Puppet MastersS


Target

Will Turkey be Trump's next military target?

Lorenzo Maria Pacini
Strategic Culture Foundation
Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00 UTC
Trump Erdogan
© Public domainUS President Donald Trump • Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Turkey continues to be a useful ally for Washington, but no longer a necessary one, and certainly a problematic one.

A love story, but not quite

Relations between the United States and Turkey have been one of the strategic pillars of the Eurasian and Middle Eastern geopolitical balance since the Second World War, forming a bilateral relationship which, while maintaining a structurally cooperative dimension, has developed along a trajectory marked by strategic differences, divergent perceptions of threat, and profound changes in the regional balance.

During the Cold War, Washington saw Turkey not only as a geographical bulwark against Moscow, but also as a privileged partner in controlling the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, which are crucial for maritime security in the Black Sea. In the post-1991 period, the dissolution of the USSR transformed the basis of this cooperation: with ideological motivations no longer present, new regional priorities emerged, such as stability in the Middle East, the Kurdish question, and crisis management in Syria and Iraq.

Comment: Trump's next military target is Iran whether he likes it or not.

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Bullseye

SOTT Focus: EU Sanctions German Journalist In Shocking First Over Gaza Reporting

Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
Sun, 22 Feb 2026 01:26 UTC
Journalist Dogru
© newsvoice.seJournalist Hüseyin Dogru
In January, a post I saw on Twitter/X shocked me.

"URGENT: As of now, I have ZERO access to any money," Hüseyin Dogru wrote. "I can't provide food for my family, including two newborns, due to EU sanctions."

Dogru is a journalist, a German citizen living in Berlin.

After reading his post, I sent him a private message offering to order groceries and have them sent to his home.

The reply shocked me even more. "Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to accept any financial or material support," Dogru wrote.

Dogru is the first European Union citizen known to be living inside the EU to face extrajudicial sanctions imposed by Brussels - robbing him of fundamental civil and humanitarian rights.


He's also the first person to be sanctioned specifically for his reporting related to Palestine.
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Star of David

Testing the alliance: Netanyahu's Washington visit

Abbas Hashemite
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00 UTC
Neti Kush Witkoff group
© UnknownRound table with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff
Netanyahu's recent rush to the United States signals that Israel seeks Washington to expand the agenda of negotiations with Iran. However, the Trump administration seems to recalibrate its policy alignment with Israel.

A Diplomatic Visit or a Geopolitical Stress Test?

Soon after the first round of US-Iran peace negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed to Washington. This visit was not part of routine diplomacy, but rather a test of geopolitical endurance. Israel and the United States had always been close allies. This bilateral relationship reached a new high during the tenure of US President Donald Trump. Since Donald Trump's reelection as the 47th President of the US, both sides have exchanged numerous visits. Yet the recent visit of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu displayed pressing importance and urgency that signaled Israel's anxiety over the recent US-Iran peace talks. Since the visit, analysts around the world are trying to analyze if the US will once again conduct a military attack on Iran at the behest of the Israeli government or if it will assert strategic independence.
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USA

Iran crisis exposes the impotence of America's neoliberal war machine

Nicolas J.S. Davies
Antiwar.com
Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00 UTC
USS Gerald R. Ford
© TwitterThe Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford
After some delays, the United States is dispatching a second aircraft-carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, from the Caribbean to the Middle East to join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and threaten Iran.

This is the third Atlantic crossing for the Ford's crew since it set sail from Norfolk, Virginia, in June 2025, and the second time its deployment has been extended, first to redeploy from the Middle East to the Caribbean, and now to redeploy back to the Middle East.

There is a grave danger that the U.S. government is preparing to exploit the genuine sympathy of people all over the world for the Iranian civilians massacred during protests in December and January as a pretext for an illegal military assault on Iran.

A new US war on Iran would be a cynical and catastrophic escalation of the crisis already swallowing its people, piling the unimaginable death and suffering of a full-scale war on top of many years of economic strangulation under US "maximum pressure" sanctions and the repression of the recent protests.

The world must act to prevent war, and the voices of Americans calling for peace and humanity may have an impact on President Trump and US politicians, in an election year when Americans are already sickened by US complicity in genocide in Gaza and the murderous paramilitaries invading US cities.
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Warning

A summit in a Belgian castle shows how Europe is worried about its industrial future

Ricardo Martins
New Eastern Outlook
Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00 UTC
belgian castle
© UnknownBelgian Castle of Alden Biesen
What was framed as a technocratic discussion on competitiveness was, in reality, a political and existential debate about Europe's economic model, institutional balance, and global positioning.

The informal European summit held on 12 February 2026 at the medieval castle of Alden Biesen, in eastern Belgium, was staged as a moment of strategic introspection. The informal summit was preceded by a one-day gathering of several high-ranking heads of states, governments, and industrial leaders focused on industrial competitiveness.

Yet the symbolism of Europe's leaders gathering behind closed doors in a historic Flemish estate to discuss industrial decline, technological lag, and geopolitical vulnerability revealed a deeper anxiety: the European Union increasingly fears irrelevance in a world shaped by the United States and China.

Comment: Why the EU doesn't work...all blather, no plans, no solutions.

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Bizarro Earth

Why, exactly, did the Biden admin destroy the border?

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:36 UTC
biden migrants border razor wire forklift
© Border Hawk/XThe Biden admin ordered Border Patrol to lift razor wire barriers along the Rio Grande to allow illegal migrants into the country in 2023
Biden's border chaos wasn't accidental — it was a political strategy to reshape America's electorate and expand left-wing power.

Why would any president destroy the U.S. southern border?

The Left typically "pounces" on anyone daring to suggest that the Biden administration had green-lighted illegal immigration to gain new constituents for agendas that otherwise were without broad public support.

The Left smears critics of open borders as racist conspiracists spreading the "Great Replacement Theory."

Yet for years, Democrats and leftists themselves had written triumphalist books with titles like The Emerging Democratic Majority. And often they crowed that "Demography is Destiny."
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Black Magic

Neocons dreaming of revenge: Susan Rice joins call for 'purge' after Democrats re-take power

Jonathan Turley
jonathanturley.org
Sun, 22 Feb 2026 20:11 UTC
french revolution mo
"It's not going to end well for them"

As Democrats plan for the possible takeover in the midterms and 2028 election, they are already openly discussing their push for radical changes in our political system, including packingthe Supreme Court to guarantee that those changes are allowed. Many are also pledging trials, impeachments, and investigations of anyone who supported President Donald Trump in a purging of politics and government. The latest to join the revenge purge pledge is Susan Rice, Democratic powerbroker and top policy adviser to both President Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

In an interview this week, Rice declared that supporters of Trump can expect the proverbial knocks on their doors: "A very prominent public figure, who has served at nearly the very highest levels, once told me ... 'Revenge is best served cold,' and the older I get, the more I see the wisdom of that."

Comment: A little more on war harpy Rice:

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Arrow Down

Best of the Web: Pope Leo rejects Trump invitation to join Gaza 'Board of Peace'

Jeff Wright
Mondoweiss
Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00 UTC
Pope Leo XIV
© WikimediaPope Leo XIV during an audience with the media, on May 12, 2025
The Vatican flatly rejected a U.S. invitation to join the Trump-led "Board of Peace" for Gaza.

Pope Leo XIV, the U.S.-born Pontiff, has formally declined U.S. President Trump's invitation for the Vatican to join his so-called Peace Board for Gaza. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem previously described the project as "a colonialist operation focused on others deciding for the Palestinians."

According to Trump, the board — which he will head — will oversee Gaza's governance and reconstruction. Trump has said that the board may later address other global conflicts under his leadership.

But in delivering the Pope's firm "no," Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, insisted that "at the international level it should above all be the U.N. that manages these crisis situations," not a U.S.-led board.
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Footprints

Hillary Clinton breaks with party line, admits mass migration is "disruptive & destabilizing"

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sat, 14 Feb 2026 06:55 UTC
Hillary Clinton
© Munich Security Conference/David Peinado/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesHillary Clinton calls for 'secure borders that don't torture and kill people' during the Munich Security Conference panel
After U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke earlier on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, where he said the U.S. and Europe "belong together" and argued for a stronger West, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served under former President Barack Obama, appeared on a panel later that afternoon and made surprising remarks about mass migration.

Clinton participated in a panel titled, "The West-West Divide: What Remains of Common Values", and said that mass migration invasion involving millions of illegal aliens has been "destabilizing" to society. She continued:
"So this debate that's going on is driven by an effort to control people, to control who we are, how we look, who we love. And I think we need to call it for what it is.

"There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration. It went too far. It's been disruptive and destabilizing, and it needs to be fixed in a humane way, with secure borders that don't torture and kill people, and with a strong family structure, because it is at the base."

Comment: The election ploy is so obvious even 'government criminals' are calling it out.

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Red Flag

ISIS's new wave of activity: tactics, threats, and responses

Samyar Rostami
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00 UTC
ISIS guy
© UnknownISIS reemerges
In recent months, ISIS* has demonstrated a resurgence in operational activity, employing proven and cost-effective tactics of "asymmetric warfare." The goal of this strategy is to confirm its viability, sow fear, and generate propaganda across various regions of Iraq and Syria.

Situation in Iraq and Syria

ISIS operations in Iraq are concentrated in the vast, inaccessible, and vulnerable desert areas of Anbar and Salah ad-Din provinces. The group seeks to inflict physical damage, attack symbols of tribal authority, and exacerbate existing tensions in society.

In Syria, ISIS is attempting to reactivate sleeper cells and revive the remnants of its networks, creating the illusion of strength and continuity. Recent events in the north and northeast of the country, including the escalation of the conflict between Damascus and Kurdish forces, as well as the mass escape of hundreds of militants from prisons in eastern Syria, mark the beginning of a new, more dangerous phase of their activities.

Comment: Pose a threat - Provide a remedy - Gain access - Rinse and repeat.

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