[Hanoi, 2/28/20] It’s been two years since I flew out of Hanoi. Chasing Covid to South Korea, I thought I would stay there for maybe a month, with a possible side trip to Fukuoka or even Osaka adding two more weeks. I never thought Covid would keep me out of Vietnam this long.
From an email I just got from an American who's been in Costa Rica for 17 years:
"In terms of self-sufficiency of a country, Costa Rica is quite self-sufficient for electricity from Hydro power. Ecuador is quite self-sufficient for oil .
"I met a guy in Ecuador who had lived in Paradise, California, the town that was destroyed by forest fire. He sold his house there less than a year before the fire and moved to Ecuador. Bought a piece of land sight unseen over the internet , sent his belongings down in a container, which he then converted to live in provisionally on his new land. He told me he picked Ecuador because he figured that in the event of global collapse, Ecuador had enough oil to keep things going, but not enough oil to make them a target for invasion (by guess who?)"
Dear Teacher Lin Dinh, great admirer of your travel writings. In fact, I think you are a force of nature. Very grim world, but your characters are uplifting and hopeful. You should write novels. You have the literate genius of Maugham Somerset - easy. Stay in good health and keep up the spirits! T
You're right, I hadn't heard that the Freedom Convoy had reached DC. News of that is, of course, not allowed on mainstream media. Lat time I checked the news, this is what I found.
MSNBC...Rachel Maddow's giant head appeared on screen. My fingers couldn't change the channel fast enough.
CNN....There was Don Lemon suckin' on James Clappers' dick.....again.
FOX....They're interviewing Condi Rice....lol, they don't F around over there.
A couple of 30 lb weights are staring me in the face. I haven't lifted them in months.
Lihn, not all is bad, Russia banned Facebook and Twitter. CNN, Netflix have stopped transmitting in the country, and I think even Pornhub is affected by the sanctions. Talk about an own-goal by the West. If it goes on like that, Russia might even end as a great place to live, free from all that trash. :D
Guys who continue doubling down on that type of glib "gallows humor" even as what was once shock-jock hyperbole becomes commonplace suffering show themselves to be genuine sociopaths.
War with Russia is upon us, just as the two-year Covid-scam was falling apart. Great timing, guys! But only crazy conspiracy theorists see a connection. Is this what those Green New Deal wackos and their senile puppet "president" meant with their "Build Back Better" mantra?
Linh--when you said "Hazy Joe’s installment after another fake election is the American deep state’s ultimate fuck you to all Americans...", this has been exactly my thought, even pretty much being my very own words. It is truly as though they wanted you to know it.
And I'll also go along with your thought: "Since it’s hard to believe the West didn’t see this coming, there are suggestions it’s deliberately inviting this catastrophe..." It's my personal thought that the cabal running the "Joe Biden" administration has set out deliberately to destroy any remaining faith anyone has in their institutions. I like how Matt Taibbi put it, "almost like they went to anti-governing school." Literally every single decision of significance has been made (deliberately?) wrong.
I, too, thought about where one could take refuge from all this, and came to pretty much the same conclusion as your friend, i.e., probably either somewhere in South America or some carefully selected part of Africa.
"In coming months, Westerners will eat less, sit in the dark during rolling blackouts and, if they make it to next winter, freeze, unless they make a U-turn and kiss Putin’s ass, country by country."
Nah. Things will continue to worsen for us westerners, energy, food prices will climb up but comparatively, by and large we will do OK. It is poor countries that are large importers of wheat and grain that will get truly whacked. Egypt, Kenya, Algeria, Nigeria, Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil etc. Can you say bread riots and more arab spring mayhem?
Russia will languish. It cannot retool, rewire everything in the country that was made to work with western equipment, and this without access to capital.
Right move to not use a fake jab card, Linh. Governments are cracking down on them. Technology being what it is, I assume it’ll become easy to distinguish counterfeits from the real ones. More importantly? The principled stand. I’ve said and will continue to say that I wouldn’t use the internal passport even if I DID get the jab, which obviously I won’t ever do. Using a fake grants this system legitimacy. Albeit, it’s obviously different for you...I’ve only ever been to previously beautiful (and underrated) Canada! You’re rarely in one place for too long! Traveling abroad was never going to happen with my parents finances, and it won’t happen with mine.
When you suggest get out of Europe, would you include Albania ? I was considering trying to move there or to Montenegro but would you say Namiba is a safer bet than these?
As they said, "Putin should get the Nobel Prize for Medicine for ending the pandemic". But it's temporary. The media cannot push more than one propaganda item at the time, or people get confused. Next winter, as Russia is forgotten, "corona" will come back. I don't know what is more sickening, the perpetual warmongers, or the perpetual vaccinators. Both want us to leave in a permanent state of emergency.
Interesting observation. When I see you article links on hotmail and click in it, and read it, I am still on the hotmail url, NOT on substack. I see this often now, in Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin, where those platforms deny traffic to other websites (or keep visitors on theirs, longer). It is these little evil things that drive people nuts. A small switch, and millions of smaller websites loose organic traffic. When I tried to press Like, then I saw it was fake. I was still on hotmail. So I clicked on the banner. Only then was my browser redirecting to your real substack page. So now, only now, do I count as page visiter. Now I could press like and comment. But I bet many people read your articles embedded in BigTech without realizing they are reading a hijacked url.
Hi everybody,
From an email I just got from an American who's been in Costa Rica for 17 years:
"In terms of self-sufficiency of a country, Costa Rica is quite self-sufficient for electricity from Hydro power. Ecuador is quite self-sufficient for oil .
"I met a guy in Ecuador who had lived in Paradise, California, the town that was destroyed by forest fire. He sold his house there less than a year before the fire and moved to Ecuador. Bought a piece of land sight unseen over the internet , sent his belongings down in a container, which he then converted to live in provisionally on his new land. He told me he picked Ecuador because he figured that in the event of global collapse, Ecuador had enough oil to keep things going, but not enough oil to make them a target for invasion (by guess who?)"
Linh
Dear Teacher Lin Dinh, great admirer of your travel writings. In fact, I think you are a force of nature. Very grim world, but your characters are uplifting and hopeful. You should write novels. You have the literate genius of Maugham Somerset - easy. Stay in good health and keep up the spirits! T
Linh
You're right, I hadn't heard that the Freedom Convoy had reached DC. News of that is, of course, not allowed on mainstream media. Lat time I checked the news, this is what I found.
MSNBC...Rachel Maddow's giant head appeared on screen. My fingers couldn't change the channel fast enough.
CNN....There was Don Lemon suckin' on James Clappers' dick.....again.
FOX....They're interviewing Condi Rice....lol, they don't F around over there.
A couple of 30 lb weights are staring me in the face. I haven't lifted them in months.
Oh well....one..two.....one..two
Bill
Lihn, not all is bad, Russia banned Facebook and Twitter. CNN, Netflix have stopped transmitting in the country, and I think even Pornhub is affected by the sanctions. Talk about an own-goal by the West. If it goes on like that, Russia might even end as a great place to live, free from all that trash. :D
A real charmer this Jonathan sounds to be.
Guys who continue doubling down on that type of glib "gallows humor" even as what was once shock-jock hyperbole becomes commonplace suffering show themselves to be genuine sociopaths.
War with Russia is upon us, just as the two-year Covid-scam was falling apart. Great timing, guys! But only crazy conspiracy theorists see a connection. Is this what those Green New Deal wackos and their senile puppet "president" meant with their "Build Back Better" mantra?
Linh--when you said "Hazy Joe’s installment after another fake election is the American deep state’s ultimate fuck you to all Americans...", this has been exactly my thought, even pretty much being my very own words. It is truly as though they wanted you to know it.
And I'll also go along with your thought: "Since it’s hard to believe the West didn’t see this coming, there are suggestions it’s deliberately inviting this catastrophe..." It's my personal thought that the cabal running the "Joe Biden" administration has set out deliberately to destroy any remaining faith anyone has in their institutions. I like how Matt Taibbi put it, "almost like they went to anti-governing school." Literally every single decision of significance has been made (deliberately?) wrong.
I, too, thought about where one could take refuge from all this, and came to pretty much the same conclusion as your friend, i.e., probably either somewhere in South America or some carefully selected part of Africa.
"In coming months, Westerners will eat less, sit in the dark during rolling blackouts and, if they make it to next winter, freeze, unless they make a U-turn and kiss Putin’s ass, country by country."
Nah. Things will continue to worsen for us westerners, energy, food prices will climb up but comparatively, by and large we will do OK. It is poor countries that are large importers of wheat and grain that will get truly whacked. Egypt, Kenya, Algeria, Nigeria, Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil etc. Can you say bread riots and more arab spring mayhem?
Russia will languish. It cannot retool, rewire everything in the country that was made to work with western equipment, and this without access to capital.
Right move to not use a fake jab card, Linh. Governments are cracking down on them. Technology being what it is, I assume it’ll become easy to distinguish counterfeits from the real ones. More importantly? The principled stand. I’ve said and will continue to say that I wouldn’t use the internal passport even if I DID get the jab, which obviously I won’t ever do. Using a fake grants this system legitimacy. Albeit, it’s obviously different for you...I’ve only ever been to previously beautiful (and underrated) Canada! You’re rarely in one place for too long! Traveling abroad was never going to happen with my parents finances, and it won’t happen with mine.
When you suggest get out of Europe, would you include Albania ? I was considering trying to move there or to Montenegro but would you say Namiba is a safer bet than these?
As they said, "Putin should get the Nobel Prize for Medicine for ending the pandemic". But it's temporary. The media cannot push more than one propaganda item at the time, or people get confused. Next winter, as Russia is forgotten, "corona" will come back. I don't know what is more sickening, the perpetual warmongers, or the perpetual vaccinators. Both want us to leave in a permanent state of emergency.
Afro-viet master race
Interesting observation. When I see you article links on hotmail and click in it, and read it, I am still on the hotmail url, NOT on substack. I see this often now, in Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin, where those platforms deny traffic to other websites (or keep visitors on theirs, longer). It is these little evil things that drive people nuts. A small switch, and millions of smaller websites loose organic traffic. When I tried to press Like, then I saw it was fake. I was still on hotmail. So I clicked on the banner. Only then was my browser redirecting to your real substack page. So now, only now, do I count as page visiter. Now I could press like and comment. But I bet many people read your articles embedded in BigTech without realizing they are reading a hijacked url.