Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

Along with the currencies of most other commodity-exporting countries, the Canadian dollar has been in near-freefall lately.

One of the most amusing things about Russia’s headlong plunge into Syria’s five-year conflict is the extent to which it effectively represented Moscow calling time on Washington’s strategy of seeking to bring about regime change in the Mid-East by intentionally destabilizing otherwise strong (if not always benign) governments.

With recent JPY strength not helping, last week ended on a down-note for Japan as its jobless rate ticked up from 3.1% to 3.3% (the biggest rise since January) and Household spending collapsed. However, as the last week of the year begins, things have not improved as a double whammy of awfulness just hit the shores of Abe's nation with retail sales (worst since the tsunami) and industrial production ugly and missing across the board. We are sure, of course, that just one more dose of faith-based QE will fix this.

A court of appeals in America has finally ruled that members of the Bush administration can be held accountable for war crimes committed in the name of the so called  ‘war on terror.’ True Activist reports: Years ago, the case of Turkmen Vs. Ashcroft set the precedent that the Bush administration could be held accountable for the actions that it took to harm innocent people during the war on terror. However, the case has been in limbo for several years as constant appeals have been filed against the ruling.

Submitted by Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org,