The leaks actually benefit the establishment by providing a myriad of distraction news stories and ammunition for the corporate media to have more false debates surrounding Iran and the bogus terror war. Supposedly, this recent batch of documents released by Wikileaks is only a small portion of the entire Cablegate archive which raises a number of questions. Why would Julian Assange the public face behind Wikileaks not release a vast majority of the documents all at once?

It is understandable that he would want an insurance policy by keeping a cache of documents that they could release in case he or other people affiliated with Wikileaks get arrested but what is not understandable is why he would not release as many documents as possible. It certainly appears as if Wikileaks wants to turn this whole Cablegate scandal into a long drawn out affair by releasing all of these documents over a long period of time.

The bottom line is that if Wikileaks was a real operation, almost all of these documents in the Cablegate archive would have been immediately released. They want this to be a long drawn out affair to provide an unlimited amount of distraction news stories and discussions in the corporate media. It will also be used to provide a justification to establish more controls over the alternative media and the Internet.

According to a complaint filed against the school earlier this year, school officials demanded Keeton, 24, go through a "remediation" program after she asserted homosexuality is a behavioral choice, not a "state of being" as a professor said. Specifically, the remediation program was to include "sensitivity training" on homosexual issues, additional outside study on literature promoting homosexuality and the plan that she attend a "gay pride parade" and report on it. "Besides violating Keeton's own First Amendment rights," writes University of California Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh in the brief, "the university's retaliation also sent a powerful message to other students: If you express views like Keeton's, prepare to suffer the same consequences - prepare to incur many hours of extra obligations, and to put yourself at risk of expulsion."

University "faculty have promised to expel Miss Keeton from the graduate Counselor Education program, not because of poor academic showing or demonstrated deficiencies in clinical performance, but simply because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and gender identity," the law firm explained. According to court documents, Keeton faces the "remediation" requirement because she supposedly (1) "voiced disagreement in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and lesbian 'lifestyle," (2) "stated in one paper that she believes GLBTQ 'lifestyles' to be identity confusion," (3) "relayed [to another student] her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations" and (4) "tried to convince other students to support and believe her views."

School authorities cited the American Counseling Association's code of ethics and said students would be required to adopt its provisions to obtain a degree in counseling. Faculty members, therefore, had demanded Keeton "attend at least three workshops... which emphasize... diversity training sensitive toward working with GLBTQ populations." They also wanted her to "develop" her knowledge of homosexuality by reading 10 articles and increasing her exposure to homosexuals and lesbians by attending "the Gay Pride Parade."

"Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform," said ADF Senior Counsel David French. "Abandoning one's own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree. This type of leftist zero-tolerance policy is in place at far too many universities, and it must stop. Jennifer's only crime was to have the beliefs that she does."

The number of children who will face family breakdown has soared from 40 per cent to 48 per cent over the last decade, according to analysis of official figures. The report undermines the claims of politically correct campaigners - endorsed by the last Labour government - who have said there is no difference between marriage and cohabiting and that it was not for government to interfere with people's choice of how they arranged their lives.

The report, carried out jointly by the Centre for Social Justice think tank and the Bristol Community Family Trust, found that family breakdown costs taxpayers 20 billion pounds every year. While more than half of children are born to married parents, divorce accounts for just one in five family break-ups for the under fives - and just 14 per cent of the costs. The collapse of cohabiting relationships costs taxpayers four times as much.

The report says: 'Of every 7 pounds spent on family breakdown among young families (by the taxpayer), 1 pound is spent on divorce, 4 pounds is spent on unmarried dual registered parents who separate and 2 pounds is spent on sole registered parents. In other words, the problem is not divorce. While marriage accounts for 54 per cent of births, the failure of marriages - ie divorce - accounts for only 20 per cent of break-ups and 14 per cent of the costs of family breakdown, among all families with children under five.' Unmarried couples account for 40 per cent of births, 59 per cent of family splits and 59 per cent of costs.

Another is the festival of Beltane, which falls in early May, devotees are urged to celebrate the Sun God with 'unabashed sexuality and promiscuity'.

The Yule festival involves pagans 'casting spells' and dressing up as ghosts. Pagan inmates may even be allowed special food and drink on their days off. Traditional pagan food include Ewe's milk for Imbolc, Simnel Cake and eggs on Spring Equinox and Roast Goose on Autumn Equinox.

On Samhain - celebrated on Halloween - pagans by tradition go apple bobbing.

It is the latest in a series of rulings to protect convicts' rights and ensure equality among different faiths. New guidelines entitled 'Religious Festival dates for 2011' state that all prison staff must be made aware of the pagan festival dates. It states: 'The Prison Service is committed to ensuring that prisoners from all religious faiths are given the opportunity and facilities to practise their religions.'

His comments came as deep divisions in the eurozone threatened to drive Spain, Portugal and Ireland into more difficulty. Attempting to defy Germany, the eurozone's powerhouse and the nation that will provide the bulk of any rescue fund, Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders called for the 440 billion euros bail-out fund to be expanded, while Luxembourg Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and Italian counterpart Giulio Tremonti outlined proposals for a joint European government bond.

However, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria on Monday pitched themselves against weaker member states by insisting the rescue package should not be increased. Finance ministers from the 16 member nations were debating the bail-out plans late into the night. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, quickly dashed hopes by rejecting the idea as unworkable and stating: "I see no need to expand the fund right now."

As market fears revived, the cost of insurance for Irish, Greek, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish sovereign debt rose. Bond yields were also higher as institutions shunned governments. European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Nout Wellink said it is not the central bank's task to rescue euro-area countries with funding problems. "It's not up to the ECB to save countries where governments run the risk of becoming insolvent," Wellink, who also heads the Dutch central bank, said. "We are not here to take over, on our balance sheet, the risks of the national economies of Europe."

Taylor runs the world's largest currency hedge fund with assets under management of around $8.5 billion. "I would argue that by the middle of next year, we will be in a recession and our fiscal hands will be tied," he said. Taylor has maintained in previous interviews that the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program, designed as a way to help jump-start the economy, won't necessarily prevent a recession.

Banks in a recession tend to demand the repayment of loans, and if the debt is denominated in the US currency - and in most cases they are - then investors are squeezed as they scramble to find dollars to repay the debt. That should be dollar-positive, Taylor said. This was what happened in late 2008 when panic in the markets - precipitated by the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers - drove the safe-haven dollar higher against most major currencies. "It's kind of perverse. When the US economy is doing badly, the dollar goes up and when the economy is doing well, the dollar goes down."

For now, all eyes are on the euro zone, which is facing a debt crisis. Theoretically, at some point the euro could fall apart, Taylor said, "What Europe has done is not enough. They have to have eurobonds," said Taylor. "You can't lend money to Ireland or Greece. You're just piling on more debt to them, and it's getting harder and harder to repay."

"We've always believed it's a mobile and nimble operation," said Sean Sarah, the non-profit group's spokesman. "We move to areas where it's most effective. Of course the situation in Congress has changed. So our strategies and tactics have changed along with it." Sarah didn't disclose which states the Alliance still has workers in. But he said the group retains its same staff size and headquarters in Washington and Gore's hometown of Nashville.

Gore in 2008 launched a $300 million advertising and lobbying campaign through the Alliance to help pass climate legislation on Capitol Hill, telling CBS' 60 Minutes at the time it was a "blitz as sweeping and expensive as a big corporation's rollout of a new product." The group has not disclosed how much of that money it ultimately spent.

World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an ever rising trend: 'Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far - 1998.' Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits - an ambition that was not to be met.

Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000 delegate UN climate jamboree, in an attempt to influence richer countries to agree to give 20 billion pounds immediately to poorer ones to offset the results of warming, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again. Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to -20c, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.

Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began. But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications - not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole. Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US Vice President Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, GLOBAL WARMING HAS STOPPED.

Even Phil Jones, the CRU director at the centre of last year's 'Climategate' leaked email scandal, was forced to admit in a little noticed BBC online interview that there has been 'no statistically significant warming' since 1995. One of those leaked emails, dated October 2009, was from Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the US government's National Centre for Atmospheric Research and the IPCC's lead author on climate change science in its monumental 2002 and 2007 reports. He wrote: 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.'

The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?

At the time, officials announced the new bills would incorporate sophisticated high-tech security features, including a 3-D security strip and a color-shifting image of a bell designed to foil counterfeiters. But the production process is so complex, it has instead foiled the government printers tasked with producing billions of the new notes. An official familiar with the situation told CNBC that 1.1 billion of the new bills have been printed, but they are unusable because of a creasing problem in which paper folds over during production, revealing a blank unlinked portion of the bill face.

The total face value of the unusable bills, $110 billion, represents more than ten percent of the entire supply of US currency on the planet, which a government source said is $930 billion in banknotes. Sorting such a huge quantity of bills by hand, the officials estimate, could take between 20 and 30 years. Using a mechanized system, they think they could sort the massive pile of bills, each of which features the familiar image of Benjamin Franklin on the face, in about one year.

The defective bills - which could number into the tens of millions, potentially representing billions of dollars in face value - will have to be shredded. American taxpayers have already spent an enormous amount of money to print the bills. According to a person familiar with the matter, the bills are the most costly ever produced, with a per-note cost of about 12 cents - twice the cost of a conventional bill. That means the GOVERNMENT SPENT ABOUT $120 MILLION TO PRODUCE BILLS IT CAN'T USE. On top of that, it is not yet clear how much more it will cost to sort the existing horde of hundred dollar bills.

The problem with the new hundred-dollar bills has remained largely hidden from public view, despite a press release issued by the Federal Reserve on October 1 that announced "a delay in the issue date" of the new bills and cited "a problem with sporadic creasing of the paper."

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn believes the 16-nation eurozone should boost the 750 billion euros (635 billion pounds; $1trillion) rescue fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said over the weekend that eurozone countries should increase the fund. The issue is one of several topics on the agenda at this evening's meeting, but Germany has already set out its position. Ms Merkel told a press conference in Berlin that she saw no need to boost the bail-out fund, which is unpopular in Germany because of the size of the country's commitment.

Germany believes the current system, under which countries issue their own bonds, imposes some fiscal discipline on members - and punishes them when they step out of line. The German chancellor said: "Competition on [bond] interest rates is an incentive to respect stability criteria... It is our firm conviction that the [EU] treaties do not allow joint eurobonds."

In the first half of 2008, the banking industry seemed to be recovering from the initial sub-prime shock. Capital was raised and interbank spreads narrowed. Liquidity support and the rescues of Bear Stearns and European banks demonstrated the authorities' determination to stabilise markets if necessary with public funds.

However the limits to that support especially in the US were not made clear and, over the summer, markets tested its credibility. We saw a succession of banks deny they needed help only to be forced into state rescues until the US tried to draw the line at Lehman. Its failure triggered a general loss of confidence in banks which was only reversed by explicit government guarantees of all their banks' liabilities, going far beyond what would have been needed to save Lehman.

This year doubts have been growing about the guarantees of euro members. Taken as a whole the euro area is in a better position to meet its debts and to bail out its banks than the US or Japan. It is in broad current account balance, its debt burden is not exceptional and its taxable capacity is huge. What is unclear is how far it is willing to act collectively. And, without fiscal support from the rest of the union, it seems doubtful that Greece can dig its own way out of its sovereign debt hole or that Ireland can redeem its banks' debts.

First Greece, then Ireland have been forced to turn to the EU and IMF for help. But the rescues have offered only more time to pay and have stopped short of promising transfers either now or if the plans go off track. Not surprisingly markets have continued to price in defaults in those cases and have moved on to question whether, on these terms, others can honour their debts and stand behind their banks. It only needs a small level of risk to make it sensible to steer clear. So now it is Portugal and Spain issuing the denials while Italy, Belgium and even France try to dismiss any threat as absurd.

If the euro area waits for the crisis to deepen and spread before acting, there is a real risk of a run on their banks like that in 2008. Not only will that set back recovery but the euro area will only restore calm and preserve the union by issuing the sort of collective guarantees of sovereign and bank debt they have been so desperate to avoid.

"Many see China's monetary tightening as a pre-emptive tap on the brakes, a warning shot across the proverbial economic bows. We see it as a potentially more malevolent reactive day of reckoning," said Tim Ash, the bank's emerging markets chief. Officially, inflation was 4.4 per cent in October, and may reach 5 per cent in November, but it is to hard find anybody in China who believes it is that low. Vegetables have risen 20 per cent in a month.

The Communist Party learned from Tiananmen in 1989 how surging prices can seed dissent. "Inflation is a redistributive mechanism in favour of the few that can protect living standards, against the large majority who cannot. The political leadership cannot, will not, take risks in that regard," said Mr Ash. RBS recommends credit default swaps on China's five-year debt. This is not a forecast that China will default. It is insurance against the "fat tail risk" of a hard landing, with ramifications across Asia.

The Politburo said on Friday that China would move from "relatively loose" money to a "prudent" policy next year, a recognition that credit rationing, price controls, and other forms of Medieval restraint are not enough. The question is whether Beijing has already left it too late.

The letter sounded like a call for help. "Once again, Germany's image has worsened significantly as a result of our position on combating the euro financial crisis in some EU member states," read the analysis, which was prepared by the Europe division of the German Foreign Ministry. The authors warned forcefully: "The goal of the federal government must be to promptly and permanently dispel doubts as to its European orientation."

For months, the Foreign Ministry has been concerned about Germany's image in the rest of the European Union. Germany has been criticized by other European countries for, among other things, unsettling the markets with talk of making private creditors share the cost of future bailouts. And the worse the euro drama becomes, the more anxiously are the diplomats in Berlin looking to Germany's neighbors. Even countries who have similar positions to Germany regarding how best to combat the crisis have voiced "occasional doubts" as to the "basic orientation" of the Germans.

Since the analysis was written in July, the situation has deteriorated even further. "Anger at Germany boils over," Britain's Financial Times wrote recently. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker has also called for more team spirit from Germany.

And, if opinion polls are to be believed, almost 50 percent of Germans would like to see the currency reintroduced as the country's official means of payment. In fact, pollsters at the EU's Eurobarometer have determined that: "For many Germans, the deutsche mark was the symbol of economic security, stability and prosperity." Those are attributes that euroskeptics will never be able to associate Europe's single currency with.

From one perspective, they might be right. Hasn't the financial crisis in Europe gotten drastically worse in recent weeks? First it was Greece, and now Ireland too has had to draw on the 750 billion euros ($993 billion) rescue fund set up this year to prevent the euro zone from breaking apart. A number of other euro-zone countries may be about to share the same fate. Financial markets are already betting that Portugal will need a bailout. And, if worse comes to worst, it could even happen to Spain, which would surely mean the end of the euro as we've known it.

But what would really happen if the euro collapsed? Would it really herald a return to the good, old days, to a Germany that uses the much-revered deutsche mark? Or could it actually be a harbinger of chaos and economic depression?

The surge, which comes as Chinese investors look for insurance against rising inflation and currency appreciation, puts Beijing on track to overtake India as the world's largest consumer of gold and a significant force in global gold prices. The size of the imports - more than 209 tonnes of gold during the first 10 months of the year, a fivefold increase from an estimate of 45 tonnes last year - was revealed on Thursday. In the past, China has kept the volume secret.

"Investment is really driving demand for gold," said Cai Minggang, at the Beijing Precious Metals Exchange. "People don't have any better investment options. Look at the stock market, or the property market - you could make huge losses there." Beijing has encouraged retail consumption, with an announcement in August of measures to promote and regulate the local gold market, including expanding the number of banks allowed to import bullion.

The rise in Chinese demand could further inflate gold prices. Bullion hit a nominal all-time high of $1,424.10 a troy ounce last month. But adjusted for inflation, prices are far from the 1980 peak of $2,300.