GERMANY - Merkel is emerging as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the German-dominated European Union. Amid a string of major European elections this year - including Merkel's bid for a fourth term in September.  Merkel's critics insist, her policies are at least partly responsible for giving a lift across the continent to nationalist populists such as Le Pen who may seek to unravel the EU. The chief of Italy's populist Northern League - posturing as Italians brace for possible elections as soon as this year - recently blasted Merkel's Germany as doing with economics what Hitler did with bombs. "They aren't employing tanks, but they're managing to economically subjugate the whole continent," Matteo Salvini told Italian radio in March.

PUERTO RICO - Puerto Rico files for bankruptcy protection in largest ever US municipal debt restructuring. Puerto Rico's creditors had filed a barrage of lawsuits against the insolvent Commonwealth and a bankruptcy was imminent. Moments ago Puerto Rico's governor announced the Commonwealth will request bankruptcy protection of a portion of the island's $70 billion in debt, setting up a showdown with Wall Street firms owed billions of dollars, in what will be the largest-ever US municipal debt restructuring and further complicating the US territory’s efforts to pull itself out of a financial crisis.

VATICAN - Every nation is free to vote for the political leaders it wants, said Pope Francis Saturday, while Europe itself is in danger of “falling apart.” “Every country is free to make the choices it believes are right for itself. I cannot judge if it is making this choice for this reason or another, because I do not know its internal politics,” Francis said, in reference to the upcoming French presidential elections. We must “respect people’s opinions, honest opinions of a political discussion,” he said.

EUROPE - With last Saturday's "Rome Declaration", the EU has declared its commitment to an offensive global policy, including an intensified militarization, as was demanded by Berlin. In the coming years, the Union must play "a key role in the world," the declaration states, while calling for "strengthening its common security and defence."

GERMANY - Lawmakers across the German political spectrum have criticized Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for calling for a "German dominant culture," or "leitkultur". With this latest iteration of the "leitkultur" debate de Maiziere "has overlooked something," said Jan Korte, the Left party's second-ranking Bundestag deputy. "And that something is the constitution. Everything's in there." Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU aims to win a fourth consecutive national election on September 24, but has lost supporters to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) as some voters have taken an increasingly aggressive stance on national borders. 

GERMANY - Interior minister claims defining German culture will help integration. The refugee crisis and a string of Isis-linked terror attacks has driven rising fears over Islamist extremism but Mr de Maizière emphasised that all religions were a “glue for society… in the Christian church, in the synagogue and in the mosque”. “Our country is shaped by Christianity,” he added. “We live in religious peace. And the basis for this is the absolute supremacy of the law over all religious rules in the state and society.”

UNITED NATIONS - Russia has supported a Chinese initiative in the UNSC intended to stabilize the situation on the Korean peninsula. It calls on the North to refrain from missile and nuclear testing, while the US and South Korea should halt military drills in the area. “Members of the [UN] Security Council have unanimously called upon DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] to stop missile and nuclear tests and to fulfil UNSC resolutions,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday following a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) session held in New York earlier on Friday.

GERMANY - As Germans look anxiously to the west, to the May 7th presidential run-off, the river Rhine has rarely seemed as wide. Even if French voters avoid the nuclear option on Sunday and reject Marine Le Pen, many Germans wonder if France hasn’t already been lost. “Today Germany is so strong that almost all candidates in the French election first round took issue with German dominance and economic strength,” noted Dr Renate Kocher of Allensbach. Even if Emmanuel Macron is elected president next weekend, the fact that French and Germans are united only in their pessimism for the EU’s future, bodes ill as the EU27 tries to reinvent and reform amid two years of trying Brexit talks.

USA - Why do things never seem to change no matter who we send to Washington?  It seems like for decades many of us have been trying to change the direction of this country by engaging in the political process.  But no matter how hard we try, the downward spiral of our nation just continues to accelerate. 

MIDDLE EAST - Hamas has presented a new political charter accepting the 1967 borders for the formation of a Palestinian state without recognizing Israel. It comes two days before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal made the announcement in a press conference in Doha Monday. “Hamas advocates the liberation of all of Palestine but is ready to support the state on 1967 borders without recognising Israel or ceding any rights,” he said.

USA - President Donald Trump said he’s actively considering a breakup of giant Wall Street banks, giving a push to efforts to revive a Depression-era law separating consumer and investment banking. “I’m looking at that right now,” Trump said of breaking up banks in a 30-minute Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News. “There’s some people that want to go back to the old system, right? So we’re going to look at that.” Wall Street has repeatedly shrugged off politicians’ calls for bank breakups in recent years.

USA - If you don’t know what the Frankfurt School is, you better find out. It was founded in Germany but moved to Columbia University in the US in 1934. Its purpose was to undermine any aspect of Western culture that encourages personal independence so that, eventually, all citizens must be dependent on and obedient to the state. Communism was the goal but not by that name. Generally, this strategy is known as Cultural Marxism.

USA - While thousands marched past the White House with hundreds waving communist flags, the media ignored it. The Hill and other media outlets praised the march but didn’t bother to mention the red flags. They had an entire story around “nine clever signs from the climate march” but never noticed the communists. The NY Times said these leftist clowns were “alarmed by Trump’s environmental agenda”. Fox said “tens of thousands protest Trump’s climate policies”. They are indeed loons. The Climate March today was a communist march which isn’t a surprise to many of us. The extremists in the movement want control of the populace, in part, to destroy Capitalism and to promote cultural Marxism.

VATICAN - After Pope Francis early in his papacy decried capitalism as “trickle-down economics” — a polemical phrase coined by the left during the Reagan years that Francis frequently borrows — radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh commented, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.” Talk show host Michael Savage called him “Lenin’s pope.” Pope Francis took such comments as a compliment. “I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended,” he told the Italian press.

FRANCE - Last year, Baron David de Rothschild was indicted by the French government after he was accused of fraud in a scheme that allegedly embezzled large sums of money from British pensioners. It has taken many years to bring this case against Rothschild and his company the Rothschild Financial Services Group, which trapped hundreds of pensioners in a bogus loan scheme between the years of 2005 and 2008. While news of a single Rothschild being indicted is certainly noteworthy, a particularly important announcement was made this Friday. The French government announced that it has launched an investigation into the entire Swiss branch of the Rothschild’s banking empire.