In praise of Reiki

June 3, 2010

Dear Sir,

It was wonderful to read in yesterday's paper that a visitor's hip pain had been permanently healed with Reiki. For those who don't know, or didn't read the letter, Reiki promotes healing through non-medication, non-surgical therapy and is very relaxing. It can be used for a wide variety of ailments and is a recognised complementary healing art. Major hospitals in the US offer Reiki therapy to their patients as it shortens healing time, relieves the side effects of medication (such as chemotherapy) and helps people to feel better quickly. There are several experienced practitioners offering Reiki on the island. What many people don't know is that anyone can learn to use Reiki by taking a course with a Reiki Master. By learning and practicing this skill you can use it on yourself and to help family, and friends. Even animals respond well to Reiki! More information can be obtained from the website www.reikibermuda.com. Wishing you peace and healing

MONICA DOBBIE

Hamilton

On behalf of Bermuda's Reiki Practitioners and Masters.

Get tough on Government

May 30, 2010

Dear Sir,

I am grateful to John Barritt's "View From The Hill" (Royal Gazette, May 28) in which he sets out a series of questions that have been put to the Government or to specific Ministers relating to matters of public interest and to which Government Ministers have given no replies (to date). It was no surprise to me that Mr. Barritt has had no replies to those questions: in my opinion, this Government has shown time and again that it thinks it can do whatever it wants, with impunity and without accountability to the people of Bermuda whom it supposedly represents and serves.

What did surprise me, though, was something else Mr. Barritt wrote, namely that he "wasn't trying to be difficult" (in asking a question at Question Period in the House to which, again, neither the relevant Minister nor the Premier replied). And this is the nub of the problem with the Opposition in Bermuda: it doesn't try hard enough to be difficult enough in getting in the face and up the nose of the Premier and his government, to challenge the Premier and his Ministers, every day of every week, at every opportunity, on all matters that concern the governance of the people of Bermuda. It's not as if the Opposition doesn't have enough material to work with!

However much anger and mistrust and even revulsion people might feel against this Premier and his government, nothing will change, even after this tin god Premier vacates his tinpot throne, until and unless the Opposition parties raise their game and play hardball with the Government. That means hard tackling, challenging every ball, and striking with their strongest offence on all corners of the field (short of incurring a red card, of course).

Attack should be uppermost in the mind and soul and voice of every member of the Opposition. It just isn't good enough for the BDA and UBP to be formulating policy and asking questions of the government every so often and generally trying not to be difficult: their job is to be difficult, to be a thorn in the government's side every day loudly, vigorously, intelligently and pointedly letting the people of Bermuda know exactly how and when and where this Government is failing, and what the Opposition intends to do to rectify the situation. If people want change, they need something they can change to. At the moment, neither Opposition party in Bermuda is standing tall enough and speaking loudly enough, and offering a good enough alternative, to give people a good enough reason to change.

The voice of the Bermuda public coming through the media (and, I suspect, on the streets) makes it clear that people want a government (and a Premier) that they can trust to make a positive and substantive difference in their lives. They want a government (and Premier) to represent them with integrity, to respond properly and fully to their concerns, to be open and frank with them, and to do things rather than simply talk about "addressing" issues that actually need to be resolved but which this government (and Premier) have been lamentably unable, indisposed or simply incompetent to accomplish.

For that to happen, though, the Opposition needs to get up on its hind legs and make life much more difficult for the government. And by doing so to give every voter in Bermuda viable, rational and compelling alternatives for change, for the better governance of Bermuda and (as they might say in legal circles) pro bono publico. Unless that happens, the status quo ante or, as they say up the country, same old same old will prevail.

GRAHAM FAIELLA

London, UK

Media watchdog endorsement

June 1, 2010

Dear Sir,

In your article entitled, "Gov't reviewing media's watchdog proposal", Opposition MP John Barritt asked, during parliamentary questions, for the names of international organisations that have endorsed the Media Council Act 2010, a paraphrase of the MP's statement was placed in parenthesis.

Please allow me to present an endorsement to this cutting edge legislation and an insight into the very heavily criticised Britain's Press Complaint Committee (PCC). PCC is the voluntary media watchdog that Bermuda wants to emulate.

Please read the following...

Hello Valirie (London, UK),

I have now had the opportunity to review the material that you sent me. My overall impression is that we are in broad agreement as to the merits of the Bill.

On the idea that voluntary regulation is best, a preliminary objection from my perspective is that the Press Complaints Commission in the UK has been shown to be a toothless body incapable and frankly unwilling to take on the press barons in the declared interests of truth and objectivity. I understand that it rejects about 90 percent of all complaints on technical grounds without investigating them.

I am not sure as to the spread of ownership of the media in Bermuda, but if it follows the same pattern as in the USA ('With each passing year the number of controlling firms in all these media has shrunk: from 50 corporations in 1984 to 26 in 1987, followed by 23 in 1990, and then, as the borders between the different media began to blur, to less than 20 in 1993. In 1996 [it] is closer to ten'. By 2004, he found the US media was dominated by just five companies: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom," Ben Bagdikian, quoted by Nick Davies in "Flat Earth News" Chatto & Windus, 2008) or the UK (where the concentration of media ownership has now produced a situation in which ten companies own a massive 74% of the private media) it is highly likely that the media in Bermuda is equally in the service of political power, particularly that which defends the already existing system of economic relations. It is likely to do so in the way that you describe in your powerful commentary.

Trotsky wrote 70 years ago, in relation to Mexico where the issue of press freedom and nationalisation was being discussed:-

"The real tasks of the ... state do not consist in policing public opinion, but in freeing it from the yoke of capital, ("Freedom of the Press and the Working Class" (the editorial of the first issue of the Mexican Marxist magazine Clave, published in October 1938. The original manuscript, written by Trotsky, was found around 1977 in the Trotsky Archive in Harvard)."

He continued:-

"This can only be done by placing the means of production which includes the production of information in the hands of society in its entirety. Once this essential step towards socialism has been taken, all currents of opinion which have not taken up arms against the proletariat must be able to express themselves freely. It is the duty of the workers' state to put in their hands, to all according to their numeric importance, the technical means necessary for this, printing presses, paper, means of transportation."

One may or may not agree with that suggested remedy, but very clearly the establishment of a Media Council with real powers is the very least that can be done. I did wonder whether the powers in s15(3)(c) and (d) might be better exercised by a court than the Media Council, but then I remembered the original decision in British Airways plc -v- Unite the Union (2010) and the strong indication in your commentary that the Bermudan courts are capable of equal partisanship and dismissed the thought from my mind.

The most important point is this: the Bill is, as you rightly observe in your commentary, at the cutting edge of media legislation. There is nothing wrong in Bermuda being at the cutting edge of regulation pro bono publico, and everything wrong about attempting to fight the same old battles with the same old useless weapons like voluntary regulation. I wish you well in your endeavours.

David Ratlett

Lecturer in Law, University of Kent

VALIRIE AKINSTALL

London, UK

Prepare for the oil

May 31,2010

Dear Sir,

I believed that those persons who were drilling for oil offshore had run countless computer models dealing with the type of accident that has occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. The livelihoods of millions of people and the future of an extremely complex ecosystem hang in the balance.

The main player, BP, has shown that it is unable to cope with this problem and money will not be the cure. The huge mass of oil that has been found thousands of feet below the surface of the Gulf presents a hazard that no one has ever encountered. Scientists have very little knowledge of deep water currents, so this mass could go anywhere these currents care to take it. This means that our little island is not out of the woods. If this mass of oil gets moved around the southern tip of Florida and in some way also is influenced by the Gulf Stream, then Bermuda could be threatened, the entire East Coast of the US and even the Maritimes could be in danger.

All of the finger pointing by those involved does nothing to solve the problem, and I do hope that this will not be the case, when the Government here decides in the very near future to be prepared for any eventuality.

I say this because I hope the Powers that be are thinking about this, although that may be too much to ask. We are going through very tough economic conditions and the threat of oil on our shores will be the nail that sealed the coffin. Now is the time to get all of the experts together and look hard and carefully at what could possibly happen to us and make the decisions to get protective equipment in the island before it is needed. For once in our existence can we just be proactive instead of reactive. This threat is not going to go away just because we are not considering a threat and the double whammy of the hurricane season bearing down on us, makes action now imperative.

BILL NEARON

Pembroke