German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday reprimanded a politician from her coalition for saying European Central Bank President Mario Draghi was on the way to becoming the "currency forger of Europe" and that a Greek exit from the euro zone was unavoidable. "We're in a very decisive phase in the fight against the euro debt crisis at the moment," [Mrs] Merkel told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday. "My request: everyone should weigh their words very carefully."

It was a swipe at Alexander Dobrindt, the general secretary of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to [Mrs] Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU). [Mr] Dobrindt had told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview published on Sunday: "I'm convinced that there is no way to avoid a Greek exit from the euro zone." He added: "I see Greece outside the euro zone in 2013."

He criticized [Mr] Draghi's proposal to set an upper limit for bond yields of ailing euro-zone nations, saying it was an attempt to "finance debt countries through the back door" and accusing him of misusing the ECB as a "bucket wheel" to shift "money from the stable north of Europe to the deficit-ridden south."

While nobody was injured - and as seismologists stress it does not increase the risk of a massive earthquake the region has long feared - it has inevitably fuelled anxiety. On Sunday, quakes could be felt as far away as San Diego on the West Coast and inland east into Arizona, as well as Orange County further north towards Los Angeles. In Brawley itself there was minor damage to town center buildings, while products were knocked from shelves in some stores and amateur video showed the alarming jolt of the biggest shakes.

Seismologists say the latest quake cluster is the biggest in 30 years. A 2005 swarm peaked with a 5.1-magnitude shake, whereas the largest judder on Sunday reached 5.5 on the Richter scale. The town at the epicenter of the shaking has a quake phenomenon named after it: the Brawley Seismic Zone. It sits between the San Andreas and Imperial faults.

Net farm income will reach $122.2 billion in 2012, the highest-ever nominal profit and the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms after 1973, the US Department of Agriculture said in its first forecast since drought spread across the corn belt.

Intense summer heat and dry soils dramatically worsened the outlook for this year’s US corn and soyabean harvest, propelling prices to all-time highs. Farms in northern plains states that escaped the worst conditions, such as North Dakota, will earn 39 per cent more this year, the department said.

“Essentially, you have a situation where the increase in prices offsets the reduction in the quantity produced and sold during the year,” said Mitch Morehart, a USDA economist. Many farmers in the drought-hit areas abandoned crops and will file insurance claims to cover losses. “Insurance indemnities are forecast to offset the impacts of declining yields associated with the drought,” the forecast said.

John Whitehead, attorney for the Rutherford Institute and Raub has stated that since the former Marine’s detention case, he has received numerous statements from other veterans who are being discriminated against. The latest trend is to have our former US service men and women declared mentally ill and detained against their will.

Just as Raub was forcibly detained in a mental ward, another veteran has been taken without charge or criminal activity. His firearms were confiscated and he was given a court date. In a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, collaborating with the VA Medical Center, an estimated 1/3rd of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq were determined to be mentally or psychologically ill. Touting post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD), more than half of returning veterans are considered suffering from a war-related mental disorder.

Committing an individual to a mental hospital is not illegal. This may be why we are seeing our US veterans being targeted, called mentally ill, and forcibly removed from their homes. Coinciding with the growing number of mentally ill US veterans we are seeing the removal of their firearms and right to even own firearms. This is another scheme the Obama administration is implementing to set the stage for their complete takeover of America after martial law is declared.

"America today would be unrecognizable to our Founders,” declared Kelly Shackelford, the director of the Liberty Institute. “Our First Liberty is facing a relentless onslaught from well-funded and aggressive groups and individuals who are using the courts, Congress, and the vast federal bureaucracy to suppress and limit religious freedom,” he said. “Let this be a call to stand for religious liberty in the United States," urged Tony Perkins, the director of the Family Research Council. “Our Founding Fathers considered religious liberty our ‘first freedom,’ and the bedrock upon which all other freedoms rest,” the report’s introduction noted.

The long list of instances where religious liberty has been threatened included the following:

+ A federal judge threatened “incarceration” to a high school valedictorian unless she removed references to Jesus from her graduation speech.

+ City officials prohibited senior citizens from praying over their meals, listening to religious messages or singing gospel songs at a senior activities center.

+ A public school official physically lifted an elementary school student from his seat and reprimanded him in front of his classmates for praying over his lunch.

+ Following US Department of Veterans Affairs’ policies, a federal government official sought to censor a pastor’s prayer, eliminating references to Jesus, during a Memorial Day ceremony honoring veterans at a national cemetery.

+ Public school officials prohibited students from handing out gifts because they contained religious messages.

+ A public school official prevented a student from handing out flyers inviting her classmates to an event at her church.

+ A public university’s law school banned a Christian organization because it required its officers to adhere to a statement of faith that the university disagreed with.

+ The US Department of Justice argued before the Supreme Court that the federal government can tell churches and synagogues which pastors and rabbis it can hire and fire.

+ The State of Texas sought to approve and regulate what religious seminaries can teach.

When the Sun reaches the peak of its 11-year cycle, fierce magnetic rays burst from it. Activity is low this cycle but as energy is not being released, any storms would be more violent. A large discharge could overwhelm Earth’s magnetic field, which serves as a protective barrier.

The last catastrophic “coronal mass ejection”, as it is known, was in 1859 when most telegraph systems were disabled. A Nasa-backed report predicted a “planetary disaster” if a storm struck. Professor Alan Woodward, of Surrey University, said: “We have never had a solar storm since we have been dependent on computers or satellites.”

In 2009, Panarin lectured at the Diplomatic Academy where he said that he believes that the US will begin to collapse in 2010. He compared America to Nazi Germany and blamed the US for the global financial crisis that destroyed the Russian economy. Panarin said that American society is in decline, referencing school shootings like Columbine. Combined with the banker bailouts in 2008 as proof that the US is no longer the global dominating economy, Paranrin believes that the American dream is over.

He asserts that mass immigration, economic decline and moral degradation will plunge America into a civil war that will center on the collapse of the US dollar. Considering the social climate emerging in America, Panarin’s words seem prophetic.

Lubbock County Judge Tom Head said on a local FOX affiliate station that he is convinced that [Mr] Obama’s re-election would spawn civil unrest which would justify the US government’s use of martial law to quell the public. [Tom] Head is seeking an increase in local taxes to “beef up” the Lubbock County Sheriff’s office and district attorney’s office.

The federal government is too large and its influence too prominent, but states still set their own laws on some of this country’s most contentious issues such as abortion and gun rights. Were Europe to emulate such a model the constituent parties (nation states) would retain local authority over at least some of their affairs. However, as recent cases demonstrate, European federalism is far from the federalism of the United States. Over in Ireland, like the United States, abortion is a hot topic. Ireland is alone in Europe when it comes to the severity of its restrictions on abortion. Abortions are illegal under all circumstances except in the case of pregnancy endangering the life of the mother.

While the abnormally religious Irish do have some unorthodox legislation relating to abortion you would think that the sort of federalism European officials say they are practicing would allow for the Irish to make their own laws on abortion. After all, the European Union has an open border policy and Europeans can vote with their feet when it comes to policies. Thousands of Irish women already do this every year, travelling to England to have abortions.

The European Court of Human rights, which has one Irish judge out of the forty seven on the court, ruled in 2010 that a woman with cancer had her rights violated when she was unable to get an abortion in Ireland. The court is set to report on its findings next month. Depending on the findings the court might demand the Irish revise their abortion laws. The current government has vowed to oppose any suggestion from the court.

The European Union has done a poor job at implementing federalism. As a political entity it is highly centralized. It ignores referendums and locally supported policies. The truth is that American-style federalism is not really what the European political machine wants. As the current euro-crisis has been demonstrating, the European political establishment has no respect for democracy and a fetish for centralized control, whether it is economic, political, or judicial.

The Afghan endgame is on in real earnest. The first moves on the regional strategic chessboard and, perhaps, the next episode of the ‘Great Game’ have been initiated. The South-Central Asian Region (SCAR) is thus currently in a state of flux. In its eagerness to egress the region, the US is rending asunder its non-alliance with Pakistan while Russia watches and waits anxiously to exploit the resulting mayhem.

The forceful geopolitical and strategic moves are afoot by both the US and Russia to manoeuvre into a geopolitically advantageous position in the region. The emerging environment of SCAR is thus pregnant with epoch-making possibilities. The Russians have a lot to gain by engaging Pakistan fruitfully at this dynamic juncture in regional and global history. The two have been conducting quiet diplomacy in the recent past. President Vladimir Putin is visiting Pakistan come September 2012.