WE NEED to talk about independence. No, not here in Scotia Minor, silly. Somewhere inhab-ited by normal people: Mars.

Yes, we haven’t even set foot in the place yet and already the debate has begun, with one as-trobiologist calling for future colonists of the Red Planet to have independence from Earth con-trol.

In what the Washington-based Smithsonian Institution reports as “a manifesto of sorts”, Jacob Haqq-Misra has put forward the case for the colonists to develop their own value systems and political culture, pretty much from the moment their first brogue takes a giant step onto the plan-et.

Writing in the journal New Space, Haqq-Misra proposes that, even before take-off, we should “liberate Mars from any controlling interests of Earth and allow Martian settlements to develop into a second independent instance of human civilisation”. I see.

Well, they’ll probably have to make the best of things on their own anyway, even while they remained dependent on Mother Earth for fresh supplies of bridies and underwear. Proper Mars indie might have to wait they’ve bedded in a bit, I fear, and can grown their own canteloupes.

You’d hope they could avoid a Mindie ref, too, as it could lead to tensions and an Interplane-tary Project Fear orchestrated by Washington. Answers would be demanded of the colonists: how are you going to do this, how are you going to run that, who’ll fund this, what’ll happen to that?

Precise figures will be sought for urine-to-water ratios 35 years hence. And, of course, the colonists will be accused of being fascists, racists, planetists and cultists.

None of which will matter much because Mars, like Earth, will really be controlled by big cor-porations anyway. Sarah Fecht, in Popular Science magazine, points out that the 1967 Ooter [CORR] Space Treaty, signed by 103 countries including the United States and Yonder Russia, ought to prevent Mars from being divided up by corporations and governments on Earth.

But, in 1967, everyone was high as a kite and so none of the treaties signed then are consid-ered legally binding. Besides, we’ve moved on since then. The market rules everything. The mar-ket is king. It is Darth Vader Inc and will run the entire universe on the sole basis of profitability.

I admire those who have put their names down for going to Mars. But they will remain, essen-tially, Earthlings. Any group of six Earthlings has one awkward clot among them, and the same will apply to Mars. He’ll be voting No, of course, and, having established the planet’s first news-paper, the Daily Teleporter, will terrify the older members of the colony into rejecting independ-ence.

So it goes. History repeats itself, first on Earth, then on Mars.