Nickel For Your Knowledge

The world's fastest growing economy is at risk of plunging back into war. South Sudan, an independent nation for fewer than 15 years, and at relative peace for barely five, faces rising tensions after President Salva Kiir confined First Vice President Riek Machar to house arrest. 

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/african-union-mediators-arrive-south-sudan-try-rescue-peace-deal-2025-04-02/

What does it mean, then, to have the world's fastest growing economy? In this case, not very much. South Sudan's 2024 growth was driven primarily by oil revenues; the country remains, per person, one of the world's poorest.

https://gfmag.com/data/economic-data/poorest-country-in-the-world/ 

Misleading growth numbers aside, the collapse of stability in South Sudan behooves nobody. New country, old problems. 

Thousands of miles to the south, the much stabler nation of Botswana entered a new era with the election of Duma Boko in 2024. Since independence in 1966, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has dominated the country's politics, and the first five Presidents represented that party. Boko won as leader of the Botswana National Front (BNF), which has existed nearly as long as the BDP, but rarely achieved electoral success. 

Botswana seems to have recovered from the HIV scourge of the 1990s, with life expectancy improving by more than twelve years in the last three decades. GDP per capita has tripled in that time. 

Indifference to developments in countries like South Sudan and Botswana doesn't change their significance. It is tempting to blame large media conglomerates in wealthy countries for failing to inform the public, but a quick search of New York Times articles, for instance, shows at least three election updates for Botswana in the fall of 2024, all during the concurrent US election cycle. News providers unquestionably take greedy, cynical shortcuts, underserving the public, but the information is available to those who seek it. 

Botswana ranks as the world's second largest diamond producer, and also mines copper, nickel, and soda ash. The world relies on countries like Guinea for bauxite, Chile for copper, Mozambique for minerals that produce titanium, Peru for silver. Ignorance of reality does not alter it. 

Finally, when it comes to ignorance as it pertains to South Sudan, nothing can match the prodigiously big and large cluelessness of the United States of America in its current political incarnation. After deporting a man who was actually from Democratic Republic of Congo "back" to South Sudan, US officials pressed South Sudan into accepting him anyway. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, no relation to the late Martin Landau, whose corpse would make a better Deputy Secretary, blamed the error on South Sudan, but who is more credible? One of the world's poorest and least stable countries, or bumbling sociopaths from the US Departments of State and Defense?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9281ljxj0o

Please support our work:

https://buymeacoffee.com/dionmwalesr


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoroughly Unclean

47th US President Donald J Law Abider insists that Roger Clemens should be allowed into the Baseball Hall of Fame because allegations of his PED use remain unproven. 47th US President Donald J Due Process Respecter insists that Lisa Cook of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors resign her position due to thus far unproven allegations of mortgage fraud.  There's no need to waste time reconciling these two contradictory positions. They are perfectly consistent and expected considering the source. For small minds, it boils down to whom they like, and whom they dislike. President Doofus likes Clemens and dislikes Cook.  In addition to the obvious perils of electing a whiny, petulant, vindictive hammerhead to one of the world's most powerful positions, a staff of sycophantic buffoons has exposed a flaw in the American political system. Let Presidents hire more or less whoever they want emerged as the default standard decades ago, based on the not unreasonable notion that if voters...
Read more

Straight Outta Low Trash

  YouTuber Pat Finnerty recently posted a video about a song that shouldn't exist. Country duo LoCash, formerly known as LoCash Cowboys, listened to Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely," a song written about the birth of his first child, and decided it was pretty good, but needed more pickup trucks. Early in 2025, this remarkable synergy produced "Isn't She Country?"  Finnerty's material, all of it, is exceptionally funny and insightful. Watch it. "Isn't She Country" is an abomination. To the credit of YouTube commenters, most of the feedback on the LoCash video is negative, with some calling it the worst song ever. Tragically, this isn't true for the same reason Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" isn't the worst song ever: there's still a good melody.  In about half an hour, Finnerty breaks down the creative bankruptcy of LoCash, as well as other recent interpolations by Machine Gun Kelly, Jake Owen, among others....
Read more

June Bugs Him

You think you've got problems? Imagine you're the richest man in the world. Sounds rough already, right? And yet, it gets worse.  First, you get into a tiff with your bestie, another petulant jerk with money and power, but you've got more money, and he's got more power, but neither you has enough of either to satisfy your boundless lust for validation and praise. Anyway, it's the usual stuff. You imply he's a sex offender, he threatens to cancel your government contracts, because it turns out he's the head of a government or something. You recant and try to make up, but it's never going to be the same as the good old days when the two of you bonded over dislike of immigrants. Unless they're rich.  Then, later the same month, your rocket ship explodes. This sucks because you keep talking about a human mission to Mars, a cold, dusty place without breathable air or potable water, but all you really need is a tree and one of those fridges with a tap, and...
Read more