No update today, will be able to continue tomorrow.
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
It has had a pretty small population, due to the climate, but they do exist. And from what I remember, they are somewhat distant cousins of some of the First Nations in Canada, with some researchers currently investigating lingustic connections between the two. Only the problem is that up until fairly recently, both Denmark and Canada had extremely restrictive language laws regarding indigenous languages, which definitely does impact the ability to gather data.
The indigenous folks of Greenland are Inuit, so they're pretty close cousins of the Inuit in Canada. They're part of the same cultural migration that spread throughout that whole region starting in about 1300 CE. It's the fact that the Inuit are relative newcomers to the area that they aren't called First Nations in Canada. It's also why the Norse describe Greenland as being uninhabited - because it largely was uninhabited when they settled the coast there.
I thought they described the place as uninhabited because the indigenous population largely didn't live near the areas that the Vikings choose to settle near, since Greenland was just a stop on the way further west. And the climate / geography of Greenland makes it incredibly dangerous to attempt to explore, so the vikings just assumed nobody could survive in a place like that.
deleted by creator
You're close. The Norse settled mostly on the west coast, with the Thule culture mostly way up in the north, having spread there from the Canadian Archipelago. So not only was there a lot of ice, but also most of Greenland, between them. That being said, there were accounts of them meeting, but it wasn't a massive cultural exchange, suggesting that whatever trade or contact existed was relatively limited.
deleted by creator
From what I remember of that geography, the eastern coast is fucking rough. All the cities are on the west coast, cause it's less frozen over lol.
deleted by creator
Not sure what else they should be called. Calling them settlements seems weird, but yeah, they are absolutely tiny. Greenland only has a population of about 55k, with about a third of them living within the capital.
I just looked up the wiki entry. It seems like they had a few different ethnic groups on the island, which vanished or replaced one another up to the Danish conquest. Interesting stuff
Another very fun fact, is that for historical reasons, Greenland is under the direct administration of the Prime Minister, and is thus seen as a thing that runs itself, and doesn't get a dedicated department / minister to run it. Because of that, the actual administration from Denmark is mostly hands-off, at least thats the way it's portrayed here (although that might just be because it's a litteral colony and we prefer not to talk about those). There is a royal protector / administrator in place, who is supposed to function as a bridge between the Danish government and the indigenous parliament who are nominally in charge of most things on the island.
deleted by creator
Our system was probably modeled on the UK's, since we didn't abolish the colonial status of Greenland until 1953, when we had our big constitional update. So i think the similarities are entirely intentioned.
The Danish constitution was based on the Belgian 1831 constitution that served as a model for many liberal systems during the 1800's. Since liberal democracy replaced absolutism with little to no fighting, the civil service continued mostly unchanged after the abolition of absolutism.
The legal system of Denmark is continental and a lot more like that of Germany or France than the British common law system that has no written constitution and relies much more on legal precedent than continental systems.
As for Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Danish kings had inherited the Norwegian claim on the island, back from the Norse settlements. For centuries nothing much happened but in the late 1700's colonisation started as a few trading and mission posts. Eventually all of Kalaallit Nunaat came under Danish control as a colony and Inuit religion was eradicated.
In 1931 Norway claimed eastern Kalaallit Nunaat under the terra nullus doctrine but lost the case at the Permanent Court of International Justice. Because of this a small patrol of Danish special forces travels up and down the east coast each year to assert sovereignty and thus keep the Norwegian menace at bay.
During WWII Kalaallit Nunaat was occupied by yanks and ruled from the Danish embassy in Washington, independently from Nazi-occupied Copenhagen. Until then the island had been very isolated with the Danish government having the monopoly on all trade. In 1950 the Yankees were allowed to build the Thule Air Base, for the purpose of which the nearby village of Qaanaaq was forcibly relocated hundreds of kilometres away.
In 1953 Denmark annexed Kalaallit Nunaat and made it a county of Denmark, granting the inhabitants citizenship and giving the island two seats in the Danish parliament. Until the grant of limited home rule in 1979 the Danish colonists embarked on a policy of what was called modernisation but which was a period of unashamed cultural imperialism and forced assimilation. The use of the inuit language was discouraged and the colonisers tried to turn hunter-gatherer Inuits into wage-earning Danes. Children were abducted and put in boarding schools in Denmark and public administration, police and health services were staffed by Danes who refused to learn the language.
A lot of the attempts to "civilize" the Inuits were done with little regards for local conditions. For instance the Danes built a big housing block in the capital city of Nuuk. It would have been a perfectly good housing block in Denmark but it didn't work in Kalaallit Nunaat. The doors were too narrow for people wearing arctic gear to enter and the drains couldn't handle the blood from butchering seals.
Home rule improved the situation somewhat, especially following its expansion in 2009 but the country remains heavily affected by imperialism. Most of the cops, the civil servants, teachers and healthcare professionals are Danes who doesn't speak Inuit, the nation is significantly poorer than Denmark and is plagued by symptoms of a broken society like brain drain, corruption, alcoholism and child abuse. Economically the nation remains dependent on fisheries and Danish aid with hopes of building wealth through resource extraction failing to materialise.
Officially Kalaallit Nunaat is an equal part of the Danish realm but reality is different. Inuit in Denmark face racist stereotypes in Denmark, schools in Kalaallit Nunaat teach Danish while Danes know virtually nothing about the Inuit language, and although formally being Danish citizens there have been next to no Inuits occupying high offices of the Danish state, no supreme court judges, no chiefs of staff, no ambassadors, no generals, no fancylands at the royal court. The average Dane sees Kalaallit Nunaat as a liability and doesn't realise the geopolitical weight the nation gives Denmark. On the bright side this also means that there's is no Danish opposition to speak of to the idea of independence for Kalaallit Nunaat.