{"id":17416,"date":"2020-12-11T01:10:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T08:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/politicalhat.com\/?p=17416"},"modified":"2020-12-11T01:10:20","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T08:10:20","slug":"anti-colonialism-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/2020\/12\/11\/anti-colonialism-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Colonialism in Space!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The following message was dropped off from a spaceship that looked like a DC-8 on its way to a volcano.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_13423\" style=\"width: 358px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13423\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13423\" src=\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/xenu981205072.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"348\" height=\"332\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-13423\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Thetan Equity Now!&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">It would seem that you Teegeeackians are finally listening to your Thetans and checking your Teegeeack privilege by treading lightly on the indigenous peoples of the Galactic Confederacy, as revealed in your \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/ftp\/arxiv\/papers\/2010\/2010.08344.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Working Group<\/a>\u201d!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>\u201cOur primary recommendation is that the planetary science decadal survey call on all <\/em><em>bodies involved in developing planetary protection policies to engage in a process of <\/em><em>community input to establish a robust reevaluation of the ethics of future crewed and <\/em><em>uncrewed missions to the Moon, Mars, and other planetary bodies with the intention of <\/em><em>developing anticolonial practices [\u2026] our second recommendation is that the planetary science and astrobiology community solicits planetary protection input through processes that are interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and include a multiplicity of epistemologies\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Yes, you dirty <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Thetan-riddled<\/span> <em>social justice minded<\/em> Teegeeackians <em>should<\/em> know better than to spread your numbers amongst us!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>\u201cColonial expansion and the trans-Atlantic slave trade have been foundational to our present world. What we call globalization \u2018is the culmination of a process that began with the constitution of America and the colonial\/modern Eurocentered capitalism as a new global power.\u2019 The result is a world where political and economic systems, namely capitalism, prioritize profit over human welfare, producing an environmental crisis and vast inequalities further compounded by climate change. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, \u2018[c]hoices were made that forged that path toward destruction of life itself&#8211;the moment in which we now live and die as our planet shrivels, over-heated.\u2019 Coloniality, the enduring system of domination born from colonialism that we are left with today, 8 is the product of those choices. Understanding what those choices were, and how we are on the precipice of making them again, is essential to ensuring an ethical, anticolonial framework for exploring space. Several of these mechanisms of colonial violence are of particular relevance, as they connect to current practices in space exploration, planetary science, and astrobiology today\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">This happened in our Galactic Confederacy until I, your gracious Galactic Overlord, solved this problem which is now your problem. Why we even decolonized the Confederacy by <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">abandoning your prison planet<\/span> decolonizing ourselves from your planet with its bountiful volcanoes. After all, I don\u2019t prioritize <em>our welfare<\/em> over profits! \u00a0 Do you know how much it costs in income tax inspections to gather billions of of souls and transport them in space-panes!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><!--more-->Some of your insights that I endorse and encourage include the following.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>\u201c<\/em>Biological Contamination and Ecological Devastation<em>: The spread of deadly pathogens was used as a form of biological warfare, playing a part in genocide against Indigenous peoples, both intentionally and unwittingly. Colonial expansion caused the population in the Americas to decrease by 90 percent, an enormous loss of life that the dispersal of these pathogens contributed to, alongside concerted warfare and the appropriation of land. All of these practices, including biological contamination, had an impact on the ecosystems Indigenous peoples were a part of&#8211;and the destruction of those environments provided an additional way to attack the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples. Settler colonial dominance can be described \u2018as violence that disrupts human relationships with the environment,\u2019 a framework that allows us to clearly see how coloniality continues to enact violence on Indigenous lives as well as many other communities through pollution and other environmentally-related effects.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Because humans before your \u201cEuropean Explorers\u201d never changed the ecology by coloning new lands, deforesting vast swaths of land, killed off macrofauna left and right, or infested a world with brainwashed Thetans. Yup, let\u2019s go with that. You shouldn\u2019t do that and bother us with your Thetans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>\u201c<\/em>Race Science<em>: Western science built the lie of racial difference that became a core justification underlying colonial expansion, the slave trade, and genocide against Indigenous peoples. White supremacy is a key aspect of almost all other forms of colonial violence and race science is fundamental to its logic to this day. [\u2026] Modern science is not immune from these antiquated notions&#8211; and science is often invoked to justify and extend racist power structures. There is even peer-reviewed literature replicating the arguments of eugenics&#8211;an ideology fundamentally tied to white supremacy in its pursuit of maximizing \u2018favorable characteristics\u2019&#8211;in discussions of how reproduction should be handled in future communities on Mars. Though the context of human space exploration is a different context with differing moral stakes, white supremacy and related systems of power, if left unchecked, can have deep impacts on future missions. Who we initially send to Mars, and how we come to that decision, will define the nature of those communities going forward.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Don\u2019t let the fact that colonizing a barren moon or building a colony in a hollowed out chuck of asteroid is nothing like slavery or genocide\u2014let alone that explorers from your \u201cEurope\u201d did so to find trade routes, that slavery was an indigenous practice that they adopted, or that your humans have been slaughtering each other for 76 million years\u2014get in the way of never wanting to do it again. After all, you wouldn\u2019t want to enslave or even genocide the Thetans, right?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>\u201c<\/em>Commodification and Appropriation of Land and Resource Extraction<em>: The commodification of land through extractive practices has led to significant disruption of the ecosystems that Indigenous communities rely upon for their livelihoods. Examples of extractive exploitation and colonialism abound; while many people in the US think only of the gold rush, mining of rare minerals in Central and South America and Africa incentivize and continue to accelerate colonial expansion even today. Agricultural practices throughout the colonial world have been and continue to be damaging, transforming environments and destroying human lives and cultures. From cotton fields in the American south to sugar plantations and rubber tappers in Brazil, the combination of land and people as property was key to the generation of wealth that built up the Western world.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">We are already using everything in our Galactic Confederacy. It\u2019s ours\u2026 OURS! You keep you hands off or I\u2019ll prep some more <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">atomic blasts detonated in volcano craters<\/span> <em>peaceful missives while you listen to your inner Thetans<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\" style=\"text-align: justify\">Public-Private Partnerships as a Colonial Structure<em>: Private individuals and institutions, in collaboration with governments, are a key aspect of the colonial structure. For example, the East India Company was fundamental to British expansion across the Eastern hemisphere and took a central role in colonial domination and political control as well as trade. More recent examples include the influence of American fruit companies in the United States\u2019 interventions into Latin American politics during the Cold War. In the United States, treaties signed with Native American nations have repeatedly been broken, often by settler colonialist individuals working in tandem with the US government and military. The Dakota Access Pipeline, a modern reframing of the ongoing Indigenous demand to honor the Black Hills Treaty, illustrates how capitalist interest intersects with colonialism today.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">That\u2019s exactly how those so-called \u201cLoyal Officers\u201d worked and acted. Don\u2019t do that. That\u2019s bad and colonialist and stuff.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quite informative. \u00a0 Don\u2019t forget to hug your Thetan!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><!--more-->&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The full report, \u201cEthical Exploration and the Role of Planetary Protection in Disrupting Colonial Practices\u201d can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/ftp\/arxiv\/papers\/2010\/2010.08344.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a> or below.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"scribd_iframe_embed\" title=\"Ethical Exploration and the Role of Planetary Protection in Disrupting Colonial Practices\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/embeds\/487021138\/content?start_page=1&#038;view_mode=scroll&#038;access_key=key-PRIkHR4GnVHA73EBEHx0\" data-auto-height=\"true\" data-aspect-ratio=\"0.7729220222793488\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"600\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p  style=\"   margin: 12px auto 6px auto;   font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;   font-style: normal;   font-variant: normal;   font-weight: normal;   font-size: 14px;   line-height: normal;   font-size-adjust: none;   font-stretch: normal;   -x-system-font: none;   display: block;\"   ><a title=\"View Ethical Exploration and the Role of Planetary Protection in Disrupting Colonial Practices on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/487021138\/Ethical-Exploration-and-the-Role-of-Planetary-Protection-in-Disrupting-Colonial-Practices#from_embed\"  style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ethical Exploration and the&#8230;<\/a> by <a title=\"View ThePoliticalHat's profile on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/user\/188606198\/ThePoliticalHat#from_embed\"  style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">ThePoliticalHat<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/><meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@PoliticHatBlog\" \/><meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ThePoliticalHat\" \/><meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Anti-Colonialism in Space!\"\/><meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"The following message was dropped off from a spaceship that looked like a DC-8 on its way to a volcano.\" \/><meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/xenu981205072.gif\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The following message was dropped off from a spaceship that looked like a DC-8 on its way to a volcano. It would seem that you Teegeeackians are finally listening to your Thetans and checking your Teegeeack privilege by treading lightly &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/2020\/12\/11\/anti-colonialism-in-space\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[70,24,64,86,48],"class_list":["post-17416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-progressives","category-science","tag-facepalm","tag-leviathan","tag-lulz","tag-science","tag-social-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17416"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17442,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17416\/revisions\/17442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}