The Human Archipelago / L'Archipel humain

  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 ...

  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. 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 of debts t...

  (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, 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 progressivement. Au cours des deux derniers mois, ce sont près de 2 000 lectures par jour qui ont été enregistrées, avec une pointe jusqu'à 4 000. Merci encore pour votre fidélité...

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...

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 give 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 has gave the subject a broader appeal.  Last Thursday, for instance, the American ambass...