Last week I published a brave prediction:

I see the political elites and their oligarch puppet-masters becoming endangered species in the United States before too long as the populace, including their own bodyguards, turns against them.

As usual, I made no attempt to specify what I mean by "before too long" because making predictions as to timing is a fool's game.

And, as usual, I got a flurry of emails expressing a wide range of rationalizations but all adding up to the same sentiment: "not any time soon."

Some people thought that the populace, consisting as it does of zombified overfed clowns addicted to Facebook and internet porn is unlikely to stage the revolution. Others thought that the oligarchy will manage to manipulate financial markets, destroy one country after another in order to drain all remaining wealth out of the world and consume it, and by so doing manage to placate the populace with bread and circuses, well into the future. The bodyguards are unlikely to rebel, some said, because they are so well paid.

Getting back to basics, it is a fairly obvious and increasingly well-recognized fact that the American empire, the empire of military bases, the Federal Reserve, the IMF and the World Bank, is on its way out. And it is a well-known fact about empires that when they fail those who held positions of power and privilege within them are quickly recycled into punching bags and pincushions. Oddly, nobody mentioned any of the mechanisms by which this transformation tends to take place, so I thought I'd mention them briefly.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has given a chilling assessment of a new geopolitical situation taking shape amid the Ukrainian crisis, warning of a possible new Cold War and calling the West's approach to the crisis a "fatal mistake."

The 91-year-old diplomat characterized the tense relations as exhibiting the danger of "another Cold War."

"This danger does exist and we can't ignore it," Kissinger said. He warned that ignoring this danger any further may result in a "tragedy," he told Germany's Der Spiegel.

If the West wants to be "honest," it should recognize, that it made a "mistake," he said of the course of action the US and the EU adopted in the Ukrainian conflict. Europe and the US did not understand the"significance of events" that started with the Ukraine-EU economic negotiations that initially brought about the demonstrations in Kiev last year. Those tensions should have served as a starting point to include Russia in the discussion, he believes.

© Reuters/Stefan Wermuth

An alleged plot to kill Her Majesty the Queen was uncovered barely 2 days before the Remembrance Day celebrations.

Four suspected Islamic terrorists were arrested by police for having put together a carefully designed plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II.

A scanty yet authoritative police report was made public in a timely fashion on Friday, two days before the Remembrance Day celebrations.

The British media is rife with fabrications and innuendoes. The contents of the police reports were distorted by the media. This carefully designed plot to stab Her Majesty with a knife hit the headlines of the weekend editions of London's major tabloids, coinciding with the Remembrance Day Event.

Gunmen killed five nuclear engineers, four of them Syrian and one Iranian, on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday, a monitoring group said on Monday.

No one claimed responsibility and Syrian and Iranian state media did not mention the attack, which occurred in an area controlled by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.


It was not clear in what capacity the Iranian nuclear engineer was in Syria, if his presence were to be confirmed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the engineers were shot dead while traveling in a small convoy to a research center near the northeastern district of Barzeh.
Iran has supported Assad throughout Syria's three-year civil war and Iranian military advisers are working with Syrian forces throughout the country, which is partly under insurgent control.

The US embargo on Cuba goes against international law and causes severe damage to the welfare of Cuban citizens, Uruguay's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Monday.

The Uruguayan government considers that the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States "is contrary to international law, causes numerous and unjustifiable damage to the welfare of the Cuban people, and affects peace and coexistence among the [Latin] American nations," according to the statement published on the ministry's website.

On November 3, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro and his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez met in Havana on the sidelines of the Havana International Trade Fair (FIHAV 2014), an important commercial fair in Cuba and the Caribbean.

At the meeting, Luis Almagro expressed his support for Cuba saying "[Uruguay] welcomed the recent adoption in the context of the General Assembly of the Organization of the UN resolution on the need to end the blockade," as cited in the statement.

On October 28, the General Assembly adopted a resolution which called for the United States to lift the economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba. The US sanctions, aimed at destroying the Cuban economy, were imposed on October 19, 1960. Havana estimates the economic damage from the blockade as being more than $90 billion, according to Bruno Rodriguez.

© Unknown

The US-EU sponsored coup in the Ukraine and its conversion from a stable Russian trading partner, to a devastated EU economic client and NATO launch pad, as well as the subsequent economic sanctions against Russia for supporting the Russian ethnic majority in the Donbas region and Crimea, illustrate the dangerous vulnerability of the Russian economy and state. The current effort to increase Russia's national security and economic viability in the face of these challenges requires a critical analysis of the policies and structures emerging in the post-Soviet era.

Pillage as Privatization

Over the past quarter century, several trillion dollars worth of public property in every sector of the Russian economy was illegally transferred or violently seized by gangster-oligarchs acting through armed gangs, especially during its 'transition to capitalism'.

Google is taking over an historic Navy air base, NASA's Moffett Field Naval Air Station on the San Francisco Peninsula. It will pay $1.16 billion in rent over 60 years for the 1,000-acre property, which also boasts a working airfield and golf course.

The former US Navy air base is currently home to NASA's Ames Research Center and is within walking distance of Google's main campus in Mountain View. NASA estimates the lease will save the agency approximately $6.3 million annually in maintenance and operation costs.

"As NASA expands its presence in space, we are making strides to reduce our footprint here on Earth," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

"We want to invest taxpayer resources in scientific discovery, technology development and space exploration - not in maintaining infrastructure we no longer need. Moffett Field plays an important role in the Bay Area and is poised to continue to do so through this lease arrangement," he explained.

Russia is to build eight nuclear power units in Iran, as a new partnership agreement, guaranteed by the IAEA, was signed in Moscow on Tuesday.

The head of the Rosatom, Sergey Kirienko, and the chief of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, signed a series of documents, promoting the links in the field of peaceful application of atomic energy between the countries, RIA Novosti reports.

According to the agreement, Russia is to construct eight pressurized water reactors "turn-key ready" in Iran. Four of them will be built at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, also completed by Russia a year ago.

Besides, nuclear fuel for the future reactors will be provided by Russia during the whole life cycle of the new reactors. Spent fuel will be returned for processing and storage.

"It is the turning point in the relations between our countries," Salehi said. "These friendly actions, taken by Russia will be well-remembered." He added that now Russia and Iran "have become even closer to each other."

United States government is getting ready to train Ukrainian military and punitive battalions in winter combat techniques before the end of the year. The goal is to make Ukrainians more efficient in killing people in Donetsk and Lugansk in cold weather.

Training will take place in Starichi educational center in western Ukraine - sources say. Starichi is localted in Yavrov military polygon in Lviv region.

The US military will train a group of Ukrainians who will serve as instructors within the Ukrainian military. They will spread knowledge on how American government thinks is the best way to kill people of Donetsk. Candidates to become Ukrainian instructors should be selected by November 10.

The march of global de-dollarization continues. In the last few days, China has signed direct currency agreements with Canada becoming North America's first offshore RMB hub, which CBC reports analysts suggest "could double maybe even triple the level of Canadian trade between Canada and China," impacting the need for Dollars. But that is not the week's biggest Petrodollar precariousness news, as The Examiner reports, a new chink in the petrodollar system was forged as China signed an agreement with Qatar to begin direct currency swaps between the two nations using the Yuan, and establishing the foundation for new direct trade with the OPEC nation in the very heart of the petrodollar system. As Simon Black warns, "It's happening... with increasing speed and frequency."

As CBC reports,

Authorized by China's central bank, the deal will allow direct business between the Canadian dollar and the Chinese yuan, cutting out the middle man - in most cases, the U.S. dollar.

Canadian exporters forced to use the American currency to do business in China are faced with higher currency exchange costs and longer waits to close deals.

"It's something the prime minister has been talking about. He wants Canadian companies, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, doing more and more work in China, selling goods and services there," said CBC's Catherine Cullen, reporting from Beijing.

Sovereign Man's Simon Black has some ominous thoughts on Canada's move...

It's happening. With increasing speed and frequency.

The People's Bank of China and the Canadian Prime Minister's office issued a statement on Saturday stating that Canada will establish North America's first offshore renminbi trading center in Toronto.

China and Canada agreed on a number of measures to increase the use of renminbi in trade, business, and investment. And they further signed a 200-billion renminbi bilateral currency swap agreement.

Moreover, just today, hot off the presses, the central banks of China and Malaysia announced the establishment of renminbi clearing arrangements in Kuala Lumpur, which will further increase the use of renminbi in South-East Asia.

This comes just two weeks after Asia's leading financial center, Singapore, became a major renminbi hub, with direct convertibility established between the Singapore dollar and the renminbi.