Nobody better represents the stakes than the person topping our annual list of people who will shape Europe in the year ahead: Matteo Salvini. Having risen to dominance domestically, the Italian far-right leader is taking his brand of fiery populism to the continental battlefield, with every intention of overturning the European order.

Even as polls predict that Europe’s traditional conservative and socialist parties will get the most votes, it’s Salvini and French President Emmanuel Macron who are turning the election into a battle over the survival of the European Union in its current form. With Brussels in his sights, Salvini is seeking to unite the Continent’s nationalists into a Euroskeptic bloc capable of reshaping the Union. “We’ll be one of the strongest groups,” he predicted.

Academics across the European Union have issued a damning review of the state of the project, warning top Eurocrats their pursuit of further integration is fuelling growing dissent among EU voters. With Brexit on the horizon, experts in EU policy have warned the bloc changes will have to be made to the inner structure of the European Union machine to save it from total collapse. 

Craig McKinley MP, a staunch supporter of the Brexit campaign, suggested the "quasi-religious" regard the European Commission and its boss Jean-Claude Juncker have for the European treaties could be a driving force of dissent among EU member states craving more independence.

Speaking to Express.co.uk last year, Mr McKinley said: "The Commission is the guardian of the treaties, it has almost become a quasi-religion for them, ‘how dare any country even want to leave?’ The EU has got some significant problems. You’ve got a parliamentary election next year on the backdrop of an increasing number of the countries that are concerned about the direction of travel."

There’s certainly Italy, one of the big four, that has had a complete change of Government recently. Greece is obviously desperately unhappy with the situation it finds itself in. "If it doesn’t change quickly and reflect what people are saying, I think it’s got real difficulties in the future. The EU you see today is going to be a very different one in 10 years time."

Dr Korteweg warned Brussels a "systemic shock" to the integrated monetary system of the EU – including a potential fallout of the Brexit negotiations or a recession – could threaten the stability of the bloc as a whole. He added: "I think there’s awareness the Eurozone is very much still a work in progress and that means any systemic shock – whether its Brexit or its an EU trade war or whether it's just the systemic vulnerability in some of the Southern European states – can still undermine the project."

“I just think these people, particularly the Junckers and the Barniers, the unelected European Commission, they are bigger, stronger, more powerful than national governments, than electorates. I suspect what you are going to get is the British public becoming even more angry about the way these negotiations are being handled.”

On Wednesday, Mr Farage warned his counterparts in the European Parliament that a no-deal Brexit was now more likely because of “fanatics who are not prepared to be reasonable or make any sense of compromise.” “Unelected bureaucrats in Brussels have been talking down to, and humiliating the prime minister of our nation, and we don’t like it. And even when she comes back, trying to be reasonable, saying let’s renegotiate, you’re not prepared to give an inch.”

The deliberate distortion of “Church and State” by the Democrats who have ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments from courthouse entrances, the public statements by such people as Barack Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg stating they have a problem with the US Constitution illustrates an ideology that challenges the norms and decency of an America that once proclaimed itself “One Nation Under God”.

As America is led further into the aegis of globalism, adopting international UN law over our own US Constitution and Bill of Rights, we are witnessing a literal mutiny against human rights, belief in God, and the ethics that are promoted from these concepts. When society legalizes the child being clinically liquidated fresh from the womb there is literally no refuge from the devaluing of human life and the undeniable orientation toward depopulation on a worldwide scale.

In his letter to the Danbury Baptists, Thomas Jefferson’s intent was to keep government out of the church but not to remove the church from government! Our founding fathers wanted the influence of the Christian church involved in lawmaking! Without the influence of morality they reasoned there would never be just and fair legislation. They were right! Today’s government resists the imposition of morality to lawmaking. Vaccinations are made with the body parts of the unborn.

If the unborn have no refuge left, if human body parts can be sold like commodities, if vaccines and prescription drugs can be sold to the public for billions in profits as thousands of people die from side effects and poisonous additives in the drugs themselves, we are entering a progressively depopulation oriented society devoid of true humanitarian directive. Where does the rationale come from that condones this kind of conduct? What influence has made the conscience of a society so removed from compassion for its very own species? What has enabled current social conscience to accept the expendability of human life?

At that point, when you find yourself in the government’s crosshairs, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white; it will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen; it will not matter whether you’re rich or poor; it will not matter whether you’re Republican or Democrat; and it certainly won’t matter who you voted for in the last presidential election.

Take Roger Stone, one of President Trump’s longtime supporters, for example. This is a guy accused of witness tampering, obstruction of justice and lying to Congress. As far as we know, this guy is not the kingpin of a violent mob or drug-laundering scheme. He’s been charged with a political crime. So what does the FBI do? They send 29 heavily armed agents in 17 vehicles to carry out a SWAT-style raid on Stone’s Florida home just before dawn on January 25, 2019. As the Boston Herald reports: “After his arraignment on witness tampering, obstruction and lying to Congress, a rattled Stone was quoted as saying 29 agents ‘pounded on the door,’ pointed automatic weapons at him and ‘terrorized’ his wife and dogs.”

“Stone was taken away in handcuffs, the sixth associate of President Trump to be indicted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. All the charges have been related to either lying or tax evasion, with no evidence of so-called ‘collusion’ with Russia emerging to date.”

Overkill? Sure. Yet another example of government overreach and brutality? Definitely. There are few communities without a SWAT team today. In 1980, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT team-style raids in the US. Incredibly, that number has since grown to more than 80,000 SWAT team raids per year. Where this becomes a problem of life and death for Americans is when these militarized SWAT teams are assigned to carry out routine law enforcement tasks.

Heavily armed police officers, the end product of the government — federal, local and state — and law enforcement agencies having merged, has become a “standing” or permanent army, composed of full-time professional soldiers who do not disband.

The three terms most widely used today to this avail are detailed below.

1) Conspiracy Theorist – This term is so overused that it really is devoid of any practical meaning. If you were to examine it at face value, though, it describes a person who is looking to understand injustices in our world and is willing to look at uncomfortable facts in search of negative influence… of which there is plenty in our world today.

However, ‘conspiracy theorist’ has literally become a derogatory term that is attributed to anyone who refuses to accept mainstream narratives at face value. It doesn’t matter that there is overwhelming evidence to indicate that mainstream media does not value objectivity or report on important issues thoroughly or truthfully.

2) Alt – We see the label ‘alt’ being applied more and more frequently as an adjective for sentiments that supposedly do not fit in with the accepted status quo. Ideas outside of the box. Alt-Media. Alt-Right. Alt-Left. Alt-News. Alt-Health. And so on. The signal here is that the mainstream is the safe space, and that any segment of ideas or thought given this prefix is outside of that mainstream and, therefore, not something ordinary people would want to associate with.

3) Hate Speech – This term is one of the all-time favorites of politicians and tyrants. After all, what could be more dangerous than hate? It is fascinating to watch how people use this term so freely as if speech itself can be criminal. American society is founded on the idea of freedom of speech and self-expression, which at its core is the recognition that as human beings we do not and never will all see the world in the same way. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that different people have different ideas about how the world is and should be. That these differences shouldn’t be used as a basis for discrimination.

The term hate speech is one of the most loaded and ambiguous terms in the political lexicon. Beware. Next time you see or hear these terms being used, ask yourself what it is about the story that you’re not supposed to think too deeply about. Allow both sides of the argument to share equal time in your mind, and honor the independent, sovereign being within yourself that deserves a chance to make up its own mind about how it wishes to view the world.

Formerly, if a prosecutor staged an arrest for publicity purposes, as Mueller did by placing a CNN presstitute on the scene and sending a couple of dozen heavily armed men in a pre-dawn raid to arrest a well known political consultant for allegedly “lying to Congress” when the appropriate procedure is for Mueller to inform Stone’s lawyer to present his client for indictment, the judge would throw out the case on the grounds that the prosecutor’s unethical action had biased the juror pool and made a fair trial impossible.

The judge might also have thrown out the case on the grounds of selective prosecution. James Clapper while serving as Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress under oath and suffered no consequences, and Hillary Clinton has clearly broken the law and lied about it.

Today judges permit unethical behavior by prosecutors that deprives defendants of a fair trial, because judges don’t want the bother of trials any more than prosecutors do. Consequently, according to official statistics 97% of federal criminal cases are settled by a defendant pleading guilty to a charge negotiated by his attorney and a prosecutor. As the charge is a negotiated or made-up one, most people in prison are there for confessing to crimes that never occurred.

As for Roger Stone, the media’s instructions are to convict Stone in the public’s mind as a facilitator of the Trump/Putin theft of the US presidential election. The actual facts do not matter, and the facts will never emerge from the media or from Mueller’s “investigation.”

According to Ryabkov, Russia is witnessing a decline in strategic stability in the world against the background of some states' attempts to shatter the architecture of non-proliferation regimes and arms control. Moreover, the "nuclear five" refused to adopt a final joint statement at a meeting in Beijing, Sergey Ryabkov said.

The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 by then leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and then US President Ronald Reagan. The leaders agreed to destroy all cruise or ground-launched ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310 and 3,400 miles).

“It is no longer such that the United States simply protects us, but Europe must take its destiny in its own hands. That's the task of the future," Merkel reportedly said during a speech honoring French President Emmanuel Macron. Both Merkel and Macron tried their hand at persuading the Trump administration not to abandon the Iranian nuclear deal completely. The leaders even issued a joint statement with British Prime Minister Theresa May, someone whose hawkish attitude towards Iran should not go unnoticed.

The lifting of sanctions on Iran already led to an increase in trade between Germany and Iran from €2.7 billion in 2014 to €3.5 billion last year. It is also worth noting that Iran will now start accepting euros for its oil in an attempt to not only avoid the US dollar, but in a move that will directly threaten it. This topic is probably best suited for another article, but it is definitely something worth keeping an eye on – and will most likely only bolster Germany’s resolve to protect Iran.

Either way, Germany and China have both agreed to stick to the Iran deal. Think for a second what this means: John Bolton openly warned European companies and countries against continuing business with Iran, stating that they could be targeted by sanctions. The newly appointed ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, also immediately warned Germany directly that German companies must halt their business activities with Tehran or face sanctions. Germany and China have essentially given the US the political middle finger in response, and arguably kowtowed to Iranian interests instead.