GeoCombat2050

The four former British colonies—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US (CANZUS)—stand tall on the world stage. They champion the Western values of freedom, human rights, and justice in their global crusades against autocracy. Sharing a common culture and language, they have come to incarnate the supreme form of human government. Despite the effusive praise for CANZUS, the dominant narrative ignores some ugly truths, those of intercontinental invasions, continental genocides, and continuous exploitation of stolen land. In all four countries, colonists and governments proceeded with systematically wiping out the Indigenous peoples. Once roaming the vast expanse of wilderness in the US, Indian tribes such as the Cherokee, Navajo, and Cheyenne were exterminated through warfare and diseases, while others went extinct. It is estimated that 12 million natives died between 1492 and 1900. The US federal government removed the Indigenous survivors from their lands and moved them to reservat...

Pablo Picasso and Christopher Columbus -- two household names in all four corners of the world. One is a twentieth-century Spanish artist whose painting, La Guernica, stands as a universal condemnation of war atrocities. The other an Italian explorer, credited for discovering the New World in 1492. Discussing these two men here seems to do justice to neither one of them. What would Picasso, widely admired for his artistic talents, have anything to do with Columbus, a controversial figure lauded or despised for his actions? Despite their differences, these two European men share something in common: Their hubris, that is, their conviction that what they did represented humanity, and their neglect of people that do not belong to the same race. Prominently featured in Picasso's painting La Guernica is the killing of innocent women and children in wars. Despair, suffering, and death fill the gray, black, and white canvas, which shows a screaming woman in front of a house on fire, anoth...