SOTT Focus:


Question

SOTT Focus: Le Monde Hit Piece on Sott.net's Analysis of the Merah Case and 'Conspiracy Theorists'

The following article appeared in the French Le Monde newspaper on the 19th June 2012. We are running it, with commentary, because it stands as a perfect example of the 'yellow journalism' so favored by the mainstream media in their efforts to dupe the public. Yellow journalism is defined as "journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers." In this case however, the specific aim of Le Monde is to discredit and ridicule rational deductive reasoning around the actions of alleged 'Muslim terorrist' Mohamed Merah.
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Authoritarian Followers stick their necks out for the government
The Merah Case: A Trip to ConspiracyLand

Soren Seelow
Le Monde

Grey areas, contradictory statements, media hype, political hijacking, shades of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, police forces blunders, shady role of the Intelligence services... the Mohamed Merah case, where a young man was accused of murdering seven people last March in Toulouse and Montauban, has all the ingredients to feed conspiracy theories. Since the beginning of the case, suspicions of political manipulations have emerged, strengthened by the case's inconsistencies, and have spread around, giving rise to alternative theses running in parallel with the official version. Let's take a plunge into this shady world of conspiracy, and let's take a look at its reflexes, techniques and ideological agendas.

V

SOTT Focus: The Cs Hit List 08: Of Oracles and Conspiracies: TWA 800, 9/11, H1N1, and VISA

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Evelyn de Morgan - Ariadne in Naxos (1877)
So far in this series, I've focused a lot on history and science, albeit some of it of a particularly paranormal persuasion. To jog the reader's memory, the first installment began with a discussion of prophecy and prediction and asked some questions such as: Can prophecies be true? If so, are they all true? All fake? How can we weed out the cons from the clairvoyants, and can a good source give a bad prediction? How come? Well, today I want to veer in a slightly different direction - no climate science, companion stars, catastrophic comets, or non-coding DNA. No, I want to ground this one in something a little more SOTT-ish: politics and conspiracies.

Over the course of the Hit List series, some readers may have wondered what place so-called 'paranormal' research has on an alternative news website. And others may, as I did just under a decade ago, wonder what on earth political conspiracies have to do with so-called 'spirituality'. I hope the answer to the former question is at least partially clearer by now, after seven installments. In a world as controlled as our own, where lies can be glibly passed off as indisputable fact, with media, corporations, academia, and government acting as shapers of public opinion on every subject, an individual finds him or herself in a situation not dissimilar to that of Theseus in the Minotaur's labyrinth. At every turn we are confronted by lies, even (and perhaps especially) when it comes to our most basic views about the nature of reality. And we would be lost if not for the thread of Ariadne.

While I'm on a Greek bent, let me share something a forum member recently pointed out from Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages:
It is generally admitted that the effect of the Delphian oracle upon Greek culture was profoundly constructive. James Gardner sums up its influence in the following words: "Its responses revealed many a tyrant and foretold his fate. Through its means many an unhappy being was saved from destruction and many a perplexed mortal guided in the right way. It encouraged useful institutions, and promoted the progress of useful discoveries. Its moral influence was on the side of virtue, and its political influence in favor of the advancement of civil liberty."
In other words, there's our answer to the second question: a good oracle (or spiritual source) doesn't shy away from politics. Like a Greek cynic, or the proverbial Cassandra, the prime role of an oracle is to present a vision of the world as it is, no matter how painful or unpopular the view, and provide the only alternative fit for a lie: the truth. So, yes, we track 'high strangeness', and our worldview is quite at odds with the materialistic dictum peddled and enforced by PhD's and media pundits the world over. Everything you 'know' is a lie, and that includes all your metaphysical assumptions about the way the 'reality' really works. Luckily there's a way out of the labyrinth, and (please excuse me for going Biblical here!) the truth will set you free.

Sun

SOTT Focus: Is Solar and Cosmic Radiation Playing Havoc With Life on Planet Earth?

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Rudy Eugene and Ronald Poppo
While millions of English intellectual and emotional zombies shuffled along to the beat of the English Queen's recent 'Jubilee' celebrations, a real zombie apocalypse (of the flesh-eating kind) was taking place in the USA.

Over the course of the past two months, there have been no less (and probably more) than 18 cases of people eating, or otherwise misusing, their own flesh or that of others. Most of these bizarre events have, for some reason, taken place in the USA. The most prominent case was that of Rudy Eugene and Ronald Poppo in Miami, Florida. The basics of that case, which took place on May 26th, as described by a witness, were:
"He [Eugene] was ripping into his [Poppo's] face with his teeth," said a witness to the ghoulish attack.

"He was ripping his skin, his neck. He had him held down. The guy couldn't move really, and he was just tearing into his flesh," Vega told WSVN TV in Miami.

The witness flagged down a police officer, who repeatedly ordered the assailant to stop and move away.

"The guy just stood his head up like that, with a piece of flesh in his mouth, and growled."

When Eugene did not comply with the officer's demands, he shot him once. Eugene, however, appeared unfazed, at which point the officer shot him four more times.

Book

SOTT Focus: Book Review: The High Strangeness of Dimensions, Densities, and the Process of Alien Abduction

High Strangeness 2nd Ed Cover
Editor's note: This review is of the revised second edition of Laura Knight-Jadczyk's High Strangeness. It is available from QFGPublishing.com, RedPillPress.com, RedPillPress.co.uk, Amazon and finer bookstores everywhere!

It's sad but true that most people don't like inconvenient realities to upset their pleasant illusions and prejudices. I see this all the time in my own daily interactions with people. Once someone reaches a point in his or her life when they feel they "understand" the world well enough - often around the age of thirty - they spend the rest of their life filling in the blanks of what they think they already know. It's a tendency that usually becomes more extreme over time. Ideas and worldviews seem to harden in tandem with the arteries.

The friends people make, television shows they watch, the internet sites they visit - the very world they create for themselves - all of these usually support the circumscribed worldview they themselves have adopted.

Obviously, it's the same with books. It's a rare book that has the ability to truly change one's mind about the world. Rarest of all are those gems with the ability to change one's life.

Laura Knight-Jadczyk's The High Strangeness of Dimensions, Densities, and the Process of Alien Abduction is such a book.

Eye 1

SOTT Focus: NATO's 'Civil War' Machine Rolls Into Syria

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Death Squad: Free Syrian Army recruits proudly display the black flag of al-Qaeda, the database of Western mercenaries/terrorists
It was only a matter of time before NATO's hired killers were tasked with carrying out a massacre in Syria that NATO stooges at the UN could then attempt to blame on the Syrian government. This time however, the con job isn't going quite according to plan.

On Monday 28th May 2012 ('Memorial Day' in the US, for those who enjoy irony) the world's public received a full frontal propaganda attack by the Western and other duplicitous media outlets parroting NATO and UN Security Council condemnations of a "massacre by Syrian troops" in the Syrian village of Houla on Friday 25th May.

Although the Houla victims were Assad supporters, the media has been primed to unleash a torrent of abuse against the Syrian government in the hope that it will carry enough weight to justify precision-strike democratization in the very near future.

Cult

SOTT Focus: Target Iran: America and Israel to Officially Unleash MEK Terrorist Cult

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Wink and a nod: Hillary Clinton walks past MEK activists
The Munafiqeen [Hypocrites] will be in the lowest depths of the Fire: no helper wilt thou find for them.

~ Sura 4 (An-Nisa), ayah 145, Qur'an
A couple of months ago, one of those dubious leaks made by "unnamed US officials" caught my eye. US media did something it doesn't often do; it publicised 'secret' Israeli government policy. Giving five minutes of prime time TV to Iranian scientist Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of Ali Larijani, philosopher and chairman of the Parliament of Iran, two "senior U.S. officials" confirmed for NBC News what Mohammad Larijani was telling them: that Israel was behind the assassinations of Iranian scientists.

Specifically, the US officials stated that Israel's Mossad was financing, training and arming an Iranian dissident group that goes by many names, but which we'll call the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) for now. In return, the MEK is "providing Israel with information." Speaking through NBC, these unknown officials confirmed what Larijani and the Iranian government have been saying for years: that Israel, through the MEK, carried out the attacks in which motorcycle-borne assailants attached sophisticated magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims' cars. The US officials further stated that the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.

No sooner had the story been leaked than a series of car bombings took place outside Israeli embassies in India, Georgia and Singapore. The same types of bombs used in the assassinations of Iranian scientists were used to blow up vehicles near Israeli diplomats. The Israelis never actually intended to kill any of their own, because the Mossad warned the embassies ahead of time. Israel of course blamed Iran for the bombings. But these stunts were clearly intended to deflect attention from the US government's confirmation that Israel is murdering Iranian scientists through its surrogate, the MEK, and, once again, portray Israel as the eternal victim.

Bulb

SOTT Focus: High Priestess in the Pulpit: A Theory on the Feminist Vegetarian/Vegan Movement

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© Anna Leah Merrit"Eva"
According to popular bible myth, Eve's consumption and sharing of the apple is the reason for the 'fall of mankind'. She and her mate were booted out of the Garden of Eden with strategically placed fig leaves and nary a pot to piss in. For a long time thereafter, women shouldered most of the blame for the alleged 'evils' of this world.

The garden of Eden tale is really a metaphor for the loss of humanity's creative energy, man's divorce from nature and subsequent marriage to the material. It was this separation that lay the groundwork for the distorted view of woman as 'evil' which then took root in many religions and continues to this day.

As with religion, both the Feminist and Vegetarian Movements were co-opted and twisted into something that seems more in line with fundamentalism than groups of people expressing ideas reflective of their choices.

What's interesting is how both these movements, in many cases, have become intertwined. Many feminists today seem to identify with vegetarianism and many female vegetarians have embraced the feminist cause. Both feminists and vegetarians have earned a reputation for vitriolic argumentation that often leaves their detractors recoiling in fear. If simple dialogue provokes such knee-jerk reactions, perhaps a closer look at the possible underlying motivations behind the feminist vegetarian/vegan (fem v/v) movement is warranted.

Pistol

SOTT Focus: The British Empire - A Lesson In State Terrorism

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For most people in Western nations today, terrorism has become synonymous with large scale spectacular acts of violence by small groups against a civilian population and, within the last 15 years, primarily in the name of one religion in particular - Islam. Historically speaking (and I mean up until the present day) there is no justification for this perception, and it can only have come about through a massive and prolonged public propaganda offensive on the part of those with a vested interest in creating and perpetuating it.

The historical record shows quite clearly that states, or those acting on behalf of the state, have been responsible for the vast majority of large-scale terrorist acts against civilians.

Meteor

SOTT Focus: The Cs Hit List 07: Sun Star Companion, Singing Stones and Smoking Visions

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I'm going to begin this installment of the Cs Hit List by picking up where we left off in the last one: the idea that our sun has a companion star. After publishing Cs Hit List 06 and reflecting on it some more, I realised that my argument for why our sun might have a companion star - simply that it's statistically probable - was kind of weak. There's actually more to it than that, even if such a companion has yet to be discovered. (Assuming it's there, of course, and that we would be told if it was actually discovered!).

In fact, it's not a new idea. Check out the Wikipedia page on the so-called 'Nemesis' hypothesis. (And see here for additional resources.) It was introduced in 1984 by two teams of astronomers (Whitmire & Jackson, and Davis, Hut & Muller) to explain the periodically spaced extinction events observed in the earth's fossil record. The idea was that a companion sun passing through or close to the spherical Oort cloud would send a death-dealing swarm of comets in earth's direction every 26 million years or so. Its presence may also help explain the non-random trajectories of certain long-period comets, as well as the strange and unexpected elliptical orbit of the recently discovered transneptunian object Sedna.

Recently, astrophysicists Daniel Whitmire and John Matese have been arguing for a 'Planet X' model to explain these phenomena, i.e. an undiscovered tenth planet existing beyond Pluto, possibly up to 4 times the mass of Jupiter. Perhaps prematurely, given that it's purely theoretical at this point, they've even given it a name - 'Tyche'. Using the same Oort-disturbing mechanism as Nemesis, the hypothetical gas giant might explain the angle at which comets enter the solar system, with "a fifth of the expected number since 1898 entering higher than expected". Matese and Whitmire are hopeful that NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope, which has the ability to detect such objects, will show evidence for Tyche, once the already-recorded data is analyzed. (Incidentally, WISE also has the ability to spot a brown dwarf.)

Comment: Note: Much of this series is in a large part based on research by members of the SOTT/Cassiopaea forum, so if you want to read the original discussions, discuss any of the subjects dealt with here, suggest ideas, criticisms, or post any 'hits' you've discovered, check it out.


Bizarro Earth

SOTT Focus: Losing Femininity in the Elusive Search for Kansas

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© Unknown
Whether male or female, and whether people realise it or not, inequality between the sexes affects everyone's lives on a daily basis.

While women in the Middle East experience 'in your face' gender inequality, particularly in theocratic regimes like Iran - which one of your authors has direct experience of - the equivalent bias in the West has a flavor that is far more subtle and therefore far more dangerous. It's more difficult to discern the root of a problem when it is acting covertly in a way that few notice.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, how different countries respond to sexism is reflective of how their ruling elites conduct politics. A religious government in the Middle East, for example, rules with an iron fist and bluntly tells its citizens what the rules of the game are. It's overt and leaves no room for doubt as to where the authorities stand on ideology.

In the West, the situation is the opposite. The government's influence is subtle and manipulates its citizens into believing ideals (e.g. "equal rights"), all the while changing the rules to suit the purposes of those who own the government - to keep life more equal for some than others.