Following the fall of Nazism, Germany has kept up its pacifist ideal and placed a strict ban on exporting arms to States that could use them for evil ends. However, during the Conference on Security that has just taken place in Munich, [Angela Merkel], the German Chancellor, has indicated these restrictions are too narrow. They only allow very few exports and consequently prevent the sales of arms from being a profitable activity.

Under the provisions of this secret clause, France will be able to continue exporting to Saudi Arabia something which the Bundestag, the German Parliament, prohibits. The profits derived from the Saudi sales will be divided between the two States but we do not know in what proportions.

In her study of European political development over more than 200 years, Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard, shows that the story of democracy in Europe is complicated. The ultimate goal, she believes, is liberal democracy, with elections, respect for the rule of law, individual liberties and minority rights. But that’s a rare, and hard-won, achievement. A step forward is often followed by a step back.

The German air force already has multi-tasking Tornado warplanes, which are already capable of deploying American atomic bombs. But those aircraft are going to be replaced, possibly, by European-developed Eurofighters, or by United States manufactured F/A-18 Super Hornets.

Either way, the warplane that Germany selects will have to be equipped with the AMAC (Aircraft Monitoring and Control) system, which allows the use of the new American atomic bombs and enables the regulation of the power of the explosion as well as at what height the bombs explode after they are launched.

Germany does not manufacture atomic weapons but has come to consider itself as a nuclear power because it has vectors to use them, and believes that this gives it the right to sit on the UN Security Council sharing the permanent member position occupied by France. Both countries would thus represent the European Union, under the auspices of NATO.

According to an article in the Financial Times last week “Germany’s federal and state governments have spent €70 billion on bailing out banks since the financial crisis, according to an estimate by Gerhard Schick, head of lobby group Finance Watch.” The figure of €70 billion is about 79 billion US dollars. Why did the US Fed throw $364 billion at one German bank when its country of origin has only reached in its pocket to the tune of $79 billion for all of its troubled banks?

The black hole surrounding derivatives is just as dark today as it was in 2008 – and just as dangerous. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission had this to say about the crash: “the existence of millions of derivatives contracts of all types between systemically important financial institutions — unseen and unknown in this unregulated market — added to uncertainty and escalated panic, helping to precipitate government assistance to those institutions.” There is not one Federal or state regulator today who could tell you which counterparty has the most concentrated risk to derivatives. Nor is there one Wall Street bank who has clarity on this issue — because the majority of the over-the-counter derivative contracts are secret contracts between one party and another.

We know that Deutsche Bank’s derivative tentacles extend into most of the major Wall Street banks. According to a 2016 report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Deutsche Bank is heavily interconnected financially to JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America as well as other mega banks in Europe. The IMF concluded that Deutsche Bank posed a greater threat to global financial stability than any other bank as a result of these interconnections – and that was when its market capitalization was tens of billions of dollars larger than it is today.

Until these mega banks are broken up, until the Fed is replaced by a competent and serious regulator of bank holding companies, and until derivatives are restricted to those that trade on a transparent exchange, the next epic financial crash is just one counterparty blowup away.

The controversy over Julian Assange’s arrest in London seems to have spilled over into the European Parliament this week. Martin Sonneborn, a long-time contributor to Spiegel and ZDF, used his time to tell “a couple of words to the Brits who are likely to remain in the EU until Halloween.” If you extradite Assange to the US, may you get your stupid Brexit right now, and may it be as hard as possible!

Sonneborn also reminded the parliament that earlier this week it approved a bill protecting whistleblowers from being exposed to various forms of persecution, adding “it is now against the EU law to blow such people away.” Further into his emotional speech, Sonneborn recalled a renowned 2007 video showing a US helicopter crew gunning down a dozen civilians, including Reuters’ staff, and then laughing at the dead.

Assange, who was behind the release of the video in 2010, now risks being handed over to “those who deny or conceal it.” The footage, released by WikiLeaks and known as ‘Collateral Murder’, quickly went viral, sparking outrage across the globe. Assange “is a whistleblower who needs international protection, not criminalization,” Heike Hansel, Germany’s Left Party MP told RT. “We say that he delivered the truth to the public about US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and therefore he should be awarded, not persecuted.”

And unlike in the past where this phenomenon was largely contained to Japan and a handful of developed nations, RBC notes that almost all countries are set to experience a decline in the number of children per household in the 2000–2030 period. More specifically, looking from 2015 out to 2030, Euromonitor expects developed markets to have a ~20% decline in the number of children per household and developing markets a ~15% decline. In fact, as the Canadian bank points out, it was as recently as 2012 when the number of couples without children globally surpassed the number of those with children.

In early April, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency over a cluster of reported measles cases in the Orthodox Jewish community. If authorities are worried about one benign illness, why not target the source of the virus: international travelers from outbreak-stricken areas? If Bill de Blasio insists on forcibly injecting six month old babies, (who do not have an adequate immune system to handle the MMR vaccine), then why doesn’t he stop all international travelers coming from outbreak-stricken areas such as Israel, Ukraine, and the Philippines? What about all the disease that pours over the Southern border?

If the government insists on micromanaging viruses in the vast world, why do they target healthy, un-vaccinated children and ignore verifiable virus sources from other regions of the world? If stopping measles is so important, why not forbid international travel until the travelers have proven they have overcome infectious disease?

A Downing Street source said it would not be fair to say the Queen’s speech was being delayed, because no official date had been set for one. “There’s no obligation to have one at a fixed point and there’s no immediate plans to bring forward a Queen’s speech,” the source said. There is usually one Queen’s speech each year, and it has taken place in May or June in recent years, but Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, announced a two-year session after the last election in order to “build the broadest possible consensus for our Brexit plans”.

There are several reasons why May might shy away from a Queen’s speech, but the most pressing is that she may not have the votes to get it through parliament given the opposition to her Brexit deal among hardline Conservative Eurosceptics, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and opposition parties.

Other factors include the government having all but run out of legislation for parliament to debate other than bills connected to Brexit, and the likelihood of a furious reaction from MPs, including those in the DUP. Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and former shadow leader of the Commons, said a refusal to bring forward a Queen’s speech would be a “constitutional outrage”. “There’s no point in a parliamentary session if we’ve not got anything to do. I never knew the real meaning of the word doldrums until this parliament,” he said.

A former Seattle police officer that was recently interviewed by a reporter from KOMO News  was very honest about the fact that he would never want to raise a family in Seattle because of the hellhole that it has become.  Every night he saw the worst of Seattle firsthand, and he finally felt forced to quit because city officials would not allow him to effectively do his job. 

An explosion of homelessness in our major west coast cities has fueled a wave of crime, drugs and human degradation unlike anything we have seen before, and in many cases our law enforcement officials have their hands tied and are literally being prevented from cleaning up the streets.

Right now, more than half a million people are homeless in the United States.  As the economy gets worse, that number will continue to rise. Many homeless Americans are law-abiding citizens that have just had a tough break. Everyone gets knocked down in life at some point, and we need to do all that we can to help those law-abiding citizens get back on their feet.

But because of their ultra-liberal policies, some of the major cities on the west coast have become magnets for drug addicts, serial criminals, sex offenders, illegal immigrants and people that have simply heard about all of the “free benefits” that are being offered. As a result, the streets of those cities have become a showcase for the social decay that is sweeping across our nation.

The ceremony was accompanied by blasts from silver horns. A band played songs based on the Hallel service, a prayer service composed of verses from Psalms, that was sung in the Temple while the Passover sacrifice was being prepared.

A goat was slaughtered and its blood was collected in a special vessel designed with a pointed base so that it may not be placed down to rest. The blood was spilled out on a model of the altar. The goat was prepared roasted whole on a long pomegranate branch in the manner described in the Torah and served to the Jews gathered to witness the re-enactment.

In 2009 book “Letters To My Grandchildren”, Mr Benn – a towering figure in British politics and one of the most prominent eurosceptics in the Labour Party – wrote: “The first basic right in a democracy must be the right of people to elect those who make their laws and the right to remove them. It is the only guarantee that those who make the laws will listen to those who have to obey them.Through membership of the European Union all member countries have lost that right."

"It has been calculated that a majority of laws enforced throughout the EU come from the Council of Minsters and not parliaments of those member states. A massive change has occurred in the democratic systems of Europe and has passed almost unnoticed because the founders did not want to emphasise it in case it led to a rejection of the Union."

Mr Benn went on to describe how the EU's structure is "complex and undemocratic". He said: "The commissioners are the key players in Brussels. They are an imperial bureaucratic elite who are not elected, cannot be removed save by an overwhelming majority in the European Parliament and therefore do not have to listen to the people over whom they exercise such power. The Council of Ministers – comprising of politicians from each of the EU countries – theoretically makes the laws under which the people of Europe are governed, but this lawmaking is done very largely in secret."

"The third element – the European Parliament – is largely a toothless group of people elected by a tiny proportion of the electorates (turnout in the 2009 elections in this country was 34 percent) of member states. It has been the objective of the Commission in its Brussels HQ to build a United States of Europe, without ever declaring that to be its aim."

The Labour politician concluded that in the most recent developments, "the sovereignty of people, which is at the heart of democracy, has been subtly replaced by the sovereignty of parliaments who transfer the powers they have been lent by the people to those who are not responsible to the people, that is to say the Commission".