"In a free state, tongues too should be free,” wrote Erasmus 501 years ago.  That said, the law has always rightly forbidden incitement to violence.

Yet the Speaker of the British House of Commons, John Bercow, plans to prevent President Trump from addressing Parliament – based on no claim whatever that he might incite violence.  Similar to the bans on controversial speakers that are routine at universities in Britain and America today.

They are about the giving and taking of offence. An example is Julie Bindel, a radical feminist, banned from speaking at Sheffield University because she was not “LGBT friendly.”

The habit of curbing free speech is being imported into Britain from America, where universities have become increasingly intolerant of anything that departs from a narrow orthodoxy. A howling mob surrounded the Yale professor Nicholas Christakis in 2015 after his wife Erika had expressed little sympathy with those who wanted Halloween costumes outlawed.

What is causing this intolerance? Why are so many students so keen to outlaw rather than answer opinions they disagree with?

The short-lived recovery of world oil prices is already in danger as OPEC and Russia fail to deliver on agreed output cuts and America’s shale industry roars back to life.

“All hell is going to break loose if they don’t extend the deal beyond June,” says Tamas Varga from brokers PVM Oil Associates.

Resurgent shale output in the US leaves OPEC and Russia facing a Sisyphean task. America’s frackers have cranked up output faster than OPEC thought possible, and on a large enough scale to alter the global balance of supply and demand.

Rising US crude stocks are a cautionary warning at a time when funds are betting heavily on a fresh oil boom, with ‘long’ contracts running at 812,000 lots. This is higher than at any time in the last five years and is approaching record levels, raising the risk of “liquidation” by investors.

The CIA has denied a security clearance to Trump National Security Council (NSC) official Robin Townley without any allegation, much less evidence of disloyalty to the United States.

Quite simply, it is because the CIA disapproves of Mr. Townley’s attitude toward the agency, and this is unprecedented. President Trump appointed Mr. Townley to coordinate Africa policy at the NSC. The CIA did not want to deal with him. Hence, it used the power to grant security clearances to tell the president to choose someone acceptable to the agency, though not so much to him.

This opens a larger issue: Since no one can take part in the formulation or execution of foreign or defense policy without a high-level security clearance, vetoing the president’s people by denying them clearances trumps the president.

Simply put, the CIA has declared war upon the President of the United States.  Who will win this war?

We’re on the verge of a new energy revolution. Except it’s the exact opposite of the one the “experts” at places like BP (British Petroleum),  the International Energy Agency and the Fake News Media are predicting.

For years we’ve been assured by politicians, energy industry specialists and green advocates that renewables such as wind and solar are getting more and more cost-competitive while dirty fossil fuels are so discredited and wrong and evil we’ll soon have to leave them in the ground.

But to believe this you’d have to believe in a world where Donald Trump and Brexit hadn’t happened; where taxpayers were still prepared to bankroll, ad infinitum, the expensive, inefficient, environmentally-damaging produce of favored crony-capitalists; where no one had access on the internet to articles showing how the whole climate change industry is such a scam.

That world doesn’t exist.  Here’s the one that does.

If Marine Le Pen wins France's presidential elections in May, all talk of punishing Britain for the outrage of Brexit will become irrelevant.

French diplomacy will pirouette overnight under a National Front (FN) leader. The Élysée Palace will seek an Entente Cordiale with the British, offering a bilateral alliance on new foundations.

It will then be the European Union that faces an existential choice: whether to reinvent itself as a loose federation of nation states, or succumb to galloping disintegration

"What is the point in punishing a country? It is senseless, unless you think the EU is a prison, and you are condemned if you escape. I want to rebuild our damaged relations with the United Kingdom," she told me in an interview yesterday (02/15).

"France is the political heart of Europe, and the moment we leave the euro the whole project collapses," said Ms Le Pen, as she leans across the table in her tiny office in the European Parliament with a glint of mischief.

"A whole psychological framework is breaking down. I think 2017 is going to be the year of the grand return of the nation state, the control of borders and currencies," she said.  Hearing her, you can’t help but think of Donald Trump.