2 Responses to “A Tale Of Two Islands, Mervyn Claxton”

• margaret D. Kawamuinyo Gill on March 2nd, 2009 at 8:58 am

  I have been hungry for news of what is going on in Guadeloupe, Haiti and Martinique in respect of the global financial and economic crisis. Unable to read even the simplest of French you can imagine how difficult that has been in Barbados. I welcome the discussion here. As we speak a regional response to the crisis, perhaps we need to speak of more than the English speaking subregion.

  I am reading C. L. R. James, A History of Negro Revolt, and am struck by his assessment of the 1948 boycott of European imported goods in Ghana that led to the eventual independence of that country. He says of the initial month-long economic boycott: “This was no ordinary riots of a hungry populace over high prices.” His historic evidence were the strategic organisation of the boycotters, the sympathetic and broaderbased intentions of the populace which quickly revealed themseves in their antiracial demands for this to be the “last European governor who will occupy the castle”.

  The organisation of the strikers in these two french-speaking countries, the resolve that allows them to remain resolute even in the face of some concessions, the race issues that are now described in this article suggest correspondences with C. L. R. James analysis.

  As a past trade unionist, I am not happy that all that was evoked from a Trade union in Trinidad was a letter of solidarity. Striking people need more than talk and from more than one national trade union body in the region. The unions in this sub-region also can learn from the engagement and concern with economic enfranchisement of the people of Guadeloupe and Martinique. If this financial crisis is about anything it is about how people can more participate in the wealth of the world, not just its products.

  A poem for the interpreters.

• Myron J Frankman, Economics, McGill University on March 13th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

  Further to Norman’s posting, this article may be of interest: Alec Wilkinson, Annals of Business, “Not Quite Cricket,” The New Yorker, March 9, 2009, p. 24 (starting page). Abstract (pasted below) can be viewed at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_wilkinson

  ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF BUSINESS about billionaire Robert Allen Stanford, his sponsorship of cricket in the West Indies, and the charges of fraud and running a massive Ponzi scheme brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The largest prize that two sports teams have ever played for was twenty million dollars, in a cricket match held last November in Antigua. The contestants were the English national team and the Stanford Superstars, a team selected from among the best players of the West Indies. The field and the purse belong to Robert Allen Stanford, a gaudy financier from Mexia, Texas, who lives on St. Croix. He is also a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, where he has owned a bank, an airline, a sports club, a newspaper, a couple of restaurants, and the cricket stadium. He is the chairman of Stanford Financial Group, a wealth-management company. According to Forbes’s 2008 list, his net worth was $2.2 billion. On February 17th, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against him and two of his associates, saying they engaged in a fraud of “shocking magnitude” involving the sale of roughly eight billion dollars’ worth of certificates of deposit. As of last week, no criminal charges had been filed against Stanford, although one of histop executives had been arrested. In Antigua, Stanford is a commanding figure, either esteemed or reviled, depending on one’s interests. Among people who care about cricket in Antigua, he is regarded as a savior. Writer interviews Stanford on his yacht in Antigua (before the S.E.C. charges were filed against him). Tells about Stanford’s youth. He attended Baylor and joined Stanford Financial Group, of which his father was the chairman, in the late nineteen-seventies. In 1993, he took over the company. Tells how he built up the business and established operations in Antigua. Describes the S.E.C.’s allegations regarding the missing eight billion dollars in C.D.s. Stanford never cared much for traditional cricket, but he embraced and promoted a succinct, modern form of the game known as Twenty20. Tells about the creation of the Stanford Superstars and describes the twenty-million-dollar match against England, which was won by the Superstars. Writer interviews Lennox Cush, a member of the Superstars who lives in Queens and was unable
  to play in the match because of injury.
  –
  Myron J. Frankman, Economics
  McGill University