Vladimir Putin

Yesterday, Ukraine was faced with a historic choice: "go West" by signing a new trade pact with the European Union and align against its former master the USSR... or "East", and go back, at least symbolically, to mother Russia. To Europe's shocked amazement, the Ukraine picked "East" in yet another very visible win for Vladimir Putin in what has just been the former KGB spy's year. Sure enough, Putin spokesman's welcomed "the desire to improve and develop trade and economic cooperation" with a "close partner". Europe on the other hand, was shocked and appalled at this unprecedented snub: "This is a disappointment not just for the EU but, we believe, for the people of Ukraine," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement. Ah yes, because Europe's unelected dictators are so concerned with the popular choices of wayward "democracies."

The overnight fireworks out of China's interbank market, which saw a surge in repo and Shibor rates (O/N +78 to 5.23%, 1 Week +64.6 to 5.59%) once more following the lack of a follow through reverse repo as described previously, and once again exposed the rogue gallery of sellside "analysts" as clueless penguins all of whom predicted a quick resumption of Chinese interbank normalcy, did absolutely nothing to make the San Diego's weatherman's forecast of the overnight Fed-driven futures any more difficult: "stocks will be... up. back to you." And so they were, despite as DB puts it, "yesterday saw another round of slightly softer US data that helped drive the S&P 500 and Dow Jones to fresh highs" and "the release of weaker than expected Japanese IP numbers hasn’t dampened sentiment in Japanese equities" or for that matter megacorp Japan Tobacco firing 20% of its workforce - thanks Abenomics. Ah, remember when data mattered? Nevermind - long live and prosper in the New Normal. Heading into US trading, today the markets will be transfixed by the FOMC announcement at 2 pm, which will likely say nothing at all (although there is a chance for a surprise - more shortly), and to a lesser extent the ADP Private Payrolls number, which as many have suggested, that if it prints at 0 or goes negative, 1800 on the S&P is assured as early as today.

America, as a nation and a culture, is now being held hostage and tortured into submission on a grand scale using economic terror by the elitist establishment which dominates BOTH major political parties.  The goal?  To push our society to conform completely with the concepts of globalization, bureaucratic micro-management, and greatly reduced living standards.  We are being conditioned to accept defeat and failure, and like children, to cry out for a parental authority to save us in our state of helplessness and fear, even if that authority was the cause of our fear from the very beginning. With so many near misses culminating so close together, it may be wise to consider what could happen in the the next three months while we wait for debt debate theater part deux.  Like a prisoner in Abu Ghraib, America is trapped, waiting for the next humiliation, the next degradation, or the next session of pain.  Are we merely being acclimated to the idea of incessant crisis?  Are we learning to become apathetic at the edge of the chasm?  Or, are we being driven to madness, mass-madness, by a concert of  elitist interrogators seeking our acquiescence? Again, the central purpose of torture is to acquire consent.  Not just extorted consent, but voluntary consent. The globalist establishment wants us to beg them to save us from the tortures they create.  If we never give them this, they will never win.

“Diminishing Superpower” This was the headline streaking across the weekend edition of the Jakarta Globe, one of the largest newspapers in Indonesia. The photo beneath was of Barack Obama, his lips pursed and eyes steeled as if he was fighting back tears. Or perhaps staring off into the fiscal abyss. The subheadline read: “Obama’s APEC absence symbolic of US waning influence in Asia.” It’s so obvious to everyone else that the US is in terminal decline. As history has shown so many times before, this is exactly how the end begins.

Still three-plus years left in Obama’s presidency, where mediocrity has been elevated to a highly acceptable status.  A good and intelligent man has proven to be an incapable leader, often by making poor choices in the advice received... However, not all has to be lost for Obama; he still has time to reweave a legacy that now appears grey and bleak.  And that reweaving will not be on the domestic front; for the economic future of 80 percent of Americans has already been cast... the slope pointing downward no matter what hopeful lies are manufactured in Washington.  Reweaving, for Obama, should take place at the international front; a great opening has appeared before him partly by chance and partly by what other world leaders have to gain as well.

Back in August, just after the false flag chemical weapon attack in Syria, we showed that despite all the posturing by the Obama administration (and, of course, France's belligerent, socialist leader Francois Hollande), the nation behind the entire Syrian campaign was not one of the "democratic", Western nations but none other than close neighbor Saudi Arabia, and the brain orchestrating every move of the western puppets was one Bandar bin Sultan, the nation's influential intelligence chief. We also explained the plethora of geopolitical and mostly energy-related issues that Saudi and Qatar had at stake, which they were eager to launch a regional war over, just to promote their particular set of selfish interests. A month later, in clear confirmation that this was precisely the case, the WSJ reported that the recent overtures by Obama, brilliantly checkmated by Putin, to push for a peaceful resolution with not only Syria, but suddenly Iran as well, has managed to infuriate Saudi Arabia: traditionally one of the US' closest allies in the region and the key source of crude oil to the western world.

In record-breaking time, categorical promises that resulted in a phenomenal victory in the September 22 election turned out to be lies

BREAKING. Iranian FM Zarif: there has to be a lifting of all sanctions, hope to be able to move in that direction in a short span of time

— Charlie Kaye (@CharlieKayeCBS) September 26, 2013

The high priests of academic and “official” history love a good villain for two reasons:  First, because good official villains make the struggles and accomplishments of good official heroes even more awe-inspiring.  And, second, because nothing teaches (or propagandizes) the masses more thoroughly than the social or political lessons inherent in the documented rise and fall of the world's most despicable inhabitants.  We get shivers of fear and excitement when we discuss the evils and the follies of ancient monsters like Nero, Attila the Hun, Caligula, etc, or more modern monsters, like Mussolini, Stalin Hitler, Goebbels, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and so on.  We take solace in the idea that “we are nothing like them”, and our nation has “moved beyond” such animalistic behavior.

If Obama's intention with the fast and furious series of geopolitical and domestic distractions over the past three months was to sideline Edward Snowden's revelations of the biggest spying scandal since Nixon, he appears to have largely succeeded: not only has America become largely numb to every successive iteration of shockers emerging from the most important whistleblowing episode in recent US history (and in fact can't wait to get even more in debt to purchase shiny, faux-gold fingerprint scanners), but the person behind these revelations, the 30 year old Snowden himself, has largely faded into the collective subconscious. So what is the Russian asylum-seeker doing now that the fruits of his labor has been largely exposed and the US public is already eager for the next big watercooler scandal, popcorn in hand? As AFP reports, it is all but life as usual for the whistleblower: "US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is living under guard at a secret address in Russia and sometimes emerges in disguise, although he remains in such danger that even a family visit could endanger his security, his lawyer said Monday."

There are very few people that actually give even one hoot and even fewer that could give two of them when it comes to poverty of people that are living in society alongside us.

BREAKING: Russian President Vladimir Putin says he may seek 4th presidential term in 2018.

— The Associated Press (@AP) September 19, 2013

If Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama can get through their tiff over Bachar al-Assad and stop pulling the covers to their own side of the geopolitical bed, then the Russian leader may just up sticks and move into the US where he will be able to spend his money rather than making out that he is a poverty-stricken in Moscow to the Russian people.

From Berlin to Ankara and even Damascus, the questions seem to be the same: Has the world order as we know it in the post-war era come to an end? What will the world look like without the United States in the role of superpower and ‘boss’?

In the summer of 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, sparking a worldwide crisis. Britain was a major stakeholder in the canal, and almost immediately, the British government put together a small coalition consisting of the UK, France, and Israel to regain Western control. Their subsequent military action, however, greatly displeased the US government. And Uncle Sam quickly asserted its new role as the world’s superpower. But to anyone paying attention, this status has waned. Asia is rising. Major centers of wealth and power have grown around the world. US finances are desolate. And its currency is now widely reviled by foreign governments. But US politicians have completely ignored this trend over the last decade. They spend and act as if US global dominance is an endless river. With Syria, though, the US may have finally reached its Suez moment.