Here Trump has stumbled on the dirty little secret of the post-World War II security architecture so beloved by our elites: for the privilege of paying for their defense, and in effect militarily occupying our allies-cum-satellites, we allow them to flood our markets with tariff-free goods, while they wall off their markets with trade barriers and subsidies. As the Old Right economist and prophet of empire Garet Garrett put it at the dawn of the cold war, it’s a peculiar sort of empire in which “everything goes out and nothing comes in.”

Trump lets it rip with a reiteration of his essential point: “I’m only saying this. We’re spending money, and if you’re talking about trade, we’re losing a tremendous amount of money, according to many stats, $800 billion a year on trade. So we are spending a fortune on military in order to lose $800 billion. That doesn’t sound like it’s smart to me. Just so you understand though, totally on the record, this is not 40 years ago. We are not the same country and the world is not the same world.

Our country owes right now $19 trillion, going to $21 trillion very quickly because of the omnibus budget that was passed, which is incredible. We don’t have the luxury of doing what we used to do; we don’t have the luxury, and it is a luxury. We need other people to reimburse us much more substantially than they are giving right now because [they] are only paying for a fraction of the cost.”

Trump has turned the tables on the War Party: it is they who are being put on the defensive by his relentless assault, and his willingness to say what most normal people are thinking. His disregard for the pieties of the Beltway, his contempt for the self-proclaimed “experts,” and his ability to mobilize the American people behind a foreign policy that puts them first, is the best thing that has happened to this country in the modern era.

"Emmott and Siebold describe NATO as a ‘Western defense alliance.’ Since the Clinton regime NATO has been an alliance for waging offensive war, a war crime under the Nuremberg rules established by the United States. Under the NATO banner a number of countries have been bombed, invaded, and had their governments overthrown by Washington acting under the cover of NATO.

These destroyed countries posed no threat whatsoever to the countries of the NATO alliance and undertook no aggressive actions against NATO members. How is it possible that Reuters’ reporters and editors are not aware of this? Why do they call an instrument of Washington’s aggression a ‘defense alliance’?

Emmott and Siebold report that ‘Russian aggression’ is the reason NATO is deploying 3,000 to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland. In other words, something that does not exist – Russian aggression toward the Baltics and Poland – is assumed to be a fact that must be countered with military deployments.

The reporters do not question whether this insignificant number of NATO troops constitutes a defense or a provocation. The number of troops would have to be 100 times greater before the force even begins to approach a defensive force. What then is the purpose of the 3,000 or 4,000 NATO troops? Every informed person knows that there is no need of a defense force against Russia in the Baltics and Poland. Aside from this fact, only an absolute idiot could think that three or four thousand troops constitutes a defense against the Russian Army.

Whatever the evil men and women in Washington who are gambling with the life of the planet think, Russia is not going to accept these missiles. Where does world leadership reside? In Washington, the war criminal capital of the world that is driving the world to nuclear war, or in Russia whose leadership accepts countless affronts and provocations in an effort to avoid war?"

The significance of Japan’s TOCOM exchange shifting from all fiat paper contracts to a physical gold trading and settlement operation is reinforced by the fact that two days ahead of the announcement it was reported that Tanaka Kikinzoku Group – Japan’s leading precious metals trader, refiner and manufacturer – acquired Swiss-based Metalor Group, one of the world’s largest refiners and supplier of precious metals-related products – Tanaka Buys Metalor. Furthermore, in March 2015, Japan’s Asahi Holdings – a collector and refiner of precious metals – closed its acquisition of Johnson Matthey’s gold and silver refining business. JM is one of the leading producers of refined precious metals products, including LBMA-quality 400 oz gold bars.

Now that Asia and Russia are no longer funding the US Treasury debt printing press, the Fed will be forced to begin hyperinflating the money supply to keep the Government funded. This fact is underscored by the Cleveland Fed President’s – Loretta Mester, a voting member of the FOMC – recent comment about “helicopter money.”

This abrupt transition into the physical precious metals market signals Japan’s move to integrate its financial markets and economic system into the developing eastern bloc monetary system, which appears as if it might eventually be seeded in gold. It likely signals the end-game for the United States.

“This is a big win for our students,” said California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson in a statement. “This document will improve the teaching and learning of history and social science. It will give our students access to the latest historical research and help them learn about the diversity of our state and the contributions of people and groups who may not have received the appropriate recognition in the past.”

However, Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), tells Breitbart News the new framework is the height of political correctness. “The whole idea that social science or history could be taught in a manner that does not reflect adversely on groups of people is absurd,” he observes, adding: “People acting as groups or as members of groups often do discreditable things, and even more often do things that later generations condemn even if those actions seemed right at the time. Any accurate account of history or social science has to reflect that reality and it is a deep disservice to students to give them a whitewashed story. The California framework is identity-politics leaning so far left that it has fallen in the Pacific Ocean of educational incompetence.”

Jane Robbins, attorney and senior fellow at American Principles Project, reacts to Breitbart News about the forced LGBT history curriculum for students. “California has decided to include people in the curriculum and celebrate them (no criticism allowed, apparently) based solely on their sexual behavior,” she asserts. “Especially after the Obergefell decision, it’s only a matter of time until this propaganda spreads to the public schools of other states.”

Details of the attacks continue to fill the news channels: the names of attackers, their origin, what weapons they used, how many were killed or wounded, are they part of an organized group?, and so forth. As important as these facts may be, there are other facts that may be even more important that are seldom featured in major news channels.

There is no better example than the fact that, in almost every case of terrorism and organized race-based violence, there is strong evidence that the attackers were recruited, radicalized, trained, funded, and protected by covert agencies of the governments that become the scenes of violence. Not only that, after the radicalized groups and dupes are pushed into suicide missions, it is amazingly common to discover that military and law-enforcement personnel are given orders to stand down for as long as possible, which allows the radicalized cannon fodder to create an amazing amount of carnage considering their small numbers.

Once this recurring pattern of rev-up and stand down is recognized, it becomes apparent that there are forces that actually want to see wanton acts of violence and killing as a catalyst to creating public demand for a police state, supposedly as the only solution to the problem they, themselves, created. If you know what to look for, you will find this pattern within the following stories from this week’s news [written by G Edward Griffin].

“We know that the police did not intervene when she was present there. We know that the strength sentry, who had six soldiers armed before the Bataclan did not intervene when the carnage was occurring at the Bataclan,” the MP said. “They felt that they were not to intervene because their rules of engagement did not anticipate that they had to intervene.”

“Their rules stipulated that they could protect themselves. It is entirely unbelievable, amazing.” This report and confirmation from the MP have been conveniently ignored by all Western media.

At the same time, BLM founder and co-defendant DeRay McKesson seemed to wear the lawsuit as a badge of honor, posing for a photograph with his process server as he was served at his Baltimore home. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan received his document through a third party at his Michigan home and President Obama was served through the mail, which is standard protocol, documents show. Four other BLM leaders were in the process of being served today.

“These are the brave gladiators of the radical black movement,” said attorney Larry Klayman, a former federal prosecutor who filed the class action case on behalf of law enforcement. “They believe and act as if they are above the law, they don’t recognize the courts or any legal process. But this time, they are going to be held legally accountable. Their time is up.”

Klayman filed the suit on Saturday in response to five Dallas police assassinations by an Army veteran who adhered to a radical “black power” ideology. He accused the defendants of inciting violence “with the fiction that police officers and other law enforcement are intentionally and systematically targeting and hunting blacks and other minorities to kill them for no reason other than racism or sport.”

Witnesses first reported a shooting in the Hanauer Street, then Riesstrae before it continued to the Olympia shopping centre, at around 6pm. Early reports said a heavily armed man opened fire near a fast food restaurant before wandering through the mall in Moosach, Munich, firing at will. Employees are still inside while armed officers attempt to establish how many shooters stormed the centre.

One man said: ”Many shots were fired, I can't say how many but it's been a lot. All the people from outside came streaming into the store and I only saw one person on the ground who was so severely injured that he definitely didn't survive. We have no further information, we're just staying in the back in the storage rooms. No police have approached us yet."

According to reports there was a shot fired at Stachus Square shortly after which is three miles away from the shopping centre. A police spokeswoman said: “We believe we are dealing with a shooting rampage. We are reckoning on several dead.”

Trump is committing himself against that Clinton-Republican repeal of FDR’s law. Trump insists it be restored so that there won’t be a repeat of the Bush-Obama Wall Street bailout. ABA chief Nichols told Morning Consult, “America’s banking industry is well poised to fuel economic growth and job creation,” and so they should continue to be supported by the government.

He called Trump’s stand to restore Glass-Steagall “a return to Depression-era regulation that would restrain banks’ ability to drive our economy forward. All of our bank regulatory agencies have agreed that Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the crisis or the housing market collapse.” Many economists disagree with the ABA on that, and have called for restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act.

The major newsmedia and politicians refer to Glass-Steagall for its supposedly capping bank-size, but it never actually did any such thing: it instead separated commercial banks (lenders to consumers and businesses) from investment banks (stockbrokers and other market-makers for the sale of financial gambles) and from insurers (which take on the risks that other financial firms avoid). It never established any cap on bank-size.

What produced the 2008 crash was the Clinton-Republican Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, named after the three conservative Republicans (Phil Gramm, Jim Leach, and Tom Bliley) who wrote it. Sanford Weill, then merely the head of Travelers Insurance, was a financial empire-builder who wanted his firm to buy Citibank, so as to produce the first financial conglomerate, Citigroup — a merger which the Glass-Steagall Act would have blocked from happening.

Weill’s Clinton-Administration friends Robert J Rubin and Lawrence Summers had no trouble convincing their boss to say yes to Gramm-Leach-Bliley, though this would toss out the core of Democrat FDR’s lasting heritage and restore the cause of the Great Depression: Wall Street’s gambling with depositors’ savings — gambling with assets that are so crucial the government would be politically compelled to backstop to prevent bankrupting tens of millions of people, savers who had made no error. It’s a Hobson’s choice of either revolution or else Wall Street bailouts; that Hobson’s choice is what Glass-Steagall ended.

“I don’t think we have the right to lecture,” the Times quoted him as saying during the 45-minute interview in a downtown Cleveland hotel suite. “Look at what is happening in our country,” he said. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?” The Times said that Trump re-emphasized the hardline nationalist approach that he has taken during his campaign, describing how he would force allies to shoulder defense costs that the United States has borne for decades.

Asked about Russian activities that have alarmed the Baltics, NATO’s newest members, Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.” Trump, who said he would press the theme of “America First” at his address Thursday night to the Republican National Convention, said allies would adjust to his approach.

“I would prefer to be able to continue” existing agreements, he told the Times, but only if allies stop taking advantage of an era of American largesse that was no longer affordable.

Hollande's motivation is obvious: he sees the latest terror attack in Nice, following the November 13 Paris atrocities and the Charlie Hebdo attacks, as a sign that the EU must consolidate its military strength to tackle terrorism. Following the Nice atrocity — in which 84 people were killed and 303 injured when a 19-ton cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds by Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian resident of France — Hollande said:

"There will be at the initiative of France a proposal to strengthen the defense of Europe. This is to facilitate the commitment of the European Union and its outer borders, to strengthen the security of our partners and neighbors to work together to build response capacity and ward off threats against us through terrorism."

The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker has also backed an EU army, saying: "Such an army would help us design a common foreign and security policy."

But Joachim Gauck believes politicians across the continent should refuse to hold referendums on any issue, not just EU membership.

He said: "When I started out in politics many years ago I was a supporter of referendums. But now I have experience and see it differently." Mr Gauck went on to claim "simple yes or no answers are not enough" when it comes to complex issues such as security and taxation.

He also argued European cooperation was needed in the fight against the growing threat of warped Islamic State extremists. He told Bild: "What will be crucial is that we stand together in Europe. Now is not the moment to accept divisions among ourselves." Earlier this month the vice-president of Die Linke, Germany's third-largest party, urged Angela Merkel to hold a referendum on the EU. Taking aim at the Chancellor, Sahra Wagenknecht said: "You shouldn't arrogantly believe that people aren't capable of forming their own opinion."

Fears of a second coup attempt stem from the realisation by the Erdogan administration that the infiltration by pro-coup forces of the senior ranks of the 600,000-strong armed forces and intelligence apparatus went far deeper than originally suspected. Some 85 generals and admirals or almost a quarter of the total of 375 were jailed on Tuesday by a court, a sign that the government privately believes that the plot involved many more senior officers than the small clique it has publicly claimed was behind the abortive putsch. Other sources suggest that the true figure for generals detained is 125.

Arrests at a high level are continuing with Mr Edrogan’s advisor on the air force, Lieutenant Colonel Erkan Krivak, arrested on Tuesday. Soldiers from the Second Army, which is fighting a widespread Kurdish rebellion in the south east of the country, have been ordered to stay in their camps in the embattled region. The Second Army commander, General Adem Huduti, is the most senior military commander arrested. The gates into the main base of the 3rd Corps in Istanbul, theoretically part of a Nato rapid reaction force, are blocked by municipal dump trucks and heavy vehicles according to eye witnesses.

“They are fearing another attempt at a coup,” says Asli Aydintasbas of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Istanbul, pointing to the extensive nature of the purge of the senior officer corps and judiciary, a quarter of whose members have been dismissed.