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The following discussion with a Nate Hagen was interesting for the blogmaster and exposes a huge gap in the local space of new perspectives to solving problems and generating scenarios for consideration to use Hagen;s thought process. A shocking observation given the level of investment in education post independence.

It is obvious the social and political prattle we continue to hear – more of the same with minimal attempt to engage in needle changing interventions.

Here is the discussion the blogmaster thoroughly enjoyed compliments of BU family member Bentley.

As Ursula K. LeGuin the amazing author said “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

Melanda Schmid-Ochieng

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340 responses to “Thought Leadership Urgently Needed”

  1. David Avatar
    David

    Smith: Diversify without delay
    Ex-CDB chief lighting fire under region
    Immediate past president of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr Warren Smith, is seeking to impress on single-sector economies such as Barbados the urgency of diversification.
    Smith, a panellist on the CDB’s President’s Chat yesterday, said this must be one of the key takeaways coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that successive global crises over the years have shown tourism-dependent countries to be among the more vulnerable within the region to these exogenous shocks.
    “The dependency on one sector for small borrowing member countries is fraught with risk and makes them more vulnerable. We had seen this to a lesser extent after the 9/11 crisis. The first lesson that we learnt from the pandemic was that diversification of our economies is critical to the sustainability of our BMCs (borrowing member countries),” he said.
    “What started out as a health crisis quickly emerged as one of the greatest economic crises to impact our borrowing members, particularly those dependent on revenues from a single sector. For example, our tourism-dependent countries had almost an immediate impact.”
    Challenges
    The former CDB head reminded those in attendance virtually of the challenges that many borrowing members faced in order to keep their heads above water during the pandemic. He added that now that the world was coming out of the pandemic, it was important that diversification of economies be placed high on the list of priorities
    for regional territories.
    “We had widespread lockdowns globally, airlines drastically reduced flights and cruise lines even had difficulty finding ports for discharging passengers and crews. Borrowing member governments had to have fiscal space and borrowing headroom in this type of global crisis to increase expenditure for the heightened health care requirement, including for isolation and quarantine facilities, vaccination, increases in health care providers and PPEs [personal protective equipment],” said Smith.
    “Additionally, fiscal space was needed to treat to the widespread unemployment, especially within the tourism sector and its knock-on effects on the wider economy. Social safety nets, where they existed, required replenishment from Government while public coffers needed additional support from multilateral agencies such as CDB.
    “Food security emerged as a major concern as supply chain issues became evident during lockdowns while shipping cost skyrocketed.” ( CLM)


    Source: Nation

  2. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    An anodyne presentation aimed to intoxicate the uncritical!

    We wondered who were those ancestors of 300 thousands years ago to whom claim is laid, as point of departure, and the unavoidable contradictions within modernity.

    We see only the continuation of present sensibilities within the fruit or students of this professor given the absence of right root.

  3. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    To be expected.

  4. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    All that means is your firm determination to build on a foundation of lies, the irrational!

    As would expect a different result.

    Can’t you see the deadendedness of these narratives.

  5. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Very difficult for some to shed the Eurocentric mindwash and think for themselves……..it has become a comfort zone..

    ..extinct in OUR new Afrikan world order, abandoned and BANNED………. but…some will never give it up…

  6. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Pacha

    Bushie continues to be flabbergasted that you can conclude that such levels of ‘blindness’ can have occurred naturally – even within a brass bowl environment.
    Boss…Even the damn insects and rats know when to do things differently when faced with extermination…

    Only NON-human, spiritual blindness, inspired by the love of money (capitalist materialism) and masterminded by spiritual EVIL forces can explain our current predicament….

    Of course, it is EQUALLY preposterous to think that it is even possible to escape from such a BLINDING condition without accessing counter-balancing SPIRITUAL support and guidance….

    But when the blind is leading the blind, it apparently ‘makes sense’ to just walk faster and more resolutely forward….

    LOL
    But not stinking Bushie…. The Bushman looking for LIGHT…. 🙂

  7. David Avatar
    David

    Did you watch the video Pacha?

    What specifically are you challenging.

  8. 555dubstreet Avatar
    555dubstreet

    “Ursula K. LeGuin”

    Never Tell Them Your True Name:
    In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1968 novel and the first in the Earthsea cycle, Ged is our protagonist and the grandest sorcerer in his land. Toward the end of his bildungsroman journey to adulthood, he defeats the shadow creature he’d earlier unleashed upon the world—unwittingly, in a fit of petulance, then of desperation—by calling the creature its true name: Ged’s own. In a Jungian moment of accepting and merging with his shadow self, Ged is saved.

    True names and the mystical strength of language were early themes of Le Guin’s
    At the beginning of “The Rule of Names,” a schoolteacher reminds her class, “You never ask anybody his name. You never tell your own.” The true name is sacred; its revelation is emblematic of deep trust. Words thwart and create equilibrium. Language is linked to power.
    Le Guin described Ged’s growth: “He’s going to blunder his way into magic. He’s going to have to learn it by doing it all wrong, which is mostly how we do learn things, right?”
    “It is no secret,” Ged says, shortly before facing the shadow. “All power is one in source and end… My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power.”

  9. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    David
    David

    Stop going to your cheap tricks.

    Yes! We watched the ENTIRE video. As painful as it was.

    But unlike you our frame of reference is radically different.

    In academia, which the interviewee purports to be, infants are taught about the definition of terms.

    Did he not try to see the future based on the evolutionary history of mankind?

    And if you as an academician try to build an argument without defining where we came from. Who were our ancestors. You are just another Covey or Carnegie. The BSers you like.

    When talking at a time the world should know that Afrikan people are the ancestors of ALL mankind and you are unwilling to tell White people that truism we will continue to have White supremacist thinking and the absence of ‘right order of things’.

    You may have the last word!

  10. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    We obviously watched a different video. Will gladly have the last word LOL.

  11. Vincent Codrington Avatar
    Vincent Codrington

    @ David Bu

    I thought that your blog was dedicated to thought leadership. Am I to understand that I wasted all those years loitering on the wrong door steps? Wuh Loss !!! O Sugar !!!!.

  12. David Avatar
    David

    @Vincent

    What the blogmaster and some commenters share yes.

    Is there something wrong with ratcheting to another level?

  13. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Don’t know how they are going to catch up now, when the Afrikan world, the ORIGINAL WORLD.. has already moved on……maybe the Eurocentric spirit will help them…I say the look really good right where they are…

  14. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    Listening to Brasstacks but not angry. lol

  15. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @ David the blogmaster,

    I always thought BU was a blog to discuss all things Bajan or relevant to Bajans.

    Because it is free I used the Diaspora corner to share my interest in ” music ” and especially G G videos.

    BU continues to be a great blog.

  16. David Avatar
    David

    Thanks for your support Hants.

  17. 555dubstreet Avatar
    555dubstreet

    Ancient music to accompany a sci-fi novel.
    Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton – Music and Poetry of the Kesh

    Early editions of Ursula Le Guin’s 1985 novel Always Coming Home came in a wide slipcase that housed a hefty trade paperback alongside a cassette tape, which the promo copy on the outer box calls “an appropriate audio accompaniment to the world” depicted in the text.
    “A Multimedia Event,” with Le Guin’s thoughts on how one could listen to the tape while engaging with the novel.
    The innovation of this text/sound packaging concept—Music and Poetry of the Kesh resists easy categorization.
    Music and singing are interwoven throughout Kesh culture as important elements of ritual ceremony, seasonal celebration, and general playful expression. To fully actualize the sonic world that courses through the text, Le Guin collaborated with Todd Barton, a polymath composer and musician.
    Fitting into the fictional anthropological framework, the sounds on the original cassette were presented as Lomax-style gleanings from The Valley, as the region is called throughout the book. On various tracks, listeners hear invented folk songs played on unfamiliar instruments, cyclical vocal chants, minimalist mallet pieces, and occasional environmental sounds. The Kesh, as Le Guin and Barton imagined them, are hardly some primitivist fantasy—they use a range of modern technologies, including a crude version of the internet, mostly speculated during the book’s writing in the early 1980s, called The Exchange. Thus, Le Guin and Barton integrate floating synthesizer tones and subtle electronics into their otherwise acoustic music making.

    The album enhances the novel’s blurring of documentary and fiction. In making the record, Barton took field recordings around Le Guin’s actual Napa property—a crackling fire, a flowing brook, fluttering birds—blending them with poems sung in the Kesh language, which was entirely devised for the novel. These fabricated indigenous melodies were apparently almost too lifelike for the publishers. “The nonexistent Kesh gave the copyright office a problem,” Le Guin said. “They thought I was trying to claim folk songs as my own, until I told them the Kesh people hadn’t even been born yet.” A later section of Always Coming Home describes in great detail the physical features of the fantastic instruments that were central to Kesh artistic life alongside detailed illustrations. In a recent interview, Barton claims that he designed the instruments just enough to convey them believably in writing—the numbers four, five, and nine are crucial to Le Guin’s cosmology for the Kesh, so Barton’s tonal system for them follows suit—though he ended up using a Roland Jupiter-8 to create their parts for the recordings. After the novel was published, dedicated fans used the text as a blueprint to build the instruments that matched Le Guin and Barton’s previously unrealized vision of them.

  18. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Pacha…they can’t see the optics, STOOPING to use Eurocentric make believe…to mislead Afrikan people, which would have worked at one time, but not anymore……..is a hell of a tell.

    they can always claim that they don’t know what they are doing, which maybe partly true…but still inexcusable.

    maybe they are playing for the minority groups…who don’t give one or two shits…anyway…how did some Black people manage to lower themselves to that degree…..a paper worth writing….

  19. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Bushie

    And we are continually perplexed by your rejection of current conditions but are more and more firmly rooted to the same Judea-Christian falsity which is the very philosophical fountainhead from whence Hagen derives. What kind of blindness is required to attain life in such an illusionary state when the truth is ‘knowable’!

  20. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Waru

    It’s alright for White people, who are not an ancient people, to talk of the cultural evolution of mankind and where the world is heading and they will never be seen as ‘nostalgic’ by rassouuuuul David and ilk.

    But for Afrikans to tell truth about cultural evolution, in his mind, that can never be anything else but ‘nostalgia’ as Pacha has been previously charged.

    We will never concede that a people which just came to town and has done so much damage to the Great Mother should be any guide as to the future. What he will never understand is that such people, as a Hagen, are sent out to erect narratives to do just that – capture the future.

  21. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    “But for Afrikans to tell truth about cultural evolution, in his mind, that can never be anything else but ‘nostalgia’ as Pacha has been previously charged.”

    can’t stop it though, he is only in control of his little world on BU…..don’t have any reach at all…

    whole sites of REAL SCHOLARS are dedicated to killing that Eurocentric narrative of make believe and outright LIES IN Afrikan lives….

    “capture the future.”

    never going to happen in our ORIGINAL Afrikan world of this era…as i told them, they have no right and no authority, given their 500 years of anti-Afrikan criminality…against our ancestors and us…

  22. Pavhamama Avatar
    Pavhamama

    Warm
    When we’re here engaged in illusions this is what one of the masters of the universe Klause Straub is talking about at Davos – transhumanism. Hagen has no real influence but Straub has.
    https://youtu.be/EnQeyXDyQ3E

  23. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Pacha…they will not see it until it’s right on top of them…..but they are trying so hard and overreaching to fit in, they are worth avoiding so that nothing sticks to our young people…….we will have to record the occasion for posterity…to show the younger generation what to avoid at all cost…

    speaking of….wrote a tribute to George Lamming for next issue of Kush Quarterly for the same reason..

  24. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    You don’t do PUDRYR well.

  25. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    The man is making and reinforcing simple points that are sound. The importance of placing greater value in implementing community based solutions versus measuring against economic indicators for example.

  26. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    David

    We were engaging Waru and Bushie. How many last words must be surrendered?

    Well if that is so, two things. This writer has actually worked in the community solutions business and am fairly sure more is known about that than either you or him.

    The truth is that given corporate control of politicians those ideas are taking a beating.

    Hagen’s ideas are more simplistic than simple. Any idea worth its salt must be tested. We estimate that what Hagen is saying has failed to make contact with the demonic intentions of Straub el al.

    You repeat this canard about PUDRYR now for the second time. To be honest we have no idea what this is about. And here we’re thinking unique ideas were being presented.😎

  27. David Avatar
    David

    Ok Pacha, have the last word.

  28. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    Pacha…just saw a clip on “countering unipolarity” am sure you will come across it, very informative.

  29. 555dubstreet Avatar
    555dubstreet

    African youths around the world nowadays are mixing with all other faces and races in the dance
    we don’t want to fight no more
    just dance

    Dance Through It (Mixed)

    Holistic Guitar (Cubed Rework 2021) (Mixed)

  30. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    @ Pacha @ WURA
    @Pacha asked:

    “Can’t you see the deadendedness of these narratives.”

    Bill Cosby once said that during the great black out in New York, he went to Ray Charles’ hotel room. The door was unlocked, and he walked right in:
    The place was pitched dark. Cosby shouted out to Ray: “Ray what are you doing ? “
    Ray Charles answered : “ I’m in the bathroom shaving.”
    You see my Comrades even in broad daylight some folks choose to be blind.
    @ David is an intellectual slave to these weak narratives and the jokers, who will try to convince us that we never saw the need to diversify before COVID.
    That’s why nobody remembers the “ genius” Arthur because in fifteen years of political and economic rule , he could not get past a one pony economy.
    Some shave in the dark others cannot even shave in broad daylight.
    2. The one masquerading on the world stage , is upfront posing with Biden , who refused to invite Cuba to something called the Conference of the Americas or whatever.
    In the meantime, nearly eighty Cuban nurses and other health workers , are in her country, propping up her health service. No solidarity with the Cuban people. Posing with Biden is more important.
    Her minions ( Pan Africanists) cannot say a word. Imagine that.But dare anyone expose Mia’s foolery and they are castigated on this blog.

    Peace

  31. David Avatar
    David

    @William

    Keep living in your make believe world. Knowledge can be found anywhere , even within the white race you despise. For you it must come from a black source to be constructive. How idiotic.

  32. David Avatar
    David

    And for your information, the blogmaster is not afflicted with group think and therefore does not require validation from any commenter here.

  33. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    “@ David is an intellectual slave to these weak narratives and the jokers, who will try to convince us that we never saw the need to diversify before COVID.”

    at least it’s now out there…the hardest thing is to know…the rest gets easier..just happy he has no reach and very little to no influence OR our young people would be very badly misled, another disservice to them, another few generations lost…but NOT THIS TIME…..

    how many years were they warned to diversify, all the major credit rating agencies told them from as far back as 2006, IMF told them in the last few years…. i saw recently where one of the alphabet lenders told them AGAIN to diversify…..but somehow they just CANNOT CONNECT TO THAT WORD or what it takes to get there…

    the world stage runner…equivalent to the beep beep bird roadrunner….still got some running to do…

  34. David Avatar
    David

    @William

    As Artax will say, check BU Archives if you want to confirm the blogmaster’s view on the need to diversify the economy. If you watched the interview you will appreciate the man is making a different point. You are too hardwired in your view to be open minded. It is why we have to pin our hope elsewhere. You are a dinosaur. Have the last word.

  35. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    ” Apostle of Bob Marley ”

  36. 555dubstreet Avatar
    555dubstreet

    Old Black Black souls will die one day and shed the skin they are in and turn to dust.;
    Transcend all fear of living and dying and shift your identification from the mortal body to the immortal spirit. This guided death meditation leads you through the moment of death, the decomposition of the corpse, and merging with the all-pervasive life force of the universe.
    First merge with the life force of planet earth, before expanding to envelope the solar system, galaxy, web of galaxies and the entire uniform universe. Become one with the Great Spirit, and dissolve your self into the omnipresent fundamental life force energy that pervades the universe. The result of this meditation is spiritual liberation.

  37. WilliamSkinner Avatar
    WilliamSkinner

    @ David
    Oh my dear , dear brother why are you so emotional. It’s just an opinion , oh my ,my aren’t we a bit touchy today.

  38. David Avatar
    David

    Because every rashole day you lot get up and can only heap negativity on every situation in or about Barbados. Coming from many of you who left Barbados to live in countries where idiots buy guns to shoot and bomb children with regularity. We live in a world where SIDs and MDCs are fighting our demons. It is and will always be a struggle to exist, we do not exist in Utopia.

  39. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    William Skinner

    On the one hand we have a teacher presenting some simplistic ideas. A teacher who has no power on the global stage at all.

    On the other hand, you got people at Davos openly planning their vision of a different world. Transhumanism and the implanting of electronic or robotic devices in human beings as a norm. This group has real power and are connected to corporate and political leaders.
    It would be a cold day in hell before this writer will fear or give more credence to the teacher’s ideas than those of Klaus Straus’s.

  40. David Avatar
    David

    @Pacha

    Knowledge and information can exist anywhere. A repository of knowledge can only exist from a person who commands the world stage?

    Piss in the blogmaster’s pocket do.

  41. David Avatar
    David

    Nate Hagens – Professor @ University of Minnesota

    https://www.finnotes.org/people/nate-hagens

  42. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    “On the other hand, you got people at Davos openly planning their vision of a different world.”

    then the beast from Belgium was down in the Congo recently with his arrogant repulsive looking self..

    ..none of this shallow minds are putting or piecing together…

  43. 555dubstreet Avatar
    555dubstreet

    David is either sad or disappointed or both and is a sad and mad dad driving in both lanes.
    So all you so called self labeling “African Intellectuals” and “Black Radicals” wannabes should stop being so childish, stinky bum bums smelly butts.

  44. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    @Hants
    No scarf?
    In a polite manner, she didn’t dodge much. She was better than JT lol

  45. 555dubstreet Avatar
    555dubstreet

    The next stage stage will be displeased and then huffy

  46. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    David
    He’s a teacher. Because you say professor is unimpressive.

    We’ll bet you don’t even know whether he’s a full professor or not. Indeed mainly adjuncts teach first year students like Hagen admitted.

    How much would you bet?😄

  47. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    David
    De rasssoul man is an adjunct as we suspected. He’s a lightweight.

    From the we heard him we knew that he was third tier.

    David bow to the majesty of Ptah less you be vanquished😄

  48. David Avatar
    David

    The man is an MBA in finance with honours and doctorate philosophy. That is all.

  49. African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved Avatar
    African Online Publishing Copyright ⓒ 2022. All Rights Reserved

    It’s been years now i realized these had no clue, don’t know a quarter of what’s going on in the real world…..stuck in their little trapped world as pretend patriots, another Euro invention handed to them so they can look foolish…

    the best Slaves
    the best Patriots

    one and the same…

    and they can’t see the irony..

  50. angela cox Avatar
    angela cox

    Would this summit drive a wedge of division within Caricom
    Xxxccc
    “[By refusing to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, all countries of the Americas] our American friends have left us .with no other credible, principled, and practical choice [but to boycott the ongoing IX Summit of the Amercas] … Our friendship has to be grounded in elemental respect, and, the truth be told, we [CARICOM nations] have been profoundly disrespected and disregarded by our American friends on this matter. …

    “I fear that irreparable damage would be done to CARICOM [if its leaders attend the summit], at least in the immediate future. I feel certain that our people, with justification, are likely to damn us.”
    ~ Prime Minister of St Vincent & the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, in a letter he wrote to all the CARICOM leaders and copied to the CARICOM Secretary General, Carla Barnett.

    The nation of St Vincent & the Grenadines has not sent representation to The Summit.

    “The Cubans have principle and practicality on their side. We are at this sorry pass because of the decision of the US government, so the option of attending the Summit and protest strongly in our own language regarding the non-invitation to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua is, in my view, not viable in both principle and practice,” Prime Minister Gonsalves remarked.

    Leslie .P. Lett

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