Puppet MastersS


Bug

Kaja Kallas, the EU's dumb but dangerous blonde

What's wrong with European women in European politics?

Kaja Kallas
© Dursun Aydemir / Gettyimages.ruEU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and raging loon Kaja Kallas
What's wrong with European women in European politics? As a European woman, I often wonder when I hear the ignorant and foolish statements of, for example, Ursula von der Leyen, Annalena Baerbock, or more recently, Kaja Kallas.

It's not something that happens once or maybe twice, but it happens all the time. At first, I thought it was age-related. Annalena and Kaja are from the generation of the "George Soros textbooks," but Ursula certainly isn't. She's from an older generation and has certainly experienced the strict and rigid teaching methods prevalent in Germany at the time.

Let's start with the second most important woman in the European Union: Kaja Kallas. She was the first female Prime Minister of Estonia, from 2021 to 2024, when she resigned before her appointment as High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. She was born into a family with what you call "a silver spoon in the mouth." Not rich in money in the truest sense of the word, but her father was the former Prime Minister of Estonia, Siim Kallas. So she had help and connections from her father to first work at the European Parliament and then become Prime Minister of Estonia.

Explosion

Iran - Explosions heard in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar

Israel bombs Tehran
© APIsrael bombs Tehran
Loud explosions have been heard in Dubai, while a Pakistani national has been killed by falling debris from a missile shot down by the UAE military in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi.

Streaking missiles were seen exploding in the skies over Jumeirah Beach Residence (JBR) and Palm Jumeirah just before 7pm Saturday night local time, Dubai-based Big News Network reported.

Three missiles were seen streaking across the sky before they exploded, seemingly intercepted by the UAE military. Several others were heard but not seen shortly after 7pm.

Loud booms were also heard mid-afternoon in and around Dubai Marina. Explosions have also been heard in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq.

These countries have closed their airspace and national airlines have been grounded. Target of the missile attacks in the Gulf countries have been U.S. military bases hosted by them. Iran had vowed to attack these bases if it came under attack from U.S. and Israeli forces. "This operation will continue relentlessly until the enemy is decisively defeated," Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement Saturday.

Explosion

Iran confirms Supreme Leader Khamenei killed in US-Israeli strike

Khamenei
© Twitter/@khamenei_irAyatollah Ali Khamenei
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been "martyred," state news agencies have announced.

Iranian state media have confirmed the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the ongoig joint US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic.

Multiple news agencies, including the Tasnim, Mehr and Press TV simultaneously announced early Sunday that the 85-year-old leader had been "martyred" in the attack.

"The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a joint attack by the criminal America and the Zionist regime," the official statement said.

"At the moment of the martyrdom, he was carrying out his assigned duties and was present at his workplace, when this cowardly attack occurred," it added, refuting the "Zionist regime's psychological warfare" claiming that the Supreme Leader was hiding in a secure and hidden location.

"This great crime will never go unanswered and will mark a new chapter in the history of the Islamic and Shiite world," President Masoud Pezeshkian's office said in a statement, announcing 40 days of public mourning. "With full force and strength... we will make the perpetrators and commanders of this great crime regret their actions."

Explosion

Moscow condemns US-Israel strikes on Iran

Russian Foreign Ministry
© Natalya Seliverstova/SputnikRussian Foreign Ministry
The attacks could lead to a humanitarian, economic, and potentially nuclear catastrophe, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.

The US and Israeli strikes against Iran are a "premediated and unprovoked act of aggression," the Russian Foreign Ministry has said in a statement, warning that it could have dire consequences for the Middle East and the entire world.

Washington and West Jerusalem launched the attack on Saturday, with US President Donald Trump stating that the operation is aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear program and bringing about regime change in Iran. Tehran responded with retaliatory strikes against targets in Israel as well as US bases in the region.

Moscow is calling on the UN and its nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to give an impartial assessment of the "reckless actions aimed at disrupting peace, stability and security in the Middle East," the ministry's statement said. The actions of Washington and West Jerusalem are pushing the region towards "a humanitarian, economic and potentially nuclear catastrophe," it warned.

According to Russia, the US is seeking to eliminate the leadership of a nation that has resisted forceful pressure and hegemonism. The strikes came after indirect nuclear talks in Geneva between Tehran and Washington ended inconclusively on Friday and amid a massive US military buildup in the region.

Broom

Xi purge: China's chief legislature sacks 9 top military officials

chinese military officers
© Florence Lo / ReutersMembers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) and People's Armed Police (PAP) in 2024
China has removed nine military lawmakers from its national parliament, escalating President Xi Jinping's purge of senior defense officials, which has been a months-long trend, tracked closely by global headlines.

In this latest move, first reported internationally by Bloomberg Thursday, the country's top legislative body stripped Ground Force Commander Li Qiaoming and Information Support Force Political Commissar Li Wei of their seats, along with seven other officers.

The dismissals were handed down this week, with state-run Xinhua reporting from the 14th National People's Congress that those targeted include Ground Force's chief Ding Laifu; Central Military Commission officials Bian Ruifeng and Wang Donghai; Navy officers Shen Jinlong and Qin Shengxiang; Air Force's Yu Zhongfu; and Rocket Force's Yang Guang.

Comment: Xi housecleaning since 2023? One might wonder how deep Western intelligence has infiltrated China's top military brass.


Jet3

Pakistan carries out airstrikes inside Afghanistan as 'open war' on border continues

mmmmm
Pakistan's military, backed by artillery and air power, struck more military installations deep inside Afghanistan overnight after Pakistan said it was in "open war" with its eastern neighbor.

Pakistan on Saturday claimed more than 330 Afghan forces had been killed since fighting erupted Thursday night during a broad Afghan cross-border attack into Pakistan. Afghanistan rejected the figures as false.

The casualty figures provided by either side could not be independently confirmed.

The fighting was in response to Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan last Sunday. Pakistan said it was targeting the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, or TTP. The group is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban. Afghanistan, however, said only civilians were killed in Sunday's airstrike.

Star of David

Best of the Web: Israel strikes girls' school in Iran, killing up to 160 (UPDATED)

mmmmm
An Israeli strike has hit an elementary girls' school in Minab, a city in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran, killing at least 51 people, state media reported, as the immediate civilian cost from Israel and the United States' huge bombardment of Iran comes into sharper focus.

Iran's Mehr news agency also reported that at least two students were killed by an Israeli attack that hit a school east of the capital, Tehran.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera's Mohammed Vall said of the attack on the girls' school, "There are new reports confirming the number of people killed in that strike has now gone above 40. That's a civilian target, and that's one of the targets that might really become problematic with regards to this campaign by the Americans and the Israelis, who are saying that they are targeting only military targets and they are trying to punish the regime, not the people of Iran.


Comment: Tass reports:
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that the strike by the United States and Israel killed up to 160 schoolgirls in the southern city of Minab.

"The Zionist regime's attack on the school in the city of Minab killed 150-160 of our girls, which is a terrible crime," he said, as quoted by ISNA.




Red Flag

Spain's government: Spinning out of control?

spain Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
© Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty ImagesSpain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
  • Deprived of Marxism, the Spanish left has sought refuge in a disparate ideological mosaic: radical environmentalism, complicit indulgence toward political Islam, the dismantling of borders, unconditional support for the Palestinians against Israel - all stacked together into an improbable and incoherent magma.
  • The Sánchez government has another reason for aligning with jihadists: the corruption scandals that have engulfed even the prime minister's immediate family.
  • The high point of the Spanish left's radicalization was reached with a January 2026 decree legalizing between 500,000 and a million illegal immigrants. Although presented as a humanitarian and economic measure, this slap-happy decision provoked widespread outrage among Spaniards.
  • Traumatized by its history, cornered by the judiciary, and deprived of ideological reference points, the Spanish left appears to be locking itself into radical dogmas and adopting increasingly divisive policies simply to remain in power.
Between corruption and radicalization, Spain's government seems to be spinning out of control.

Comment: Spain's current situation is why 'founding fathers' set guidance and parameters of governance. Wisdom from the past anchors the future...but only if it is acknowledged, revered and utilized.


USA

The Graveyard of Destructive Ideas

2 guys and crowd
© UnknownVladimir Lenin • Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support — and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed?

There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity.

The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential threat requires immediate government intervention, novel legislation, ample funding, and public awareness of the impending danger.

So out of nowhere, the public is warned that the scorching planet will be inundated by rising seas in a mere decade. Or that millions of transgender youth are our next civil rights frontier, given that they suffer in silence without political advocacy, new laws, programs, and the chance for "life-saving," powerful hormonal treatments and radical sex-reassignment surgeries. Indeed, the travel time from an outlandish idea by the faculty lounge to liberal status quo is a mere few years.

Oil Pipeline

US Treasury to allow resale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba to ease island's fuel crunch

Oil refinery
© Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty ImagesThe refinery El Palito in Puerto Cabello, Carabobo state, Venezuela • January 22, 2026
The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday announced a new licensing policy to streamline the resale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, with the goal of supporting the island's private sector and bolstering humanitarian efforts amid ongoing fuel crises.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) will extend the new licensing policy to specific applications seeking authorization for the resale of Venezuelan oil for use in Cuba.

The move was done "in accordance with the United States' support and solidarity for the Cuban people," reads the new policy.

The policy does not cover entities or persons connected to the Cuban military, intelligence services, or other government institutions, including entities on the U.S. State Department's Cuba Restricted List.