Ukraine's Farmland Fire Sale, Why Is the USA in Ukraine?, "Sissy Porn Made Me Trans", Jordan Bardella on France, Sovereignty, and the EU, Presence Devoid of Sensory Clues
That Croatian highway and Enron deal is new to me. It's very nasty.
We didn't need a war for such deals, our post-communists sold everything to the Germans/French without a shot being fired. Austrians are still famous for their involvement in building our highways (on credit, still paying for it, a lot).
As one of the prices for NATO accession, besides taking part in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Romania had to give Bechtel a major highway building contract. In 10 years the americans built 50 km of highway at a cost of 1.5 billion dollars. Almost 2 decades later the full highway is still not finished.
But it was worth it because you either join NATO or you get bombed by NATO.
May 21, 2023·edited May 21, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
On the Harper's piece: provoking Russia to do something stupid is a stupid move. This would be horrible and tasteless victim blaming, if I was a Twitter American, but I'm not, I, and most of my fellow countrymen understand this. We exercise this caution, and expect our leaders to do so.
If we antagonized Russia, and somehow become the victims, we would be, in a large part, to blame. More importantly, our elites would suffer the least. Probably zero. Some might even make money out of it. They already have their offshore assets to fuck off to. My dear Polish friends, consider this.
Vlad is not a perfectly rational individual. Those who demonized him for decades would also agree. So, last year, he did something stupid, as he eventually would have done at one point, per his irrational part. If he had a savegame from January 2022, I have no doubt he would load it. I also have no doubt that he wouldn't use this second chance to conduct his war better, but to back out of it before it starts, and go back to what his original goal was for the next decades: sell as much energy and raw materials to Germany and Europe for hard currency as he can.
But we all knew, including the US FP establishment, that he can be tricked into jumping the gun. Woe to those who happen to be on the other end. Do I like Putin? No. Do I want my countrymen to become the Mujahideen who stop him? (From doing what?) No, I want my country to be like Austria.
Re Bechtel and Enron, in Australia we appear to be developing the same way. Australia is a close US ally so the country pours tribute into the coffers of the US.
Australia has vast hydrocarbon reserves which yield minimal royalty payments, especially when compared to Mother Russia under Putin. The excess profits are pocketed by Chevron etc. The Australian taxpayers are now being fleeced to pay for a round of defence procurement designed to provide profits and economies of scale for US and UK shipbuilding industries and to finance the development of missiles and air-defense systems. In effect Australia has taken the place of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf State as the buyer of last resort for US arms exports. How much more security ensues remains to be seen.
I have no problem with the US alliance per se, but no public discussion is allowed here on the sensitive stuff involving the development of our own military-industrial capacity. The US recently changed its laws to allow Australian and UK manufacturers to bid for US defence contractors. This will have endless knock-on effects for labour and industrial relations, graft and kickbacks etc.
Hey Nicolo you are one prolific writer, perhaps you should do as other writers do and schedule in holidays and days off.
What Chatgpt rewrote for me
Hello, Nicolo! Your ability to produce a substantial amount of written work is truly impressive. It might be worth considering following the example of other writers by incorporating scheduled holidays and taking occasional days off.
Touch more formal than what I might say but a huge improvement, and yes you should really consider an odd day off!
May 21, 2023·edited May 21, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
I have heard that Croatian highways are excellent, but highway construction is not such a Hightech industry that Croatians could have not made them themselves. Even worse is the permission given to foreign banks to pillage the country, as that never ends. There is a plenty of locals ready to sell their country cheaply. This latter-day janissary, a Bosnian Croat is bragging that he helped the Austrian Telecom to defeat the Croatian Telecom: https://youtu.be/gS3z85ood64?t=921 So, Niccolo, every time you make a phone call, you make a payment to Vienna.
After privatizing the Serbian economy and making millions of people unemployed, this former Finance Minister of Serbia left "public service" for the exciting world of international finance. Of course, he is a proud WEF member https://www.weforum.org/people/bozidar-djelic
Is there anything we can do to fight the neoliberal feudalism?
Our author consistently displays astute judgement. I trust that he does the hard work for me and seems not to have a political axe to grind. He is a shortcut; I find that very valuable.
Great newsletter again! Boy, that transexual critic and writer has some disturbing things to say--like, some variety of porn is responsible for her identity. Looks like both Duke and NYU helped her on her way to such heights of modern thinking. At this rate of DQ-ing colleges for teaching nonsense, I’ll be down to barely a few by the time my kids are ready to matriculate.
The Chu...person... just reinforces my existing view on the trans subject. It’s a bunch of porn-addled activists pushing a social contagion for regime browny points. I’m too disgusted by such topics to look at the article, so I might be repeating what is already there, but I saw a recent discussion on social media about the Wachowski brothers which matches up to the article. Apparently they became trans under the “tutelage” of a famous Hollywood dominatrix. This dominatrix is apparently married to a pornographer known as “Buck Angel”. It’s truly incredible how society has bent over backwards to satisfy the sexual desires of a tiny perverted minority.
"Naomi Klein coined the concept of destroying countries only to profit from its rebuilding “Disaster Capitalism”." This idea was described long ago by Marx.
Although I typically are aligned with your perspectives, I think the part about the Ukrainian elites making a bet on the West instead of being in a perpetual tug of war position is a bit optimistic. I think it's more that they attended the Vito Corleone school of negotiating courtesy of US interests and offer refusal was not an option or as the old school neighborhood shops used to say when the local Italian tax collector came around "50% of something is better than 100% of nothing".
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That Croatian highway and Enron deal is new to me. It's very nasty.
We didn't need a war for such deals, our post-communists sold everything to the Germans/French without a shot being fired. Austrians are still famous for their involvement in building our highways (on credit, still paying for it, a lot).
Loved this one
Bosnian Serb VRS
[What is VRS?]
conflict with the them --> conflict with the the 'bosniaks'?
8th for manganese, and 6th for titanium
[mang ores adn titanium ores, right?]
local oligarchs who --> local oligarchs whom
even gaining criticism from --> even copping criticism from
OR
even attracting criticism from
the “normie” --> the “normies”
As one of the prices for NATO accession, besides taking part in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Romania had to give Bechtel a major highway building contract. In 10 years the americans built 50 km of highway at a cost of 1.5 billion dollars. Almost 2 decades later the full highway is still not finished.
But it was worth it because you either join NATO or you get bombed by NATO.
On the Harper's piece: provoking Russia to do something stupid is a stupid move. This would be horrible and tasteless victim blaming, if I was a Twitter American, but I'm not, I, and most of my fellow countrymen understand this. We exercise this caution, and expect our leaders to do so.
If we antagonized Russia, and somehow become the victims, we would be, in a large part, to blame. More importantly, our elites would suffer the least. Probably zero. Some might even make money out of it. They already have their offshore assets to fuck off to. My dear Polish friends, consider this.
Vlad is not a perfectly rational individual. Those who demonized him for decades would also agree. So, last year, he did something stupid, as he eventually would have done at one point, per his irrational part. If he had a savegame from January 2022, I have no doubt he would load it. I also have no doubt that he wouldn't use this second chance to conduct his war better, but to back out of it before it starts, and go back to what his original goal was for the next decades: sell as much energy and raw materials to Germany and Europe for hard currency as he can.
But we all knew, including the US FP establishment, that he can be tricked into jumping the gun. Woe to those who happen to be on the other end. Do I like Putin? No. Do I want my countrymen to become the Mujahideen who stop him? (From doing what?) No, I want my country to be like Austria.
Re Bechtel and Enron, in Australia we appear to be developing the same way. Australia is a close US ally so the country pours tribute into the coffers of the US.
Australia has vast hydrocarbon reserves which yield minimal royalty payments, especially when compared to Mother Russia under Putin. The excess profits are pocketed by Chevron etc. The Australian taxpayers are now being fleeced to pay for a round of defence procurement designed to provide profits and economies of scale for US and UK shipbuilding industries and to finance the development of missiles and air-defense systems. In effect Australia has taken the place of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf State as the buyer of last resort for US arms exports. How much more security ensues remains to be seen.
I have no problem with the US alliance per se, but no public discussion is allowed here on the sensitive stuff involving the development of our own military-industrial capacity. The US recently changed its laws to allow Australian and UK manufacturers to bid for US defence contractors. This will have endless knock-on effects for labour and industrial relations, graft and kickbacks etc.
Yes. Of Course. It's all the fault of those terrible Americans.
Bad Americans. Bad, bad.
What I wrote"
Hey Nicolo you are one prolific writer, perhaps you should do as other writers do and schedule in holidays and days off.
What Chatgpt rewrote for me
Hello, Nicolo! Your ability to produce a substantial amount of written work is truly impressive. It might be worth considering following the example of other writers by incorporating scheduled holidays and taking occasional days off.
Touch more formal than what I might say but a huge improvement, and yes you should really consider an odd day off!
I have heard that Croatian highways are excellent, but highway construction is not such a Hightech industry that Croatians could have not made them themselves. Even worse is the permission given to foreign banks to pillage the country, as that never ends. There is a plenty of locals ready to sell their country cheaply. This latter-day janissary, a Bosnian Croat is bragging that he helped the Austrian Telecom to defeat the Croatian Telecom: https://youtu.be/gS3z85ood64?t=921 So, Niccolo, every time you make a phone call, you make a payment to Vienna.
After privatizing the Serbian economy and making millions of people unemployed, this former Finance Minister of Serbia left "public service" for the exciting world of international finance. Of course, he is a proud WEF member https://www.weforum.org/people/bozidar-djelic
Is there anything we can do to fight the neoliberal feudalism?
Our author consistently displays astute judgement. I trust that he does the hard work for me and seems not to have a political axe to grind. He is a shortcut; I find that very valuable.
Great newsletter again! Boy, that transexual critic and writer has some disturbing things to say--like, some variety of porn is responsible for her identity. Looks like both Duke and NYU helped her on her way to such heights of modern thinking. At this rate of DQ-ing colleges for teaching nonsense, I’ll be down to barely a few by the time my kids are ready to matriculate.
Excellent as always, thank you.
The Chu...person... just reinforces my existing view on the trans subject. It’s a bunch of porn-addled activists pushing a social contagion for regime browny points. I’m too disgusted by such topics to look at the article, so I might be repeating what is already there, but I saw a recent discussion on social media about the Wachowski brothers which matches up to the article. Apparently they became trans under the “tutelage” of a famous Hollywood dominatrix. This dominatrix is apparently married to a pornographer known as “Buck Angel”. It’s truly incredible how society has bent over backwards to satisfy the sexual desires of a tiny perverted minority.
"Naomi Klein coined the concept of destroying countries only to profit from its rebuilding “Disaster Capitalism”." This idea was described long ago by Marx.
Although I typically are aligned with your perspectives, I think the part about the Ukrainian elites making a bet on the West instead of being in a perpetual tug of war position is a bit optimistic. I think it's more that they attended the Vito Corleone school of negotiating courtesy of US interests and offer refusal was not an option or as the old school neighborhood shops used to say when the local Italian tax collector came around "50% of something is better than 100% of nothing".
Hat tip as usual. Have a good one!