At least 40 members of the White Helmets organization have admitted during recent interviews that they staged chemical attacks in Syria to provoke retaliation against President Bashar Assad, Foundation for the Study of Democracy Director Maxim Grigoriev said on Thursday as he unveiled the results of a new study at the UN.

"We have interviewed ... 40 members of the White Helmets, including those from Douma, who provided a detailed description of their methods commonly used by their organization to fake scenes," Grigoriev said.

The foundation conducted a fact-finding mission in Syria and located both White Helmets members and dozens of other people who participated in the staged attacks, Grigoriev said.

"Those people told us in detail how they had to participate in the staging for few dollars to buy some food for their families," he said.

One woman recounted how she was given white burial shroud to wrap herself up in and then told to lay on the ground and smear her mouth with toothpaste, Grigoriev said.

The following special report comes to us from our Russian correspondent, Anoniy Mouseevich Stenographov. Anoniy risked his life smuggling this information out of Russia, but he fears for the safety of his family due to the explosive nature of the Russian national secrets revealed here.

Four years ago, the UK's Daily Express revealed to the world one of the Kremlin's best-kept secrets: Russian President Vladimir Putin is insecure about his height. One year ago, the New Yorker's Robin Wright confirmed this, using her astute knowledge of Putin's inner psyche to conclude: "Putin is still a little man strutting to be one of the big boys."

This information continues to be relevant, and several sources within the U.S. and UK intelligence communities have confirmed to us that it is perhaps the key piece of intelligence that will help the free and democratic world win the New Cold War. While they couldn't share all their plans with us for reasons of national security, they did tell us one thing: part of the plan involves interfering in the elections of as many foreign nations as possible in order to 'elect' tall leaders (like Trump at 6'3", Imran Khan at 6'2", and Aleksandar Vucic at 6'6"). The hope is that the intimidating height of such competitors will slowly wear on the Russian president's self-image until he does something to catastrophically weaken his stranglehold on Russian politics, thus paving the way for the election of someone more willing to sell Russia to the highest bidder, like Alexey Navalny.

Here's what the Express said at the time, quoting their source in the Kremlin:

The Russian president was hosting a group women at the presidential palace in Moscow to celebrate International Woman's Day. However, Putin's aides forgot to tell the invited group not to wear high-heels, leaving several of the guests towering over the Russian leader - who is famously self-conscious about his height. A Kremlin insider said strict rules dictate no one can be taller than the president - who is believed to be between 5ft 2" and 5ft 5" - in official photos.

"That's why his bodyguards are always shorter then [sic] he is, to give the impression Putin is a tall person," the source revealed. However that diktat appears to have been ignored in the most recent images of Putin, which show a handful of the 14 invited women dressed smartly but with accompanying high heels. According to the insider, the women were told to bend down during the photo call to make Putin appear slightly taller.

"They were told to try and squat down a little bit during the official photo session," the source said. They added: "Fourteen women were selected and invited to the Kremlin to take part in the official meeting with [the] president. In line with Kremlin rules, no one can be taller than he is to avoid causing embarrassment in pictures and video."

SOTT.net can confirm that this insider was subsequently ferreted out by the FSB and is currently serving time in Putin's personal secret gulag, where he is forced daily to repeat the phrase, "President Putin is the greatest and tallest leader the world has ever known." Our own Russian sources tell us that the women photographed with the Russian president have not been seen since the unfortunate event. Their whereabouts remain unknown - even to our highly-placed sources within the Kremlin. Only Putin knows their fate.

Julian Assange's mother reported yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder has not been permitted any visitors during his detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors and his lawyers. Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have attested that he urgently needs medical care. Belmarsh is a maximum security prison sometimes referred to as "the UK's Guantanamo Bay".

And yet we're asked to believe that this has something to do with an alleged bail violation and a US extradition request for alleged computer crimes carrying a maximum sentence of five years. If you zoom out and listen to the less-informed chatter of the overt propagandists and the brainwashed rank-and-file Western mass media consumers, you will also see that people believe this has something to do with Russia and rape allegations as well.

Actually, none of these things are true. Assange is being imprisoned under draconian conditions for journalism, and for journalism only. The Obama administration declined to prosecute him after WikiLeaks' publication of the Manning leaks out of concern that doing so would endanger press freedoms, and the Obama administration didn't have any more evidence at its disposal than the Trump administration has now. The "crime" Assange is accused of consists of nothing other than standard journalistic practices that investigative journalists engage in all the time, including source protection and encouraging the source to obtain more material. The only thing that has changed is an increased willingness in the White House to prosecute journalists for practicing journalism, and there are an abundance of reasons to believe that he will be hit with far more serious charges once extradited to US soil. They're not going to all this trouble for a bail violation and a five-year maximum sentence.

The world's largest democracy will hold parliamentary elections this month. The elections are conducted in 7 stages from April 11 to May 23rd. Phase 1 of the elections were completed on April 11th. 900 million people are eligible to vote, including 84 million first-time voters, in 1 million polling booths supervised by 11 million personnel for 543 parliamentary seats. 130 parties fielded more than 8000 candidates. Incumbent Prime minister Narendra Modi is expecting to retain his position, while opposition party (Congress lead UPA) that won 10 times out of the last 15 Lok Sabha elections (since independence) is hoping to reverse their abysmal 2014 performance. A record amount of money ($US 7 to 9 billion) is expected to be spent on this years election making it costlier than last US presidential election.

While the Ruling Hindu nationalist BJP coalition (NDA) hopes to showcase Modi's reforms during the last 5 years and highlight his tough stance on national security, the opposition parties are trying to take advantage of weak unemployment figures, anti-incumbency trends and attempt to cast Modi as corrupt with slogans like 'Chowkidar Chor Hai' (watchman is a thief) which is a reverse of the rhetoric Modi used to portray himself as a "Chowkidar" (a watchman or gatekeeper). Like a Bollywood movie, Indian elections contain a lot of emotion, pomp, drama, music and color.

Climate protesters Extinction Rebellion have spent the week blocking London's roads, staging die-ins, glueing themselves to trains, climbing on top of buses, and even chaining themselves to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's house. The activists' aim is to cause maximum disruption and get themselves arrested to draw attention to climate change. Protest leaders claim that humanity faces extinction unless carbon emissions are cut to net zero by 2025.

They have compared themselves to Gandhi and Martin Luther King. A BBC podcast asks if Extinction Rebellion are 'the new Suffragettes'. They have been endorsed by many on the radical left who have persuaded themselves that a serious rebellion is afoot.

Last week, left-wing new media outlet Novara Media posted on social media a video of veteran eco-warrior George Monbiot. In it, Monbiot calls for an end to green tinkering and the 'micro-consumerist bollocks' of sustainable cotton buds, etc. Instead, he says, 'we need to get to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it'. The audience cheered and the clip went viral, with over one million views. James Corden from Gavin and Stacey retweeted it. Leftists tweeted excitedly about a decisive and radical shift in the 'Overton Window' in favour of abolishing capitalism.

Yellow Vests protests brought clashes and tear gas back to the streets of Paris, despite politicians' calls for "unity" in the wake of the Notre Dame fire. For protesters, the response to the fire only showed more inequality.

Saturday's protests mark the 23rd straight weekend of anti-government demonstrations, but the first since Notre Dame de Paris went up in flames on Monday. Officials were quick to criticize the protesters for returning to the streets so soon after the disaster.

"The rioters will be back tomorrow," Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told reporters on Friday. "The rioters have visibly not been moved by what happened at Notre-Dame."

Today's Western cultural landscape seems to give us all the wrong messages of what happiness is, and how one should go about attaining it; we're programmed for unhappiness and seemingly trapped in ways of thinking and being that only make for more unhappiness! On this week's MindMatters we discuss John F. Schumaker's book In Search of Happiness - Understanding An Endangered State of Mind and delve into what happiness actually is, what it isn't - and some of the perennial values which nurture the meaning in our lives that deep happiness is quite often an outgrowth of.

On this week's show we'll also be looking at what some great minds had to say on bringing happiness about. Everyone wants to 'be happy,' but how does this feeling really come about and what, if anything, is the process to be engaged that could make it available to us? Can happiness even be experienced without knowing its opposite - and how willing are we to sacrifice short term gratification for the deeper more fulfilling life that nurtures true happiness. Join us this week as we put away the happy pills, the happy meals, the happy faces, and choose to suffer through a more objective understanding of a mostly elusive state of mind.


Running Time: 01:10:42

Download: MP3 - 64.7 MB

After two years of gaslighting the public while it blew smoke up America's ass, the Jacobin news media enjoyed its final feeding frenzy with the release of the 400-page Mueller report. They expected 1000 pounds of raw filet mignon, but it turned out to be tofu fried in olestra. The ensuing fugue of hyperventilating hysteria was also duly expected and William Barr stoically endured their hebephrenic peevings at the release ceremony - a press conference which itself offended the media.

The threats and raving continued all the livelong day and far into the peeper-filled night with CNN's Chris Cuomo blustering "It's time to rumble," and the lugubrious hack David Gergen muttering soulfully, "This was not fake news," and The Times' Maggie Haberman fuming that the White House had played the "Nazi anthem" Edelweiss - very fake news, it turned out, since the tune was written for Rodgers' and Hammerstein's 1959 Broadway show, The Sound of Music (and sung by the anti-Nazi hero Baron von Trapp). Meanwhile Rachel Maddow had the balls to confab in prime time with disgraced former FBI mandarin Andy McCabe, officially identified as a liar by his own colleagues at the agency. What a circus of perfidious freakery!

Understand that the Mueller Report itself was the mendacious conclusion to a deceitful investigation, the purpose of which was to conceal the criminal conduct of US government officials meddling in the 2016 election, in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign, to derail Mr. Trump's campaign, and then disable him when he managed to win the election. Mr. Mueller was theoretically trying to save the FBI's reputation, but he may have only succeeded in injuring it more gravely.

This week our resident health experts Elliot Overton and Doug DiPasquale interview Dr. Chandler Marrs on the essential roles of vitamin B1 (thiamine), mitochondrial bioenergetics, and how to stay healthy in our toxic modern world.

Dr. Chandler Marrs is a researcher and writer who holds a PhD in experimental psychology/neuroendocrinology, where the research focus was on female hormones and women's health. She co-authored the book "Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition", and is also the founder of the health website and online journal "Hormones Matter".

In her time as a writer she has written well over 200 articles, and her research has gradually moved over to medication-adverse events, the mitochondria, and examining the roles of nutrition in mitochondrial function.

When she is not busy at work, Dr Marrs is involved in competitive powerlifting and is also a self-proclaimed long-time jock!

Here's where you can find Dr. Marrs:
Her website: http://www.hormonesmatter.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chandler.marrs
Old Ladies Lift: https://oldladieslift.com/
YT Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCopTDVMrTYb6K3UvucQ7P_g

For other health-related news and more, you can find us on:
♥Twitter: https://twitter.com/objecthealth
♥Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/objecthealth/


Running Time: 01:08:47

Download: MP3 - 62.6 MB

While London almost immediately blamed Moscow for being behind the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK city of Salisbury in March 2018, Russia has strongly rejected its involvement, stressing it's been denied access both to the investigation into the incident and the Russian nationals affected.

On 16th April, the New York Times published a glowing profile of Gina Haspel, who in May 2018 became the seventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The article referred to Haspel - the former head of a CIA 'black site' in Thailand at which an indeterminate number of suspected terrorists were viciously tortured - as an "adept tactician" blessed with "good listening, empathy and an ability to connect", and discussed the difficulties the intelligence chief faced in ensuring "her voice is heard at the White House", due to the intransigence of President Donald Trump and a White House that allegedly treats national security professionals "with deep skepticism".