Puppet MastersS


Bulb

MPs vote to take control of Brexit through 'indicative votes'


BBC
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 18:30 UTC
UK MPs Brexit vote
© HOC
MPs have voted to take control of the parliamentary timetable in an unprecedented move to try to find a majority for any Brexit option.

The prime minister was dealt a fresh blow as the government was defeated by 329 votes to 302, setting up votes on Wednesday to find out what kind of Brexit has most support among MPs.

Theresa May has said there is no guarantee she will abide by their wish.

Thirty Tory MPs voted against the government, including three ministers.

Richard Harrington, Alistair Burt and Steve Brine resigned to join the rebels, with Mr Harrington accusing the government of "playing roulette with the lives and livelihoods" of Britons.

Former industry minister Mr Harrington said: "It's absurd that now we are in a position of political impasse and... Parliament hasn't actually talked about it on the floor of the House of Commons. That's what I call a democratic deficit."

Comment: The DUP dealt an additional blow to May's Brexit deal:
Writing in The Telegraph, Sammy Wilson, the DUP's Brexit spokesperson insisted that his party would not let "the PM or the Remainer horde in Parliament to bully us into backing a toxic Brexit deal."

Wilson argues that May's withdrawal agreement as it stands means "no Brexit" for the UK and is not averse to a long extension to article 50 of up to a year.


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Chart Bar

'Now to change Europe': Italy's Salvini sets sights on EU elections after major victory in regional elections


RT
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 18:28 UTC
salvini
© REUTERS / Remo Casilli/Italy's deputy prime ministers Luigi Di Maio (L) and Matteo Salvini (R)
Italy's government coalition partners have started separate fights for May's EU elections, after recent regional elections saw a resounding victory for Matteo Salvini's right-wing coalition at the expense of the left.

The deputy prime minister's coalition scored 42 percent of the ballot in the southern region of Basilicata in local elections on Sunday, with 18.8 percent coming from Salvini's League party supporter base.

It marked the end of center-left stewardship of the mainly agricultural region for the first time since 1995.

It also saw a sharp decline in local support for the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement (M5S), whose popularity in Basilicata halved from the 44.3 percent it gained in last year's general elections, to hover just over 20 percent following last weekend's regional poll.

Comment: A 'Europe of Nations', or some sort of 'regime-changed' EU, is Europe's only chance of preventing fratricide and regional war.

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Mr. Potato

Comey has 'so many questions' in wake of failed Russiagate probe, gets memed into oblivion


RT
Mon, 25 Mar 2019 17:51 UTC
James Comey
© Reuters / Joshua RobertsFormer FBI Director James Comey
Robert Mueller's report, concluding that President Trump didn't collude with Russia in 2016, has hit some establishment bigwigs hard. Spare a thought for poor James Comey, lost in the woods and ridiculed on Twitter.

After two years of investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller gave Attorney General William Barr his final report on Friday. Summarizing the report on Sunday, Barr revealed that Mueller couldn't find the elusive 'Russian Collusion' he was tasked with unearthing, and President Donald Trump declared his own "Complete and total exoneration."

After sustaining themselves for nearly two years on a diet of pure, unrefined Russian hysteria, America's liberal pundits and Democrat politicians began to melt down. It wasn't pretty. Former FBI Director James Comey, among Trump's most vocal opponents, took a more pensive approach, going for a walk in the woods to contemplate life post-Mueller.

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Bad Guys

US commercial and foreign policy: Succession of failures, or grand strategy?

Thierry Meyssan
Voltaire Network
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 18:01 UTC
grand strategy
The designers of the US Grand Strategy – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his advisor, Admiral Arthur Cebrowski; President Donald Trump and his commercial advisor Peter Navarro; and finally Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his advisor Francis Fannon.
It is commonly believed in the United States that the country has no Grand Strategy since the end of the Cold War.

A Grand Strategy is a vision of the world that one seeks to impose, and that all administrations must respect. So, even if you lose in one particular theatre of war, the fight continues in others, and finally ends in triumph. At the end of the Second World War, Washington chose to follow the directives set by ambassador George Keenan in his famous diplomatic telegramme. It proposed describing an alleged Soviet expansionism in order to justify containment of the USSR. Indeed, although the USA had lost the wars in Korea and Vietnam, it finished by prevailing.

It is very rare to be able to rethink a Grand Strategy, even if there were others during that period, in particular, with Charles De Gaulle in France.

Over the last eighteen years, Washington has been able to progressively set new objectives and new tactics with which to attain them.

Comment: It's hard not to look at the repeated 'failures' of U.S. foreign policy and think that no one can be that stupid. On the one hand, people can be that stupid, but on the other, you have to ask if perhaps the U.S. policy-makers got exactly what they wanted. That would fit into the Cebrowski strategy Meyssan describes above. And given Trump's obsession with Iran and Venezuela, it seems as if he is going along with the plan. But there are still inconsistencies. See, for example:

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Chess

Germany wants Europe to join China's new Silk Road (after criticizing Italy for doing the same)


RT
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 16:51 UTC
european leaders and xi jinping
© AFP / ludovic Marin
The Chinese "Belt and Road" initiative is an important project, which European states would be glad to join, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who stressed that cooperation should be based on reciprocity from Beijing.

"We, as Europeans, want to play an active part and that must lead to certain reciprocity and we are still wrangling over that a bit," Merkel said, as quoted by Reuters.

The comment comes shortly after talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is currently paying a state visit to France.

Comment: Macron - in the days before Xi's arrival - was warning that 'China is trying to divide Europe'. When Xi got to Paris, they inked a deal for 300 Airbus planes - the European company's largest ever order.

They can say all they want about China, but they can't resist the powerful tidal force it is exerting on the world order.

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Stop

Hamas says agreement reached on mutual ceasefire with Israel


Sputnik
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 17:42 UTC
Israel Hamas
© Flickr / Israel Defense Forces
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said Monday that the movement has reached an agreement on a mutual ceasefire with Israel.

"Egypt's efforts to cease fire between the occupation forces and resistance factions have turned to be successful", Barhum said in a statement.

A senior Palestinian official told Reuters Monday on condition of anonymity that Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt. The truce went into effect at 22:00 local time (20:00 GMT), according to Reuters.

However, following the reported truce agreement, air-raid sirens went off across the southern part of Israel, the IDF said late on Monday. There was no immediate information about any damage caused by rockets in Israel following the rocket alarm, Reuters reported.

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Bad Guys

US to keep 400 troops in Syria for 'undetermined amount of time'


Sputnik
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 17:29 UTC
US armed forces
© CC0 / Staff Sgt. Jacob Connor / 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
The remaining 400 US troops will stay in Syria to carry out clearing operations for an unidentified period of time, Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said in a press briefing on Monday.

"Our forces will stay on in very limited numbers in northeast and At Tanf to continue our clearing operations and stability operations against ISIS[Daesh] for a period of time not to be determined at this point", Jeffrey told reporters.

Last week, US President Donald Trump confirmed that a total of 400 US troops will remain in Syria.

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Friday that the territorial caliphate of the Daesh terror group has been completely eliminated in Syria.

Comment: Also from Sputnik:
Last week, US President Donald Trump said that the US would leave 400 troops in Syria with 200 of them deployed closer to Israel.

US Special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey said Monday that the fight against Daesh in Syria wasn't over, adding that the US would leave a limited number of its troops there.

"This is not the end of the fight against ISIS. That will go on, but it will be a different kind of fight. ISIS has lost much of its capability to project terrorist power and to have a recruiting base in an area that it controls," Jeffrey told reporters during a press briefing.
Jeffrey neglected to mention to reporters that the efforts of Syria and Russia have decimated ISIS and forced the US to 'mostly' leave the country.

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Bad Guys

Pompeo's visit to Lebanon doesn't go over so well - Hezbollah's Nasrallah to respond soon

Elijah J. Magnier
ejmagnier.com
Mon, 25 Mar 2019 17:25 UTC
pompeo berri beirut
© JIM YOUNG/AFP/Getty ImagesUS Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) meets with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (R) in Beirut on March 22, 2019
The visit of the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Lebanon went over badly among supporters of Hezbollah, mainly in the Christian and Shiite communities, and was welcomed by their political opponents. Concluding his visit to the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, Pompeo used the words "Hezbollah" 22 times and "Iran" 13 times in an eight minute speech. After one introductory minute the remaining seven minutes were devoted to Hezbollah and Iran. Would the US Secretary of State have had anything to say at all if not for Hezbollah? The entire visit would have been meaningless.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will respond publicly on Tuesday the 26that 17:00 local time. Nasrallah will respond both to Pompeo's speech and to President Donald Trump's "gift" to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Syria's Golan Heights, occupied since 1967 by Israel. Hezbollah considers the behaviour and statements of the US guest "arrogant and inaccurate". The group was pleased with the conduct of Lebanese officials, notably President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berry and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil (all Hezbollah's allies), who met Pompeo during his visit to the country last week.

What could Sayyed Nasrallah say?

Well-informed sources said the entire Pompeo speech was misleading and confused. Pompeo misrepresented the real objectives of the US in Lebanon when he professed the desire "to see Lebanon prosper and in peace".
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Arrow Down

UN, EU, Gulf allies - including Saudi Arabia - all condemn Trump's recognition of Golan as Israeli


RT
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 17:02 UTC
netanyahu trump
© Reuters / Leah MillisU.S. President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pose with a presidential proclamation recognizing "Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights" , March 25, 2019
Donald Trump's decision to recognize Israel's annexation of the Syrian Golan has been met with condemnation by the international community, with the UN and Washington's Gulf and European allies slamming the move.

The US president signed a declaration on Monday recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was present at the signing ceremony, praised Trump's unilateral move, comparing the president to biblical and Zionist heroes. But reactions among the international community - including Washington's closest Gulf and European allies - were considerably less enthusiastic.

The United Nations, which has long maintained that Israel's occupation of the Golan is illegal under international law, signaled that its position had not changed. A UN spokesman said that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will continue to honor a December 1981 resolution which called Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights "null and void and without international legal effect."

The declaration was similarly unpopular among nations which normally follow Washington's foreign policy lead.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait - Washington's accommodating Gulf allies which host US military bases - have criticized Trump's move.

Comment: The international community has spoken! Not that anything will be done about it: Trump offers occupied Golan to Israel, yet the indignation is verbal only. But as usual it is Israel and its vassals against the world. George Galloway was on point:
Galloway called Trump's declaration "an act of brigandry which will send a clear message to the entire world that the US cares nothing for international law, for treaties, just force."
...
"The US will underwrite any Israeli crime as long as its imperial interests in the Arab world are furthered," Galloway told RT. "The oil reserves in the Golan are already being stolen in absolute violation of international law but for the further enrichment of western businessmen."


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Alarm Clock

Russian Duma speaker warns 'US decision on Golan Heights is highway to war'


RT
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 16:53 UTC
israel soldiers golan
© Xinhua/JINI/Ayal MargolinIsraeli soldiers stand on an armored personnel carrier in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, on March 25, 2019.
The US decision to recognize the Golan Heights as Israel's territory was taken bypassing the UN Security Council and ignoring the UN dialogue on the issue, said Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's Lower House.

"All members of the international community should voice their stand on the matter," he said during the meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun.

Such a development could lead to a situation where "everyone is fighting each other," he stressed. "The rule of force would dominate. This is a highway to war."

Comment:

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