Today marks the 13th anniversary of the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq. March 20th, 2003 was the date on which the Western Empire began its insane quest to 'reshape the Middle East' through violent intervention. This week on Behind the Headlines, we'll be looking back at the bloody mayhem the Iraq War unleashed, and discussing its ongoing ramifications as it continues spreading today, not least in Turkey, where yet another 'suicide' bombing took place this week.
Unlike the American 'Mission Accomplished' three months after invading Iraq in 2003, the Russian equivalent in Syria this week appears to have some basis in reality. We'll be exploring what it means for the balance of power in the Middle East, and also discussing whether there is any connection to yet another Russian passenger airplane falling out of the sky near the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine yesterday.
This show aired live from 1pm-2.30pm EST / 5-6.30pm UTC / 6-7.30pm CET
The Islamic State pretends to be viable state. It's right there in their name. But are they? And if they are, can they sustain themselves? There are certain reasons why states survive or fail, but the least discussed reasons are perhaps the most important. Luckily, these are discussed in Andrew Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology. On this episode of the Truth Perspective, we continued where our previous discussion of radicalization left off, showing why Daesh is doomed to fail, and how its ultimate purpose must be looked for elsewhere. The only reason it has been able to succeed to the degree it has is because of external, foreign support: from their Gulf monarchy sponsors and from the U.S. It actively eschews appealing for popular Muslim support, relying on a tiny minority of sadistic psychopaths and mercenaries.
Russia is playing a big part in the ultimate demise of Daesh. We discussed what Russia and their allies have accomplished, including the latest news: the partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria.
The Truth Perspective is brought to you by the SOTT Radio Network on SOTT.net, your one-stop source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events. Live every Saturday at 6 pm UTC / 7 pm CET / 2 pm EDT.
Is cold actually good for you? We've all heard stories about long-lived people from Northern Europe and the hardiness of those who live in cold environments, but can these benefits be available to everyone? Can you avoid sickness and infirmity by exposing yourself to the cold? What are the actual mechanisms of how cold adaptation affects the human body? These are the questions we explored on this week's Health and Wellness show: The Benefits of Cold Adaptation. We also discussed Wim Hof's remarkable story, cold adaptation techniques, and heard some live testimonials.
Included as always was Zoya's Pet Health Segment, discussing dog bites: why they happen, how to know the warning signs, and what to do about them. Join us weekly on Fridays on the SOTT Radio Network!
Harrison Koehli & Joe Quinn Sott.net Mon, 14 Mar 2016 22:10 UTC
The scene of the Ankara blast on March 13.
On Friday, March 11, the American embassy in Turkey warned American citizens of a "potential plot to attack Turkish government buildings and housing" in the Bahcelievler neighborhood of Ankara. Yesterday, a car bomb exploded just a few kilometers away, close to the Justice and Interior Ministries, a courthouse, and the former office of the prime minister, killing 37 and wounding 125. Turkish courts shut down access to social media in order to suppress sharing footage and coverage of the scene. This comes less than a month after another bombing in Ankara, which killed 29, and almost immediately after an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was broadcast, in which he said that Russia has evidence that Turkish troops have crossed the border into Syria, having "already dug themselves in several hundred meters from the border in Syria." These events come on the eve of the resumption of the Syrian war peace talks in Geneva and the announcement by Putin that Russia would start to withdraw its forces from Syria.
I love this country. Not for what it's become, of course - a fascist police state with a rabidity and penchant for lashing out that can only be compared to the Third Reich. No, that's definitely my least favorite part about it. What I love is what it is conceptualized as, and what it ostensibly stands for: freedom, democracy, opportunity, a melting pot of cultures and civilizations.
Growing up, studying the history book version of America inspired me. Granted, we glazed over the Native American holocaust and lionized slave owners and oligarchs, but at the core there was an American mythos worth believing in: the right to be secure in our persons and property, the freedom to believe in and practice whatever religion we wanted, a 'free market' in which we could survive, thrive and prosper. In this America, we had the right to defend ourselves from violence, and to speak our minds when we thought there was something worth speaking about.
Sadly, that America doesn't exist, and worse - I doubt it ever did. Since its inception, America has been controlled by the money men. Those who have the most wealth also have the most power. They control and influence public opinion because they have the ability to talk louder than anyone else. They own the media. They buy politicians and legislation. Laws are selectively enforced based on whether or not the populace is aware that they've been violated, and even then this 'elite' usually get away with it. Bribery and corruption are nothing new - in fact, Citizens United legalized it to a whole new level by proclaiming that a corporation's ability to spend money on political campaigns could not be impugned because to do so is considered a 'violation of free speech' because, as everyone knows, corporations are the most important and privileged of all 'people'.
Sinkholes swallowing cars and people, meteor fireballs raining down, and volcanoes erupting all over the place - for the shortest month of the year, February 2016 sure was eventful...
Last month, there were many spectacular volcanic eruptions in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Indonesia and Japan. Elsewhere, the Earth literally opened up to kill a man in Arizona, while a giant fissure swallowed a river in southern Mexico. Major earthquakes included a 6.4 magnitude tremor in Taiwan that toppled buildings and killed 33 people, while another strong quake (5.9M) struck Christchurch, New Zealand, which is still rebuilding after a devastating earthquake struck the South Island city in February 2011.
A lot of spectacular meteor fireballs were caught on camera last month. On just one day, February 6th, there were 3 notable meteor events: NASA recorded a massive overhead explosion in the South Atlantic Ocean; a second meteor shook homes when it exploded over Denmark and sent meteorites to the ground; and a third meteor did likewise in southern India, killing a man who had the misfortune of becoming the first official case of 'death-by-meteor'. The bolide that exploded over the South Atlantic was the largest to hit the planet since the Chelyabinsk event, almost three years to the day.
Those strange 'sky sounds' were heard in North America last month, notably in the US Northeast and Quebec. Deluges brought flash-flooding to Mauritius, Fiji was flattened by its strongest ever storm, Peru was hit by devastating mudslides, and there were heavy snowfalls in parts of the US and Pakistan. Ottawa, Canada received its biggest single-day snowfall in over 100 years.
An increasingly erratic Jet Stream coupled with a record-strong El Nino brought weather extremes to the US, with the US Southwest experiencing a record heatwave for this time of year, the US Northeast experiencing record cold temperatures mid-month, and the US South experiencing both unseasonal tornado outbreaks and blizzards. In what appears to be an increasing trend, sea life continues washing ashore in droves on beaches around the world. We also have several clips of animals going on the rampage, including the somewhat symbolic sight of a bear attacking people in Turkey.
These were the signs of the times in February 2016...
The Age of the Caliphs: Brown - Muhammad, 622–632. Orange - Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661. Yellow - Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750
With post-9/11 anti-Muslim hysteria in the West providing fertile ground for the perception of today's refugee crisis in Europe as a "Muslim horde invading Western civilization to rape our women, steal our jobs and generally tarnish Our White European Christian Values", intense historical revisionism is underway to paint Muslims as having always been a 'backwards, sub-human horde'.
In a throwback to the Medieval crusades, today's Western wars of conquest in the Muslim world have essentially been justified on the basis of a 'civilizing mission' to bring freedom and democracy to backwards peoples. Citing it as historical precedent, the revisionists propose that the Medieval era crusades launched against Muslim cities in the Eastern Mediterranean were justified because of the 'invasion and occupation of Medieval Spain' during Europe's Dark Age.
In what is arguably one of history's richest ironies, this complete inversion of what really happened when the Muslims came to Europe around 700 AD has obscured the truth about just who was behaving like a marauding horde and who was doing the civilizing. So this week on Behind the Headlines we're going to take a moment to explore the origins of Western civilization.
We're live from 1pm-3pm EST / 5-7pm UTC / 6-8pm CET
This week, the Truth Perspective hosts were joined by Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley from Behind the Headlines.
If you read the papers or watch the news, you probably 'know' that radicalization is the biggest threat to human civilization and values the world has ever seen. But is it really? The phenomenon of radicalization is much discussed, but ill-defined and not thoroughly understood. The word itself has become a convenient catch-all for individuals and groups with a variety of goals and motivations. Whether religious, social, political, or economic, radicals can be either a force for positive change, or personal and social degradation. We need new words if we want to understand what's really going on.
Moving in that direction, we discussed radicalization in general, the history, goals, and influences on "radical Islam", and how the science of ponerology provides the only comprehensive understanding of what's really going on, and the real threats facing humanity. Relevant topics included: the Iranian revolution, the colonial history of the Middle East, the creation of Israel, the occupations of Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, the nature of resistance movements, the varieties of 'conversion' experiences, and more.
Migrant children wait by the fence on the Greek side of the border to enter Macedonia
Perhaps the only positive thing about the deteriorating social and environmental conditions on our planet is the fact that they tend to drive our 'leaders' to increasingly desperate acts to secure their positions in power. As part of this process, this 'elite' are also given to telling increasingly outrageous and transparent lies. Take the Syria/Turkey/Russia/EU/US refugee debacle that has been raging for over 2 years for example.
For the last 5 years Western powers and their media lackeys have made no bones about the fact that they have been fully supportive of the 'Syrian rebels' in their brutal war against the Syrian people in an effort to overthrow the democratically-elected Assad government. No secret was made either of the fact that various Western governments were directly funding, training and arming these 'rebels' who were then killing Syrian civilians en masse. During that time, it came to light that the vast majority of the 'rebels' are of the crazy-jihadi variety, low-brow foreign mercenaries willing to fight for any cause as long as you pay them enough, or give them enough candy bars and Saudi-supplied amphetamines like captagon.
A good portion of those jihadis came from Libya, where they were well-known to agents of the US, not least to Hillary Clinton, who used them to destroy Libyan society and publicly sodomize and murder Muammar Gaddafi, much to Clinton's delight. What a wonderful prospect for the American people to have such a vile psychopath represent them.
Today on the Health & Wellness Show we looked at some of the latest headlines and connected the dots to get an overall picture of what's happening to our collective state of health here on the big blue marble. Has America truly become an Idiocracy where citizens are so dumbed down that they trust the people who know the least and ridicule any sort of rational, well-read, informed knowledge? Are we creating a world of dummies through toxic junk-food lifestyles exported abroad, setting an example by being self-righteous, ignorant and deliberately gullible? Join us as we will delve into the details of the corporate shenanigans of Monsanto, Big Pharma, FDA conflicts of interest, sick care in America, and the poisoning of our bodies with everyday products.
The Health and Wellness Show airs every Friday at 10 am EST and 4 pm CET, where we expose the lies and emphasize the truth about health in our modern world. With us today, as always, was our resident animal health expert Zoya, with her weekly Pet Health Segment.
