A return to the polls was triggered in December, when the Parliament rejected Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ pro-austerity candidate for president. In a general election, now set for January 25th, the EU-skeptic, anti-austerity, leftist Syriza party is likely to prevail. Syriza captured a 3% lead in the polls following mass public discontent over the harsh austerity measures Athens was forced to accept in return for a €240 billion bailout.

Austerity has plunged the economy into conditions worse than in the Great Depression. As Professor Bill Black observes, the question is not why the Greek people are rising up to reject the barbarous measures but what took them so long.

Greece can regain its sovereignty by defaulting on its debt, abandoning the ECB and the euro, and issuing its own national currency (the drachma) through its own central bank. But that would destabilize the eurozone and might end in its breakup. Will the troika take that risk? 2015 is shaping up to be an interesting year.

The hashtag #OpCharlieHebdo is visible in the video that dedicates the message to: “Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists.” It says that the hacktivist group will be going after and shutting down all terrorist accounts on social media in a mission to avenge those killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Earlier, Anonymous posted a statement on Pastebin, titled: “Message to the enemy of the freedom of speech.” “Freedom of speech has suffered an inhuman assault … Disgusted and also shocked, we cannot fall to our knees. It is our responsibility to react,” the statement says.

The group had successfully attacked many websites in the past, including government, military, religious, and commercial pages. Anonymous’ signature move is to overwhelm the servers with traffic by sending out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which knocks out the websites.

The magazine was temporarily banned by the French government in 1961 and 1966. In 1970 it was banned again for mocking the death of former French President Charles de Gaulle, but this time it took a new name to save itself. It has a relatively low weekly circulation, but is well known for its provocative cartoons, and five of the magazine’s cartoonists were executed in the killings.

The magazine is extremely left-wing in its opinion and completely anti-institution. It mocks politicians, culture and authority figures but it has a special passion for mocking religion – particularly Christianity and Islam. Its cartoons have shown nuns masturbating and popes wearing condoms. The editor, Stephane Charbonnier, who was also killed in the attack, once stated that his magazine would continue its style “until Islam is just as banal as Catholicism.”

Militant Islam practices a ‘takfiri’ doctrine that allows it to brand other Muslims apostates for allegedly going against the faith’s true teachings. A tragic attack on Wednesday took the lives of 12 people, when armed gunmen stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, prompting a citywide manhunt. The magazine had printed cartoons that mocked the Prophet.

Nasrallah went on to say that “Takfiris are the biggest threat to Islam, as a religion [and] as a message.” The Charlie Hebdo terror attack should be taken as “revenge for the honor” of Islam’s prophet, according to a source allegedly belonging to Yemen’s branch of Al-Qaeda, who wrote to several news outlets with the message.

Murder so horrifying, on a pretext so un-Western, that non-Muslims – blinded by grief and rage – turn on Muslims. Blame them. Persecute them. Burn their book, attack their mosques, threaten them in the street, demand their expulsion from Western societies.

Actions that, in turn, scare Western Muslims, isolate them, alienate them. And thus drive some of them to support – and even become – terrorists. Result: terrorists swell their ranks for a civil war they long to provoke non-Muslims into starting.

Similar to our 2013 poll, almost three times as many people suspect controlled demolition rather than fires after viewing video footage of WTC 7’s destruction. More than half — 52% — are either sure or suspect it was a controlled demolition, while only 18% are sure or suspect destruction by fire.

In terms of whom they’re more likely to trust, 45% are more inclined to believe critics of the US government report, who cite evidence that explosives were used, versus only 16% who are inclined to believe the government's story.

Based on these results, it is clear that Canadian and American elected officials and members of the news media are operating in a different reality from almost everyone else.

Nevertheless, it is our mission to keep up the pressure, and these results will be of great use to 9/11 activists — particularly in Canada, where the push for a parliamentary review continues ahead of the procedurally imposed January 17th deadline. Next week we will mail the results to every Member of Parliament, while continuing to contact every Canadian media outlet.

Lawhorn’s commander, Colonel David Fivecoat, took action against Lawhorn after a soldier complained to the website MilitaryAtheists.org. Captain Lawhorn had spoken and distributed one page of religious material to soldiers November 20 on how his faith helped him overcome bouts of depression. Suicide in the ranks has been a major Army problem amid deployments to long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael Berry, a reserve Marine Corps judge advocate who is representing Captain Lawhorn, called Colonel Fivecoat’s letter “knee-jerk.” “He basically censured a chaplain for doing his job, for doing what chaplains are trained to do and what Army regulations in fact encourage chaplains to do,” said Mr Berry, a lawyer at the Liberty Institute in Dallas. “Colonel Fivecoat did not do his homework.”

In fact, the Pope himself devoted significant time in November to ecumenical initiatives. He addressed Evangelical Protestants on November 6th and he met with the Ecumenical Patriarch (the Orthodox Archbishop of Constantinople), Bartholomew I, in Turkey at the end of the month. (They had already met in the Holy Land and issued a joint declaration six months earlier.) On the return flight from Turkey, Francis offered the press a number of insights into the urgency and possibilities of the quest for Christian unity today.

In 1964, the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) firmly established the ecumenical project as a necessary expression of the common baptism of all Christians and of Christ’s desire that his followers would be one (John 17:21). Pope John Paul II followed up in greater detail with his 1995 encyclical That They May Be One (Ut Unum Sint).

Wind speeds of between 60mph and 70mph are expected in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, where the Met Office has put in place yellow 'be prepared' warnings.

Police have also said that trees are down and blocking roads, especially in the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, and people have been warned not to travel 'unless absolutely necessary'.

Buildings have been damaged, trees uprooted and travel and power lines affected by the high winds, with some reporting the winds were so strong their windows were blown in.

All schools on Orkney and the Western Isles are shut today and dozens in the Highlands, including nurseries, are also closed. Planes were also captured on camera being buffeted by the gales as they struggled to take off and land at Leeds Bradford Airport. The gales are caused by a 250mph Atlantic jet stream heading for the north of Scotland from the US, bringing two storms with it, one hitting overnight and the second striking during the day today.

“Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people's desires,” he wrote.

“Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”

While President Francois Hollande called for national unity in an attempt to deter the public from demonizing the country’s 5-million strong Muslim community, Le Pen said France has to confront the beliefs of the gunmen who stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

“Time’s up for denial and hypocrisy,” Le Pen, who has railed against immigration, said in a video posted on her party’s website. “The absolute rejection of Islamic fundamentalism must be proclaimed loudly and clearly.” The lessons voters draw from the deadliest attack on French soil since World War II will shape the political debate as the country looks toward the 2017 election. Hollande, the most unpopular president in modern history, is struggling to make up ground on Le Pen, who’s seen her support surge as she blames immigrants for France’s near-record unemployment and deepening inequalities.

“Of all political parties, the Front National stands to gain most from this atrocity,” Jim Shields, head of French studies at Aston University in Birmingham, England, said in an interview. “Public agreement with the FN’s ideas has been rising steadily and this event will play into the party’s anti-immigration, anti-Islam agenda.”

Not so Islam. The battle within Islam itself between Sunni and Shia, so evident in the wars of the Middle East, and the fight between extremist interpretations of Islam such as those of Islamic State and Muslims who wish to practice their religion in peace, is now being played out on the streets of Europe with potentially devastating consequences for social cohesion.

These latest shootings may be the work of "lone wolves" but their consequences will ripple across Europe and provoke much soul-searching about the failure of integration over the past decades. Immigrant communities are already being viewed with increasing suspicion in both France and Germany, with their significant Muslim populations, and even in the UK.

France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, some five million or 7.5% of the population, compared with Germany's four million or 5% of the population, and the UK's three million, also 5% of the population. The killings at Charlie Hebdo are a deeply unwelcome reminder to the west that for some, mainly young radicalised men, their fundamentalist interpretation of their religion matters enough to kill those who offend it.

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said he was dismayed by the remarks, in which the UK Independence Party leader said there was a “fifth column” living in Britain and France responsible for terrorist attacks. In a passionate defence of Charlie Hebdo, the targeted magazine, Mr Clegg said there is “no right to not be offended”.

Mr Farage told Channel 4 News: "There is a very strong argument that says that what happened in Paris is a result - and we've seen it in London too - is a result I'm afraid of now having a fifth column living within these countries. We've got people living in these countries, holding our passports, who hate us.

"Luckily their numbers are very, very small but it does make one question the whole really gross attempt at encouraged division within society that we have had in the past few decades in the name of multiculturalism." He repeated the message on LBC Radio, saying: “What should have been done is we should have had a controlled immigration policy and made sure we did full checks on everybody who ever came to this country from anywhere - and that applies to everyone else.

“We in Britain, and I’ve seen evidence in other European countries too, have pursued a really rather gross policy of multi-culturalism. We have encouraged people who come from different cultures to remain within those cultures, and not to integrate fully within our communities.”