Bahamas Blog

A new judge will have to resolve the $100 million dispute between feuding Israeli-born brothers Rami and Amir Weissfisch.

The Court Of Appeal ruled that Senior Justice Anita Allen should step down from the case. Justice Allen maintained that she could objectively determine the distribution of profits from 1992 to 2000 of the brother's metal trading business when she decided to remain on the case.

Justice Allen was also critical of the actions of Senior Justice John Lyons in his appointment of Daniel Ferguson - the brother of a close female friend of Lyons - to conduct a forensic accounting report.

Justice Lyons resigned on May 7 following the controversy surrounding the appointment.

During the recusal application, there was a debate whether Justice Allen was the first person to mention recusal during a meeting in her chambers to discuss a newspaper article about the case, which was being held in closed court.

The only person who recorded what transpired during this meeting was Nicholas Lavender, QC, the lawyer for Rami Weisfisch. According to Lavender, Justice Allen first suggested recusing herself after she said she was "conflicted" by information she had heard.

The Court found that in the absence of an objective record of what transpired in the judge's chambers it was not able to say "that the fair-minded and informed observer would not have any doubt about the learned judge's objectivity and we therefore hold that the learned judge ought to have recused herself from further hearing the matter."

From The PUNCH!

People laugh when I talk about the Bahamian mafia, but it is no joke.

There really is a culture of organized crime in The Bahamas, even if it isn't as organized as in other nations. (I mean, what in The Bahamas works efficiently? Nothing!)

I was reading The Guardian (the real one, in England) and I came across an article by Roberto Mancini on the Italian mafia.

Mancini quotes Piero Ostellino, the former editor and journalist of Il Corriere Della Sera, the most distinguished and conservative of all Italian newspapers. This is how Ostellino describes Italy today, in the preface to his new book Lo stato canaglia (The scoundrel state):

Quote:

A country paralysed by a huge number of laws and regulations, suffocated by an invasive and slow-witted bureaucratic culture; run by a plethoric, costly, inefficient, and often corrupted, civil service; oppressed by punitive fiscal laws for those who pay their taxes and absent-minded towards those who don't; the prisoner of guild or nepotistic interests; from Rome southwards, in the hands of organised crime. A country in a relentless cultural, economic, political decline. This is Italy today.

Sounds like he is talking about The Bahamas, no?

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I bought a jacket! I can't ever remember owning a jacket but I went out and bought one because it is freezing here in Nassau. Well, by my standards anyways.

I am sure many of my readers who are suffering the wrath of Winter in the U.S., Canada and other frigid places are ready to slap me upside the head for thinking that 61 degrees is cold.

But for me... it is. It's usually in the high 70's and 80's around here and I don't even own long sleeve shirts.

The funny thing is; I went down to the beach yesterday and there were dozens of tourists splashing about, having a grand time. These poor people are visiting from places that have 6 inches of snow on the ground. So, to them... it is hot down here.

It's all relative, I guess.

Who didn't watch (or attend) the inauguration of Barack Obama yesterday? No one I know.

Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a speech the new president gave.

Obama got where he is by his dynamic speeches. But he would never have been elected if he had given this kind of lackluster speech during the campaign. It was his worst speech, and on his biggest stage thus far.

I think Alex Spillius, a blogger for the UK Telegraph hit the nail on the head in his assessment:

Quote:

The delivery, as ever, was first class, but the message was wasn't clear enough and the language not insufficiently inspiring. As soon as the applause had died down, an African American standing man near me on the Mall said to his friend: "I thought the speech was shit." Another woman said, correctly, that "we had heard it all before at other events". In a way Obama was a victim of his own success. Having given so many dynamic speeches he had set his own bar very high. What he tried to do at his inauguration was tell Americans that they had to sacrifice to make gains, while making them believe this was well within their capabilities. The emphasis on sacrifice was too weak however. To the disappointment of many black people in the crowd, he also made but one reference to the enormity of a black man occupying the White House for the first time. Obama has never laboured the issue of his race, but on this historic day the issue needed more. Jon Favreau, his co-writer, recently admitted that he had been pouring over previous inaugural speeches. That might have been a bad idea. Obama seemed weighed down by the past, and failed to seize the moment.

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Barack Obama's inauguration is today. Just dandy!

But if I hear someone refer to him as the first African-American president - again - I am going to scream... loud.

Here's a shocker to all the idiots who want to make the whole Obama thing be about race... Barack Obama is NOT black.

I know. I am black.

My daddy was black, and his mother and father were black, and their mothers and fathers were black.

My mummy was black. Her mother and father were black, and their mothers and fathers were black.

Mr Obama is HALF black and HALF white. That makes him as much white as he is black.

How come we are not celebrating the WHITE side of him?

Is it because the liberal media is all hung up on this black thing?

Why is it that unless a person is ALL white, they are not considered white.

Yet, if a person is even a little black, they are considered black.

What kind of racist bullshit is that?

So, today, I celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama, just another WHITE President of the United States of America.

Let's hope, though, that he's better than the last Democratic president.