Just like Detroit, the city of Chicago is rapidly becoming a joke to the rest of the world, but a horribly corrupt political culture likely stands in the way of any type of major reform any time soon. And just like much of the rest of the nation, a spirit of violence and civil unrest is rising in Chicago. So far this year, the number of shootings in Chicago is up 50 percent compared to the same time period last year, and that was before we even got to Memorial Day weekend.

As of Sunday morning, at least 40 people had already been shot, and authorities were bracing for even more violence as the holiday weekend stretched on… The cries to fix what is wrong with Chicago are becoming increasingly desperate, but at this point the city is drowning in debt and is pretty much flat broke. So the options for doing anything about this growing crisis are quite limited.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are bitter rivals, seeing themselves as the leaders of Shia and Sunni Islam respectively. Officials from both countries have tried to negotiate arrangements for Iranians to perform the Hajj this year, but without success. The failure to reach agreement was because of “obstacles raised by the Saudis,” said Ali Jannati, the Iranian culture minister. The Iranian Hajj Organisation said: "Saudi Arabia is opposing the absolute right of Iranians to go on the Hajj and is blocking the path leading to Allah."

Last year, 60,000 Iranians travelled to Mecca. But a stampede caused the death of 2,300 pilgrims, including 464 Iranians, leading Tehran to accuse the kingdom of being unable or unwilling to manage the Hajj safely. Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with its regional neighbour in January after a mob stormed and looted the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran, retaliating for the execution of a prominent Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

“I don’t think it’s anti-Christian at all... It does poke some fun at aspects of the church or ways in which the church can develop and, well, we laugh at it,” 56-year-old Father Christopher Wilson of the All Saints' Parish Church told Boiko.

The idea came to Wilson when he decided to attract a new audience to his church, to help with donations for necessary building repair works, and decided to indulge in a spot of counter-programming. The worldwide controversy unleashed by Life Of Brian 37 years ago, would easily put recent brouhaha over Innocence of Muslims in the shade, and sparked public discussion comparable to Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons.

Despite being virtually banned by dozens of UK authorities, it was a huge hit in the country. Public showings were also forbidden in Norway and Ireland, as well as dozens of more conservative countries.

Of course this particular date was chosen because it corresponds closely to “666” and the Mark of the Beast that we read about in the Book of Revelation, and therefore this little group of Satanists will receive some unusual media attention this week. A lot of people are going to get upset about this, and that is quite understandable.

But in the end, we have got to realize that we are not a Christian nation any longer and we have not been one for a very long time. Today, there are a multitude of religious organizations vying for our attention, and Bible-believing Christians are just one of them. I like what Paul McGuire had to say on this matter…

“Currently in America there is intense competition among various belief systems, religions, philosophies, and ideologies. This competition is expressed openly as different groups and faiths seek to promote their belief systems and win converts to their religion or cause. We live in a free market place of ideas, and various religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, Hinduism, Buddhism, Satanism, Wicca, and others are free to ‘evangelize,’ even though many of these religions would say that they do not believe in evangelism. Wicca, along with witchcraft and paganism, is currently the fastest growing religion in America. Islam is also a fast growing religion. Christianity, and specifically Evangelical Christianity, is declining faster than most people realize.”

The reason why so many of these other religions are winning in America is because Christianity is losing ground.

Jean-Claude Juncker isn't the kind of man who likes to be told to keep quiet. When it comes to defending the European Union, the Luxembourger doesn't usually hold his tongue for long. But when it comes to what could turn out to be the most important issue of his term in office - the threat of Britain's exit from the EU - the head of the powerful European Commission has been astonishingly quiet.

The reason is that Juncker had to promise British Prime Minister David Cameron that the EU executive branch would stay out of the Brexit debate. Officials in Brussels have a miserable reputation in Britain, and the last thing Cameron needs at the moment are EU commissioners promoting the union. Much to Juncker's chagrin, that also applies to the Commission president himself.

Juncker only managed to convince Cameron to give him a small loophole: If Brexit supporters have a clear lead in polls in the week prior to the June 23 referendum, the Commission president will be allowed to make his voice heard. That, of course, would be too late to significantly shift public opinion, but it would mean that Juncker could not be accused of having done nothing to prevent a Brexit. Under no circumstances does Juncker want to go down in history as the first Commission president to preside over a member state departing the EU.

The image put forward by the EU these days is not a strong one. On the contrary, fear appears to have the upper hand. Juncker's Commission, with its 30,000 civil servants, has nearly ground to a halt, with June 23 marked in red on staff calendars.

Mr Saviano, who wrote the best-selling exposés Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero, made the comments at the Hay Literary Festival. The 36-year-old has been living under police protection since publishing revelations about members of the Camorra, a powerful Neapolitan branch of the mafia, in 2006.

He told an audience at Hay-on-Wye: “If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth you might tell me well it’s Afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the South of Italy and I will tell you it’s the UK. It’s not the bureaucracy, it’s not the police, it’s not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital. 90 per cent of the owners of capital in London have their headquarters offshore.

“Jersey and the Cayman’s are the access gates to criminal capital in Europe and the UK is the country that allows it. That is why it is important, why it is so crucial, for me to be here today and to talk to you because I want to tell you, this is about you, this is about your life; this is about your government.”

“Over the last 200 years, fossil fuels have provided the route out of grinding poverty for many people in the world,” states the article. “This trend is certain to continue for at least the next 20 years based on the technologies of scale that are available today. A rapid decarbonization is simply impossible over the next 20 years unless the trend of a growing number who succeed to improve their lot is stalled by rich and middle class people downgrading their own standard of living.”

The article found current CO2 emissions aren’t falling rapidly enough to slow global warming largely because most public policy has focused exclusively on developing wind and solar power, which may actually increase emissions. Continued support for wind, solar and other forms of green energy like biofuel “represents total madness” as these energy systems don’t justify the massive costs of the subsidies required to support them.

“It is clear to me that every further step along the current pathway of deploying first-generation renewable energy is locking in immature and uneconomic systems at net loss to the world standard of living,” Kelly wrote in a press statement. “Humanity is owed a serious investigation of how we have gone so far with the decarbonization project without a serious challenge in terms of engineering reality.”

The article confirms previous criticism of environmental policies which state the total amount of energy created by solar and wind is relatively small, even though both systems have been heavily subsidized since at least the 1970s. In 2010, wind power alone received $5 billion in subsidies, swamping the $654 million oil and gas received. Solar and wind power get 326 and 69 times more in subsidies than coal, oil, and natural gas per amount of energy generated.

In 2015, solar and wind power accounted for only 0.6 and 4.7 percent of electricity generated in America, respectively, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Sigmar Gabriel, also the vice chancellor, told the RND group of regional papers that his Social Democratic Party "doesn't wish to be part of a bad deal", as he warned against a hastily negotiated agreement on the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). He said Merkel "was wrong to say, in the euphoria of (US President Barack) Obama's visit to Germany, that we will be able under all scenarios to conclude negotiations this year".

Washington and Brussels want the TTIP completed this year before Obama leaves office, but it has faced mounting opposition on both sides of the Atlantic. Gabriel, whose party is the junior partner in Merkel's coalition government, already said earlier this month that the deal "will fail" if the United States refuses to make concessions.

Opinion polls show that people in the eurozone's biggest economy are growing increasingly wary of the proposed pact despite Merkel's continued support. Some 70 percent of Germans polled this month said they believed the TTIP would bring "mostly disadvantages".

“Its purpose must be to implement the visions of both states, based on the border agreement of 1967 and the capital of the Palestinian state being eastern Jerusalem, so that both countries can live side by side, in safety, stability and peace – if Israel wishes to seek peace,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech at a meeting of foreign ministers at the Arab League.

Throughout the previous peace negotiations and to this day the Palestinian Authority insists that the West Bank must be a part of their sovereign nation, and that the presence of Israeli military control is a violation of their right to rule. While the United Nations calls the West Bank and Gaza Strip Israeli-occupied territories, Israel considers them disputed.

The idea of introducing NATO forces in the Middle East country has been voiced by Abbas before during the last peace negotiations. The original idea was for the IDF to remain in the Palestinian state for a transitional period of five years after which the Israeli forces could be replaced by NATO forces along with Palestinian Arab police and security units.

Tel Aviv argues that it keeps its IDF forces in West Bank to protect themselves from the perceived threat of “Palestinian terrorism.” To solidify their claims, in addition to military presence, Israel has been building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and on a number of occasions refusing to negotiate the status of Jerusalem.

On Saturday, Abbas presented conditions that will most likely be rejected by Israel. Besides insisting that East Jerusalem would be the capital of Palestine, Abbas also rejected the notion of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. “We have previously recognized the state of Israel but we will not accept or recognize the terms of a Jewish state. We demand a Palestinian state on Palestinian lands and we will not allow any Israeli presence inside Palestinian territory,” President Abbas said.

In America today anyone not politically protected can be declared “associated with terrorism” and taken out by a Hellfire missile from a drone on the basis of a list of human targets drawn up by the president’s advisers. Due process, guaranteed by the US Constitution, no longer exists in the United States of America. Neither does the constitutional prohibition against the government spying on citizens without just cause and a court warrant.

The First Amendment itself, whose importance was emphasized by our Founding Fathers by making it the First Amendment, is no longer protected by the corrupt Supreme Court. The Nine who comprise the Supreme Court, like the rest of the bought-and-paid-for-government, serve only the One Percent. Truth-tellers have become “an enemy of the state.” Whistleblowers are imprisoned despite their legal protection in US law.

The United States government has unaccountable power. Its power is not accountable to US statutory law, to international law, to the Congress, to the judiciary, to the American people, or to moral conscience. In the 21st century the war criminal US government has murdered, maimed, and dislocated millions of people based on lies and propaganda. Washington has destroyed seven countries in whole or part in order to enrich the American elite and comply with the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony.

Americans live in a propaganda-fabricated world in which a brutal police state is cloaked in nice words like “freedom and democracy.” “Freedom and democracy” is what Washington’s war machine brings with sanctions, bombs, no-fly zones, troops, and drones to countries that dare to cling to their independence from Washington’s hegemony.

Referring to the bravery of the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, who defended the Church against King Henry II in 1170, Nichols said: “We know that this relationship between the role and powers of the state on the one hand, and the role and commitment of the Church on the other, is never an easy one.”

He recalled the words of Pope Benedict’s address at Westminster Hall in 2010, that “religion is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to national conversation” and said the role of the faithful is “to defend those arenas of life in which true religion flourishes”. The cardinal said solutions to today’s challenges were to be found in working together with governments from a position of trust, but added that in doing so the Church must not lose its “specific Judeo-Christian sources of our strength and inspiration”.

Of course the Obama administration is doing all that it can to promote “alternative lifestyles” these days. To say that “things have changed” in the White House over the past couple of generations would be a massive understatement.

Just consider this parallel for a moment…

In May 1961, President John F Kennedy announced that we would put men on the moon.

In May 2016, Barack Obama announced that we would put men in women’s restrooms.

And while most of the focus has been on the bathrooms, many people have not even considered some of the other very disturbing implications of Obama’s recent move… The most offensive part of the new policy is that, under the Obama administration’s federal guidance:

• School districts must allow biological males and females to spend the night together in the same hotel room on field trips;

• Colleges must let men who say they are transgender be roommates with one or more women; and

• School officials cannot even tell those young women or their parents in advance that their new roommate is a man, without risking a federal lawsuit.

The plain wording of the Obama administration’s diktat is clear enough, yet it has not been reported, even by conservative news outlets. In the end, we need to face the reality that we are not a “good” nation. Evil is rising in literally thousands of different ways, and yet very few people are standing up for the truth. How bad do things have to get in America before people will finally be willing to stand up and do something about it?