The recent UN global warming conference under auspices of the deceptively-named International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded its meeting in South Korea discussing how to drastically limit global temperature rise. Mainstream media is predictably retailing various panic scenarios "predicting" catastrophic climate change because of man-made emissions of Greenhouse Gases, especially CO₂, if drastic changes in our lifestyle are not urgently undertaken. There is only one thing wrong with all that. It's based on fake science and corrupted climate modelers who have reaped by now billions in government research grants to buttress the arguments for radical change in our standard of living. We might casually ask "What's the point?" The answer is not positive.

The South Korea meeting of the UN IPCC discussed measures needed, according to their computer models, to limit global temperature rise to below 1.5 Centigrade above levels of the pre-industrial era. One of the panel members and authors of the latest IPCC Special Report on Global Warming, Drew Shindell, at Duke University told the press that to meet the arbitrary 1.5 degree target will require world CO₂ emissions to drop by a staggering 40% in the next 12 years. The IPCC calls for a draconian "zero net emissions" of CO₂ by 2050. That would mean complete ban on gas or diesel engines for cars and trucks, no coal power plants, transformation of the world agriculture to burning food as biofuels. Shindell modestly put it, "These are huge, huge shifts."

Have you ever been called a Russian bot or a "sock puppet?" I know I have. Of course, I just have to shrug it off and get back to my life. No sense in trying to focus on it, and feeding the trolls is always a bad idea but apparently, in light of the NPC (non-player character) meme becoming so widespread, Twitter has decided that this sort of "dehumanization" can actually lead to "world harm." Go figure, they didn't seem to have any problem when it was just folks like me being dehumanized, but now it's an issue so great it could literally cause the whole world grievous harm.

If you're not familiar with gaming culture, a bit of an explanation is in order. NPCs or "non-player characters" are the background in a game. They only have a set of pre-programmed responses to choose from and their activities are limited to pre-programmed sets of actions. An example from Existenz, one of my favorite films by David Cronenberg, occurs "in-game" when the game designer Allegra Gellar asks NPC Darcy Nader a question that he was not programmed to respond to. He immediately begins by introducing himself again and then gets stuck in a "game loop." At this point, the "players" have to give his name and offer the proper "input" before he can move the game forward.

I was overjoyed to see yet another article grace the pages of the Guardian this week, extolling the vital necessity that everyone switch to a plant-based diet in order to 'save the planet'. This is, by my count, the fourth such article to come out of the Guardian's pie-hole in the last few months (oops, I meant the fifth). They seem to have their hearts set on getting everyone to go along with the dramatic fiction that ruining your health by giving your body the least ideal food is going to appease the sky gods halt climate shift and save the globe. Apparently, sanctimoniously dining on rabbit-food has the magical ability to change the climate back to a more stable, 'cooler' state. Just ignore the fact that the science this claim is based on is beyond questionable; if the Guardian says it's true, who are we to argue? Drop that steak, son. We've got a planet to save.

This article focuses on another 'study' with a misguided perspective on how to save the world - looking at modern animal farming practices and the problems they cause, and offering the only possible solution: doing away with animal farming altogether (or to at least cut back significantly on animal farming by shifting the population to a more plant-based diet). As usual, it frames everything in black and white terms, ignoring the fact that switching to sustainable animal farming practices has a net beneficial effect on the environment with the added bonus of making the meat healthier.

Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared from the Saudi embassy in Istanbul 2 weeks ago and is presumed dead, is (or was) a Saudi journalist and author. His grandfather (of Turkish origin) married a Saudi woman and served as the personal physician to King Abdulaziz Al Saud, the founder of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He is the nephew of the late, high-profile Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, known for his part in the Iran-Contra scandal, and his cousin was Dodi Fayed, Princess Diana's paramour when the two were likely assassinated in a deliberate car crash in a Paris tunnel in 1997.

Khashoggi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation that he praised in his recent columns in The Washington Post, along with the 'moderate rebels' in Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood exists to rid the Muslim world of Western influence and its adherents aspire to instil the Quran and the Sunnah as the "sole reference point for ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community and state". The only difference between Muslim Brotherhood members and radical Islamic Wahhabists is that the former is willing to accept some form of democracy in their political system.

During the late 1980s and 1990s Khashoggi was employed by the Saudi intelligence services (and allegedly US forces) in Afghanistan. It is claimed that he was an advisor to the former head of Saudi intelligence Prince Turki Al Faisal, who resigned from that position just ten days before the 9/11 attacks. Khashoggi befriended Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and Sudan and supported his jihad against the Soviets in newspaper articles he wrote at the time. He interviewed bin Laden several times and met with him in Tora Bora, and Sudan in 1995. Khashoggi was, therefore, the only non-royal Saudi who knew of the royals' intimate dealings with al-Qaeda in the lead-up to the 9/11 terror attacks. But no one should think that Khashoggi was a mere disinterested journalist. Below is a picture of him (top left with RPG on shoulder) with the Afghani Mujahedin, in a newspaper article he wrote himself.

In a collective gasp heard 'round the world, the Western establishment media last week discovered that the Saudi regime is capable of doing evil stuff.

The 'brutal murder' of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey is bizarre on a number of levels, not least because everyone knows about it, yet it's not even confirmed that he's actually dead and not just missing.

US Congress appears to be going straight for the jugular, threatening sanctions against its - to this point, from its perspective - unblemished Middle Eastern ally. So 'sanctions', maybe, but cancelling the weapons sales which sustain the proxy war in Yemen? No way!

In addition to discussing the latest Saudi intrigue, this week's podcast explores the ongoing outbreak of Trump Anxiety Disorder across the West, but primarily in the USA. Joe Quinn elaborates on his idea that the real reason people hate Trump is that he is NOT a liar...


Running Time: 01:03:20

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As examples of egregious abuse of power and general immoral behavior in high places, how does Donald Trump's common or garden variety sexism (there's no evidence he's a racist - calling someone 'dumb' doesn't count) compare to the CIA funding, training arming and generally facilitating the existence of al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists? It's an important question that everyone should consider as a means to getting their priorities straight. It's also important to consider to achieve a more objective understanding of what has been happening since Trump was elected, and why he was elected.

Trump campaigned on an isolationist platform and he explicitly rejected globalism. That appealed to a majority of American people because it promised to 'put America first', but it sounded alarm bells in the all-powerful Washington political establishment that has long before embraced an expansionist ideology to ensure American global hegemony and 'exceptionalism'. These are the people that gave us the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, mass surveillance, officially sanctioned torture, and plots to destroy and subvert numerous other countries.

Whether anti-Trumpers like it or not, the fact is that their antipathy towards the current POTUS is not only irrational, it is not even really theirs. It is instead largely the result of manipulative tactics by members of the Washington establishment and the mainstream media who have very different (and inherently selfish) reasons to want to hamstring the Trump presidency.

What's it like to grow up as a child in post-9/11 America? Authoritarianism, school shootings, identity politics, technology and the sexualization of childhood are all on the rise while basic duties like working, doing homework, and generally assuming the responsibilities of an adult have fallen by the wayside. After years of programming the results are in - and they aren't pretty.

Is childhood being replaced by something much more sinister, or are we just witnessing the tragic results for one lost generation? We'll be discussing this and more today on the Truth Perspective.

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When a US warship narrowly avoided slamming into a Chinese naval vessel earlier this month in the disputed South China Sea, the incident could serve as a metaphor. The two economic giants seem to be on a collision course for war.

That collision course was ramped up last week when US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a barnstorming speech declaring China as global enemy number one. Speaking at the rightwing Hudson Institute in DC, Pence castigated China for "increased economic and military aggression", and warned: "We will not back down."

Pence did at one point say the US hopes to have a cooperative relationship with China, but the overall thrust of his remarks was stridently belligerent.

The New York Times headlined: "Pence's China Speech Seen as Portent of New Cold War."

There were even comparisons from some commentators to the infamous speech made by British leader Winston Churchill in 1946 when he declared an "Iron Curtain" with the Soviet Union, a speech which is seen as instigating the old Cold War between the West and Moscow that lasted for nearly five decades.

One of the main themes used to demonize Putin in the West are the incessant insinuations that he is corrupt and that his corruption enabled him to build up massive personal wealth. But while these allegations are invariably presented with zero evidence, we do have some evidence that Putin is in fact not corrupt (at least not in the way it is being implied in Western media - but this will be a topic for another discussion). I found the testimony from Sharon Tennison very interesting in this regard as well. Tennison is the founder and president of Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI) and had worked in Russia (and the USSR) for 30 years. In the course of her activities, she has had at least one personal encounter with Putin and had over the years came to know many other American officials and businessmen who had worked with him. According to Tennison, none of those officials "would describe [Putin] as 'brutal,' or 'thuggish,' or other slanderous adjectives and nouns that are repeatedly used in Western media."

Tennison first met Vladimir Putin in 1992 and described the experience in one of her blog articles:

"I met Putin years before he ever dreamed of being president of Russia, as did many of us working in St. Petersburg during the 1990s. ... For years I had been creating programs to open up relations between the two countries ... A new program possibility emerged in my head. Since I expected it might require a signature from the Marienskii City Hall, an appointment was made. My friend Volodya Shestakov and I showed up at a side door entrance to the Marienskii building. We found ourselves in a small, dull brown office, facing a rather trim nondescript man in a brown suit. He inquired about my reason for coming in. After scanning the proposal I provided he began asking intelligent questions. After each of my answers, he asked the next relevant question. I became aware that this interviewer was different from other Soviet bureaucrats who always seemed to fall into chummy conversations with foreigners with hopes of obtaining bribes in exchange for the Americans' requests... This bureaucrat was open, inquiring, and impersonal in demeanor.

After more than an hour of careful questions and answers, he quietly explained that he had tried hard to determine if the proposal was legal, then said that unfortunately at the time it was not. A few good words about the proposal were uttered. That was all. He simply and kindly showed us to the door. Out on the sidewalk, I said to my colleague, 'Volodya, this is the first time we have ever dealt with a Soviet bureaucrat who didn't ask us for a trip to the US or something valuable!' I remember looking at his business card in the sunlight - it read Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin."¹

At least in this 1992 encounter with Tennison Vladimir Putin seemed to fulfil his duties in a professional manner without seeking kickbacks or favors from Tennison, who was obviously well-accustomed to that exact behavior from other government bureaucrats.

Today we are joined live by veterinarian doctor Zoya Klebanova, host of the Health and Wellness Show's Pet Health Segment. We'll be discussing the important topic of the health of our furry family companions! How do you know when you should take your pet to the vet? What should you know before bringing a new pet home? What sorts of things around the house are actually dangerous for our fuzzy little friends, that we may not know about? If you have a specific breed of dog or cat, are there any conditions they're predisposed to and what can you do about it?

We'll talk about these topics and many more fun facts about our cuddly little creatures. Join us for a great discussion! And remember, if you have any questions for Zoya you can call in or type them in the chat!

Running Time: 01:32:14

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