Head Transplants

Absent Minded,

Eleni has sent these first four storied, all really linked. First, about how the military industrial complex assimilated Donald Trump the insurgent, by separating him from other insurgents, and controlling all of his information inputs.

The Junta members dictate their policies to Trump by only proposing to him certain alternatives. The one that is most preferable to them will be presented as the only desirable one. "There are no alternatives," Trump will be told again and again.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/trumps-insurgency.html

America's Slow Motion Military Coup

In a democracy, no one should be comforted to hear that generals have imposed discipline on an elected head of state. That was never supposed to happen in the United States. Now it has.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/09/16/america-slow-motion-military-coup/WgzYW9MPBIbsegCwd4IpJN/story.html

Whatever Happened to America? Paul Craig Roberts (We'll need America again soon. I hope we can find her.)

When I was born America was a nation. Today it is a diversity country in which various segments divided by race, gender, and sexual preference, preach hate toward other segments.

.http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/09/18/whatever-happened-america/

According to a report from the Israeli website Inian Merkazi and Abna news agency, Libyan security forces arrested a Daesh commander in the city of Benghazi — only to find out soon after that the man they had captured, Ephraim Benjamin, was also an agent of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Benjamin, who was known in Libya as Abu Hafs, had begun work in Libya after the 2011 NATO-led invasion of Libya that ousted former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47835.htm

Goldman does Trump. Goldman, Goldman, Uber Alles...

Cohn, as president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, had been at the heart of it all. Aggressive and relentless, a former aluminum siding salesman and commodities broker with a nose for making money, Cohn had turned Goldman's sleepy home loan unit into what a Senate staffer called "one of the largest mortgage trading desks in the world." There, he aggressively pushed his sales team to sell mortgage-backed securities to unaware investors even as he watched over "the big short," Goldman's decision to bet billions of dollars that the market would collapse... Sens. Warren and Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, sent Cohn a letter a few days later. They brought up the $65 million (parting gift Goldman's board of directors gave him for "outstanding leadership" just days before Trump was sworn in) and asked him to publicly recuse himself from any issue that could have a direct or "significant indirect" impact on his old firm. Cohn never responded to the letter...

http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/politicsandgovernment/2376/government_by_goldman/

The Wall Street Journal calls for FBI wiretaps "in Trump Tower", on Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, to be investigated, since it is now clear that they existed and were repeatedly approved. (Does this mean that the generals' coup against the civilian neocons is winning? Who do I root for?)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-20/extraordinary-worrisome-wall-street-journal-demands-know-how-fbi-meddled-2016-electi#comment-10300140

Manafort says, "Release my wiretap transcripts, so everybody can see them. There's nothing there."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-19/manafort-calls-doj-release-his-intercepted-phone-calls-demands-investigation-leaks

The World is Creeping Towards De-Dollarization (The latest global trade currency to wear out it's welcome)

https://mises.org/blog/world-creeping-toward-de-dollarization

Trade denominated in $US at Russian seaports is ordered to cease. (drip, drip, drip...)

https://www.rt.com/business/403804-russian-sea-ports-ruble-settlements/

"This is where the next financial crisis will come from", is somewhat mislabeled. "This is the dried up global money-forest, waiting for lightning and glowing cigarette-butts" might be a better title. Still really useful. (Keep in mind the Limits To Growth graphs and information from the last post. These are different presentations of the same underlying realities.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-19/where-next-financial-crisis-will-come

The large majority of people who think they got rich because they’re smart will also lose their ‘fortunes’ because they think they’re smart. It is inevitable, it’s a mathematical certainty... Fortunes built on central banks largesses are virtual. You have to sell your assets to make them real. But the same mechanics that blew the bubbles in housing, stocks, bonds et al also keep people from selling them. Until it’s too late.

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/09/bubble-fortunes/

A dozen (more?) top Catalan officials are arrested by Spanish police for conspiracy-to-hold-illegal-democracy, or something. The attempts to prevent October 1 Catalan Independence referendum are becoming "whatever it takes". Police can arrest people and confiscate all the ballot boxes on October first, but they really, really don't want that picture to be developed. (I think they will have to do it, and that will not be the end of it, either...)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-20/we-are-state-siege-spanish-police-arrest-top-catalan-officials-referendum-raids

Death and blackness in Mexico City:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-20/death-toll-climbs-217-deadly-earthquake-leaves-millions-mexicans-no-electricity

160 MPH winds and huge storm surge rip across Puerto Rico, maybe their worst storm ever. (My friend, Manuel is in his hospital, and will be working, working, working...)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-20/weve-never-seen-anything-maria-slams-puerto-rico-9-foot-storm-surge-155-mph-winds

Blowin' in the Wind

Worse Than I Think

​Revisiting 1972,

In the face of a media torrent of news about stock markets doing well, driverless cars about to change America, and a house full of appliances which will anticipate your every need and tell you when your unrequested-but-customary toast and coffee are ready​, I would like to take your consciousness back to MIT 1972, where the third iteration of the most advanced systems-analysis computer model, World-3, produced the projected graphs below, of what our species would achieve on our planet, if we kept doing things about the same, without a concerted and global redirection of our efforts, "Business as Usual". Notice the red line on this graph, marking peak industrial output and food per person. It looks like it falls right about 2014 or 2015. This was not a "prediction", as the authors stated many times, but a forward projection of historical trends, with the interactions of the trends correlated into each other, rather than being projected in isolation, as if everything else would remain the same. World-1 and World-2 programs had been tested and retested, then further refined to develop World-3. Running the data with a start date of 1900 predicted the 20th century pretty well, including the part that had not yet happened. Limits to growth was a hot topic in 1971, the year that US oil production peaked, just as M. King Hubbert had predicted in the 1950s. We were feeling a lot of change then. I remember. We were surprised, and didn't want to be surprised again. Remember? 

Move your gaze about halfway between that red line and the marker for 2020, down on the x-axis. that's where we are. That's where Wile-E-Coyote looks down.

China's Deng Xiaopeng was strongly influenced by this book. Remember China's one-child-policy? Ronald Reagan made a point of scorning this book in public speeches, saying there were "no limits". Peak oil was discredited in 2006, the year oil was to peak, by re-defining "oil". Look, no peak! (except the archaic definition of "oil" peaked that year) Saved by innovation! Will you be comforted by becoming a billionaire, when you are provided with a billion-dollar i-Phone, instead of a gold watch, retirement pay, Social Security and Medicare? 

http://ecoglobe.ch/sustain/e/ltg.htm

In 2010, the University of Melbourne rigorously analyzed the 1972 projections, overlaying best data from the intervening years to create these graphs. this 2014 article presents the data well. The graphs all show very impressive correlations. (Birth rate reduction from forecast is partly due to 1979 Chinese implementation of one-child-policy)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse

"You have been warned, the situation in the markets is much worse than you realize" This article targets investors, hence the first part is really a segue into the core message that insiders everywhere, in many industries, are saying that things are much worse than they look from the outside. This one graph is a little disorienting, unless you already know that we have been pumping shale oil on borrowed money, which can never be repaid. Big money across our planet is "taking-profits", not "investing in production".

https://srsroccoreport.com/you-have-been-warned-the-situation-in-the-markets-is-much-worse-than-you-realize/

Professor of Physical Chemistry, Ugo Bardi, at University of Florence (Italy, not Texas) explains The Seneca Effect, or "Seneca's Cliff". Seneca observed 2000 years ago that natural systems grew slowly and collapsed rapidly. That is what we face in our human-centric ecosystem now. That curve of collapse is shown above in the industrial output per capita, and other inflection points of the Limits to Growth graph.

https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.gr/2017/09/the-seneca-curve-is-way-nature-works.html

There is a lot to consider about money, since the current definition of money is exponentially expanding debt, and it is about to massively default everywhere. Cryptocurrency is attractive, in that it is inherently limited in quantity, at least Bitcoin is. This could provide a new form of global currency in the reset, but no nation state will peacefully give up the right of seigniorage the use of the excess value from the initial creation of money. Therefore, we may have a lot of national cryptocurrencies. Some of these schemes could still include coins and bills, not requiring every transaction to be digital and recorded. (Governments can't let Bitcoin take over, but they can use it as a tool and weapon, as China did when it bought up so much Bitcoin mining and currency, and is now making it harder and harder to trade. China's government might soon provide the only legal trading platform for Bitcoin in China. Chinese were using Bitcoin to get their money out of China. China is now poised to dominate that situation, while also using Bitcoin against the $US in the coming currency wars.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-17/hedge-fund-cio-why-future-cryptocurrency-not-it-seems

Charles sent this article about cultural norms and societal engagement styles in the cultures of the world. This is painted with broad strokes, and every society has a wide variety of personalities and talents in the mix. I can look at this, and myself, and think of some frustrations I have trying to collaborate on solving problems, with people who have very different styles.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-lewis-model-2013-9

Revisiting India

Lies Are True

Expecting Something,

The proposed timeline for 4 year transition into Medicare for all is presented here:

http://healthoverprofit.org/chart-for-transition/

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher presents a potential deal to the White House, after seeing Wikileaks proof that Russians did not hack the DNC emails. White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, tells him to just go talk to the NSA about getting that evidence for "free", without a budget-breakingly expensive pardon for Julian Assange.

https://sputniknews.com/us/201709161057441362-usa-rohrabacher-assange-russia-elections/

Former CIA Director Michael Morell quits his Harvard fellowship in protest of Harvard deciding to invite Chelsae Manning to speak as a visiting-fellow. Former-Corporal Manning is a brave, principled and tortured American hero(ine), who showed us the horrors carried out in our name. ("Traitor, convicted criminal..." etc.)

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41274060

Harvard apologizes for inadvertently giving the mistaken impression that they were approving of Chelsae Manning's actions. They just meant to present a diversity of views they DON'T AT ALL agree with, and stuff. 

All-clarified now. Fellowship offer revoked, but Manning can still come talk once with no honorific...

https://www.globalresearch.ca/harvard-disgracefully-rescinds-fellowship-offered-chelsea-manning/5609280

Syrian update. The oilfields east and northeast of Dier ez Zor are the most productive in Syria. The American proxy-force, "Free Syrian Army", oops, changed to "Syrian Democratic Forces", anyway, same ting, couldn't get to the oilfields fast enough, so the US seems to have paid some of the ISIS guys who were still there to re-brand as SDF, and go for the oilfields under US Special Forces command. A Russian jet fired some live "warning shots" and wounded 6 of these guys, and none of the Americans. They had already been warned that the Russians and Syrian Army would be working this side of the theater. (Those guys can hopefully get out of the war alive, now.) It's all mop-up operations until the end of the year for the Syrians and Russians. The Americans can declare victory and get out (HINT, guys...)

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/09/syria-summary-the-plan-to-eliminate-isis-remains.html

(occupied) Germany launches probe after Pentagon's Syrian arms smuggling story goes viral... (Gotta' save some face with the German voters, with elections coming up.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-15/germany-launches-probe-after-pentagons-syrian-arms-smuggling-story-goes-viral

Spanish President Rajoy congratulates police on seizing lots of referendum-posters, as well as the printing plates for them, in a raid against deeply anti-democratic forces in Catalonia, trying to have an illegal vote among Catalans, about whether they want to be an independent country again. They should be satisfied to still have their own language.

It's anti-democratic and felonious to even mention separatism in public. Buncha' criminals. Gotta' support freedom and democracy! The oppressive ballot boxes remain in hiding, but they and anyone approaching them on October 1 will certainly be apprehended and brought to justice.

https://www.thespainreport.com/articles/1127-170915205724-rajoy-congratulates-civil-guard-for-seizing-100-000-catalan-referendum-posters-in-barcelona

Chris Martenson says that (hot or trade) war between the US and China will change the slow transition away from the $US as global reserve currency to a fast transition away from it, and collapse the derivatives markets, the "financial weapons of mass destruction" we keep hearing about. (Other bad things could happen, too.)

https://usawatchdog.com/china-dollar-dump-means-hyperinflation-chris-martenson/

Atlantic Storms are not over yet...

http://www.mytwintiers.com/weather/three-storms-raging-in-atlantic-with-one-eying-irmas-path/812783091

Pension storms are a certainty for my generation, the "me" generation.

http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/pension-storm-warning

Expecting Nothing

As Others See Us

Mirror Gazing,

Pulitzer (and other) prize winning journalist, John Pilger points out that peace on the Korean Peninsula hinges upon "containing the US", the most aggressive military regime on earth for the past 70 years. The rest of the countries on our planet (maybe not Israel) are working, to whatever degrees they are able, to rein in American military adventurism, the big hammer that sees a world full of nails.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/403134-north-korea-nuclear-containment-john-pilger/

Russia and China work together for a peaceful diplomatic solution on the Korean Peninsula, but do not see that American domestic politics allow any politician room to negotiate, controlled as they are by the outdated "unipolar world", neonon agenda.

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201709121057331832-russia-china-unite-for-korean-peace/

On July 14, 2015, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, collectively referred to as the P5+1 group, signed the JCPOA with Iran on the latter's nuclear program. The deal stipulated a gradual lifting of anti-Iran sanctions in exchange for Tehran's assurances that its nuclear program would remain in a peaceful nature. 

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov points out that Iran is in full compliance, and that the US has treaty obligations to fulfill, lifting economic sanctions, not adding more.

https://sputniknews.com/russia/201709131057365133-lavrov-iran-deal-us/

North Korea has another ICBM fueled up and ready to test. The last underground nuclear test site took a big hit, crumbled/cratered some, is leaking xenon gas, and may be contaminating groundwater, so other sites are being prepared for future underground tests.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-14/gold-usdjpy-turmoil-nikkei-reports-signs-north-korean-missile-launch-prep

It's time to get the oligarchs off the neocon boat... "Former US President Jimmy Carter said the US works more like an "oligarchy than a democracy," while also lambasting Trump's “hopeless” approach to solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and the increasing tension with North Korea."

https://www.rt.com/usa/403169-carter-us-oligarchy-korea/

Jean-Claude Juncker foresees More-Europe, Bigger-Europe, Centralized-Europe, Powerful-Europe! (More Wine!)

Among the key proposals put forward by the EU Commission president were compulsory Euro membership for the remaining eight European states outside the bloc, for new countries to join the Schengen zone, plans for closer defensive cooperation leading to the creation of a European army in the next decade and easier ratification of EU-wide trade treaties with foreign powers. Tax and welfare standards would converge and Europe, not the United States, would be the hub of a free-trading world.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-13/juncker-unveils-grand-vision-united-states-europe

Does the United States have a future as a Great Power? (This is well researched, well considered and well written by a Russia scholar.) America sure doesn't have the future envisioned for the past 16 years... We need to clean our own house.

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/does-united-states-have-future-great-power/ri20901

Venezuela stops accepting $US for Venezuelan oil. 

(This is an act of war which has resulted in the downfall of regimes in Iraq and Libya, but there have been clear signals recently that China is backing Venezuela, and we can assume Russia is, too. Will the US launch an invasion of Venezuela? Everything short of that, intense economic/financial attack, is already long underway, and numerous coup attempts have failed. If weak Venezuela, in America's near sphere-of-influence, can refuse $US for oil, then so can the whole world. China is setting up markets for global oil trading in gold/Yuan, which creates a gold/Yuan/oil equivalency, something that the world has not had since Richard Nixon ran short of gold in 1971.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-13/de-dollarization-spikes-venezuela-stops-accepting-dollars-oil-payments

US Threatens to cut off China from SWIFT global financial ($US) trading platform if China fails to toe the line on North Korea sanctions. (Really? You could not set up a better plan to de-throne the senescent Nixonian-petro-dollar if you tried. Is that the intent? It may be...)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-12/us-threatens-cut-china-swift-if-it-violates-north-korea-sanctions 

Dollar Denominated

Alternative Facts

Flying by Night,

The charming story about Vladimir Putin dropping acid at a critical juncture of decision in his life, in 1982 Paris, is acknowledged by the author to be "true except for Vladimir Putin", in the comments section. Thanks Travis.
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/10/1697580/-Back-in-1982-I-was-selling-acid-at-Jim-Morrison-s-grave-that-s-when-I-first-met-Vladimir-Putin

A further and ongoing CIA pipeline of weapons is still pumping to Syrian "rebels" on American payroll. The Romanian connection has other tentacles, and has bought up so much that it is having to accept Soviet era stockpiled weaponry now.
"The SOCOM contractor, who asked not to be named, identified the Pentagon’s Picatinny Arsenal as a source for the CIA-run programme to arm Syrian rebels fighting President Assad as well as the Pentagon’s anti-ISIS campaign."
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/the-pentagon-s-2-2-billion-soviet-arms-pipeline-flooding-syria-09-12-2017

The CIA has 137 artificial intelligence projects in the pipeline (that we know about)
http://www.atimes.com/article/cia-137-projects-going-artificial-intelligence/

"Hackers" Could Program Sex Robots To Kill (or DARPA... Hey wasn't this a 1980s movie, or something?)
https://nypost.com/2017/09/11/hackers-could-program-sex-robots-to-kill/

"60% of chronic Lyme patients are actually co-infected with several strains of mycoplasma, the most common one being “mycoplasma fermentens” which is patented by the U.S. Army and army pathologist Dr. Lo; Pathogenic mycoplasma, U.S. Patent 5,242,820 issued Sept. 7, 1993."
That's weird. Thanks Colleen. I wonder what could lead to this bizarre coincidence.
"Plum Island was specifically named for Cold War biowarfare research alongside Dugway Proving Ground and Fort Detrick back in the early ’50s when the US biowarfare program and clandestine germ warfare trials first began."
So they continued German biowarfare research into tick born illness deposited behind enemy lines? Plum island is a short hop across the water from Old Lyme Connecticut. Mapped density of Lyme Disease cases marks the spot.
http://truthstreammedia.com/2017/09/09/officially-ignored-connection-lyme-disease-plum-island/

Not only were all those files about Plum Island lost, but these CIA files on Lee Harvey Oswald were all empty folders, too. Wassup?
https://sputniknews.com/military/201709111057289386-jfk-files-oswald-cia/

Hurricane Irma's weather records and comments.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/irma-makes-its-mark-weather-records

America's Fiscal Doomsday Machine, David Stockman

18% of GDP for shitty, bureaucratically swamped health services is what we get, and we can't afford it, and the music will soon stop. Then what?
https://dailyreckoning.com/americas-fiscal-doomsday-machine/

The Democratic Party seems to have had a tipping point into support for some form of Medicare for All, which is bound to have some guaranteed profits for their supporters in the interim. Sander proposes legislation today. (Who gets to be the hero on this unavoidable step?)
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/democrats-fought-25-years-over-single-payer-now-many-back-medicare-all-2589117

Not talking about how to pay for Medicare for All. That would probably kill it. A lot of current vested interests will be big losers. That's where politics comes in, and it won't be realistic until the crash sets in.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/sanders-legislation-nationwide-healthcare-wont-include-how-fund-it#15052695885402

"Mother of Leprosy Patients", Ruth Pfau MD, a German nun and physician, won against leprosy in PAkistan by "treating the whole patient", and family and community and society. RIP, Doctor Pfau.
http://www.dw.com/en/german-doctor-and-nun-ruth-pfau-pakistans-mother-of-leprosy-patients-dies/a-40033766

Illuminating Love

Vlad's Wall

Perplexed,

I can't tell if this is real or not. It could be. I have not been able to disprove it. It's a fascinating story, purportedly from Vladimir Putin's friend and roommate in Paris in 1982. It is plausible that Vladimir Putin, with his guitar, met this author at Jim Morrison's grave, where Putin was paying respects (played/sang Crystal Ship) and the author was selling blotter-acid, though not to Vlad. It's a deeply engaging tale. It still leaves the reader with unanswered questions, just different ones... Thanks Jeanine.
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/10/1697580/-Back-in-1982-I-was-selling-acid-at-Jim-Morrison-s-grave-that-s-when-I-first-met-Vladimir-Putin


Are these pictures of the same guy, one year apart, without a perm? Is the nose different?
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/496944140103826572/

Putin does speak English, and may have spoken it better in 1982.
http://www.newsweek.com/does-putin-speak-english-kremlin-634048

Still Wondering

Three Storms

Recognizing Patterns,

"Weird shit comes in threes", goes the saying, and I've observed it to be true countless times in a life that goes through periods of weird-shit magnetism.

America's weird shit for August 2017 is starting with 3 hurricanes.

I've heard from my friend, Hope, in Houston, who is helping in relief efforts, because that's who she is and she didn't flood. She says that her mind (and she's not sheltered) boggles at the massive piles of sheetrock, bad carpet and padding, mattresses and couches which now dominate the Houston landscape. 

People remain hard at work tearing out the rot , while military C-5 sprayer planes, designed to spray Agent Orange on the Ho Chi Minh trail so the pilots could see the Vietnamese and bomb them, release sky-filling clouds of (safe) insecticide over a million acres of born-again-swamp.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-09/mind-chemtrails-us-air-force-dispatches-sprayer-aircraft-response-harvey

Because Houston was such a swamp, and flooded so very often and badly, Texans moved the capital to Austin in 1839. That worked out better. 

The best overall history of Houston flooding, remediation, reflooding, improvements, and housing expansion is here. Thanks Charles. It all makes sense...

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/explainer/article/The-trouble-with-living-in-a-swamp-Houston-7954514.php

Hurricane Irma has hit Florida, after raking Caribbean islands, large and small, and may create disaster areas in 6 states, much farther inland than initially projected. She was the most powerful Atlantic Hurricane ever measured.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41222053

Hurricane Jose is getting pushed hither and thither, the way that Hurricane Harvey was, making the coming week quite uncertain. Will he dump on the east coast? This hurricane season is not over. The Atlantic is still packing a lot of heat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/09/10/hurricane-jose-to-meander-not-far-from-u-s-east-coast-for-days-in-threatening-position/?utm_term=.bfca05db234c

Florida's electric power grid needs the most extensive rebuilding in US history. 3/4 of customers are out of power. Since many are businesses, that is about half of Floridians.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-11/half-floridians-without-power-state-braces-lengthiest-restoration-us-history

America can't afford to rebuild. ("I'm callin' yer hand!") 

Our credit is "good" until it disappears completely. That's how those things go. Ilargi has a description you won't hear on CNBC.

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/09/america-cant-afford-to-rebuild/

Jim Kunstler also makes good points, in colorful style, and with a very long view of where we are all eventually going.

"The second major weather disaster this year may not be enough to induce holdouts to reconsider the issue of climate change, but it ought to provoke some questioning about the development pattern known as suburban sprawl, which even in its pristine form can be described as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. Surely there will be some debate as to whether Florida, or at least parts of it, gets rebuilt at all."

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/swamp-fever/

This is another part of the "perfect storm" theme. These storms come at a time when the US is about spent as dictator-of-the-world. The US navy's most advance missile cruisers get destroyed by lumbering things that go bump in the night (hacked electronics?), while our run of destroying countries that have oil on flimsy pretext, has been put to an end by the ancient culture of Syria, with help from the somewhat less ancient culture of Russia. The rest of the cultures in the world seem happy, except Israel and Saudi Arabia, of course. Turkey is adjusting... Will the fading hegemon start WW-3? 

The showdown with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a seminal event that can only end in one of two ways: a nuclear exchange or a reconfiguration of the international order.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/09/the-dangerous-decline-of-us-hegemony/

Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Service, explains the destruction of American diplomatic relations with Russia, begun under the Obama regime, and continued now, to maintain the obviously false narrative of Russian interference with the US presidential election. The data from DNC servers was downloaded to a memory stick, not hacked by anybody. (Seth Rich remains unavailable for questioning, but somebody has his laptop...) She also points out that American presidents can die in office. Thanks Bill. YouTube blocked this. It's on Russian YouTube with subtitles.

https://rutube.ru/video/9940e58bf1a4074e99d459aab5a60258/?ref=logo

9/11, The Pentagon's B-movie is presented here again, as an important (now impotent) contextual ground for all of the other events on this page. (The neocon-deep-state "New American Century" has failed to proceed as planned, is thwarted at every front, and is about to retreat in chaos. Offensive weapons remain intact, but there is no defense for American citizens, their electric grid, economy, etc. Americans voted for regime-change, and peace with Russia, but that vote cannot be recognized by the ruling powers.)

https://www.globalresearch.ca/911-the-pentagons-b-movie/5606573

American history of using false-flag attacks to justify war is long and has been profitable to financial elites. This looks back as far as the Spanish American War, giving a few notable examples, all well documented and widely accepted (except that 9/11 attack)

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/never-forget-the-us-government-has-a-known-history-of-using-false-flags-1e08d6543d0c

Jim Rickards figures the empire will militarily attack North Korea to take out their nuclear and missile programs, and decapitate the latest member of the ruling Kim family.

"The leadership in North Korea is hoping that the United States is bluffing and that they will be able to get a serviceable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a hydrogen bomb that could threaten or destroy Los Angeles before the U.S could do anything. The United States is facing a six month window to act and I believe they will.”

https://dailyreckoning.com/jim-rickards-north-korean-endgame/

On Thursday, a military and diplomatic source told Sputnik that USAF helicopters had evacuated 22 Daesh field commanders and militants from areas outside the city of Deir ez-Zor in late August, amid a successful operation by Syrian government forces to free the area from terrorist control. The militants were reportedly taken to northern Syria. The US-led coalition's press office told Sputnik that the allegations were "false."... Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel turned anti-neoconservative activist, told Sputnik that these evacuees were likely people that the US military and intelligence establishment wanted to protect, "particularly people with evidence that could be used against the US [during] negotiations." "It makes a lot of sense that we would either want to kill those people or extract them before the Syrians could interrogate them,"Kwiatkowski said... CIA black programs don't require day-to-day approval from the president. If that's what this evacuation was, "this is standard operating procedure, and they don't really care what the president says in a speech. ..."Certainly, we are rescuing our allies. But to some extent, we are preserving people who have worked with us, people that are dealing with the financial aspects of our aid to Daesh, because that's what's going to be looked at in the autopsy of this operation. People are going to be saying: where did the money flow? Who knew about it? What was the American role?  Thanks Eleni 

https://www.sott.net/article/361576-Retired-US-Air-Force-Lieut-Col-Karen-Kwiatkowski-on-Alleged-US-Rescue-of-ISIS-Field-Commanders-We-Are-Rescuing-Our-Allies

Russia will move forward to standard monetization of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, presumably Ethereum-based, in 2018.

https://sputniknews.com/russia/201709091057251503-russia-blockchain-tech-leader/

More Jim Rickards: The IMF is scrambling to get a centrally-controlled blockchain technology in place to replace the $US as global reserve currency, the blockchain SDR. This would only be for use at the elite level, governments and central banks, an appropriate application of this very expensive and very secure technology. Of course China is already collecting taxes on blockchain transactions, and preparing the global oil market for a Yuan/Renmenbi/gold/oil equivalency, based in Shanghai and Hong Kong. It looks like we are entering a period without a dominant global trade currency, an era of competing platforms. This will collapse American purchasing power at all levels, and all savings in US dollars. ("America can't afford to rebuild" theme is bolstered...)

https://dailyreckoning.com/president-trump-america-rude-awakening/

Beleaguered Venezuela, with the largest confirmed oil reserves, will ditch the $US as soon as is feasible. (US-backed regime change operations there have not yet been successful, despite widespread damage to Venezuelan economy, and suffering at all levels.)

http://theantimedia.org/venezuela-to-ditch-us-dollar/

Adapting as Possible