Fifth Summit of The Americas

Trinidadians & Tobagoians, and on a wider scale the entire Caribbean, is preparing for the upcoming Fifth Summit of the Americas, being held in Trinidad on April 17th to 19th. Although I’m a good 150 miles overseas, I must admit to a great deal of personal excitement over the impending arrival of President Obama in Trinidad; we can only hope he might decide on a spur of the moment rest-stop in Greenz perhaps?

For the past week or so, as advance security measures have begun, Grenada’s Point Salines International Airport has become a hub for the U.S. Air Force.  F15 jets and C5 transports occupy a section of the runway, with the F15s maintaining a steady rotation of recon/surveillance flights. The Grenada network on Facebook is awash with videos and pictures, and I managed to locate some public shots on Flickr for your enjoyment.

ModernDayGilligan’s Flickr photos
RicardKo’s Flickr photos

And here is a hilarious blog post by Trinidadian blogger aka_lol, about a telephone conversation between Obama and P. M. Manning. For more jokes, read his Welcome to Obama post.

On a more serious note, I came across an interesting post on Huffington Post regarding the U.S. policy towards the rest of the Americas.

The first is the degree of demographic and economic interdependence with the United States: highest and still growing in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean: lowest and likely to remain low in South America, and especially in the Southern Cone. Countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and others, which have significant fractions of their population living and working in the United States, pose “intermestic” issues — combining international and domestic facets — from immigration to medical insurance, pensions to drivers licenses, remittances to youth gangs.

Here’s hoping to hear some good news out of the Summit.