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Eiffel Tower

Best of the Web: Yellow Vest Movement in France: Reviving Democracy

Diana Johnstone
The Unz Review
Fri, 11 Jan 2019 13:27 UTC
france yellow vests
"Don't leave our country in the hands of bankers"
Paris, France, 9 January 2019

French Democracy dead or alive? Or perhaps one should say, buried or revived? Because for the mass of ordinary people, far from the political, financial, media centers of power in Paris, democracy is already moribund, and their movement is an effort to save it. Ever since Margaret Thatcher decreed that "there is no alternative", Western economic policy is made by technocrats for the benefit of financial markets, claiming that such benefits will trickle down to the populace. The trickle has largely dried up, and people are tired of having their needs and wishes totally ignored by an elite who "know best".

President Emmanuel Macron's New Year's Eve address to the nation made it perfectly clear that after one unconvincing stab at throwing a few crumbs to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protest movement, he has determined to get tough

France is entering a period of turmoil. The situation is very complex, but here are a few points to help grasp what this is all about.

Comment: See also: NewsReal: Yellow Vest Protests, Brexit Farce - Revolutionary Climate in Western Europe?

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Vader

Best of the Web: Foreign Affairs comes right out and says it - Attacks on Russia are because Putin challenges the Western Empire

Peter Harrell
Foreign Affairs
Thu, 03 Jan 2019 17:46 UTC
putin
Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, its war in eastern Ukraine, its interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and other aggressive acts against the United States and its allies demand a strong Western response.


Comment: There was no Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the Russian military is not actively involved in any war in E. Ukraine (although the gov't is helping Donbass with its needs), and Russia only came to the aid of Crimea after the people of Crimea voted in a referendum for self-determination to join Russia. The UN has in the past accepted the self-determination of other nation-states. Only sock puppets for the Western Empire call what happened in Crimea "Russian aggression".


For the past four years, that response has been dominated by sanctions and other coercive economic measures. U.S. and European officials have hoped that the economic measures would not only exact a cost for such actions but also deter the Kremlin from escalating its assault on American and European interests.


Comment: Those efforts have been mostly futile. The Western Empire's influence is fading.


The economic pressure has certainly had an effect. The IMF estimated that the sanctions linked to the 2014 invasion of Ukraine cost Russia 1 to 1.5 percent of its GDP by mid-2015. The sanctions also hurt the Russian treasury's bottom line, since Russia had to make up for lost Western capital by spending billions of dollars to prop up large companies that depended on Western funds. The more recent sanctions announced in April 2018 in response to Russia's interference in the U.S. election rattled Russian financial markets and put pressure on the value of the ruble. Specific people and companies have also felt the squeeze: the net worth of Oleg Deripaska, the pro-Putin oligarch, for example, has tumbled because of U.S. sanctions.
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Black Magic

Best of the Web: Damning: US Justice Dept. fired chief medical expert after he privately told their lawyers vaccines can cause autism

Sharyl Attkisson
Full Measure
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
Dr Andrew Zimmermann
© Screen shot from Full MeasureDr Andrew Zimmermann
Today we investigate one of the biggest medical controversies of our time: vaccines. There's little dispute about this much-- vaccines save many lives, and rarely, they injure or kill. A special federal vaccine court has paid out billions for injuries from brain damage to death. But not for the form of brain injury we call autism. Now-we have remarkable new information: a respected pro-vaccine medical expert used by the federal government to debunk the vaccine-autism link, says vaccines can cause autism after all. He claims he told that to government officials long ago, but they kept it secret.

Yates Hazlehurst was born February 11, 2000. Everything was normal, according to his medical records, until he suffered a severe reaction to vaccinations. Rolf Hazlehurst is Yates' dad.

Rolf Hazlehurst: And at first, I didn't believe it. I did not think that, I did not believe that vaccines could cause autism. I didn't believe it.

But there's a hard reality for Yates. The trademark brain disease, pain and inability to communicate that's common with severe autism.

In 2007, Yates' father sued over his son's injuries in the little known Federal Vaccine court. It was one of more than 5000 vaccine autism claims.


Comment: Another nail in the coffin for Big Pharma's vaccine industry? We can only hope. See also:

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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: Summing up the Official Claims in the Salisbury Poisonings: Weighed in the Balances and Found Wanting

Rob Slane
The Blogmire
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 17:28 UTC
lady justice
As promised, I want to round off my pieces on the Salisbury case by looking at what I consider to be the major issues and flaws with the case presented to the public by the British Government and the Metropolitan Police, as well as the role played by the mainstream media. I have chosen 10 major points (not in any particular order), although there are many more issues than these.

This is a necessarily lengthy piece and I wouldn't blame you if you gave up half way through to go and do something more profitable with your time, such as reading a decent book, cooking a good meal, or horsing around with your children. But on the offchance that you are of a mind to stick it out to the end (or even to split it up in between slices of something more profitable), consider this my attempt to show why any person endowed with powers of reason, logic and a commitment to facts and truth should not believe the case that has been put to the general public as to what happened in Salisbury on 4th March, 2018.

1. Verdict First; Investigation Afterwards

I was bound to be interested in this case from the off, since it took place in the city where I reside, just a few hundred yards from my home. But what really sparked my interest into writing about the case for so long, was the response of the British Government. Within 48 hours of the incident, before the investigation had properly begun, and before any of the facts of the matter had been established, certain Government ministers were already pointing the finger of blame at the Russian state. Too quick. Something's up.

Then on 12th and 14th March, little more than a week after the incident, and still with almost no facts of what actually happened having been established by investigators, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, not only formally accused the Russian Government in the House of Commons, but also announced a series of responsive measures. Much too quick. Something's definitely up.
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Attention

Best of the Web: Inside Integrity Initiative's desperate attempt to sabotage Russian-German relations

Kit Klarenberg
Sputnik
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 16:51 UTC
germany
© AFP 2018 / CHRISTOF STACHE
On the afternoon of January 4 I was putting the finishing touches to a series of articles about the Integrity Initiative's activities in Germany, when hacking syndicate Anonymous released another tranche of files plucked from the organization's internal servers. The content was so explosive I was forced to put the multi-part project on hold.

The new trove included several highly incriminating files related to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March 2018, which raised a number of extremely serious questions about the shadowy British state and NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the affair.

A few hours after publishing an article based on a precursory investigation of the documents, I received a curious email from political scientist Hannes Adomeit - the subject line 'Criminal Charges against Kit Klarenberg' - which made me somewhat glad I'd postponed my German series.

Comment: More on Integrity Initiative's blatant disinformation campaign:

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No Entry

Best of the Web: Beyond Kafka: How Youtube & Facebook Keep Purging Speeches of Hassan Nasrallah

Sayed Hasan
Resistance News
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 20:08 UTC
Hassan Nasrallah is persona non grata on Social Networks, where Anti-Zionism is the ultimate thoughtcrime

With a comment from Norman Finkelstein
nasrallah
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanese anti-US-Israel resistance group Hezbollah
The guillotine's blade fell again, one year later. On December 2017 already, my 5-years-old Youtube channel Sayed Hasan, mainly translating speeches from Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, was completely removed by Youtube, along with its 10,000 subscribers, +6 millions views and +400 subtitled videos of anti-Zionist & anti-Imperialist content. I then denounced this censorship in detail in my article Kafka 2.0: How Youtube's Political Censorship is Exercised. And just around New Year's Eve 2019, the +6000 Subscribed Facebook Page Resistance News Unfiltered, along with all its similar content, got deleted without explanation. The only thing left online is a cache view of the page dating back from this summer, in French.
resistance news facebook
I had created this Page at the beginning of 2018, since no other place can compete with Youtube and its near-monopoly on video content, in order to reach a broader audience. But it was deleted without explanation by Facebook short of its first anniversary. I can't even know the precise date of termination. Youtube did at least bother to send emails notifying of the removal of a video or of a whole channel, but Facebook has only internal notifications for posts removals. Here is how it happened.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: The UK Government Manufacture of False Sexual Allegations Against Threats to the State

Craig Murray
craigmurray.co.uk
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 18:21 UTC
believe women
I want to give you a concrete example of how the UK government deliberately sets out to manufacture false sexual allegations against people it considers a threat. I do so to educate those who view this concept as an unthinkable "conspiracy theory". I write of a case of which I have expert knowledge; it is my own case.

I became an "enemy of the state" when, as British Ambassador, I protested against UK and US complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition in Uzbekistan. As detailed in Murder in Samarkand, I very quickly found myself suspended and subject to civil service investigation of disciplinary allegations against me, the worst of which was that I extorted sex from visa applicants. Blair's No. 10 quickly leaked this allegation against me to the Daily Mail.

I was in a state of complete shock. I had no idea at all what could have led to such allegations. The Kafkaesque nightmare deepened when I was presented with the evidence against me.
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Briefcase

Best of the Web: Thought Crime and Punishment in Academia: Lindsay Shepherd's Year of Shunning and Lawsuits at Wilfrid Laurier University

Lindsay Shepherd
Quillette
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 08:42 UTC
Lindsey Shephard
© Andy Ngo
In late 2017, I found myself at the centre of a controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University, where I was an M.A. student and teaching assistant (TA) in the Communication Studies department. In the class for which I was serving as TA, I played part of a panel discussion that had aired on Ontario public television. As many readers will know, this material featured University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson making the argument against alternative gender pronoun usage, as well as Sexual Diversity educator Nicholas Matte's arguments encouraging their use.

Because I chose not to disavow Peterson's views before airing the clip, I was brought into a subsequent disciplinary meeting. The supervisor for the course in question, Nathan Rambukkana, as well as the coordinator for my M.A. program, Herbert Pimlott (also known, at times, as "Hillary X Plimsoll"), and Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention manager Adria Joel accused me of breaking the law by airing a clip of Peterson in a classroom, as well as threatening and targeting trans people, thereby creating a toxic environment. All of this is well-known because I taped the whole meeting.

Apparently, "one or more" students had complained about the class in question - though that claim later turned out to be false. Both Rambukkana and Wilfrid Laurier University President Deborah MacLatchy apologized to me, and I was cleared of any wrongdoing after a neutral third-party fact-finding investigation concluded I hadn't done anything wrong. The investigator also determined that "basic guidelines and best practices on how to appropriately execute the roles and responsibilities of staff and faculty were ignored or not understood."

Comment: What happened to Lindsay Shepherd is a chilling example of how Bill C-16 can be interpreted as they see fit when it suits their purpose and why it's so dangerous. Thankfully she had the foresight to see where it was going and recorded the meeting, thus exposing the insanity that radical left ideology has become in our schools. Kudos to her for sticking to her convictions and not backing down. See also:

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Colosseum

Best of the Web: Upheaval in London, Washington & Paris: Western Regime on The Brink of Collapse

George Galloway
RT
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 15:15 UTC
London Washington Paris protest
© Global Look Press / Christoph Meyer/Dpa; Reuters/Kevin Lamarque; Reuters/Christian Hartmann
Despite the thrashing around of the NATO disinformation apparat, the imperial heartland has entered 2019 in a state of complete chaos.

Washington, London, and Paris - the three capitals of the Empire - are today effectively ungoverned, shutdown, tottering on the brink of collapse or under siege by their own people.

Their self-chosen Nemeses - Moscow and Beijing - meanwhile toast the New Year in a state of considerable optimism and self-confidence. These are the facts, this is the news.

We should start at the top of the Empire. The United States government has closed down amid stasis and a barrage of inter-governmental howitzers.

Comment: Living standards are declining so drastically and corruption is now so blatant that, for many Western nations, they've been left with little option but to begin to take action against their deluded rulers: For in-depth discussions on the topics above, check out SOTT radio's:

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Propaganda

Best of the Web: US fake news blames Russia in US diplomat attack in Cuba. Culprits were most likely crickets

Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 11:32 UTC
NBC Fake news
NBC News and MSNBC specialize in repeating and disseminating what U.S intelligence officials tell them to say and then calling that servitude "reporting." Those two networks really are the all-but-official outlets for CIA messaging. And this status has led their brightest on-air stars to broadcast a series of extremely consequential stories that turned out to be humiliatingly wrong.

This stenographic and highly jingoistic practice of mindlessly reciting the whispered claims of anonymous "intelligence officials" is what notoriously led the New York Times and other leading U.S. media outlets to deceive the country into believing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz's fairy tales about Iraqi WMDs and Jeffrey Goldberg's tales about Saddam's alliance with Al Qaeda.

But while many of those outlets apologized for that behavior and vowed to avoid it in the future, NBC and MSNBC have committed themselves to it with greater vigor than ever, as evidenced by the increasing prominence of their national security reporter Ken Dilanian, whose entire career has been defined by repeating what the CIA tells him to say - and has thus been plagued by one embarrassing false story after the next.

Comment: Western mainstream media outlets never let an opportunity to blame Russia for something go to waste, no matter how foolish it makes them look. See also:

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