Britons should stay vigilant, particularly after the parliamentary elections in the EU, marked with a notable drift towards both extreme-right and in some cases “openly Nazi” political parties, Lee Jaspar said. Neo-Fascism has never reached a huge scale in Britain because local communities, trade unions and community organizations have always been “extraordinarily effective” at opposing them, he added.

“When our communities mobilize, we always outnumber them [Nazis] 10 to 1,” Jaspar said, stressing that any time there is a neo-Nazi local threat, communities must react immediately. “That should become a great concern not only to Britons, but to all peace-loving people across Europe,” he said, blaming the austerity measures taken by the EU, which acted “as a magnifying glass to amplify existing disadvantage, anxiety and anger.”

Scapegoating minorities, Muslims, and LGBT communities is another feature whipped up by politicians in the media to “promote hostility to minority groups… [it’s] a classic example of what happened in Europe during times of economic stress – and we know where it led in the past,” Jaspar said.

But, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion. America’s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all.

“The situation is as bad as you can imagine,” said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It’s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid.” The crisis stems from Las Vegas’s complete reliance on Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, which was created by the Hoover Dam in 1936 - after which it took six years to fill completely. The lake currently looks as if someone has removed a giant plug from it.

“The drought is like a slow spreading cancer across the desert. It’s not like a tornado or a tsunami, bang. The effects are playing out over decades. And as the water situation becomes more dire we are going to start having to talk about the removal of people (from Las Vegas).”

He said: “It’s a community for the rich and famous and it has a 320-acre lake filled with three billion gallons of water from Lake Mead. That’s three billion gallons of drinking water, and each year they take millions more to keep it from stagnating and smelling.” Las Vegas gets just four inches of rain in a good year, and in the first four months of 2014 there was just 0.31 of an inch.

In the early Eighties, Gaston Thorn was president of the European Commission. Another distinguished-looking mediocrity from Luxembourg, he was a good choice, being both amiable and ineffectual. A life-long federalist, he did nothing to realise his ambitions. Mr Juncker likes cognac for breakfast. That is not the ideal foundation for a day’s hard federalising. So why go to such unavailing trouble to block a man who might turn out to be Gaston Thorn II?

A bad choice for Britain, Mr Juncker was a worse one for Europe. Although a lot of people in Europe are talking about ''reform’’, hardly any of them know what it means. Mr Juncker is not going to fill that gap. He may have spent five years as Luxembourg’s employment minister, but he has no insight into the economic or political needs of a serious country. To him, a democratic mandate is something that emerges from the deal-brokers, irrespective of public opinion. A good economic policy is anything that promotes ever-closer union, irrespective of its impact on jobs, output and growth.

In this, Mr Juncker is the perfect spokesman for the Euro-nomenklatura who are determined to build Europe whatever the consequences for Europeans: the people who gave us the single currency. In order for Maastricht and Aachen to use the same currency as Messina and Athens, radical measures are required. Either the poorer country must suffer a drastic cut in living standards, or the richer one must pay a lot more tax to subsidise the poor relations – or both. At present, the strain is falling on living standards and on employment levels. Thus far and despite the rise of populist parties, there has been a surprising degree of quiescence. But how long will that last? The eurozone could still bleed to death on the streets.

The proposal on ‘arrangements for the implementation by the Union of the Solidarity Clause’ was jointly presented by the Commission and the EU High Representative in 2012. A country can invoke the “solidarity clause” if a crisis “overwhelms its response capacities”. Mention is made of operational, policy and financial instruments and structures.

Andrej Hunko continued: “The adoption at the General Affairs Council took place in secret: the point was not mentioned on the agenda of the meeting. The press was not informed. Yet this is one of the most controversial clauses contained in the EU treaties. That is precisely the reason why agreement on the details of the solidarity clause was postponed to a later point at the time of the signature of the Lisbon Treaty.

The clause strengthens the course towards militarisation of home-affairs policy, since military personnel can be sent to another Member State on request. I am concerned that this is about the home-affairs version of the Article 5 clause on mutual defence: it would apply in situations which ‘may have an adverse impact on people, the environment or property’. Even politically motivated blockades in the areas of energy and transport and general strikes are covered.”

In the flesh, however, Mr Juncker is rather hard to dislike. At a time when politicians are bland, Luxembourg’s former prime minister is a dinosaur who loves to drink, smoke, gossip and joke. He can be disarmingly frank, such as when admitting he had to lie to save the euro. It is the nature of the commission to pursue integration. And Mr Junker’s run-ins with Tony Blair should be kept in perspective: his bad relations with Nicolas Sarkozy scarcely make him anti-French.

Mr Junker’s faults are of a different, less sensational variety. First, for all his experience, the 59-year-old is past his prime and offers little new to regain voters’ trust after the rise of anti-EU parties in May’s elections. He lacks the administrative skill to reform an unwieldy bureaucracy. Yet it would not be the first time that the EU has opted for unthreatening mediocrity: two previous Luxembourgers, Gaston Thorn and Jacques Santer, spring to mind.

The second, deeper problem is that Mr Juncker has been chosen by an indirect system known as Spitzenkandidaten, or “lead candidates”, which sets a bad precedent. [This] shifts power from elected governments to the parliament, and endangers the commission’s many functions requiring impartiality, including competition policy.

Mr Juncker will become an accidental president because he is most people’s second choice. He himself hoped to be president of the European Council, representing leaders, where he could have been a good backroom dealmaker. For Mrs Merkel he is better than Mr Schulz. For Mr Schulz, backing Mr Juncker is the price for increasing the power of the parliament (where he will remain president). For France and Italy, Mr Juncker is more likely to soften austerity than other conservatives. For others, support for Mr Juncker can be traded for plum jobs and other concessions. Sadly for Britain, even its closest European friends think that backing Mr Juncker is better than siding with Mr Cameron.

One of his main campaign pledges was to seek a “fair deal” in the renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership. Let’s see.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has found "conclusive" evidence that these neonicotinoids are "a key factor in the decline of bees." These pesticides are extremely toxic — five-to-ten thousand times more toxic than DDT. While neonicotinoids are illegal in Europe, they are completely legal in the United States. In order to help rebuild the populations, researchers have recommended planting bee-friendly gardens. These gardens have specific plants that create an environment in which bees can thrive, and over time, can help rebuild the bee population. These plants are sold at the usual big box garden centers, like Home Depot, Walmart, and Lowe's.

While it seems like a great plan, the Pesticide Research Institute has determined the bee friendly plants sold at these stores actually contain neonicotinoids. So the bee friendly gardens are inadvertently contributing in a major way to the death of even more bees.

As you might guess, the lack of genetically modified meat on the market isn't because of a lack of technology. It's because of politics — GM foods are deeply unpopular, and GM food animals especially so. Still, I was surprised at how far along the development of GM meat is after I read this new feature from the biologists' magazine The Scientist. There are many labs around the world working on making animals that are engineered to grow faster, resist disease, or provide people with extra nutrients.

Research projects underway include goats whose milk is designed to prevent deadly diarrhea in children and chickens in which bird flu viruses don't reproduce. In spite of public opposition and a lack of funding, GM meat research has continued to advance.