WW3 Watch: Can we trust in benign Western paternalism?
There’s a lot going on today. More than any one brain can process quite frankly. We are all going to be stunned with too much information flow and I don’t want to add to the noise. But I think there are a few important points that need stressing to do with hybrid information war and […]
WW3 Watch: The Mavrodi pyramid connection
As everyone reading this blog hopefully knows, I am not a military tactician or geopolitical expert. Most of my military insight comes from studying ancient historical battles, a brief excursion to Afghanistan during which time I got to hang out with mercenaries and about four years dating a British army officer (during which time I […]
Stuff I’ve been reading (Moderna)
From the “Fake News” zone: Daily Mail reports: “Scientists find virus contains tiny chunk of DNA that matches sequence patented by Moderna THREE YEARS before pandemic began”. The patent referenced is for a Moderna cancer treatment and the genetic match relates to the all important furin cleavage, which is the bit of the SARS-COV-2 virus […]
Stuff I’ve been reading (Novavax, PayPal and Trudeau)
(Some of these links are stale because I’ve been half-terming it, but I’ve included them anyway for commentary and record-keeping purposes.) Finance and markets: Perry Mehrling gathers a bunch of high-level money geeks for his 2022 “Money View” symposium. I was one of them. It’s been a bad week in markets. The disconnect between public […]
Why Canada is cultivating an M-pesa moment for bitcoin
As mentioned the other day, I am on the go this week due to it being half term. Nonetheless, I wanted to quickly draw readers’ attention to the following Globe and Mail piece by Tim Kiladze, mostly because it quotes me. For those who don’t know, the Globe and Mail is one of Canada’s most […]
The FATF recognises its human rights blind spot
For a while now, people like me, Ian Grigg and David Birch (top rank blockchain/payments experts) have been moaning on Twitter about how anti money laundering and Know-Your-Customer rules, despite being developed in good faith, have started to backfire on the system. Rather than curbing criminal financing, in many instances all they have done is add […]
Stuff I’ve been reading
Finance/Markets: The World Socialist Website is a feed available on Bloomberg. Are Pfizer’s lawyers getting a bit twitchy? (Q4 release adds some potentially concerning language: “…or further information regarding the quality of pre-clinical, clinical or safety data, including by audit or inspection…”) Used cars are still doing nicely. Big avocado news. Algos don’t do war […]
An important operational note
But first some housekeeping. I’m going to be honest. While I’m ramping up the website I just don’t have the bandwidth to do a daily aggregation post. I still find them really worthwhile to do, however, so I’m going to set them to occasional mode. They’re worth reading if you’re interested in my general perspective […]
WW3 Watch: The fertiliser angle
A lot of people are asking, if Russia doesn’t have hostile intentions against Ukraine, why the troop build up? This is an absolutely fair question. Not least because the troop build-up has been happening for many months. One under-appreciated factor in the whole story, however, is the role being played by natgas and fertiliser markets. […]
WW3 Watch: The Kobayashi Maru tell
We continue to live in an utterly polarised media landscape. The West, according to Russia, has become obsessed with hyping up war… (exhibit A) While the Western media has become obsessed with building the narrative that Russia will use a false flag (yes, that favourite of the Alex Jones universe) to justify war (Exhibit B): […]