Cogito, who does some of the most astounding and in-depth research on global histories, just came out with an incredible documentary about the history of West Papua that changed the way I see it forever. I highly recommend it (and most of Cogito's work. Even his extensive citations are worth spending time with)
Really cool. I hope they succeed in establishing native rights to the forest before the logging companies make them extinct again.
nkoren 10 hours ago [-]
Okay, here's a West Papua mystery which the internet needs to become as interested in as I am. It was one of those random things that the Youtube algorithm pushed to me when it only had a few thousand views, and I can't stop thinking about it since: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpNKDCo23iM
tl;dr: very passionate young man develops a special interest in the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), and becomes convinced (not without some evidence) that it might still be alive in Western Papua. So he spends two and a half years preparing to Indiana Jones it into the mountains of Western Papua, and the video ends with him saying "I went". Cut to black. No part 2 was ever posted.
Damn, I really want to know how that story finishes. (I fear that "I went" actually meant "I'm going right now", with the intention that he would post part 2 upon his return. Which appears not to have happened.)
ycombinete 3 hours ago [-]
From what I can find, that video only contains per-expedition video. So the likelihood that he actually went is itself under doubt.
OneLeggedCat 9 hours ago [-]
Just clicked and watched that. Amazing really. I can't figure out what I believe about his sanity.
culi 12 hours ago [-]
It's incredibly difficult to do research in West Papua which is under very violent occupation by Indonesia, the US, Britain, South Korea, the Netherlands, and France. Foreign journalists and human rights monitors are basically completely barred. Much of this decades long conflict is around the US-owned Grasberg Mine
West/Indonesian Papua is not North Korea. Yes, travel in the interior requires permits (surat jalan) and you won't be let anywhere near the mine, but as a tourist you can fly in to any of the major cities with no questions asked and there's even an active tourism industry in the Baliem Valley.
11 hours ago [-]
triyambakam 15 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't be surprised if more such discoveries were found. Papua is, as best as I can describe it, insane.
abanana 15 hours ago [-]
Indeed, it seems the interior of the country is so little-known and so unspoiled by modern civilisation, it would be surprising if we don't have any unexpected discoveries coming out of there in the nearish future.
anon84873628 14 hours ago [-]
Not to get all internet indignant about it, but the island is currently split into two countries thanks to the colonization by Indonesia. Which human rights advocates and indigenous leaders consider to be a systematic ethnic cleansing and cultural erasure of the indigenous Melanesian Papuan population. Along with an ecocide driven by a toxic mix of military occupation, corporate exploitation, and resource extraction.
The situation in West Papua is essentially one of the least recognized humanitarian and ecological tragedies slowly happening right under our noses.
culi 12 hours ago [-]
The part people especially don't like to talk about is that Indonesia is acting as a proxy for the US, Britain, and France here. Readers of The Jakarta Method won't find this surprising but the scale here is astounding. The largest gold and copper mine in the world is here and it is owned by the US.
The US currently has 8,133.5 metric tons of gold which is more than the next 4 combined (Germany, Italy, France, and China). About 1,700 metric tonnes (out of an estimated total 4,720) has been extracted from West Papua by the US
jakzurr 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it's a complicated mess. I'm just going to link some of the New Guinea wiki articles:
Probably still lots of people being killed to keep Indonesia (and commercial interests) in control of Western New Guinea. I don't even pretend to understand it all.
mmooss 10 hours ago [-]
Is there a well-known, respected source? I see people talking about it, but someone's book and a Wikipedia article don't distinguish it from lots of fringe ideas, unfortunately. (I do know about Suharto, etc.)
asanineassasin 3 hours ago [-]
The invisibility of non western colonialism and non white bad actors to the western left is all you need to know, to know all about them. A ecocidal catastrophe and its of course all about us.
West papua is basically indonesia colonizing and other economic groupies having a having a free for all feeding frenzy.
graemep 2 minutes ago [-]
We do not have moral agency you see, so we cannot do anything bad.
We are just noble savages who need white saviours to save us from white baddies.
If we actually had choice and agency we might not even need white saviours to guide us.
red75prime 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
DoItToMe81 14 hours ago [-]
The military goes in and splits up their communities by murdering them on behalf of logging and mining companies.
red75prime 13 hours ago [-]
What it has to do with the "cultural erasure" I quoted specifically? "Who owns the land" is a different problem that is not made simpler by the fact that the land is subject to tribal conflicts.
jakzurr 4 hours ago [-]
I'm guessing some thought your previous comment hurtful. Well, maybe it was. I don't know if that's why you got flagged; maybe someone can explain that better.
You have to realize their culture is not being lost mainly from people wanting to leave for a more convenient life. These small communities are not just culturally isolated, the are also physically isolated.
People with modern weapons (The Indonesian National Armed Forces) can basically do whatever they want there. And according to Wikipedia, that's exactly what they've been doing:
Not for long. Tons of forests were burned to make way for more profitable crops
msuniverse2026 12 hours ago [-]
Always surprised when I see new animals discovered. Especially in tiny places like Borneo which seems to be the spawn point for new animals god is testing out.
hermitcrab 11 hours ago [-]
Tiny? Borneo is 723,154.07 km^2 and the 3rd largest island in the world.
antonvs 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
meindnoch 11 hours ago [-]
Borneo is 3x the size of the UK. It's about as large as Texas.
sidewndr46 10 hours ago [-]
Which is slightly larger than metropolitan France
motionlessveloc 4 hours ago [-]
Papua, not Borneo. Different islands, and both of them are huge.
meindnoch 11 hours ago [-]
So, now that we can observe them alive, how close are they to the reconstructions we've made based on the fossils?
15 hours ago [-]
hulitu 12 hours ago [-]
> thought extinct for 6000 years
Does this makes sense for an English speaker ?
bryanrasmussen 12 hours ago [-]
In British English it is totally reasonable and in fact relatively elegant, in American it might take a couple of seconds to figure out what was being said and it would seem ungainly for this reason.
On the British elegance: in British English one could of course use "thought to be extinct" and in these kinds of structures it has become common as a stylistic touch to drop the helping infinitive, "to be", considering it implied.
Myrmornis 5 hours ago [-]
Right. But, one says "X is thought extinct." or "X is thought to have been extinct for 6000 years" (or "gone extinct ... ago").
As written don't you think it begs the question (joke, fellow language pedant :) of who was doing the thinking that it was extinct over the course of those 6,000 years?
bryanrasmussen 1 hours ago [-]
if it was written "is thought" that would be wrong because it is not thought to be extinct, if it was written "was thought" then one would have the same problem of wondering who was doing that thinking.
The phrasing is pretty normal, however it might have been better handled with a comma between glider and thought - my personal preference.
This is one of the aesthetic qualities of English (the dropping of helping infinitives) that makes things like "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" or "Police Police police Police" possible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWp5904RkJY
This is an area where raising the West Papua can give you 15 years in prison.
Edit: this is flabbergasting. West Papuans are resisting combined forces of Indonesia, US, UK, with some 300 guns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_West_Papua
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict
sorry, too late to edit
tl;dr: very passionate young man develops a special interest in the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), and becomes convinced (not without some evidence) that it might still be alive in Western Papua. So he spends two and a half years preparing to Indiana Jones it into the mountains of Western Papua, and the video ends with him saying "I went". Cut to black. No part 2 was ever posted.
Damn, I really want to know how that story finishes. (I fear that "I went" actually meant "I'm going right now", with the intention that he would post part 2 upon his return. Which appears not to have happened.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine
The situation in West Papua is essentially one of the least recognized humanitarian and ecological tragedies slowly happening right under our noses.
The US currently has 8,133.5 metric tons of gold which is more than the next 4 combined (Germany, Italy, France, and China). About 1,700 metric tonnes (out of an estimated total 4,720) has been extracted from West Papua by the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea (the Eastern half; an independent state, technically a realm of King Charles III)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_New_Guinea (Indonesian since 1962)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Papua_(province) (The province in Western New Guinea where that giant mine is)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine (see parent comment; tons of ore)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict (still going on; horrific)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_West_Papua (proposal for independent state in place of Western New Guinea; likely a lot of politics and money involved in stopping it)
Probably still lots of people being killed to keep Indonesia (and commercial interests) in control of Western New Guinea. I don't even pretend to understand it all.
West papua is basically indonesia colonizing and other economic groupies having a having a free for all feeding frenzy.
We are just noble savages who need white saviours to save us from white baddies.
If we actually had choice and agency we might not even need white saviours to guide us.
You have to realize their culture is not being lost mainly from people wanting to leave for a more convenient life. These small communities are not just culturally isolated, the are also physically isolated.
People with modern weapons (The Indonesian National Armed Forces) can basically do whatever they want there. And according to Wikipedia, that's exactly what they've been doing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict
Not for long. Tons of forests were burned to make way for more profitable crops
Does this makes sense for an English speaker ?
On the British elegance: in British English one could of course use "thought to be extinct" and in these kinds of structures it has become common as a stylistic touch to drop the helping infinitive, "to be", considering it implied.
As written don't you think it begs the question (joke, fellow language pedant :) of who was doing the thinking that it was extinct over the course of those 6,000 years?
The phrasing is pretty normal, however it might have been better handled with a comma between glider and thought - my personal preference.
This is one of the aesthetic qualities of English (the dropping of helping infinitives) that makes things like "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" or "Police Police police Police" possible
https://medium.com/luminasticity/cardinality-and-growth-rate...
I appreciate it as an example of the whimsical toleration of ambiguity common to English.
Although maybe it should have been "Tiny possum and glider thought: 'Extinct for 6,000 years!'"
"Possum considered extinct for 6,000 years"