Breaking: Ama Dablam – Three missing in Khumbu avalanche

Three young French climbers are missing on Mingbo Eiger after a massive avalanche struck the west face of this 6,017m peak near Ama Dablam.

Some of the best climbers in Nepal have arrived in the area to help. But hopes of finding the French alpinists alive are close to nil.

The missing climbers are Thomas Arfi, Louis Pachoud, and Gabriel Miloche, according to Le Dauphine.

They are members of an eight-person group belonging to France’s GEAN (the national climbing team), who are climbing several peaks in the Khumbu.

Facts were confusing at first, as the GEAN climbers divided into smaller groups, each targeting different mountains. Earlier this week, we reported that one of the other GEAN groups had opened a new route on Nare Ri Shar.

The French Federation of Mountain Clubs (FFCAM) issued a press release about the Mingbo Eiger climbers. It stated that the three young guides and aspiring guides “had planned four days for this ascent”.

It went on: “After a whole day of scouting with binoculars to assess the snow conditions and ensure the weather window, they decide to begin the ascent. On the evening of [October] 26, contact was established by satellite phone from the bivouac where the climbers were installed. The first day of climbing went smoothly.”

No news, and a major avalanche

Concern grew, as time went on without news. Finally, the French Embassy launched an aerial search yesterday. A helicopter found that a major avalanche had swept the face, according to Montagnes Magazine. Pilots also spotted some gear at the base of the slope.

Today, Nepal’s National Mountain Guides Association deployed a team of some of the best climbers in the country to help with the search, The Himalayan Times reported.

Among the rescuers are IFMGA guides Mingma Gyalje Sherpa (aka Mingma G), Vinayak Malla, Ang Dawa Sherpa, Tshering Sherpa, and Pemba Gyalzen Sherpa.

Meanwhile, the head of the GEAN group, Stephane Benoist, confirmed that the climbers had separated into two teams. He said they were all devastated. They presume that an avalanche had swept away the missing climbers.

Source: Angela Benavides – EXPLORERSWEB

Notes:

  • Groupe Excellence Alpinisme Nationale (GEAN)

G20 leaders make little progress toward sweeping Climate Deal

At this point, one can’t say the G20 meeting in Rome was entirely unproductive, although the unofficial run-up to the upcoming COP climate conference in Glasgow next week didn’t seem to accomplish much.

After the US and EU trade negotiators struck a deal late yesterday to resolve a trade spat dating back years, the G20 nations – an agglomeration of the most economically powerful nations on the planet – agreed early Sunday on a new climate framework that they will bring to the climate accords in Glasgow next week (although Russia and China, two prominent G20 members, skipped the international circle-jerk, and with good reason).

Both leaders participated in the Rome meetings via video conference, and aren’t expected to join in person in Glasgow.

Anyway, on Sunday, negotiators from all sides reached agreement on the climate section of the G20 summit’s final conclusions, giving the world’s biggest and most developed countries something to take with them to the COP26 summit in Glasgow this week. Of course, as we have explained, developing nations will need some serious convincing, since projections show them having the most to lose over the coming decades as they catch up to their developed peers.

According to Bloomberg, the G20 deal – as expected – calls for a reduction in offshore coal plants, while recommitting the global community to the aims first adopted 6 years during the Paris Accords (which haven’t hardly come close to being realized).

Negotiators reached agreement on the climate section of the Group of 20 summit’s final conclusions, giving leaders something to take onto the COP26 summit in Glasgow this week.

The language largely mirrors prior pledges made in the 2015 Paris climate accord, however. Leaders said they “remain committed to the Paris Agreement goal to hold the global average temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

As expected, the communique agrees to phasing out investment in new offshore coal power plants, something China already said it would do. “We will put an end to the provision of international public finance for new unabated coal power generation abroad by the end of 2021.”

While members committed to cut their reliance on coal, the deal didn’t offer too many details about how exactly that would happen (China, the world’s second largest economy is still heavily reliant on the stuff).

In terms of domestic coal, the statement only contains a general pledge to supporting those countries that commit to “phasing out investment in new unabated coal power generation capacity to do so as soon as possible.” The communique offered little in the way of concrete action. The G20 committed to “significantly reduce” greenhouse gas emissions “taking into account national circumstances.”

Speaking at the start of the meeting, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi proclaimed that going it alone simply isn’t an option for the world’s most developed nations.

Instead, Draghi insisted that “multilateralism” is the key, per the FT.

Multilateralism is the best answer to the problems we face today. In many ways it is the only possible answer,” Draghi, Italy’s prime minister and host of the G20 this year, said in his opening comments on Saturday. “From the pandemic, to climate change, to fair and equitable taxation, going it all alone is simply not an option. We must do all we can to overcome our differences”.

Ahead of Saturday’s talks French President Emmanuel Macron told the FT that he hoped the G20 would agree to “accelerate the exit from coal power” and for rich countries to commit more financially to help developing countries meet their climate goals. Of course, the last time the West was confronted with a bill for these so-called “commitments”, John Kerry nearly had a heart attack.

For the sake of global cooperation allowing the emerging world to continue on its path toward development without taking too much away from the West, the world leaders attending better be ready to make more sacrifices than they did this weekend in Rome.

One final takeaway from the G20 gabfest, as Andrea Widburg notes, is that if the ritual photograph of world leaders is anything to go by, Joe Biden has lost some of the respect that used to be accorded America. Some? Who am I kidding? He’s lost all of the respect.

Think of this as a Where’s Waldo game and try to find Biden in the staged photo-op of massed world leaders above.

If you can’t find him, let us help. Don’t look to the center. In the center, you can see India’s Modi in the white leggings, with Germany’s Merkel on his left and, two over from Merkel’s left, there’s Canada’s Trudeau.

Cast your eyes in the other direction, to Modi’s right, and you’ll see the blonde shock of hair that is England’s England’s Boris Johnson, a couple of people away from Modi. Turkey’s Erdogan standing in front of Johnson.

But where is Biden? Oh, right! There he is, on the far left of the photo, practically falling off the stage.

Is that really where the American president belongs?

Source: Tyler Durden – ZEROHEDGE

Header: JERSEY CITY, NJ – AUGUST 9: Morning fog shrouds lower Manhattan and One World Trade Cente as the sun rises in New York City as a man runs through the 9/11 Empty Sky Memorial on August 9, 2020 in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

Welcome to The Metaverse

Virtual reality as an escape from real world dystopia has a long tradition in science fiction. Is Mark Zuckerberg bringing it to life?

Facebook Goes Meta

Last week’s biggest news out of Silicon Valley was Facebook’s (FB) announcement that it was rebranding as “Meta”, as part of its corporate embrace of the “Metaverse”.

The Dystopian Playbook

The term Metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson in his dystopian novel Snow Crash. Stephenson tweeted on Friday that he has no connection with Facebook/Meta otherwise.

Mark Zuckerberg almost certainly has read Snow Crash; it’s a favorite of tech types from Google co-founder Larry Page to Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson. And Neal Stephenson has been one of America’s most prophetic novelists.

Already two dystopian trends he predicted in Snow Crash have come true: people living in shipping containers, and mass illegal migration from the Global South to America (although in Stephenson’s book, they came by sea, which was likely an homage to JeanRaspail’s earlier novel, The Camp of the Saints; for an even earlier dystopian novel that has proven prescient, see our previous post, That Hideous Strength).

In Snow Crash, the Metaverse is, among other things, a virtual reality escape from the actual reality of living in a shipping container.

That idea was borrowed in a later dystopian novel, Ready Player One, which was made into Spielberg movie in 2018.

As The American Sun noted, the push for a virtual escape from dystopia suggests the powers that be aren’t working to prevent a dystopia.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that the “eat the bugs” folks at World Economic Forum have taken an interest in Meta.

Investment Implications

Dystopia or not, a lot money is going to be pouring into making the Metaverse a reality. Nathan Roth suggested some companies and crypto currencies that could benefit from it.

A few of our recent top names are on that list. Nvidia (NVDA) and the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) were both top names of ours last spring.

Source: PORTOFOLIO ARMOR via ZEROHEDGE

Israel: ‘Hard days ahead’ – Price of gas will soar to a record high tonight

The price of gas will soar to a record high tonight, and is expected to be linked to a wave of price increases, from vehicles and replacement parts to electrical products and real estate.

The CEO of the “Victory” supermarket chain, Eyal Ravid, warned of rising prices in the economy following the government’s new decrees and asked consumers to act wisely.

On his Facebook page, Ravid wrote: ”Hard days are ahead of us, we can say that we are facing a real tsunami of price increases. Fuel prices are about to skyrocket, with the government passing a new tax on disposable utensils alongside an additional tax on sugary drinks. These are just some of the factors that will weigh heavily on the pockets of us all.”

“And if that is not enough, the corona and its effects are still here, the suppliers have already announced that after a decade in which they have not raised prices, they no longer have a choice.”

Ravid said that in the not-too-distant past, before the corona, suppliers paid NIS 7,500 to bring a container from the east to Israel, by sea. Today the price already reaches NIS 59,000 per container.

“It cost NIS 2,500 from Europe and today NIS 17,000. This will hit all of our wallets.”

Victory CEO asks Israelis: ”Be smart consumers, buy right, plan your shopping, make lists in advance, check what goes into your cart and what you eat at home, keep Excel spreadsheets of expenses and income.”

”We at Victory will continue to do our best to lower the family food basket costs, give lucrative in-depth deals, fight suppliers and deepen parallel imports.

“You will need to be smart consumers, plan ahead and manage the family account wisely and together, hopefully, we will continue the struggle over the cost of living. Together we will get through the coming period,” Eyal Ravid promised.

Source: Arutz Sheva

Note:

1 NIS=0.32 USD

The priest who was born – and buried as – a Jew

A few days ago, 90-year-old Gregor Pavlovsky, once known as Yaakov Tzvi Gruner, passed away. Pavlovsky was born a Jew, was rescued from the Nazis at age nine, and died as a priest, with both Christian clergymen and religious Jews attending his funeral.

Rabb Shalom Malul, dean of the Amit yeshivah in Ashdod, related something of Pavlovsky’s life, gleaned from his discussions with him over recent years.

“He had a wonderful childhood,” Rabbi Malul related. “He learned in cheder, in a traditional religious framework.” Then, the Second World War broke out, and with the entry of the Germans into Poland, the Jews of Pavlovsky’s town were confined to a ghetto. His father was murdered, and then in ’42, his family was relocated to the town of Izbitza, which was just a stop on the way to the death camps, although many of the town’s Jews were also shot in the town and buried in mass graves. Several of Pavlovsky’s relatives shared this fate.

“It was at this stage that the young Pavlovsky sought refuge in the church where he was taken in as an orphan with a new identity. While he preserved the memory of his Jewish heritage in his heart, he began to learn about Christianity and eventually studied for the priesthood.”

Asked why young Yaakov Tzvi did not return to his Jewish roots when the war ended, Rabbi Malul replies that he never asked him why – during their discussions, they always focused on the latter years of Pavlovsky’s life. All the same, Rabbi Malul thought it reasonable to assume that, “as a young orphan with his whole past life destroyed, he must have felt protected and safe in his new life and wondered whether it was worth shaking everything up to start over. And maybe he also felt a certain sense of connection to Christianity, even though his Jewish identity always remained important to him.”

Yaakov Tzvi progressed in his studies, and then, just before qualifying, he decided to inform his teachers that he was actually Jewish.

“The Church was shocked and confused hearing that,” Rabbi Malul relates, “but after conferring with his superiors, his teachers decided that they would accept the situation as it was and allow him to complete his studies. They added that he was not the only Jew who had been adopted by the Church. And so, he was made a priest and became a very respected member of the clergy.”

20 years passed, and in ’66, Pavlovsky wrote an article in which he described something of his life. The article was published and reached the hands of his own family, who gave it to Yaakov Tzvi’s brother, who had survived the Holocaust with his Jewish faith and observance intact. The two met.

“Yaakov Tzvi told his brother of his wish to live as Jew among his own people,” Rabbi Malul relates. “He asked the Church to be appointed to a position in Israel and he was sent to Yaffo, where he lived among Jews.” A while later, he and his brother traveled to Poland where they erected a monument in memory of their parents and other members of the Jewish community of Izbitza who had been murdered during the Holocaust.

“In his will, Yaakov Tzvi wrote that he wanted to return to his people in full – he wanted to have a minyan at his funeral, and to have Kaddish said,” Rabbi Malul relates. “He even told the Church about his will, which took no small amount of courage to do. He wrote that he would remain a Christian till he died, but that afterward, he was cutting himself off from Christianity. The Church respected his wishes, and he continued to serve as a priest while living in Yaffo despite his will stating that he wanted to die and be buried as a Jew. He also started fasting on Yom Kippur and stopped eating chametz on Pesach.”

After becoming acquainted with the story of Pavlovsky, Rabbi Malul would contact him in Israel whenever he was on a trip to Poland with his students, so that they could listen to Yaakov Tzvi’s story while actually standing on Polish soil.

During one conversation, Rabbi Malul suggested to Pavlovsky that he might consider returning to Judaism before his death, given that the Church already knew of his intentions, and he asked him if he would like to start putting on tefillin.

However, Pavlovsky replied that “he felt grateful to the Church and to Christianity, for saving his life.”

Instead, Rabbi Malul came up with the idea of giving Pavlovsky a mezuzah to put up on his door, and the priest agreed.

On Rabbi Malul’s next visit to Pavlovsky, he brought the mezuzah with him. “I asked him if he wanted to affix it himself. I put a yarmulke on his head and he made the blessing. And whenever I spoke to him afterward, he told me proudly how he took care of the mezuzah and made sure it didn’t fall off.”

From Pavlovsky’s life story, the picture of how the Church interacted with Jews during and after the Holocaust becomes more complex than is often portrayed, and Rabbi Malul explains that, “Portraying things as simpler than they are can backfire, and people may wonder if information is being kept from them. It’s far better to present the issue in its full complexity, which shows that we’re not afraid of the facts and are open to discussing anything.”

Rabbi Malul adds that the story of Pavlovsky and the trials he underwent are unlike anything most of us ever encounter. Pavlovsky was presented with the question of how to live his life and also how to die – and he could easily have opted to die as he had lived, as a priest, and be buried with all the pomp and circumstance that a respected member of the clergy would have been accorded. Instead, he chose to rejoin his People. “Everything goes according to the ending, and Yaakov Tzvi was, at root, a Jew,” he says. “That’s something that everyone can learn from.”

Later this week, Rabbi Malul will be traveling to Poland together with several tour guides and six of his former students, in order to be present at Pavlovky’s Jewish burial, recite Kaddish with a minyan, and fulfill the last wishes of Yaakov Tzvi Gruner.

Source: Shimon Cohen – Arutz Sheva

‘Number of things I lacked’: Merkel is looking forward to her future leisure activities

The 67-year-old chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that she is satisfied with her long term and is now looking forward to leisure time that she hadn’t had enough because of her duties.

“I see that there are a number of things that I, as a chancellor, lacked. Perhaps travel a bit or read, or simply enjoy some leisure time knowing that no possible upheaval may happen in the next 20 minutes,” she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

She noted that despite her satisfaction, her term was tense and difficult due to the crises the country had faced.

“I can say with a good feeling now that it is right for someone else to take over,” Merkel added.

Earlier, the chancellor said that she was relieved and grateful when she was handed notice of the end of her term from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. According to Merkel, she is satisfied with the work done over the past 16 years.

Since Tuesday, Merkel has been nominated as the acting German chancellor.

She is supposed to hold the office until the coalition negotiations under the leadership of Social Democrat Olaf Scholz are completed.

If these negotiations end successfully, Scholz will become the new head of government before the end of this year.

Source: SPUTNIK NEWS

‘Boris, No!’ Trudeau appears to hold UK’s PM back as he charged at Macron in G20 photo-op

When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met French President Emmanuel Macron at the G20 conference, he appeared to be held back by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, just as the leaders were setting up for a group photo.

As the Channel fishing row heats up, Macron and Johnson faced each other in person, and Trudeau appeared to be holding Johnson’s arm as they made their way onto the platform in one amusing photograph.

The shot made it appear as if the two world leaders were set to clash amid the escalating tensions brought on by the fishing dispute.

However, Macron sure does look relaxed watching Johnson coming at him in that manner, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen directed Johnson to his spot.

Earlier, Johnson warned that the UK might trigger legal action in the post-Brexit trade pact as soon as next week.

Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Jean-Charles de Gaulle has written to von der Leyen, requesting her support for a strong new position against the UK.

Paris has vowed to boost checks on British boats, implement a “go-slow” policy with customs arrangements in port Calais, prohibit UK fishing vessels from docking in French ports, and raise energy rates in Jersey.

The French are demanding that the UK issue more fishing licenses to French fishermen so that they can enter British waters.

Johnson and Macron met with US President Joe Biden and German acting Chancellor Angela Merkel in Rome on the summit’s first day to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, and are set to meet one-on-one during the conference on Sunday.

When asked if he felt like he was again in the same situation as when he and Macron argued over Brexit at the G7 meeting earlier this year, Johnson said he was not concerned and that he had “bigger fish to fry,” according to British media reports.

During repeated post-Brexit spats with the British government, the French president said he had “never created pointless controversy.” He claimed there was “no tension” over fisheries, but emphasized that the topic was vital to both parties.

Despite the continuous squabbles and blame-shifting, Johnson and Macron both emphasized their close personal ties and met face to face at the G20 summit. As they came for the leaders’ “family photo” at the opening of the summit, the two also shared a “mock hostile fist-bump.”

Source: SPUTNIK NEWS

First Slowly, Then Quickly

“No worst, there is none,” wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, about human states of mind. If he were alive today, he might write, “No most absurd, there is none,” about our current contortions of language.

In a publication aimed at dermatologists, the Dermatology Times, we read in an article devoted to the treatment of the skin in transgender patients the following:

“Patients of reproductive potential who are not…abstinent with penis-containing partners, 2 forms of contraception are required.”

In other words, women who would like to be men but still have their ovaries and wombs can become pregnant by sexual intercourse with fertile men, the latter now being known as “penis-containing” persons.

  • The venerable but increasingly lunatic medical journal The Lancet recently decided to call women “bodies with vaginas.” How long can it be before we no longer address meetings or assemblies as Ladies and Gentlemen but as Penis-containers and Vagina-bearers, or perhaps P and V for short?

At the same time as we are enjoined to think of biological sex as unimportant to the point of nonexistence, and to believe that men who can have babies by penis-containers are men in precisely the same sense that Tarzan was a man, we are also told to distinguish human beings solely by one or other of their genitive features.

This makes the doublethink of Nineteen Eighty-Four seem straightforward or even lucid by comparison.

The article in the Dermatology Times points to a practical problem for dermatologists in their treatment of women-to-men transsexuals.

These women are given masculinizing hormones that, among other side effects, result in the development of acne in up to a third of them.

Acne is a distressing condition and when it is severe enough can provoke suicidal thoughts. Moreover, one of the best treatments for acne is isotretinoin, a well-known side effect of which is suicidal thoughts sometimes resulting in suicide, even in those not previously suicidal. As if this were not enough, the rate of depression and suicide among such gender-diverse individuals assigned female at birth is already high—according to the article itself. What is the poor dermatologist to do? The answer is simple: prescribe isotretinoin and shift the responsibility onto a psychiatrist. If the dermatologist refers the patient to a psychiatrist but the patient nevertheless commits suicide under his treatment, it is then the psychiatrist’s fault, not the dermatologist’s.

Did the writer of the article use the term penis-containing partner spontaneously, or was it the end result of a serious deliberation, either on his part or that of the editor, as to what term would cause the least trouble with the intimidatory lobby that has, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, come up like thunder ’crost the bay, though in this case not from China? (In fact, how they must be laughing in China at this further evidence of Western decadence.)

It is possible that I am mistaken, of course, and that thorough research would prove me wrong, but I do not think that anyone would have used the expression penis-containing partner ten, maybe not even five, years ago. It seems that civilizations go bankrupt like people, first slowly, then quickly.

There are several wider cultural trends discernible in the current agitation over transsexualism, or whatever name one wishes to give it. (“Words are wise men’s counters,” said Hobbes, “they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools.” It is only fair to add that, with inflation, money could soon become the money of fools.)

The first cultural trend is an increasing reluctance to accept any limitation whatsoever to the satisfaction of one’s desires that are placed by circumstances beyond one’s control, that is to say an exaggerated or exacerbated Prometheanism:

“You can be anything you want, without limitation, and therefore you do not have to accept anything you were born with as ineluctable.”

In such a culture, death itself becomes unacceptable, an insult to our desired omnipotence; it is not any particular kind of death that we reject or fight against, often with success, but death itself.

The second trend is to magical thinking, despite the supposed rationality of our age and its vaunted defeat of superstition. We believe that we can change reality by means of mere verbal incantations.

If we alter our language enough, reality itself will change. Some element of this belief can be found in the philosophy of Wittgenstein, though he was probably more in tune with the future trend than creator of it. Thus, if we go on saying long enough that women who take male hormones are men, and outlaw the opposite proposition, such women will become men.

The third trend is the worship of power. The object of deliberate language change is not to improve the state of the world, or even anyone’s state of mind, but the exertion and consolidation of power for its own sake.

One glaring example of this was Ataturk’s language reform in Turkey: In a matter of a few years, an entire people was cut off from all of its past and history and had therefore no option but to cleave to the new dispensation, which even Erdogan has not been able to change in many respects, notwithstanding a little Busby Berkeley-style choreography and costume-dressing.

The fourth trend is centralization of the marginal; that is to say, a marginal phenomenon such as transsexualism comes to occupy the center of intellectual attention.

To employ a different metaphor, the tail wags the dog.

The fifth trend is to the increasing spinelessness or cowardice of much of the intelligentsia, who in this case have proved themselves astonishingly easy to intimidate, a pack of intellectual Neville Chamberlains (but Chamberlain had more excuse, for he had lived through the horror of the First World War, which he did not want to repeat).

Nothing has proved too absurd for this intelligentsia to swallow; indeed, the swallowing of absurdity is easier for the intelligentsia than others, for rationalization is their métier.

There is no point in being an intellectual if you think only what everyone else thinks.

The most important question is, What next?—for there will be a next, because transgressive reform is what gives meaning to life in the absence of any other meaning. My money is on incest, against which there is no rational argument these days, given the availability of birth control and abortion and the moral authority of mutual consent.

Source: Theodore Dalrymple – TAKI’S MAGAZINE

Israeli Military Home Front exercise to simulate DOMESTIC UNREST for first time

The National Home Front Exercise, which will begin on Sunday and last for five days, will involve practice by all relevant entities and agencies in a scenario where Israel has to deal with fighting on multiple fronts, including from within.

As part of the lessons of the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip in May, in which the security system was surprised by the intensity of clashes and disturbance of the peace in Israeli cities, particularly mixed and Arab localities, the National Home Front Exercise will open for the first time with a scenario led by the police.

In the simulation, a security incident causes clashes in Israeli cities and blockage of main transport arteries, peace disturbances and attempts to impede the Israel Defense Forces’ ability to mobilize to its required arena.

“A new reference was added to the scenario, that of the internal arena, which is a lesson from [the May operation in Gaza,] Guardian of the Walls,” explained Yoram Laredo, head of the National Emergency Management Authority.

“The first day of the exercise will be dedicated to Israel Police practicing violent disturbances against a multi-arena nationalist background, and that will be a day in which the police get a clearer view of the challenges facing them in terms of optimizing their force-building.”

The exercise will require Border Police platoons operating in the West Bank to report to friction points, after being relieved by IDF soldiers. Concurrently, the Border Police reserve call-up array will be practiced as part of the drill.

“This exercise is also an excellent opportunity for all government ministries to understand the implications, starting with disruptions in energy supplies. We’re talking about 24-hour country-wide power cuts,” Laredo added.

After criticism raised over the cooperation between the organizations since the Second Lebanon War and as presented in recent state’s comptroller reports, the exercise will be run by a joint administration of the emergency authority and the Home Front Command, Israel Police, The Fire Department, Magen David Adom, with all government ministries participating.

The IDF, through the Home Front Command, is expected to enter the exercise only a few days in.

In the first stage the army is expected to be managing fighting and preparations, whereas in the second stage it will begin assisting the civilian array.

Home Front Command Chief of Staff Brig. Gen. Itzik Bar detailed the scenarios Israelis can expect in the next flare-up in the north in a conference call to military reporters. Including the familiar scenarios of “targeted fire on localities adjacent to the border,” he noted a new scenario for civilians living on the border with Lebanon.

“We’re talking about dangerous substances which the enemy has, medical substances that dissipate in the air that can impact the population if they come in contact.”

According to estimates, during fighting Israel is expected to be under a widespread missile attack, most of which will target the north, but the center of the country will also be under significant attack during the early days. “We will jointly exercise evacuation and intake of the population, extended stays in protected spaces due to the volume of fire,” said Bar.

“For the first time, we will deploy the civilian aid battalion as well, a logistics battalion solely devoted to supporting the civilian space, both to allow for supplies to civilians staying in shelter for extended periods, and for other issues.”

The forces will practice evacuating hospitals, retirement homes and special needs facilities.

“We’ll evacuate casualties, use soldiers to play wounded, road and chopper evac; we’ll practice the intake at hospitals around the country. We’ll practice the whole process – from planning to intake. We’re practicing because we realize that the hospitals will likely have to take quite a few casualties, both civilian and military,” Bar said.

Source: Yaniv Kubovich – HAARETZ

Season of the Jewitch: The occultists reviving Jewish witchcraft and folklore

Occult practices and totems are a mainstay of Halloween season, and sage bundles, altars and crystals are an increasingly trendy way to dabble in divination and witchcraft. But the spooky supernatural world also has a long history in Judaism, and modern “Jewitches” are encouraging the connection — though their practices often slightly differ from their non-Jewish contemporaries.

“I do not burn sage,” said Zo Jacobi, who runs Jewitches, a popular blog and podcast that deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices.

The sage-related ritual of “smudging,” an Indigenous ceremony popular among modern witches for cleansing a person or place of negative energy, “is not a Jewish practice,” she said.

“But Jews had crystals. Actually, they were called ‘gems.’”

Jacobi and her peers are revitalizing ancient Jewish practices of witchcraft, which have been seeing something of a revival as of late. Far from having an uneasy relationship with magic practitioners, Judaism — or at least Kabbalistic strands of it — has long embraced them.

Jacobi, based in Los Angeles, studies those gems’ role in Jewish ritual, along with the connections between assorted other magical artifacts and Judaica. Eight shelves in her home are filled with books on Judaism as well as Jewish magic, witchcraft and folklore.

Her studies have revealed the historical ways that items like gems have been used in Jewish magical correspondences.

Like healing crystals, gems are meant to protect and heal based on their properties, according to the Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 2:7), or rabbinic interpretation of the Bible. For example, sapphire was thought to strengthen eyesight.

“It’s in a medieval text called the ‘Sefer Ha-Gematriaot,’” Jacobi said.

“But even if we go to the Torah, we see crystals on the breastplates of the kohanim [high priests of Israel].”

Many Jewish rituals today have their roots in warding off demons, ghosts and other mythological creatures.

When we break glass at a wedding, scholars say, we’re not just remembering the destruction of the Temple; we’re also scaring off evil spirits that may want to hurt the bride and groom. Likewise, ancient Jews believed that the mezuzah — a small box affixed to the doorpost containing biblical verses on parchment — protected them from messengers of evil, a function parallel to that of an amulet or good-luck charm.

“The mezuzah is absolutely an amulet,” said Rebekah Erev, a Jewish feminist artist, activist and kohenet (Hebrew priestexx, a gender-neutral term for “priest” or “priestess”) who uses the pronouns they/them and teaches online courses on Jewish magic.

“I consider it to be a reminder of the presence of spirit, of goddess, of shechinah [the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God]. Much of magic is about reminding ourselves that we’re all connected and that everything is alive and animate.”

The moniker “Jewitch” itself can be seen as controversial within the group. Erev first heard the term while attending a 2014 “Jewitch Collective” retreat in the Bay Area.

“I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing,” Erev said, even though they do consider both witchcraft and Judaism to be major tenets of their life.

“To be a Jew and to be a witch has had serious repercussions throughout time. I hope the recent popularity of the term ‘Jewitch’ will bring more acceptance and understanding of both identities and help to make our practices more widely accessible,” they said.

Cooper Kaminsky, a Denver-based intuitive artist and healer, concurred that the portmanteau was “revisionist” to some, but added, “Many, including myself, are empowered by identifying as a Jewitch.”

Historically, as Judaic practices grew more patriarchal, women were exempt from studying the Talmud and Torah. They knew little Hebrew, so they created their own prayers in Yiddish, used herbal remedies and centered their religious practices around the earth.

Erev mirrors these customs by creating magical rituals, like meditating on cinnamon sticks during the Jewish month of Shvat, hearkening back to how cinnamon trees in Jerusalem scented the land during the harvest.

“There’s a Kabbalistic idea of making oneself smaller for creation to emerge. Connecting with a cinnamon stick is a simple ritual. The cinnamon folds in, and the bark contracts in on itself,” Erev said. “Sometimes contracting inward can give us space to emerge and create.”

They also do spellwork, creating spells for new love, pregnancy protection and social justice; on their blog, they shared an incantation designed to bring more awareness to Indigenous Land Back movements.

The goal of many “Jewitch” educators and practitioners, they say, is to shine a light on rituals that have been forgotten or buried for self-preservation. Jacobi believes that many folkloric practices died out following the 13th-18th centuries because, at the time, Jews were viewed as demonic witches.

“Jewish communities did what they thought would protect them from literal certain death. Some of that came at the expense of some of these practices,” Jacobi said. “Instead of the supernatural reasons, they tried to give rational reasons for what they were doing. Ashkenazi Jews routinely tried to debate with their oppressors in the hopes that they could out-logic antisemitism.”

This traumatic history, the Jewitches say, is often papered over or dismissed as “myths” and “superstitions.” “Saying ‘superstition’ is a way that we downplay our magic,” Kaminsky said. “We protect ourselves because, historically, a huge part of our oppression has been because we’re magical.”

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, does spiritual readings for clients that draw upon Kabbalah, Tarot and the Akashic records — a reference library of everything that has ever happened, which spiritual mediums believe resides in another dimension. Kaminsky incorporates Jewish prayers into their spellwork, like reciting the Psalms of David when doing candle spells and the B’sheim Hashem as a magical invocation.

Kaminsky grew up in a Conservative Jewish household and learned the basic concepts of Kabbalah in Jewish day school.

“Kabbalah looks at Judaism through a cosmic, mystical lens that clicked for me a lot more than looking at a story from the Torah,” they said.

“As I read more Kabbalah, I started feeling more connected to my Judaism.”

Various scholars and rabbis have linked Kabbalah to Tarot, a deck of cards originally used in the mid-15th century to play games that evolved to divinatory practices in the 18th century (though Jacobi, for one, refutes this idea, claiming the connection has never been proven).

The Tarot’s Major Arcana — the trump cards of the deck, which detail the evolution of one’s soul — usually make up 22 cards in any given pack, a meaningful Jewish number: the same as the number of letters in the aleph-bet, and the number of pathways on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

For their energy work, Kaminsky draws parallels between the chakras, energy points in the body discussed in Hinduism, and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

“The Tree of Life is an energy network,” they said. “There’s the meridians of energy, and the chakras are like the middle pillar.”

Mystical practices were a part of Jacobi’s upbringing. Her parents practiced Kabbalah, metaphysics, folklore and folk mythology. They have attended the same local Chabad since Jacobi was three years old.

Thanks to these experiences, Jacobi is comfortable living out of the (broom) closet — a tongue-in-cheek term that some modern witches use to refer to openly practicing witchcraft. She grew up with astrology, used tarot cards on Shabbat and played with her mother’s rose quartz crystal ball while her father led Havdalah prayers. The Jewitches blog and podcast are filled with mythological creatures with origins in Jewish beliefs, like dybbuks, werewolves, dragons and vampires.

Some creatures are unique to Jewish lore: the vampiric Alukah, a blood-sucking witch referred to in Proverbs 30, turned out to be Lilith’s daughter, while a Broxa originated as a bird from medieval Portugal that drank goat’s milk and sometimes human blood during the night.

“Whenever there have been dire times throughout history, people have turned to mysticism; that’s how Kabbalah emerged,” Erev said. “We need to look to our ancestors for guidance. There are a lot of tools in our human community for healing and re-dreaming and creating a world that is safe and generative for all beings.”

Kaminsky thinks magic has the power to repair the world:

“Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing. Tikkun olam, using our magic to repair the world, is beautiful.”

Source: Rachel Roman – JTA via TOI

‘Very green’: VIDEO of Biden’s massive 85-car motorcade ahead of climate summit leaves critics stunned

On his way to meet Pope Francis on Friday, Biden traveled with a massive motorcade, caught on camera and likely extended from his usual entourage due to a COVID-19 restriction in Italy limiting the number of passengers in each vehicle.

A typical motorcade for the president includes a couple dozen vehicles, plus vehicles to block traffic.

Biden led a group of about a dozen people into his meeting, and his motorcade was filled with security details as well as press who shadow and report directly on the president.

It reportedly involved 85 vehicles.

Footage of the long line of gas-guzzling vehicles moving their way through the slim streets of Rome left many confused, especially since climate change is an issue the president and the Pope so often talk about.

The meeting also took place ahead of a planned climate summit in Glasgow where the president was expected to tout over $500 billion in new spending on environmental programs, which is part of his larger $1.75 trillion spending package that has been stuck in Congress negotiations.

Many critics noted the likely massive carbon footprint Biden’s trip has left, especially when the vehicles being used are not exactly environmentally friendly, including the 244-horsepower vehicle carrying the president, referred to as The Beast.

Most of the vehicles are SUVs, vans, etc, typically vehicles that receive low gas mileage.

“But remember folks,” pundit Darren Grimes tweeted in reaction to video of the extended fleet of vehicles, “YOU must stop driving YOUR car. YOU must stop flying abroad. YOU must stop eating meat. YOU must stop using a gas boiler. YOU must immiserate YOUR life in the name of saving the planet.”

“Just a vanity visit,” commentator Steve Milloy said, adding: “Very green.”

Biden met with Pope Francis for approximately 75 minutes.

A planned live broadcast of the meeting was canceled shortly beforehand, though the White House said later the two discussed numerous issues, including climate change.

Biden’s stop is part of a larger trip that will lead to the United Nation’s COP26 climate summit on Monday in Scotland.

Source: RT

There’s NO case for “vaccinating” children…& the FDA meeting proves it

Findings from an FDA meeting are being used to raise alarms about the level of risk COVID poses for children, in order to push for the authorisation of the Pfizer vaccine for kids under eleven.

The real story of the statistics is that children face almost no danger from “COVID”, and the experts at the meeting themselves admit the vaccines have unknown side effects, especially in the long term.

On October 26th, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee held a meeting to vote on allowing Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) of Pfizer’s COVID “vaccine” for children aged 5-11.

Getting approved by the VRBPAC is a key step on the way to the FDA issuing an EUA, and with the vote passing the Pfizer vaccine is expected to be approved for use on children in November.

The entire meeting was live-streamed, and you can watch the whole eight hours of it below, if you really feel the need:

For those who would rather not, here are the key take-aways:

  • Seroprevalence studies suggest, as of June 2021, ~42% of 5 to 11-year-olds have been exposed to Covid.
  • Roughly 1.9 million Covid cases have been reported in that age group.
  • 8300 of those cases have resulted in hospitalisation.
  • One third of hospitalisations resulted in an ICU stay.
  • 94 children have died.

These bullet points have been doing the rounds on social media, and in articles, to try and frighten people into believing “COVID” poses a serious risk to their children:

In fact, they show the complete opposite.

Ignores the ridiculous argument about missing school, and ignore the race-baiting nonsense even harder. Focus on the figures.

Five to eleven-year-olds make up roughly 8.7% of the US population, or 32 million people. If the seroprevalence data is correct, that means about 13.4 million children aged 5-11 have been exposed to COVID to the point they’ve developed antibodies.

8300 hospitalisations out of 13.4 million people is only 0.06%. So a child infected with COVID has a 99.86% chance of never needing to go into hospital.

94 deaths out of 13.4 million people gives an overall survival rate of 99.994%. Right in line with CDC predictions from months ago.

As if these numbers aren’t small enough, they all come with important riders that make them even smaller.

  • Firstly, while the hospitalisation and fatality figures are current, the seroprevalence data is from June of this year. Millions more children have likely been exposed to the virus since June, so logically speaking the survival rate is potentially a significant underestimate.
  • Secondly, we have no idea what (or how many) pre-existing conditions were present in the children that died. We DO know the vast majority of “COVID deaths” have at least one serious co-morbidity, therefore the survival rate for healthy children is probably even higher than 99.994%.

Finally, there’s the most important rider for this entire situation: We don’t know any of these “COVID cases” or “COVID deaths” ever had “COVID” at all.

The existence of the virus Sars-Cov-2 as a discrete entity that causes the disease known as COVID is not proven. The tests they use to detect this virus are not fit for purpose and can return huge numbers of false positives. And, since “COVID deaths” are defined only as “death from any cause within 30 days of a positive test”, ALL COVID-related statistics are entirely meaningless.

…but let’s put that aside.

Let us assume, for now, that Covid is very real, that all these children had it, and it tragically resulted in 94 of them dying.

Does a survival rate of at least 99.994% justify an EUA for the Pfizer “vaccine”?

To answer that, let’s compare Covid to the flu, and then see what we really know about these “vaccines”.

COVID VS THE FLU

According to these numbers, in the US Covid has killed 94 children aged 5-11 since the beginning of the pandemic.

For comparison’s sake, according to the CDC 2017/2018 flu season resulted in the deaths of at least 188 children of all ages, and they report this is “likely an undercount” and the real number was “closer to 600”. The 2019/20 season was similar, with 199 official flu deaths in children, this is also described as an undercount.

The 2009/10 flu season was much worse, when the Swine flu “pandemic” killed at least 358 children.

And that’s just in flu season, the six months from October to May. COVID has been around for almost two years and is allegedly responsible for 645 deaths in children under 18. That’s a comparable rate to flu, without even taking into account the absurd way “COVID deaths” are collated to deliberately inflate the numbers.

Interestingly, in the 20/21 flu season, only 9 pediatric flu hospitalisations were reported, down from the expected “several thousand”. While COVID was out there killing people at about the same rate as the flu, only 1 single child is reported to have died of flu.

All of which is pretty remarkable when you think about.

THE VACCINES

Having established that Covid has at least a 99.994% survival rate in 5-11 year old children, and that it’s no more dangerous than the flu, is there any argument left for vaccinating children?

Well, yes, there’s the “protect granny” argument.

From the beginning of the pandemic, when it became apparent the allegedly deadly “COVID” plague posed almost no risk whatsoever to children, the argument for vaccinating children wasn’t to protect them, but to prevent them from spreading it to “vulnerable” relatives.

Matt Hancock, the UK’s Health Secretary, even told kids “don’t kill your gran by catching coronavirus and passing it on!”

But do the vaccines mitigate this alleged risk?

No, not according to the latest reports, published in The Lancet and reported by the BBC. The recent study states there is a “continued risk of infection in household contacts despite vaccination”.

So the alleged benefit of vaccinating children turns out to be non-existent. Even if the vaccines were proven safe, injecting them into children has already been shown to be completely pointless…and they are not proven safe.

This is not at all a controversial position, it logically follows that vaccines less than a year old have unknown long-term impacts. Further, Pfizer themselves admit it.

A supply contract between the pharmaceutical giant and the government of Albania, leaked by the independent media, contains a clause that states:

“…the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known.”

The experts from the VRBPAC panel agree. One of them, Dr Eric Rubin of the Harvard School of Public Health, even said at the meeting (6.52.30):

“We’re never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is, until we start giving it.”

…which is not at all a confidence-building thing to hear, if you are a parent.

CONCLUSION

So, there you have it really. Mainstream experts and sources have been clear:

  1. Children are at virtually no risk from the disease.

  2. Vaccinated people still transmit the virus.

  3. The long term side effects of the vaccine entirely unknown.

In light of all that, the relevant question stops being “Is vaccinating your child worth the risk?”.

The answer to that seems to be fairly clearly “NO”.

Instead, and rather more importantly, we need to ask: Why would any supposedly independent body ever approve an unnecessary, ineffective and experimental medical treatment for use on children?

Source: Kit Knightly – Off-Guardian

Israel and the United States are heading for a diplomatic breakdown

The Biden Administration is arrogantly ignoring official Israeli protests against the opening of a US Consulate in Jerusalem to serve non-Israeli Palestinian Arabs.

It is more important for them to cow to the radical wing of their party than honor the pledge made by previous administrations to an unbreakable bond with Israel.

The Biden Administration could easily have catered to Palestinian Arabs by opening a consular office in Ramallah.

This is where the Palestinian Authority is based. This is where they serve their electorate, whenever they have elections. The last one was in 2006.

They were supposed to hold elections every four years but Palestinian factions have been at war with each other for decades.

That said, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah decided not to help their people – what else is new – and instead play diplomatic football by insisting that the United States must reverse their avowed declaration that Jerusalem is the undivided sovereign capital of the State of Israel. Instead, the Palestinians and the current US Administration are determined to drive a wedge, some would say a stake, in the heart of Israel and the so-called “unbreakable bond” of the United States-Israel relationship by insisting that a consulate be located not in Ramallah or Gaza but deep in central Jerusalem.

Biden is weakly, some would say willingly, surrendering to the demands of a non-state entity that uses American tax-payers’ money to pay their killers of Jews.

Why not? There were no effective protests against this in America. If this fails to extract protest the opening of an office should be child’s play.

You begin to see the gradual erosion of US-Israel relations, one poisonous drip at a time.

For sure this is yet another example of who is actually controlling the White House and State Department.

Biden, Harris, Blinken and the Democratic caucus have bowed their head to the demands of the radical wing of their party. They are too frightened to stand up to them even to the extent that they risk irrevocably damaging their relationship with Israel. It is as major a schism as that.

The power in America is now in the hands of the Israel haters.

It seems that Blinken believes that the new Israeli coalition, with a fair proportion of the government representing center-left parties, will eventually accede to their position. It could be that Biden and his political overlords and the notorious anti-Israel squad of radical women, are happy to see Israel squirm politically.

They really wouldn’t mind seeing the fall of a government and a political fracture within Israel over this issue.

They would view it as helping the Palestinian Arabs achieve an international public relations embarrassment over Israel.

The current American Administration is as wrong in this assessment as they have been with every other foreign policy position.

On its face it is yet another example of a Democrat machine built entirely on setting back every successful Trump policy no matter the consequences of their reversal. We witness the disasters of every reverse the Democrats have touched since taking power earlier this year.

Border security and legal immigration have been thrown out of the window with an open border policy that will flood their country with over two million unverified, unidentifiable, illegal immigrants from third world countries by the end of this year for the sole purpose of fundamentally and politically changing America.

We see it in the incomprehensible setback of America from being an energy independent nation to one that went begging to OPEC to increase production because Biden inexplicably, in his first act of president, closed the spigot on the XL Keystone pipeline.

We see it in the Marxism of the American economy and the abuse of a bloated government demanding trillions and trillions of dollars for ludicrous projects hidden in what they laughingly call an Infrastructure Bill. Even people are called “human infrastructure” in America these days.

Tragically, we witnessed the disastrous failure of American military power and diplomacy in the death knell of a failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, perceived internationally as a victory for Islamic terrorism, in which a careless Biden Administration left hundreds, maybe thousands, of American citizens trapped behind enemy lines.

Meanwhile, Israeli aid agencies have independently and covertly extracted Afghanis out of that frightening country.

Now, in their fevered attempt to set back another Trump achievement, they are determined, at any cost, to reverse Trump’s establishment of a United States Embassy in Jerusalem by uniquely planting a mini-embassy in Jerusalem explicitly for Palestinian Arabs from Judea and Samaria.

There are no examples anywhere in which America, or any other country, has, over the objection of a sovereign state, ignored that nations’ sovereign objections by unilaterally opening a facility to serve people of a country or an entity outside such a sovereign state, let alone an entity that regularly practices terrorism in all its forms against Israel.

This constitutes a major diplomatic slap in the face of Israel that will have far reaching and damaging repercussions.

The distrust is already taking form following America’s shocking withdrawal from Afghanistan and its weak display over Iran’s march to a nuclear weapon capability.

There are certainly people in the Democrat Party and in the Biden Administration, as mentioned earlier, who will be salivating to see a deep rift develop between America and Israel.

It seems these people may have their way.

Either the current Israeli Government will stand firm and actively prevent the opening of this consulate or, if it supinely accedes to the unilateral decision of the Biden Administration, the Israeli government will fall.

Israel’s enemies within America may celebrate such an event, but such a celebration will be short lived because, with the fall of the Israeli government, Israelis will overwhelmingly vote in a more affirmative Zionist government.

Israel has a history of overcoming adversity. It always comes out stronger in the end.

We wish the same will be true for America.

Source: Barry Shaw – Arutz Sheva

Header: Dedication ceremony of the Embassy of the United States in Jerusalem

US President Biden says Pope told him he should keep receiving Communion

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday that Pope Francis had told him he should keep receiving Communion, amid fierce debate in the U.S. Church over Biden’s position on abortion.

Biden has come under pressure from conservatives at home and his most ardent critics in the U.S. Church hierarchy have said he should be banned from receiving communion, the central sacrament of the faith.

Asked if the topic of abortion came up during a long meeting with Pope in the Vatican earlier on Friday, Biden said “no”.

He said the Pope told him he was happy he was a good Catholic and he should “keep receiving communion”.

The president, who goes to weekly Mass regularly and keeps a picture of the Pope behind his desk in the Oval Office, has said he is personally opposed to abortion but cannot impose his views as an elected leader.

Last month, asked about the U.S. communion debate, the Pope told reporters that abortion is “murder”.

But he also appeared to criticise U.S. Catholic bishops for dealing with the issue in a political rather than a pastoral way.

Source: Jeff Mason – Reuters

Watch: Israeli F-15s escort American bomber

Earlier on Saturday, Israeli Air Force F-15 fighter jets escorted an American B-1B bomber over Israeli skies towards the surrounding bay, an IDF source said.

The source added that, “The joint flight illustrates the continued strategic cooperation of the Israel Defense Forces with the United States in the area.”

Earlier this month, the Israeli Air Force held the fifth “Blue Flag” international exercise at the “Uvda” Air Force base, where significant deployments and major international exercises are held.

The exercise, which has taken place every year since 2013, has a great impact on the strategic international aspect of the State of Israel, making it a bridge for regional cooperation and advancing shared capabilities.

This year, for the first time, both the United Arab Emirates and Jordan joined the Blue Flag exercise.

Alongside Blue Flag, there was also an F-35 conference in the Nevatim Air Force Base which included the delegations from Italy, Norway, Netherlands, UK, US and Belgium. The conference was led by the US.

Source: Arutz Sheva

Now is the time to look much more closely at The Great Reset, a Fake Utopia being Sold to Us by Charlatans

As we exit the pandemic, expect to hear much more about The Great Reset and “building back better”.

Far from resulting in a low-carbon dream life, though, it’s a cartoonish fantasy that will hand the global elite even more power.

‘The Great Reset’ is a term that has been bandied about quite readily by most Western neo-liberal politicians. So often, in fact, and without proper explanation, that it strikes the prudent observer as a kind of paid advertisement.

But what is it exactly?

The term rose to prominence at the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in June 2020.

It was initially launched by the Prince of Wales, before being absorbed into the philosophy of the sartorially dystopian sci-fi villain Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF.

The Great Reset refers to a plan to rebuild the world’s infrastructure ‘in a sustainable way’ following the economic ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and to establish a global treaty to prevent future pandemics, or as it is described more formally, to “build a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations.” If you ever hear people talking about “building back better,” they are referring to The Great Reset.

Probably the most disturbing part of The Great Reset is how much it strongly resembles business-as-usual, only with EXTRA globalism.

Most of the plan’s outlines include a further weakening of national boundaries and individual national autonomy, in favour of a more ‘universal governance.’ As usual, it is the rapidly vanishing Western middle class which must shoulder this burden, as their freedoms are further curtailed to meet the quotas of corporate-media-fuelled activism.

Regardless, many world leaders, no doubt charmed into acquiescence by Schwab’s commandingly sinister Blofeld-esque wardrobe, agreed to the Great Reset, including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Mark Rutte, Pedro Sánchez, Erna Solberg and Volodymyr Zelensky. According to John Kerry, Joe Biden’s administration is on board, too.

But the general agreement of the Western leaders is absolutely typical of any agenda which is espoused by NATO, the UN, or the WEF. If an emotionally charged, politically vague and ultimately ineffectual edict or bill is proposed by one of these entities – each resembling a shabby, globe-trotting team of insurance salesmen – our effete politicians line up to show the most fervent compliance.

As a rule, it seems their solutions to specific environmental or scientific problems mysteriously become entwined with LGBTQ+ rights, workplace equity, open borders initiatives and other unrelated social justice causes.

It’s as though any goals they have are somehow unilaterally from the same source, or entail the same solution, regardless of causality or consequence. Therefore, a united response to a global pandemic mysteriously also equals trans rights activism.

In their own words, “No single government or multilateral agency can address this (pandemic) threat alone. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly co-ordinated fashion.”

There are many other sweeping sentiments expressed by Schwab and his acolytes which can seem either trite or threatening. Consider “the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close” and “we want more attention paid to scientific experts. No one can “self-isolate” from climate change so we all need to “act in advance and in solidarity.” There is much talk of the pursuit of “fairer and equitable outcomes.”

International treaties always tend to be about concentrating power. It’s one of those rules of life, for realists, as there is no escaping power dynamics in human affairs. Real problems don’t often have feel-good solutions. Often, they require ‘solutions that sound mean’, that don’t sound good on a corporate goals bulletin.

Initiatives like The Great Reset all entail the gradual loss of the autonomy of individual nations, as their decision-making power is transferred to an international, disembodied rule-maker.

It has been, without a doubt, a globalist fantasy for a long time, but the key question is: do they realise what they are doing or not?

As far as their amazing coordinated pandemic response goes, this appears to be nothing more than forced world-wide vaccinations for EVERYBODY.

According to Klaus Schwab himself: “As long as not everybody is vaccinated, nobody will be safe.” To which the attendant neo-liberal world leaders nodded in re-affirming unison, repeating in unison their mantra: “Global public good.”

Schwab, despite appearing like an immortal brothel-keeper at Kublai Khan’s Xanadu, is really cut from the same cloth as your typical EU technocrat.

His ideas are not creative, they are quite staid and pedestrian, and research of his career shows they have been unchanged since the 1970s. He has consistently been preaching the very same thing, like a broken record.

Schwab believes we can achieve environmental solutions without altering capitalism in the slightest, by creating treaties of “mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and co-operation within the international system.”

His idea involves ‘ethical capitalism’ – where the excesses of capitalism will somehow be held at bay by ‘ethical stakeholders,’ to whom the corporations will be held accountable, while (conveniently) the elites and systems already in place will continue as they are.

This is the master plan of the World Economic Forum, largely unchanged for 40 years.

The result?

A green technocracy, one assumes, with a WEF-mandated ‘ethical stakeholder’ apparatus, a worldwide spiderweb organisation ruling by the threatened fears of pandemic and carbon doom. No section of society would be exempt from edicts of ‘the new treaty.’

The Great Reset website appears to be little more than an advertisement for modern pod-living. It seems to style itself as a low-carbon dream-life (without loss of modern convenience) to effeminate hipsters. One can see slovenly-looking neo-liberal youths, frequent references to LGBTQ+ values, and an overall urgency about carbon footprints.

There is a hint of Adbusters about the website, creator of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Despite the fact that the WEF and Davos and all associated entities are entirely elite institutions, the website styles itself on grassroots urban activism. There is much cringeworthy symbology in its white papers, such as a green and rainbow flag-combination with fey slogans like ‘we salute you, zoom queen!’

Schwab refers to the aim of The Great Reset as “the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” with the first being powered by water and steam, the second introducing mass production, and the third electronic automation. The fourth will blur the lines between “physical, digital and biological spheres.”

In this grab-bag of magical advances, he lists, “fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing.”

This sounds like cartoonish optimism, as many of these technologies are anything but clean and don’t seem to de facto relate to side-stepping out of industrialism or anything else. On top of that, fewer than 9% of companies use the machine learning, robotics, touch screens and other advanced technologies listed as somehow ‘changing everything.’ Stakeholder capitalism, as a concept, does not explain itself as foolproof, and will no doubt be freely interpreted by the likes of Silicon Valley or supply chain conglomerates.

The jewel in the crown of Great Reset optimism has to be the belief that the advent of AI will alter everything positively, again without specifics, to somehow create a low-carbon new world.

It appears at best to be all be smoke and mirrors, a childish corporate fantasy manufactured by isolated bean counters. At worst, it is an intentional power-grab by unaccountable international agencies and hidden oligarchs.

Either way, it is a fake utopia at the price of privacy and autonomy, sold to us by used-car salesmen who think they are princes.

Source: Brendan Heard – RT