Peeking Behind The Curtain

Well, here we go with the top news stories of 2016.  Yesterday, we covered the various passings that have marked the year that was, from the great to the small.  Today, we want to focus on the more entertaining parts of pop culture, namely the headlines.

Our take on things is, of course, a bit different.  We focus on the stories that will likely have far-reaching impact on the future, and believe it not, we don't think the Trump presidency is one of them.  In fact, the entire election cycle of 2016, while being wildly entertaining and providing gobs of grist for the mill, will like a Hollywood blockbuster have little or no nutritional value for the brain.

Instead, we will focus on some stories that flew in under the radar, but which will likely come back to haunt us in major ways in the near-to-far future.

The first thing we focus on also happens to be one of the most recent: the assassination of Andrey Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey.  Likely related to that event was the downing of a Russian jet over the Black Sea with a Russian military choir on its way to Syria to entertain the troops for Christmas and New Year.

This event is a fire starter - a slow burn in the coal scuttle that will eventually leap into dramatic flame, much like the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo that touched off World War One.  To any aware observer, this event couldn't be more obvious.  It was meant, as so many other events over the past two decades, to goad Russia into war.  The provocations include the Ukraine mess, NATO camping out on Russian borders, "friendly fire" incidents in Syria, and the overt acts of war generally called the Economic Sanctions set in place because 98% of Crimean people voted to rejoin the Russian Federation and Russia accepted.

And all this against a country that just a few years ago was America's best buddy in Asia after the Wall Fall.  In fact, Russia was seen as the foil by which the West could keep China down on the farm.

Well, it didn't work out that way.  Instead, Russia and China teamed up to form the BRICSA group, who announced their intention to start an alternative financial clearing system that threatens the Dollar Hegemony and the SWIFT cabal.  Since that time, the Western media, mouthpieces for the Shadow Government, have been steadily driving Russia's image into the dirt - or at least trying.

Despite all the humiliations and public trashings the West has heaped on Russia, they have shown remarkable restraint, preferring instead to fight through media and public relations, figuring the "whipping boy" image garners sympathy and admiration from the rest of the world, which it certainly seems to have done.  However, their patience is not boundless.

Certainly, the murder of a top diplomat in a key nation, plus the jet downing, must be pressing on the Kremlin's last nerve.  We can assume that investigators will thoroughly document proof of Western involvement, and then take their case to the world in the hopes of stirring significant ill will towards the US, and most definitely put it on the table when negotiating with the Trump administration, which has promised to lighten up a bit.  In any event, a significant story to watch.

Another important story, and one that will have long-lasting effects on all our daily lives, is the so-called "fake news" phenomenon.  In addition to being used to tar and feather Russia (again), it is also part of a much larger effort to take full control of the internet, a process that was begun with Obama's signing over ICANN to the UN in October, plus rise and empowerment of WIPO, have touched off a rapidly growing effort to shut down free speech on the internet.

There is nothing more dangerous to human liberty than giving any government body the ability to control how and what its opposition can say.  This ability is especially powerful when "intellectual property" rights can be used to control people's ability to cite reference materials in their writings and speech.  This combination can literally shut down free inquiry, independent reporting and academic research all in one fell swoop.  The associated rise of "fact checkers" and "information arbiters" is a very dangerous game in which almost everyone loses.

Every discovery ever made in human history came from rearranging existing facts and applying novel interpretations to them.  If one can control the facts that are widely available and the interpretations that are deemed "acceptable," one effectively controls the mind of humanity and certainly shuts down any voyages of discovery in the general population, not to mention political opposition.

One to watch, and fight tooth and nail, going forward.

The next major story is one that is truly bubbling just under the surface, and there is a full-on effort to stifle it, as it could literally destroy the global ruling class.  The story is, of course, Pizzagate.

Wikipedia immediately labeled this story a "conspiracy theory" and says it has been debunked.  The now-discredited Snopes jumped all over it and declared it a non-item.  "News" outlets have all but shut the story up, except to rant on about a "lone gunman" who walked into Comet Ping Pong in an obvious attempt to discredit the story.  In other words, it's a very dangerous story to certain groups who desperately want it to go away.

The story broke during WikiLeaks' release of John Podesta's email during the presidential campaign.  There were numerous references to "pizza" and other code words that are known to be pedophile jargon.  The email mentioned several pizza restaurants around the US, specifically Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C., and the references were connected to other mentions of "spirit cooking," a truly sick form of black magic

This story is a huge deal.  Dozens of researchers have spent decades documenting child-sex rings at the highest levels of power.  Though nearly snuffed out, the Jimmy Seville case almost blew the lid off of the story.  Before that, researchers have been tracing this practice since the 1950s, showing that Child Protection Services, kidnapping rings and other sources provided thousands of children each year to service high-level clients.

The practice has been tied to the Roman Church abuse of children dating back to the 1800s in Canada, the Bohemian Grove antics of the US power elite, black magic rituals, and the use of pedophilia as a means to ensure silence among the participants.  There are also long-standing rumors that Stanley Kubrick was murdered for the subtle and not-so-subtle revelations in his films The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.  If proof of this practice were ever to see the light of day, it would cause a global and violent backlash against the ruling classes that would change the course of history.  Naturally, it must be squelched with every possible effort.

The Podesta email provided one of the biggest breaks ever in research of the practice.  It named places and people, gave code words, and have led to the discovery of all sorts of corroborating evidence, such as advertising, that clearly imply nefarious activities of a most grotesque nature.

Needless to say, the people who research this subject are tireless and stay on it for decades.  With this kind of information coming to the public, it has reinvigorated them in a way that Jimmy Seville's story did and shows the global nature of the problem.  This story will not go away anytime soon, and there are likely to be more revelations coming to light over the coming year and beyond.

Finally, the major story of the century will most likely be the weather, and this year the New Ice Age started to become apparent.  Over the year, oddly cold spells, strange snow events, heavy rains, record frosts, and other events signalled the coming Big Chill, though the constant brow-beating of Global Warming over the past three decades, combined with repeated scandals of data manipulation, have either got most people unable to see it, or simply burned out on the whole climate debate.

As the story goes, this past solar cycle has been unnervingly quiet.  The sunspot counts are way down and solar activity of all kinds have been waning for the past three years.  This has caused Earth's magnetic shield to weaken and destabilize, with the poles wandering closer to the equator on their way to converging sometime over Indonesia.

At the same time, the weaker shield has allowed much higher levels of cosmic radiation to penetrate Earth's atmosphere resulting in higher evaporation rates from the oceans.  This higher moisture content in the atmosphere meets with rapidly cooling temperatures due to reduced solar output, causing vast flooding and snow events worldwide, including the most recent heavy snows in North Africa, one of the hottest regions on Earth.

Careful reading of food quality and price reports shows a steady decrease in food quality combined with a steady increase in prices across the board for grain, fruit and leafy vegetables.  Harvest outputs have been declining over the past three years due to flooded fields and frost damage.

This story will become increasingly visible over the coming couple of years as the Sun enters a periodic minimum causing global temperatures to drop rapidly and a whole host of problems to crop up as a result.  Though attempts are and will continue to be made to blame Global Warming and human activity.  Cooling is, however, a far worse problem that warming and has nothing to do with anything humans are doing.

The extent of this story depends entirely on the Sun.  A severe minimum combined with Earth's magnetic poles reversing would likely be catastrophic.  Because so much time and money has been wasted on the Global Warming fairy tale, we are ill-prepared for what's coming, with declining food supplies, large areas becoming uninhabitable and the possibility of ocean levels dropping precipitously resulting in toxic salinity levels for marine life.  No one really knows how severe the situation will be, but higher food prices and political instability are certainly the least of the problems to come.

Obviously, the stories the Corporate Media want us to focus on pale in comparison to our top picks here.  Oh sure, the election made good theater, Brexit was chat-worthy and WikiLeaks stole a lot of headlines, but all of them will fade in weeks or months, replaced with more entertaining "news."  The stories that will affect most of humanity going forward are the ones being assiduously kept under wraps.  We are not meant to bother ourselves with real issues, and that distracts from our ability to be controlled.

Stay tuned tomorrow as we release our world-famous Predilection Issue 2016, looking at the most likely headlines for 2017 - good, bad and indifferent.  That will be followed by a little break for us Far Siders as we welcome the New Year and get roaring drunk in the jungle of Borneo.

Sampai jumpa, Y'all!