The Future

 I have seen the future and am disappointed. Fifty years ago I was a member of TAHAL's consulting team in Nicaragua. Among our projects, Afik wrote the Atlantic Coast Development Project, dealing with extensive mapping of soils and planning rational economic enterprises. The Atlantic Coast was about 70% of Nicaragua's surface, a vast tropical forest extending to the city of Limon. I asked the internet what happened in these fifty years and was amazed to read about woke stories of "settlers" usurping native lands. The only natives were the Moskito - small settlements of African slaves marooned on the Caribbean coast. We Israelis were among the first professionals mapping and planning the development of those diseased, malarial jungles. 

Looking at the same place from the future (today), I found the Costa Atlantica semi-deforested by mestizo cattle farmers, with a developed frozen meat industry selling to the US market. It had happened spontaneously; Afik's plan had been long forgotten. Current issues were dealing with "Native" land rights, and sustainability accusations by American "woke" groups. They were demanding certificates of origin of the meat, that is identifying the "hacienda" that sold the cattle, and a certificate that it was "woke" in the sense that it was ecologically sustainable, not a "settler" farm on the new-fangled Biosphere Reserve, and so on - following the Save the Earth ideology. They were demanding that the US stop importing Nicaraguan meat considered immoral and harmful to the planet. 

BTW, the "settlers" are mixed-blood Nicaraguans, certainly not Europeans. Those White Americans' impositions may be interpreted as a form of imperial interference.  

 The Future II: Argentina vs Brazil

When I was in high school in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Brazil were more or less equal. Those were times of military dictatorship and the papers used to compare their military powers. Argentine was worried that its traditional rival was growing faster and leaving behind the country. Fifty years after, today, Brazil's population and economy are five times larger than Argentina's. I have no data on their military.