The New Scramble for Africa, Is the West Turning Into China?, Pity the Poor Armenians, Worst US Bridges Getting Fixed?, Happy Nations and Heavy Metal Music
I wanted to post this one this past Friday, but I ran out of time. I was with my parents and extended family up in the village over the weekend, and had zero time in front of my laptop. Apologies.
Hit the like button at the top of this page to like this entry. Share it using the share and/or re-stack buttons. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
At least in Finland, the biggest heavy metal wave was in 00s (and featured locally a lot of stuff that didn’t get recognition abroad due to being in Finnish). It had receded considerably since then in public consciousness.
A healthy reminder that we tend to stereotype foreigners and assume that what's niche over here will be mainstream over there, when it turns out to just be a somewhat larger niche. Or we become aware of a fad, or an event that's considered extraordinary even in the place it happened and assume that it's a permanent feature of the local culture.
Most people everywhere are normies with bland tastes.
Metal assuredly still has more prominence and credibility in Finland than in, say, the US, and during the "glory days" it certainly had a foot in the door to mainstream appeal (see, for instance, this clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icFfov2ChXA) where Finnish morning TV interviews Moonsorrow, a pagan/folk metal band.
Still, even if one would have looked at the hit lists of the 00s, even, they would have mostly been dominated by pop rock and pop rap, either domestic or foreign.
Yes that is true also. The tires are going to be a big part of the EV conversion. The manufacturers put tires on the EVs to maximize mileage to make the cars look better. But traction suffers and the extra weight makes the loss of traction worse.
🗨 Most obviously, nobody had developed even an embryonic version of the renewable energy supply chain which is the essential first step to turning non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) into the envisioned “renewables” upon which the promised techno-psychotic future is to be built.
The amount of toxic waste generated by REE makes Chernobyl look like the garden of Eden AND THEY KNOW.
GREEN is just the greatest con job sting in human history. GREEN generates 3X brown being manufactured and 2000 tons of toxic waste for every ton of REE .
CO2 which is you know our exhalations and plant food, hence oxygen fuel is taxed and scammed while convincing guilty white Christians they are the sinners who endanger the earth.
The reason we have Global Warming as the big boogeyman is the actual corporate and government polluters need to distract from what they are polluting with, and sell electronics and solar; so they have rigged the entire grant system government and corporate so no grant for research that doesn’t mention global warming is approved. Never mind measles or flu research doesn’t touch GW, pray to GW or touch no money.
Now everyone deserves everything they get because everyone knows this is a lie.
Like the vax victims they’ll be poor and in danger, but all deserved.
Democracy has no innocents because democracy has choice.
Just deserts are in the eye of beholder's heart 😝 Let's move our sinner frames a byte more (and more often), get our blood vigorously flowing, and make some extra plant food for Gretas to harp on while the stubbornly uncooperative GW proceeds at glacial pace 🤸
PS Even if this lazy not-thinking of general public sure doesn't qualify as malice, the stupendously stupefying stupidity of perpetrators and attendant narrative-weavers does border on criminal negligence 🤦
I work in clean energy. The policies the government is undertaking, both in clean energy and for electric vehicles will be catastrophic.
It has led me to believe that Mao and Stalin were not simply vindictive, massive tyrants who intentionally killed tens of millions of their citizens; rather, they believed the technocrats who proposed centralized, ill-fated agricultural systems.
Aug 7, 2023·edited Aug 7, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Much as a remarkably massive accomplishment NS Lyons' monster read sure is, no exposition of managerial regime is complete without detour to Michael McConkey's excellent 'stack The Circulation of Elites --> thecirculationofelites.substack.com 👌 Warning: scholarly boulders ahead 😉
PS The Managerial Class on Trial <-- a book its author never tires of billing as 'must read!' (shriek requisite).
When I see 'must read' or 'must watch' it has never been as billed, so I now make it a policy not to read anything which says I must. I realise this excludes a lot of stuff, so I reserve the right to change my mind just in case I should read it.
The scramble for Africa will have predictable consequences. African oligarchs will get feted by the West just like the Gulf Arabs were in the 70s. The Arabs got to build diasporas across the West in return for oil. The African's will get to do the same. We can expect an acceleration in the Africanisation of the West. The synergies between woke ideology, Western rivalry with Russia and China and Africa's surging population will be a challenge.
Philip; USA and China will divide up Africa and they’ll supply the REE to us, leaving Africa a giant Chernobyl ... there’s 2000 tons of waste for every ton of REE including a ton of radioactive Thorium or Uranium. That’s why we have it but don’t mine it and China does, and some of the 70,000 tons of Thorium at one site is leaking its way towards the Yellow River...
Perfectly true but the Beltway foreign policy crowd will insist on making friends by handing out visas and instead of war in MENA we will have war across Africa. And nothing brings countries closer than killing.
Here in Australia we opened up visas for Africans to buy votes for a bid to get a temporary seat at the Security Council (yes we are that dumb) and Australian mining companies are at work in Africa and they argue for closer ties (more foreign aid, more visas). With predictable results on crime in Australia. In my jaundiced opinion, the continent is a pest-hole and should be quarantined. Involvement in that zone of dysfunction is invariably a mistake.
I’m going to make a prediction we 🇺🇸 make nice buddy again with China 🇨🇳 to rape Africa through Chinese 🇨🇳 as proxy.
The entire point of America’s noble postwar anti colonialism being to get the goodies for ourselves. We of course have the entire Western Hemisphere to ourselves.
Now if I knew no history and hadn’t seen the world (and not from the hotels and cafes) I’d feel bad.
I don’t.
China may do less harm to Africa culturally, in environmental terms 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Do you know what the Chinese did to their own to get the REE?
🤣🤣🤣
Chernobyl worst case (the water table) in slow motion.
Now the entire Eastern Hemisphere is hopelessly corrupt top to bottom so I don’t care.
The EU moved to spot price gas just in time for the Russians to intervene in the Ukraine. They did so on the advice of an economist. If it was any funnier it would induce a medical catastrophe on yours truly.
Same spot price 💩 here, but you can buy from wholesalers a year out. I do. 🫡
That they make incorporating here 🇺🇸 so easy is a flaw the System can’t get away from power wise; because THEY are all LLCs etc selling contracts to the government and each other - the spouse or family member is usually the LLC while the Virtuous Civil Servant is in government. Contracting is the core pillar of their governance, the government was already useless in the 90s, so Clinton “reinvented government” as a contracting brokerage.
The Competitive Contracting Process is 3 guys with a dozen Corps between them divide up the contracts over Chicken wings. Now 1-2 of their Corporations each DO produce products so the government “services” do happen. The rest are for taxes and banking, and “Competitive Bids.”
This is a core pillar probably the core pillar of support for their power. Its why the official government is 3 million Civil Servants but in truth ~ 9 million estimated.
It’s also a flaw, the System dare not consolidate or they’re gone, AND the actual government aka Replacements are at their desks.
They CAN govern because they DO govern.
This includes for decades the Spooks, etc. This system duplicated down to county and local level. It’s a strength and a flaw.
Trump started to run afoul of this when one of his very first executive orders was to prohibit the Revolving Door , well when that’s the Wife (WE ARE A WOMAN OWNED BUSINESS!) that’s unwise....
In fact he signed that Day One, as usual without checking, clueless as usual.
This one hit an exceptionally raw nerve. This evening bumped into a former colleague who complained of how the usual suspects are now moving heaven and earth to micro-manage the audit trail. The wider conversation revolved around the poisonous influence of the US and AUKUS nuclear subs and newly imposed requirements for security vetting all round. Came away with the feeling that I was dead right all along that Australia was going to become another Ukraine. Now totally assured of my good luck in having burnt so many bridges behind me.
The modern bureaucratic take on familial governance (gov't and public administration by family networks) has yet to be written. Here the libel laws just won't allow it.
We’re talking 9 million people off the DC tit, so its less families at that level and significant churn (they fsk each other over) if that’s encouraging 🤣
On AU/US or DC + anything = ☠️
I posted that on Helen Dale’s stack and got confused or alarmed replies; listen break it off with America (note AU Senate Pfizer hearings Pfizer admits they didn’t take Pfizer vax in AU).
Look at Ukraine, Vietnam etc etc or Germany 🇩🇪 now - Israel if they can - DC is on Nero Order mode. Get away, everyone ELSE must go. Literally Bond Villains.
Armenia perhaps chose the worst possible path to go down after the first war. Without realizing it, the Armenians have decided to teach the world just how much damage pride can do.
But the west was too shy on supporting them and Greece in 1922-23, when they culd have beaten the turks had they have more $$ and weaponry supplied by the victorious allies.
Armenia’s folly was choosing neither side, neither West nor East. They could have succeeded without the West, but it would have required them to act very differently from how they did in their relationship with Russia since the 90s. They’ve tried to play both sides and failed.
Wasn't intended to be charming, but a thinly veiled threat.
I suspect that the Ukrainian grain Muh Starving Africans ZOMG went to make cookies and donuts for La Nuland.
They grow a lot of sugar (beets) in Ukraine so this makes sense.
I wanted to post this one this past Friday, but I ran out of time. I was with my parents and extended family up in the village over the weekend, and had zero time in front of my laptop. Apologies.
Hit the like button at the top of this page to like this entry. Share it using the share and/or re-stack buttons. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
All good; Saturday is an arbitrary social construct anyway 🤪
That food you posted did look good.
At least in Finland, the biggest heavy metal wave was in 00s (and featured locally a lot of stuff that didn’t get recognition abroad due to being in Finnish). It had receded considerably since then in public consciousness.
A healthy reminder that we tend to stereotype foreigners and assume that what's niche over here will be mainstream over there, when it turns out to just be a somewhat larger niche. Or we become aware of a fad, or an event that's considered extraordinary even in the place it happened and assume that it's a permanent feature of the local culture.
Most people everywhere are normies with bland tastes.
Metal assuredly still has more prominence and credibility in Finland than in, say, the US, and during the "glory days" it certainly had a foot in the door to mainstream appeal (see, for instance, this clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icFfov2ChXA) where Finnish morning TV interviews Moonsorrow, a pagan/folk metal band.
Still, even if one would have looked at the hit lists of the 00s, even, they would have mostly been dominated by pop rock and pop rap, either domestic or foreign.
Great wrap up as always. The essay from NS Lyons was amazing.
Massive accomplishment.
Agreed. The Lyons essay will prove to be seminal, I think. Absolutely essential reading.
Electric vehicles are not going to help the bridge situation.
The weight factor right? Saw some anon on Twitter talk qbout how parking garages aren't built for them either.
Yes, it is the weight factor. And it is true for parking garages as well.
I can't believe that I didn't think of this. Thank you.
I saw somewhere that increased weight on EV's also increased particulate pollution from tire/road wear...
Yes that is true also. The tires are going to be a big part of the EV conversion. The manufacturers put tires on the EVs to maximize mileage to make the cars look better. But traction suffers and the extra weight makes the loss of traction worse.
You'll hear "China is just 10 years ahead of the west" all the time in relation to technocratic governance. Appears true!
Reminds me of a very interesting/frightening article about some Ukrainian state app where you can
-file a birth certificate
-register a business
-report dissidents
-report russian troops
All from one app. It's backed by USAID and I believe a lot of the development is from Silicon Valley.
Feels like a test bed for US/Europe
Ukraine is now being used as a testing ground for the digitization of the citizen.
Yup.
It's called Diia for those who haven't heard of this. Apparently there are plans for this in other countries. If it's not happening already.
Who, Whom; and can WHO do that to WHOM?
Intentions I don’t question.
Capabilities? I have questions..
It’s not the Reach its the GRASP.
Only commenting on the excellent taste Scandinavians have in music (reading all other links as homework)
🗨 Most obviously, nobody had developed even an embryonic version of the renewable energy supply chain which is the essential first step to turning non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) into the envisioned “renewables” upon which the promised techno-psychotic future is to be built.
Lol its a scam.
The amount of toxic waste generated by REE makes Chernobyl look like the garden of Eden AND THEY KNOW.
GREEN is just the greatest con job sting in human history. GREEN generates 3X brown being manufactured and 2000 tons of toxic waste for every ton of REE .
CO2 which is you know our exhalations and plant food, hence oxygen fuel is taxed and scammed while convincing guilty white Christians they are the sinners who endanger the earth.
The reason we have Global Warming as the big boogeyman is the actual corporate and government polluters need to distract from what they are polluting with, and sell electronics and solar; so they have rigged the entire grant system government and corporate so no grant for research that doesn’t mention global warming is approved. Never mind measles or flu research doesn’t touch GW, pray to GW or touch no money.
Now everyone deserves everything they get because everyone knows this is a lie.
Like the vax victims they’ll be poor and in danger, but all deserved.
Democracy has no innocents because democracy has choice.
Just deserts are in the eye of beholder's heart 😝 Let's move our sinner frames a byte more (and more often), get our blood vigorously flowing, and make some extra plant food for Gretas to harp on while the stubbornly uncooperative GW proceeds at glacial pace 🤸
Why build a bogus infrastructure for a scam?
As a proof of concept dead in the water from get-go? 😏
PS One has to squint hard to equalise supply chain with infrastructure 🙂
I am with you. This was not thought through maliciously a la The Long Warned. They did not think it through at all.
WarNed duly noted & appreciated! 🤭
PS Even if this lazy not-thinking of general public sure doesn't qualify as malice, the stupendously stupefying stupidity of perpetrators and attendant narrative-weavers does border on criminal negligence 🤦
I work in clean energy. The policies the government is undertaking, both in clean energy and for electric vehicles will be catastrophic.
It has led me to believe that Mao and Stalin were not simply vindictive, massive tyrants who intentionally killed tens of millions of their citizens; rather, they believed the technocrats who proposed centralized, ill-fated agricultural systems.
Availability heuristic rears its queer head 😉
Just don't let that nauseatingly abominable duo of hardened psychopaths off the hook too easily 😳🥺
They're growing cotton in northern Niger?
Much as a remarkably massive accomplishment NS Lyons' monster read sure is, no exposition of managerial regime is complete without detour to Michael McConkey's excellent 'stack The Circulation of Elites --> thecirculationofelites.substack.com 👌 Warning: scholarly boulders ahead 😉
PS The Managerial Class on Trial <-- a book its author never tires of billing as 'must read!' (shriek requisite).
When I see 'must read' or 'must watch' it has never been as billed, so I now make it a policy not to read anything which says I must. I realise this excludes a lot of stuff, so I reserve the right to change my mind just in case I should read it.
Rights have no point if left to languish idle 😝 Give a few random posts a whirl to see if size fits 🙂
Someone needs to translate McConkey. He's insightful but his prose is extremely academic.
Speaking of translations, NS Lyons practices a welcome self-service with The West and China share the same fate at UnHerd 😏 --> unherd.com/2023/08/the-west-and-china-share-the-same-fate
A great newsletter. Very timely.
The scramble for Africa will have predictable consequences. African oligarchs will get feted by the West just like the Gulf Arabs were in the 70s. The Arabs got to build diasporas across the West in return for oil. The African's will get to do the same. We can expect an acceleration in the Africanisation of the West. The synergies between woke ideology, Western rivalry with Russia and China and Africa's surging population will be a challenge.
Philip; USA and China will divide up Africa and they’ll supply the REE to us, leaving Africa a giant Chernobyl ... there’s 2000 tons of waste for every ton of REE including a ton of radioactive Thorium or Uranium. That’s why we have it but don’t mine it and China does, and some of the 70,000 tons of Thorium at one site is leaking its way towards the Yellow River...
and I don’t care...
... they chose against us.
SUFFER. Wretches.
Perfectly true but the Beltway foreign policy crowd will insist on making friends by handing out visas and instead of war in MENA we will have war across Africa. And nothing brings countries closer than killing.
Here in Australia we opened up visas for Africans to buy votes for a bid to get a temporary seat at the Security Council (yes we are that dumb) and Australian mining companies are at work in Africa and they argue for closer ties (more foreign aid, more visas). With predictable results on crime in Australia. In my jaundiced opinion, the continent is a pest-hole and should be quarantined. Involvement in that zone of dysfunction is invariably a mistake.
You are rocking it productivity wise!
I’m going to make a prediction we 🇺🇸 make nice buddy again with China 🇨🇳 to rape Africa through Chinese 🇨🇳 as proxy.
The entire point of America’s noble postwar anti colonialism being to get the goodies for ourselves. We of course have the entire Western Hemisphere to ourselves.
Now if I knew no history and hadn’t seen the world (and not from the hotels and cafes) I’d feel bad.
I don’t.
China may do less harm to Africa culturally, in environmental terms 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Do you know what the Chinese did to their own to get the REE?
🤣🤣🤣
Chernobyl worst case (the water table) in slow motion.
Now the entire Eastern Hemisphere is hopelessly corrupt top to bottom so I don’t care.
Die. Slowly.
Poisoned by your own greed.
LMAO.
The proper term is big bodied metal or thick metal for short ;)
Is that like Thick Girls?
“spot price’ approach” to buying gas. This is of course so scumbags can play the insider market .
At least the Eastern scumbags buy long term contracts (so do I for business and residential).
The EU moved to spot price gas just in time for the Russians to intervene in the Ukraine. They did so on the advice of an economist. If it was any funnier it would induce a medical catastrophe on yours truly.
Same spot price 💩 here, but you can buy from wholesalers a year out. I do. 🫡
That they make incorporating here 🇺🇸 so easy is a flaw the System can’t get away from power wise; because THEY are all LLCs etc selling contracts to the government and each other - the spouse or family member is usually the LLC while the Virtuous Civil Servant is in government. Contracting is the core pillar of their governance, the government was already useless in the 90s, so Clinton “reinvented government” as a contracting brokerage.
The Competitive Contracting Process is 3 guys with a dozen Corps between them divide up the contracts over Chicken wings. Now 1-2 of their Corporations each DO produce products so the government “services” do happen. The rest are for taxes and banking, and “Competitive Bids.”
This is a core pillar probably the core pillar of support for their power. Its why the official government is 3 million Civil Servants but in truth ~ 9 million estimated.
It’s also a flaw, the System dare not consolidate or they’re gone, AND the actual government aka Replacements are at their desks.
They CAN govern because they DO govern.
This includes for decades the Spooks, etc. This system duplicated down to county and local level. It’s a strength and a flaw.
Trump started to run afoul of this when one of his very first executive orders was to prohibit the Revolving Door , well when that’s the Wife (WE ARE A WOMAN OWNED BUSINESS!) that’s unwise....
In fact he signed that Day One, as usual without checking, clueless as usual.
This one hit an exceptionally raw nerve. This evening bumped into a former colleague who complained of how the usual suspects are now moving heaven and earth to micro-manage the audit trail. The wider conversation revolved around the poisonous influence of the US and AUKUS nuclear subs and newly imposed requirements for security vetting all round. Came away with the feeling that I was dead right all along that Australia was going to become another Ukraine. Now totally assured of my good luck in having burnt so many bridges behind me.
The modern bureaucratic take on familial governance (gov't and public administration by family networks) has yet to be written. Here the libel laws just won't allow it.
We’re talking 9 million people off the DC tit, so its less families at that level and significant churn (they fsk each other over) if that’s encouraging 🤣
On AU/US or DC + anything = ☠️
I posted that on Helen Dale’s stack and got confused or alarmed replies; listen break it off with America (note AU Senate Pfizer hearings Pfizer admits they didn’t take Pfizer vax in AU).
Look at Ukraine, Vietnam etc etc or Germany 🇩🇪 now - Israel if they can - DC is on Nero Order mode. Get away, everyone ELSE must go. Literally Bond Villains.
Armenia perhaps chose the worst possible path to go down after the first war. Without realizing it, the Armenians have decided to teach the world just how much damage pride can do.
kinda.
But the west was too shy on supporting them and Greece in 1922-23, when they culd have beaten the turks had they have more $$ and weaponry supplied by the victorious allies.
Armenia’s folly was choosing neither side, neither West nor East. They could have succeeded without the West, but it would have required them to act very differently from how they did in their relationship with Russia since the 90s. They’ve tried to play both sides and failed.