Some individuals, perhaps naively, deduced on social media the perpetrator might just conceivably be a Muslim – and an unholy Twitter storm erupted. Outraged Tweeters fought to be the most offended by these “outrageous, Islamaphobic” allegations, declaring that “until his faith is officially verified you’re just another racist scumbag!”

Less than two hours later, the hostage taker was identified as “radical Muslim cleric” Man Maron Monis. There was no “racism”: the Muslim man who’d declared himself a Muslim was, after all, a Muslim. In 2014, political correctness finally got out of control. Intellectually, we are thought-policing each other towards the precipice. And that way, fresh madness lies. It’s time to tell the PC brigade to stuff their sanctimonious judgments where the sun don’t shine. And if that offends them, so much the better.

"Here we are again with our president clearly demonstrating his severe disconnect with blacks in America, as he has ginned up racial hatred and … completely ignoring the fact that he's the first black president and holds a historic role that is intended to mend and rebuild America's fractured racial history," said Stacy Washington, a radio talk-show host in St Louis.

She noted Obama's "dereliction of duty" in ignoring such statistics as high black unemployment and "the lack of educational resources for children who are trapped in failed inner-city schools and his refusal to even acknowledge that voucher programs and school choice play a large role in African-American children escaping poverty and escaping inner cities."

In November, the black unemployment rate stood at 27.6 percent, compared with 14.5 percent for whites, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The estimated trade deficit will be Saudi Arabia’s largest on record. The Finance Ministry said the government will try to save some money by cutting salaries, wages, and allowances that represent around “50 percent of total budgeted expenditures.” But the move could anger Saudi youth, who are already struggling to cover the costs of living in the country.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), about two-thirds of the population works for the government.

Endless war: Does anyone remember when the United States was going to invade Syria in late 2013/early 2014? The country’s dictator had been accused of gassing his own citizens. So once again, the American people were entrenched in a war in a country halfway across the world that had absolutely nothing to do with them. Now in late 2014, the White House is urging everyone to pour their hatred into IS/ISIS/ISIL, one of the three or more combatants currently in engaged in the latest wave of the Syrian Civil War.

Revisionist history: A recent article from the New York Times claimed that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and asserted that George Bush was correct in invading Iraq. This article has unleashed a new wave in the propaganda war between right wing and left wing media outlets, both criticizing each other more than doing any real examination of the facts.

Media control:Revising history is not the only role the media plays. No, it is capable of much more sinister disruption. The major corporations that control the flow of information are working hard to ensure that the average citizen stays not only uneducated, but unaware of the more important issues. In other words, the media serves to distract the public by incessantly placing irrelevant topics into the sphere of debate and purposefully hiding news about the issues that a democratic and vigilant group of people should be concerned about.

Following up on his predecessors' - Pope John Paul's and Pope Benedict's - historic visits to Cuba and meetings with Fidel Castro in 1998 and 2012, he helped broker a political deal which made headlines around the world this month.

Offering his Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia, the senior churchmen who run the Holy See, Pope Francis, having observed at close quarters for the past 20 months how the Vatican actually works, unexpectedly gave his Roman bureaucrats a severe dressing down.

He listed 15 deadly sins - "ailments" he called them - that he had witnessed since he took office. Too much micro-management, too little internal co-ordination, examples of boastfulness, showing off, claiming to be indispensible, a tendency to gossip and defamation and, even worse, clerics leading double lives.

According to worldwide polls conducted by the prestigious US-based Pew Research Centre, a majority of people in over half the 43 countries surveyed say they had a positive view of Pope Francis, with particularly high ratings in Europe (84%) and Latin America (72%).

According to US Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures, oil and gas shipments accounted for 68 percent of Russia's total $527 billion of gross exports in 2013, when Brent crude - comparable to Russian Urals - traded at an average of $108 per barrel.

Should the current price of Brent, at around $60 per barrel, be sustained over the next 12 months, that would result in Russia's export income from crude dropping to $95 billion, from $174 billion in 2013. However, these losses will be amplified by the total loss of revenue accrued from lower prices for refined petroleum products and domestic sales of crude, which totalled $122 billion in 2013, according to the EIA.

Comments made over the weekend by Saudi Arabia's powerful oil minister Ali Naimi that the kingdom would not cut production even if prices fell to a level of $20 per barrel will have sent a cold chill through the corridors of the Kremlin where preparations are already being made to cope with a deep economic recession. Russia is being squeezed hard by a combination of tough trade and financial sanctions and plummeting oil prices, which are eroding its main source of hard foreign currency earnings.

A former German politician, Juergen Todenhoefer is the only outsider to have travelled deep into IS territory and back. And, considering that several Westerners have recently been beheaded, he did so at terrifying risk. Mr Todenhoefer said he was struck by their brutal zeal, and the scale of their ambition to carry out "religious cleansing" and to expand their territory. "There is an enthusiasm that I've never seen before in warzones," he said.

"They are so confident, so sure of themselves. At the beginning of this year, few people knew of IS. But now they have conquered an area the size of the UK. This is a one per cent movement with the power of a nuclear bomb or a tsunami." Filmed by his son - with a permit guaranteeing their safety - his material gives the impression of a group busy entrenching their bureaucracy, relatively unperturbed by the threat of coalition air strikes.

"I had the impression that they want to show that the Islamic State is working," Mr Todenhoefer said. The jihadists now have their own justice system - with IS flags hanging in courtrooms - and their own police enforcing strict Islamic law, although the local police chief told him that he no longer needed to administer violent punishments. Fear, said Mr Todenhoefer, appeared to be an extremely powerful deterrent.

Safely back in Munich, Mr Todenhoefer told us: "They are the most brutal and most dangerous enemy I have ever seen in my life." "I don't see anyone who has a real chance to stop them," he said. "Only Arabs can stop IS. I came back very pessimistic."

Russia needs a land bridge to Crimea if its new province is to be economically sustainable. But Merkel said in November that if Putin attacks the Ukrainian city of Mariupol - the Crimea bridge - more EU sanctions are “unavoidable”. She said in December the existing sanctions can be rolled back only if he gives up conquered territories.

The EU measures and low oil prices cost Russia $140 billion in lost revenue in 2014 (6% of the state budget). Capital flight cost another $100 billion and the rouble has plunged to all-time lows. But Putin, in his state-of-the-nation speech on 4 December, didn’t blink. He told Russian people to expect more economic hardship and described Crimea as Russia’s “Holy Land”.

Whether he intended to stop at Mariupol, or Kiev, or to go to Tallinn when the 16 armoured vehicles left their base in Crimea on 21 February is not known. But if political and market forces cause a Russian economic crisis, it might make him even more unpredictable.

The Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn between Israel and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, called for mutual recognition, something that is totally lacking from Hamas, the leading political body of Palestinian Arabs, or from the rejectionist Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority. The notion of “two states for two peoples” has been rejected by the Palestinians.

Europeans need to be asked: If Hamas is not a terrorist organization, what is? As European parliaments fall, one by one, to a “Palestine” vote, and its court cannot understand what constitutes a terrorist organization if it is cloaked in Palestinian clothing, no other issue has unified the Israeli parliament like the European court’s decision. Wall to wall condemnation was heard across Israel’s divergent political parties against the European court, whose decision demonstrates the loss of a moral path, in the words of Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett.

Former justice minister Tzipi Livni reminded Europe that Hamas is “an extreme Islamic religious terrorist organization that must be fought with all force.” Clearly, Europe does not have the stomach, or the political will, to fight Islamic terrorism with all its force, if at all. As Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein said, the European Union “must have lost its mind!” This is clearly the case. The question is whether the winds of political change will arrive in Europe in time to save it and Israel from the damaging tsunami of current political moves.