The Human Archipelago / L'Archipel humain

  Down but not out... The United States Congress is considering modifications about the law that autorize 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 looming

  The frontpage of the January 31th edition. What's the difference between the Britich Brodacasting Corporation, the official mouthpiece of the British governement, 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 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 that

  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 courament, 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 tentative p

  The First Republic bank just failed and been gobbled up by a larger banking institution, following  a sudden drop in deposits. It was the third such bankruptcy in the banking sector in the last few months, on the territory of the United States, the most powerful economic power on the planet. We are probably not at the start of a crisis like the great financial crisis of 2008. Still, what is happening show the impact of high interest rates on the economy in general, especially for banks such as this one, but also for governments in particular. Our present governments have grown complacent, used to produce deficits as a matter of course, without anyone wincing, as if it is the normal thing to do, instead of producing a balanced public budget. It is not a futile matter. In fact, there is now, in front of our eyes, a growing house of cards that is waiting to fall. And fall it will, eventually. Modern representative democracy is doom to fail if things carry on in that manner. The mountain

Africa, as the craddle of mankind, may be seen as the center of the human universe. Recently, the magazine Nature (see below) published an interesting piece about the need to update our language. For exemple, the expression 'The New World' to designate the Americas is valid for people of European descent, but not to the original inhabitants of North and South America, for whom their lands were not a 'newly discovered place' but simply home... The idea is excellent, but its extent must be enlarged to all of what we now know about our species, our planet and our place in the universe. We have to rethink (and rename) everything. Let's do it in a methodical fashion. First, our species originated from Africa. It appeared there, lived there, evolved there, and, reather recently, relatively speasking, spread beyond it. 'Recently', because, if our whole history, whose duration spans millions of years, is reduced to a period of 24 hours, we've set foot out of Af

  (English follows) UN QUART DE MILLION DE LECTURES ! Mille mercis ! Les articles de la chronique L'Archipel humain, fondée en mars 2021, ont été lus un quart de million de fois. Cette chronique compte 298 articles pour le moment, celui-ci inclus, écrits en français et en anglais sur divers sujets d'actualité. La barre de la 250 000ième lecture a été franchie hier, le mardi 11 avril 2023, vers 17 h, selon le compteur interne du site. Les lecteurs et lectrices proviennent de partout dans le monde: 47 % sont du Canada, 38 % des États-Unis et 15 % d'autres pays, la moitié d'entre eux en Europe de l'Ouest (Allemagne, Royaume-Uni, France, Pays-Bas). La fréquentation du blogue est surtout concentrée dans les milieux consulaires et universitaires. La croissance a été lente au début et s'est accélérée progressivemente. Au cours des deux derniers mois, ce sont près de 2 000 lectures par jour qui ont été entregistrées, avec une pointe jusqu'à 4 000. Merci encore pour

One day, The day of your last breath, And of your last words, Lying on your last bed, With your children all around you, And their children, And the shadows of all the unborn children yet to be, Your hands in their hands, You will go peacefully, Unto the cold night, The long, dark, cold night, Toward the untold mysteries, Knowing that a part of you Will still lives Inside all of them, Under the Sun Of the Human Archipelago. CM

  The five permanent members of the Security Council: the United States of America,  the United Kingdom, France, Russia (the main successor state of the  Soviet Union)  and China. In the last years, many voices have asked for changes in the composition of the permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations, made up of the five winners of World War II: France, America, Russia, Britain and China. Those five occupied permanent seats and have a very important veto power. The Council also has seats occupied by other countries, on an elected basis and for a given period of time only. Mainly, those asking for changes were suggesting to gave the permanent seat presently occupied by Russia to another major power, usually India. Boris Johnson, when he was Prime minister of Britain, have made remarks about it, among others. Of course, the start of the Ukrainian invasion have gave the subject a broader appeal.  Last Thursday, for instance, the American ambassador to the UN, Linda T

  Tokyo's Asia Nikkei wrote an article not long ago about the new silk roads that were supposed to link China and Europe on land, one day, and be important vectors of prosperity. After a false start, those links seems to have fizzle away. First, it must be noted that, if some of those new silk roads used already existing railways, some others implied building new sections, an endeavour that takes time and is expensive. Before you start, you have to define a corridor, a long, thin piece of land that cross many countries and require the approval of many actors. Here and there, bridges and tunnels would have to be constructed. The existence of different gauges must be taken into account. The planning must also take into account the need for regular servicing and occasional repairing of the new tracts once they are constructed and put to use. That's probably why the network of maritime new silk roads was the first to be completed. It was simpler that way. China started with that n

LA FAMILLE OCCIDENTALE TRADITIONNELLE La famille occidentale traditionnelle est composée:  d'un couple, comprenant un père et une mère, accompagnés  d'un certain nombre d'enfants. LA FAMILLE OCCIDENTALE MODERNE Ce modèle traditionnel est évidemment complètement dépassé de nos jours. La famille occidentale moderne bouscule gaillardement les façons vieillottes de nos ancêtres et mise audacieusement sur les formules d'avant-garde, innovantes, créatrices, basées sur le principe de la liberté individuelle, sans aucune contrainte, inhibition ou retenue. La famille occidentale moderne est donc composée: d'un couple polyamoureux comprenant trois hommes, deux femmes, une personne non-binaire et une chèvre, accompagnés d'aucun enfant (trop de trouble).