Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

75 years ago today – January 27, 1945 – was the Big Reveal …

There were rumors, accusations and suspicions of cruel atrocities against victims behind the German lines during World War II. Nevertheless, there was also a degree of doubt as well. Nazi Germany had deniability … until this day 75 years ago. This is when Soviet troops liberated the Concentration Camp in Auschwitz, Poland:

“The cat was out the bag”.

See a summary and highlights of Auschwitz here:

Title: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
The camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp built with several gas chambers; Auschwitz III–Monowitz, a labor camp created to staff a factory for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps.^[3] The camps became a major site of the Nazis’ Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, sparking World War II, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp for Polish political prisoners.^[4] The first inmates, German criminals brought to the camp in May 1940 as functionaries, established the camp’s reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died. The death toll includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.^[5] Those not gassed died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.

At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944 two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who staffed the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. Only 789 staff (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial;^[6] several, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allies‘ failure to act on early reports of atrocities in the camp by bombing it or its railways remains controversial.

As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp’s population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947 Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Table I – Auschwitz Death Estimates

Nationality/ethnicity (Source: Franciszek Piper)[2]	Registered deaths (Auschwitz)	Unregistered deaths (Auschwitz)	Total
Jews	95,000	865,000	960,000
Ethnic Poles	64,000	10,000	74,000 (70,000–75,000)
Roma and Sinti	19,000	2,000	21,000
Soviet prisoners of war	12,000	3,000	15,000
Other Europeans: Soviet citizens (Byelorussians, Russians, Ukrainians), Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, Austrians	10,000–15,000	n/a	10,000–15,000
Total deaths in Auschwitz, 1940–1945	200,000–205,000	880,000	1,080,000–1,085,000

Source: Retrieved January 27, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

    

This was mankind’s lowest point, the “darkest chapter in human history” … or was it?

“Never Again” became the mantra from this point forward for Holocaust victims and other stakeholders. These ones wanted to present Auschwitz as a Cautionary Tale so that “the world” would Never Again tolerate “man mistreating man” so egregiously.

Never Again lasted “for a minute”!

But “Never Again” has only been empty words. Within the days, weeks, months and years of this atrocity, more atrocities emerged. This is not just my assertion; this is the fact … as chronicled by historians, anthropologists, academicians, journalists and newscasters alike; see the highlights of a sample book on the subject here:

The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities – a popular history book by Matthew White, an independent scholar and self-described atrocitologist. The book provides a ranking of the hundred worst atrocities of mankind based on the number of deaths.

In the pages of his book, the author, Matthew White, details the 100 Worst Atrocities of Mankind from Antiquity to Modernity. Let’s pick up his ranking from World War II and present the detailed list since those atrocious events. See here-now:

Table II – White’s ranking of atrocities

Rank	Event	Place	Start year	End year	Death toll
1	World War Two	Europe, Asia, Africa	1939	1945	66,000,000
36	Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe	Eastern Europe	1945	1947	2,100,000
88	French Indochina War	French Indochina	1945	1954	393,000
70	Partition of India	India and Pakistan	1947	1947	500,000
2	Mao Zedong‘s rule	China	1949	1976	40,000,000
30	Korean War	Korea	1950	1953	3,000,000
30	North Korea	North Korea	1948		3,000,000
69	Algerian War of Independence	Algeria	1954	1962	525,000
35	Sudanese Civil Wars	Sudan, South Sudan	1955		2,600,000
24	Vietnam War	Southeast Asia	1959	1975	4,200,000
81	Suharto’s purge	Indonesia	1965	1966	400,000
46	Biafran War	Nigeria	1966	1970	1,000,000
40	Bengali Genocide	Bangladesh	1971	1971	1,500,000
96	Idi Amin‘s rule	Uganda	1971	1979	300,000
37	Mengistu Haile‘s rule	Ethiopia	1974	1991	2,000,000
91	Postwar Vietnam	Vietnam	1975	1992	365,000
39	Democratic Kampuchea	Cambodia	1975	1979	1,670,000
55	Mozambican Civil War	Mozambique	1975	1992	800,000
70	Angolan Civil War	Angola	1975	1994	500,000
70	Ugandan Bush War	Uganda	1979	1986	500,000
40	Soviet–Afghan War	Afghanistan	1979	1992	1,500,000
96	Saddam Hussein‘s peacetime rule	Iraq	1979	2003	300,000
61	Iran–Iraq War	Persian Gulf	1980	1988	700,000
94	Sanctions against Iraq	Iraq	1990	2003	350,000
70	Anarchy in Somalia	Somalia	1991		500,000
53	Rwandan genocide	Rwanda	1994	1994	937,000
27	Second Congo War	Central Africa	1998	2002	3,800,000

Source: Retrieved January 27, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Big_Book_of_Horrible_Things#White’s_ranking_of_atrocities

This is the lesson for us today. This is the relevance of Auschwitz 75 years later. This aligns with the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. It asserts (Page 23) that “history teaches that with the emergence of new economic engines, ‘bad actors’ will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. A Bible verse declares: ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun’” – Ecclesiastes 1:9 New International Version.

This is why we must always be On Guard for slight movements towards societal dysfunctions, tyranny and Failed-State status; this is when atrocities occur. Again, this is the lesson from Auschwitz by the victims of Auschwitz who still survive today; see this depiction in this VIDEO here from CBS News:

VIDEO – Holocaust survivor opens up about Auschwitz – https://www.cbsnews.com/video/holocaust-survivor-visits-auschwitz-for-first-time-since-camps-liberation/

Posted January 27, 2020 – Monday marks 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, the largest Nazi death camp. Around 200 Holocaust survivors are expected to be honored guests at a place where they were once sent to die. Mark Phillips spoke with a 91-year-old survivor who hasn’t talked about what happened to him in the camp until now.

The Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), asserts that in addition to economic empowerments, the stewards for a new Caribbean must also optimize the security apparatus in the region to ensure public safety and justice standards for all stakeholders: citizens, visitors and trading partners.

How do we go about empowering the economics and security engines? Throughout the 370 pages of the Go Lean book, the details are provided as turn-by-turn directions on how to mitigate against Failed-State encroachment. There is an Index Number that reflect Failed-State eventuality. The book defines this Index and the related eco-system, as follows (Page 134) :

This Go Lean roadmap includes the new community ethos (attitudes and values) that must be adopted; plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate the region’s security and justice institutions. In fact, this actual advocacy in the Go Lean book contains specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 134, entitled:

10 Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices

We never want to spiral down to the level of Auschwitz, so we must monitor early and often. The Go Lean movement addressed the subject of monitoring for the encroachment of Failed-State status on many occasions. See this sample of many previous blog-commentaries here:

“Never Again” has only been empty words in the modern world; but let’s do better here at home.

In truth, when people are victimized, they want the world to Never Forget; but when people are villainous, they want the world to Not Remember. The former European Jews repatriated to a homeland in Palestine and proceeded to bully, oppress and suppress their neighbors there, the Palestinian people. The drama of Israel and Palestine is complicated and difficult to solve; the solutions are out-of scope for this Caribbean focus. We simply wanted to study history and apply the lessons learned in the effort to reform our society.

Yes, we can … do better in protecting our citizen and ensuring “justice for all”. This is heavy-lifting, yes, but it is conceivable, believable and achievable.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … to do the heavy-lifting and elevating Caribbean society and making the homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii.  Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xiii. Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states (for example: Haiti and Cuba) will require a concerted effort to integrate the exile community’s repatriation, the Federation must arrange for Reconciliation Commissions to satiate a demand for justice.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.