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SOTT Focus: The Health & Wellness Show: Hello Darkness My Old Friend: The Ups and Downs of Caffeine


Sott.net
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:00 UTC
coffee
Caffeine is the most popular mood-altering drug in the world and a daily habit for millions (or billions?) of people. Whether it's savored in coffee, sipped in tea, devoured in chocolate or downed in cola we can't seem to get enough. Though mostly embraced as a concentration booster, workout and memory enhancer, caffeine has also been blamed for hypertension, sleep disturbances, stress and in some extreme cases, death.

Stay alert and join us for this episode of The Health and Wellness Show where we explored the ups and downs of this cherished substance, its 'addictive' properties, withdrawal symptoms, side effects and medicinal uses. Note: We talk about coffee. A lot.

Also stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment where she tells us about a coffee-drinking cat that lived to 34 years old!

Running Time: 01:18:07

Download: MP3

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Propaganda

SOTT Focus: Mass Media Reaches New Low Stoking Russiaphobia in Wake of Florida School Shooting

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Thu, 22 Feb 2018 18:42 UTC
florida shooting
© Reuters/ WSVN.com
Hysteria over alleged Russian meddling in US affairs hit a new low this week, with claims that Kremlin-controlled internet agents are exploiting the Florida gun massacre.

The New York Times' top story in its online edition Tuesday was headlined: "After Florida School Shooting, Russian 'Bot' Army Pounced".

Other US news media also gave prominent coverage to unsubstantiated claims that Kremlin-orchestrated internet agents, known as "trolls" or "bots", were heartlessly exploiting American public grief over the mass shooting.

The NY Times report stated: "Any news event - no matter how tragic - has become fodder to spread inflammatory messages in what is believed to be a far-reaching Russian disinformation campaign."
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Russian Flag

SOTT Focus: America's election meddling would indeed justify other countries like Russia retaliating in kind

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Tue, 20 Feb 2018 12:27 UTC
tweet whataboutism Twitter
There is still no clear proof that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 US elections in any meaningful way. Which is weird, because Russia and every other country on earth would be perfectly justified in doing so.

Like every single hotly publicized Russiagate "bombshell" that has broken since this nonsense began, Mueller's indictment of 13 Russian social media trolls was paraded around as proof of something hugely significant (an "act of war" in this case), but on closer examination turns out to be empty. The always excellent Moon of Alabama recently made a solid argument that has also been advanced by Russiagate skeptics like TYT's Michael Tracey and Max Blumenthal of The Real News, pointing out that there is in fact no evidence that the troll farming operation was an attempt to manipulate the US election, nor indeed that it had any ties to the Russian government at all, nor indeed that it was anything other than a crafty Russian civilian's money making scheme.

The notion that a few Russian trolls committed a "conspiracy to defraud the United States" by "sowing discord" with a bunch of wildly contradictory posts endorsing all different ideologies sounds completely ridiculous in a country whose mainstream media spends all its time actively creating political division anyway, but when you look at it as a civilian operation to attract social media followers to sock puppet accounts with the goal of selling promoted posts for profit, it makes perfect sense. James Corbett of The Corbett Report has a great video about how absolutely bizarre it is that public dialogue is ignoring the fact that these trolls overwhelmingly used mainstream media like the Washington Post in their shares instead of outlets like RT and Infowars. As a scheme to acquire followers, it makes perfect sense. As a scheme to subvert America, it's nonsensical.

Comment: Caitlin Johnstone's podcast on the topic: America's Election Meddling Would Indeed Justify Other Countries Retaliating In Kind

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Family

SOTT Focus: Dutch-Russians File Discrimination Complaint Against Russophobic Statement by Democrats Party Leader

Bahar Azizi
Sott.net
Tue, 20 Feb 2018 23:32 UTC
alexander pechtold
Dutch politician and Democrats 66 (D66) party leader Alexander Pechtold
Several days ago, Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra resigned after he admitted lying about having met Russian President Putin in 2006 and overhearing him talk about his plans to create a "Greater Russia". After former Shell executive Jeroen van der Veer told the Dutch Volkskrant newspaper that Zijlstra wasn't even present at that 2006 meeting with Putin, Zijlstra confessed that he'd been lying all these years.

In response to Zijlstra admitting that he'd never attended a meeting with Putin, the Parliamentary leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) party, Alexander Pechtold, told state-run broadcaster NOS, that he appreciated Zijlstra's frankness, and that he has "yet to meet the first Russian who corrects his mistakes himself."

This statement raised many eyebrows in the Netherlands, including among Dutch-Russians. Several of them have now filed a complaint against Pechtold, calling his statement "offensive" and "hurtful".
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TV

SOTT Focus: Desperate Deep State Resorts to Russia-Bashing Infomercial in Wake of FISA Memo - Act Now!!

Elan Martin
Sott.net
Tue, 20 Feb 2018 14:43 UTC
'Evil Russia' narrative
'Russia is Evil' narrative now available in over 9 different colors!
Desperate times call for desperate measures. In the afterburn of the House Intelligence Committee's and White House's release of the damning FISA Memo, the forces behind the Russia-gate and Russia-is-evil narrative are, predictably, doubling-down in response. And how could they not, after all, the FISA Memo unambiguously showed how the Clinton political machine, the FBI and the DOJ all conspired to illegally push through the bought-and-paid-for lies of the now-infamous Steele Dossier - in order to help justify spying on Trump and his campaign team, and gain any advantage they could over their political nemesis.

The Dossier was supposed to tie Trump to Russia and help paint Russia as some malign entity trying to undermine US politics and subvert American Democracy. A one-two punch that is now showing itself to be full of toxic hot air.

It looks very much like master conman Barack Obama was also neck deep in the action. Complicit in attempts to undermine Trump, the Obama administration applied for a FISA court wire tapping permission as well - and was actually turned down the first time by the judicial body. Turned down, that is, until the Hillary camp came up with the manufactured Dossier.

For anyone actually paying attention (and who isn't still hopelessly 'pro-Hillary'), the FISA Memo releases should not only sound the death-knell for the Russia Gate investigation, but also largely demolish the egregious and dangerous 'Cold War 2' impetus it rests upon.
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USA

SOTT Focus: American Energy Dominance And The Rise of The Petro-Yuan

Corey Schink
Sott.net
Tue, 20 Feb 2018 13:50 UTC
US flag oil crude rig refinery
Russiagate, gun control, terrorism - a new deception for every day. But while Western populations are increasingly at each other's throats over political and social ideologies, a radically different moral and political system is developing in the world.

For centuries the West has enjoyed the fruits of global hegemony, and for the past 60 plus years America has enjoyed a dominant place within that system. Thus, the idea of a foreign culture gaining hegemonic power anywhere else is nearly unthinkable; for the elites it is a sacrilege, and for the average person it is simply unnerving.

But for China, the civilization with the longest continuous written history, regional hegemony is natural, and yet China struggles in an international system which leaves no room for national sovereignty - let alone regional hegemony.
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Black Cat

SOTT Focus: When Race Trumps Story: Black Panther - an Alt-Right Superhero for Leftists

Timothy C. Trepanier
Sott.net
Tue, 20 Feb 2018 13:21 UTC
Black Panther movies
© MarvelHear no Evil - See no Evil - Speak no Evil
Imagine that Hitler and Oprah had a baby, and that baby's name was Shaft (or perhaps Helmut).

He would be like a skinhead, but with an afro.

One hand raised in protest as a fist, the black power salute, clutching a flag emblazoned with a rainbow coloured swastika.

The other hand attempting a feeble, limp-wristed Seig Heil, barely mustering the strength to hold a piece of fried chicken, coincidentally shaped like a hammer and sickle.

He wears a dark hoodie with a picture of Che Guevara, who himself is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Richard Spencer being punched by Chairman Mao, who is wearing a red MAGA baseball cap, loaned to him by Joseph Goebbels, the original founder of Antifa.

His archetype - Pepe the gorilla, sipping on a soy milkshake.

This baby was no ordinary baby, for he was destined for greatness. He grew up to be the benevolently xenophobic, compassionately despotic emperor of the ethnically pure, 100% genuinely fictional country of Wakanda. His name is T'Challa (the artist formerly known as Kangz), and he is here to chew watermelon-flavoured bubblegum and kick some deplorable ass, and he's all out of bubblegum!

Alas, if only Idiocracy played professional basketball. If only there were concentration camps for albinos. If only hillbillies were fluent in eubonics. If only we could keep crackers as slaves. If only there were bagpipes in every rap song. If only there were some less offensive words that rhyme with trigger.

Then, and only then, would our fake non-fictional world be as perfect a place to live in as the real fictional world of Wakanda!
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Jet2

SOTT Focus: US Wars Fund The Welfare State Which Finances The Liberal March Towards Totalitarianism

Pierre Lescaudron
Sott.net
Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:25 UTC
liberal totalitarianism
Most people reading this will have heard of the US Military Industrial Complex (MIC), a state within the state that wages wars everywhere, has bases all over the planet, plunders poor nations and seizes their resources for the personal profit of an elite few. But if this definition is accurate, we would expect to have seen a dramatic increase in the US federal spending on defense over the course of the last 70 or 80 years, when the modern American MIC has been active. Is that the case?
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USA

SOTT Focus: Florida School Shooting: A Culture of Narcissistic Entitlement and Resentment

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Sun, 18 Feb 2018 22:45 UTC
Nikolas Cruz
One more school shooting in the USA, one more round of inane squabbling, finger pointing and calls to 'ban guns' from one side and 'deal with the mental health problem' from the other. As is true for most polemic issues hotly debated by ignorant human beings, the truth probably lies somewhere in between, or somewhere else.

If there were no (or very few) guns in US society, there would be fewer shootings, and therefore fewer deaths, but not fewer attacks by 'mentally ill' people. It seems reasonable to assume that if the number of school or mass casualty shootings in America were replaced by school or mass casualty knife attacks, it would still be a serious social problem. So it seems more rational and productive to focus on solving (or at least better understanding) the problem of mental illness in order to reduce the number of mass casualty attacks.
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SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Florida School Mass Shooting: Gun Control, Mental Illness and the Criminal Mind


Sott.net
Sun, 18 Feb 2018 17:00 UTC
students florida shooting
Finer and finer orders of control
Another mass shooting took place in the US last week, this time at a high school in south Florida. The gunman was apparently 19-year-old dropout Nikolas Cruz, who waltzed into the school with an AR-15 rifle and some spare clips of ammo, then slaughtered 17 students and teachers in cold blood. He escaped the shooting scene by hiding among the fleeing students, but was later picked up by law enforcement.

Cruz was associated with a White Nationalist group in Florida, suggesting that his motive was revenge at society. He also said he heard voices telling him to do it. The important thing is that he has plead guilty to committing the crime, the NRA and Putin are being accused of somehow conspiring to make him do it, gun control is back on the agenda, and the US can now move on and mourn as One (Nation Under God).

This week on Behind the Headlines, we examined the criminal mind that can do such crazy things.

Join us this Sunday 18 February, from 12-1:30pm EST / 5-6:30pm UTC / 6-7:30pm CET.

Running Time: 01:50:28

Download: MP3

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