"When one sees him, a ruler must be a paragon of mercy, loyalty, humanness, integrity and scrupulousness. Indeed, there's nothing more important than appearing to have this last quality, for the common people are impressed by appearances and results."

Niccolò Machiavelli

Remember when rival political parties would dig up dirt on each other? Anything would do: this guy once took a train journey and never paid for it; this one threw a candy bar wrapper on the street; this one once said women love it when he grabs them by the pussy; you know, silly stuff.

For the longest time, the public have always needed those involved with running their countries to be squeaky clean. People need that ideal to project onto, because they know they themselves are not perfect. Yet regardless of how great the leader in question might have seemed, 'ordinary' people really knew deep down that the leader wasn't perfect, but so long as their sins were kept under the rug, it didn't matter.

On February 27, US Army General Joseph Votel blamed Russia for "playing both arsonist and firefighter, fueling tensions among all parties in Syria... then serving as an arbitrator, to resolve disputes, attempting to undermine and weaken each party's bargaining positions."

The United States has always introduced itself as a Messiah with the responsibility to protect. But has anyone invited Washington to demonstrate its destructive... oops, defensive strategy? So, here's a blast from the past with Sputnik's special selection of four countries where Washington had taken on the roles of "arsonist and firefighter," fanning the flames and then trying to extinguish them (not so much).

Afghanistan

In 2001, in response to the horrifying 9/11 attacks in the United States, then-president George Bush announced the Global War on terrorism and the beginning of the operation, codenamed Enduring Freedom, to target al-Qaeda and the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Washington has been mired in the never-ending war for over sixteen years, and despite its initial advances during the campaign, today the Taliban controls about one-third of Afghanistan, "more territory than at any point since the US-led invasion." But has the plight changed a bit since the launch of Enduring Freedom?

Update: US Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE). a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement regarding President Trump's comments today on due process and the Second Amendment:

"Strong leaders don't automatically agree with the last thing that was said to them. We have the Second and due process of low for a reason. We're not ditching any Constitutional protections simply because the last person the President talked to today doesn't like them."

President Trump told a group of lawmakers that they must do something to keep guns away from mentally ill individuals - even if that means raising the minimum age for rifle ownership to 21, Bloomberg reports.

His remarks appeared to contradict a CNN report from earlier in the week, which quoted anonymous White House aides saying Trump would soon walk back his support for raising the age limit.

But on Wednesday, in what the New York Times characterized as a "shocking" break with his Republican Congressional allies,Trump told lawmakers during a televised meeting in the Cabinet Room that easing gun owners' ability to carry concealed weapons across state lines, a provision of the House-passed gun bill and the NRA's top legislative priority, should be part of a separate bill, a strategy favored by Democrats.

Hezbollah, which is Lebanon's de facto military force, is regarded as a terrorist organization by a number of countries, including Israel, the US, Canada and the Arab League.

Killing Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, would be a "decisive victory" in a future Israeli war against Lebanon, Major General Yaakov Barak said Wednesday as quoted by the Haaretz news outlet. "If we manage to kill Nasrallah in the next war, I would see that as reaching a decisive victory," Barak said.

According to the Israeli military official, a potential future war with Lebanon will be different, as Israeli forces are "ready and prepared" to penetrate deeper and quicker into Lebanon's territory. "The next war will not be a war of several days, but it won't last several months either," Barak noted.

The general's comments come several months after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief spokesperson acknowledged that his country was already engaged in "psychological and media warfare" against Lebanon's Hezbollah and that Hassan Nasrallah, "would be a target for assassination" in any war between them.

The illegal Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights has now been in place for more than 50 years. This substantial territory, part of southern Syria, was conquered by Israeli occupation forces in the 1967war.

The majority of the Syrian population in the territory was then either expelled, or fled towards safety. Israel demolished their homes, buildings and entire villages in the Golan in order to build Jewish settlements where they once stood.

In 1981, in defiance of the United Nations and international law, Israel annexed the Golan Heights. This move - unrecognised even by Israel's allies - was intended to solidify Israel's de facto control of the occupied Syrian territory, giving it a gloss of legalistic self-recognition. What's more, over the past few years Israel has used the cover of the long-running and bloody war in Syria to expand its control of the Golan, far into the rest of the south of its neighbour's sovereign territory; it wants as much control as possible.

As I wrote here last summer, Israel is now establishing a buffer zone in the south of Syria, extending from the Golan. Working with local proxies in the south, Israel is establishing what its front organisations claim is a "safe zone".

Read: Israel suffers major setback in Syria

Theresa May has rejected the EU's plan to include Northern Ireland in a future customs union. "No UK Prime Minister could ever agree to it," she told Parliament, as it would jeopardize "the constitutional integrity of the UK."

The European Commission's plan contravenes the Prime Minister's stance on Northern Ireland. In essence, May's position is that Northern Ireland will be under the same regulations as the rest of the UK post-Brexit, and will consequently have to leave the EU customs union.

In a private letter, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson urged the PM not to pursue a "no border" policy for Ireland post-Brexit. Rather the government should "stop this border becoming significantly harder," according to the letter, which leaked to Sky News.

In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a US government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government.

McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company's ties to the US government.

McSpedon didn't work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the US Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in US humanitarian aid.

If his latest PR disaster of a trip to India is anything to go by, Justin Trudeau is working overtime to put the "tard" in Libtard.

Yesterday, the Canadian PM, along with Finance Minister Bill Morneau, unveiled Canada's 2018 federal spending plan whose sole purpose seems to be to pander to women voters and their delicate male feminist counterparts with a bunch of costly ineffective progressive policies.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau's third budget released Tuesday is very much a left-wing document and they're not even trying to hide the fact. For a supposedly financial document, it's rife with identity politics - touching upon multiple issues of gender and race.

Prior to the release they were teasing this as the first budget seen through a gender lens. Oh boy, do they deliver on that front.

The word gender appears 358 times. Choose another big issue, say, terrorism - that word doesn't appear once. It tells you something about priorities.

That our soy swilling, empty headed Prime Minister would table this type of superficial, female-focused budget comes as no surprise considering that a majority of Canadian men do not support Trudeau's Liberal party and in order to secure a second term after the 2019 election, he must prostate himself upon the altar of political correctness.

If not for women, Justin Trudeau's government would be in serious trouble. And not only because they comprise half the cabinet: the support of women is carrying this government through the difficult midterm portion of its mandate.

According to the last opinion tracking by Nanos Research, the Liberals actually trail the Conservatives in support among men: 38 per cent to 33 per cent. But among women, the Liberals lead 42 per cent to 25 per cent. And the latter gap is enough to give the governing party an overall lead.

The more cynical (and perhaps astute) reader might think that our youthfully handsome world leader cares only about his own future political career, and is merely using the cause celebre of 'minority rights' as a tool to get himself reelected.

The budget might go some way toward ensuring the political gender gap continues to pay dividends for the Liberals. If the party can hold its support among women through to the 2019 election, it can still emerge with a majority government - even if it loses the male vote

The US will impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports next week, President Donald Trump has announced.

"We're gonna build our steel industry back. We're gonna build our aluminum industry back," Trump said in a White House listening session with industry executives on Thursday. He cited the success of the recently imposed tariffs on solar panels and washing machines.

"I don't blame other countries" for taking advantage of bad trade deals made by the US, Trump said.

Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko seemed to get ahead of himself by claiming the first batch of arms from the US will arrive in a few weeks. The Pentagon said it was "premature to speculate" on when weapons would be sent.

Poroshenko announced on Wednesday that it's matter of weeks before the first shipment of US-made weapons arrives in Ukraine, as part of the military assistance plan that also envisages lethal arms supplies. "The first delivery should happen in a very few weeks," Poroshenko told a press conference, noting "huge progress" in negotiations with "American partners."

The Ukrainian president refused to specify which weapons he was expecting to be delivered in the first batch, adding that several shipments had already been agreed with the US, including supplies of anti-sniper complexes, means of electronic warfare, missile defense and "many other types of weapons."

The Pentagon, however, has not confirmed the timeline suggested by Poroshenko. "On weapons delivery, it is premature to speculate on when that will happen," US Department of Defense spokesperson Sheryll Klinkel told Sputnik.