Reading an article from the current issue of Time Magazine really makes one stop and think. At the beginning of the article, one sees a lovely color photo that, except for a few fashion details, could have been taken last week in Paris.

©Andre Zucca

One of the photos showing the supposedly sunny, happy life in Paris during the German occupation

And then, one reads the text:

The photographs from the early 1940s show Paris as sunny, airy, bursting with color. Its inhabitants appear carefree, content and refreshingly unaware of their proclivity for looking très chic. It's all very much at odds with the prevailing image of the French capital suffering and smoldering under the yoke of its Nazi occupiers. Indeed, that very dissonance has made the current photo exhibit "Parisians Under the Occupation" one of the city's most controversial cultural events of late. Was life in Nazi-controlled Paris really as idyllic as these pictures suggest?

I would say that life in Nazi-controlled Paris was exactly as idyllic as life is in Neocon controlled New York City where Machine Gun-Toting Officers will be Patrolling the NYC Subway and several citizens were quoted as actually saying they now feel "safer," never mind that the Phantom Terrorist menace is exactly as real as the Jewish Terror Menace was to the Germans. This must, of course, give us pause to consider...

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Sott.net, along with many others commentators (including US government officials), have repeatedly stated that "al-qaeda" is a fabricated enemy. That it is used to justify the Ziocon's military rampage though the Middle East while simultaneously terrorising the folks back home.

In the past 7 years the world public has repeatedly been treated to bogus missives from "al-Qaeda leaders" that strangely echo the Islamophobic claims of the leaders of the Western world.

Every time a member of the US or Israeli government expounded on the "Muslim terror threat to freedom and democracy everywhere", soon afterwards "al-Qaeda" obligingly popped up with a new video or statement in which they threatened freedom and democracy.

As the massive holes in the US government's official story of the 9/11 attacks continue to widen, and sites like Sott.net continue to point to the real culprits in Tel Aviv and Washington DC, disembodied internet voices that US government officials "believe to be that of Osama bin laden", set the record straight and claim responsibility. In spite of such strenuous efforts to fool the entire world, fewer and fewer people are buying the terror hysteria, and recently the desperation on the part of the Ziocons has begun to show.

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Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

I happened to catch the hilarious Monty Python sketch from the 1970s and its famous catch-phrase got me thinking. With all that's happening in the West today, is nobody expecting another Spanish Inquisition, or something like it?

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Noble Martyrs were likely just Uppity Women

Communicative Behaviors, Witchcraft Accusations, and European Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Abstract
This literature review investigates the relationship between a woman's communicative behaviors and the likelihood of her being accused as a witch in various regions of Europe from 1350 to 1650 a.d. This paper uncovers how women were expected to communicate during this period and what sort of deviation from this normative communicative behavior was present in those ultimately accused of witchcraft. The environmental and socioeconomic changes in Europe, as well as religious factors and the history of witchcraft that influenced the communicative behaviors of women in this period are reviewed.

I read Styron's novel, Sophie's Choice, when it first came out. I was mesmerized all the way through (and it's a pretty long book!). I didn't go to see the movie in the theatre because, knowing the story, at the time, I didn't want to be depressed. My babies were little and I didn't think I could handle seeing Sophie make that choice!

©Universal

Sophie's Choice

A couple of years ago, I bought the movie, but it sat on the shelf for a long time, unwatched until last night when most of us here at SOTT HQ viewed it. I don't think anyone else here had read the book, so they didn't know what they were in for.

Ark, my Polish husband left the room about half way through because he just couldn't stand to be reminded of things that were way too real for him. The rest of us continued to watch, hypnotized by the inexorable unfolding of the tragedy. After it was over, nobody spoke for a very long time. It's that kind of movie.

However, there is something about the movie that was left out and this "leaving out" suggests that this movie was used as part of the Exclusive Jewish Holocaust propaganda campaign.

Part 1

The Power of Nightmares: Baby, It's Cold Outside

The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism and draws the parallels between the two of their "optimistic visions to change the world". It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the US to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in western society through consumerism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite "vanguard" to lead a revolution against the established order.

Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser's jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he influences the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution. The revolution does not materialise and Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted not only by their western-inspired leaders, but Muslims themselves have been affected by jahilliyah and thus both may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him.

Continuing the Time-honored tradition of picking the person who has had the most "influence on the world" during the course of the year - and thereby manufacturing a certain status for the person in question in the minds of the general public, whether merited or not - for the year 2004, Time magazine nominated George W Bush as their "Man of the Year". In a eulogy to make your stomach churn, filled as it is with nauseating platitudes and obsequious psychophantic panderings, Time said they had chosen Bush for the second time in four years for:

"sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters this time around that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years. For sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes - and ours - on his faith in the power of leadership."

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was an American contingent of about 2800 volunteers who fought on the side of the Second Spanish Republic during the country's 1936 - 1939 Civil War against the fascist Nationalist rebellion under General Francisco Franco. From 1937 through 1938, it aimed to stop international fascism under Hitler and Mussolini that led to WW II. This essay explains who the "Lincolns" were, why they're important, and what their relevance is to America today under George Bush. First a look at the Spanish Civil War and why these Americans fought in it.

The war began when Franco's troops invaded Spain in July, 1936 to unseat an unstable Republic that developed from the social dislocations after WW I. Post-war saw a wave of revolutionary unrest that led to the military dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera in 1923. Rapid decline followed under him after the boom years of the 1920s. It weakened Spain's monarchy, returned the country to republican rule, but things weakened when a liberal-Socialist coalition tried addressing agrarian problems that beleaguered all Spanish governments for generations. Reforms failed and so did the coalition. It came apart after an attempted military coup on the right and an anarchosyndicalist insurrection on the left that culminated in the Casas Viejas massacre of Andalulsian peasants in January, 1933.

By summer, Spain's many parties and organizations began regrouping and polarizing. In November, the Spanish Confederation of Right Groups (CEDA) coalition replaced the liberal-Socialists. Positions then hardened on the left and right leading to the 1934 "October Revolution" when Asturian miners in northern Spain became the epicenter of a general uprising throughout the country. It brought "Army of Africa" commander Francisco Franco from Spanish Morocco to the mainland for the first time in five centuries to defend "Christian Civilization" from "red barbarism." It was the start of class and regional conflict that became the Spanish Civil War two years later.

His father was a drunk who regularly beat him. His name was Josef Stalin. Born in Russia's Georgia, in 1878, under the rule of the Romanov Czars, he excelled as a student, while building up a deep resentment towards the cruel occupiers of his Caucasus region. Stalin became a Marxist revolutionist and a master conspirator. The book, Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, tells how this merciless, but extremely talented, psychopath was forged.

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