Leaving Neverland has been seen by his many wild-eyed defenders as a "j'accuse" aimed at the legacy of Michael Jackson. It is not. It is a detailed, four-hour study of the psychology of child sexual abuse, told through two ordinary families who were groomed for 20 years by a paedophile masquerading as a trusted friend. It's a mask that is often used by predators, whether a priest, a teacher, an uncle. This time the man behind the mask just happened to be Michael Jackson.

I had only a foggy idea about all this before starting work on the film. The complex, counter-intuitive and repugnant truths of child sexual abuse that Wade Robson, James Safechuck and their families have courageously unravelled on camera came as a shock to me.

In particular, the repellent but undeniable fact that a powerful attachment often forms between the predator and the child, who experiences the adult's sexual advances not as abuse, but quite the opposite: as love. Equally disturbing to any parent is the child's subsequent urge to shelter the abuser from parents or police. This misplaced loyalty often persists into adulthood, even though the adult knows by now that child sexual abuse is a crime. "I felt anointed," as Wade puts it.

And then there's the fear of consequences. "Michael told me we'd go to jail for the rest of our lives," said Wade, describing a conversation that he had at Neverland when he was seven, but was repeated many times. The combined weight of love, shame and fear can lead to a lifetime of silence. The psychological strain of keeping the secret corrodes the soul, resulting in depression, feelings of worthlessness, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts. And the victim doesn't connect these symptoms with the childhood sexual relationship. I am no psychotherapist but this all started to make a dreadful kind of sense to me. As James observed poignantly in a recent interview: "Your whole childhood is a lie."

Three capitals, three countries, three tales of Jews maligned. At the same time.

Mania for 'anti-anti-semitism' hit all-time highs in the US recently thanks to uproar over comments made by freshman congresswoman Ilhan Omar suggesting that pro-Israel lobby groups exert undue influence on American politics. Whether contrived or spontaneous, public debate led to a concerted effort - for now canned - to legally conflate anti-semitism with criticism of Israel.

It's remarkable enough that proscribed speech may be instituted in the USA, but what's even more remarkable is that the French government just last month announced its intention to likewise broaden the legal definition anti-semitism to include criticism of Israel, and that it did so in response to the 5-month-long Yellow Vest anti-government protest movement.

Finally, politics and media coverage in the UK has of late been all but saturated by endless claims that opposition party leader Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semite because he does not specifically condemn Israel's Middle East foes Hamas and Hezbollah. Remarkably, this occurs at a time when the UK is undergoing a profound constitutional crisis due to 'Brexit' and its ramifications for the unity of the UK as such.

In this NewsReal, Joe & Niall discuss the highly dangerous strategy Western governments are taking in pushing Jews front and center of fractious national debates.


Running Time: 01:14:03

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If you're one who pays attention to the trends in mainstream dietary advice, and I'm certainly not recommending staying up to date with that complete trainwreck, you'll notice that the mainstream media are rather consistent in their constant misguided warnings against low carb, ketogenic diets. It's rather glaring that this approach to eating is a threat in some way to the established dietary dogma of the day. On the surface, it looks like just a petty back-and-forth about something as inane as diet - "veganism is the best!" "No, keto's the best!" The average person would be forgiven for thinking the whole thing is rather stupid and ignoring it all.

But there's more behind this than may first meet the eye, and a recent example of propaganda gracing the collective information dumpster that is the internet is quite illustrative of just how much skin in the game the diet dictocrats have, and how much they really want you to never, ever, even consider embarking on a low carbohydrate dietary regimen. This particular smear against the ketogenic diet has popped up seemingly overnight, yet has spread far and wide with a kind of traction that couldn't possibly be organic. It's banal, crass and would be quite funny if the implications of it weren't rather sinister. I am of course talking about the phenomenon now known as "keto crotch" (I told you it was crass).

I've probably lost some readers already and believe me, I wouldn't stoop to addressing this if it wasn't so prevalent at the moment. All sorts of articles across multiple platforms have been conjured within the last week talking about a supposed side-effect of the ketogenic diet that causes genital itching, discharge and a change in odor. It mostly applies to women, but some articles have said it applies to men, too. How convenient. No one is safe. So we're apparently taking a break from the 'saturated fat causes heart disease' myth, or the long-debunked 'eating cholesterol will raise your cholesterol' propaganda, or even my personal favorite, the 'cow farts are destroying the planet' lies. The newest reason to avoid a low carbohydrate diet is that it will make your junk stink. Welcome to "journalism" in 2019. Talk about hitting below the belt.

Parapsychology remains a controversial science, rejected by materialists as impossible and not worth any scientific attention. But if materialism is false, and there is something valid in the parapsychological research, what do its results suggest about the nature of consciousness? James C. Carpenter has been doing such research for decades, and developing a theory of psi that places it within a complete picture of human psychology.

Seven years ago he published the culmination of his research and theorizing: First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life. Carpenter argues that psi events are not anomalies and psi is not an ability. Rather, psi is an intrinsic psychological process that contributes to every thought, feeling, and action. It is the leading edge of consciousness and plays an essential role in the construction of our experience.

In fact, psi seems to operate in much the same way as various subliminal mental processes: below the level of consciousness. Just like subliminal primes, extrasensory information prepares the mind for action, activating physiological, emotional, and cognitive responses. And all these psychological processes fulfill the same function: to engage the world of meaning according to our shared and individual aims and intentions, both conscious and unconscious.


Running Time: 01:34:19

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For the first time since war broke out in Syria in 2011, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has travelled to Iran to meet Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

President Assad had only travelled outside of Syria on two other occasions during the war - both times to Russia.

The significance of the trip cannot be understated - it was a message sent to those who orchestrated the proxy war against Syria that Damascus has prevailed and instead of driving a wedge between it and its allies in Moscow and Tehran - it has only drawn these regional powers closer together.

The symbol of solidarity between Syria and Iran comes at a time when Washington finds itself vacillating between a full withdrawal from Syria, a redeployment to Iraq, or an attempt to drag out the conclusion of the Syrian conflict for as long as possible by keeping US forces there indefinitely.

The Washington Post in its article, "Syria's Assad visits Iran in rare trip abroad," would admit:

U.S. officials said Trump's decision authorizing a small number of U.S. troops to stay is a key step in creating a larger multinational observer force that would monitor a so-called safe zone along Syria's border with Turkey. The buffer zone is meant to prevent clashes between Turkey and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. It is also aimed at preventing Assad's forces and Iran-backed fighters from seizing more territory.

Vovan and Lexus, Russian telephone pranksters known for their trolling of politicians from around the world, have struck again, targeting US special representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams to find out more about the US-backed effort to unseat that country's legitimate government. Sputnik got ahold of the full audio from the talks.


Posing as Swiss President Ueli Maurer, who also serves as the country's finance minister, the pranksters contacted Abrams on two occasions - in mid-February and early March, speaking to him for over 23 minutes about Swiss policy on the ongoing effort to freeze the Venezuelan government's assets as part of broader plans to replace President Nicolas Maduro with US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido.


The highlight of the pair of conversations was when 'Maurer' asked Abrams about the chances of Washington following through with its threat to use military force to topple Maduro. Here is what he revealed:

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Edward W. Said's pioneering book, Orientalism, as well as fifteen years since the Palestinian-American intellectual's passing. To bid farewell to such an important scholar shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Said fiercely criticized until his dying breath before succumbing to leukemia, made an already tremendous loss that much more impactful. His seminal text forever reoriented political discourse by painstakingly examining the overlooked cultural imperialism of colonial history in the West's construction of the so-called Orient. Said meticulously interrogated the Other-ing of the non-Western world in the humanities, arts, and anthropology down to its minutiae. As a result, the West was forced to confront not just its economic and political plunder but the long-established cultural biases filtering the lens through which it viewed the East which shaped its dominion over it.

His writings proved to be so influential that they laid the foundations for what is now known as post-colonial theory. This became an ironic category as the author himself would strongly reject any implication that the subjugation of developing countries is a thing of the past. How apropos that the Mandatory Palestine-born writer's death came in the midst of the early stages of the 'War on Terror' that made clear Western imperialism is very much alive. Despite its history of ethnic cleansing, slavery, and war, the United States had distinguished itself from Britain and France in that it had never established its own major colonies within the Middle East, Asia or North Africa in the heart of the Orient. According to Said, it was now undergoing this venture as the world's sole remaining superpower following the end of the Cold War with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

What's better: A pinko commmie health care system where everyone is forced to support a bunch of lazy sick people who don't care for themselves or a ruthless capitalist system where only the rich can afford care while the poor and middle class are bankrupted by medical costs or given substandard care because it's all they can afford?

Neither of these systems seem ideal - far from it. But if you only listen to the critics, this is often how the options appear. Beyond the hyperbole, what is it that makes for a good health care system? What countries seem to be doing it right, or doing it wrong? The picture is complicated and there are no easy solutions but objective analysis can help us tease apart what works and what doesn't.

Join us for this week's episode of Objective: Health as we discuss the current state of health care in different countries and what we think would work better.


Running Time: 01:07:53

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President James Monroe would probably have been appalled to see how his policy of protecting the peoples of the Americas from European colonizers mutated into a self-issued license to intervene into other nations' affairs.

In a recent comment, US National Security Advisor John Bolton bragged that the current White House administration is "not afraid to use the phrase 'Monroe Doctrine.'" He was of course referring to the 1823 policy of President Monroe, who extended US protection to any part of the Americas facing colonization by European nations.

Its meaning has apparently been twisted over the years, however, along with the way the US sees its role in the world. When Ronald Reagan supported murdering dictators in Latin America and sent the CIA after democratically elected leftist leaders, he was said to be following the Monroe Doctrine. Arguably, it has since gone global, with the US claiming it to be its unalienable right to meddle in any nation anywhere in the world for no better reason than protecting its national interests, be it Syria or Venezuela.

RT's Murad Gazdiev explores how a once benevolent idea turned into a justification for imperialist policy.

You would think, with the US presidential election coming up next year, that Donald Trump's political opponents in the US would be preparing a coherent and appealing strategy to sway voters to not vote him in for a second term.

But you would be wrong.

Instead the Democrats have announced their grand vision for the USA - and thus their flagship campaign for attracting voters to whoever they select as their candidate in 2020 - a bizarre 'Green New Deal' that has about as much appeal to most American voters as giving up their guns.

On the basis that climate change is man-made (it isn't), the proposal spearheaded by New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez envisions a government-mandated comprehensive overhaul of the US economy in order to 'eradicate poverty and social injustice', and to 'save the planet'.

Trump this week gave his longest-ever speech, delivered at the annual conservative CPAC event, and went off-script to tear into his opponents' plan, 'crooked Hillary', 'Russiagate', and all his haters. The media meanwhile, in synch with congressional hearing testimony provided this week by Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, doubled down on its three-year-long inane bullshit about Trump being 'literally Hitler'.

This week on NewsReal, Joe & Niall discuss why this likely means electoral victory for Trump in 2020.

Later in the show they also discuss the 'nuclear stand-off' between India and Pakistan over terrorism and Kashmir, and the likely foreign intrigue behind that sudden flare-up in south Asia.


Running Time: 01:38:46

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