Election wins for Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, as well as the UK's vote to leave the EU, were widely seen as a rejection of current socio-economic models. Populism became a key story of 2016 and will be front and center in Davos ahead of elections this year in France, Germany, the Netherlands and most likely Italy.

In a nod to this current mood, this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) is titled "Responsive and Responsible Leadership" and its official agenda describes a "weakening of multiple systems" that has eroded confidence and speaks of a possible "downward spiral" fuelled by protectionism, populism and nativism.

Donald Trump's inauguration as US president on January 20 will overshadow the event but it's hard to see how every conference, bilateral meeting or roundtable in Davos won't include some reference to this political upheaval, which the conservative news aggregation site The Drudge Report calls the "new, new world order".

Indeed, some critics have attacked the event itself as being a reason why US citizens started to question globalization and contemplate the negative impacts it's had on some parts of Western nations.

But Islamabad insists its weapons testing, which follows additional nuke testing back in December, is just a “deterrence” measure. Pakistan’s government military arm released a statement, which read: “The missile was fired from an underwater, mobile platform and hit its target with precise accuracy.”

It added: "Pakistan eyes this hallmark development as a step toward reinforcing the policy of credible minimum deterrence.” The testing of nuclear-capable submarines indicates Pakistan is eager to develop a full-scale weapons arsenal, which also includes air and missile-based warheads.

Pakistan’s military posturing comes just weeks after India tested a 50 tonne missile it has been developing for the past decade. At the end of December, India fired Agni-V from a remote island with the missile landing near to Australian waters. The missile is so powerful that it even has the capacity to reach Britain.

If the US economy is doing just fine, then why are we experiencing such a retail apocalypse?  All over America, vast shopping malls that were once buzzing with eager consumers now resemble mausoleums.  We have never seen anything quite like this in our entire history, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.

Since the early portion of 2013, sales are down an astounding 37 percent.  Sears is currently more than 1.6 billion dollars in debt, and they are losing more than a billion dollars a year. They keep closing stores in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, but it hasn’t worked. In 2010, Sears had 3,555 stores. Last year, Sears had 1,503 stores, and now a whole bunch more are being shut down. But everyone can see where this is going.  As I have stated repeatedly, Sears is going to zero, and many of the experts completely agree with me…

Of course Sears is still surviving for the moment, and that is more than can be said for The Limited. Back in the old days, it seemed like every mall had one of their stores.  I remember passing it on my way to Orange Julius and Herman’s World of Sporting Goods. But now they are shutting down every single location and will be online only…

But let us also not underestimate the impact that the stagnating economy is having on ordinary consumers.  Thanks to the last eight years, approximately two-thirds of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  More than a third of all Americans have a debt that is at least 180 days past due, and the rate of homeownership has been hovering near the lowest level that we have seen in about 50 years. 

As you read this article, more than 95 million Americans are not in the labor force, and that number has grown by 18 percent under Barack Obama.  Homelessness in New York City and other major cities is at a record high, and as a nation we have accumulated the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

According to Google, parabiosis is “the anatomical joining of two individuals, especially artificially in physiological research.” Based on research that has been done on mice, it is believed that blood transfusions could potentially slow or even reverse aging in humans. The Bible tells us that “the life of the flesh is in the blood”, but now these elitists want to greedily use the blood of younger people to greatly extend their own lifespans. If it turns out that this method is highly successful, will the blood of young people become a greatly valued commodity?

As I mentioned above, Peter Thiel is one of the leading proponents of this technology. The following is an excerpt from a recent Inc article…

“In particular, Thiel is very excited about the work being done by a firm known as “Ambrosia”. This company has already been conducting full-blown clinical trials, and so far the results have been quite astounding…”

“But as far as anti-aging studies go, parabiosis appears promising. According to Inc, a company called Ambrosia in Monterey, California, is conducting clinical trials wherein participants 35 and older agree to pay $8,000 apiece to receive a transfusion of blood from those aged 16-25, and then have their blood monitored over the next two years to determine if there’s been any improvement in the patient’s health.”

“The effects seem to be almost permanent,” Ambrosia founder Jesse Karmazin, a Stanford-trained anti-aging expert, told Inc “It’s almost like there’s a resetting of gene expression.”

At the beginning of this article, I quoted a line from Leviticus 17 that says “the life of the flesh is in the blood”. Right after that, God directly commands us not to eat blood. The blood that flows through all of us has some amazing properties that we are only just beginning to understand, and there are certain lines that should not be crossed. Most of us would be repulsed by just the thought of eating someone else’s blood, but that is essentially what these elitists want to do. They want to get the blood of younger people inside of them so that they can live much longer lives.

“As [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians,” former Ambassador Craig Murray wrote on his blog Monday morning, adding that he had direct access to the original source. “As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks — there is a major difference between the two …”

“Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access.”

“It does not help us if tanks will be going up and down on both sides of the border,” Brandenburg’s leader and SPD party member, Dietmar Woidke, told RBB. “I hope everyone will keep calm.” “I believe that despite all the difficulties, we should seek dialogue with Russia,” he added on Thursday, warning that relations with Moscow could worsen even further.

Crowds of people marched through Bremerhaven on Saturday to protest the deployment and transport of NATO troops and weapons through the city. Hundreds of American tanks, trucks, and other military equipment bound for Poland, said to be the largest arms shipment since the fall of the Soviet Union, arrived at the German port on Friday to be transferred to Eastern Europe.

The protesters marched through the city holding signs and banners reading, “No NATO deployments! End the militaristic march against Russia!” and “Out of NATO.”

The hostility towards Mr Trump from the world of showbiz contrasts with the feting of his defeated rival in November's presidential election, Hillary Clinton. Streep was referring to a rally in South Carolina in November 2015 when Mr Trump jerked his arms in front of his body as he made fun of Serge Kovaleski, a New York Times journalist who has a congenital joint condition.

Mr Trump, who will be inaugurated in less than two weeks, tweeted on Monday morning: "For the 100th time, I never 'mocked' a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him 'groveling' when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!"

The story contains basically two elements: (1) security agencies of the US government say there is overwhelming evidence that emails were hacked by the Russian government to effect the presidential election, but (2) those agencies have failed to deliver that evidence. The only new elements that appear from day to day is the name of the person or agency that makes the claim and that fails to deliver.

The only reason we are bothering to report on this ongoing non-news phenomenon is that the major media outlets are counting on people to become so saturated by the claim that they fail to notice that the proof of the claim is still missing. We must not let them get away with that deception.

A main issue here is the reorientation of the US military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct confrontation with main powers like Russia and China. A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA. Another role has been delegated to the various military and NATO think tanks like the Atlantic Council and the British RUSI and reliable proxies within the media.

The current emphasis of the campaign is on the release of emails and papers from the Clinton campaign through Wikileaks. It is alleged that some releases were gained through hacking, planned and executed by the Russian government. Trump had announced that he plans to seek good relations with Russia, the power that the cabal had earlier chosen as the new enemy de jour.

But there is a problem. There is no real evidence that a "hack" ever happened. There is no evidence that Russia is involved. None at all.

The digital record would be regularly updated based on databases from airlines, customs agencies, banks and other sources, and could be managed by an independent international authority.” The quotation above comes from CNN, an American news network that has done such an exemplary job in recent years in serving as a mouthpiece for the US Government.

The argument for global passports is a familiar one: “You are in danger of being killed by terrorists. We will save you by removing yet another of your freedoms.”

Or, as Hermann Goering said, “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

This is an issue to be watched closely. Historically, whenever governments have put the squeeze on their citizens’ freedoms, citizens have reacted by trying to wriggle out. The squeeze in many countries is presently at its zenith and many, many people are voting with their feet. There will always be takers in the world when this occurs and, in the Caribbean, opportunities for increased freedom are very much on the increase.