True Left

South China Sea: Beijing opens hotpot restaurant on Woody Island in disputed Paracels chain
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Woody Island, known as Yongxing in China, is the largest outcrop in the group of about 30 islands making up the Paracels. Called Xisha in Chinese
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Beijing has also artificially built-up and heavily militarised the Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief reefs in the Spratly Islands

A lot of Western colonial names here that must be cease to be used ASAP:

The Amphitrite group was named after the French frigate Amphitrite
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The islands were first scientifically surveyed by Daniel Ross of the British East India Company in 1808.[38] The names of Duncan, Drummond, Money, Pattle and Roberts islands were all chosen in honor of senior figures in the East India Company.

Named after the 19th-century British whaling captain Richard Spratly

etc.

The U.S. Army renames a base in honor of Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black WWI hero

Louisiana's Fort Polk became the latest U.S. Army installation to shed its Confederate namesake on Tuesday when it was officially renamed Fort Johnson after a Black World War I hero.

The base now honors Sgt. William Henry Johnson, whose actions on the front lines in France earned him the nickname Black Death during his lifetime and a posthumous Medal of Honor nearly a century later.

"The Warrior Spirit that burned with in Sgt. William Henry Johnson now inspires generations of Soldiers — Soldiers that will now call JRTC and Fort Johnson home and Soldiers that will continue to come here from all over the nation and the world to train," said Brig. Gen. David Gardner, commanding general of Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Johnson, in a Facebook post.

Johnson's courage became the stuff of legend after the night of May 15, 1918, when he nearly single-handedly stopped German forces from approaching the main French line and taking his fellow soldier prisoner in the process.

He maintained a fierce defense during the surprise attack, continuing to fight even after being injured by enemy fire and running out of ammunition. Johnson turned to hand-to-hand combat and his bolo knife, eventually killing four German troops and wounding between 10 and 20 others, according to the National Museum of the United States Army.

"By the time what a reporter called 'The Battle of Henry Johnson' was over, Johnson had been wounded 21 times and had become the first American hero of World War I," says the U.S. Department of Defense...

Entire article: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182155304/fort-polk-renamed-william-henry-johnson-black-wwi-hero

Thank you!

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

Three Sacramento schools are getting new names as part of a rebrand away from the racist historical California figures they were named after, the Sacramento City Unified School District said.

SCUSD's board voted Thursday to rename Sutter Middle School, Peter Burnett Elementary School and Kit Carson International Academy, with the three being schools viewed as having “the most egregious school names,” according to the district.
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Sutter Middle School will be renamed Miwok Middle School in honor of the Miwok people who lived in the region when Europeans came to California.

Peter Burnett will be renamed Suy:u Elementary, which is pronounced: “suu you.” Suy: u is the Miwok name for "hawk." The name was inspired by recommendations from the school’s students and community members to call the school Red Tail Hawk Elementary.

Kit Carson is being renamed Umoja International Academy in a tribute to the first principal of Kwanzaa to strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
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As part of the proposal, members of the renaming committee produced short biographical profiles about Sutter, Carson and Burnett’s racist and exploitative behavior and a list of sources by historians.

“Sutter enslaved Native peoples by making war on local tribes, which provided him with a steady source of free labor for his enterprises as well as a source of income by which to reduce his debts through the sale of orphaned children,” the Sutter bio says.

The bio notes that some Miwok and Nisenan residents were drawn to his trading post for security, but then after beginning working for him, “the threat of violence prevented indigenous people from leaving, which meant their permanent enslavement.”

The section on Carson links the famous trapper and guide to the ambush of a village on the Sacramento River that killed several hundred people.

“Serving as Colonel John C. Frémont’s scout in California, in 1846 Kit Carson and Frémont’s men destroyed a village on the Sacramento River with artillery and rifle fire and then descended upon the village with swords, pistols, axes, and knives,” the bio says. “Anyone attempting to escape was chased down and murdered by mounted soldiers wielding Tomahawks.”

Carson later commanded an expedition against the Navajo, who refused removal to reservations.

That expedition “killed all Navajo men wherever they were found, burned crops, destroyed villages, slaughtered livestock,” among other actions.

Burnett, California’s first governor, is noted for first becoming the supreme judge of Oregon’s territorial government and advocating “for the total exclusion of all African Americans from the territory.”

He became known for authoring what was called “Burnett’s lash law,” which allowed the beating of any free Black people who refused to leave the territory.

The bio said that Burnett owned two slaves that he kept in California and also advocated for exclusion once he moved to the Golden State.

“Regarding California’s tribal communities, Burnett gave state money to local militias to exterminate the indigenous peoples and worked with the U.S. government to obtain the resources needed to carry out this genocide,” the bio says.

At last, it's not OK for school names to be "white"!

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/08/tribes-want-to-rename-ohios-wayne-national-forest-sen-jd-vance-does-not.html

WASHINGTON, D. C. – Native American tribes whom Gen. Anthony Wayne helped remove from Ohio more than 200 years now want to remove his name from the Southeast Ohio’s Wayne National Forest.
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A Forest Service press release said Wayne’s “complicated legacy includes leading a violent campaign against the Indigenous peoples of Ohio that resulted in their removal from their homelands,” and described the current forest name as “offensive because of this history of violence.”
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U.S. Sen. JD Vance on Thursday asked top Forest Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to oppose the change. In a letter to Agriculture Sec. Tom Vilsack and Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, Vance said the name change would denigrate Ohio history and represent “a lack of fidelity to our nation’s founding generation.”

See also:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/human-evolution/old-content/msg7380/#msg7380

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/leftist-vs-rightist-moral-circles/msg9760/#msg9760

Yes, "West Asia" is definitely the worse term by far, as most of "West Asia":



 is actually east of the accurate definition of Asia (shown in red):



making the name absurd to anyone who knows history. "West Asia" is also functionally worse because it excludes Egypt etc., unlike "Middle East":



On the other hand, Mashriq:



has the disadvantage of excluding Iran and Turkey. The best we can do is Rashidun:



I suppose we could try to promote the term "Greater Rashidun"?

Previously:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/issues/name-decolonization/msg728/#msg728

what does it say about a civilization that sees no problem with naming birds after the first humans who shot them?? Answer: it is Western. This story really succinctly captures how Western civilization interacts with everything it comes into contact with. The initiated violence, the utter lack of respect, the reflexive hubris, all in one package.
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here is a False Leftist on the issue:

Quote

    Should any birds be named after people? Some birders, like Nick Lund, didn’t want to end the honorific process altogether. “It’s fun to honor people, and add a sense of history,” he wrote at The Birdist, while stressing that offensive names should be changed. “If there's a bird named after some guy and it turns out that guy was a huge racist jerk, change the name!”

Lund may be against racism, but he is still a Westerner because he thinks it is "fun" to name non-humans after humans. A True Leftist, on the other hand, is effortlessly aware that it is disrespectful.

Quote

    Birders like Philadelphia’s Tony Croasdale have created lists of revised names, redubbing animals like Rivoli’s Hummingbird to Majestic Hummingbird or Harris’s Hawk to Pack-hunting Hawk.

Success:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/01/bird-names-racism-audubon/

After two years of discussion and debate, the nation’s premier birding organization has decided that birds should not have human names.
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The American Ornithological Society announced Wednesday that it will remove names given to North American birds in honor of people and replace them with monikers that better describe their plumage and other characteristics. The group said it will prioritize birds whose names trace to enslavers, white supremacists and robbers of Indigenous graves.
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Not every birder in the 2,700-member society is expected to welcome the news. Some who’ve memorized names established for more than a century are likely to push back. “Are we expecting that people won’t agree with this decision—sure,” Morris said. “But we’re proud of this decision.”

The American Ornothological Society just became more authentically American (ie. non-Western).

Good catch!

Astronomers say the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds should be given a new title because of their namesake's 'violent colonialist legacy'.

The dwarf galaxies, visible to the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere, have been known about for more than 1,000 years after being spotted by indigenous peoples across South America, Australia, and Africa.

But they are named after the 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed to have discovered them with his crew during his first circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522.
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Mia de los Reyes, an assistant professor of astronomy at Amherst College, Massachusetts, branded Magellan 'a coloniser, a slaver and a murderer'.

She added that he was 'no astronomer', nor was he the first to discover the galaxies because indigenous peoples had 'names and legends for these systems that predate Magellan by thousands of years'.

Professor de los Reyes said she and 'a coalition of astronomers' were calling for the scientific community to rename the clouds, 'as well as other astronomical objects, institutions, and facilities that bear his name'.   

A lunar crater, a Martian crater, NASA's Magellan spacecraft, the twin Magellan telescopes in Chile and the next-generation telescope under construction – called the Giant Magellan Telescope – are all named after the explorer.

'I and many other astronomers believe that astronomical objects and facilities should not be named after Magellan, or after anyone else with a violent colonialist legacy,' Professor de los Reyes wrote in the American Physical Society journal.

She said the explorer had murdered, enslaved and burned the homes of indigenous people during his circumnavigation, while also placing iron manacles on the 'youngest and best proportioned men' in what is now Argentina.
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The very first recorded mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud was by Persian astronomer Shirazi, in his Book of Fixed Stars around 964 AD.