Attentive observers of global politics may have noticed that when 'terror attacks' take place, Western authorities usually have a preprepared narrative about what happened and which terror group was responsible that is quickly pitched to the media and public. On very rare occasions however, such events are met with an uncharacteristic silence from the halls of Western power, at least for the crucial initial few days when the public mind is 'open' to impressions...

Such was the case with the downing of a Russian plane over the Sinai, when Western governments came close to saying absolutely nothing about the crash other than it had to be investigated. This was, of course, shocking to many people. After all, the authorities are meant to be authoritative and give us the simple black and white explanations we all crave so we can go back to sleep.

While the Russian government has repeatedly called for everyone to refrain from jumping to conclusions before any actual investigation had taken place, after their few days of relative silence, the US and British government officials couldn't restrain themselves from pushing the terror threat into the collective face of the global public.

British 'intelligence' has led the recent campaign to convince the world that a bomb, and therefore 'ISIS', brought down the Russian plane. The evidence for this claim involves unnamed British intelligence personnel simply saying 'it was probably a bomb'. When pressed for actual evidence however, they refer to "chatter" they "picked up" after the crash, where "ISIS militants" celebrated the event. In intelligence terms, "chatter" today usually means some tea boy at MI6 HQ seeing a post by an alleged jihadi on FB.

The closest we can get to non-social-media-based evidence for a bomb on the plane are statements by various unnamed sources, some of them allegedly "close to the investigation". One such source told AFP that "everything was normal during the flight, absolutely normal, and suddenly there was nothing." He described the accident as a "violent, sudden" demise.

Meanwhile, a source with access to the black boxes told France 2 TV channel that a sound similar to that of an explosion could be heard on the recording. This information has led other "sources close to the investigation" to tell French news magazine Le Point that the Metrojet flight was "definitely blown up by an explosive device". This was apparently based on analysis of the black boxes by Russian, French, German and Irish investigators in Cairo.

Broadcasting from deep in the heart of the American Empire, join your host Elan Martin, and fellow Sott.net editors, as they discuss everything from current events and the latest machinations and manipulations of the global elite to history, science, and religion, and how it all fits together.

The craziness we see on our planet is only intensifying! Among the topics that will be discussed on this week's Truth Perspective are: Mass protests in the West and the East, Israeli revisionism of the Holocaust, the US Government's Syria narrative, and dramatic Earth Changes in the form of the incredible increase in ice sheet size, deep crustal rumblings and fireballs galore. What do these developments point to? And what can we reasonably expect to happen in the coming months as a result? Join us as we examine the implications of the dramatic changes we're seeing this week on The Truth Perspective.

The Truth Perspective is brought to you by the SOTT Radio Network and SOTT.net, your one-stop source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

Live every Saturday from 2-4pm EST / 11am-1pm PST / 8-10pm CET.

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The Health and Wellness show on the SOTT Radio Network covers topics of health, diet, science, homeopathy, wellness culture, and more. Tune in weekly!

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You may recall our run-in with Finnish media outlets earlier this year, when Finnish presstitutes targeted Sott.net with specious accusations in an apparent effort to intimidate us.

When Finnish SOTT (fi.sott.net) editors recently wrote an article about Finnish military historian and honorary doctorate Sampo Ahto's condemning views about US imperialism, and shared it on their Facebook page, the post was subject to the kind of trolling usually only reserved for those who stray too close to the truth.

The reason we're bringing this to your attention is that Finnish mainstream newspaper Lappeenrannan uutiset subsequently published a hit-piece on October 31^st titled: "a man from Lappeenranta had an incident with a Russian troll factory".

In this article by reporter Janne Koivisto, the "Russian troll factory" is our Finnish SOTT site. But extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. So let's take a closer look at this "news" story according to the Finnish newspaper:

Jorma Tyrmi from Lappeenranta was startled last week while using Facebook, when an unusual advertisement came up on the screen. Russia's president Vladimir Putin smiled on the advertisement, which led to an article on a website named Sott.net.

- An interesting thing was, that the ad was paid for. Russia is ready to pay a US business, so it can feed its nonsense to Finnish people, Tyrmi says astonished.

Maybe the Finnish media needs to retake Social Media Activism 101 at the US State Department, because what they describe as an "advertisement" is actually a Facebook link to an article on Finnish Sott.net. The article in question is a write-up about the website Dearputin.com.

So to summarize: some dude called Jorma Tyrmi from Lappeenranta in Finland saw an "advertisement" on the Sott.net Finnish Facebook page, drew the conclusion that it must have been paid for by the Russian government because it contained an image of Putin, became hysterical and called Finnish journalists, who then wrote a story about it. This, dear readers, is the "source" for the dubious claims in the headline of the Finnish newspaper. That's quality journalism right there!

The crash of Kolavia Flight 7K9268 from Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, to St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 31st killed all 224 passengers and crew, making it Russia's worst ever aviation accident.

The Airbus A321 disappeared from radar over the Sinai desert 23 minutes after takeoff. No emergency signal was broadcast by the pilots. The plane began a rapid, almost vertical, descent from around 31,000 ft until it disappeared from radar at around 28,000 ft. The plane's debris and passenger bodies were spread over a 20 sq km area, with one 3-year-old passenger allegedly found 8 km from the main crash site. This strongly suggests that the plane broke up in mid-air.

Russian aviation experts have discounted the idea that the plane was shot down by a missile or that a bomb exploded on board. A technical fault that could have caused the plane to suddenly plummet out of the sky and incapacitated the pilots before they could send a distress signal is also implausible. Even if both engines failed simultaneously, the plane would still have been 'airworthy' enough to allow the flight crew to glide the plane to an emergency landing over the course of at least 25 minutes.

Something else, something extremely violent, sudden and catastrophic befell the plane and its passengers. Viktor Yung, deputy director of the airline, echoed this assessment when he said today that only an "external force" could have caused the plane to suddenly plummet from the sky.

"As the catastrophic incident started to develop, the crew members were rendered completely incapable. This explains why they didn't attempt to contact air traffic and report the incident happening on board," Yung said. Aleksandr Smirnov, who supervises the company's fleet, said that "the only possible explanation is a mechanical force acting on the aircraft, there is no combination of system failures that could have broken the plane apart in the air."

This week on Behind the Headlines we'll be discussing the conflicts in the Middle East and assessing where it's all likely to end up.

First up, we're interviewing Canadian freelance journalist and human rights activist Eva Bartlett. Bartlett has lived in the Gaza Strip since late 2008, and was aboard the Dignity, one of five Free Gaza missions to successfully sail to the Strip that year. Bartlett reported from Gaza during the 2008/2009 and 2012 Israeli attacks. She has visited Syria three times since April 2014, including independently on a journalist visa. Her Syria writings are collated on this page.

Later in the show, we'll also be speaking with Iranian-American Navid Nasr, writer, political analyst and host of the 'Bullet Points' radio show on the 'Voices of the 99%' radio network. Nasr has covered US and global conflicts - including those in Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, Yemen and Libya - for Lebanese Al-Etejah TV and PressTV.

Join us this Sunday, 1st November 2015, from 2-4pm EST / 8-10pm CET, for the perspective you won't hear on the mainstream media.

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Broadcasting from deep in the heart of the American Empire, join your host Elan Martin, and fellow Sott.net editors, as they discuss everything from current events and the latest machinations and manipulations of the global elite to history, science, and religion, and how it all fits together.

Monsters: What are they exactly? What forms do they take? What do they do? Is there a common thread between the 'supernatural' cases of Chupucabras or Mothman and serial killers Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer? Why has ISIS been so often referred to as a monster? And what do what do they all represent? Join us as we explore the concept of monsters, their meaning and their possible relation to our world.

The Truth Perspective is brought to you by the SOTT Radio Network and SOTT.net, your one-stop source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

Live every Saturday from 2-4pm EST / 11am-1pm PST / 8-10pm CET.

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The U.S. political, military and intelligence leadership have been scrambling to save face in Syria since Putin threw a geopolitical curve-ball at the empire-builders one month ago. Russia has now been pounding them with it repeatedly for 30 glorious days, taking out 1,600 terrorist targets and sending many of the critters fleeing. Put simply, the Americans created a wasteland, dug a giant hole in that wasteland, filled it with cannibalistic, head-chopping psychopaths, and bet the farm on burying their enemies in it, only to find themselves neck-deep in their own duplicity and hubris, scrambling to escape a problem of their own creation. American petard, meet Russian hoist.

Here's how it happened. After decades of using every dirty trick in the book to expand and maintain their hegemony -- bribery, blackmail, torture, coups, assassinations, death squads -- the Americans got complacent. To this end, the 'Al-Qaeda' bogeyman served them well. It is at once both a media creation to terrify the plebs and justify domestic and foreign power-grabs and a cover for mercenary warfare against foreign resistance to American occupation (e.g., Iraq), and against governments who refused to toe the American line (e.g., Libya).

Al-Qaeda 2.0 (ISIS/ISIL/IS) is no different. From 9/11 and the launch of the 'war on terror', the empire-builders enforced the PATRIOT Act and corresponding police state legislation right across the Western world, launched wars of occupation and proxy wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Mali and elsewhere and increased their economic, political and military dominance around the globe.

Naturally, they didn't think anyone would seriously challenge or call them on their bluff and bluster. Enter Vladimir Putin. Judging by American words and actions over the last month, and despite crying wolf about 'Russian invasions' in Ukraine since the coup d'état in Kiev in February 2014, the Americans didn't see the Russians coming in Syria.

Let's be honest here, the Americans practically handed it to Putin on a platter. They spent so much time and energy building up ISIS as the biggest, baddest, scariest bunch of psychopathic monsters that all Putin had to do was say, "Yeah, you guys are right. Mind if I take 'em on? You know I know Judo, right?" I would have loved to see the looks on their faces when they heard the news on September 30th.

The mainstream diet dictocrats are at it again, swearing up and down that meat is the equivalent of Satan himself on your dinner plate. This week, social media has been on fire with the latest WHO report that red meat is probably carcinogenic and processed meat is definitely carcinogenic. Smug vegans and "health" aficianados are crying "I told you so" while Paleo bloggers are crying foul. The real question is: Are red and processed meats actually harmful to our health?

Today on the SOTT Talk Radio Health and Wellness Show, we look into the subject of meat. Is your delicious steak harmful to your health? Is it beneficial? What about bacon? Does the WHO report have any merit? How can we make choices in our meat consumption that provide us our ideal nutrition?

All this will be explored and more as we explore the subject of meat here on the Health and Wellness Show. Join us every Friday at 10am EST.

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A recent report published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) titled 'Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat' has garnered a significant amount of media attention the world over in the past few days. As usual, the mainstream media didn't hesitate to take the opportunity to ramp up fear among the masses with sensationalist headlines like 'Processed meats do cause cancer - WHO' (BBC), 'If meat causes cancer, What can we eat?' (CNN), and 'Hot dogs, bacon and other processed meats cause cancer' (Washington Post).

These types of definitive statements, however, have not been limited to sensationalist media headlines, with even the World Health Organization itself making such claims on social media: