The TSA sends out its Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams to set up unannounced checkpoints used to “Dominate, Intimidate, & Control” American travelers. The purpose of VIPR teams is to maintain a presence in public areas and force travelers to submit to searches, including opening up bags and being patted down.

The New York Times wrote of the TSA on August 8, “With little fanfare, the agency best known for airport screenings has vastly expanded its reach to sporting events, music festivals, rodeos, highway weigh stations and train terminals.” TSA records show that the teams ran more than 8,800 unannounced checkpoints outside of airports last year alone. These included searches at train stations, bus stations, the Indianapolis 500, the Superbowl, the Democratic and Republican national conventions, political speeches, and sports stadiums, more. CBS Los Angeles reported that TSA conduct an estimated 9,300 “suspicionless” spot searches of travelers in 2011.

TSA now has grown to a whopping 56,000 agents, violating rights en masse at 450 American airports. Its complete disregard for individual liberties and the constitution illustrates the uncomfortable fact that the United States is becoming a police state.

Hamilton believes the government is miscalculating what it owes by leaving out certain unfunded liabilities that include government loan guarantees, deposit insurance, actions taken by the Federal Reserve as well as the cost of other government trust funds. Factoring in those numbers brings the total amount the government owes to a staggering $70 trillion, he says.

According to FOX, Hamilton believes important areas of federal off-balance-sheet commitments include loans for post-high school education, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve System.

“The biggest off-balance-sheet liabilities come from recognition of the fiscal stress that will come in the form of an aging population and rising medical expenditures,” Hamilton says, adding, “It is worth noting that there are many historical episodes in which off-balance sheet liabilities ended up having quite significant on-balance sheet implications.”

Fabian Picardo said Mariano Rajoy was fuelling the crisis to distract from his domestic troubles – just as the military junta in Buenos Aires did by ordering the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982.

He spoke out as the Foreign Office announced that it is lodging another formal complaint with Spain over the latest ‘unacceptable’ delays at the border with Gibraltar. Yesterday travelers, including a pregnant woman, were forced to wait for between three and five hours in baking heat. David Cameron is expected to decide today or tomorrow whether to sue Spain in the European Court of Justice over its imposition of draconian border controls.

Mr Picardo said: ‘I think what we are seeing is a little bit like what Mr Galtieri deployed in Argentina in 1982, which is an attempt to bang the nationalistic drum to make people look away from the national problems that Spain is suffering and the PM himself is labouring under. What is happening in the background is that the Spanish government has been engulfed in allegations of corruption which affect Mr Rajoy himself.’

Mrs Merkel suggested she would be open to talking about the repatriation of powers later this year if she is re-elected as Germany’s leader. The European Union should consider whether it can “give something back” to national governments, she said. The Prime Minister has said that he wants to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU, winning back a range of powers from Brussels. He would then put the new deal to the British people in a referendum by 2017, where voters could either accept the renegotiated relationship or leave the EU.

Mr Cameron’s allies admit his ability to win public support for his new deal will depend on being able to win back substantial powers from the EU. In a German radio interview, Mrs Merkel said she was open to changing the way EU countries relate to one another and the EU’s central institutions.

“In Europe at the moment we have to take care to coordinate our competitiveness more closely, and for that we don’t have to do everything in Brussels,” she said, adding: “'More Europe’ cannot only mean transferring competences from national states to Europe, but you can also have 'more Europe’ by coordinating national political actions more intensively and rigorously with others.”

Some analysts have suggested that the British bid to repatriate power is doomed because other European governments will not agree to give Britain a better deal. But hopes have been boosted this year by Holland, which has also suggested changes in EU rules to give individual states more autonomy.

The Boy Scouts of America’s newly adopted membership policy — in which youths no longer will be blocked from joining the Scouts based on “sexual orientation or preference alone” — is “a sweeping change to its core values,” said Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal defense organization.

The policy change has legal ramifications for religious chartering groups, potentially exposing them to lawsuits if they continue to sponsor troops while seeking to maintain the traditional Christian teaching that homosexual behavior is immoral. What could happen is “somebody would come and say, ‘We want to use your church for a same-sex wedding ceremony,’ and the church would say, ‘Wait, we have a religious belief against that,’” said Erik Stanley, an alliance lawyer and Eagle Scout.

Most states that have gay-marriage laws also have some kind of “conscience exemption” that does not require churches to perform same-sex ceremonies. But the rebuttal by such a gay advocacy group would be, “Well no, you don’t — or if you do, you’re not sincere or you don’t follow it, because you allow this Boy Scout troop in, and you had to specifically sign a charter saying that you agreed with the BSA policy of allowing in openly homosexual youth,” Mr Stanley said.

“That’s our basic concern — that it weakens the church’s freedom of religion and freedom of association arguments on that point,” he said, adding that churches may need to separate from the Boy Scouts of America to “protect their right to freely preach the Gospel” and “be a witness to our nation’s youth.”

On May 17, the first day the Treasury reported that the debt had hit exactly $16,699,396,000,000 - and was thus just $25 million below the legal limit - Treasury Secretary Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner saying he was beginning to implement what he called "the standard set of extraordinary measures" to prevent the Treasury from exceeding the legal limit on the federal debt.

Since Lew sent that letter - announcing that he would use "extraordinary measures" - the debt has remained stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for 87 straight days. That includes all 31 days in July when Lew's Treasury says it was running a $98 billion deficit. When Lew stops using "extraordinary measures" to keep the debt at exactly $16,699,396,000,000, the government will have another debt-limit crisis.

A number of top analysts are pointing out the fact that the biggest cluster of "Hindenburg Omens" has appeared since the last stock market crash. And those that have studied this insist that the more "Hindenburg Omens" there are in a cluster, the stronger the signal is.

Meanwhile, another very disturbing sign is the fact that the yield on 10 year US Treasuries is starting to soar again. On Tuesday it shot up from 2.62% to 2.727%. As I have written previously, the yield on 10 year US Treasuries is the most important number in the US economy right now. If that number continues to rise, it is going to be very, very bad news for the financial system.

When the Hindenburg Omen makes an appearance, it is supposedly a signal that the US stock market will likely experience a significant decline within the next 40 days. But of course this has not always happened when a Hindenburg Omen has appeared. However, what we are seeing right now is a highly concentrated cluster of Hindenburg Omens. According to SentimenTrader's Jason Goepfert, the last time such a cluster appeared was before the last stock market crash.

Yet flu scientists are currently at loggerheads over experiments to make the H7N9 bird influenza virus that emerged in China earlier this year even more dangerous.

Some argue that "gain of function" experiments to make the virus more infectious, more deadly and drug resistant in ferrets – the best available test animal for human flu – offer up vital information that could help us defend against a pandemic. Other scientists are concerned that deliberately creating a supervirus could provide a weapon to bioterrorists. What’s more, they point out, existing biosafety measures – such as requiring researchers to wear special safety suits and go through decontamination chambers when leaving the lab – may not be enough to prevent the virus spreading.

Now, a team led by Benjamin TenOever, at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, has devised a genetic failsafe that would switch off mutant strains if they escaped from the lab and infected humans.

Known as the Worldwide Grid, it would give users access to the computing power of all the machines connected to a network no matter where they are in the world. The technology could turn desktop computers into supercomputers and is now being adapted to allow mobile devices such as phones and tablets to connect.

Physicists at CERN already have access to the world’s biggest Grid computing network, combining more than 200,000 computers together. It allows them to analyse more than 26 million gigabytes of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) each year. It is now undergoing an upgrade as the rest of the LHC is similarly upgraded to increase its power. Based on the past three years of use, scientists are intending to improve the efficiency of the system while also decreasing its complexity.

In his novel ‘1984’, George Orwell imagined a future world where speech was greatly restricted. He called the language that the totalitarian state in his novel created “Newspeak”, and it bears a striking resemblance to the political correctness that we see in America right now. According to Wikipedia, ‘Newspeak’ is “a reduced language created by the totalitarian state as a tool to limit free thought, and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, peace, etc. Any form of thought alternative to the party’s construct is classified as ‘thoughtcrime.’”

Yes, people are not usually being hauled off to prison for what they are saying just yet, but we are heading down that path. Every single day, the mainstream media in the United States bombards us with subtle messages about what we should believe and what “appropriate speech” consists of. Most of the time, most Americans quietly fall in line with this unwritten speech code. In fact, most of the time we enforce this unwritten speech code among each other. Those that would dare to buck the system are finding out that the consequences can be rather severe.

It would be a huge mistake to underestimate the power of the mainstream media in America today. As I mentioned the other day, Americans watch an average of about 153 hours of television a month. When Americans go to work or go to school, the conversations that they have with others are mostly based on content that the media feeds them. And about 90 percent of what we watch on television is controlled by just six gigantic corporations.

But the media is not the only source that is telling us what to think. The truth is that the messaging that comes from all of our major institutions (the government, the media, the education system, etc) is remarkably consistent. The establishment wants to control what we say and how we think, and they have a relentless propaganda machine that never stops working.

In 2004, scholars at UCLA revealed that college students involved in religious activities are likely to have better mental health. In 2006, population researchers at the University of Texas discovered that the more often you go to church, the longer you live. In the same year researchers at Duke University in America discovered that religious people have stronger immune systems than the irreligious. They also established that churchgoers have lower blood pressure.

The list goes on. In the last few years scientists have revealed that believers, compared to non-believers, have better outcomes from breast cancer, coronary disease, mental illness, Aids, and rheumatoid arthritis. Believers even get better results from IVF. Likewise, believers also report greater levels of happiness, are less likely to commit suicide, and cope with stressful events much better. Believers also have more kids. What’s more, these benefits are visible even if you adjust for the fact that believers are less likely to smoke, drink or take drugs. And let’s not forget that religious people are nicer. They certainly give more money to charity than atheists, who are, according to the very latest survey, the meanest of all.

So which is the smart party, here? Is it the atheists, who live short, selfish, stunted little lives – often childless – before they approach hopeless death in despair, and their worthless corpses are chucked in a trench (or, if they are wrong, they go to Hell)? Or is it the believers, who live longer, happier, healthier, more generous lives, and who have more kids, and who go to their quietus with ritual dignity, expecting to be greeted by a smiling and benevolent God?

Obviously, it’s the believers who are smarter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mentally ill. And I mean that literally: the evidence today implies that atheism is a form of mental illness. And this is because science is showing that the human mind is hard-wired for faith: we have, as a species, evolved to believe, which is one crucial reason why believers are happier – religious people have all their faculties intact, they are fully functioning humans. Therefore, being an atheist – lacking the vital faculty of faith – should be seen as an affliction, and a tragic deficiency: something akin to blindness.

Armoured bulldozers moved deep into the main camp outside the eastern Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. Officials say the other protest camp, at Nahda Square, has also been cleared. Graphic accounts of bloodshed emerged from the protest camps as reporters described wounded protesters being treated alongside the dead in makeshift field hospitals.

The interior ministry said a mopping-up operation in the streets surrounding Nahda Square was under way. Pro-Morsi activists were chased into the nearby zoo and Cairo University, Nile TV said. It is still unclear how many casualties were caught up in the two Cairo operations. Figures differ widely and have been impossible to verify independently.

In a televised statement, a government spokesman praised their "self-restraint" and spoke of the "smaller number" of injuries among protesters. The government would decisively confront attempts to attack state buildings and police stations, he said.

And it is not just savers who have effectively had their money pinched. Anyone who has a fixed monthly income, such as pensioners, or has had a tiny pay rise, has also lost out. Someone who earned £20,000 four years ago is now £804 worse off. A retired person living off a personal pension of £550 a month has lost £1,236 a year. A saver who has kept £10,000 in the best easy-access account has seen the value plunge by £1,243.

The money pickpocketed from savings and wages through this cunning attack is being used to pay off the nation’s debtors, including our own Government. This grab is about to get worse, too. Last week, the Bank of England issued forward guidance - the first time it has ever taken such a radical step - and indicated that interest rates could remain low until 2016. The new governor, Mark Carney, has formally linked the base rate to unemployment rather than inflation.

Dr Ros Altmann, a former Downing Street pensions adviser, says: ‘What we are seeing is a massive redistribution of assets from savers to borrowers. Every time the cost of living outstrips pay rises or interest on High Street accounts, money disappears out of the pockets of people who have been prudent into the pockets of those who have big debts to pay.’