The disastrous showing immediately sparked warnings from would-be leader Boris Johnson that things will get even worse for the Tories if the UK does not leave the EU by the new deadline at the end of October - deal or no deal. A jubilant Mr Farage demanded a role in the next round of negotiations with the EU, threatening to contest a general election. Speaking this morning, he blasted the Tories for their handling of Brexit but said he would be willing to support a Conservative leader who promises to take Britain out of the EU with No Deal. He said: 'If we don’t leave in October the Brexit party will go on to a general election.'

'We are happy to help any leader who is genuine about us leaving the EU. We would like to be part of the negotiating team, use us and give us some responsibility, but they need to be prepared to leave with a clean break Brexit. Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove - all of them voted for Mrs May’s European treaty. It’s all about establishing trust – if the next leader says the same thing then no one is going to trust them. This is just the beginning of a new political movement.'

Mr Farage, who was re-elected as an MEP in the South East, declared: 'This is a big, big message, a big wake-up call to Westminster. Will they listen? Never before in British politics has a new party launched just six weeks ago topped the polls at a national election. The reason of course is very obvious. We voted to leave in a referendum. We were supposed to do so on March 29 and we haven't.'

Writing in the Daily Telegraph before the results, Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson said: 'I predict a rout. In this miserable election that should never have taken place, for a Euro parliament that should no longer represent us, the voters are delivering a crushing rebuke to the government – in fact, to both major parties. I cannot find it in my heart to blame them. They gave us one chief task: to deliver Brexit. They have so far given us almost three years to do it. We have flagrantly failed to carry out their instructions.'

Both populist far-right groups and left-wing environmentalists are securing considerable wins among the 751 European seats up for grabs, with the two biggest parties preparing to lose their majorities, despite coming out on top. But the mainstream leaders say they will not co-operate with far-right groups who 'do not believe in the future of the European Union', in spite of their huge gains. In the symbolic clash of the campaign, French far-right leader Le Pen's National Rally came in just ahead of President Macron's En Marche movement, damaging his drive for deeper European integration.

In Italy, Matteo Salvini's far-right League achieved a similar result, strengthening its role at the core of a vocal populist faction in the EU's legislature. The advance of the right was less pronounced in Germany, where there was a strong showing by the Greens, but the anti-immigrant Alternative for Deutschland broke the 10 per cent barrier and will also gain seats. The results will likely leave Parliament's two main parties, the European People's Party and the Socialists & Democrats, without a majority for the first time since 1979, opening the way for complicated talks to form a working coalition.

Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, a major figure among the anti-migrant hard-line nationalists, declared a 'change in the air' and that a victory by his right-wing League party would 'change everything in Europe'. He told supporters at his party headquarters in Milan early on Monday that the results mean 'a new Europe is born'. The Italian added: 'I will say to those who have sunk the European dream, transforming it into a nightmare, that I am proud that the League participated in this new rebirth of a sunken Europe.'

The rate of car break-ins is particularly striking: in 2017 over 30,000 reports were filed, and the current average is 51 per day. Other low-level offenses, including drug dealing, street harassment, encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant.

When compounded with other troubles for which the city is now infamous (human feces, filth, and homelessness, which is up 17 percent since 2017), San Franciscans find themselves surrounded by squalor and disorder. According to many in law enforcement, the crime wave is being fueled by a 2014 law, Proposition 47, which downgraded possession of illegal narcotics for personal use as well as theft of items below $950 in value from felonies to misdemeanors.

All of this has left residents depressed, according to Marina Times EIC Susan Dyer Reynolds, who said "A lot of people are ready to leave because the crimes are causing depression," adding that so-called homeless navigation centers "are not sober facilities, and people steal and break into cars to feed their habits. Crime will go up. We know this."

Without rare earth elements, modern society as we have come to know it would not be able to function. Today, rare earth elements are used in the production of cell phones, televisions, computers, DVD players, speakers, cameras, electric car motors, jet engines, satellites, lasers, wind turbines and superconductors. In other words, without rare earth elements we would not be able to produce any of those things. And since the Chinese have such a dominant position in the global marketplace, that gives them an incredible amount of power.

If China made such a move, it would take the trade war to an entirely different level. Some are referring to this as China’s “nuclear option”, and they will not use it lightly. But if they do decide to go there, it will be absolutely devastating… “China could shut down nearly every automobile, computer, smartphone and aircraft assembly line outside of China if they chose to embargo these materials,” James Kennedy, president of ThREE Consulting, wrote Tuesday in National Defense, a US industry publication.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and local intelligence officials are getting continuous updates about developments from the Americans and other countries. Three names apparently starring in these updates are the straits of Bab al-Mandab and Hormuz, and the Suez Canal. Iran is threatening to seal off these passages hermetically, with no entry to commercial vessels, and with anyone persisting in entering risking attack. This is a threat in every sense, no less serious than the others directed at Israel by Tehran and Hezbollah, which are perceived as more tangible. This time the warhead is not on a missile.

There are no alternatives to these shipping lanes; they are among the most important in the world: Approximately 20 percent of the world’s fuel passes through these straits every year. Bab al-Mandab is the gateway from Asia and Africa – through the Suez Canal – to the Mediterranean Sea and Europe, and one cannot exaggerate its importance. With regard to Israel, 90 percent of its imports and exports are transported by sea, and 12 percent of them pass through Bab al-Mandab. This includes all commerce between Israel and the East, particularly its imports from China. We’re talking about around $15 billion worth of goods a year.

And of course this comes at a time when the US economy is already slowing down dramatically. The economic optimism of the last couple of years is being replaced by a deep sense of gloom, and we are starting to see this reflected in the behavior of the markets.

“You can’t have the world’s two largest economies in a long, drawn-out mutually destructive trade war and not slow the global economy,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities Corporation. Of course Hogan is 100 percent correct. The trade war is going to hurt all of us economically, and very disturbing numbers are rolling in on a daily basis now.

Moore – whose role in co-founding Greenpeace is so embarrassing to the organisation that it has tried to airbrush him out of its history – was appearing as a witness before the House Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife. He told the Democrat-led committee that the UN’s Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IBPES) was merely a “front for a radical political, social, and economic transformation of our entire civilization”.

“As with the manufactured “climate crisis” they are using the specter of mass extinction as a fear tactic to scare the public into compliance. The IBPES itself is an existential threat to sensible policy on biodiversity conservation.” The IBPES report was released earlier this month and widely covered in the mainstream media. It warned a million species are threatened with extinction. But Moore told the committee this claim was nonsense.

The IBPES claims there are 8 million species. Yet only 1.8 million species have been identified and named. Thus the IBPES believes there are 6.2 million unidentified and unnamed species. Therefore one million of the unknown species could go extinct overnight and we would not notice it because we would not know they had existed. This is highly unprofessional. Scientists should not, in fact cannot, predict estimates of endangered species or species extinction based on millions of undocumented species.

And then the Dark Ages came. In the blink of an eye, all that was lost. The people no longer had the technological know-how even to repair bridges and aqueducts built by the Romans. They had lost the ability to make cement. They lost many of the works of Aristotle. Roads and plumbing fell into disrepair. Statues crumbled. Only centuries later did civilization begin to reassert itself, barely climbing back to the accomplishments of several centuries earlier.

Whatever the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, one thing is for sure: There were not vast bands of powerful Romans prattling about “Roman privilege,” demanding that the Huns be given preference over Romans and writing articles with titles like “Abolish the Romans!” That is the driving impulse of one of our two major political parties. The other party can’t bestir itself to care about anything other than tax cuts, abortion and moving our embassy to Jerusalem.