Iranian lawmakers on Tuesday asked country's parliament to debate a motion for Iran to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The move appears to be the latest from Tehran to pressure European powers to salvage the more recent nuclear deal of 2015.

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Lawmakers in the past have sometimes withdrawn their signatures seeking debates on motions about nuclear and other issues.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 has affirmed its absolute rejection and condemnation of the so-called "deal of the century" which represents a prescription to surrender to the usurping Israeli occupation, and it renewed its firm standing by the just struggle of the Palestinian people for restoring their legitimate rights.

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.

Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau has opened a probe against former president, Petro Poroshenko, who is suspected of abuse of power, embezzlement "on a grand scale" and allegedly stealing US aid funds.

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.

During the George W Bush administration it was popular in conspiracy circles to speculate that events might be orchestrated which would allow the Bush family to complete a coup against the US Constitution and hold on to power indefinitely.

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.

U.S. President Donald Trump unleashed his sharpest attack yet on John Bolton after his former national security adviser depicted Trump as playing a central role in a politically motivated pressure campaign on Ukraine, as the U.S. Senate prepared on Wednesday to enter a new phase in the president's impeachment trial.

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."

We all know that the powers-that-shouldn't-be don't put together a decades-long propaganda campaign to condition the public to believe in the plain, simple truth. So why have they spent decades (if not centuries) trying to condition us to believe that voting is important and effective? Today on #PropagandaWatch James explores the propaganda campaign surrounding voting and what it tells us about the statist indoctrination system we live under.

With the protracted Brexit saga coming to an end this week, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made a not-so-veiled warning to the UK, saying it still must abide by EU rules if it wants full access to the bloc's single market.

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.

Indian PM Narendra Modi says the Indian military could take down neighboring Pakistan within a week - 10 days at most. Both regional rivals are nuclear-armed powers.

Speaking at the National Cadet Corps Rally in Delhi on Tuesday, Modi lamented the "inaction" of his predecessors who were reluctant to use military force against Pakistan. He said that even when India's top brass "asked for action," the political leadership "would not go ahead," but instead conducted what he called "a proxy war" with Pakistan as a law and order issue, rather than one requiring a military solution. The prime minister said he believes Pakistan would not stand a chance if a military confrontation broke out between the two.

With Senator Bernie Sanders surging in the polls, DNC chair Tom Perez has put forward a cartoonishly neoliberal cast of foreign policy hacks and corporate lobbyists to sabotage his nomination.

Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July.

Many of Perez's nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.

Just as it did in 2016, the DNC appears determined to sabotage a Sanders nomination, foisting a collection of neoliberal and imperialist hacks onto the convention committee to hold back a popular rebellion against the policies of endless war and corporate free trade they have personally presided over.

Western elites and their lackeys in the media despise Russian president Vladimir Putin and they make no bones about it. The reasons for this should be fairly obvious. Putin has rolled back US ambitions in Syria and Ukraine, aligned himself with Washington's biggest strategic rival in Asia, China, and is currently strengthening his economic ties with Europe which poses a long-term threat to US dominance in Central Asia. Putin has also updated his nuclear arsenal which makes it impossible for Washington to use the same bullyboy tactics it's used on other, more vulnerable countries. So it's understandable that the media would want to demonize Putin and disparage him as cold-blooded "KGB thug". That, of course, is not true, but it fits with the bogus narrative that Putin is maniacally conducting a clandestine war against the United States for purely evil purposes. In any event, the media's deep-seated Russophobia has grown so extreme that they're unable to cover even simple events without veering wildly into fantasy-land. Take, for example, the New York Times coverage of Putin's recent Address to the Federal Assembly, which took place on January 15. The Times screwball analysis shows that their journalists have no interest in conveying what Putin actually said, but would rather use every means available to persuade their readers that Putin is a calculating tyrant driven by his insatiable lust for power. Check out this excerpt from the article in the Times:

"Nobody knows what's going on inside the Kremlin right now. And perhaps that's precisely the point. President Vladimir V. Putin announced constitutional changes last week that could create new avenues for him to rule Russia for the rest of his life....(wrong)

The fine print of the legislation showed that the prime minister's powers would not be expanded as much as first advertised, while members of the State Council would still appear to serve at the pleasure of the president. So maybe Mr. Putin's plan is to stay president, after all?....(wrong again)

A journalist, Yury Saprykin, offered a similar sentiment on Facebook, but in verse:

We'll be debating over how he won't leave,
We'll be guessing, will he leave or won't he.
And then — lo! — he won't be leaving.
That is, before the elections he won't leave,
And after that, he definitely won't leave." (wrong, a third time)

(" Big Changes? Or Maybe Not. Putin's Plans Keep Russia Guessing", New York Times)

This is really terrible analysis. Yes, "Putin announced constitutional changes last week", but they have absolutely nothing to do with some sinister plan to stay in power, and anyone who read the speech would know that. Unfortunately, most of the other 100-or-so "cookie cutter" articles on the topic, draw the same absurd conclusion as the Times, that is, that the changes Putin announced in his speech merely conceal his real intention which is to extend his time in office for as long as possible. Once again, there's nothing in the speech itself to support these claims, it's just another attempt to smear Putin.