The Human Archipelago / L'Archipel humain

  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.''         ...

  Of the Association of Southeast Asian'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 of 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 be 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 between the two countries, the communist Vietnam and the capitalist Philippines and Chin...

  The 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 rivalry 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 negotiated between the Chinese and the British governments before the 1997 reintegration with China, and supposedly guaranteed for many decades. It is also true China didn't remain true to its word, and engineered a crackdown resisted by most of the population. Still, the territory is undeniably an integral part of China. More importantly, the article downplay...

  Down but not out... The United States Congress is considering modifications about the law that authorize the legal debt ceiling of that country. To be honest, that law is not the real problem, and worrying about it should be seen as irrelevant and a waste of time. The real problem is the growing debt itself and what to do about it. The US are already in default since January, and the Fed is just using tricks to keep things going. The Americans seems to be too politically divided to be able to devise a long-range plan to manage that debt and to start reducing it. The rise of the US national debt is a long-standing problem, growing slowly in the shadows for decades, and the recent Covid-19 virus has greatly made things even worst, boosting enormously the outlay of public funds. Even if, admittedly, it was just for a few years, the sanitary crisis aggravated further a debt problem that is far from being limited to just the US. With an actual (and very costly) war in Ukraine and a lo...

  The frontpage of the January 31st edition. What's the difference between the British Broadcasting Corporation, the official mouthpiece of the British government, and the  Volkischer Beobachter , the official mouthpiece of the Nationalsozialist Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)? In the first year of World War II (1939, 1940, 1941), when everything was going wrong for the Allies, with country after country falling to the fascists, military defeat following military defeat, bad news following bad news, when every indicator suggested that a terrible disaster was coming and inevitable, each time the British army got a beating and was trashed, the BBC announced that the British army got a beating and was trashed. In the last year of World Wat II (1942, 1943, 1944, 1945), when everything was going wrong for the fascists countries, conquest after conquest falling to the Allies, military defeat following military defeat, bad news following bad news, when every indicator suggested t...

  A)  SUR LA SURFACE DE TERRA   1.   DEUX GRANDS ENSEMBLES Deux grands ensembles commencent déjà à se dessiner sur la carte de Terra, la troisième planète de Sol. Ces ensembles pourraient se révéler aussi durables que ceux connus durant la guerre froide du XXe siècle et pourraient donc avoir la capacité de perdurer au cours des prochaines décennies, selon une forme plus ou moins semblable, au gré d'une évolution difficilement mesurable mais régie par divers phénomènes relatifs au temps long, notamment ceux liés à la démographie, à la sociologie et à la géographie, sans parler de la simple entropie des choses. Il y a loin de la coupe aux lèvres, dit-on couramment, et c'est tout à fait vrai, puisque la distance à franchir entre l'une et les autres et le temps requis pour y parvenir peuvent varier et se situer n'importe où entre le zéro et l'infini. Ce qui suit constitue donc ce que l'on pourrait appeler un risque calculé ou un essai raisonné, un genre de ...