The AfD states that if the reforms are not implemented “we deem necessary to consider a withdrawal of Germany or an orderly dissolution of the European Union and the establishment of a new European economic and interest community”. According to the party, 44,000 EU officials and 11,000 employees cost over €8 billion a year – 4,000 of those officials earn more than €290,000 a year, which is more than the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s salary.

AfD is also considering to drop the euro as the EU’s single currency and the bloc’s climate change targets in their planned sweeping changes. The eurosceptics are currently working on the unification of the EU Parliament’s right-wing parties by seeking to take advantage of those left homeless by British-led groups after Brexit.

According to election analysts Europe Elects, the AfD, who currently reside in Nigel Farage’s EFDD group, could become the second largest group by attracting fellow right-wingers the ECR and ENF. The pollster’s projection would see the group win 161 seats in the EU Parliament, leaving them just 17 seats away from becoming the largest and most powerful team of MEPs.

The incident, which provoked such an angry reaction from the police union chief, took place on December 29. Four migrants aged between 17 and 19 and coming from Iran and Afghanistan, went on a rampage near the railway station in Amberg, assaulting and beating people seemingly at random. It was later established that all the assailants were drunk. The scuffles left 12 people injured.

All four suspects were promptly detained by police. Wendt also said that the attackers “should only be set free after they set foot in their homeland,” echoing widespread calls for swifter deportations of migrants and asylum seekers who commit crimes in Germany. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer also called the Amberg incident “troubling” and that such “excessive violence” cannot be “tolerated.” "If existing laws are not sufficient, they must be changed,” he told Bild as he renewed his pursuit for swifter deportations.

For those with Jewish-German heritage, the idea of returning to Germany, where their families suffered at the hands of a brutal Nazi regime, is deeply fraught. But with anti-Semitic attacks on the rise since the Brexit referendum — and in the wake of a campaign that played on resentment of foreigners and immigrants — many now look to Germany, which opened its doors to refugees at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, as a place of relative safety and tolerance.

If the idea of Brits — not least the descendants of Nazi victims — queuing up to become German citizens would have been unthinkable a decade or so ago, their willingness to consider a return to Germany is evidence of how much they feel both countries have changed.

Germany must admit that it is not only far-right extremists who commit hate-fueled mobbing attacks, the German police union chief said as he lambasted a group of migrants who assaulted people days before New Year’s Eve.

The public face of Aufstehen, which has almost 170,000 signed-up members, Wagenknecht said she admired Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) and the Jeremy Corbyn-supporting Momentum in the UK and that she was effectively modelling the movement on them. Wagenknecht was quick to stress that she did not support violence, but said she was sympathetic to those who felt the need to use it to express their anger.

Wagenknecht blamed “wage dumping” – keeping wages low using cheap labour – for triggering the most dissatisfaction with the EU and said it would lead to the bloc’s “further disintegration” if not tackled. She said the British economy was one that had arguably benefited most from cheap labour from eastern Europe, as well as from low corporation tax. That had led to a low-wage economy, which in turn encouraged Brexit.

Financial blacklisting doesn’t just rob you of a chance to spread your message: it robs you of your ability to do business, your livelihood, your very means of functioning in a capitalist society. Thanks to the encroachment of progressive ideology into the financial industry — including major credit card companies like Visa, Discover, and Mastercard — it has now become a reality.

...The liberal Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), bluntly warned that banks and credit card companies had become “de facto internet censors.” That even liberal groups had raised the alarm signaled the seriousness of the problem.

Since then, financial blacklisting has only gotten worse. In August, Mastercard and Discover deplatformed conservative and Islam critic Robert Spencer. In the same month, Visa and Mastercard ceased service to David Horowitz. While credit card processing service to Horowitz was eventually restored, Spencer remains financially blacklisted. Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Patreon did not return requests for comment.

The policing of language is soon going to reach its apex — and it’s not going to be pretty. Language has a powerful effect on the way we think and feel. The erasure of male identity in language signifies a much greater problem than just battling so-called gender bias. Recall Ayn Rand’s Anthem, a dystopian fiction novel in which the notion of individuality has been erased entirely; gender-specific pronouns are not used. There is no “I,” only “we.”

Gender is closely tied to one’s identity as a person. The slow erasure of gender in our everyday language can, and will, erode individualism and sense of self. While the powers that be say they are increasing “equality” through neutrality, what they aren’t saying is they want us all to be equal slaves. Perhaps it sounds a bit far-fetched, but every path begins with a single step — including the path to tyranny. Indeed, if the globalists have their way, we’ll all soon be a herd of genderless, mindless sheeple who are unable to defend ourselves or fight back.

But as bad as 2018 was, the year that has just started threatens to greatly surpass it. Let’s start by talking about politics. According to Axios, Donald Trump is currently the subject of 17 different investigations. Yes, you read that correctly. We have never seen anything like this in American history. Even during the Nixon era there was some measure of restraint, but at this point they are trying to come up with any angle that they possibly can to get rid of Donald Trump. We are rapidly getting to the point where America will be ungovernable. Our political institutions are breaking down, and faith in the system is at an all-time low.

But at least economic conditions have been relatively stable, and this has done much to pacify most Americans in recent years. Unfortunately, economic conditions are really starting to slow down, and big corporations are beginning to announce large scale layoffs. Just like we saw during the last recession, eventually there will be millions of Americans that lose their jobs, and mortgage defaults will spike dramatically once again. And just like in 2008, the stock market is starting to plunge in a major way. 2018 was the worst year for the stock market in a decade, we just witnessed the worst month of December for Wall Street since the Great Depression, and at this point approximately 12 trillion dollars of global stock market wealth has been wiped out.

History has shown that tough economic conditions make military conflict more likely, and the world continues to teeter on the brink of war. In the Middle East, Turkish tanks have been lining up along the Syrian border in anticipation of a possible invasion, and Syrian forces have been massing to defend against a potential attack. Elsewhere, Hezbollah and Hamas seem to be in a race to see who can start a war with Israel first. If war does break out, Israel may find themselves fighting both of them simultaneously.

As for the United States, our relationships with both Russia and China are rapidly deteriorating. The Russians continue to prepare for a coming military conflict with the United States, and the Pentagon is officially freaked out by the new hypersonic missiles that the Russians have just developed.

Meanwhile, the trade war with China continues to escalate and one Chinese general just suggested that the Chinese military should not be afraid to “sink two US aircraft carriers”. And let us not forget Iran, North Korea and the potential for a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sadly, I have a feeling that there is going to be a whole lot less “peace on Earth” by this time next year.

On top of everything else, the crust of our planet appears to be getting increasingly unstable and climate conditions are changing at a very rapid pace. Dozens of volcanoes are currently erupting, and one expert is warning that about 100 others could be on the brink of erupting. Massive earthquakes have been striking along the Ring of Fire with increasing regularity, and major storms just keep getting larger and more intense.

We could keep going if you like. I haven’t even mentioned the potential for a global pandemic, the impending collapse of the European Union, civil unrest, terrorism, the death of our oceans or the horrible drought in the western half of the country. Yes, people desperately need hope, but giving them false hope by telling them that everything is going to be just wonderful in 2019 is not a good thing. Our world is in turmoil, and it is going to get even worse in 2019. So put on your seatbelts and get ready, because it is going to be a bumpy ride.

The official did not elaborate on Shanahan’s views on China, but said the acting SecDef told the leaders to follow the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy guidance when it comes to Beijing. The strategy, written by Mattis, described China as “predatory” and a “strategic competitor” that, along with Russia, wants to “shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.”

“Long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities for the Department, and require both increased and sustained investment,” the strategy continued. President Xi Jinping demanded the US Navy cease “provocative actions” in the South China Sea late last year, and told the country’s military to get “prepared for war,” without elaborating further.

President Xi also said on Wednesday that Taiwan – currently an autonomous state – “must and will be” reunited with China, and that his government will take “all necessary measures” to make this happen. With military threats bandied about, things are not looking much better on the economic front, with China and the US spending much of 2018 locked into a trade war.

President Trump said: “I shouldn’t be popular in Europe. I want Europe to pay. I don’t care about Europe. I’m not elected by Europeans, I’m elected by American taxpayers, frankly.” Continuing the theme that his job was to serve the US, not the voters of other countries, he continued: “If I were popular in Europe, I wouldn’t be doing my job. I could be the most popular person in Europe, I could run for any office if I wanted to, but I don’t want to. I want people to treat us fairly, and they’re not.”

President Trump’s comment that “I want Europe to pay” was a reference to European allies who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership without paying the two percent minimum of GDP for defence they collectively promise to. The President again brought up Germany for not doing its part, saying of the economic powerhouse’s defence spending: “Germany pays 1 percent; they should be paying 4 percent.”

Attacking Germany’s poor spending and decade-long promised time frame to see any improvement, Trump observed: “Germany is just paying a bit over one percent, whereas the United States is paying in actual numbers 4.2 percent of actual GDP [towards defence]. We’re paying a lot of money to protect; this has been going on for decades… it’s very unfair to our country, it’s very unfair to our taxpayers… these countries need to step it up, not over a ten-year period, but immediately.”

After Apple announced that their sales during the first quarter are going to be much, much lower than previously anticipated, Apple’s stock price started shooting down like a rocket and by the end of the session on Wednesday the company had lost 75 billion dollars in market capitalization. Meanwhile, “flash crashes” caused some of the most violent swings that we have ever seen in the foreign exchange markets… It took seven minutes for the yen to surge through levels that have held through almost a decade.

In those wild minutes from about 9:30 am Sydney, the yen jumped almost 8 percent against the Australian dollar to its strongest since 2009, and surged 10 percent versus the Turkish lira. The Japanese currency rose at least 1 percent versus all its Group-of-10 peers, bursting through the 72 per Aussie level that has held through a trade war, a stock rout, Italy’s budget dispute and Federal Reserve rate hikes.

This is the kind of chaos that we only see during a financial crisis. There will be good days and there will be bad days in 2019. There will be ups and there will be downs. But it has become exceedingly clear that the downturn that so many have been anticipating has finally arrived, and the financial crisis of 2019 looks like it is going to be a doozy.