In the end, the opposition was as much legal as it was political – indeed diplomats all across Europe have been at pains to stress that they wanted to help the UK de-incentivise our benefits system and remove labour market distortions, but just not that way. There were other methods available – many of which will now be considered – but as recently as two weeks ago Mr Cameron was still demanding the right for Britain to breach the core European principle of equal treatment for all nationalities doing the same job.

Mr Cameron was apparently calculating that a Europe visibly on its knees over the single currency, migration and terrorism would trade away this core principle, rather than risk a British exit and a further unravelling. That was a fundamental miscalculation. ‘No’ said Donald Tusk, the European Council president; ‘No’ said Mark Rutte, the Dutch PM and – when he telephoned to complain and ask for a ruling – ‘no’ said Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor.

On the upside, Mr Cameron’s vault-face now opens the door to a full agreement in February followed by referendum in June that will - one way or the other - end the corrosive uncertainty that currently hangs over Britain’s position in Europe, and indeed, the world. So now, at a dinner with his fellow European leaders in Brussels on Thursday night, the Prime Minister will lay out his vision for a flexible, a la carte Europe that - he will argue – simply reflects today’s ground-realities, not tomorrow’s European pipe-dream.

The success of the Front National in last Sunday’s first round of the French regional elections was not just down to anger at the government’s handling of Islamic extremism. It was also because of disillusion with the old French political class over what is seen as the Brussels-imposed austerity. In truth, France’s economic morass has less to do with Brussels than with the insane socialist policies of François Hollande – though France would greatly benefit from leaving the euro, reinstituting the franc, and devaluing to put its economy back on track. However, Marine Le Pen’s souverainiste message – promising to regain French sovereignty – has proved powerful.

The EU is also responsible for the open borders immigration policy that made it so easy for Islamic extremists to move back and forth from Belgium, and allows relatively easy passage of firearms across the continent. To be fair to the EU, though, France’s historic neglect and ill-treatment of its Muslim population has contributed greatly to tensions in that community. But the EU has scarcely made things better.

On this side of the Channel, things are going so badly with the alleged renegotiation – which has become the modern political equivalent of fairies at the bottom of the garden – that Mr Cameron’s friends are saying he may join the Brexit campaign. It is a thought that fills that campaign with horror, given the baggage Mr Cameron would bring with him, but it is highly unlikely it will ever happen. But if this “threat” was designed to shake our European partners into compliance with British wishes, it hasn’t worked.

Meanwhile, Mr Cameron must face the realities of his dismal relationship with Europe. There will be no deal on benefits, let alone on anything that really matters to the British public, such as border controls or sovereignty. The longer he postpones his referendum, the more chance that some other destructive, anti-democratic or ruinous aspect of EU policy will lead to Britain’s leaving Europe. But it no longer seems to be a question of whether Britain can survive outside the EU, as whether widespread public discontent with the anti-democratic EU will allow it to survive very long after a British exit.

A scheme pioneered by Mr Juncker’s office to address the influx by flying migrants by charter jets from Greece and Italy to new homes around the European Union has ground to a halt, moving just 184 people since it was launched in September, out of a target of 160,000. According to official figures, EU states have volunteered some 3,827 reception places for migrants, with some 156,000 left to find.

The feeble response is a source of embarrassment for the European Commission - and of quiet satisfaction to eastern European states which insisted the plans would not work and protested they were an unacceptable infringement of sovereignty. The relocation policy was announced in Mr Juncker’s ‘State of the Union’ address in September, and driven through the European Council by a majority vote against the wishes of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania.

Since then, several states – among them Austria, Estonia and Slovenia – have effectively boycotted the scheme by not making available places. The migration crisis is top of the agenda at this week’s European Council summit in Brussels, at which Britain’s renegotiation will also be discussed. Leaked papers hint at forcing migrants to take part in the scheme, saying progress has been "insufficient" and that leaders will discuss how they can “discourage refusal of registration”.

Leaders are due to agree to "implement relocation decisions more rapidly", and will consider whether the scheme should be expanded to evacuate migrants from other overwhelmed countries, such as Sweden. Some credit Mr Juncker with showing leadership by pushing the scheme through at a time of chaos. But many national diplomats point out that they repeatedly warned the complicated scheme was doomed to failure, because the majority of the refugees from the Middle East are intent on reaching only Germany, Sweden or Britain, and have no desire to be “relocated” to Tallinn, Poznan or Bucharest. Those that did agree to be moved, the argument goes, would be on the first coach to Frankfurt.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin said recently the Vatican was considering whether to ramp up security. He said: "The Vatican could be a target because of its religious significance. We are capable of increasing the level of security in the Vatican and the surrounding area. But we will not let ourselves be paralysed by fear." Rome has been the subject of a number of threatening terror films released by the extremists in recent weeks.

It is thought the focus on Rome, and specifically the Vatican City, may be in response to the Pope's recent condemnation of the deadly terror attacks in Paris, as well as its status of the capital of the Catholic world. The latest, and most ominous video, shows CGI ISIS tanks advancing on a crumbling Colosseum, promises a final battle between "believers" and "crusaders."

It also shows an eerie St Peter's Basilica, the papal enclave within the Vatican City, bathed in an orange light and accompanied by chilling music. The video's narrator then apparently claims that ISIS will take over Rome, destroying crucifixes and taking Christian women as slaves.

Robots are already being weaponized: In 2014, a South African company started selling drones that could shoot 80 pepper balls per second, and police in North Dakota have been cleared to use a type of drone that is armed with tear gas and Tasers. Police use of Tasers — they’re designed to be nonlethal but can trigger cardiac arrest — killed 540 Americans from 2001 to 2013, according to Amnesty International.

Right now, this technology requires an operator to remotely control the robots and the weapons. But autonomous weaponized robots are already being used by the Israeli military to patrol that nation’s borders, and a Texas company has created a drone to hover over private property and, without human instruction, fire a Taser dart to keep a potential intruder under shock until the authorities arrive. Imagine a convergence in technology that also gives these robots facial-recognition capability.

Given the right circumstances, such as a terrorist threat, these robots could be rolled out in large numbers to protect citizens. Connected to the cloud in order to work in tandem with other robots, they would be the perfect tools to ID and track large numbers of people from afar and from the air. The threat of future attacks would make these robots hard to put away again.

And don’t forget the problems with all computerized devices: They can be hacked and used against the authorities or innocent victims. They can be spoofed about their location and crash into buildings. And they have already been used to commit crimes like theft, snooping and drug smuggling.

We shouldn’t stifle the onset of new technologies that could help humanity, but we need a bill of human technological rights to ensure our individual freedoms. Otherwise, I am predicting a gradual erosion of human rights such as freedom of movement, privacy and even life.

Assange addressed the panel on security and surveillance hosted by RT in central Moscow on Thursday via videoconference from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has remained holed up for the last three years in order to avoid extradition to Sweden.

When offered a chance to comment on the session’s topic – “Security or Surveillance: Can the right to privacy and effective anti-terror security coexist in the digital age?” – the whistleblower asked the moderator, and host of The Big Picture Show on RT American, Thom Hartmann: “How long have you got, Tom?” implying he has a lot to say on the issue. But it was Assange’s only joke during the event, as his reply turned out to be gravely serious and in many respects depressing.

“In thinking about this issue I want to take quite a different position, perhaps, from what you would expect me to have taken… I think that we should understand that the game for privacy is gone. It’s gone. The mass surveillance is here to stay,” he said. Mass surveillance is already being implemented not only by major world powers, but also by some medium and small-sized countries, he added.

“The Five Eyes intelligence arrangement [of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US]… is so evasive in terms of mass surveillance of domestic and international telecommunications that while some experts can achieve practical privacy for themselves for limited number of operations… it’s gone for the rest of the populations,” the WikiLeaks founder stressed.

International terrorists are among those “experts” capable of making their communications invisible for security agencies, he added. Privacy “will not be coming back, short of a very regressive economic collapse, which reduces the technological capacity of civilization,” Assange said.

First of all, what proportion of the population is same-sex attracted? On page 8 of the booklet for teachers, it states very clearly that "10% of people are same-sex attracted". This is supported by Footnote 9, which refers the reader to a monograph, the 5th national survey of Australian secondary students and sexual health, published by the Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society at La Trobe University.

However, nowhere does the 10% statistic appear in the reference. So what is its source? On page 23, the La Trobe University survey states that "a proportion (6% overall: 8% boys, 4% girls) reported being attracted exclusively to people of the same sex". In addition, 4% (4% boys and 5% girls), were unsure about their sexual attraction. It appears that the 10% figure may have been reached by adding those who were exclusively attracted to those who were unsure.

The Safe Schools Coalition needs to explain how it got its figures so wrong. One explanation may be its highly unprofessional research methods. The “All Of Us” study guide says that the figures are based on "Australian and international research". This is nonsense. The two footnotes are just reports based on rough-and-ready surveys, not peer-reviewed journals.

Figures about the LGBT population are always going to be controversial. The Safe Schools Coalition could have used figures provided by the best-known LGBT think tank, the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School in California. It is “dedicated to conducting rigorous, independent research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy”. Its fact sheet, “How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender?” is freely available. The author, Gary J Gates, is a well-known American demographer specialising in LGBT issues whose work has been used in US Supreme Court cases.

Surprisingly, Gates’ figures are far, far lower than those cited in the “All Of Us” program: “An estimated 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender,” he writes. If Gates is correct, the “All Of Us” figure for same-sex attracted people is about 180% too high and for transgender people about 1200% too high.

The teen years are a turbulent time for children. What they need to survive and thrive is the truth, not the propaganda in the “All Of Us” program.

There are just 150 residents of the picturesque hamlet, while up to 200 men will be kept there at a time, in some cases for up to three weeks. Residents have posted flyers saying the move is “entirely disproportionate”. That is putting it mildly. Who on earth really thinks it is a good idea to house people from a totally different cultural background in a tiny village that will not be able to cope?

The problems that will arise are entirely predictable, not least because they have happened elsewhere including Germany where long-term residents have been turfed out of their homes to make way for incomers. This is a recipe for unrest.

A government’s first duty is to its own people, not migrants from other countries who know nothing about Britain and feel neither loyalty nor love for the UK. Immigration has already changed the face of Britain almost beyond recognition. If the Government doesn’t get a grip it will pay dearly at the ballot box.

According to a letter sent by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen last week, Washington is seeking a bigger military contribution from Berlin to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Der Spiegel reports.

A German Defense Ministry spokesman confirmed their receipt of the letter to the publication – and added that the US request is under consideration. No further details about the contents of the letter were provided.

Last week, Germany approved the sending of up to 1,200 military personnel to Syria and provided six Tornado reconnaissance jets and a frigate to protect the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. On Thursday the first batch of German troops – along with two jets and an aerial refueling plane – arrived at Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase. More are due to arrive in January.

Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party, junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, found it hard to approve the deployment of German soldiers to join the international military campaign against Islamic State (IS) in Syria. But Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told delegates at a party congress in Berlin on Thursday that Germany will have to get even more involved in international missions in the future.

“You can’t just comment on the foreign-policy actions of others,” Mr Steinmeier said in a speech. “Germany bears responsibility,” he said, adding, “That’s why we can’t evade it.”

The congress coincides with the start of one of the most dangerous missions in the history of the Bundeswehr, the German military formed in 1955. The first of two Tornado reconnaissance jets and an A400M troop transport aircraft flew off to support international combat missions against IS.

Before the dust had even settled, the official narrative was clear. ISIS was responsible. This was war, and France was going to escalate that war, both at home and abroad. A state of emergency was declared, road blocks, border controls and a curfew were imposed, freedom of assembly was restricted, and the military was deployed on the streets.

French President Francois Hollande soon announced that he intended to extend the state of emergency for three months (some are even saying it may be extended indefinitely), and to alter the French constitution. The state of emergency gives the police the power to detain people without trial, search without warrants and to block any website they see fit.

France's parliament has already voted to extend the country's state of emergency following the Paris attacks for three months, giving the police powers to keep people in their homes without trial, search the homes of people without a warrant from a judge and block any website deemed a problem. These powers are already being used! Activists have already been placed under house arrest, and not for crimes that they have been accused of actually committing, but pre-emptively!

In 2012 UN migration chief Peter Sutherland urged the EU to "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states. Such a proposition may sound absurd, unless you take into account that breaking down the national identity of a country makes it much easier to dissolve political boundaries and independence. And that's precisely what the technocrats in Brussels want.

Hollande has been one of the most outspoken voices in this push to hand over more power to a centralized European government, effectively stripping member states of any meaningful sovereignty. Give that European government a military, its own surveillance apparatus and public which is struggling financially, looking for someone to blame, and practically begging for war, and you have a recipe for the rise of overt fascism in Europe.

Rather than make empty promises to its citizens about better policies, the Scandinavian nation frequently rated as having the highest standard of living in the world is paying out money for asylum seekers to avert a lengthy bureaucratic wait and just leave instead.

As Fox News reports: A family with two children is eligible for up to $9,300 dollars – and free flights home, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration told the media outlet. More than 900 people reportedly have accepted. “Refugees thought that when they came to Norway they would get protection rather quickly,” the head of The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration’s return unit told local broadcaster NRK, The Local adds.

Instead, applications for family reunification can often take years, and an increasing number of refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Africa don’t want to wait. Norwegian leaders have been actively playing to the idea that refugees will simply not be accepted, and that more should not come.

As one of The Local‘s commenters said, it is a “good investment, considering the alternative, paying them and their families from cradle to grave for generations to come.” These socialist European havens “paradises” would disintegrate very quickly if they were overwhelmed with the costs of hundreds of thousands and millions of new refugees who are looking for assistance on every front.

Coupled with inflation, low interest rates have destroyed any hope of bagging a return on cash. In fact, savers have actually been punished for their prudence with money stashed in accounts now worth LESS than it was in 2008.

Analysis by Hargreaves Lansdown shows that £10,000 kept in an instant access savings account over the past seven years would now be worth just £9,170 after inflation. Collectively savers have seen £150 billion wiped off their buying power.

Over the same time period, the same £10,000 would now be worth £16,430 if it had been kept in a UK share fund or £10,430 in the average UK home. Danny Cox, chartered financial planner at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Cash savers are now facing their eighth year of miserable interest rates with only the smallest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.”

HFCS is a highly-processed chemical sweetener used in many processed foods, including breads, cookies, candy, condiments, and soft drinks. HFCS extends the shelf life of products, and it is often cheaper than sugar, which are the main reasons why manufacturers like it. But HFCS has gotten a bad rep, considering the circumstantial evidence that links it to various metabolic diseases, so Big Food and the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) decided to get creative.

HFCS is sub-categorized based on its fructose content. The “standard” HFCS – HFCS 42 or HFCS 55 – contains either 42 or 55 percent fructose. The new term “fructose” is now being used when foods contain the ingredient previously called HFCS-90, which has 90 percent fructose.

Identifying HFCS-90 as “fructose” in the ingredients list gives food makers a green light to use statements such as “Contains No High Fructose Corn Syrup” or “No HFCS” on the product label, thus misleading buyers.

Paul: "I think Evangelical Zionism has something to do with it… they made a decision, they base it on a devout religious belief and conviction and they've been taught this in their churches and the preachers have taught them this and they feel they're as right about their policy as I feel about my interpretation of what Christ taught us. He was supposed to be the Prince of Peace, not - not advocating pre-emptive war!"

"But then others come in and join them, the people who want to protect oil, and military industrial complex… this concept of pre-emptive war, we become the aggressor; the 'Bush principle,' he does it in the name of Christian faith. It's a gross distortion from my viewpoint of what the Christian faith is all about…”