Tafadhali
10-21-05, - 01:07 PM
This was taken from bahamian.ebloggy.com and it is our reality. This is really bad. We all can agree out goverment seems to be doing absolutely nothing to change the status quo. God help the Bahamas!
Content Analysis
Allied Intelligence invented content analysis during WWII. At a time when they didn't have any spies in German Army headquarters, they needed statistics. They needed statistics on casualties, war dead, food production, economic conditions etc. So they invented a method of gleaning those statistics from local German newspapers which their agents sent them.
From the obituary columns, they could extrapolate war casualty figures, but from the headlines, they could accurately guage the mood of the country.
Lets do some content analysis here in the Bahamas. Here is a sampling of yesterday's headlines:
* Mother Stabbed to Death on Kemp Road
* Web Shop Worker Shot, Killed
* Two Men in Court for Separate Murder Charges
* Young Men Charged With Murder
* Bird Flu Fears Grow
* Contract Signed for New Prison Facility
* Northern Bahamas on Alert as Wilma Approaches
* Water Problem Closes School
* Embassy Warns Americans in Bahamas About Rape
* Man Dies in Hit and Run
* Minister Vincent Peet "We Can't Handle Illegals Problem"
* School Brawl Filmed and Posted on Internet
There doesn't seem to be any joy in Mudville. Some of the headlines bear comment. We are glad that the high-tech web business is so good in the Bahamas that web workers carry around $5,000 in their pockets. (For non-Bahamian readers, there are Web Shops or Internet Cafes that are illegal gambling fronts that are semi-tolerated -- even uniformed police officers frequent them). And it's good to see that our students are getting enough of a high-tech education to burn videos of school brawls and post them on the web.
And the 26 rapes of American women by Bahamian men -- that een good. And the young men on the streets are engaged in open warfare with each other with the murders and killings.
The reason that we bring this up, and that various people have castigated us as being harbingers of doom. They say that our own economic analysis is flawed, and the Bahamas is not on the brink as we say, but chugging along as the government of Hairy Crisco Butt maintains.
We have always said, that the erosion will be gradual. We will not self-destruct with a big bang, but erode away with a whimper.
The decline is never noticeable at first. It nibbles away at the periphery. Like gasoline jumping to almost $5 a gallon. In the rest of the world, the price has subsided substantially. Crude is at a 15 week low, and yet we in the Bahamas are paying a 92 cent a gallon jump. Our pocketbooks are stretched and stretched in small increments, that we barely notice. Yet when we stop and take a minute to add it up, we can quantise the decline in our quality of living.
And it manifests itself in other ways. The number of murders inches up year by year. Social unrest and societal disorder increases in miniscule amounts. There are more and more neighbourhoods that we do not venture into. But we don't care as long as it is not at our front door.
And the cost of insurance rises, and medicines jump higher -- the list goes on. We can guarantee that if you are middle class Bahamian, you are not as living as well as you were 5 years ago.
The erosion is gradual as are the effects in your lives. But you learn to do without, and you tell yourself that it is just temporary and you carry on. This rut that we are on -- if truth be known, it is just the open end of a grave.
Little by little -- slipsliding away. And the evidence is in the newspapers in front of us. Content analysis.
Content Analysis
Allied Intelligence invented content analysis during WWII. At a time when they didn't have any spies in German Army headquarters, they needed statistics. They needed statistics on casualties, war dead, food production, economic conditions etc. So they invented a method of gleaning those statistics from local German newspapers which their agents sent them.
From the obituary columns, they could extrapolate war casualty figures, but from the headlines, they could accurately guage the mood of the country.
Lets do some content analysis here in the Bahamas. Here is a sampling of yesterday's headlines:
* Mother Stabbed to Death on Kemp Road
* Web Shop Worker Shot, Killed
* Two Men in Court for Separate Murder Charges
* Young Men Charged With Murder
* Bird Flu Fears Grow
* Contract Signed for New Prison Facility
* Northern Bahamas on Alert as Wilma Approaches
* Water Problem Closes School
* Embassy Warns Americans in Bahamas About Rape
* Man Dies in Hit and Run
* Minister Vincent Peet "We Can't Handle Illegals Problem"
* School Brawl Filmed and Posted on Internet
There doesn't seem to be any joy in Mudville. Some of the headlines bear comment. We are glad that the high-tech web business is so good in the Bahamas that web workers carry around $5,000 in their pockets. (For non-Bahamian readers, there are Web Shops or Internet Cafes that are illegal gambling fronts that are semi-tolerated -- even uniformed police officers frequent them). And it's good to see that our students are getting enough of a high-tech education to burn videos of school brawls and post them on the web.
And the 26 rapes of American women by Bahamian men -- that een good. And the young men on the streets are engaged in open warfare with each other with the murders and killings.
The reason that we bring this up, and that various people have castigated us as being harbingers of doom. They say that our own economic analysis is flawed, and the Bahamas is not on the brink as we say, but chugging along as the government of Hairy Crisco Butt maintains.
We have always said, that the erosion will be gradual. We will not self-destruct with a big bang, but erode away with a whimper.
The decline is never noticeable at first. It nibbles away at the periphery. Like gasoline jumping to almost $5 a gallon. In the rest of the world, the price has subsided substantially. Crude is at a 15 week low, and yet we in the Bahamas are paying a 92 cent a gallon jump. Our pocketbooks are stretched and stretched in small increments, that we barely notice. Yet when we stop and take a minute to add it up, we can quantise the decline in our quality of living.
And it manifests itself in other ways. The number of murders inches up year by year. Social unrest and societal disorder increases in miniscule amounts. There are more and more neighbourhoods that we do not venture into. But we don't care as long as it is not at our front door.
And the cost of insurance rises, and medicines jump higher -- the list goes on. We can guarantee that if you are middle class Bahamian, you are not as living as well as you were 5 years ago.
The erosion is gradual as are the effects in your lives. But you learn to do without, and you tell yourself that it is just temporary and you carry on. This rut that we are on -- if truth be known, it is just the open end of a grave.
Little by little -- slipsliding away. And the evidence is in the newspapers in front of us. Content analysis.