The bishops embraced the findings of a study group on sexual morality chaired by Berlin Archbishop Heiner Koch, which will form a starting point for the “Synodal Way of the Church” in Germany to rethink Catholic teachings and praxis for the present day. “There was agreement that the sexual preference of humans is expressed during puberty and assumes a heterosexual or homosexual orientation,” the statement reads.

Since one’s sexual orientation is unchangeable, “in church thinking, this means that any form of discrimination against homosexuals must be rejected, as has long been required by the magisterium and is also explicitly emphasized by Pope Francis in the post-synodal letter Amoris Laetitia,” the bishops note. “The results of the expert consultation will feed into the Forum of the Synodical Way ‘Living in Successful Relationships — Living Love in Sexuality and Partnership,’ which will start work in February 2020,” the text concludes.

The US government believes China has imprisoned up to 3 million people – mostly Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz Muslims – in over a thousand concentration camps built in Xinjiang province, which borders Afghanistan. There, from what reporters and human rights activists have pieced together from the few survivors who have escaped, detainees are subject to torture, rape, communist indoctrination, slavery, and live organ harvesting.

The Chinese Communist Party claimed this week that all detainees had “graduated” from the concentration camps. China insists the camps are “vocational training centers” where underprivileged Muslim youth learn valuable trade skills to participate in the Chinese economy and steer clear of terrorist organizations.

You have the Conservatives led by Boris Johnson, a proven liar who turns as many stomachs as he makes smiles. He’s led a demonstrably dishonest campaign offering very little beyond a promise to deliver Brexit within weeks (which no one believes). He’s deployed tactics reliant on fake news social media and hoodwinking gullible journalists into reporting stories that are not true.

On the other hand you have Labour led by Jeremy Corbyn, an old socialist full of good intentions but who is slippery on the issue of Brexit and tainted by accusations, true or not, that he has not acted quickly enough to stamp out anti-Semitism among his supporters.

There are also parties like the Liberal Democrats, and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party but it looks like all they can hope for is to play a spoiler role, and make it harder for either the Tories or Labour to achieve a decisive victory.

The polls, which are hardly ever wrong of course, suggest the most likely outcome is that the Conservatives will scrape a majority. But it’s worth reiterating that, if we’ve learned nothing else over the last half a decade, we do know that polls are not to be trusted, so really anything could happen and Labour may have nationalised Christmas by … erm … Christmas.

YouGov’s latest and final general election MRP model also shows the Conservative Party winning an overall majority in this election. Predicted vote shares stand at 43 percent for the Conservatives, 34 percent for Labour, 12 percent for the Liberal Democrats and three percent for the Brexit Party. This would translate into 339 seats for the Conservatives, 231 for Labour, 41 for the SNP and 15 for the Liberal Democrats. This is enough to give the Conservatives a working majority of 28 in the House of Commons.

Gone are the days when TIME chose adult men, like Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill as the magazine’s person of the year (Adolf Hitler too – the award is for the most influential, not necessarily the most virtuous public figure). These days the accent is on youth, and Greta Thunberg personifies the much acclaimed ‘wisdom of the child’. That is why three Norwegian MPs nominated Thunberg for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

Throughout the Western world the authority of adulthood is in crisis. Adulthood is increasingly associated with negative attributes and grown ups feel less and less able to provide guidance to young people. The flip side of the erosion of adult authority is the tendency to look to young people for solutions and answers. That is why Western society’s depreciation of adulthood coexists with adulation of the supposed wisdom of children.

Arguably the most grotesque manifestation of this trend is the spectacle of politicians and dignitaries intently listening to Greta at high profile international meetings. A thunderous standing ovation is guaranteed by the mere appearance of this symbol of an infantilised political culture. The theme of adult irresponsibility has been her most common refrain – appearing in her lecture to the United Nations climate change summit as far back as a year ago, and in every major speech she has made this year.

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” she said last December. “We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with.”

Germany’s arms industry is looking forward to golden days ahead. "We are benefiting from the backlog many countries have in their military provisions and from growing budgets, particularly also in Germany," Armin Papperger, Rheinmetall Board Chair was quoted saying. Germany's arms industry hopes to get a significant portion. Additional large sums will flow into the coffers of the German arms producers from the EU's specific projects. Experts, for example, are calculating that the Franco-German combat aircraft project will cost up to €100 billion alone.

German arms exports are already increasing rapidly. As was announced in November, the German government had authorized the export of around €7.4 billion worth of war material from January to October 2019, thereby nearly as much as in the entire record-breaking 2015, when arms exports valued at around €7.9 billion had been authorized by the government. German arms manufacturers are heavily profiting from NATO's arms buildup.

While Erdogan’s evaluation is not very complimentary for the present-day European politicians, at least some of the past EU leaders earned his praise. Erdogan named the former German chancellor Gerhard Schroder as an important leader who was able to make reforms. Another politician to the Turkish president’s liking was former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, under whom Italian-Turkish cooperation thrived.

When asked which of the contemporary world leaders he actually likes, Erdogan listed both the US and Russian presidents, stating that both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are “open” during talks and they do not have any “secret agenda” against Turkey.

Ankara has been repeatedly engaging in bitter rows with the EU over various issues, including the refugee problem, alleged violations of human rights in Turkey, Erdogan’s recent assault on Kurdish-led militias in northern Syria, and so on. While these issues have repeatedly caused diplomatic flare-ups between the bloc and Turkey, Erdogan was not afraid to spice it up and get personal with the EU leaders.

In the drafted letter, Mayor Winter asked the governor for aid in forcing the homeless to adhere to her regulations, but includes “conservatorship until such time as the individual has demonstrated the ability to care for themselves including managing their finances.” So, if these people are homeless due to the recent devastation, then they could also be forced to any type of makeshift prison, and have their finances taken over by the state. This is called Asset Forfeiture.

Seizure and forfeiture of assets currently represent the proceeds of crimes. However, if this request is approved, the State of California will either be redefining the laws on Asset forfeiture, or they will actually be making homelessness a crime. It has also been likened to Debtors Prisons or forced workhouses. California has the highest percentage of unsheltered homeless individuals in the country.

After hijackers supported by Saudi Arabia attacked the United States on 9/11, the US waged a relentless, unforgiving, violent, and unwinnable war in Afghanistan. Since the beginning of the war, the Afghans have been slaughtered, the country has become a hotbed for terrorists, they’ve drastically increased heroin production, and this year, the US was found to have killed more people than the terrorists we are ostensibly fighting. The once beautiful nation has been turned into a pit of rubble by years of bombing and war — and the US taxpayer has funded all of it. And it has only gotten worse.

For the last several decades, the US government has openly funded, supported, and armed various terrorist networks throughout the world to forward an agenda of destabilization and proxy war. It is not a secret, nor a conspiracy theory — America arms bad guys. The situation has gotten so overtly corrupt that the government admitted in May the Pentagon asked Congress for funding to reimburse terrorists for their transportation and other expenses. Seriously.

Americans have been so brainwashed into the two party divide, that they are more concerned with accusations of political favors than they are about a vast conspiracy against them which has caused immeasurable pain and suffering on a global scale. Congratulations, America, you’ve successfully become an Orwell novel.

“Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult…” — George Orwell in ‘1984’

The idea that debt can grow faster than the ability to repay, until it unbalances a society, was well understood thousands of years ago, according to Michael Hudson, an economist and historian. Last year Hudson published “And Forgive Them Their Debts,’’ a study of the ancient Near East where the tradition known as a “jubilee” - wiping the debt-slate clean - has its roots. He describes how the practice spread through civilizations including Sumer and Babylon, and came to play an important role in the Bible and Jewish law.

Rulers weren’t motivated by charity, Hudson says. They were being pragmatic - trying to make sure that citizens could meet their own needs and contribute to public projects, instead of just laboring to pay creditors. And it worked, he says. “Societies that canceled the debts enjoyed stable growth for thousands of years.”