The signs are everywhere. If you're a middle aged man, you probably know a peer who has killed himself in recent years. At least one. If you're a parent, you may have noticed that your daughter's friends seem a little more on the ball than your son's. They get better grades. They smoke less weed. They go to more prestigious colleges. If you're an employer, you may have noticed that your female employees show up on time, whereas the young men often don't. And of course if you live in this country, you've just seen a horrifying series of mass shootings, far more than we've ever had. Women didn't do that. In every case, the shooter was a man.

As the solar minimum continued, subfreezing temperatures and snowfalls were still breaking records in February. Canada and the US experienced another arctic blast from the now split 'polar vortex', pushing wind chill temperatures in Canada to -62°C and covering much of the northern, central and eastern U.S. with heavy snow. The cold blast also descended to Europe and parts of Asia. This 'Beast from the East' brought heavy snow to much of Europe with some parts colder than the Arctic!

China was hit by heavy snow, disrupting transportation and flights, while Japan had one of its worst winters in decades. Snow also blanketed unusual places like the UAE and Morocco.

Heavy rain caused destructive floods in Indonesia, New Zealand, Cyprus and deadly mudslides in South America, while seventy rivers overflowed from the Great Lakes to Texas. Record-breaking size hail pounded Argentina, while California and Saudi Arabia were pounded by hailstorms that caused damage and disrupted traffic for hours.

The Ring of Fire continued with increased activity, volcanoes and mud volcanoes that had been dormant for decades awoke with a vengeance, triggering evacuations and disrupting the flights of thousands of travelers. Taiwan, Papua New Guinea and Mexico were also shaken this past month by significant earthquakes as the the cosmic ray grand maximum approaches.

Dry tides are becoming more common all around the world, while mass fish deaths and strandings continue to baffle scientists.

Meteor fireballs put on quite a show again this month, while the reports of unexplained loud "booms" increased all over the world.

Check it out below!

Syphilis, one of the most feared infections of the Middle Ages and Victorian eras, was until recently virtually eradicated from our world. In the United States, after being close to zero in 2000, the syphilis rate began a sharp climb in 2011. Experts are squeamish about giving an answer to the upsurge of STDs in general. Perhaps they are naive or prudish when it comes to sexual matters, or perhaps they're living in a bubble.

In this article, you'll learn about the shocking statistics on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) - a veritable sign of our times. Hopefully this will increase the disgust factor a few notches for those still 'on the fence'. When it comes to STDs, it doesn't hurt to err on the side of caution.

The Yuk Factor

Jonathan Haidt, author of the acclaimed book The Righteous Mind - Why People are Divided by Politics and Religion, explains how moral foundations are innate - "organized in advance of experience". In this sense, moral foundations are like the first draft of a book that gets revised as individuals grow up within their own unique culture. Haidt describes six moral foundations:

Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth! Millions of families visit the theme park every year to enjoy the magical place of rides, spectacular shows and cheerful cartoon figures. Everything is clean, perfect and joyful. Unless ... you realize that Cinderella might actually be homeless. That's right, 10% of Disneyland's employees are actually homeless, many more are on food stamps, and 75% struggle to make ends meet.

Today on the Health and Wellness Show, we have a very special interview with brilliant researcher Dr. Stephanie Seneff.

Stephanie Seneff is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. She received the B.S. degree in Biophysics in 1968, the M.S. and E.E. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1980, and the Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1985, all from MIT. For over three decades, her research interests have always been at the intersection of biology and computation: developing a computational model for the human auditory system, understanding human language so as to develop algorithms and systems for human computer interactions, as well as applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques to gene predictions. She has published over 170 refereed articles on these subjects, and has been invited to give keynote speeches at several international conferences. She has also supervised numerous Master's and PhD theses at MIT. In 2012, Dr. Seneff was elected Fellow of the International Speech and Communication Association (ISCA).

In recent years, Dr. Seneff has focused her research interests back towards biology. She is concentrating mainly on the relationship between nutrition and health. Since 2011, she has published over two dozen papers in various medical and health-related journals on topics such as modern day diseases (e.g., Alzheimer, autism, cardiovascular diseases), analysis and search of databases of drug side effects using NLP techniques, and the impact of nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins on human health.

Join us for a fascinating discussion with Dr. Seneff where we'll be covering a wide variety of topics on human health and nutrition.

Running Time: 01:17:33

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

As you may have noticed from the title, I'm cutting to the chase on this one. Context is everything these days when attempting to understand major geopolitical events.

Sergei Skripal is a former Russian army colonel who worked for Soviet military intelligence during the Cold War. In the late 1990s he was recruited by MI6 as a double agent. In December 2004, Skripal was arrested and charged with "high treason in the form of espionage", convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison. In July 2010, he was released as part of a spy exchange for ten Russian agents who had been arrested in the United States as part of the 'Illegals Program'. Skripal was then settled in the UK by MI6 in the town of Salisbury. Yesterday he was found on a public bench with his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia. Both were incoherent and/or incapacitated. When medical personnel arrived, some of them also allegedly became ill.

Within a few hours of the discovery of the pair, the British media and politicians had decided that they had been poisoned at the behest of Vladimir Putin himself, with some as yet "unknown substance". British newspapers said it, so it must be true. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson threatened fresh sanctions against Russia if it is proven to have poisoned a Russian double agent and branded the country "a malign and disruptive force". No evidence was cited to back up any of these allegations, because everyone 'knows' that Putin is a ruthless dictator who just loves to bump off people that he doesn't like. British newspapers and politicians said it, so it must be true.For the unfortunate cretins who still refuse to swallow the anti-Russia narrative, the British government and media duly require you to remember the case of Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian intelligence agent who became a British intelligence asset. Litvinenko was, 'everyone knows', murdered in 2006 by polonium that was given to him by two Russian spies on the 'direct orders of Putin'. The problem is that there was, and is today, no hard evidence for this claim. But who needs evidence when you have a propaganda bullhorn to addle the public brain. Mush-for-brains are highly averse to evidence anyway. It's much better to quote the words of people like Alexander Goldfarb, long-term anti-Putin activist, author of Litvinenko's deathbed testimony accusing Putin, and promoter of the activities of 'Pussy Riot'. On the Skripal situation, Goldfarb, who was (coincidentally) a close friend of Skripal, said:

"Any reasonable person would think immediately that Russia had the opportunity, motive and a prior history of this kind of crime so it is reasonable to think it was involved in this attack. This is the Kremlin's modus operandi. There are plenty of precedents. What's interesting now is that this happens just before Russia's presidential election."

The Skripal event, and the way it is being reported, cannot be understood except in the context of the vicious and persistent defamation and slander campaign that Western governments and media have waged against Russia over the past several years. To put it another way, the Skripal event is simply one more chapter in that defamation campaign. The reasons for the West's anti-Russia hysteria have everything to do with the fact that, over the past 10-15 years, Russia has re-emerged as a powerful independent player on the world stage, capable of pushing back long-standing Anglo-American designs on global control. Exceptional nations with a serious megalomaniacal streak (and their lackeys) don't like being pushed back, not even an inch. When they don't get their way, and lack the cojones to engage in a fair fight, they resort to dirty tricks and smear campaigns, at which they are very adept.

In the 1960s Dr. Martin Luther King fought for equal civil rights on behalf of African-Americans while President John F. Kennedy was trying to shift US foreign policy towards a peace race instead of an arms race. In their actions, these two men represented the qualities of the archetypal hero - their shared desire to unite society, and ultimately all of mankind.

Back then if you were a 'Liberal', you probably supported both of these men. Kennedy described himself in the following way:

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties - someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I'm proud to say I'm a Liberal."

That sounds reasonable to me. The trouble, however, with identifying one's politics, is that, as time goes by, the meanings of words change. For example, during the 1930s, 'fascist' applied to someone who supported the nationalistic ideology of that era. Today the term can mean a far-right or far left supporter, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The meaning of terms today also vary from person to person, so one word can have multiple meanings, even if they tend to aggregate around one 'common sense' meaning. A psychopath, you can imagine, has a totally different conception of the word 'freedom' than you have.

When Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States, it soon became clear that we had moved into an era of culture wars, and that the 'left' or 'liberal' ideology had undergone a very strange metamorphosis:


How the heck did we end up here?

Are you perturbed by what's happening in America? Are you shocked by inequality, disappearing middle class, declining quality of health, police brutality, gun violence, ever-growing national debt, government's Orwellian monitoring etc.? You are not alone, but all these are confusing only if you think in terms of an "American government" or "American corporations" or "American banks" that have, or should have, unique loyalty or consideration towards the American people.

But that's the wrong way to think about American today. Everything becomes clear if you think of it as a "System".

President Putin's 'state of the union' address to Russian legislators this week included an unusually blunt message to the self-styled 'masters of the universe' in Washington, DC: "You never listen to us. Now, you listen!"

Taking the opportunity to announce the completion of an overhaul of Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal, including some new hi-tech weaponry that he claims is unstoppable by any other military systems, Putin put the smack down on American pretensions to single-handedly ruling the world.

This week on Behind the Headlines, we'll discuss the significance of this development for world affairs, along with our regular round-up of recent events on the Big Blue Marble.

We're live from 12 noon - 1:30pm US Eastern, 5pm - 6:30pm UTC, 6 - 7:30pm Central European, this Sunday March 4th, 2018. If you can't tune in then, download the show from the Sott Radio Network archive!

Running Time: 01:44:27

Download: MP3

We're living in dangerous times folks. The postmodern feminist worldview has been officially adopted in UK courts.

In making their rulings, British judges use a guidance manual named the 'Equal Treatment Bench Book', which is published by the Judicial College, a body responsible for training all UK judges. The manual was just updated with a very pro-feminist, anti-male worldview taking hold. Judges are now being advised to avoid offending any of the snowflakes that might appear in their courtroom:

"Judges are now being urged to refrain from using certain words, including 'ethnic minorities,' 'afro-Caribbean' and 'transsexual,' while 'postman' should be replaced by 'postal operative'."

But the politically correct language doesn't stop there. It gets much worse:

"The guidelines also call for judges to be "slow" when it comes to jailing women, as imprisonment is believed to be more damaging to females than males. Going against the long-standing social norm whereby all are treated equally before the law, the guidelines suggest the opposite. "True equal treatment may not always mean treating everyone in the same way," the new version reads."

It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous statement. Equal treatment absolutely means treating everyone equally. Anything else is unequal treatment, plain and simple. This cannot be denied, yet the wizards at the Judicial College somehow have convinced themselves of something that is completely at odds with both the function of the English language and observable reality. Welcome to the liberal feminist ideology, where black is white and unequal treatment is fair if it benefits those poor victims of the patriarchy.