Kishida is diplomatic when asked about China’s challenge, citing the need to build on the “positive momentum” forged by his November summit with Xi. However, he admits “China’s current external posture and military trends are matters of serious concern.” Others in his administration are bolder. Rather than Russia or North Korea, “the major threat is coming from China,” says Kono, who previously served as both Japan’s Foreign Minister and Defense Minister. “We need to be prepared for their military actions as well as economic coercion against Taiwan or others.”

Washington agrees. In recent months, President Biden has committed to enhanced military cooperation with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. He will be pressuring Kishida to assist not only with defense matters but also to prevent technology transfer to China. Meanwhile, Beijing has set about courting the Global South with a new forum for international relations, which the nation’s state media has dubbed “Xivilization.” It’s a clash of worldviews that promises to keep heating up.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr Hecker, since the attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been threatening the use of nuclear weapons and has suspended the last remaining disarmament treaty with the US. North Korea and Iran are expanding their nuclear weapons programs, and China plans to more than triple the number of its strategic nuclear weapons. Which of these developments do you consider to be the most dangerous?

Hecker: The immediate greatest concern, of course, is Russia's potential use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Putin's threats appear to be primarily to dissuade the West. However, because they are nuclear, they must be taken seriously. But the much greater danger is the combination of all these developments. And this really began with Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. First of all, of course, we all look at the incredible human toll and suffering of the Ukrainian people. I certainly share that view, particularly because I was born near the Polish-Ukrainian border. But what concerned me most after the invasion of Ukraine is its impact on the nuclear world order. My fear is that Putin has destroyed this order.

DER SPIEGEL: In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, Henry Kissinger warned that nuclear weapons are now more dangerous than ever in the age of cyberwarfare and artificial intelligence. And he expressed doubts as to whether politicians can control this technology. Do you share this concern?

Hecker: When someone of Kissinger's age and experience says something like that, one should pay attention. I was surprised at the emphasis he attached to artificial intelligence and the possibility of entrusting strategic nuclear decisions to machines. I share this concern. And when it comes to nuclear weapons, it is the political leadership that matters – and ultimately the president. So, my concern is more about which people we elect to lead. We should be concerned about who has their fingers on the nuclear button.

Is it any wonder that Fox fired its anti-establishment superstar Tucker Carlson shortly after Blackrock bought over 45 MILLION shares in the Fox Corporation? Again, "Follow the money." The list below is 32 of the most recognizable brands that receive massive investment from BlackRock. Their overt woke virtue signaling and policies make sense when their money ties are revealed.

• Apple: $1 BILLION
• Microsoft: $532 MILLION
• Amazon: $596 MILLION
• Alphabet Inc (Google): $416 MILLION
• Johnson & Johnson: $199 MILLION
• Exxon: $292 MILLION
• JP Morgan Chase: $195 MILLION
• Visa: $126 MILLION
• Pfizer: $443 MILLION
• Coca-Cola: $311 MILLION
• Meta (Facebook): $152 MILLION
• Bank of America: $472 MILLION

Last Monday, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of the Satanic Temple and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which sued when a Northampton County school district would not allow the club to meet on its grounds.

“In a victory for free speech and religious freedom, a federal court has ruled that the Saucon Valley School District must allow the After School Satan Club to meet in district facilities,” the ACLU announced.

Everett said the clubs are excellent alternatives to Christian after-school groups for agnostics, atheists and religious minorities such as pagans, emphasizing that groups’ actual activities can encompass nearly anything.

This overhaul, years in the making, is taking the clearest shape right now in the Middle East, a region where the US has devoted many resources in the 21st century. In March, China helped arrange a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, taking the kind of broker role in the region long held by the US. Washington currently has no diplomatic ties with Tehran and relations with Riyadh have grown strained.

“We bluster, we threaten, we menace, we sanction, we send the Marines, we bomb,” says Chas Freeman, a veteran US diplomat, “but we don’t ever use the arts of persuasion.”

Freeman was principal interpreter for President Richard Nixon on his visit to China in 1972. The trip ultimately resulted in the US recognizing the People’s Republic over Taiwan and the opening of an embassy in Beijing, where Freeman served as deputy chief of mission. Now he tells Newsweek, Washington’s “moment of diplomatic glory” is long over. “What has happened is that the American ability to coerce is declining,” he says. “We seem to be approaching the world as though we still have an unchallenged authority that we imagined we did at the end of the Cold War.”

It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation.” – John Adams

Many have already given up their liberties and freedoms for the promise of government safety and welfare payments, but will ultimately realize they aren’t safe, and the promises were hollow and false. The nation is financially and morally bankrupt, and the fall of the American Empire will be the most spectacular in world history.

Through its renewed commitment to EU, NATO and UN missions, Rome once again demonstrates its intention to cultivate the interests of its alliances as well as national ones. The communiqué issued by the Council of Ministers in fact states that “the strategy for the use of military tool continues to be based on the traditional adherence to the initiatives of the International Organizations of reference for our country”.

With the four 2023 novelties, Italy is now engaged in over 40 international missions. What makes the latter a fundamental element of Italian foreign policy is, on the one hand, the possibility of contributing to the stability of the countries in which we intervene – where, normally, Italy itself sees national interests at stake – and, on the other, the guarantee of maintaining an open dialogue with the countries where the missions take place.

Can a multipolar financial system help struggling economies like Argentina? Can this move away from the dollar, and membership of BRICS, save the country from potential disaster? Yes, but only if Argentina stops flip-flopping on economic and foreign policy decision-making.

Argentina’s economic turmoil has reached desperate levels, a result of debt slavery to the International Monetary Fund, lack of access to dollars, and a historic drought that has battered crucial agricultural exports. While the official exchange rate with the US dollar is 222 pesos for 1 USD, the ‘Dollar Blue’, the unofficial rate offered on the black market, reached up to 500 Pesos in recent days. For context, in 2014 under leftist President Cristina Kirchner, the official rate was 8 pesos for 1 USD and the unofficial rate hovered around 12-14 pesos. Annual inflation stands at 104%.

Wang noted that May 7 was the anniversary of the embassy attack, in which three Chinese journalists were killed and 20 diplomatic staff were injured. “The Chinese people will never forget what they sacrificed to uphold the truth, fairness and justice. Nor will we ever forget this barbaric atrocity committed by US-led NATO,” he told reporters.

While claiming to be a regional defense bloc, NATO has “repeatedly lit the fuse and brought conflicts to places all over the world,” Wang noted, “from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Kosovo, from Iraq to Afghanistan, and from Libya to Syria.”

Having participated in wars that have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced tens of millions, NATO is now “making forays eastward into the Asia-Pacific, instigating bloc confrontation and undermining peace and stability in the region,” the spokesman added.

Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the regime is moving well beyond any attempt to keep a human in the AI decision-making loop. “China is pursuing development of AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapons,” Allen wrote in a prepared testimony for an April 13 hearing of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

“The best available indications… suggest that China’s strategy is ambitious, moving beyond any sort of on-the-battlefield human supervision into increasingly autonomous AI-enabled warfare.” Such programs essentially aim toward one end: the restructuring of the Chinese military into an increasingly centralized cadre of officers who direct swarms of AI-enabled autonomous systems to do the actual fighting.

Just like in 2008 and 2009, large numbers of people that have lost their jobs or their businesses are ending up living in the streets, and as a result homeless encampments are absolutely exploding in size from coast to coast. In Marin County, California the average price of a home is 1.4 million dollars, and it is one of the most prosperous areas of the entire country.

But it is also home to vast hordes of homeless people. In fact, one of the biggest homeless encampments in Marin County is now more than two miles long…Hundreds of locals in one of San Francisco’s wealthiest counties have been forced to pack up their lives into RVs and trailers after being pushed out of the housing market. Shocking photos show the ever-growing line of trucks and other vehicles along 101 Highway – which now stretches over two miles in one of the largest encampments in the country.

At this point, the entire city of Portland is essentially one enormous homeless encampment, and countless businesses have fled for greener pastures as a result. Yes, some of the people living in these homeless encampments are drug addicts and criminals, but there are also a lot of hard working individuals that have just had some tough luck.

Ironically, I think that CNN has actually summarized the current state of affairs better than anyone else…

A summary of where things stand in the banking crisis:

• The Fed: “Banks are fine.”


• The Treasury: “Banks are fine.”


• The banks: “We’re fine.”


• Wall Street: “Everybody sell, the banks are on fire!”

So what is the bottom line? The bottom line is that things are bad, and now that the Fed has decided to raise interest rates again they will soon get even worse. At this stage, very few banks are truly safe. Depositors continue to pull money out of the system, bonds that are held by these banks continue to lose value, and more loans are going bad with each passing day. This banking crisis is far from over. In fact, it is just beginning.

With the release of its ‘Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’ in February, China put itself forward as a potential mediator between Moscow and Kiev. The Chinese plan was rejected outright by the US and EU, while Russian President Vladimir Putin described some of its 12 points as “in tune” with Moscow’s position, and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky welcomed only a handful of its points, but maintains that Kiev will not compromise with Russia in any way.

Zelensky’s refusal to negotiate with Putin’s government – the Ukrainian leader banned contact with the Kremlin in a decree last October – is just one stumbling block faced by China or any other potential middleman.

“The slight rebound in the FFPI (FAO Food Price Index) in April was led by a steep increase in the sugar price index, along with an upturn in the meat price index, while the cereals, dairy and vegetable oil price indices continued to drop,” the FAO said.

According to the report, the sugar price index soared 17.6% from March, hitting its highest level since October 2011. The rise was reportedly linked to concerns over tighter supplies following downward revisions to production forecasts for India and China, along with lower-than-expected output in Thailand and the European Union.