The results have placed it in prime position to challenge Mrs Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition in next year’s general election. Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Express last night, party leaders shared their envy of Britain’s forthcoming EU referendum on June 23, and confirmed they would be pushing for a similar move in Germany.

“I want every member state to decide what is better for them, and the only way we can really do that is to have a referendum, like the UK.” said deputy chairman Beatrix von Storch MEP. “Schengen has collapsed already. Under Schengen Europe’s borders are supposed to be protected. They’re not."

“A referendum is the only way German people can truly express if they want to stay in the EU, if they want to stay in the Euro, if they want to reform border controls to deal with the migrant crisis. They should be given a voice. They must be asked what they want."

The announcement came at strategic talks in Washington, where the allies reiterated their opposition to the militarization of outposts in those waters, where six Asian governments have competing claims. China has built artificial islands with airstrips and military facilities as it asserts its claim to virtually all the South China Sea, including land features claimed by the Philippines.

Another of the five Philippine military bases where the US will have access is on southern Mindanao island, where the US is concerned about the presence of Muslim extremist groups. The 10-year defense pact was signed by US and Philippine officials in 2014, but it only got the green light this January after the Philippine Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional. It is a key part of the Obama administration effort to reassert its presence in Asia.

On Wednesday, the US Army announced that it plans to stockpile munitions and military supplies in Vietnam, Cambodia, and several other undisclosed nations including, experts believe, the Philippines, as the US adopts an increasingly aggressive military posture toward China. Army Materiel Command Chief General Dennis Via emphasized that, in addition to munitions, the sites will contain Humanitarian and Disaster Relief (HADR) supplies.

The decision to place an American Army cache within Vietnam, the site of a bloody and largely unnecessary US war that ended in 1975, is a startling turn of events that has left Beijing incensed. The move comes in response to what the US has alleged are repeated steps by China to militarize the region in what is seen as a push to dominate the South China Sea.

“We will take any steps necessary to get the vote,” said Harry Shindler, 94, a veteran of the Second World War who lives in Italy and is named on the legal action. “It is quite undemocratic and we have tried everything – I’ve written to the Prime Minister, it’s been raised in the House of Commons, to no avail. The only thing to do now is go to a court of law.

“It might well delay the referendum if we’re successful but it doesn’t have to. There are cases where legislation has been fast-tracked through Parliament in a few days.”

While Russia and the United States have cut their nuclear arsenals, the pace is slowing. As of January 2015, they had just over 7,000 nuclear warheads each, about 90 percent of world stocks, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. "We have less nuclear warheads, but the risk of them being used is growing," Ivanov said at a Brussels event with the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland and a US lawmaker.

NATO's secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has warned Russia of intimidating its neighbors with talk about nuclear weapons, publicly voicing concerns among Western officials.

"The paths of Europe and Russia are seriously diverging and will remain so for a long time … probably for decades to come," Ivanov said, adding that Russia could not be the eastern flank of a "failed greater Europe." "These beautiful plans, we have to forget," he said, adding that Russia's destiny was now as the leader of a greater Eurasia stretching from Belarus to the Chinese border.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke on Wednesday as almost 50 people, including activists and academics, were detained in a wave of police raids. In a speech to local politicians in Ankara, he criticised critics raising concern over Turkey’s record on “democracy, freedom and rule of law” as discussions over a landmark deal on the refugee crisis continue.

“For us, these phrases have absolutely no value any longer,” he said in the televised address, according to a translation by DPA. “Those who stand on our side in the fight against terrorism are our friend. Those on the opposite side are our enemy.” On Monday, the President had vowed to extend the legal definition of “terrorists” to include MPs, activists and journalists.

The list of problems facing President Rousseff runs long. The scandal plaguing the state-owned oil company Petrobras continues to spread. Brazil is facing the worst economic recession in about a century, in large part due to the crash in prices for oil and other commodities. GDP shrank by 3.8% in 2015 and could contract by almost as much this year. And President Rousseff herself is facing impeachment proceedings for cooking the budgetary books.

She isn’t the only one to blame. The Petrobras scandal and the ongoing investigation, known as Lava Jato, have implicated politicians from several political parties, not just her own. Also, the impeachment proceedings are being led by an opponent of the President, Eduardo Cunha, who himself is under investigation for corruption as part of the Petrobras scandal. Still, the pressure on Rousseff is growing by the day. One of her major coalition partners, the PMDB party, could abandon her in the coming weeks.

ECB chief Mario Draghi refused to rule out the prospect saying only that the bank had not yet “discussed” such matters due to their legal and accounting complexity. This week, his chief economist Peter Praet, went further in hinting that helicopter drops were part of the ECB's toolbox. "All central banks can do it", said Praet. "You can issue currency and you distribute it to people. The question is, if and when is it opportune to make recourse to that sort of instrument which is really an extreme sort of instrument?"

With 16 out of Europe's 28 economies still in deflation and annual eurozone growth set to hit just 1.4 percent in the middle of a cyclical upturn, the opportune moment may soon be upon us. “We have had forward guidance, QE and negative interest rates. But none of these has proven a panacea and their shelf-life is getting shorter", says Gabriel Stein at Oxford Economics.

Forthcoming or not, the debate around helicopter drops has led to a fightback from central bankers who reassert that they are never powerless to generate inflation. Citing Milton Friedman’s maxim that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”, economist Tim Congdon is adamant that monetary policy is still the only game in town. “Monetary policy can never – repeat, never – 'run out of ammunition'”, he says.

A sense of loss of control of the flow of events probably characterizing the Western leadership in 2016 is what makes the rest of the year quite difficult to predict. The general feeling is that we are approaching the unwinding of a ten year paradigm shift, but the panic created by the approaching perspective of actual change among the leaders, the Western leaders in particular, is once again raising the question of the exact form this unwinding will take.

When the world sustaining a governance system disappears, but the governance system is still “in charge”, concern is justified. The leaders have certain challenges on their agendas which completely exceed their conceptual and instrumental abilities. They must now choose among a variety of “bad solutions”, meaning they will inevitably make bad decisions.

Some of those decisions will have no impact whatsoever, while others will have rather dramatic consequences, but it is particularly the unpredictability of these decisions which blurs the future and reinforces the feeling of panic even more. This is a strong trend for 2016, one that also justifies the “strategic retreat” identified by our team as the keynote of the year.

Now the French government has opened an investigation into the Swiss Rothschild unit. Bloomberg reports: “The Swiss unit of Edmond de Rothschild said it’s the subject of a French probe regarding a former business relationship managed by a former employee. ‘Edmond de Rothschild (Suisse) SA is actively participating in the criminal investigation under way,’ the Geneva-based bank said in an e-mailed statement on Friday. ‘The bank denies all the allegations that have been made against it’.”

Edmond de Rothschild, a private banking and asset management firm established in Paris in 1953, oversees about 150 billion euros ($164 billion) and is led today by Baron Benjamin de Rothschild and his wife Ariane. The Swiss unit traces its roots to the acquisition of Banque Privee in Geneva in 1965. From a Haaretz interview 6 years ago, Baron Benjamin de Rothschild was quoted as saying "The United States is finished, at least for the moment" and "I do not believe in God - I do not report to him."

The indictment of a Rothschild is not simply another dirty banker being brought to justice. The imprisonment of the controlling interest of life on Earth would mean a stop to endless wars, illegal mass surveillance, debt slavery, and a Luciferian cultural agenda. Basically, peace on Earth. A bit much you say?