Entries on 28 June 2020
History: The Arrival of the Portuguese in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1834 - 2 articles
By Odeen Ishmael
From the time of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and, particularly, during the period of the campaign to end slavery, the planters of the Caribbean and Guyana were aware of the acute need to find a substitute labour force that was both cheap and reliable to fill the ranks of the soon-to-be-liberated Africans. They initially were interested in seeking a labour force from Europe since they realised that there was a decreasing proportion of Whites in the colony.
They felt that this imbalance could be remedied by recruiting indentured labour from European countries. In addition to strengthening their own security, they wanted to have an alternative labour force to compete with the ex-slaves for plantation jobs after emancipation and thus forcing down employment costs. Continue reading →
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Medical: Learning From the COVID-19 Failure — Before the Next Outbreak Arrives
Chronicle of a Pandemic Foretold –
Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker – HEADS OF STATE
“Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic. We must act now with decisiveness and purpose. Someday, after the next pandemic has come and gone, a commission much like the 9/11 Commission will be charged with determining how well government, business, and public health leaders prepared the world for the catastrophe when they had clear warning. WHAT WILL BE THE VERDICT?”
That is from the concluding paragraph of an essay entitled “Preparing for the Next Pandemic” that one of us, Michael Osterholm, published in Foreign Affairs in 2005. The next pandemic has now come, and even though COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus that emerged in late 2019, is far from gone, it is not too soon to reach a verdict on the world’s collective preparation. THAT VERDICT IS A DAMNING ONE. Continue reading →
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Airlines: LIAT to be liquidated and new airline formed – Antigua’s PM Gaston Browne
Barbados Today – June 27, 2020
“From all indication, LIAT will be liquidated,” Prime Minister of Antigua, Gaston Browne has just announced.
The Prime Minister said there will be a meeting of all shareholders shortly to discuss collapsing LIAT. —- A new entity will be formed.
“COVID would have actually, let’s say increased the losses exponentially, so whereas in all of 2019 LIAT made a loss of about EC$12 million, that was within the means of the shareholder governments to subsidize,” Browne said on local radio in Antigua... Continue reading →
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Business: Former CLICO Barbados chairman Leroy Parris charged with theft
HEATHER-LYNN EVANSON– Added 24 June 2020 – Nation News
Former CLICO Barbados chairman Leroy Parris flanked by two police officers on his way to Magistrates’ Court on June 24, 2020. (Picture by Jameel Springer)
The former businessman of No 8 Dayrells Heights, St Michael, is accused of theft in relation to $3.333 million from CLICO International Life Insurance Ltd; conspiring to cheat the Crown by failing to submit income tax returns for the income year ending March 2010; conspiring to defraud CLICO and money laundering. Continue reading →
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COVID-19: DO MASKS WORK? A Review Of Science Relevant To Social Policy
June 16, 2020 – williambowles.info –
April 2020 — Ontario Civil Liberties Association – D. G. Rancourt
Summary / Abstract: MASKS AND RESPIRATORS DO NOT WORK.
There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles.
Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: Continue reading →