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Caesar

SOTT Focus: "Putin" - The new documentary sure to change everything you thought you knew about Russia's president

Vesti News Putin documentary
A groundbreaking new film by Andrei Kondrashev. "Putin" dives into depth about the man who we all hear so much about, but who we know so little about. From the early tumultuous days of the presidency - dealing with the terrorist situation, the Kursk tragedy and a demoralized Russia - to Putin now, the leader of a reenergized and recovered Russia. A year in the making with personal stories that have never been told on camera before. Some will be shocking and stunning. Attempts on the president's life and the toll of the presidency on Vladimir Putin himself - all of it has been brought together in the most complete portrait of Vladimir Putin that has been done to date.

Biohazard

SOTT Focus: Embassy Expulsions: How Low Will The Western Order Go? Joe Quinn Speaks With Sputnik

joe quinn sputnik
The coordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats from over a dozen Western countries earlier this week is a new low in the New Cold War, but some fear that the bottom has yet to be reached.

Earlier reports made it evident that some sort of collective action was being planned in the West, but comparatively few could have imagined that it would lead to the largest-ever expulsion of foreign diplomats in American history, let alone during what is formally regarded as "peacetime". Even more insultingly, this was executed on the unproven pretext that Russia allegedly carried out a chemical weapons attack in the UK, after which its esteemed diplomats were accused of being "spies" and unceremoniously kicked out of their host countries.

As Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted, this was especially painful for Russians because it came right after the tragedy in Kemerevo while the entire country was still in mourning.

Star of David

SOTT Focus: Israel suppresses unarmed protesters against siege of Gaza with chemical weapons and live gunfire from snipers: 16 Palestinians killed, thousands injured

tear gas protest gaza
© Mohamed Mosleh / Facebook
Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza marched to the edges of their 140-square-mile pen of territory Friday to face off against the Israeli military after calls for demonstrations. But the day turned to bloodshed as the Israeli military used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse the crowds, killing 15 people and injuring hundreds, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

Spurred by poverty, unemployment and a growing sense of hopelessness, about 17,000 Palestinian demonstrators gathered along several points on the border fence with Israel, according to Israeli estimates. The Hamas militant group, which controls the Gaza Strip, and other Palestinian factions had called for a peaceful ''March of Return'' for Land Day, which marks the Israel government's expropriation of Arab-owned land in 1976. Trucks mounted with loudspeakers had urged Palestinians in recent days to attend demonstrations.


Comment: Along with the 16 people who were shot dead, it's estimated over 1500 people have been injured since these attacks started on the protesters.



Comment: Israel continues to respond to the most basic human rights demands of Palestinians with extremely violent and illegal measures that are wholly disproportionate to what the situations call for. Despite the international community's condemnation of Israel's constant human rights violations, the country continues to act with impunity - and with weapons provided to it by the British and American regimes.

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Attention

SOTT Focus: 'We Know Where Your Kids Live': How John Bolton Bullied and Intimidated an International OPCW Official

Bolton
© Boing BoingJohn Bolton
Who better to advise the bully-in-chief, Donald Trump, on when to make war and kill people than another bully? It's difficult, after all, to avoid the label - that of a bully - when thinking of John Bolton, the former Bush administration official - turned - Fox News pundit who Trump recently picked as his national security adviser.

"John Bolton is a bully," José Bustani, the retired Brazilian diplomat and former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told me when I reached him by phone in Paris earlier this month.

There are a number of people who claim to have been bullied or intimidated by Bolton - including Bustani. The latter's criticisms of the famously mustachioed hawk have been public for many years now, but some of the details of his tense encounter with Bolton at the OPCW have never been reported before in English.

In early 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was putting intense pressure on Bustani to quit as director-general of the OPCW - despite the fact that he had been unanimously re-elected to head the 145-nation body just two years earlier. His transgression? Negotiating with Saddam Hussein's Iraq to allow OPCW weapons inspectors to make unannounced visits to that country - thereby undermining Washington's rationale for regime change.

Eye 1

SOTT Focus: We Can Actively Assume That Skripal Was Poisoned by The British Government

uk media skripal
By now anyone with an opinion on the Skripal poisoning has already decided if they believe the official narrative or not. Still, the event and the ongoing media coverage around it presents an opportunity to understand more than we might think.

The British government claim is that a "military-grade nerve agent", one of a group of nerve agents supposedly called 'novichok' (which simply means 'newcomer'), was used by Russia on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. They reach the conclusion that Russia is to blame because, they claim, the nerve agent used is "of a type developed by Russia."

Pirates

SOTT Focus: Saudi prince MBS: 'Anglo-Americans asked us to spread Extremist Islam to defeat Russia in Cold War'

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
© Hamad I Mohammed / ReutersSaudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism began as a result of Western countries asking Riyadh to help counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Washington Post.


Comment: Slight correction. Wahhabism is modern day jihadi terrorism. Western nations, in particular the USA, are therefore directly responsible for ALL such terrorism today. And all of it because of their hysterical drive to 'get Russia'.


Speaking to the paper, bin Salman said that Saudi Arabia's Western allies urged the country to invest in mosques and madrassas overseas during the Cold War, in an effort to prevent encroachment in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union.

He added that successive Saudi governments had lost track of that effort, saying "we have to get it all back." Bin Salman also said that funding now comes mostly from Saudi-based "foundations," rather than from the government.


Comment: First, it appears that someone has a very good handle on funding, training and arming tens of thousands of jihadis and moving them into countries that the USA wants to 'regime change'. So "lost track of" sounds more than a little disingenuous. Secondly, how can you have "lost track" of jihadi traning camps (madrassas) if your "foundations" are still funding them?

The importance of this admission cannot be overstated. The USA and its NATO and Gulf allies are directly and indirectly responsible for ALL of the major jihadist terrorism over the last 30 years, and it appears they were motivated to encourage it by their hysterical hatred of Russia.


Comment: Saudi Arabia wouldn't exist as it does today without the West, and his claims are well documented: Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: MBS Saudi Takeover Heralds End of the Petrodollar? Trump Does Asia, Asia Likes It


Biohazard

SOTT Focus: Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack Uncovers $70 Million Pentagon Bioweapons Program at Porton Down

Porton Down skripal novichok
© Peter Nicholls / ReutersSigns prohibiting access near to the Porton Down Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, near Salisbury, Britain, March 19, 2018.
The Pentagon has spent at least $70 million on military experiments involving tests with deadly viruses and chemical agents at Porton Down - the UK military laboratory near the city of Salisbury. The secretive biological and chemical research facility is located just 13 km from where on 4th March former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench following an alleged Novichok nerve agent poisoning.
porton Down laboratory
Porton Down is located 13 km from the Salisbury District Hospital.
porton down skripal map
© Google MapsThe Porton Down Lab is located just 13 km from the site where Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found and from where they were rushed to hospital.

Comment:


Heart - Black

SOTT Focus: British PM May Using Skripal Poisoning to Divert Attention from Child Sex Abuse

may theresa
© REUTERS/ Parliament TV
The assumption that British Prime Minister Theresa May has raised the alarm over the Sergei Skripal case to downplay political failures of her cabinet cost Dimitros Lyacos, Greek journalist and foreign affairs columnist, his job. Speaking to Radio Sputnik Lyacos shared his views on what could really be behind London's hysteria.

Having said on the air that British Prime Minister Theresa May is hyping the scandal about the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury to divert public attention away from the Rotherham child sexual exploitation case and Brexit problems, Dimitros Lyacos, a foreign affairs columnist, was fired from Cyprus' state-owned television channel.

"I dared to say on the air in Cyprus, the former British colony, that the reason behind British PM Theresa May's brining up [the Skripal case] is - at least according to Moscow - the Brexit problem which she has yet to solve. In a year Britain should withdraw from the EU and pay a huge sum of money to Brussels. And the second reason is a scandal about the rape of more than a thousand underage girls in a [South Yorkshire] provincial town," Lyacos told Radio Sputnik.

The journalist specified that the rape incidents remain neglected due to the fact that some of perpetrators were "refugees" which makes the case highly sensitive for the British authorities.

Comment: Poisoning a British spy in order to blame it on Russia is reprehensible. Even more reprehensible is the British authorities refusal to adequately protect their own children from sexual abuse for the sole reason that they're afraid of being called racist. It just goes to show how inverted Western values have become. Racism is the supreme evil and must be fought, even if that means subjecting our children to rape and murder.


SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Facebook and Cambridge Analytica - Trump Dumped - Skripal Saga

cambridge analytica
A steady trickle of mainstream punditry about the evils of social media in recent months last week became a flood of criticism, targeting Facebook in particular. High-profile exposés of Anglo-American market research firm Cambridge Analytica had instant impact, kicking off a viral #DeleteFacebook campaign. But the chattering classes loved social media until recently. Why the sudden change of heart?

The Trump Train lost many of its passengers before now, but the US president's signing last week of a gargantuan $1.3 trillion budget that includes no Mexican wall and lots of funding for Democrats' favorite projects has enraged what remained of his base. On the foreign front, Trump finally fired H.R. McMaster... only to replace him with John Bolton. Trump now has a bona fide neo-con National Security Advisor!

The UK government still has zero evidence to support its wild conspiracy theory that the Kremlin poisoned a former Russian spy in southern England earlier this month. In fact, recent developments in this saga only buttress the case that this 'chemical terrorist attack' was a false-flag operation conducted by British security services.

Join us later today - from 12-1:30pm EST / 4-5:30pm UTC / 6-7:30pm CET - as we go Behind the Headlines of the Western Propaganda Factory.

Running Time: 01:40:05

Download: MP3


Eye 2

SOTT Focus: Why Boris Johnson is Lying in Skripal Case

boris johnson
Evidence submitted by the British government in court today proves, beyond any doubt, that Boris Johnson has been point blank lying about the degree of certainty Porton Down scientists have about the Skripals being poisoned with a Russian "novichok" agent.

Yesterday in an interview with Deutsche Welle Boris Johnson claimed directly Porton Down had told him they positively identified the nerve agent as Russian:
You argue that the source of this nerve agent, Novichok, is Russia. How did you manage to find it out so quickly? Does Britain possess samples of it?

Let me be clear with you ... When I look at the evidence, I mean the people from Porton Down, the laboratory ...

So they have the samples ...

They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, "Are you sure?" And he said there's no doubt.
I knew and had published from my own whistleblowers that this is a lie. Until now I could not prove it. But today I can absolutely prove it, due to the judgement at the High Court case which gave permission for new blood samples to be taken from the Skripals for use by the OPCW.