This Top 5 comes from interest.co.nz's Gareth Vaughan.
As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to david.chaston@interest.co.nz. And if you're interested in contributing the occasional Top 5 yourself, contact gareth.vaughan@interest.co.nz.
Have discovered new music this week. pic.twitter.com/oEWqPgiyao
— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) February 28, 2022
1) "We're already in World War III."
Many column inches have been devoted to what might be going on in Russian President Vladimir Putin's mind in recent weeks as tensions around his intentions towards Ukraine culminated in the recent invasion.
Here, Politico's Maura Reynolds talks to Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Hill previously served as deputy assistant to US President Donald Trump and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019.
Among other things Hill talks about recreating a Russian world, meaning bringing together all the Russian-speakers in different places that at some point were part of the Russian Tsardom.
She also makes a sobering point by arguing that World War III has been underway for some time.
Reynolds: The more we talk, the more we’re using World War II analogies. There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III.
Hill: We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I. And we had an interwar period between them. And in a way, we had that again after the Cold War. Many of the things that we’re talking about here have their roots in the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire at the end of World War I. At the end of World War II, we had another reconfiguration and some of the issues that we have been dealing with recently go back to that immediate post-war period. We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait.
All of the conflicts that we’re seeing have roots in those earlier conflicts. We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.
But this is also a full-spectrum information war, and what happens in a Russian “all-of-society” war, you soften up the enemy. You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war. I mean he has got swathes of the Republican Party — and not just them, some on the left, as well as on the right — masses of the U.S. public saying, “Good on you, Vladimir Putin,” or blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome. This is exactly what a Russian information war and psychological operation is geared towards. He’s been carefully seeding this terrain as well. We’ve been at war, for a very long time. I’ve been saying this for years.
2) Why a SWIFT ban can be a potent sanction.
One of the moves made by Western nations in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine is to exclude Russian entities from global banking’s SWIFT messaging system. The Belgium-based SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, delivers secure messages among thousands of financial institutions and companies in more than 200 countries, handling transactions valued in the trillions of dollars. Message traffic averaged 42 million a day in 2021, including orders and confirmations for payments, trades and currency exchanges.
Here, Bloomberg takes a look at what Russian entities exclusion from SWIFT will mean. (At the time of writing seven Russian banks are being excluded).
A country cut off from SWIFT can suffer significant economic pain. That’s what happened to Iran in 2012, when its banks lost access as part of European Union sanctions targeting the country’s nuclear program and its sources of finance. (Many of the banks were reconnected in 2016 after the EU took them off its sanctions list.) When Western nations threatened Russia’s access to SWIFT in 2014, Alexei Kudrin, a onetime finance minister close to Putin, estimated that it could reduce Russia’s gross domestic product by 5% in a year.
The U.S. was working with European Union partners to finalize the list of Russian banks to be cut off from SWIFT. It was set to include seven lenders including state-controlled VTB, Bank Rossiya and Bank Otkritie, according to an EU draft. Some of those targeted already faced other sanctions. Sberbank and Gazpro
mbank were excluded from the proposal, underscoring concern over the potential economic fallout for Europe. Sberbank has twice as many assets as any other bank in Russia and Gazprombank is a key bank for Russia’s energy conglomerates.
3) Ex-Goldman Sachs banker's trial: Feng shui & lies.
Remember Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund scandal? It's a tale of missing billons that embroiled and brought down Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Two former Goldman Sachs bankers feature in a case brought by the US Department of Justice. Tim Leissner is the prosecutors’ star witness at the trial of Roger Ng.
Prosecutors say between 2009 to 2014 Goldman Sachs raised US$6.5 billion for 1MDB through bond sales and pocketed US$600 million in fees, but that US$4.5 billion was diverted to officials, bankers and their associates through bribes and kickbacks.
Leissner, who pleaded guilty in 2018, says the Goldman bankers sought advice from a feng shui master in 2016 on how to handle the investigation, Free Malaysia Today reports.
Leissner testified that he and Ng played a key role in that scheme and that he personally transferred US$35 million in kickbacks to Ng, Goldman’s top banker for Malaysia. Leissner oversaw the firm’s Southeast Asia team.
He said on Tuesday that Ng and Lim attended his meeting with the feng shui master at a Hong Kong hotel, where the master said he would have trouble with authorities over the next five years but that the problems would later resolve themselves.
“I was in a panic,” Leissner said. “They felt this would give me comfort and they wanted to show their support.”
At the end of the meeting, Leissner said he, Ng and Lim concocted a “cover story” involving Lim and Leissner’s then wife, Judy Chan, to justify the US$35 million in funds.
The testimony could prove problematic for Ng, who argued that the money prosecutors call ill-gotten gains was actually derived from a legitimate business venture between the two men’s wives.
Meanwhile Reuters reports that Leissner admitted he has "lied a lot" in his life. This comes with Ng's defense attempting to show Leissner was the true architect of the scheme, and was lying about Ng's involvement in a bid to avoid prison.
On Tuesday, Ng's attorney Marc Agnifilo grilled Leissner about his romantic relationships with five different women. The former banker admitted that he had twice been secretly married to two women at the same time, and had on at least one occasion forged a divorce certificate to mislead a woman he wanted to marry.
"I have lied a lot sir, and I have regretted those choices," Leissner said.
Leissner testified that he and Ng played a key role in the scheme and that he personally transferred $35 million in kickbacks to Ng, Goldman's top banker for Malaysia. Leissner oversaw the firm's Southeast Asia team.
Goldman Sachs itself agreed a deal in 2020 to settle a probe into its role in the 1MDB corruption scandal, including paying penalties of US$2.9 billion.
4) Tongan MP pushes for the adoption of bitcoin.
A Tongan MP wants Tonga to follow El Salvador's lead by adopting bitcoin as legal tender. The Australian Financial Review reports that Lord Fusitu’a, a Tongan MP, barrister and hereditary landowner, plans to table a bill for Tonga to adopt bitcoin as legal tender alongside the pa‘anga at May's state opening of parliament.
The first stage of his plan for Tonga to adopt the borderless currency will involve using digital wallet Strike on the Bitcoin Lightning Network to help Tonga’s diaspora of 250,000 to 300,000 overseas workers send money back to its island population of about 100,000.
“Tonga is the highest remittance-dependent country on earth,” Fusitu’a says. “Between 38 per cent and 41.1 per cent of our GDP, depending on which World Bank figures you use, is remittances. So, nearly half our economy is money sent back from our diaspora.
“To get those remittances to Tonga, Western Union takes a 30 per cent bite out of them, on average. It can be 50 per cent. In El Salvador, it’s closer to 50 per cent. So, our GDP in 2020 was $US510 million, 40 per cent of that is just over $US200 million so 30 per cent of that or $US60 million is fees alone to Western Union.”
Unsurprisingly, Tonga's central bank is not keen.
The Governor of the Reserve Bank of Tonga, Sione Ngongo Kioa, said the bank had no plans to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender alongside the Tongan pa‘anga. “The adoption of bitcoin as an official alternative currency, as you mentioned, is definitely unlikely,” he said.
5) How to make a proper tinfoil hat.
As I write this police are moving against the protestors camped outside parliament in Wellington. For a bit of light relief, I really enjoyed the video from Michelle Dickinson, Nanogirl, below posted in response to some of the protesters who've been wearing tinfoil hats. I recommend watching Dickinson's video right to the end.
Firstly here's a tweet about the tinfoil hats.
We ran out of foil this evening. You'll need it tomorrow before the government EMR (Electro-Magentic Radiation) attacks that the MSM is not reporting. If you donate to @NzFubar we will distribute more foil from the First Aid tent #EndTheMandatesNow #convoynz2022 #Convoy2022NZ pic.twitter.com/2wq3Ow9gao
— DefendFreedomInNZ (@defend_nz) February 25, 2022
And here's Dickinson.
I've seen some tin foil hats being made recently and it struck me that their designs aren't very effective. I thought I'd help by explaining some of the key scientific principles needed to make the perfect shield for your brain from (the perfectly safe) electromagnetic radiation pic.twitter.com/a7FTa2TEQ2
— Dr Michelle Dickinson (@medickinson) March 1, 2022
30 Comments
2) Why a SWIFT ban can be a potent sanction.
The eurodollar system is a reserve-less ledger money system congregating mostly offshore – not just offshore of the US, but offshore of pretty much everywhere. The keepers of the ledger outside jurisdictional boundaries, meaning global banks, they hold all the monetary keys to the financial and economic kingdom worldwide. Link
A new World order, led by V Putin & Xi. Evolved from a comon idelogy. Spies everwhere, from real eyes to tech eyes, powered by artificial intelligence. Even George Orwell could not have foreseen this.
Where might is everything ...
Vlad P is about 70 and getting impatient to complete his objectives since Crimea in 2014. Trump's loss in 2020 did not help his cause. Old Joe warned him about invading Ukraine, and he brushed it off.
Whether he crushes Ukraine or not, Russia is now a pariah nation. No international sports for Russians.
"No international sports for Russians"
Well, that was what everyone thought would happen after the state sponsored drug scandal. Yet here we are a couple of Olympic games later watching them compete and win medals as "not Russia"
Most bans will be lucky to see out the European summer. We will see them back competing as all sorts of cool "not Russia" named teams. But they will be Russia. They know it, and we know it.
Well that is probably because of all the drugs. Competing in a nation with good drug testing is a huge disadvantage compared to competing for the likes of China or Russia where doping is state run or e.g. Jamaica where drug testing is very poor.
Not to say the nations with good drug testing don't have lots doping as well.
Whiskey Jack,
Believe me, there are plenty out there pushing that agenda. I was accosted by someone I know recently telling me that the UN agenda 21- a non-binding resolution passed in 1992- was part of it, together with the Rothschilds, Soros and others. I took a deep breath and plunged into the murky depths and found lots of stuff about the New World Order. It's truly bizarre.
What makes me laugh is that the UN is just a great big talking shop with superannuated politicians like Helen Clarke strutting their stuff-with tax-free salaries and good expense accounts.
Someone else asked me if I knew that Ardern is worth $25m courtesy(perhaps) of a bribe from Pfizer.
Has anyone seen an academic or informed repudiation of Russia's stated reasons for invasion - that they could link to? I'm not quite sure I even know what the reasons are. In addition to the NATO security issue I've heard, mistreatment/ violence towards Russian language speakers, banning of the Russian language from schools etc, banning of the Russian Orthodox church and Russian TV, Nazis... Is this all bullshit? Not suggesting they warrant a war, but they're fairly extreme, if true.
an interesting & apparently knowledgeable perspective Craig Murray - Historian, Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist
Have a look at these Qora comments. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Russian-language-schools-still-allowed-in-Ukraine-What-justifies-the-governments-indecision-to-ban-them-completely and another, Russian https://www.fairplanet.org/editors-pick/schools-in-ukraine-scrap-russian-language-from-their-curricula/
Perhaps Michelle Dickinson could put her skills towards an effective facemask? The current crop are about as much use as a tinfoil hat.
"This, together with the multiple experimental studies reporting poor filtration efficiency,13,14,16,19,62 suggests that poor filtration is generic, because as we have seen particles are just carried through the relatively large inter-yarn gaps. These gaps are an order of magnitude greater in size than typical fiber spacings in the non-woven material in surgical masks.10,11
We estimate that the filtration efficiency of our imaged fabric is in the range 2.5%–10%. This is for particles of diameter 1.5 μm, which is around the most probable size for droplets exhaled while speaking.23 Thus, this is the most probable droplet size for source control. To protect the mask wearer, the mask must filter droplets that have evaporated in the surrounding air. Because the filtration efficiency decreases with decreasing particle size, the filtration efficiency will be even lower for droplets once they have23,29,30 entered room air, and evaporation has reduced their diameter by a factor of 2 to 3.23,30 "
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0074229
The SWIFT ban simply ensures a more rapid de-dollarisation of much trade. Russia's SPFS and China's CIPS are already interoperational. The main constraint is the relatively small number of banks subscribing to each. But when use of a given payments channel is built into terms of trade for scarce resources, one should expect that to change and possibly quickly.
Both R and C have patience and long term strategic aims. Autocracy makes this possible, in contrast to democracies, where short-termism reigns Supreme. R has most FF and mineral resources which C needs, C has technology and trade outlets which R needs, so cross border trade is likely to boom. Dethroning the USD is surely one of those long term aims.
Final point: C will not impose sanctions on R.
I wondered about the wider impact of removing Russia from SWIFT. While sanctions will mean most countries will stop trading with Russia for a while, a few will have little choice as Russia will offer stuff at far cheaper prices than the open markets. Iran did that too. And that could spread. So is there a significant risk that the currency of choice for international trade will shift away from the US$, even though it is backed by the worlds largest economy? This would ultimately lead to a fall, likely significant, of the US$ value too, which could be advantageous for some, but damaging for the US?
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.