Emerging markets have already endured a dollar shock. The currency has risen 20 percent since July 2014 in expectation of this moment, based on the Fed's trade-weighted "broad" dollar index. The tightening of dollar liquidity is what caused a global manufacturing recession and an emerging market crash earlier this year, made worse by China's fiscal cliff in January and its erratic, stop-start, efforts to wind down a $26 trillion credit boom. The shake-out has been painful: hopefully the dollar effect is largely behind us.

The central bank governors of India and Mexico, among others, have been urging the Fed to stop dithering and get on with it. Presumably they have thought long and hard about the consequences for their own economies. The greater risk for the world over coming months is that China stops trying to hold the line against devaluation, and sends a wave of corrosive deflation through the global economy.

It is currently being reported that two “screened and vetted” Afghani trainees have disappeared from Moody Air Force base in Georgia where they have been training alongside American servicemen since February.

The two trainees failed to show up to training on Monday. Georgia police and the Air Force are both searching for the two men whom the Pentagon says “do not pose any apparent threat”. Key word: “apparent”.

The Air Force released this statement:

“The students have trained alongside American counterparts for the entirety of 2015 and do not pose any apparent threat. There is a well-coordinated process among federal agencies to locate the individuals as quickly as possible and return them accordingly to the proper authorities to manage their present situation.”

And we can all trust the Pentagon! After all, they are the ones who “carefully vetted” the moderate Syrian rebels, training and arming them, before they all joined ISIS! Even if they later find these guys, that isn’t the point. Maybe they just had the flu together. Whatever. The point is they have driven this country into a potential hysteria over ISIS and fear over potential terrorist attacks. This story is scaring sleeping people who have now been poised to expect a terror attack here in America.

Many other political leaders all over the world are asserting authoritarian powers and cracking down on freedoms and legal protections.

Why is fascism on the march? Highly-regarded journalist John Pilger thinks that the liberal democracies of the West have become fascist. The West is certainly largely dictating Japanese policy … and backing Japan as a counter-balance to China’s rising power. Similarly, NATO – the western military alliance – backs Turkey as a counter-weight to Russia’s growing assertiveness. So the West is enabling the rising authoritarianism in these two countries.

Another theory is that corruption starts at the top (a “fish rots from the head”). When the world’s strongest country (America) committed the ultimate war crime – an aggressive war on Iraq – it amounted to a virtual declaration of open season on lawlessness for the rest of the world. But is this really new? After all, the US and the West have long backed authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere because it is politically expedient (they’ve got lots of oil).

Indeed, we have frequently backed strongmen – such as Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega and Muammar Gaddafi – until they get too “uppity” … at which point we bump them off. True, the brazenness of the Iraq war lies – along with the concomitant crimes of torture, etc – maybe on a whole new level.

But I would argue that what’s really different now is that – for the first time since the end of WWII – US imperial power is waning. Wanna-be dictators such as Erdogan, Abe and others in the gallery of rogues are therefore jumping into the void and trying to enlarge their power … These are the exact type of scoundrels who dream and scheme of resurrecting the glory of empires gone by … whether the Ottoman, imperial Japanese, or other.

The fact that most of the nations of the world use our dollars to trade with one another creates a tremendous amount of artificial demand for our currency. In other words, the US dollar is valued much higher than it otherwise would be just because it is the de facto reserve currency of the planet. As a result, we can import massive amounts of products at super cheap prices. When we go to Wal-Mart or the dollar store, we can fill up our carts with lots and lots of ridiculously inexpensive stuff. Our standard of living is way higher than it actually should be.

And because the US dollar is used so widely in global trade, major exporting nations end up with giant piles of our currency which they have been willing to lend back to us at ultra-low interest rates. This has made it possible to fund our massively bloated federal government and to go 18 trillion dollars in debt. If the rest of the world stops using our dollars and stops playing our game, we will be in a tremendous amount of trouble. The cost of imported products would absolutely skyrocket and our standard of living would go way down.

In addition, the federal government (along with state and local governments) would have to pay much more to borrow money which would rapidly create a gigantic debt crisis. So Russia knows where they could really hurt us. Most of the “power” that America currently projects around the world is based on having the de facto reserve currency of the planet. If you take our financial power away, we would be far, far less imposing on the global stage. Sadly, the truth is that the US military is rapidly shrinking and has largely been defanged by the Obama administration.

A lot of people that will read this article will not understand this, but it is very, very important to keep an eye on this emerging Russian/Chinese alliance. I believe that it is going to play a critical role in world events during the years ahead.

The schematic for the new world order, according to the admissions of the internationalists, cannot possibly include the continued existence of US geopolitical and economic dominance. The plan, in fact, requires the destabilization and reformation of America into a shell of its former glory. The most important element of this plan demands the removal of the US dollar as the de facto world reserve currency, a change that would devastate our current financial structure.

I outlined with undeniable evidence the reality that major governments, including the BRICS governments of the East, are fully on board with the globalist agenda. There is no way around it; the BRICS, including Russia and China, have openly called for a global monetary system centralized and dictated by the IMF using the SDR basket. This same plan was outlined decades ago in the Rothschild-owned magazine The Economist. We are witnessing that plan being implemented in front of our very eyes today.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said that “behind closed doors” ministers across the Continent agree with the UK that migrants should not be allowed access to the benefits system immediately. He dismissed Donald Tusk’s claim that there is “no consensus” on Britain’s demand to lock EU migrants out of in-work benefits for four years and said the letter did not reveal “very much”.

In a hardening of rhetoric, Mr Duncan Smith demanded that if Mr Tusk is looking for an alternative to the plans he should simply “agree” with Britain and stop challenging the proposal. “When I talk to ministers in Germany and France et cetera I have yet to come across one person … that doesn’t actually agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with this system that means people can arrive in a different country and be eligible for benefits that they have never contributed towards or been involved in,” Mr Duncan Smith said. “And I think you’ll find if you talk to the Dutch ministers and the Danish ministers that I’ve talked to and Germans they are all actually in agreement.”

Serving officers in terrorist hotspots including London and Birmingham said that forces are becoming increasingly nervy over the rising threat of Islamic State (ISIS) inspired attacks, with some telling staff not to wear their uniforms in their OWN patrol cars. One officer in London said the firebrand presidential hopeful was “pointing out something plainly obvious” whilst another in Lancashire said the police have to ask local Muslim leaders for permission before sending patrols into their communities.

Their shocking testimonies are in stark contrast to the official responses from politicians and the Metropolitan Police, who have rounded on Mr Trump’s controversial claims. The Republican frontrunner provoked fury across the globe on Monday when he said that all Muslims should be banned from entering America to combat terrorism. During a tub thumping speech to party activists he also took a swipe at Britain, saying: “We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised that police are afraid for their own lives.”

His comments were widely derided by British politicians including David Cameron, who called them “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong”. The Metropolitan Police also issued a withering statement saying Mr Trump “could not be more wrong” whilst London Mayor Boris Johnson said his claims were “utter nonsense”. But they have today been fatally undermined by members of the rank and file, who have said that fear of Islamist extremism within Britain’s police is widespread despite the protestations of the authorities. One serving officer in west London said: “Islamification has and is occurring. You have to have extra vigilance in certain parts when you are working."

The planned visit follows Trump’s call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” in light of what he said was “great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.” A security source said Trump would probably not be allowed to visit the Temple Mount, the Post’s sister publication Ma’ariv reported.

The source said that when the current wave of terrorism began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned all politicians from visiting the site. The source added that Trump’s visit is meant to be a provocation, so security forces are likely to bar him from ascending the mount.

Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected Trump’s remarks regarding Muslims, but officials suggested his December 28 meeting with Trump would go ahead as planned. “The State of Israel respects all religions and protects stringently the rights of all its citizens,” a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office said. “At the same time, Israel is struggling with extremist Islam that is attacking Muslims, Christians and Jews as one and is threatening the entire world.”

He admitted that the EU is not the only possible model for Europe but the alternative is a “Europe of nationalism, a Europe of borders and walls” – a formula which led Europe to disaster in the past. Schulz pointed out that what is called the EU’s weakness is actually the weakness of the EU states which first voted to transfer sovereignty to the EU, but then complain of unacceptable interference in their affairs and block the EU moving forward.

“No country alone can handle challenges such as migration, climate change, terrorism, trade and international crime. We can only do it together, as the EU,” Schulz said. “The retreat of many governments into nation-based thinking is fatal,” he added.

From this perspective Schulz supports the German Chancellor’s position on refugee policy – countries such as Germany, Sweden, Austria or Italy must not meet this challenge alone. But he also agreed that many German towns and municipalities cannot accept migrants and refugees further.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu provided Russian President Vladimir Putin with the recovered flight recorder on Tuesday during their meeting in Moscow. Shoigu said that Russia has been actively conducting operations on Syrian territory, where the Russian Su-24 pilot was “gunned down” by Turkmen militants after he had ejected from the plane.

“As a result of this work, these territories were liberated by the special operations forces and the Syrian army’s special force tasked with the crew search. Surveying the area, the Syrian military found the plane’s crash site,” he said.

The militants, who “actively” fled the area, had no chance to dismantle anything which was among the debris from the plane, the minister added. The Russian leader emphasized that the parametric flight recorder should be opened and decoded only in the presence of international experts who are genuinely interested in finding out the truth about the incident.

A future where the gene editing technique CRISPR/Cas9 is used by DIY biologists, genetic engineering startups, and even artists creating fanciful organisms straight out of sci-fi is not just possible — it's likely, argue two of the country's top bioethicists.

"Why should we not expect dwarf elephants, giant guinea pigs, or genetically tamed tigers?" Hank Greely of Stanford School of Medicine and Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine write in the essay “CRISPR Critters and CRISPR Cracks.” "Or — dare we wonder — the billionaire who decides to give his 12-year-old daughter a real unicorn for her birthday?"

Greely and Charo argue that such overlooked or even "frivolous" uses of the gene editing technique CRISPR/Cas9 could fall through regulatory cracks and may ultimately have a greater impact on our environment than human editing ever would.

He said in a policy speech on Friday that his Liberal government would introduce legislation as early as 2016 to legalize marijuana, making Canada the first in the G7 bloc of industrialized nations to do so, although precise details remain sketchy.

Two in three Canadians support decriminalizing possession and use of the mind-altering weed, according to a recent Ipsos poll. Support is widespread and at its highest level in three decades, it said, even though cannabis use has fallen off. Details of the Liberal plan haven't yet been released. However, it is expected to go much further by not only legalizing marijuana but also creating a regulated market for it, as Uruguay and a few US states have done.

An estimated one million out of Canada's 35 million people regularly smoke marijuana, according to the latest survey taken in 2014.

Corab, which includes pillars of the establishment like Baroness Butler-Sloss, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former head of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Lord Williams, better known as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says that Britain has seen “a general decline” in its Christian affiliation, and the time has come for public life to take on “a more pluralist character”.

Only two in five British people now “identify” as Christian, and the commission wants a new settlement for religion in the UK. Major state occasions should be changed to be “more inclusive”. “Socially divisive” faith schools must be phased out. The number of bishops in the House of Lords should be cut to make way for other religions, the law requiring schools to hold a collective act of worship should be scrapped.

Apart from God help us, two thoughts occur to me. Firstly, if Corab gets its way, British children will never become familiar with the Judaeo-Christian religion which underpins 2,000 years of Western civilisation; if you banish it from schools, they will certainly not get it at home. And the stories and attendant values which those of us over the age of 40 take for granted will be lost. Sadly, you have to conclude that this is exactly what those hand-wringing members of the liberal establishment want.

Second? We probably have 10 years tops before we stop greeting each other with the unpluralist “Happy Christmas”. A Nativity play, should such a regressive, sexist construct be allowed to exist in 2025, will probably begin with a four-year-old Angel Gabriel reading out a disclaimer: “The baby Jesus was meek and mild, but unfortunately he does raise major questions around gender and ethnicity. If you are affected by any of the issues in this Nativity play, please call the free helpline, Offended Anonymous, or speak to Mrs Michaels, the Head of Non-Religious Transgender Studies.”

In this new, secularist Britain, you will still be allowed to buy a Norwegian spruce to decorate, but it will be called a “holiday tree”. There’s not much that makes me want to run amok, but the spectacle of eminent judges and religious leaders signing the death warrant of Christianity in these isles is just intolerable.

It is literally beyond belief. Hands off our faith schools! Hands off our Christmas! At this most unsettling of times, we want public life to have a character that is deeply familiar and comforting; we need our traditions more than ever.