The Human Archipelago / L'Archipel humain

  When I was younger, a boy of 10 or 11, or more likely 13 or 14, I'm not too sure, I daydreamed a lot. Like most young boys of that age, I would suppose, I saw myself as a kind of hero, brave and pure of heart, swashbuckling my way through life... I often dreamed myself to be a naval officer, in command of wooden ships-of-war, with tall masts and white sails, gliding upon the high seas, always on the look-out for enemy ships. A particular daydream of mine was to go into the Northern Sea, with a small fleet of those ships, then follow a narrow passage leading into a great bay, a hiding place where the dreaded, hereditary enemy lurked... Then and there, I will battle against enemy ships, capturing them or sinking them, fighting with big, black cannons that hurled big, black balls at great distance, trying to outgun good crews led by tenacious captains. Then and there, I will land with my men, in small embarcations, near this or that enemy fort, besieging it and taking it by storm, i

  Carte montrant les cinq pays composant actuellement le BRICS: Brésil, Russie, Inde, Chine et Afrique du Sud. Trois d'entre eux sont en Eurasie et appartiennent aussi à l'OCS. En date du 23 mai 2023, quelques mois avant la conférence d'août du BRICS qui statuera sur les nouveaux membres et sur la nouvelle monnaie qui servira aux échanges entre les participants, voici la vaste étendue des membres actuels et des trente pays qui souhaitent devenir membres. Il n'est pas impossible qu'un jpur, toute l'Asie continentale, l'Afrique et l'Amérique latine soit colorée en rouge... Carte montrant les pays participant à l'Organisation de coopération de Shanghai. En vert foncé: les membres. En vert pâle: les observateurs. En jaune: les partenaires de dialogue. On parle beaucoup du groupe des pays du BRICS par les temps qui courent: plusieurs pays du Sud Global veulent s'y joindre, une monnaie utilisée pour les échanges entre les membres pourrait voir le jour,

  The excellent US publication Foreign Affairs just published an article about the fentanyl epidemic, one of the many social ills afflicting American society. The main weakness of the article is that the real problem is not supply, but demand, more precisely : the use and overuse of fentanyl. In a larger sense, the real problem about demand is that it exist in the first place. What's or who's to blame for that catastrophe? And what's or who's to blame for all the other social ilnesses of American society (high crime rates, drug use, marital instability, low birth rate, sexual deviations of all kinds, etc.)? The main culprit for all that is something that as been overtly and willingly promoted, in the Western world in general, but in the US in particular, since at least 1945. Excessive individualism is the key to understand everything. At the juncture of the end of the Second World War, and the beginning of the Cold War, the United States found itself opposite of the So

  Récemment, une publication française (ci-dessous) a fait état des projets d'implantation d'usines de batteries chinoises en Europe, des installations de grande envergure, notamment (mais pas uniquement) une grosse unité en Allemagne et, surtout, une encore plus grosse en Hongrie. L'usine de Hongrie, viisblement, c'est pour séduire l'Europe orientrale, très pro-américaine, tout en accommodant un gouvernement quasi pro-russe. Celle d'Allemagne, elle, vise à desservir le coeur industriel de l'Europe, ce pays était un éléme du tandem franco-allemand, véritable noyau de la construction européenne et bipôle incontournable de l'Union européenne (UE). La lecture de l'article soulève une question inévitable: pourquoi des usines de batteries, mais pas des chaînes d'assemblage, pourtant en cours de déploiement dans le sud-est asiatique ? Les joueurs de go que sont les Chinois ne placent pourtant aucune pierre sur la grille sans une mûre réflexion préalab

  The gradual spread of Austronesian tribes, nations and peoples in the Pacific and Indian oceans, in the last five thousand years (source: Wikipedia, 2023). It should ne noted that the Austronesians are present in Melanesia, but that the bulk of the people living in that area is made up of pre-Austronesian, black populations, loosely related to Australian Aboriginals. The Polynesian Triangle is formed by  three points located in New Zealand (Maoris), Easter Island (Pascuans) and the archipelago of Hawaii (native Hawaiians). The related peoples living in Micronesia are to the north-west of it, while, to the west, lies Melanesia, whose older black-skinned populations, as said above, is akin to Australia's Aboriginals and a series of smaller tribes and nations still living in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Yemen and the Philippines (forming a kind of living bridge between Africa and Australia). The Malay Universe covers the present countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and

  Il, elle, iel? ''Non-binarité  est un terme générique utilisé en sciences sociales et dans le lexique LGBT+ pour catégoriser les différentes identités de genre  non binaires  ou  genderqueer  qui ne s'inscrivent pas dans une norme binaire, c'est-à-dire que les personnes non binaires ou  genderqueer  ne s'identifient ni strictement homme, ni strictement femme, mais entre les deux, un mélange des deux, ou aucun des deux. Les personnes non binaires peuvent choisir d'adopter des pronoms personnels différents pour se désigner, changer de prénom, adopter une expression de genre différente de celle de leur genre assigné à la naissance. En plus d'une éventuelle transition sociale, certaines choisissent également de réaliser une transition médicale. La non-binarité est rarement reconnue officiellement ; quelques pays reconnaissent un genre non binaire dans leur état civil.''        (Wikipédia en langue française, mai 2023) Depuis quelques années, il est de

  Of the Association of Southeast Asia's ten countries, Vietnam and the Philippines seem to be coalescing into two key US allies in its growing rivalry with the People's Republic of China. One thing that's common to both ot them is the deep impression left by America on their populations. Vietnam was, of course, the site of the war of the same name, with millions of deaths (mainly on the Vietnamese side), uncounted damages and untold suffering. America's military might certainly was visible for everyone to see, back then. As for the filipino republic, it used to be America's only colony, having been taken from Spain in what may have been a made-up war (given the mysterious and still-unexplained blow-up of the Maine battleship). Among other notable territories captured through that war, and still held by the USA, one can mention Guam and Puerto Rico. Add to all that, the conflict betwen the two countries, the communist Vietnam and the capitalist Philippines and Chin

  Th British-based The Economist, widely considered to be a sort of Bible in the world of contemporary capitalism, just published a very interesting article about the growing rivaly between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. It is very enlightening and well-informed, and may constitute the way the Western world see the enfolding event. Yet, a few notes and corrections are in order. Some are somewhat minor. The article seems to imply that Hong Kong is not truly inside the political borders of continental China. It is true that it is a special administrative territory, with a autonomous status negociated between the Chinese and the British governements before the 1997 reinegration with China, and supposedly garanteed for many decades. It is also true China didn't remained true to its word, and engineered a crackdown resisted by most of the population. Still, the territory is indeniably an integral part of China. More importantly, the article downplay