Monthly Archives: September 2020

NASA confirms the Suns new solar cycle; Moon and Mars missions will have to adapt – Teslarati

Posted: September 18, 2020 at 1:04 am

NASA just announced that our Sun began a new solar cycle this year its 25th to be exact after reaching a solar minimum in December 2019. Solar weather activity is now expected to increase for the next five years until reaching a maximum in July 2025. With several space missions planned during that time frame for both the Moon and Mars, the Artemis program, in particular, involving astronauts on board, extra preparation and consideration will have to be made to weigh the impact of the increasing radiation events.

Space weather predictions arecritical for supporting Artemis program spacecraft and astronauts, NASAs announcement detailed. Surveying this space environment is the first step to understanding and mitigating astronaut exposure to space radiation.

Solar activity is tracked by agencies around the world by counting the number of sunspots (black spots) that appear on the Sun. Each one is an indicator of some type of high-energy activity such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections, and their appearance means a large amount of Sun material has been ejected into space. This material can cause disruptions on Earth, in orbit, or on anything in the deep space region nearby our star. Satellites in particular have to cope with solar interruptions frequently, although algorithms and engineering tend to mitigate much notice from a consumer standpoint.

While the Artemis mission will certainly have to take on the new challenge of a Sun thats becoming more and more active as time goes on, solar cycles arent something new to NASAs human spaceflight program.

As we emerge from solar minimum and approach Cycle 25s maximum, it is important to remember solar activity never stops; it changes form as the pendulum swings, explained Lika Guhathakurta, solar scientist at the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in the solar cycle announcement. There is no bad weather, just bad preparation Space weather is what it is our job is to prepare, added Jake Bleacher, chief scientist for NASAs Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at the agencys Headquarters.

When astronauts are orbiting the Earth, our planets magnetic field protects them from being directly hit by the majority of solar ejections; however, once outside that protective bubble and on their way to another deep space or lunar destination, things can be very dangerous. Radiation issues are often discussed when it comes to human space exploration, but scientists dont seem to be short of ideas on how to handle it.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, for example, has proposed passengers en route to Mars using water as shielding. During a solar flare event, all on board would move to a part of the Starship where the liquid was being stored and essentially use it like a basement during bad weather. Given that SpaceX plans to deal with radiation in the longer term via Mars colonization, there may be plenty of other developments coming from the rocket launch (and landing) company in the near future.

Aside from the scientists watching and studying the Suns solar activity, the European Space Agency currently has a space probe in orbit around our star. The spacecraft has been sending back the closest pictures of the Sun weve ever seen, and a few new features have been observed such as campfires. The probes overall mission involves studying and understanding the Suns solar cycles and hopefully make space weather prediction akin to the kind of meteorology we have on Earth.

Just because its a below-average solar cycle, doesnt mean there is no risk of extreme space weather, Doug Biesecker, panel co-chair and solar physicist at NOAAs Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colorado, commented. The Suns impact on our daily lives is real and is there. SWPC is staffed 24/7, 365 days a year because the Sun is always capable of giving us something to forecast.

NASA held a live-streamed conference discussing the solar cycle announcement which you can watch below:

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Life on Venus? Carl Sagan predicted it in 1967. He may be right. – Mashable

Posted: at 1:04 am

Millions of space nerds reacted with joy Monday to a study showing the atmosphere of Venus contains phosphine, a chemical byproduct of biological life. But none would have been more thrilled or less surprised by the discovery than the late, great Carl Sagan who said this day might come more than 50 years ago.

Now best remembered as the presenter of the most-viewed-ever PBS series Cosmos, the author of the book behind the movie Contact, and the guy who put gold disks of Earth music on NASA's Voyager missions, Sagan actually got his start studying our closest two planets. He became an astronomer after being inspired as a kid by Edgar Rice Burroughs' space fantasies, set on Mars and Venus.

But as Cosmos fans know, Sagan's starry-eyed sci-fi hopes never beat his hard-edged science. He shot down one early "proof" of life on Mars. He predicted the surface of Venus would be insanely hot even before NASA's first Venus probe in 1962, which he worked on, confirmed it. And he was the first scientist to see Venus' hellscape as the result of a runaway greenhouse effect one he knew could point the way to Earth's climate-changed future.

So it was all the more surprising when Sagan co-authored a paper proposing we might still one day find microbial life above our sister planet. "If small amounts of minerals are stirred up to the clouds from the surface, it is by no means difficult to imagine an indigenous biology in the clouds of Venus," he wrote in Nature in 1967 two years before NASA landed on the moon. "While the surface conditions of Venus make the hypothesis of life there implausible, the clouds of Venus are a different story altogether."

As Sagan pointed out, a high carbon-dioxide atmosphere was no obstacle. Up at the 50km (31-mile) layer, at the top of Venus' clouds, conditions are actually hospitable and almost Earth-like. Organisms could thrive in the upper reaches the same way bacteria thrives around superheated, CO2-rich vents at Yellowstone. Add sunlight and water vapor to CO2, he said, and you have the recipe for that building block of life, photosynthesis.

"Sagan's work on Venus was formative, though few today remember his impact," says Darby Dyar, the chair of NASAs Venus Exploration Advisory Group. "His idea was prescient, and still makes sense today: between the hellish surface conditions on present-day Venus and the near-vacuum of outer space must be a temperate region where life could live on."

Just 11 years after Sagan made his prediction, another Venus probe discovered methane in the atmosphere which could be considered a predictor of the presence of organic material. Scientists like Sagan were cautious about the discovery; no one could prove methane meant life beyond a reasonable doubt. (We also found it on Mars in 2018, and have yet to explain that). Still, no one ever gave a reasonable alternative for why the methane might be hanging around on Venus.

Sagan died in 1996, in the midst of a criminally long dry spell for NASA Venus exploration. But his idea lived on. In 2013, we discovered vast amounts of microbes alive in the clouds above Earth. More than 300 varieties, to the surprise of the scientists collecting them microbes are actually less dense at lower altitudes. In 2016, NASA models showed that Venus once had oceans, for at least 2 billion years. That backed up a theory by planetary expert David Grinspoon, who suggests microbial life migrated to the clouds when conditions got too tough for life on the surface a billion years ago.

Call them the original climate refugees.

The science didn't stop, even when we only used Earth-based telescopes to do it. We've found evidence for active volcanos on the surface, which would "stir up minerals" into the atmosphere just like Sagan suggested. In 2018, another study of the Venus atmosphere turned up mysterious "dark patches" that scientists speculated could be evidence of microbial life vast quantities of it. How much? We'd need more study to find out. "I came to that paper out of frustration," co-author Sanjay Limaye told me last year. "We haven't been looking for organisms [on Venus]. Why not?"

Why not indeed. As I wrote earlier this year, Venus was unfairly shunted aside for Mars in NASA's budgetary priorities. Even though Venus is closer and more Earth-like, Mars had a surface we could stand on, which was an easier sell to our 20th century "space colonization" mindset.

But the more we look at Venus, the more we need to rethink what exploration looks like.

Quietly, inside and outside NASA, a "Venus community" grew that wanted to explore its clouds and started begging for scraps of budget. Its most exciting moment until now came in 2015, when NASA unveiled a concept mission called HAVOC a Zeppelin, basically, that you didn't need to fill with helium or hydrogen. Just regular old Earth air would float atop Venus' dense atmosphere. Tear the balloon's fabric, and the high pressure could actually keep the air from escaping for weeks.

As you might expect, the Venus community was abuzz with excitement over the phosphine discovery Monday. Not least because the NASA administrator had just tweeted the magic words: time to prioritize Venus.

There is, of course, caution in spades. Phosphine is also found in the vast, churning gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn. But to explain why it would be present on a rocky planet as small as Venus if it isn't because of life, scientists say, you'd have to propose some geological process we don't yet know about.

"The exciting discovery of phosphine in the Venus atmosphere just reinforces the growing body of evidence that Venus is a likely, perhaps the most likely, other place in our solar system where life might now or in the past have existed," says NASA's Dyar. "Venus holds the keys to our understanding of the evolution of rocky planets as homes for life.

"This finding may be the first of many to come as NASA and other countries renew a Venus exploration program."

Currently the ESA, the Russian space agency and NASA all have Venus probe plans in the works that could arrive this decade; the phosphine announcement could well move launch dates up. If and when the next probes find more evidence of life above the solar system's most mysterious planet, we'll be one step closer to confirming Carl Sagan's legacy as a visionary Venutian genius.

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Diamond worlds unlike anything in our Solar System are entirely possible. We just havent found them yet – RT

Posted: at 1:04 am

As an extra incentive to get humanitys colonization capabilities up to scratch, researchers have revealed that not only are worlds made mostly of diamonds possible, they are in fact quite probable (not to mention profitable).

With private space companies slowly but surely gaining a foothold in low-Earth orbit, amid plans to take humans to the moon and Mars in the next decade, the potential plunder available farther afield looks increasingly promising.

Researchers at Arizona State University have recently published a paper in which they detail the circumstances necessary for these so-called diamond world exoplanets to arise, as well as a proof-of-concept experiment.

"These exoplanets are unlike anything in our Solar System," says geophysicist Harrison Allen-Sutter of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Their research is based on the idea that not all stars are created equal, and the chemical composition of the planets in a given star system are largely dictated by that of their star.

According to current estimates, between 12 and 17 percent of planetary systems might inhabit the space around carbon-rich stars, a promising precursor for diamond worlds.

Scientists and researchers have already confirmed the existence of carbide planets, made primarily of carbon and a handful of other elements, but they have to encounter the hypothesized silicon carbide (aka 'diamond') planets with just a hint of water to oxidize and convert the carbide to its constituent silicon and carbon.

Allen-Sutter and his team are making the case that, with enough heat, pressure and a dash of water, these silicon carbide worlds could be covered in diamonds. To prove their point, the researchers used a diamond anvil cell, subjecting test materials to extraordinarily high pressures.

They immersed samples of silicon carbide in water and then squeezed the hell out of them at a pressure of around 50 gigapascal, or 500,000 times the Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level. Adding insult to injury, the team then blasted the squeezed samples with lasers to heat them up.

They conducted 18 runs of this experiment and, as predicted, the silicon carbide samples broke down and converted into silica and diamonds. So the theorized diamond worlds are entirely feasible, we just need to find them.

For those tempted to search the cosmos for these diamond worlds, the sweet spot would be planets with a temperature of 2,500 Kelvin (2,226 degrees Celsius, 4040 degrees, Fahrenheit), a high-pressure atmosphere and the presence of water on top of a mostly silicon carbide rock, a somewhat tall order, but worth it to find a diamond in the galactic rough.

The researchers warn budding interplanetary treasure-hunters that these worlds would not be remotely hospitable for miners, as their atmospheres would be toxic to all life as we know it. So interstellar Indiana Joneses would need some pretty beefy machinery to extract the riches from these extraordinary planets.

In the meantime, upcoming missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help identify both these diamond worlds as well as a plethora of other interesting planets and potential treasure troves of alien life.

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Globe Book Club: With his wry observations on life, Thomas King educates and entertains – The Globe and Mail

Posted: at 1:04 am

Join The Globe and Mail on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 7:30 p.m. for a livestream conversation between Margaret Atwood and Thomas King. Readers without a Facebook account will be able to view the conversation on the Globes website.

Sept. 23: Margaret Atwood returns to host the Globe's book club with guest Thomas King, the author of Indians on Vacation, The Inconvenient Indian, and Obsidian. Join Atwood and King for a livestream

Everybodys read Tom King. The raccoon that lives under my house has read Tom King.

First of all, let me start off by confessing that Im a huge Tom King fan. By that I dont mean Im a physically imposing fan, but merely a reader who appreciates his talents. As a developing author, I hoped to grow up to be much like him again, not specifically a 6-foot-5 half-Greek, half-Cherokee, American-turned-Canadian photographer and former moustache grower. Instead, I wanted to stand in his shadow or beside it, using the written word and humour to showcase the multifaceted environments of the Indigenous community. In that journey, I still have far to go.

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But first, lets go back to just after Time Immemorial. In 1986, the Contemporary Indigenous Literary renaissance began. By that I mean an explosion of written and published material that sprang forth from our community and took Canada by storm. Before that, there had been the occasional book that would grab the attention of the Canadian literati briefly before they would return to their Margarets. I speak of influential texts such as Halfbreed by Maria Campbell, Prison of Grass by Howard Adams and Bobbie Lee: Indian Rebel by Lee Maracle.

Globe Book Club: Margaret Atwood announces her pick for Sept. 23 online event

Then a play called The Rez Sisters set the theatre community on fire. Written by an unknown playwright Tomson Highway in an unconventional theatre space the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto the play was about seven Anishnawbe women from a reserve on Manitoulin Island who want to travel to Toronto to participate in the worlds largest bingo game. This innocuous storyline won the 1987 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award and the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, and was shortlisted for the Governor Generals Award the following year. The number of remounts of The Rez Sisters must be approaching triple digits by now.

In my opinion (and we know what thats worth), that simple play opened the doors for many of us who followed in the publishing game. It was a catalyst of sorts. It showed the Canadian public the versatility and talent that existed within our Indigenous communities, and most importantly, that we could tell our stories in a way anyone could enjoy. Within a decade, writers such as Jeanette Armstrong, Basil Johnston, Ruby Slipperjack, Marilyn Dumont, Daniel David Moses et al. were on their way to becoming a substantial presence in the larger Canadian literary world.

This big bang of modern Indigenous storytelling had, and in many ways still does have, an objective. It could be said it was born from the effects of colonization and its prime focus was to record and detail the repercussions of said colonization. In the epigraph to the published version of Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Highway writes: Before the healing can take place, the poison must be exposed.

And exposed it was.

During this renaissance period, most of the plays and novels coming out of the Indigenous community had three general storyline variations. They consisted primarily of a historical narrative, a victim narrative, or stories dealing with the byproducts of what I call post-contact stress disorder. In short, they were gloomy, dark, angry, and dealt with oppression, depression and suppression. As the saying goes, when an oppressed people get their voice back, chances are they will talk about being oppressed. And Native people had a long history of oppression to talk about. So the writing became cathartic on a personal and cultural level.

As a result, I remember talking with several people at different times who would tell me they were reluctant to see any more Native plays or read Native books because they were tired of being depressed. The literature had begun to develop a reputation.

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By this time, Thomas King had relocated to Canada from America and soon began pumping out novels and non-fiction using his own style. What was of particular interest was the unique flavour of his storytelling. It bucked the trend.

Kings first book, Medicine River, was an interesting departure. Published in 1989, it wove together tales of various southern Alberta First Nation people into a cohesive tale of returning home, finding home and accepting those colourful people that make up home. Told from the perspective of Will, an expat returning to Medicine River for a few days to attend his mothers funeral, the reader is transported to a joyous and lovable town bordering on a large Alberta reserve.

What makes this novel so unique for the time is that it didnt dwell on many of the stereotypes usually associated with Indigenous literature. King refused to allow his characters to be victims in the way many previous Native authors had focused on. His characters had flaws, but alcoholism, homelessness, drug addiction and sexual abuse were not de rigueur. Yet, his characters were centred in a very Indigenous context. They were not polemics for the evils of Canadianization. Instead, the book (and those that followed) was a celebration of the humour and frequently quirky aspects of small-town life. And the novel was highly successful CBC turned it into a made-for-TV-movie in 1993.

Inconvenient Indian, Michelle Latimer's documentary adaptation of Thomas King's award-winning book, premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival this month.

Courtesy of TIFF

Over the following years, Kings literary output included the award-winning Green Grass, Running Water, The Truth About Stories, Truth and Bright Water and The Inconvenient Indian (for which I constantly tease him, referring to it as The Incontinent Indian) and a host of other amazing fiction and non-fiction. Of course, this includes perhaps the most popular of his creations, and one of the most beloved of Canadian comedy shows, the radio series The Dead Dog Caf Comedy Hour.

The beauty of Kings writing is that, like all good authors, it seems effortless. Like those words always have and always should be in that specific order on the page, and that was the way the great literary gods planned it.

This was not long after I wandered into the field of Indigenous literature and woke up one morning to discover I was a playwright and later a journalist, filmmaker and novelist. In fact, Tom King and I have an ongoing contest of sorts, around who can write in the most mediums. So far, we are tied. He has never yet had a play produced, and I still have not yet slain the book-of-poetry dragon.

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As any academic will tell you, literature is not static. It grows and evolves, like everything else under creation. Indigenous writing is no different. Perhaps some of that healing has been accomplished. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, curiosity has been developing in our writing community toward the concept of genre fiction. While Indigenous literature may itself be considered a unique genre in itself, many in the last decade or two have let their interests wander further afield to areas not usually hunted by our writers.

Daniel Heath Justice, a noted academic from the University of Alberta, has to be one of the more adventurous of our writers, having published an Indigenous fantasy trilogy back in the mid-2000s, full of elves, magic and swords The Way of Thorn and Thunder, Wyrewood and Dreyd. Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, publisher of Kegedonce Press, compiled and edited a collection of international Indigenous erotica called Without Reservation in 2003.

More recently, theres been an explosion in the popularity of science fiction. Cherie Dimaline took the Canadian youth market by storm when she wrote The Marrow Thieves three years ago. The dystopian tale has Native people being hunted and harvested for their dream-inducing bone marrow. Next came Waubgeshig Rice with his equally popular Moon of the Crusted Snow, another dystopian story about life on a small northern reserve that loses contact with the rest of the world.

I myself have written a collection of science fiction short stories, Take Us to Your Chief and Other Stories, as well as a vampire novel called The Night Wanderer. Im currently working on a horror novel. Indigenous people seem to be colonizing mainstream Canadian publishing.

As usual, my buddy Tom is no different. When hes not pumping out award-winning fiction or non-fiction, he can be found neck deep in one of his favourite past-times: writing detective murder mysteries. DreadfulWater, The Red Power Murders, Obsidian and a few others have established his presence in that genre. And true fans will notice theres a lot of autobiography in Toms writing, shown by the fact that the detective in these novels, the delightfully named Thumps DreadfulWater, is an American Cherokee photographer who discovers hes diabetic. Tom was once a professional photographer and still is.

That biographical tendency also shows up in Tom Kings most recent book, Indians on Vacation (just long-listed for the Giller Prize). Protagonist Bird Mavrias, a Cherokee-Greek writer-photographer expat, meets a woman, Mimi, who will be his wife. They move to Canada and end up in Guelph, Ont. Anybody who knows Tom and his work will notice more than a smidge of familiarity in that character. Less like Toms real life, the two characters, into their golden years, end up tracking down Mimis great-uncle, who disappeared into Europe 100 years ago with a precious medicine bundle belonging to the family.

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Indians on Vacation has his usual wry observations on life, interesting witticisms and spot-on perceptions of white life from the Indigenous perspective, all the while taking you on a curious journey.

I like reading Tom King because he does, succinctly and cleverly, what all good writers should do he educates, illuminates and entertains with every paragraph.

But like I said Im a fan.

Editors note: An earlier version of this article included an incorrect title for Howard Adams novel.

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Bahamas New VIP Plan: Allow Tourists In, Then Lock Them Down. – The St. Kitts-Nevis Observer

Posted: at 1:03 am

NASSAU, Bahamas In a national address on Monday, September 7, Minister of Tourism & Aviation Dionisio DAguilar announced additional details of the forward-looking recovery and reopening plan for The Islands of The Bahamas. DAguilar wants to jump-start the countrys tourism industry while protecting the health of all concerned.

Beginning October 15, The Bahamas will enter Phase 3 of the Tourism Readiness & Recovery Plan ahead of the busy holiday season, which will include the reopening of beaches and major hotels.

The countrys in-depthTourism Readiness and Recovery Plan can be seen here.

As part of Phase 3, beaches and major hotels will reopen on all islands.

DAguilar announced that all hotel guests must abide by a 14-day Vacation-In-Place (VIP), which will allow guests access to all amenities, including hotel spas, gyms, bars and more. Phase 3 will also see the reopening of attractions, excursions and tours on November 1.

Ahead of the reopening, the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation is working with airlines to get more direct flights from key markets where Covid-19 is less prevalent.

Additionally, the Ministrys communication team is prepared to commence a marketing campaign, complete with authentic storytelling and aggressive PR and sales strategies, leaning into current travel trends, such as the preference for vacations closer to home, as well as options that afford seclusion and outdoor pursuits.

Following the safe move into Phase 3, the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation along with the Ministry of Health and other government agencies will recommend a date to enter Phase 4, in which other attractions such as casinos, cruises, and ferries will be reopened.

Effective, September 1, 2020, the Bahamian government announced new entry requirements, including:

The government recommends that all travelers interested in visiting The Bahamas review requirements applicable to each member of their party at Bahamas.com/travelupdates before booking a trip, to determine what steps need to be taken to be granted entry.

Since 1950, tourism has played an integral role in The Bahamas economy, accounting for more than 50% of the countrys GDP and 60% of national employment. The COVID-19 Pandemic has had an unprecedented effect on global tourism and The Bahamas economy has felt the impact, particularly following 2019s record-breaking tourism numbers, where the country welcomed 7.2 million visitors.

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Search Called Off for Missing Jamaicans and Haitians in Bahamas – caribbeannationalweekly.com

Posted: at 1:03 am

The Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) has called off the search for boaters who went missing during an incident last weekend.

After some four days of canvassing an expansive area of waters around Chub Cay, and the Berry Islands, and based on wind and tide models, we have suspended search and rescue operations for the five persons reported missing at sea last weekend, said Commander William Sturrup, the search and rescue coordinator with the RBDF.

According to Sturrup, there were no signs of life or wreckage found during the overflights or vessel patrols in that area.

He added that the RBDF is grateful to its interagency partners and the United States Coast Guard for its support in the search.

The missing boaters were passengers aboard a 27ft vessel that capsized on September 12 in waters.

The 12 migrants, said to be a mix of Jamaicans and Haitians, were subsequently rescued and search efforts were conducted to find the remaining persons without success.

CMC

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PAHO: Bahamas showing balance between reducing transmission and reopening – EyeWitness News

Posted: at 1:03 am

NASSAU, BAHAMAS The Bahamas has proven that public health strategies can work to reduce transmission and strike a balance between reopening the economy, said Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Health Emergencies Department Director Dr Ciro Ugarte yesterday.

However, Ugarte urged the country to follow public health measures, noting that the increase in cases since July is a cause of concern.

A large number of cases in New Providence and ongoing detection is one source of optimism in terms of the capacity of the health system to rapidly detect the cases, he said.

I would say that the public health measures must be strictly followed in the country to reduce the transmission, at the same time that nationals are considering the relevance of new cases.

In this regard, I would say that the number of cases that we are seeing in The Bahamas and in other countries in the Caribbean thats increased because of the opening of the economy, is a source both of concern.

We need to know that these measures must be implemented in the long run, but at the same time, we have to put in balance opening the economy and also open the access to other essential services in the country.

Ugarte noted that PAHO is following the countrys progress very closely and continues to be in close coordination with the Ministry of Health and local authorities.

He said while The Bahamas did very well in the first wave fromMarch to June when it saw a small transmission of cases, local authorities are now facing a challenge with an increase of cases identified on the Family Islands.

Ugarte acknowledged that those challenges include the slowing of progress on New Providence, the high rate of infection of healthcare workers, and the capacity of the laboratory.

As of yesterday, the total number of confirmed cases in The Bahamas stood at 3,087.

The number of COVID-19 deaths stands at 69 with12 deaths now under investigation.

Hospitalized cases also increased from 66 to 74.

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‘Fifth division Bahamas’ faces uphill struggle to hit Singapore ambition – Bahamas Tribune

Posted: at 1:03 am

Banker: Gov't must discard 'lawyer brain'

Brands BPL, Cable, BTC as digital 'jokes'

Entrepreneur: Doors close if name 'not right'

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas "is as far from becoming the Singapore of the Americas as a fifth division soccer team is from the UK's Premier League", a prominent banker warned yesterday.

Gregory Pepin, Deltec Bank & Trust's chief executive, told a webinar organised by the TCL Group that while this nation has the potential to achieve such status it has much work to do before realising such lofty ambitions.

Arguing that it remains "a struggle" to gain approvals for any form of investment and business outside tourism, Mr Pepin said he had personally experienced such challenges over the past six months "to bring new business" to The Bahamas.

While COVID-19 has presented an opportunity to "reinvent" the Bahamian economy by reducing its dependency on tourism, the Deltec chief said this can only be seized if the Government "stops thinking like a lawyer and thinks like a businessman".

He also warned that The Bahamas' digital economy and "technology hub" aspirations were currently built on extremely shaky foundations, describing all three of Bahamas Power & Light (BPL), Cable Bahamas and Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) as "a joke" for offering services that were either unreliable or too costly compared to regional and global rivals.

While The Bahamas' proximity to major consumer markets in the US and Canada, and connectivity to other key jurisdictions such as the UK, remained critical strengths, Mr Pepin said this nation lacked "the right policies to take advantage" of this.

He described this as being akin to "a bad house in a rich neighbourhood", where the investment climate and regulatory framework were not sufficiently efficient, robust and business friendly to attract major foreign direct investment (FDI) and capital flows.

"The biggest problem with The Bahamas is not position," Mr Pepin said. "You can be the Singapore of the north, the Singapore of the Americas, but knowing how Singapore works we're as far from Singapore as a fifth division team is from the Premier League.

"The challenges you have to go through to get there are discouraging. The reality is if you want to do business here other than tourism it's challenging.... anything else is a struggle. That's a fact. Whoever the Government of The Bahamas is I don't care. Invest in the population, invest outside tourism.

"I've been trying to do some things for the last six months to bring new business here, and it's a challenge, it's an effort. That shouldn't be the case. Hopefully the Government will take away their lawyer brain, and thinking like a lawyer, and think like a businessman. Stop thinking like a lawyer and take decisions to make things work."

Urging The Bahamas to break away from dogmatic thinking, and the bureaucracy and red tape that continues to strangle private sector-led growth and job creation, Mr Pepin also called for initiatives to "inspire" young entrepreneurs who he described as the country's future.

With The Bahamas' relatively young population providing hope for post-COVID-19 prospects, the banker said incentives to encourage Bahamian and foreign investment in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) were sorely lacking.

One such entrepreneur, Robbyn Thompson, who started her hair and beauty business in 2012 to finance a college education, told the webinar that successive governments had not been effective in meeting the Bahamian people's needs or providing "a conducive environment for business to thrive".

With politicians tending to cater to the interests of the elite from which they are drawn, she said policies lacked input from younger persons while often also widening the gap between rich and poor in Bahamian society.

"As a young person and entrepreneur I feel the Government has failed in its mandate to provide opportunities for young entrepreneurs and people," Ms Thompson said. "They want seats at the table, they want to have a role in policies. They're tired of having other people speak for them. How can you design a policy for young people but have never asked us" for input?

She criticised the composition of the Government-appointed Economic Recovery Committee, whose role it is to generate a road map for The Bahamas' short and longer-term recovery post COVID-19, arguing that its members all came from "elitist positions" while the interests of start-ups, entrepreneurs and persons under 30 years-old were not represented.

"Until young people are given an opportunity to have a piece of the pie, there will always be a gap in our country in terms of economic growth," Ms Thompson said. She argued that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were already "under-appreciated and under-assisted" prior to COVID-19, with the sector's two main weaknesses involving access to resources and networking.

Recalling a speech she gave in London, where she "bragged" that The Bahamas is investing $25m over five years in SMEs, Ms Thompson said: "Somebody came up to me after the speech and said that number was a joke.

"Twenty-five million dollars is a lot, but we're only now beginning to take SMEs seriously and pay attention to them when other countries recognised long ago that SMEs were the backbone of the economy and key to driving growth."

Recalling how she had applied for an initiative under the Small Business Development Centre (SBDC), Ms Thompson continued: "Many of these organisations sound wonderful in theory but bureaucracy and red tape makes it difficult to access resources.

"We need more accountability and transparency in these resources, and make sure people in these organisations realise what it means to have $1 and a dream..... It honestly seems that when you knock on doors in this country, and they ask who's there, if you call a name they don't recognise the door doesn't open.

"Our government has to do a better job of making sure no one gets left behind, and that every entrepreneur regardless of background, name and colour of skin is given equal opportunity access to resources in this country."

This prompted Mr Pepin to exclaim "great read out of the situation", adding that "if you don't know someone" who is able to facilitate the necessary permits and approvals then someone who does invariably jumps ahead.

"That's not how you build an economy, that's how you destroy an economy," he added. The Deltec banker also warned that the Bahamas Bar Association's effective closed shop, and restrictions on international and regional law firms setting up affiliates here, was further undermining the country's competitiveness as business was directed to other jurisdictions.

He added that a "big trading firm" had approached him about the conditions for setting up in The Bahamas during the webinar, but were already questioning the feasibility after being told they had to use a local law firm, along with BPL's unreliability/pricing and the costs of Internet access.

"BPL is a joke. That's a fact, sorry. Cable Bahamas is a joke. BTC is a joke," Mr Pepin added, when it came to The Bahamas' digital economy and technology hub prospects.

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Back to the Bahamas: It’s the people you remember most from life’s adventures – Kingsport Times News

Posted: at 1:03 am

Back to the Bahamas, the week of Labor Day 1980.

I was 17 on my first trip out of the United States, which included my first time on an airplane, and traveling with a group which included friends and soon-to-be friends.

Some of my most vivid memories (sorry, Mom said I cant share them all):

Many of the locals referred to us U.S. tourists as my cousin, as in John, my cousin, let me show you where to find the best deal, or Lahn, my cousin, you are beautiful lady and you honor us by being in daily poolside fashion show. Lahn, is how our Bahamian cousins pronounced my partner in shenanigans Lambs name. She and Rosa Whitten did indeed participate in a fashion show, featuring the loveliest Bahamian attire available in the Holiday Inn Freeports gift shops. But it wasnt poolside. It was indoors in the lobby, where those of us who were willing to take a break from the sunshine that day sat in wicker and rattan furniture and clapped.

One of my only souvenirs from the trip was a pullover V-neck shirt I can best now describe as Bohemian rather than Bahamian. I wore it on the trip home. A picture of me wearing it, in the hotel parking lot, appeared in the 1981 Dobyns-Bennett annual. Believe it or not, I wore it for several years. Im sure I still have it, in storage, somewhere. Many of my friends came home with Its Better in the Bahamas T-shirts.

Another day it rained. A lot. Most of us sat it out in our rooms. Some gathered for impromptu parties in this or that room, taking turns darting through the rain to the poolside bar for trays of drinks.

The elevator frequently stopped between floors. This did not stop us from using it, however, even though it was only one floor from the lobby to most of our rooms. I remember being stuck several times, once with the elevator quite crowded. I was standing face-to-face with Mitzi Johnson Hurd, whod been my older sister Pams friend since I was in grade school. Mitzi assured me it was fine and all would be OK. I might have slipped a grasshopper from a tray she or someone else was carrying from the bar back to the room, filled with nothing but a dozen or so small glasses of that sweet, mint and chocolate cocktail. I think that was during the rainy spell. My only previous experience with minty alcohol was when this or that Skobys waiter would make my order of fried ice cream extra special by drizzling a teaspoon or so of creme de menthe on top. Whenever I eat grasshopper pie I think of rain-swept beaches, old friends, and ... taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

One day several of us signed up for a snorkeling trip. We walked into the surf from the hotels beach side and waded out about chest deep, where we climbed up a ladder and into a good sized boat. I was excited to try to snorkel but I hate going underwater at all. So once we reached the spot and dropped anchor, I basically dog paddled around on top of the water just looking through my mask toward the oceans floor. I still had fun. Until the sky suddenly turned dark and the boat operators rushed us all back on board to try to beat a storm to shore. It was just like the opening credits of Gilligans Island, that storm and how it came up so quickly.

As we got close to shore, the captain was saying something I didnt quite catch, but most everyone was nodding OK and started diving overboard. Hed said due to the waves caused by the storm he couldnt get as close to shore as when hed picked us up ... could we swim for it?

I really didnt fathom how deep the water was, and had only dived into water one time since Judy Brookshire and Marty Brotherton (more friends of sister Pam) gave me swimming lessons when I was about 10. I looked around on that boat deck, but neither Judy nor Marty were anywhere to be seen. Neither was the D-B gym teacher whod made me take that one required swimming-class dive into the deep end of the schools pool.

Everyone else was diving and swimming toward shore in the choppy water. I stalled for time. Finally, a couple not with my group walked over to me and asked if I was going to have trouble. I said I could swim, but not underwater. The man told me to go ahead and hed be right behind me ... and was calm enough to tell me that if I did have trouble and he tried to help, not to panic and drag him down. I jumped (not dived) into the water. I went under. I swallowed some saltwater. I surfaced, and began to swim best I could toward shore. I wasnt making much progress. True to his word, the man appeared next to me as suddenly as the storm had arrived at our snorkeling spot.

I thought you said you could swim, he shouted over the rain and waves.

I can.

No, I dont think you can.

I just keep getting water in my mouth.

Shut your mouth!

His wife was soon beside us as well. He basically towed me ashore, or at least to the point I could stand up and walk, while she followed a few feet behind.

I thanked them for saving my life. He said he thought the praying helped. I asked when hed prayed. I said a silent prayer before you jumped off the boat ... and you were screaming for Jesus the rest of the way.

I havent been snorkeling since. But I did take another swimming class. I still cant dive and cant stand to go underwater.

One night, late, one of us wanted to make a telephone call home (remember traveling before cell phones?) and no one was answering at the front desk. Rosa, who worked at the Holiday Inn here in Kingsport, wanted to know just what was going on at the front desk. We went up to the lobby and found the front desk completely unmanned. Rosa climbed over the counter and began running the switchboard. She didnt get to stay long, but she did get the call put through to Tennessee. And she gave the hotel employee who finally showed up (and demanded she get back across the counter) such a dressing down Im sure they were convinced she was a corporate mystery guest.

Two new friends I made on the trip were Lori Kloempken and her bestie Iva Clark. Lori won the trip, for two, in a bikini contest. If I remember correctly, the contest was at the Nite Life. That was a nightclub on the old road to Johnson City. Being only 17 at the time, I will admit only to having been in the Nite Life (legitimately) one time at that point: I was a model in a fashion show at the club one Sunday afternoon, featuring clothes from stores in the Fort Henry Mall. I modeled in that show for, I think, the County Seat (if thats the store that was near Record Bar, and uniquely had a staircase in its center that led to a balcony that ran the perimeter of the store). I think the clothes I modeled included the blue shirt I was wearing in the photo that ran with last weeks column.

The trip (or the contest) was also the first time our tour director, Doug East, met Lori. Im still friends with both. Both live in Myrtle Beach (for years now) and have been friends these 40 years.

Mitzi worked at Skobys at the time and was among several of the waitstaff there who went on the trip. I cant remember exactly who all went. Donna Wheelock. Steve Ayers. Don Moore?

There was an older couple (compared to me at 17 and most everyone else in my group in their 20s) whose full names I cant remember. Dottie and Big E. Doug said he doesnt remember if they were on this particular trip. Maybe Im mistaken. But whatever trip I met them on, they watched out for me like I was their own.

I feel in love with air travel on the way down. On the way home, I learned its not always friendly in the skies. For some reason we were routed through Roanoke. Doug thinks it was due to bad weather in Charlotte. Well, guess what, bad weather moves around (maybe it was that storm from snorkeling day, following me) and when we landed at Roanoke it was in a terrible thunderstorm. Id now know that was the type conditions that lead to downdraft wind bursts and crash landings. In all my years of travel since, I think that was the worst landing Ive ever experienced.

Ive rambled on a lot now about my first trip to the Bahamas. If youve made it this far, youve maybe noticed I didnt say much about the Bahamas, the beach, the food, or the shopping. Thats because the best memories are always about the people (even when you cant remember their names).

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Divide and rule – Bahamas Tribune

Posted: at 1:03 am

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The strategy of divide and conquer was first develop by Sun Tzus, a Chinese General 2500 years ago. In the west, the divide your enemy so you can rule approach is attributed to Julius Cesar he successfully applied it to conquer Gaul twenty-two centuries ago.

Elements of this technique involve: creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign fostering distrust and enmity between local rulers encouraging meaningless expenditures that reduce the capability for political and military spending.

The Caribbean have inherited the tendency to divide and rule from the British. It is inherent in the Westminster System as the ruling party and the opposition. It is meant to keep people divided and benefiting from one party and disliking the other. The creation and perpetuation of Hindu-Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy: the colonial project of divide et impera (divide and rule) fomented religious antagonisms to facilitate continued imperial rule and reached its tragic culmination in 1947. The British divided up the Middle East after World War I, and they did it again in India. The Caribbean and the Bahamas continued the British system of divide and rule. Loyalty is more important than competence for executive position in government and related private sector. The question I ask is will we mindless continue a system that has created crime and poverty for the many with a few elites that acts as managers so the developed world can plunder the countrys resources.

From June 13, 1789 to July 1, 1789 in the assembly in France, people to the left of the president of the assembly were against the monarch and stood for movement or progress while the people on the right were for the monarch and for order. This division of left wing and right wing continues today. But what has happened recently is that the right has moved more left thereby keep order and having social programme for the marginalised. In the US Donald Trump a Republican, a right wing party sends US $1200 cheque to Americans for doing nothing free money like a left wing politician. In the Bahamas both parties (PLP and FNM) were moderate pro-Western parties committed to democracy and free enterprise. The division in the Bahamas is between the have and have nots. The department of social services programmes and the R.I.S.E programme to Tackle Poverty are attempts to alleviate poverty. These programmes put a band aid on a gunshot wound. The evidence is the high homicide rate in the Bahamas and the exponential growth of youth involvement in criminal gangs. They have create a vacuum where the people will find alternatives to deliver what they want and need. Sometimes, it is drug selling, scamming, prostitution or robbery because many are Machiavellian by any means necessary. Election does not bring fundamental changes because politics is the art of deception. The Bahamas will continue to be colonized once the people are divided. We have external colonizers and their internal collaborators. The people have power but they naively bestow it to their political leaders instead of exercising it for their own benefits. I agree with Malcolm X when he said, what, what do you call second-class citizenship? Why, thats colonization. Second-class citizenship is nothing but 20th slavery. There is still a lot of work to be done, especially with the impact of COVID-19 health and economic crisis.

To look at the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Bahamas and the world. Just like the US Patriot Act crippled privacy for financial transactions after the twin towers were destroyed on September 11, 2001, the response to this pandemic will cripple freedom of movement and health privacy. Biosecurity will trump civil liberties. Whether that is a wise move is for the people to decide. Lets get ready to rumble.

BRIAN ELLIS PLUMMER

Nassau,

September 15, 2020.

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Divide and rule - Bahamas Tribune

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