The Indigenous Shasta Nation of California just won 2800 acres of their land back after 100 yrs, the largest in California #history! And, California is paying for it!
It's part of the Klamath River dam removal project, an ecological project which revives a 300 mile salmon habitat! Shasta land was stolen in the 1848 Gold Rush & 1911 by imminent domain for the Copco No 1 Dam. Shasta chairman Janice Crowe said “Today is a turning point in the history of the Shasta people” #news#indigenous#uspol
Around 50 years ago, our rulers chose to begin a massive project, essentially conducting a unique scientific experiment, one with potentially foreseen but possibly unpredictable outcomes.
They decided to go all out in (1) extracting fuels buried deep in the Earth, energy from the sun stored via photosynthesis and animal metabolism over a span of 500 million years as coal, oil, and gas, and then (2) burning all of this they could find in the brief period of a few decades.
Our rulers were warned by scientists that their project involved serious risk, but they figured the power they could gain and the money they could make was worth any cost. They didn't care about the negative consequences, and/or foolishly believed that future technologies (still a fantasy in the year 2024) would somehow be able to fix whatever problems their actions caused.
And now, guess what — we're seeing signs that this experiment might be out of control. Feedback loops are kicking in, causing "natural" emissions which could trigger cascading effects, breaking down the ecosystem. It also appears that Earth's climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than first believed. Yet our rulers still continue to recklessly burn fossil fuels, always drilling and fracking for more, hungry for power and compelled by greed.
At this point, it’s a race between the consequences being sharp enough to take out the modern world vs them being sharp enough to crash almost all ecosystems.
"Any time you find yourself, as a worker, rooting for the same policy as your boss, you should check and make sure you're on the right side of #history."
Today is International Day of Women in Diplomacy! #emdiplomacy was by no means an all male affaire. Women played a central role not only in mainting contacts to the queen's court and other female actors. They could also directly take part in negotiations, as the example of the Ladies' Peace of Cambrai (1529) shows. Here Margaret of Austria and Louise of Savoy negotiated for the Emperor and the king of France respectively.
If you want to know more, have a look at the #handbook article by Carolyn James who talks about female diplomatic actors.
I find it strange that royal marriages are often seen as the CONCLUSION of a treaty/diplomatic process. Surely marrying one's daughter or sister to another king or prince is the BEGINNING of having a close ally permanently placed at the heart of a foreign court - with direct, privy access.
That's true. In general, a treaty might be the conclusion of the negotiations leading up to it, but it's never the end. It's often the beginning of an alliance or a relation on the basis of peace instead of war. In case of marriage treaties it's even closer.
Hm, #TIL about the "most widespread security incident in the history of the Web", when in 1999 a security flaw in Hotmail was revealed that permitted anybody to log in to any Hotmail account using the password "eh".
Finnane & Richards in the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review investigate the evidence of genocide against First Nations on the Queensland frontier 1859-1897. They argue that the impact of colonisation needs to be studied carefully using local sources. https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12278
... in the 1930s, wealthy Germans who saw the Nazi party as a “battering ram” against trade unions and socialists were persuaded to overlook Hitler’s antisemitism because it allowed the market system to flourish."
... a lot of German elites said to themselves: we’re quite happy funding Hitler because his street fighters will help crush the trade unions, so that we can make more profits.”
@antipode77@bookstodon “The Nazis are just a gang of stupid hooligans, but they do serve a purpose. Let them get rid of the communists, later we’ll be able to control them.” - Baron Maximilian von Heune, in the film CABARET
After 1639, foreigners were not allowed to enter Japan, and Japanese people were not allowed to travel abroad. Japan would remain closed off to the world for more than two centuries.
Well, sort of. The truth was much more complicated, centering on a weird little man-made island in Nagasaki Harbor. Dejima was a sort of jail and a site of fascinating cultural exchange.
Volunteer Louise Pengelley shows a page from the 1638 Mercator Atlas to delegates of the Societies of Antiquaries of Ireland and Scotland today at the delightful Library of Innerpeffray, Scotland’s oldest free lending library - established 1680! https://innerpeffraylibrary.co.uk
That's helped me find it with a double T: “The vulgar word for a skeleton.” and also a verb:
“ To be ottomised; to be dissected. You'll be scragged, ottomised, and grin in a glass case: you'll be hanged, anatomised, and your skeleton kept in a glass case at Surgeons' Hall.’