February 23, 2006<$z$>

THE continuing whitewashing of Fidel Castro's totalitarian regime and its racist policies by his Bermudian supporters sickens me. The execution of three blacks by a Cuban government firing squad in 2003 for attempting to hijack a boat to Miami raised many questions about racism on the island, questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered by Castro or his henchman. This was, you should remember, the first time anyone, black or white, had been executed for trying to flee Cuba.

Castro (pictured) justified the executions of Jorge Luis Martinez Isaac, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo and Barbaro Leodan Sevilla Garcia by saying their deaths would deter any attempts at a mass exodus from the country. But many observers, both on and off the island, doubt that the three would have been put to death had they been white.

"By executing three young blacks, Castro was sending a clear message to the Afro-Cuban population" that dissent would not be tolerated, said Jaime Suchlicki, director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami, in an extensive report on Cuban racism.

"I was a Fidelista. I love my nation," Ramona Copello said on the day her son was executed. "I no longer love Fidel. He assassinated my son. Now I have no faith in the revolution."

It should also be remembered that Castro took advantage of the fact that international attention was focused on the imminent outbreak of the US-led war with Iraq in 2003 to start a crackdown on internal dissent that is still ongoing. Afro-Cubans have been among the most prominent targets of this latest wave of oppression.

Initially Castro arrested 35 opposition figures, many of them black, then just days after the three Afro-Cuban men who tried to commandeer a Havana ferry to take them to Florida were executed the Castro regime jailed another 43 dissidents — again, a disproportionately large number of them black.

In the intervening three years another 100 or so leading Afro-Cuban opposition figures have also been jailed on the most dubious of charges.

Where is the international outcry? Where, for that matter, is the outcry from a Bermudian Government that opposed apartheid in South Africa but which is now making friends with a regional dictator who practises the same abhorrent policies in the Caribbean?

Cubans of African descent, who make up 62 per cent of the Cuban population, live in the worst, most dilapidated Havana neighbourhoods: Cerro, Luyano and Guanabacoa. Afro-Cubans have the worst jobs and are increasingly disenfranchised, according to the University of Miami report.

In 1997, the Cuban government passed laws preventing citizens from moving to Havana in search of high-paying tourist jobs, but according to the State Department, the law "was targeted at individuals and families from the poorer, predominantly black and mulatto eastern provinces".

The report notes that none of the top ten generals or senior military leaders in Cuba is black. None of the 15 presidents of provincial assemblies is black. Two of the 40-person Council of Ministers are black, and three of the 15 provincial heads of the Cuban Communist Party are black.

Cuban blacks, according to government reports, have five per cent of the lucrative tourism jobs, but Afro-Cubans constitute 85 per cent of Cuba's prison population. Afro-Cubans and black tourists increasingly complain about "racial profiling" by state security officials, according to the report.

One of the pillars of faith in the Cuban revolution is that Mr. Castro freed poor black Cubans, giving them schools, jobs and health care.

Today, Afro-Cubans who turn their backs on the "gains of the revolution" are considered unappreciative.

"There are a growing number of black Cubans in the opposition movement. The leadership is almost entirely black or mulatto," says Frank Calzon of the Centre for a Free Cuba. "No white Cuban has ever been executed for trying to leave. The message is clear: If you are white and speak out, it is bad. If you are black and speak out, you are ungrateful and watch out."20/20

City of Hamilton

Heading for artistic sterilityFebruary 22, 2006

MANY more social and cultural changes are likely to happen as our island becomes further indebted to the financial services sector for its survival. Whereas in most places, an influx of wealthy (and therefore presumably sophisticated) people would be a signal for a thriving artistic community, signs in Bermuda are that the island is heading for sterility in terms of art. If they have not already left, many professional artists are planning to live elsewhere. They can no longer make a living here. The rent required to provide an outlet for artists' work has become prohibitive to independent commercial art galleries.

The consensus of popular opinion seems to be: "So what? Who needs a bunch of over-emotional, numerically-dysfunctional throwbacks who can't run a profitable business producing stuff to hang on walls?" But historically communities intending to evolve cannot do without them.

Few professional artists in Bermuda have space in their studios to run a "gallery" showing their own work. Group ventures, like the Arts Centre at Dockyard, a non-profit registered charity, and the Bermuda Society of Arts, depend on their membership, but largely on sponsorship to promote ongoing exhibitions of work by current professional and non-professional local artists.

By far the largest proportion of sponsored dollars, received from both corporate/group sponsorship and the Arts Council go to the Bermuda National Gallery or the Masterworks Foundation. Neither entity has a mandate to foster the work of current Bermudian or resident artists on an ongoing basis.

The Bermuda National Gallery collects work, largely donated and not necessarily Bermudian, which it has a responsibility to preserve and about which it attempts to educate the local population. Apart from exhibits by favoured artists, it provides a limited exposure for some of the local artists once every two years.

The main qualification of hopeful exhibitors is guts, not only to run the gamut of the competitive nature of the Biennial exhibit, but to face the fallout from whatever opinions may be held by the juror selected by the gallery. Some of the particles flung by the juror of two years ago may still be discomforting to potential exhibitors in the 2006 Biennial. His type of unpleasant and uninformed approach is hardly conducive to creating an atmosphere that fosters anything artistic.

There are many such reports which undermine the credibility of the Bermuda National Gallery among artists, not the least of which involve the perceived biases and qualifications (or lack thereof) of its staff.

Masterworks is committed to collecting works largely by non-local, but now-famous artists who, long ago, were inspired by a visit to Bermuda. Any funds now allocated to the foundation are currently being poured into concrete to provide permanent housing for these works.

Since the closing of its Hamilton gallery there has been little focus on the works of contemporary Bermudian artists (although, to be fair, Masterworks has indeed hosted a number of shows of local works at its current Botanical Gardens site).

It is to these two entities that the majority of sponsorship dollars from the reinsurance kitty, as well as funding from the Arts Council, currently goes.

In making their donations without knowing exactly what they are promoting with their dollars, far from fostering the future of the visual arts scene in Bermuda, these sponsors have supported its decline.

Any thorough research into the artistic future of their adopted community would have guided most committees towards responsible sponsorship.

The legacy of current sponsors will for future generations be the sight of the promised glass tower on Front Street, symbolic of the negation of visual arts in the first decade of 21st-century Bermuda. ARS GRATIA ARTIS

City of Hamilton

February 20, 2006

I WOULD be very grateful if you would grant space for the following remarks with respect to the recently announced 'Task Force' to combat feral chickens, apparently in response to the fight against the threat of bird flu.While I continue to respect the Minister of the Environment for commitment to her portfolio, I remain convinced the advice she has been given should be open to scrutiny, indeed perhaps management quality control, by those of us with appropriate qualifications but also by the general citizenry of Bermuda, who represent the 'consumers' or perhaps targets of this advice.

I have been watching the developments on the Baltic German island of R|0xfc|gen with intense interest.

The veterinary authorities there are dealing with some criticism of how they have managed the unfolding tragedy, but on the whole their approach has been logically adapted to their circumstances. They would indeed envy our distance from mainland - absolute isolation, instead now they must monitor every vehicle, person and animal coming and going from the island via the man-made road-link. For this they have called in the army.

The poultry economy is at risk. The French are very nervous about their Atlantic coastal duck and geese farming. What to do? Vaccinate or not. The big problem is the fact that ducks in particular can be perfectly healthy, but still carry and transmit the H5N1. Wild ducks and geese can migrate.

The key measure in containing spread is to stop the transport of live fowl but all measures taken to prevent the geographical spread of a virus must take into consideration the locally prevailing conditions and food production: Bermuda does not have a rural agricultural economy depending on the production of poultry meat and eggs.

An outright ban on the import of live birds would only affect one or two poultry farmers temporarily. Nor, objectively speaking, is the density of the feral chicken population such that it even approaches that of farmed poultry in areas where the H5N1 virus has spread rapidly.

We can isolate our local poultry from intentionally imported live birds and there are other bird species than just feral chickens, which are potentially both highly susceptible and much more mobile vectors. Chickens stick to a relatively small group territory and do not like to fly unless in danger. They are very bad at flying and usually only manage several yards just off the ground.

We cannot isolate our country from migrating birds, and this will be our most vulnerable point. Any weakened, dying or dead sea birds affected with the H5N1 virus could remain rotting on inshore stretches of coast for days, and thus the cadavers would provide in infected source of nutrients for the many other locally based scavenging birds: gulls and other 'sea' birds (to which we should number the kiskadee) and land birds such as crows, all of which love a good piece of cadaver and certainly will not mind a spot of faecal contamination with it.

What does the team propose to do, kill them all? How much more effective to initially deploy this team to identify dead sea birds, as well as other migrating land and sea birds meeting their demise on our shores; to remove their carcasses a quickly as possible and test them? How much more effective to deploy this team to question returning residents and visitors regarding any possible contact with wild birds or poultry farms in affected areas?

I know, for example, that my husband and I will be travelling very shortly to Austria and Italy and Belgium (for the record, not simultaneously); two of these countries have isolated the H5N1 - and we are in one of the highest professional risk groups!

No, as a first line of defence on an isolated island I believe we should do the do-able, practical and most effective measures immediately, and then look to the next level.

There is also the emerging data, which is very highly suggestive that the H5N1 has probably spread world-wide (on continents) long ago, and that the current heightened attention to bird die-offs (not at all unusual in the winter season, and in overstocked areas when any illness is introduced) has led to the first-time testing of birds in many areas of Europe, Africa and the Orient .

I suspect when all the data starts coming in (and this is certainly the prevailing opinion among my EU colleagues on the front line from whence this opinion hails), it will be discovered to have penetrated most areas of the world to a greater of lesser extent. In some areas it will come to regarded as endemic.

This is a story, which has torn through the media at a time when governments are only too relieved to focus public attention on some other threat other than the often government-generated ones bearing down on their citizens.

The attempt to draw a parallel with the Spanish flu epidemic caught the imagination of the catastrophe-driven western media; from a scientific point of view rather nonsensical; although evidence based medical research showed the viral agent(s) responsible for the Spanish flu was avian in origin, the virus(es) was never specifically identified or isolated.

In general, the feral chickens, which survive Bermuda's roads to adulthood, are actually extremely robust and healthy rendering them so difficult to contain. This is easy demonstrable. Demonising them as repositories for disease, or the roosters as a violent threat to the health of unsuspecting (more accurately inexperienced) humans, may serve the purpose of silencing dissent when the culling begins (by methods sparingly disclosed to the public), but is actually plain nonsense.

Poultry have been the most important provider of high-quality nutrients from man's waste food for thousands and thousands of years. Naturally, all cockerels will defend their hens, and will become territorial if their hens are sitting or have baby chicks.

We have had a few painful spur wounds from our own roosters before we neutered them all! (An excellent way to keep free range chickens close to home and laying, but remove their males' aggression.)

Certainly the animals cannot speak out for themselves, and clearly the best we can mandate on their behalf (when it comes to this very widely publicised but to date still very low-risk threat of a mutation from a zoonotic agent into human to human transmissible virus) is the insistence on humane and environmentally acceptable methods of culling.

We are entitled to demand this.

We are also entitled - as recipients of open and transparent government - to know precisely how, when and where the culling will take place, so we can secure or house our own stock. We have a right to insist that no poison is used, and that the killing is humane and worthy of these extraordinary animals, and worthy of us as their human custodians.

If we genuinely wish to create, nurture and be part of a caring, kind and gentle society, rather than an abusive one, capable of disposing of a living dog by tying two bricks around its neck and discarding it overboard - not to speak of the treatment humans can deliver to fellow humans - then we, and in this instance civil servants responsible for animal 'control' and particularly those who supervise them, must set the right example to all humans of all ages who call this island home .

This must include respectful treatment of all domestic and non-domestic animals on this island. How we treat other living inhabitants of the island is what I personally would regard as a benchmark of civilisation; an opinion I shall always hold and always defend, for as long as I remain a resident of my homeland, Bermuda.DR. A.M. WARE CIETERS

City of Hamilton

'Disgruntled' ex-employeeFebruary 21, 2006

I AM writing to correct the record with regard to your recent articles on the new Berkeley school as purported by a former employee of our company, Mr. Gabriel Martel.Mr. Martel was hired as a site superintendent in August of 2005 to supplement the other site superintendents on the Berkeley project. Somers Construction terminated Mr. Martel's employment for his untruthful account of an incident on the Berkeley site involving damage to school property. He is in our view a disgruntled ex-employee upset at being caught in an untruth resulting in his dismissal. It is unfortunate that Mr. Martel has chosen to air his grievances in this way.

Mr. Martel, to the best of our knowledge, is not a professional engineer; he was not hired as stated to do an audit, nor was he hired as an inspector, again he was only hired to supplement the other site superintendents on the Berkeley project. On any construction project there are deficiencies, and as a part of normal procedures, site superintendents are required to prepare deficiency lists for all trades. These deficiencies must be and will be corrected prior to final payments to the contractors.

There have been various inspections by the appropriate authorities, such as the Department of Planning and the Bermuda Fire Services, to allow the Ministry of Education to start installing their fixtures, furniture and equipment.

In the normal course of construction and when the deficiencies are corrected there will be further inspections carried out. Prior to final occupancy all of the independent consultants involved in the design will do their final inspections and certifications.

MICHAEL A. BUTT

Somers Construction Ltd. Chair and CEO