SpaceX Rocket Landing in The Bahamas

Bahamian Perspectives on SpaceX Rocket Landing in The Bahamas

SUDDENLY NEARLY EVERY BAHAMIAN IS A ROCKETEER; WHETHER FOR OR AGAINST!

By Professor Gilbert Morris
Nassau, NP, The Bahamas

I am not a rocketeer either way, and I have only a common curiosity about them, beyond lighting up cans of “flit” with my devilish cousins in Freeport, before Mumsy put an end to that!

But I am overqualified to speak to the methodical protocols of the public debate…which essentially if my official role as “National Public Reader!"

To start: let’s stop all this gapseed and fast talk that has so many engaged.

The matter of these rocket landings can’t be assessed one dimensionally or emotionally.

We can’t just imagine every permutation of potential impact, as a mean.  It’s like people are saying, “gurrl I felt my finger hurt when that rocket landed.  "We at risk!"

Alternatively, we can’t evangelise benefits we could have but never built into this opportunity.  We can’t start talking about “space tourism”, which has nothing to do with watching rocket landings and more to do with actually going into space…which we are not doing!!

In both sides: those who talk as if any potential negative possibility is a risk and those who think that they can just claim that suddenly The Bahamas is a player in the space game.  We could be…but we are NOT; because that’s not what we designed or cultivated.

More importantly, we must take more matured, rather than a wild speculative approach; on both sides!

"Public rationality” is the ability of a society to frame agreements and disagreements around ratios informed by a fact-pattern that is acceptable to all sides, even when they disagree.  The discourse around this rope tells me we need more Baysians Logic, statistics and probability together with general knowledge of risk metrics; starting in kindergarten!

When we consider these rocket landings, we must consider….mmmmmmmm…some basics:

First, there is the question of Musk himself.  Some people are offended by his character and attitudes and thinks black nation should not entertain such a person.  That must be weighted against the variety of personalities - many actual Nazis and gangsters - we’ve dealt with over the decades in The Bahamas; with known similar odious views!

Second, risks-benefits analysis are always comparative: it is, invariably always a calculus…of the actual or potential downsides in their variety (as was spoken to above), offset by relevant, substantive and potential, nameable, actionable benefits.

First, the thug has happened: we can’t be talking now about what this “could mean to The Bahamas”. 

We’re not 7!

We must say what the 3 or 5 initiatives are that we are doing.  These may include internships at Space X, Saturday master classes in rocket science, certified post-landing cleanup technicians etc.

We mustn’t say it’s the first time a rocket took off from in country and landed in another.  It’s not true. John Glenn landed at Turks and Caicos, February 2nd. 1962…and I can guarantee you, he didn’t take off from there.  Perhaps based on the clear skies designation of Turks and Caicos and The Bahamas, together with the angular geometry of rocket launches that designate the Bahama region for landing, we would develop a joint space monitoring centre.

If you want to go big: maybe the last scheduled launch should be a Bahamas satellite.

When it comes to the risks, we must be diligent…but we mustn’t be to cute:

We have been a greater threat to our environment than any external force.  Any assessment should begin with our own renewed sensibilities toward our neglected responsibilities based upon public rationalities.

So the question isn’t whether the sensible risk concerns raised are irreparable determinants; but are the overrides, offsets, compensations, redundancies and other inter-leavening weights in our risk models, such that overall it generates net benefits for The Bahamas?

Otherwise everyone will simply jump in talking about flies and roaches that are being “impacted”.

Rather let’s use this moment to show we are capable of credible ASSESSMENTS, productive of instructive risk/benefits ratios.

Have we such an outtake?

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The Unipolar World Order versus The Multipolar World Order

A NEW (KINDA OLD) WORLD ORDER!

By Professor Gilbert Morris
Nassau, NP, The Bahamas

Every American founding father - in letters and speeches - lusted after the creation of a global U.S. empire; with the exception of Alexander Hamilton (the Caribbean man, born in Nevis).

The empire emerged as American aristocratic novelist Gore Vidal explored in 5 historical novels beginning in 1824 with the Monroe Doctrine.

(The novels, all brilliant: Empire, Burr, 1876, Lincoln, United States)

Henry Kissinger took the view - beyond international law - that there was a “collective superpower prerogative”, so that Russia-China-US (with EU and Africa at the children’s table) should reflect the structure of the world order.

That is to say: Kissinger believed that led by the U.S., together with Russia and China, they should set the global agenda and the rest of the world should follow!

The Reaganites accused Kissinger of being “anti-American” for expousing a variety of multipolarity.  That is, Reagan attacked Kissinger for not promoting the idea of “America first and leading with the other superpowers following and the rest of the world following them.

I leave it to you to determine whether Reagan should ever have been allowed in the same room with Kissinger.

But now, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio - one can’t get used to the notion - has withdrawn from the Reagan hubris of sole superpower, to a hybrid of Kissinger’s world order model; adding ‘zero sum’ insular multipolarity; meaning every man (nation) for himself!

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MARCUS GARVEY THE GREAT!

Marcus Garvey can be credited in America, with linking Blackness to Africa

WAS MARCUS GARVEY GREAT?

By Professor Gilbert Morris
Nassau, The Bahamas

Marcus Garvey is less a complex, than an opaque figure.  He can be credited in America, with linking Blackness to Africa; whilst positing that the diaspora were one people. (That’s where Bob Marley got the idea).

Strange as it may seem now, that association with Africa was verboten; as whites had convinced blacks and blacks convinced themselves, that there was nothing of value to and/or in Africa.

Countee Cullen - the American poet who was Black, who moved me most, who was the high school teacher of James Baldwin and married to WEB Dubois’ daughter - wrote “what is Africa to me/Spicy grove, cinnamon tree/what is Africa to me?”  (Derek Walcott - the St Lucian Nobel Laureate poet - also wondered about the conundrums of a far distant Africa and the alien beloved tongue in which he wrote now.  In “A Far Cry From Africa” (a double entendre titling), he wrote: “The gorilla wrestles with the superman/I who am poisoned with the blood of both/Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?/I who have cursed/The drunken officer of British rule, how choose/Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?”

This in many ways was the more enlightened, but not the general sentiment.

It wasn’t until in the Harlem Renaissance - 1920, the Benin Bronzes were shown and Alain Locke - father of the Harlem Renaissance - posited the cultural history of Africa in his “Essays on Value”, which lead Blacks to take a second look eventually.  Then came the structural decolonising/independence movements after 1950, which quickened the rise of Africa in America; even and especially amongst Blacks…including in the Caribbean.

Garvey initiated that in the 1920 with his Universal Negro Improvement Association and his philosophy of Pan-Africanism, which argued for the intellectual and cultural plentitude of Africa.

Garvey was quite entrepreneurial and established his own black Shipping Company: Black Star Line…with an unthinkable self-confidence, which was mimicked by persons such as Jack Johnson, the Black heavyweight champion boxer.

In 1922, Garvey was charged and convicted of wire fraud, but it was not for defrauding schemes of any sort.  It involved the selling of shares in his shipping company…and it is agreed by most scholars that the charges were used to silence him.

Joe Kennedy at the time was engaged in actual fraud and opium dealing…and yet saw no pause in his freedom.  Garvey’s sentence was commuted by President Andrew Jackson and in 1927, President Calvin Coolidge ordered Garvey deported to Jamaica.

Two points of note: 

1. Garvey’s main opposition in America was not whites, but Blacks like A. Philip Randolph and Walter Wilkins.  They were elite blacks who had gotten inroads with whites.  They felt that Garvey - a bit of a show off was compromising their status, speaking about this hated Africa, which they regarded as backwards.  They appealed to the Attorney General to investigate Garvey; who as a bit of a ‘dandy’, which didn’t help because of his flamboyance.  These are the same Blacks who rail-roaded Paul Roberson and who opposed Dr. Martin Luther King jr. who - from 1963 until his death - was the most hated Black man in America for his stance on the Vietnam War and for planning the “Poor People’s March on Washington”.

2. Marcus Garvey never set foot on the African continent.  Why?  Because before 1950, the countries were all colonies and no colonial government would allow his entry, which would have been a challenge to their authority.

Even in dress Garvey was audacious: there is a rich history to the uniform he wore…but in the simplest terms, he mimicked W.E.B. Dubois, who himself mimicked the Prussian elite nation builders - like Karl von Bismarck and others - who established the state of German in 1870.  Dubois studied at the Univeristy of Berlin - which I’ve visited for research purposes and where he is still well regarded - having helped to developed the discipline of sociology with Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber and others.  Dubois and Garvey wanted to achieve the same ends in the manner…that at last…all the German people were united; so they wished to advance the same amongst Blacks in the diaspora with the African continent.

So was Garvey a great man?

His contribution was significant.  He lacked the multivarious talents or global prominence of Paul Roberson, the majesty, education, pedigree and vision of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. or the sheer natural brilliance and discipline of Malcom X.  But they rose and stood on the shoulders of his natural audacity to think Africa and African origins and of an African future as substantive.

His ideas were 100 years before their time: only now we see in the Sahel, where 5 nations - Mali, Niger, now Togo and Chad together with Burkina Faso (led by the magnetic Ibrahim Traoré) have broken (are breaking) from France…steeped they are…the philosophy of Marcus Garvey, as there is no other self-dependent blueprint for Black nations confident in their significance.  Garvey is the sole philosopher in that space.  And as it was for Garvey, Roberson and King, their most strident opposition came from fellow Black presidents of African nations over-tethered to the West…even against or within their own narrow interests!

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Trump's World

Trump Rules!

Trump For a New Division of The World

By Elson Concepción Pérez
January 9, 2025

We are "living" in the 21st century and, for Donald Trump, the almost new president of the United States, life and the integration of the world must go backwards, and he is trying to recycle the colonialist formulas of yesteryear, with the addition that this time money is the main factor when it comes to appropriating foreign territories and reformulating even the geography itself, as if it were a poker game or the stock market.

It is almost impossible for the reasoning of a human being to be able to "digest" that we have reached 2025 with wars, genocide, sanctions and threats, all with the participation and direction of the American governments, and that, far from using all the resources to stop the human carnage that is being staged in Palestinian territory, new threats, this time territorial ones that would surely become war scenarios or, at least, of destabilization, are coming to the public arena.

Trump's proposal is a provocative attempt to retake the Panama Canal, the inter-oceanic waterway that the Isthmian country recovered when Presidents Omar Torrijos and Jimmy Carter signed on October 1, 1979, the Treaties that established that the Central American country would take full control of it on December 31, 1999.

It is a waterway through which 6 % of world trade transits, and almost 60 % of the containers transported from Asia to the East Coast of the United States.

Even though the Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino, rejected Trump's threats and assured that "the sovereignty and independence of the country are not negotiable", the Republican magnate reiterated that "the plan to recover the Panama Canal is currently under consideration", and did not rule out the possible use of military force to achieve it, according to Sputnik reports.

In our own region, Trump's policy has led him to expose another of his hegemonic blunders: "I am going to announce in the next few days that we are going to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America."  "What a beautiful name!  It's appropriate," Trump said in a press conference.

All these ideas are accompanied by economic and financial threats, such as "imposing harsher tariffs, if the Aztec country does not accept."

Trump also suggested that Canada could become the 51st state of the U.S.  "If we remove the artificially drawn line, and analyze what it looks like, we will also greatly improve national security.  Let's not forget: basically, we protect Canada," the magnate assured.

In this regard, Justin Trudeau, who until two days ago was Canadian Prime Minister, exclaimed that "there is not the slightest possibility that Canada will become part of the United States".

Another obsession that Trump had already raised in his first term, is that of "buying" Greenland, or, in other words, the accession of that territory.  Defiantly, as is his wont, he said that "people don't even know if Denmark has any rights to that territory, but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security, that is, for the free world."

Let us conclude with the following appreciation: this is the beginning of a new year, 2025.  It is the prelude to a Republican administration in the United States, under the leadership of Donald Trump, the man who, even without reaching the White House, plans to undertake a new "sharing of the world", something very similar to a new colonization, this time not carried out by European metropolises, but under total American leadership.

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The Destructive Impact of Disinformation

Disinformation is more than “fake news”

Global citizenship skills in education: What Does Civic Literacy Mean in the Disinformation Age?

By  Dr. Jannie Lilja

Disinformation can have a range of destructive impacts.  Lies about the harmful consequences of vaccines may negatively affect public health.  Disinformation may erode trust in the state, in political processes, and polarize society.  False information can incite violence.  What is put on the line is accountable and representative governance.

Disinformation is more than “fake news”.  It is about the whole information environment that people find themselves in, ranging from news to entertainment, rumors, satire, and conspiracy theories.  Much of this is conveyed on social media platforms through images, texts, videos and audio clips.  Its evolving nature is propelled by rapid technological development and this can be defined as false information with the intent to harm.  Disinformation is often emotionally charged to increase people´s propensity to buy into the messaging and to unknowingly pass it on to others.

What is the role of education in efforts to counter disinformation?

There are two basic approaches to countering disinformation: Top down and bottom up.

Top-down measures include various kinds of regulatory or policy measures.  Many of them aim at controlling or restricting information flows.  Such measures can also consist of incentivizing certain behaviours.  For example, through carefully designed online architectures, social media platforms can provide warnings, corrections, or nudges to make individuals deliberately consider and evaluate content before they share, rate, or comment on it.  Another top-down policy measure is to make media literacy mandatory in school curricula, an option used by a growing number of governments.  This brings us on to the bottom-up measures.

Bottom-up measures can be called ‘literacy enhancing’.  Such measures are aimed at equipping people with a latent ability to identify disinformation.  Schools and other education institutions have vital roles to play.  Training modalities can range from classroom teaching to online modules.  Children and youth in formal education are important target groups of such interventions.  Pragmatic approaches include the integration of media and information literacy in other school subjects.  Proactive countering disinformation efforts have, for example, been undertaken in Finland where children are taught about disinformation from an early age.  The widespread preparedness and ability to, for example, detect grammatical errors in online messaging, led to the prompt halt of a foreign-sponsored disinformation campaign during Finland´s NATO accession process.

What does civic literacy  mean in the disinformation age? 

There are vivid discussions about the specific types of civic literacy needed to cope in today´s disinformation environment.  Attempts are made at comparing the relative merits of media literacy, digital literacy, and information literacy.  Others are putting more of a focus on the role of citizenship, as reflected in studies on civic media literacy, civic social media literacy, and civic data literacy.

What is clear is that knowledge and skills of different kinds are needed for citizens to keep pace with the growing volumes of both fake and real information.  A recent study by Lilja, Eklund and Tottie (2024) finds that there is no common understanding of what disinformation is, but also that there is no clear understanding of what constitutes authentic information.  However, most people recognize their lack of knowledge and skills and want to improve.

It is equally clear that education systems and schools must play a central role in ensuring that every child and adolescent develop civic literacy.  A broad set of cognitive skills, emotional self-awareness, and technical know-how is required for citizens to navigate the massive flows of true, false and simply irrelevant information.  People need to be able to spot lies but they also need to be able to trust authentic information.  The discriminatory capacity to separate fake from real is key.

Summing up and ways forward 

1.  Disinformation is more than we think.  The rapid evolution of the disinformation landscape is driven by new technological developments combined with human-made strategies.  Disinformation goes beyond fake news to encompass the entire information environment.  Continuous exposure to disinformation may subconsciously affect the judgement of individuals.

2.  Civic literacy in the disinformation age is also more than we think.  Civic literacy today is extremely demanding.  A very broad set of skills and knowledge is needed for a person to act as a responsible citizen.  Knowledge of how to identify both disinformation and reliable information is required.

3.  Urgent and concerted measures by a variety of actors are needed – and educators have central roles to play.  Teaching children and youth civic literacy skills is necessary.  However, adults outside the formal education system are a neglected constituency that also needs educators´ attention.  Tailored and engaging online and offline efforts aimed at different constituencies will be critical.

A joined-up cross-sectoral approach is needed to counter the forces that disinform, divide, and ultimately attempt to dismantle democracy. 

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The Bahamas Rejects The Trump Administration Transition Team Proposal on Deportation Flights

The Bahamas Rejects The Trump Administration Transition Team Proposal on Deportation Flights of Migrants from Other Nations

The Office of the Prime Minister wishes to address recent reports regarding a proposal from the Trump transition team in the United States for The Bahamas to accept deportation flights of migrants from other countries.  This matter was presented to the Government of The Bahamas but was reviewed and firmly rejected by the Prime Minister.

The Bahamas simply does not have the resources to accommodate such a request.  The Prime Minister priorities remain focused on addressing the concerns of The Bahamian people.

Since the Prime Minister’s rejection of this proposal, there has been no further engagement or discussions with the Trump transition team or any other entity regarding this matter. The Government of The Bahamas remains committed in its position.

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Maximising opportunities in The Bahamas and Caribbean - to professionally serve the financially lucrative retiring demographic in North America, and throughout the world

THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE ON EARTH!

Owing to a number of factors, world population for the first time since the 14th century is shrinking: Call it “the age of depopulation.”

What lies ahead is a world made up of shrinking and aging societies...

By Professor Gilbert Morris
Nassau, NP, The Bahamas

For 21 years I’ve been speaking about the “demographic bomb”.  I introduced the topic at a Rotary Lecture at East Villa, Nassau in 2003; after 17 years absence from The Bahamas.  Basically I argued that over the next 40 years, 100 million people in North America and nearly 1 billion people worldwide would hit retirement age.

Let’s set the stage for this discussion:

My thesis - really a recognition of a demographic fact - was aimed at The Bahamas and Caribbean maximising opportunities to serve this retiring demographic; which in the case of the U.S., must and will move south, but can’t really live in Florida or boiling hot Texas.  If we Caribbean nations had prepared for them, in The Bahamas alone, that would require about 100 new “Lyford Cays”; designed this time with Bahamian certified “Occupational Licences” (see Dr Peter Blair) in mind; ensuring mass rapid professionalisation of the Bahamian labour force.

This would mean about $100 billion in economic opportunity in 20 years!

There are a few additional benefits, as I like to kill all the birds with one stone! (For the literalists, ain’t no one actually killing birds):

1. Financial Services - the 100 million retirees, besides the direct economic impact on construction services, would/could actually produce a larger impact in financial services than in all previous years combined.  The reason is the “double transfer”:

a. $40 trillion from Baby Boomer’s parents to boomers

b. $27 trillion from Boomers to their children

This opens an unprecedented vista of options for Caribbean jurisdictions for which only Cayman Islands is primed.

2. Occupational Licensing - Dr. Peter Blair will eventually win the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in the area.  But to simply it: imagine 10,000 retirees in The Bahamas, all of whom need services like nurses assistants, physicians assistants, certified caretakers, chiropractors, certified massage therapists, certified exercise physiologists, certified nutritionists, dialysis technicians, smart home technicians, certified gardeners etc.  That does not include: estate managers, financial planners, trust protectors, family office experts, personal assistants etc. and those don’t include: electricians, plumbers, computer technicians, beauty stylists, private butlers and drivers.

Considered carefully, I’ve argued publicly and privately formallly and informally that this opportunity should be the main focus of our governments for the next 10 years, because in executing this opportunity, we’d likely triple Bahamian GDP…rather than wasting time on cruise ship tourists!

But what I did not see coming was the impact that several regionally discrete dynamic phenomena would have in limiting the number of humans on earth at a pace exceeding that of the organic passing of retirees!

Owing to a number of factors, world population for the first time since the 14th century is shrinking: Call it “the age of depopulation.”

At that time, the Black Death in 1347 wiped out nearly 1/3rd of humans in the known world.  I explained this on the “Hitback” with Nahaja Black in 2020. Since 2020, we’ve seen a series of new phenomena:

1. The One Child policy in China has left a shortage in population

2. The Policy related to girls in China means nearly 200 million men who will never have wives or girlfriends, same for India, Russia and Ukraine

3. Drug wars in Mexico, Colombia and invasions in the Middle East and Central Asia has left high rations for women to men

4. Birth rates in the West and in Asia are falling precipitously

5. Social Media is promising girls that they can establish “choice and engagement” boundaries that hurt women in the long run by re-prioritising families too late for demographic balance.  Economists have become enamoured of dating sites…because the data is a 30 year true account of the social world and human choices, where the input is voluntary: the data shows 80% of woman of all ages are attracted to about 4% of men (tall, handsome and rich), but that 4% of men are attracted to mostly young women, but as many young women as possible.  That is, the 80% of women delusionally believe they are all 10s and that the 4% of men should prefer them.  This means 96% of men go with no or very little interaction or gain interaction only after the women are rejected by the 4% of men.  Social media platforms and dating sites (all social media are dating sites) are able to track these relationships and the men who are left out are and are becoming more and more hostile to women; whom they believe do not really prefer them, but give them attention only after rejection by ‘elite men’.

This sort of knowledge has never existed in such a scale.  I don’t care about the reasons, just the effects…which are that it has a destructive impact in relationships, because both parties are looking beyond each other constantly across social media platforms for someone better.

That loss of trust, commitment or even convenient settling and so means fewer families!

In the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine - the influential journal for intellectual foreign policy - scholar Nicolas Eberstadt writes: “With birthrates plummeting, more and more societies are heading into an era of pervasive and indefinite depopulation, one that will eventually encompass the whole planet.  What lies ahead is a world made up of shrinking and aging societies.  Net mortality—when a society experiences more deaths than births—will likewise become the new norm.  Driven by an unrelenting collapse in fertility, family structures and living arrangements heretofore imagined only in science fiction novels will become commonplace, unremarkable features of everyday life.”

I think Eberstadt is right but it goes further than he imagined.  This will affect labour markets, social welfare systems, the economics of wages and income and the prices of land and other asssets.  It will impact insurance, banking and commercial services to degrees heretofore unknown.

Eberstadt wrote further: “Human beings have no collective memory of depopulation.  Overall global numbers last declined about 700 years ago, in the wake of the bubonic plague that tore through much of Eurasia.  In the following seven centuries, the world’s population surged almost 20-fold.  And just over the past century, the human population has quadrupled”.  That is now at an end and the great population shrinkage has begun.

It is my job as a methodologist and strategist to notice things that are not noticeable readily:

1. If The Bahamas and the Caribbean fail to execute on this gift - a situation in which we don’t have to generate economic demand - we’ll be locked in circumstances in which we will have to deal with our own depopulation and find a way to pay for it, when we could have leveraged both American depopulation and subsidise our own, plus gain economic expansion

2. We would have missed the chance to reform our education and training system and raise nearly 70% of Bahamians to a level of certified professionalism

3. No one has coupled the (1) retiree phenomenon, with (2) fertility crisis to the (3) automation/digitisation dynamic, unfolding currently.

It is an interesting question whether we would get “balancing offsets”, meaning in productivity terms, technology could replace humans who are retired or unborn owing to fertility loss…but only in productivity terms.

It’s a complex question - which could be rationalised through advanced deferential equations - to determine whether automation could replace workers, but wouldn’t provide consumers to consume at those sustained productivity levels…even though retirees would still consume.  That is because fertility loss means there would be no “replacement” humans or family systems - which coordinates consumer demand - and the world population would shrink…demanding radical system and structural adjustments.

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