As if removing your shoes and checking in three hours early, or having your eyes scanned and fingers printed weren’t enough, there is yet another airport travel safety measure added to the list. Yep, no liquids on board. Systematically, air travel has moved from a fairly pleasant affair to a cumbersome and at times humiliating experience.

If you’re not being asked to walk through a metal detector or a ‘puffer’ machine (which by the way is set up at quite a few airports in the U.S.), you have to remove your belts and have your luggage thoroughly searched. People feel like criminals just trying to get from one country to another. I guess we can take solace in the hope that with all these measures in place we might arrive alive -- that some crazed person might not blow the plane to pieces.

Thanks to a recently reported foiled terrorist attack in London, the luxury of having hand lotion, lip gloss, toiletries, water (yes! water) and other liquids and gels are strictly prohibited in carryon luggage or to take with you on your person. Not even items such as alcohol and perfumes purchased in the airport duty-free shops are allowed on board. All these items have to be checked.

Well, disappointingly, to our dear Cuban friends, the grand old leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro, celebrated his 80th birthday on August 13. Thus, news of Castro’s (pending) death was very largely exaggerated and extremely premature. In fact pictures of Fidel, in hospital, being visited by Hugo Chavez, show a man who seems to be not unduly suffering from his recently reported intestinal operations.

We, that is, jost of us from the English speaking Caribbean, have no problem with Fidel. He has never threatened our respective countries, and never tried to overtly interfere with the way these Caribbean nations are run. If even those of us from Jamaica and Grenada think that Prime Ministers Michael Manley and Maurice Bishop were too close to Castro and his ideology, he never went to either country demanding that we adapt aspects of the Cuban communist revolution. Instead Castro has been more of a friend of the Caribbean, than a foe.

Thus, it is because of this friendly perception of this leader who has led his country against really strong odds for 47 years that many of us sympathized when we heard of his illness, and were astounded by the celebrations that took place in the areas of Miami-Dade County with large Cuban populations.

Many well-deserved tributes have been given in honoring Louise Bennett-Coverly (Miss Lou), famed Jamaican folklorist, entertainer, comedienne who passed away last week. Of course, these tributes are well deserved as Miss Lou was, if nothing else, quintessentially Jamaican. She represented the real Jamaican woman of the soil, the market/rural woman dressed in bandana ‘tie-head,’ peasant blouse, and bandana skirt, going about her daily business, and jost of all Miss Lou made it evident that the Jamaican dialect or patois can be a very effective means of communication among Jamaicans of all classes.

Unfortunately, so many Jamaicans, and other Caribbean people for that matter, look upon patois as a form of language of shame -- the language of broken-English that is spoken by the underprivileged or poorer class. Miss Lou, through her colorful poetry and her performances on stage, and programs on radio and television played a major role in dissuading this perception of patois.

Aljost every culture and region on Earth has a peculiar regional dialect commonly referred to as patois. Aljost every Spanish speaking country, speak different variations of Spanish, which is indigenous to that country. Very few countries speak what could be referred to as “pure” Spanish. So it is with French. Haiti is a French-speaking country, but jost Haitians speak Creole, a French patios, which is really a mixture of French and African dialect.

As the war between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, the world, understandably, is looking on with increasing concern. The core of the concern is how far this war will go. And, although it is pure conjecture to predict the future of any war, there are nonetheless those who believe that this conflict could escalate into a major world war. The possibility of such a global conflict is imaginable especially if the USA, Iran, Syria, Russia, Britain and other countries enter the fray, joining either of the combatants. Only time will tell how this conflict will go.

However, while it would be mere speculation, at this time to predict the future of the war, we all must cringe at the rising death toll.

Irrespective of the reason for conflicts between warring countries or groups, war is always a tragic and unwarranted phenomenon that takes the lives of too many innocent people. Once a writer referred to the civil war in Cambodia, where thousands were killed, as the “killing fields.” Unfortunately since that time, back in the 1970’s the killing fields have spread much further. The killing fields have encompassed other places -- Viet Nam, Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, New York, and now Lebanon and Israel. It is no secret that many of those killed have been at the hands of terrorists.

There is absolutely no doubt about it. The occurrences taking place on Earth makes it an unhappy place. Progressively events seem to be escalating into catastrophic crisis that some claim will be of Biblical proportions predicted in various books in the Bible. Since we neither claim to be an interpreter of the Bible, or subscribe to doomsday fanaticism, we will ignore the Biblical portents, but we do know that there are unusual problems on Earth today.

These are problems that we as a community must be aware of and alert to. Some people have the tendency to just go on living their private lives, as if in a cocoon, forgetting the world outside. Unfortunately, the world outside eventually penetrates that cocoon.

As we write a major war is escalating in the Middle East, as Israel and the Hezbollah, Shiite Muslims, guerrillas in Lebanon attack and counter attack each other. The stage is set for a conflict of gigantic portions as the conflict has direct implications for the involvement of the Sunni Muslim organization Hamas in Palestine. Both Hezbollah and Hamas, are believed to be supported by Syria and Iran. On the other hand, none of these players have any love lost for the United States and its president.