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TV

SOTT Focus: Art of The Narrative: How Viral Photos of Suffering Kids Shape (& Silence) The Immigration Debate

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 19:00 UTC
kids mother US border tear gas diapers
© Reuters / Kim Kyung-Hoon
You've seen it by now: Two women and two little children, barefoot and in diapers, fleeing teargas on the US-Mexico border. The powerful image has gone viral, and it's not the first time. But to what end?

Taken on Sunday by Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-Hoon, the photo soon appeared on the front pages and splashed across the screens of every single US mainstream media outlet. It quickly spread via social media, eclipsing every other image from the incident - in which a group of migrants from the Central American "caravans" tried to storm the US border as San Ysidro.

Comment: Playing to people's emotions is the only way the elites can corrupt the understanding shared by most that an unregulated flood of foreign populations into their society is dangerous for everyone involved.

The MSM doesn't have total control of its own narrative though. Check out what happened today when MSNBC went to their on-the-scene reporter:


See also:

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Better Earth

SOTT Focus: What We Talk About When We Talk About Immigration

Neema Parvini
Quillette
Mon, 26 Nov 2018 17:08 UTC
immigrants fence
My father moved to the UK from Iran in the 1970s to study engineering when he met and married my mother, who is from a small town in the Welsh valleys. Many people from that town would not have met a non-white person before they met my father. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, my parents made the eminently sensible decision that they would build their life together in Wales and not Iran.

To this day my father remains the hardest working person I know. He always worked two jobs, became a successful engineer and I recall watching him take part in publicity photos in the 1990s as the first non-white retained fireman in Wales, which he went on to do for 25 years.

He is by any measure a credit to his community and can easily be held up as a model for "integration." However, he is just one person. I sometimes wonder how different things might have been if there had been even one or two other Iranian families living on our street.

My father was born more than 3,700 miles from where I was born. By the age of three I'd already lived in four different countries. I grew up in a small town in Wales. By the time I was 15, I couldn't wait to move to London. I'm writing this column in a hotel room in Japan. When it is finished I'll send it to my editor in Australia and by the time you read it I'll likely be back home in London. As an internationally minded academic, I have what Talcott Parsons called an "achieved identity" based on education and career success.
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Toys

SOTT Focus: Masha And The Bear: How 'The Kremlin' Set Out to Subvert Our Toddlers

George Galloway
RT
Mon, 26 Nov 2018 22:53 UTC
russia masha bear
Global Look Press / Daniel Karmann
Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote: "Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us." I thought of this while reading what is surely the nadir of Russophobic balderdash about the cartoon Masha and the Bear.

As it happens I am a Russophile and have been for more than 50 years. But I have four children under the age of 12 and all of them have loved Masha and her friend the big protective bear quite without a single exposition from me on the State and Revolution or the limitations of Lenin's New Economic Policy. I usually wait until my children are 12 before explaining that Socialism = Soviet Power plus electrification.

In any case, Masha and the Bear don't live under Socialism - they live in a capitalist state, the new economic policy is the same as that of the rest of the world. Their Russia is already well-electrified, and revolution and Soviet Power are in the museum. More's the pity from my point of view, but there we are.

Comment: RT dissected the batshittery accordingly:


If we were to take a stab at reading the filthy subconscious thoughts of the Russia-haters on this one, we'd say it's a combination of actual, demented hatred of Russia (the Estonian expert mentioned above, for example, is likely predominantly driven by this), geopolitical requirements to demonize Russia (that one's a no-brainer), and the postmodernist agenda to destroy 'good clean fun' precisely because therein lie values which are antithetical to liberalism - which, in the West these days, is synonymous with nihilism.

It would be interesting to see, if Masha was transgender and the Bear an animal rights activist pushing veganism, whether Western elites still had a problem with the cartoon...

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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: NewsReal: Populism Explained


Sott.net
Mon, 26 Nov 2018 17:00 UTC
newsreal populism
'The rise of populism' is a horrifying prospect to most of the intelligentsia in cities across the West these days, invoking fears of the imminent implementation of totalitarian systems like Nazi death camps.

At the same time, its opponents, when attempting to seriously analyse the phenomenon, acknowledge that its success is down to new parties and leaders acknowledging (or, at worst, 'pandering to') the general public's mistrust of elites, and their efforts to redress injustices or imbalances.

As such, populism, 'right-wing' or otherwise, surely then invigorates democracy, expanding and enacting the 'democratic will of the people'. Why then are its opponents so vociferously ranged against it?

On this episode of NewsReal, Joe & Niall discuss the emergent (and increasingly dominant) political theory of the times.


Running Time: 01:23:58

Download: MP3

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NPC

SOTT Focus: Feminists' Undue Process: Ideologues React Hysterically to Trump Administration's Suggested Reforms to Campus-Rape Tribunals

Heather Mac Donald
city-journal.org
Fri, 23 Nov 2018 18:18 UTC
me too protesters
The Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings gave the public a crash course in campus-rape ideology. It is about to get another. Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos released a proposed federal rule that corrects the worst procedural abuses of campus-rape tribunals.

It hews closely to judicial precedent and is fair to all parties, yet the feminist establishment has reacted with hysteria, characterizing the draft regulation as an assault on sexual-assault "survivors." Maintenance of the campus-rape myth, it turns out, is incompatible with due process. Whether feminism itself is compatible with Enlightenment values appears increasingly doubtful.

Opposition to the Kavanaugh nomination was based on the principle that self-professed "survivors" must be believed and that accused males must be condemned, regardless of the paucity of evidence against them. That principle, already ubiquitous on college campuses, got an assist from the federal government in 2011, when the Obama administration released a so-called guidance (an informal federal directive of murky legal status) on college rape proceedings.

The guidance strongly discouraged cross-examination of the accuser and required schools to use the lowest possible standard of proof for finding a defendant guilty of sexual assault. It promulgated a broad definition of actionable sexual harassment-"unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature"-that ignored relevant Supreme Court precedent and that would extend to an unwanted request for a date.
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Info

SOTT Focus: Straight-Talking Tulsi's Rising Star Could Mean Setting Sun for the Democratic Party Establishment

Finian Cunningham
RT
Fri, 23 Nov 2018 14:11 UTC
Tulsi Gabbard
© Getty Images / Tom Williams
Tulsi Gabbard's blistering criticism of President Trump over his pardon to Saudi Arabia has further elevated her prospect of becoming the standard bearer in the 2020 presidential election, shaking up the Dem Party establishment.

The 37-year-old Hawaiian representative this week blasted Trump for being "Saudi Arabia's b*tch" after he controversially backed the Saudi regime over the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump said the US-Saudi relationship was too important to consider a rupture with the oil kingdom's rulers.

Trump's prioritizing of commercial and strategic interests over the brutal killing of a US-resident journalist in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 was met with widespread disdain among American politicians and media this week. But Gabbard's put down was probably the most scathing and memorable.
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: The Truth Perspective: The Stoic Roots of Christianity: Self-Transcendence Through Meaning and Responsibility


Sott.net
Sat, 24 Nov 2018 17:00 UTC
Crucifix
© Global Look Press/ Hauke-Christian Dittrich
All institutions stagnate over time. But if the original inspiration contains enough universal truth, it can survive the centuries. This seems to be the case with Christianity. Despite millions of Christians who believe all they have to do is verbally profess their faith in their Lord Jesus Christ, a much deeper understanding of the human condition and each individual's capacity for transformation remains just waiting to be rediscovered. Troels Engberg-Pedersen is just one of the scholars of early Christianity to have mined Christianity's earliest texts - the letters of Paul - for insights into what they actually meant - and still mean - for those with eyes to see.

The shape of Paul's thought has much in common with the philosophy of Stoicism. Not only does it provide a pathway of transformation - it presents a vision of the world imbued with meaning and responsibility. In a time when identity politics is on the rise, perhaps it is time to rediscover the values at the root of our civilization. Paul's Christianity was the anti-identity politics of its time. His message was simple, practical, and effective: bear your suffering, act with responsibility and meaning, and consider others interests, not just your own. In short, crucify your old self so that a better self can be born.

Today on the Truth Perspective we look at the Stoic-like roots of Paul's thought and how it fits into a wider worldview where meaning is not only possible, but real.

Running Time: 01:28:09

Download: MP3

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Whistle

SOTT Focus: The US Deep State vs Julian Assange

Ryan Jones
Sott.net
Thu, 22 Nov 2018 21:38 UTC
Ecuadorians protest over Assange
On Friday November 16th 2018, the US deep state's #2 "paper of record", The New York Times (second only to The Washington Post), announced that the US Department of Justice had secretly filed criminal charges against Julian Assange, founder of the world-famous media organisation Wikileaks, a specialist in publishing 'leaked' documents provided unofficially (and often illegally) by whistleblowers in high-profile corporations, organisations and governments.

For the last 6 years, Assange, an Australian citizen, has been locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador in 2012. His reason for requesting asylum was to evade extradition to the United States via Sweden, which had attempted to do so based on trumped-up accusations of "rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion", accusations that were eventually downgraded to "consensual sex without a condom" before being dropped completely by the Swedish government. Text messages by the women in question revealed they "did not want to file any charges against Assange but that the police were keen on getting a grip on him," with one writing that "it was the police who made up the charges". No charges were ever brought by the Swedish police against Assange, who cooperated whole-heartedly with the investigation wherever possible.
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USA

Flashback SOTT Focus: John F. Kennedy and the Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net
Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:00 UTC

Comment: This is the concluding article in a series of 12 articles written in 2006 commemorating (at the time) the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of JFK. This day, November 22nd, 2018, is the 55th anniversary of what can, in hindsight and in Truth, be called the Day America Died.

Anyone who has taken the time to study the facts about that fateful day in Dallas, TX, will already know that JFK was deliberately murdered by a cabal of psychopathic warmongers who were opposed to his plans for a more peaceful world. That same cabal is still in power today, and it has extended its reach across the globe.

You can find the rest of the JFK series here. You can also purchase a Kindle of the whole series on Amazon.

If you do nothing else, just take the time to watch the Sott.net/QFG produced version of 'Evidence of Revision', a three disc set that presents archive footage that will leave you in no doubt who killed JFK and why.


John F. Kennedy and the Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy

Image
As I mentioned in the previous chapter of the present series, I was 11 years old and in my 6th grade classroom when the news of John F. Kennedy's assassination was first broadcast. I was not ignorant of the idea that evil existed in the world, but I thought about it as something that was personal, local even, not some sort of global juggernaut stalking whole societies. John Kennedy's assassination was the event that changed all that.

Even though I was not able to fully comprehend it then, years later I was better able to articulate the raw, horrifying face of evil I had seen on that sunny November day in 1963. I didn't know then that Kennedy himself had already seen it and described it:
For we are opposed, around the world, by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy...
Well, of course, George W. Bush says the same thing, doesn't he? The difference is, Kennedy died for saying it, Bush didn't. That suggests that Kennedy had in mind the real conspiracy, and Bush either doesn't have a clue, or is busy directing attention away from it.
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Vader

SOTT Focus: Carb Wars: Latest News From the Front is That Bread Cures Dementia Now

Doug DiPasquale
Sott.net
Wed, 21 Nov 2018 20:40 UTC
fresh baked bread
Just the smell of freshly baked bread increases IQ by 10 points.
A quick survey of the latest headlines will show what appears to be an all-out war in the dietary advice world. On the one hand, the woefully misguided talk of a 'meat tax' is all over the headlines after a 'study' came out saying it will, surprise surprise, save lives. Yet the LA Times just published an article that's getting a lot of traction titled 'The case against carbohydrates gets stronger', similar to the title of Dr. David Ludwig's widely circulated article 'The case for a low-carb diet is stronger than ever'. The battle lines are being drawn, vegans versus carnivores, high carb versus low carb, Dr. Shawn Baker versus Dr. Neal Barnard. Or so it would seem.

While there's little doubt this is confusing the public to no end (as evidenced by the growing number of Youtube videos on the 'vegan ketogenic diet', a vain attempt to meet opposing dietary advocates in the middle), the argument really should be framed for what it is - the attempt of truth and science to overcome the push from monolithic government bodies and industry. No matter who wins the headline war, which is really a fixed game, the number of people out there cutting the carbs and getting healthier as a result, is making waves.

So it was little surprise to see another shot fired from the pro-carb camp: The Daily Mail published an article this week singing the praises of carbohydrates titled, 'How CARBS could be the secret to living longer: Diet low in protein and rich in bread, pasta and rice may protect against dementia'. This after publishing 'Veganism backlash begins! Forget gobbling up your greens these women swear an ALL-MEAT diet has made them Slim, sexy and more full of energy than ever' less than a week before. Apparently the Daily Mail, with their ridiculously long headlines and gratuitous use of all-caps, is just as confused as the rest of us.
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