Enslave
Profiteer
Rule
Don’t go there!
Perhaps ironically, one of the most famous 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse paintings is by a Russian:
- Pestilence (on a White Horse -> COVID !?)
- War (on a Red Horse -> PUTIN !?)
- Famine (on a Black Horse -> HYPERINFLATION !?)
- Death (on a Pale Horse -> TOO LATE !?)
- Meduza
- DW
- Ahead
As mobile Internet blackouts spread from Russia’s regions to Moscow and the authorities continue throttling Telegram, opinion polls paint an uncomfortable picture for the Kremlin. Eighty-three percent of teenagers have reacted negatively to the shutdowns. Pro-government pollsters have avoided publishing analogous survey data on adult Russians, not wanting to draw attention to the scale of the discontent. Meanwhile, the security services pushing for the blocks have faced virtually no resistance from the politicians who privately oppose them. Meduza spoke with sources inside the Kremlin, regional governments, and the Putin administration’s political team to find out why.
In recent weeks, a series of articles with near-identical headlines has appeared across Russian state-controlled regional media, warning readers to delete Telegram from their phones before March 31. At the same time, the pro-Kremlin tabloid Baza published a piece claiming that Russians’ iPhones have been overheating and breaking down because VPNs (often used to access Telegram) put too much load on the processor. All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of Telegram’s slow but apparently irreversible blocking by the Russian authorities. Meduza teamed up with the fact-checking project Provereno Media to make sense of this wave of warnings.
In just a matter of weeks, the Middle East war has taken on enormous significance for Russia’s leadership. After the first two months of the year, the country’s federal budget deficit had already spiraled out of control. But the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 27 percent of global seaborne oil and petroleum products trade passes — triggered a sharp spike in commodity prices. This could allow the Kremlin to hold the annual deficit to its target of 1.6 percent and keep military spending at the top of its priorities. Even so, this windfall won’t resolve the deep structural problems plaguing a war-battered economy. Meduza explains what the high price of oil means for Russia’s pocketbook.
In the last month, accounts linked to a movement calling itself “Scarlet Swan” began appearing on TikTok and Telegram in Russia. Its members — young men and women, including minors, as the outlet Verstka has reported — are urging Russians to take to the streets on March 29 to protest the Kremlin’s intensifying Internet restrictions. However, opposition activists and journalists have warned that the project could be a setup orchestrated by Russian security services. On March 23, the movement’s Telegram channel said that one of its administrators had sold their account to associates of Vladislav Pozdnyakov, a pro-war blogger and founder of the far-right organization ”Male State” — though minutes later the same channel dismissed the claim as fabricated.
The Sverdlovsk branch of the Russian Security Service (FSB) recently ran what it described as a “social experiment” — posting Telegram ads promising “easy money” and then asking those who responded to commit acts of sabotage.
2026.03.28
Phase 1 of exploration has begun at Orestone Mining’s (TSXV:ORS) Francisca Gold Project in Salta province, Argentina.
The program will consist of detailed mapping and sampling of a 200 by 500-meter grid covering the surface exposure of the South Zone. Sampling will consist of 600 rock chip, channel and grab samples including the resampling of the 11 existing trenches which crosscut the zone along its 500-meter strike length.
2026.03.28
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has had a profound impact on the prices of oil, natural gas, and other key industrial commodities.
Before the war started, 20 million barrels of oil flowed through the strait daily, or about a fifth of global oil consumption. Significant volumes of aluminum, LNG, distillates such as gasoline, fertilizer, and sulfuric acid used in metal refining, also normally transit the narrow waterway, but are trapped in the Persian Gulf due to the conflict.
From Bloomberg
If the strait stays closed, the world will have to dramatically reduce its oil and gas consumption — but not before prices spike to a level that forces us to fly, drive and spend much less.
Read More
From The Economist
The journey from Shanghai to Rotterdam takes a container ship a month. Setting out at night, the vessel—a shadow amid glowing pleasure boats—begins by sliding past the Chinese city’s banks. Over the following fortnight it snakes through the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, threads the Strait of Malacca and crosses the Indian Ocean. Next come the Bab al-Mandab and the Suez Canal. Then the ship passes Gibraltar. After 30-odd days, it coasts through the English Channel, approaching its destination.
Continue reading The nightmare scenario for global trade at Ahead of the Herd.
2026.03.26
Torr Metals (TSXV:TMET) announced on March 25 that the drill-permitted Lodi and Kirby zones are a compelling secondary drill target for the 2026 exploration program, based on newly integrated interpretations of geological, geochemical and geophysical datasets.
Torr believes the Lodi-Kirby area represents a highly prospective copper-gold porphyry cluster system, with the potential to host multiple preserved mineralized intrusive centers, including the Lodi and Kirby occurrences, at shallow to moderate depths beneath a broader interpreted hydrothermal footprint measuring approximately 24.5 square kilometers.
2EMMA Featured Stories
Mandela’s Kiss Endures
The 2024 Global Elections Super-Cycle
Stay tuned for continuous updates on elections around the world. Click on a country for the latest elections data and analysis.
- Number of national elections to be held in 2024 18 of 68
- Overall turnout (based on registered voters) 63%
- Total number of ballots cast in 18 elections 467,094,737
Pulled conclusions from pooled data compilations
Using some of the world’s largest companies by market cap & some of the most quoted indices + two most sung alternatives: data for this millennia where available
- At 134x, Apple is the absolute stock price growth winner; with Amazon at 45x and Google at 32x
- Despite the lack of interest or dividends, gold at 6.6x looks good compared to any other stock or index!
- Barrick Gold on the other hand seems to be poorly correlated to anything including the gold metal itself!?
- But Barrick is the only stock producing negative correlations with most of the indices including a relatively high -0.77 with the Euronext100 index
- If one wast trying to get something totally uncorrelated on purpose- it would be hard to beat: gold and the Euronext100 index at -0.03; or Barrick and the Hang Seng index at 0.04; or gold and Merck at 0.16; or BTC and the FTSE index at 0.19
- Correlation against a basket of indices & alternatives is best in Disney and Google (0.81-0.82), albeit at different growth multiples
- If an average historical P/E is somewhere in the 20x range, then the current S&P quoted average which is in high 30s is as warned high, BUT: only Amazon and Visa seem to be widely out of range (justified by growth in online transactions?), with many below current & historical averages
- In the current world of no interest & no inflation, maybe the higher P/E averages are justified..? For how long, that is a different question…
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Ivan
Ivan
