Category Archives: Thought Leaders.

Lalibela Foundation and Silverback General Contracting N.V. working on projects in the Netherlands and Sint Maarten.

Foundation Lalibela Commonunity working in Rotterdam. This is how Foundation Lalibela raises funds to support relief efforts in Ethiopia.

How to revitalize Caribbean economies.

Above the logo of the Soualiga Youth Foundation. Profiled on this BLOG in the HOME section.

ST PETERS Sint Maarten: Since 2000 the Foundation Soualiga Youth wrote a detailed report which was presented to then Minister of Education Sarah Wescott Williams. In said report the Foundation outlined a comprehensive plan of action pertinent to Economic revitalization of the Caribbean economies, using Agriculture and Eco-Cultural Tourism as an alternative to the present hedonistic people destructive trend in tourism.The plan was never taken seriously and experts worldwide are predicting the imminent collapse of the Tourism sector as a viable economic pillar regionally. This article is a mirror of what the Soualiga Youth presented to the government of Sint Maarten.

Nov 21, 2012 (Menafn – Caribbean News Now – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) –There is indeed a continuing conversation in many global quarters pertaining to the type of prescription necessary for the revival of the Caribbean economies. In Washington, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Inter American Development Bank (IADB) are lamenting about the evolving middle class in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While they have exercised much care and caution about defining the specific nations where the middle class is emerging, we must not lose sight of the fact that these two powerful agencies have not substantially addressed the growing poverty issues and decrease in quality of life among certain sectors of the region’s population. In addition, there have been no indicators from these two agencies as to how an emerging middle class will contribute to the control of poverty; improve youth employment and improve the quality of life for the disadvantaged in a sustained manner.

To the great disappointment of many other global observers, the Washington and Geneva multilateralists are aggressively pursuing their selfish development agenda through the deployment of financial resources and development of phony collaborative partnerships with their regional counterparts.
These agencies and their collaborators are yet to come forward with any viable and achievable suggestions regarding the revitalization of our economies; managing our foreign policy reserves by decreasing imports and most important development strategies for a sustainable path that would alleviate the region’s social and economic ills.
Addressing youth unemployment; rural development; access to information technology tools and ensuring there are initiatives that will bring tangible benefits to the disadvantaged are innovations and expectations that should become, key development and policy planks in the region.

As efforts and suggestions are developed for advancing and sustaining the Caribbean economies, there are at least three sectors that require immediate attention and hopefully will result in some improvements. However, it must be noted and recognized that successful and sustainable outcomes will only be derived from a genuine change of attitude, recognition of the need for broad based planning, participation and an acceptance that the global community is changing and Caribbean governments and institutions are obligated to fall in line with these global changes.
Agriculture has long been recognized as the central mainstay of Caribbean economies. Unfortunately, this economy has disappeared and there has been no coordinated or demonstrated effort to revive and sustain it. Short term tourist dollars seem to be the priority. Accumulation of foreign currency in any Caribbean nation should not be dependent only upon tourism.

Many of our small farmers have been abandoned as weak kneed regional policy experts associated with various governments have embarked upon a wild and ill fated chase for tourism dollars, which is unlikely to increase.
While the chase of tourism dollars might be justified by the weak knee policy experts, evidence clearly indicate that Caribbean economies should not rely only on a tourism sector, given global economic uncertainties in Europe and North America. Tourism should not be embraced as the saviour of Caribbean economies. Agriculture should be the priority.

In reviving and sustaining this important industry, there are several factors that require a radical change in thinking and perception about production and market penetration. The application of new information technology tools, identifying and building new partnerships, creation, and sustenance of a strong national marketing board that will assist agricultural stakeholders in exporting and selling their products.

The days of the Geest Line, Harrison Shipping, Atlantic Lines, the Saguenay and Canada Steamship Lines are remembered by many for transporting our agricultural products in better times. Unfortunately, maintenance and sustainability of these exports are disappearing and very little efforts are being advanced for production and export reliability of these products. Like the tourism industry, they are foreign currency income earners and this is why the rationale and need for the agricultural economy is vital to our future.

The tourism industry is an important sector for the region. While the importance of this industry is recognized and encouraged, like the agricultural industry, it also requires radical changes and understanding. The Caribbean tourism industry is very competitive and exceeds the old antique marketing strategy of white sand beaches, bikini clad women with tantalizing physique and beautiful white teeth.

Potential vacationers are looking at affordability, safety, quick, accessible transportation and potential venues or attractions that jug their interests. These expectations require many changes in the management of this industry. Pricing, target marketing, and promotion are very essential if Caribbean nations are interested in holding their niche.

Tourism income earnings are fine and must always be encouraged. However, consideration must be given to a more intricate and sustainable link with our agricultural industry. Tourist vacationers must be encouraged to consume more local foods and other consumption goods associated with the tourist industry. 

The preservation of the local arts and craft industry is of critical importance. This would require effective monitoring and maintenance of existing legislation that addresses trade preference and import of these products. Irrespective of the World Trade Organization (WTO) hype, our local arts and crafts industries should always be protected.

As I examine the plight and future of the region’s disadvantaged, it is crystal clear that unemployment, sexual exploitation, youth delinquency, crime, and lawlessness will continue to confront Caribbean governments. At the same time, many regional individuals have embarked upon further education only to discover after graduation that there are no immediate employment opportunities at home.
Therefore, Caribbean governments need to broaden their perception about another potential foreign income source. Given the decline of the tourism industry, the collapse of the agricultural industry and limited export products, the denial must end and our leaders need to get down to work to address local economic conditions and stop blaming global economic conditions.

Jamaica and Barbados maintain fairly good tourism and trade infrastructures that earn them foreign exchange. However, these two CARICOM nations are actively and aggressively engaged in labour export that provides opportunities for their unemployed skilled workers to seek temporary foreign employment in the United States and Canada. While these two nations, like their other regional colleagues, are engaged in the Canadian seasonal farm workers program, they recognize that it is minuscule and there is need for sourcing other potential opportunities.

Many of our regional governments need to take a page from Barbados and Jamaica as labour export generates good foreign income and also contributes to the improvement of the quality of life. Those regional governments with tunnel vision on labour export must understand that they need to go beyond the seasonal farm workers program.

Our governments can begin exploring new labour market opportunities by putting their consular officials to investigate and identify employment opportunities for skilled unemployed workers in their domain. Canada and other western nations have growing temporary employment opportunities that can utilize the skills of our employed. We need to move beyond the farm workers program.
Recognition and implementation of the above suggestions require our regional Ministries of Labour to become more innovative and forward looking in addressing labour market opportunities in their domain. They might wish to solicit the assistance of the Trinidad-based International Labour Office (ILO) if they decide to become innovative and creative.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN IN THE BIBLE.

Copyrights Wade A. Bailey : Above a detailed map of the area located on the continent of Alkebulan aka Africa, detailing the biblical area of the Garden Of Eden. In Genesis 2:10, 11, 12.13,14,15 it is stated that two rivers went out of Eden one of the rivers Gihon (the Blue Nile), compassed or surrounded Ethiopia.

A painting of Adam and Eve. Property of Dr Malachi York.

From the scriptural accounts, we can see that the Garden of Eden is to be found in the land of Ta-Merre i.e. Egypt [land of the Sun]. Many European scholars even some so called Christian scholars claim that the location of Eden is neither in Egypt nor even on the African continent citing a supposed mis-spelling in the King James Version of the Bible as pertains to the word Ethiopia in some accounts. They claim that in the original language the word was Kush which they attempt to link to Iran or Irak and even Turkey.


Sadly it is buffoons of the above mentioned ilk who are not true scholars but poseurs and miseducators who have for decade’s mis-written and falsely fashioned history and academic scholarship as per their racist pet theories and notions.
I will now provide factual evidence grounded in science and historically verifiable data as to the location of Eden.
There are two very preeminent and world renowned scholars of the ancient world namely Dr Cheik Anta Diop and Dr Joseph Ben Jochannan.
Both these scholars who functioned in their capacity are well travelled world lecturers and were both professors at major universities during the span of their careers.
I studied both of these men’ works to establish the scientific and archeological basis for the evidence I will bring forth.
If one were to conduct a study of the ancient world in pursuit of the location of the Garden of Eden one would have to start in anciency not in modernity.
The entire studied population of the earth is by now well aware that, the earliest man-like fossils were discovered in Africa by Louis Leakey and his wife. Based upon carbon dating and other scientific data we have empirical evidence that the human race originated on the so-called “African continent” which is in fact correctly called Alkebulan.
I will like to examine here certain bible passages taken from Genesis.
Genesis  chapter  2:10  “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
From the above we can see that Eden was not a Garden but Eden was the name of a land mass precisely how large is not given, what it does state is that out of Eden flowed a river
That parted four ways and the following names are given for those four rivers.
Genesis 2:11 the name of the first is Pison“White Nile,” that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is Gold. Havilah is old Nubia from the word Nub which means gold. Some so-called modern scholars place Havilah in modern day Turkey.  How can one make such a claim seeing that Turkey was not known in ancient history or in modern times for being a land renowned for its vast gold  reserves.


The assertion that Iran or Iraq could have been the location for Havilah is also destroyed by the fact that although ancient Babylon was the site where today’s Iraq is located,
Babylon was in fact a satellite state of ancient Kemit misnomered Egypt by modern Euro-centric scholars. The fact that Nimrod mentioned in the bible as the great hunter before the lord was according to ancient as well as modern accounts none other than Osiris the Kemitian god of the underworld, we have evidence in history that attest to Nubian kings having conquered and subjugated the entire continent of Alkebulan so vast was their empire that there was an upper and a lower Egypt also the Nile river was identified as the Blue Nile and the White Nile, most Eurocentric scholars ignore these pertinent facts.
Babylon was a satellite state of Nubia by way of Kemit, and had vast Gold reserves is as a result of gold being brought to that region from our Kemit and Kush or Ethiopia which is rightfully called Punt.
These  evidences in ancient history points only to an African source, of much of the mineral wealth of the region.
Not only was the Nubian kingdom, which in fact penetrated even into Sudan on our modern map of Africa above Sudan just below the Blue Nile we have an area identified as Nubia.

Africans were already using the term Nubian in ancient times as a term of designation of a distinct, highly developed social, political,Religious and cultural ethnic group in the area in question. Before European contact. The Arab and Berber did not exist at the primacy of the development of Nubian civilization. Berbers according to the Encarta are themselves an Arabized people, how then can an assimilated primitive  culture  formed after the Nubian which were a supra-civilization,  be credited with having fathered the modern inhabitants of Nubia?  The utter absurdity in the matter defies common sense! Scholars still use terms such as Hamitic, Japhetic and Semitic as terms of designation for the various people groups on the planet.The terms are in fact derived from the bible they are the names of the three sons of Noah namely, Ham, Shem, and Japheth.  Ham fathered the African nations most notable of which are Kush (Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea), Mitsrayim (Egypt), and Phut=Punt (Nubia), Nimrod (Babylon) et al. Shem fathered certain notables such as Asshur (Assyria), Elam, Aram and Arphaxad, out of these came the so-called Semites along with their languages.

The Nubians who were a dark skinned thick-lipped people with wooly hair not unlike many of their surviving descendants today they are in fact the architects of what we call Egypt. These people founded the world’s first university at Timbuktu .It is to this region that all the European scholars traveled to become learned, in the ways of the “Medu Nechter” or the so-called Egyptian mystery system.  Onyx the other precious metal mentioned in the Genesis account was also greatly used in Kemit as a depiction of “Kephera” the so-called Scarab Beetle “Dung Beetle”, which is usually made from black Onyx and Gold.Also one important fact that must be taken into account in anciency the continent of Alkebulan was still joined to the other countries of the so called Middle East all of whom were satellites of the Nubians. One must bear in mind that there was no Aswan Dam. Io mention here  the names of the rivers mentioned in scripture in Genesis.The name of the third river is Hiddekelit states that it went towards the east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.All of the places mentioned were in ancient times still joined to the continent of Alkebulan Africa.Mesopotamia, [Greek- between two rivers], so named because of its strategic location between the Tigres and the Euphrates rivers.The land of Assyria takes its name from one of their ancient kings called Asshur.Ge:  10:11: Out of that, land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah,Ge:  10:12: And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.Ge:  10:13: And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,Ge:  10:14: And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim.

In ancient history, we will read that Ur of the Chaldea where Abraham came from was, in fact, the conquerors of the Assyrians who were a satellite of Ur. Let us examine Ur, one of the most important cities of ancient Mesopotamia located on the Western Bank of the lower falls of the Euphrates River. Some very illuminating finds were unearthed in (Tel Muqayyir) modern Iraq. From the data thus far gathered we can see a pattern of development since Ishtar was the deity worshiped by the Assyrians who were a satellite at many points in the history of the Babylonians who were as per their own records descendants of Nimrod. The same Nimrod of the Bible, whose mother Serimaris or Astarte was called the Queen of Heaven, or the mother of Heaven. Serimaris and Nimrod correlate to Isis and Horus of the Kemitians (Egyptians).Also according to archeological evidence, Babylon is one of the first ancient civilizations it is also the place, where the two rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates meet. The Babylonian king called Hammurabi wrote the Code of Hammurabi or Laws of Hammurabi.

This post will be continued .

SHURENDY ‘TYSON’ QUANT AND HIS NO LIMIT SOLDIERS.

A map of the Caribbean showing the illicit narcotic routes from Colombia and Venezuela.

With the Caribbean basin being so close to Colombia as this map shows, the use of the Caribbean as a drug transshipment point, to Europe and North America, has increased as international pressure continues to ramp up against Mexican drug cartels. William Brownfield, an assistant U.S. Secretary of State in charge of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs said: ―We see this crisis coming we even have some sense as to when it will arrive‖. The crisis is being fueled by Mexican drug cartels who are responding to increased police pressure along their northern border with the United States. But there is also an element of state-supported help as countries antagonistic to the United States, such as Venezuela, work closer with drug cartels, the analysts warned. These sentiments were underscored during a Dec. 15 hearing in front of a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on drug trafficking, by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, who said there seems to be a lack of urgency as violence continues to grow in the Caribbean basin. The problem is becoming so dire in the Dominican Republic, Menendez said, that a presidential candidate in that country recently warned that his country is close to becoming ―a narco-state.‖―He said that the government is incapable of stopping drug traffickers, Analysts with the state department say Colombian narco cartels are increasingly using Caribbean countries as trans-shipment points for drugs headed to the United States and Europe. These routes were highly popular during the 1980s when Colombian cartels made Miami and southern Florida hugely popular entry points for illicit cocaine shipments, the analysts said. ―I have observed with great concern the security situation in this region,‖ said Liliana Ayalde, deputy administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development and a former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay ―Over the last ten years, there‘s been an alarming escalation of homicides in the region, She said. In the 1980s law enforcement began choking off maritime trafficking at the same time that Colombian cartels were being dismantled because of international pressure, according to analysts. Brownfield said this served to shift major drug trafficking activity to Mexico where home-grown cartels used age-old smuggling routes along the porous overland border. But the explosion of violence over the last six years in Mexico has drawn international pressure on the cartels, who are shifting operations further south in neighboring Latin American countries.

He predicted that recent intervention efforts, targeting Central America, will begin to take hold this year, at which time the cartels are predicted to shift the smuggling routes into the waters of the Caribbean, where tiny island nations, are vulnerable and not equipped to deal the volume of money and violence, that the cartels bring with them.―I am neither satisfied with the progress being made on the ground, nor the news and information I am receiving from the region,‖ Menendez said. He noted that in the Bahamas, the murder of 104 people last year set a new homicide record for that island nation that had been set only a year earlier. ―But that pales in comparison to Jamaica, which has become the murder capital of the Caribbean,‖ Menendez said, with more than 1,400 people murdered last year. Early signs support Brownfield‘s prediction. Rodney Benson, an assistant administrator with the DEA, described an operation last July in which the DEA helped the Dominican Republic arrest a member of Mexico‘s Sinaloa Cartel, who had been coordinating cocaine shipments by air from Venezuela to the Dominican Republic. And while the arrest was counted as a successful operation, Benson said, the Dominican Republic was unprepared for the ensuing violence of reprisal that wracked the country. Menendez said that despite this spike in violence, there are troubling signs of the drug cartels staying one step ahead of law enforcement. One example is the amount of money the U.S. government is allotting to this fight. While the focus and the funds are on Mexico and Central America, Menendez noted that funding for anti-drug efforts in the Caribbean are actually expected to drop to $73 million from $77 million a year earlier.―If we don‘t pay attention to the Caribbean,‖ Menendez warned, ―we‘re going to repeat history. The information and statistics above offers well documented proof of a highly organized sophisticated thrust by Narco Cartels, out of Mexico in Collusion with Colombians and other South American countries and most recently Caribbean islands, like Belize, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and others as transshipment points for drugs destined for Europe and America.

Above top members of MS 13 in a prison in El Salvador. Above the logo of Los Trinitarios.
I indicated since 2003 that the Mara Salvatuchra or MS 13 , and the Trinitarios (the Dominican gang active throughout the US , St Thomas, St Croix, Belize and peripherally through proxies in some Antillean islands), are the proxies of some powerful Mexican ―narco-cartels‖ . Increasingly Caribbean gangs are as I have stated previously, displaying certain characteristics most often associated with terrorist organizations i.e. kidnappings used as a political bargaining chip whilst simultaneously using kidnapping as a revenue stream, their use of highly sophisticated military grade weapons, tactics of dismemberment of rivals and even civilians as a means of sowing terror and fear in their opposition, local populations and the elite within the state apparatus. One of the most recent contemporary examples of a narco-state in the making is Sint Maarten, a former Dutch colony and formerly part of the now non-existent Netherlands Antilles.

Figures 1-2: In photo‘s Shurendy Quant and his Dutch Goth celebrity lawyer Inez Wiske. A potent example of the preceding and the impact of Urban American gang-culture on the Caribbean is that of the No Limit Soldiers (NLS), a crime syndicate originating in Koraalspecht Curacao. Their exploits can be read about, in most Dutch media outlets in Holland and the islands of the former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. The crime syndicate is involved in various criminal enterprises, ―Another major activity of the gang are contract killings. The gang is known for operating murder-for-hire squads that are used to eliminate rival drug trafficking operations in Curacao as well as in the Netherlands. Colombian crime groups as well as criminal organizations from the Dutch Penose are known for doing business with the Afro-Curaçaoan gang in the committing of contract killings‖.
Wikipedia, not the most reliable information source on the internet, contains clear facts that can be gleaned from police reports, local and international media. In April of 2013 Arthur Hall Senior News Editor of The Gleaner a leading Jamaican publication wrote an article on April 16 2013 wherein it was stated that: ―Curacao National Sent Home From Jamaica Awaiting Further Deportation.
The Curacao national who was deported from Jamaica under controversial circumstances last week is now in custody in that country awaiting deportation to the Netherlands to answer several charges. The 30-year-old Shurandy Quant, otherwise called ‘Tyson’ and ‘Padmore’, was taken into custody immediately on arrival in Curacao last Thursday.” He is wanted in Holland to answer charges so the authorities there asked Jamaica to arrest him, and they deported him back to the country from which he arrived, so they sent him here,” said Norman Serphos, public relations officer for the Public Prosecutor in Curaçao.”He is being held here while we await the green light from Jamaica, where the matter is to be settled,” added Serphos.The matter that has to be settled relates to efforts by lawyers representing Quant to prevent his deportation. Attorneys-at-law Carolyn Reid-Cameron and Chukwuemeka Cameron have argued that Quant was deported despite a Supreme Court order that he should be allowed to stay in the island until the case was settled. Due process not followed.
They contended that due process and the rule of law were not followed. But the police are claiming that while they were aware of an application in the Supreme Court, they received no instruction that impacted the deportation order signed by National Security Minister Peter Bunting. The lawyers have indicated that they have been instructed to initiate contempt of court charges against Bunting. Quant is described as a very violent, wealthy and sophisticated world drug trafficker who fled to Montego Bay, St James, to avoid capture. According to international law-enforcement agencies, members of his organization are tattooed ‘NLS – No Limit Soldier’ on their hands and ‘TRU – The Real Underworld’ on their chest back or head.

Figure: Photo a bonafide NLS member, poses proudly in the heart of NLS, territory in Koraalspecht Curacao © Sinaya Wolfert. They also wear chains with the associated insignia NLS/TRU.
It is feared that Quant would use his considerable wealth earned through the illegal drugs trade to corrupt the local police.”I know that he is wanted for trial in connection with a drug case, but there are others,” Serphos told The Gleaner.Quant subsequently won the case enumerated above. Now the question in my mind is which, street gang has the financial wherewithal and the obvious legal representation that Shurendy Quant and his No Limit crime syndicate has available to them? Certainly not in the case of Afro-Caribbean males in the impoverished Caribbean context. Shurendy Quant is unequivocally one of the executives of a well-oiled, sophisticated, money generating enterprise.There are clear facts that can be gleaned from police reports, local and international media and the various snitches, that have absconded from NLS. One such snitch/rat being Anthony Bertinus aka ―Pencho‖. Bertinus stated publicly in an interview with Margriet Martinus who worked for the Dutch magazine ® Niuewe Revu, the photographer for the piece was Sinaya Wolfert.Bertinus stated in an interview with the Volkskrant a Dutch newspaper that he knows who ordered the hit on Helmin Wiels; I will include excerpts from the interview herein. The article was written by Charlotte Huisman dated 8, September 2016. The article was of course written in Dutch, I have translated said article for my readership. The article was captioned as follows: ―How Three Rich Casino Bosses made 600,000 Euro‟s available To Assassinate Helmin Wiels‖.Who gave the orders to assassinate Helmin Wiels? Anthony Bertinus knows first-hand. He told his story to the judicial authorities on Curacao, but his name was ―leaked‖ to the press. ―My death sentence‖, Anthony stated that‘s why I want to tell my side of the story‖. ―Anthony Spencer Bertinus (50) is

in a Dutch jail, behind the glass in a freezing cold room. Bertinus is in jail for an armed robbery on a Marijuana plantation, which he committed several years ago, while he resided in Holland. He was extradited to Holland to serve his sentence. He will talk to us about, his intimate knowledge of the assassination plot, to liquidate Helmin Wiels and the principals and financiers of said plot‖.―Bertinus gave a detailed statement to the Public Prosecutor on Curacao, „with the understanding that my name would not be revealed‟, but the Public Prosecutor named him in an earlier hearing as a „witness‟. His name appeared in a report in the local newspaper Amigoe on Curaçao, as a witness‖. Commenting on the report in Amigoe Bertinus said: “That felt like my death sentence, now that it doesn‟t matter anymore, I want to tell my side of the story”.―Even behind bars in the Netherlands Bertinus is not safe. He was threatened recently, by a fellow inmate from Curaçao. The man said to him that: „Pencho I know that you are marked for death. There is a price on your head and I want to cash it!‖―Bertinus begins to talk….about the most volatile question on Curaçao, ‗who murdered Helmin Wiels?‘ Bertinus says that he grew up in Koraalspecht with Burney F aka ‗Nini‘, the former campaign manager of Jorge or George Jamaloodin. Jamaloodin was a former Finance Minister in the Cabinet of the then Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte.

in a Dutch jail, behind the glass in a freezing cold room. Bertinus is in jail for an armed robbery on a Marijuana plantation, which he committed several years ago, while he resided in Holland. He was extradited to Holland to serve his sentence. He will talk to us about, his intimate knowledge of the assassination plot, to liquidate Helmin Wiels and the principals and financiers of said plot‖.―Bertinus gave a detailed statement to the Public Prosecutor on Curacao, „with the understanding that my name would not be revealed‟, but the Public Prosecutor named him in an earlier hearing as a „witness‟. His name appeared in a report in the local newspaper Amigoe on Curaçao, as a witness‖. Commenting on the report in Amigoe Bertinus said: “That felt like my death sentence, now that it doesn‟t matter anymore, I want to tell my side of the story”.―Even behind bars in the Netherlands Bertinus is not safe. He was threatened recently, by a fellow inmate from Curaçao. The man said to him that: „Pencho I know that you are marked for death. There is a price on your head and I want to cash it!‖―Bertinus begins to talk….about the most volatile question on Curaçao, ‗who murdered Helmin Wiels?‘ Bertinus says that he grew up in Koraalspecht with Burney F aka ‗Nini‘, the former campaign manager of Jorge or George Jamaloodin. Jamaloodin was a former Finance Minister in the Cabinet of the then Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte.

Figure: Anthony  ‘Penchu‘ Bertinus.
Gerrit Schotte‘s party the MFK is now once again a part of the government in Curacao‘s Parliament. Gerrit Schotte is the same individual that the criminal Penchu and many other‘s including the Public Prosecutor‘s on Curacao, has linked to the murder of Helmin Wiels, why then is this individual a participant in the political process? The insanity of the matter boggles the mind.

Wiels center campaigning in better times.

Above the body of Helmin Wiels lying on Marie Pompoen beach where he was murdered, shot at point blank range with an AK-47.

Bertinus specifically named lotto boss Robbie Dos Santos, the Sint Maarten based casino boss Francesco Corallo has been (named as an „important person in the Sicilian Mafia‟ by the authorities in Italy), and a third unnamed person, as being the principals in, financing, authoring and ordering the assassination of Mr. Helmin Wiels‖.―More than three years after the murder of Helmin Wiels, the Public Prosecutor on Curacao, launched a preliminary hearing against “Nini. The Public Prosecutor claims that “Nini”, is the link to the three big bosses and the hired killers. Bertinus and “Nini” know each other from their younger years growing up in the same No Limit Soldier stronghold, the Koraalspecht neighborhood”. Bertinus said that “Nini”, was good friends with his elder brothers.

Bertinus said in his statement to the Public Prosecutor, that “Nini”, confided in him that: „The three gambling bosses each contributed 400,000 Antillean Guilders, which amounted to 1.2 million guilders the equivalent of 600,000 Euro or 650,000 US dollars. “Nini”, told me that Wiels did not keep his mouth shut, about the corruption in the gambling and casino industries on Curacao, which led to his assassination. “Nini” thought that I would adhere to the „no snitching‟ code. What he didn‟t know was that my father had been friends with Mr. Wiels‖.―Bertinus told us his life story‖ (some of which I have excerpted in the following). ―When I was 17, I moved from Curacao to Rotterdam. In Rotterdam I started a career as an armed robber. I was eventually locked up in prison. After having been released from prison. At the age of 23 I was the European Kickboxing champion. In Rotterdam with its large Antillean community, he met people from his old neighborhood Koraalspecht. Some of them were members of the No Limit Soldiers (NLS)‖.―After his father died Bertinus returned to Curacao. He saw how drastically Curacao had changed. Barely a week after he returned, Helmin Wiels was murdered by members of NLS from his neighborhood‖.―Bertinus went to work as ‗security‘ at the ―Haifu Minimarket‖, in Koraalspecht. He also did odd jobs, for Michael L a member of NLS. One day Michael told Bertinus to go to ―Nini who they heard had contracted NLS members to execute the contract on Helmin Wiels‘ head.

Figure: The Haifu Minimarket clearly visible.The executives in NLS were furious that their people were involved in the hit and wanted to see money! They demanded that ―Nini‖, pay them 25,000 Euro. ―We know that you were instrumental in orchestrating the hit”. Bertinus told „Nini‟.―In the case file of the hearing on August 2014, there are three statements by Bertinus against the organizers of the Wiels hit. The actual statements were made by Bertinus in February, 2014. Then he was imprisoned, on suspicion of the attempted extortion of ‗Nini‘. Bertinus claims that he has changed his life and wants to do well by his island, Curacao. He says that: ―I was shocked, to see children as young as, 13 and 14 years old, walking around with guns and openly sympathizing with the No Limit Soldiers. The new generation of gangsters, do not have an ethical code. There is

only senseless violence. He said that Curacao is held, too tightly in the grip of the mafia. Everything is being taken over and robbed, by criminals, the harbor, water and electricity companies, the casinos. My island is the scapegoat, everything is becoming more expensive and there is hardly anyway one can make an honest living. The youngsters in Koraalspecht see the expensive cars, that the gangsters ride around in and they also want to be gangsters. While the gangbangers continue to do the dirty work for the, crime bosses’. I stand by what I say; even if it costs me my life, the crime bosses must not evade justice this time. I do not want my beautiful island to be ruined”.

Figure: a Facebook photo: In this photo Dangelo Damascus left and Elvis Kuwas right in photo. The two persons shown above are the ones held responsible for the murder of Helmin Wiels. Both are being described by the Prosecutors Office on Curacao as members of the No Limit crime syndicate.


The naming of Elvis Kuwas and Damascus as bonafide members of the NLS does not fit with the proven image of the NLS. The NLS is a very modern, highly regimented and organized criminal syndicate that is consciously, franchising, branding and consolidating small street gangs both on Sint Maarten and in Holland. A real NLS member is either branded with a tattoo like the one above on the right shoulder of the man in the photo, or they wear the syndicate‘s logo of the tank on their chain. Within that gangs culture only highly ranked members are allowed diamonds and other precious stones in the medallion of the tank logo, more diamonds and precious stones marks the wearer as a shot-caller (general) within the crime syndicate. The two men Elvis Kuwas aka Monster and Dangelo Damascus were not identified in the media as having any specific tattoos indicating their allegiance to or membership within the NLS crime syndicate. There is however evidence that proves Kuwas, was being used as an assassin by the group, specifically to hunt down Erwin Juliana, the highly ranked BVC shot caller, who was killed in 2015 at the Hato International Airport, Curacao. Juliana was not killed by Kuwas, the specifics of the hunt for Juliana was highlighted in the corporate media and I will highlight some of the excerpts here.To date Burney Fonseca aka ‗Nini‘ was sentenced to 25 years for having orchestrated the murder of Helmin Wiels.An explosive, detailed report in the police magazine Blauw/Blue gave detailed information culled from police reports in the city of Rotterdam and elsewhere, on the activities of the No Limit Soldiers (NLS), Buena Vista City (BVC) and a gang called Kura Piedra/Army, in the city of Rotterdam. Published on the 28 March 2015 captioned: Bendeoorlogen Binnen Het Koninkrijk/Gang Wars in The Kingdom, and written by Marielle den Breejen all photos are from the Rotterdam Eenheid or the Unit Rotterdam and ANP, here are some excerpted highlights from the report: ―Members of the No Limit Soldiers and Buena Vista City street gangs, regularly come to Holland to flee rivals in Curacao and to further their criminal activities.


The gangs are caught in a fierce ongoing, violent gang war. Wherever rival factions meet, they immediately open fire on each other‖.―Curacao has a chronic problem involving criminal gangs whose members are often complicit in, armed robberies, illicit narcotics trafficking, rip-deals, and gun running. The gangs are in possession of huge arsenals of weapons. The most dominant of these gangs are the No Limit Soldiers (NLS), from the Koraalspecht area and Buena Vista City (BVC), from the Buena Vista neighborhood‖.―A year and a half ago the Recherche Samenwerkings Team (RST) the English translation for RST is Investigative Cooperation Team (ICT), warned us (the Dutch police) that members of the NLS and BVC, were leaving Curacao for the Netherlands, according to Edward Van Meel national information coordinator of the recently established info-cel Caribbean‖.―In a section entitled: ‗Moordcommando‘/Murdersquad or the Hitteam, it was stated in Blauw that: ―De KMar op Schiphol treft op 26 Februari 2012 zes Kilo cocaine aan in de vleugel van een vliegtuig uit Bonaire/Curacao.

On February 26, 2016, at Schiphol International Airport, personnel of the special KMar unit discovered six kilos of cocaine in the wing of a plane that transited Bonaire made a stop on Curacao, with its final destination being Schiphol. The subsequent investigation that followed consisting of Customs, KMar and FIOD, exposed a drugs-pipeline that led to the Caribbean. Eighteen suspects were arrested, among those arrested were personnel of the Schiphol International Airport and persons in the Caribbean.

The Justice Department in Amsterdam made their findings public. They took that course of action, when it became clear that people within the crime syndicate responsible for the drugs transport, were blaming some of the persons responsible for the shipment of illicit narcotics with theft, such an accusation is usually cause for the accused being killed. Some of the suspects were members of No Limit Soldiers (NLS). In October of that year (2012), the investigation unit uncovered a plot led by members of NLS to liquidate a BVC shot caller (Erwin Adriano Juliana). The detectives warned Juliana that he was being hunted. In the beginning of November (2012) one of the leaders of NLS, went to Schiphol International Airport to pick up a hit man flown in from Curacao, subsequently a second hit man arrived days later. It became apparent to the investigative team, through listening to the hit teams cellphone conversations, that they were unable to find Juliana, thanks to the detectives‘ previously warning him, Juliana was off the grid .Towards the end of November (2012), the (Koninklijke Marecheussee)/ KMar, the FIOD led by several arrest units, conducted a series of raids multiple suspects and the hired hit men, were arrested, firearms and illicit narcotics were found, several seized cellphones contained pictures of the suspects posing with firearms, money and drugs. A case was being built by the Public Prosecutors office against eight of the suspects for the establishment of and membership in an ongoing criminal enterprise. NLS head honcho Shurendy Quant aka Tyson Q, was among those arrested, however due to insufficient evidence, the presiding judge in Haarlem, ordered his predetention lifted. The following is documented evidence from previously classified information, from the national investigation unit in the Netherlands, which proves a definite NLS presence on Sint Maarten.

Sint Maartens judicial authorities and police force has yet to acknowledge the chronic problems created island wide since NLS, began operating on Sint Maarten. What follows is damning evidence of the scope and extent of the operations of NLS on Curacao, Sint Maarten and the Netherlands: ―The No Limit Soldiers is a criminal syndicate with a military‘, hierarchy in Curacao, Sint Maarten and the Netherlands. The general‘ and the colonel‘ are at the head of the organization, further down several lieutenants (shot callers) issue orders to their subordinates soldiers‘. Specific women called ‗princesses‘ are used to fulfill supportive roles and carry out important tasks within the NLS crime syndicate one such female was Latoya Flanders (Source: DRIO Rotterdam).

Figure: Above Latoya Flanders, aka “Nuta” and Urvin Nuto Wawoe, a shot-caller within the No Limit Gang aka Tru from Koraal Specht Curacao. Flanders proudly wears a white T-shirt with the alternate name of NLS/TRU The Real Underworld.

Above Latoya Flanders the deceased paramour of Urvin ―Nuto‖ Wawoe. Flanders was murdered in Sint Maarten on Thursday, September 5, 2015. She was liquidated in a reprisal shooting, in the ongoing war between Buena Vista City (BVC) and the No Limit Soldiers (NLS), both of which originate out of Buena Vista (BVC) and Koraal Specht (NLS) on the island of Curacao.

Figure: Above a No Limit Soldiers promotion instead of the aforementioned TRU is used the organization is one and the same. The website shown koraalspechtcity.com is their official site. On their FB page Latoya Flanders is eulogized by Urvin Wawoe in poetic verse he refers to her as “Nuta” and himself as “Nuto”.The war being waged by the gangs have transcended the narrow confines of their neighborhoods on Curacao and have taken on a regional, international character. The following is quoted from Sint Maarten News online (SMN): ―Based on the information SMN News received from persons within the community that know some of the gang members they said the spate of killing started after NLS leaders ordered the execution of two men at Curacao’s Airport. While Urvin ―Nuto‖ Wawoe was caught with a large amount of illegal drugs that landed him in prison on St. Maarten and a huge prison fight led authorities to send him to a prison in the Netherlands for his own safety, the other gang members are hell bent on getting revenge for the assassination of two of their members‖. The two men referenced in the excerpted quote are BVC shot-caller Erwin Adriano Juliana aka Jais and his nephew. The event that precipated the ongoing war between the both factions mentioned previously, dates to when the gangs were in a pahse of ―cooperation‖, and were essentially allies, is as follows: ―NLS is a crime syndicate that is being used by certain narco-cartels based in Colombia. As a franchise that is, essentially a muscle and protection source when huge quantities of cocaine is being shipped from Colombia to Curacao or Sint Maarten in multi-kilo drug trafficking operations into the Netherlands and the United States. The so called Snowflakes case was just such an operation. In the Snowflakes case 623 kilos of Cocaine was shipped to Curacao and Sint Maarten, we speak here of a transshipment operation, the ultimate destination being Europe and America. The local police on Sint Maarten―discovered‖ 170 kilos of Cocaine in a house in Cole Bay which led to the arrest of Miguel Arrindell and several other men, some of those men were members of the NLS. The so called Benzi case is also linked to the Snowflakes case. The Benzi case began with the theft from NLS, of several kilos of Cocaine by Buena Vista City (BVC) shot caller, Erwin Adriano Juliana aka ―Jais‖, this led to a contract being placed on his head by the executives within NLS. Juliana was liquidated at the Hato airport on Curacao, in the first half of 2014. Another spurious tale being spun by the corporate media in the Netherlands Antilles is the lie that NLS travel to Colombia and purchase huge quantities of Cocaine. Due to the nature of the narcotics trafficking terrain in Colombia and the dominance of Colombian cartels outsiders rarely travel to Colombia if at all to purchase narcotics. The volume of Cocaine in the Snowflakes case point‘s to the fact that Miguel Arrindell was a Warehouser of Cocaine for a Colombian cartel, NLS being a franchise that is closely linked to a cartel, functioned as muscle and security in the operation. That operation spiraled out of control resulting in the so called Vesuvius investigation which I went into at length in the post ―The No Limit Soldiers Organized Crime in the Netherlands Antilles.

The people who facilitate the operations of gangs and narco cartels within the former Netherlands Antilles are persons like Michael Römer above. Römer is a former head of the (VDC) Veiligheidsdienst Curacao or the English translation of the Secret Service of Curacao. In the local media throughout the Caribbean and in the Netherlands, the saga of Römer played out here then is proof of extreme corruption and how it facilitates narco cartels and even the murder of political rivals. Römer was appointed by the then Prime Minister of Curacao Gerrit Schotte as head of the VDC on Curacao. Römer as a vassal of Schotte, who was in turn the slave of mafia figurehead Francesco Corallo , allowed Colombian criminals access to sensitive information, contained on computer hard drives at the VDC headquarter, all of the computer were destroyed and the hard drives were wiped clean of their contents.

Above Gerrit Schotte the former Prime Minister of Curacao became Primem Minister after having orchestrated the murder of Helmin Wiels, who was the legitimate Prime Minister of Curacao at the time. Here are some quotes from the Curacao Chronicle, further substantiating what was previously enumerated: ―ROMA, WILLEMSTAD – Justice in Italy confirms that they have found some incriminating documents in Francesco Corallo‟s possession, linking the former Prime Minister of Curacao, Gerrit Schotte with the mafia boss. This is according to Korant Veridiko. Corallo was arrested in August on suspicion of fraud at Banco Popolare. Apparently there are 150 million euros involved.


In a raid on the home of former Prime Minister in Willemstad, his office in the parliament building and the MFK party headquarters there were probably some documents found that indicate a link between Corallo and Schotte. The Public Prosecutor in Willemstad, at the mouth of press spokesman Norman Serphos indicated that they will not give any comments on ongoing investigations. The Italian media have so far made no mention of the relevant documents.


Casino ownerFrancesco Corallo is a well-known casino owner in the Caribbean. He owns the Atlantis World Group, which operates several casinos in the region. In St. Maarten there are the Atlantis World Casino in Cupe Coy, Paradise Plaza in Simpson Bay and Beach Plaza in Philipsburg. The company also owns the Paradise Plaza Casino in Curacao and three casinos in the Dominican Republic. Since June 1, 2011, Corallo‟s holding company is registered as a Cypriot company. Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten in the spring of 2011, Corallo was in the news on the islands of Curacao and St. Maarten. Baetsen Rudolf, CFO of the Atlantis World Group, was supported by the Prime Minister of Curacao as possible candidate for Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Central Bank of the two islands. Many saw this as a part of Corallo’s attempts to turn things into his favor to make an end to the unwelcome gambling tax. The islands also feared the influence of the Italian Mafia, which Corallo is widely known for. Corallo ambassador FAO A report from the Italian Bank in June 2011 provided the basis for a thorough investigation for certain loans to gaming companies, including those of Corallo.

In raids in November, he relied on his diplomatic immunity by virtue of his ambassadorship to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on behalf of Dominica. At its headquarters in Rome, however, they had no ambassador by that name. Atlantis / Betplus then gave a press release stating that Corallo gave up his immunity to cooperate with the judicial investigation. According to the Italian Foreign Minister, he is not even an ambassador, as he does business in Italy, and “it is inappropriate in our country as someone with business interests also enjoys diplomatic immunity.” Italian arrest warrant on June 2012, the Italian tax police arrested the former chairman of Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM) in connection with an investigation into questionable loans from this bank. Massimo Ponzellini (1950), which left the Milanese bank in late 2011 and is now chairman of a construction company Impregilo, was one of three persons for which an arrest warrant was issued because of suspicion of involvement in a criminal organization.

The other two arrest warrants were related to Francesco Corallo, who is considered by the investigators as the owner of Atlantis-BPplus, and

Antonio Canna Lira, also active in the gambling business and closely related to Ponzellini. Bribes Milan prosecutors hypothesized that there are very substantial loans provided, which departed from the evaluation procedures at the bank in exchange for 5.7 million in bribes. In searches in offices and homes owned by Ponzellini in November 2011, it proved that one of the suspicious loans was 148 million Euros to Atlantis BPplus. This was granted after the company was granted a contract with the Amministrazione Autonoma dei Monopoli di Stado (AAMS). AAMS‟ responsibilities are overseeing gambling and issuing permits”. By Dick Draayer (Persbureau Curacao).

Above Francesco Corallo and Theo Heyliger , Corallo is at right in the green shirt, a scowling Heyliger sits opposite Corallo in a blue stripped shirt. Heyliger is the political boss of the UP party on Sint Maarten. Heyliger has been implicated in several scandals and is called ―Mr. Ten Percent‖, by the Dutch politicians on the islands and in the Netherlands.

Corallo and his lackey Schotte are both shown in this picture.

The criminal Corallo being led to a court hearing, after being arrested here on Sint Maarten.

The mafia stooge Theo Heyliger, campaigning for his mafia bosses and their interest‘s. The actions of these people are the real cause of the new criminal trend amongst the poorer classes in the former Netherlands Antilles. Gerrit Schotte and his lackeys used the gang profiled herein the No Limit Soldiers to murder their, political rival Helmin Wiels, thereby empowering that organization. The gang has furthered their criminal pursuits far beyond their home turf of Koraal Specht Curacao, and are very active in many Caribbean islands and in Europe specifically Germany and the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a large Afro-Curaçaoan community; cells of the gang (NLS) are appearing in large Dutch cities such as Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, Lelystad and Dordrecht. Members from Curaçao cooperate with gang members living in the Netherlands to smuggle cocaine they obtain from Colombian as well as Jamaican narco-trafficking cartels, into major Dutch cities. From there the narcotic is distributed to smaller dealers. NLS as the evidence shows is a franchise that is being used as a distributer or a Distro, in the popular parlance. They are also being used as muscle to ensure the huge shipments of Cocaine coming out of Colombia to specifically Curacao and Sint Maarten are not tampered with by local cowboy criminals. The incidence of NLS absorbing certain local street elements is a brilliant move and is testament of their franchise model. NLS have and are establishing a strong local presence as is attested by their, transformation of prison politics at the Pointe Blanche Prison and their restructuring and strengthening of gang-culture locally, corporatizing it and stressing on obedience to the orders of the executives within NLS.

Above a CD cover bearing the NLS tank logo and a now deceased member Lil Homie. The very name Lil Homie is an Urban American ghetto term, it is alien to the language and true culture of Curacao. As I have wrote innumerably, both in Blog‘s essays and in all of my books, American urban culture specifically gang culture, is being exported globally by corporate America which is overseen by rich middle aged and older white males, but the poison that they export is cheerlead by young African American males and females. The Afro-Caribbean young people identify with the colour of their American peers and subsequently imitate the worst aspects of their culture. American urban culture and its derivative gang culture, is a negative and dangerous culture of death, made palatable by corporate greed and clever marketing tricks, in slick glossy magazines and expensive videos. The terrorism that the American corporate machine has unleashed on the world through their so called Hip-Hop music industry is nothing short of criminal. Since that culture began being adopted by Caribbean youth, the region has undergone unalterable changes that are absolutely devastating and far reaching, the impact is generational. Bear witness then to our reality in the Caribbean.

Above the public face of the NLS crime syndicate. Note the jewelry worn by Nuto, a lieutenant/Shot caller within the syndicate. Such jewelry encrusted with diamonds can easily cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 dollars. Such wealth has allowed the syndicate to expand their operations, to Sint Maarten my island, and they are wreaking havoc here. Read in the following the devastation being wrought by this syndicate on Curacao. The is from my Blog: NO LIMIT SOLDIERS AND BUENA VISTA CITY WAGING COSTLY WAR THAT IS DEVOURING CITIZENS OF THE FORMER NETHERLANDS ANTILLES. The former Netherlands Antilles is being portrayed in travel blogs, tourist related magazines et al, as idyllic vacation havens while that may have been the case 30 years ago, our contemporary reality is anything but ideal. The corporate media in their insane attempt to ―protect‖, a failed one pillar economic activity called ―tourism‖, have been under-reporting the true reality that citizens of the former Netherlands Antilles exist in today. In my previous blog posts on this site and my Lionzman website http://nazaritze-lionzman.blogspot.com/I have methodically deconstructed the false narrative that, these islands are ―safe‖ places and are idyllic vacation spots. As a result of the state in the former Netherlands Antilles being abysmally and endemically toxic, criminal and corrupt, unable to govern and the state itself is a human-trafficking entity as I have shown with numerous posts on all of my sites. The state itself is a narco-trafficking entity with politicians, their family members and proxies engaging in every type of criminal activity, including prostitution and drug smuggling. This post will be limited to the creation of the narco-states in the former  Netherlands Antilles. The child of unchecked gambling based and prostitution tourism is the street gangs and crime syndicates that have sprung up in the wake of the aforementioned. These new entities though they garner much front page and headline, news they are mere bit players in the narco trafficking industry in the former Antilles. The old-guard Syrian, Lebanese, Anglo-European, Chinese , Arab multi-millionaire and billionaire families who have entrenched themselves in these islands generationally for decades are the ones importing, exporting and transshipping, voluminous amounts of illicit narcotics, human beings and automatic as well as semi-automatic weapons to and from these islands in their attempt to hold onto their hegemony, both within the illegal narcotics trade and their lucrative human trafficking trade which is tied into the prostitution sector throughout the Caribbean. The local Afro-Caribbean crime syndicates such as NLS and BVC are mere bit-players and pawns in a grand scheme beyond their comprehension.
Since the Afro-Caribbean gangs are the ―front line soldiers‖, in the war for hegemony in the region‘s ongoing narco-wars, I want to focus on a crime syndicate that is literally devastating Curacao and Sint Maarten‘s young and vulnerable. The name of the syndicate is the No Limit Soldiers (NLS), NLS and their primary rival Buena Vista City (BVC), have both established themselves in major cities throughout Holland and it is a documented fact that NLS is operative in all the Antillean islands, Holland and other European countries and maintain strong ties to crime syndicates in Jamaica, Miami and Haiti. My primary goal in these posts is to inform and educate people about the lived reality of the law abiding citizens of the former Netherlands Antilles. Another objective is to promote the ideology of independence as the only seriously viable option to our present neo-colonial status. My third objective is to gather a body of fact based verifiable data that will eventually be used to bring a case to the United Nations, for the total independence of Sint Maarten from Holland, not with the present criminal clans ruling the island, but with an enlightened body of leader‘s who will take the island into independence and beyond. I will now show from evidence gathered within the public domain that, the NLS is in fact an instrument that is being used to further enslave and destroy our youth. The NLS crime syndicate is consistently being portrayed as a ―street gang‖, yet their tactics, political clout, financial wherewithal and international, transnational and regional scope of activities place NLS, in the realm of an international organized crime syndicate, with its own media arm, that has the ability to perpetrate terrorist attacks, assassinate politicians, liquidate highly placed rivals, bribe public officials, traffic illicit narcotics through the region et al. They also serve as muscle for the transshipment of illicit narcotics, from Colombia and Mexico to the former Antilles heading to Europe. The resultant turf wars, rip-deals and drive by shootings continue unabated, claiming the lives of gangsters as well as the innocent, even children and the unborn are not exempt from the touch of death in this brutal saga.To those who will learn I want to paraphrase my prediction from 1999 when I lived in Groningen. I wrote the following in a Souliga Youth publication in my capacity as President of said foundation :Ladies and gentlemen: The so called Antillean in Holland is being marginalized and discriminated against not only because they are so called buitenlanders (aliens) but also because the Antillean is being used as a primary tool of advancement of the criminals that control the cocaine trade. Any people who in large numbers in any community in the world will sell Crack Cocaine as a means of livelihood will always be despised and looked upon as men of little or no worth at all‖. I wrote further that ―The incidences of youth on Sint Maarten murdering their peers is as a direct result of the self-destructive policy of the illegally installed ―government‖ since the children of those whose interests the politicians represent are not part of the prison population it may bode well for the average person to pay keen attention to what is written herein and develop some sort of awareness as this book is in fact a teaching tool which will not only highlight problems but it will offer solutions that will attempt to solve some of the most pressing of those problems. A way to ensure that the government of Sint Maarten becomes an actual public service organ that functions in the best interest of the population at large would be to, for a special interest or pressure group government of Sint Maarten before the United Nations Tribunal of Human rights and charge the individuals within the so-called government with Human rights violations.If such a charge is properly launched it will gain international prominence and it is on this platform that the real country Sint Maarten can be formed.In the event of an actual formation of an independent government and country the entire population would have to literally be re-educated and deprogrammed from the miseducation and racist genocidal policies of the present system of government.

Above Erwin Juliana, the BVC shot-caller liquidated by NLS on the HATO International Airport, Curacao.

Figure: Destry Juliana shown above from a still shot of a YouTube video, eulogizing him. Destry Juliana, who was the brother of Erwin Juliana, was killed by an NLS hit-squad in the ongoing BVC, NLS war.

Figure: Shafien Mauricia: who was killed by Teke Teke Snack bar in Cay Hill. He was an active member of NLS, originally from Curacao but he was operating on Sint Maarten at the time of his murder.

Figure: Above a photo taken with a cell phone and posted to Facebook by Latoya Flanders. Boss Lady can clearly be seen on the medallion on her chain TRU another handle that the so-called No Limit Soldiers (NLS), use for their crime syndicate in their media and on their clothing and tattoos. The clearly visible tank on her chain marked her in that gang’s culture as a “made”, member of the syndicate. The Five stars tattooed on her breast branded her as a person who was highly placed within the crime syndicate. Judging from the evidence that the “victim” provided of her lifestyle i.e. deathstyle, I see incontrovertible proof of the young woman in question being a bonafide member of NLS who had made her bones.

Figures 1-2: The images shown above bare salient testimony to the, sophistication, organization, education and thorough understanding of modern technology and its use, for the purposes of self-promotion and branding, demonstrated by the top-tier within the No Limit crime syndicate. The fantasy being perpetuated by the ―corporate‖ media, that No Limit is a ―street gang‖, will be shattered herein. No internet attention seeker I come from the St Peters area on Sint Maarten a place known for its share of drug dealing and recently gang related liquidations and activity and I still reside in St Peters. I have not seen any public support of No Limit within my environment, however there is in areas such as Dutch Quarter and Mount William Hill a definite affiliation with the organized crime syndicate.

Figure: Above  top a still from one of the videos produced by one of the many NLS YouTube accounts. Luigino Victoriano Martina, aka Small V.

Figure: Luigino Victoriano aka Small V.  Bottom chains with diamond encrusted medallions all bearing the No Limit logo, testament to the financial wherewithal of NLS.

Figure: The No Limit logo. NLS in Curacoa’s official logo, of course an imitation of Master P’s logo. The diamonds and gold are real though.

Figure: Luigino was shot to death in a reprisal attack, led by members of Buena Vista City (BVC), on Curacao.

Figure: Above is a photo of Janishairah Jano the young woman of Curacaolinian parentage born in Holland, who was murdered earlier this year in a drive-by shooting on Curacao. Janishairah died in a hail of bullets, as the result of a revenge killing, in the ongoing war between No Limit Soldiers (NLS) and Buena Vista City (BVC). The ongoing war stems from the liquidation, in 2014 of BVC shot caller Jais and his nephew at the Hato International Airport in Curacao.J anishairah was the girlfriend of a BVC linked man, whose brother was said to be one of the shooter‘s that killed this man, Luigino Victoriano Martina. Four young children were in the car with Janishairah and her boyfriend; two of the children were seriously wounded. The man driving the car was flown to Rotterdam Holland for medical treatment, where he subsequently died as a result of his severe wounds.

Above graphic proof of the toll, the imported Urban American culture is wreaking throughout, the former Netherlands Antilles. Janishirah and her boyfriend, were riddled with AK-47 bullets in a reprisal shooting, for the death of Victoriano Luigino.

Janishairah received multiple gunshot wounds to her head, resulting in the horrific photo above, where brain matter is clearly visible on the gurney sheets.

Figure: Above in photo a young boy who was one of four young boys in the car with the two adults shown previously, being held in the arms of an unidentified male. One of the young boy‘s is on the ground with another on the stretcher above; the fourth child is not in the photo. The oldest boy was no older than 6. All of the children were severely wounded except the boy being held by the man wearing shorts in photo. One of the boys subsequently died as a result of his wounds. As I have written previously the imported gang-culture brought to this region, by the corporate American money machine is the harbinger of many of the most brutal and dastardly acts ever witnessed in these islands. Although drug dealing was evident throughout the region. The appearance of young organized criminal gangs such as NLS and BVC masquerading as Hip-Hop labels are a new phenomenon, directly adopted and imported from North America, via their rap music industry. The sophistication of gang-culture in the Caribbean and its subsequent brutality is as a result of imitation of and exposure to American Urban gang-culture. I have written extensively on the culture and its dangers to the Caribbean and the linkages of gang elements, with terrorist elements in prisons the same holds true for the former Netherlands Antilles. Readers of my Blogs know that I use the present day reality, in the former Netherlands Antilles to advocate the total independence of Sint Maarten from Holland, which is a country directly responsible for much of the corruption and exploitation of the populace by the so-called leaders, which creates the hopelessness that in turn creates space for gangs like NLS and BVC to operate preying off of the leadership void in said communities.

THE HEBREW PEOPLE.

Taken from my book Shamanism as a Social Cultural Value System and its Antithesis Apostolic Culture.
In all ancient cultures including Judaism, we see mankind‘s quest to find Godman has within himself the intrinsic need and desire for love and acceptance by something or someone higher than himself.This intrinsic genetically encoded desire to be acknowledged and loved by a being higher than oneself has resulted in the promulgation of religions and religious dogma worldwide.All cultures and people from Africa to Europe have been known to have a culture of totemism or phallically deigned symbols that represented to them power or conquest.The ancient Hebrews were the only people who have in their history a recorded written account of a God that forbade idolatry whenever the Hebrew people bowed to the worship of inanimate objects God always followed this up with a punishment which usually resulted in the death of the idolaters.The Five Books of Moses or Torah is clear on the matter of what type of activity God considered sacrilegious and what was honorable.Examples of his commandments are the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses by YHVH.Some scholars claim that Moses plagiarized The Ten Commandments from the Egyptian book of the dead which contains 147 specific commandments ten of which though similar in tone are distinctly different from the Ten Commandments of the Torah.The first factor that must be considered here is that the ancient Egyptians were polytheist‘s they held a belief in a pantheon of deities. The most cited example of and matter of fact one very rare I might add is in the person of Akhenaton the pharaoh who spurned polytheism and revived one of their most ancient orders of worship which was the worship of the Aten or Atum the Sun God this though monotheistic does not in any way correlate with the Hebrew God YHVH and the Mosaic priesthood.There are marked ways in which the Egyptians honored their God Aten-Rah and the worship of YHVH was conducted.The ancient Hebrews worshipped a deity who revealed himself by the four Hebrew vowels YHVH I will be who I will be Yah Eye Asher Ehye.This name in and of itself is a mystery and a revelation I want to share a pearl gained through the study of the word of God please examine with me the Hebrew vowels for the name YHVH. Now let us examine together the Hebrew symbols/letters for the name Yeshua עשוהיIf you examine the macro dictionary that you got with this book, examine the first three symbols in the name YHVH they are the Yod He Vau, now examine the first three symbols in the name Yehoshua they are also Yod He Vau or in English Y, H and V here is a mystery revealed.The name Yeshua means the salvation of Yahweh if I were to spell the name Yeshua out as it was literally given it would look like the following YHVSHA; this is what it would look like.Bear in mind that Hebrew is written from right to left and not from left to right.The name Yeshua contains the most sacred name of God, Jesus‘ very name means God literally and symbolically this is what I meant when I said earlier on that he is a methodical God, and the language wherewith he chose to reveal his name is a divinely ordained language to show his character to man.God is unity oneness even in science we can see God if we split the H2o molecule we will get two Hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom when all three are joined there is a water molecule

Figure 33. A Water molecule or scientifically H2 O.This water molecule or the molecular structure of water shows how the water looks in its smallest parts.The Hebrew language is structured in exactly the same way meaning the language itself is mathematic it has a very deliberate mathematical structure.The Hebrew name of God and the name Yeshua are exactly like this molecule shown above without the atoms of oxygen and water coming together there is no water without the first three symbols of the Hebrew name of God and the Hebrew sh and a coming together there is no Yeshua.God is revealing the very union of his character in his name.The term trinity is an oxymoron that is very incompatible with the bible and the character of God.The father-son and Holy Ghost is one person that executes various functions.The Hebrews acknowledge only one God this is the reason a Trinitarian cannot bring the house of Israel to Christ only those with the revelation of who Jesus is can provoke the Jews to jealousy.Science can and has benefited humankind but in these last days, science will be the undoing of humankind.I use science to show Jesus again and again in defiance of the kingdom of Satan and man who will use science to confuse people as to the authenticity of scripture I use their methods against them in defense of the gospel.The worship of YHVH allowed animals to be sacrificed as atonement in blood to cover the sins of the house of Israel.The whole process was symbolic of the death of Jesus on the cross.Every feast in Judaism was symbolic of the coming of the messiah.
It is not necessary to prove him his own words prove him this work only function as a vehicle whose purpose is to expose falsehood and lies and introduce Jesus as the one true God, to introduce him in his messianic role and his final and supreme role as master and ruler of the universe.In this portion of the work, we will deal with a historical account of the Hebrew people.The conquest of Palestine marked the beginning of a settled life they were no longer a small nomadic group of people, they now had the opportunity to grow and expand their society.

Figure. Seal of Jeroboam Inscribed on the seal we have the following inscription ―Shema servant of Jeroboam.‖ It was found at Megiddo it refers to Jeroboam an Israelite King in the 19th century BCE.
Here we have concrete proof unearthed by Archeologist‘s proving the actual existence of a Hebrew king. There are many more archeological finds that attest to an actual Hebrew dynasty having existed. Evidence of the queen Jezebel having actually lived was recently unearthed in the year 2007 by archeologists.

Figure: Photo by British Museum EPA.


This is a photo of the so-called Cyrus Cylinder featured in an article in the Economist Magazine: on Apr 3rd, 2013, 15:35 by S.C.S. The cylinder is a surviving example of some issued by Cyrus following a thousand-year tradition of the Persians of that era, that entailed all nations enslaved by the Persians were free to return to their homelands and their gods, and shrines were to be returned to them. It is recorded in scripture that Jerimiah the prophet was one of the spiritual leaders of the Jews during the reign of Cyrus. Jeremiah also wrote of the event and the decree issued by Cyrus, Persia is modern-day Iran where the cylinder was found. During the reign of Cyrus Persia was a global superpower.The above-mentioned points actually contradict the claims of many that there never was a Hebrew people, and all Hebrew history and culture is simply a plagiarization of Kemitian culture. In future works, more evidence will be brought to the fore pertaining to the actual existence of the Hebrew people.


Jewish society became more complexed later in the period 973 B.C. a monarchy was established with Saul being the head of that government,1 Samuel the kingdom from that point on was ruled by a succession of kings who at times were despotic or righteous, the greatest of these rulers were David and Solomon under Solomon‘s reign the temple was built and the order of the Levitical priesthood took on another dimension sacrifices were no longer conducted in tents, called a tabernacle but were moved to the temple which was the original design of God.Later the northern tribe’s ten of which rebelled against the monarchy and established in (r.c. 933-912B.C.) the kingdom of Israel this kingdom under the rule of Omri (r.c.887-876 B.C.) this new kingdom experienced marked success and expanded into new territory (1 Kings 16:29-33).Omri, s son Ahab married Jezebel in 1 kings 16:28 the fate of Omri is described and the succession of his son is recorded. Ahab married Jezebel a Phoenician queen the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians.Ethbaal means man of Baal or son of Baal, the word Baal as was previously described, means lord. The word Jezebel means unmarried yet she was married to Ahab she bore the epithet, unmarried because she was a witch and as such, she was literally a bride of Satan.Jezebel was raised from her youth to marry into the Judahite tribe, why?Jezebel represented the spirit of Diana female counterpart of Lucifer therefore she was a Satanic plant to breed seed, in order that a seed of Satan would sit on the throne of David, in effect thwarting the plan of God that a messiah would one day sit on the throne of David, this is the reason the entire line of Ahab was annihilated from off the face of the earth, they were annihilated in order to rid the Davidic line of the serpent seed fathered by Ahab with the demon-infested queen Jezebel.Ahab and his wife were chiefly responsible for the spread of witchcraft amongst the Hebrews of that period.Jezebel’s father was not only a king but he was also a wizard of some advanced degree since everywhere he conquered he built temples and altars to his demon patron Baal.Jezebel was also called an enchantress, Devi or (Maha Deva) please note even so-called ―Christian ― gospel female artists refer to themselves asDeva, s when a Deva is a male Hindu demon the Devi or Maha Deva is his female counterpart she is also called siren or seductress.One aspect of her craft failed when she attempted to distract Jehu through the means of seduction she was thrown from the window at Jehu, s command by the eunuchs.Jezebel who was the daughter of Ethbaal also pursued a course of spreading the paganism of her father.This period marked the slow decline of the monarchy of the Jews under paganism their kingdom declined.The Jews because of paganism were subjugated and colonized by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar Daniel 1:1, 21 in 579 B.C. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians the most educated and noble of the country were taken captive by the Babylonians and lived in exile in Babylon (586 B.C.).The Babylonians were conquered by the Persians ―Persia is modern Iran‖Under Cyrus, in 539 B.C. Jeremiah 5:1 to 37 Daniel 5:5-25-28, Ezekiel1:5, 6.The period after the Persian conquest is called the Hellenistic period as the majority of the earth came under the authority of the armies of Alexander the Great.In 168 B.C., Antiochus the fifth began a campaign of suppression against Judaism.

This period is called the Maccabean revolt so called because it was led by a man called Judas Maccabeus (160 B.C.).In 163 B.C. Palestine fell under Roman domination Palestine was ruled for centuries by the Roman Empire.Under Roman domination, the Jewish people searched their religious documents and new literature was developed amongst them are the Apocryphal works and the Pseudepigrapha.This period also saw the proliferation of various sects the Essenes, Zealots, Pharisees, and Sadducees all abounded and had their own peculiar doctrines they were all legalists and believed that salvation could be attained by good works.It was into this admixture of political and religious upheaval that Jesus The Messiah of the Ages stepped. He preached a doctrine of grace and not works, declaring that mankind could only find eternal peace in his name, not through works he was rejected and denounced as a blasphemer and heretic, he was then crucified.Today Ultra-Orthodox Jews are still waiting for Messiah many cults have established their own version of Messiah all these events must occur as it was already prophesied that it would be so.The modern development of the state of Israel had its roots in Zionism the ―Yishuv‖ the Jewish community in Palestine experienced growth due to the rise of Nazism in Europe and anti-Semitism elsewhere in Europe led to anAccelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1930,s this development and the strong economic growth and Jewish community strength were a cause for concern amongst some in the Arab community.At this point in their history, the Jewish people were supported by Great Britain.England supported the Jews but also sought, a ―white Paper‖, this document was an official statement of policy, it reduced the support of Great Britain for a Jewish National home in Palestine.

In 1942 amid growing European hostility to the Jews in Europe, the Jews in Palestine openly stated that their aim was to develop an independent Jewish state in Palestine.The murder of over some six million Jews in Germany under the Third Reich of Adolph Hitler who was aided by scientists and educators in carrying out his Satan-inspired scheme mass murder of the Jews. The racist Dogma of Darwinian Theory is what Hitler built his empire on; these same dogmatic theories, are still being taught, in schools today.Here then is Hitler in his own words: ―It is idle to argue which race or races were the original representative of human culture and hence the real founders of all that we sum up under the word ‘humanity.’ It is simpler to raise this question with regard to the present, and here an easy, clear answer results. All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits,to the not unfounded inference, that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word ―man‖. He is the Prometheus of mankind, from whose bright forehead the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times, forever kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illumined the night of silent mysteries and thus caused the man to climb the path to mastery over the other beings of this earth. Exclude him-and perhaps after a few thousand years darkness will again descend on the earth, human culture will pass, and the world turns to a desert‖. The type of thinking espoused in the preceding, of course, has been refuted in this book over and over in the times that we live in and in anciency, countless ethnicities other than Aryans have contributed to the overall advancement of the human race, in every sphere of development.

Hitler’s speech is markedly Luciferian, his allusion to Prometheus the Hellenic Lucifer is remarkable in that he equates the Euro-Aryan as the progenitor of mankind, the fact that science has proven human life originated on the African continent shatters the fantasies of buffoons of Hitler’s ilk both modern and ancient. The Hellenic Lucifer as the father of the Caucasian people‘s is taken from the Kabbalistic Adam Kadmon, as the primal man, Hitler simply spun the myth to jibe with his ―Master Race‖ mythology. The Grand Council of Knights, consisted of Himmler and twelve senior SS Generals, modeled after the hierarchy of a witches coven. There can be little doubt that Hitler and his top SS generals were involved in satanic rituals since everything from their chosen symbolism to the rituals they practiced were modeled after ancient Germanic and Satanist rites.As a result of the widespread Jewish repression and mass extermination of and murder of Jews in Europe, Jews began a mass exodus from Europe into Palestine. Between 1933 and 1939 about 235,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine legally, and thousands more came by illegal means, doubling the size of the Jewish Yeshuv. The terrorist Jewish organizations Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and the Lehi (the Stern gang), named after its founder, were the military instruments that made it possible for the Jews to control Palestine. One of the more memorable terrorist attacks by Jewish terrorists was the Camp David hotel bombing.In 1947, the British-led Jewish Palestinian negotiations broke down.

The matter was placed before the U.N. general assembly, it was decided that the British mandate over Palestine would be terminated. The country was partitioned into two states one Jewish one Arab on November 29, 1947, in the general assembly.On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was declared. David Ben Gurion becamePrime minister and D.R. Chaim Weizmann was president of the state council.Since that time, until today the state of Israel has experienced a great deal of war‘s and conflict with their Palestinian neighbors, this state of the constant conflict began with Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael is the father of the Arab nations and the brother of Isaac. The Arabs and their worldview of Islam are ideologically on a headlong collision course with world Jewry and particularly Zionism. The Jewish people not all, but many, believe that Palestine is their birthright, the Bible contains in its scriptures evidence that supports this.

Above the flag of the Sovereign State of Israel.

Arab Muslims are equally ―a people of promise‖, through their ancestors Ishmael, Esau, and Abraham. In Genesis Chapter 15:18-21, it is stated: ―18 In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, unto him thy seed have I given this land, from the river, the river Egypt unto the great river the river, Euphrates:19 The Kenites, and the Kennizites, and the Kadmonites,20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. Genesis Chapter 16: 6 -12, 6 And Abram said unto Sarai, Behold thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.7 And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way of Shur. 8 And he said, Hagar, Sarai‘s maid, whence camest thou? And wither wilt thou go? And she said I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. 9 And the angel of the Lord said unto her return to thy mistress and submit, thyself unto her hands.11 And the angel of the Lord said unto her, behold thou art with child and, shalt bear a son and call his name Ismael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. 12 And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man‘s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.15 And Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son‘s name which Hagar bare Ismael. The above biblical references are some of the scriptures that some Jews base their legitimacy to ―Greater Israel‖ or Biblical Israel, the Arabs also place great legitimacy on certain Quranic Hadith as a means of establishing, a ―divine‖ heritage, backed by their religion. Some of the Quranic hadith are worth recounting here as an aid in establishing the thrust of the work in this portion. Surah 14 Ibrahim part 13relates how Abraham/Ibrahim left Hagar and her son Ishmael in the wilderness he invoked his God and asked him to bless them: ―O our Lord I have made some of my family to dwell in an uncultivated valley by your sacred house (the Kabbah at Makkah); in order o Lord that he may perform As-Salat. So fill some hearts among men with love for them. And o Allah provide them with fruits that they may give thanks. The Quranic account of Ismael and his mother is much longer than the Bible‘s, it establishes the covenant between God and Abraham and his offspring. The Biblical account verifies the Quranic account and both are in agreement. Islam and Judaism are both religious value systems built on the observance of the law. There is however historical evidence that points to Jews, having lived in the area they called the land of Israel and which others came to call Palestine, in the centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple, in the first century a.d. Due to their diminished numbers, and after the conquest of Palestine by Arabs in the seventh century, the majority of the population (including Jews), were Arabized. Most of the inhabitants of Israel called Palestine by the Arabs, adopted the ―new‖ religion of Islam, there yet remained a substantial number of Christians and some Jews. Until the ,modern era few Jews sought actual repatriation from the countries in which they dwelt to Israel. The claim that Israel is a creation of Britain and the UN, is a distortion of historical evidence. There is abundant evidence of a pre-modern Israel with its own distinct cultural value system. In 1881, before the start of the modern migration of Jews into what became known as ―Palestine‖, there were only about 24,000 Jews living in Israel. Many of the Jews in Israel at that time were largely dependent on charity from abroad, as a means of devoting themselves to religious studies and to eventually be buried in the Holy Land. In the next six and a half decades up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Jewish population of Palestine increased dramatically. In 1882 in response to an outbreak of anti-Jewish persecution in Eastern Europe, there began the first of a series of waves of Jewish immigration into Israel. The waves were referred to as aliyah (Hebrew for going up), or immigration into Israel. Unlike previous immigrants the new ―settlers‘‖ from Poland, Romania, and Russia‘, motivations were largely nationalist and political. The new immigrants were the forerunners of Jewish secularism and nationalism, that manifested in ―Zionism‖. Zionism held that the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and the establishment in Israel, of Jewish nationality and culture, was the only solution to the ―Jewish problem‖. With the aid of Philanthropist‘s among whom were the Rothchilds dynasty, the settlers set up agricultural colonies and revived Hebrew as their daily spoken language. In the decades before World War I, a new wave of immigration brought thousands of Jews into Israel. Many of the young Jewish men and women were socialists who fled Russia after the pogroms of 1903. They were highly energetic and politicized, they were the halutzim ―pioneers‖. The pre-state Jewish community was created by these newcomers. In 1917 the British were fighting the Ottoman empire for what was referred to as Palestine, the British government issued a policy statement, that they called the Balfour Declaration, in acquiescence to the Zionist‘s goal of a ―national Jewish homeland‖, in the biblical-historical land of Israel. The father of Zionism Theodore Herzl said: ―The area of the Jewish State stretches: ―From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.‖ According to Rabbi Fischmann, ―The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.‖

Image: A map of present-day Israel.


The document that will be included herein is alluded ad-infinitum by Arab Muslims, in the ME, and throughout the western academic world wherever Muslim students, intellectuals, and Muslim sympathizers are to be found. The following is quoted from Global Research pertinent to same April 29, 2013 ―The following document pertaining to the formation of ―Greater Israel‖ constitutes the cornerstone of powerful Zionist factions within the current Netanyahu government (which has recently been re-elected), the Likud party, as well as within the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The election was fought by Netanyahu on a political platform that denies Palestinian statehood.According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, ―the area of the Jewish State stretches: ―From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.‖ According to Rabbi Fischmann, ―The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates; it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.When viewed in the current context, the war on Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing war on Syria and Iraq, the war in Yemen, the process of regime change in Egypt, must be understood in relation to the Zionist Plan for the Middle East. The latter consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of an Israeli expansionist project.―Greater Israel‖ consists of an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates.The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.Greater Israel would create a number of proxy States. It would include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).


According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in a 2011 Global Research article, The Yinon Plan was a continuation of Britain‘s colonial design in the Middle East:―[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military‘s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.Greater Israel‖ requires the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.―The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel‘s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation… This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme.‖ (Yinon Plan, see below)Viewed in this context, the war on Syria and Iraq is part of the process of Israeli territorial expansion. Israeli intelligence working hand in glove with the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and NATO is directly supportive of the crusade directed against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), which ultimately seeks to destroy both Syria and Iraq as nation states‖.The following is a publisher‘s note that is of utmost importance in understanding the preceding and what follows:―The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents, with Oded Yinon‘s article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed, and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands as an accurate representation of the ―vision‖ for the entire Middle East of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon, and Eitan. Its importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it presents‖.Here is the plan in its entirety: ―A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties by Oded Yinon.

This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14–Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department of Publicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem.1At the outset of the nineteen eighties the State of Israel is in need of a new perspective as to its place, its aims and national targets, at home and abroad. This need has become even more vital due to a number of central processes which the country, the region and the world are undergoing. We are living today in the early stages of a new epoch in human history which is not at all similar to its predecessor, and its characteristics are totally different from what we have hitherto known.

That is why we need an understanding of the central processes which typify this historical epoch on the one hand, and on the other hand we need a world outlook and an operational strategy in accordance with the new conditions. The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of the Jewish state will depend upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs.2This epoch is characterized by several traits which we can already diagnose, and which symbolize a genuine revolution in our present lifestyle. The dominant process is the breakdown of the rationalist, humanist outlook as the major cornerstone supporting the life and achievements of Western civilization since the Renaissance. The political, social and economic views which have emanated from this foundation have been based on several ―truths‖ which are presently disappearing–for example, the view that man as an individual is the centre of the universe and everything exists in order to fulfil his basic material needs. This position is being invalidated in the present when it has become clear that the amount of resources in the cosmos does not meet Man‘s requirements, his economic needs or his demographic constraints. In a world in which there are four billion human beings and economic and energy resources which do not grow proportionally to meet the needs of mankind, it is unrealistic to expect to fulfil the main requirement of Western Society, i.e., the wish and aspiration for boundless consumption. The view that ethics plays no part in determining the direction Man takes, but rather his material needs do–that view is becoming prevalent today as we see a world in which nearly all values are disappearing. We are losing the ability to assess the simplest things, especially when they concern the simple question of what is good and what is Evil.3The vision of man‘s limitless aspirations and abilities shrinks in the face of the sad facts of life, when we witness the break-up of world order around us. The view which promises liberty and freedom to mankind seems absurd in light of the sad fact that three fourths of the human race lives under totalitarian regimes. The views concerning equality and social justice have been transformed by socialism and especially by Communism into a laughing stock. There is no argument as to the truth of these two ideas, but it is clear that they have not been put into practice properly and the majority of mankind has lost the liberty, the freedom and the opportunity for equality and justice. In this nuclear world in which we are (still) living in relative peace for thirty years, the concept of peace and coexistence among nations has no meaning when a superpower like the USSR holds a military and political doctrine of the sort it has: that not only is a nuclear war possible and necessary in order to achieve the ends of Marxism, but that it is possible to survive after it, not to speak of the fact that one can be victorious in it.4The essential concepts of human society, especially those of the West, are undergoing a change due to political, military and economic transformations. Thus, the nuclear and conventional might of the USSR has transformed the epoch that has just ended into the last respite before the great saga that will demolish a large part of our world in a multi-dimensional global war, in comparison with which the past world wars will have been mere child‘s play.

The power of nuclear as well as of conventional weapons, their quantity, their precision and quality will turn most of our world upside down within a few years, and we must align ourselves so as to face that in Israel. That is, then, the main threat to our existence and that of the Western world. 3 The war over resources in the world, the Arab monopoly on oil, and the need of914the West to import most of its raw materials from the Third World, are transforming the world we know, given that one of the major aims of the USSR is to defeat the West by gaining control over the gigantic resources in the Persian Gulf and in the southern part of Africa, in which the majority of world minerals are located. We can imagine the dimensions of the global confrontation which will face us in the future.5The Gorshkov doctrine calls for Soviet control of the oceans and mineral rich areas of the Third World. That together with the present Soviet nuclear doctrine which holds that it is possible to manage, win and survive a nuclear war, in the course of which the West‘s military might well be destroyed and its inhabitants made slaves in the service of Marxism-Leninism, is the main danger to world peace and to our own existence. Since 1967, the Soviets have transformed Clausewitz‘ dictum into ―War is the continuation of policy in nuclear means,‖ and made it the motto which guides all their policies. Already today they are busy carrying out their aims in our region and throughout the world, and the need to face them becomes the major element in our country‘s security policy and of course that of the rest of the Free World. That is our major foreign challenge.6The Arab Moslem world, therefore, is not the major strategic problem which we shall face in the Eighties, despite the fact that it carries the main threat against Israel, due to its growing military might. This world, with its ethnic minorities, its factions and internal crises, which is astonishingly self-destructive, as we can see in Lebanon, in non-Arab Iran and now also in Syria, is unable to deal successfully with its fundamental problems and does not therefore constitute a real threat against the State of Israel in the long run, but only in the short run where its immediate military power has great import. In the long run, this world will be unable to exist within its present framework in the areas around us without having to go through genuine revolutionary changes. The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account. It was arbitrarily divided into 19 states, all made of combinations of minorites and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging. 5 Most of the Arabs, 118 million out of 170 million, live in Africa, mostly in Egypt (45 million today).7Apart from Egypt, all the Maghreb states are made up of a mixture of Arabs and non-Arab Berbers. In Algeria there is already a civil war raging in the Kabile mountains between the two nations in the country.

Morocco and Algeria are at war with each other over Spanish Sahara, in addition to the internal struggle in each of them. Militant Islam endangers the integrity of Tunisia and Qaddafi organizes wars which are destructive from the Arab point of view, from a country which is sparsely populated and which cannot become a powerful nation. That is why he has been attempting unifications in the past with states that are more genuine, like Egypt and Syria. Sudan, the most torn apart state in the Arab Moslem world today is built upon four groups hostile to each other, an Arab Moslem Sunni minority which rules over a majority of non-Arab Africans, Pagans, and Christians. In Egypt there is a Sunni Moslem majority facing a large minority of Christians which is dominant in upper Egypt: some 7 million of them, so that even Sadat, in his speech on May 8, expressed the fear that they will want a state of their own, something like a ―second‖ Christian Lebanon in Egypt.8All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflict even more than those of the Maghreb. Syria is fundamentally no different from Lebanon except in the strong military regime which rules it. But the real civil war taking place nowadays between the Sunni majority and the Shi‘ite Alawi ruling minority (a mere 12% of the population) testifies to the severity of the domestic trouble.9Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors, although its majority is Shi‘ite and the ruling minority Sunni. Sixty-five percent of the population has no say in politics, in which an elite of 20 percent holds the power. In addition, there is a large Kurdish minority in the north, and if it weren‘t for915the strength of the ruling regime, the army, and the oil revenues, Iraq‘s future state would be no different from that of Lebanon in the past or of Syria today.

The seeds of inner conflict and civil war are apparent today already, especially after the rise of Khomeini to power in Iran, a leader whom the Shi‘ites in Iraq view as their natural leader.10All the Gulf principalities and Saudi Arabia are built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil. In Kuwait, the Kuwaitis constitute only a quarter of the population. In Bahrain, the Shi‘ites are the majority but are deprived of power. In the UAE, Shi‘ites are once again the majority but the Sunnis are in power. The same is true of Oman and North Yemen. Even in Marxist South Yemen, there is a sizable Shi‘ite minority. In Saudi Arabia half the population is foreign, Egyptian, and Yemenite, but a Saudi minority holds power.11Jordan is in reality Palestinian, ruled by a Trans-Jordanian Bedouin minority, but most of the army and certainly the bureaucracy is now Palestinian. As a matter of fact Amman is as Palestinian as Nablus. All of these countries have powerful armies, relatively speaking. But there is a problem there too. The Syrian army today is mostly Sunni with an Alawi officer corps, the Iraqi army Shi‘ite with Sunni commanders. This has great significance in the long run, and that is why it will not be possible to retain the loyalty of the army for a long time except where it comes to the only common denominator: The hostility towards Israel and today even that is insufficient.12Alongside the Arabs, split as they are, the other Moslem states share a similar predicament. Half of Iran‘s population is comprised of a Persian speaking group and the other half of an ethnically Turkish group. Turkey‘s population comprises a Turkish Sunni Moslem majority, some 50%, and two large minorities, 12 million Shi‘ite Alawis and 6 million Sunni Kurds. In Afghanistan there are 5 millionShi‘ites who constitute one third of the population. In Sunni Pakistan there are 15 million Shi‘ites who endanger the existence of that state.13This national ethnic minority picture extending from Morocco to India and from Somalia to Turkey points to the absence of stability and a rapid degeneration in the entire region. When this picture is added to the economic one, we see how the entire region is built like a house of cards, unable to withstand its severe problems.14In this giant and fractured world there are a few wealthy groups and a huge mass of poor people. Most of the Arabs have an average yearly income of 300 dollars. That is the situation in Egypt, in most of the Maghreb countries except for Libya, and in Iraq. Lebanon is torn apart and its economy is falling to pieces. It is a state in which there is no centralized power, but only 5 de facto sovereign authorities (Christian in the north, supported by the Syrians and under the rule of the Franjieh clan, in the East an area of direct Syrian conquest, in the center a Phalangist controlled Christian enclave, in the south and up to the Litani river a mostly Palestinian region controlled by the PLO and Major Haddad‘s state of Christians and half a million Shi‘ites). Syria is in an even graver situation and even the assistance she will obtain in the future after the unification with Libya will not be sufficient for dealing with the basic problems of existence and the maintenance of a large army. Egypt is in the worst situation: Millions are on the verge of hunger, half the labor force is unemployed, and housing is scarce in this most densely populated area of the world. Except for the army, there is not a single department operating efficiently and the state is in a permanent state of bankruptcy and depends entirely on American foreign assistance granted since the peace.15In the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt there is the largest accumulation of money and oil in the world, but those enjoying it are tiny elites who lack a wide base of support and self-confidence, something that no army can guarantee.

7 The Saudi army with all its equipment cannot defend the regime from real dangers at home or abroad, and what took place in Mecca in 1980 is only an example. A sad916and very stormy situation surrounds Israel and creates challenges for it, problems, risks but also far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967. Chances are that opportunities missed at that time will become achievable in the Eighties to an extent and along dimensions which we cannot even imagine today.16The ―peace‖ policy and the return of territories, through a dependence upon the US, precludes the realization of the new option created for us. Since 1967, all the governments of Israel have tied our national aims down to narrow political needs, on the one hand, and on the other to destructive opinions at home which neutralized our capacities both at home and abroad. Failing to take steps towards the Arab population in the new territories, acquired in the course of a war forced upon us, is the major strategic error committed by Israel on the morning after the Six Day War. We could have saved ourselves all the bitter and dangerous conflict since then if we had given Jordan to the Palestinians who live west of the Jordan River. By doing that we would have neutralized the Palestinian problem which we nowadays face, and to which we have found solutions that are really no solutions at all, such as territorial compromise or autonomy which amount, in fact, to the same thing. Today, we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade; otherwise we shall not survive as a state.17In the course of the Nineteen Eighties, the State of Israel will have to go through far-reaching changes in its political and economic regime domestically, along with radical changes in its foreign policy, in order to stand up to the global and regional challenges of this new epoch. The loss of the Suez Canal oil fields, of the immense potential of the oil, gas, and other natural resources in the Sinai peninsula which is geomorphologically identical to the rich oil-producing countries in the region, will result in an energy drain in the near future and will destroy our domestic economy: one-quarter of our present GNP, as well as one-third of the budget, is used for the purchase of oil.

The search for raw materials in the Negev and on the coast will not, in the near future, serve to alter that state of affairs.18(Regaining) the Sinai peninsula with its present and potential resources is, therefore, a political priority that is obstructed by Camp David and the peace agreements. The fault for that lies of course with the present Israeli government and the governments which paved the road to the policy of territorial compromise, the Alignment governments since 1967. The Egyptians will not need to keep the peace treaty after the return of the Sinai, and they will do all they can to return to the fold of the Arab world and to the USSR in order to gain support and military assistance. American aid is guaranteed only for a short while, for the terms of the peace and the weakening of the U.S. both at home and abroad will bring about a reduction in aid. Without oil and the income from it, with the present enormous expenditure, we will not be able to get through 1982 under the present conditions and we will have to act in order to return the situation to the status quo which existed in Sinai prior to Sadat‘s visit and the mistaken peace agreement signed with him in March 1979.19Israel has two major routes through which to realize this purpose, one direct and the other indirect. The direct option is the less realistic one because of the nature of the regime and government in Israel as well as the wisdom of Sadat who obtained our withdrawal from Sinai, which was, next to the war of 1973, his major achievement since he took power. Israel will not unilaterally break the treaty, neither today nor in 1982, unless it is very hard pressed economically and politically and Egypt provides Israel with the excuse to take the Sinai back into our hands for the fourth time in our short history. What is left, therefore, is the indirect option.

The economic situation in Egypt, the nature of the regime, and its pan-Arab policy will bring about a situation after April 1982 in which Israel will be forced to act directly or indirectly in order to regain control over Sinai as a strategic, economic, and energy reserve for the long run. Egypt does not constitute a military strategic problem due to its internal conflicts and it could be driven back to the post-1967 war situation in no more than one day.20The myth of Egypt as the strong leader of the Arab World was demolished back in 1956 and definitely did not survive 1967, but our policy, as in the return of the Sinai, served to turn the myth into ―fact.‖ In reality, however, Egypt‘s power in proportion both to Israel alone and to the rest of the Arab World has gone down about 50 percent since 1967. Egypt is no longer the leading political power in the Arab World and is economically on the verge of a crisis. Without foreign assistance the crisis will come tomorrow. In the short run, due to the return of the Sinai, Egypt will gain several advantages at our expense, but only in the short run until 1982, and that will not change the balance of power to its benefit, and will possibly bring about its downfall. Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front.21Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run.22The Western front, which on the surface appears more problematic, is in fact less complicated than the Eastern front, in which most of the events that make the headlines have been taking place recently. Lebanon‘s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel‘s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi‘ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.23Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel‘s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi‘ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.24The entire Arabian Peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia. Regardless of whether its economic might based on oil remains intact or whether it is diminished in the long run, the internal rifts and breakdowns are a clear and natural development in light of the present political structure.25Jordan constitutes an immediate strategic target in the short run but not in the long run, for it does not constitute a real threat in the long run after its dissolution, the termination of the lengthy rule of King Hussein and the transfer of power to the Palestinians in the short run.26918There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel‘s policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority. Changing the regime east of the river will also cause the termination of the problem of the territories densely populated with Arabs west of the Jordan. Whether in war or under conditions of peace, emigration from the territories and economic demographic freeze in them, are the guarantees for the coming change on both banks of the river, and we ought to be active in order to accelerate this process in the nearest future.

The autonomy plan ought also to be rejected, as well as any compromise or division of the territories for, given the plans of the PLO and those of the Israeli Arabs themselves, the Shefa‘amr plan of September 1980, it is not possible to go on living in this country in the present situation without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security. A nation of their own and security will be theirs only in Jordan.27Within Israel the distinction between the areas of ‘67 and the territories beyond them, those of ‘48, has always been meaningless for Arabs and nowadays no longer has any significance for us. The problem should be seen in its entirety without any divisions as of ‘67. It should be clear, under any future political situation or military constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan River and beyond it, as our existential need in this difficult epoch, the nuclear epoch which we shall soon enter. It is no longer possible to live with three fourths of the Jewish population on the dense shoreline which is so dangerous in a nuclear epoch.28Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today. Taking hold of the mountain watershed from Beersheba to the Upper Galilee is the national aim generated by the major strategic consideration which is settling the mountainous part of the country that is empty of Jews today.29Realizing our aims on the Eastern front depends first on the realization of this internal strategic objective. The transformation of the political and economic structure, so as to enable the realization of these strategic aims, is the key to achieving the entire change. We need to change from a centralized economy in which the government is extensively involved, to an open and free market as well as to switch from depending upon the U.S. taxpayer to developing, with our own hands, of a genuine productive economic infrastructure. If we are not able to make this change freely and voluntarily, we shall be forced into it by world developments, especially in the areas of economics, energy, and politics, and by our own growing isolation.30From a military and strategic point of view, the West led by the U.S. is unable to withstand the global pressures of the USSR throughout the world, and Israel must therefore stand alone in the Eighties, without any foreign assistance, military or economic, and this is within our capacities today, with no compromises. Rapid changes in the world will also bring about a change in the condition of world Jewry to which Israel will become not only a last resort but the only existential option. We cannot assume that U.S. Jews, and the communities of Europe and Latin America will continue to exist in the present form in the future.31Our existence in this country itself is certain, and there is no force that could remove us from here either forcefully or by treachery (Sadat‘s method). Despite the difficulties of the mistaken ―peace‖ policy and the problem of the Israeli Arabs and those of the territories, we can effectively deal with these problems in the foreseeable future‖.
Conclusion

Image: A map of ―Greater Israel‖, or ―The Biblical Lands of Israel‖. In Genesis Chapter 15:18-21 it is stated: ―18 In the same day the lord made a covenant with Abram saying, unto him thy seed have I given this land, from the river, the river Egypt unto the great river the river, Euphrates:19 The kenites, and the Kennizites, and the Kadmonites,20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Gergishites, and the Jebusites.


I will quote here from War on Syria: Gateway to World War III, by Tony Cartalucci and Nile Bowie.―In 1952, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan spoke ardently of Tel Aviv‘sultimate goal, the creation of ―an Israeli empire.‖ Netanyahu‘s conservative Likudparty was founded on the ideological foundations of Revisionist Zionism, promotingJewish settlement in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the full biblical land ofIsrael by contemporary Jews, an oil-rich landmass extending from the banks of theNile River in Egypt to the shores of the Euphrates. The Movement for Greater Israelwas founded following the capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan andEgypt during 1967‘s Six Day War, leading to the wider construction of Israeli920settlements. Israel‘s Likud party was established on the philosophy of Ze‘evJabotinksy, who called for the establishment of a ―Greater Israel,‖ a concept embracedby Israeli historian Benzion Netanyahu, father of Israel‘s Prime Minister who was quoted in a 2012 interview before his death as saying : ―The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases,‖Benzion Netanyahu said. ―The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab.He is an enemy by essence. His personality won‘t allow him any compromise oragreement. It doesn‘t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he willpay. His existence is one of perpetual war.‖ Israel‘s must be the same, he indicated. ―Thetwo states solution doesn‘t exist,‖ Benzion Netanyahu said. ―There are no two peoplehere. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population… there is no Palestinian people,so you don‘t create a state for an imaginary nation… they only call themselves a peoplein order to fight the Jews.‖ Benjamin Netanyahu was portrayed as the ideological heir of his late father’s rhetoric in a TIME magazine article titled: ―Received Wisdom? How, the Ideology of The Father Influenced the Son‖, TIME, May 02 2012. Benjamin Netanyahu‘s most recent UN performance saw him lumping Tehran together with IS, Syria, Hamas, and others, to pander to the West and certainly not his Israeli base, since the Jews know full well that the groups and countries mentioned above are divided along sectarian and ideological lines. Netanyahu insists on ―Israel‘s right‖ to strike at Iran first in a worst-case scenario, which would plunge the entire Middle East and effectively the world into an instant World War III. Cartalucci and Bowies’ book with its World War III scenario is almost prophetic in its predictions.The biblical implications of the present war theatre in the Middle East are astounding in their clarity and I will examine a few in light of bible prophecy.

Obama‘s UN speech where he declared that Israel should abide by the pre-1967 borders, was flatly rejected by a visibly irritated Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu declared that the pre-1967 Israeli borders were, indefensible in contemporary times and Israel would not cede an inch of territory, to the detriment of its people. The crux of what Obama, was demanding began during the Arab- Israeli War, the Palestinian Arabs were facing defeat in Israel, the governments of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon decided to intervene militarily as a means of preventing ―partition‖(the division of the country into Jewish and Arab states). May 15, 1948, Arab military forces entered Israel/Palestine. The Israeli terrorist, groups were by June of the921the same year, merged into the Israeli Defense Forces. The IDF was able to block the Arabs and took the offensive. A UN-appointed mediator Count Folk Bernadotte was assassinated by Jewish terrorists in September. By the end of the fighting in January 1949, the Jews had extended their area of control to almost 77 percent of the country. By February amidst protracted negotiations and signings that stretched well into July of 1949, armistice agreements were signed between Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Israel’s first general elections were held in January 1949, the Mapai party emerged as the largest party in the Knesset its leader David Ben-Gurion, formed a coalition government with the religious and centrist parties. Chaim Weizman, elder statesman of the Zionist movement, was elected as Israel‘s first president; after his death in 1952, Itzhak Ben-Zvi replaced him. The armistice agreement of 1949 was a disappointment for the Arabs and did not open the way, to a comprehensive peace agreement. King Abdullah of Jordan who had annexed the West Bank in 1949, held secret talks with Israel, he was assassinated in July 1951, by a Palestinian nationalist. Palestinians began to infiltrate into Israel from the West Bank and Gaza, perpetuating attacks on Israeli‘s, Israel launched retaliatory raids, the ensuing violence spiraled dangerously out of control, resulting in the deaths of, Israeli civilians and soldiers, as well as Arab civilians and soldiers. Ben-Gurion and his protégé, Moshe Dayan army chief of staff at the time, propagated renewed territorial expansion. In 1955 Ben-Gurion became the Israeli defense minister.
Will be continued in upcoming posts/ This post was written with the Bible as the prism, or worldview, out of which it was constructed. This post was originally posted when Barack Obama was the US President. I will be posting, articles from my Blogspot.com sites, as I will be discontinuing those. I want to maintain the archive here, and post some of the post’s that were of great interest to my readers.

VIRTUAL SECURITY CONFERENCE 2020.

From 27 – 31 July, 2020, CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) will host the first-ever Virtual Security Conference in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), under the heading of ‘Securing Our Caribbean Community Within The Era Of Covid-19 and Beyond’.

The crisis presented by coronavirus (COVID-19) is unprecedented in CARICOM. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, Governments across the Region imposed several measures, including social distancing, restrictions, border closures and suspension of non-essential services to prevent the spread of the pandemic. In support of these measures, law enforcement and security officials played a crucial role to prevent and control the spread of the virus, while at the same time managing and operating within the changing multi-dimensional security environment.

In an effort to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the security environment and the operations of law enforcement and security officials, as well as to identify best practices that can be applied to similar situations in the future; CARICOM IMPACS will bring together a network of practitioners, security experts, government officials, academics, private sector representatives and civil society officials to discuss the challenges, impact and implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Security of our Region. The Virtual Conference will address the following thematic areas such as:

 

 

  • Peace, Security & Development – A Roadmap For The Future In The Context of COVID-19;
  • Criminality & Organised Crime During COVID-19: Present and Future Trends;
  • Policing In The Time of a Pandemic- Lessons Learnt;
  • Enhancing Cyber Security In The Age of COVID-19;
  • COVID-19 & the Future of Borders;
  • Crisis and Gender Based Violence;
  • Climate Change and Security- Building Resilience in Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
  • Impact and Implications of COVID-19 on Prisons and Correctional Services; and
  • Maritime Security and the Blue Economy

CONFERENCE OBJECTIVES

The CARICOM Virtual Security Conference will gather leading representatives from government, regional and international agencies, academia, private sector and civil society organisations to discuss the impact and implications of COVID 19 and measures to respond.

Specifically, the Virtual Security Conference will:

  • Consider how COVID-19 is shaping the security landscape today and in the future;
  • Identify how COVID-19 has impacted criminality and organized crime and the implications for the future;
  • Facilitate constructive exchange of information, best practices and lessons identified during the COVID-19 outbreak, so that states can strengthen their abilities to continue to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare and response to future pandemics;
  • Assess and evaluate the threats and opportunities created by the COVID-19 pandemic;
  • Explore how the pandemic impacted law enforcement and security officials roles, responsibilities and standard operating procedures, resilience and food security among other issues;
  • Provide a consultative forum for discussion between leading practitioners and representatives from the government, regional and international agencies, academia, private sector and civil society. This is especially important when speaking of Border Security and border movements post pandemic.

CONFERENCE OUTCOME

The Virtual Conference will serve as source material for the development of a “Lessons Learnt and Guidance Document for Preparing for and Responding to Threats such as Pandemics and other crises”. 

 

Caribbean Countries among those benefitting from UN SDG Financing.

Media Release Courtesy UN Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean

Bridgetown, Barbados – As Eastern Caribbean countries strive to build back better from COVID-19 and accelerate progress toward attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),  support is being provided as part of a historic United Nations Joint SDG Fund US$60 million grant launched to close the SDG financing gap and foster more inclusive, sustainable and resilient countries across the world.

In response to a global call, United Nations Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, in collaboration with the governments of Barbados, Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, has been awarded a USD$1 million Joint SDG Fund Grant after successfully submitting a proposal for a joint programme entitled ‘Harnessing Blue Economy Finance for SIDS Recovery and Sustainable Development’. 

The initiative will support the efforts of the three participating Eastern Caribbean governments to develop financing strategies in the Blue Economy and create an enabling framework for SDG investment. The successful proposal was among 62 joint programmes selected from 258 submissions supporting interventions in over 100 countries.

The two-year USD$1,140,000 Joint Programme will be led by the United National Development Programme (UNDP), with participation from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It will also benefit from counterpart funding of USD$140,000 from the three participating UN agencies.

The joint UN SDG Fund is a critical facet of the ongoing global UN reform, which enables the UN Sub-regional team in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean to access funding for SDG acceleration support to countries, working under the leadership of the Resident Coordinator, by leveraging the individual strengths of specialized funds, agencies and programmes, to ‘deliver results as one’ and ensure that no one is left behind.

In welcoming the new joint initiative, that exemplifies the UN’s approach to ‘deliver as one’, UN Resident Coordinator, Didier Trebucq noted:

“This presents another opportunity for the UN development system working cohesively, to deepen its partnerships with Governments of the Eastern Caribbean and to foster blue economic growth through innovative financing mechanisms, while ensuring that the SDGs are at the forefront of national policy and no one is left behind.”

With the Blue Economy engaged as a driver for regional economic recovery and development, emphasis will be placed on creating an enabling environment for Blue Economy financing by identifying policy gaps, key opportunities and specific financing mechanisms for achieving resilient growth. This catalytic investment will address the current financial challenges of the beneficiary countries, including the additional financial burden arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and build on existing partnerships with the private sector and development financing institutions, as well as existing UN projects on Blue Economy and other SDG-related areas in-country.

Speaking on the significance of the initiative, UNDP Resident Representative Magdy Martinez-Soliman stated:

“The COVID-19 crisis has affected the Caribbean’s ambitions to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It has drained away resources that were much needed to finance the SDGs. This Joint Programme will support Barbados, Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, in their efforts to develop financing strategies in the Blue Economy and SDG investments. The three countries are at the vanguard of the Blue Economy “wave” in the region.”  

The UN investments in 62 Joint Programmes around the world will offer pragmatic solutions, all assessed as relevant in the context of the COVID-19 crisis: from addressing reduced fiscal space to align with the SDGs amidst COVID-19 recovery and financial planning to co-creating a new generation of risk-sensitive and responsive Integrated National Financing Frameworks. The results of the investment in SDG financing interventions will begin to materialize in the first quarter of 2021, and a second component is expected to be launched by the Joint SDG Fund soon that would allow other countries to benefit.

Learn more: SDG Financing portfolio.

COVID 19’s Effect on Emerging Market and Developing Economies.

St Peters Sint Martin: By Wade A Bailey.

 

 

I cite the World Bank 2020 report listed below under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO license (CC BY 3.0 IGO) http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/3.0/ igo. Under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

 

World Bank. 2020. Global Economic Prospects, June 2020. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-1-4648-1553-9. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO.

ISSN: 1014-8906 ISBN (paper): 978-1-4648-1553-9 ISBN (electronic): 978-1-4648-1580-5 DOI: 10.1596/978-1-4648-1553-9

 

What follows are various citations and highlights from the report listed previously, the report is used in documenting pertinent facts, that will highlight the dire looming possible economic crisis, that could engulf the global economy. The dire economic scenario presented previously, proves the unsustainability of the ‘one pillar’ economic model used, in the past by regional governments including Sint Martin, its inability to sustain the island’s populace, in a post-Covid19 world.

Global Outlook: Pandemic, Recession: The Global Economy in Crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has, with alarming speed, delivered a global economic shock of enormous magnitude, leading to steep recessions in many countries. The baseline forecast envisions a 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in eight decades, despite unprecedented policy support. Per capita incomes in the vast majority of EMDEs are expected to shrink this year. The global recession would be deeper if bringing the pandemic under control took longer than expected, or if financial stress triggered cascading defaults. The pandemic highlights the urgent need for health and economic policy action—including global cooperation—to cushion its consequences, protect vulnerable populations, and improve countries’ capacity to prevent and cope with similar events in the future. Since EMDEs are particularly vulnerable, it is critical to strengthen their public health care systems, to address the challenges posed by informality and limited safety nets, and, once the health crisis abates, to undertake reforms that enable strong and sustainable growth. Regional Macroeconomic Implications of COVID-19. The rapid rise of COVID-19 cases, together with the wide range of measures to slow the spread of the virus, has slowed economic activity precipitously in many EMDEs. Economic disruptions are likely to be more severe and protracted in those countries with larger domestic outbreaks, greater exposure to international spillovers (particularly through exposure to global commodity and financial markets, global value chains, and tourism), and larger pre-existing challenges such as informality. Growth forecasts for all regions have been severely downgraded; Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and Europe and Central Asia (ECA) in particular have large downgrades partly because of the size of their domestic outbreaks and exposure to global spillovers, while South Asia’s substantial downgrade is primarily the result of stringent lockdown measures. Many countries have avoided more adverse outcomes through sizable fiscal and monetary policy support measures. Despite these measures, per capita incomes in all EMDE regions are expected to contract in 2020, likely causing many millions to fall back into poverty. This edition of Global Economic Prospects also includes analytical chapters on the short- and long-term growth impact of the pandemic, as well as on global implications of the recent plunge in oil prices. Lasting Scars of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has struck a devastating blow to an already-fragile global economy. Lockdowns and other restrictions needed to Executive Summary COVID-19 has triggered a global crisis like no other—a global health crisis that, in addition to an enormous human toll, is leading to the deepest global recession since the second world war. While the ultimate growth outcome is still uncertain, and an even worse scenario is possible if it takes longer to bring the health crisis under control, the pandemic will result in output contractions across the vast majority of emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Moreover, the pandemic is likely to exert lasting damage to fundamental determinants of long-term growth prospects, further eroding living standards for years to come. The immediate policy priorities are to alleviate the ongoing health and human costs and attenuate the near-term economic losses, while addressing challenges such as informality and weak social safety nets that have heightened the impact on vulnerable populations. Once the crisis abates, it will be necessary to reaffirm credible commitment to sustainable policies—including medium-term fiscal frameworks in energy-exporting EMDEs suffering from the large plunge in oil prices—and undertake the necessary reforms to buttress long-term growth prospects. For these actions, global coordination and cooperation will be critical. xvi address the public health crisis, together with spontaneous reductions in economic activity by many consumers and producers, constitute an unprecedented combination of adverse shocks that is causing deep recessions in many advanced economies and EMDEs. Those EMDEs that have weak health systems; those that rely heavily on global trade, tourism, or remittances from abroad; and those that depend on commodity exports will be particularly hard-hit. Beyond its short-term impact, deep recessions triggered by the pandemic are likely to leave lasting scars through multiple channels, including lower investment; erosion of the human capital of the unemployed; and a retreat from global trade and supply linkages. These effects may well lower potential growth and labor productivity in the longer term. Immediate policy measures should support health care systems and moderate the short-term impact of the pandemic on activity and employment. In addition, a comprehensive reform drive is needed to reduce the adverse impact of the pandemic on long-term growth prospects by improving governance and business environments and expanding investment in education and public health. Adding Fuel to the Fire: Cheap Oil during the Pandemic. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the wide-ranging measures needed to slow its advance have precipitated an unprecedented collapse in oil demand, a surge in oil inventories, and, in March, the steepest one-month decline in oil prices on record. In the context of the current restrictions on a broad swath of economic activity, low oil prices are unlikely to do much to buffer the effects of the pandemic, but they may provide some initial support for a recovery once these restrictions begin to be lifted. Like other countries, energy exporting EMDEs face an unprecedented public health crisis, but their fiscal positions were already strained even before the recent collapse in oil revenues. To help retain access to market-based financing for fiscal support programs, these EMDEs will need to make credible commitments to a sustainable medium-term fiscal position. For some of them, current low oil prices provide an opportunity to implement energy-pricing policies that yield efficiency and fiscal gains over the medium term.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, with alarming speed, delivered a global economic shock of enormous magnitude, leading to steep recessions in many countries. The baseline forecast envisions a 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in eight decades, despite unprecedented policy support. Per capita incomes in the vast majority of emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) are expected to shrink this year, tipping many millions back into poverty. The global recession would be deeper if bringing the pandemic under control took longer than expected, or if financial stress triggered cascading defaults. The pandemic highlights the urgent need for health and economic policy action—including global cooperation—to cushion its consequences, protect vulnerable populations, and improve countries’ capacity to prevent and cope with similar events in the future. Since EMDEs are particularly vulnerable, it is critical to strengthen their public health care systems, to address the challenges posed by informality and limited safety nets, and, once the health crisis abates, to undertake reforms that enable strong and sustainable growth.

Summary The COVID-19 pandemic has spread with astonishing speed to every part of the world and infected millions   The health and human toll is already large and continues to grow, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and many more suffering from diminished prospects and disrupted livelihoods. The pandemic represents the largest economic shock the world economy has witnessed in decades, causing a collapse in global activity   Various mitigation measures—such as lockdowns, closure of schools and non-essential business, and travel restrictions—have been imposed by most countries to limit the spread of COVID-19 and ease the strain on health care systems. The pandemic and associated mitigation measures have sharply curbed consumption and investment, as well as restricted labor supply and production. The cross-border spill overs have disrupted financial and commodity markets, global trade, supply chains, travel, and tourism. Financial markets have been extremely volatile, reflecting exceptionally high uncertainty and the worsening outlook. Flight to safety led to a sharp tightening of global and EMDE financial conditions. Equity markets around the world plunged, spreads on riskier categories of debt widened considerably, and EMDEs experienced large capital outflows in much of March and April that bottomed out only recently. Commodity prices have declined sharply as a result of falling global demand, with oil particularly affected (Figure 1.1.D). Many countries have provided large-scale macroeconomic support to alleviate the economic blow, which has contributed to a recent stabilization in financial markets. Central banks in advanced economies have cut policy rates and taken other far-reaching steps to provide liquidity and to maintain investor confidence. In many EMDEs, central banks have also eased monetary policy. The fiscal policy support that has been announced already far exceeds that enacted during the 2008-09 global financial crisis. In all, the pandemic is expected to plunge a majority of countries into recession this year, with per capita output contracting in the largest fraction of countries since 1870. Advanced economies are projected to shrink by 7 percent in 2020, as widespread social-distancing measures, a sharp tightening of financial conditions, and a collapse in external demand depress activity. Assuming that the outbreak remains under control and activity recovers later this year, China is projected to slow to 1 percent in 2020—by far the lowest growth it has registered in more than four decades. Due to the negative spillovers from weakness in major economies, alongside the disruptions associated with their own domestic outbreaks, EMDE GDP is forecast to contract by 2.5 percent in 2020. This would be well below the previous trough in EMDE growth of 0.9 percent in 1982, and the lowest rate since at least 1960, the earliest year with available aggregate data. EMDEs with large domestic COVID-19 outbreaks and limited health care capacity; that are deeply integrated in global value chains; that are heavily dependent on foreign financing; and that rely extensively on international trade, commodity exports, and tourism will suffer disproportionately. Commodity-exporting EMDEs will be hard hit by adverse spillovers from sharply weaker growth in China, and by the collapse in global commodity demand, especially for oil. With more than 90 percent of EMDEs expected to experience contractions in per capita incomes this year, many millions are likely to fall back into poverty. With advanced economies contracting, China experiencing record-low growth, and EMDE growth savaged by external and domestic headwinds, the global economy is expected to shrink by 5.2 percent this year in a baseline forecast. This would be the deepest global recession since World War II, and almost three times as steep as the 2009 global recession.

The 2020 global recession is expected to be the deepest in eight decades, and the subsequent recovery will be insufficient to bring output to previously projected levels. Amid heightened uncertainty, worse outcomes could arise if the pandemic and economic disruptions persist or cascading defaults amid high debt lead to financial crises. A lack of space is constraining fiscal responses in many EMDEs. Building resilient health care systems is critical to prevent similar crises. With ongoing recessions exerting scarring effects on potential output, pursuing reforms that bolster long-term growth prospects will be essential.

 

The forecast assumes that the pandemic recedes in such a way that domestic mitigation measures can be lifted by mid-year, adverse global spill overs ease during the second half of the year, and dislocations in financial markets are not long-lasting. Although a moderate recovery is envisioned in 2021, with global growth reaching 4.2 percent, output is not expected to return to its previously expected levels. Since uncertainty around the outlook remains exceptionally high, alternative scenarios help illustrate the range of plausible global growth outcomes in the. In particular, the baseline forecast for 2020 could prove optimistic. If COVID-19 outbreaks persist longer than expected, restrictions on movement and interactions may have to be maintained or reintroduced, prolonging the disruptions to domestic activity and further setting back confidence. Disruptions to activity would weaken businesses’ ability to remain in operation and service their debt, while the increase in risk aversion could raise interest rates for higher-risk borrowers. With debt levels already at historic highs, this could lead to cascading defaults and financial crises across many economies .Under this downside scenario, global growth would shrink almost 8 percent in 2020. The recovery that follows would be markedly sluggish, hampered by severely impaired balance sheets, heightened financial market stress and widespread bankruptcies in EMDEs. In 2021, global growth would barely begin to recover, increasing to just over 1 percent. In contrast, in an upside scenario, a sharp economic rebound would begin promptly if pandemic-control measures could be largely lifted in the near term, and fiscal and monetary policy responses succeed in supporting consumer and investor confidence, leading to a prompt normalization of financial conditions and the unleashing of pent-up demand. However, even with these positive developments, the near-term contraction in global activity of more than 3 percent in 2020 would still be much larger than during the global recession of 2009, and EMDE growth would also be negative. Once pandemic control measures are fully lifted, global growth would rebound markedly in 2021, to above 5 percent. Policymakers face formidable challenges as they seek to contain the devastating health, macroeconomic, and social effects of the pandemic. During the last global recession, in 2009, many EMDEs were able to implement large -scale fiscal and monetary responses. Today, however, many EMDEs are less prepared to weather a global downturn and must simultaneously grapple with a severe public health crisis with heavy human costs. Particularly vulnerable EMDEs include those that have weak health systems; those that rely heavily on global trade, tourism, and remittances; those that are prone to financial market disruptions; and those that depend on oil and other commodity exports. EMDEs where poverty and informality are widespread, including many low-income countries, are also vulnerable, since their poor have limited access to proper sanitation and adequate social safety nets, and often suffer greater food insecurity . An arsenal of macroprudential support policies has been deployed in EMDEs to maintain financial sector resilience and promote lending during the crisis. These include relaxing capital and liquidity coverage requirements, allowing banks to draw down capital and liquidity buffers, and encouraging banks to offer temporary loan repayment holidays to distressed borrowers. Further, many countries have initiated debt moratoria and government guarantees on bank loans to strengthen bank balance sheets and support distressed borrowers. Policymakers would, however, need to carefully balance some of these actions against jeopardizing the future stability of the financial sector. Once economic activity begins to normalize, they will also need to prudently withdraw the large-scale policy stimulus provided during the crisis without endangering the recovery. Meanwhile, many EMDEs have introduced fiscal measures to expand social safety nets and protect those most vulnerable, including wage support to preserve jobs, increased access to unemployment benefits, and targeted cash transfers to low-income households. In EMDEs with wider fiscal space, the policy response has been markedly greater than in those more constrained by higher debt levels. For many energy exporting EMDEs, fiscal balances are deteriorating as oil prices have fallen below fiscal break-even prices. Elevated debt burdens in some low- and middle-income countries also underscore the need for temporary debt relief. In this context, global coordination and cooperation—of the measures needed to slow the spread of the pandemic, and of the economic actions needed to alleviate the economic damage, including international support—provide the greatest chance of achieving public health goals and enabling a robust global recovery. In the near term, COVID-19 has underscored the need for governments to prioritize the timely and transparent dissemination of accurate information in order to stem the spread of the disease, and to build public trust. In the long term, the pandemic has laid bare the weaknesses of national health care and social safety nets in many countries. It has also exposed the severe consequences of widespread informality and financing constraints for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in many EMDEs   There is a critical need to invest in resilient health care systems that prioritize national health security, in order to prevent and mitigate similar crises   It is also necessary to put in place social benefit systems that can provide an effective, flexible, and efficient safety net during disasters. Such systems can be augmented by measures to deliver income support and emergency financing to vulnerable groups such as the poor, urban slum dwellers, migrants, and informal firms. In particular, digital technologies can enhance the provision of cash transfers and other critical support measures, as well as facilitate the flow of remittances. In many countries, deep recessions triggered by COVID-19 will likely weigh on potential output for years to come. Governments can take steps to alleviate the adverse impact of the crisis on potential output by placing a renewed emphasis on reforms that can boost long-term growth prospects.

More to follow.

 

 

 

 

Regional Mobility actors charged to ‘Get Started.

(Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Press Release, 25 June 2020 |Bridgetown, Barbados) –  Stakeholders in the energy and transportation sectors were charged not to wait until a comprehensive plan and perfect conditions are available in order to get started on the Regional Electric Vehicle Strategy during an online discussion, which focused on innovation opportunities and the Caribbean reality.

The discussion, which was hosted by the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREEE) and the Energy Unit of the CARICOM Secretariat, saw more than two hundred and fifty stakeholders gathered to hear from regional and global experts in the field. Stakeholders also had the opportunity to express their opinions and have their queries addressed.

The Need for Regional Coordination

During the online event, attendees in majority identified cost as the most important factor when deciding on an electric vehicle (EV) purchase versus an Internal Combustible Engine (ICE) vehicle. In response, panelist Xavier Gordon shared that the total cost of ownership of an EV was lower when compared to an ICE vehicle, as global market trends show a decline in EV costs.  He warned, however, that there was a need to produce economies of scale in the region, which could, in turn, further reduce costs for CARICOM Member States and consumers, particularly procurement costs.

Mr. Gordon added that both public-private partnerships, particularly in the installation of charging infrastructure, and regulator-utility collaboration for the development of attractive charging prices for consumers, were key innovative approaches to support the adoption of EVs. To stimulate market response in the region, project implementation and demonstration were important, panelists shared.  Antonio Sealy of the Barbados Light and Power Company Limited revealed that when the Electric Bus Project commenced in Barbados, they began to receive significant interest from global EV service providers.

Innovation Opportunities & Challenges

Head of the CARICOM Energy Unit, Dr Devon Gardner, responded to the charge to “get started” by sharing that CARICOM, with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) implemented TAPSEC Project, was in the process of having a Regional Electric Vehicle Strategy (REVS) prepared. Project implementation will continue at the same time, with a view to having relevant projects inform the strategy. This was in line with another recommendation from panelist Andrea Denzinger, who suggested that the region implement pilot projects and allow them to create data and build trust.

In their quest to support the development of the sustainable transport sector, the CARICOM Secretariat – through its Energy Unit – and the CCREEE have established a Regional Electric Vehicle Working Group to produce the Regional Electric Vehicle Strategy Framework. Having been presented with an overview of the framework, eighty-five percent (85%) of participants joining the discussion indicated that they were sufficiently convinced of the need for such a strategy. Nonetheless, there were cautions in light of the financial implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Panelist Xavier Gordon shared that he completed the region’s first empirical meter reading study in 2017 and, the results show that electrification makes sense for the region. Nevertheless, he noted that access to finance may be significantly slowed as countries and donors redirect available funds.

The Caribbean Reality

Within the region, several opportunities exist to propel a transition towards wide-spread use of electric mobility, according to panelists. Sharing on the Barbados experience in implementing the Electric Bus Project where 33 electric buses are being procured, panelist Antonio Sealy told attendees that there was tremendous value to the transport sector, through electrification of public transportation. He maintained that cost benefits were to be found through fueling and maintenance, with estimated savings of BBD $2M annually for the current project. Improved comfort and commuter experiences, as well as reduced environmental impact through lessenend noise and greenhouse gas emissions were also identified as advantages.

The University of the West Indies is also supporting the electric mobility sector through their Electric Vehicle Research and Development Platform (EVRDP) and, an application developed to control charging time, to avoid congestion in the electrical network. Professor Chandrabhan Sharma explained the characteristics of EV charging, noting that uncoordinated charging could put significant stress on the power system, whereas providing power from a vehicle to the grid could contribute to stabilising the power grid and improve contribution of intermittent renewable energy supply to the electrical network.

This discussion was another step toward the development and implementation of the Regional Electric Vehicle Strategy which will lean on lessons learned from other jurisdictions and projects; and incorporate plans and approaches to produce economies of scale, within CARICOM. This is all to be accomplished with the ultimate goal of transforming the regional energy sector, for the benefit of Caribbean people.