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SOTT Focus: Sarkozy - Hello NATO, Goodbye France

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:16 UTC
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That Sarkozy was always going to eviscerate France's tenuous military and political neutrality once he took office should have been obvious to all. Long before he somehow managed to win the 2007 French elections, he was already known as 'Sarko the American' not to mention 'President Bling Bling'. It seems it's just not possible for a French politician to truly admire the American empire builders (as Sarko seems to) and not grovel at their feet.

After all there are great personal advantages to be had from aligning oneself and one's nation (whether they like it or not) with the last great empire. There is the sense of being on the "winning side" (who now can stand up to the US juggernaut?). There is immediate access to the massive resources, influence and intelligence assets of the empire through which previously impossible goals become not just possible but a matter of policy.

Up until Sarkozy's nomination as President last year, France had a 40 year long history of staunch opposition to the type of US diplomacy that has brought us the ludicrous yet deadly "war on terror". As long as there was a major world power that was still relatively independent, there was still a third option - that if small yet strategically important nations weren't "with the US" they weren't by definition "with the terrorists". They could be "with France".

Comment: The above link contained within the text "those that so deftly shunted him into the Elysee Palace" has been removed from the original Quatar Penninsula site, but is still available on archive.org. In case it ever disappears completely from the web, here are two screen-shots of the article for a more secure archive experience:

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Pistol

SOTT Focus: No Taser Deaths In USA?

Grover
Sott.net
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:40 UTC


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This citizen was Tasered for refusing to lie down, and then Tasered again for refusing to get back up.
Long live the Taser!

I was asked to attend a Citizens Police School as part of our local police department's community outreach program. This program is held a couple times a year and lasts 12 weeks. Although this sort of thing wouldn't normally interest me, given the large amount of bad press the police are getting across the country I decided to sign up in order to learn more, in effect, to do some research. What I discovered left me with the strange urge to check if my passport was still valid.
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Chess

SOTT Focus: UPDATE: Connecting the Dots: The Axis of Evil in Motion Under Peculiar Cosmic Weather

SOTT Focus
Sott.net
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:45 UTC


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Update: Dry weather, fires, spontaneous combustion? As it turns out the Taurid meteor event was not a complete bust, more like a combustion:
1st of July 2008 - Witnesses across Southern California say they saw an object 'moving very fast across the northern sky' and falling near the San Bernardino Mountains. Officials have no firm answers on what it was.

From Hollywood Hills to the Nevada state line, people reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky and falling near the San Bernardino Mountains this morning. But explanations of the mysterious object were scarce.

San Bernardino County Fire Dispatch reported receiving dozens of calls related to what was described as fireball moving at high speed and falling in northwest sky around 10:40 a.m.

"We got quite a few reports. It started with a gentlemen in the Lake Arrowhead reporting a fireball in the Meadow Bay area and then we started getting calls from all over," said San Bernardino County dispatch supervisor Tom Barnes. "Fire crews in Barstow and on I-15 near Stateline came up on the radio and reported an object in the sky moving very fast across the northern sky and described it as yellowish green in color with streaks of debris. It looked like it burned up before it hit the ground."
Now isn't it a "coincidence" that California became engulfed, at its peak, in 1,783 fires across the state, scorching over 527,000 acres, including one in the San Bernardino mountains. Firefighters are still battling over 300 fires. Yet, all the fires are being blamed on "unusual early-summer lightning storms".
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Black Cat

SOTT Focus: Neil Entwistle: Psychopath

Harrison Koehli
sott.net
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:55 UTC


Entwistle
©Reuters
The face of evil.

You've probably heard the story, or at least one like it. Husband kills wife and child, seemingly without remorse, then attempts to pass it off as a murder/suicide. And, remarkably, people believe him. The latest such example is Neil Entwistle, a British computer programmer, who murdered his American wife and 9-month-old daughter in 2006. He was recently sentenced to life in prison.

The trial made for a fascinating and disturbing spectacle. Aptly described by jurors as a complete narcissist, Entwistle put on quite the display during the presentation of a video of the bloody crime scene. But before we see his reaction for ourselves, let's see what the media tells us we see.
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Beer

SOTT Focus: From Cafe to Cybercafe: The Splintering of Society

Henry See
SoTT
Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:33 UTC


Coffee and Cigarettes
©Unknown

During a recent visit to Montreal, I was struck by the many changes. I spent the greater part of my life in Montreal, but had not visited in several years. It is normal to find that a place you once lived has changed. Nothing stands still, however, the changes I am referring to go much deeper than the usual new buildings or housing developments.

The social fabric of a community is made up of many elements: knowing your neighbours, or at least recognizing faces on the street; communication with local merchants; places where people get together to meet and talk over a coffee or a drink; population density and the ease of circulating on foot or by bike, via public transportation, or by car. Neighbourhoods with small businesses run by people who live in the area have a different feel from ones that are rife with franchises.

Roaming through my old neighbourhood, the old haunts had disappeared. The local cafe, run by people from the neighbourhood and offering a spot to go and spend an afternoon or evening reading or talking over a coffee and a cigarette, populated with students, professors, artists, writers, and musicians, had gone, replaced by yet another chain offering a prepackaged and franchised atmosphere that could be found anywhere on the planet. The former rows of books, everything from novels, poetry, and drama to philosophy and social science, sitting on battered shelves for people to pick up and browse over a coffee had been replaced by, well, nothing. Emptiness. Mirrors reflecting back the image of the consumer to himself.
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Butterfly

SOTT Focus: Enough Hand-wringing! What You Can Do

SOTT Focus
SOTT.net
Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:17 UTC
The SOTT editors receive a great deal of mail every day. A lot of those letters run on the theme of "What can I, one person, do in the face of so many problems and such overwhelming odds? It's impossible."

The SOTT News Service subscribes to the "butterfly effect", dedicating itself to continuous pushing against the pathocratic oppression we all suffer under. Small incremental efforts by many people can engender massive change, IF kept up persistently. The scope of our individual freedoms are maintained only by the collective effort of all who care about those freedoms.
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Heart

SOTT Focus: In Memoriam: Andrzej M. Łobaczewski

SOTT Focus
Sott.net
Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:54 UTC
Andrzej M. Łobaczewski
© sott.netAndrzej M. Łobaczewski, November 2005
The editors of sott.net were recently informed that, after a long period of illness, Dr. Andrzej M. Łobaczewski passed away in late November of last year. Łobaczewski was the author of Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes.

He was born in 1921 and grew up on a rural estate in the piedmont vicinity of Poland. Under the Nazi occupation of Poland he worked on the family farm, was an apiarist, and then a soldier of the Home Army, an underground Polish resistance organization. After the Soviet invasion of Poland, the family estate was confiscated and the Łobaczewski family was driven from their ancient home.

Comment: See also: The Theory of Positive Disintegration

Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Applied for Political Purposes

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Pistol

SOTT Focus: The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, Part 5 - Sirhan Sirhan

AB
Sott.net
Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:55 UTC


JFK and RFK
©Unknown

We conclude our look at the Robert Kennedy assassination with a view to revealing new evidence and a few hints at just how wide the spider's web is.

Comment: If you'd like to know more, here is some recommended reading:

The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Turner and Christian)
An Open & Shut Case (Joling and Van Praag)
Programmed to Kill (McGowan)
Political Ponerology (Lobaczewski)

And, for your viewing pleasure
Evidence of Revision (5 DVD set)

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Magnify

SOTT Focus: Target Chavez: Framing and demonisation

SOTT Focus
SOTT.net
Sat, 31 May 2008 18:05 UTC


chavezworld
©worldproutassembly
Evidence that Chavez is planning a world communist revolution and corrupting the minds of the youth in Venezuela.

Not content with their preparations for war against Iran, a war that is worryingly looking like it will involve the use of a nuclear weapon by Israel and the US while blaming the detonation on Iran, it seems that Venezuela and particularly Hugo Chavez are in the cross-hairs of the imperial war machine.

The most recent chapter of the story starts with a Columbian air raid against a camp in Ecuador on March 1st. The camp was the location of a group from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who were negotiating the release of some 700 prisoners. The raid killed FARC's second in command and top negotiator, Raul Reyes, and 23 other people, including 5 Mexican students. The air raid, followed up by a raid by special forces, was an armed incursion into Ecuador's sovereign territory and therefore an act of war against Ecuador (consider how the US would react if such an act were carried out by Iran into Iraq, let alone by Canada into the US) but this has conveniently been forgotten in the excitement that eight perfectly intact pieces of computer hardware were found at the scene of devastation.

Comment: For additional context to the ongoing vilification of Chavez, see the following:

James Petras' Venezuela: Democracy, Socialism and Imperialism and Venezuela: A Dictionary of Euphemisms of the Liberal Opposition

John Pilger's Latin America: the attack on democracy

Nikolas Kozloff's Controversy Over Guajira -- U.S. Military Bases in South America

Naomi Klein's Venezuela's Media Coup

Eva Golinger's Chronology of the 4th Generation War Against Venezuela

Troy Turner's Propaganda alert : A portrait of Hugo Chavez and his influence on American lives

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Fish

SOTT Focus: Penn Guinn's French adventures

SOTT Focus
SOTT French troops
Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:53 UTC
Continuing his whirlwind tour of the democracies of the world: Israel, Italy, and now France; Guinn has touched down in the land of frogs' legs, feasts and funky cheese.

Sarkozystan: the arrival; Our Man Guinn arrived in style, the $200,000-a-trip private jet being used by nameless French sub-ministers was unfortunately not available, luckily under the new regime, non-cronies of Sarkozy are provided with lush travel accommodation.

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©Unknown
After some breathing assistance, the man from Antarctica is back, ready for his French adventures.
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