Professor Hawking wrote in the newly-published book: “We are free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science. I think that when we die we return to dust. But there is a sense we live on, in our influence, and in the genes we pass to our children.”

Things look even hairier on the Russian front. For all of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s Taoist patience, Moscow’s diplomatic circles are exasperated by serious American threats – as in the US Navy possibly enforcing a blockade to restrict Russia’s energy trade. Or worse: the ultimatum that Russia must stop developing a missile that according to Washington violates the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, otherwise the Pentagon will destroy it. This is as serious as it gets – because it amounts to committing to a US nuclear first strike.

In parallel, BP CEO Bob Dudley told the Oil & Money conference in London that any additional US sanctions against top Russian energy companies would be disastrous. “If sanctions were put on Rosneft or Gazprom or Lukoil like what happened with Rusal, you would virtually shut down the energy systems of Europe, it is a bit of an extreme thing to happen,” he said.

On the BRICS front, Russia and India deftly maneuvered on their own and managed to squash some US geostrategic planning against the three major poles of Eurasia integration: Russia, China and Iran.

The Quad – US, Japan, Australia, India – was conceived to box in China across the Indo-Pacific, in parallel to confining Russia’s margin of maneuver. The Quad is not exactly in sterling form after India decided to buy Russian S-400 missile systems. Trump has promised revenge.

On top of the S-400 deal, Russian companies will be building six additional nuclear reactors in India, at a cost of $20 billion each, over the next decade. Rosneft signed a 10-year deal to sell India 10 million tons of oil a year. And India will continue to buy oil from Iran, paying for it in rupees.

On the EU front, it’s all about Germany. There are few illusions in Berlin about the EU’s wobbly future. The export-centered German economy is focused on Asia. Germany is doubling down on solidifying an Asian-style model – a few large companies that are national champions able to turbo-charge exports. The US market – under protectionist winds – now is just an afterthought.

Then there’s the Brazilian tragedy. President Mauricio Macri ruined Argentina with a neoliberal shock. The nation is now a hostage of the IMF. A possible scenario is a G-20 in which Argentina will be learning how to deal with a fascist leading its close neighbor and top trade partner, Brazil.

Now picture Washington as a raging compendium of threats and sanctions. An EU fractured to the hilt – denouncing Asian illiberalism while impotent to fight the “rise of the deplorables” at home. BRICS in disarray, with two in a serious clash with Washington, one out of the game and one on the fence – among the top four. The House of Saud rotting from the inside. Iran not even at the G-20 table. Time to sing What a Wonderful World.

If you doubt this, please consider what just went down in Portland on Saturday night… A demonstration billed as a march for “law and order” in the streets of Portland descended into chaos as rival political factions broke into bloody brawls downtown Saturday night. In addition to the weapons mentioned above, it has now been confirmed that some of the combatants were armed with “firearms” and “knives”…

Video shows the first punches being thrown which quickly escalated into chaos that spilled out into the streets. Police now confirm that the demonstrators used pepper spray and were armed with ‘hard-knuckled gloves, firearms, batons and knives.’ It seems inevitable that as these brawls continue to become even more bloody that people are going to start getting shot and stabbed at these things.

But neither side seems inclined to back down. In particular, Antifa continues to become even more defiant. Prior to the brawl on Saturday, members of Antifa were filmed burning an American flag… Responsible leaders from both political parties should be seeking to defuse the growing violence, but instead many of them are constantly fueling it with their hateful words.

But the elite don’t like the American people to be told the truth, and they are censoring us on a scale that would have once been unimaginable. Just last week, there was another mass censoring of independent voices on Facebook and Twitter… Mark Zuckerberg just shut down 559 pages and 251 accounts — which include tons of massive independent media sites with millions of followers run by Americans — a few weeks out from the midterms. Jack Dorsey followed it up by banning many of the same independent news sites and the journalists who ran them on Twitter. Is it just a coincidence that all of this censorship is happening just before the midterm elections? Of course not.

We are in a battle for the heart and soul of America, and the flow of information is one of the most critical aspects of that battle. There is a reason why our founders attempted to protect freedom of speech in the Constitution. Without the ability to speak freely, tyrants can thrive, and that is why the left is so determined to shut all of us up.

“The structures that have been ‘sleeping’ for a long time inside the Treaty of Lisbon – now we have activated them,” she told Uncut, a documentary for Euro News. “That means we now have a legal framework for a European Defence Union, we have a joint planning process, so that as Europeans we can also develop a structure that tells us when we are going to use our forces.”

However, Brexiteers on Twitter were not so keen on the new “Defence Union”, having campaigned against the policy for years. Also furious about the increasing power of the EU, former UKIP leadership candidate Ben Walker believes that the British armed forces have been “run down” to build up to this EU army. “Whilst Brexit itself is the topic of the day, the real detail is not,” he told Kipper Central. “For years parliament has quietly voted through legislation that binds our own military to ever closer EU integration at the behest of Civil Servants and EU directives which aren’t fully understood by MP’s and never once explained to the British Public.

“The wholesale rundown of our Armed Services is no mistake; it has always been in preparation for an EU Military.”

This reorientation coincides with an increasingly prominent role for Germany in European affairs with the European Union facing an increasingly assertive Russia and continuing internal divisions. For Germany (and Europe) this boils down to a dramatic realignment of the European balance of power. It also carries risks. Germany’s strategic situation has been turned upside down: The commander in chief of its hitherto most important ally now treats it as one of the United States’ key competitors, while Russia seeks to undermine the EU at its Eastern flank.

In the EU, member states are preparing for Brexit while struggling with rising popular dissent at home and sustained division across the Union. Under these circumstances calls on Germany to lead no longer fall on deaf ears in Berlin. Even on defense issues, Germany has expressed its readiness “to accept responsibility and to assume leadership” in the government’s most important official document on German security, the 2016 “White Paper.”

As Ron Paul once so astutely observed, it is actually about as “federal” as Federal Express is. The Federal Reserve is an unelected cabal of central bankers that is running our economy into the ground, and the only way we are going to fix our long-term economic and financial problems is if we abolish it. So for those of us that understand these things, it is extremely exciting to hear President Trump use language such as this…

President Donald Trump knocked the Federal Reserve for continuing to raise interest rates despite some recent market turbulence. “I think the Fed is making a mistake. They are so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy,” the president said after walking off Air Force One in Erie, Pennsylvania for a rally. That may be one of the greatest things that Donald Trump has ever said.

Using the location data above, from NORC at the University of Chicago, we can see clusters of counties that have an extremely high rate of overdose deaths. Between 2012 and 2016, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio saw a combined 18,000 deaths related to opioid abuse. A recent survey showed one-third of people who abused prescription painkillers in the past year got pills directly from a physician.

If doctors have been prescribing opioids for decades, what is causing this recent spike in overdoses? The answer, for the most part, is fentanyl. This synthetic opioid presents a problem because it’s extremely potent – it only takes about 2 milligrams to overdose on the drug. Since much of the fentanyl on the market is sourced illegally, doses can and do exceed this amount on a regular basis.

The thousands of overdose deaths around the country are the most extreme symptom of the opioid epidemic, but the problem runs much deeper. In 2017, there were over 11 million “opioid misusers” in the United States. To put that number in perspective, that’s equivalent to the entire population of Ohio. In fact, the problem is so widespread, that it’s suspected to be influencing workforce participation rates. The health care burden of the crisis is also staggering. The cost of opioid abuse ranges from $10,000 to $20,000 in annual medical costs per patient.

Instead, he argued that the forces that have led to the chasm in the trans-Atlantic relationship have been long in the making and that a more strategic approach to rebalance the relationship is required. Specifically, Maas called for a separate payment system to SWIFT (a Brussels-based company that facilitates global financial transactions) that would be insulated from US secondary sanctions. He also proposed a European Monetary Fund (EMF) that would act independently of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as a European Security and Defense Union — since European members of NATO "cannot rely on Washington" as much as they used to.

A European push for greater autonomy was bound to result from an intensifying wave of US unilateralism on tariff policy and secondary sanctions, as well as US quarrels with European partners over defense and energy matters. In May, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire argued that Europe needs to reclaim its "economic sovereignty" after Washington withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement. Germany's voice adds considerable firepower to this broader appeal.

Perhaps more significant is Maas' call for an independent payment system to insulate Europe from US secondary sanctions. Washington has threatened to sideline Iran from SWIFT as part of its maximum-pressure tactics to isolate Tehran from the global financial system. SWIFT, however, is a Belgium-based private company subject to EU laws, and Europe's present leaders largely oppose any new actions against the Islamic republic's banks, unlike their decision to participate in sanctions against Tehran six years ago. The United States could still try to sanction individual board members of SWIFT to punish the company for noncompliance, but this could harm a critical artery of the global financial system — not to mention ignite a serious diplomatic crisis with the European Union.

During an appearance this week on Fox & Friends, Paul said: “I was there at the ballfield when Steven Scalise almost died from a very, very angry, violent man who was incited, really, by rhetoric on the left. And this hasn’t been reported enough: When he came on to the ball field with a semiautomatic weapon, firing probably close to 200 shots at us, shooting five people and almost killing Steve Scalise, he was yelling, ‘This is for health care!’ He also had a list of conservative legislators – Republicans – in his pocket, that he was going to kill.”

Paul was himself the victim of a brutal assault at his home late last year. Since then, people like NBC’s Kasie Hunt and other top Democrats have expressed personal delight over the savagery that left the senator with six broken ribs.

In an effort to reason with Democrats to tone down the left’s inciting rhetoric, Paul’s wife, Kelley, is speaking out. She told Breitbart News’s Amanda House that she lives in fear for her personal safety. She also penned an open letter to Senator Cory Booker (Democrat for New Jersey) asking him to retract his call for left-wing activists to get in the faces of Republican lawmakers. He has so far refused.

As of this writing, Breitbart News has documented more than 590 separate acts of political violence, vandalism, mob action, and harassment against President Trump and his supporters at the hands of leftists. Paul also told Fox & Friends, “There is going to be an assassination if this doesn’t ratchet down.”

As World Health Organization representative Elizabeth Hoff reports,

“As of 18 August 2017, 33 children under the age of five have been paralyzed. The detection of the circulating vaccine derived polio virus type 2 (cVDPV2) cases demonstrates that disease surveillance systems are functional in Syria. Our priority now is to achieve the highest possible polio immunization coverage to stop the circulation of virus.”

Thirty-three children paralyzed by the vaccine that was supposed to protect them — and the UN’s response is to just keep doling out more vaccines? Sadly, that’s par for the course. Obviously, bad medicine is never the problem — there’s just not enough bad medicine, that’s all.

"Please join us for a public hex on Brett Kavanaugh, upon all rapists and the patriarchy at large which emboldens, rewards and protects them," reads the description for the event, "Ritual to Hex Brett Kavanaugh." There will also be a second ritual afterwards - "The Rites of the Scorned One" - which seeks to validate, affirm, uphold and support those of us who have been wronged and who refuse to be silent any longer," reads the description.

It further states that 50% of the event proceeds will go to charity: 25% to the Ali Forney Center and 25% to Planned Parenthood. The Ali Forney Center is a homeless shelter and help center for LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer] youth. Planned Parenthood is America's largest abortion provider. It received $543.7 million in taxpayer funding for the year ending June 30, 2017, reads its latest annual report. Tickets cost $10.00.

As this story was posted, the Facebook page for the ritual hex said that 931 people would be attending and that 10,000 were "interested" in attending. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to hex, as a verb, means to "cast a spell on; bewitch." As a noun, hex means "a magic spell; a curse." Some of the other events occuring at Catland Books this month include "Demonology," "Magic Spells with the Tarot," "Witchcraft 101," and an "All Hallows Seance."