Mr Amato told a conference in Rome, he had inserted the get-out clause specifically to prevent the British from complaining that there was no clear cut, official way for them to bail out of the Union. He said: “I wrote Article 50, so I know it well. My intention was that it should be a classic safety valve that was there, but never used. It is like having a fire extinguisher that should never have to be used. Instead, the fire happened. When it comes to the economy they have to lose.”

The Italian believes if it is hard for the British to trade away from the arrangement set by the bloc, they may consider abandoning the world’s biggest trading zone. Britain voted in a referendum on June 23 to leave the EU. To do so, London will have to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts a two-year countdown to a formal exit from the 28-nation bloc.

Keeping soldiers in their barracks has been a central tenet of postwar German domestic policy following the demise of Nazism. Now the Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann says that following the shopping mall slaughter - and the train attack earlier in the week in which a refugee attacked passengers on a commuter train with an axe and a knife - soldiers must join in the anti-terror fight in the same way as they do in France. "We are facing extreme situations," said Herrmann.

"We do not live in the time of the Weimar Republic now," he said - a reference to Germany's post-WW1 experiment with democracy which failed spectacularly and led directly to the rise of the Nazis. He said once historically justified reservations about armed soldiers on the streets were no longer applicable, adding: "We are an absolutely stable democracy."

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.