Mr Farage also took a swipe at his nemesis and arch-federalist Jean-Claude Juncker as the EU faces up to an existential crisis. Speaking to Italian TV station Agenzia Televisiva Nazionale, the 52-year-old said: "The President-elect has a great deal of respect for Brexit Britain. I am not sure what he thinks about the European Union but it doesn’t really matter.

"In a few years time the European Union won’t exist anyway. This isn’t working. We can talk about the euro, we can talk about Angela Merkel’s migrant policy." Speaking from the European Parliament in Strasbourg the MEP continued: "We can talk about a whole range of issues. I have been here [the European Parliament] 17 years I am very pro-European.

"I love all the different European countries but this centralist model of government in buildings like this isn’t working. In the long term we are returning to nation state democracy and I think that is the big message that comes from 2016. We’ll have a Europe of friendship, a Europe of trade, a Europe of trade and a Europe of cooperation."

Mr Farage’s damning criticism of the EU comes after a new study has revealed EU membership cost Britain £2 billion more last year than previously thought. Calculations by think tank Global Britain reveal that the UK’s net contribution in 2015 was £10.4 billion instead of the £8.5 billion previously claimed by the Government. Ukip leadership candidate Suzanne Evans said that the figures underline her case for Britain leaving "within weeks" by repealing the 1972 Act.

A new crisis is now happening all around us affecting trees. It appears that millions, hundreds of millions even, of trees are dying in North America and around the world from a basket of reasons, promising to completely and permanently alter the landscape and environment around us.

Tree are among the most abundant and the most critical organisms on planet earth, and only recently have we been able to assess just how many trees inhabit planet earth. A study published in 2015 gave us this picture:

“A new study published in Nature estimates the planet has 3.04 trillion trees. The research says 15.3 billion trees are chopped down every year. It also estimates that 46% of the world’s trees have been cleared over the past 12,000 years.”

The web of life cannot be damaged in one area without the effects being felt elsewhere. Just as bees and other insects are dying off en masse by a number of causes, some known and unknown, trees are also harbingers of the health of our planet. With such little attention given to the state of this earth and so much attention given to the human and political dramas that occupy our attention 24/7, will the human race wake up and react in time to avert a major planetary crisis?

A long strip of deep and fertile soil pinched by sharply rising mountains, the valley has more than doubled its output of produce in recent decades and now grows well over half of America’s leaf lettuce. Yet one place the valley’s bounty of antioxidants does not often appear is on the tables of the migrant workers who harvest it.

Public health officials here describe a crisis of poverty and malnutrition among the tens of thousands of farmworkers and their families who tend to the fields of lettuce, broccoli, celery, cauliflower and spinach, among many other crops, in an area called the salad bowl of the nation.

More than a third of the children in the Salinas City Elementary School District are homeless; overall diabetes rates are rising and projected to soar; and 85 percent of farmworkers in the valley are overweight or obese, partly because unhealthy food is less costly, said Marc B Schenker, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the health of farmworkers.

“The people who grow our food can’t afford to eat it, and they are sicker because of it,” said Joel Diringer, a public health specialist and advocate for farmworkers. “It’s an incredible irony that those who work in the fields all day long don’t have access to the fresh produce that they harvest.”

Don’t get me wrong – I am a very big believer in working hard and contributing something of value to society, and those that work the hardest and contribute the most should be able to reap the rewards.  In this article I am in no way, shape or form criticizing true capitalism, because if true capitalism were actually being practiced all over the planet we would have far, far less poverty today. 

Instead, our planet is dominated by a heavily socialized debt-based central banking system that systematically transfers wealth from hard working ordinary citizens to the global elite.  Those at the very top of the pyramid know that they are impoverishing everyone else, and they very much intend to keep it that way.

The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the global elite have used various forms of debt to turn the rest of the planet into their debt slaves. As debt levels race higher and higher all over the planet, the elite are using the magic of compound interest to grab a bigger and bigger share of the pie. Given enough time, those at the very top would have virtually everything and the rest of us would have virtually nothing. 

The darker reality, the authors suggest, is that lying to children, even about something fun and frivolous, could undermine their trust in their parents and leave them open to “abject disappointment” when they eventually discover that magic is not real.

Kathy McKay, a clinical psychologist at the University of New England, Australia and co-author, said: “The Santa myth is such an involved lie, such a long-lasting one, between parents and children, that if a relationship is vulnerable, this may be the final straw. If parents can lie so convincingly and over such a long time, what else can they lie about?”

Levelling with your children so close to the big event may put a bit of a dampener on festivities, but parents must sometimes take the long view, according to McKay. “There is potential for children to be harmed in these lies,” she said.

And astonishingly it has been agreed that the EU should also be prepared to act autonomously in cases where NATO is not willing to take the lead. However the EU is celebrating this victory claiming the security situation in and around Europe has worsened significantly in recent years, due to challenges like terrorism, hybrid threats or cyber and energy insecurity.

It says no country is able to tackle defence alone and “solidarity and resilience require the EU to stand and act together”. European politicians have now guaranteed at least £420 million-a-year in funding to set up their new European wide army which will be a "rapid response" team.

They suggest devoting an initial two per cent of the overall GDP to defence, establishing multinational forces and EU headquarters to plan and command crisis management operations, and enabling the EU to act where NATO is unwilling to do so.

After Mr Fillon's shock victory in the primary elections, he has emerged as the favourite to be president of the country. The former prime minister said Europe is in crisis and Brexit is a direct consequence of a lack of initiative from European leaders and particularly hapless Francois Hollande, the current president of France. 

Mr Fillon has made it clear that he believes there should be a no-nonsense approach to Brexit and has called for a fast divorce. He said: “Today Europe at best is inefficient, useless, out fashioned and at worst is an obstacle to our development and our freedom.”

...the most insidious excuse being pushed by the establishment Left (consisting of party leaders and much of the mainstream media) is the so-called “fake news” trope. No one denies that publishing articles about made-up events, and presenting that as real news, is a terrible thing, which unfortunately gets “shared” without people taking the responsibility of verifying information.

But the censorship crusade being carried out by MSM is about more than actual fake news. It is a vehicle for silencing alternative media and dissenting voices that represent a threat to the narrative. The target is not just the “alt-right” but alternative news and views from a range of political categories.

Alternative media represent a choice for people who are fed up with the system, and it is the people’s responsibility to research the news in order to achieve an accurate perspective on events. It is not up to a self-proclaimed “Ministry of Truth” – laden with the same corrupt baggage that acted as proverbial buoy for Hillary Clinton during the campaign – to dictate what is right and wrong.

Critics may think that is a vast improvement over the present situation in which the Fed conceals its allegiance to the giant Wall Street investment banks behind a public relations cloud of “independence”, but the idea of one man controlling the price of the world’s reserve currency and, thus, the price of financial assets and commodities across the globe, is equally disturbing.

Trump tapped into that wellspring of anger and frustration by denouncing the “failed and corrupt political establishment” in which both Hillary Clinton and the Fed feature prominently. Now he’s going to take it to the next level by launching a surprise attack on the Fed which will leave Wall Street stripped of its power-agency and left to fend for itself. This is a blurb from the New York Times:

“A core view of many Trump advisers is that the extended period of emergency policy settings has promoted a bubble in the stock market, depressed the incomes of savers, scared the public and encouraged capital misallocation,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “Right now, these are minority views on the FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee], but Trump appointees are likely to shift the needle.” (With Trump in Power, the Fed Gets Ready for a Reckoning, New York Times)

They’re going to “shift the needle” alright, then they’re going to drive it through the serpent’s heart. The Fed has had every opportunity to show where its loyalties lie and it has sided with Wall Street every single time. There’s a reason why 95 percent of all income gains in the last eight years have gone to the one percent, while working people have struggled just to put food on the table. Just like there’s a reason why stocks have tripled in value in the last eight years while wages and incomes have stagnated and the economy has slowed to a crawl. It’s the policy, stupid.

The Fed has created the conditions for a permanent Depression so it can provide infinite cheap money to its crooked reprobate friends on Wall Street. Now their little party is coming to an end.

Barack Obama said it was easy to forget the risk Ellen DeGeneres took to come out as gay in 1997. He said her bravery helped "push our country in the direction of justice".

"It's easy to forget now, when we've come so far... just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the most public of stages almost 20 years ago," he said during the award ceremony at the White House. "What an incredible burden that was to bear - to risk your career like that - people don't do that very often. And then, to have the hopes of millions on your shoulders."

Look, I voted for Donald Trump and I want him to be as successful as possible.  But when Donald Trump becomes our next president on January 20th, that does not mean that all of the great problems that our nation is facing will somehow magically disappear.  If you listen to some people, they make it sound like America is going to experience nothing but peace, prosperity and blessing for decades to come.  I would love it if that was indeed going to be the case, but unfortunately that is simply not the truth.

We are currently on a path that leads to national suicide, and unless we change our ways it isn’t going to matter who is in the White House. I keep hearing about how our new president is going to “unify” the nation, but that is going to be extremely difficult to do considering the fact that we are now more divided than ever.  In fact, a brand new Gallup survey found that an all-time record high 77 percent of all Americans believe that we are “greatly divided when it comes to the most important values”. I keep hearing about how we are now entering a golden age of peace and prosperity, but how is that supposed to happen while we are still butchering millions of innocent children in our abortion mills?

I keep hearing about how the economy is about to take off like a rocket, but how is that possible when we have already been on the greatest debt binge in world history?  The only way we have been able to maintain our massively inflated debt-fueled standard of living is by piling up debt at a faster pace than any generation in history. 

Today we have accumulated 12 trillion dollars in consumer debt, corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, and the national debt is rapidly approaching 20 trillion dollars.  How can Trump possibly pump up our standard of living with debt more than Obama has already done?

I keep hearing about how we are “going to make America great again”, but how can we be great when we are producing more pornography than the rest of the world combined? If we do not fundamentally change course as a nation we will not survive.  Tinkering with tax rates, regulations and trade agreements is not going to get the job done.  So many people are acting as if we just have a few cuts and scratches, when the reality is what our country really needs is major heart surgery.

Donald Trump is not some sort of a messiah, and even if he is able to accomplish every single thing that he is promising right now it will not nearly be enough. But for the moment millions of Americans are proclaiming “peace and safety” now that Donald Trump has won the election, and we shall see how it all turns out…

“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added.

A second source confirmed the fireworks. “The meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,” the other source said. “Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said.

“Trump didn’t say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate – which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.” The stunned reporters tried to get a word in edgewise to discuss access to a Trump Administration.

Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway told reporters the gathering went well. “Excellent meetings with the top executives of the major networks,” she said during a gaggle in the lobby of Trump Tower. “Pretty unprecedented meeting we put together in two days.” The meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations.

In documents filed with a federal judge in Texas the Justice Department said that in light of the new management that will take over next year, the case should be suspended.

“Accordingly, the parties respectfully submit that further proceedings on the merits of this case, including the submission of a schedule for resolving the merits, should be stayed until February 20, 2017,” the Justice Department and lawyers for Texas said in a joint request of Judge Andrew S Hanen.

This most likely sounds the death knells of Obama’s illegal executive amnesty programs, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA).

In June, 2016, Trump called Obama’s executive amnesty “one of the most unconstitutional actions ever undertaken by a President,” and said amnesty hurts “poor African-American and Hispanic workers by giving away their jobs and federal resources to illegal immigrant labor – while making us all less safe.” Another disastrous Obama policy bites the dust, thanks to President-elect Trump – and he hasn’t even been sworn into office yet!