Puppet MastersS


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Italy's Salvini slams Macron for allowing terrorists to 'freely drink champagne under the Eiffel tower'

Matteo Salvini
Matteo Salvini
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini urged French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday to extradite leftist guerrillas who have been hiding out in France for decades to avoid serving prison sentences in Italy.

"I appeal to the French president to return to Italy the fugitives that should not be drinking champagne under the Eiffel tower, but should be rotting in jail in Italy," Salvini said in an interview with Canale 5 TV.

Salvini, leader of the far-right League party, spoke a day after the return of communist militant Cesare Battisti to Italy from Bolivia to serve a life sentence for his involvement in four murders in the late 1970s.

Eagle

Lunatic neocon John Bolton is steering Trump into war with Iran

John Bolton
"Stop the ENDLESS WARS!" implored President Donald Trump in a Sunday night tweet.

Well, if he is serious, Trump had best keep an eye on his national security adviser, for a U.S. war on Iran would be a dream come true for John Bolton.

Last September, when Shiite militants launched three mortar shells into the Green Zone in Baghdad, which exploded harmlessly in a vacant lot, Bolton called a series of emergency meetings and directed the Pentagon to prepare a menu of targets, inside Iran, for U.S. air and missile strikes in retaliation.

The Wall Street Journal quoted one U.S. official as saying Bolton's behavior "rattled people. ... People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran."

Comment: And lest we forget - Bolton is a bought-and-paid-for shill for the MEK - a 'regime change in Iran' terror group:


Bullseye

PM Theresa May attacks Jeremy Corbyn to sideline him from cross-party Brexit talks

May/Corbyn
© Reuters/Hannah McKayPrime Minister Theresa May and leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn
UK Prime Minister Theresa May's plan to enter into cross-party Brexit discussions without the official opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, has been widely condemned by MPs and political commentators on social media.

In the immediate aftermath of the crushing defeat of her Brexit deal in the House of Commons on Tuesday, May stated that she would now seek cross-party talks with senior politicians to find "genuinely negotiable" solutions which she can take to EU negotiators.

One of those senior politicians who wont be included in talks with the PM is the Labour leader, according to the leader of the house, Andrea Leadsom. In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Leadsom dismissed any notion that Corbyn would be invited to discuss the best way forward.


Comment: Even though May has just been annihilated by the House decision, it is unlikely she will consult with Corbyn (a further grovel) to the detriment of the UK and its murky way forward. How typical of the mindset and current political milieu - not only in Britain.


Arrow Down

Washington confirms: US to begin INF Treaty withdrawal as of February 2nd

Missile launched
© eadaily,com
The US will begin its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia on February 2, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Andrea Thompson told NATO officials in Brussels.

Washington's unilateral withdrawal from the treaty - originally signed by the United States and Russia in 1987 - comes after negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, fell through on Tuesday. Thompson claimed that Russia is in breach of the treaty, and that Moscow's 9M729 missile system violates the terms of the agreement.

Under the agreement, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, land-launched nuclear missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km are banned. Washington claims, without evidence, that the 9M729 has a range greater than 500 km and is therefore in violation of the treaty.


Comment: Reason would suggest expanding the treaty to include all other countries that have the same missile capability as well as the infringements and new technology that outdates and negates the current treaty. The SouthFront video is succinct and informative.


Light Saber

'It's becoming clear Scotland's wider interests will only be protected with independence' - First Minister Nicola Sturgeon

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon
© Press AssociationSNP leader Nicola Sturgeon
Nicola Sturgeon has said it is becoming increasingly clear that Scotland's wider interests will only be protected with independence.

The Scottish First Minister is travelling to London today to meet with Westminster leader Ian Blackford to back a People's Vote after insisting a second European referendum was now the "only credible option" for the UK after the proposed Brexit deal was defeated.

However, while backing a so-called 'People's Vote' which could see the UK remain in the EU, she said that "it is becoming increasingly clear that Scotland's wider interests will only be protected with independence."

Comment: Nicola Sturgeon: Brexit will lead to 2nd Scottish independence referendum


Footprints

Erdogan on Manbij blast: 'Trump will not halt Syrian withdrawal, it would mean ISIS wins'

Erdogan
© Reuters/Umit BektasTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
The terrorist attack in Syria's Manbij killed 20 people, including 5 US soldiers, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, adding he believes the attack won't make US President Donald Trump to cancel the withdrawal of troops.

Speaking on live TV amid a visit of the Croatian president to Turkey, Erdogan said that the Wednesday suicide attack in Kurdish-controlled Manbij was directed at Trump's decision to withdraw troops from the war-torn country.



Comment: See also:


Arrow Down

Iran: No military withdrawal from Syria despite Israel's threats

Iran General Mohammad Ali Jafari
© AP/Vahid SalemiThe head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps General Mohammad Ali Jafari
The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps says Iran will retain its military presence in Syria, defying Israeli threats that Iranian forces will be targeted if they do not leave the war-torn country.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will keep its military advisers, revolutionary forces, and its weapons in Syria," Iranian media quoted Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari as saying on January 16. The comments come days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was "more determined than ever to act against Iran in Syria."

Speaking at a cabinet meeting on January 13, Netanyahu also said that Israel had succeeded in "curbing Iran's military entrenchment in Syria" by attacking Iranian and Hizballah targets there "hundreds" of times."

Jafari called Netanyahu's threats "a joke" and warned that the Israeli government "was playing with [a] lion's tail." "Be afraid of the day that Iran's precision-guided missiles roar and fall on your head and revenge all the blood you have spilt of innocent Muslims in the region," the Iranian general said.

Comment: See also:


Attention

Tucker Carlson: Trump's wish to remove the US from NATO leaves neocons seething

Trump
US President Donald Trump
Tucker Carlson, Fox News and Russian and American news outlets alike have picked up the story that US President Donald Trump has on numerous occasions, opined that the United States would do well to depart from the North Atlantic Military Organization, or NATO.

This wish caused enormous fury and backlash from those opposed, which, oddly enough include both Democrats and Republicans. Their anger and alarm over this idea is such that the media networks through much of the US are alive with the idea of impeaching the President or bringing 25th Amendment proceedings against him for insanity!

Take a look:


Tucker Carlson, as usual, nailed it.

NATO was formed to make Western Europe secure in the face of a perceived Soviet threat. In 1991, the USSR collapsed and the threat of Ivan the Communist bad guy collapsed with it.

But 28 years later, NATO is still here. And, why?

Comment: The many unfounded assaults on this president, so far, have not culminated in his removal. So defying logic, the new plan is: more of the same.


Footprints

George Galloway: Extinct prime minister Theresa May, and her deadman-walking government

MayBrexitfloat
© Reuters/Peter Nicholls
Even after her historic Commons defeat over the Brexit deal, PM Theresa May is unlikely to be toppled in the upcoming no-confidence vote. That won't help alleviate the chaos her previous bad decisions have started.

There will now be a special glass case in the political museum for May, who has just suffered - by some distance - the worst defeat for any British prime minister in the history of the country. Like the glass case in London's Natural History Museum marked "Dodo" it will contain an extinct entity, an ex-parrot, an ex-prime minister.

May's defeat by 230 votes is worse by some margin than the next largest, that suffered by the first Labour PM Ramsay MacDonald - by 166 votes - before being brought down by the MI6 forgery known as the Zinoviev Letter in 1924. It is in the memorable words of a commentator at "the upper-end of bad." No political adjectives exist to fully describe the stratospheric scale of the defeat.

Comment: See also:


Snakes in Suits

Trump: A symptom of a new brand of class warfare raging at home and abroad

Trump/tower
© Buzzfeed
What's happening in America is an echo of what's happening in democracies around the world, and it's not happening because of Trump. To understand events around the world today, one must think in terms of the class struggle.

This sentence sounds like something that could be written by a doctrinaire Marxist. But it is nonetheless true. Much of the current tension in America and in many other democracies is in fact a product of a class struggle. It's not the kind of class struggle that Karl Marx wrote about, with workers and peasants facing off against rapacious capitalists, but it is a case of today's ruling class facing disaffection from its working class.

In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a "dictatorship of the proletariat," the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the "New Class," noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion's share of the goodies. Workers and peasants stood in long lines for bread and shoddy household goods, while party leaders and government managers bought imported delicacies in special, secret stores. (In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: "But what if the communists come back?")

Comment: It seems to be a lot more going on than just 'class warfare' in the dynamics that undergird the latest manifestations of unacceptable control, increasing poverty and profound unrest. Social engineering, population culling and authoritarian politics employed to mask financial failure? The elite have contrived the means to be insulated, protected. The common man: less and less each day.