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SOTT Focus: NewsReal: Senator McCain is Dead! Trump Impeachment For Real? Imminent Syria 'Chemical Attack'


Sott.net
Sun, 26 Aug 2018 16:00 UTC
mccain death newsreal
Senator John 'The Maverick' McCain III is dead. This week on NewsReal, Joe and Niall look back on the illustrious career of an American hero and titan of US politics, whose indelible contributions to the War Party over four decades have earned him a place in the pantheon of Exceptionalistan.

Also this week: 'revelations' in two court cases stemming from the Mueller investigation produced a terrible week for President Trump, spurring the media to again go all out with calls for his impeachment. The Washington Crazies are not actually serious about forcing Trump out, are they?

Meanwhile in Syria, state forces amassing in the country's northwest to reclaim Idlib province for Damascus are being met - yet again - with the imminent threat of another staged chemical attack, with the Russian government warning that the plot is a pretext for Western powers to launch more airstrikes against Syrian military targets.


Live audio broadcast from 16:00 UTC / 12:00 US Eastern / 18:00 Central European. Video upload available Monday 27th August here: NewsReal with Joe & Niall

Running Time: 01:27:48

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Bad Guys

SOTT Focus: Operation Destroy Syria Has Failed - Next Target: Hezbollah

Elijah J. Magnier
ejmagnier.com
Sun, 26 Aug 2018 15:24 UTC
hezbollah
After more than seven years of war with the goal of changing the Syrian regime, the target has now become Hezbollah. But the question remains: after the failure of the 2006 war, what can the enemies of this organisation do to achieve their goal?

Hezbollah's Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said in his most recent speech that "Hezbollah is stronger than the Israeli army". Israel responded by showing a drill of the Golani brigade and the 7th Armoured Brigade, in the presence of Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, simulating war against Hezbollah. This drill took place after routine ground forces exercises of the 36th Division to "improve coordination and readiness in case of war".

In a message indicating that it will not distinguish civilians from militants, Israel has constructed a new training base in the occupied Golan Heights, the Snir facility, to simulate Lebanese villages. These mock Hezbollah villages are meant to be of the type Israeli soldiers might face in combat situations if an invasion of Lebanon is ordered.

Likewise, Hezbollah has constructed mock Israeli villages on the Lebanese-Syrian borders for combat training to prepare for war. Sayyed Nasrallah has promised to move the battle beyond the Lebanese borders and has asked his men to prepare to fight on "enemy ground" if war is imposed on Hezbollah.
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Newspaper

SOTT Focus: Study Shows People Who Kind of Remember Eating a Not-in-Fact Low Carb Diet May or May Not Die Earlier

Doug DiPasquale
Sott.net
Sun, 26 Aug 2018 22:11 UTC
surprise shock
I know, dude. We're all freakin' out.
The mainstream scientific community apparently hates low-carb diets. So do the mainstream media, who take every opportunity to parrot whatever 'study' gets published that can provide an attention-grabbing click-bait headline, trashing anything that actually goes against mainstream dietary dogma. Last week it was a new 'study' published in the Lancet, and despite the fact that it is a horrible piece of pseudo-scientific nonsense, it was dutifully splashed across the headlines of pretty much all mainstream media sources. And what was the shocking finding? Low-carb diets will shorten your lifespan. Of course they will.

The study appears to be attempting to show a "balanced" perspective by showing high-carb diets are also dangerous; as if we didn't know that eating lots of sugar is harmful. The researchers claim their findings show that a moderate approach is what's healthiest - less than 40%, or more than 70%, of calories from carbohydrates carried a higher risk of mortality, they claim.

But check out these headlines:
Both low- and high-carb diets can raise risk of early death, study finds
Low-carb diet linked to early death, Lancet medical study says
A Low-Carb Diet May Reduce Four Years of Your Life: Lancet
Low-carb diets associated with lower life expectancy, study suggests
Low-carb diets could shorten life, study suggests
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SOTT Focus: The Truth Perspective: The Strange Order of Things: The Common Roots of Consciousness and Culture

Corey Schink, Harrison Koehli, Elan Martin
Sott.net
Sat, 25 Aug 2018 16:00 UTC
strange order of things
Renowned neuroscientist Antonio Damasio's newest book, The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures, makes some revolutionary claims. All organisms with nervous systems have consciousness. Feeling-based images are at the root all human experience. Consciousness would be impossible without feelings, which provide the subjective experience of homeostasis - a biological state of order that aims toward the future. Culture is rooted in feeling and is the complex means by which humanity seeks to survive and thrive within that homeostasis.

Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss Damasio's main arguments, where his genius shines through, and where his thinking is hampered by a philosophy that ultimately cannot account for the phenomena he seeks to explain. With reference to other thinkers and philosophies, we provide an alternative explanation that takes these mysteries seriously - the so-called emergence of consciousness and value, the nature of the individual, and the source of transcendence - and what it means for how we should think about life, our place in the world, and our ultimate responsibilities.

Running Time: 01:34:37

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Light Sabers

SOTT Focus: How US-China Trade War is Spreading From Goods to Services

Dan Steinbock
Sott.net
Sat, 25 Aug 2018 14:43 UTC
china us trade war
Trump tariff wars are entering a new, far more dangerous phase. As the White House is expanding its tariff wars, collateral damage is about to spread from goods to services - much of it in the U.S.

After months of trade threats, the Trump administration announced its 25% tariff on $34 billion of Chinese imports effective in early July, while threatening levies on another $16 billion of imports. To defend its sovereign interest, China responded with 25% tariffs on $34 billion of US imports and recently imposed an additional tariff of 25% on $16 billion of US imports effective on August 23.

As Trump is escalating his tariff war, a total of $50 billion of goods on each side will be taxed as of Thursday.
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Megaphone

SOTT Focus: Bolton Calls on Al-Qaeda to Stage More Chemical Attacks in Syria

Eva Bartlett
RT
Sat, 25 Aug 2018 09:25 UTC
National Security Advisor John Bolton
© Global Look PressNational Security Advisor John Bolton
In a move that was entirely predictable, the US administration is once again threatening to bomb Syria if there is a "chemical weapons attack".

This was entirely predictable because that chemical attack script has been read out, with salty crocodile tears, fake concern, and mocked indignation by US talking heads over the years - since 2012, in fact, when former US President Obama himself drew his red line on Syria.

The latest script-reader to toe the chemical hoax line is President Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, who on August 22, stated: "...if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time."

Beyond the tattered veil of moral superiority that is US war propaganda, Bolton's words were clearly a very public command to Al-Qaeda and co-extremists to stage yet another fake chemical attack.

Comment: 'Russiagate', 'Syrian regime using chemical weapons'... schemes that exist only in the Western reality-creators' sick minds.

These cowboys, politicians, businessmen, war hawks - who would prolong the war in Syria when peace is within reach and the country is beginning to rebuild and heal - should all be tried for crimes against humanity.

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Alarm Clock

SOTT Focus: Mass Media Is The Enemy Of The People Like The Cage Is The Enemy Of The Bird

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Fri, 24 Aug 2018 15:26 UTC
Bird in cage

The Guardian has just published an actual, non-fictional op-ed that is titled "Is my Jewish three-year-old too young to learn about antisemitism?", about a concerned mother who is teaching her toddler about the Holocaust in case Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister.

The Guardian. Not The Onion. The Guardian.
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USA

SOTT Focus: Trade War Against China - 11 Myths and Delusions

Chris Kanthan
Sott.net
Thu, 23 Aug 2018 22:47 UTC
Trump China trade war
Many people are ardently supporting Trump's trade war, driven by a combination of anger, fear, hubris and confusion. While there's no doubt that globalization has inflicted misery upon many Americans, there are numerous myths and delusions surrounding the clamor for tariffs and trade wars, especially against China. Let's take a look at some of the popular ones.
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SOTT Focus: The Gulag In Numbers: Was Stalinism Really That Bad?

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Thu, 23 Aug 2018 21:50 UTC
Gulag prisoners
© Mikhail Sokolov/RFE/RLA photo of Gulag prisoners in Perm (undated).
I'm currently reading a new book by Russian-American military expert Andrei Martyanov, Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning. It's a great book. The writing is clunky at times and could have used an editor to smooth out the text, but its content more than makes up for the deficiencies in presentation. We carried a few reviews of the book at these links: It's an eye-opening and maddening book to read. As Martyanov argues, Americans have never experienced a real war - where their citizens faced starvation, mass atrocities and casualties, and a life-or-death struggle for survival, as the Soviet Union did in World War II. This has led to a range of negative consequences for the collective USA: a profound arrogance, a romantic fantasy about the nature of warfare, an overestimation of American military capabilities, an underestimation of Soviet and Russian capabilities and achievements, a stereotyped prejudice against everything Russian, and the rise of incompetent civilian policymakers who only make things worse.

The book is definitely worth reading, so don't let the following criticism stop you from checking it out. Despite Martyanov's injection of some much-needed nuance in understanding the realities of the Soviet Union and the West's hubris-based miscalculations of its actual abilities and achievements, the author traps himself in his own black-and-white thinking on a few points, notably in his treatment of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his statements about the Stalinist repressions.
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2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Stephen F. Cohen: The Brennan Affair Reveals The Deep State

Stephen F. Cohen
The Nation
Thu, 23 Aug 2018 16:06 UTC
Valorizing an ex-CIA director and bashing Trump obscures what is truly ominous.
Former CIA director John Brennan
© Kevin Lamarque / ReutersFormer CIA director John Brennan
Ever since Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, every American president has held one or more summit meetings with the Kremlin leader, first and foremost in order to prevent miscalculations that could result in war between the two nuclear superpowers. Generally, they received bipartisan support for doing so. In July, President Trump continued that tradition by meeting with Russian President Putin in Helsinki, for which, unlike previous presidents, he was scathingly criticized by much of the US political media establishment.

John Brennan, CIA director under President Obama, however, went much further, characterizing Trump's press conference with Putin as "nothing short of treasonous." Presumably in reaction, Trump revoked Brennan's security clearance, the continuing access to classified information usually accorded to former security officials. In the political media furor that followed, Brennan was mostly heroized as an avatar of civil liberties and free speech, and Trump traduced as their enemy.

Leaving aside the missed occasion to discuss the "revolving door" involving former US security officials using their permanent clearances to enhance their lucrative positions outside government, Cohen thinks the subsequent political media furor obscures what is truly important and perhaps ominous.

Comment:

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