Colonialism reloaded
Update: see a follow-on mini-series: 8a Lessons from Post-colonialism, 8b Our fearless youth is our future, 8c Downward mobility rules, 8d “Goes in swings and roundabouts” & 8e … Pt. 2, written after 9 A new World View &c. following in this Series. See also a series recap here and a series wrap-up here.
I’m a mapmaker, an amateur medievalist and interested in geo-history: how geography in general and maps in particular help illustrate our past in engaging ways. I also follow sites of similar interest, like the late geocurrents.info and the current decolonialatlas.com. I cannot help but notice, however, that since decolonisation ended mid last century by-and-large, no-one redrew the country borders to try and redress the situation — not only did colonial powers draw them for their benefit in an extended “Great Game”, but they also purposefully split indigenous nations to “divide & conquer” —redrawing borders is evidently not easy, as the Balkan wars attest to after Yugoslavia fell, but it shows that colonial attitudes are far from gone.
Ocean
So while egregious behaviour exists less on land than before, it certainly remains unabated in the oceans. It’s been well written up elsewhere that fishing hoovers up the ocean — a British expression meaning “sucks up everything like a vacuum cleaner” or a Hoover — with no concern for fish stocks. Atlantic cod stock may have recovered, but mining the sea floor, rushing to the Arctic as climate change opens up the ice and retrograde practices like resumed whaling make international waters the new Wild West.
There is however hope in many conservation efforts I needn’t repeat here. But National Geographic contributor Paul Nicklen posted this on Instagram — see the lovely video here — and the economics are staggering, if only done right:
Space
And while today’s Mars Rover landing may be exciting, what’s alarming is space colonialism, which doesn’t bode well for Earth’s custodianship by powers-that-be: In an interview on YouTube NASA live feed, a scientist already talked about mining water on Mars, “living off the land” etc… I just couldn’t believe my ears! Here’s the video, w “live off the land” @ 1:50:20.
Climate Emergency
Is it not high time we reconsidered our thinking? George Monbiot keeps repeating that we must reframe our questions and move the goal posts faster than the climate apologists do. Let me repost the end clip of his call to arms from two years ago — and the fact it appears in an irreverent comedy show in Britain shows how upside-down media reporting is in the absence of the mainstream — and a news channel was just launched to address that lacuna.
