SOTT Focus:


Eiffel Tower

SOTT Focus: La Grande Armée 2018? Macron Taunts Trump on Armistice Day Amid Eurotalk of Empire-building

Robert Bridge
RT
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 15:41 UTC
macron paris ww1
French President Macron rebuked the concept of 'nationalism' during Armistice Day celebrations marking the end of WWI. At the same time, his government was pondering the merits of empire and building an all-European army.

Donald Trump's trip to France got off to a bumpy start, and the world is still experiencing the turbulence today. Ahead of Trump's arrival in Paris for the celebrations, Macron dropped a bombshell, speaking out on behalf of an all-European military force, which would be totally free of US patronage.

"We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America," he told French radio.

Although Trump and Macron made nice for the cameras in Paris, the US leader referred to Macron's remarks as "very insulting."
Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron 11/10/18
© Reuters / Christophe Petit TessonDonald Trump and Emmanuel Macron at Elysee presidential palace, Paris, France, November 10, 2018 Reuters / Christophe Petit Tesson

Comment: The current leadership in all western EU countries (save Italy, perhaps) doesn't have the cojones to walk the walk:

Europe bows to Trump: Not a single member-state takes up EU offer to form alternative payment channel for bypassing Iran sanctions

Read More...
Eye 1

SOTT Focus: The Crucifixion of Julian Assange

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Wed, 14 Nov 2018 19:59 UTC
Julian assange
© Mr. Fish/TruthdigJulian Assange
Julian Assange's sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to intercede on behalf of Assange, an Australian citizen, even though the new government in Ecuador, led by Lenín Moreno - who calls Assange an "inherited problem" and an impediment to better relations with Washington - is making the WikiLeaks founder's life in the embassy unbearable. Almost daily, the embassy is imposing harsher conditions for Assange, including making him pay his medical bills, imposing arcane rules about how he must care for his cat and demanding that he perform a variety of demeaning housekeeping chores.

Comment: How many lies and crimes would have gone unexposed without the dedication of the Wikileaks team? Julian Assange has performed more service in the cause of press freedom than any individual on record.

A political prisoner in the heart of the so-called democratic West, he is the journalist that Western media OUGHT to be focusing on before lecturing other countries about freedom of speech and freedom of the press... Assange held up a mirror to the West, and the US in particular, and for that the Deep Staters running this 'democratic' freak-show hate him...

Read More...
Fire

SOTT Focus: Gaza Burns Hotter Than Hollywood But There's Nobody to Put The Fires Out

George Galloway
RT
Tue, 13 Nov 2018 21:49 UTC
gaza airstrikes
© AFP / Mahmud HamsA ball of fire above the building housing the Hamas-run television station al-Aqsa TV in the Gaza Strip during an Israeli air strike, November 12, 2018
The world is fixated by the forest fires in Hollywood burning down stars' mansions. With supreme irony some of them belong to those who helped raise millions of dollars for the Israeli Army which is now burning the hovels of Gaza.

The Hollywood warriors have insurance of course, and other homes too, sometimes many of them. The hovel-dwellers of Gaza have neither.

The brave firefighters of California are well-equipped and have the wind of hope of millions of well-wishers at their backs. There are no firefighters in Gaza.

hollywood celebrities IDF
© Friends of Israel Defence Forces
Read More...
Cloud Precipitation

SOTT Focus: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - October 2018: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs


Sott.net
Tue, 13 Nov 2018 12:01 UTC
At the risk of sounding repetitive, October this year was, yet again, a month of major and destructive amounts of precipitation across the globe. At this point, the intensity and frequency of rainfall (often including hail) in so many places is getting a little worrying. From Asia to the Americas to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, towns, cities and villages in all these areas experienced massive downpours in just a few hours that destroyed property and took lives.
frio
Winter also arrived early this month in many places, with the European Alps, the Canadian and US Rockies (including further south in Arizona), China, South Korea, Pakistan and India all receiving unusually large amounts of the white stuff. As usual, there were meteorites/fireballs aplenty and, of course, the increasingly common sinkholes made their appearance, in one instance killing two people. For residents of Florida, October was marked by the arrival of Hurricane Michael with 155mph (250kmph) winds while Cyclone Titli hit the Indian coast leaving 17 people dead and 300,000 evacuated. All in all, it was yet another month of 'climate' madness on the big blue marble - matched only, you might say, by the political madness that appears to have taken hold of the minds of many people.

Watch our summary below:


Comment:
Check out the other recent releases:


Read More...
SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: NewsReal: US Midterm Elections 'Blue Wave' - Yet Another Nothing-Burger


Sott.net
Sun, 11 Nov 2018 17:00 UTC
newsreal us midterm elctions
Imagine our surprise when we learned that the US Midterm Elections didn't generate the 'blue wave' the Democrats wished for, despite the relatively high turnout and record volumes of cash spent on campaigning.

And yet, the elites' #Resistance against Donald Trump continues!

This week on NewsReal with Joe & Niall, your hosts will discuss the fallout from the Midterms, the WW1 centenary event in Paris, the mass shooting and wildfires in California, and how it's all connected to the 'great ideological war' of our time (for the hearts and minds of people who live by fundamentally different moral codes)...


Running Time: 01:24:32

Download: MP3

Read More...
MIB

SOTT Focus: We want to believe: 'Russian hacking' memo shows US intel pinning leaks to Kremlin was an exercise in wishful thinking

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:56 UTC
mulder scully X-files
© Getty Images / FOX / ContributorIf you ever thought the endless search for “Russian hackers” sounded very X-Files, that's because both used variations of the motto “I want to believe.”
A newly-out memo containing the Obama admin's talking points about "Russian hacking" in the 2016 election reveals how US spy agencies attributed email leaks to Kremlin by saying it's "consistent" with what they think Russia does.

The seven-page document was contained within the 49 pages published on Friday by BuzzFeed, which obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in late October. At the root of it is a November 29 letter by several Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asking then-President Barack Obama to declassify documents concerning "Russian Active Measures."

Comment: Very important point in that last paragraph. It wasn't the supposedly hacked and leaked DNC emails that "delegitimized" the Trump presidency, but the Washington establishment that accused Russia of hacking and leaking the emails that led to the smearing of Trump as a 'Russian agent'. It can logically be assumed that, in claiming that Russia was behind the leaked emails, it was the INTENT of the Washington establishment to delegitimize the Trump presidency.

Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Globalism Vs Nationalism in Trump's America

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 14:00 UTC
trump globalists media
Billed as a 'referendum on Trump's presidency', the US Midterm Elections drew an unusually high number of Americans to the polls yesterday. The minor loss, from Trump's perspective, of majority Republican control of the lower House of Representatives, suggests, if anything, the opposite of what the media and establishment want you to believe it means.

An important clue to why the American media has declared permanent open season on this man transpired during a sometimes heated post-elections press conference at the White House yesterday. First, CNN's obnoxious Jim Acosta insisted on bringing up the patently absurd allegations of 'Russia collusion' and refused to shut up and sit down. Soon after, PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor joined her colleagues in asking Trump another loaded question, this time on the 'white nationalism' canard:

Alcindor: On the campaign trail you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists...

Trump: I don't know why you'd say this. It's such a racist question.

Alcindor: There are some people who say that now the Republican Party is seen as supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric. What do you make of that?

Trump: Why do I have among the highest poll numbers with African Americans? That's such a racist question. I love our country. You have nationalists, and you have globalists. I also love the world, and I don't mind helping the world, but we have to straighten out our country first. We have a lot of problems...
Read More...
SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: The Truth Perspective: Insight, Or Why It's Not Just Your Boss Who Lacks Self-Awareness

Harrison Koehli, Elan Martin, Corey Schink, Adam Daniels
Sott.net
Sat, 10 Nov 2018 17:00 UTC
insight
If you're like almost everyone else, you think you're special: smarter than average, kinder than average, more attractive, a better driver than most, ahead of the curve in your profession, and self-aware too. But chances are you're wrong. The vast majority of people think they're self-aware: they think they know themselves and how they appear to others. But the vast majority are wrong: self-awareness is a relatively rare skill. A small minority seem born with it, a slightly larger minority have learned it. But luckily, despite your likely lack of self-awareness, you too can learn it. It'll just take some effort - and some intense discomfort.

This is the subject of Tasha Eurich's recent book, Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, And Why The Answers Matter More Than We Think. Today on the Truth Perspective we discuss Eurich's book, the insights she shares, and some of the tools that are proven to work to help us raise our self-awareness, and thus help us succeed in our jobs and relationships.

Running Time: 01:32:15

Download: MP3

Read More...
Bullseye

SOTT Focus: Ukraine in 2018 is a Dystopia Cooked up by Western Imperialists: Human Rights Nowhere, Thuggery and Corruption Everywhere

John Wight
RT
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 14:24 UTC
ukraine nazis
© Global Look Press / Sergii KharchenkoSupporters and members of different far right nationalistic movements and parties at an annual torch march, Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan.1, 2018
The democratic revolution that ensued in Ukraine in 2014 was in fact a revolution against democracy, unleashing the dogs of thuggery and gangsterism.

Someone who made the mistake of falling foul of those with a vested interest in the corruption that is a hallmark of today's Ukraine was Katerina Gandzyuk. The anti-police corruption activist was murdered in an acid attack in Kherson, southern Ukraine. Before succumbing to her injuries, Gandzyuk alleged that "corrupt" high ranking police officers might have been behind the attack, though as yet no one has been prosecuted in connection with it. Prominent members of the far-right group Right Sector are suspected however, begging the question of where the far-right ends and the police begin?

The treatment of Russian journalist Kirill Vyshinsky sheds even more light on Ukraine's failed experiment in pro-Western democracy. The head of the Russian RIA Novosti news bureau in Ukraine, Vyshinsky was arrested in May on treason charges by Ukrainian authorities and has been held in detention ever since. Even in the face of a call for the journalist's release by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a Ukrainian court has ruled that Vyshinsky's detention be extended until the end of December.
Read More...
Evil Rays

SOTT Focus: Western Lie Factories: 'Think-Tanks' Are Among The West's Top Actors in The Media Disinformation Crisis

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Fri, 09 Nov 2018 13:45 UTC
think tank
Most consumers are unaware off the mainstream media's dirty little secret. Think tanks are increasingly taking advantage of tight news budgets to influence the press agenda in favour of their sponsors.

Decades ago, these outfits generally operated as policy advisories. Although, some were comfortably enumerated 'retirement homes' for distinguished public servants or intellectuals. However, in modern times, they have become indistinguishable from lobbying firms. With the budgets to match.

On the Russia (and broader Eastern European) beat, think tank influence is becoming increasingly dangerous and malign. And it's leading to a crisis in journalistic standards which nobody wants to acknowledge.

Two cases this week highlight the malaise.

Right now, Hungary and Ukraine are embroiled in a standoff regarding the rights of ethnic Hungarians in the latter country. The disagreement is entirely local, with roots in the 20th century carving-up of Budapest's territory after it found itself on the losing side in both World Wars. As a result, lands were dispersed into other nations - former Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.

Comment: See also: The Screens: How the PTB tell us what to believe

Read More...