Changing…

…not the territory

Your Eyewitness is reminded of a wonderful old philosophical warning, attributed to Korzybski – and later embraced by the postmodern woke establishment – “The map is not the territory.” It was meant to remind us that a representation of reality ain’t ever reality itself!! Unfortunately, some folks at the UN seem to have read the warning backwards!! They’re redrawing the map of the world to show Africa’s real size – as if changing the colours, boundaries, labels, and perhaps the politically approved vocabulary of the atlas will somehow persuade the WORLD to change Africa with it!!
This is postmodernism with a UN stationery budget!! Seems if a boundary has the wrong historical pedigree, hey, redraw it; if it appears too large or too small, adjust the cartography – like with Africa!! And if the map reflects an uncomfortable political reality – as it does with Africa – the “obvious” solution is to produce a more comfortable map!! The problem is that Africa’s already been through the mill with maps!!
European powers drew lines across Africa with rulers, pencils, and imperial treaties – with absolutely no regard for the people who lived on either side!! Think Ethiopia and Eretria!! Those lines subsequently became international borders, and generations of Africans have been living with the consequences!! Think Congo!! Now comes the delicious historical irony: after decades of warning Africans about the dangers of colonial cartography, the international community’s once again discovering the transformative power of cartography!!
Will anything actually change? Will the farmer in northern Ghana harvest more maize because somebody’s adjusted the map or the child in rural Niger get clean water because Africa’s now “right-sized”? And what’s gonna happen to the depressing African realities that refuse to cooperate with the new cartography? The great African paradox is the continent don’t suffer from a shortage of maps – it suffers from a shortage of infrastructure, investment, productive employment, accountable institutions, and electricity!!
You can redraw Africa till “thy kingdom come” and still not generate a single kilowatt-hour of power!! Now, there’s nothing wrong with correcting historical distortions, but maps are instruments for DESCRIBING political reality – not magic carpets for transporting populations into prosperity!! And that’s where the UN’s cartographic enthusiasm becomes comic!! The postmodern insight was, ‘Don’t confuse the map with the reality,’ but the UN’s interpretation is that we don’t like what’s happened to the territory; change the map!!
Perhaps the next General Assembly might dispense with maps altogether, and Africa could simply be represented by a gigantic blank sheet of paper!! Then everyone could agree that it’s historically accurate, politically inclusive, geographically non-threatening and free of colonial assumptions!!
In the meantime, somewhere in Africa, somebody’s still waiting for a road.
And that, unfortunately, is the territory!!

…Venezuelan irony
Venezuela’s produced one of those delicious ironies that political history occasionally throws up: a woman who spent years cultivating Washington has been eclipsed by another woman who spent years cussing it out!! María Corina Machado – who just showed up in Caracas!! – positioned herself as Venezuela’s natural post-Maduro leader – fiercely anti-Chavista, pro-market and openly aligned with the US. Her expectation was that when the Maduro regime finally fell, she’d inherit the political kingdom!!
Instead, it was Devious Delcy – a Chavista establishment veteran and hard-core critic of Washington – who inherited the Govt!! She slyly deals with Washington by presiding over a Venezuela whose enormous oil reserves have suddenly made pragmatic engagement more important than ideological purity!! That’s the supreme Venezuelan joke!!
The woman who expected Washington to deliver the kingdom is still waiting at the palace gates – and the Marxist revolutionary has inherited the palace!! The Yanks better learn from their (bitter) experience in trusting ideological enemies in Afghanistan, etc!!
They shouldn’t forget their old friend out in the courtyard!!

…the CPL script
Our Warriors have marched into the CPL finals undefeated – by dealing with every challenge thrown at them. The fans now have an opportunity of doing what they’ve historically done – show up in numbers at Providence!!