To put this amount in perspective, the US spent more on its military than the next six nations combined, with China coming in second at $215 billion, followed by Saudi Arabia at $87 billion, Russia at $66 billion, with the United Kingdom, India and France spending roughly $50 billion each on defense expenses.

The sheer enormity of the sums being given to the military-industrial complex is enough to boggle the mind. Think for a moment how else that $600 billion could be spent to actually assist in creating growth rather than death.

Consider that in January 2015, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found there were 564,708 homeless people on a given night in the United States – the government could actually purchase a $1 million dollar home for each individual homeless person in the US and still have money left over.

But if anyone is suffering from ‘political amnesia’ it is the EU grandees and their allies in the British establishment. As a journalist and author who has studied in detail both the foundation of the European Union and the Nazis’ plans for post-war economic domination, and who has reported from all over Europe for more than 20 years, I believe that Johnson’s reference to Hitler was not only correct, but absolutely necessary.

The Nazis, like Napoleon, whom Johnson also referred to, are part of a historical continuum of European empire-building. It is a story that goes back to the original Roman empire, through Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire in the ninth century, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and its Ottoman rival, the Third Reich, the Soviet Bloc in the east of the continent and today’s European Union.

And Johnson is being smeared. He had deliberately NOT drawn parallels between the methods and aims of the EU and those of the Nazis. Of course the EU is not fighting a race war or organising mass exterminations. There are no parallels to be drawn between the way Brussels carries out its business and the Nazi approach in wartime Berlin.

What Johnson did do was to make an apt and timely historical observation about diverse attempts to unify Europe that have taken place over the centuries. Nazi Germany, far from being a subject to gloss over in any debate on the EU, is one that has to be scrutinised. For many senior figures in the Third Reich wanted economic union in Europe - and it is incumbent on us to examine whether their hopes actually came to fruition.

'The uncomfortable - and usually unspoken - truth is that the parallels between the plans of the Nazi leadership for the post-war European economy and the subsequent process of European monetary and economic integration are real'.

Postwar Britain famously lost an empire but couldn’t find a role; now, Germany has acquired an empire of sorts but can’t work out how to run it. All of Europe’s problems — the flood of Syrian refugees, the euro crisis, Vladimir Putin’s belligerence, the euro zone’s anemic growth, Eastern Europe’s drift toward rampant nationalism, Brexit — keep landing in Angela Merkel’s lap. Germany’s chancellor has usually found some way to cope, most obviously by kicking each problem down the autobahn. But she lacks the power (and too often the inclination) to lead Europe, while her partners, even when they don’t obstruct her, do very little to help. So the problems drift, and frustration in Berlin mounts.

The overriding worry is that a vicious cycle has begun: As Germany gets ever more frustrated with Europe’s inability to change; it gets ever less likely to lead, so the change it wants becomes ever less likely to happen. In a strange way, Brexit might alter this dynamic. Merkel is desperate to keep Britain within Europe because she sees David Cameron, for all his Little Englander elements, as a voice for reform.

Yet if Britain were to opt to leave and other countries threatened to hold referendums, then even the cautious Merkel might be forced to seize the moment and bully reforms through Brussels to create a more cohesive, modern euro zone with a deeper single market. Hence an irony for Johnson and his fellow Brexiters: The dominant Germany they fear is more likely to come into being if Britain votes to leave the union.

Countries are just waking up to the most serious global food crisis of the last 25 years. Caused by the strongest El Niño weather event since 1982, droughts and heatwaves have ravaged much of India, Latin America and parts of south-east Asia. But the worst effects of this natural phenomenon, which begins with waters warming in the equatorial Pacific, are to be found in southern Africa. A second consecutive year without rain now threatens catastrophe for some of the poorest people in the world.

Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Madagascar, Angola and Swaziland have already declared national emergencies or disasters, as have seven of South Africa’s nine provinces. Other countries, including Botswana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have also been badly hit. President Robert Mugabe has appealed for $1.5 billion to buy food for Zimbabwe and Malawi is expected to declare that more than 8 million people, or half the country, will need food aid by November.

Politicians may talk of going on to the world market to buy a million tonnes of maize, but Ushiyama [head of the UN World Food Program in Malawi] is unsure where it will come from. There is usually enough food in the region, but South Africa, which usually exports a million tonnes of food a year, will need to import 3.5 million tonnes this year. Only Zambia may have enough food to export and it has imposed restrictions, she said.

Finding the cash to feed possibly 50 million people for eight or more months is the biggest problem of all, says the UN, because Africa’s slow-burn crisis must compete with Middle East wars, refugees and natural disasters for attention. According to the UN, which is holding an unprecedented humanitarian summit this week in Istanbul, 125 million people worldwide need long-term assistance and a further 60 million have been forced from their homes by war, violence and disaster.

Instead of droughts, La Niña usually brings heavier monsoon rains in south-east Asia and much cooler and wetter conditions in southern Africa. “We pray hard for rain and then we must pray harder that it stops. Is there no end of extreme weather?” said Malawian villager Richard Kapenda.

This is not science fiction: “By delivering synthetic genes into the muscles of the [experimental] monkeys, the scientists are essentially re-engineering the animals to resist disease.” “’The sky’s the limit,’ said Michael Farzan, an immunologist at Scripps and lead author of the new study.”

“The first human trial based on this strategy — called immunoprophylaxis by gene transfer, or IGT — is underway, and several new ones are planned.” “IGT is altogether different from traditional vaccination. It is instead a form of gene therapy. Scientists isolate the genes that produce powerful antibodies against certain diseases and then synthesize artificial versions. The genes are placed into viruses and injected into human tissue, usually muscle.”

Here is the punchline: “The viruses invade human cells with their DNA payloads, and the synthetic gene is incorporated into the recipient’s own DNA. If all goes well, the new genes instruct the cells to begin manufacturing powerful antibodies.”

Read that again: “the synthetic gene is incorporated into the recipient’s own DNA.” Alteration of the human genetic makeup. Permanent alteration.

On a climbing holiday in Scotland, it was almost 24 hours before she emerged into clear mobile phone range to be told of the apparent crisis engulfing her organisation after details of the controversial new policy were first reported in a Sunday newspaper. In the days since, her phone has been making up for lost time as a petition demanding a rethink has swollen to 35,000 signatures, hundreds of midwives signed a public letter of protest and MPs openly attacked the policy change.

Critics accused her of “riding roughshod” over midwives’ views by signing them up to an “abhorrent” and “radical” campaign which, they say, goes against the most basic principles behind a profession dedicated to helping bring new life into the world.

The furore erupted after the organisation published a new policy document on abortion and, crucially, drew attention to Professor Warwick’s earlier decision to sign the RCM up for a campaign led by Britain’s biggest abortion provider BPAS calling for complete decriminalisation of the procedure. Such a move would sweep away the 1967 Abortion Act, with its 24-week limit on performing terminations, its legal requirement for the approval of two doctors and the need for legal criteria to justify ending a pregnancy.

In a measure called Senate Concurrent Resolution 43, Oklahoma lawmakers accused the Obama administration of overreaching its authority by issuing a directive last week stating that US schools risk losing federal funding if they don’t allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. The measure states that the order “clearly and unequivocally exceeds the authority of the federal government.”

It also calls on US House representatives from Oklahoma “to file articles of impeachment against the President of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, the Secretary of Education, and any other federal official liable to impeachment who has exceeded his or her constitutional authority.”

The lawmakers argue that the Constitution does not give the executive branch authority over public school systems or the use of their restrooms or shower facilities. State Representative John Bennett, who wrote the resolution, said the federal government’s direction was “biblically wrong.” “Our phones and emails are being flooded by citizens who are enraged by this president’s attempt to use our children as pawns in a liberal agenda,” he said in a statement. “This directive is biblically wrong, a violation of our state’s sovereignty and it is a serious public safety issue. We are going to do everything we can to protect our women and children.” Even if the bill passes, however, impeachment would be unlikely, as the measure is non-binding, as reported by Reuters.

Gosling says the EU is trying to unify Europe in an attempt to create a “United States of Europe,” which is controlled from Brussels with very little democratic accountability. He says no one has elected the people who are running Brussels, adding that, “It is hardly surprising [that] they are working in the interest of big business, not in the interest of ordinary voters around the continent.”

“What is going on in Europe at the moment is that people are getting fed up with what is going on in Brussels and they do not see that it is something that is working for them. So, in a way it is quite natural that the people want to secede,” he says. The analyst further says that the “transatlantic big businesses” are influencing policy in the EU exactly the same way they are doing in the United States.

“What we see today is Brussels and the massive EU bureaucracy, which really does not have much in the way of real democratic accountability... The MEPs that are elected, all they can do is kind of put their finger in the dyke with the legislation, which is drawn up by big business,” he says. Cartwright, for his part, believes the United States wants the UK to remain in the EU so that it would be its “Trojan horse” on foreign policy.

This is all stored, and can easily be used to create a record of everywhere your car has been. Coupled with cellphone and WiFi data being collected along with its own geodata, and tied to things like tracked credit card activity, emails and the now-ubiquitous public surveillance cameras, it is very, very easy for law enforcement to know where you are, where you have been and have a pretty good idea of what you were doing. Run that same process for lots and lots of people, and you can also tell who spent time with whom.

Expand that process nationwide and you truly have a police state. How to do that? Contact a private company called Vigilant Solutions. They collect license plate scanning information from multiple police departments as well as their own network of private plate scanners and facial recognition/facial cataloging technology and then sell it in database form to law enforcement.

The Vigilant database is massive, with over 2.2 billion location data points, and it is growing by almost a million data points per day. The database means, for example, that the New York police can now monitor you and your car whether you live in New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, or elsewhere.

The database also boasts a full suite of data analytics tools which allow police officers to track cars historically or in real time, conduct a virtual stakeout, figure out which cars are commonly seen in close proximity to each other, and predict likely locations to find a car. Data, once collected, can exist forever. Whatever it is being used for now, it will also be available for other uses in the future, enhanced by new exploitive technology.

The doctor, not wanting to be called a bigot, proceeds to give the man a fake gynecological exam, playing into his delusional distortions about his own biology and arguably worsening his mental disconnect with his physical self.

This is what transgenderism and "biological subjectivism" has come to in America today... a politically correct demand that everyone agree to participate in the mental distortions of a few individuals who suffer from a psychological disconnect from their biological realities. Such ideologies stand in complete contradiction to the known science on biology and physical reality, and sadly, this mental distortion is now being thrust onto children as part of a sick, demented political agenda to appease the most lunatic fringe elements of the political spectrum.

That agenda now demands that public schools be turned into transgender child factories, churning out confused, suicidal children who are physically and chemically mutilated by a society that applauds them for denying their biological reality. This entire agenda, now being waged against the children of America by politically motivated cultural arsonists, is nothing less than a crime against children.

The science is clear: The biology of gender is a physical reality that's not subject to "impersonation".

The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asserting the US Government's authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares - and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well. So perhaps precious metals investors shouldn't feel too paranoid. Confiscation has never seemed to GATA to be a serious or imminent threat.

While the US Government in 1933 did demand the exchange of circulating government-issued coins for paper money (proceeding to devalue the paper money after the gold was surrendered), that gold then was a huge part of the country's money supply, and amid the national economic collapse at that time the government could make a plausible complaint against "hoarding." There are no such circumstances today, gold no longer being in general circulation as currency. (Yes, we're working on that.)

But of course lately the arrogance and imperiousness of the US government has far exceeded even the paranoia of precious metals investors. Certainly capital controls may be imposed in the United States in the next currency crisis, and it's not far from capital controls to even more brutal interventions in the economy.