Grrl Power #1014 – The Zambezi high club
An odd page, admittedly, but things are happening on the other side of the Earth.
I didn’t write this page intending to dump on Mozambique, but I had to decide where Galytn actually was, and based on other higher altitude maps I’ve drawn, it’s at the southern tip of Malawai and overlaps into Mozambique slightly. The country started off about a quarter the size of Rhode Island, but has expanded considerably. Mostly directly south so Deus can connect it to the Zambezi, and then to the ocean.
I did a little research on Mozambique and it’s supposedly one of the poorer African nations, is rife with corruption, and according to wikipedia, their air force is comprised of 8 jets (mostly old Russian castoffs), 2 attack helicopters, and a number of cargo transports and training planes. Presumably one of the jets was down for maintenance when they tried to stop Deus last time. And as Deus states, less than 1% of Marromeu’s (a city along the Zambezi) population has electricity. So it seems to me, or at least Deus, that some of the population might appreciate a little industrialization. The endemic corruption is probably why the country is languishing as it is. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the geopolitics of the area, but I am going to assume that’s the case, which is why Deus has decided that a change of administration is required before he starts putting down infrastructure there.
In Mozambique’s favor, they do have quite a few tanks, so we’ll see how Deus’s campaign goes.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Proofing’s back on. One last set of notes left to go through. I should be able to do that this week. At that point, it should be done. I want to do some more work on the cover, but I also want to get it out to you guys, cause honestly I think it’s pretty entertaining. So… maybe I’ll release it with a mostly finished cover. You guys will definitely find a few extra typos if the first book was any indication, so I can fold those in as I noodle the cover for the final final version.
January’s vote incentive is titled “The Origin of The Might Halo.” Hopefully the reason is evident.
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O was wondering where this guy had been
This is why Deus is such a threat. He’ll do everything as businesslike as he can and will get exactly what he wanted no matter what happens. Worst of all he doesn’t want to rule,he just wants what he wants and will get it eventually.
he doesnt always get what he wants – though he always provides a cooperative scenario to his opposition and makes sure that in the case of defection they pay the higher price
and on top of that – he never enters into a situation unless it is from a position of overwhelming power – if there is no such position…he does not engage
which would make his origin story VERY interesting… because at some point he has to have had aquired sufficient power to build upon in this way
i presume, for the financial world of the GrrlPower verse he came basically out of nowhere – very low-key building assets until he can start making powermoves like that without immediatly becoming a target for bigger players at the table that can do the same to him
Assume he is a super whose power is information. There’s a lot of ways to get silly rich with out combat.
… Here is an odd thought, what if he doesn’t have a super whose power is information working for him. What if he *IS* a super with some kind of info power. He *sees* patterns that are otherwise impossible to find, he *knows* how someone or many someones will react to stimulus, etc.
Unless I missed something, I think we have established that there is no way to detect supers… Sooo, maybe?
Looks like you were pretty close there.
His power is knowing what people want. That’s why he thinks greed is the root of all. That is also why he is so *ahem* good…
Still using Pzkfw III H apparently, looks like the long 50mm in a late war mantlet
Meh, might actually be a Pzkfw IV F looking at the pic in frame 2, with the slight angle down of the hull in front of the turret and the shottraps on the turret corners
I mean, I think Dave just drew a “generic tank” and that’s what his reference image was. If Wikipedia is correct, Mozambique would probably be using Soviet T-55’s instead.
True dat
More like Dave found a 3D tank .obj that wasn’t obviously an American tank or some futuristic Tron looking thing, then needed his stepkids help because whoever made it used like 600K polygons and welded it to a massive ground plane and Clip Studio Paint did not like that.
… and then touched it up a bit so it didn’t look so obviously 3D.
My condolences to your hairs which were lost. I can fully understand this one.
Love background stories like that,
I am reminded of an interview (paraphrasing here) of a cyberpunk artist, there was discussion on what these tubes and wires did on this hexapod tank, the idea they had to have done all this research on circuitry, hydraulic pressure systems, and so on; and when asked the artist was just shrugging and saying something like “I thought it looked cool and high tech*.
That was not only a power move, but also the right move.
Association to your association:
It’s hard for me to find a balance between my hobby of trying to make things that shouldn’t normally work work and not accidentally putting realism expectations on an artist.
For me an artist that writes “unrealistic” is only better, because it allows me to play with the variables until I find something that works, but in my quest for challenges I tend to use complaints about the work being unrealistic as a basis, because they present a good case to work from, but with that behavior I give them legitimacy increasing the power of their call.
I calm my conscience with the idea that my designs also take legitimacy by porposing a different more generous viewpoint.
Sad Smoutwortel noises :(.
I will have to admit it can also be done on other subjects and I do, but fiction is the only one that allows me to spar with people on an equal level even if my own knowledge and ability grows.
Examples
If you make kryptonite a beta emitter and superman’s skin a carbon structure some dude will pull a comic out of his ass where someone holds a Geiger counter next to it without result.
If you think of a FOSS version of anti-cheat and drm you will have to write, publish and market it before you get critique you saw already coming.
Fans get way too obsessed with the details. Supposedly the writers of MacGyver did considerable research to ensure his contraptions were realistic, but deliberately left out key components or steps so that viewers wouldn’t actually be able to copy them.
Same with “Burn Notice”: even though Michael would mention, seemingly in detail, what he was doing, they always left things out that would actually make it work
Ouch, way too much effort for background scenery. That wasn’t a 3d print file was it? Welded to a base sounds suss, like it’s for printing.
Though perhaps they are Girls & Panzers tanks, so the imminent curbstomping won’t actually kill any tank crews.
Mozambique has T-54 and T-55, with an unknown status. I’d wager that they have less than 20 runners.
Deus is getting his Bond villain on
no, bond villians aim stupidly high with convoluted plans. SPECTER might have started out as an exception, but it still tried for world domination. Dues may come to dominate the world, but he’s focused on one little part of it. Seriously, does Dues keep a shark or Man-O-War in a tank in (around) his office?
just wait till Dues’s priestess shows up.
Deus might have a shark tank. But it’d just be because he wanted a shark tank.
He wouldn’t even feed people to it, waste of effort and they can escape, plus it’s bad for their digestion
Or worse they might fight his pet shark Geffrey. It could get hurt!
But do they have lasers attached to their heads?
And if they don’t have lasers, I hope they’re at least ill-tempered!
No. Having lasers attached to their heads impairs sharks’ swimming ability, which is more important than some human’s idea of what “cool” is.
Ahh, but when they are being transported by tornado, they don’t need to *swim*, now do they?
Deus read the Bond villain playbook, took notes, and decided to do it *better*
actually, I suspect he’s read the evil overlord list(tm) not sure where the 12 year old is, However Due seems to actually be a good manager (unlike some people) and may be capable of hiring, paying, and actually listening to dissenting voices.
help…. I feel this urge… I need help… Must PUN.
If you are looking for one of the original lists
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
Why build a day-care and preschool for your workers’ families, and not have it serve a secondary function?
Sydney’s mom has got it goin’ on…
most women who become mothers do…
At this point Deus is every earlier colonizer rolled into one… “I want to civilize you, but on my terms, for my benefit and no matter if you want it or not…”
The difference is that he seems to *actually* be bringing prosperity, rather than simply extracting wealth.
…maybe. Noone is advocating for him except him, but noone is saying he’s lying, either.
To be fair, colonialism was never about extracting wealth, but about securing trade and political power over other colonial powers. Most colonies were actually money sinks on their own merit.
Would be interested to see supporting sources for this. A few colonies settled by newcomers (e.g. the Puritans) were about new places to live, but the majority of European colonialism in Africa, India, and the Americas just gobbled up the new resources and trade, and exported all the wealth back to the mother country without a thought for the natives’ needs, rights, or quality of life.
I suspect its a time thing. early on, yes, the colonies were a massive money sink. anytime they lost their collective marbles and needed troops to put the marbles back put the colony behind another 10-20 years or so financially. at one point or another, they made money for both the trading companies, and the host countries.
There’s not a huge difference between a colony and a person’s desire for a second house built from pretty well scratch on a green plot. Both cost an arm and a leg, not merely for establishment, but on-going maintenance, just ask any landlord. This is why you don’t often see (for example) a steel mill in a colony. You *will* see a useful port that can accommodate bulk transport carriers. The other thing which will be highly visible is some form of agriculture, especially in the (Euro) tradition of wheat barley and oats even if these are totally foreign to the locals. Factories? Never!
Colonies are also useful for feet in boots.
Horse. Poop. The colonies are mostly for extraction and plantations. The wealth and raw materials go back to the colonizing country where value gets added. c.f. Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, and Britain. It can change if you drive out or exterminate the original inhabitants and replace them with your own people. But that isn’t guaranteed
Isn’t that what I just said? Or are you confused by the presence of deep water sea-ports?
Of all the British colonies in Africa only Egypt and South Africa were profitable. The rest never wend above redline and existed mostly so Britain could build a railroad connecting those two. And eliminate east African slave trade.
That is … one of the silliest things I have ever heard. From the Iberian conquest of South America to the Sugar Plantations of the Caribbean, the Scramble in Africa, the Arab Slave Trade, the agreements former French colonies suffer under to this day, and so on for days. Are you going to tell me next that the formerly colonized need to pay back their debt to the colonizers who uplifted them from savagery, civilized them, and relieved them of the burden of all those natural resources and cheap labor out of the goodness of their hearts?
In the immortal words of Homey D. Clown “Homey don’t play that s***.”
” Are you going to tell me next that the formerly colonized need to pay back their debt to the colonizers who uplifted them from savagery, civilized them, and relieved them of the burden of all those natural resources and cheap labor out of the goodness of their hearts?”
Ask Haiti about that. Or better yet, ask France – they’re STILL forcing Haiti to pay off the “debt” from the loss of their property… i.e. the slaves who staged a successful revolt.
Yep. And the deal they have forced on the colonies which didn’t thoroughly unass them (French Indochina as an example of what it takes to delouse oneself of them) is about as bad. Direct payments for the wonderful things Paris did uplifting them, forever. First refusal on resource extraction for French firms. Preferred supplier for all military equipment and training. Government money resides in France. Permanent invitation to La Légion if France decides French interests are threatened. So on. So forth.
I am shocked that Rwanda didn’t get sued for changing their official language to English
Bringing prosperity to the region is just an unfortunate (for him) side-effect
On what basis are you suggesting that he actually dislikes people? Certainly, he wants to be the biggest of the really big dogs, but his strategy for achieving that appears to be to have the largest of a LOT of small slices of a pie that he is going to make REALLY, REALLY big. He wants to dominate a planet that dominates the cosmos.
Would/will he replace everyone with more efficient bots at some point? It feels unlikely. I think he wants _crowds_ with valid reason to think that he hung the moon. (The newer, better, one of course.)
Didn’t say he dislikes people, just said that any benefit that helps others is secondary to helping himself
Depends on your definition of prosperity, I think. They have infrastructure and wealth and education and such. However, the posture of the serving girl in the last panel doesn’t exactly scream “social equity” to me…
Specially not with that control collar around her neck…
And we have already seen SmugD surrounds himself with lackeys willing to kill those who upset or oppose their master
A caucasian girl… OK, probably “rescued” from some place like Romania.
Where do you get that it’s a control collar?
Possibly indirectly, from the presence of Ms Liglalathane in the background? I mean, yeah, unlikely that Deus would condone their use.
Equity? She’s well-dressed, employed in a pretty soft indoor job in high-end surroundings. Seems pretty equitable to me. Were you expecting servants to be the social equals of their employers? On what basis?
Collar? Its a choker, such as are found in many maid costumes. ARC all wear chokers too. Whats your point?
Most importantly, Dave likes chokers, and a selection of other, shall we say, restrictive items, as anyone familiar with his art before Grrlpower can tell you. So its hardly a surprise that the man puts in what he likes from time to time.
A soft, indoor job in the high-end surroundings of a forward military bunker…
Yes, I expect *employees* to be socially equal to their employers, on the grounds of “all men are created equal”
It’s not just the choker, it’s the posture. Chin up, eyes forward, lips not quite pursed. It all reads to me as someone who has received strict training on being seen, not heard.
I’m just saying, as a point of imagery, she seems to be placed to call into question Deus’ promises of sharing wealth and livelihood with the people when he has the capacity to all but own the people himself…
“Chin up, eyes forward” – she’s waiting attentively to serve him a snack, and monitoring his face and speech to find the right moment. Given her task and that she is much shorter than him, I don’t see any way for her to be looking other than up and forward. Odds are she is part of the catering team, not a personal assistant like the 2 behind him.
Any interpretation of her attire, expression, and posture is highly subjective without more context. We’ve really only seen a few of his villainous minions (Lorlara, Vale, various mercenaries); at least I can’t recall seeing any traditional business staff. But to me, she appears to be in catering-esque business casual and getting bored waiting for him to stop yakking and take his snack so she can move on.
And most of Deus’ minions seem to treat him as an equal anyway. One or two of them almost to the point of disrespect…
A well trained slave is alert. Watching the face of the master closely for cues to the next command.
because prosperity is good for you, its why every single dictator irl is a stupid idiot who dont know what they are doing, being an asshole is detrimental for everyone involved including the dictator him or herself
if you help the people to prosper they will be happy and will be less likely to rebel, if you give them education they will be smarter and provide your country with riches and technology that everyone including yourself will enjoy, if you invest in infrastructure people lives will be better and you will have more money to spend, if you place nicely and respect international laws like human rights other powerful and rich nations will be more willing to exchange goods and services with you
basically being good is a win win situation where everyone ends up better, if you dont realize the most powerful nations on earth got there by being nice with their citizens investing in education and infrastructure and in general by not being evil assholes with everyone, there are some examples of asshole nations that managed to survive and prosper for a while but eventually those tend to fall
but the human mind is curious and evolution has made it so that we only care about the short term benefit instead of the long term one so a dictator is more likely to invest in a new golden statue than in industrializing his nation and in opresing disidents with violence and human rights abuses instead of trying to solve the situation peacefuly and by other means
deus is still a villain thou
I don’t know what a colonizer is, but Deus seems to be more in the Empire building business. Going by his track record, he actually takes the White Man’s Burden on his shoulders, but only because it makes him filthy rich. Happy people are productive people after all. Oh, and because he can, wouldn’t put that bit past him….
A coloniser is someone (or, more often, a country) in the Empire building business.
Colonizers. He invades your lands for his own personal enrichment and aggrandizement. Add in some crap about civilizing the savages and bringing them the glory of god, a d you’ve got a colonizer. Especially when you actually make living conditions worse for the area you’re invading.
Check the book “7 myths of the Spanish conquest. “
So the big difference between your standard colonizer and Deus is that Deus seems to be intent on bringing these people the glory of himself… who he may believe to be god. He claims to be improving the living conditions, but as Rakaydos pointed out, we only have his word for it.
>who he may believe to be god
Not just believes but openly calls.
To save others searching the archives:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-393-deus-uses-develop-country-its-super-effective/
While Deus’s claims in panel 4 could be entirely fictional, Dave’s note under the comic seems to imply that it’s at least partially true (though also noting that improving the quality of life for Galtyn’s people is likely a pretty low bar).
Well, you take away a lot of water-borne diseases, actually have things like penicillin / azythromycin in stock to treat infections, water purification… you’d be surprised how fast life expectancy can go up.
Oh, and you get rid of the folks prone to, you know, murder.
I ensure you that not everybody did or claimed to do it such “benevolent” reasons:
The VOC was a company with a business model who saw money, the Australian “colonists” did it to not be killed, Leopold III never considered the natives wellbeing and the conquistadores did it for gold and silver.
Sure the british, french, portugeze and spanish states claimed to do it for such reasons, but they were not the only colonizers.
A state always needs a “life improvement for citizens” excuse for direct action, so the big players found this, but this only kept up for states that had conquered for this purpose before and hadn’t been recently at the receiving end.
I don’t recognize the guy in the vote incentive. Is that supposed to be an author self-insert?
Sydney’s dad.
oh damn, I did NOT read that image right. This is going to be even more absurd than you think. I had a massive brainfart and mixed up Sydney and her mom (who don’t even have the same hair color now that I think about it), so I thought this was a vacation boyfriend in Mexico making an artwork of Sydney to practice and she said she needed to get drunker for that. I don’t understand this, I’ve been reading this comic since 2016, I should have realized it wasn’t Sydney, but I was confused by the title and thought this was on their trip to Mexico…
I was thinking this might have been the beginning of the night that Sydney was conceived, but they both look similar enough to how they do now to be a much more recent picture.
Am I the only one who finds it awkward to call him “Sydney’s Dad” when HIS name is Sydney? Call him Sydney Sr. Elder Sydney? Sydney the Elder? Sydnelder? Syddaddy!? I’ll go on like this all night…
Just like with the two Tony Dinozo’s on NCIS: the father was always referred to as ‘Senior’ and Slap-bait was always called ‘Junior’ when both were around
You don’t recognize Sydney’s dad? He only appeared in the comic recently, but he’s been in a few pages.
“I don’t actually read the comic, I’m just here for the sexy vote incentives.”
Yeah he really is try to be the maximum villian isn’t he?
To be fair, he’s just being a conqueror here. Nothing specifically evil about it, he’s following a long line of “every ruler ever”
Annexing a country against the will of its recognised government, threating to kill those who resist, is indeed specifically evil, regardless of how good the carrot is.
specially currently, marching to another recognized nation and taking them for yourself hasnt been in vogue for atleast 80 years, the last guy who did that is… not liked a lot
80 years? Hmm, I’ve got a call from Sebastopol for you…
(true, not a particularly well-liked guy either)
So far, the amount of “evil” Deus has done is actually fairly on the down low. He didn’t plan to break into the magic vault, just took advantage when someone else did. He deposed a murderous dictator and made the lives of his people better in the process.
He very probably tried to negotiate with yet another dictator to get access to the sea and he is now giving the soldier every opportunity to surrender.
There have been way worse reasons for starting a war throughout history…
The enemy not immediately surrendering is somehow enough casus belli in your book?
Also, he had to have been constantly monitoring the vault to know that it was vulnerable, and it definitely wasn’t to prevent other people from robbing it. So if that isn’t “planned” I don’t know what is.
actually no he only had to know about the vault and some of its security precautions
the entire magical world got a notification that the “internet” was going to run on backup power for a while…which would make it clear to him that the alarms are going to be off at the time
that gives him all he needs to know when to make his own entrance into the vault – and he is shows up shortly after scionia
for what he mentions about her crew, all ne heeds to have is some decent dossiers on most of the criminal super population and some of the council as well as an idea of whats in the vault
as the elder vampire mentioned when he realized it… they accidentally CCed scionia as to when their security would be down
he probably had several plans on how that vault could be breached in a folder somewhere – doesnt mean he put any of it into motion… its more likely for him to have been negotiating backchannels to get access to some specific items as the need for any of them arose
but when given the chance to aquire a lot of the items in there on minimal effort and all the heat on someone else, he probably will make the choice to stock up on those items ahead of time
Even though he is apparently immensely wealthy Deus is about managing expenses. Negotiating is usually way cheaper than fighting. Deus will spend the cash if it furthers his goals. Minimizing casualties helps to reduce the animosity of the locals and reduces the degree to which other world leaders feel like they have to intervene. He didn’t hesitate to eliminate that dictator when negotiation didn’t work. I think it’s been discussed before; Deus is evil, he’s just efficiently evil.
evil is a very unhelpful subjective label
all it essentially says is “he does something that conflicts with at least one of my core values” without specifying which
no one thinks of themselves as evil and there is no absolute arbiter that defines what evil is.
so far deus has been pragmatic and been seen to increase the social benefits and limit overall harm to people with little to no regard to personal morals
he is absolutely acting as a dictator/authoritarian ruler – even if on the benevolent side
we cant really speak for his motives because the comic never has shown them – only things he has accomplished, but not what he is aiming for
i would have issues with how much what he is building depends on someone like him in power – not so much with him specifically… so in my book? i wouldnt call him evil – though he also isnt sufficiently aligned with my core values that i would call him good
depending on his motives – he might be close to the archetypal utilitarian… maximize the wellbeing for as many people as possible no matter the means
personally i dont like that school of thinking, because of that last bit – but i wouldnt call it evil, because it aligns with my goals – and many of the means that can lead to that goal are perfectly compatible with my values… but for me there are limits i dont want to cross which is why i wouldnt align with it
you on the other hand might think very differently and have different values – you might draw different lines to not cross and with a different intensity, all of which is valid
but just calling something evil is lazy.
Utilitarians are Humanitarians, which Deus definitely is NOT. What he is all about is enlightened self-interest.
Evil is a very unhelpful label until you are on the receiving end.
I’m perfectly happy to use Granny Weatherwax’s definition for most practical purposes, treating people as things.
I agree with your point. Evil is one of those words that is too widely applied. Tsath’s point probably covers the generality of evil. In this case it is convenient to call Deus evil for the purpose of discussing this particular bit of fiction. In life I’ve had opportunity to meet a number of people who would be considered evil to some degree or other. Some of them were just chaotic f&@k ups who didn’t consider their actions in time and had an “evil” outcome. Some of them were political types who were bright enough not to commit murder or overt crimes but who would step on you in a heartbeat in the furtherance of their ambitions. A few were criminals who killed someone who was in their way. These would mostly be considered lower case “e” evil. There might be a genuine Hannibal Lecter out there somewhere but he would be a truly rare bird. I have met upper case “E” Evil one time. He could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck from 50 feet away. I could pick up on the fact that he was dangerous way before I found out that he was a spree killer. For reference, I met most of these people at a forensic psychiatric hospital where I worked at various jobs for nearly 30 years. The point here is just to illustrate that there are a lot of things that people label “evil” and this barely scratches the list. Other than Tsath’s point about treating people as things they didn’t have that much in common with each other and possibly aside from the political types they would have very little in common with the character of Deus. Deus presents an interesting character. He illustrates the point that sometimes evil is good looking and wears a nice suit and he sometimes does stuff that works in your favor. I suppose to a degree that is part of the seductiveness of evil. As for the benevolence of individuals like Deus, eugenics sounds like a pretty nifty idea…until they come for your disabled brother.
deus is pragmatig but he is definetly evil, is just that he realized that if he plans to act like the regular super villain in a saturday morning cartoon he is going to eventually find himself without allies, money, power and with a contingent or arcswat at his door asking for questions
also we know his objectives, he himself said it, his ultimate objective is to take over the entire world, which is harder than it sounds or how most cartoons make it look like when you realize that to accomplish said objective you need to fight you way against over 200 goverments some of them with masive armies equiped with highly advanced technology and billions of potential soldiers, what deus is doing right now is very simple, he is building himself an army that can take over the world
and for that he needs to build the infrastructure, population, technology and resources to be able to accomplish said goal, he is acting as a benebolent dictator because that is exactly what accomodates him the best, after all you cant build highly advanced weapons without the necesary factories and alien technology cant be reverse enginered without a good group of educated and profesional scientists and enginers, soldiers need to stay loyal and no better to win their upmost loyalty than to improve the living conditions of their family and friends, all of this means that building infrastructure, educating the population, pacifing warlords, making sure that the economy prospers, improving the lives of the population, etc are all things that he is interested in because eventually all that prosperity is going to make him more powerful
the same can be said of his lackeys, he makes sure to treat his mercenaries really well, give them a lot of money and new shiny toys that they can use, this way they remain loyal because they know that even if someone else offers more money working with deus is better in the long run
but is all a play and his eventual objective is to make himself the god emperor of mankind, why? we dont know yet, but a good guy he isnt, he is just smart
He’s not just negotiating access to the sea, he is openly declaring annexing the area once he gains access
And if they don’t comply, he will simply kill all those who oppose him until there are no more
Rather, a Maxima villain. scnr
@DaveB –
When researching Real World countries of contemporary Earth, one essential resource is the CIA World Factbook:
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/
By no means do I suggest that it is the be-all & end-all. Merely that it is one of many resources, and it is filled with an enormous amount of up-to-date statistical data. If it contradicts other resources you have, you’ll want to dig a little bit to resolve why. But, the CIA World Factbook is rarely wrong and, when it is, it’s usually quite close and a matter of being an update off. At the very least, if you check both the Factbook and Wikipedia, you should be on fairly solid ground pretty quickly and in a position to drill down into more specific searches armed with good base numbers and solid vocabulary to compose searches.
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mozambique/
The Mosambique Armed forces has a few T54/T55 main battle tanks… These are tanks that was designed during WWII.
Hungarian Resistance fighters took them out with Molotov cocktails during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
The PT-76 is a light tank(light enough to float… ) and while it’s till in use some places, it’s a tin can with very poor armor. The BRDM 1 and 2 (also in Mosambique) have largely replaced them.
The rest is mostly APCs.
In other words, a Teleporter capable of teleporting to a location high in the air, and also carrying glass bottles filled with flammable chemicals and a burning rag in the opening can easily dispatch the wwhole set of tanks.
(Try not to completely destroy all. Bovington might want a few)
Yup, historically correct.
During Operation Barbarossa (German attack on Soviets), the German Stukas were able to destroy an enormous quantity of Soviet tanks by shooting them with 7.7 mm machine guns, which are glorified Kalashnikovs. Normally, that wouldn’t have scratched the paint. But the Soviet tanks were carrying drums of gasoline in preparation for their own attack. Replace Stuka with flying super, same principle.
So i just checked out the vote incentive.
Is that Laura? Why’s she so much taller than Syd Sr here? I thought she was about the same height in heels previously? Also, is she naturally blonde or brunette? I could see the dye going either way (fun flirty youth dying it blonde or professional lady dying it brown to try and mitigate some of the sexist horseshit she probably has to endure anyway).
Also I see Deus is continuing to demonstrate that “the beatings will continue until morale improves” is acutally a valid strategy under the right circumstances.
She could be standing on a raised platform, at least some artists the location where the model is at is actually above the level of the floor, presumably to make it easier to see everything.
I’d assume she’s standing on a box, it’s not uncommon in that situation.
Compare the lengths of their torsos. She’s definitely standing on something. She’s so much taller because her knees are in line with his crotch.
34% of the people in mozambique has access to electricity. Which sounds about the same as texas to me.
Yes, but is the Texas grid as stable and trustworthy as the Mosambique grid?
No, no it is not
I imagine unlike Texas that the people in Mozambique aren’t proud of it either.
I don’t think Mozambique is in danger of having its Wind Turbines freeze solid. For one, they can’t afford to build any…
That is not at all why the grid went down last year, yeesh.
To be fair, there WERE frozen wind turbines, but the natural gas and other traditional power plants failed as well, as many of them weren’t adequately winterized. The frozen wind turbines weren’t the root problem, but a symptom of it.
To be fair, it was the third coldest winter in Texas History. Dallas/Fort Worth recorded -2F on February 16. It matched the low of January 31, 1949 and was 6F above the -8F of February 12,1899. This is around 30F below the normal low for Dallas/Fort Worth. It was, essentially, a once in a century cold snap. Very few electrical grids can handle a once in a century low. Texas, except for El Paso, has its own electrical grid so it can tell The Federal Government where to stick it. The advantages of this far out way the disadvantages.
Also to be fair, Texas has the incompetence of Ted Cruz and Abbott, which outweighs those Advantages right back.
So… yeah.
There is an interesting overview of the Texas Power Grid Outage at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08mwXICY4JM
At night I can see a hundred beacons on flashing on top of wind turbines. They are synchronized by the way. It’s flat out here. And kind of boring. There is a reason we have propane for back up and we all keep generators out in the garage. The higher voltage infrastructure has improved a bit since the utility companies had to build a lot of lines to gather and distribute the current from the turbines but local distribution is still crap. I can lie in bed at night and hear the fan speed up and slow down with variations in voltage.
Given that Mozambique is currently in a 4 way civil/gang war between the army, the police, the mafia, and Al Shabaab, where they are all just kicking the hell out of each other at the cost of the civilian population, and the whole country is disintegrating magnificently, I doubt they’d be able to muster even that.
Keep in mind that “a few months ago” in comic, Maxima was in a videoconference with Obama (that Sydney barged in on)
So there may be a growing disconnect between realtime and comic time.
Just assume that it’s always’now’ whenever current events are mentioned.
Yeah, it’s pretty easy to forget that the comic timeline has moved less than a year in the…what, decade? A little over? Anyway, yeah, time’s advanced less than a year in the comic in the entire time we’ve been reading it.
I assume this comic much like Marvel and DC had to do with eventually stop referencing real world politics and events and make up its own politicians and such as a separate reality entirely.
*when does the story take place?
-next Sunday AD
The pun in Portuguese works more or less because we tend to put “currently” near the beginning of the sentence, with the appropriate voice tone: “Talvez tu tinhas, mas ACTUALMENTE menos de 1 por cento da população tem acesso”.
It could work if Deus hasn’t got perfect/excellent Portuguese and is using more English sentence construction. And is he speaking Pt Portuguese? Brazilian? Mozambique dialect? (I’m not sure how different African dialects of Portuguese are from EU and Brazilian Portuguese)
“talvêz você tinha, mas menos de 1% tem acesso, de forma corrente” isn’t good portuguese, really stretching to make the pun, but it is understandable.
A better pun would be using “light” as a slang for electric, then using it to mean knowledge/awareness “let me illuminate you” but then you’re just re-writing the whole conversation
I think the pun is based on “electric current”, so you’d have to use correntamente instead of atualmente.
I’m using Yandex which seems to be more reliable than Google and Bing has retreated to the shelter of a hole in the ground.
“You did, perhaps, but less than one percent of the population has access currently.” Original, gives
“Talvez sim, mas menos de um por cento da população tem acesso.” “Talvez sim” translates (correctly I think) to:
“Maybe so, but currently less than one percent of the population has access.” Move the adverb, which generates “actualamente”, so look for synonyms and look:
“Talvez sim, mas correntemente menos de um por cento da população tem acesso.”
Yes, the word-play does work in Portugese, but it is stretching the lakky a bit. Okay, you could call it a pun.
“Pode chamar-lhe um trocadilho.” :)
Oh, electric CURRENT! I didn’t get that pun. Yeah, in European Portuguese that pun doesn’t work. “Correntemente” sounds more like Brazilian Portuguese.
I don’t think you’ll be in any danger from Pader’s Ginja serving squad :)
Oops. Sorry Pander, I missed the n. :(
I forgive you…. this time. :)
I’m brazilian. The joke don’t work here either. “Correntemente”, as far as I can tell, do not exist.
I’ll just assume that Deus did a really good pun in portuguese, and the universal translator that write the comic baloons adapted the best they could.
I have assumed that Mozambique Portugese would be more aligned with Portugal itself, mostly because I cannot see a way for Brazillian Portugese to make it to the far side of Africa.
OTOH, we really cannot trust the Machine Learning algorithms in any online translation. I typed “Pajero” into the Spanish window in both Yandex, Google and Bing, they all came back with “Wanker” — and I’m very sure that’s NOT the correct or proper translation.
Geographically, where would Deus’ Country (the one he bought/stole) be located? Zambia? Malawi? I thought it was around Rwanda or Burundi. Is he trying to create a path to teh Ocean? Or conquer all of the East African nations in his path?
The description says:
> I didn’t write this page intending to dump on Mozambique, but I had to decide where Galytn actually was, and based on other higher altitude maps I’ve drawn, it’s at the southern tip of Malawai and overlaps into Mozambique slightly. The country started off about a quarter the size of Rhode Island, but has expanded considerably. Mostly directly south so Deus can connect it to the Zambezi, and then to the ocean.
And yes, Deus said that he wants to get a route to the ocean. It seems that right now his plan is to bite off a reasonable chunk of land and focus on developing it. Keep his ambitions small enough for the moment and he won’t have major world powers coming to spank him with an axe (or a Maxima). Also, after he’s turned Galytn into a huge success other countries will start asking to join instead of needing to be conquered.
More of Column A than of Column B: he is ‘only’ trying to gain direct ocean access from an initially landlocked state, but he does insist that it be through Galytn’s own territory. He’s not trying to conquer the whole of the intervening state(s), only a narrow corridor!
Compare that to similar situations in our world, where the landlocked state would usually negotiate secured transit rights via one of its neighbour’s major rivers – Malawi uses the Shire and Zambezi to transit Mozambique, for instance. (If Galytn extends a bit further South and/or West than Malawi does, it can probably access the Zambezi directly and bypass the narrower Shire.) Alternatively, it may have agreements for the free passage of containers by road and/or rail, generally on the condition that they remain sealed while in transit.
The closest our world has to Deus’s objective is things like the Panama Canal Zone, where the USA essentially leased the land around the route of the Panama Canal in order to build and later operate the canal. Much easier to pull off if the leasing country has leverage on the transit country (be that military, political, economic, or simply monetary), and especially if it’s a route that would serve many users and thus have a greater case for ‘being a neutral zone’.
I read through the comments about Deus and honestly, just let it be a comic book. This is not primed for accuracy, any more than the Avengers is. That said, Deus gets away with things no one, no matter how rich would get away with. He doesn’t have the liquid assets to accomplish what he does, and banks wouldn’t lend to him once he started doing what he is doing. The US/UK functionally control money lending he would have access to and so could ignore his efforts in the UN and just make his funding dry up.
And then there is China, which is doing a lot of the work to destabilize Africa to maintain their stranglehold on the world coltan supply.
Short answer is military power doesn’t matter. Neither does diplomatic power. Dues doesn’t have the economic power to fight the entire world monetary establishment.
Let him get his Lex Luthor on, b/c as I said above, it’s a comic book.
Deus isn’t fighting the world. The country that he is ambassador to is fighting a poor, corrupt African nation.
I don’t think I will ever cease to be baffled by the number of people who apparently want their entertainment to be nonsensical. Nor will I ever understand why so many of the above feel so righteous about it that they have to nag all the people who appreciate the opposite…
It’s called “escapism”. It’s fun, and relaxing.
but there in lies the problem.
people hate Deus because he brakes the “escapism” i myself love the rest of the cast and their story but the moment Deus shows up its like a train wreck. he derails all other plot lines and every other character, no matter how intelligent or insightful, has to become a blind idiot to keep his joke of a plot line going.
there has been few characters in fiction that poison a story so much that i want to drop the story all together but Deus is at the head of that list
Complete agrecian with you
The sooner SmugD gets punted into the sun the better (not our sun, that’s too close)
One day you’ll finally realize all this anger you have towards Deus is secretly admiration for his accomplishments, G.
All praise Deus amen.
Tell me, do either of youse two do any cooking? Like maybe a ragout, or an Irish Stew?
My Mum used to make a Steak and Kidney pie from time to time. Do youse like Kidneys? Statistically, probably not. They too often taste HORRIBLE, and the mouth-feel isn’t that great either. But if you delete the Kidneys from the S&K Pie, all you have is just another pie. Seriously, with nothing that makes it SPECIAL. Take the Kidneys out and you then have to change the recipe A LOT.
Deus is the Kidney in the S&K Pie. His job is to add interest by derailing things. In another universe he would be Jorj X. McKie, and just as much beloved by would-be bajillionnaires and powerful OverGovernment Ministers.
There is nothing ‘special’ about SmugD, he doesn’t add anything that would be missed if it wasn’t there
Kevin makes for a more interesting anti-villain
What’s ‘special’ about Deus is that he’s a villain they can’t legally stop with violence. And represents a counterpoint and reasonable threat to Max, whether due to his political maneuvering, technology, or just being able to cause her to doubt her choices.
If Deus was trying to use the whole of Africa to take on the world, you might have a point. But he’s just working to raise up one very small country, and the world largely isn’t caring about it. It’s *near* where most of the coltan mining is apparently happening, but it’s not there, so China’s not going to be super concerned about it until it’s really apparent that something is really going the way Deus is claiming.
Also, Deus doesn’t seem like the sort to rely on borrowing money any longer than he can help. He’s not to the point yet where the US/UK would be interested in stopping him, and by the time he is, he won’t be borrowing money. He’ll be *lending* money. Given how poor governments seem to be at managing their funding, that will probably help him get around a lot of obstacles that he’d likely face at that late stage.
But as far as your direction goes “just let it be a comic book”… it *is* a comic, so there’s not really any other option.
… No single person, no matter how rich, has enough money to bankroll an entire country. Even for the ludicrous rich, their assets are in the form of assets that while being semi-liquid, are not liquid to the extent that they could instantly spend any appreciable fraction of it at a single time. Instead all of the uber rich borrow money because it makes sense for them to do so, because even with the interest, borrowing money just makes them richer.
If world’s-richest-man Elon Musk had somehow cashed out everything last year during his peak worth (the height of the TSLA run), he would have had about $302 billion, or 4.4% of the actual 2021 US budget. Enough to run the Federal government (but not any state or local ones) for just over 16 days. Today being Jan 14, we’d have 2 days left before shutting everything down for 349 days and trying again next year.
…which, given that this is “2020 too”, might not be that bad of an idea.
That said, this list of country expenditures for 2020 actually indicates Elon could have bankrolled quite a few of the smaller countries indefinitely, and many medium ones for a few years before going broke. Buying out an small African country with a tiny GDP actually isn’t far-fetched at all. And if Deus can pull it off for a few neighboring countries and maintain the sharing of wealth and freedom over several years, he’d probably have a pretty decent shot at acquiring more [strike]subject[strike] partner nations willingly and continuing to get stupid rich from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget
Yes and Elon Musk is actually incapable of using the money in that way. It’s simply financially impossible for him to leverage his wealth in such a way
A lot of people dont understand the difference between wealth and realized income.
You see anyone with some money can effectively beat the Mozambique’s army in armored forces and aircraft. It means nothing. You might win pitched battles but it just means getting entrenched in an Afghanistan-like war. I am pretty sure that the amount of repression needed to pacify the zone after an invasion would make the most ruthless dictator flinch.
Think it like that… If somebody from outer space came and invaded your country and offered goodies in exchange for your liberty what would you do? What would the population do? It is very “american” to believe that resistance can be beaten with money. I mean it helps but it’s not sufficient otherwise someone would’ve done so already.
Look at it from this perspective: If some organization like an organized chrime syndicate can amass significant power within a state, it is more often than not because they bullied or bribed their way past the authorities, who have the real power of arms. Replace the people in power with people who can’t be bribed, because their boss pays better, can’t be killed, because their skin is harder than steel and can’t be blackmailed, because their dependants are out of your reach, and the whole spiel becomes much harder.
Add to that the fact that Deus won’t even blink twice before he turns it around on them, bribing and bullying and blackmailing the Mafia in turn, and you suddenly have one country with a lot fewer problems…
Crime, bribery, corruption. They all work because they are convenient to someone and the risk/reward is low enough. People can be corrupted even if they are billionaires for example. If the risk is low enough they will be susceptible to corruption.
That’s one of the ways how organized crime survives in rich countries. In fact it prospers. So there are really two ways to reduce rime. Reduce the payout and increase the risk. Increasing the risk is a repressive measure and that’s what someone like Deus is likely to bring to the table. Either that or hiring the criminality, after all they can get jobs done.
But that would not address the issue here. People are bing invaded it is quite stupid to think that the people will not fight back because electricity. They will get the electrocity and then fight back too.
Whenever someone invades a country, the peasants of the land will react in one of two ways, they will either oppose them as tyrants or hail them as liberators. Which of the two happens depends almost entirely on the behaviour of the invaders.
Considering how Deus knows this, how he comes bearing gifts, how the government of the people whose army he is about to trash, the people have little reason to anything but welcome him with open arms.
And to be fair, noone except Deus himself has ever framed it otherwise.
I think the plan is to take the area by force and then develop it into a paradise with high-level infrastructure, plenty of food and clean water, and a happy population. “Hearts and minds” stuff that will eventually mean no one wants to fight because their lives are better under Deus.
Dave, it’s not always corruption that keeps a country back. Read a story about this aid-worker who proposed to furnish a village with an oil-press so they could farm a local oil-bearing crop, press the seeds for oil, sell it on the market. Profits, a way to lift oneself up, glorious future awaits, and so on and so forth. The elders deliberated for like three days, and decided they liked their life as it was and politely but firmly declined the offer. And that really is a fine and valid choice. Just like the Amish, for example, choose to live the way they live. You can think whatever you like of it, but at the end of the day: How they live their life is their choice, not yours, to make.
Of course, if the country really wants civilisation, infrastructure, the lot, but cannot get it because corruption, that’s something else. But assuming corruption is the reason they’re not going forward is bringing your own bias with you.
So in that sense, rather than being a saviour, Deus is committing a crime here: He’s forcing a choice he has no business forcing, because it’s not his to make.
The Amish don’t have their children die of preventable diseases, mostly because they have an income large enough to afford educated doctors. I would very much like to know wheteher or not that was also the case in your oil-Press village.
Keep in mind, even the amish have a certain standard of technology, their coaches have suspension, they are not using wooden ploughs, they are making candles. The average hovel in africa falls way short of that standard.
Profit is a way to lift yourself up, you got that right, and lifting yourself out of the dungheap of death and suffering – which is where most of Africa currently resides – is pretty much always a good thing, thank you very much.
You’re still applying external standards. Much like how hand-outs are pretty much worthless because unearned, being forcibly lifted up to someone else’s standards is as likely to cause resentment as happiness.
I’m pretty sure the villagers did have access to medical care. If not western, then their own. And it doesn’t matter that you think their standards suck. It only matters that they’re happy with their choices. Getting the press is one thing, but keeping it going requires a communal effort, organising, tending the fields, lots of hard work that’s quite unlike being a hunter-gatherer, a change of the way of life. And whatever their reasons, they chose not to go for all that. It’s quite irrelevant to point to the things that Amish do have and villargers in Africa may not. Each made their choices and they’re happy with it.
It’s actually something that we’re going to have to learn to do too. I don’t mean “go back to herding goats”, but I do mean making clear choices. Only for us it’s because the technology can do things that mean our quality of life might go backwards despite that the tech required is quite advanced. It still comes down to saying “yes, we want this” or “no, we don’t want that”. Think “social credit”, CCTV with facial (and gait, and whatnot else) recognition everywhere, cars that automatically call emergency services on criteria outside your control, continuous surveillance online everywhere, you name it. Those things and many others might even deliver on the promise of fewer deaths, fewer crimes, and yet at the end of the day we’re unhappier because we feel watched everywhere. It’s a different level of technology, but the “do we really want this?” question is quite similar. And we’d better answer, or someone else will, on our behalf, without our input.
The one solution for Africa that might actually work, as argued by an African, is to put a giant fence around it and have it sort itself out. Once it’s learned not to be corrupt and it figured out it really wants to lift itself up and is willing to work for it, then they can open the fence again and we can share. But not before, because it’s more likely to lead to more corruption, abuse, death, and suffering, than to Good Things.
That sounds really harsh, but look at the many years of Western “development aid” and how that worked out. Eg. they got trucks as aid, and if they broke, why, they just sat at the side of the road until the next helping of “development aid”. There just wasn’t the infrastructure, the parts, the skill, the knowledge, or the will, to do repairs themselves. Why bother, they’d get a new one shortly anyway. But that does mean they’re not gaining the self-sufficiency necessary to really lift themselves up.
China now comes a-calling and Africa damn well knows that relationship is going to be abusive and unlikely to be a long-term Good Thing for Africa and still they prefer dealing with the Chinese rather than the West. That should give you something to think about besides focusing on that yes, less death and less suffering is preferrable. That’s not the point. The point is that getting there requires more than a get-out-of-death-and-suffering-free card. It takes a Choice that you have to make yourself. If someone else makes it for you, it doesn’t work.
Interesting. A few years ago, during a trip to Dakar, Senegal, I talked to a (Senegalese) guy who said pretty much the same thing. He was lamenting that every student with a brain was emigrating instead of participating in the local economy. And he was quite bitter about the results of international aid and foreign policy advisors, especially the Europeans trying to prevent electrification of the country(!).
One more reason why a “developing nation” needs Universities sooner rather than later. And some way to promise Perspective for the brainier set.
A while back at an international climate policy conference a bunch of greenies were telling “developing nations” they’d have to hold off on civilisation because of all the CO2 and how the world couldn’t afford to give ‘leccy and cars to Africa and India and so on. The developing nations were understandably less than amused. I’m not faulting them. In fact I agree that “the west” largely caused the problem and shall have to step up not only on reducing its own emissions (meaningfully, not the dog+pony show that is supposed to make for green policy now) but also and moreover shall have to work with the rest to bring civilisation in a green way. Saying “you can’t have civilisation because we used it all up”, which is what our greenies are effectively saying, just won’t do. Their failure to work that out before opening their mouths says bad things about the problem solving abilities of those policy-making greenies.
The fun thing is that a body of work on how to do this was already amassed in the 1970s, but nobody was really interested in rolling it out at scale. In much the same way we knew the climate was going to be a problem, and the politicians then almost did something about it, but in the end left it for future generations to sort out. And those chickens are coming home to roost today.
OR, it says a lot about the actual objectives of Greenie Policies and policy-makers. This is especially true if you look at how the exact same causes were supposed to be bringing an ice-age with exactly the same solutions being proposed in the late 1960s through 1980s until the direction was switched to ‘Global Warming’. Same causes cited, same solutions pushed, different effect being ‘fought’ because the prior one turned out to be untrue.
Notably the same people back then, and now, are the ones expected to eat the cost, while the pushers exempt themselves from the burdens and expect to reap benefits-but not the benefits they’re claiming, because it’s not about global temperature or climate, it’s about grabbing for economic control and the power to dictate over others.
Yes, they do. Amish antivaccination sentiment and eschewal of things like modern water treatment take a heavy toll as does rejection of all education past eighth grade
Most of Africa does not reside “in the dungheap” – yes their income is low compared to the Western world, but their life expectancy is very nearly the same.
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles&url=v1
https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street
I was born in an African country, and lived there for all my childhood. Wherever a school was erected, there appeared a long queue of mothers with children. All schools were accustomed to 110% attendance.
In fact, the only way to keep kids out of schools is to start a civil war and destroy the village infrastructure. This happens very frequently in ex-colonies of European nations, and in one English colony.
Many do-gooders did actually try to impress the locals with technology, and all those were rejected. The reason for the rejection was always the same: “We have no means of maintaining and reparing these machines.” My father was associated with the Grand Peanut Debacle in southern Tanganyika. It was a debacle because the Poms didn’t bother to ask or listen to the locals, and the Poms had never seen black clay soil.
The destruction of African self-respect is continuing today because nobody is prepared to undermine the mad mahdis who spread contaminated versions of Islam like the plague. I would love to see an Islamic jihad against the mad mahdis, but when even places like Indonesia cannot control the outbreaks…
Are those mad mahdis a cause or a symptom? I don’t expect a jihad against movements that proclaim any kind of islamic creed as long as they do it against the unbeliever. And if anyone else says anything against any form of islam, it’s them who deserves to have his head cut off.
I read a while back about a study that had it that the Industrial Revolution kicked off after England (and Holland) had consistently outperformed the surrounding countries in year-on-year GDP per capita increases for some 800 years. I don’t know how they calculated that. Kickstarting an economy to Western levels doesn’t take quite that long if you have some infrastructure in place that can be upgraded and an example to copy. (I’m thinking China here: The great leap forward mainly killed people, it wasn’t until western companies and methods were (very carefully) let in that they got the kickstarting going, and that was after Japan got kick-started into a technological powerhouse–they were a “cheap labour” country for a while before that.) But it’s really not what the do-gooders tried to do. They were bringing the trappings and didn’t understand that’s not the substance. That takes quite a lot more work.
You could call that western arrogance, and perhaps it is. But it’s not our entrepreneurs and engineers and agriculturalists that went there and wanted to “do good”. Nor in the Tanganyika groundnut scheme debacle, looks like those were mainly bureaucrats. (That very well is British Arrogance; for a long time they believed that British Pluck was really all you needed. It had served them quite well too… until it didn’t.)
It’s worth noting that the children brought to school by enthousiastic moms then are now the people running the show. Some of them have caught on that corruption is very costly to society (it’s said the damage is about twenty times the value of the kickbacks), but plenty haven’t. And given the enormous amount of work that needs to be done and ultimately you’re there to feed your own family, not everyone else’s… it’s easy to stoop to short-cuts.
And that shows how little you actually know about Islam.
The vast majority would very MUCH side with non-Muslims to deal with Fanatics.
Moreso than Christians would. Most people tend to forget there’s over ten to a hundred times as many Christian Nutcases as there are Muslim Nutcases. The US just likes to gloss over that because most of them happen to BE American.
its not well covered but its my understanding that one of the reasons Slightly Smarter Leaders don’t badmouth Islam as a religion, is because then the local communities are far more likely to point out that Joe over there has been hitting way too many of ‘those’ sites and has a suspicious collection of stuff. little while later Joe is up on firearm charges and there is little national interest. now Joe is in a world of hurt, but its only Joe and not 10 other people. yes I’m aware that Joe is not seen as an islamic name. that was not accidental.
“Are those mad mahdis a cause or a symptom?”
Bloody good question, however we can look much closer to home, in our Christian societies. Religion ALWAYS brings out the fanatics, which is *one* reason the Church used to be so… restrictive. We note that the “Mad Mahdis” tend not to appear in the Islamic homelands, the Middle East. ISIS is an exception, probably with roots in the social catastrophe caused by unrestrained dictatorships mostly in Syria, and the wars between Iran and Iraq.
Europe has been a battleground since Roman times, and allegedly Christian since about 1000AD. Europe did indeed have its fundamentalist sects, most of which were exterminated by the governments of the host nation. The French Hugenots are a spectacular example of Christian charity. But we need to understand that the European fundamentalist sects, including the Spanish version of Christianity, were — like the current Middle East — born out of unmitigated suffering caused by war.
The Mad Mahdis were most prominent in northern Africa, and the British government never did figure out that if they were left alone they would literally die out within 5 to 10 years after the death of the leader. However, the social damage caused by their exploits was enormous.
My own thinking is that the Mad Mahdis are actually a symptom.
One difference between Europe and Africa is that Europe is a lot smaller, and back when already a lot more organised. Many wars were over resources, over land, requiring to kick the loser out or kill him in job lots, rather than settling grudges or snatching a wife from a neighbouring tribe. The latter is doable with hide shields and assegais that can do nasty damage but don’t kill all that much, whereas the Europeans got better and better at killing. By way of ak47 that got back to Africa eventually. Though Rwanda shew us that macheted manpower can kill quite well also.
The Spanish’ strict adherence to catholicism did (contribute to) cause a war or two itself.
The catholic church has a strong centralised leadership. islam doesn’t, but has a strong political part to it that “cannot be removed”. It’s no surprise that various islamic countries have a governmental ministry of religion that tells the imams what to say from the minbar. (And so a major error for non-islamic countries to welcome groups of largely islamic people, be they guest-labourers or refugees or whatnot, let them stay and bring over their families, and also import imams on special visas, and to neglect to start your own ministry of religion.) ISIS tries to outright be the government, it grew in the absence of functional government. A few other groups have similar origins and try the same thing.
The taliban (originally funded by the CIA) managed to get themselves more or less legitimised, so we get to see how well their ideas will govern. I think “the west” has lost quite a lot more face than it realises, it certainly managed to hoist itself by its own petard again.
If you look at, say, boko haram, just that name tells us they’ve turned away from “the west” or at least the parts that deigned to come to them and tell them how to live their life. Maybe an anthropologist can explain why they (and ISIS, and so on) need such violence to say it.
And Pendrake, I’d like you to go and (find someone to) organise an anti-fanatic-jihad. Try and survive so you can tell us how it went, alright?
“… so a major error for non-islamic countries to welcome … and to neglect to start your own ministry of religion.”
Many… OK, Australia I know for a fact, it’s in the Federal Constitution, and I’m pretty sure the UK, possibly KiwiLand… European nations have some clause which prohibits creation AND deletion of established religions and denominations of religions. In most cases, it is there to provide some measure of assurance to citizens that the nation actually cares for them.
The idea is to separate church and state. You know, stop the church meddling in state affairs, and in return have the state not meddle in church affairs. Among other things to stop persecution for adhering to the wrong creed for political reasons. (Which both church and state did quite a few times in history.) Only islam comes around, breaks that separation idea with gay abandon, and the people in government turn a blind eye. Often enough for (IMO misguided) ideological reasons like “noble savage” worship. Which in turn does a lot of damage.
The least they ought to have done was set up some sort of imam college to teach both the creed and local values, giving the newcomers a handle on local life through a familiar channel. Don’t ever import preachers from afar that haven’t a clue about life here.
Just saw in the news that a deeply islamic-conservative imam got finally kicked out of Belgium… after 40 years of anti-Western preaching. The rest of Europe with its large populations of erstwhile gastarbeiter and their “reunited” extended families and a few generations added to the mix hasn’t caught on much yet either. Perspective-deprived kids with festering anti-Western outlook (to put it mildly) is exactly the deeply toxic mix that fills the French banlieues, and a bunch of other no-go areas accrued through policymaker neglect. They really ought to have told the imams to put a sock in the political preaching, because that’s not allowed in Europe, and for good reason.
The prob there, dipshit, is the groups you just named aren’t Muslim, so much as specific people USING Islam as an excuse to gain footsoldiers.
For most Muslims, “Jihad” is basically equivalent to Christians and Old testament crap. To be read and learned about, NOT practiced.
The diff there, tallowbrain, is it’s far easier to get christians to publicly denounce other christians getting up to Old Testament crap than it is to get muslims to publicly denounce other muslims getting up to jihadist crap. The westboro baptist church gets more flak for its slurs from other christians than isis gets for beheading or throw-off-building videos from other muslims.
Which is why I invited you to put your deeds where your mouth is and get that anti-fanatic-jihad going. Instead you call me names. Too hard to do something useful, eh?
On top of that, yours is a specious argument. The footsoldiers believe they’re serving allah and founding a caliphate. Whether the caliph believes his own bullshit or not is immaterial. Even if you could somehow prove he doesn’t and is “merely using” islam for his own ends. Which, by the looks of it, the various caliphate declarers were were not, being believers themselves.
You say they ‘Would”, but the fact is, they DON’T. If I had a nickel for every time a Christian (Or Kuh-Riss-Tee-Uhn-ah!) said they ‘would’ do something noble, but then didn’t? It might be a pile of coin that could plate the northern hemisphere in shiny, cold-resistant alloy with good machinability and a high resistance to corrosion.
The same is true here-NOBODY openly admits to approving of violence, bigotry, etc. but the willingness to act in a manner you claim to uphold is rare. It’s why they’re called ‘Values’ instead of not having a name because everyone does it and nobody bothers to think about not doing it. Values are valued because in practice they are RARE.
I don’t think the criminality of his acts bothers Deus one iota. Nor do I think he cares one bit what the locals want.
Can you really make a choice if you don’t even know what the alternatives are like? Or that they even exist?
You say the “elders” made the choice for their whole village. They’re probably the best off in the village. What about the worst off? Did they get any say? Did they get to make a choice?
Your politicians make choices for you every day. I suppose they can do that because they’re supposed to know what the alternatives would be like. But, do you get any say? Do you get to make a choice?
Oh, did I give you the impression that I thought (un)representative democracy was any better, or even any different?
Yes actually, but I’ll take this reply as fact. But please, most nations are plutocracies, quite far from democratic. At least the few remaining kings/emporors (autocracies) are honest about it.
Humans have spent their entire history debating who should rule, rarely ever considering that nobody should.
Oi Oi Oi! Don’t come with that anarchic bullcrap down here in Oz! The bloody plebs will want to try it and God only knows where that will end up! Probably having to ask the Kiwis to rescue us!
We know what happens when anarchy rules. Houses burn, everybody dies, there is enough historic evidence for that. Anarchy is not a system of governance, but the absence of one. It is, in fact, bullcrap.
What historical evidence would you be referring to?
The problem with anarchy is that it’s unstable, and has no means to defend itself from whoever inevitably tries to take control and impose a system of government. You need at least a token government to fill the void and prevent the formation of an oppressive one.
He’s not very far wrong you know. You only have to observe various parliaments solving arguments for good examples. Even a couple of Italian parliaments have been forced to the use of The Noble Art in order to restore order… And look at the Boxing Day Sales for scintillating illustrations of our capacity to negotiate outcomes.
Unfortunately, anarchy refers to two concepts that are almost polar opposites of each other. People frequently conflate the two, either from ignorance or malice.
“… when anarchy rules …”
PANDER?
Sorry, been busy on boring RL legal stuff which has gotten in the way of the much more important and fun posting stuff on Grrlpower forums. :)
Reading now :)
While ‘anarchy rules’ doesn’t actually make sense as a sentence, “when anarchy rules” can also mean, and probably does mean in the way that Killmashandra is stating it, “During the period in which there is no overarching government” – in which case Killmashandra is entirely correct.
Anarchy is not a system of government – it’s the absence of one, usually the period between governments.
Torabi: “The problem with anarchy is that it’s unstable,”
It’s not only unstable. It’s completely unworkable Like you said, there must be at least a token government to fill the void. Which makes what you said earlier sort of … weird… when you said “rarely ever considering that nobody should.”
Because if ‘nobody should rule’ then that means anyone can do anything they want without consequence. I’m a pretty die hard libertarian (individuality rah rah yay) but that’s too much even for me, since I still adhere to the Non-Aggression Principle and basic Constitutional rights that need to be stated in order to prevent future people from trying to claim they the basic inherent aspect of human rights (ie, that rights come from simply existing, and are not GIVEN by government – that government exists to protect those rights from being taken away by the government OR by other people, rather than granting those rights to you in the first place).
If ‘no one rules’ then there’s no way to really make any decisions once you get above like…. any number of people. Eventually even TWO people will have a difference of opinion on what to do, after all.
Aaas it happens… There is (was?) one nation in Europe that could be considered an anarchy.
Italy. Between 1946–1994 there were 66 governments, and as far as I can see in a poverty-stricken mess of incomplete references, probably another 10 or 15 between ’95 and ’20.
However, the important bit is Italian productivity in these periods. Just a few: Cars, trucks, aircraft, ships, phones… One reason given for the disparity between governments and productivity is the Italian Public Service. It seems the tycoons were simply ignoring what governments said, and worked according to the standards set by the Public Service.
That sounds a lot like anarchy to me. It can work if everybody puts their shoulders to the wheels, but I have to admit there are far too many countries where whingeing and bitching seem to be taught in schools.
Australia, despite having a proper real government with very little evidence of anarchy does not make cars, trucks, aircraft, ships or phones.
Pander:
By “nobody should rule”, I essentially mean the non-aggression principle. As soon as somebody attempts to coerce another person, it’s no longer anarchy, because they have attempted to impose a hierarchical order.
“nobody should rule” also doesn’t necessarily mean “no rules” — it means that the rules do not give anybody the power to make decisions for others. People can negotiate, and trade, and make consensus decisions, all without one person ruling over another.
gorblimey: Australia has a proper real government? who is the PM this week? didn’t they go through about five in one year?
Still, would trade you all of yours for Popularity Queen ‘Traffic Light System’
“when anarchy rules”
Pander, my friend, while I enjoy your more educated posts? It was intended as a slightly flowery figure of speech…
…And now I feel like a dumbass.
….aaand now I feel like a dumbass..
Freetown Christiania. The problems that they have come from outside of their community, the Danish government trying to impose their rule, the Copenhagen police interfering, the drug cartels trying to claim the territory. Leave them alone they have been doing fine for 50 years.
Exarcheia. In Athens, same problematic neighbours as Freetown. Government, military and police. 48 years.
Dignity Village, Portland Oregon. Started as a homeless tent city, grew from there. Going strong 21 years.
All anarchist, socialist and/or autonomist societies doing well internally, some beset from outside. The anarchist society you envisage as a free for all tooth and nail is PROPAGANDA.
You know why.
‘I can give your people clean water and air conditioning.’
‘We have electricity.’
Uhm… sure, but wouldn’t you like to have all three? Or are you saying that with electricity you don’t need the other two?
I don’t see the connection between the first and the second statement.
Air conditioning doesn’t usually run on hamster wheels.
The air conditioning fills a different niche though, as well as that it implies a certain level of infrastructure and availability of luxury that the country as a whole is currently lacking, as Deus elaborates on in the follow up. It also glosses over the clean water part.
‘I can give everyone a car.’
‘We have gasoline.’
This has a similar vibe (to me). Just because you have the means to run a car, doesn’t mean everyone has access to them, nor does just having gasoline help with the need to have transportation.
Air conditioning still runs on electricity
But it requires access to reliable electricity, not just sunset-to-midnight electricity.
Actually AC can run on fuel too, any form of energy can be used to generate a temperature gradient (including acoustic energy, which I just learned about from the Webb telescope cryocooler). The earliest fridges (after a plain icebox at least) ran on propane; our family cabin still has one, blew my mind as a kid.
Of course, that region of Africa isn’t exactly flush with oil and gas, so electricity is probably still the best option.
“… blew my mind as a kid.”
So that’s what happened to it :P
How dar… no actually that’s a fair point.
G, my cousin’s family (wife’s side – yeah my extended family is a veritable we-are-the-world-music-video) is Dominican and I’ve been to the D.R. to visit a few times. They aren’t in a bigger city like Santiago or Santo Domingo or San Felipe de Puerto Plata (which do have electrical grids). A lot of them don’t have air conditioning, let alone stable electricity (he bought them generators so they can have electricity during the time between the rolling down-time that there is no electricity so now the refrigerator can be on most of the time).
And I met this nice guy who was an attorney while there – very well off for Dominican standards – and he was very proud of how he lived in Santiago, where his place did have relatively regular electricity so he had an air conditioner in his home. Apparently, air conditioning requires a LOT of electricity from the grid and needs a very stable grid, especially if used on a population-wide scale. Living where I do in New York (or even when I lived elsewhere like in smaller towns in Hawaii or in the midwest), I did not appreciate this until I was without it.
And the D.R. is better off than Mozambique by a LARGE margin.
In Southeast Africa, while there is electricity, does not usually have a lot of infrastructure for a very stable electric grid except in the richest areas (which is not that rich overall). They’re not living in thatch huts or something but stable electrical grids (or electrical grids period) are not THAT common either, although they’ve been trying to get more electrical access to Sub-Saharan Africa.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/31333/9781464813610.pdf
To be honest, have no idea about air conditioning, it’s just not wide-spread down here, probably because most windows can be opened or closed as needs be (except for the damn neighbour, they seemed to have sealed all their windows so had to install some sort of system to get fresh air in, and for over a year thought there was an air field nearby because it sounded just like a taxiing plane!)
And the point was, the Colonel mentioned they had electricity
Reasonable portrayal. Mozambique is an extraction-based economy, not an industrial one. Extraction-based economies ate overwhelmingly corrupt since the underlying factors to remain in political power does not require a happy population. In any political system, liberal democracy or otherwise, retaining power requires retaining the loyalty of police and military forces – ie the violence arm of the State. This requires keeping these forces happy, which means paid.
In an industrial economy like the US, this is done through taxation. A motivated workforce is necessary to maintain the tax base to pay the violence arm, so that State creates mechanisms to disguise the fact that the taxes paid exist to keep the public in-line and under the command of the State, even going so far as to convince the public it has choices (the vast unelected, unfirable administrative bureaucracy that exists in N. America and Europe should be evidence to the contrary). When this motivation declines, the ability to pay off the power support also erodes.
Extraction economies don’t need a happy public to retain power. The oil, gold, diamonds, etc pay those factions. The happiness of those under the regime’s rule is not just unimportant, it becomes a zero sum game. A happy public is a sign that the military abs police aren’t getting a big enough cut.
By offering industrialization, Deus is announcing to the region he is going to steal the loyalty of the violence factions for himself by changing the payment dynamic away from raw resources to human capital.
Incidentally, this is why industrial regimes that turn to the printing press tend to become less concerned about general well being, such as right now in the US. Money drives the loyalty of the violence arm and if the State no longer believes it needs a motivated workforce to sufficiently tax, it ceases caring about it. We see it with the Biden Administration’s flippant attitude where officials dismiss declining earning power in the face of runaway printing and public spending because the Dow Jones is doing well. Or in Australia where they seem to be perfectly content in keeping the public in mass imprisonment for years.
“We have learned not to trust white men in expensive suits, especially ones promising the moon and the stars.”
Deus is going full-blown colonizer here, and I think a lot of people might appreciate it being painted in the light of villainy for once, instead of either having the atrocities glossed over in favor of the “progress” brought about by the expansion of, say, the British Empire, or having it presented as Manifest Destiny.
Deus is doing full-blown supervillainy here, and he doesn’t even have legitimate claims to the territory like Victor von Doom did in Latveria. No matter how much prosperity he might bring to these nations he’s running roughshod over, it’s good to see the process presented in the proper villainous light.
If Deus wants to get some good press from the media on his side he needs to start making claims that his mega power towers we saw in previous pages are carbon neutral and he is is just doing this to save the planet.
In fairness to Dave, maybe that’s what these next pages will be about – our major view of Gatlyn thus far has been painted through Deus’ viewpoint, because he is an important side character. It’d be nice to see Dave do a few pages from the view of the… people he seems to think he’s “saving?”
Specifically, pages where neither Deus nor his supers are anywhere around to be enforcing the sort of answer they’re giving. That said, somebody like Deus who knows things that he shouldn’t could potentially even intimidate people who would otherwise be assured that their statements wouldn’t get back to the ones they fear. Given that, I’m uncertain if they’d really be able to give good testimony ever.
Okay, I had to check the comments and since I didn’t see anyone mention it, I’ll go:
I don’t think the pun works in portuguese at all. While the words kinda work, that’s not how an actual portuguese speaker would put it, so it would have to stretch the wording a bit to sound like a pun.
Still, nice little touch!
Did you start at the top of the comments? For example, one timestamped at {January 13, 2022, 7:05 am}? Plus a few earlier ones?
Do have a good day!
I love the overhead shot in the first panel,I wonder what grades the comic’s author got in geography for school?
Are Deus’s forces massed in a tight formation?
Sure, Mozambique might not have many tanks or jets, but they must at least have a few mortars, right?
Those are supers, pretty sure there’s at least a couple of them who can protect the group from that.
Is that Hench Wench serving the snacks?
Don’t think so, but I could be wrong. I am pretty sure that’s Lorlara in the background but.
So that is where she got to. Deus has no powers except superhuman levels of confidence and money, so if he has hired her, then she is stuck with menial jobs, like server or paralegal.
Deus is sounding a LOT like the Tau from Warhammer 40,000 here. Technologically more advanced than any of their neighbors they want to expand their empire. First they try the carrot approach of offering the benefits of joining their empire voluntarily. If that doesn’t work they then switch to the stick approach and take what they want by force. Either way, they’re getting what they want no matter what.
IIRC, in the most Current Codex, it’s implied that even their ‘carrot’ approach has a little bit of stick, Given the conclusions that Commander Farsight has come to vis-a-vis the Ethereal consolidation of the warring Tau castes, but much of what is written may be caked in Human anti-Xeno sentiment.
Quite possibly! But if so, she isn’t referenced in the characters sidebar. We do know she subcontracts for a portaler and Opal works for Deus.
Woops, was supposed to be a response to Billy Yank.
If Deus is starting a war about electricity and these guys are the resistance, shouldn’t they have a big Ω (omega) symbol on the side of their tanks?
Tanks without air support have a name, it’s “target’. In particular in the kind of terrain you’re looking at with Mozambique and other parts of that portion of Africa-armored vehicles are a terror against ground-bound infantry, but once there’s functional air support involved (never mind on-call artillery or supers) they aren’t an asset anymore-they’re a liability.
Under those circumstances, they become a grave site.
One A-10 with just the GAU-8 and regular HEAT 30mm shells (not even the depleted uranium bullets) could take out the armored forces in at most 3 sorties, unless they widely dispersed their forces, which would make them close to useless.
For the purposes of the comic, it probably doesn’t matter if the problems in Mozambique are due to corruption or not. Deus has a vested interest in acting like they are, which is good enough for him to pitch it that way.
And on the other side, the fact that this guy is probably old enough to remember when Mozambique gained independence from European powers seems like a great reason for him not to be cool with this plan.
I get that Deus means well, or at least… well… I mean, obviously he means to line his bank account, but he seems to want to do it without being unnecessarily cruel… but… I mean… a white man uplifting Africans from poverty just seems… I think it might be a little less cringy if he were also black while doing that.
I mean that’s the whole point to Marvel’s Wakanda: the idea that African countries aren’t poor because of skin color, and that white people aren’t necessarily to uplift any particular group of Africans… Though it has its own cringe worthy implications. For example, the only reason Wakanda is like it is is because of vibranium, which is essentially magic space rock. Which in turn means the only reason Wakanda is a powerful and wealthy nation is because they got lucky, not because of the merits of the people. Then there’s also the fact that it’s an ethnostate, which implies that “the only way for blacks to be successful is with extreme segregation” which again is super cringy.
In my opinion the cringe there defeats the real world point about race that Marvel is trying to make with Wakanda.
Honestly, I like the Galytn approach better because it’s got fewer unintended implications… but I think it’d probably be best if Deus wasn’t white… Though ultimately I don’t think it’s possible to avoid the cringe 100% without actually telling the story, and I don’t think avoiding the cringe is worth not telling the story… Though I might suggest maybe showing that Deus isn’t planning this entirely on his own, but rather has locals that are keeping him informed, making suggestions, etc. Of course it’s just a suggestion. I’m fine either way.
No, SmugD means only himself, if others benefit, that’s just an accident
Nothing Deus, praise be his name, paragon of humanity and savior of the downtrodden, pinnacle of Earth, does is ‘just an accident.’ When it benefits others, it’s part of his plan to make people’s lives better and get a nice profit in doing so, without being an evil overlord.
Maybe meant ‘incidental’
If someone rich prick feeds on chocolate cake and some crumbs fall on the ground for rats and insects to scavenge, then that just means the rich prick doesn’t have to clean up after themselves
I think the necessity for Wakanda to be an ethnostate is that they wanted to show ethnic African people being successful on their own. But I agree the fact that it’s because they happen to have the vast majority of the vibranium on Earth ruins whatever they could’ve hoped for.
It doesn’t really matter to me what color the skin is of whomever is uplifting them, or what ethnicity. That it’s just one guy doing it means that at best, it’ll probably last about 6 months longer than he does. I’d like to live in a world where people can observe someone else doing something the right way and learn from it, and I’ve seen people do that here. But it doesn’t require one other person to learn from it, but rather either a nation or the specific people to whom Deus entrusts his estate. I don’t trust Deus to leave a will, but even if he did, I’d expect that his heir(s) would probably be notably hard to teach these lessons.
I’m sorry, but exactly where or when has SmugD’s race mattered? He’s white because the random spinner landed there. Nothing else.
I would argue that the USA is a powerful and wealthy nation is because they got lucky, not because of the merits of the people. Lots of cheap oil propelled the country to wealth and industrialization.
Umm. No. Yes the USA has lots of oil. BUT.
It took probably a century of foreign investment to bring the USA close to financial independence. The real world is a history of entrepreneurs having access to sufficient funds to bring their ideas to fruition. Look at Australia: roughly the same age as the US, but always a colony. There were several would-be entrepreneurs here in those times, with good and sound concepts. But they had no access to money because they had no access to money, and their creativity died with them. COLONIES DON’T MANUFACTURE. And now Australians have a new excuse: “We’re too far from the markets, boo-hoo.”
Henry Ford was able to get a factory together only because he could find backers, which stemmed from the fact that the USA had discovered it had to stand on its own feet. But I would argue the Founding Fathers never ever thought “Ooooh, let’s become independent so we can build factories!”.
One other problem with Wakanda is that they sat there in their hermit kingdom over centuries watching foreign ships sail up to the coasts of Africa and haul off literally millions of Africans as slaves without doing anything to stop it. They prioritized their privacy over interference. Doing air strikes on sailing ships may have been a little obvious, but I am sure they had submarines. Maybe a few attacks by mysterious sea monsters could have scared off a sizable number of approaching raiders. It worked for Nemo. (the captain, not the fish.)
Does the responsibility to intervene occur when the slave trade becomes established (relatively) locally, or when someone from outside that area finds out about it and joins it to their plantations elsewhere? The slave trade existed for centuries before it gained overseas buyers for export labour, and with a primarily land-based trade there’s no easy opportunity to take the ‘Captain Nemo’ intervention.
Hey, Lorlara is back! :D
I’m really hoping that things flip here. The continent of Africa is divided into 54 nations or countries and has over 1.3 billion people. Should be plenty of “supers” in that mix. And while there are defiantly political considerations to take into account, I find it hard to accept that the other nations and “supers” from those other nations would allow modern day colonization and soviet-era conquest to take place.
Even Deus should meet with equal level opposition and fail to reach his goals.
Depends on why Supers are SUPER. I don’t know that DaveB has ever proposed reasons, but we have established they’re mostly modern era, and more prominent in the US.
As I attempt to type this up without coming off as a completely racist First Worlder, it occurs to be one thing America has that few other places on earth do is “Mixed Blood”. Maybe superpowers come from that interaction of rare genes that exist in two totally separate lines.
Now that is racist: claiming that America is one of the few places that has ‘mixed blood’?
Only the most isolationist countries (and there are far fewer of those than you would think) don’t allow ‘mixing of blood’
Even China has ‘mixed blood’ citizens
Depends very much how you define ‘blood’ for the purposes of mixing. The USA has a more visibly varied mix than many places, in large part because of how recently it was importing settlers and workers – recently enough to be drawing easily from much of the world, and recently enough that the resulting groups haven’t had time to mix yet. But many trading countries have been swapping people for millennia, just at lower rates and with more diffusion into the local population. And if a ‘blood’ is defined as narrowly as some ethno-nationalists like to pretend, then Eastern Europe and the Balkans would be exporting Supers to the world.
Was thinking just that
Would almost be like what happened when the Fel gatecrashed the party: American Supers go to some small ‘backwoods’ Euro country thinking there could just roll over everyone, only to find that literally everyone in the country has Powers :D
Yeah, not even fucking remotely, Yank.
Literally nearly every country on the planet currently has “Mixed Blood” Citizens. Brazil, for instance, has a fairly large white and part-German population. the UK and France have a lot of African, Middle Eastern and Indian blood mixed in, list goes on.
I think it more depends on how Galytn has its much higher per capita of supers. I’d wager that it’s because Deus has hired them away from other parts of Africa, especially his immediate neighbors.
I agree with all the others here pointing out that every nation has “mixed blood” citizens, even those that specifically forbid it. Admittedly, those that specifically forbid it have less, because it does reduce the amount of mixing that happens and because anyone of mixed race with a self-preservation instinct would want to leave said country as soon as possible and probably will leave as soon as feasible.
I don’t think there was anything in the comic that said America has more supers than most. It’s just where the primary focus of the comic lives. The only cause I’m aware of in comic for America to have more supers than some particular other countries is Maxima, and I don’t think it sounded like she radically altered the demographics of the few countries she affected that much. Galytn has more than most, according to Deus. He says he knows why, but hasn’t said more on that subject.
It was strongly implied by the comment that the richer the country the more supers per capita.
Deus’ comment, “Must be something in the water” was a claim that he could affect things somehow. No confirmation so far.
I was just about the mention that and point that out with the link. :)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-829-spilling-news/
Page 145, in the press conference, says that it appears that developed nations get more supers per capita.
The same press conference claimed there was no more than a handful of supers in the entire country, and then Kevin and his friends showed up uninvited to dinner
That very page I listed says the estimate in the US is 400-600.
Page 204, after the restaurant brawl has started, says that they didn’t think there were as many combat-capable supers in the US as showed up.
They didn’t say a handful. They said between 400 and 600 in the US, with a global population of between 7000 to 10,000. 400-600, even though that seems to be a significantly lower number than the actual number, is not a handful.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-145-lets-talk-numbers/
They thought there were only about 30 combat-capable supers though. Which turned out to be an underestimate because a lot of combat-capable supers apparently keep a low profile and don’t just go around causing chaos. For example, the Barberian is superstrong but…. he’s a hair stylist. Maxima admitted “Overall estimates of the number of supers are way off” being a distinct possibility.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-204-i-guess-everyone-parked-in-the-back/
Meant combat-capable
Why isn’t Arianna catching this? An incident like this one would be all over social media regardless if the regular news channels missed it. Hopefully ARC-SWAT is informed and makes the choice to put Dues in his place. There are only so many times a villain can get away with this before others step in.
Unfortunately, this is on an entirely different continent involving different countries that probably aren’t even part of the UN. They have to ask the US for help if ARC-SWAT wants to help. Of course that hasn’t stopped any branch of the military before, but they still need a good excuse to “accidentally” help them while they “just happen to be in the area.”
Doesn’t matter if the US can’t directly intervene, Archon (specially Maxi) would still be keeping an eye on that arsehole to make sure he doesn’t get out of control
I think it’s more that Maxima is keeping an eye on Deus, to the best of her ability. The rest of Archon? Deus is their vendor. There’s probably someone officially watching for some signs, but this probably won’t really get their attention. They’ll likely consider it African politics, so long as Deus manages it well enough.
I am certain the US has fingers in Mozambique. Obama’s administration was always happy to start another war to get what they want, and Deus is sitting on some very valuable alien technology.
Yeah, so was Trump’s (Yemen, Assassinating that Iranian General on Iraqi Soil), your point?
No need to get so defensive there bucko. He was just point out that there was president for the US to be involved here. No need to let your TDS get out of control.
Mozambique is a member of the UN.
ARCHON is specifically a domestic organization. They’re not going to send their world-famous public members to a country on the other side of the planet without an invitation.
Is it just me, or does Deus have a relatively small mouth? Like he’s intentionally trying to close his lips all the time when he talks.
I think it’s just that his mouth is small compared to His Chin. His Chin dwarfs all other facial features. Fear His Chin.
Deus, always wanting the best in everything, based his chin on that of the greatest chins in human history – Bruce Campbell, Jay Leno, Ron Perlman, and Batman.
I know that DaveB doesn’t do politics and acknowledges it, but this is getting beyond ridiculous, even for a comic.
The stunning ignorance – or if I’m feeling more generous, willing suspension of disbelief asked of the reader – in having Deus wage war against a single weak African state with his private army/army of Galatyn, without taking into account either the regional powers (South Africa being the most prominent) or the global powers, or his reliance on the global finance systems, or the reactions of the population to invasion, or the huge difference between conquest and occupation… is stupendous.
Now, were it not for DaveB’s comment on today’s comic, I could believe that this was just a case of Deus playing an idiot in public and not believing anything he was was saying, so this would be handwaved with some thoroughly idiotic reasoning on the next page, that he had done something stupid that that nevertheless worked because, hey, he’s a supervillain of sorts, and taken this into account and gotten acceptance by every power that mattered, and somehow had acquired a population base allowing him to reasonably believe he’d be able to keep his conquests under control while also keeping Galatyn under his thumb etc. But with DaveB’s comment such rationalization is out the window and will have to come after the fact, because Dave himself seems to see the conquest of a slice of Mozambique as merely a question of beating Mozambique’s standing army.
I find it amusing that this bothers me more than the fundamental idiocy of all the super powers, aliens, demons, whatever, or the way the US basically just does whatever it wants with respects to interactions with the Twilight Council as if they represent the Earth as a whole, and so on and so forth, but there you have it – if you are going to write about military conquest in the real world, as modified for story developments, is concerned, I expect at least some semblance of real world politics or military logic to hold sway.
Yes, but Dave is writing about military conquest in his comic world, which is not the real world. Considering it’s had the Twilight Council for hundreds of years, it’s probably more different than any of us can really fathom, since we’ve only gotten information on it as filtered through the comic and the author comments. Dave’s also not saying anything about how it will actually go down, just how his most smug character thinks it will go down and why that character thinks he has a good chance of success.
I expect him to get approximately the same pushback that Russia received for carving the Crimea off Ukraine.
Nations are generally FAR slower to respond to aggression than they “should”. Canonically, Deus is being careful to play in an area that no one bigger than SA cares about. And SA is going to be really nervous about taking on Archon’s #1 supplier….
Er, you may want to review the long histories of all 3 countries. It’s… complicated. And tangled. And you thought the Balkans were bad.
Not forgetting the Alari ship that landed in Galytn which may or may not get involved with their super tech.
Still kinda rooting for that guy
Try rooting deeper, like six feet deeper
Always root for the winning team. Don’t listen to naysayers like G. :) We’ll turn G around to the light eventually.
Unless there is another country out there with a similar name, it’s Malawi not Malawai (eldest sister was born there, back when it was Nyasaland)
Cue the SmugD cheersquad (and the paintballs for the cheerleader)
I’m well armored against your slings and arrows of discontent, my friend. :)
That’s why stopped using those :P
Sorry, but the pun doesn’t work. I’m assuming the pun is regarding currently>current>electricity, and in portuguese (brazilian, but it’s similar) currently is “atualmente”, witch has nothing similar with electricity. A better word would be “chain”(corrente), it’s actually the same word as “current” in electrical current.
“YOU did, perhaps, but less than one percent of the population has access unless you go far up on the politically-connected …. chain.” *cough*
Who are you, and what have you done with Pander? The Pun Ninja Hit Squads want to know why their orders “have the client and target the wrong way round”!