But now, in spite of all that agonising self-examination and repudiation, the ghosts have risen. Protectionism and isolationism became respectable options in an American presidential campaign, without any regard for their previous consequences.

Populations are whipped into ignorant frenzy by politicians who play on crude dissatisfaction. The world stage is once again dominated by national leaders whose foreign policy is dictated by their own egotistical pathology in a way that will be sickeningly familiar...Will we really allow ideological demagogues on Right and Left to lead the world into chaos once again?

The updated draft of the Nationality Law was approved by the Special Ministerial Committee for the Approval of the Nationality Law, Israel Hayom reported. The draft will now move to the Knesset plenum to be voted into law. It was also decided that the Arabic language would maintain its status as an official language of the State of Israel. 

The committee decided that in order to honor the Druze community whose sons serve in the IDF, the Knesset will also pass a special law that will define the state's treatment of the Druze community separate from the Arab community. 

The law begins: "The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its desire for self-determination according to its cultural and historical heritage." The text was originally supposed to continue: "The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people and the place of the establishment of the State of Israel." However, under pressure from the haredi parties the latter half of the sentence was removed and the words "the place of the establishment of the State of Israel" will not appear. 

Another change which was made at the request of the haredi parties pertained to the section which deals with the purpose of the law. Instead of referring to the purpose of the bill as "intended to protect Israel's status as the nation-state of the Jewish people," the phrase "nation-state of the Jewish people" was changed to "a Jewish state with a democratic regime."

According to a recent study from Yale University researchers, liberated, college educated women are freezing their eggs because they can't find a man to marry and have children with before their natural childbearing years expire. In the UK, for instance, one in five women is childless when their natural reproductive years expires, as opposed to one in ten women a mere generation prior.

So what's to blame for this onslaught of college-educated yet terribly empty women?

The short answer is feminism.

The author of the study, Marcia Inhorn, an anthropology professor at Yale University, concludes that the common assumption about women putting off children to advance their careers is mere myth. The 150 women undergoing the egg-freezing process in the US and Israel who were extensively interviewed for the study, claimed they were not putting off having a family in order to advance their career, but because they simply couldn't find a mate.  

Why would a man rush to settle down and marry someone if he can not only have sex with “liberated” women without a ring, but even cohabitate with them, too? Moreover, the less chaste a woman is, the less preferable she will likely be to a man. Not to mention a woman's increasing age and creeping near infertility as another massively undesirable trait. If women demanded more from men, did not sleep around in the name of feminism, men would settle into marriage at an earlier age.

Unfettered violence. Unbridled brutality. Outside our democratic community. When Angela Merkel held her closing address on Saturday afternoon at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, she used clear words to denounce what had taken place on the streets of Hamburg during the preceding day and night.

Cars and barricades ablaze, shops plundered, water cannons in constant operation, injuries, devastated city quarters, heavily armed special police units: The images of the violence in Hamburg have circled the globe. And they stood in stark contrast to those of the 20 heads of state and government who, at the same time, were listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" in Hamburg's chic new Elbphilharmonie concert hall. Classical music inside, clashes outside.

The question that must now be asked, which the chancellor must also answer, is this: Was it all worth it? Or was the price too high?

At first glance, the political results and messages presented by the club of global economic powers leave room for doubt. The arduously negotiated closing declaration is so weakly formulated that, as usual, all participating countries can live with it.

- Trade: The G-20 declares its opposition to protectionism. But it is still not a clear commitment to free trade.

- Climate: On climate protection, the G-20 essentially agreed that they don't agree.

- The Fight against Terror: The G-20 countries intend to work more closely together to fight terrorism, with the goal of putting a stop to the financing of extremists as well as their propaganda on the internet and their communication among themselves.

- Supporting Women in Developing Countries: A pet project of Donald Trump's, because it was initiated by his daughter Ivanka.

The results hardly constitute a debacle. But they aren't a breakthrough either.

It was announced after a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit of major economies in Germany. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said the area covered by the agreement affects Jordan’s security and is a “very complicated part of the Syrian battlefield”.

Mr Tillerson said: “I think this is our first indication of the US and Russia being able to work together in Syria, and as a result of that we had a very lengthy discussion regarding other areas in Syria that we can continue to work together on to de-escalate the areas.” However, similar ceasefires in the past have failed to hold for long.

The US has vowed to take measures to protect its security and that of its regional allies in case sanctions fail, even if it means using force against the North Korean regime. “If you see this for what it is, which is North Korea showing its muscle, then you need to stand strong and vote with the international community to strengthen sanctions on North Korea. And if you chose not to, we will go our own path,” Haley said, addressing China and Russia.

Taking the floor at the emergency UNSC session in New York, Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s deputy envoy to the United Nations, spoke out against new sanctions, calling on member states to follow a joint Russian-China initiative agreed Tuesday, during the Moscow meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“Any attempts to justify a military solution are inadmissible and will lead to unpredictable consequences for the region. In the same manner, attempts to economically strangle North Korea are equally unacceptable, as millions of North Koreans remain in need of humanitarian aid,” Safronkov stressed.

China’s UN ambassador, Liu Jieyi called the joint proposal a “realistic route” in calming Korean tensions, noting that China has always been “strongly opposed to chaos and conflict on the Peninsula.”

“In their telephone talks, Abe and Trump affirmed they will hold a trilateral meeting with Moon on the sidelines of the G-20 summit starting Friday in Germany, to discuss how the three countries should cooperate to tackle the threat from the North,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda said, according to the Japanese Kyodo News Plus.

According to Hagiuda, Trump’s Japanese counterpart praised the US for imposing fresh sanctions last week on a Chinese bank and individuals accused of laundering money for North Korea, the news outlet reported.

“All eyes will be on Trump, who stunned the world by pulling out of the 2015 Paris climate pact, questioned long-standing NATO allegiances and dismissed free-trade principles in favor of an ‘America First’ stance,” AP reported.

The military options are more grim than ever. Even the most limited strike risks staggering casualties, because North Korea could retaliate with the thousands of artillery pieces it has positioned along its border with the South. Though the arsenal is of limited range and could be destroyed in days, the United States defense secretary, Jim Mattis, recently warned that if North Korea used it, it “would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”

North and South Korea, separated by the world’s most heavily armed border, have had more than half a century to prepare for a resumption of the war that was suspended in 1953. While the North’s weaponry is less advanced, the South suffers a distinct geographical disadvantage: Nearly half its population lives within 50 miles of the Demilitarized Zone, including the 10 million people in Seoul, its capital.

“You have this massive agglomeration of everything that is important in South Korea — government, business and the huge population — and all of it is in this gigantic megalopolis that starts 30 miles from the border and ends 70 miles from the border,” said Robert E Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University in South Korea. “In terms of national security, it’s just nuts.”

The Chinese response to the latest North Korea missile launch is not to threaten North Korea but to warn the US against military action whilst ruling out across-the-board sanctions and regime change.  Moreover China – contrary to its previous practice and its probable wishes – has been driven to state this clearly and in public, and has enlisted Russia’s support.

Kim Jong-un will no doubt go through the motions of rejecting China’s proposal.  He can do so in the confident knowledge that there will be no penalty since the US will reject it also.  In the meantime he has pocketed assurances from China and Russia that they will not impose across-the-board economic sanctions on his country. Privately he must be delighted with the way things are turning out.

The only other time indicators were at this level was before the dot com crash at the turn of the millennium. Experts are now worried that history is about to repeat itself. It comes after stock markets in both the US and Britain have continually topped their highest ever levels in recent months.

American's top stock indices the Dow Jones and S&P 500 are up a staggering 20 per cent and 16 per cent respectively over the past 12 months, while Britain's FTSE 100 has surged as much as 15 per cent over the past 12 months.

If companies are in good health and profits are growing, soaring share prices may be justified. But one method of assessing share values, the Shiller PE (Price to Earnings) ratio on average inflation-adjusted earnings from the previous 10 years, suggests that stocks are very expensive… this level is at its highest since the Dot Com bubble burst in 2000 and stock markets crashed.