Let’s face reality, one of capitalism’s fundamental characteristics is its inexorable drive for accumulation leading to the expansion of its businesses and expansion generally. One of the effects of that expansion is the consumption of smaller businesses or bankrupting them out of existence. Development in Guyana, slow though it was, saw the slow strangulation of cake shops and groceries. Cake shops have completely disappeared in developed areas. Groceries are being replaced by supermarkets. Small supermarkets are now giving way to larger supermarkets. While groceries and general stores still exist outside the city, and some have survived by selling alcohol, and their survival may persist for some time yet, the writing is on the wall. Unless they further innovate by converting themselves into modern, small, supermarkets, for their small communities with a wider range of product to meet the growing demands of their customers, they are not going to survive. The development of the oil economy has, and will continue, to speed up this process.
Continue reading “LET’S FACE REALITY”HASSAN NASRALLAH
Oppressed people will always resist. The apartheid Israeli occupation and killing of thousands of Palestinians living in open air prisons since 1967 explains, although it does not justify,the atrocities of October 7. It also explains the militant resistance of Hezbollah which was formed to resist apartheid Israel’s war on Lebanon and occupation of southern Lebanon for eighteen years until expelled in 2000. The Sabra and Shatila massacres of hundreds of Palestinians by Christians militias, protected by the Israeli army, destruction of Beirut, and killing of thousands of Lebanese, were the product of apartheid Israel’s war on Lebanon and the Palestinians. It is the ominous threat of apartheid Israel that has sustained Hezbollah as a force to defend Lebanon.
Continue reading “HASSAN NASRALLAH”SUPPLIER DIVERSITY
The level and value of governmental procurement has escalated to such a height that, having regard to Guyana’s ethnic diversity, an entrenched, law-based, programme of supplier diversity is rapidly becoming a necessity. Such progammes do not exist in developing countries such as Guyana. But it exists in many developed countries in North America and Europe. The United States, which has had a long history of discrimination against African Americans and other groups, such as American Indians, as well as an equally long history of resistance to such discrimination has, as a consequence, developed advanced programmes of supplier diversity. These policies generally exist in large companies, but the Federal Government and many State Governments have also passed laws which provide for supplier diversity in their own procurement practices. In Guyana’s context, supplier diversity includes infrastructure and procurement of goods and services.
Continue reading “SUPPLIER DIVERSITY”SCRAP THE CURRENT CONSTITUTION REFORM PROCESS
An advertisement last week for a secretary for the Constitution Reform Commission (CRC) has reminded the public that constitution reform is on the agenda. The CRC was appointed on 3 April 2024. Elections in Guyana are due on or before 2 November 2025. The delay so far does not suggest that the CRC will be in a position to commence its first hearing before 2025 has begun, or is about to begin. Preparations for the elections campaign will also be about to begin and by the time the work of the CRC is in high gear, so will be the elections campaign. Few would be interested in constitutional reform.
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On 20 February 2013, my son Kamal, was on the platform just outside the front door of the offices of Cameron & Shepherd in Avenue of the Republic on the western side of the Victoria Law Courts. This is how he described the occasion. “I was standing on my office platform just before lunch when I turned to my left and saw no less a personage than Sir Shridath Ramphal standing next to me in a pink polo shirt. He had come up quietly behind me after paying one of his regular courtesy visits to my father and, like me, was awaiting a ride. He was without bodyguards, or entourage, or umbrella-carrier or anyone else accompanying him for that matter. I introduced myself, thanked him for his service to Guyana, the Caribbean, South Africa and the Commonwealth, and then asked if he would facilitate a photograph. He happily obliged.”
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