The Smoke Rings Of My Mind

Let's see...where were we?  Obviously, we've slept since the last post, and well, at our advanced age, things just kind of slip away.  Oh yes, we were on about the election here.  You might want to sit down for today's post, because it's going to be all over the place and we don't want you to get dizzy and fall down on the mass-people-mover.

So, the winner was Jokowi (a.k.a., the white hats)...or was it?  After the July 9th election, the margin was apparently so close that the black hats made a fuss and wouldn't concede, so we all had to wait until July 22, when the KPU (national election authority) announced their final count.  Well, that came down on the side of the white hats with 53% to 46%.  But that didn't satisfy the black hats either, though they promised they would accept the KPU's count.  So they threatened to burn down the country (like good patriots do when they lose) because of "massive fraud" in the system.  Of course, they should know, they were behind a lot of it.

Anyway, the black hats announced on 22 July that they were disgusted with the KPU and were pulling out of the election, which was more or less conceding the count.  Then on 23 July, the campaign announced that "quitting" wasn't really what they meant...they were pulling out of the counting process - two hours before the official announcement - because of "massive fraud and corruption".  In other words, that count didn't go in their favor either.  So now they are filing an appeal with the Indo Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land, alleging "massive fraud" in the system.

Oh, they also filed a police report alleging that various election agencies "lost" thousands of pages of "evidence" of that self-same "fraud".  Gee, they just don't have all that "evidence" because a government agency "lost" it, your honor, but take their word for it...lots of "fraud".

What's really going on is that the ruling oligarchs and military-industrial complex that have run Indonesia for decades lost fair and square to a populist reformer furniture-maker, who grew up in the slums of Yogyakarta and rose up through the ranks to become Indonesia's seventh president.  It's akin to the Bush Clan losing complete control of America, and the Bushes threatening to destroy the country because of it.

Fun to watch.

Meantime, a group named after an Egyptian goddess (Isis), who was the model for the Virgin Mary (look it up), has taken a chunk of Iraq, is trying to take Syria, has likely taken Libya, and currently has a bunch of (white) folks here in Indonesia recruiting.  We mention the "white" part, because these are Europeans, not Semitics, who are recruiting for ISIS.  We'll let you make up your own scenario on how all that works.  We have a pretty good idea.

Also in the past month that we've been actually doing productive stuff and taking a well-earned vacation at the Far Side World Headquarters - Java Branch (FSWHJB), another Malaysian airliner went walkies.  Yup, that makes TWO planes from the Malaysian national airline - a country that tried and convicted George W. Bush of war crimes in Iraq.  See previous comments.

This brings up some interesting thoughts, too.  We know what you are thinking, "Oh God, here he goes again."

Have you noticed over the past few years the globs of experts that seem to all die in clumps?  First, there were the microbiologists, then bankers, then Chinese IT experts (Malasia 1) and finally HIV/AIDS experts (Malaysia 2).  If you're one of those people that likes math and statistics, which we don't, then please calculate the odds and send us the result.  Please show your work, even though we wouldn't have a clue how to check it.

The first two groups have all be suicided in rather interesting ways - nails and bullets to the back of the head and so on - while the latter two groups have all been snuffed by the same airline with one plane vanishing off the face of the Earth and the other being shot down over a war zone.  Don't forget to add those events into your calculations.  There also seems to be a smell of relatedness about the groups, in that microbiologists and HIV experts, and bankers and IT experts, all seem to fit into a strange looking puzzle just so.

We figure the odds are like trillions to one, or impossibly random, but we don't trust our math - that's your job, remember?

While all this was going on, there was this event called the World Cup, of which we watched all of exactly zero minutes of, as usual.  It was held in Brazil and attended (conspicuously) by high-ranking officials from the BRICS nations, and their wanna-bes (Germany and Argentina).  Notice too how the wanna-bes were the two finalists.  More calculations from the math-savvy folks out there?  The finalists also happened to be the two countries from where the last two popes were born.  click-click-click on the calculator...  We lump "coincidence" in with things like the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

While all this has been going on, Russia and China have been making new friends in far-away places and installing their own version of a kinder-gentler IMF and World Bank.  China's also been busy making currency-swap deals with a bunch of folks, including the very hub of Western banking - Switzerland.  In case you are history impaired, this is how the US dollar took over the world after WW2.  First, you hand piles of your paper to other countries, then sell them vital resources to build/rebuild their infrastructure all denominated in dollars.  We don't know about you, but we shifted all our two dollars in the FOREX market to renmimbi options.  But don't listen to us, we aren't "certified" money advisors, and we tend to do stupid stuff like sell all our stocks in 1999, and buy gold at $270/ounce, then sell it all at $1800/ounce to buy real estate for cash in the hinterlands.

Damn kooks we are.

Oh, did we mention the real estate has appreciated 50% or more in the past three years?

Big damn kooks.

Anyway, back to the Indonesian presidential elections.  Bet you hadn't noticed that WW2 is still being played out.  Yes, that's right, we're still fighting it.  On one side, we have the fascists who represent the very old New World Order, founded in the 1600s, and widely known as the British East India Company, symbolized by red and white stripes on their banners (look it up).  On the other side are the Socialists represented by solid, blood-red banners.  The former believe in corporations owning government, and the latter believe that government owns the corporations.

We, frankly, don't have truck with either side, since they both believe that own us.  We reserve that right to ourselves and our God, thank you very much.

So, that pesky election thing...

The black hats have their red-and-white coalition (look it up), and the white hats are all but Socialist in name, since they want to redistribute wealth through a variety of schemes and keep government firmly planted on top of the nation's resources and the companies that want them.  The two sides are at each others' throats, as they have been for the past century across multiple nations.  in fact, the world seems to be dividing quite nicely along a line that more or less follows the Prime Meridian through the Pacific Ocean, then turns down the Caucasus Mountains through Europe.  The Southern Hemisphere is still up for grabs, which is why the new pope is from Argentina and Africa is a corporate battleground.  And why the Indonesian elections were/are so important to those with half a mind given to free thinking.

Which brings us around to the "border crisis" in the US.  Bet you thought we'd never get to that, right?  But hey!  It took some setup to show how Indonesian elections, dying experts and financial shenanigans are all connected to Mexican/US borders...

What do you do when your Socialist ponzi scheme (commonly called Social Security) is going broke because the largest breeding festival in history is getting old and wants their money back?  Furthermore, what do you do when your arch enemies in the Eastern Hemisphere are making good friends on your southern flank by treating folks decently, rather than stomping on their faces with steel-shank boots?

Why, you throw open the border and allow millions of fresh new tax-payers come running in, who just happen to be from all those countries south of the equator that you've crapped on for nearly a century.  That way, they all have a vested interest in cozying up and keeping you safe from those evil BRICS folks, because - gosh - half your family lives up there, right?

Who's behind it?  Why those pesky corporations who want cheap labor at home to shore up the flagging economy in their back yards, and who want to raid the pensions for capital without causing too many shooting wars at home.  After all, if folks lose both their Social Security and their pensions, they're liable to get just a little irate.  At least they won't bite Uncle Sugar's hand if he's handing out welfare checks.  The corporations can always shift their execs to overseas offices, but it's kind of hard to move politicians.

Everybody wins!

Except us, of course.

The Final Solution

Have you noticed anything?  Do you see it also?  The world changed last week, and if you weren't looking, you might have missed it.

One of the most significant changes in geopolitical relations in the past 50 years flew right under the RADAR and landed smack in the middle of the Western Banking Establishment's lap.  Russia, China and now India have made a gas deal that will take the US and the dollar out of the energy business in Asia.  In other words, three of the hottest economies on the planet just thumbed their collective nose at Western hegemony.  It was amazing to watch.

Most of us alive today don't remember a time when the US was an agrarian, second-class economy.  In fact, if you were born anytime during the 1950s or later, you've never known a world were the US wasn't a black hole of power and resources.  That old world just ended.  There is indeed a New World Order, and the neighborhood bully just got kicked out of the club.

What brought the US to prominence, beside being the last man standing after WW2, was that it meant business.  It created thngs and exported things and created wealth.  In recent years, however, it has been a net importer, a debtor and has all but lost the innovative edge that made her name.

You may have not been aware that the US has spent several decades shutting down coal, oil and gas production, preferring instead - and at great risk as the 1970s showed - to use everyone else's energy reserves.  But, as the Western Banking Establishment has grown increasingly panicked, suddenly all those oil, gas and coal fields that were shut in under the guise of ecological concern are now open for business and the country is ramping up production in a huge way.

At one time, the world was happy to take the US jobs and money, and were willing to take the BS that went with it.  In recent times, though, the US has devolved into a militaristic mercantile empire exporting only bombs and debt, and the world has grown weary of it.

Instead, they now look to Russia and China as the economic powerhouses and perceive that those countries are far more legitimate because they bring business without egregious strings attached.  There are no agendas besides pure economic benefit - no ideological ham-fisted Agenda 21s or Pax Americana or nation building/regime change to go with the forced indebtedness.

Furthermore, everyone except the poor duped Americans themselves see quite clearly that Obama is a self-serving, illegitimate occupant at the reins, and see even more clearly that he does not run the country.  They know very well that the banksters and corporate interests set the agenda in the US, and that the country's political and legal systems are nothing more than mafioso enforcement schemes to protect the "too big to fails".

Now Russia and China have entered into an energy agreement that shuts the Western oligarchs out of the deal.  Soon, India will join because pipeline routes will be able to come right around any Western-controlled puppet states.  This is the foundation of a new and quite seperate financial system that will force the Western banksters to their knees, or provoke them into rash military response, which will make plain to the world the illegitimacy of the empire, whose ideology is based solely on greed and avarice.

Empires don't crash and burn.  They fade over decades, centuries, and even millennia (c.f. Rome).  The US empire will not crash.  The dollar will not go up in flames.  It will slowly fade away into obscurity and people find viable alternatives and adjust to new paradigms.  The greatest mistake the US could make at this point is military adventurism, though that is likely what will happen, given the inbred stupidity controlling the country.

There is only one real answer that the American people can give now.  Don't vote.  Stay away from elections in droves.  This vote of "no confidence" is the only thing that can force the cockroaches into the sunlight and show them for what they are.  There is no political solution at the polls, and by not voting, the oligarchs will be forced to retain power without consent and thus expose their despotism.

Not voting en masse is the only peaceful means left to expose and debunk the power-mad slime.  They have horrific weapons that make open conflict and revolution untenable.  They control the judiciary and legal processes with unflinching fists.  They even control the electoral process to the point that voting is pointless.  The outcome is predetermined.  Therefore, NOT voting is the only way to answer tyranny without force or immoral acts.  The only way they maintain the illusion of legitimacy is by getting folks to the polls, thus fooling the rubes into thinking that their minions were selected democratically.    Without the pretense of fair and open elections, they can not claim any semblance of legitimate power, and will be forced to keep power by open aggression.  At that point, they have lost without a shot being fired.  They would have no legitimacy either in the domestic nor global arenas.

As George Carlin rightly said, you only have the right to complain if you don't participate in the fraud.

Denial Anger Bargaining Depression...

It's not easy watching a country commit suicide.  It's kind of like a car wreck: everyone slows down to look at the carnage before speeding off happy to still be breathing.

Usually, when folks kill themselves, they seek a little privacy and try to do things as quickly and painlessly as possible.  Occasionally though, you get the jumpers.  They get out on the ledge and wait for big crowds to gather and media to show up.  These big public shows are rarely serious, though.  What they are looking for is some attention - someone to save them.

The United States of America seems to be one of those exceptions.  Not only has it crawled out on a particularly precarious ledge, but it is absolutely defying anyone to help it.  Convinced of its own immortality and what David Byrne called "special-NESS",  Not only has it edged itself out in a very public space, it is tap-dancing on the ledge singing the Star-Spangled Banner and yelling to the gaping mobs below about how privileged it is.

It's a special kind of insanity, really.

There's an additional problem.  This gross display of self-delusion is compounded by the fact that the nation has crawled out on the ledge carrying a lot of weapons and seems hell-bent on taking out a few million folks before swan-diving to a spectacular end.

A lot of countries and individuals around the world are trying to distance themselves from the coming carnage.  The number of people giving up their citizenship or permanent resident status has reached record highs.  Legislation has been introduced in Russia to ban possession and trade in dollars.  A dozen countries have demanded their gold back from the Federal Researve (good luck - getting smack off a junkie is easier).  Many other countries are establishing trade agreements in their own currencies to by-pass the dollar.

All of this is going on fairly quietly so as not to agitate the loony on the ledge, but he's getting wise and starting to get that wild, haunted look in his eyes.  He's spying on everyone, friends included, out of sheer paranoia.  He's got weapons pointed in every which direction.  He's insisting that everyone sign his Trans-Pacific Pact or he'll by-God jump.  In fact, he's showing all the same signs the USSR did a while back before slipping and falling to its death in a rather spectacular way with a vodka-swilling Jew riding a tank into Red Square.

The world is pretty much resigned to the inevitable, and since the loony gets ever more belligerent with every passing moment, it seems a good idea to stand back and let the guy rush head-long to his demise, while making back-up plans for the inevitable time when the rest of us don't have to worry about his destructive behavior.

Americans, being for the most part provincial and self-centered, don't realize how their country squats on top of the world and, in spoiled child fashion, issues demands and decrees that are completely oblivious to the rest of the world or the harm that it does.

Having been so steeped in "exceptionalism", Americans are blind to the destructive tendency of their culture.  Raised on diets of pro-Cowboy/anti-Indian, the US continues the single-minded conquest of the world in the belief that there is no other way but the Anglo way, and the world must conform or die.

Civilization is something that is grown, not pounded.  It also recognizes that there are many paths to the same destination.  Americans, and America, must reform or face extinction.  No man is an island entire to himself.

The decline of the US is now well into the paranoia phase, in which it is lashing out to blame anyone and anything for its misfortunes.  In fact, the whole problem is as simple as a point of view, but one that is extremely hard to take, because it requires seeing the errors of the current situation.

Slowly but inexorably the American people are waking up and realizing what is and has been done in their name.  This is causing increasing dissatisfaction and distancing from government institutions.  Once the people have been lost, governments crumble  Like marital infidelity, it is extremely hard to regain trust, especially that which was built on complete faith in the goodness and morality of the system.

American paranoia says that the rest of the world is plotting against it, but out here on the Far Side, we know the end is near and it is prudent to prepare.

Pick A Vlad, Any Vlad

Oh man, we humans are so FumBucked.

Just to put a fine point on how nutz the world is these days, Vlad Putin is being pushed for a Nobel Peace Prize.  Now that in itself is not so crazy, but his name comes up because he stopped a Nobel Peace Laureate from prosecuting a war on Syria.

We are so screwed.

Most of the insanity is coming out of America today.  World War 2 vets are catching flack for assembling at the World War 2 monument in DC.  If you think this is something new, then you should read up on the Bonus Army.  Keep in mind that then-Majors Patton and Eisenhower were riding through the protesters hacking and slaying with their swords.  Now they just use microwaves.  So much cleaner and doesn't provide unseemly photo ops.

More fun?  Just as full-blown socialism arrives in America (Obamacare), the country crashes and burns.  No wonder a dozen countries all want their gold back.  There may not be anyone to load it pretty soon.

One good thing about the government shut-down...the US won't be invading any countries for several days.  One bad thing...if it goes on too long, old Bammy might just start exercising Emergency Executive Powers and finding it much easier to operate without that silly old Congress in the way.  Remember some guy names Hitler?

This is likely the beginning of the end of the Anglo-American empire.  The country is already in receivership - euphemistically called sequestation (note definitions 3 and 4).

As the London Telegraph notes, this is no way to run a country.  Of course, being stupid hasn't stopped the polidiots yet, and London has little room to talk on the subject.

At any rate, these events will likely, and may already be causing a crisis of confidence in US bonds.  Even more to the point, Russia and China may be holding US by the short and curlies with the threat of a mass sell-off of US debt instruments, which is at the root of all this mess.

We shouldn't be surprised if Germany, Venezuela, Finland, Poland, Romania, and a number of others start getting very cozy with the BRICS alliance.  Furthermore, we should look for Russia and China to kick their efforts to establish a seperate system of finance into high gear.  They've got to get their safety net in place before the last few threads break under the Evil Empire's behind.

What's a real head-slapper here is that the more we see, the more Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was right.  He said many pressient things, but the one that stands out just now is, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope by which we will hang them."

The US sold its soul to Russia and China thinking that by owning piles and piles of US debt, they would never stand up to Anglo-American hegemony.  The neo-whatevers apparently never considered that the transfer of wealth and manufacturing to points east, as well as the decades-long effort to completely destroy family cohesiveness and educational excellence at home have completely destroyed capitalism and the empire in one fell swoop.

The Capitalists not only sold the rope, they tied the knot, found the tree, and stuck their head into the noose.  Lenin is stunned into a catatonic state just pondering how right he was.

Where to now?  Well, if you're in the US, you might want to get out.  If the collapse of Rome is any indication, that country will be no place to live pretty soon.  All those post-apocalyptic movies, like Mad Max and The Postman are probably mild compared to what's coming.

As one Texas politician put it some time back, "Rape is like the weather - if it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it."  Heck, if nothing else, we may get to see two Nobel Peace Laureates go to war against each other.

Won't that be entertaining...

The Game's A Foot (sic)

Attribution: Green Economy Coalition
www.greeneconomycoalition.org

It's been very interesting to watch the Snowden case.  As I've mentioned before, I don't buy the MSM fairy tale about what's going on and suspect there is a much deeper story to all this.  Apparently, so do a number of other folks, such as Max Keiser, bless his ranting soul.

For those who keep up with the alternative researchers, and a worthy effort it is, then you know about Joseph Farrell's and Tom Dolan's theories about Break-Away Civilizations and Alternative Financial Systems.  Farrell recently posted a vlog on topic.

Here's the scenario: after WW2, the US (and it's empire mentor the UK) has been using captured Axis loot and booty to set up and operate a shadow economy.  In effect, Wall Street heavies have been using the loot to create piles and oodles of derivatives and a host of other financial instruments that have turned the Nazi gold into a vast system of finance that is completely off the books.  This hidden system is run, at least in part, by the Bilderberg group and it's ilk.

Bother Dolan and Farrell speculate, with reason, that the hidden system amounts to trillions of dollars in virtual transactions that are funding all sorts of projects that are so black, not even the black operators know about them.  Dolan sees a secret space program, among other things.  Farrell sees all sorts of things, such as GMO research and weather wars, with a transhumanist agenda.  (See interview with Farrell and de Hart on Radio Far Side)

One thing is certain, a huge pile of confiscated Nazi and Japanese gold and other loot has never been adequately accounted for and the idea of a hidden system of finance certainly makes a lot of dots suddenly fit together.

Now suppose you were the Rest of the World (RoW) and you were watching this US empire grow to overshadow just about everything you can see, much less imagine.  Suppose you were Russia, China or Germany, all very powerful economies in their own rights, but you were unable to expand because there was this 400-pound gorilla sitting on top of the global financial system.  Especially imagine yourself as Germany.  All this loot came from you and you have been beaten down with it for the past 70-odd years.  Throw Japan in there, as well, since they've only prospered as a lapdog for Uncle Sugar, and when they started making noises about cutting loose, a Big A$$ Earthquake came and gutted your economy.

Now, with that scenario firmly in mind, do you really think Germany is so shocked and surprised by all the surveillance they've been under?  Don't bet on it.  Nor are Russia and China surprised.  They've all known about this, and the BRICSA nations have been after a chink in the US armor for a long time, trying to bust out.

Now suppose you were one of the second dogs mentioned above and you found a guy who worked for a major NSA contractor who was approachable and who had access to a lot of secrets...AND who could get out the door and draw attention away from your real operatives inside.

You get your insiders to feed information to this weak link, and then give the weak link (who's an idealist, by the way) a game plan.  Tell him to run to Hong Kong and then to Moscow.  He'll be covered there while the dust settles.  Have your diplomatic types run around telling other countries not to give him asylum, because you need him to stay in some form of limbo within your control.  Can you say "transit lounge of the Moscow airport"?  At the same time, you keep your hands clean.  "Hey!  He didn't cross our line, so we really can't touch him."

Meantime, you carefully orchestrate and series of bombshell revelations while at the same time, you are telling the US via back channels to back off the RoW or you'll blow the whole damn lid off this can of worms.  Just as a teaser, you let out some of the "less" harmful information - stuff that doesn't surprise those who are paying attention - but it's also enough to let the US know that you have some real goodies in your trick-or-treat bag.

Suddenly, markets start gyrating wildly up and down.  Volatility skyrockets.  Gold plummets.  Market indexs jump up 4% one day, and drop like a rock the next.  Politicians start jumping up and down about "traitors" and POTUS suddenly becomes very quiet and changes the subject to ObamaCare for the first time in a year.    All the top people at the Vatican Bank run for the exits.  And all the US players have beads of sweat on their upper lips and foreheads as they start to see their dreams of empire melt.

Basically, the cat is out of the bag.  No, not with us "little" people, but the top dogs sure know what the game is.  You can see it all over the markets and MSM.  They are shittin' bullets, to put it in Texanese.

So, where do things go from here?  Well, we can assume from all the market swings that someone is battling it out right in front of our faces.  One day Asia is in the dumps, the next Wall Street.  Back and forth.  Perhaps the Egyptian junta is part of the distraction gambit.  Keep us rubes looking the wrong way.  Whatever is going on, it has kicked Syria right off the front page for the moment.

So how about a little future gazing?

Whatever Snowden brought to the Chinese and Russians, it's dynamite.  They've got enough goods to scare the hell out of the WallFleeters.  There is likely a major cyberwar going on, as well, though I don't have the right tools to see it, but I sure feel it in terms of net speed and various other irritations.  In fact, Beijing's new world's-faster supercomputer is probably battling New York's former world's-faster supercomputer in high-speed trading that would make scenes from The Lawnmower Man look positively tame.

At the same time, Moscow is faxing various bits and pieces of their loot to Washington, teasing them with all the goods they have on that bunch of Bozos.

Meantime, Germany is putting up its Big Act of Being Offended (BABO) so that it can, a) leverage its gold out of the Federal (coff coff) Reserve, and b) have a graceful exit from the EU and NATO and all the other strings that the US has tied Gulliver down all these years.

Oh, and don't forget Japan tossing in a freak heatwave over the western US to show they can play WeatherWars, too.

Conclusion?  By Christmas, this could be an entirely different world.  If the US empire is mortally damaged, then that takes the oppressive weight off of Germany, Russia and China.  Japan and Brazil will join the fun.  South Africa will certainly go along for the ride, putting its gold and diamond trade up for grabs.  The Western markets will crash big time.  Israel will turn into a power black hole, leaving the Middle East in shambles.  Russia and China will make their plays, and *POOF*, the world will change over night.

You can take what you will from this, but I'm betting I'm right...or at least damn close.  I'm inviting interested readers to throw in their comments at luap.jkt at gmail dot com.  Let us know what you think about this scenario and maybe help us flesh it out a bit.

Damn!  This crystal ball stuff is fun, ain't it?

The Pyongyang Polka

You'd think that with North Korea being just a couple thousand miles from Indonesia, folks here would be all balled up in fear that at any moment the whole region would get lit up with the glow of nuclear night.

*YAWN!*

Wake me when Kim Jong-un looks serious.

You know what folks around here are really scared of?  They are scared that the US will use N. Korea as an excuse to come in an colonize the region once again.  'Colonize' because the US is a colonial power, though it may refuse to address itself as such.  And 'again' because it has taken over various parts of the South Pacific at least two other times in the past 150 years.

N. Korea is the barest slip of land sandwiched between two massive economic powers.  Because the country is little more than the jewel in the crown of a megalomaniacal family.  Granted they have a couple of nuclear pop guns, but compared to what would be raining down on their heads if they used one, even the Kim family isn't that stupid.

So they much be getting provoked.  In other words, someone is poking a stick in the hornet's nest in order to stir up the critters into a fighting mood.  And right now, there is only one power in the entire world that has shown the willingness and ability to use military might to get what it wants: Washington DC.

Now I use 'Washington DC' as opposed to 'America' because the country is not represented by its government.  The powers that slither through the halls of DC are a rogue bunch of banksters and oligarchs who have little or no connection to the average person in the rest of the country, save for the few that actually buy the propaganda, and they are relatively few.

The US, after World War 2, was the last man standing, based mostly on the fact that it had no land bridge to the rest of the world, and so was protected by the expense of projecting power that far at that time.  To a certain extent, South America enjoyed the same benefit, though it didn't have the technological infrastructure to become a surviving power at the time.

As such, the US felt it had the right of the conqueror, and to some extent the moral responsibility, to rebuild the world in its own image.  This position offered certain advantages in business dealings, which one can hardly blame them for exploiting.  And since America's culture was built on the mass-produced repeatable experience (McDonald's, Holiday Inn, etc.), it was ready-made for export to the prostrate world.  The world accepted with open arms, as something was better than nothing.

As a consequence, the US economy boomed like none before it.  Being fueled with loot and technology captured from Nazi Germany, and fanned by the City of London banksters and ex-colonialists looking to recapture past glory, the US quite easily took over the world, especially since its only major rival was the Soviet Union, whose political system was antithetical to most people's sensibilities.

All was good until the world started to recover.  By the end of the 20th century, a great many nations had grown technologically and economically to the point they were ready to find alternatives to the one-sided trade deals offered by the now-imperialistic US-UK axis.

Groups of nations found it in their interests to trade within their regional groups, thus by-passing the US-UK system of control, which tended to scrape a healthy bit of cream off the top of everything.  Enter trade blocs such as the BRICS now threatening the US-UK hegemony over world affairs.

Thus, a clash of interests.  The US-UK axis built a system in which they pictured themselves atop a global pyramid, while the rest of the world saw themselves as building a bunch of smaller pyramids where more folks could enjoy being on top.

These outsiders had copied and improved on the technology that the US-UK axis had exported when exploiting the cheap labor and lack of regulation in these client states.  As such, they had built themselves into booming economies that were increasingly outside the control of the US-UK colonialists.  Furthermore, these nations were limited by having to deal with each other in dollars, which not only gave the US-UK axis a cut of the pie, but injected control mechanisms into the burgeoning economies.

So they decided to break away and form their own trade blocs.  Perfectly reasonable and sensible under a capitalist system.  One always seeks deals that provide greater benefits to one's self.  This increases profits and overall well-being, which is the centerpiece of capitalism.

But the US-UK axis didn't see things quite that way.  They liked skimming profits from deals they had nothing to do with, and they enjoyed exerting control over nearly every transaction in the world.  Gee, who wouldn't, but that doesn't serve the interests of all parties, which again, is a central part of capitalism.

In order to protect their status, the US-UK axis had to exert force in order to maintain privilege.  Since the instrument of control was increasingly backed by nothing but hot air (i.e., the dollar), the banksters and oligarchs turned to the only tool they had left to maintain dollar hegemony -- the military.  Their chosen means of injecting their military power was to create tensions and conflicts where they didn't exist before in order to justify intervention and re-orientation.

Enter N. Korea.

It is no mistake that this latest flap in Southeast Asia occurs on the heels of the BRICS announcing the formation of a trading bank to compete with the IMF and World Bank, know as the International Development Bank.  It is little mystery that this new international bank will not trade in dollars and will actively seek the membership of as many emerging world economies as possible.

What to do if you are a US-UK bankster facing thsi sort of rebellion to your global system of control?  You could use the Libya/Egypt/Syria option, but Russia, China and India are a bit large and intimidating for that sort of direct interference.

Planted in the heart of the occident is a tailor-made situation.  The N. Korean leadership is...shall we say, unstable?  They have nukes as a result of left-over technology from Japan's WW2 development efforts.  And they have an ongoing war that has never been resolved.

Few folks think about the fact that the Korean War (1950s) never ended.  It was fought to a cease-fire, but neither side surrendered.  Thus, hostilities have simmered for lo these 60-odd years.

Enter the stick in the hornet's nest.

Stir up Pyongyang with covert threats, possibly even actual boots on the ground doing what covert ops do best.  Get Pyongyang to saber-rattle and move toys around in overtly belligerent maneuvers.  Use these events as justification to move your toys into Southeast Asia and position them in ways that would otherwise be roundly castigated.  Finally, use all the bluster and thinly veiled threats to distract attention away from other pursuits, such as, oh you know, setting up rival banks of international development that don't benefit the US-UK axis.

Sure, Kim Jong-un is a wild-eyed lunatic (runs in the family), but even he knows that people who don't eat or have productive labor soon rebel en mass.  He also knows his little firecrackers and underfed army are little match even for his southern neighbors.  The only thing that would provoke his current actions would be a direct threat.

That the aforementioned direct threat serves the purpose of the US-UK axis makes this scenario all the more credible.  There has been a low-level war going on between the US-UK and the BRICS for some time.  They poke and prod each other's defenses and test the sensitive underbellies looking for weaknesses.  N. Korea is just another poke and prod in that effort, but one designed to be a little bit hotter, so as to enable the US-UK to position some hardware in the area and demonstrate their resolve to be the only economic playground in the neighborhood.

What is disturbing about all of this is not whether or when the dollar will be deposed.  That is inevitable.  It is that all these events belie a sort of maneuvering of the global chess board for some major onslaught.  At some point, one side or the other will feel the time is right, or at least won't get better, to strike in open conflict to protect their back board.

If the US-UK axis feels that it is sufficiently losing its control over global trade and economics, it will strike at its best possible opportunity.  If the BRICS or other group grow frustrated enough and feel ready to challenge the existing structure in hot conflict, they will strike.  In the meantime, we will continue to see massive cyber attacks, regional conflicts, saber rattling, and positioning of belligerent hardware in strategic locations.

It is a given that the US-UK axis will not concede quietly.  It is also a given that the rest of the world is ready to stretch and do things their way, for a change.  These two polar opposites cannot co-exist and the boundary between them will continue to shift and change.

When one positions one's self as king of the mountain, whether in a child's game or in geopolitics, one is ripe for challenge.  Ultimately, whether game or global, the king is always toppled and new powers emerge, and they in turn are toppled as new powers emerge.  It is the nature of humanity to want to be on top even though history tells us that the top is the target.

So we close with one final question...

Have you ever noticed that every major city on the face of the planet has a China Town?