SOTT Focus:


Sheriff

SOTT Focus: Candace Owens Unlocks New Reality, Makes 'Victor Mentality' the New Black

Candace Owens
© Candace Owens, TPUSA. Image Via Twitter
In recent years, many people around the world - but particularly in 'Western' societies - have become quite adept at the art of 'being oppressed' and letting everyone know about it. The victimhood narrative is part of a mindset that draws quick conclusions and assumes the worst in people. It leaves little room for such adepts to grow beyond the challenges we all face because it foists the responsibility needed to face the world onto others. It moves them away from any thought of a charitable society and draws them deeper into the victim culture.

We see this in many of liberals' pet projects: from gay rights, to the ideology behind transgender activism, to Black Lives Matter. Oppression has been used an as excuse to demand power from others. Power is sought not as a result of efforts made that earn greater responsibility, but by way of self-proclaimed victim status. Characteristics that makes us strong, such as effective communication, thinking deeply about our problems, and conscientiousness have been tossed aside in favor of elevating victimhood in order to exploit the good nature of others. That said, not everyone is buying this victim mentality. It is being challenged in big ways. One such challenger is Candace Owens, a conservative commentator and communications director for Turning Point USA.

Rose

SOTT Focus: Flemish Priest Father Daniël Maes Living In Syria Exposes The Truth The Western Press Ignores

father daniel maes
Father Daniël Maes
Living in Syria in the sixth-century-old Mar Yakub monastery in the city of Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus, Flemish Father Daniël Maes has been a witness to the invasion of western-backed terrorists since the very beginning. To this day, he and his friends continue to help the Syrian people by not only helping them directly, but also by spreading the truth about what is truly going on in the country.

Die

SOTT Focus: Joe Quinn on PressTV: 'Macron in Washington to Convince Trump Not to Break Iran Deal'

joe quinn presstv
Behind all the cuddles and bisoux for the cameras, what was French boy-president Macron's grande visite to the US of A all about? What the US and France can do to retain Western dominance of the Middle East, of course!

Trump is warning Iran not to "restart its nuclear program" while (again) yammering on about the 2015 JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) multinational agreement on Iranian nuclear development being "an insane, terrible deal that should have never been made."

Europe's very own 'stable genius' meanwhile spoke out of both sides of his mouth in an attempt to tame Trump's tantrum while not aggravating the Iranians, telling US officials the Iran deal can be "revisited" but should not be torn up. Iranian president Rouhani is meanwhile warning both of them about "grave consequences" if the 2015 deal is torpedoed.

What does all this bluff-and-bluster mean? And what is Trump's beef with the JCPOA anyway? Needless to say, it has almost nothing to do with the 'proliferation of nuclear weapons'...

Quenelle - Golden

SOTT Focus: Iranian Professor: 'Iran Will Retaliate if Attacked. Get Over it'

Rouhani Iran
© AFPIranian President Hassan Rouhani (L) and senior members of his armed forces watch a parade on the occasion of the country's annual army day on 18 April 2018, in Tehran
"The White Man's Burden" - or perhaps, the better-phrased "the burden of the white man" - has arguably been the greatest yoke in human history. When asked about his thoughts on Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi reportedly replied: "it would be a good idea."

While western intellectuals do voice criticism over their governments' global policies, failings are too often blamed on political parties, poor leadership, ineffectual strategies, not enough funding, weapons or "will". But venture further for a moment to consider whether the problem isn't more foundational - whether the "western" construction of knowledge itself isn't fraught with troubling inadequacies.

Too few mainstream intellectuals are even prepared to entertain the idea that perhaps western social structures and their underlying epistemology of values are so irredeemably flawed that they make western political regimes a serious burden to human existence.

USA

SOTT Focus: The U.S. Role in the Destruction of Syria

Editor's note: The text below that is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of David Ray Griffin's book: "Global Chaos," of Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World constitues perhaps the most complete condensed and objectively true description of the causes of the 7 year long war in Syria. It is well worth taking the time to read it.
Syrian soldier liberated Syria
In Syria, the goal of creating chaos has succeeded in spades. Mnar Muhawesh wrote: "[F]oreign powers have sunk the nation into a nightmare combination of civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism. Syrians are in the impossible position of having to choose between living in a warzone, being targeted by groups like ISIS and the Syrian government's brutal crack- down, or faring dangerous waters with minimal safety equipment only to be denied food, water and safety by European governments if they reach shore."

No Entry

SOTT Focus: British Baroness After Fact-Finding Trip to Syria: Syrians Support Assad But BBC Won't Acknowledge This

Bashar al-Assad
© SANA / ReutersSyria's President Bashar al-Assad greets his supporters during Eid al-Adha prayers on September 1, 2017, Syria.
Most Syrians support their president and military, but the BBC presents Britons with a different, one-sided story, a British baroness and member of the House of Lords told RT, after returning from a trip to the war-torn country.

Caroline Cox, a baroness and Life Peer in the House of Lords, recently returned from a tour of several Syrian cities, during which she spoke with a "wide range of people," including government officials, opposition leaders, artists, intellectuals, writers and ordinary Syrians walking in the park.

According to Baroness Cox, despite claims from western governments and media outlets, the vast majority of Syrians are thankful to President Bashar Assad and the Syrian and Russian militaries for fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL) and jihadist groups.

The Syrian people "are very grateful to the Syrian Army, to Assad and, I may say, for Russian help in getting rid of the terrorists. They are the perpetrators of the most appalling atrocities and killings."

Comment: See also: Elections in Syria 2016 defy US, NATO criminals, liars and hypocrites' attempt to deny the will of the Syrian people


Gold Seal

SOTT Focus: Craig Murray: Complete disillusionment with the UK Establishment

Theresa May
© Reuters
The second half of my life has been a continual process of disillusionment with the institutions I used to respect. I suppose it started with the FCO, where I went from being Britain's youngest ambassador to being sacked for opposing the use of intelligence from torture, at the same time having an insider view of the knowing lies about Iraqi WMD being used as a pretext for invasion and resource grab.

I still had some residual respect for the BBC, which respect disappeared during the Scottish independence referendum where BBC propaganda and disregard for the truth were truly shameless. My love of the universities was severely tested during my period as Rector of Dundee University, when I saw how far the corporate model had turned them from academic communities developing people and pursuing knowledge, to relentless churners out of unconsidered graduates and financially profitable research, with nearly all sense of community gone.

My respect for charities vanished when I discovered Save the Children was paying its chief executive £370,000 and had become a haven for New Labour politicos on huge salaries, which was why it was so involved in pushing a pro-war narrative in Syria. When Justin Forsyth and Brendan Cox - both massively salaried employees who came into Save the Children from the revolving door of Gordon Brown's office - were outed over sexual predation, that seemed a natural result of "charities" being headed by rich party hacks rather than by simple people trying to do good. As for respect for parliament, well the massive troughing expenses scandal and all those protected paedophiles...

TV

SOTT Focus: Keep Calm & Blame Russia: RT Documentary on Inconvenient Facts in Skripal Saga

salisbury chemcial hazmat suits
If countless Russia-bashing pieces don't help you get the big picture of the lingering Skripal saga, a report by RT's Murad Gazdiev may. He scrutinized the major slipups in the UK government's (and their pundits') narrative.

It is "highly likely" that Russia deployed a deadly weapons-grade toxin to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal. Porton Down, the UK's leading chemical research lab, says there is "no doubt" the toxin was Novichok-class nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union. And Russia surely did it, because the very word 'Novichok' is Russian for 'newcomer.'

RT's Murad Gazdiev examines the stunning discrepancies that emanate from the Skripal case, as the blame game against Moscow continues.

The report includes commentary from renowned chemical weapon experts, both Russian and Western-based, who told RT the formula of Novichok-class agents is actually an open secret as any - yes, you heard it right - laboratory in the world may produce the same substance with the same degree of purity. Moreover, the pace at which the UK authorities identified the poison used on the Skripals raises even more questions.

Watch RT's report in full here:


Comment: Given that it wasn't Russia, suspicions naturally fell on the British security services. But the choice of location for poisoning the Skripals is highly odd - Salisbury, home of British chemical weapons manufacturing for a little over a century. Why would the British paint a target over themselves in this way?

Combined with the British government's utterly bizarre handling of this incident - while being utterly convinced that this was done to them 'from without' - we are led to suspect a 'third force' was behind this.

As former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray wrote one week after the incident in early March:
Israel has the nerve agents. Israel has Mossad, which is extremely skilled at foreign assassinations. Theresa May claimed Russian propensity to assassinate abroad as a specific reason to believe Russia did it. Well, Mossad has an even greater propensity to assassinate abroad. And while I am struggling to see a Russian motive for damaging its own international reputation so grievously, Israel has a clear motivation for damaging the Russian reputation so grievously. Russian action in Syria has undermined the Israeli position in Syria and Lebanon in a fundamental way, and Israel has every motive for damaging Russia's international position by an attack aiming to leave the blame on Russia.



Colosseum

SOTT Focus: Empire Collapse: Russian Missile Tech Renders America's Trillion Dollar Navy Obsolete

kinzhal hypersonic missile
Kinzhal ('dagger') hypersonic missile being test-fired by the Russian military
For the past 500 years European nations - Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, Britain, France and, briefly, Germany - were able to plunder much of the planet by projecting their naval power overseas. Since much of the world's population lives along the coasts, and much of it trades over water, armed ships that arrived suddenly out of nowhere were able to put local populations at their mercy.

The armadas could plunder, impose tribute, punish the disobedient, and then use that plunder and tribute to build more ships, enlarging the scope of their naval empires. This allowed a small region with few natural resources and few native advantages beyond extreme orneriness and a wealth of communicable diseases to dominate the globe for half a millennium.

The ultimate inheritor of this naval imperial project is the United States, which, with the new addition of air power, and with its large aircraft carrier fleet and huge network of military bases throughout the planet, is supposedly able to impose Pax Americana on the entire world. Or, rather, was able to do so - during the brief period between the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of Russia and China as new global powers and their development of new anti-ship and antiaircraft technologies. But now this imperial project is at an end.

SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Russian Trolls? Let's Talk About British and US Mainstream Media As Unabashed Government Mouthpieces

russian bot
Those of us with a functioning BS meter and a decent grip on reality have known for many years that the mainstream media has, at least periodically, operated as a fifth branch of government (in the USA) and the 'Ministry of Truth' (in the UK). In recent years however, on all geopolitical topics - in particular those relating to Russia and the 'War on Terror' - the Western press seems to have fully embraced the role of Western government mouthpieces.

In recent months and weeks, with the outrageous claims over the Skripal affair and the 'chemical weapons attack' in Douma, Syria, the US, British and French governments have sunk to new lows (or new highs) in the blatancy of their lies and fabrications, the vast majority of them aimed at Russia.

Tune in this week when your hosts will be discussing the problem that is the Western media from 12-1:30pm EDT / 6-7:30pm CET this Sunday April 22nd.

Running Time: 01:42:12

Download: MP3