Even before British voters decided to end their nation's 43-year-old European Union membership, Germany announced plans to expand its army for the first time in 25 years, with Berlin also quietly increasing its role in international military missions.

Germany's forces stand at 180,000 soldiers, but that is a huge fall from a figure approaching 600,000 at the time of re-unification in 1990. Berlin's military boost should help fill at least part of the vacuum in Europe left by Britain — a pillar of the EU's defence capabilities. On Friday, NATO leaders meet in Warsaw with the alliance's two-day summit likely to provide an early glimpse of the enhanced political, economic and financial power that Germany should command in Europe in the wake of the British vote.

After living in the shadow of London for decades, Britain's move should also allow the German financial capital, Frankfurt, to shine as a global market hub and emerge at the heart of European financial life.

The EU leadership has just produced a white paper titled “Shared Vision, Common Action.” It has plainly been in the works for months but was deliberately withheld until mere days after the Brexit vote. It does not call for an EU army, but it would create the nucleus of one. The purpose of that army would not be to complement NATO but eventually to displace it.

Why does the EU need its own army, when NATO forces have successfully defended Europe’s peace and prosperity for almost seven decades? One may well wonder. But our guess is that the EU elites consider this immensely expensive, potentially destabilizing exercise necessary in order to drive out the Americans, finally and decisively — even at the risk of drawing the Russians back in, indeed even at the risk of no longer keeping the Germans down.

The deputy vice president of Die Linke, the Bundestag's third main party, said it would be "arrogant" to not trust the electorate with the decision. Currently, Germany's constitution does not allow national referendums to take place, except for special exceptions. She said: "You shouldn't arrogantly believe that people aren't capable of forming their own opinion."

"Many British people might have been lied to during the referendum campaign, but this was also a risk during elections. If we invalidate all elections in Europe in which the government had previously spoken of doing the opposite, of what they are doing afterwards, then we would have as good as no government left." The left-wing politician has already campaigned for referendums for individual EU contracts and the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The German Chancellor has come under increasing pressure to hold an EU Referendum ever since Britain voted to leave the bloc two weeks ago. But this is the first time anybody from the left has called for the vote. Far right figures in the Alternative for Germany party promised to call their own vote if they clutch power in the country's general election in autumn next year. A party spokesman branded Brussels a "bureaucracy monster", before adding: "Next year the AfD will enter the German parliament and Dexit will be top on our agenda".

As many Alliance members become increasingly nervous over Russia’s incursions into neighboring territories and demand a harsher tone with Moscow, powerful voices in Berlin have pushed in the opposite direction. “What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further with loud saber-rattling and warmongering,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Germany’s Bild last month. “Anyone who believes that a symbolic tank parade on the Alliance’s Eastern frontier will create security is mistaken.”

As NATO leaders convene in Warsaw this weekend for a summit to debate the Alliance’s stance on Russia, Germany’s increasingly dovish position is frustrating efforts to present a united front.

While Western sanctions and efforts to bolster NATO’s presence in the Baltics and Poland enjoy support across most of Europe, in Germany the measures are the subject of constant criticism at the highest levels of government. Given Germany’s political clout in Europe and status as a pillar of NATO, its internal squabbling on Russia has unnerved many of the countries that are counting on its help.

Steinmeier’s comments came at the conclusion of a 10-day NATO military exercise in Poland, the largest such maneuver ever staged by the Alliance. Though Steinmeier didn’t specifically criticize the exercise, his comments were widely interpreted as a broadside against it — an impression his ministry did little to counter. “Such developments lead to uncontrollable situations, all the way up to war,” Gernot Erler, a Steinmeier deputy and the government’s point man on Russia, warned a few days later.

This UN-LGBT Enforcer will travel the world imposing the sexual revolution on peoples and churches and countries who do not want it. It will be under the guise of protecting LGBT people from discrimination. But that is a lie. The purpose will be aimed at anyone who believes in traditional sexual morality and to stamp out that belief.

The New United Nations LGBT Enforcer will determine, without a doubt, that your religious beliefs are nothing more than hate. The new UN-LGBT Enforcer will come with the might and muscle of the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States and with the power to enforce this radical new belief.

Excerpts from the Pope’s speech:

“I know that you are gathered in Munich, Bavaria, from many Movements and Groups, for your meeting called “Encounter – Reconciliation – Future”. You are right. It is time to get together, to face the problems of our day with a true European spirit. Apart from some visible walls, other invisible walls are being strengthened which tend to divide our continent. These walls are being built in people’s hearts. They are walls made of fear and aggression, a failure to understand people of different backgrounds or faith. They are walls of political and economic selfishness, without respect for the life and dignity of every person.

Europe finds itself in a complex and highly mobile world, which is ever more globalised and therefore ever less Eurocentric. If we are aware of these momentous issues, then we must have the courage to say: we need change! Europe is called to reflect and to ask itself whether its immense heritage, so permeated with Christianity, belongs in a museum or is still able to inspire culture and to offer its treasures to the whole of humankind.

Europe’s history is an ongoing encounter between Heaven and earth. Heaven indicates openness to the Transcendent, to God, which has always been characteristic of European people. Earth represents their practical and concrete ability to address situations and problems.

Together for Europe? Today this is more than ever necessary. In a Europe made up of many nations, you bear witness to the fact that we are children of one Father and brothers and sisters to one another. You are a precious seed of hope, so that Europe can rediscover its vocation to contribute to the unity of all."

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was interviewed last year by Thomas Roberts of MSNBC. Mr. Roberts openly engages in homosexual acts and wedded his homosexual paramour in 2012. Pelosi boasted of having brought her grandchildren to watch when she received an award from the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. She told Roberts she wanted the children to know that marriage between two men or two women was consistent with Catholic teaching. Of course, she is absolutely and unquestionably wrong about that claim.

I know that using words as heresy in an age of political correctness - and in the face of a growing syncretism within segments of what still calls itself Christianity - may be considered controversial or inappropriate for civil discourse. However, I write as a concerned Catholic Christian who works with other Christians, across confessional lines.

I am regularly asked by Christians of other traditions, churches and communities, how someone like Nancy Pelosi can continue to say such things in public and actually claim it is the teaching of the Catholic Church, without facing any repercussions from the leadership of the Catholic Church. In the past, I have written about Pelosi's fundamental error concerning the dignity of every human life and her open and notorious rejection of the teaching of the Catholic Church on the fundamental Right to Life. I have also engaged her on the proper understanding and formation of conscience.

I accused her of scandal, "For decades, Nancy Pelosi has enacted and vocally defended laws that have led to the destruction of millions of innocent human beings by procured abortion, while claiming to be a "devout Catholic." She even received the top award from Planned Parenthood, named after racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger. This is the very epitome of scandal."

Finally, I made this assertion, "It is one thing for someone to claim to be a Catholic and openly dissent from the Church. When that person is an influential leader and does so in such a public manner, however, she is committing what the Catholic Catechism calls a "grave offense which may lead others into spiritual death"."

It is time to take the verbal gloves off once again - especially, as the 2016 election campaign begins in the United States of America.

The sniper attack on police broke out at around 8.45pm while hundreds of people gathered to protest after police shot dead two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban St Paul, Minnesota. Mayor Mike Rawlings said one member of the public was also wounded in the gunfire. The attack was one of the worst mass shootings of police in the USA's history. The identities of the suspects are not yet known but police said the ambush appeared carefully planned and executed. Police chief Brown said the snipers fired "ambush style" upon the officers.

Three suspected snipers have been arrested and a fourth, who told police negotiators he intended to hurt more law enforcement officials, has been killed.The suspect told police "the end is coming" and that more police were going to be hurt and killed. Brown said the suspect also told police "there are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown". One woman was taken into custody in the parking garage where the standoff occurred.

The use of force by police against African-Americans in cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore and New York has sparked periodic and sometimes violent protests in the past two years and has spawned the Black Lives Matter movement. Anger has intensified when the officers involved in such incidents have been acquitted of charges or not charged at all.

The first sign that things were unravelling was when American investment bank Bear Stearns prevented investors taking money out of two mortgage-related hedge funds in the summer of 2007. Eventually, both were liquidated.

At the time, the move seemed largely inconsequential to the wider world but within weeks BNP Paribas had taken similar action over three funds holding American mortgage-backed securities. The events effectively meant the financial markets’ pricing system was broken and as a result markets went into freefall. Share prices crashed and the interbank lending market dried up overnight, triggering widespread investor panic. Within days, Northern Rock, the first UK lender to embrace mortgage securitisation, called the FSA to say it had a liquidity problem. The biggest financial crisis for nearly a century was under way.

Almost nine years since that fateful day, and the ghost of Bear Stearns is stalking the Square Mile again after the lockdown of three of the UK’s biggest property funds. Investors have been spooked once again after insurance giants Standard Life, Aviva and M&G, froze redemptions in their retail property funds.

Meanwhile, the problems for the biggest banks in Europe just continue to mount. At one point on Wednesday Credit Suisse hit an all-time record low, and German banking giant Deutsche Bank closed the day at an all-time record closing low of 12.93. Overall, Europe’s Stoxx 600 Bank Index closed at the lowest level in almost five years. What we are watching is a full-blown financial meltdown in Europe, but because it is not personally affecting them yet, most Americans are not paying any attention to it.

Of course this is likely only just the beginning. There are some analysts that are suggesting that the British pound could eventually hit parity with the US dollar at some point. We are seeing seismic shifts on the foreign exchange market right now, and this is going to affect trillions of dollars worth of currency-related derivatives. It will be exceedingly interesting to see how all of this plays out.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank continues to get absolutely hammered. If the biggest and most important bank in Germany is not completely imploding, then why does the stock price continue to crash time after time? Since the start of 2016, the value of Deutsche Bank has fallen by half, and many have pointed out that the trajectory that it is on is very, very similar to Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Smith writes: “The reality is there is no avenue left for advocacy, grievances or redress in a system dominated by global corporations. The castle on the hill doesn’t exist; it is diffused all over the planet, and well protected by state minions controlled by neofeudal corporate interests. Do you really think it’s mere coincidence that small business growth has imploded in the era of corporate dominance?

As I explained yesterday in Governments Change, the Corporatocracy Endures, central banks dropping interest rates to near-zero for financiers and corporations sealed corporate dominance of finance and governance. There are few opportunities for small businesses when the financial and political structures serve neofeudal corporate interests. Corporate power destroys democracy. That is the heart of neofeudalism.”

That’s the stunning discovery revealed in a series of direct messages between three activists.

On Friday, June 10, 2016, someone hacked into the Twitter account of #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) leader and former Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay McKesson. McKesson later confirmed the hack to The Baltimore Sun.

On June 11, 2016, a Twitterer who calls himself The Saint (@TheSaintNegro) tweeted a direct-message conversation on June 10 between McKesson and another BLM leader Johnetta Elzie (Netta), in which the two discussed talking with Attorney General Loretta Lynch about plans to bring on martial law by causing chaos at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, so as to keep Obama in office.

The FBI recommended on Tuesday no charges be brought against Hillary Clinton, despite the confirmation the e-mails she used via an insecure server contained classified data. However, FBI Director James Comey called the Democratic presidential hopeful "extremely careless" for the way she handled confidential information.

RT: “The FBI calls it 'extreme carelessness' on Hillary Clinton's part: 110 e-mails contained classified information at the time they were sent or received. Why is the FBI not recommending charges against Hillary Clinton?”

Peter Van Buren: “This is the question that is now on the minds and the lips of pretty much all American citizens. This decision by the FBI is without precedent. Hillary Clinton, by the FBI’s statement, transmitted 110 classified emails over an unclassified system. The system was created by her for her own purposes. Those 110 emails could not have been moved electronically to her system from a classified system and thus had to be retyped by someone.

This is obvious intent, this is obvious transmission of classified materials, it is obviously in violation of national security laws. Yet, the FBI recommends no prosecution. The FBI has prosecuted a number of government officials for far lesser infractions and leaves us literally speechless here in the US about how this could possibly be justified.”

Thousands of masked protesters and police fought running street battles in France this week, with police using water cannon to quell rioters who hurled projectiles at them and destroyed storefronts, joining the millions of French citizens who have protested against new anti-worker laws that are designed to protect and enrich a wealthy elite at the expense of ordinary people.

The protesters in Paris represent all working class people united, mobilized, and resisting the greed of globalist elites. Police involved are violently fighting against the people and protecting the interests of the ruling class.

However as the government, police and mainstream media continue to suppress this important movement’s progress, the people continue to rise up. Western mainstream media continues to suppress information regarding the scale and intensity of the revolution taking place on French streets.

The passport-free Schengen area - which the UK is not part of - has been blamed on allowing terrorists, people traffickers and economic migrants to travel freely across the continent. An impressive 483 MEPs voted to bring in the new plans this autumn, while 181 voted against and 48 abstained.

The re-introduction of border controls is bizarrely being trumpeted as a victory for the EU, despite the Schengen agreement being seen as one of the bloc’s success stories.

EU rapporteur, Artis Pabrics, said: "The European Border and Coast Guard Regulation will ensure that the EU external borders are safer and better managed. This is not a silver bullet that can solve the migration crisis that the EU is facing today or fully restore trust in the Schengen area, but it is very much needed first step.”