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SOTT Focus: Joe Quinn on PressTV: Iran Summons French Ambassador Over MEK 'Govt-in-Waiting' Based in Paris
© REUTERS / Andres Martinez Casares
One wouldn't be able to discern this iniquitous reality from mainstream Western news reporting, however. Alan MacLeod, an academic specializing in media theory and analysis - and member of Glasgow University's respected Media Group - set out to discover why.
As the result of this, the people from one of the most stalwart Western powers are getting a completely different and first-hand, view of Russia.
A news piece in the Guardian, entitled "Message to the English: come to Russia and feel the love" blew the lid off the seal that the British propagandists thought they had placed on the great country to their east, and it was done simply and in the most direct way possible, by portraying the experience of the English tourists who are in Russia en masse now for the tournament. Tom Rosenthal writes:
This. World. Cup. Is. Good. Having been lucky enough to be at Nizhny Novgorod for England 6 Panama 1 (stick that in your hats), St Petersburg for Argentina 2 Nigeria 1 (Messi's foot of God) and Kaliningrad for Belgium against England (the game was literally pointless), I get to write in The Guardian to say my personal experience is that Russia is absolutely killing this World Cup, which is a vast improvement on spies in Zizzi*. The organisation of this tournament has been fantastic and you'll struggle to find anyone who'll say otherwise, which is not because they're a double-agent or a Twitter bot, but because it's true.
Comment: Reports like the above are precisely the reason the UK establishment tried so hard to discourage UK citizens from traveling to Russia. Lies can only persist in a vacuum of access to reality, which is what the World Cup experience brings. But it looks like the dose of reality was too much, because right on time, another couple in Britain has been novichocked into the news: Skripal Lie Redux: Two More People "Poisoned" Near Porton Down
The reality creators are simply livid that Russia is getting deservedly good press, that ordinary people are getting a taste of the real Russia and seeing for themselves that it is not the totalitarian evil empire the reality creators pretend it is.
© Twitter / @StrategicNews1
Comment: As we previously pointed out, all that hoopla about Russia 'secretly doing Israel's bidding in Syria' is complete bunk: the Syrian Army is clearing out ISIS et al from the southwestern region next to the Golan Heights - Israeli airstrikes against 'Iranian' targets be damned...
After only two weeks since the beginning of the military operation, jihadists and militants in most of eastern rural Daraa in south Syria have either surrendered or were overwhelmed, and over 70 villages they occupied were liberated by the Syrian Army. Meanwhile, Israel has reduced its requests or conditions pronounced in the last two weeks: from launching threats against the approach of the Syrian Army towards the South, to menaces if Damascus pushes forces beyond the 1974 demarcation line and the disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel. This clearly means all players (the US, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) have dropped the jihadists and militants they were training and are turning their back on them: they are now on their own.
For over seven years, Israel has invested intelligence, finance, military and medical supplies in these jihadists and their allies. On many occasions, Israel has said it prefers the "Islamic State" to Iranian forces on the borders. Many times, Israel showed images of jihadists - including those fighting under the flag of al-Qaeda - in Israeli hospitals, recovering from wounds inflicted during their clashes with the forces of Damascus. Today, it is clear that Israel's intentions have been defeated when it can announce that for the Syrian army to cross the 1974 disengagement line it means crossing red lines. Israel is crying in the wilderness because the Syrian army has the intention and means to defeat all jihadists and militants who received supplies from foreign countries. It has never crossed Syria's mind to start a new war with Israel before the Syrian territory (in the north) is liberated.
Comment: And it's highly unlikely they'll start one once the north is liberated (though, God knows, they'd be justified in doing so).
Comment: From a strategic point of view, it certainly seems like Israel is losing the war on Syria. It is losing on many fronts, actually:
Why Israel's Expansionist and Ethnic-Cleansing Ambitions Will Fail
That doesn't necessarily mean its days of causing widespread suffering in the region are over, of course.
Meanwhile, here's a video of the Israeli/American/European weapons caches the Syrian Army found in ISIS hands in southwestern Syria in recent days.
The sheer volume is freaking ridiculous...
Just as the World Cup had forced the British media to grudgingly acknowledge the obvious truth that Russia is an extremely interesting country inhabited, like everywhere else, by mostly pleasant and attractive people, we have a screaming reprise of the "Salisbury incident" dominating the British media. Two people have been taken ill in Amesbury from an unknown substance, which might yet be a contaminated recreational drug, but could conceivably be from contact with the substance allegedly used on the Skripals, presumably some of which was somewhere indoors all this time as we were told it could be washed away and neutralised by water.
Amesbury is not Salisbury - it is 10 miles away. Interestingly enough Porton Down is between Amesbury and Salisbury. Just three miles away from Muggleton Road, Amesbury. The news reports are not mentioning that much.
Amesbury is not Salisbury - it is 10 miles away. Interestingly enough Porton Down is between Amesbury and Salisbury. Just three miles away from Muggleton Road, Amesbury. The news reports are not mentioning that much.
Comment: What was earlier today an "unknown substance" is now, officially, novichok, "the same nerve agent that contaminated Yulia and Sergey Skripal", in the words of Head of Counter Terrorism Neil Basu, who "received test results from Porton Down" this evening. The couple were allegedly found on Saturday, unconscious at a property on Muggleton Road, but there were no media reports or statements until today, four days later. Just as with the Skripals, the couple - Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess - was initially thought to have been having a bad drug reaction:
The substance was initially believed to be heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs, but police say they "are keeping an open mind" on what led to the incident. Further testing and an investigation are ongoing.Not likely. How would they know?
Police cordoned off and increased their presence in the areas in and around Amesbury and Salisbury, and the places the two frequently visited before they fell ill, as a precautionary measure. Meanwhile, Public Health England (PHE) said that a "significant health risk" to the wider public is not likely. There is also no further information on any potential dangers at this point.
The incident happened 12km from Salisbury, but a similar distance from Porton Down. Counter-terrorism police were brought in to assist, though just this morning UK police said they weren't sure if a crime had been committed:
On Saturday, June 30, Paramedics were called to an address in Muggleton Road, Amesbury in the morning after a woman collapsed at the property. They returned to the same location in the evening receiving reports that a man was unwell.Rowley was reportedly a registered heroin addict.
It will be interesting to see how the Brits spin this. Will they really risk worldwide ridicule by trying to blame Russia? But if they don't, how will they explain that they very same substance, which according to them only could have been used by Russia, wasn't used by them in this "attack"?
Police have yet to determine if there is any connection between the March poisoning and the incident in Amesbury, Basu said, noting that "the possibility that these two investigations might be linked is clearly a line of enquiry for us."For what appears to be the only eyewitness account so far, see the statements of Sam Hobson, a "friend of the couple", included in Moon of Alabama's latest piece:
It is not known if the substance that the British pair was exposed to "was from the same batch" that the Skripals were allegedly poisoned with, Basu stressed.
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid has announced he will preside over a meeting of the government's emergency committee on Thursday. He praised the "tireless professionalism" of Salisbury Hospital staff and said the new incident "follows the reckless and barbaric attack which took place in Salisbury." Javid asked that the police be "given space"to establish the circumstances of the new incident.
He described how on Saturday morning Sturgess fell ill and was taken to hospital and how later that morning Rowley also became sick. He said both were in hospital in isolation and he was receiving regular calls from the authorities to check he was well. "They thought it was drugs at first. They now think it's a nerve agent," he claimed.Witnesses say that people in protective suits were seen on Saturday evening: ...
...
Hobson visited Rowley's home in Muggleston Road on Saturday morning. Sturgess, who lives in Salisbury, had spent the night there. "I saw lots of ambulances there and [Sturgess] got taken out on a stretcher. She needed to be helped with her breathing," Hobson said. Rowley came out in tears. "They said she needed to have a brain scan."
After she was taken to hospital Hobson and Rowley went to Boots in Amesbury. Later they went to a hog roast at the local baptist church.
...
Hobson said: "We went back to his place after the hog roast. We were going up to the hospital. Then he started sweating. His T-shirt was soaking wet. He got up and started rocking against the wall. His eyes were wide open and red, his pupils were like pinpricks. He began garbling incoherently and I could tell he was hallucinating. He was making weird noises and acting like a zombie. I phoned an ambulance. At first they thought it was drugs but ... they know now it isn't drugs."
...
Some more details that might be of interest:It has emerged Ms Sturgess lives in a homeless shelter close to the Zizzi's restaurant in Salisbury where Russian spy Sergei Skirpal and his daughter Yulia were targeted four months ago.The police early on lied to the people living near the place where the incidents happened. It first pretended the issue was a gas leak. Two days ago it still told local media that this was a case of contaminated drugs. But its actions showed that something else was going on.
...
Sam Hobson, 29, said: 'Charlie was dribbling and was rocking backwards and forwards. He was in another world, he was hallucinating.
'He wasn't high or anything. He was stone cold sober. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. I called the ambulance and they took him away.'
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast" - Alice in Wonderland.
© Hannah Mckay / Reuters
Let me start with the latest: the taxpayer-funded purchase for more than one million pounds of the homes in Salisbury of the British spy Sergei Skripal and the police officer Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. This purchase is explained as necessary on security grounds and - some suspect - may be followed by the destruction of both houses and all the evidence therein.
This is difficult to explain in the absence of a state purchase of the Zizi's Pizza Restaurant where Skripal and his daughter Yulia ate what could have very well ended up being their last meal, and where they spent at least as much time as DS Bailey could have been in touch with the pair. Ditto the pub the Skripals visited before repairing for lunch. And anywhere else they went after leaving their door handle on which was smeared in gel form the strangely innocuous Novichok(ish) which killed none of the people who ingested it.
Comment: Nah. Why would the Tories crack down on criminal enterprises in London? London (and the Tories!) would be out of business!
More likely is that the 'Secret Team' was behind this (see Litvinenko and Berezovsky for past form) - which of course doesn't preclude using Mafia to help with the dirty work.
Hersh, of course, could have been implying 'Russian Mafia' in quotes, i.e. Israeli Mossad, but if he was suggesting gangsters and not deep state actors, then he's blowing smoke.
Whoever did this had major behind-the-scenes reach.
Salisbury isn't just any old place: it's like the Mecca, Jerusalem and Constantinople of chemical weapons all rolled into one. Chemical warfare was founded there during WW1; all of the UK's major chemical warfare companies are based there; CS gas - today used by every government on Earth for 'non-lethal' population control - was invented there; all British military forces conduct war drills there; and the UK's specialist chemical weapons division was conducting a drill there at the very time this incident happened.
That's not something a couple of dual-identity schlemiels from Moscow (even billionaire ones) can pull off. That's pinnacle-of-power stuff...
In these depressing times marked by lies, fear and nihilism, I would like to brighten your mood by sharing a heart-warming story; a real life event that is better than a fairy-tale and should restore your faith in humanity and our burgeoning postmodern society.
A Modern Fairy Tale
What happened? In a nutshell, a heroic individual saved a 4-year-old boy from a deadly fall.
On Saturday, May 26th 2018, at 8:00 p.m. in Paris' 18th district, the boy was left alone by his white French father who was busy playing 'Pokemon Go'. The boy went to the balcony and fell from the 6th floor over the handrail.
During the fall, the vigorous young boy managed somehow to grab the 4th floor handrail as he hurtled toward the ground. Hanging there precariously, death seemed just a few moments away.
Fortunately, Mamoudou Gassama, a migrant from Mali, was in the right place at the right time. He saw the distressed boy and swiftly climbed 4 floors of the building exterior, pulled the boy up over the handrail and safely dropped him onto the balcony while a crowd below cheered and clapped.
Here is the video, made by an eyewitness:
Less than 24 hours after the heroic rescue, French President Macron received Gassama at the presidential palace. The latter was immediately given French citizenship and a job in a firefighter's squad.
Then Gassama was received at Paris town hall and given its highest distinction: the vermeil medal of Paris. Gassama's triumph went international, and a few days later the hero received a BET award in Los Angeles.
So, there you have it, all the ingredients of a good tale: Gassama, the hero from an oppressed minority, the powerless innocent victim, the dramatic tension, a literal cliffhanger, and the happy ending. Frankly, it was as good as a scene directly extracted from a Spiderman movie.
But like in every fairy tale or superhero movie, there's always a villain. In this case, the villain appeared four days after the heroic rescue, and goes by the name of André Bercoff.
A Modern Fairy Tale
What happened? In a nutshell, a heroic individual saved a 4-year-old boy from a deadly fall.
Gassama climbing up to save the boy
During the fall, the vigorous young boy managed somehow to grab the 4th floor handrail as he hurtled toward the ground. Hanging there precariously, death seemed just a few moments away.
Fortunately, Mamoudou Gassama, a migrant from Mali, was in the right place at the right time. He saw the distressed boy and swiftly climbed 4 floors of the building exterior, pulled the boy up over the handrail and safely dropped him onto the balcony while a crowd below cheered and clapped.
Here is the video, made by an eyewitness:
Less than 24 hours after the heroic rescue, French President Macron received Gassama at the presidential palace. The latter was immediately given French citizenship and a job in a firefighter's squad.
Macron receiving Gassama at the presidential palace
So, there you have it, all the ingredients of a good tale: Gassama, the hero from an oppressed minority, the powerless innocent victim, the dramatic tension, a literal cliffhanger, and the happy ending. Frankly, it was as good as a scene directly extracted from a Spiderman movie.
But like in every fairy tale or superhero movie, there's always a villain. In this case, the villain appeared four days after the heroic rescue, and goes by the name of André Bercoff.
The direct result of NATO's destruction of Libya.
Yet NATO is a demonstrably useless institution. Its largest ever active military deployment, for 12 years in Afghanistan, resulted in military defeat throughout 80% of the country, the installation of a pocket regime whose scrip does not run further than you can throw the scrip, and a vast outflow of heroin to finance the criminal underworld throughout NATO countries.
In invading Afghanistan and boosting the heroin warlords, NATO countries destabilised themselves.
SOTT Focus: Russian TV report: Propaganda matrix obliterated as foreign visitors discover real Russia
Israeli and Iranian fans hang out together on Red Square during the 2018 Football World Cup
Comment: THIS is why they tried to take the tournament off Russia. This is why they tried to get it cancelled, moved, whatever. This is why they conducted black ops like the Skripal Affair and non-stop fake news about how god-awful Russia and Russians are.
They dreaded what would happen when 2 million foreigners actually visited the place - including around 80,000 Americans - and had a grand old time.
And now Fake News has come crashing head-long into Reality.
We may not be there yet, but 2018 is playing out as the year 'the left' (in the US anyway) became completely unhinged. Join Joe and Niall tomorrow Sunday 1st July for a run-down of This Week in Crazy...
Show starts: 18:00 Central European / 12:00 US Eastern
Running Time: 01:26:29
Download: MP3
Comment: And, unfortunately still the case, 'Western sources' remain the overwhelmingly dominant narrative-writers globally. Even if, for example, you're reading a Malaysian New Straits Times piece on Venezuela, chances are high that you're actually reading a slightly modified script written in London or New York.