He claims to be fighting ISIS, and yet an endless parade of trucks carrying oil that ISIS has stolen goes back and forth over the Turkish border with his full knowledge and approval. Barack Obama is very much aware that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS and he refuses to do anything about it. If the Republicans are looking for a scandal which could completely wreck Obama’s presidency and essentially secure the 2016 election for them, this is it.

Do you want to know why the Turkish government ordered the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 bomber on Tuesday? It is because the Russians have been bombing the trucks that transport oil from ISIS into Turkey. The Turks claim that the Russian aircraft violated their airspace for approximately 17 seconds. But as Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, in order for the SU-24 to fly only 1.15 miles in 17 seconds would mean that it was flying at stall speed the entire time, which is ridiculous. Clearly there is something very fishy with the official story, and the Russians say that they never violated Turkey’s airspace at any time.

The government of Turkey desperately wants to see the Assad regime toppled, and so they are training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals. This is being done with the full knowledge and complicity of the Obama administration, and it is a betrayal on a level that is almost unspeakable.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants - many fleeing war and persecution from North Africa and the Middle East - have poured into the continent this year, creating the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Speaking today at an EU-Turkey summit, Mr Tusk said he hopes to have reached an agreement on how to ease the chaotic situation.

Leaders of the EU are aiming to sign an agreement with Turkey that offers Ankara cash and closer ties with the bloc, in return for Turkish help in slowing the amount of migrants entering Europe. Confirming that the main goal of the meeting was to tackle to refugee crisis, Mr Tusk: “We have reached an agreement which I hope will be accepted. This summit is about wider dimensions, namely re-energising our relations with Turkey including the accession process.”

But Mr Tusk added that any deal with Turkey would not be enough to deal with the migrant dilemma if the EU does not firmly control its external borders. He said: “Approximately 1.5 million people have illegally entered the EU in 2015. “Most have come through Turkey. Some seek shelter from war and persecution, others seek a better life and the few think to destroy our values.”

Ahead of the summit, more than 175 countries have tabled pledges (known as intended nationally determined contributions, or INDCs) to cut their carbon emissions which, if enacted, would be enough to limit global warming to 2.7C. But the United Nations has pledged to limit climate change to 2C – and would much prefer it to be 1.5C.

This means there is much work to be done in Paris. Although nobody is expecting an agreement that will guarantee to limit global warming to 2C, the UN climate chief Christiana Figueres is determined to enshrine a process that paves the way for the world to be able to meet that target further down the line.

The plaintiff, the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has 30 days to appeal the ruling. Hallinan went viral earlier this year when he declared his Inverness, Florida, store a "Muslim-free zone" in the wake of the shooting of four servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by a Muslim extremist.

"I have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety of all patriots in my community and so, effective immediately, I’m declaring Florida Gun Supply as a Muslim-free zone," Hallinan said. "I will not arm and train those who wish to do harm to my fellow patriots."

“The toy-sized robots can coordinate with each other on the battlefield,” said the report, following their unveiling at the 2015 World Robot Conference in Beijing. The first model is known as a “reconnaissance” robot, which scouts for poisonous gases, dangerous chemicals and explosives before transmitting its findings back to base.

If this initial investigation detects a simple bomb is the source of danger, the second robot model - a small explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) machine - would be sent in to diffuse it. But with other, more complicated threats, an attacker robot would start its mission, armed with “minor-caliber weapons, recoilless rifles and grenade launchers”. “With a sighting telescope, a trigger and a safe installed, the attacker can hit its target from a long distance,” Xinhua said.

In his masterpiece How Long Will SA Survive? Oxford don RW Johnson explains ANC thinking was based on a view that 30% of the country’s arable land needed to be urgently redistributed to dispossessed communities and small African farmers. He writes: “This target took no cognisance of the fact that farming is nowadays a very specialised activity… sophisticated operations with computer-operated grain silos, extremely complex irrigation equipment, requiring a keen knowledge of movements in futures markets and so forth.

There is no easy way a subsistence African farmer or farm worker can take over and run a commercial farm (or even wants to).” The result: over 90% of redistributed farms have failed at a huge cost to SA’s food security. Add politically inspired termination of old privileges for farmers, more demanding labour laws, tougher water restrictions and effectively ignoring growing farm attacks and “the result has been the dispersal of commercial farmers to all points of the compass.”

By 2007, Johnson writes, their number had halved from the 61,000 of 1996 and is predicted to be just 8,000 by 2030. The consequences seem obvious to all except the cocooned policy makers – SA’s traditionally huge agricultural exports have been eroded to the point where it is becoming a net importer. Overlay the collapse of the Rand and a drought, and the ANC could hardly have better nurtured the spark that ignited Arab Spring. As you sow, so shall you reap.

So what is in store for us, according to Pastor Salazar?

• Towards the end of the year, or in early 2016: Europe will close its borders to refugees, followed by other countries, including the US, where martial law will begin.

• February 2016: China will attack Japan.

• May 15-17 2016: At 2.20 am local time Puerto Rico time off the coast, a 5.6 mile asteroid will impact. It will cause earthquakes across the world and tsunamis with initially 1.2 billion deaths before the figure rises.

• Shortly after: Volcanoes across the globe, including Yellowstone, in the USA, will erupt, sending up ash that will block out the sun and cause a year-long ice age and a large chunk of California to disappear.

• June 16 2016: World war III breaks out when Russia and China attack a heavily weakened US.

• October 25 2016: The Russia/China alliance wins WWIII.

• March 2017: The Chinese Yen becomes the new global currency.

• Late 2018/early 2019: Russia attacks Israel.

• 2020: The Antichrist arrives on Earth and rules over us all.

• 2023:The Second Coming of Christ and salvation.

So quite a specific chain of events, but should we be worried? Well, not really, since Pastor Salazar's visions follow a long line of doom prophecies from those who have tried calling the end of days and so far not one of them has got it right. Scientists and commentators have called for calm and pointed out how many false 'end of world predictions' have been made historically that have never materialized.

Earlier this year he predicted that on July 22 a 10.2 magnitude earthquake would sweep across the US and Japan and that on August 22 a meteorite shower would burn down a third of the world's forests. He then predicted global panic after an asteroid exploded above Earth on October 8 or 9. None of these happened, so let's just hope he is as off with the rest of the predictions.

All the above are real people, gargoyles gaily cartwheeling down our kingdom’s corridors of influence. These and their ilk are the leaders of our society. They, supposedly, are our elite, totems of the best that our society can manage. Is it any wonder that Islamist maniacs think Western civilisation is there for the taking? Across public life, nakedly awful pocket-stuffers and favour-mongers and back-scratchers and truth-trimmers prosper. Crooks and creeps and exaggerated oddities are fawned over as celebrity trumps common sense. And therein, I fear, lies our civilisation’s terrible weakness which is being exploited by Islamist terrorists.

In this regard, the Church of England has practically disappeared as a force for disapproval. Bishops have become cultural quislings, declining to challenge the fashionable consensus of secularism. Last weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrung his hands and said he had a moment of doubt in God when Paris was attacked. Might I respectfully beseech him to keep his doubts to himself? Show some leadership, sir! Since the Sixties, the Church of England has dismantled the high aesthetics of liturgy because they wanted to suck up to transient fashion and were more interested in egalitarianism than in worshipping God.

This, tragically, is what British life has to offer. F-words are spattered all over our state-subsidised stages. Some composers of classical music regard harmony as pointless. In Premier League football, foul-mouthed cheats are paid millions. Architecture prizes go to designers of the most anti-social eyesores. Big business makes little effort to pay tax.

Recently, the Mail brought news of pay and expenses rackets by public-service managers in the police, health service and universities. Until recently, there would be an acceptance of the word of a Prime Minister, a judge, a bank chairman. Today, such figures are scorned. The most common phrase you hear from the public is ‘they’re all at it’.

The families, who have children in years seven and eight, argued Mrs Morgan had taken a “skewed” approach to Religious Studies. Mr Justice Warby ruled there has been a “breach of duty” in reflecting the religions and non-religions practiced in the UK after the education secretary claimed the subject would cover the state's legal duty to provide religious education.

The families argued schools would intepret this to mean they would not have to include non-religious views, including humanism, in teaching. Humanists are usually atheists or agnostics who do not conform to any religion. Since changes were made to the subject in February religious leaders raised concerns about the GCSE giving different priority to different religions.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, urged the Government to include humanism in the subject.

The barmy edicts claim that trying to stop terrorists from returning home is racist and set out a series of stringent criteria dictating how extremists’ “human rights” must be pandered to. They mean that ISIS jihadis will be able to stream into Europe and cross the continent unchallenged all the way to Calais, where they can launch attempts to smuggle themselves past Britain's overwhelmed border guards.

Critics said the actions of Labour’s representatives in Brussels were “shameful” and will put British lives at risk by “opening the door” for ISIS fighters to return from Syria and carry out atrocities on our streets. They were all passed with Labour’s support just six days after the Paris attacks, which were carried out by ISIS jihadis who strolled into Europe posing as refugees in Greece before moving across the continent unchallenged because of its free movement laws. But in a raft of controversial amendments to current EU resolutions all they appeared to achieve was to further degrade Europe’s already leaky border controls.

UKIP’s Home Affairs spokeswoman Diane James said she was “astounded” that Labour had backed the proposals just days after the horrific Paris massacre, in which 130 people lost their lives. She raged: "After the events of Paris I am astounded that Labour MEPs have voted for these amendments. The free movement of people has led to the free movement of jihad and the only way to combat this is for Member States to regain control of their borders immediately. Labour opened our borders and have attempted to keep them open even in the face of these barbaric forces. UK citizens' security should be paramount. Apparently Labour does not agree."

"Merkel, step down. You can do it," Frauke Petry told some 600 AfD supporters, mainly gray-haired men, putting a new twist on Merkel's "Wir schaffen das" (We can do it) message to those who doubt Germany can deal with the influx of migrants expected to reach one million this year. Petry, whose Alternative for Germany is enjoying an improbable revival after nearly imploding in a power struggle, said her party stood a real chance of entering three new state parliaments next year and the national parliament for the first time in 2017.

Petry drew at least four standing ovations with attacks on what she called Merkel's undemocratic decision to open Germany's borders to migrants who are expected to reach one million this year. Merkel, who will attend a summit of European Union leaders and Turkey's prime minister on Sunday on the issue, has resisted pressure from her own conservatives to cap the number of refugees.

In an address to parliament on Wednesday, she vowed to stick to her open-door refugee policy, defying criticism at home and abroad which has risen due to fears about a potential security risk after the Islamist attacks in Paris.

The triumph of the triple-Left alliance under Socialist leadership is a historic moment for the country and implies a sweeping reversal of austerity cuts imposed by the now-departed EU-IMF Troika. President Anibal Cavaco Silva warned the Socialists that he will sack the government if it violates eurozone deficit rules and the Fiscal Compact, or endangers the “external credibility” of the country. “It is an illusion to think that Portugal can dispense with the institutions and creditors,” he said.

Yet his rhetoric cannot disguise the fact that an establishment centre-Left party has, for the first time, defied the prevailing ideology in the eurozone. The Germans can no longer count on Lisbon to make the austerity case for them, and to provide political cover. “They have lost their best ally for fiscal discipline,” said Ricardo Amaro, from Oxford Economics.

Yet the picture remains chaotic and fraught with danger. The Socialists are to rule by minority, with no encompassing coalition agreement. The Communists and the Left Bloc reserve the right to dissent, and have made it clear that they will do so. “It could break over Syria, or TTIP (trade deal), or anything,” said Mr Tavares.

And now that France, reeling from the Paris attacks, has declared war on the Islamic State, other European countries are shrugging their shoulders, mumbling condolences, and silently hoping that the conflict will spare them. The implication is clear: although Europe has made significant progress toward fiscal union, it remains far removed from political union.

A half-century after the foundation of a common market and 15 years after the launch of the common currency, Europe still lacks a united police force and a single foreign policy. Perhaps most problematic, the EU is still home to 28 armies, with 28 commanders-in-chief, bound together only loosely by NATO.

It is time for the EU to change its approach to integration. Instead of continuing to push for unbalanced fiscal integration, it must work to implement key elements of political union, including an integrated police force, common asylum laws, a single foreign policy, and, above all, a united army. If recent events have taught us anything, it is that threats to the EU stem not from inadequate fiscal risk-sharing, but from insufficient coordination on foreign-policy and security challenges.

Bloomberg in September reported details of the plan, which may also seek to consolidate the country’s seven military regions to as few as four. The plan also seeks to tighten the Communist Party’s grip over the 2.3-million-member military, with Xi insisting the People’s Liberation Army maintain "correct political direction” and stressing "the Communist Party of China has absolute leadership of the armed forces," Xinhua reported.

Under Xi, China has been more assertive over territorial claims in the East China Sea and South China Sea, raising tensions with neighbors such as Japan and the Philippines, as well as the US. Xi’s policy marks a shift from China’s previous approach of keeping a low profile and not attracting attention on the world stage, a philosophy laid out by former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

“Under the leadership of the party, the army has gone from small to large, from weak to strong and from victory to victory," Xi told military leaders, according to Xinhua. “The reason why the military has stayed vigorous is that it has kept pace with the times and never ceased reforming itself. Now, as the country progresses from a large country to a large and powerful one, defense and military development stands at a new and historic starting line.”