Reviewing "Empire of Dust", the documentary that spawned the legendary "It's all so tiresome" meme with a creative translation - plus made in America sequels
It sounds to me like the people in the Congo are grifting just as the people here in the US do – only they're doing it on the back end (at the ground level).
Here in the US instead of stealing fuel, and asking for loans they do this:
Propose a piece of legislation, that’s supposed to produce something. It can be anything, but it’s usually a large infrastructure project, high-speed rail, the broadband deal, bridges, EV charging stations, things of that nature.
Then behind the scenes, you have politicians determine which engineering/consulting groups they want to work with. The politicians write into the law nonsense requirements for those consulting contracts, things that are generally unassociated with the work to be performed (that way even through there’s an “open bid” process, they will get the “right” consultants contracted). 😉👉
The legislation also has an exhaustive list of nonsense steps, requiring years worth of consulting work to be completed before anything ever happens in the physical world.
The consulting groups are working behind the scenes with the politicians; part of their unspoken agreement is to have the consulting groups and their employees donate to the political campaigns of the politicians who awarded them the contracts. This can be done various different ways.
All of this is by design, because as long as those consultants can stay on the job, they can keep laundering tax-payer money into the pockets of the politicians who awarded them the contracts. Everyone keeps getting paid. And most importantly – nothing is being built.
So, it’s the same mindset here in the US, only they steal the money at the front end. Still nothing of any real utility is built.
Your review makes me want to see this film. Long ago a friend's uncle was a missionary in Congo. He told those stories. Black people sit under a tree in the shade waiting till you give them food. If we don't work the fields ourselves, they don't do it. If one works, it is a woman. The men don't do a thing. They get a tractor and use it till it runs out of gas. Then they refuse to get to the town to get gas, and let it sit to rust. Etc. Europeans and Americans are industrious. so are Asians and South-Americans as far as I know, my Mexican neighbors work day and night. But Africans seem to be different. They seem to obey by the biblical words, the birds don't show the fish don't harvest, so why would you worry? Which of course brings no food to the table either... unless you wait for hand-outs.
When the Rodale Institute (Organic Gardening Magazine people) went to Africa to teach organic gardening, they found it was the women who did the actual work. The men were useless.
..."Perhaps the “Empire of Dust” sequels should be made in America in places like California, New York, North Carolina, and East Palestine"...or the most appropriate place: The DC swamp. The world's capitol for inefficiency, theft and grifting.
When the Romans conquered large swaths of what is now considered Europe and the UK, they built roads and viaducts to bring commerce and water to the empire. As the empire fell into decline so did the infrastructure. We can only hope the Chinese continue their expansion of the belts and roads initiative, particularly in places like sub Saharan Africa, the very geography of the continent make it a challenge, massive elevation changes and weather to complicate the issues. So the CHinese lend money for natural resources and then the country that has accepted the loans says we changed our minds….we aren’t paying you back and further you can’t have the minerals or whatever else the deal was about. Now what CCP? Invade? Go ahead, see how that works out. You have told the world that your ancient Middle Kingdom is far more sophisticated and brilliant than the rest of the “barbarians” littering the earth. But, before you went forth with the plan, especially in Africa, you might have consulted with the Belgians, The British, The Spanish, The Portuguese, The Dutch and the Germans to name a few colonial empires that tried to settle down in Africa. Until a people anywhere on this blue and green marble called earth, dashing in a circle around the sun decided that they want something, it cannot happen no matter how good the intentions. What is the difference between the Congo and California? Nothing, except location. When Californians or any other dysfunctional State in the lower 48 comes to determine it doesn’t work anymore, then there will be change. The question is will they get to the realization that nothing is working before or after the revolution. Time will tell. In the meantime let China continue to stretch the their rubber band of resources, snap back is a really nasty thing when you catch the band in the snout.
If nothing ever worked in Congo (for instance) and doesn’t work now, what would be the observable difference for the Congolese? Speculating on the topic, one might imagine that the colonization was a glimpse, a flash in the dull monotony of their lives, same stuff going for millennia after millennia. With Belgians wanting strange things gone, the great inertia, that dreary unthinking beast will destroy their work, so happens with Chinese. Stopping waxing lyrical, the root cause is the people. It just takes courage to admit it against all modern egalitarian discourse.
Fair to say the Chinese want to learn the hard way. Good for them. They will find places that don’t want change are not going to change. You made some very good points. Appreciated.
Roads are really a great example of social disfunctions. They are supposed to be simple...a baseline for any higher order.
It's not for nothing that in Afghanistan, after they failed at everything, the last objective was finishing that damned Ring Road.
And they(we?) failed. More than 2.3 trillion dollars and they couldn't even do this much. But at least, for a fine moment, there was a rainbow flag flying in Kabul.
Every midwit on social media knows about the Congo from some dumb clickbait article “7 reasons why King Leopold was worse than Hitler. Number 5 will SHOCK you!!”
Here is a good read on the real history of colonialism in Congo.
Puerto Rico. The culture and politics have combined to trap it into a doom loop. Outside the tourist resorts it might as well be Cuba, stuck in the 1950's, but with seventy years of wear and tear showing.
I love PR, has been my second home. But I know its tiresome underbelly. The 1950's was an era of opportunity that came. Investment post-WWII was a boon. Things were built, fortunes were made. But not shared. Or passed down to anyone else but the politically connected and wealthy classes.
One of the villainous families many of us have identified as helping to destroy the world, Laurance Rockefeller (JD's grandson), helped bring industry and development to PR in the 1950's. Big Pharma built large manufacturing capacity to PR. Among his developments was Dorado, PR, Ricky Martin's hometown. Pharmaceutical manufacturing employed a large number of Ricans until the industry was off-shored following Bill Clinton's changes in the tax code and the US pivot to China for manufacturing.
When those jobs left the island's economy collapsed. It was already an economy built in a culture that rewards political patronage. Each change in leadership would result in jobs being created at the publicly owned companies. Like the telephone company on the island. They wouldn't fire the spoils system workers and replace them with new spoils system workers. The just added to the employment rolls of the phone company. It became a huge, wasteful behemoth money pit. Without the work to sustain the number of employees many were just sat at a desk and given boxes of pencils to sharpen in a sharpener on top of it. All day they got paid to sharpen pencils. Down to stubs. And other types of jobs proliferated and still proliferate around the island that are akin to being paid to dig a hole in the ground all week. And coming back the following week and filling it back in.
In the mid-2000's after a decade of a public ownership-privatization debates, strikes, etc. a Claro executive was given the green light to finally reform the company and get rid of the bloated employment rolls. Employees threatened to strike (again) and his reply was, "fine, I'll close the whole operation up here on PR and move it to the Dominican Republic. And then instead of just the pencil-sharpening jobs being cut I'll fire everybody." The employees who wanted to work saved the PR operation, the calls to strike failed.
But that culture is endemic in PR. It's taught, generational dependency. Just support a political party and make money when they win, no real work or effort required. Doesn't even matter which party, just pick one that you think has the best chances of winning and become and active supporter of it, the reward will come.
And nothing gets done. Hurricanes, earthquakes, billions of dollars flow in to help rebuild, enough to finance construction of a completely new electrical grid and power production to support the entire island's population with the latest technology. And it still has island-wide power outages, as recently as a few weeks ago. The billions that were given paid for a handful of repairs, same dilapidated, overburdened, fragile power system they had before. It's all so tiresome.
Just go start filming. Waiting around for money before you begin kind of sounds like what the problem with government now is in the US. Post on Substack. Build an audience. Don't wait.
You don't need $1.7 million for a toilet or a documentary.
The documentary left me wondering whether the project was ever built. The purpose of the road was to connect mineral rich areas of the Congo with a Seaport. It was envisioned as a win win for China and the Congo. The documentary showed local corruption indefinitely bogging down the project. The project was eventually completed with the help of massive bribes to the then ruling family of the Congo. Tolls are as high as $900 for a round trip for some vehicles, with much of that money going to the ex president of the Congo. This is detailed in the following article:
Great write-up. I decided to give Empire of Dust a go -- it's both shocking and illuminating. Thanks for the share. Probably gonna watch the whole thing while the Mrs. sleeps, if I'm honest. Perfect meme material, no doubt.
I wish I knew how Eddy the African learned to speak Chinese. Did he live there as a child?
Sad that California levels of corruption have reached African levels. What we lack is unity and a sense of civic virtue. Instead, we get only more deliberately divisive diversity and Pelosi levels of self-dealing at public expense.
I live in California. I'm sure there is plenty of corruption, just as with any big government. But another big problem here is we just have too many midwits that somehow end up running things.
If anyone was going to build a transcontinental African railway the British would have achieved it in the 19th century. The fact they didn't means it couldn't be done with the local people and the country the train would travel through
It sounds to me like the people in the Congo are grifting just as the people here in the US do – only they're doing it on the back end (at the ground level).
Here in the US instead of stealing fuel, and asking for loans they do this:
Propose a piece of legislation, that’s supposed to produce something. It can be anything, but it’s usually a large infrastructure project, high-speed rail, the broadband deal, bridges, EV charging stations, things of that nature.
Then behind the scenes, you have politicians determine which engineering/consulting groups they want to work with. The politicians write into the law nonsense requirements for those consulting contracts, things that are generally unassociated with the work to be performed (that way even through there’s an “open bid” process, they will get the “right” consultants contracted). 😉👉
The legislation also has an exhaustive list of nonsense steps, requiring years worth of consulting work to be completed before anything ever happens in the physical world.
The consulting groups are working behind the scenes with the politicians; part of their unspoken agreement is to have the consulting groups and their employees donate to the political campaigns of the politicians who awarded them the contracts. This can be done various different ways.
All of this is by design, because as long as those consultants can stay on the job, they can keep laundering tax-payer money into the pockets of the politicians who awarded them the contracts. Everyone keeps getting paid. And most importantly – nothing is being built.
So, it’s the same mindset here in the US, only they steal the money at the front end. Still nothing of any real utility is built.
Nailed it. Way to spoil the sequels ;)
Spot on! Written like someone who was in the DC trenches, the nuts and bolts of the swamp. Me, too, almost 30 years. It was all so tiresome.
Yep, sounds about right. 😢
What a great piece, Yuri. We outsourced manufacturing and the innovation that comes with it. It is starting to show everywhere.
Your review makes me want to see this film. Long ago a friend's uncle was a missionary in Congo. He told those stories. Black people sit under a tree in the shade waiting till you give them food. If we don't work the fields ourselves, they don't do it. If one works, it is a woman. The men don't do a thing. They get a tractor and use it till it runs out of gas. Then they refuse to get to the town to get gas, and let it sit to rust. Etc. Europeans and Americans are industrious. so are Asians and South-Americans as far as I know, my Mexican neighbors work day and night. But Africans seem to be different. They seem to obey by the biblical words, the birds don't show the fish don't harvest, so why would you worry? Which of course brings no food to the table either... unless you wait for hand-outs.
When the Rodale Institute (Organic Gardening Magazine people) went to Africa to teach organic gardening, they found it was the women who did the actual work. The men were useless.
Seems like in over 50 years nothing has changed
..."Perhaps the “Empire of Dust” sequels should be made in America in places like California, New York, North Carolina, and East Palestine"...or the most appropriate place: The DC swamp. The world's capitol for inefficiency, theft and grifting.
When the Romans conquered large swaths of what is now considered Europe and the UK, they built roads and viaducts to bring commerce and water to the empire. As the empire fell into decline so did the infrastructure. We can only hope the Chinese continue their expansion of the belts and roads initiative, particularly in places like sub Saharan Africa, the very geography of the continent make it a challenge, massive elevation changes and weather to complicate the issues. So the CHinese lend money for natural resources and then the country that has accepted the loans says we changed our minds….we aren’t paying you back and further you can’t have the minerals or whatever else the deal was about. Now what CCP? Invade? Go ahead, see how that works out. You have told the world that your ancient Middle Kingdom is far more sophisticated and brilliant than the rest of the “barbarians” littering the earth. But, before you went forth with the plan, especially in Africa, you might have consulted with the Belgians, The British, The Spanish, The Portuguese, The Dutch and the Germans to name a few colonial empires that tried to settle down in Africa. Until a people anywhere on this blue and green marble called earth, dashing in a circle around the sun decided that they want something, it cannot happen no matter how good the intentions. What is the difference between the Congo and California? Nothing, except location. When Californians or any other dysfunctional State in the lower 48 comes to determine it doesn’t work anymore, then there will be change. The question is will they get to the realization that nothing is working before or after the revolution. Time will tell. In the meantime let China continue to stretch the their rubber band of resources, snap back is a really nasty thing when you catch the band in the snout.
If nothing ever worked in Congo (for instance) and doesn’t work now, what would be the observable difference for the Congolese? Speculating on the topic, one might imagine that the colonization was a glimpse, a flash in the dull monotony of their lives, same stuff going for millennia after millennia. With Belgians wanting strange things gone, the great inertia, that dreary unthinking beast will destroy their work, so happens with Chinese. Stopping waxing lyrical, the root cause is the people. It just takes courage to admit it against all modern egalitarian discourse.
Fair to say the Chinese want to learn the hard way. Good for them. They will find places that don’t want change are not going to change. You made some very good points. Appreciated.
Roads are really a great example of social disfunctions. They are supposed to be simple...a baseline for any higher order.
It's not for nothing that in Afghanistan, after they failed at everything, the last objective was finishing that damned Ring Road.
And they(we?) failed. More than 2.3 trillion dollars and they couldn't even do this much. But at least, for a fine moment, there was a rainbow flag flying in Kabul.
We did it Patrick! We saved the city.
Now think about Biden's floating dock in Gaza.
Every midwit on social media knows about the Congo from some dumb clickbait article “7 reasons why King Leopold was worse than Hitler. Number 5 will SHOCK you!!”
Here is a good read on the real history of colonialism in Congo.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/king-hochschilds-hoax/
Empire of Dust is a must watch tragic-comedy about a man just trying to find some gravel.
Puerto Rico. The culture and politics have combined to trap it into a doom loop. Outside the tourist resorts it might as well be Cuba, stuck in the 1950's, but with seventy years of wear and tear showing.
I love PR, has been my second home. But I know its tiresome underbelly. The 1950's was an era of opportunity that came. Investment post-WWII was a boon. Things were built, fortunes were made. But not shared. Or passed down to anyone else but the politically connected and wealthy classes.
One of the villainous families many of us have identified as helping to destroy the world, Laurance Rockefeller (JD's grandson), helped bring industry and development to PR in the 1950's. Big Pharma built large manufacturing capacity to PR. Among his developments was Dorado, PR, Ricky Martin's hometown. Pharmaceutical manufacturing employed a large number of Ricans until the industry was off-shored following Bill Clinton's changes in the tax code and the US pivot to China for manufacturing.
When those jobs left the island's economy collapsed. It was already an economy built in a culture that rewards political patronage. Each change in leadership would result in jobs being created at the publicly owned companies. Like the telephone company on the island. They wouldn't fire the spoils system workers and replace them with new spoils system workers. The just added to the employment rolls of the phone company. It became a huge, wasteful behemoth money pit. Without the work to sustain the number of employees many were just sat at a desk and given boxes of pencils to sharpen in a sharpener on top of it. All day they got paid to sharpen pencils. Down to stubs. And other types of jobs proliferated and still proliferate around the island that are akin to being paid to dig a hole in the ground all week. And coming back the following week and filling it back in.
In the mid-2000's after a decade of a public ownership-privatization debates, strikes, etc. a Claro executive was given the green light to finally reform the company and get rid of the bloated employment rolls. Employees threatened to strike (again) and his reply was, "fine, I'll close the whole operation up here on PR and move it to the Dominican Republic. And then instead of just the pencil-sharpening jobs being cut I'll fire everybody." The employees who wanted to work saved the PR operation, the calls to strike failed.
But that culture is endemic in PR. It's taught, generational dependency. Just support a political party and make money when they win, no real work or effort required. Doesn't even matter which party, just pick one that you think has the best chances of winning and become and active supporter of it, the reward will come.
And nothing gets done. Hurricanes, earthquakes, billions of dollars flow in to help rebuild, enough to finance construction of a completely new electrical grid and power production to support the entire island's population with the latest technology. And it still has island-wide power outages, as recently as a few weeks ago. The billions that were given paid for a handful of repairs, same dilapidated, overburdened, fragile power system they had before. It's all so tiresome.
They need Elon Musk.
Even if they get him, it would not change the lazy grifting. He's wise enough to avoid places like this.
Thank you comrade for sharing this.
Looks like a movie filled with wry humor.
Follow up documentaries - excellent idea. Anyone know of a Kickstarter/Patreon for such?
Just go start filming. Waiting around for money before you begin kind of sounds like what the problem with government now is in the US. Post on Substack. Build an audience. Don't wait.
You don't need $1.7 million for a toilet or a documentary.
Get an idea, research it, get your phone and start filming. Make it something no one else is talkig about. Put it on the web, Vimeo.
The documentary left me wondering whether the project was ever built. The purpose of the road was to connect mineral rich areas of the Congo with a Seaport. It was envisioned as a win win for China and the Congo. The documentary showed local corruption indefinitely bogging down the project. The project was eventually completed with the help of massive bribes to the then ruling family of the Congo. Tolls are as high as $900 for a round trip for some vehicles, with much of that money going to the ex president of the Congo. This is detailed in the following article:
https://www.mining.com/web/china-built-congo-a-toll-road-that-led-straight-to-the-ruling-family/
Sounds like Mexico.
Great write-up. I decided to give Empire of Dust a go -- it's both shocking and illuminating. Thanks for the share. Probably gonna watch the whole thing while the Mrs. sleeps, if I'm honest. Perfect meme material, no doubt.
I wish I knew how Eddy the African learned to speak Chinese. Did he live there as a child?
Sad that California levels of corruption have reached African levels. What we lack is unity and a sense of civic virtue. Instead, we get only more deliberately divisive diversity and Pelosi levels of self-dealing at public expense.
Maybe went to university there is my guess.
it is the other way around..
I live in California. I'm sure there is plenty of corruption, just as with any big government. But another big problem here is we just have too many midwits that somehow end up running things.
The far left votes for them out of a misguided sense of righteousness.
If anyone was going to build a transcontinental African railway the British would have achieved it in the 19th century. The fact they didn't means it couldn't be done with the local people and the country the train would travel through
I think the basic problem was they didn’t control enough contiguous territory. They did make a pretty good effort down the east coast.