Puppet Masters
Former Bush UN ambassador Bolton served as Trump's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Bolton is known as a rabid neoconservative interventionist. President Donald Trump fired Bolton and cited his opposition to Bolton's establishment foreign policy views, accusing Bolton of undermining his negotiations with the North Korean regime.
The neocon wing strongly supports the U.S. funding and arming of Ukraine to challenge Russian leader Vladimir Putin, an oil exporter who is hated by the Washington foreign policy establishment.

Turkish President Erdogan • Dome of the Rock mosque at Al-Aqsa compound, Jerusalem
Erdogan, a long-time critic of Israeli policies, lashed out at the US-proposed roadmap in a Wednesday interview with journalists who were accompanying him on his return from a three-country visit to Africa.
"This is the plan to ignore the Palestinians' rights and legitimize Israel's occupation," Erdogan said, as quoted by Anadolu Agency.
The remark is in line with criticisms voiced earlier by other Turkish officials. The Foreign Ministry branded Trump's plan "stillborn" and said it was aimed at "killing the two-state solution and stealing Palestinian lands."

Human Rights Watch representative Omar Shakir (center) has been expelled by Israel.
Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, acknowledged a few months ago that Israel is not likely to stop oppressing Palestinians unless it comes under "much greater international pressure." While that message seems to be clear, the position of Human Rights Watch is actually quite muddled.
Human Rights Watch has argued that businesses have a duty to pull out from Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights. But the group has also emphasized that it doesn't advocate a boycott of Israel, the state actually building those settlements.
Even worse, Human Rights Watch is in a partnership of sorts with at least one Israeli institution that encourages violence against Palestinians. The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC Herzliya) - an Israeli university - is participating in a $5.5 million European Union-funded "rule of law" project called Reconnect. Lotte Leicht, head of the Human Rights Watch office in Brussels, sits on the project's advisory board.
Comment: This appears to be a bonafide conflict of purpose and interest for HRW. Money? Influence? Arm-twisting? Has Israel's propaganda, infiltration and anti-Semitism machine compromised the reputation of yet another target?
For more on Shakir's expulsion see also: Israel expels high-ranking HRW official over past BDS activism
A report on the assembly's news site ICANA said a minimum number of MPs had signed a request to parliament's managers to arrange a debate on the motion for Iran to take the far-reaching step of leaving the NPT, which was first ratified in 1968
Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran could withdraw from the NPT if European countries refer the country to the UN Security Council over the 2015 deal.
Lawmakers in the past have sometimes withdrawn their signatures seeking debates on motions about nuclear and other issues.
Syria rejects and strongly condemns 'Deal of the Century', renews support for Palestinians' struggle
An official source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said in a statement to SANA that the Syrian Arab Republic expresses its strong condemnation and absolute rejection of the so-called "deal of the century" which represents a prescription to surrender to the usurping Israeli occupation and it comes in the framework of the attempts of the successive U.S. administrations and the Zionist entity to liquidate the Palestinian cause and to ignore the international legitimacy and thwart its resolutions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The source added that the latest U.S. plan has again clarified the organic link between the U.S. and the Zionist entity in its extreme hostility to the Arab nation and its issues, and that the U.S. policy in the region first and foremost aims to serve "Israel" and its expansionist schemes at the expense of the Arab rights and interests, indicating that the one who has always been a main supporter of the Israeli aggression is not eligible at all to play the role of peace maker.
The case against the ex-president was opened following a complaint by a group of Ukrainian MPs and the nation's High Anti-Corruption Court demanding the authorities investigate embezzlement and misappropriation of the foreign financial aid at the time of Poroshenko's term in office, a Ukrainian MP Renat Kuzmin said in a Facebook post.
Kuzmin, a member of the Opposition Platform - For Live party, also published the anti-corruption bureau's documents, confirming that the case against Poroshenko had been launched. The papers state that the former president and some "unknown people" from his administration are suspected of embezzling "on a grand scale," subsequent legalization of criminally obtained funds, and abuse of power.
Comment: Embezzlement charges are not all Poroshenko is facing:
- Ex-President Poroshenko under investigation for treason - Ukrainian State Bureau
- Fugitive Ukrainian MP reveals 'Poroshenko fuels war and corruption with IMF money'
- How Poroshenko embezzled and exported $8 billion from Ukraine
- Weeks prior to Ukraine vote, Poroshenko comes under fire over smuggling claim
- Investigation exposes Poroshenko's secret coastal Spanish villa
- Massive Corruption Leads to 92% of Ukrainians Wanting Old Government Back, Thanks America!
- Kiev court rules to launch corruption probe against Poroshenko and Klimkin
Such paranoia and suspicion of government power in the wake of the extraordinary post-9/11 advancements in Orwellian surveillance programs and unprecedented military expansionism were perfectly understandable, but predictions that the younger Bush would not cede power at the end of his second term proved incorrect. In today's hysterical Trump-centric political environment we now see mainstream voices in mainstream outlets openly advancing the same conspiratorial speculations about the current administration, and those will prove incorrect as well.
What these paranoid presidential prognostications get wrong is not their extreme suspicion of government, but their assumption that America's real power structures require a certain president to be in place in order to advance depraved totalitarian agendas. As anyone paying attention knows, intense suspicion of the US government is the only sane position that anyone can possibly have; the error is in assuming that there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the same agendas carry forward from one presidential administration to the next.
Trump lashed out at Bolton on Twitter. The president said Bolton "couldn't get approved for the Ambassador to the UN years ago, couldn't get approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job" and "mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V. (in reference to how to handle North Korea) - adding that "if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now."
While cheering the fact that the British decision to part ways with the EU is finally getting an orderly implementation, Maas said his nation expects the relationship with the UK "to be as close as possible, even after Brexit".
The minister delved into security and political issues where the two parties can benefit from close cooperation, but also mentioned the most contentious thing, the economy.













Comment: See also: