This is the tale of two pilgrims following the road that really matters in the young 21st century; one coming from NATOstan and another one from BRICS.

Let's start with Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron. Picture him with a plastic grin in his face strolling alongside Xi Jinping in Guangzhou. Following the - long and gentle - sound of classic "High Mountain and Flowing Water", they enter the Baiyun Hall to listen to it played by the 1000-year-old Guqin (a beautiful instrument). They taste the fragrance of 1000-year-old tea - and muse on the rise and fall of great powers in the new millennium.

And what does Xi tell Le Petit Roi? He explains that when you hear this eternal music played by this eternal instrument, you expect to be in the company of a bosom friend; you are in synch as much as the high mountain and the flowing water. That's the deeper meaning of the ancient tale of musicians Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi, 25 centuries ago in the Kingdom of Chu: bosom friendship. Only bosom friends can understand the music.

And with that, as Chinese scholars explained, Xi brought up the concept of Zhiyin. After Zhong Ziqi died, Yu Boya broke his Guqin: he thought that no one else could understand his music. Their story imprinted the term "Zhiyin": someone who understands music, with the added meaning of close friends that can completely understand each other.

All bets are off on whether a narcissist puppet like Macron would ever be cultured enough to understand Xi's subtle, sophisticated message: those that get it are true soul mates. Moreover, Macron was not dispatched to Beijing and Guangzhou by his masters to do soul mating, but to try to bend Xi towards NATO on Russia/Ukraine.

His body language is a dead giveaway - complete with crossing his arms demonstrating boredom. He may at first have been impervious to the notion that true friendship requires mutual understanding and appreciation.

But then something extraordinary happened. Xi's message may have touched a key spot in the tortured inner depths of the narcissist Petit Roi. What if, in international relations, mutual understanding and appreciation is the key for nations to find common ground and work together towards common goals?

What a revolutionary notion; not exactly the Hegemon-imposed "rules-based international order".

Rosemont Seneca vice president visited Obama White House at least 17 times, met with Joe Biden aides

Four business partners, a vice president, and two assistants at Hunter Biden's now-defunct firm visited the White House more than 80 times when his father was vice president in the Obama administration, Fox News Digital has found.

President Biden has repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of Hunter's business dealings amid dual criminal and congressional investigations into the first son and his family.

However, Joan Mayer, who says she was the vice president of Hunter's now-defunct investment firm Rosemont Seneca Advisors from 2008 to 2017 on Linkedin, made at least 17 visits to the White House during that time, according to visitor logs reviewed by Fox News Digital.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is well into its second year. While valiant, brave and committed, Ukraine's army is David to Russia's Goliath military force.

Expelling Russia from Ukraine and bringing an end to this deadly, costly conflict will take more than NATO tanks and the determined hearts of Ukrainian fighters, according to a new report exclusively obtained by CTV National News.

Three retired NATO soldiers, who've spent the last nine months in Ukraine training its military, have co-authored what they've dubbed the "White Papers."

The lengthy report outlines a Ukrainian military command structure that, at times, is in disarray and a crumbling military communication system that could result in losing "generations of Ukrainians" if intervention in military tactics isn't taken.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison

Empire's proxy war on Russia is rapidly coming to a head in Ukraine and the imperial guard might urgently need a new war. Their next target is China and once more we witness a relentless escalation of provocations and hostility. In his Wall Street Journal column this week, former National Security Advisor John Bolton laid out his "grand strategy" to confront Russia and China. His genius idea is to give Taiwan "much more military aid" from western nations and "embed Taipei into collective-defense structures."

Preparations for war

Bolton's warmongering is only the last in the long sequence of proclamations by US officials indicating the direction of their foreign policy. Last month, U.S. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) that the United States has "to prepare, to be prepared to fight and win that war" against China. This is not just idle talk: they really are preparing.

On Sunday, 10 January, Lieutenant General James Bierman, the commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he said that his command is working hard to replicate the empire's military success (!) in Ukraine. Bierman explained that the US and its allies in Asia were recreating the groundwork that had enabled western countries to support Ukraine's resistance to Russia in preparing for scenarios such as Chinese invasion of Taiwan:

"Why have we achieved the level of success we've achieved in Ukraine? ... because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, pre-positioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations. We call that setting the theatre. And we are setting the theatre in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations."

In other words, the US is creating the same conditions to draw China into a war over Taiwan in order to replicate the success they've had in Ukraine. Truly, whom gods would destroy, they first make them mad.

An academic turned fighter believes those who think the fighting can be contained are misguided

For a philosopher, the military path - the path of war - is quite natural. In reality, such a scholar is always engaged in this process - the conflict of ideas. He understands that war is the forefather of all things and since he is looking for the origin of everything, turning to war, both as a subject and an element of existentialism, is natural. Of course, it is also a great honor for me to be part of the armed forces of Novorossiya and the Donetsk People's Republic.

There were a lot of theoretical discussions on this before the start of the military operation in Ukraine, last year, when the new realities of combat first emerged on such a grand scale. There is a military saying that generals always prepare for the previous war. So, in a way, no one knew how this would look. Of course, the robotization of fighting develops new means of combat and warfare. This especially concerns drones, intelligence capabilities, and the range of weapons.

However, in existential terms, it doesn't work like Fallout. As German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said, war is a chameleon. Its external appearance changes all the time, but its inner core and essence remain the same. It always means risk and involves questions like death, victory, and defeat. These key factors never change.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposes punitive additional fees on struggling economies - because they are struggling economies.

In the MENA region, the fund has hiked the loan costs of Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan, by adding so-called surcharges, putting the countries under increased financial strain. The justification for the policy is invalid and must be called out by European Union states for being discriminatory.

Without additional loan fees, Egypt could pull hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty. The country pays more than $167m in surcharges every year, in addition to its annual debt servicing and loan fees to the IMF. The country is also one of several in the region at serious risk of defaulting.

Russia's Foreign Minister has slammed the United States military-biological activities in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), citing it as a security threat.

Speaking at a news conference following his visit to Uzbekistan on Friday, Sergei Lavrov warned that "there are threats of terrorism and threats posed by military-biological activities in our space by the United States and its allies, which create very dangerous precedents in terms of biological security. Also, there is a direct threat to public health and the environment."

Lavrov pointed out that removing dangers threatening peace and safety in the region was of utmost importance and required a joint effort.

We were waiting for the end of the world
Waiting for the end of the world, waiting for the end of the world
Dear Lord, I sincerely hope You're coming
'Cause You really started something

- Elvis Costello, Waiting for the End of the World, 1977

We cannot even begin to fathom the non-stop ripple effects deriving from the 2023 geopolitical earthquake that shook the world: Putin and Xi, in Moscow, de facto signaling the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.

This has been the ultimate anathema for rarified Anglo-American hegemonic elites for over a century: a signed, sealed, comprehensive strategic partnership of two peer competitors, intertwining a massive manufacturing base and pre-eminence in supply of natural resources - with value-added Russian state of the art weaponry and diplomatic nous.

From the point of view of these elites, whose Plan A was always a debased version of the Roman Empire's Divide and Rule, this was never supposed to happen. In fact, blinded by hubris, they never saw it coming. Historically, this does not even qualify as a remix of the Tournament of Shadows; it's more like Tawdry Empire Left in the Shade, "foaming at the mouth" (copyright Maria Zakharova).

Xi and Putin, with one Sun Tzu move, immobilized Orientalism, Eurocentrism, Exceptionalism and, last but not least, Neo-Colonialism. No wonder the Global South was riveted by what developed in Moscow.

"We are fueling a proxy war in Ukraine in order to defend freedom, such as the freedom to censor dissenting views on our proxy war in Ukraine" — Aaron Maté

How long do we have to wait before Volodymyr Zelensky opens a disco in Boca Raton? That's one of the questions raised by the secret CIA documents leaked last week, supposedly by a 21-year-old National Guard airman in Massachusetts named Jack Teixeira. Since that's about the lowliest rank in the whole US military, you have to wonder how Jack got his mitts on all that embarrassing info, and what it says about the Pentagon's command structure and its relations with the Intel "Community."

I guess our cyber-security isn't what it's cracked up to be. But then, neither is our war effort in Ukraine. Yes, our war effort. We own this war from tail to snout, lock, stock, and barrel, the whole shootin' match. We started it (in 2014, when we began the preps there), we goaded the Russians into it in bad faith, and now we're losing it. Why? Because it was a stupid venture from the get-go. Now, it's really a matter of how psychotic our government's reaction will be when the Russians restore order to the place.

US President Joe Biden's administration is in a serious bind after officials were made aware last week that a cache of secret documents was leaked in March showing the US spied on allies.

One of the most damning leaks revealed extensive details of US military support in Ukraine and the exact location of troops, supply specifications and other information related to Kiev's upcoming spring offensive against Russia. But another important leak surfaced too.

Korean media reported that the CIA files revealed that the US appears to have been spying on the South Korean National Security Office (NSO) in Seoul. The NSO is described as the "control tower of South Korea's security decision-making." Additionally, the leaked reports show that the US has also been spying on the UK, Canada and Israel.