Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

What is the requirement for the Office of the President of the United States; and why is this important to the Caribbean?

A candidate must be at least 35 years old; natural born citizen of the country (could not have been naturalized); must win the majority of votes (270) of the 538 total in the American Electoral College.

One more requirement: the candidate must have a “thick skin” and the uncanny ability to choose his/her battles. The President cannot pick a fight with just anyone that lobs unkind words, no matter how denigrating the insult.

This is not easy! Considering the free-for-all that is the internet; freedom of speech … is not free!

This actuality was dynamically illustrated in the past week; first with a number of 2016 potential candidates (Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton) in their quest to secure their own web domains (xxxxxxxxxx.com, xxxxxxxxxx.net, xxxxxxxxxx.org, etc.) and lastly with the current president’s first foray with the social media site Twitter. See stories here:

Title #1: U.S. presidential candidate Fiorina spins web around interviewer
By: Bill Trott, Reuters, May 10, 2015

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina apparently has learned something about registering website domain names.

Shortly after the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive announced her campaign last week, she found out that a cybersquatter had bought the rights to carlyfiorina.org and was using it to criticize her record.

Chuck Todd of NBC News brought up the issue while interviewing Fiorina on “Meet the Press” and showed the website, which features row after row of frowny-face emoticons representing 30,000 people laid off during her Hewlett-Packard tenure from 1999 to 2005.

Fiorina defended her record and after the interview sent a tweet thanking Todd for having her on the show and saying, “Btw, checkout chucktodd.org.” Her campaign had registered that domain and clicking on the link redirected traffic to her official campaign site, carlyforpresident.com.

Fiorina had done the same thing last week with sethmeyers.org when she appeared on NBC’s “The Late Show with Seth Meyers.”

Fiorina has acknowledged she made a mistake in not registering carlyfiorina.org first, but she is not the only 2016 presidential candidate bedeviled by cybersquatters.

Republican Ted Cruz must endure a rogue tedcruz.com site that says only “Support President Obama. Immigration Reform now”, while jebbushforpresident.com is being used by supporters of gay rights, not Jeb Bush.

The site hillaryclinton.org is not the work of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and cyber security experts say it contains malicious software.

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Title # 2: VIDEO – President Obama @POTUS – http://wapo.st/1FkwKrX

May 19, 2015 (Reuters) – President Obama started his own Twitter account on Monday. Within 45 minutes of sending his first tweet, Obama gained more than 217,000 followers.

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Title #3: ‘Welcome To Twitter, N*gger’: Righties Go FULL RACIST On POTUS Twitter Account (TWEETS)

Well, President Obama finally has his own twitter account, and conservatives didn’t waste any time showing just how racist they really are.

While the president was having fun posting about how his tweets would be his own words to the American people, righties were busy hurling racial slurs in @replies at the POTUS twitter account. For your viewing disgust, here are just a few of the so-called “welcome” messages President Obama received on his newly-created personal account (yes, these are screenshots and not actual tweets, in the event these trolls decide to delete their words like the cowards they are):

As if those initial messages weren’t bad enough, one person tweeted to the sitting President that he should be lynched, completed with image:

… I could go on, but you get the idea. If this doesn’t tell you that Barack Obama has handled the unprecedented disrespect and outright hatred directed at him from right-wing racists with the utmost grace and dignity, I don’t know what will. …

The entire article is here: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/05/18/welcome-to-twitter-ngger-righties-go-full-racist-potus-twitter-account-tweets/; retrieved May 19, 2015.

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Title #4: Uh, you probably don’t want to tweet to @POTUS, actually
By: Caitlin Dewey

Twitter, at first glance, is a magical fantasy land — a utopia where any old egg can freely converse with presidents, pop stars and kings. It is the great democratizer; the global water cooler; the one place where you can say anything to anyone and know it’ll be okay.

Consider this your monthly reminder that this is actually NOT the case: On the modern Internet, impressions of anonymity and ephemerality are, well … usually fake.

But the joke’s actually on them: Not only does the Secret Service already monitor Twitter for threats, but the White House is archiving each and every thing @POTUS tweeters say. Ashley Feinberg flagged this relevant piece of the White House Online Privacy Policy …

… when you tweet “leave Michelle for me @POTUS,” or something even more inappropriate/creepy, that lives in an official White House Archive for eternity (slash, for potential future scrutiny).

To be clear, this isn’t just a White House thing: The principle applies, in one form or another, to most types of social networking …

Find the whole article at the Washington Post Online site – The Capital’s Daily Newspaper (Posted 05-19-2015) –

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/05/19/uh-you-probably-dont-want-to-tweet-to-potus-actually/

The President of the United States (POTUS) is considered the most powerful Commander-in-Chief in the world; this is due to the fact that the US is the only remaining Super Power with the world’s largest Single Market economy and world’s largest military establishment. This country is the Caribbean largest trading partner. POTUS also has direct oversight over the US Federal Government functionalities in the 2 US Territories in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands).

This subject is a pivotal theme in the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which asserts that Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) are critical for elevating Caribbean society. The art and science of this field is slated to impact the economic, security and governing engines. The internet makes things easy; it makes benevolent endeavors easier and malevolent endeavors easier. There must be the constant oversight.

The challenges of politicians and the Internet clearly demonstrate the need for technocratic oversight for the Caribbean’s foray into garnering more respect and benefits for intellectual property. There is the need for “Grievance Officers” to settle disputes related to cyber-squatting for Caribbean domains and the proposed Caribbean Cloud branded: www.myCaribbean.gov.

Change has come to the world of politicking and elections. The ubiquity of the internet cannot be ignored.

This book, Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the societal engines and marshal against human and civil rights abuses.
• Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, plus facilitate a smooth transparent election process.

Early in the book, the benefits of optimizing governance through technology empowerments are pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 & 14), with these statements:

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…

xxvi.  Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxvii.  Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

The Go Lean book details the community ethos to adapt to the changed ICT landscape, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:

This commentary is about the Caribbean, not about the United States. It is important for leaders in the US to be concerned with the Caribbean’s well-being. This point has been explicitly acknowledged by Caribbean stakeholders and relevant subjects have recently been extolled in these previous Go Lean…Caribbean blog/commentaries:

Other interactions related to US government-to-Caribbean population have also been blogged in Go Lean commentaries, as sampled here:

The CU seeks to re-boot the relationship with the US to an elevated “protégé” status, as opposed to the parasite status currently being maintained. For the Caribbean member-states, the CU will oversee the radio spectrum used for internet, radio, television and satellite communications in the region. (This radio spectrum must be regulated “by us and for us” … on a regional level due to the close-proximity of member-states). So the CU‘s coordination must be arranged in the manner of a Common Pool Resource, as the radio spectrum is limited. This oversight must also extend to internet broadband (wireless & wire-line) governance.

Also, the CU must conduct its own federal elections for all 30 member-states. This CU election process, detailed in the Go Lean roadmap, is a direct parallel to the election process in the US, alluded to at the start of this commentary. The US system defines 538 “electors”. This corresponds to the 435 members of the House of Representatives, 100 senators, and the three additional electors for the nation’s non-State capital city, Washington, DC. The same Electoral College design is proposed for the CU – so as to not trivialize the region’s Small Island States – where 250 House seats, and 60 Senate seats, amounts to a total 310 (Page 91). With the requirement of 156 electoral votes to win the CU presidency, no candidate can be elected without the inclusion of some Small Island States. This is logical; an effective application for the CU legal structure bred from the US model.

For the CU, ICT must also come into play more and more to facilitate efficient federal campaigns. We can do this!

We can apply best-practices – as communicated in the foregoing articles – so as to mitigate election-campaign abuses and remediate slanderous communication from “bad actors” who try to bully elected officials; these ones  will become more active as election passions intensify.

“Out with the old; in with the new” – the US President Obama has less than 2 years remaining in his constitutionally-mandated  term-limit. The candidates vying for Mr. Obama’s job for 2016 will have to feature many of the same qualifications as Mr. Obama; these ones, in particular, must be thick-skinned in tolerating scathing insults and cyber-bullying. They would do best to remember that there will always be a loud minority … and quiet majority. 🙂

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