Note: I just saw this in Commentary Magazine online. It is too good to pass. I have to share that with you. And just for funzies, I bolded out the most blatant lies/misrepresentations. Have fun! The Saker

Is Russia Ready for Another Land Grab in Ukraine?
It's time for a new strategy.

by Noah Rothman

© Soldiers of the Ukrainian air assault units board a military cargo aircraft at a military base in the Zhytomyr region, Ukraine, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018.
Soldiers of the Ukrainian air assault units board a military cargo aircraft at a military base in the Zhytomyr region, Ukraine, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018.

Two weeks ago, the world reacted with palpable shock to the news that Russia had unilaterally closed naval traffic through the Kerch Strait separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov, but it's a mystery as to why. Moscow's brazen violation of Ukraine's maritime navigation rights and its arrest of sailors is only its latest egregious attack on international norms. Such attacks have ranged from the invasion and annexation of sovereign territory in Europe to the active support for the starvation of Syrian civilians. This last offense against responsible statecraft was comparatively modest, but it was no less dangerous. If Russia's provocation was a calculated effort designed to gauge how the world would react to another transgression against Ukrainian sovereignty, Moscow got a rather definitive answer: it wouldn't. Russia has taken its cues, and it may be preparing for something far worse.

Andrey Illarionov, a former economic advisor to Vladimir Putin who has become a fierce critic of the Russian regime in his current role as a Cato Institute scholar, told the Kiev Post this week that time is not on Russia's side and the Kremlin knows it. Occupied Crimea is running out of water. The peninsula relies primarily on a Soviet-era canal to channel fresh water from mainland Ukraine and, between periodic draughts and the Ukrainian government's efforts to choke off resources to the illegally occupied territory, Illarionov believes it's only a matter of time before the canal runs dry. He thinks that Putin is resolved to prevent that kind of a crisis by any means necessary.

Oh well, the good thing is that these folks are showing their true face along with their mind boggling level of dishonesty. This will all eventually end like it always does, with a big and very predictable backlash. Then they will whine and sob about how nobody loves them (for some mysterious reason).

The Saker

Yellow Vest protesters in Paris erected a guillotine bearing the name of Emmanuel Macron's political party in a direct threat to the under-fire French President.

The move came as the country's finance minister warned the violent protests sweeping the country are a 'catastrophe' for the nation's economy.

The demonstrators torched cars, vandalised and looted shops and restaurants, and hurled stones in a fourth weekend of protests in Paris.

Riot police fought back with tear gas, water cannon and baton charges, leaving 71 people injured in the French capital.

The shocking guillotine footage, which was filmed in an unknown location in France, emerged as Macron prepared to meet trade unionists and rival politicians before addressing the country at 8pm tonight.

And his finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, yesterday warned that the Yellow Vest protests will have 'a severe impact' on the economy.

'It's a catastrophe for commerce, it's a catastrophe for our economy,' the finance minister said. 'We must expect a new slowdown of economic growth at year-end due to the protests.'

The protesters, who take their name from the fluorescent safety vests that French drivers are legally obliged to carry, have wreaked havoc on retailers and the tourism industry.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday called on the United States not to "create new opponents" and warned it against "bullying" Chinese citizens.

Wang made the remarks in a speech at the annual Symposium on International Developments and China's Diplomacy, hosted by a government think tank and its foundation in Beijing.

It came after the world's two biggest economies agreed to a 90-day truce in their trade war, and following the arrest of Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou in Canada on December 1. The US is seeking Meng's extradition on multiple fraud charges.

Update 3: This is big.

In what might be the first sign that May is growing weary of the unceasing Brexit chaos that has marred her tenure as prime minister, No. 10 Downing Street just hinted in comments that May might not be the conservative leader during the next election.

Update 2: Cable has climbed to session highs, wiping out yesterday's losses, following a BBC report that 158 MPs - enough for May to prevail in the no confidence vote - have publicly promised to back the prime minister.

Venezuela's governing United Socialist Party (PSUV) won a landslide victory in local council elections held Sunday, claiming 95 percent of the initially declared seats.

In its first official bulletin, Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) revealed that after tallying 92.3 percent of all votes the PSUV had won 591 of the 623 municipal council seats where results were deemed irreversible. Further declarations from the CNE indicated a similar trend in the remaining seats, which were announced during the course of Sunday night and Monday.

In response to the news, President Nicolas Maduro congratulated his team, urging them to get to work to solve widespread problems in transport and public services.

No one in Russia wants to see violent riots like the ones recently crippling Paris, Vladimir Putin said, commenting on the arrest of human rights activist Lev Ponomarev for his social media calls to stage unsanctioned protests.

The President said that it was hard for him to question the decisions of the trial and appeal courts, which found 77-year-old Ponomarev guilty of the violation and put him under administrative arrest.

"We don't want to have events that resemble those in Paris when cobblestone pavements are torn up and everything is set on fire, and the country descends into a state of emergency," he said.

However, Putin promised that he'll ask Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to "look more closely" at the events surrounding Ponomarev's detention.

One of Britain's leading barristers has claimed that a senior BBC journalist has told him that the public broadcaster has indulged in showing "coded negative imagery" of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn since his election in 2015.

Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project, a group which recently helped win the case in the EU courts for the UK to unilaterally stop Brexit if they wish to do so, took to social media to post the alleged evidence of bias against Corbyn.

Maugham, who originally made the claims in March this year, said that he was making messages between himself and a senior BBC journalist public after being 'trolled' by Rob Burley, editor of the BBC's live political programmes, about the issue.

On December 4, Chris Williamson MP tabled a parliamentary question, asking whether Integrity Initiative - a "so-called think-tank dealing in disinformation" - had received UK government funding. The response was affirmative, and the outspoken Labour representative is calling for a full public inquiry into the organization's activities as a result.

Williamson's query revealed Integrity Initiative had received in excess of US$2.76 million (£2.2 million) in Whitehall funding since the start of 2017, an exposure he labelled "stunning" in a widely-shared Twitter video.

"Staffed by former security and military personnel, its agenda seems to include the denigration of the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn. Their approach is to connect media with academia and politicians, to influence policy in certain countries. Leaked documents reveal numerous examples, such as Pedro Banos, an army reservist and author, who the Spanish socialist party wanted to make the country's Director of National Security - that was before the Integrity Initiative's Spanish cluster got involved," Williamson says.

By signing the UN Global Compact, Trudeau is setting up a steady erosion of Canada's independence, taking power away from the Canadian People.

The Trudeau government has betrayed the Canadian People by signing the UN Global Compact on Migration, dealing a severe blow to Canada's sovereignty.

The Compact will be used by the Trudeau government to crackdown on the press (at least the ones he isn't bailing out), by trying to silence any speech that is critical of 'migration.'

Additionally, the Compact begins a transfer of authority from national governments, to the centralized authority of the United Nations, turning migration (AKA control of national borders), into something dominated by supranational institutions.

Theresa May is on the brink of a leadership challenge with multiple sources suggesting over 48 Conservative MPs have now submitted letters of no confidence in her leadership - enough to trigger a formal no-confidence vote.

A government minister as well as a number of Conservative MPs in the pro-Brexit European Research Group, told Business Insider that they believed Sir Graham Brady, chair of the party's 1922 Committee, had received over 48 letters of no confidence.

One senior MP in the group told BI that Brady had received 53 letters, five more than the 48 threshold.