Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China's infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA spokesperson emailed The Washington Post to say (emphasis in original): "The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber."

After that categorical statement to the Post, the NSA was caught spying on plainly financial targets such as the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras; economic summits; international credit card and banking systems; the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft, and Intel; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In response, the U.S. modified its denial to acknowledge that it does engage in economic spying, but unlike China, the spying is never done to benefit American corporations.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for instance, responded to the Petrobras revelations by claiming: "It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters.... What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line."

It's over: whether due to the complete domination of centrally-planned markets by a few central banks, whether as a result of HFTs forcing out all human traders and investors, whether due to volatility plunging to record lows and complacency at record highs, whether viewers simply aren't impressed by the new young, female faces that are increasingly taking over the prime time financial TV slots, because people are tired of Cramer's endless "caffeine" high and endless attempts to justify a record disconnect between manipulated record high "markets" and a stagnant economy in which some 53 million workers are "freelancers", or simply because video game consoles don't watch TV, America's interest with finance and the stock market is over.

Exhibit A: The chart below shows CNBC's Nielsen rating for August.
Some observations: for the core 25-54 demo, CNBC's Business Day segment is down every month this year compared to last year, with August's 28,000 literally a step in the abyss compared to last year, as viewership plummeted by a near record 30% (with ad revenue following close behind). In fact, the last time CNBC was up in Business Day year to year was over two years ago, in July 2012.

And the punchline: this was the lowest rated month in the core demographic since February 1993! In fact, in CNBC's entire Nielsen-rated history, there is only one month in history when demo viewership was lower, back in November 1992, when demo viewership was just 1000 less at 27,000.

At this rate, in the next month or two, CNBC should make history when Nielsen reports that its viewers have dropped to a never before seen low, paradoxically enough, as the increasingly unwatched financial channel cheers on the very same market-rigging policies that are forcing retail investors to give up on anything finance-related, and crushing the station into ad-revenue and eyeball oblivion.

There are many issues currently threatening humanity. Here are some of the most critical issues that come to mind. Issues that humanity must figure out if it is to survive the current fight against the controlling class. Perhaps at some point we will figure it all out.

Changes never happen overnight; and, as a whole, most Americans hopefully do have a few things in common. Surely one of the solutions is to look for what we all have in common and see how we can all work together to improve things. Coming together on wider platforms is also a key to moving forward.

Here are the top issues and potential solutions.

This week on SOTT Talk Radio we spoke with author William Patrick Patterson about the mysterious teachings of Georges Gurdjieff. After many years as a student of The Fourth Way and discovering no answer to the question that had gradually formed in him - what is the 'self' in self-remembering? - Mr. Patterson was called to explore Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism). In doing so, he realized the full significance of the ideas and practices of The Fourth Way and how this sacred and seminal teaching provided not only the necessary foundation, but was applicable on the very highest levels.

Mr. Patterson is the founder/director of The Gurdjieff Studies Program and has led groups, as well as given seminars and talks, throughout the United States for many years. He has written nine books on the teaching and directed, written and narrated the award-winning video trilogy The Life & Significance of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, and the just-released video Introduction to Gurdjieff's Fourth Way: From Selves to Individual Self to The Self. A new video talk has also recently been released:William Patrick Patterson Explores The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda.

His latest book is Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff: The Man, The Teaching, His Mission.

Running Time: 01:12:00

Download: MP3

Vladimir Putin surprises a female Siberian student with flowers on her 23rd birthday but also comes face to face with a woolly mammoth.
The Russian president visited Russia's largest region - the Sakha Republic - on Monday and was briefed on efforts by Siberian scientists to clone the extinct creature. In Yakutsk's world famous Mammoth Museum he saw the complete skeleton of the woolly mammoth.

'Soft tissues are preserved, so, it can be cloned?' asked the president. He was told Russian experts are working in close co-operation with their colleagues from South Korea. If successful, the beast could again roam Siberia for the first time since it became extinct in Wrangel Island in around 1650BC.

Mr Putin also met students and staff of the North-Eastern Federal University, congratulating them on the start of the new educational year, which is always marked in Russia on 1 September.

While opening the meeting, the president congratulated graduate student Darya Efimova on her birthday and presented her flowers.

Trapped since officials placed them in quarantine two weeks ago, the residents of Dolo Town are becoming increasingly resentful over their incarceration in Liberia's open "Ebola jail".

Around 17,000 increasingly hungry residents in the settlement, close to the international airport, are forced to queue for rations of rice while soldiers blockade them in at gunpoint.

The usually-packed streets are almost empty, as residents observe quarantine measures in a bid to halt a particularly severe outbreak of a virus which has killed 2,000 west Africans, half of them in Liberia.

Dolo Town, 75 kilometres (47 miles) east of Monrovia, was placed in lockdown on August 20 at the same time as West Point, a slum in the capital.

While the West Point lockdown caused riots, people have largely accepted the measures to contain them in Dolo Town. But their patience is wearing thin.

"I am used to going out every day to hustle for my family to eat. Now look at me, sitting here like a kid, looking at my wife and children all day," carpenter Jallah Freeman, 56, tells AFP as he sits in front of his house.

"I am tired. I am fed up with this quarantine. We beg the government to lift this thing."

Most of the working age inhabitants of Dolo Town are employed at a nearby plantation owned by US tyre maker Firestone, the largest natural rubber operation in the world, covering almost 500 square kilometres (200 square miles).

Commercially successful rock and pop stars have tended to be silent about the oppression of Palestinians. There are exceptions, of course. Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, and the Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie have both been speaking out against Israel's crimes for quite a few years.

Other high-profile artists like Madonna, Elton John and The Rolling Stones have shamefully performed in Tel Aviv, ignoring calls for a cultural boycott of Israel.

The summer of 2014 might be remembered as the time when the music industry started to wake up.

Two weeks after Israel's latest offensive against Gaza began in July, Massive Attack used a festival in Dublin to convey a simple and poignant message. A graphics and lighting display during the band's performance emphasized that more than 400 Palestinians had been killed.

When Akkas Al-Ali's Israeli friend accused him of "siding with terrorists" in Gaza, he decided to write the following letter in response.
By now, I expect you are fully aware of the apocalyptic scenes that have been coming out of Gaza over the past few weeks. In case you are not, I hope the following will give you some idea of what the Israeli army - spurred on by the country's government, by politicians, by journalists, by academics, by the lynch mobs in the streets - has successfully achieved in just six weeks.

From the beginning, we can now surmise, the Israeli military's sight has been set on nothing but blasting Gaza, an area of land several times smaller than greater London, my hometown, back to the Stone Age. Yesterday, 26 August, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 2,101 Palestinians have been killed. Of this dreadful figure, 1,460 (69%) are civilians, 493 (23%) are children and 253 (12%) are women. The number of casualties is even higher. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 11,066 (mostly civilians) have been wounded, including 3,374 children.

But this is still not the entire picture; a picture it is imperative for you, as an Israeli Jew, to know, because these crimes are being committed in your name. Whether you are aware of them or not, the Israeli state has already implicated you in its actions.

Since 8 July - in just 51 days - this regional superpower has bombarded Gaza by F16, helicopter, drone, artillery, tank, ship and other weaponry. It has dropped almost 20,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, roughly equivalent to the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It has displaced over 485,000 people with 240,000 fleeing to already overcrowded UN shelters. It has destroyed 16,000 homes. It has damaged 21 hospitals, 167 schools, 108 mosques, 52 fishing boats, 18 charities, five universities, five high-rise buildings, and eight water and waste plants. Electricity supplies have also been cut off after the bombing of Gaza's only power plant. As a direct result of Israel's destruction of basic and essential health services, the United Nations recently predicted an outbreak of serious diseases such as typhoid and cholera, not seen in Gaza for decades.

As I write to you, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire to which, I must point out, half the Israeli cabinet remain opposed. And given Israel's long history of breaking agreements with Palestinians, how long will it be before this one is also rendered meaningless? How long before Israel launches another war and Palestinians must resume counting dead bodies? Who, when the time comes, will answer for these crimes against humanity, for the children that lie dead in Shujaeya, in Rafah, in Khuza'a? Will it be you?

Yet for all the cruel force and unyielding power of the Israeli army, this tiny corner of the Mediterranean will always haunt you. For it is here that the stray wreckage of your national memory - the Nakba you choose to forget - lies buried.

Here is the vexing math problem educators in the Gaza Strip are trying to solve in order to start school Sept. 14, three weeks later than originally planned:

There are 500,000 students who were scheduled to be divided among 648 schools, with 421 of the buildings being shared in double shifts. But the fighting between Israel and Hamas over the summer left at least 34 buildings damaged beyond use and dozens more in need of major repair. An additional 31 schools are still sheltering 59,728 residents who lost their homes.

Now, the students must be sorted into classrooms, taking into account that thousands no longer live where they did last year.

"This is the most challenging year for us," said Farid Abu Athra, the head of the education program for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs schools for half of Gaza's students. "We have a plan, but when we see facts, it might change. When our teachers face the students in the schools, I think we will know."

Two schoolgirls were killed and hung from the ends of the same rope on a tree in India's northeastern Assam state. Locals suspect the girls were first raped, reminding of the outrageous gang-rape and murder of a student in Uttar Pradesh.

The girls, who were students at the same school in the Nilambazar area, went missing on Wednesday, local media cited police as saying.

Family members alerted local residents and launched a search operation in the area.

The next morning, a relative of one of the girls found two bodies hanging from a tree located two kilometers from the India-Bangladesh border.

Police said the bodies have been sent for post-mortem examinations, as the reason for the murder has not been yet established.