SOTT Focus:


Vader

SOTT Focus: Pathocracy: Brave New World or 1984?

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© Sott.net
To those who have grown up in countries considered "free", the vision of George Orwell's 1984 strikes us as a threatening nightmare, a warning of a not-so-distant future where freedom is but a word. Like seed perpetually scorched before it even has a chance to take root, all that it means to be human is actively degraded, denied, and punished at even the smallest display.

The vision of the Party's rule, its inhumanity and utter ruthlessness and mendacity frighten us and we hope it will never come to pass here. But we have no clue how to prevent it, and just like the people in Orwell's fictional world, we are perpetually caught off guard when it comes to pass in our own lives. One day we wake up and realize we are living in a nightmare, and we have been for a long time. "It'll never happen here" and "We've taken every precaution" become "When did it happen" and "How did we get to this point?" This perennial sickness takes hold of a nation and we are at its mercy.

Binoculars

SOTT Focus: Cass Sunstein: Agent of COINTELPRO

Cass Sunstein
© unknownThe new face of COINTELPRO.
The Obama administration is merely one more in a line of bought and paid for actors in the theater of the absurd that is politics today. If readers still have any illusions about this fact, a look at Cass Sunstein, Obama's appointee to the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs should help shatter them.

First of all, to put some of his more absurd ideas in perspective, Sunstein advocates a "libertarian paternalism" type of government. As Paul Hsieh writes:
The basic premise of libertarian paternalism is that the government should use its power to "nudge" people into acting in their best interest, while leaving them the choice to "opt out." If the government decides that saving money is good, it would automatically divert a percentage of your paycheck into a savings account in your name unless you explicitly declined. Supporters claim that this preserves freedom because government is only changing the default, while leaving individuals the final choice. It is merely a gentle "nudge," not a hard push.

Alarm Clock

SOTT Focus: Obama's State Of The Union Address - A Live Analysis

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'The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force'
Obama's State of the Union speech is occurring as I write this, and against my better judgment I actually turned it on. It's about 20 minutes into the incongruous jocularity of the President and the Chamber - and he just said that he will encourage legislation to reverse the ruling of the Supreme Court that Corporations are 'persons' and can donate to election funding. He says this is wrong - this will allow society's most powerful to influence elections, as well as foreign interests - he won't have it.

The Supreme justices sit there on camera like stunned corpses as a bipartisan standing ovation explodes in the Chamber. He's addressed ear mark spending, lobbying limits and transparency, changing political discourse, the super-majority dictated by the Republican minority leadership (60% majority needed to do anything), and further tax cuts for education and child credits. He states that voting no on everything is hindering progress (what an astonishingly brilliant observation!).

Comment: Three pertinent quotes to consider, all by one Adolf Hitler:
"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think"

"The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one."

"The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force"



Rocket

SOTT Focus: US Hypocrisy In The Hanging Of 'Chemical Ali'

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Scape goat for the continued illegal US occupation of Iraq - 'Chemical Ali'
Saddam Hussein's former defense Chief Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh, cynically dubbed 'Chemical Ali' by the US government was hung yesterday by the US puppet government in Iraq. That is to say, yesterday, the US government hung a former Iraqi politician in an effort to justify its almost 7 year old invasion, occupation and wholesale destruction of Iraq and the genocidal murder of millions of Iraqi civilians.

The US government has long claimed that Saddam, and Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh were responsible for the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1998 as part of the Iran-Iraq war. Strong evidence however suggests that the Iranians were responsible for the attack. Even stronger evidence exists to support the argument that the US government far-surpasses any other nation in the use of chemical and biological weapons against innocent civilians.

USA

SOTT Focus: Disaster Capitalism Comes To Capitol Hill

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Many civil liberties groups in the US are up in arms over Thursday's Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United V Federal Election Commission, that gives corporations free reign to spend as much money as they can afford (which is a lot) to influence American political election outcomes. This is the same gaggle of Supreme Court Justices (more or less) that gave us, literally, the glorious reign of George Dubya Bush. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann dedicated one of his 'special messages' to the ruling which he said made all US politicians 'prostitutes' to big corporations.

Eh....so what's new?

Star of David

SOTT Focus: Arun Gandhi And 'The Jews'

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Dr. Arun Gandhi in front of a picture of his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi

Arun Gandhi is the fifth grandson of the famous Mahatma Gandhi, a public figure and an established and true man of peace. So what was he doing spreading nefarious 'conspiracy theories' about the Jews back in January 2008?

Magnify

SOTT Focus: Connecting the Dots: 2009 - The Year in Review

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© JonnyRadar/artchemicalmatter.com
Warm winter blessings to our readers this New Year! And midsummer's greetings to our readers in the southern hemisphere! We thought we'd begin this month's Connecting the Dots by welcoming in the new year with some reflection upon the old: 2009 was a truly smashing year in more ways than one.

Climategate broke out just as Connecting the Dots went to print last month. As we felt might happen, the Copenhagen Summit took a mighty hit from the 'truth vibrations' and despite frantic efforts, no binding international treaty came to pass. For now.

The mother of all cosmic ironies was not lost on us as the temperatures plummeted and negotiations at the 'Global Warming' summit froze! But the question remains: is the freezing weather in the northern hemisphere simply explained by regular variations in weather patterns? Or is climate change, in the sense of a fundamental change in the planet's climate, really happening, only not in the way we're being told?

As the solstice is a time for festive fun, we have a special treat for you this month, a pantomime, complete with odd characters in funny costumes and underwear that sparkles! Even Silvio Berlusconi makes a cameo appearance, until his mask nearly breaks in two. Sadly, not everyone saw the funny side, so we'll be looking at some of the darker implications of such episodes. We'll also be assessing the likely impacts upon our lives as a result of the latest phony act of terror.

Venture with us now into the shadow world of espionage and subterfuge, where the heroes refuse to bow before the Evil Empire and the villains do their Zionist master's bidding on the grand stage of power politics. Who are the real terrorists in this Faustian drama? Are they connected to those who claim ownership of the planet's resources for themselves at the expense of humanity? Would they really have us pay for the air we breathe and the water we drink? Is it possible that 'evil' is a real phenomenon?

Mr. Potato

SOTT Focus: Shocking Leak! Al Gore, Climate Scientists, the greatest source of Green House Gas

Rooters News Wire - A shocking development today in the global climate change pandemic occurred when an undisclosed source close to the Greatest Most Awesomest President Barack 'da Pimp' Obama told WSS News correspondent Ignatius O'Reilley that the Obama Administration is frantically trying to conceal the true source of green house gas: Al Gore and his cadre of climate change scientists.

Bizarro Earth

SOTT Focus: The Underwear Bomber - Crushing Freedom With Phony Arab Terrorism

underwear bomber
Strange as it may seem, a couple of weeks ago as I ruminated on Obama's broken promise to bring the troops home, his attempt to out-warmonger the Bush administration and his plummeting popularity, I thought to myself: "ya know, what that guy (or rather the disgruntled US public) needs is a good old fashioned 'Muslim terror attack'. Preferably one that includes a ranting 'terrorist' message about Afghanistan and 'slaughtering infidels'. That'll soon silence the rabble and get them behind Obama's Afghan surge!"

And so it was that, as I sipped my eggnog on Christmas day, I was shockingly unsurprised to read the headlines about an 'underwear bomb' (as shown above).

Comment: Update

The above article was written within a few days of the "Detroit terror attack". Since then, further details have emerged/been dug up:

Yemen has international debt totaling almost $6 billion, much of it owed to the IFC (basically the World Bank) and the Paris Club (same thing). What is most interesting however is that almost ALL of this $6 billion appeared on Yemen's books in the last 6 months of 2009.

In short, the Yemeni government sold its soul, or more specifically, the lives of many Yemeni civilians, to the World Bank. What it got in return is open to debate. When this type of thing happens (which it has, often, especially in the last 10 years) I like to think that the leaders of the lucky country in question received first class seats on the "rapture train", but I could be wrong.

More details about the bomber's father's banking interests have also appeared. Part of Yemen's debt is financed by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) which just happens to be the bank that financed the opening of Nigeria's first Islamic Bank, Jaiz Bank, in 2007. The bombers father is chairman of the Board of Directors of Jaiz bank

It's interesting, to say the least, that the father of the underwear bomber is financially beholden to/in bed with the banking institutions that recently gave Yemen stacks of cash, cash which said banking institutions (and the World Bank) probably stood to lose if the Houthi tribesmen in the North and the various social activist groups throughout Yemen were to succeed in their aim of homegrown regime change.

Could it be that, in bombing Yemen, the US government is simply following the orders of those mythical bankers? And if so, does that mean that said mythical international bankers actually exist??!

Having scoured their favorite "jihadist web sites" and message boards, it seems that the only beef IntelCenter/the mainstream media could come up with on the young underwear bomber was that he was lonely, as opposed to a radical hate-filled Islamophile jihadist bent on destroying Western civilization. Oh well.

However, the FBI did interview him and claimed that:
"he made contact via the internet with a radical imam in Yemen who then connected him with al Qaeda leaders in a village north of the country's capital, Sanaa."
So do we think that was before or after he came out of the trance?

According to one of his classmates, Mutallab:
"was pretty quiet and didn't socialize much or have a girlfriend that I knew of. I didn't get to talk to him much on a personal level. I was really shocked when I saw the reports. You would never imagine him pulling off something like this."
Strangely enough, I had the same impression, and I didn't even know him.

One last thing, that is perhaps of note. In September 2008, the Nigerian government were debating whether or not to allow the Mossad to come and train Nigerian security forces. It seems they probably decided to go with the idea because, according to one of the Nigerian MPs:
"They (Mossad) are professionals and they are here to help train our own intelligence agents. I don't see any way by which their presence in the country [could] pose any threat to our National Security."
Famous last words perhaps, at least for the young Mutallab, and the aspirations of the Yemeni people.


SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: SOTT Podcast: The Underwear Bomber - Crushing Freedom With Phony Arab Terrorism?

SOTT Podcast Logo
Known as "the underwear bomber", the misguided attempt by the 23 year old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a plane in Detroit on Christmas day 2009 is the latest in a long list of increasingly bizarre incidents that are immediately and unquestioningly ascribed to Muslim terrorists. Joe Quinn and special guest discuss some of the less well known details of the incident and ask the question that the mainstream media studiously avoids - who benefits?

Running Time: 00:57:05

Download: MP3