Puppet MastersS


Warning

'Change is inevitable': What is next for Iran?

Virginia Pietromarchi
Aljazeera
Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00 UTC
Beheshti Mosque
© AFPBeheshti Mosque damaged during public protests in Tehran on January 21, 2026
Without changes and a deal with US to lift sanctions, Iran could be set for further unrest, analysts say.

Protests in Iran have petered out. Tens of thousands have been arrested. And those accused of supporting the unrest have had business assets seized and are being pursued on "terrorism" charges. The authorities - for now - have reasserted control.

Yet, in the shadow of the apparent calm, the very same grievances that sparked the unrest remain, leaving Iran with little choice but to make tough compromises to win sanctions relief and fix the economy or face further upheaval, experts say. With a battered economy, a weakened network of regional allies and the looming threat of a US attack, Iran is at a crossroads.

Director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, Ali Vaez says:
"This is not a stable status quo - it's just not tenable. I am not predicting that the system will hit rock bottom tomorrow, but it's in a spiral and from this point on, it can only go down if it refuses to change."
The recent demonstrations erupted in late December when protests over a currency collapse morphed into a nationwide upheaval calling for the overthrow of the Islamic republic - Iran's system of governance. The authorities' response led to one of the most violent confrontations since the country's 1979 revolution.
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Bizarro Earth

Trouble in China: Elite purge as Xi targets his own top general, longtime confidant

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sat, 24 Jan 2026 20:53 UTC
Zhang Youxia He Weidong China cpp
© Agence France-PresseZhang Youxia, left, and He Weidong, the previous second ranked Vice Chairman who was purged in 2025.
Another significant military purge appears underway in China, as Saturday morning the West woke up to news that China's most senior military officer, who is second only to Xi Jinping, has been put under investigation over alleged "grave violations of discipline and the law."

Gen. Zhang Youxia is a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party body that controls China's armed forces, and this comes as somewhat of a major shock given he is widely regarded as President Xi's closest ally within the military - or at least prior to this.

Another member of the commission, Gen. Liu Zhenli, has also been placed under investigation, according to the Defense Ministry on the same day. He's in charge of the PLA military's Joint Staff Department.
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: NewsReal: Trump Unveils Gaza 'Beach Resort' at WEF, Weathers Minneapolis ICE Storm Back Home


Sott.net
Sun, 25 Jan 2026 21:14 UTC
ice minneapolis carney davos trump iran newsreal
© Sott.net
Amidst growing protests in Minneapolis against the presence of "Trump's enforcers," more mayhem as ICE agents kill a SECOND local liberal disrupting their hunt for illegals. Are Americans losing their appetite for 'mass deportations'? Or will they 'follow the penguin to the mountains', as DHS seemed to suggest? Meanwhile, US support for extreme forms of 'disruption' in Iran has resulted in 3,100 deaths there in support of a manufactured 'revolution', but no American 'savior' airstrikes as yet.

Also this week, Canadian PM Mark Carney's speech heralding the end of American hegemony stole the show at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and undermined Trump's attempt to platform his son-in-law's 'master vision' for turning Gaza into a 'world-class beach resort'. 'Daddy' Trump was apparently placated, however, when NATO Sec.-Gen. Mark Rutte got him to back down from annexing Greenland by promising him more bases and mineral rights on the Danish territory.


Running Time: 02:05:18

Download: MP3 — 115 MB

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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Obama fingerprints are all over the investigations of Trump and Killary

Paul Sperry
RealClearInvestigations
Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:57 UTC
Obama, hillary clinton
© Kevin Lamarque/ReutersBarack Obama and Hillary Clinton
Comey cleared Clinton, Obama boarded Air Force One with her, and the Russia hoax took flight — new evidence suggests the fix was in long before voters ever weighed in.

In the run-up to the 2016 Democratic Party convention, FBI Director James Comey gained access to at least eight thumb drives containing large volumes of former Secretary Hillary Clinton's sensitive State Department emails — as well as some from President Obama — that appeared to have been compromised by foreign hackers.

Instead of investigating the explosive new batch of evidence revealed in recently declassified documents, Comey rushed ahead to close an investigation into whether Clinton improperly transmitted and received classified material from a private, unsecured server she kept in her basement. Comey also took the extraordinary step of bypassing the attorney general and personally exonerating Clinton of wrongdoing during an unusual press conference on July 5, 2016.
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Warning

The Middle East is at a tipping point as the U.S. fuels crisis across the region

Mitchell Plitnick
Mondoweiss
Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00 UTC
Trump Davos
© White House Photo/Daniel TorokUS President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland • January 21, 2026
Long-standing crises in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, and Iran are deepening as the U.S. imprint on the Middle East shows no signs of weakening.

A lot of eyes were focused on the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, but while the world was riveted on Switzerland, scant attention was being paid to the Middle East where escalating tensions threaten to reach a boiling point.

In Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, and Iran, long-standing crises have expanded and become more entangled with each other, and for all of Trump's pretensions of isolationism or restricting American activity to the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. remains deeply entangled in the Middle East, always to the detriment of the people in the region.

With so many hot spots in the region, so much American clumsiness, and Israeli aggression aggravating an already tense situation, it is impossible to predict where the greatest rupture might be located. But it is worth looking at several particularly sensitive areas.
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Warning

Does Europe need a modern-day Octavian Augustus? Lessons in pragmatic reform for a divided union

Adrian Korczyński
New Eastern Outlook
Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00 UTC
Gaius Octavius Caesar EUflag
© UnknownGaius Octavius Caesar • Tattered EU flag
In the final, bloody decades of the Roman Republic, political form survived long after political substance had rotted away. As Europe enters 2026, the parallel is no longer academic.

The Senate still convened, magistrates were still elected, and republican rituals were carefully observed. Yet behind these venerable façades lay a state hollowed out by factional warfare, elite predation, and chronic paralysis. The rivalry between optimates and populares reduced governance to obstruction, while successive civil wars — from Marius and Sulla to Caesar and Pompey — normalized violence as a routine political instrument. Proscriptions, mass confiscations, and the privatization of armies by ambitious generals exposed a republic that could no longer govern an empire it formally still possessed.

The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC did not restore balance; it accelerated collapse. Rome plunged into another round of civil war, marked by the cynical brutality of the Second Triumvirate and the open commodification of power. Into this void stepped Gaius Octavius — young, physically unremarkable, underestimated, yet disciplined, calculating, and utterly unsentimental. Adopted by Caesar and dismissed as a placeholder, Octavian proved otherwise. After eliminating his rivals and defeating Mark Antony at Actium in 31 BC, he faced the problem that had destroyed all his predecessors: how to stabilize Rome without formally abolishing the Republic.

Comment: 'None so blind as those who will not see.'

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Attention

Trump shamelessly plays the Russia/China bogeyman card for Greenland grab


Strategic Culture Foundation
Sat, 24 Jan 2026 17:23 UTC
Chess Pieces
© Strategic Culture Foundation
The old saying that a week is a long time in politics is especially true under the U.S. Presidency of Donald Trump, given his propensity for unhinged bombast, zig-zags, U-turns, vendettas, and theatrics.

So, last week, he was threatening to take over the Danish Arctic territory of Greenland by military force, if needed. Trump was also gearing up to launch an unprecedented trade war against European states that, with pipsqueak temerity, dared to support Denmark, a move that would have cratered the eight-decade-old transatlantic Western alliance.

This week, in a 70-minute rant at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump, seemingly magnanimously, announced that he was not going to deploy military power to subordinate European NATO "allies". But he insisted that Greenland must be annexed under U.S. control.

In a telling quip, he said: "I don't have to use force." Trump is right on that score. There is no need for military coercion because the European "allies" have been exposed as a bunch of dithering vassals who were pathetically clutching their pearls for the past week out of fear and angst that Uncle Sam was slapping them.

However, when vassals appease, they only end up being abused. The American Don may have softened his contemptuous rhetoric at Davos, but there is little doubt that the expansionist ambitions to grab Greenland will be pursued, and the Europeans will be, in time, further degraded in their submission to the American overlord.

Oddly enough, for a president who boasts about flexing military muscle for imperialist aims, Trump couched his takeover of Greenland as a matter of "national security." He is claiming that the United States needs to take control of the "big, beautiful piece of ice" to defend it from Russia and China.
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Star of David

Israel and its relationship to the Islamic State

Jonathan Yen
Mises Institute
Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00 UTC
ISIS dudes
© P10/KJN
This week, ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), also known as ISIL, IS, or Daesh, has reappeared in the headlines following the killing of two Iowa National Guardsman — Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard — in an ISIS airstrike in Palmyra, Syria. These two American men are only the latest of the over 40,000 soldiers, from numerous different nations, who have lost their lives in the war against ISIS — a war which America's supposed greatest ally against terrorism, Israel, has not assisted.

The AIPAC website proudly proclaims that Israel is an "Indispensable Ally" against terrorism; and indeed, the Trump administration has continued funding the Israeli government at massive expense, including a $4 billion dollar military aid package earlier this year.
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Map

Ukraine peace talks down to one sticking point - Witkoff


RT
Thu, 22 Jan 2026 12:23 UTC
Steve Witkoff
© Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesUS Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff
A US delegation is expected in Moscow on Thursday for negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Ukraine peace talks have been narrowed down to a single unresolved issue, according to US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he would travel to Moscow later on Thursday. The trip was later confirmed by the Kremlin.

Speaking at an impromptu 'Ukraine Breakfast' on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Witkoff said he felt "encouraged" and "optimistic" about the progress so far. He said:
"If both sides want to solve this, we're going to get it solved. I think we've made a lot of progress. I think we've got it down to one issue, and we have discussed iterations of that issue, and that means it's solvable."
Witkoff did not specify the remaining sticking point, but he had previously suggested it relates to territory.
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Volcano

Up in Smoke

James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com
Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00 UTC
WEF cartoon
"This is how tyranny looks in the modern world. It arrives dressed as dialogue, consensus, and expertise. It is imposed by people who sincerely believe they are doing nothing at all."
— DataRepublican
Davos — The World Economic Forum (WEF) — is toast. Trump, Bessant, and Luttnick exposed the wretched org of overcompensated squishes to too much light and heat and it flared into such a pathetic little smoldering cinder that its spoxpersons said the meeting might get moved out of Davos altogether next year to Dublin or Detroit. Closer to the people, you understand (except there are hardly any people left in Detroit, thanks to the fifty years of WEF influence on manufacturing policy and the people of Dublin are now Nigerians, Somalis, and Congolese, thanks to the WEF's retarded migration doctrine.)

All of which means that its trademark, WEF Globalism, is dead, too. No more aspirations of One World Government (as if Earth was the Planet Krypton). . . no more You will have nothing, be happy, and eat bugs. . . no more green energy gaslight. . . no more all women are women, including men pretending to be women. . . no more wide-open borders. . . no more of their preposterous elitist armchair totalitarianism. In fact, if anything, the WEF had terminal boundary problems, much like the Cluster-B personalities that infest the upper echelons of the NGO alternative universe that carried out the WEF's dastardly programming for them. They didn't know when to stop.
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