The post-war order is already under existential threat from a revanchiste Russia. State authority has collapsed along an arc of slaughter through the Middle East and North Africa, while an authoritarian neo-Ottoman Turkey is slipping from the Western camp.

To lose Greece in these circumstances - and to lose it badly - would be an earthquake. Yet that is exactly what Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras evoked in a blistering outburst in Le Monde, more or less threatening an economic and strategic rejection of the West if the creditor powers continue to make “absurd demands”.

The chorus of warnings from EMU leaders that Grexit would be ruinous for the Greeks is a negotiating ploy, or mere cant. Each of the sweeping claims made by EMU propagandists over the last twenty years has turned out to be untrue. The euro did not enhance growth, or bring about convergence, or displace the dollar as the world's reserve currency, or bind EMU states together in spirit, and refuseniks such as Britain, Sweden, and Denmark did not pay a price for staying out.

To the extent that they believe their mantra on Greece, they risk misjudging the political mood. It leads them to suppose that Syriza must be bluffing. Costas Lapavitsas, a Syriza MP and an economics professor at London University, thinks the new drachma would plunge by 50 percent against the euro before rebounding and stabilising at 20 percent below current levels. The trauma would be over within six months. “Greece would be growing at a 5 percent rate in a year and it would continue for five years,” he said.

“Have you ever looked at the nasty toxic ingredients inside most sunscreens? The irony is that we are using a toxic skin product to protect our skin that is cancerous because of toxicity. Organic alternatives exist that are much healthier. Skin cancer is an inside job primarily, not an outside job (protection from the sun). The whole system/body supports cancer, not just the skin.

When we look deeper and we ask if we have good health practices and good emotional health, what is the honest answer? The key point here is that cancer is really an “inside job.” Another key point is that the constitutional health of the “whole body” supports the cancer. Thirdly, that there is frequently an “emotional” component to cancer.

With this correct understanding, it’s much easier to recognize that the sunscreen commercials are only a smokescreen for the true causes of skin cancer. The skin is one of the major detoxification organs of the body along with the liver and GI tract. When the liver becomes overloaded with toxins, they are sometimes excreted through the skin. A congested liver and/or toxic colon will always put more of a burden on the skin to slough off more waste products than its fair share.

Therefore, it is often an individual’s regular diet which contributes to the greatest degree to the various types of cancer. Of course, environmental exposures and stresses can have considerable impact as well, over-exposure to the sun being one of them. However, it is much more likely that the exposure to toxic chemicals and other pollutants, especially those put on the skin and ingested through the diet, will have a more significant impact on the development of skin cancers. This is why many are wondering if sunscreen causes cancer.

Such a juggling act is often beyond the capacity of today’s political and diplomatic classes, though. We find ourselves yearning for statesmen (and women) with vision to appear. And this vision needs to be broader than those cooked up on a daily basis by whichever staffer is in charge of the political agenda, and one which goes beyond the tinted glass of the official car or the gates of Downing Street, the Élysée Palace or Moncloa. In this globalised world, one great irony is that, so far, it produces leaders with domestically minded, parochial perspectives or even, in some cases, plain nationalists.

With time running out, and looking to draw a line under months of acrimonious negotiations, the creditors have effectively come up with a take-it-or-leave-it offer. However, Tsipras has produced a plan of his own and said he intended to discuss this document in Brussels, calling on euro zone partners to show some "realism" and urging a deal that would let Greece escape from "economic asphyxiation".

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said an initial look at Greece's reform suggestions indicated that talks aimed at securing an aid-for-reforms deal will take time. "I have no information that anything decisive has changed in terms of substance," he said at an event in Berlin.

Sounding more upbeat and conciliatory than Germany, France suggested that an agreement was within reach. "We are a few days or hours away from a possible deal on Greece," French President Francois Hollande told a conference organized by the Paris-based OECD think tank.

“Israel has moved some offices to occupied Jerusalem and has been arresting Palestinians in groups. Such developments and violations of Palestinian human rights prove its flagrant attempts to Judaize the holy city through accelerating the pace of settlements,” said a statement from the Saudi Council of Ministers, which is led by Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul-Aziz. The statement was reported in Middle Eastern newspapers Tuesday. A response from Israel was not immediately made public.

The Saudi information and culture minister, Adel Al-Tarifi, said Israeli policies in Jerusalem "amount to human rights violations," reported the Middle East Monitor. He also added: "They are flagrant attempts carried out by the occupation authorities aiming at Judaising the City of Jerusalem throughout accelerating settlement and moving government offices to the city based on Plan 2020."

Jerusalem's Old City, founded around 4,000 BC, is divided between Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian quarters.

The editor in chief of The Lancet, Richard Horton, wrote last month:

“Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”

“As one participant put it, 'poor methods get results'. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity [ie pervasiveness within the scientific culture] of bad research behaviour is alarming."

Similarly, the editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Marcia Angell, wrote in 2009:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” Dr Angell skewers drug companies, university medical departments, and medical groups which set the criteria for diagnosis and treatment as being rotten with corruption and conflicts of interest.

Postscript: Corruption is not limited to the medical or scientific fields. Instead, corruption has become systemic throughout every profession … and is so pervasive that it is destroying the very fabric of America.

Airport screeners, who are employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), did not detect banned weapons in 67 of 70 tests at dozens of airports. In one test, the network said an undercover agent was stopped when he set off an alarm at a checkpoint but that TSA screeners then failed to find a fake explosive device taped to his back when they patted him down.

Jeh Johnson, the US Homeland Secretary, said on Monday that he takes the findings "very seriously", and that he had directed the TSA to revise airport security procedures, retrain officers and retest screening equipment in airports across the US. He also reassigned the acting administrator for the TSA following the report.

Suffice to say, if a significant percentage of people ever actually moved their money into physical cash, it could very quickly become a systemic problem. Indeed, this is precisely what caused the 2008 meltdown, when nearly 24% of the assets in Money Market funds were liquidated in the course of four weeks. The ensuing liquidity crush nearly imploded the system. Because of this, Central Banks and the regulators have declared a War on Cash in an effort to stop people trying to get their money out of the system.

One policy they are considering is to put a carry tax on physical cash meaning that your dollar bills would gradually depreciate once they were taken out of the bank. Another idea is to do away with actual physical cash completely. Perhaps the most concerning is the fact that should a “systemically important” financial entity go bust, any deposits above $250,000 located therein could be converted to equity… at which point if the company’s shares [fall], your wealth evaporates.

So if the bank then fails (meaning its shares fall)… so does your deposit.

Let’s run through this.

Let’s say ABC bank fails in the US. ABC bank is too big for the FDIC to make fold. So…

1) The FDIC takes over the bank.

2) The bank’s managers are forced out.

3) The bank’s debts and liabilities are converted into equity or the bank’s stock. And yes, your deposits are considered a “liability” for the bank.

4) Whatever happens to the bank’s stock, affects your wealth. If the bank’s stock falls at this point because everyone has figured out the bank is in major trouble… your wealth falls too.

This is precisely what has happened in Spain during the 2012 banking crisis over there. And it is perfectly legal in the US courtesy of a clause in the Dodd-Frank bill. This is just the start of a much larger strategy of declaring War on Cash.

Of the provinces affected by the dry spell, almost half or 19 are on the southern island of Mindanao while 10 are in the central part of the country, said the PAGASA report. The rest or 14 provinces are on the main island of Luzon. The Philippines has 81 provinces.

In the central province of Cebu, the latest on the list of calamity areas, the office of the provincial agriculturist said at least 170 hectares of corn, rice, banana and vegetables in two cities and two towns were badly affected by the drought, The Freeman newspaper said. Australia's ABC News reported last week that eight Philippine provinces severely affected by the drought had been placed under the state of calamity.

Writing for Le Monde in a tone of furious defiance after the latest set of talks reached an impasse, Mr Tsipras said the eurozone's dominant players were by degrees bringing about the "complete abolition of democracy in Europe" and were ushering in a technocratic monstrosity with powers to subjugate states that refuse to accept the "doctrines of extreme neoliberalism".

"For those countries that refuse to bow to the new authority, the solution will be simple: Harsh punishment. Judging from the present circumstances, it appears that this new European power is being constructed, with Greece being the first victim," he said.

The Greek leader, head of the radical-Left Syriza government, issued a stark warning that his country will not submit to these demands and will instead take action "to entirely transform the economic and political balances throughout the West." "If some, however, think or want to believe that this decision concerns only Greece, they are making a grave mistake."