The Human Archipelago / L'Archipel humain

  ''Grand Sachem, do you know what's inside a woman's mind?'' ''Yes, of course. Can you be more precise?'' ''Can you tell me what the priorities of a woman are, Grand Sachem?'' ''That's easy. A woman has two priorities: first her bathroom, then her children, in that order.'' ''What about her husband, Grand Sachem? Surely, he must be a priority too?'' ''Yes, he is a priority for her, but he must compete with the furniture for the third spot.'' * * * PLUS:  @charles.millar3 (Twitter)

  The Five Eyes countries: the American Republic, and the four main British Kingdoms: the Australian Kingdom, the New Zealander Kingdom, the Canadian Kingdom, and the United Kingdom. Pearls and Irritations , a left-of-center Australian political blog, just published an article about the power wielded by state corporate news media in today's world, especially in the light of the current Gaza War. What is written there is all fine, true, and well, but it carries not enough weight in front of the onslaught of press coverage carrying the same lines every hour, every day, every week. And the same holds true with the current Ukrainian War. The Five Eyes don't just share information. They share ideas, reflexes, habits of thought, slogans, inclinations, biases, sentiments, opinions, mindsets, etc., all carried through the same medium: the English language. As everybody knows, that language has almost become the lingua franca of the whole planet, used on innumerable radio stations, ...

  One of the many visions of what increasingly looks like a Third World War, waged between China's allies and America's allies. It should be noted that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt are slated to become BRICS members next year, like Iran, Argentina, and Ethiopia, by the way, while South Africa  is already a member of that economic association. The well-known US magazine Foreign Affairs just published a very interesting article on the Israeli war against Hamas and asked pointed questions about the initial attacks executed by Hamas combatants toward Israeli civilians, especially about the lack of prior warnings from the State of Israel intelligence community. The first reason for the intelligence failure, I suspect, is that many intelligence (and army) officers had their attention fixed on internal threats (read: the far-right ultra-religious Israeli government itself), instead that on external threats. Besides that, the way the Israelis, the Americans, ...

  4 Territoire de la république de Djibouti) Wikipédia, 2023). Below, you will find an extremely interesting text about Ethiopia's possible future priorities once it became an official BRICS member on January 1st, 2024. Clearly, according to that document, there's a wish to initiate a political process aiming to federate the whole Horn of Africa region, which is to say: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia (including autonomous Puntland and Somaliland). Also, there's a clear and expressed need to find an oceanic outlet for Ethiopia, a country whose economy is booming and whose population will soon triple, reaching more than a third of a billion people in only a few decades. That outlet may take the form of a lease port in any of the other three countries forming the Horn of Africa, possibly through an exchange (possibly against a share to be determine in the Renaissance dam or in the national airline). Also, the importance of the unicity of the many nations living i...

  Les voies ferrées et projets de voies ferrées à l'époque coloniale (Wikipédia, octobre 2023) Une conversation avec un ami ouest-africain m'a permis de mieux comprendre certains éléments de l'actualité récente. La frontière entre le Bénin et le Niger est présentement fermée par Nyamey en guise de moyen de pression sur Porto-Novo. En conséquence, les camions ne passent plus et les conteneurs à destination du Niger s'accumulent dans le port de Cotonou. De la part de Nyamey, c'est une manière ponctuelle (et subtile) de signifier au gouvernement béninois à quel point le commerce entre les deux pays est important et bénéfique, pour l'un comme pour l'autre. Il y a probablement plus à tout cela, toutefois. Il s'agit sans doute aussi d'un geste visant à préparer des changements à plus long terme, au plan structural, dans les échanges qui existent entre les pays du Sahel et les ceux de la bande côtière (ou pays guinéens). Présentement, pour des raisons...