Robert Allen Stanford arrives for a bond hearing at the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse June 25, 2009 in Houston, Texas.

It was here that Robert Allen Stanford spent the past winter as a guest of the US Federal government, as he began to serve a 110 year sentence for operating a Ponzi scheme which cost his investors over 7 billion dollars.

Stanford was born and raised in Texas, but as a young man he relocated to the Caribbean where he founded the Stanford Financial Group, which became the vehicle for his criminality. Stanford’s modus operandi was similar to that of the more notorious Bernie Madoff. Both men paid their investors such impossibly high rates of return on investment, year in year out, that anyone with half a brain should have smelled something fishy from the outset.

Stanford’s Caribbean odyssey began on island of Montserrat, where he opened a bank in 1985. Following a regulatory crackdown there, he swiftly moved his operations to the nearby island of Antigua where he was very popular with the authorities for over twenty years.

Queen Elizabeth II is still the head of state in Antigua and is sovereign of the Order of the Nation which, on the recommendation of local politicians, grants an Antiguan version of a Knighthood. Through such a recommendation, Stanford eventually became ”Sir Allen”. This Knighthood was revoked when his misdeeds came to light.

Leaving aside his alleged bribery and money laundering activities, Stanford’s popularity sprang from something very unusual, namely he was a Texan who loved cricket and understood the game. He was very generous in his sponsorship of international cricket on Antigua and even had his own cricket ground on the island, known as Sticky Wicket Stadium.

Stanford was shrewd enough to realize that the way to the heart of an Antiguan is cricket, which is treated by the islanders almost as a religion. The main cricket ground on the island is the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, which was built in 2008 at a cost of $60 million. Most of that money came in the form of a grant from the Chinese government, which had doubtless learned from Allen Stanford’s activities that generosity to cricket is the way to gain influence on Antigua.

I visited Antigua for the first time in late March 2013 and below there is a photograph of me demonstrating a cricket shot with the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in the background. It would look more credible, if only I could have been holding a cricket bat at the time.

View Bob at bat in Antigua Cricket Stadium in a larger map

In early March, this stadium was the site of a test match (an international match) between the West Indies and Zimbabwe. The West Indian team is drawn from all of the formerly British Caribbean, not just Antigua. I wish that I could have arrived on the island two or three weeks earlier and attended the match. Nevertheless, I much enjoyed my visit, because the climate was perfect and the local people were delightful.

Turquoise water in Antigua

The island has attractive hills and beaches. The sea was the bluest that I have ever seen anywhere in the world. It was a startling turquoise.

Road in Antigua

Now for the criticism! The road system is awful. All the roads on the island are potholed and narrow. They meander and intersect. Worst of all, street names and directional signs are in short supply. What few signs that do exist are colored green and are mostly faded to the point of illegibility. At the bottom of these signs, one can just make out that they were provided by The Stanford Financial Group. Perhaps if Sir Allen’s sojourn on the island had not been so rudely interrupted, sign maintenance would have been better.

Halcyon Cove Hotel

My daughter Anna and I were staying at the Halcyon Cove, a hotel on Dickenson Bay, on the northern coast of the island. We decided to visit English Harbor and Nelson’s Dockyard on the southern tip on the island, a journey of about 12 miles in a straight line. Our journey took a lot of time and was anything but straight. Anna must be given all the credit for the fact that we even arrived at our destination at all, since my contribution was limited to reminding her to drive on the left. The photograph below shows us there shortly after our arrival.

Anna and Bob visit English Harbor

A gigantic yacht was moored in the harbor. It must have required a large crew to operate it. Whose boat was it? I asked all the locals but none of them knew. It must have belonged to a Russian oligarch skilled at preserving his anonymity.

The harbor itself is well protected from the ocean, so much so that British ships in the harbor would survive undamaged, when ships outside the harbor were being destroyed by hurricanes.

Admiral Nelson

Admiral Nelson made it his headquarters in the West Indies from 1784 to 1787. When dying in 1805 from wounds suffered in the Battle of Trafalgar, fought in the stormy Atlantic with winter approaching, how the admiral must have yearned for the warmth and tranquility of English Harbor, Antigua.

Battle of Trafalgar

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Firstly, there was the Berlin Wall itself, separating East Berlin from West Berlin.  A very short stretch of the wall still stands and I filmed Pat touching it.  We resisted the temptation to take home a little piece of the wall as a souvenir.  We can always buy a piece on E-bay, if need be.  Indeed, so many pieces of the wall have been offered for sale on E-bay that one could build many walls with them.  Before the wall was built by the communists in 1961, millions were using Berlin as an escape route from East Germany.  After the wall was built, thousands still managed to escape to West Berlin though hundreds perished in the attempt.

A guard house now stands at the intersection of Zimmerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse to mark the location of Checkpoint Charlie, the best known of all the crossing points across the Berlin Wall. This was of particular interest to Pat, whose late brother served with US military intelligence in Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Much of his time then was spent in the vicinity of Checkpoint Charlie, where his fluent German – free of any foreign accent – allowed him to gather useful information. Today, the guard house is staffed by actors dressed as allied military police with whom tourists can have their pictures taken.  Nearby is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, in which we inspected a number of motor vehicles with hidden compartments, used to smuggle refugees across the Wall.

We also visited the stadium built for the 1936 Olympic Games.  There we visited the Bell Tower, which is several hundred feet high and from the top of which we were able to enjoy, not only the stadium itself, but also spectacular views across Berlin.  Fortunately the tower contained an elevator, otherwise I would never have made it to the top!   When one compares the present view with 1945 photographs showing the total devastation of Berlin, one can only marvel at the recovery.

Reichstag – Home of German Parliament

There are also fine views across Berlin in every direction to be seen from the platforms underneath the glass dome which has recently been built on top of Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag. It was thrilling to see the Reichstag and to recall its place in history since its construction in 1894.  In February 1933, just four weeks after Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, the Reichstag fire started mysteriously and thereby prevented parliament from subsequently using the building.  This conveniently enabled Hitler to circumvent parliament and to suspend civil liberties. The Reichstag was badly damaged then and also by allied air raids during World War Two. That war was prolonged by two days in 1945 when 1500 Nazis made their final stand in the Reichstag. The building was later beautifully restored and, since 1990, has been the meeting place for the parliament of reunified Germany.

Brandenburg gate while the wall was still up

Finally, we came to the Brandenburg Gate.  Built in 1791, it lies to the west of the center of old Berlin. This Gate is the monumental entry to the Unter den Linden, which is the well-known boulevard of linden trees that once led to the palace of the Prussian emperors.

This Gate was the site of the famous speech by President Reagan in 1987, when he challenged the Soviets.  “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate” and “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” cried the President.

The Brandenburg Gate was not the site of an earlier speech by a US President in 1963, when President John F Kennedy proclaimed “Ich bin ein Berliner – the literal translation of which is “I am a jelly donut”.  That speech was made in front of City Hall, when his huge audience perfectly well understood what JFK meant and appreciated the support that he was promising to the beleaguered people of West Berlin.

Political leaders walk through Brandenberg gate Nov 9, 2009

The story of the Brandenburg Gate recently had a happy ending in November 2009 when the present German Chancellor Angela Merkel, together with Mr. Gorbachev himself and former Polish president Lech Waleska, walked through the Gate to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So we accomplished much in those seven hours, despite having to cope with a humid temperature of a 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  While it is sad not to have been able to take more time to enjoy these famous places, together with many others that are to be found in Berlin, it is far better to have had a fleeting glimpse of them than never to have seen them at all.

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Pat and I paid our one and only visit to the US state of Hawaii in August 2011. The chain of eight major islands and many smaller ones spreads itself across the Pacific Ocean some 1400 miles to the north of the equator. We only visited one of those islands, Oahu, the third largest, which is home to three quarters of Hawaii’s population and to the state capital of Honolulu.

USS Shaw explodes during attack of Pearl Harbor

This island is also the location of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack on which in December 1941 brought the United States into World War Two. The famous Waikiki Beach lies alongside the city of Honolulu. We saw Waikiki and many other beaches, because we drove around the coastal road encircling Oahu, which has over 200 miles of coastline.

Diamond Head volcano

Oahu has a couple of extinct volcanoes, which are responsible for the mountains in the center of this small island, only 600 square miles in area, rising to a height of over 4000 feet above sea level.

Thus far, there was little to catch the imagination. There is beauty in Oahu – fine beaches, blue seas, green mountains and warm sunshine, but these delights can also be found elsewhere. I have had the good fortune to experience them in many parts of the world. The music of these islands is pleasantly relaxing to listen to, but hardly more so than a calypso on an island in the Caribbean or a flamenco in an Andalusian town square in southern Spain. Hawaii is not unique in possessing its own distinctive rhythm. What finally caught my imagination was the story of The Pineapple King, James Drummond Dole.

James Drummond Dole

In 1893, Dole was just a 16-year old schoolboy growing up in Massachussetts. That same year the last Queen of Hawaii, Lili’uokalani, lost her throne. The following year a republic was established by the group of American and European businessmen who had deposed the Queen. Prominent in that group was Sanford B. Dole, a cousin of James. The coup was assisted by a detachment of US sailors and marines from the mainland. The islands were in effect stolen from the native people of Hawaii. Their queen did not go voluntarily. Sanford Dole then became President of the new republic.

Queen Liliuokalani

One can only imagine how these events were regarded by the 16-year old James Dole thousands of miles to the east in frozen New England. He must have been tempted to join his cousin at once. Nevertheless, the boy was patient. Dole finished his education which included a bachelors degree in agriculture at Harvard. It was not until 1899 that he arrived with his modest savings in the Hawaian Islands. Dole bought land in the middle of the island of Oahu and, after experimenting to discover what grew best, soon decided that it was the pineapple. Business boomed. The years passed. The Pineapple King bought more land on Oahu and on nearby islands and eventually was producing three quarters of the world’s pineapple crop.

Dole Air Race

Life in the islands was much affected by the development of air transportation and The Pineapple King was one of the first to see the possibilities. Charles Lindbergh had made the first transatlantic flight in 1927, after which The Pineapple King longed to export his product from the islands by air. After all, Hawaii is closer to California than New York is to Paris. Shortly after Lindbergh’s historic flight, the Dole Air Race was begun. Starting point was Oakland, California. First prize was $25,000 and second prize was $10,000 and these prizes were won by the only two competitors to reach Honolulu. The race attracted another ten entrants, some of whom crashed and died and some of whom simply flew west and were never seen again. What better way for an enterprising aviator to disappear in order to avoid bankruptcy, prison or a bad marriage or am I guilty of treating tragedy with cynicism?

The Pineapple King himself lived until 1958. His business has since been re-organized to become The Dole Food Company, Inc. It is the worlds largest producer of fruit and vegetables with annual revenues in 2010 of 7 billion dollars. Shortly before his death, The Dole Plantation was established in the middle of the acreage on Oahu bought by him on his arrival on the island in 1899.

The Dole Plantation has since been expanded into a tourist attraction, which Pat and I visited. In particular, we took a train ride through the plantation on the “Pineapple Express”, during which all the technicalities of pineapple growing were explained to us. When our stay on Oahu ended, we flew back to the US mainland. I stared out of the airplane window, as I slowly sipped my pineapple juice. I was looking for an ancient airplane, but naturally I saw nothing. Yet perhaps, somewhere out there over the North Pacific, the ghost of a 1920′s aviator and his plane are still battling towards Honolulu, seeking victory in the Dole Air Race.

Click on video below to see a slideshow of our trip and a video clip of a Hawaiian dancer.

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