57 Comments

Installment plan for gas stations?

Are they stupid? You'll be paying for your previous gas while fueling up in future times.

Ugh these politicians are morons.

The confiscation bill is fucked up too. Didn't Russia experience that from the West? Now they do it to their own citizens like the west does.

Geniuses. 🤡

Expand full comment

Yes, that bit about paying gas in installments struck me as a particularly stupid idea. The net effect is that the bank is going to take rent from you for basically no reason.

Expand full comment

"Yes, that bit about paying gas in instalments struck me as a particularly stupid idea."

Not a stupid idea if you're an oligarch, you've got to make obscene profits. The grifters got to grift: "Herman Gref’s Sberbank reported a fivefold increase in net profit in 2023—a record 1.493 trillion rubles. [Kommersant]"

PS Thanks Riley for the post, great info

Expand full comment

Don't understand this.

Isn't Russia the largest gas station on the planet? You wanne tell me people cannot afford gas there?

Expand full comment

Russian working class people have money problems too.

They're in an oligarchy just like the USA and Europe is.

Any time you hear that the economy went up, keep in mind that's the markets which means the rich are getting richer, not the working class who are broke.

Expand full comment

In Libya, the people could fill their cars with very, very cheap oil. No taxes, even for cars... Just saying...

Expand full comment

Nationalists are under fire in all countries as far as I can tell. Which country is truly a sovereign nation with a government for the people and by the people? Can anybody name one?

Expand full comment

Perhaps some indigenous and origenarien people, in the past.

Expand full comment

Has there ever been one?

I thought it was government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.

Guess I got that wrong.

Expand full comment

Yemen?... Iran?...

Expand full comment

What a week. This does not bode well:

"State Duma will soon consider a bill that will allow the government to confiscate property, money, or other valuables from Russians accused of publishing fakes about the country’s military. [Izvestia]"

Expand full comment

This is interesting - "Gazprom supplies gas to Europe in transit through Ukraine in the amount of 40.5 million cubic meters. m per day through the gas measuring station (GIS) Sudzha"... In transit through Ukraine - last I heard, Ukraine and Russia were supposed to be at war with each other. How is it that the Ukrainians don't just divert the gas and sell it themselves - or blow up the pipeline? It's an easier target than the Nordstream pipeline, I'd think. I think there are two globalist governments in place, each destroying and destabizing their own countries, much as Western governments run by globalists - the US, Canada, and the UK, amongst others - are doing to *their* own countries. The continued existence of that pipeline is awfully suspect in my eyes, the effect of it is to keep the war going - perhaps that is the aim, to kill on the Russian side as many ethnic minorities as possible, on the Ukrainian side, to kill as many Ukrainians as possible - both populations which might obstruct globalist goals. And Putin and his government have enacted the same policies as the WEF - and fight against nationalist/populists like Navalny, similarly to what the globalist US government is trying to do to nationalist/populist Trump...

Expand full comment

“It feels like digitalization is always good for the authorities, it needs to be applied everywhere, some kind of organizational structure can be created for it, and funding can be obtained for this matter … It seems to us that this is total control.” Well and simply said. Thanks, Riley.

Expand full comment

I read somewhere - hope I was mistaken - that at least some Russian orthodox Christians think, that CBDC is evidence of Russia's world standard technological competence.

Expand full comment

"It's a digital slavery device, but it's our digital slavery device, and it's the best in the world." :-)

Expand full comment

Thank you for clarifying that Jeffrey.

I get it now ... sorta ... not quite.

Expand full comment

:-)

Expand full comment

A lot of dark pills in that news compendium. What about the good news from Russia? Any good news from Edward's village? Or is everyone just grumbling about the state of affairs like around here?

Anyone still watch RT.COM? I used to really enjoy its news and programmes back in the day when it got going. Over the last decade it's slowly morphed into a 24/7 propaganda machine. Almost embarrassing to watch. It now has almost no resemblance to its earlier fresher and funnier version.

Expand full comment

I want to hear more about your farm!

Expand full comment

I'd really like to have you on our channel because frankly, the reality of Russia Today(TM) needs to be shown

Expand full comment

"The Russian Ministry of Defense said that the Pentagon is working to create so-called “controlled epidemics” and called for an international investigation into the activities of American biological laboratories. [Interfax]"

Seems fairly accurate, except for some static, regarding monkey-pox for instance.

Letting the US military know, that Russia knows, almost exactly what they are up to.

Letting Russians know, that Russia knows, exactly what the evil US military is up to.

Letting Russians know, that the Russian military, would never do such things.

Russians can sleep well, knowing that the bear will protect them from the eagle.

Expand full comment

Is there any kind of increased death rate and trauma counts following the jab campaign with Sputnik and Sinovac?

Expand full comment

Very interesting question indeed!

Expand full comment

"The price of eggs in Russia is starting to stabilize."

Will this affect the price of eggs in China?

Expand full comment

The fact is that hen don't lay eggs when temperature is to cold, unless you can provide for warm conditions. Maybe that could be taken into account when trying to figure out why eggs are so costly...

Expand full comment

Interesting point.

There is an international register of average egg prices - believe it or not - so seasonal variations could be checked.

ATM egg prices in China are 3 x more than in Russia, for those interested.

Not sure what the price of eggs in Russia has stabilised means exactly - staying the same or returned to an acceptable level.

Whatever is happening is no doubt related to sustainable development goals.

I wonder what reason can be invented to ban hens - avian flu hazard?

Perhaps the UN & CO do not want to risk a stockpile of eggs, that could be weaponised and launched, as counter measures against them.

Expand full comment

Thanks for your comment and info about the international register. I nevertheless somehow stick to my point since this winter is particularly cold and snowy in most of Russia and China. That is not to say that the SDG deliriums don't play a role....

On a lighter note, I eat at least three eggs a day (breakfast) and buy them at "cheap" price by local producers...

Take care

Expand full comment

Riley, you promised us some news about Marko's return a long while ago.Nothing happened since?

Expand full comment

That is a very worrying thing: the Turkish and Chinese banks, isn't it? Is there a workaround? Can it be handled somehow? I hope so. And this late in the game they begin to acquiesce to American threats? Now? What does that signify? Now is when everyone should be least likely to bow to American demands shouldn't it?

So what is in play here? Some new threat the Americans have come up with that we're not being told about?

Or an understanding around the world manifesting in Turkey and China that Russia is going down so stop backing it?

Or: glimmer of hope perhaps: Russia's new financial structures have gotten so robust that Russia, Turkey and China know that dropping the current system (SWIFT is it?) isn't really going to matter ?

I think this is tremendously important and I would like to know more.

Or have it explained to me why it is not tremendously important. :)

Expand full comment

Currency Wars and Sanctions:

"..head of the board of the Financial Innovations Association, believes that Turkey is still "interested in fulfilling the role of a commodity transport hub between Russia and Europe, plus its own exports". According to the expert, behind the current settlement crisis is "some kind of another game". Mustafa Gültepe also hinted that the situation "should improve in the near future." Yuliya Shlenskaya, referring to the words of counterparties, says that "there will be some solution by the end of January".

Background:

"Since US President Joe Biden's decree on secondary sanctions against banks that assist Russian banks was signed on 22 December 2023, Turkey has become one of the first countries whose banks began to close correspondent relations with the Russian Federation... no bank wants to be cut off from dollar payments," admits one Russian banker.

Victor Dostov, chairman of the Electronic Money Association, believes that this is a rather tough lever, because "the entry of a Turkish bank into the US sanctions list means that local clients in Turkey will run away from it as well". The expert emphasises that so far the country "has been one of the few windows, although not so wide, but they were not afraid to work with Russia there". The development of SPFS (the Russian analogue of SWIFT) does not completely solve the problem, as payments through it are made within the framework of correspondent relations, Mr Dostov clarified."

Expand full comment

@ Linda O

I thank you for that. Informative.

It doesn't remove the worry does it?

I'll pin my hopes on those 'hints' and the 'some kind of another game'.

I am lacking in sources for what shall we call it - a 'comprehensive' look at this conflict?

I've been making do so far with all those battlefield watching videos.

Plus such as Simplicius essentially pronouncing on not a lot more.

Plus poring through Telegram.

Plus Judge Napolitano's stable of invitees who amongst them just about encompass all my other sources.

That's more or less it.

The clear point being I'm not getting information on what more and more I think is what really matters: the financial machinations, the trade implications, the various oligarchal interplays.

It seems the nearest I get to homing in on the driving forces behind it all is essays that maintain Biden and three or four immediate associates are deciding all. On the battlefield. In diplomacy. Winken, blinken and nod.

A very superficial view of it all I think. Though I'm not capable of understanding any in depth expositions on any discipline at all: finance, economics, trade, politics, you name it - I'd still like to be in receipt of the information.

I don't think I'm seeing, learning, what's really going on.

If you can direct me to good sites please do.

:)

Expand full comment

In the first instance click on the link beside the news byte. Then copy and paste the article into Translate.

Expand full comment

The military is blaming the 1917 Revolution for destroying family values while the current-day Communist Party is proposing bills to support larger families ... quite a turnaround.

Great stuff, thanks!

Expand full comment

All swords are two edged but I am very wary of this one.

Supporting both population growth and depopulation.

How exactly does that work?

Expand full comment

Is "Digitalization Day" a Russian National Holiday, or a missive describing the future despotic panoptic technocracy. 🤔

Expand full comment

Does Russia have a ban on genetically modified foods? I wondered about the ban on seeds from the Netherlands...the US will definitely use the fertile soil in Ukraine to raise lots of GM foodstuffs

Expand full comment

I’ve always heard that supposedly Putin banned gmos. Total nonsense as it turns out.

Expand full comment

hello Rurik.

Do you have sources? I've always "believed" it had been a policy in Russia...

Expand full comment

US biotechs Sygenta, Cargill and Monsanto moved into Ukraine in 2014.

Expand full comment