Complicate, incarcerate, annihilate, exaggerate & alienate

The five ways of the 21st Century

According to Stanford University in the US, I have an IQ of 149. Despite that glowing tribute, it has always been my habit – on encountering a new piece of software – to type into the nearest search engine available the name of the product followed by ‘for Dummies’. Failure to do this can cause panic attacks, and a profound suspicion that one is having a Close Encounter of the Third Kind with the Jargonauts from Planet Dorknerd.

So it was this afternoon I got sucked into the Black Hole formerly known as VLC recording. The ‘Dummy’ nomenclature having been noted by ‘help?’, below is a fair summary of the encounter:

”For all the saving, converting, transcoding, encoding, mixing and streaming tasks, you should find useful information in the Streaming documentation. If you are unsure about terminology, please consult the knowledge base. Features that make VLC the preferred media player for a lot of people are its excellent support for various Audio and Video codecs, the fact that it’s cross platform, and the open way of development. The interface overview when a media file is streamed (live) shows in the position indicator of the track slider, which does not move because the total duration of the streaming is not known until it finishes. The buttons below the slider control the playback and toggle fullscreen (video only). The small speaker icon is a button that mutes () or un-mutes () the sound. The triangle to the right is a slider that shows the current playback volume: clicking this slider modifies the volume, and the playback volume is also displayed as a percentage number on top of this slider.”

I don’t want to even imagine what the Grown-Ups’ intro to VLC is like, but I sense only too well what those who can follow it are like: they are weird geeks who know what codecs, open ways and fullscreen toggles (video only) are, and when I am finally crowned Emperor of the World, they will all be sent to St Helena, there to contemplate their entirely deserved fate alongside the empty tomb of Napoleon – but minus internet access of any kind.

Talking of no internet access, from my perspective here in West Africa I can tell you that there are many excuses (although few reasons) for switching off the Great Digital Highway when the self-styled elite deems it necessary. To the north of us is Senegal, a francophone ex colony on a mission to abolish the beastly Opposition leader and his entire Party for the dastardly crime of having better ideas about how to run the country.

People keep telling me that a web switch-off isn’t possible, but clearly nobody told President Macky Sall (pictured left with some other bloke) about this. Senegal is now a black hole from which escape is restricted and reliable information nonexistent. Close lady friend Da Doo is there for medical treatment. Where and how she is remains a mystery to both me and her family.

When one surveys the inflationary environment here, it is at times almost like having binoculars into the immediate Global future wherein survival of inflation is the big distraction from what the 1% are up to. The average family will not have the time to analyse the semantics of freedom if every day, wages neutered by the cost of travel, food, heating and cooking gas make the next meal the only game in town.

How unbearably sick and ironic it would be if Homo sapiens gave up its independent liberty in the search for Just-in-Time Food. Already, schemes that pay desperate families to do nothing other than behave themselves are in the pipeline: this is all part of the patronising idiocy of the Davos damned: You will have nothing and you will be happy.

Grain harvests are blown up, cattle herds slaughtered and vegan diets promoted for a species that is undeniably omnivorous and not that keen on grilled daffodils.

The stakeholders want us weakened by starvation tomorrow, and conveniently dead by next week.

We the People are alone save for one or two guiding lights in the US. The most likely outcome is that it is up to us to save ourselves.

In that context, news reaches us here to suggest that the American secret State is not always a sharp as some people might believe: NBC of all people runs a piece this morning (Wednesday) offering some excoriation of the Niger fiasco:

‘Hours before the recent coup in Niger, American diplomats painted a picture of a democratic government that, while imperfect, was more stable than others in the region.

“There’s a public perception of general corruption, but it’s not as bad as other countries in the area,” a U.S. official told NBC News on July 25. Later that day, Nigerien security and military leaders overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum.’

However, the report soon degenerates predictably:

‘Niger was the sixth country in Africa’s sprawling Sahel region, which spans the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, to have experienced a coup since 2020. It is also a base for emboldened Islamist militants and one of the world’s largest producers of uranium, which is coveted by many nations’. (Not least the Pentagon)

This is the point at which NBC returns rapidly to On Message by saying it’s all the work of Jihadist nutters so we must remain firm in our War on Terrorism. That’s drivel: Nigeriens aren’t Islamists so much as a nation fed up of a corrupt, incompetent US stooge filling his boots.

But if the Mad Mullah fear falls on stony ground, there’s always Vlad the Lad to give a damn good kicking:

‘the U.S. response to the coup raises questions about how effectively the West will be able to counter Islamist terrorist groups and Russian disinformation in a region that risks becoming a region of failed States’.

I don’t think it raises any questions at all beyond Blinken being asleep at the wheel. Negeriens are waving Russian flags in a demonstration of distaste for French and US quasi-colonialism. That’s it, period. The last thing Putin needs right now is a second front in Africa. Thus far, everyone I speak to here thinks the coup was long overdue.

ECOWAS, meanwhile, displays its near permanent ability to be splintered by what one might call ”a hypocrisy of self-interest”.

As usual, the only truly insane Mullahs live in my British homeland….give them power, and they will only flex it to negative advantage. Using his favoured fascist battering ram, Sad Khan’s Transport for London is now set to impose a toll on the Blackwall Tunnel. This is rather like taking Britain’s worst bottleneck and applying a plastic cork as the solution.

But you see, in little Sadiq’s Wacky World, poke motorists in the eye for long enough, and they will climb aboard a bike, come rain or shine. My use of the potentially misogynist word ”bike” does not apply here. Rather, it evokes a new Slogarithm as follows:

”Never come between a man and his car. Never elect a Kahn as Tsar’‘

John Ward has been a radical empiricist opponent of financialised neoliberal globalism since 1986. He is neither Left nor Right, and occasionally wrong. He is however an entrepreneurial capitalist from top to toe and continues to believe that social mutualism is by far the best model. He is an unbending critic of politicised education, spineless journalists, mendacious politicians and their masters in the New World Order to whom they genuflect……pausing only to give them our tax money with unbridled generosity.