{"id":34835,"date":"2015-01-12T03:27:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T02:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=34835"},"modified":"2015-01-12T03:27:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-12T02:27:08","slug":"discretion-versus-risk-aversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/discretion-versus-risk-aversion\/","title":{"rendered":"Discretion Versus Risk Aversion"},"content":{"rendered":"

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By Bashorun J.K. \u00a0Randle, OFR, FCA<\/em><\/p>\n

Tomorrow is my 71st<\/sup> birthday but the day is committed to the Global Risk Assessment and Management Conference at a top secret location.\u00a0 At least we thought it was a secret until CNN announced it as \u201cBreaking News\u201d this morning.\u00a0 Apparently, the leakage is the handwork of Edward Snowden.\u00a0 This guy simply cannot keep any secrets!!<\/p>\n

Anyway, I may just as well let you know that the focus this year is on: \u201cCALM WATERS\u201d (and where to find it in a world that is in constant turmoil and revolt).<\/p>\n

Even before we commence business, Professor John Bedford has created a buzz by raising the following issues:<\/p>\n

(i)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Incidentally I think they have tricked Obama into softening the US stance on Cuba.\u00a0 The embargo and the non-diplomatic relationship most certainly are absurd anachronisms but they have helped the Castro dictators (and now their sons and grandsons) to consolidate their hold over the country and steal fortunes at the expense of their people.\u00a0 Now these despots have cleverly played on Obama\u2019s desperate need for a foreign policy legacy.\u00a0 Cuba is an obvious selection for Obama, with minimal international repercussions.\u00a0 The country has only 10m people and is economically, socially and militarily crippled.\u00a0 Raul Castro will also now win reformist plaudits, even though he has murdered thousands of his own citizens and completely bankrupted the land with phenomenally incompetent and restrictive, repressive economic and social policies.\u00a0 And what is more, he will not loosen his grip at all, but just allow funds to come in from the USA into his own coffers. \u00a0Now that the Venezuelans have (or will soon have) cut off the supplies of cheap oil and cheap credit, he needed to find another sugar daddy and Iran (with whom overtures were made over the last five years) and North Korea (his close ally) are much riskier than Uncle Sam himself.<\/p>\n

(ii)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cChina\u2019s Silent Army\u201d:\u00a0 A first-hand report by two Spanish (Chinese-speaking) journalists describing how China\u2019s economic model (as per the Beijing Consensus) has overwhelmed certain communities worldwide with dodgy practices and a de facto \u2018social, commercial and financial\u2019 invasion of whole swathes of local businesses and even provinces, often in cahoots with corrupt and venal local politicians at the expenses of their own citizens.<\/p>\n

The conveners of the conference have also sent me the following quotations by Martin Luther King Jr:<\/p>\n

(i)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cInjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

(ii)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDarkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.\u00a0 Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

(iii)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cPeople fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each because they don\u2019t know each other; they don\u2019t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

(iv)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWe must live together as brothers or perish as fools.\u201d<\/p>\n

(v)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, participants have been provided with a video of the grotesque plight of fourteen-year-old George Stinney who was hanged in the US seventy years ago for the murder of two white girls, Mary Emma Thames 7, and Betty June Binnicker 11.<\/p>\n

George Stinney Hearing: Lawyers Fight To Get Justice For Teen Executed In 1944<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Attorneys will present evidence before the state of South Caroline they feel warrants a new trial for George Stinney Jr, a 14-year-old Black teenager who was put to death for the murders of two White girls nearly seventy years ag.<\/p>\n

The case is extraordinarily unique for several reasons.\u00a0 For one, Stinney was the youngest person executed in the United States last century but there is no official record of the day-long trial in which the boy\u2019s fate was decided in a mere ten minutes after the defense and prosecution rested their cases.\u00a0 It is widely believed that Stinney did not commit the murders and was instead used as the scape=goat for a town blindly seeking revenge for the girls.<\/p>\n

Today, defense attorneys for the boy\u2019s family will try and prove that Stinney\u2019s conviction was tried under the most egregious of circumstances and that a new trial is in order.\u00a0 But their efforts to reopen the case are a long shot at best, according to news reports.<\/p>\n

Defense attorneys will have to prove to a circuit court judge in Sumter, S.C., that Stinney\u2019s case was mishandled back in 1944, according to Solicitor Ernest \u201cChip\u201d Finney III, the prosecutor who will appear at the hearing this week for the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about procedures and rules 70 years ago that none of us were around to understand,\u201d said Finney, son of the first black chief justice on the state\u2019s Supreme Court.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s going to be enough evidence to open it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Steven McKenzie, one of the lawyers representing the Stinney family, said time should not be an issue.<\/p>\n

This is a horrific case, \u201che said, \u201cWhether justice is 70 years old or one year old or one month old, we think justice needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stinney\u2019s Sister:\u00a0 My Brother Did Not Kill Those Girls.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s is some background on the case:<\/p>\n

When two White girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old May Emma Thames, went missing in Alcolu, S.C., on March 22, 1944, after riding in to town on their bicycles, Stinney was arrested the following day for allegedly murdering them.<\/p>\n

The girls allegedly passed Stinney\u2019s home, where they asked him where they could find a particular kind of flower.\u00a0 Once the girls did not return home, hundreds of volunteers looked for them until their bodies were found the next morning in a ditch.<\/p>\n

Because Stinney joined the search team and shared with another volunteer that he had spoken to the girls before they disappeared, he was arrested for their murders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Without his parents, Stinney was interrogated by several White officers for hours.\u00a0 A deputy eventually emerged announcing that Stinney had confessed to the girl\u2019s murders.\u00a0 The young boy allegedly told the deputies that he wanted to have sex with the 11-year-old girl, but had to kill the younger one to do it.\u00a0 When the 8-year-old supposedly refused to leave, he allegedly killed both of them because they refused his sexual advances.<\/p>\n

To coerce his confession, deputies reportedly offered the child an ice cream cone.<\/p>\n

There is no record of a confession.\u00a0 No physical evidence that he committed the crime exists.\u00a0 His trial \u2013 if you want to call it that \u2013 lasted less than two hours.\u00a0 No witnesses were called.\u00a0 No defense evidence was presented.\u00a0 And the all-White jury deliberated for all of 10 minutes before sentencing him to death.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On June 16, 1944 his frail, 5-foot-1, 95 pound body was strapped in to an electric chair at a state correctional facility in Columbia, S.C.\u00a0 Dictionaries had to be stacked on the seat of the chair so that he could properly sit in the seat.\u00a0 But even that didn\u2019t help.\u00a0 When the first jolts of electricity hit him, the head mask reportedly slipped off, revealing the agony on his face and the tears streaming down his cheeks.\u00a0 Only after several more jolts of electricity did the boy die.<\/p>\n

While no surviving participants from the trial are around to testify, people who claim to have known Stinney are.\u00a0 In a recent interview with the Post and Courier, friends of the slain girls said that they are convinced that Stinney was quilty:<\/p>\n

Sadie Duke said she always believe Stinney was guilty because only a day before, he had threatened her and her friend Violet Freeman as they went to a church to collect water.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, if you don\u2019t get away from here and if you ever come back, I will kill you,\u201d Duke said.<\/p>\n

Evelyn Roberson, who was 15 at the crime, said her husband often fought with Stinney as they tended cows near town.\u00a0 \u201cThey called the (Stinney) boy \u2018Bully\u2019 because he was so bad to everybody,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cEverybody he met he wanted to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberson said Stinney first confessed to the crime to his grandmother, who called the authorities.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t feel like it\u2019s an open case,\u2019 she said.\u00a0 \u201cI think he did it, and he should have gotten punished for it and he did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bob Ridgeway of Manning said he was 13 at the time and remembers his father joining the search party for the girls and the mill whistle blowing for a long time, signaling that their bodies were found and the search was over.\u00a0 \u201cThere was never any question in anybody\u2019s mind to my knowledge that he did it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stinney\u2019s sister, Amie Ruffner, now in her 70s and living in New Jersey, is expected to testify to the contrary.\u00a0 She is expected say that there was no way he could have committed the murders because he was home with her on the day the girls died, Mathew Burgess, one of the attorneys seeking a new trial, told The Post and Courier.<\/p>\n

Ruffner, 77 who not asked to testify during the original trial, Ruffner told WLTX-TV that she and her brother did see the girls on the day that they disappeared because they asked them about some flowers in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said \u2018could you tell us where we could find some may pops,\u2019 Ruffner recalled.\u00a0 \u201cWe said \u2018no,\u2019 and they went on about their business.\u201d\u00a0 She says r brother never left the house after they left, but the cops would eventually pick up Stinney from their home for the murders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never saw my brother alive again from that day they took him out of our yard and out the house,” Ruffner said.<\/p>\n

He was tried and executed for the crimes three months later.\u00a0 Despite what she has gone through over the decades, Ruffner harbors no anger at anyone.\u00a0 She just wants justice for her sibling.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you think I\u2019m wrong, my brother did not do it, and I hate no man,\u201d Ruffner said.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 \u2013 August 28, 1955) was an African-American teenager who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois, visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region, when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store there.\u00a0\u00a0 Several nights later, Bryant\u2019s husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam went to Till\u2019s great-uncle\u2019s house.\u00a0\u00a0 They took Till away to a barn, where they beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.\u00a0 Three days later, Till\u2019s body was discovered and retrieved from the river.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Till\u2019s body was returned to Chicago. His mother, who had raised him mostly by herself, insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmet Till\u2019s bloated, mutilated body.\u00a0\u00a0 Her decision focused attention not only on American racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his casket and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the condition of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the country critical of the state.\u00a0\u00a0 Although initially local newspapers and law enforcement officials decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they soon began responding to national criticism by defending Mississippi, which eventually transformed into support for the killers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The trial attracted a vast amount of press attention.\u00a0 In September 1955, Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till\u2019s kidnapping and murder.\u00a0 Protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam publicly admitted in an interview with Look magazine that they killed Till.\u00a0 Till\u2019s murder is noted as a pivotal event motivating the African-American Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n

Problems identifying Till affected the trial, partially leading to Bryant\u2019s and Milam\u2019s acquittals, and the case was officially reopened b the United States Department of Justice in 2004.\u00a0 As part of the investigations, the body was exhumed and autopsied resulting in a positive identification.<\/p>\n

He was reburied in a new casket, which is the standard practice in cases of body exhumation.\u00a0 His original casket was donated to the Smithsonian Institution.\u00a0 Events surrounding Emmett Till\u2019s life and death, according to historians, continue to resonate and almost every story about Mississippi returns to Till or the region in which he died, in \u201csome spiritual, homing way\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Regarding the delicate matter of strategic advice and selection of options, we cannot afford to ignore the incisive observation of George Will, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist of the \u201cWashington Post\u201d newspaper who recently reminded us:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1910, forty peaceful European years after the France \u2013 Prussian War, Norman Angell\u2019s book:\u00a0 \u201cThe Great Illusion\u201d became a best-seller by arguing that war between developed industrial countries would be prohibitively expensive, hence futile, and hence unlikely\u201d.<\/p>\n

It took only four years for the First World War (1914 to 1918) to prove that he was totally wrong.<\/p>\n

Angell\u2019s theory was an early version of what foreign-policy analyst James Mann calls \u201cThe Starbucks Fallacy\u201d, the theory that when people become accustomed to a plurality of coffee choices, they will successfully demand political pluralism.\u00a0 This theory has been wounded, if not slain, by facts, two of which are China and Vietnam.\u00a0 Both combine relatively open economic systems with political systems that remain closed.<\/p>\n

Regardless, there was much to take away from the Global Risk Assessment and Management Conference held in Luxembourg in December 2010.\u00a0 We were overwhelmed by the dexterity, robustness and versatility of the computer model on Zimboda and the imminent threats to its security.\u00a0 What was truly amazing was that much of the information and data which our own country vigorously classified as secret was in fact readily available on internet!!\u00a0 This is not withstanding the sensitive nature of such detailed information.\u00a0 We were sufficiently alarmed to phone our contacts in government in order to alert them that our nation was in peril.\u00a0 They did not appear to be bothered.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I must digress and record that we lodged at the historic Auberge Knowlton hotel which was founded in 1849.\u00a0 However, what is far more relevant was that seated in the cosy conference room were a magnificent array of strategic thinkers.<\/p>\n

The Senior Citizens (ex-partners of KPMG who are still awaiting their gratuity and pension) could not but marvel at the professionalism, thoroughness and commitment of the lead speakers.\u00a0 They had all the facts and figures at their fingertips supported with charts and flowline of global trouble spots\u201d.<\/p>\n

They were the ones who reminded us that KPMG\u2019s mantra was:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur people are our greatest assets\u201d.<\/p>\n

So how come those who had served the firm meritoriously from 1970 to 2004 did not even merit a Christmas\/New Year card?\u00a0 They threw us off-balance by reminding us that Chief Anthony Ani was a signatory to the first KPMG International agreement signed in 1988 and later became our Minister of Finance.\u00a0 He too did not receive a Christmas\/New Year card!!<\/p>\n

Perhaps former military President General Ibrahim Babangida had a point when he declared on CNN (\u201cInside Africa\u201d) \u201cwe are saints compared with our successors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway back to the issue at hand the critical question was how prepared was our nation to deal with insurgency, Islamic fundamentalism, kidnapping, suicide bombers and other security challenges?<\/p>\n

Sadly, Zimboda was scored very poorly in the following critical areas:<\/p>\n