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Sherlock

SOTT Focus: From Belfast to Baghdad: New Evidence Emerges of British False-Flag Operations in Ireland

Stephen Travers
Northern Ireland's British-Made 'Troubles'

Late at night on 31st July 1975, about 7 miles from the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a minibus carrying members of a music band, The Miami Showband, was stopped by what appeared to be a group of British soldiers. The five members of the band - lead singer Fran O'Toole, trumpeter Brian McCoy, guitarist Tony Geraghty, bassist Stephen Travers and saxophone player Des McAlea - were told to exit the bus and stand by the roadside while two of the soldiers searched their bus. At least some of the soldiers were members of the Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR) - an infantry regiment of the British Army recruited from Northern Ireland - but they were also members of the UVF, a loyalist paramilitary group responsible for many indiscriminate murders of innocent Northern Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland's brewing sectarian conflict.

While a soldier asked each of the band members for their names and addresses, a car pulled up and another uniformed man appeared. He was wearing a beret that was noticeably different from those worn by the others and, according to two of the band members, spoke with a "crisp, clipped English accent." He immediately took charge of proceedings, instructing the other soldiers to ask for the names and dates of birth of the band members rather than their addresses.

Comment: Also by Joe Quinn:

The British Empire - A Lesson In State Terrorism


SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Who Was G.I. Gurdjieff And Why Does It Matter?

gurdjieff
Healer, philosopher, psychologist, adventurer, composer, mystic - all describe a facet of who George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was, and what he did. And yet, he may also be called one of the leading figures in 'spiritual' growth that most people have simply never heard of. Gurdjieff's teachings, body of writing and the schools he started and taught were, and are, a profound testament to his insight and vision for a healthy and well functioning human being. On a personal level, he worked with hundreds of students in assisting them to not only see themselves as they really were, but to help grow the seeds of greater consciousness and conscience that would make them better people.

This week on MindMatters we discuss the life and times of one of the 20th century's most towering figures and ask, what drove him? Who did he work with? And what is the 4th Way school that has carried on his work in the generations after his death in 1949? In a world that insists that it is 'woke', why are Gurdjieff's ideas about self-awareness so relevant to the individual in the here and now?


Running Time: 01:02:03

Download: MP3 — 57.7 MB


Red Flag

SOTT Focus: Warning: Do NOT Read This! NewsGuard 'News Rating Agency' Gives SOTT.net Red 'Fake News' Label

newsguard thinking
Well, they finally got around to 'officially' marking Sott.net 'fake news'.

In October 2018, a representative of 'NewsGuard Technologies', a self-described "news rating agency," reached out and invited us to answer "some questions regarding Sott.net's background and editorial practices." Based on the false assumptions that were clear in their questions, and their ludicrous examples of Sott.net content they deemed "far-right," we immediately had a good idea of who they were and what their shtick was. (Ostensibly, "combating online disinformation." Really, cracking down on dissent.) We nevertheless humored NewsGuard with detailed responses, which apparently stumped them because it was another 14 months before they got back to us.

Much background digging has been done on this outfit in the meantime, but for now I'll summarize NewsGuard's pitch then share with readers some of our most recent correspondence with them. NewsGuard's 'technology' is a free opt-in browser extension that flags search engine results and social media posts that include links to content from news and information sites with a color-coded 'nutrition label'. They base it on nine 'journalistic criteria', five for credibility and four for transparency.

If you download the NewsGuard app and see a red shield appear next to a post or search result, this means it comes from a site NewsGuard has deemed 'fake news'; if a green shield appears, users may proceed to click on it, safe in the knowledge that it's from a 'trustworthy' news site. While they don't actually say 'Sott.net is fake news', that is clearly implied given the climate in which this is taking place. The red shield contains an exclamation mark and next to it appears a warning to "proceed with caution," and a link to "see the full Nutrition Label" (here's Sott.net's). They even have a third category: a yellow shield with a smiley face in it, reserved for satirical news sites like The Onion, along with this helpful explainer: "This is a satire or humor source. It is not an actual news source."

While this is a free opt-in browser extension for now, NewsGuard has big plans to roll it out nationwide in the US - and its powerful backers are also intensively lobbying the EU to do likewise - as a default feature in libraries and educational institutions, and is in the process of securing big contracts with Big Tech to have it baked into devices and operating systems like Microsoft Windows, and/or 'at source', directly with Internet Service Providers. NewsGuard isn't the only such initiative taking off; a plethora of similar 'news ranking initiatives' are competing to "turn media credibility into a booming business."

Biohazard

Flashback SOTT Focus: NewsGuard: The Neocons' New Weapon For Waging War on Independent Media

Tom Rogers Steven Brill
© Ed Bailey/Associated PressPrimedia chairman and CEO Tom Rogers, left, talking with Newsguard CEO Steven Brill after a New York news conference announcing Brill as the chariman and CEO of Media Central, Jan. 4, 2001.
As Newsguard's project advances, it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site's ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States.

Soon after the social media "purge" of independent media sites and pages this past October, a top neoconservative insider - Jamie Fly - was caught stating that the mass deletion of anti-establishment and anti-war pages on Facebook and Twitter was "just the beginning" of a concerted effort by the U.S. government and powerful corporations to silence online dissent within the United States and beyond.

While a few, relatively uneventful months in the online news sphere have come and gone since Fly made this ominous warning, it appears that the neoconservatives and other standard bearers of the military-industrial complex and the U.S. oligarchy are now poised to let loose their latest digital offensive against independent media outlets that seek to expose wrongdoing in both the private and public sectors.

Video

SOTT Focus: Oliver Stone: What Reagan Said About the Soviet Union is True About Us - United States is 'the Evil Empire'

Stone/Correa
© RTFilm Director Oliver Stone • RT's Rafael Correa
Oliver Stone's films have won 12 Academy Awards including two for Best Director, as well as a bunch of Golden Globes and BAFTAs. His new focus is documentaries - on Venezuela, Ukraine, and Edward Snowden - all reflecting on the dubious activities of the US government both at home and abroad.

Oliver Stone, the award-winning American director and a relentless critic of US administrations, has called his country an "evil empire".

The term was coined by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 when he was referring to the Soviet Union and its arms race with the United States.
Things have changed a lot since then, at least for Stone. "Empires fall. Let's pray that this empire, these evil things... because we are the evil empire," he said in an interview to RT. "What Reagan said about Russia is true about us."
Stone - best known for his films Platoon and Wall Street - has long criticised US foreign policy, particularly its involvement in armed conflicts in the Middle East.

People

SOTT Focus: The Establishment Doesn't Fear Trump, And it Doesn't Fear Bernie. It Fears You

People power choice awareness
During the George W Bush administration it was popular in conspiracy circles to speculate that events might be orchestrated which would allow the Bush family to complete a coup against the US Constitution and hold on to power indefinitely.

Such paranoia and suspicion of government power in the wake of the extraordinary post-9/11 advancements in Orwellian surveillance programs and unprecedented military expansionism were perfectly understandable, but predictions that the younger Bush would not cede power at the end of his second term proved incorrect. In today's hysterical Trump-centric political environment we now see mainstream voices in mainstream outlets openly advancing the same conspiratorial speculations about the current administration, and those will prove incorrect as well.

What these paranoid presidential prognostications get wrong is not their extreme suspicion of government, but their assumption that America's real power structures require a certain president to be in place in order to advance depraved totalitarian agendas. As anyone paying attention knows, intense suspicion of the US government is the only sane position that anyone can possibly have; the error is in assuming that there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the same agendas carry forward from one presidential administration to the next.

Blackbox

SOTT Focus: Is it Okay to be White?

is it ok to be white?
I'm white and that's OK with me. I'm not proud to be white because I did nothing to achieve it. I just happen to be white because both my parents were. I had no say in their decision. It was nothing to do with me.

In December 2019 posters appeared in Perth saying "It's okay to be white." According to the BBC, hardly reliable, this caused some people to say, "It's sickening and disgusting to know that people think like this." The Scottish government seemingly agreed, with John Swinney MSP stating, "We must stand together to resist this unacceptable material."

Why is it unacceptable? Would it be unacceptable to say it's OK to be black, brown, yellow or red? Perhaps it would but, if so, why? What's wrong with being OK with the skin you live in? Must we all be uncomfortable with our own ethnicity? What does skin colour matter anyway? The knee jerk reaction itself assumes the posters were inherently racist. Maybe this says more about those reacting than those posting.

I think it's OK to be black, fine to be brown, great to be yellow and neat to be red. In modern developed nations, I consider anyone who imagines themselves superior by virtue of their skin colour to be either brainwashed or an idiot. It is the brainwashed and the idiots who deny people equal opportunities because of their skin colour. They are the cause of remaining systemic racism. Regardless of their own individual skin colour. Thankfully, there are less of them, but they still exist.

Laws have been passed to stop the idiots discriminating. Unfortunately, many of the idiots who still discriminate are immensely wealthy and therefore powerful. They can afford other, very expensive idiots who will win court cases for them. So the law generally doesn't apply to the idiots who can afford not to care about the legalities. We are about to find out who they are.

USA

SOTT Focus: Ignoring the Elephant at Gitmo: Yet Another 9/11 Crime

Guantanamo bay detainee torture
The dubious legal proceedings at the Guantanomo Bay (Gitmo) prison camp continue to promote the idea of justice for victims of 9/11. Unfortunately, these proceedings do not represent an administration of law but an unstated claim that the Global War on Terror is above the law. More importantly, the Gitmo antics have one obvious objective — to perpetuate willful ignorance of the 9/11 crimes.

There is a dangerous elephant in the Gitmo courtroom, however, and if it ever gets reported it could bring down the terror-torture house of cards.

Reporters covering Gitmo continue to call it a trial but it is not a trial, it is a "military tribunal." They continue to call the site "Camp Justice" when justice is as far from the prison camp as it has ever been from any human endeavor. What they don't do is think critically about the information they are parroting from court sources.

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SOTT Focus: Objective:Health #42 - Medications That Change Our Personality

O:H header
Would you like a side of gambling addiction with your Parkinson's medication? How about bouts of road rage and violence with your cholesterol meds? Or a pill that reduces your sense of empathy along with your headache?

A recent article on the BBC called "The Medications That Change Who We Are" exposes the little-mentioned serious personality-shifting side effects of many of the most popular medications in the world. While the negative side-effects of psychotropic meds are relatively well known (although downplayed in the mainstream press), few are aware that pill regimes seemingly unrelated to mood and personality could have such wide-ranging negative effects on how we relate to the world.

Join us on this episode of Objective:Health as we take a closer look at the medications that change who we are.


And check us out on Brighteon!


For other health-related news and more, you can find us on:
♥Twitter: https://twitter.com/objecthealth
♥Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/objecthealth/
♥Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channel/objectivehealth

And you can check out all of our previous shows (pre YouTube) here.

Running Time: 00:31:26

Download: MP3 — 28.8 MB


2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Green Resistance Using Haftar's Army as a Vehicle for Sovereign Libya

Green resistance Libya
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's former spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim speaks about why Germany was chosen as the location to manage Libya's crisis, how the West introduced chaos to Libya and has managed the chaos ever since, why Turkey is militarily backing the UN-backed government, the conditions of the Green Resistance's alliance with General Haftar and their suspicions about him and more!