Water is the transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance that is the main constituent of Earth's streams, lakes, and oceans. It also happens to be the main constituent fluid of most living organisms and an absolutely essential part of life. No known life form, including humans, can possibly survive without it. But what happens when our water becomes so polluted it's actually less harmful to go without?

Heavy metals, fracking chemicals, pharmaceutical waste, industrial pollutants, microplastics, agricultural chemicals, dangerous micro-organisms - it seems there's no limit to the amount of toxic stuff we find in our water. Gone are the days of pristine streams and clean lakes you could directly drink from. Now we need complicated filter systems just to get a drinkable glass of what we all need to live. And we in the modernized world are the lucky ones!

Join us on this episode of The Health and Wellness Show as we talk about this vital resource that the human race has managed to mess up for the entire planet. Is there a way out of this madness?

And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment, where she talks about how to get your cat to drink more water.

Running Time: 01:14:06

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The Russian author thought it was no coincidence that Soviet Russia shared certain common problems with the West, for he saw socialism and liberalism as kindred ideologies

With tensions between America and Russia running high, it is worth reconsidering a figure who once cast a long shadow across both lands: Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As a writer, Solzhenitsyn acquired renown through works such as One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch and Gulag Archipelago, whereby he not only exposed the follies, pretensions, and crimes of Marxist-Leninism but also testified to the power infused into the human spirit by its Maker. As a dissident, Solzhenitsyn proved such a nuisance to Soviet authorities that they deported him in 1974, leading him to take up residence in Montpelier, Vermont. At first regarded as a hero by Americans, he eventually found his popularity waning, thanks in part to his controversial 1978 commencement address at Harvard University.



Instead of heaping upon America the praise which might have been expected at the time from a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Communist, Solzhenitsyn used his Harvard platform to warn that he had observed phenomena in the United States disturbingly reminiscent of Soviet life:

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevents independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life.

"The press has become the greatest power within the Western countries," he also insisted, "more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?"

In a rare and damning interview, historian and UK foreign policy analyst Mark Curtis asserted that the British state has been complicit or responsible for the deaths of around 10 million people since World War II. The interview spans across various cases of post-war British foreign policy, from Libya to Vietnam and from Yemen to Indonesia. And it's definitely not the kind of analysis you'll find on the BBC.

Anyone who's ever tasted teargas will attest how unpleasant it is. I tasted it in Paris on Saturday 8 December as the city turned into a war zone.

I am writing these words in a hotel room in central Paris in the aftermath of a day of rage, unleashed by the self-styled gilets jaunes (yellow vests) mass movement of latter-day 'enrages' (angry ones) of French revolutionary repute. And it was indeed a day that bore the hallmarks of a revolution underway. Even now, just after 8pm, the unrest continues, with the sound of wailing police sirens and helicopters hovering overhead the unceasing mood music to my thoughts.

This chaos is taking place not in Syria, Venezuela or Ukraine but in Paris, the city most synonymous with the affluence, culture and liberalism of a European continent that increasingly finds itself beset by social unrest and political disruption.

The French capital is now, for all intents, the frontline in a growing struggle against neoliberalism and its bastard child, austerity, across a European Union whose foundations are crumbling. They are crumbling not due to the devilish machinations of Vladimir Putin (as an increasingly unhinged and out of touch Western liberal commentariat maintains), but instead as the result of a neoliberal status quo that provides far too few with unending comfort and material prosperity at the expense of far too many, for whom dire misery and mounting pain are its grim fruits.

The Yellow Vest Movement - weekend 8 and 9 December - Round 4. Some say, they are the worst riots in France since the student-driven mini-Revolution of May 1968. Over the four weekends, hundreds of thousands were in the streets, middle class people, from students to workers to outright employees and housewives. The police force increases by every new Round - and so do the demonstrators. Today - more than 8,000 police, a considerable increase from last weekend's 5,000-plus. Tens of thousands Yellow Vests demonstrated; police reported more than 1,600 arrests.

There are tanks in the streets - not seen for at least ten years - burning cars and shop fronts, vandalized buildings. The police are fighting them with teargas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Police brutality seems to be unavoidable, However, apparently more moderate than on other occasions. Nevertheless, a youtube is circulating, where a group of riot gear protected police beat up a helpless Yellow Vest, already on the ground and defenseless. These are the pictures you see on TV.


And the globalized 'everybodies' throughout Europe and the (western) world sit comfortably in their fauteuils, shaking their heads - "the French again; they are never content, always want more" - having apparently no idea that what they, the French workers, had rightfully accumulated in terms of social funds and public infrastructure - hospitals, schools - since WWII (instead of paying for a heavy army) is being 'legally' stolen by a small elite who put a Rothschild banker - Macron - in power to pass the necessary legislation to make the fraud legal.

Voilà. So simple. Most of the fauteuil warriors have no idea that the hangmen are stealthily coming to them too. By the time they wake up and see the light irradiated by the French Yellow Vests - it might be too late. It's not for nothing, that Europe, under the command of the unelected European Commission (EC), has become increasingly militarized and a conglomerate police state, to be ready when general discontent spreads and political and social upheavals start. We may be at that point.

There are two major grievances that are motivating the ongoing 'Gilets Jaunes' protests in France (and similar protests in other European countries over the past few years). One is the the specter of mass immigration - 'accidentally' inflated by 17 years of the Global War on Terror - and the other is French and EU government policies aimed at 'preventing climate change'.

In their arrogance, however, European elites have decided to double down on these massively unpopular polices by:

(a) encouraging mass migration into Europe - with Macron currently in Morocco where he will sign the UN Compact on Migration, where signatory states are required to formalize and legalize structures for accepting and financing large numbers of migrants, and (b) implementing an EU/globalist 'ecology tax'.

So the question is: what do climate/earth changes and mass migration have in common, and what do governments know that they are not telling the people?

On this week's NewsReal with Joe & Niall, we reveal why the elites' view of the people and the people's view of the elites are so out of sync, and why the discrepancy is signalling an impending showdown of, literally, biblical proportions.


Running Time: 01:14:59

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A month of demonstrations, at least 4 people killed, chaos in the capital, and, according to polls, 8 out of 10 people support the protesters. Sounds like a government in trouble - and it's not Venezuela, Iraq, nor Somalia... but France.

On today's The Debate, we discuss the roots of the French fury with Paolo Raffone, secretary general of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels, and Niall Bradley, editor at independent news site Sott.net.

France is boiling with anger. Thousands of people take to the streets in cities across France for the fourth consecutive weekend to protest against government's social and economic policies. Security forces again fired tear gas, flash-bang grenades and 'rubber' bullets to disperse the protesters, leaving hundreds injured. They also arrested around 1,700 people.

The Yellow Vest movement started as a protest against fuel tax rise, but eventually turned into a general opposition to the economic policies of President Emmanuel Macron. The protests continue despite the government's decision to abandon the fuel tax hike. Four people have been killed so far. How far will this go? And what is the root cause of the popular anger against Macron's government?

PressTV today spoke with Joe Quinn, political commentator and editor of independent news site Sott.net...

Over 1,500 people were detained and more than 500 were arrested on Saturday amid more anti-government 'Yellow Vest' protests in Paris, prompting authorities to brace themselves for more violence. Sputnik discussed the ongoing protests with Joe Quinn, Sott.net editor.

Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss the French polymath Gustave Le Bon's most famous work, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Le Bon was a physician, soldier, and author of numerous works ranging from anthropology, medicine, physiology, and even physics, where he is credited with anticipating Einstein's theory of relativity.

But it was defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, the radical mentality of the Paris Commune of 1871, and his extensive studies of peoples in Europe, Asia and North Africa that gave him that unique insight into the nature of crowds which, when he published them, resulted in a book which has been described as "one of the most influential books of social psychology ever written."

The Crowd may have been an instant bestseller in the late 19th century but it remains just as relevant today. From radical Islamists in Syria to Antifa in the US, and most recently the Yellow Vests storming Paris, Le Bon provides us key insights regarding the crowd's susceptibility to suggestion, the individual's loss of control, and its potential to be radicalized in the name of senseless violence. If nothing else this knowledge can help to keep us moored while others are swept away in the tide.

Running Time: 01:36:00

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