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4 The Independent . the Diaspora ’ s Multicultural Voice February 28 2017
Our View
Editorial
Facing the ICE
You have to have no compassion for others if you think that deporting people who have lived in a country for years as undocumented persons is in any way justified .
Yes , they may have jumped the queue to find a place in a land of opportunity like the US , or even Canada . But at a time when that queue is impossibly long and any delay could mean prolonged suffering for yourself and your family because of a lack of employment opportunities or other circumstances at home , it often is seen as a viable option by many .
In the case of the USA , people have landed there without the legal right to remain , and have stayed underground for years , if not decades . In this time , they have contributed to the development of the country , often doing jobs for little pay that Americans hold in scorn .
Many have also paid taxes , signed up their kids in schools , and even bought houses . This is where they now call home .
Yet under President Donald Trump , they are now all living in fear of deportation . The US President has signaled his intent to go after the undocumented , even if they are offered protection by cities and states which understand their value . He has said the US will enforce its federal immigration laws , and indeed , it has already started doing so , sending out teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) agents in areas known to harbor the undocumented .
ICE agents swept Queens , New York and even set up operations in New York ’ s subway system to catch the undocumented .
We ’ ve not heard any reports ( yet ) of them going into schools to drag out students who are children of the undocumented , but we won ’ t be surprised if that happens next .
The thing is , the economies of many major cities in the USA depend on the low-paid undocumented . Remove them and small businesses across the board will be forced to close , as they cannot afford to pay the minimum wage to Americans – if they can find anyone to work for them .
Think , however , how frightened these people now are in their own homes . They are not sending their kids to school , and are wondering what will happen to all of their investments ( in homes and other properties ) and savings if they are suddenly caught in an ICE net and deported to countries they left so long ago . Compassion , however , no longer seems to exist in Trump ’ s America . Our thoughts and prayers are with those families facing the ICE .
E-mail : independentnewspaper @ aol . com 416-278-9302
The Independent is a digital bi-weekly newspaper for the intelligent reader and is designed to serve minority immigrants in the Diaspora on the basis of commonality of experiences and needs . Writers / Photographers : Herman Silochan , Susan Gosine-Herrera ( NY ), Rajesh Ragbir , N . D . Robert Ranjitsingh , Tony Deyal The Independent prefers to be contacted via email . Please send all communications to the email address listed above .
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By Jim Killock
Journalists as spies
British journalists could be treated as spies , and given up to 14 years in prison for handling state secrets , if proposals by the UK ' s Law Commission become law .
In 2015 , the Commission , whose remit is to review and recommend reforms to UK legislation , was asked to examine laws relating to official data . Its recommendations , published last week , suggest the definition of the offence of espionage is changed so that it is " capable of being committed by someone who not only communicates information , but also by someone who obtains or gathers information " .
It would also lift restrictions on who can commit espionage . They would no longer have to be employees of the state , but could include journalists , NGOs or whistle-blowers , who wouldn ' t be able to use a public interest defence to protect themselves .
We don ' t have to look further than the 2013 Snowden leaks to understand the implications of the proposed changes - in fact they can be seen as a direct attack on the newspaper that broke the story .
In June 2013 , the Guardian published the first of many articles that showed that the UK and United States had been engaging in the mass surveillance of the world ' s digital communications .
The source of these claims was whistleblower Edward Snowden , a former National Security Agency ( NSA ) contractor , who had stolen millions of files from his former employer .
Other media outlets including the Washington Post , The Intercept and Der Spiegel also published original stories using the leaked documents .
If the Law Commission ' s proposals had been in place , the Guardian ' s editor of the day , Alan Rusbridger , and other journalists would almost certainly have been charged with criminal offences for handling the Snowden files , never mind publishing stories based on them .
As it was , Rusbridger was hauled before a Home Affairs Select Committee to answer questions about his loyalty to the state and Government Communications Headquarters ( GCHQ ) technicians were dispatched to the Guardian ' s offices to smash up two computers that had stored the leaked Snowden documents .
This was a futile act , given that copies of the documents were stored elsewhere , but it symbolised the British government ' s frustration at its inability to control information in the digital age .
Or as the Law Commissioner , David Ormerod , put it : " Before the digital era , anyone engaging in espionage would be limited as to how much information they could access . But now , online communications and storage means the volume of information and associated risk is of a very different scale ."
The destruction of the Guardian ' s computers was a contributing factor in the UK ' s fall by three places to 33rd in the World Press Freedom Index .
More recently , a draconian surveillance law , the Investigatory Powers Act , has been condemned by the National Union of Journalists because it threatens the ability of journalists to keep their sources secret .
National Union of Journalists ( NUJ ) general secretary , Michelle Stanistreet , has also criticised the Law Commission ' s proposals for threatening public interest whistle-blowing and journalism ever further : " We have already faced many challenges and attacks on our right to report in the last few years . Could this be intended as another step taken to curtail the media in the UK ?"
If the UK Law Commission ' s proposals become law , there could be consequences for free speech beyond the UK .
When democracies pass laws that threaten the freedom of the press , they provide justification for authoritarian regimes to pass their own repressive laws , often in the name of national security .
The British prime minister , Theresa May , has tried to distance herself from the proposals , insisting that they were initiated under her predecessor David Cameron ' s leadership .
Given that the Home Office were a key part of the pre-consultation process , and May was serving as the Home Secretary during Cameron ' s second term in office , this lacks credibility .
However , the government is now aware of the scale of opposition to these proposals . The Law Commission needs to bring the laws regarding official data up-to-date , not drag them back into the last century .
The last thing the UK needs is a blanket ban on reporting wrongdoing at agencies which are already barely accountable to the public .
Jim Killock is executive director of Open Rights Group , which campaigns for privacy and free speech .
Pan is the Man in the Van
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Hype and money go together like love and marriage which , as the old song says , go together like a horse and carriage and we can go on indefinitely until we get to who begat what when . The Americans , still and increasingly the most parochial people on earth , were able to disguise this brilliantly . A travelling circus owned by legendary showman P . T . Barnum and restricted for a long time to the United States , called itself “ The Greatest Show On Earth . The annual finals of a game , baseball , played professionally by Americans in the U . S . only , was called the “ World Series .”
Trinidad , a small Caribbean island of 1,833 square miles and a population of about 1.2 million , calls its annual Carnival “ The Greatest Show On Earth ” defying Barnum , Baseball and Brazil . In 2011 , the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro attracted 4.9 million people ( more than four times the population of Trinidad ) including 400,000 foreigners .
Today , Saturday February 25 , 2017 or Carnival Saturday , is when the national “ Panorama ” competition or steelband ( pan ) championship is held . Bands of musicians playing songs or calypsos compete in what we might call the Greatest Show on Earth ’ s own “ World Series ” of Pan . It is interesting that the word “ panorama ” means “ a wide or unbroken view ” of the whole region surrounding an observer . The panorama of an ant is clearly different from that of someone on Trinidad ’ s highest mountain El Cerro del Aripo
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in all its 940 metres ( 3,084 ft ). We know our limits and have not yet termed it “ The Greatest Mountain On Earth .” This year ’ s Panorama of pan has widened significantly and for the first time includes the island of Barbados and celebrates the twinning of a Trinidad composer and a Barbadian singer .
The records from 1963 show that the North Stars steelband playing Sparrow ’ s “ Dan Is The Man ( In The Van )” won the competition . It can be argued that by inviting the crowd at one of his shows to “ kiss my Grenadian ” rear-end Sparrow was actually the first and so far the only non-national whose song was played by the winning band . However , it is universally acknowledged that despite his birthplace Sparrow has qualified as a hero of the Republic . This year , according to media reports in both Barbados and Trinidad , a song “ Good Morning ” by “ Barbados-based , internationally-renowned performing artist Peter Ram ” ( composed by Jovan James of Trinidad ) was played by five of the top bands in the preliminaries of the competition . Last year ’ s Panorama winners , Desperadoes , won the semi-finals playing Ram ’ s song . If Ram wins , it will be argued by many Trinidadians that Ram only sang the tune but a “ Trini ” composed it . This is inevitable and reminds me of the way some Barbadians were insistent that Brian Lara ’ s 375 was not as good as the 365 by Garry Sobers whose record he broke because Sobers was “ not out ”. In that sense ,
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West Indians tend to be far more parochial than Americans . We “ trump ” them in pettiness so to speak . But tonight , apart from Sparrow ’ s unrepentant rectum , is a first for Panorama and one hopes a first for Ram , James , one of many for Desperadoes and its arranger , Carlton “ Zanda ” Alexander from my home town of Siparia , and for Trinidad which can make up for quality versus quantity , and regionalism instead of nationalism in its “ Greatest Show On Earth .” In the full spirit of Carnival , I am ending with a few verses from an unpublished poem I wrote seventeen years ago in 2000 , just before the Carnival .
“ PANORAMA NIGHT : THE BATTLE OF
THE SOUND ”. When people ask me what is “ pan ”, I don ’ t know what to say , Is it the Greek God with the pipes That haunting melodies play ? Or is “ pan ” the dream of one-ness , The word that means unity , Linking the world with music Our bridge to eternity ? Or is “ pan ” the God of music , On stage in the Savannah tonight , In Port of Spain ’ s Queen ’ s Park , Where the Kings come out to fight ?... Pride drives the wheels of the pan-racks , Pride beats the heavy bass pans , Love is the lightening that surges ,
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In the fingers and the hands …
Music is the beat of the oil drums ,
Music is the Tony Deyal
Holy Grail , Each band follows its muse tonight , On destiny ’ s distant trail … Tonight Pan takes its rightful place , With Jupiter and Mars , With Mercury and Venus , In the pantheon of stars … Tonight is pandit and bandit , Sancho Panza and the Don , Tomorrow we ’ ll fight the windmills , When we find out who has won … So go my friends to glory , Go where history waits , Go with banners flying , Through time ’ s endless gates … Let no quarter be asked or given , Leave no prisoners on the ground , Tonight will determine forever , The battle of the sound .
Tony Deyal was last seen wishing that Caribbean Unity will reign tonight and the Savannah will be Ram Cram .
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