Swimming a Few Laps Around Barbados: Spending Life Living

Interesting excerpt, given the way that local residents cry down the local health services. Trinidad and Tobago has some excellent health-care initiatives, including all free medical services at public hospitals and clinics, as well as at private facilities when necessary. Medications for chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol are also free. Compared to US healthcare, it is highly unlikely that medical bills would bankrupt people or reduce them to homeless status.

Swimming a Few Laps Around Barbados: Spending Life Living:

"If her heart attack had occurred in Barbados and she wound up in a Barbados hospital with local docs unable to understand what happened to her, I likely would have criticized our local doctors for lack of training. But she’s in a prestigious U.S. hospital; her doctors there are puzzled.

In fact, earlier today I saw a Barbados physician for a chronic ailment that was misdiagnosed and mistreated by a U.S. doctor last week. Even without fancy tests, my local doc saw immediately what my problem was and prescribed medicine that began working immediately."

Castro Chides Summit Secrecy, But Likes Obama's Sleep Habits

Definitely a reason for the Summit to re-tool itself. It has gotten way too complex and expensive for smaller/poorer countries to host. Basically it is costing itself OUT of the region! Few countries in LAC have the resources to hot it anymore. T&T is an anomaly in that it is VERY small, but also has ridiculous amounts of resources in the people (accustomed to and trained in pulling off massive events like our Carnival) and our gas revenue.

Castro Chides Summit Secrecy, But Likes Obama's Sleep Habits: "'I did some thinking. I calculated how much all that would cost and I suddenly realized that no other country in the Caribbean could afford the luxury of putting on a similar show, that the seat of the summit is immensely rich, a sort of United States surrounded by small poor countries.'

'Could Haitians with their extremely rich culture, or Jamaica, Grenada, Dominica, Guyana, Belize or any other, host such a luxurious summit?' he wondered."

Obama Endures Ortega Diatribe

Fox news WOULD call a wonderful, impassioned, intelligent speech with wonderful rhetoric a diatribe. He is a "leftist" after all.

Obama Endures Ortega Diatribe

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago -- President Obama endured a 50-minute diatribe from socialist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that lashed out at a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America and included a rambling denunciation of the U.S.-imposed isolation of Cuba's Communist government.

Obama sat mostly unmoved during the speech but at times jotted notes. The speech was part of the opening ceremonies at the fifth Summit of the Americas here.

Later, at a photo opportunity with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama held his tongue when asked what he thought about Ortega's speech.

"It was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."

"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored two questions about Ortega's speech, instead offering lengthy praise of a cultural performance of dance and song opening the summit.

'I thought the cultural performance was fascinating,' Clinton said. Asked again about the Ortega speech, Clinton said: 'To have those first class Caribbean entertainers on all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space, I was overwhelmed.'"

Transcript of Obama's Opening Remarks at Summit of the Americas

Somehow I can't yet find the transcript of Ortega's speech. :(

Obama's Opening Remarks at Summit of the Americas - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com:

"Good evening. I am honored to join you here today, and I want to thank Prime Minister Manning, the people of Trinidad and Tobago for their generosity in hosting the Fifth Summit of the Americas. And I want to extend my greetings to all the heads of state, many of who I am meeting for the first time. All of us are extraordinarily excited to have this opportunity to visit this wonderful country -- and as somebody who grew up on an island, I can tell you I feel right at home. (Applause.)

It's appropriate and important that we hold this summit in the Caribbean. The energy, the dynamism, the diversity of the Caribbean people inspires us all, and are such an important part of what we share in common as a hemisphere."

Obama Publishes Op-Ed in Advance of Summit of the Americas

Obama Publishes Op-Ed in Advance of Summit of the Americas

"President Obama wrote an op-ed that ran today in 15 Carribean, Latin American and United States newspapers, promising the other nations of the hemisphere 'a new day' in their relationship to its most powerful member.

'Choosing a Better Future in the Americas' appeared this morning in the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald, both of which serve substantial Cuban American readerships, and the Trinidad Express of Trinidad and Tobago, where Obama is headed to tomorrow to attend the Summit of the Americas than runs through April 19. As well, the op-ed ran in El Nuevo Herald, an American Spanish-language paper.

The op-ed also ran in a number of Grupo de Diarios America affiliates across the hemisphere: La Naci�n in Argentina, O Globo in Brazil, El Mercurio in Chile, El Tiempo in Colombia, La Naci�n in Costa Rica, El Comercio in Ecuador, El Universal in M�xico, El Comercio in Per�El Nuevo D�a in Puerto Rico, El Pa�s in Uruguay and El Nacional in Venezuela."

At Summit of Americas, U.S. May Face World of Blame for Economy

At Summit of Americas, U.S. May Face World of Blame for Economy - washingtonpost.com

"You have to be willing to accept that Latin Americans, who are experts in crisis after creating many of their own, will say 'We didn't create this one,' " José Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States, said at a recent forum sponsored by the Inter-American Dialogue and the Canadian Foundation for the Americas. "These are presidents, heads of state. . . . But we're going to have some hard things to say."

Summit of the Americas - Let's hope for a good lime | UN Dispatch

From Rob Skinner - cool liming pardner a while ago when he was here with the US State Dept. Now working for the UN.

Summit of the Americas - Let's hope for a good lime | UN Dispatch:

"as President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, UN Secretary General Ban and the rest of the hemisphere's leaders get ready for this year's Summit of the Americas, more than a few staffers, diplomats and journalists will be pulling out their atlases. One thing I'm sure they'll find in Trinidad is warm hospitality and, if they step away from the formal events, a good lime (more on that later). But, they will also find a small country facing many of the difficult issues that the Obama administration is currently trying to tackle."

Summit measures blotch true colours

Debbie Jacobs makes some good points here - are we really going to empty out the city for the Summit?

Summit measures blotch true colours | The Trinidad Guardian: "I’m wondering: aren’t the Obamas going to notice there aren’t any people around? Are we trying to give the impression that this is a deserted island?"

When the media steals your photos

When the media steals your photos :: Photocritic photography blog: "The story of a photographer whose photos went astray – and got re-published by one of the UK’s biggest newspapers without permission

There’s something really difficult about looking after your copyright on the internet. Every single word I’ve ever typed in this blog, for example, is duplicated at least a couple of times around the web. The problem is that words are easy to find. Pictures, on the other hand, are a different tumbler of guppies… As Maciej Dakowicz found out, when his photographs suddenly surfaced on the Telegraph’s online edition…"

Same thing happened to me with a local newspaper. They took a photo of mine off Flickr and used it on the FRONT PAGE of their Entertainment Section - almost full page! I called my lawyer, gave her the details (and a copy of the newspaper) and she is dealing with it. They haven’t offered anything yet, but we will follow through if only to let everyone know that you can’t just take pics off the Internet and use them!

A.P. Moving to Halt Use of Articles on Web Sites - NYTimes.com

A.P. Moving to Halt Use of Articles on Web Sites - NYTimes.com:

"Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that it will demand that Web sites obtain permission to use the work of The A.P. or its member newspapers, and share revenue with the news organizations, and that it will take legal action those that do not."

Internet Users Ignored Earth Hour

Internet Users Ignored Earth Hour:

"While nearly 1,000 global landmarks went dark for Earth Hour and uncounted individuals turned off lights in a symbolic gesture endorsing climate change action, Internet usage continued to suck down power with no slowdown before, during and after Earth Hour. Power for servers and associated cooling equipment took up 1.2 percent of the entire U.S. power consumption in 2005 at a cost of $2.6 billion."

Antony Lerman: Is Oliphant's cartoon antisemitic, or just offensive?

Interesting, considering the flag and symbol of Israel is the same as the symbol of Judaism. Is it possible to separate the state from the religion given this?

"Pat Oliphant, the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world, has been fiercely attacked by major American Jewish groups for a cartoon published last week which they say is 'hideously antisemitic'.

The cartoon shows a headless Nazi-like, goose-stepping, jackbooted figure, with one arm raised and outstretched, holding a sword, and the other wheeling a head in the form of a Star of David – one side of which is a wide-open mouth, equipped with vicious teeth, about to devour a very small, fleeing refugee-like female figure holding a baby. The word 'Gaza' is emblazoned on her cloak."

Antony Lerman: Is Oliphant's cartoon antisemitic, or just offensive? | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

Is Queen Liz a copyright infringer (and Obama, for that matter)?

Read more at The Open Rights Group :

"You may have read that President Obama has given Queen Elizabeth an iPod with 40 show tunes on it. Well, that’s better than the set of region one DVDs he gave Gordon Brown, but yet again as the EFF have pointed out Obama has stepped right into the territory of copyright infringement, and forced UK premiers to risk their reputations by potentially breaking the law."

You’re NOT a social media expert, you idiot

This is so cool and so accurate!

You’re NOT a social media expert, you idiot • openpresswire.com:

"Are you tired of hearing it yet? I sure am. It seems Twitter has fostered an extreme steroid fed bacterial growth of social media experts, social media gurus and super follower magnates. Unfortunately there isn’t much of an antibiotic floating around to separate the experts from the idiots. If you weren’t aware already, most of these experts are just idiots that have found a stool to stand on and shout their garbled rehashed crap they read from TwiTips.com and rewrote it on their own “pretty” blog.

I believe there are five different types of what is perceived to be social media experts. Please note: I’m excluding the idiots above because they’re not experts and they don’t need to be discussed, just ignored."

Bill would give Obama power to shut down Internet, networks during cyber attacks - Network World

"Federal legislation introduced in the Senate this week would give President Obama the power to declare a cybersecurity emergency and then shut down both public and private networks including Internet traffic coming to and from compromised systems."

Read more at Network World: