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…”

“We managed to become a great nuclear power capable of defending the independence and national dignity of our homeland by mighty nuclear and hydrogen strikes,” leader Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying by the central news agency. He also said North Korea “has to continue with actively developing its military industry.”

The statement came as Kim Jong Un was on a tour inspecting an upgraded arms plant in Pyongyang on Thursday, according to TASS quoting the North Korean central news agency. So far it has not been confirmed that the country has in fact designed and created a hydrogen bomb. Indeed, the South Korean intelligence community and experts say North Korea is unlikely to have enough scientific know-how to design a H-bomb.

Indeed she did not. Objections also came from the far right as well as the left. Willy Wimmer, a member of the Bundestag for more than 30 years and once defense spokesman for Merkel’s own Christian Democratic Union party, but also noted for his anti-American and pro-Russian views, warned that the warheads gave “new attack options against Russia” and constituted “a conscious provocation of our Russian neighbors.”

Why, at a time when Germans are paying painfully high energy bills to rid themselves of civilian nuclear power plants, would Merkel make such a controversial move? Not only did she approve the new B61-12 deployment, but her government has also announced that it will retain the Tornado fighter jet — also based at Büchel, where it routinely practices missions with dummy B61s — in its inventories until at least 2024.

To be sure, it would take a giant change in German domestic political attitudes to even begin to talk about a home-grown nuclear force. But perhaps, with the outside world changing so rapidly and so violently, it is foolish to think that Europeans won’t change their attitudes toward security and the need for military power as well.

Germany this year dropped below Japan to have the lowest birth rate in the world. For every 1,000 people in the European country, just 8.2 babies are born a year. This is a huge problem because the 1950s and 1960s baby boomers are starting to enter retirement. Germany has one of the highest basic state pensions in the world and it needs a lot of people in employment and paying tax to keep it going.

However, the population is quickly becoming extremely top heavy, with fewer and fewer young workers to support the increasing older population. This could lead to a huge financial crisis for the country and subsequently the whole of Europe, according to Harry Dent, a top American economic forecaster and analyst.

It's thought that the ageing population is part of the reason why Germany has been so keen to welcome in more than a million migrants from Syria - to help plug the gap in the young section of the population. Mr Dent added: "It would take 11 or 12 million refugees who stay there and eventually learn German to address this."

Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation — one that has been spreading like wildfire — is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live. Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of Muslims, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord. Fear makes people stupid. Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world — all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

After delivering the facts, Metropolitan Hilarion asked Putin to make protection and defense of Christianity around the globe a major part of his foreign policy. And, as reported by Interfax, Putin replied, “You needn’t have any doubt that that’s the way it will be,” assuring Hilarion that Russian foreign policy would defend Christians from persecution abroad.

Putin has spoken openly of his faith, noting that most of Europe is rooted in Christianity, and that a denial of this is embarking on a path of “renouncing” their roots. Putin believes that Russia is the new leader in supporting Christian values and morals. Now my cold war upbringing makes me cynical and even today our media paints this man as a thug, however I must confess, even if it is propaganda, I wish I would see this type of propaganda coming out of our own American leaders.