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SOTT Focus: Brexit: A Political Farce Based on a Public Lie

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Wed, 21 Nov 2018 16:41 UTC
Brexit posters
Equally-deluded: opposing camps on Brexit
When a dramatic event or trauma occurs to a person that fundamentally changes their life or life course, friends and often psychologists will immediately look to what was happening in the person's life that may have provoked this major change. That's called looking for context. Over the past 2.5 years, I've listened to, read, and watched many pundits and politicians expound on the topic of Brexit, what it means and the reason it came about. Yet not once did I hear any of these 'experts' mention the most important aspect of 'Brexit': the context in which it came about.

The result of Brexit - supposedly a simple vote on whether the UK should leave the EU - has become the farce it is today for one simple reason: the call for the referendum and the vote itself had, essentially, nothing to do with the UK's membership of the EU. Instead, the referendum was called by British politicians as a direct result of British political maneuvering, with the incumbent (then and now) Conservative party attempting to consolidate its grip on power in the face of an increasingly popular 'far right' UK independence movement that was founded on anti-immigrant sentiment and a desire to leave the EU (primarily to control immigration). The vote itself by the British people hinged on that same issue: immigration, or more specifically, immigration to the UK from Muslim countries, understood as being facilitated (or mandated) by the EU.

But why was immigration a sufficiently hot topic in the UK to provoke such a political calamity?
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Hardhat

SOTT Focus: Why Drivers Are Leading a Protest Movement Across France

Feargus O'Sullivan
CityLab
Mon, 19 Nov 2018 21:23 UTC

Comment: Barely 18 months into his presidency, open rebellion has erupted in France. Now entering its fifth day, hundreds of thousands of people are protesting rising prices and taxes by donning the fluorescent yellow reflective vests all drivers are mandated to store in their vehicles at all times, giving this grassroots movement the name 'Gilets Jaunes' (yellow vests).

Protests occur regularly in France, and strikes of course - nobody does strikes quite like the French - but what stands out about this particular movement is that it's genuinely grassroots. No trade unions, no NGOs, no politicians, and no think-tanks were involved in promoting, leading or sponsoring it. It has no leadership and no spokesman. It doesn't even have a website...


gilets jaune protest france
France may have a tradition of boisterous protest, but this weekend's mass demonstrations against gas tax increases have still managed to take the country by surprise.

On Saturday and Sunday, at least 280,000 protesters took to the streets in urban, suburban, and rural communities across the country, burning cars, blockading highways and fuel depots, and engaging in battles with police and motorists as they demonstrated against planned rises in gas and diesel taxes. So far, over 400 people have been injured in the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement - so named because the protesters are wearing the high-viz vests that French drivers are obliged to carry in case of emergencies. On Saturday, one was even killed after being run over by a panicked driver. The movement shows no signs of letting up, however, with protests continuing Monday and more major protest days planned for later in the month.

Comment: Protesters attempted to reach the Elysée Palace - Macron's residence - on Saturday:


The first day, Saturday 17 November, saw the biggest turnouts so far. The whole country pretty much came to a standstill. Here's footage from just some of the protests in just one of France's 96 departments on Saturday:




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Attention

SOTT Focus: 17 pupils at a single British school are in the process of changing gender, teacher says most are autistic

Sanchez Manning
Daily Mail
Sun, 18 Nov 2018 01:44 UTC
trans kid
© ITVThe Mail on Sunday can reveal that 17 pupils at a single British school are in the process of changing gender. Pictured: Anna Friel and Callum Booth-Ford in the drama Butterfly.
An astonishing 17 pupils at a single British school are in the process of changing gender, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Most of the youngsters undergoing the transformation are autistic, according to a teacher there, who said vulnerable children with mental health problems were being 'tricked' into believing they are the wrong sex.

The whistleblower says few of the transgender children are suffering from gender dysphoria - the medical term for someone who feels they were born in the wrong body - but are just easily influenced, latching on to the mistaken belief they are the wrong sex as a way of coping with the problems caused by autism.

Comment: While the SJW crowd would like you to believe these children are just 'expressing who they really are', the reality is that these are vulnerable kids who are being manipulated for an agenda, taking life-changing steps that most will no doubt grow to regret. The fact that this is being done to children is what is truly horrific. There's a special place in hell reserved for people who manipulate children for an agenda in this way.

See also:

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SOTT Focus: NewsReal: California Wildfires, Climate Change, And The Impossible Brexit


Sott.net
Mon, 19 Nov 2018 15:00 UTC
newsreal california wildfires brexit
When Trump weighed in on the record-breaking California wildfire season last week, he was - as usual - roundly condemned in the media for 'insensitivity', 'stupidity' and 'ignorance'. But what if his comments about forest management and climate change were actually well-informed?

This week on NewsReal With Joe & Niall, your hosts discuss the raging California wildfires and the pretentious ideological beliefs that lead federal and state authorities to go way beyond their station by attempting (and repeatedly failing) to tackle local environmental problems via hare-brained measures intended to 'save the planet'.

Also discussed on this episode is the interminable 'Brexit' fiasco. This political wildfire flared again last week when May's govt announced that 'a Brexit deal' had been settled with the EU. 'Brexit' in name only, the deal effectively keeps the UK in the EU, which led to the mass resignation of govt ministers and the threat of an imminent leadership challenge.

Watch to learn why the UK cannot leave the EU...


Running Time: 01:27:46

Download: MP3

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Pirates

SOTT Focus: Blowback: An Inside Look at How US-Funded Fascists in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists

Max Blumenthal
Mint Press News
Thu, 15 Nov 2018 22:29 UTC
Not only are white supremacists from across the West flocking to Ukraine to learn from the combat experience of their fascist brothers-in-arms, they are doing so openly, under the nose of a shrugging law enforcement - chronicling their experiences on social media before they bring their lessons back home...
azov battalion
© Efrem Lukatsky | APVolunteers of the Azov Battalion carry portraits of members killed in the war conflict with separatists in the country’s east, at a rally marking Fatherland Defender Day in Kiev, Ukraine, Oct. 14, 2016.
Last month, an unsealed FBI indictment of four American white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement (RAM) declared that the defendants had trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia officially incorporated into the country's national guard. The training took place after the white supremacist gang participated in violent riots in Huntington Beach and Berkeley, California and Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

The indictment stated that the Azov Battalion "is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations."

After a wave of racist violence across America that culminated in the massacre of twelve Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the revelation that violent white supremacists have been traveling abroad for training and ideological indoctrination with a well-armed neo-Nazi militia should cause extreme alarm.


Comment: Indeed, though not quite in the way you might imagine. What this dynamic shows is that actual white supremacists should give extreme cause for alarm when they are being protected and funded by Western intelligence agencies for the purpose of making ALL nationalism seem evil...

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SOTT Focus: The Truth Perspective: 5 Easy Pieces: How the Big 5 Personality Traits Impact Who We Are, and Who We Can Become

Harrison Koehli and Corey Schink
Sott.net
Sat, 17 Nov 2018 17:00 UTC
man cliff landscape
Every single individual varies along a range of five personality traits. We don't know why, or how, only that we do. Agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness: these five traits, and the variations within them, capture the range of human personality, and they do it quite well. They capture differences between men and women, between liberals and conservatives, between emotionally unstable artists and hard-working manager types, and everyone in between.

Not only do the traits help us know ourselves a bit better - like what careers or environments are best suited to our personality and what aspects of our personality are most likely to bring us into conflict with others - they help us gain a better understand of just how different other people can be from us, and why. And they point out the aspects of our personality that might need some work: like when to be more assertive, harder-working, kinder, cautious, or adventurous.

Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss all this and more, with reference to Jordan Peterson's Big 5 personality test: Understand Myself.

Running Time: 01:17:45

Download: MP3

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Gold Seal

SOTT Focus: NYT Series About Decades-Long Moscow Plot to 'Tear West Apart' a Jewel of Psychological Projection


RT
Fri, 16 Nov 2018 17:56 UTC
media
© Reuters / Joshua Roberts
Russia has been scheming for decades to splinter the West with civilization-shattering fake news, claims a shocking three-part film series published by the New York Times. The series was filed under "op-ed" for a reason, however.

Russia's alleged "meddling" in the 2016 presidential election is the "culmination of Moscow's decades-long campaign to tear the West apart," according to the scary graphics-filled, spooky music-stuffed video series. The three-part report - safely labelled opinion/editorial - insists that America's internal political squabbles can be traced back to a "virus" conceived by "KGB spies"in the 1980s. Who knew that the Soviets had Twitter?

"Americans are using Russia's playbook against one another without the faintest clue," the NYT series warns. To back up their ironclad claims, the filmmakers interview a former Czechoslovak intelligence service officer, Ladislav Bittman, about all the terrible fake news that the KGB once spread - and purportedly continues to inspire. But how exactly did Bittman become privy to these juicy KGB scoops? The ex-spook never worked for the Soviet security service, and fled to the US in 1968. Just an opinion, basically.

RT's Murad Gazdiev takes a closer look at the sensational op-ed series - concluding that the evidence-free accusations might be an unfortunate case of psychological projection.


Comment: "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

LOL!

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Flashlight

SOTT Focus: No Surrender: The Paranoid English Fantasy Behind Brexit

Fintan O'Toole
The Guardian
Fri, 16 Nov 2018 22:07 UTC
In the dark imagination of English reactionaries, Britain is always a defeated nation - and the EU is the imaginary invader
bomber dreams
© Francesco Ciccolella / The Guardian
Before the narrative of Len Deighton's bestselling thriller SS-GB begins, there is a "reproduction" of an authentic-looking rubber-stamped document:
"Instrument of Surrender - English Text. Of all British armed forces in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland including all islands."
It is dated 18 February 1941. After ordering the cessation of all hostilities by British forces, it sets down further conditions, including
"the British Command to carry out at once, without argument or comment, all further orders that will be issued by the German Command on any subject. Disobedience of orders, or failure to comply with them, will be regarded as a breach of these surrender terms and will be dealt with by the German Command in accordance with the laws and usages of war."
Written amid the anxieties of Britain's early membership of the European Communities and published in 1978, Deighton's thriller sets up two ideas that will become important in the rhetoric of Brexit. Since there is no sense that Deighton has a conscious anti-EU agenda, the idea seems to arise from a deeper structure of feeling in England. One is the fear of the Englishman turning into the "new European", fitting himself into the structures of German domination. His central character is a harbinger of the "rootless cosmopolitan" who cannot be trusted to uphold English independence and English values, and who therefore functions as the enemy within, the quisling class of pro-Europeans. This is the treason of the elite, the puppet politicians and sleek mandarins who quickly accommodate themselves to the new regime.
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SOTT Focus: The Health & Wellness Show: The Importance of Vitamin B1: Thiamine


Sott.net
Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:00 UTC
thiamine
Today we interview Health and Wellness Show co-host Elliot about the deep dive he's done recently on the topic of vitamin B1: Thiamine. In the mainstream health paradigm, thiamine deficiency is a thing of the past. The manifestations of vitamin B1 deficiency are termed 'beriberi' and it was widespread in Japan in the 19th century when people had switched to polished rice (white rice) for aesthetic reasons, removing the bran from the rice that contained B vitamins, which lead to deficiency. By fortifying foods with vitamin B1, the problem was thought to be solved.

However, low grade thiamine deficiency may not lead to overt beriberi symptoms, and is a vastly under-recognized problem. According to the work of Dr Derrick Lonsdale and Chandler Marrs, in their book "Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition", thiamine deficiency is extremely common in a whole host of people who suffer from a wide variety of diseases - so many, in fact, that the deficiency is often referred to as "the great imitator". As a result, thiamine therapy has proven very effective in the authors 40 years of clinical work for a wide variety of conditions including cases of nervous system disorder, dysautonomias, insomnia, depression, schizophrenia, along with cardiovascular disease, excessive vomiting, gut issues, and many more.

Join us for this episode of the Health and Wellness Show, as Elliot tells us all about this important and vastly underrated nutrient.

And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment, where she shares important information about anemia in cats.

Running Time: 00:53:32

Download: MP3

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NPC

SOTT Focus: The Real Problem with Nationalism, Without the Virtue Signaling

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Thu, 15 Nov 2018 10:56 UTC
eastern orthodox church
Depending on your political bias, U.S. President Trump is either a black hole, or a radiant orange sun. Either way, you cannot escape his influence. Every tweet and stray comment is picked up, and picked apart, by the media. As Jon Stewart recently pointed out - with a degree of insight sorely lacking in the majority of his peers - the media just can't help but take his bait:
"What he's done well is appeal to their own narcissism, to their own ego," he said. "The journalists stand up and say: 'We are noble! We are honorable! How dare you, sir!' And they take it personally."

"Now he's changed the conversation to - not that his policies are silly or not working or any of this other things - it's all about the fight," Stewart said. "He's able to tune out everything else and get everyone else just focused on the fight. And he's gonna win that fight."
But it's not just his attacks on the media (who are just as keen to attack him). Trump manages to dominate the news cycle, and even create the news cycle, by getting them to focus on issues of no real substance, simply because Trump said it. He's a master of distraction by controversy - troll level 'POTUS'. Or maybe it's unintentional and the media personalities are just that obsessed with them. Either way, I increasingly feel like this guy:

As Joe Quinn discussed in his latest SOTT Focus, Globalism Vs Nationalism in Trump's America, Trump created yet another controversy in a two-year long string of nonstop controversies: he said he is a nationalist at the post-midterm-election White House press conference and during a rally in Houston. Naturally, people were irate, because nationalism is bad. Right? Well, as Joe wrote, "Words and their exact meanings matter", so let's take a closer look at the n-word in question.
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