SOTT Focus:


Eggs Fried

SOTT Focus: US Illusion of Democracy: The Idiotic Distinction Between Liberal Interventionists and Neocons

Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 21:35 UTC
army ejercito estados unidos usa
© army.mil / RT / wikipedia.org
Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanis (to name but some) can be fully excused for being completely unaware of the fact that the United States of America is a democracy. As the preeminent global democracy, there are at least two subtly different ideological positions that made those countries targets for American bombs.

First, we have the neoconservatives, or 'neocons', who gave us the Project for the New American Century, the bombing of Afghanistan and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, and who were prominent in government during the horrid George W. Bush years. They include people such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Michael Chertoff. They tend to be Republicans.

Then we have the liberal interventionists, or "the indispensable-nation crowd", as Katrina vanden Heuvel calls them (due to their insistence that the US is 'indispensable' as the global police), who also supported the Iraq War, cheered Obama's continued military adventures in Afghanistan, rejoiced when NATO bombed Libya and handed it on a plate to Al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and supported rebels in Syria (also terrorists), in the hope that they would topple Assad. This gang includes Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Michele Flournoy. They tend to be Democrats.

So here's the distinction between the two groups: One of them promotes military intervention and regime change in non-compliant nations, and predatory capitalist practices in complaint nations, for the profit of US business, and also unconditionally supports Israel. And so does the other.
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Pumpkin 2

SOTT Focus: Dutch 'Purple Friday' Encourages Blurring The Lines Between Male And Female

Bahar Azizi
Sott.net
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 20:59 UTC
purple friday sebastian
© RTV Utrecht/Kees Hoogendijk15-year-old Sebastien (male), who calls himself 'genderqueer', often goes to school wearing a short skirt and long heels.
Last Friday was 'Purple Friday' in the Netherlands, a day on which students are encouraged to wear purple to school in order to show their solidarity with homosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians and transgenders. Since 2010, 'Purple Friday' takes place annually on the second Friday of December. It was inspired by the equivalent annual 'LGBTQ awareness day' in the US, called 'Spirit Day'.

The Dutch organization for LGBT men and women - COC Nederland - organized this year's 'Purple Friday' across more than 900 high schools. This year's theme was 'pigeonholing'. An article on the COC website explains what they mean:
Around 250,000 students will wear purple clothing on that day to show that everyone can be themselves at school, whatever your sexual orientation or gender identity is. This year, students will be campaigning against pigeonholing. Can a boy wear make-up at school? Is it alright if a girl wants to be a car mechanic? Can boys kiss with boys and girls with girls? Will students who don't feel comfortable with the label 'boy' or 'girl' also be accepted? These are the type of questions students will ask on Purple Friday with posters, events, parties and by wearing the color purple.
poster coc
© COC NederlandOne of the posters used by COC Nederland. The elderly couple are saying: "In our time, you could immediately see who was a boy...and who was a girl." The girl (?) wearing boyish clothes says: "Welcome to our time!". The sign on the right says: "Wear purple to school to show that you're not pigeonholing."
It is a rather sad state of affairs to see Dutch authorities blurring the lines between what is male and female, in the process leading children on a path of confusion and dividing society between people who find such behavior (rightly) disturbing - thereafter labeling them as 'bullies' - and people who find such behavior hunky-dory.
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Whistle

SOTT Focus: Is Trudeau Off His Rocker? Canadian PM Wants to 'Reintegrate' ISIS Terrorists Into Society

Daniel Solomon
Sott.net
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 01:02 UTC
ISIS
Canadian Prime Minister and avowed feminist Justin Trudeau last month introduced plans to reintegrate ISIS fighters back into Canadian society. His rise to the top seat in Parliament was very much like his predecessor south of the border, Barack Obama in 2008. The current Prime Minister is a young, hip and trendy PM who rode a wave of promises about hopey-change and 'positive politics' that was supposedly going to represent a 180 degree turn from the previous Harper government.

However, it's becoming more apparent every day that Trudeau's brand of 'positive politics' is completely divorced from reality. His government has focused on ideologically-driven identity politics and political correctness, while paying almost no attention to the potential long-term ramifications of their actions. The outrageous scheme to 'reintegrate' ISIS fighters is a case in point.
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USA

SOTT Focus: The Murder of Daniel Shaver by Criminally Violent Arizona Cops, Philip Brailsford and Charles Langley

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 20:18 UTC
Daniel Shaver Laney Sweet
Daniel Shaver, Laney Sweet and family
On January 18, 2016, Arizona police officer Philip Brailsford killed Daniel Shaver at a La Quinta Inns & Suites hotel in Mesa, Arizona, where Shaver was staying. Both men were 26 years old. Shaver, a resident of Granbury, Texas, was a married father of two children, and a pest-control worker who owned two air rifles that he used for his job.

According to a police report released December 7th, a man and woman who were attending a conference and staying at the La Quinta hotel said they met Shaver in the elevator, he asked them if they wanted some shots, they agreed, and went to his 5th floor room where they reportedly played video games and drank alcohol.

While in Shaver's hotel room, the woman saw a case and asked if it contained a musical instrument. Shaver opened the case and revealed his pellet gun and a dead sparrow. Shaver told the woman he was on a business trip with Walmart and that it was his job to kill all of the birds that get inside buildings. The woman said that when Shaver and the other man pointed the rifle out the window, she told them to stop as she was afraid they'd hurt someone because they were drinking. The air rifle was, in fact, seen by another guest at the hotel who notified hotel staff, who then called the police, turning the benign scenario into a possible 'active shooter' situation. It should be noted however that Arizona is an 'open carry' state.
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Muffin

SOTT Focus: The Tyranny of 'Experts': Cutting Carbs Will Make You Dead, Experts Say

Doug DiPasquale
Sott.net
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 19:57 UTC
MSM BS
Sometimes, when I'm cruising around social media, I'll take a look at what the MSM is saying in health and wellness news, just to get out of my bubble and take a look at what shape the mind-programming is taking lately. And even though I should know better, more often than not, I see something that just leaves me flabbergasted. And in this case, I'm not talking about yet another blunder from CNN.

Last week, this tasty piece of propaganda came out, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. The headline:
Cutting carbs can increase risk of diabetes and other diseases, experts warn
Ah experts. Where would we be without their anonymous guidance dictating dietary advice well over three decades old.

So I guess it's time to find out from "experts" how exactly the actual mechanism for avoiding diabetes - by cutting carbs - is actually what causes it! I can't wait for the Sydney Morning Herald to set me straight!
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SOTT Logo S

SOTT Focus: Last-Ditch Effort: As Russiagate Falters, MSM and Soros Try to #MeToo Trump

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 21:09 UTC
Trump posed for this photograph during the Miss Universe pageant
Miss Universe pageant, Moscow, November 2013.
Globalist operation 'Git Trump' continues apace. Russiagate turned up nothing but Democratic collusion with dodgy British and Ukrainian foreign agents, so now they're back to leveraging popular appetite for salacious scandal.

Yesterday, TV airhead Megyn Kelly interviewed Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey, and Rachel Crooks, all of whom accused Donald Trump of "sexual harassment" during the crescendo to last year's astonishing US presidential campaign.

This comes as Democrats are being plagued by an avalanche of similar accusations, and as the Trump witch-hunt, otherwise known as Mueller's "Russian collusion probe", has probed further than the average proctologist and come up with a whole lot of nothing. Anyone with a passing interest in mental health will notice that these two trends have something in common: hysteria.

Collusion is bad (hello, Israel), and rape is evil. But the anti-Russia and #MeToo hysteria(s) go far beyond their declared bounds, conflating unwanted sexual advances with assault, and ordinary diplomacy with criminal conspiracy. And often, there's actually nothing behind the accusations in either category.

The sexual accusations against Trump came before Weinstein-gate unintentionally initiated #MeToo, but it was only a matter of time before the mainstream media rehashed old 'news' and dressed it up for the new fad.

Here's a clip of Kelly's show:

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USA

SOTT Focus: Manufacturing Dissent - The New Culture War

Chris Kanthan
Sott.net
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 23:18 UTC
antifa poster
Noam Chomsky famously talked about manufacturing consent, a propaganda tool of the elites to control people. However, another equally potent way to control people is by manufacturing dissent. This is otherwise known as 'divide and rule', a strategy usually restricted to foreign policy, but now being directed at the American people by the American elites. Neo-Nazis, Alt Right, Antifa, destruction of statues, and Americans assaulting one another are all signs of a divided nation that's in the throes of a manufactured 'culture war'. While the ruling class is laughing it up, the middle and working classes are ensnared in what I would call a Societal Autoimmune Disorder (S.A.D.). Between 2008 and now, we have been cleverly steered away from 'Occupy Wall Street' to 'Occupy One Another'.
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Bulb

SOTT Focus: US Tacitly Admits Defeat to Russia in Syria, White House Reportedly Accepts Assad's Rule Until 2021 Elections

Beau Christensen
Sott.net
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 22:28 UTC
assad
© AP Photo/ Syrian Presidency Facebook
Here's some news you may not have expected to read today.

The New Yorker, citing unnamed US and EU officials, claims that the White House will accept Assad as Syria's president until the next elections in Syria in 2021:
Donald Trump's administration is prepared to accept the continuation of Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule until the country's next presidential election, set for 2021, The New Yorker newspaper reported, citing unnamed US and EU officials, explaining that depending on the results of the next US presidential election in 2020, he might still be in power, when the incumbent US president leaves office.
Imagine that! The US, in all its supposed omnipotence, is willing to 'allow' the democratically-elected President of a foreign nation to serve out his term. Maybe Assad should send a gift to the White House in recognition of the astonishing honor that Washington has afforded him.

This report is, however, in stark contrast to what other Trump Admin. officials have been saying very recently. Earlier this year, crazed war-hawk Nikki Haley said that "Assad has no place in Syria", while Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said "the reign of Assad is coming to an end". Well, I guess not! It's possible that part of Putin's reasoning in pulling most of the Russian military out of Syria was to appease the crazies in Washington and get them to accept Assad as the Syrian president for the foreseeable future.
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Cult

SOTT Focus: Trump Condemns Free Syrian Army For Smashing Christian Icons, Forgets US Military Has Been Supporting Them For Years

Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 18:19 UTC
Trump tweet twitt Jayda Fransen Virgin Mary statue
© Twitter
This one comes from the increasingly common 'You couln't make this up if you tried!' category of high level politics news.

On the 28th of November, Donald Trump retweeted three 'anti-Muslim' videos from Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a 'patriotic political party and street movement' - as it defines itself on its Facebook page - formed in 2011 by former members of the British National Party.

One of the videos shows a boy - allegedly a Muslim immigrant - beating up another boy in crutches - supposedly a Dutch national. The Dutch media is said to have verified that the attacker was neither Muslim nor an immigrant.

The second video shows a Muslim man smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary.

In the third video we see a group of people on a rooftop of what appears to be a Middle Eastern country, where two young men are brutally thrown from a higher level and beaten up. Fransen describes the group as an 'Islamist mob'. This may be true while also misleading, as one of the men appears to be carrying an ISIS flag - thus these are not your average 'Muslims'.

The UK Prime Minister's spokesman, John Bercow, condemned the original tweets and Trump retweeting them, saying that Britain First sought to divide communities through its use of "hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions... It is wrong for the president to have done this".
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Caesar

SOTT Focus: Putin and Abbas received in Cairo as Russia and Egypt join forces against terrorism

Corey Schink
Sott.net
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 00:41 UTC
putin sisi egypt
© egypttoday.com
In the aftermath of the 'Arab Spring' in 2011, which saw the overthrow of the Egyptian government, followed by a counter-coup in 2013, president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi sharply pivoted Egypt's international outlook away from America and towards Russia. Since then, Russian-Egyptian relations have reached a level not seen since the 1970s.

Throughout, pro-government Egyptian media regularly accused Barack Hussein Obama of siding with deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi's now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group. And all the while, Egypt has also seen a huge spike in terror attacks, with 'ISIS' promising more to come.

One naturally wonders, is there a correlation between 'the political' and 'the terror'? The answer is, of course there is.

The nexus is writ large everywhere once you see it. Earlier this year, newly sworn-in Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte was literally in Moscow meeting Putin to discuss refitting his country's military with Russian hardware when 'ISIS' sprang out of nowhere to take a major city in Mindanao hostage. Around the same time, the British establishment's preferred choice was facing defeat in the polls until 'ISIS' rode in to save the day for Her Majesty's Secret Services.

Comment: See also:

Mission Accomplished: Putin makes first-ever visit to Syria, announces withdrawal of Russian troops following defeat of ISIS

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