Global Voices Online

Vexed Bermoothes weighs in on the call by Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister for regional territories to move towards economic and political integration: “My advice to Bermuda: stay out of it. As a community, we treasure our cultural and family links to the Caribbean. But there’s little benefit to us economically to get involved in Caribbean federation.”

“The buzz issue in the Caribbean media in recent weeks is whether the CARIFORUM members will sign-on to the CARIFORUM/EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)”: Barbados Underground examines a few of the issues.

Blogging from Jamaica's Calabash Literary Festival, Annie Paul talks about Derek Walcott's poem The Mongoose, “written specifically with V.S. Naipaul in mind”: “Down here at Treasure Beach we give thanks for sunny skies and prickly poets. Willing conscripts in the enactment of a first-class literary feud we await the unfolding of Day 3 at Calabash with some relish. A mongoose will never just be a mongoose again.”

Blogging from St. Lucia, Looshan Ramblings is concerned about the effect of rising oil prices and the global food crisis on consumers: “We need to know that our leaders are trying their best to put measures that will cushion the fall out from this global food crisis and recession.”

Litblogger Geoffrey Philp blogs about the “eminent Jamaican author, journalist, and historian” VS Reid, who he says “is usually credited, along with Trinidad and Tobago's V.S. Naipaul and St Lucian Derek Walcott, as shaping modern Caribbean writing.”

“Tourism has become the life blood of most of the Caribbean countries and it needs to be re-energized”: Living in Barbados wonders whether the region can be proud of its tourism offering.

Blogging from St. Lucia, Looshan Ramblings notes that “Oil is set to go up again. If the trend continues the first casualties of this spiraling inflation are the poor nations of the developing world.”

Although she is “yet to get a copy of the estimates of expenditure for the 2008/2009 budget”, Looshan Ramblings has a few things to say: “The present administration has no idea…they are acting as if Saint Lucia is on planet Venus and the rest of the world is on earth. Who cares about 7 new hotels when we cannot afford to buy cheese for God's sake…”

As oil prices hit US $120 per barrel, Looshan Ramblings says: “The…continued rise in oil prices will negate any efforts by Caricom governments to reduce food prices as we are so heavily dependent on imported food.”