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SOTT Focus: Why the Deep State Hates Putin

cold war nuke hysteria
Russophobia in America today is as intense as it was at the height of Cold War when terrified school kids had "Duck and Cover" drills and the public was obsessed with bomb shelters. However, all the drama hides the real conflict: geopolitical power struggle for world domination, which involves hundreds of trillions of dollars, massive egos of Machiavellian elites, and nations driven by memory of the past and visions of the future.

Here's the big picture: it's a geopolitical battle of USA + EU versus Russia + China. The US and EU are governed by the same banking and military-industrial overlords, while Russia and China - two independent countries - have made an alliance out of necessity. Why? If Russia falls, China will be the next.

Get the bear, you get the dragon, and thus you get the world.

But here is the kicker: the globalists did trap the bear in 1991 when the USSR collapsed. However, rather than befriending the bear, they caged it and then starved, tortured and humiliated it for the next eight years. That's when the bear tore down the cage and fought back.

Cowboy Hat

SOTT Focus: Is US 'Mission Against ISIS' Really About Partitioning Syria?

Syrian Democratic Forces
© Rodi Said / ReutersUS-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters
Announcing the start of military operations against the remaining strongholds of Islamic State, the US State Department included some pointed language, hinting at de facto partition of Syria, analysts tell RT.

"The days of ISIS controlling territory and terrorizing the people of Syria are coming to an end," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Tuesday.The operations will be conducted by the US-led coalition and local partners, including the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces.

The US will also work with Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon to "secure their borders" from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Nauert said. This is intriguing, because the only remaining IS presence is near the Iraqi border, with a pocket south of Damascus currently being cleared out by Syrian government forces.

Nauert also said the US will ensure there is a "strong and lasting footprint" in Syria so that IS cannot return and the liberated populations "are not exploited by the Assad regime or its Iranian supporters."

Comment: It speaks volumes that, as things currently stand, US forces are geographically situated BETWEEN Syrian and Russian forces and the remaining ISIS pockets on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Are they there, in fact, to protect what's left of the 'Islamic State'?


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SOTT Focus: Iran Lied? Netanyahu Cries Wolf AGAIN as Trump Mulls Scrapping JCPOA

iran lied Benjamin Netanyahu
© AMIR COHEN/ REUTERSIsraeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, Israel April 30, 2018.
Every year or so Benjamin Netanyahu treats the entire globe to cartoonish nightmares of a 'nuclear Iran,' exhorting us all to do something 'before it's too late!' Just like with the 'global warming' myth, there's the exhortation that, if we just did something, we could all be saved. And, just like the global warming myth, we are never told 'it's too late' because then the myth loses its political usefulness.

In the latest edition that will no doubt dominate headlines for days, Netanyahu, utilizing a 'professional' PowerPoint presentation, provides what he calls incontrovertible proof that Iran had a nuclear weapons program and is still secretly pursuing nuclear weapons. He sums it up as follows:

No Entry

SOTT Focus: Look Where They Tell You Not to Look

At the very beginning of the of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by D(SMA) notice any media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian. Gordon Corera, "BBC Security Correspondent", did not name the source who told him to say this, but helpfully illustrated his tweet with a nice picture of MI6 Headquarters.

Gordon Corera tweet
MI6's most important media conduit (after Frank Gardner) is Luke Harding of the Guardian.
luke harding tweet
A number of people replied to Harding's tweet to point out that this was demonstrably untrue, and Pablo Miller had listed his employment by Orbis Business Intelligence on his Linkedin profile. That profile had just been deleted, but a google search for "Pablo Miller" plus "Orbis Business Intelligence", without Linkedin as a search term, brought up Miller's Linkedin profile as the first result (although there are twelve other Pablo Millers on Linkedin and the search brought up none of them). Plus a 2017 forum discussed Pablo Miller's Orbis connection and it both cited and linked to his Linkedin entry.

2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Netanyahu's Anti-Iran PowerPoint Moment as Trump Wavers and Europe Turns its Back

Netanyahu Amad Iran
'Right there, that's an Iranian nuke aimed at Israel'
Netanyahu had his best Microsoft OfficeTM people put together a nice 'Iran is EVIL' PowerPoint presentation, which he then launched at the ever-receptive Western media, and in particular at Trump, who will decide before May 12th whether or not to back out of the 2015 Iran deal. This is Bibi's attempt to influence Trump's decision.

Not one word of it should be believed of course.


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SOTT Focus: Flashback 2005: Watch CNN's Christiane Amanpour Tell Syria's Assad 'US is Coming For You'

cnn interview assad
CNN's Christiane Amanpour 'interviews' Bashar al-Assad in 2005
In late 2005 CNN's Christiane Amanpour interviewed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad ahead of the publication of a UN report on an investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minster of Lebanon, on Valentine's Day that year. Syria's leader was at the time effectively tried and condemned in a trial-by-media as having ordered Hariri's assassination, though there is to this day no conclusive evidence proving either Syrian or Lebanese government links with the massive bomb attack in Beirut that killed Hariri and 22 other people. In fact, the evidence strongly points to an Israeli hand in the murder.

Given that Hariri's death triggered a popular uprising known as the 'Cedar Revolution', which overthrew the pro-Syrian government in Beirut and led to Syrian troops being forced out of Lebanon after decades of peacekeeping since the Lebanese civil war, it's difficult to see what possible motivation the Syrian government may have had for assassinating Hariri - though one can certainly see how certain other countries in the region may have benefited.

Having grilled Assad on his alleged involvement in that macabre deed, Amanpour went on to tell her interviewee, to his face, that the US government was 'actively seeking' to depose him by force:
"Mr President, the rhetoric of regime change is headed towards you from the United States. They are actively looking for a new Syrian leader. They are granting visas and visits to Syrian opposition politicians. They are talking about isolating you diplomatically and perhaps a coup d'รฉtat or your regime crumbling."

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SOTT Focus: The Two Tweets That Destroyed Democracy: House Report on 'Russian Meddling' Is Laughable

rt logos
© Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters
Though the House Intelligence Committee report exonerated President Donald Trump of 'collusion' with Russia, it still accused Moscow, and RT specifically, of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

The report released on Friday says the committee "found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government," but it accepted the US intelligence community's claims from the January 2017 report that said Russia used 'active measures' to meddle in the elections.

How did that happen? That's classified. Much of Chapter two, suggestively titled 'Russia attacks the United States,'was entirely redacted at the request of the US intelligence community, according to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas). The few tidbits that the public was allowed to see defined spear phishing and credential harvesting and admitted that "attribution is a bear."

The report then goes full tinfoil hat, claiming that WikiLeaks is a Russian intelligence outlet and accusing RT of serving some dark agenda of the Kremlin. According to the US spy community, RT produces content which appeals to "skeptics of both the mainstream media and the establishment." Points for honesty on that, Langley, that is literally what "Question More" means.

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SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Western Order Break-Up? New Middle East? New Korea?

Macron Trump hold hands
© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque
Last week French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel visited Trump. In contrast to Macron and Trump's 3 day 'love in', Merkel spent a mere 3 hours with the POTUS, but both European leaders had the same agenda: preventing Trump from starting a 'trade war' with the EU and backing out of the 'Iran deal'. Why does Trump think the 'Iran deal' is "bad" anyway?

Reading between the lines of comments by both Macron and Merkel, it is clear that Trump's protectionist and isolationist bent is deeply concerning to the stewards of the 'Western order' on both sides of the Atlantic. After all, who will 'contain' Russia and Iran and protect Israel and Saudi Arabia? For 70 years the Europeans have merely played the role of NATO cheerleaders for US imperialist wars under the NATO flag. Are they really expected to go it alone now?

In another blow to the Western world order, there were extraordinary scenes in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) of Korea this week as the leaders of the two Koreas met for the first time in 11 years and agreed in principle to formally end the Korean War, with Chairman Kim Jong-un becoming the first North Korean leader to cross the border into the South since the Korean peninsula was partitioned in 1945.

A little over a year ago, the situation in Korea looked far from peaceful as North Korea and the US began a war of words (and a display of missile capability) that apparently portended imminent global nuclear Armageddon. What changed? Or what were people missing? And if it's possible for this conflict to be resolved amicably, could peace break out in other hotspots like the Middle East?

Tune in this week from 12-1:30pm EDT / 6-7:30pm CET this Sunday April 29.


Running Time: 01:48:01

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Evil Rays

SOTT Focus: Syria - A Case Study in Western Propaganda

Cover of The Economist, August 31st, 2013
Cover of The Economist, August 31st, 2013
Dear diary, many of my colleagues are unhappy about the recent events in Syria. They are unhappy that Assad is still in power. However, I see the metaphorical glass as being half full. In a recent poll, 58% of Americans support the bombing of Syria and 19% have "no opinion." This is wonderful news, since it shows how the vast majority of people are easily manipulated and are simply apathetic. In a democracy, the most important but least understood tool is propaganda. Let me share with you the fundamentals of a successful propaganda campaign.

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SOTT Focus: Joe Quinn on PressTV: Merkel Washington Visit Underscores US-EU 'Parting of Ways'

Merkel Trump Washington
Joe Quinn spoke with PressTV today about German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to Washington, DC. Distinctly low-key compared with French president Emmanuel Macron's 3-day love-fest with US president Donald Trump, the US-German summit merely underscored the isolationist approach Trump has taken with respect to its 'closest partners'.

The US government imposed import tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum in March, but it provided a temporary exemption until May 1 for the EU. Judging by both Merkel and Trump's statements to the media following their meeting, Trump is probably not going to make the exemption permanent. In short, 'Europe must pay!

Coupled with the EU leaders' failure to turn Trump back from reneging on the JCPOA Iran deal, this week's meeting with the leaders of Europe's two biggest countries serves to underscore a 'parting of ways' within the Atlantic alliance.