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

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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.

When the democratically-elected President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in the bloody US-backed coup of February 2014, turning Ukraine against Russia, one of the beneficiaries was Ukraine's 'anti-Russian church': the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP).

This church was established in 1992 by a former Metropolitan of the Moscow Patriarchate, Filaret (Denisenko), after he failed to be elected Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). This caused him to break entirely from the church and create a new one in Ukraine. Later in 1995, when the elected head of this new church died, Filaret declared himself Patriarch of the UOC-KP.

Today, the intensely anti-Russian post-coup Ukrainian Government is allowing Filaret's clergy to lead their congregations in raids to take control of the churches and other facilities of the original Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate, UOC-MP).

Furthermore, Filaret's speeches are openly hostile toward residents of the far-eastern Donbass region of Ukraine, where over 90% of the local population had voted for the overthrown President, and then refused to accept the coup-regime and thus declared the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Mainstream news is full of health advice. The fact that most of it is bad doesn't seem to stop the endless stream of awful recommendations based on faulty science and questionable motives. A quick review of the news can reveal the following: Saturated fat is bad and should be limited to 13 grams a day; Take statins to reduce cholesterol and prevent heart disease; Have no more than a half teaspoon of salt per day; Whole grains are the foundation of a healthy diet; Mobile phones and other sources of ionizing radiation can't cause cancer; Increase your intake of polyunsaturated fats; Only plants make proteins; Glyphosate poses no risk to human health and is safe for consumption; Red meat kills. If this egregious advice wasn't enough, mainstream health writers go out of their way to lambast herbs and natural remedies with thousands of years of safe and beneficial use for humans. What's a person to do?

Join us for this episode of The Health and Wellness Show where we separate the lies from the truth and tried to figure out why mainstream health authors seem to have it in for us. And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment, where she spoke about the rabies virus.

Running Time: 01:25:32

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Russian president Vladimir Putin today delivered a landmark address to the Russian Federal Assembly - a joint session of the two chambers of the Russian Parliament - in what is the Russian equivalent of an annual 'State of the Union' speech.

Despite its name, the audience of the address is not limited to Russian legislators. Members of the cabinet, senior civil servants and important public figures are also invited. There were so many people invited this year that the event was moved from its traditional venue at the Georgievsky reception hall in the Grand Palace of the Kremlin to the larger venue at Moscow's Manege.

Taking advantage of the new venue's better multimedia capabilities, Putin announced that Russia has developed a number of advanced weapons systems, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile which render all US capabilities aimed at undermining the Russian nuclear deterrent - including its anti-missile systems - obsolete.

Days after Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi was imprisoned for slapping an Israeli soldier in her hometown of Nabi Saleh, members of her extended family living in Deir Nitham were threatened by an Israeli captain during a raid: "The day will come when you wish you are not a Tamimi." In early January, the Tamimis from Deir Nitham buried 16 year old Musaab al-Tamimi after he was shot on the neck during clashes with Israeli soldiers. Musaab was the first Palestinian killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in 2018.

The long-term resistance of Tamimi family to the Israeli occupation is becoming something of an obsession for Israeli authorities. In some cases, they are losing their grip on reality. Two years ago, Knesset member and former ambassador to the US Michael Oren initiated a parliamentary committee investigation to find out if the Tamimis were "not a real family... not genuine, and was specially put together for propaganda" purposes by the Palestinians, in which case this would represent "exploitation of children". Unsurprisingly, this conspiracy theory "didn't reach unequivocal conclusions."

Contrary to Oren's show of concern for the Tamimi children, the IDF has targeted members of the family irrespective of their age or innocence. On the 26th of February at 3 a.m., the Israeli military raided Nabi Saleh and arrested ten members of the Tamimi family for no apparent reason. Half of them are minors, including Ahed's cousin Mohammed. The arrests were carried out after collectively punishing the neighbourhood by spraying it with 'skunk water', a putrid substance normally used to disperse crowds:

"When one sees him, a ruler must be a paragon of mercy, loyalty, humanness, integrity and scrupulousness. Indeed, there's nothing more important than appearing to have this last quality, for the common people are impressed by appearances and results."

Niccolò Machiavelli

Remember when rival political parties would dig up dirt on each other? Anything would do: this guy once took a train journey and never paid for it; this one threw a candy bar wrapper on the street; this one once said women love it when he grabs them by the pussy; you know, silly stuff.

For the longest time, the public have always needed those involved with running their countries to be squeaky clean. People need that ideal to project onto, because they know they themselves are not perfect. Yet regardless of how great the leader in question might have seemed, 'ordinary' people really knew deep down that the leader wasn't perfect, but so long as their sins were kept under the rug, it didn't matter.

If his latest PR disaster of a trip to India is anything to go by, Justin Trudeau is working overtime to put the "tard" in Libtard.

Yesterday, the Canadian PM, along with Finance Minister Bill Morneau, unveiled Canada's 2018 federal spending plan whose sole purpose seems to be to pander to women voters and their delicate male feminist counterparts with a bunch of costly ineffective progressive policies.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau's third budget released Tuesday is very much a left-wing document and they're not even trying to hide the fact. For a supposedly financial document, it's rife with identity politics - touching upon multiple issues of gender and race.

Prior to the release they were teasing this as the first budget seen through a gender lens. Oh boy, do they deliver on that front.

The word gender appears 358 times. Choose another big issue, say, terrorism - that word doesn't appear once. It tells you something about priorities.

That our soy swilling, empty headed Prime Minister would table this type of superficial, female-focused budget comes as no surprise considering that a majority of Canadian men do not support Trudeau's Liberal party and in order to secure a second term after the 2019 election, he must prostate himself upon the altar of political correctness.

If not for women, Justin Trudeau's government would be in serious trouble. And not only because they comprise half the cabinet: the support of women is carrying this government through the difficult midterm portion of its mandate.

According to the last opinion tracking by Nanos Research, the Liberals actually trail the Conservatives in support among men: 38 per cent to 33 per cent. But among women, the Liberals lead 42 per cent to 25 per cent. And the latter gap is enough to give the governing party an overall lead.

The more cynical (and perhaps astute) reader might think that our youthfully handsome world leader cares only about his own future political career, and is merely using the cause celebre of 'minority rights' as a tool to get himself reelected.

The budget might go some way toward ensuring the political gender gap continues to pay dividends for the Liberals. If the party can hold its support among women through to the 2019 election, it can still emerge with a majority government - even if it loses the male vote

There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press. ~ Mark Twain

Today's news cycle is such that we are bombarded with information, much of it fake news and most of it echo and spin. There are excellent journalists, bloggers and academics out there, but too often they go unheard in the electronic haze of hysteria that passes for 'news'. The mainstream media has few journalists worthy of the name on the payroll, but plenty of those willing to compromise themselves for 'the inside scoop'. The CIA's Operation Mockingbird exposed collusion between government and media decades ago. And today, when some journalists routinely submit their drafts to powerful interests before publication, getting 'the right people' who will 'stick to the script' into media is a relatively easy job.

Publicare et Propagare

Journalism is as old as civilization. Ptah-hotep, vizier to Egyptian pharaoh Djedkare Isesi, wrote sometime around 2,200 BCE of the need for "communicating truthfully, addressing audience interests, and acting in a manner consistent with what is being said."

Julius Caesar launched the Acta Diurna, a daily gazette "posted in prominent places in Rome and in the provinces with the intention of feeding the populace official information."

The Acta Diurna introduced the expression 'publicare et propagare', which means "make public and propagate," and was typically written as a footnote to texts published in the Diurna. The practice of recording Senate deliberations was kept up after Caesar, though his successor refused to publish them, and thereafter they were often only published in censored form.

Another year, another Olympics marred by petty politics, dirty tricks, and information warfare. Why is Russia now the global sports pariah? What's up with all the doping? It looks as if it is Washington putting the so-called "Gerasimov doctrine" into effect: full-on hybrid warfare, without ever having to fire a gun.

And as the Olympians compete in their dopey games, the Syrian war has escalated to "another Aleppo", "another Srebrenica", this time in East Ghouta. But it's not just the headlines being recycled. The reality on the ground is pretty much the same as it was in Aleppo, with western journalists providing information cover for the terrorists occupying the area, holding civilians hostages, indiscriminately shelling civilian targets in Damascus, and trying to convince the world that they're not Al-Qaeda. As the Syrians progressed in their liberation of East Ghouta, Western terrorist sympathizers stepped into the fray, with the UNSC voting for a 30-day truce. But will Al-Qaeda abide by it? Unlikely.

With the proxy war waged in PyeongChang and Syria in full swing, the third front - Russiagate - is still going strong despite there being no evidence for it existing in the first place. There's more evidence for Bigfoot. The Dems have now released their much hyped memo. Mueller has indicted Russians and more Americans. And yet that Russian collusion is still nowhere to be found.

Join us this Sunday 25 February, from 12-1:30pm EST / 5-6:30pm UTC / 6-7:30pm CET as we discuss these topics and more.

Running Time: 01:54:56

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