Dear readers; Izabella is off this weekend conferencing around Europe, and as such has left the Blind Spot Wrap in the shaky hands of Dario. As such, the notes below are dangerously unsupervised and prone to the arrogance and over-intellectualisation typical of inexperienced under-30s. Please bear them with patience.
Media & Market Matters
- Greek renewable energy production covered national energy demand for a few hours during the first week of October.
- Toyota accidentally exposed a key for parts of their sensitive source code for over 5 years on GitHub, which included information from over 290,000 clients.
- Russel Napier argues that faced with a 15-20 year phase of high inflation and financial repression, Western economies will see the return of capital investment and re-industrialisation.
- Adam Curtis’ latest on how hyper-capitalism wrecked the Russian nation, and why Liz Truss should beware of taking a similar path.
Curtis’ focus on the ruin brought about by Russia’s hyper-capitalism is a tale often forgotten in contrast to the West’s prosperous 90s.
The contrast between the Wests’ prosperity and the economic collapse in the former Soviet Union is not typically conjoined in the Western mind. The Russian collapse is often adjudicated to bad Russian free-market policies, gangsters, and state-endorsed corruption.
However, later historians will make sure to draw equivalents between the two by focusing on Western corporate raiders of Russia. High-brow elite institutions such as the Harvard Endowment Fund, or general US-supported aid and policies that served to castrate what remained of Russian economic prosperity, are often cited by academics as critical tools in the country’s looting.
Regardless: the short-lived nature of Liz Truss’ economic initiatives may have undercut the particular thrust of Curtis’ cautionary argument – but not its validity. That what has failed is not necessarily communism or capitalism, but technocratism; the idea that mechanically-inspired rules could replace the error-prone human from economic management.
Curtis highlights the irony that in our time of economic desperation, we’re faced with no solid-seeming political alternatives. Perhaps the solution may arise once we focus on the real cause of the problem. Not human error, but human error disguised as rational policy. -DGG
- China to halt LNG sales to foreign buyers, ostensibly to ensure their own supplies last throughout winter.
Political Pots
- Musk blocks use of Starlink for Ukrainian troops in Crimea over fear it could lead to more escalatory confrontations with Russia.
- Everyone’s favourite al-Qaeda-but-not-really militant group HTS waltzes into the Afrin canton in northern Syria.
- Unnamed sources told the Washington Post that the United States ‘privately’ believes the Russo-Ukrainian war is unwinnable by both sides, but that negotiations are a long way off due to a mutually contradictory belief in their own victory.
- Poland holds a symbolic referendum to seize the Russian Embassy’s building in Warsaw.
Organised Disinformation
- British ex-spook Christopher Steele was allegedly offered up to $ 1mn to prove allegations in the so-called ‘steele dossier’, but was unable to prove his claims.
- Paypal allegedly terminated the account of a Hong Kong dissident party, citing unspecific ‘excessive risks’.
- The Brownstone Institute asks how many people were killed by the use of ventilators and latrogenesis in April 2020.
- Both Sweden and Germany refuse to disclose details regarding the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines for reasons of national security.
Some would call this fishy….
Nasty Stuff
- Microplastics were allegedly found in 26 out of 34 studied samples of breastmilk.
Funky Designs
- American weapons manufacturer produces hilariously brutish drone design featuring two M-72 recoilless rifles.
If it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid. However, the design appears to have some in-built contradiction; a complex, high-tech drone wielding low-tech recoilless rifles.
I see weaponised drones as spreading into two logical directions; budget, throwaway drones and complex, re-usable drones. Think a kamikaze drone cello-taped with explosives and a fish-eye lens versus a Predator drone.
To wrap a low-tech, low-power weapon onto a high-tech, high-power drone takes one step forward and one step back. Glass cannons function precisely because you don’t mind the glass cannon shattering.
I would not be surprised if this type of drone concept becomes more disposable – a cheaper, lighter construction with a single M-72 tube designed to yeet a projectile at a high-value target and praying to escape in one piece. And if you don’t, no biggie. -DGG
- In 2017, the DEA found that a Chinese American gangster with potential connections to the Chinese government had laundered millions in dollars for Mexican drug cartels.
- ‘Terror granny’ plotted to kidnap the German health minister and carry out terrorist attacks on Germany’s energy grid to bring about a return of the Kaiser.
High Strangeness
- China’s military says they’re overwhelmed by a surge in UAP sightings from both military and civilian sources.
- Excellent Medium article compiles a list of spotted UFOs from 1300BC to 1954.
As we outlined in our recent piece on UAP, there are several valid explanatory hypotheses for UAP.
I’ve often found many so-called skeptics are taken by the idea of man-made UFOs; that the most rational explanation for UFO sightings are mistaking classified, conventional technology for flying saucers. Or, alternatively, that some alternative propulsion methods exist but are too expensive to be taken mainstream and thus kept secret – meaning that if flying saucers exist they are genuinely strange but ultimately human.
Such an argument is compelling precisely because of its simplicity. No aliens, no interdimensional quandary, no apparent historical challenge. It is anything but.
The man-made UFO hypothesis would have to account for thousands of years of UFO sightings of comparable characteristics to the ones we see today – forcing the viability of the man-made hypothesis to stretch into the complex realms of time-travel. -DGG
