40 Burst results for "Syria"
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from An Introduction to Acts
"So good to be back again on a Wednesday night. Good to see your faces and appreciate your prayers so much. As I was talking to Pastor Nathan, what's on my heart, I'd like to begin a series of studies from the book of Acts with you tonight. The Acts of the Apostles, or more appropriately, the Acts of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ and through the Apostles' labors. We want to remember some things before we try to delve into the text, actual text. We need to remember that Luke, the beloved physician referred to in Colossians 12. We know that he traveled with the Apostle Paul and most commentators that I've read claim that Luke was a Gentile and that as a Gentile grew up in Antioch of Syria. And if you recall in Acts chapter 13, remember the Apostle Paul and Barnabas were members at the church at Antioch. So that's where the relationship actually began. And Brother Luke is a special character in the tapestry of God's witnesses because he in the gospel narrative that is bearing his name chronicled historically the birth and ministry of Christ as well as his death, burial, and resurrection. And I want to go to Luke chapter 24 and show you how Luke ended his gospel message that was written about 60 to 62 A .D. and connected to the first chapter of the book of Acts. Here we find Christ appearing to his disciples and verse 45, he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, which would relate to the Old Testament. Remember that's all they had at that time. They had the Old Testament Scriptures, the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. That's the reference here to Scriptures. And he said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem, and ye are witnesses of these things. Now I just want to make this note here. It's Brother Luke that mentions that the gospel is to go to all nations. Now that includes the Gentiles.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "syria" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"When can't find the right words. Music can help them sound it out. Talk to the kids in your life about emotional their well -being. Find tools and resources at sounditouttogether .org. to Brought you by the Ad Council and Pivotal Ventures. Our Lady of Bethesda Retreat Center will host a two -day marriage workshop entitled Strengthening Your Love on October 14 to 15. This Christ -centered marriage renewal workshop designed to is offer practical tools to help married couples foster emotional closeness, improve communication skills and overcome distance, hurts and unhealthy patterns in marriage. Cost to attend is only $480 per couple, plus you have won't to travel far. We're located just inside the Beltway in Bethesda, Maryland. Find more information on our website, lady of Bethesda dot org. Book today. Coming up. Back to the drawing board for the commanders. Sports in 10 minutes on WTOP. Scenes of the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey have touched the world, but thousands of lives lost. We need to protect those children who remain who have lost their parents and their homes help now. Donors like you are the reason why UNICEF is able to help children and families in Syria and Turkey with
CRYPTO 101
A highlight from Ep. 565 The Truth About Inflation with Truflation
"All righty, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather round. We got a big episode for you today. This is what I'm going to call the de facto episode on inflation. If you ever were confused about what the heck inflation is or why it's here or how we track it, we're going to have really the best guy for you. Not only was he the former CEO of Bitcoin .com, Stefan Rust is currently the founder and CEO of Truflation. We have him joining us today on the Crypto 101 podcast. We're going to bring him on in just a minute. Okay, so hang tight. But first I want to check in with Brendan Veman on the other side of the country. Brendan, how's your trading going, my man? Hey, the trading is starting to go good. I've been talking to a bunch of buddies and traditionals. They're actually coming to me and saying, hey, we're seeing a lot of fundamental activity between all these ETFs, traditionals looking at putting up exchanges, PayPal's adding cryptocurrency options. Everyone's starting to get excited again, not just on the trading side with the charts, but also fundamentally in a lot of different ways. So, you know, as we'll see in just a second, the future is indeed looking bright, just like Stefan's background. Yeah, we're looking good. Good. Yeah. We're going up. You're long, I take it. You're still long. Yeah. You know, I'm really optimistic. Kind of the way that I've been looking at it is that maybe the short term is kind of choppy, kind of unknown. Maybe we move up and even down a little bit. But the mid and long term for crypto is really starting to look good. You look at things like placing consistent higher swing lows on the daily timeframe. And that's the opposite of what we've been seeing from the top of the market, where it was putting in lower swing highs from that oversold territory. Now we're seeing higher swing lows from the oversold territory. So it's, you know, things are starting to really look bright for those longer term outlooks of crypto once again. Absolutely. The technicals are looking good. And I think fundamentally, one of the other big talking points we're going to hit on today with Stefan is the Bitcoin halving. Because if this is an episode on inflation, we've got to think about Bitcoin's monetary policy and how it is the antidote to the rampant and criminal inflation that is a hidden tax on wealth and that is exorbitant in countries like Zimbabwe or Lebanon or Syria or Argentina, where they have their wealth eradicated on a decade basis. So anyhow, we're going to stop ranting. We're going to shut up. We're going to introduce our guests because the tension is thick. I can feel everybody in the audience want to hear your voice. Stefan, how are you doing today? Doing great here. Thanks. Thanks a lot for having me and excited for this podcast and love, love preaching to the converted. So excited.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "syria" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"To you by the Ad Council and Pivotal Ventures. Chains of earthquakes the in Syria and Turkey have touched the world. With thousands of lives lost, we protect those children who remain, who have lost their parents and their homes. Help now. like Donors you are the reason why UNICEF is able to help children and families in Syria and Turkey. With your help, UNICEF can continue to be there to keep children safe. Visit UNICEFUSA .org slash earthquake relief. Thank you. Back to the drawing board for the commanders. Sports in 10 minutes on WTOP. If you live in the counties of Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William, the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Church, Falls or the towns of Herndon, Clifton, and Vienna, your personal property taxes are due October 5th. The safest, easiest, and fastest way to pay is online, by phone, or by mail. your Visit local jurisdiction's website for more information. Again, personal property taxes are due October 5th Throughout Northern Virginia, message from the Northern Virginia Regional Commission. The following is a public service announcement. For our soldiers fighting overseas in public safety, it can be tough to stay focused when they know their families may be struggling. Eagle Swatch wants to help lighten the load and you can help by donating a gift card of any amount. We'll make sure they go to military and public safety families who are in need. Please mail your gift cards or donations to Eagle Swatch Foundation, 200 Lawyer's Road, number 256, Vienna, Virginia, 22183, or go to eagleswatchfoundation .org and click on the gift cards for the home front link. This is WTOP news. It's 1215, I'm Stephanie Gaines Bryant, thanks for being with us. Peace out, A -Town! It looks like the NFL has announced who will be headlining the halftime show at the 2024 Super Bowl. Usher, who's 44, is currently headlining a residency in Las Vegas, which has drawn sold out shows and rave reviews. In a statement, Usher called it the honor of a lifetime. The Super Bowl will be February 11th at the Allegiant Stadium
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Pauls & Barnabas Accountability to the Local Church_10
"Amen. Thank you for tuning us in. I'm Darryl Bailey, servants for Christ as we continue on in the life of the Apostle Paul. And so here we deal with the 10th in our series of the life of the Apostle Paul. Acts chapter 14 verses 21 through 28. This closes out the first missionary journey of Paul as we continue on to get to the second and the third missionary journeys. Here, September the 13th, 20023, the 27th of Elul, 5783 of the Hebrew calendar. Now, we talk about Paul and Barnabas' accountability to the local church. Unfortunately, community ignorance is the way that many churches operate. They think that within their own selves as whatever they come up with, they can just do what they want to and not be attentive to God's Holy Spirit. But God's work is accomplished by God's power, working with God's people. And the church is not to be run by the congregation instead by God's clear standards and plan that he has. And there's a lot of churches, they're just doing their own thing and they're not taking any wisdom and leadership from the Holy Spirit of God. They say, maybe we'll get a bunch of people this way. Maybe we'll get a bunch of people that way. Maybe we'll get this and we'll get that, you know. But they're doing it in their own power and strength instead of the power of God's might. And they will never be successful. Paul and Barnabas, their accountability to the local church says volumes in this particular message of this ending of the first missionary journey of Paul. And so, I want to invite everyone to come and be with us at Theffal Crossroads Baptist Church. Our pastor, Keith Dempsey and First Lady Amy. Sunday schools 10 a .m. Sunday morning worship at 11 and Wednesday nights. Kids for Christ. Boy, did we have a bunch of kids this past Wednesday night. Bunch of, man, kids love kids. And 7 p .m. Wednesday night, come and be with us at 450 Iron Hill Road, Taylorsville, Georgia 30178. Boy, I tell you, the kids had a wonderful time. And so I hope and pray that you begin to bring your family back into the house of God you're before missing out on the greatest blessings that you could ever have. Come and be with us at Theffal Crossroads Baptist Church. Now, AD 47 to 49, if we continue on with Acts chapter 14, verses 21 through 28 of the first missionary journey that we give. And we look at Paul's Acts travels because on land, Iconium, back in Acts chapter 13, the land on Lystra, he started up in Acts chapter 14 on that last part of running and then on land to Derby in Acts chapter 14, verses six to 20 on land and Lystra in verse 21 on land, Iconium in verse 21 and on land, Antioch of Pisidia in verse 21, then on to Perga and verse 25 of Acts chapter 14 on Attila, verse 25. And then from there, he started back from where he started out from the beginning of the first missionary journey all the way back to Antioch of Syria on the Mediterranean Sea, headed back because he had completed his first missionary journey that God had sent him and Barnabas upon to go on. And so. As these sections here really tells of what we're talking about tonight in verses 21 down to verse 28. And I'm glad Charles Rice said how incredible that Christ should be kept outside of his own church, how gracious that he would still seek entry unquote. You know, here we talked about in the past, we talked about Paul's pattern for preaching and how that in chapter 14, it gives a clear picture of God's pattern for bearing a witness to his name. We saw Paul and Barnabas, all the things they experienced and how they had difficulties. They were expelled from Antioch in Pisidia. They took the dust and knocked it off their feet. And they went on to Iconium and then they went to the people where they tried to stone them. And it went on to Lystra where they were treated like gods. The crowds are different in every area of place throughout the world. And when the crowd changed their minds and began to stone Paul, he just got up and went to Derby. That wouldn't all. Paul and Barnabas had the courage to retrace their steps so that they could help encourage the new Christians when they returned home. And they told the church what the Lord had done, not what they had suffered. Paul and Barnabas put Christ first and others second and themselves last. They had a job to do and they were determined by God's grace to do it. And so every one of us, that was God's pattern. It was of seven steps that we talked about and how God expects his servant to be able to preach the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we talked about Paul's distractions in Lystra, how there was a lot of things that distract us from Jesus. We talked about how we spelled the acrostic of Lystra, lost in thought, the Y in yourself, S for sports, the T for television and internet, R for radio and music, A for alcohol and drugs. Who here can get distracted? Everybody. All Christians get distracted and they need to maintain our focus on the Lord. And I'm glad that every one of us, that Jesus is the offer and finisher of all of our faith, amen. And so we can have distractions in these new cars because there's so many buttons and gadgets and everything that we could go down the road. These millennials think their telephone is more important than their own driving ability to drive down the road safely. That they want to text somebody and they want a conversation with somebody they can't see. And it's a sad thing because Paul and Barnas was preaching on the city streets of Lystra and they ended up healing a crippled man that had never heard the gospel message of salvation. And it stirred the crowds and the streets that got such an attention for the miracle healing that was misconstrued as they were gods. And they were a distraction and they ended up being called Mercury and Jupiter, which thought to be the gods of that first area. I believe that if we're honest and we'll look deep into our hearts with all the spiritual distractions that surprise us, we get distracted sometimes by the choir. Oh my goodness. We get caught up. Where's the ensemble today? Oh my goodness. We ain't got enough people to have the choir. And I get all distracted by all of these things. That's got to happen a certain way in the church because it's always happened that way in the church. And they've got to continue to do that that way. What a distraction. Why not just follow the Holy Spirit of God? Man, I'm going to tell you, maybe the preacher might come in one Sunday said, why don't y 'all go shut up and sit down? I got to preach. Hallelujah. Amen. And so let's get to it. Amen. And so in our own imagination, we get to pay attention to all the things except listening to God us communicate through the gospel message of the minister behind the pulpit. Then we get up and all of a sudden we got somebody that's spirit fed, but we don't want to be spirit led. And so all of a sudden we begin to overlook the message. Oh my goodness. That preacher could have preached a little bit longer. He could have preached shorter. Oh my goodness. He could have used this. He could have used that. We begin to critique the message that God is sending to the church and we get up there and get distracted by all of these things. God help us today. And so I'm glad that the life of the apostle Paul here is that message of the last part that he's talking to us about. And he's telling us that there are two great ministries when you come to church. Amen. Two great ministries in the church. Listen, I want you to look for this and remember this pastors, the two great ministries in the church is the preaching of the gospel and number two, making disciples. Did you hear me? It's preaching the gospel and then it's making disciples. We preach the gospels and some folks get saved and they don't never come back and we can't even disciple them. They all of a sudden they thought they got saved that one time and they don't need to come back. They join the church. I've had them join the church and never saw them again ever. They never came back. But how can you disciple somebody when they don't let you disciple them? And everybody's got all the answers that we can do it this way and that way. But then there's a third thing. Let me say it this way. The third most important thing in the ministry and the church is not only the preaching of the gospel, not only making disciples listen to me, the strengthening of the church, the unity of that church. It has to stay strong. It has to stay unified and there can nothing come between anything in politics or cliques or all of this or this deacon or deaconess or that that thinks they're going to run the whole picture. And this family name of the Smiths and the Joneses and the justice and all of these other last names. That's a prominent somebody in the community that they say we got to run the church because we're a prominent family name. No, that's not how God wants it. God don't want it that way. And so there's a terrible neglect in both evangelism and strengthening the church. Just how are churches made strong? That's what we're talking about. Paul and Barnabas had an accountability to the local church in this series. And in doing so, we see again.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "syria" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"Its potentially serious complications. It keeps you protected and also protects your loved ones. Protecting our community can't wait. So why get stuck inside with the flu? Don't get flu FOMO. Learn more at GetMyFluShot .org. Brought to you on Amazon. Hey, everything OK? Yes, I'm fine. Honey. Hey, I'm here for you. Tell me about school today. When kids can't find the right words, music can help them sound it out. Talk to the kids in your life about their emotional well -being. Find tools and services at SoundItOutTogether .org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal Ventures. Chains of earthquakes the in Syria and Turkey have touched the world. With thousands of lives lost, we
Crypto Altruism Podcast
A highlight from Episode 119 - Giveth - Building the future of giving by empowering a global decentralized altruistic community
"We can help people who need help with like very little to no red tape, you know, it's like, okay, if I want to help people here, it's like instantly they can go there and like people are encouraged to make grassroots causes without having all these hoops. So it's like kind of the permissionless way that we can like actually build stuff and support each other. Welcome to the Crypto Altruism Podcast, the podcast dedicated to elevating the stories of those using Web3 for good. I'm your host Drew Simon from CryptoAltruism .org. Now before we get started, a quick disclaimer, while we may discuss specific Web3 projects or cryptocurrencies on this podcast, please do not take any of this as investment advice and please make sure to do your own research on investment opportunities or any opportunity, including its legality. And now let's get on to the show. Welcome and thanks so much for joining. One of the most game changing aspects of Web3 is how it allows communities to organize around causes in new permissionless ways. No matter where you are in the world, you can join a DAO, for example, by purchasing some governance tokens or volunteering your time and then play an active role in the decision making and future of the DAO. One area where decentralized communities shine is public goods funding allocation or empowering the community to make decisions over which public goods projects or causes receive the most funding. And this is where we're going to be focusing our time for today's episode. So to dive into this, I'm excited to welcome Mitch, DAO steward at Giveth, a community driven movement to transform the way we fund nonprofits and social causes. We discuss how they're using Web3 tools to reimagine philanthropy and the donor experience, the role of DAOs and give us decentralized, altruistic community, optimizing public goods funding with conviction voting and quadratic funding and much more. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Mitch to the Cryptoltrism podcast. OK, Mitch, it is such a pleasure to have you here on the Cryptoltrism podcast today. How are you doing today? I'm fantastic. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah. Pleasure to have you and really excited to chat about Giveth. Been following Giveth for quite, quite a while now. Very fascinated with the work that you're doing. I love the recent introduction of quadratic funding, so I'm really excited to dive into all that. But before we get there, I'd love to learn about your history or your kind of story of how you got into the wild world of Web3. So what would you say was your aha moment that got you excited about crypto and Web3 in the beginning? Well, I think I'm going to like roll a little bit further back than that, Drew, actually. So it's a really interesting story, how I met Griff, who's one of the founders of Giveth. I was working, I was doing a project called Decentralized Dance Party, which was like with my buddy Gary. And we were doing these crazy wild dance parties on the street. And anyway, so that's how I got into like decentralization was like this weird dance party angle. at And then the same time, I was also going to Burning Man and so was my buddy Gary and all this. And then Gary puts me in touch with this guy. He needs a chef for his Burning Man camp. And my career before doing any of this was I was a chef, so I was cooking food. So I get in touch with this guy and he's like, oh, by the way, our camp's like all about decentralization and cryptocurrency and this guy turns out it's Griff. You know, so Griff invites me, I start cooking at his camp and introduces me to crypto and the Ethereum ecosystem. And that was really my entry point was like talking to people, especially a lot of people that were involved in the in the white hat rescue of the Dow attack, all of them not understanding who the hell they are or like the context was like, oh, OK, this sounds like important stuff. All right. And so then I started holding on to crypto. I really, really liked it at first to get to like the aha moment for me was that the practical sense of being able to like send and receive funds without needing like a crazy intermediary or using like a bazillion different platforms and exchange rates and transfer times, it was like simple, at least to me, to like sending and receiving. And then when we saw DeFi come into the picture, it was like, well, OK, I can do way more things now than I could with my traditional bank. And I don't really need to like do all these absurd forms and all that stuff. And then what really, really like clicked it together was like, OK, then like, how do we take all that DeFi? And then I start applying it to like for good ideas, you know, like like, you know, using liquid interest staking to donate to matching pools or directly to public causes, things like like glow dollar or GTC or any of that stuff. And so for me recently, that's been a big aha moment of like how we can use crypto for good and for altruism. That's awesome. I love that story. That's so cool how you got introduced to to Griff and then got in the world of Web three. That's that's awesome and really cool. And so that led you obviously to give if love that. That's, you know, give it like I said, I've been a big fan of your work for quite some time for those that maybe aren't as familiar that are listening in today. Do you mind giving a high level overview of your mission? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, the easiest thing to say about give it is that it empowers projects and donors with evolutionary fundraising opportunities. So we use the power of cryptocurrency to just facilitate easy peer to peer donations. So simplest the thing to say about give it is that it's a peer to peer fundraising platform and cryptocurrency. Yeah, yeah. Great. And we're going to dove in exactly kind of what that means and the different tools and everything that you're utilizing and different ways you're making it more engaging for donors. And, you know, on your website, there's a question that's posed and it says, what if donating were mutually beneficial and nonprofits could evolve their fundraising to maximize impact? So I've been working in the nonprofit sector for quite some time now. And one of the current challenges with philanthropy is that just that lack of donor engagement. Right. It's so disempowering. It feels transactional. Like you make your donation and then maybe like a few months down the road, you get a thank you letter and like, hey, donate again or here's a little, you know, piece of swag or something like that. But that's kind of the extent of the relationship. Whereas I think that, you know, Web3 and solutions like Giveth can really create new opportunities to create a more engaging donor process. So talk to me about this and how Giveth is doing this. So really, the nice thing that I like about Giveth and because it has like this sort of like international permissionless network that it's running under, which is Ethereum, it means that like we can have a wider variety of smaller organizations on the platform. And the nice thing is that when you work with these smaller organizations, it's easier to have a close or like an intimate relationship with them. You know, they're small teams. They don't have a huge donor base. They don't have this crazy administrative corporation they have to run. So it's easier to make real connections with them. You know, we use what I think the crypto community is a little bit more humble as well. So like, it's easier to have online events and get the actual founders of the organizations to talk to their donors and like having all these fun events using platforms like Discord where people can have real connections. You know, the donors can meet the makers. The makers can talk to the people that are supporting their causes. And just the platform itself, like using Giveth, it's really, really easy. And in some cases, it's mandatory that these projects provide updates to their donors. And so just making a flow that's easy on the platform, but also acknowledging the culture in crypto and smaller organizations that it's easier to create real bonds with people. Yeah, totally. Definitely. And I think, you know, I couldn't agree more. And that's something I noticed as soon as I kind of got into Web3, was just that like kind of collaborative and like community collective approach where, yeah, you could just DM a founder and hop in a chat or hop in a Twitter space and ask a question. And I think it's really empowering. And, you know, I think another way that, you know, Giveth empowers donors is through rewarding them for donating to verified projects. Right. Because I think that, you know, in the past, the reward that donors got was maybe that little piece of swag and a thank you letter. Right. And I know that donations isn't always about getting rewards to write. You know, people donate for altruistic reasons, but, you know, it can be an important way to recognize donors and to build that relationship. So talk to me more about the rewards process within Giveth for donors. Yeah, so, I mean, if we go and maybe look at the problem or like the current situation, I mean, if you're in Canada, you know that if you if you're Canadian and you donate to registered charity, you get a tax receipt. Right. And in the US, it's something similar. And so you have this kind of rewards, which honestly is like a very big incentive for a lot of people to donate. So how do we recreate that in like a Web3 international world, you know, where there's no borders, there's no, you know, registered state government authority that's, you know, whatever. So we tried to recreate that system and that is through something called Givebacks. And so that is just as you mentioned, that is when you donate to a verified project on Giveth, you can get up to 80 % of the dollar back of your donation back in Give tokens. And so the Give tokens can be used for a variety of different things. The Givebacks usually work in two week rounds. So every two weeks, we take the calculation of all the donations. We find out how much matching we need to give to each, depending on which project you donated to. And then you just get distributed in this ERC20 token on a Gnosis chain. And starting this week, we'll be distributing on Optimism as well. Cool. That's great. That's amazing. And yeah, so you get these Give tokens, which is great, you know, up to 80 % of the donation worth of the Give tokens. So what do those Give tokens unlock for the holders? So there's the basic stuff that you'd expect from, you know, you have the governance thing. So we have a few different governance platforms, which I think we'll probably get into a little bit later. And then the other thing that's important is that it will allow you to use the community curation mechanism, which is called Give Power, which I think you had on there. We're going to chat about that as well, right? Well, you can dive right in here right now, if you'd like, for the Give Power, because I think it's absolutely fascinating. Perfect. Perfect. So like, as you mentioned, like the entry point for getting these Give tokens is you donate, so you donate, you get the Give backs. And then probably the best use case is going to be this community curation mechanism. So it's this idea that once you have these Give tokens, then you can essentially stake them behind a project. So if anybody's familiar with like how Curve works, basically like you, you get the Curve token, then you stake it behind a pool, and then the pool in turn yields more rewards to the people that are like providing liquidity. Right. So kind of abstracting that kind of idea. So it's like using Give to incentivize the rewards of certain projects where projects might represent a pool on Curve. So, you know, when I said you could get up to 80 percent back in Give backs, so that's actually a variable rate. It ranges between 50 percent to 80 percent. So the more Give that you have staked on your project, the more Give power that it has and the higher ranking it has on the platform. And in turn, it yields more rewards to the people that subsequently donate to that project. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You as a Give holder then can be actually like a curator. Yeah, I like that. And that's important, too, because that's just another level of engagement, right? With the platform, with the giving experiences that it, you know, not only are you able to donate to a cause you care about, you're then also able to uplift it in a different way, too, so that hopefully we'll get more donations. Right. Which is great. So I love that. And something you've mentioned a couple of times that we've talked about is verified projects. Tell me about that and the verification process and how that all works. Yeah, so because we're not operating under like the guise of like a state government, we still need to have some sort of like human process that says, OK, we've looked at your content, you're legit. If you claim to be a nonprofit registered in some country, can you prove it? You know, either with impact reports, something from your state government that says, you know, you're this or that. And if you're not a registered nonprofit, that's no problem. You know, that's kind of the thing is like we don't explicitly require, but we need you to provide some information that like, OK, do you have some skin in the game? Do you have reputation at stake? Are you real? What impact have you generated? And so it's like kind of this like extra questionnaire just to like allow a human to see that you're actually doing impact and that you are a public good or have some sort of altruistic cause. And then it gets this verified badge without the verified badge. There's no givebacks to your donors. So it really is like the the highest, most desirable status for projects. And that's how we incentivize high quality projects to like enlist and become verified on the platform. Yeah, yeah. And what I love about what you just said there, too, is that you don't have to be a charity. Right. So many of these platforms that are out there forgiving, that is the requirement. Right. Is that you have to be registered charity. But I think that there's so many positive like movements of change that aren't charitable. They just don't have that label that aren't aren't a charitable organization. Right. It could be a grassroots movement, an informal kind of like activist network. Right. Like there's so many or just a change maker who's doing awesome work in the community. Right. And I think that that's the power of what you're doing, is that like a lot of these groups have traditionally been excluded from from the giving process. Right. So it gives them an opportunity to to participate in ways that they haven't before. So, yeah. Good to see you. I love that. A spicy take just to add on to that is like we we also try to help out organizations that sometimes like aren't don't have functional state governments. You know, just flat out or maybe they're operating somewhere where like certain state governments say that, like explicitly, you can't they're like they're like no go zone. So I mean, example was like when we had the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Well, Syria is like a sanctioned country, according to somebody state government. So a lot of people don't simply can't help them. So it's like these people in Syria, they're like they're still suffering. And so it's like, you know, there's like a verifiable these people are doing something good, but like the Syrian state government's not going to do anything. The U .S. state government is clearly has its own position, but they're doing something good. So, I mean, you know, we should be able to find a means to help them and still be able to have those rewards for people who choose to support them. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's a great point there. And I'm glad you mentioned that. So thank you so much for sharing that. And I want to shift a little bit now because I know that you recently integrated a quadratic funding into your platform, which is so cool, super fascinated. So we have on this podcast in the past had a couple of folks speak about quadratic funding. But maybe if you don't mind giving a quick kind of like 30 second, explain it like I'm five of what quadratic funding is and what has been kind of the impact of introducing that to your platform. So if you're unfamiliar with what quadratic funding is, it is this interesting spin on providing matching funding. So, you know, how corporations or whatever might provide like a dollar to dollar match quadratic funding changes it. So it changes the algorithm. So like instead of getting like a straight dollar to dollar match, it applies a basically like a squaring or a square root function to it where it incentivizes more unique donors versus just like the highest value donations. So it's like instead of a few donors with a lot of money taking all of the matching funds to a certain cause, it's about who has the largest community of individual donors supporting a community or a cause. So it kind of flips that on its head and really just like supports people who have like more organic support rather than just a few whales in the background. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Right. It's prioritizing or uplifting the favorite projects of the community, not just the ones that have the most financial backing, which I think is so important because then that really empowers smaller donors. Right. I know that, like, you know, if you're a smaller donor that can only afford to donate 10 bucks or something like that, you know, it can be disempowering to then see someone come in who's a millionaire and drop 100 grand on something and steal up all those matching funds. Right. So I think that it really empowers those smaller donors and makes them feel like their their donation has more of an impact because it does, which is which is amazing. So how. Yeah. And how what has been the impact of that on the platform implementing quadratic funding? What have you seen as like the community response, the uptake? It's been really, really good, actually. So we did like an alpha round. So it's kind of like it was like a test round just to see if everything's cool in the background and like the system makes sense. So we had small it was like a 10 grand matching pool and about 46 projects. We and then we just took like we took a lot of ideas from like Gitcoin back when it was like, you know, a year and a half, two years ago. We really, really like that that user experience. It wasn't too technical. It could be, you know, multi chain. And it seemed really great. Like we had we had a good support. We had, you know, an additional almost like 12K worth of donations without really promoting it very much. You know, that was the response. And so that was cool. Working with a third party to do like Sybil analysis. We got like an organization called Trust to Labs and like seeing all of the work they do in the background was like actually really, really interesting as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That's cool. And so you mentioned Sybil there. And I think that that's such an important piece of the puzzle, right? Because somebody listening might be like, wait, couldn't somebody just set up a bunch of bots and send a bunch of one dollar donations to your project to kind of, you know, mess with the algorithm. So how does how does how do you prevent that? So basically, the beauty of blockchain is that it's all it all has a history to it, right? You can see where the money came from and who sent what where at what time. So Sybil analysis, from what I saw from the the report that they gave us, basically, they can find clusters of donations. So like like accounts or users or people who are donating along the same patterns and then find like a likelihood that like that cluster of individuals might actually be the same person based on where where the money all came from as like a source point. And also finding instances where there might just be straight up like fraud, like basically project has money, donates to donor, donor, donates back to the project. And so finding those recirculation issues as well on top of the Sybil. So proving that like this account was actually unique and a real human that was doing it. Yeah. And I think that's so important, right? Because it just restores trust, I think, to the process to have that, which I think trust is something that's been on a decline in philanthropy. Right. So having that ability to say that, no, these are unique individuals that are supporting this project, I think is is so valuable. So that's awesome. And, you know, another aspect of give that we alluded to earlier that I'd love to learn about is that and I think that is such a cool feature of Web3 and philanthropy is this idea that, you know, donors can then be a part of like the governance of the platform itself. Right. So talk to me about that. Tell me about the governance of giveth and this giveth decentralized altruistic community, I understand is kind of the name of it. So talk to me more about that. Yeah, sure. So the governance of giveth works in a few different ways. So, you know, you get these give tokens and they do all these governance things. So the primary one is that we have a community funding DAO. Basically, people can there's like tens of millions of give in this thing here, and it's all supposed to be earmarked for community initiatives. So people who would like to build something for giveth can make a proposal. They go through the hoops, which there's not very many and give it, to be honest. And then they can use give to request funding from this this this community down, essentially. We use some cool things. We use like conviction voting, which I don't think you ever heard of before. Yeah, no, please tell me more about that. Yeah. Yeah, so conviction voting is something I think that one hive was working on a long time ago. Anyway, it is the idea that like the longer that you put your tokens or that you signal your favor for a proposal, the more conviction that you have towards it. So it's a function, basically, that says, you know, the longer the amount of tokens that you stake by the longer that you stake, that means the more power that you have in support of it. So it's kind of like this this curve that goes up like that. And so conviction voting, basically, it it calculates how many people are staking the tokens behind it, how long each person staked that, how much funding they're requesting. And then it sets like a threshold saying, OK, you guys need to have this much conviction. And then the proposal passes. So it's like you put your tokens in there. It goes it builds up power. Once it passes the threshold, then it can be executed. And then the funding is released to the to the community or the project owner that's that's building the thing. That's so cool. So that's community funding. We also have snapshots. So like when we're making non -financial decisions, we rely on snapshot to get signaling from people. For example, like we started a process of budgeting our working groups based on this. So like we have like, what do you want us to build? You know, we have we could go big and like do all these things. We could kind of like stay at this level or we could even like reduce the scope of what we're doing in this particular area. And then the give token holders essentially decide. They're like, well, you know, I don't really like that you're spending your time on this and they can vote to reduce the budget and the scope and so on and so forth. And the last one I want to mention, which is important for give token holders, which is kind of cool, actually, is we have this thing called token log, which is a token weighted backlog. So it's more of like for development, product development. And so we have all these ideas in there of things that we could build for giveth. And then basically you can vote with your tokens and see like what features you'd actually like to see built in what order. So it's just basically like a like a ranking, you know, and it's like cool. But it's like we want quadratic funding. OK, we want to add project discussions into like the page so people can talk to the things we want, you know, whatever have you. But we maintain a list like that and people can vote on it with their tokens. That is so cool. I love that. I mean, each of those things that you just mentioned, there is just like a really cool new way to engage givers in a different way. Right. And to me, that's something that's really inspiring as a donor to say, like, I get to join this really cool community and and shape the future of this platform. Right. That's amazing. So kudos to you for doing that. I just love the like community focus of everything that you're doing, the decentralization and really giving the power to the givers and the donors to make those decisions. So that's awesome. And, you know, I saw on your website that over a million and donations have been made, which is incredible. So kudos to you on that. That's a huge win. I was wondering if you have money on, I think. Oh, really? Almost two million. OK, wow. Look at that. One point nine. One point nine. Wow. That's amazing. So impact incredible that you've had so far. Do you have any like success stories or anything that you'd like to share from from the experience so far with Givith? Well, there's a really interesting project. I was trying to find it right before this. It was a couple of years ago, but you're going to like this because it's Canadian. There was a guy named David from Chilliwack, and he had this this it was like a small project and he wanted to go with his daughter and prepare food packets and give them out to homeless people in Chilliwack. And so he like made the civil project and he ended up getting like. 130K like dollars worth of ETH donated to his project. I have no idea. I was like, boom, here you go. And so his little like like father daughter project just like is like, OK, what? Yeah. So I think it was like this, like out of nowhere, just like massive amount of funding. And I think he ended up like doing some of the work. But then since like like what do you do with that much money at that point? I think he did donate it to a local org in the end who could probably like scale up the impact with that. There was another really great one, which was the one I mentioned, which was the Turkey and Syria earthquake relief. That was really cool. It was like we got we got Gnosis. We got Grace aid. We got Bankless. We got them all to like activate. I think one inch was in there as well. We just found these people like grassroots organizations and we were able to raise like over 100K in funding and like, you know, two or three weeks and get it to the to the people there. So those are like some really, really cool success stories of just like we have the platform, the crypto community activates and like we just, you know, make it happen. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, kudos to you. You should be very proud. You and your team should be very proud of the impact you've had so far and the incredible platform you're building. I'm just blown away with all the different mechanisms you're putting in place to empower donors and to really, you know, put power in the hands of the community. So that's incredible. And obviously we weren't able to cover everything in this short conversation today. And, you know, I'm sure folks listening in are going to want to, you know, engage with the community and make a donation, forgive us. So what's the best way for them to learn more and to join the community of givers? Well, I mean, the best place is go to our website.
Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
Fresh update on "syria" discussed on Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
"Pop in SoftBank shares, and that's helping to push the Nikkei higher. Seven -tenths of one percent is the gain. In Hong Kong, different story. Hangsang down down about eight -tenths of one percent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 is off three -tenths of one percent. In Sydney, the ASX 200 now weaker by around three -tenths of one percent. Material shares leading the pullback at the moment in the South Korean equity market. WTI crude oil pushing up with the active contract $90 .30 in the electronic session. And U .S. Treasury yields inching higher, particularly at the long end. We've got a 10 -year now in the Tokyo session at 5 .45. Checked at 4 .45 percent. So, get ahead of myself. Let's get to global sports next. Dan Schwartzman is here. Douglas, start off in European football. PSG, a big 4 -0 win over their rival, Marseille. But it comes with a cost. Killing Mbappe leaving the match with an apparent ankle injury. No word if he's going to miss any significant time. Moving on to Syria. Into Milan. Still perfect on the early season. They knock off Empoli 1 0. It was Atlantis shutting out Cagliari 2 -0. Napoli and Bologna played to a scoreless draw. Romantorino played to to 1 all draw. It was the Madrid Darby Atletico knocking off Real 3 to 1. Real losing for the first time this season. Chelsea continues to struggle in the Premier League. They lose to Aston Villa 1 -0. They just cannot score any goals. They sit in 14th place in the Premier League table. Meanwhile, Arsenal and Tottenham in the North London Darby ends in a 2 all draw. Both
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from The Cutting Edge of Evangelism
"I don't know how much all of you know about the Jewish faith today, but I suspect you know quite a bit. And I suspect everyone here this morning knows that someone's Jewish heritage is passed down through the mother's side. That in considering your Jewishness, it comes from your mother, meaning of course that if your father is not Jewish, but your mother is, by Jewish law, you are Jewish. However, if your father is Jewish and your mother is not, you are not, under Jewish law, Jewish. And that is how it stands today. So when I was studying for our passage in Acts for today, Acts 16 one through five, I was struck by an inconsistency in just exactly who was considered Jewish in the first century AD. Here's the passage and we'll read it. I don't usually read it first, but we're going to read it first. Paul came also to Derba and to Lystra. A disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of all the Jews who were in these places. For they all knew that his father was a Greek. As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and they increased numbers daily. And if I have trouble reading here, this wasn't because of small print. I bought a new printer. My printer is double printing pages. I'm getting a new one on Friday, Aaron doesn't know that yet, but it's on its way. I can hardly read what's printed here. So forgive me if I'm slow on some of these. The rest, however, I hand wrote and that'll make it even harder to read. So what struck me here was that Timothy was the son of a Jewish mother and a Greek father. So under Jewish law, Timothy was Jewish, right? Jewish mother, Gentile father, you're Jewish. Jewish father, Gentile mother, you're not Jewish. So Timothy is Jewish. Why then did Paul find it necessary to circumcise Timothy because of all the Jews in the area who knew his father was Greek? But more importantly, if Timothy's mother was Jewish, why wasn't he already circumcised? What's going on here? Well, at the time of Acts 16, Jewishness was passed down through the father. It was not passed down through the mother. We were reading today in the Old Testament. Now the people of Reuben and the people of Gad had a very great number of livestock. You notice who they're referencing here? They're referencing the fathers. Jewishness back then, the Levi priests, the priests of the temple were to be sons of Levi. This is how Jewishness was passed down in these days. It was passed down through the father's line. It was what is called a patrilineal society, meaning the line came down from the potter, the father. The opposite of that, because I'm going to be using these terms, is a matrilineal society. That is one that comes down through the mother. That everything was ordained by your potter, who was your father. That's what was important. It was not matrilineal based on your mother. So when did the change occur? And I think you'll all be with me on this. Okay, when did this change occur? I want you to know and what I say is not suspect. It's actually true. I could not find this in any Christian writings. I couldn't find it in commentaries. So what do I do? I go to the Jewish sources on the internet, the respected Chabad .org. My Jewish learning is good. There's a few others. The only place I could find this referenced and I found it universally referenced in Jewish sources is that between 10 AD and 70 AD, this change came in and was institutionalized. Now, if you've been here with me for these teachings, an awful lot of things changed between 10 AD and 70 AD. And I know you know the answer to this, but what happened in 10 AD to 70 AD? Well, let's see. Jesus was 13 years old. What happened in the temple when Jesus was 13 years old? Well, that's right. He appeared there and studied with the teachers when his parents didn't know he was there and left him there. We suspect that who he spoke to was Gamaliel, Simeon, and my old friend who I'll never forget, their grandfather Hillel. Okay, so in 10 AD, Jesus was beginning his study. Then, you know, we get to 30 AD. We're into Jesus' ministry. Up comes his crucifixion and resurrection. The church starts. The church age is from 35 to 70 AD. The church age is still going on, mind you. But the beginning of the church, 35 to 70 AD, and then comes the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. And they are universal in Jewish circles to say that this change occurred specifically between 10 AD and 70 AD. The change was made in the writings of our old friend, the Mishnah. It was written down there that it was now determined that the Jewishness was to go through the mother. And it strikes me that just as the Old Testament was the pre -first century scriptures for Israel and the New Testament in the first century, in the post -first century, words from God concerning his church. The Old Testament was pre -first century. The New Testament was post -first century. The Old Testament was concerning the nation of Israel and their relationship to God. The New Testament is how to understand the Old Testament and to see the ushering in of the church age. And where the New Testament is the continuation and explanation of the Old Testament, the Mishnah in many ways is not the continuation of the Talmud, but it changes almost every significant rule of Judaism laid down in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud. And the other major difference between the scriptures and the Talmud, of course, is that the scriptures are the word of God. And the Talmud was written by men as a commentary and as additional laws for the Jews. So last week, we saw that a sharp division arose between Paul and Barnabas on whether to take John Mark on the second missionary outreach the two men had planned. Barnabas was just as adamant that John Mark be included. This impasse led to the decision for the two great missionaries to go their separate ways. Barnabas taking John Mark with him to Cyprus, as we saw, and Paul traveling with Silas. We ended at verse 41 of chapter 15, which read, he, that is Paul, went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. A chapter, verse 1a of chapter 16, which we come to today says, Paul came to Derbe and Lystra. Okay, that's verse 1a. When Paul told Barnabas, he wanted to visit the churches that were started in the wake of their first missionary trip, my somewhat orderly mind thought we would sail to Perga and then travel to Sidi and Antioch and then down to Iconium and then go on to Lystra and Derbe. But that is not what Paul did. Paul went in reverse order. And why did he decide to go in reverse order? Scripture doesn't say, and I suspect Paul didn't know why he was going in reverse order. But instead of sailing, Paul and Silas instead headed north by land. Now they had to cross a major mountain range and crossing it brought them down to Tarsus. Now, you might recall the city Tarsus. There is somebody we know that was called Saul of Tarsus, you know, who is now the Apostle Paul. So he started by heading back just as Barnabas had gone to Cyprus, his home country. The second trip, for reasons we don't know, perhaps he had family he wanted to see. We don't know why he went to Tarsus first. We just know he had to go to Tarsus because it was the only way to get to where he was going by the route he took. And nothing is told of his stay in Tarsus if indeed he stayed there at all. We don't know that he didn't just pass right through because scripture does not tell us and neither does history, secular history. Traveling on from Tarsus, the party had to cross another mountain range. Directly north of Tarsus. And so they approached, then approached Derbe from the south. Verse 41b says they came to Derbe and to Lystra Verse 1b says a disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer but his father was a Greek. So his mother was Eunice and we know this from 2 Timothy. His grandmother was named Lois. They figure prominently in letters of Paul to Timothy remembering of course that my rule of thumb is it's really good to be named in the Bible if you're not. Ananias and Sapphira and a few others. Lois and Eunice were highly thought of Christians in the early church. Now for Eunice to marry a Greek Gentile at the time was to break Jewish law. This was not allowed and people have wondered why as a Jewish believer she was allowed to do this. Well we know from Paul's first trip to Derbe and Lystra that these towns had a very small Jewish community with little influence in that region. And it is surmised for this reason that there were few suitable Jewish men that she was allowed to marry outside Judaism. While the ESV translation says that Timothy's father was a Greek, a more accurate reading would be that his father had been Greek implying that his father was dead. The past tense used in Greek showed that he was no longer alive. Timothy, second Timothy 1 .5 tells of Eunice's sincere Jewish faith. There Paul writes to Timothy I am reminded of your, Timothy's, sincere faith a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now I am sure dwells in you as well. And second Timothy 3 .15 speaks of Timothy's early instruction in Hebrew scriptures. Eunice, though married to a Gentile with a son therefore seen as a Gentile also chose to raise him as Jewish and take him to have him instructed in the scriptures. Indeed it was the duty of a Jewish parent married to a Gentile. Note that I just said parent. It didn't matter if it was a Jewish woman married to a Gentile man or a Jewish man married to a Gentile woman. It was their duty within Judaism to instruct their children in Jewish law and this Eunice had done. Eunice now was identified also as a Christian believer and she was undoubtedly one of those converted in Lystra by Paul and Barnabas on their first visit to there the previous year which was AD 48. Verse two says he and this again is Timothy was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Now Lystra and Iconium were several days travel apart. They were not side -by -side towns but undoubtedly the Christians in the area kept in touch as best they could. Timothy was thus known by the Christians of the surrounding area to be of superior character. Verse 3a says Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him and here is the reason that God directed Paul in his ministry to take a backward approach to his previous missionary trip. If he had repeated his trip he would have met Timothy in the last city on his second missionary trip. Instead he meets Timothy at the very beginning of the trip and this will prove important knowing that Timothy was a Greek father because we're going to see later that Paul doesn't just repeat his last trip he then ventures into Europe by way of Greece on this trip and having a native speaking Greek with him is going to be of importance and remember Silas that he took with him. He took with him from the Jerusalem church. Silas was a Hebrew Christian.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
Fresh update on "syria" discussed on Evangelism on SermonAudio
"So good to be back again on a Wednesday night. Good to see your faces and appreciate your prayers so much. As I was talking to Pastor Nathan, what's on my heart, I'd like to begin a series of studies from the book of Acts with you tonight. The Acts of the Apostles, or more appropriately, the Acts of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ and through the Apostles' labors. We want to remember some things before we try to delve into the text, actual text. We need to remember that Luke, the beloved physician referred to in Colossians 12. We know that he traveled with the Apostle Paul and most commentators that I've read claim that Luke was a Gentile and that as a Gentile grew up in Antioch of Syria. And if you recall in Acts chapter 13, remember the Apostle Paul and Barnabas were members at the church at Antioch. So that's where the relationship actually began. And Brother Luke is a special character in the tapestry of God's witnesses because he in the gospel narrative that is bearing his name chronicled historically the birth and ministry of Christ as well as his death, burial, and resurrection. And I want to go to Luke chapter 24 and show you how Luke ended his gospel message that was written about 60 to 62 A.D. and connected to the first chapter of the book of Acts. Here we find Christ appearing to his disciples and verse 45, he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, which would relate to the Old Testament. Remember that's all they had at that time. They had the Old Testament Scriptures, the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. That's the reference here to Scriptures. And he said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem, and ye are witnesses of these things. Now I just want to make this note here. It's Brother Luke that mentions that the gospel is to go to all nations. Now that includes the Gentiles.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from Short Stuff: Evil Eye
"Elevate your travels with the city advantage executive card the only card with admirals club membership earn advantage miles and loyalty points on your Purchases plus premium benefits that take your trips above and beyond expectations visit city .com slash executive for a bonus miles offer travel on Hey and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here to Given us the evil eye. Mmm for all the trash we've ever talked about her and frankly it's working because I just Blew a tire on the way here to work. Is that a euphemism? No, no, I blew a tire and I lost my checkbook Mmm, you were at the grocery store. They rang everything up. Mm -hmm You're standing there looking and they were then they said you have to pay now and you want oh and you reached in your purse To get your checkbook out. I reached in my front pocket of my shirt and then you're like, does anyone have a pen and Twelve people under the age of 75 behind you rolled their eyes inside Mm -hmm, and they had a pen but it leaked all over my hand. They gave you the evil eye big Thanks to our pal Dave Bruce and the old folks at how stuff works calm For this bit on the evil eye what we in our house call the stink eye Yes, also, thanks to Antonio Paglia Rullo Who is the author of a book on the evil eye the evil eye Colin the history mystery and magic of the quiet curse? Dave talked to a lot about this because not only did Antonio write that book his grandmother was an evil eye Doer away with practitioner when he was growing up That's right, if you don't know what we're talking about we're talking about what turns out to be a very very old I don't know what you call a tradition. What do you what is custom? Superstition. Yeah, all those things where someone will give you the evil eye. Someone will shoot you a glance We call it the stink eye again. Yeah, and it's it's wordless. You don't have to say a thing. You don't have to have a What is a little voodoo doll There's a big there's a quick cello sting going on in the background 100 % you got to take that that small string section around with you It means basically well originally I think it was sort of came from jealousy or envy but can also be just someone's angry or they resent you or Maybe they're being greedy or something and it's generally always intentional But I was surprised to learn From our friend here who wrote that book that it can be unintentional. I didn't realize that but I mean I guess I guess if you're coveting Something are you jealous of somebody to the left of the person you accidentally look at and give the evil eye That's the best I can come up with for unintentional evil eye This goes all the way back to the Greeks and possibly before right? Oh, yeah long before the Greeks but Plutarch was maybe the first person to actually write about it He was a philosopher and historian as everybody knows and he wrote some essays that were collected into something called Moralia And he talked about the evil eye in that his whole jam. Was that your eyes are a source of energy That shoot out that shoot the energy out into the world around you and that reminded me Chuck of our stereoscopic episode where that one one of those ancient physicians would had their their theory was that we see by shooting beams out at Stuff. Yeah, and that's how we see and I guess that's kind of what it was based on. Yeah, totally the basically the body fills up with that jealousy or rage or whatever and It clouds the mind and then the eyeballs are right there in front of the mind to sort of Display for the world whatever the mind is thinking and in this case, it's evil Yeah, and it goes when you shoot the evil eye out of your eyes that was Plutarch's take and apparently that was the popular Take of it. Yeah, and depending on what culture you are from and your your ancestry is Sort of about you might have a long rich tradition of evil eye shooters or or Blaming everything that happens to you. That's bad on an evil eye that was shot your way Yeah, because it's not just stuff that happens to you directly like an injury or an illness It can also be things that happen to the things you depend on like your smartphone Exploding in your pocket. Remember what that used to happen. Yeah They are blowing a tire smartphones did They didn't catch on fire, right? Am I making that up? There were like mild explosions with some I want to say an Android at some point in time Yeah blowing up in people's pockets and everyone's like ha boy remember when that was a thing Yeah, and now they're right back in her pockets again back in the aughts. Yeah. Everybody's like, I don't care I love smartphones so much. I'll just take the risk. That's right so back to Antonio who wrote the book the evil eye he is Catholic and Italian and he said, you know, we don't even have like baby showers over here like that That's considered bad luck to have a baby shower. Like you're tempting fate or something like that yes, so it's a you know, sort of a superstitious danger and Over there and this is kind of true anywhere in any culture that has an evil eye history They will have protections against evil eyes like amulets and things like that and pregnant women would wear amulets in Italy Apparently at least in his family and they would say these special prayers to ward off the evil eye Yeah, and the reason why Having something like a baby shower would tempt fate and maybe attract an evil eye Is that it could be taken as like a boast or something and roasting can generate? Envy or jealousy and envy or jealousy can shoot out of your eyes as the evil eye and then your smartphone blows up in your Hand during the baby shower. Yeah, look at me I made a human and in particular babies children pregnant women and animals are the most vulnerable to the evil eye Although it can happen to anybody But there's different traditions and customs for protecting against the evil eye Depending on where you are in the world. Like you said in Turkey when you are a newborn baby You're gonna get what's called a nazar? Which is a dark blue? Circle with a white circle inside it in a dark blue circle inside the white circle and it's meant to be an eye And Chuck I say we take a break and we'll come back and tell everybody whose eye it is after this know ooh You friends seeing a doctor when you're sick is enough to make you sick or sicker and involves a lot of time and Effort at a time when you're least equipped to provide either so we want to talk about Teladoc, which is a far better alternative It's putting the humanity into health care. Yeah, think about what happens when you're sick and you have to see a doctor You've got a schedule an appointment and that could take days sometimes weeks to get in then you have to go to the doctor Even though you're probably feeling miserable and then you have to wait in the appropriately named waiting room Exposed to whatever the people around you are coughing and spewing into the air. It's a thing Well with Teladoc Health you can get in touch with a doctor 24 hours a day 365 days a year all from the comfort of your own home Just open the Teladoc Health app and get a diagnosis treatment plan and prescription if needed from a board -certified provider Download the app to get started today or go online to register or schedule a visit at Teladoc Health dot -com slash stuff That's T E L A D O C health dot -com slash stuff People are excited about what AI will do for them at IBM We're excited about what AI will do for business your business Introducing Watson X a platform designed to multiply output by tailoring AI to your needs when you Watson X your business You can build AI to help coders code faster customer service respond quicker and HR handle repetitive tasks in less time Let's create AI that transforms business with Watson X learn more at IBM comm slash Watson X IBM. Let's create a Horace it's the eye of Horace. Oh, wow. That was quick. Yeah Yeah, and like you said depending on where you are you might have different traditions for warding this thing off a lot of these countries are Middle Eastern or somewhere around the Mediterranean Sea I believe Dave Even said in his own family his grandmother in the Jewish tradition would tie Ribbons on cribs and things like that to ward off the evil eye or potential bad luck for newborn babies in that right? Yeah for sure in India They'll put some coal a black dot on the in Infants face and all these the point of these the nazar the red ribbon the black dot on the face They're meant to protect they're they're basically amulets or talisman that can protect against the evil eye and one reason why they based that on the eye of Horace is because in ancient Egypt the eye of Horace was painted on homes painted in tombs and it offered protection from evil or malintent or all sorts of problems even back then and so it kind of got mmm, you know how they take like You century know it goes from really ornate to like really stylized and simple That's basically what happened to the eye of Horace when it became the nazar. Yeah, that's a good way to say it Well, thank you and our book author also like you mentioned his grandmother Paglia Rulo's Grandma would keep a bowl of water in her kitchen and poured little drops of olive oil in there and look at the shapes and the patterns that the oil would take and Apparently that would inform her on the evil eye and if there was like someone in her family that was potentially in danger or a neighbor or something that Possibly will be or was stricken with the evil eye and I thought that was really interesting I don't know if it literally was like hey that looks like Our Gary our neighbor, right or if it's just you know, kind of reading the tea leaves, right? I'll put that olive oil was so good, too So you said that this all kind of came out of the Mediterranean did you not yes They've traced it back at least 5 ,000 years ago to tell Brock which is a city in Mesopotamia Which is tell Brock is a modern -day Syria right now and they found tiny figures that all kind of bear a resemblance to one another They call them eye idols and that they think that these offered protection as well Did you look up the eye idols of tell Brock do I didn't if? Et is not based on that. I will eat my head It's Identical to eat. It's crazy how much it looks like et man There's nobody who's seen et and would see one of those and be like, I don't know like it looks exactly like et All right, I'm looking it up and that is et. Yeah in that nuts That is et. I mean that is unmistakably an et head, right? But also even the body resembles et the proportions and everything. Yeah, that's true I don't see any arms and legs, but it does have that big squatty body. Well, thank God I don't have to eat my hat today Because they just pile on everything else bad that's happened. Was it like a sweaty old baseball cap. Mm -hmm Salty, you know, it's got the white salt streaks. It'll never come out. No, thanks So, I guess that's about it, huh for for evil eye. I got nothing else. Yeah There's all sorts of amulets and talisman you can use to protect yourself If you feel like somebody gave you the evil eye you can also say please don't look at me like that anymore I don't know what's wrong with you. That will also dispel the magic too. That's right.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Serving Where God Directs
"Amen, thank you, team, and if you have your Bibles, please open them up to Acts chapter 15. Acts chapter 15, verses 36 to 41. Now, before you get excited that this is a smaller passage of scripture, there is a lot to unpack in this. But don't worry, we will still take our normal time. So Acts chapter 15, verse 36 to 41, the title of this sermon that is prevalent throughout this that is underlining theme in here is serving where God directs, as we see something in this passage that we haven't necessarily seen that, to me, gives encouragement to know that the first century church wasn't this perfect, no -problem church, that there were issues that this church went through that, for us today, can give us some principles on what we as believers today can ascertain from this text. So Acts 15, verse 36 to 41, I'll be reading, this verse will also be up on the screen. Starting verse 36. Now, after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, let us return and visit the brothers in every city in which we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are. And Barnabas wanted to take John called Mark along with them also. But Paul kept insisting that they should not take him along who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there was such a sharp disagreement that they separated from one another. And Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and left, being committed by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. And as he was traveling through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this opportunity. We have to hear your word this morning. God, I pray that you will open all of our hearts, minds, and ears, God, to hear what it is that your word is being brought today to say. God, help remove any distractions. Father, just be with us this morning as we study your word. We ask all these things in your precious and holy name. Amen. So as we look through this text, we see three main individuals that we've already been introduced to. John, excuse me, John called Mark, Paul, and Barnabas. Now, the question that we are going to be looking at today and a question that each of us also need to ask, but we see playing out through these individuals is, are they the right individuals for the job? Are they in the right job? Are they in the right location? Are they doing the right thing and using the right methods and means to accomplish the task that they have been set out to accomplish? Now, to understand this passage more clearly, and honestly, throughout the whole book of Acts, to understand the relationship specifically between Paul and Barnabas, but then also between Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark, John called Mark, we need to understand kind of a chronological timeline in the book of Acts. Because as you read through chapter and chapter and verse and verse and section and section, our normal, I guess you could say, default position is to assume that we're just days or months into the birth of the first century church. But that's actually not the case. And what we need to be careful of is that when we read these things, they're not always necessarily happening within days or weeks. They're sometimes in some of these passages, a gap of years.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
How China Has Infiltrated Our Country With Nikki Haley
"Now, I want to dial out to 30 ,000 feet over America's history since World War II. And I just talked about this with Senator Cotton. We didn't see Korea coming. We didn't see the disaster of Vietnam coming. We did not see 9 -11 coming. We did not execute Iraq or Afghanistan correctly. President Obama blew Libya, blew Syria, did not prevent Ukraine from being invaded the second time. Georgia happened on W's watch, but nobody saw China turning. The national strategic document that W produced in 06 is just like two throwaway pages on China. And then this administration did not prevent Ukraine second. What is with America's strategic deficit? Why do we not prepare for the next conflict, Ambassador Haley? I think it goes back to our intelligence. I don't think our intelligence agencies are up to par. I don't think that we are getting the proper information. If we did, we would have seen the fall of Afghanistan the way it was. We would have seen so many of those other events. And we're just not getting it. And that's why when I'm president, we're going to go back in and fine tune the mission. Don't forget that when we talk about modernizing the military, make sure that we have most up -to -date ammunition and equipment to prevent our men and women in the military. We also have to make sure we have the most up -to -date intelligence. And we are archaic in that. And we are not as good as our peers. And we need to make sure that one, we strengthen those partnerships of intelligence. Two, we get our intelligence agencies back on the mission of saving Americans. And then three, make sure that what are we doing to make sure we have the top of the line information so that we do that. And then that's only the second leg of it. The third leg of it is communicating. Tell the American people. Treat American people like adults and give them the information you have and what we need to do to protect ourselves. Why in this last decade did it not come out that the Chinese were buying up all of this farmland? I mean, food security is national security. Why didn't come up that they were running cables underneath that farmland to our military installations to spy? Why didn't it come up that 90 % of our law enforcement drones are Chinese? Why didn't it come up about the harm of the research that was being stolen from the universities when all those millions were going in there? Why didn't it come up that Chinese front companies have been lobbying Congress? Why are we allowing foreign lobbyists in the first place? You know, why didn't it come up that China was developing these strike weapons that can actually engineer and change brain activity of military leaders and groups of people? What more do we need to know than to realize it's not that China's coming. China's already here. They have infiltrated our country.
Mark Levin
Wagner Chief Assassination Shows Who Putin Really Is
"Jewish and he lost family members in the holocaust if you believe in that stuff there's nothing i can do for you seriously you're probably in the wrong place doesn't actually mean you have to agree with hundreds of billions of dollars going into ukraine and so forth that's not what i'm talking about you gotta know right from wrong moral from immoral evil from good totalitarianism when you see anyway we're not crying any tears here that the head of the wagner but it just demonstrates what Putin is pewton overthrew the democratically elected government in nigeria nigeria was one of our closest allies on the continent of they allowed our special operations our special forces operate from there such as activities there we're able to land our not anymore because through that government cuteness back syria the water that's going on over there and of course iran's backing cute i mean let's let's stop playing games i mean don't i understand the well i do understand it these cycles happen like i said
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Worldwide Word of Rebuke and Worldwide Plan of Mercy
"Isaiah chapter 17 and 18, these are God's words. The burden against Damascus, behold, Damascus will cease from being a city, and it will be a ruinous heap. The cities of Erewear are forsaken. They will be for flocks which lie down, and no one will make them afraid. The fortress also will cease from Ephraim. The kingdom from Damascus, the remnant of Syria, they will be as the glory of the children of Israel, says Yahweh of hosts. And that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob will wane, and the fatness of his flesh grow lean. It shall be as when the harvester gathers the grain and reaps the heads of his arm. It shall be as he who gathers heads of grain in the valley of Rephaim, yet gleaning grapes will be left in it. Like the shaking of an olive tree, two or three olives at the top of the outermost bough, four or five in its most fruitful branches, says Yahweh. And that day a man will look to his Maker, and his eyes will have respect for the Holy One of Israel, the work of his hands. He will not respect what his fingers have made, nor the wooden images, nor the incense altars. And that day his strong cities will be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation. Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not been mindful of the strong will. Therefore you will plant pleasant plants, and set out foreign seedlings. In the day you will make your plant to grow, and in the morning you will make your seed to flourish. But the harvest will be a heap of ruins, in the day of grief and desperate sorrow. Woe to the multitude of many people who make a noise like the roar of the seas, to the rushing of the nations that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters. The nations will rush like the rushing of mighty waters, but God will rebuke them when they will flee far away, and be chased like the chaff of the mountains before the wind, like the rolling thing before the whirlwind. Then behold it even tied to trouble, and before the morning he is no more. This is the portion of those who plunder us, and the lot of those who rob us. Woe to the land shouted with buzzing wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, which sends ambassadors by sea, even in vessels of reed on waters, saying, Go, swift messengers, to a nation long and smooth of skin, to a people terrible from their beginning onward, a nation powerful and treading down, whose land the rivers divide, all inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth. When he lifts up a banner on the mountains you see it, when he blows a trumpet you hear it. For so Yahweh said to me, I will take my rest, and I will look from my dwelling place, like clear heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he will both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches. They will be left together for the mountain birds of prey, and for the beasts of the earth. The birds of prey will, some are on them, and all the beasts of the earth will enter them then. In that time a present will be brought to Yahweh of hosts, from a people of tall and smooth skin, and from a people terrible, from their beginning onward, a nation powerful and treading down, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of Yahweh of hosts." To Mount Zion, so far the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word.
Postcards to the Universe with Melisa
Kronos the Siriun Shares a Message Through Channeler Rev. Gregory Possman
"So for those of you just listening, Gregory, he's been channeling for a long time, and he just kind of moves aside, and whoever wants to come through comes through, and I will ask that entity slash spirit or angel some questions. So Gregory, what did you do? Just ask who was poking at you? How does that work? Share with us how that happens. Physically, it feels like pressure on my shoulders, and it's not painful. It's not difficult. There's no challenge to it. It's just I can feel this energy around me, and then I ask who it is, and they tell me, and that's basically how it happens. So in a way, it's kind of a feeling, but it's also a little bit of a physical feeling as well. So you'll hear something in your head, like you'll hear somebody like Kronos from Syria. Is that a Syrian? Well, I'm going to say he. I know it's not necessarily he, but I don't know how else to say it though, right? Kronos. They are like beings. They are like beings, and they also describe themselves as a much higher intelligence, and they're not referring to us. They're not saying they're higher than we. They're just saying that they're an aspect of higher intelligence from Syria. Okay. All right. So what we're going to do is there's three that decided that they wanted to come on. So I think what we'll do is we'll start with whoever wants to show up first, doesn't matter to me, and then we'll wrap up with that light being right before the break, and then we'll come back, and then we can ask the other two to join us. Whatever order they feel that they want to come on is totally fine with me. How's that sound to you? That sounds great. Sounds good. I'm ready to go. All right. I was going to say, anything you want to add before we go? Are you ready? You just ready? No. Don't worry. Be happy. Let's do it. All right. Let's do it. Okay. Here we go. We are the one called Kronos. We are the spiritual commander of the Syrian race, and we wish to explain that the word commander has no military association whatsoever, and therefore it is important to understand that from the perspective of spiritual, that is truly important. Welcome Kronos. I was going to ask you what a spiritual commander was, because I did think of the military when I saw the word commander, and I heard the word commander. What is a spiritual commander? Think in terms of a network of beings that are all aligned with one another, and think in terms of that network being able to communicate entirely by telepathy, and think in terms of not being limited by time or space, and then imagine that there is one being who has some sort of connection to all of them, although they are all connected to one another, and it is not a matter of commanding them. It is not a matter of doing anything other than ensuring that the communication between every member of the network is equal. Equanimity, perhaps that is the word that we would use, and also the aspect of unity. We are all part of the one, and the one is the network. You describe it as an egregor, as a morphic field. We describe it as a network. There are many ways to describe it, but that is our job per se. Thank you for that clarification. So, I always ask the man Gregory, before he joins me, who would like to come on and speak with me today, and since you showed up, I would like to know, is there a message that you wanted to share with me and the people that are listening to us right now? There is, of course, and the message is this. Many of you on your planet are steeped in fear, a kind of paranoia, if you will, and there are so many things in the physical plane that you find to be frightened of. You are frightened of destruction. You are frightened of what you call scarcity. You are frightened of an inadequacy of love, an inadequacy of affection, an inadequacy of attention, and we wish for you to understand that we are like guardians. We are like protectors, and oftentimes you refer to the angelic realm as your guardians. However, we would ask you to also consider the possibility that unlike the projection that your media makes, that we are constantly interested in your destruction or we are interested in the conquest of your planet or some other foolishly ridiculous aspect, that is of no interest to us whatsoever. We and our cousins, a number of other extraterrestrial races, are primarily interested in how quickly you can grow, how quickly you can move forward, and how quickly you can evolve, and it is that that is of great interest and intention for us.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Pride, an Enemy More Deadly Than Armies (and the God Who Weeps Over the Proud)
"Isaiah 15, 1 through 16, 14, these are the words of God. The burden against Moab, because in the night Ar of Moab is laid waste and destroyed, as in the night Kir of Moab is laid waste and destroyed, is gone up to the temple and to bond to the high places to weep, Moab will wail over Nebu and over Medabah, on all their heads will be baldness and every beard cut off, and in their streets they will clothe themselves with sacra, on the tops of their houses and in their streets everyone will wail, weeping bitterly. Heshmon and the Layalover will cry out, their voice shall be heard as far as Yehaz, therefore the armed soldiers of Moab will cry out, as life will be burdensome to him. My heart will cry out for Moab. His fugitives shall flee to Zavar, like a three -year -old heifer, for by the ascent of Luchit they will go up with weeping, for in the way of Oranayim they will raise up a cry of destruction, for the waters of Nimrin will be desolate, for the green grass has withered away. The grass fails, there is nothing green, therefore the abundance they have gained and what they have laid up, they will carry away to the brook of the willows, for the cry has gone all round the borders of Moab, its wailing to Igla 'in and its wailing to Be 'er Eilin, for the waters of Diman will be full of blood, because I will bring more upon Diman, lions upon him who escapes from Moab and on the remnant of the land. Send the land to the ruler of the land from Selah to the wilderness, to the mount of the daughter of Zion, for it shall be as a wandering bird thrown out of a nest, so shall be the daughters of Moab at the fords of the Arnim. Take counsel, execute judgment, make your shadow like the night in the middle of the day, hide the outcasts, do not betray him who escapes. Let my outcasts dwell with you, O Moab, be a shelter to them from the face of the spoiler. The extortioner is at an end, devastation ceases, the oppressors are consumed out of the land, in mercy the throne will be established and one will sit on it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking justice and hastening righteousness. We have heard of the pride of Moab. He is very proud of his haughtiness and his pride and his wrath, but his lies shall not be so. Therefore Moab shall wail for Moab, everyone shall wail. For the foundations of Kir Haraseth you shall mourn, surely they are stricken, for the fields of Eshman languish on the vine of Sibmah, the lords of the nations have broken down its choice plants which have reached Jezer and wandered through the wilderness. Her branches are stretched out, they are gone over the sea, therefore I will bewail the with the weeping of Jezer. I will drench you with my tears, O Eshman and Alela, for battle cries have fallen over your summer fruits and your harvest. Gladness is taken away, and joy from a plentiful field. In the vineyards there will be no singing, nor will there be shouting. No treaders will tread out wine in the presses, I have made their shouting cease. Therefore my heart shall resound like a harp for Moab, and my inner being for Kir Haras. And it shall come to pass when it is seen that Moab is weary on the high place, that he will come to his sanctuary to pray that he will not prevail. This is the word which Yahweh has spoken concerning Moab since that time. But now Yahweh has spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of a hired man, the glory of Moab will be despised with all that great multitude, and the remnant will be very small and feeble. O my dear family, how dangerous an enemy is our own pride. At the beginning of chapter 15, the picture is of a nighttime surprise attack by the Assyrians entering Moab from the north, going from one city to another. So quick is the destruction by the plan of the attack, and the location, and the time, that they're able to take multiple cities in one night, in verse 1, and the destruction moves rapidly south. The warriors of Moab are left impotent, powerless, and you get to the end of verse 4, and Moab is in the ruins, and their strongest men are helpless, and hopeless, and crying out. And then we have this wonderful surprise. It's only a surprise to us because we don't know the greatness of the mercy of our God, but this interruption, where Yahweh himself is saying, my heart will cry out for Moab. And he describes how great the devastation is through the end of chapter 15. And then he gives them advice. He says, send a lamb, a lamb to the ruler of the land, from Salah to the wilderness. So now they're all the way down in Salah. The remnant, whatever is left of Moab, is stuck in the lowest part of the nation, almost to the border with Israel. He doesn't say send it to Ephraim, Ephraim is in their own mess, as we'll be hearing next week, Lord willing, in 17 and 18, and their alliance with Syria. It says, send the lamb to the mount of the daughter of Zion. And the picture in verse 2 is the Arnon, which is the big river in Moab, and they're crossing at the place where the Arnon is most crossable, trying to get over to Judah, trying to get over to their new alliance with this small and despised people who have an infinitely great and exalted God. Now alliance with Judah does not sound like the best military strategy, but an alliance with the daughter of Zion is an alliance with the anointed of the Lord. And so it certainly is the best strategy. And so he says, take counsel, execute judgments, let my outcasts dwell with you, O Moab, I'm bringing this on them too, but you can be joined to my people, and you can suffer together and you can be restored together. And he describes the restoration and the end of the trouble in verse 4 and the restoration in verse 5, the extortioner is at an end, devastation ceases, the oppressors are consumed out of the land, so the trouble ends, and then the restoration, verse 5, in mercy the throne will be established and one will sit on it in truth in the tabernacle of David. Now we read it that way, because we know who sits on the throne in the tabernacle of David. It's the Lord Jesus, of course, but if you were a Moabite you'd be like in the tabernacle of David. And so there's an implied rejection between verse 5 and verse 6. One will sit on it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking justice and hastening righteousness, but Moab rejects the proposal out of hand. And verse 6 through 12 really is a lament of the Lord over Moab, because he's been invaded by something much worse than Assyria. He's been invaded by his own pride, which kept him from trusting the Lord. We've seen this several times. Of course, pride is what destroyed the devil and Babylon and Assyria and Philistia in last week's reading. Pride was Ahaz's big problem. When the Lord told Ahaz that, you know, offered to Ahaz a sign that he would be Ahaz's savior, but Ahaz was already trying to form an alliance with Assyria and Tiglath -Pileser. And the Lord described himself as the stumbling stone that is laid in Zion that Ahaz stumbled he over because wanted to trust in himself, not in the Lord. Whenever we think we are going to make up for our sin, we are going to fix our life, we are going to take away our guilt, we are going to fix our situations, we are going to... That's our pride invading, and pride is a worse invader than Assyria. And so here the Lord has made Moab this wonderful offer to be joined with Judah and Zion under the ruler who sits on the throne of the tabernacle of David in mercy. And they reject it. And so you have the lament over Moab. We have heard of the pride of Moab, verse 6. He is very proud. But his, and the word James translates it lies, it's empty words, his empty words shall not be so, all the things that he tells himself about what he is going to be able to do. And he says, Therefore Moab shall wail for Moab, but the Lord himself mourns over him. Therefore I will bewail the vine of Sidma, etcetera. He says, I have made their shouting cease, therefore my heart shall resound like a heart for Moab, and my inner being for Tir Haaretz. You see this sympathy of God, this love for God, grieving, now not just over Israel, we're accustomed to that. Right? And Ezekiel, why will you die, O Israel? Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked? But that you would turn from your sins and live, or Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. But here it is with Moab, in 1 Timothy 2, God desiring that none should perish, that all should come to the knowledge of the truth, all the horrible pride of man that refuses to be saved, and the mercy of God that sympathizes here pictured as weeping and wailing, even as he is righteously punishing them. And of course the righteousness of that punishment comes out in verse 12, because what does Moab do? He goes from one of his worship places to the other, from the high place of worship to the house of worship, the temple, and of course he's worshiping what are not gods and those can't help him. And basically the gist of verses 13 and 14 is verse 13, that this isn't the first time the Lord has warned, that the Lord has been faithful in warning. But what the Lord is doing now is similar to what he's done in other parts of the prophecy of Isaiah so far, he's given a time soon. Sometimes he gives a time and amount of years, sometimes he gives it before the child is weaned, and those kinds of things here, he gives it exactly within 3 years as the years of hired man. But what does a hired man do? He counts down the days, right? He knows the exact amount of time. And so when it comes exactly on the schedule, then everyone knows to see what the Lord does to Moab as a warning from the Lord, as an example, and warning not to be destroyed by our own pride. For pride is a worse invader than the Assyrian army. That's the point of these two chapters. May the Lord help us to see his mercy and have our pride humbled so that putting our trust in him, we will be restored under King Jesus and we'll be happy to be under him, instead of too proud to be ruled. Let's pray. Our gracious God and our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your faithful and consistent warnings all to peoples everywhere, and especially to us where your warnings are so clearly spelled out in your word, which you have caused us to hear, and we thank you and praise you for displaying to us your compassion and even grief over the very ones whom you punish, that we might know your love, that we might know your mercy, even in the midst of judgment and never doubt the justness of your judgment. Save us, O Lord, from pride. It does so much damage to our lives in so many ways, and the best of us have more than enough to harm us left in us. So please forgive us and help us, we ask, in Jesus' name, Amen.
AP News Radio
Palestinian officials say Israeli strike on eastern Lebanon kills 5 militants, Israel denies role
"Israeli air strike kills 5 Palestinian militants. An Israeli attack targeting a Syria backed Palestinian group in eastern Lebanon leaves at least 5 people dead and ten wounded. According to an official from the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine general command, the air strike hit positions in kasia, a Lebanese town near Syria. After the attack and other official tells the AP that the group will retaliate at a suitable time. The PFL PGC has military presence and precisions along the Lebanon Syria border and has attacked Israel in the past. Commenting on the air strike and Israeli official denies the country had anything to do with it. I'm Mimi Montgomery.
AP News Radio
Florida sued over new law blocking Chinese citizens, other foreigners from buying property
"Florida is being sued over a new law blocking Chinese citizens and other foreigners from buying some property. A group of Chinese citizens living and working in Florida is suing the state of a new law that bans Chinese nationals from purchasing property in large swathes of the state. The suit bild in a federal court by the American civil liberties union claims that the law unfairly targets foreign citizens because of the actions of their governments, the new law applies to land near military installations and critical infrastructure and also affects citizens of Cuba Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. U.S. China ties are strained amid growing tensions over security and trade in nearly a dozen state houses and Congress, a decades old worry about foreign land ownership has spiked since
Mark Levin
Rep. James Comer: Whistleblowers Are Getting Cold Feet, Going Missing
"Two individuals that were involved with the from China They were reportedly detained and no one seen them for a while You've got the Israeli that was alleging some corruption involving both the president's son and the president are the vice president He's missing in Syria or somewhere in that vicinity And you've got the I don't want to know if you the correct term is whistleblowers but the people that are basically informants for us on where to look where the shale companies were here things like that These are people that used to be in some type of relationship with Hunter Biden neither partial or professional relationship There are all either in court or they literally fear for their lives Many have been contacted by the Biden attorneys Threatened them because if you were in business with Hunter Biden you probably are squeaky clean yourself So you've got a lot of intimidation taking place And look at me They flew a banner over The Kentucky Derby which honestly helped me But this dark money group probably I'd say it cost over a $100,000 to fly a plane all day over The Kentucky Derby Order of million people with a banner attacking me they've got billboards in my district I mean this early motivates me there's a technique that's their business model they're trying to intimidate the witnesses They're trying to intimidate the banks that are cooperating with us And they know the banks that were about to subpoena And it's very disappointing to see these are people who are present in our leaders at the highest levels These are thugs Actively engaged in a cover up
AP News Radio
War, natural disasters left record 71 million people internally displaced in 2022, report says
"A new report says a record number of people in the world have been internally displaced by conflict or natural disasters. The Norwegian refugee council's internal displacement monitoring center says the war in Ukraine helped push the global total of people internally displaced throughout the world last year to a record 71.1 million people, the report says that by the end of 2022, 5.9 million more people had been forced to relocate inside Ukraine because of Russia's invasion in Syria in 2022, 6.8 million more people were displaced by conflict after more than a decade of Civil War. The number of people displaced inside their country because of disasters such as floods and famine reached an additional 8.7 million. I'm Donna water
The Dan Bongino Show
Kayleigh McEnany: Where Oppression Reigns, Faith Still Prevails
"I mean your book is called serenity in the storm for a reason You talk about whether it's a church in Afghanistan or some legal rulings we've had going our favor how it's not all bad There's a reason to smile about this transformation coming A little bit more on that Yeah that's right You know and you take me back to the idea when we look at the senseless school violence that has happened And it is corresponded with the removal of prayer in schools in fact the woman who could be credited with removing prayer and God from schools Madeline Murray O'Hare she founded atheist organization famous a very nasty individual her son ended up totally disowning his mother's atheism in this case that took prayer out of schools And he ended up becoming a minister And he made the point that in 1963 at the point at which God was still in schools in Baltimore there was not a single death at a Baltimore school And he goes through all the ills that came when we started removing God entirely from school but the optimism point here is this You know I was sitting in the rose garden when Amy Coney Barrett is nominated to the Supreme Court All of a sudden we're winning on these issues You can now kneel in silent prayer at the 50 yard line coach Kennedy can If you have a school voucher in Maine you can go to a you don't have to go to a secular public school You can use it to go to a school of faith So we are winning on a lot of these issues It doesn't feel that way right now but at least on the Supreme Court They're making a huge difference in the country in Afghanistan you know your point the underground churches on fire because we're oppression rains I can tell you this People are receptive to faith They recognize the difference between light and darkness which is why Christianity is on fire in China and Iran and in Syria places you wouldn't necessarily think
AP News Radio
Airstrikes kill well-known Syrian drug kingpin
"Both an opposition war monitoring group and a pro government radio station are reporting air strikes over southern Syria have killed one of the country's most well-known drug dealers. The first strike hit a home near the Jordanian border, killing mutt rampton, his wife and 6 children, according to the Britain based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the monitoring group and sham FM, then set another strike in a southern province hit a building thought to have been a drug factory the strike also comes a day after Arab government's reinstated Syria to the Arab League as the Arab nations gradually rekindled ties with Damascus, one of the key topics of discussion has been serious illicit drug industry, which is flourished during the ongoing conflict, especially the illegal amphetamine captagon. I'm Charles De Ledesma
The Economist: The Intelligence
"syria" Discussed on The Economist: The Intelligence
"Max Martin is on his way to toppling John Lennon and Paul McCartney as the most successful songwriter of all time, according to the Billboard Hot 100 charts. It's an incredible accomplishment. So what can other would be hitmakers learn from his hits? Max Martin is a very successful songwriter and producer who came out of Sweden in the late 1980s and he has more number one hits than anybody since the year 2000. Crystal ariva writes about music and data for The Economist. So over the last couple of years, I decided I was going to listen to every single Billboard Hot 100 number one. Of course, Martin has a ton of number one. So I listened to a lot of his songs. And as I went along, I was collecting data, and I started noticing some trends. Go on, what trends did you see? Max Martin doesn't do a lot of press, but when he won the polar music prize, which is pretty much the closest thing to the Nobel Prize in music, the interviewer asked him, are there any changes in popular music over the last 30 years? As long as he's been working in the business. And I thought it was odd the first thing he said was that song introductions have become shorter. So I had all this great data and I decided to sort of fact check the king of pop songwriting here to see if he was correct. And he is correct introductions have gotten shorter. And you can even hear that on his work, for example, Katy Perry's 2008 hit I kissed a girl. This was never the way I but hold on, this is sitting down and listening to all of the Billboard Hot 100 for 30 years. I mean, how long did that even take you? It took me somewhere between three and a half and four years because I was listening to just one song a day. I mean, there was no end goal here. So I figured I could meander along. But that allowed me to really get into each one of those songs between 1958 and today. But more quantitatively, it does seem clear to you that basically intros are getting shorter. Max Martin certainly does have a point while he was coming up in the 1980s, the average Hot 100 number one hit had 21 seconds of introductory material. You can sort of hear something like this on queen's hit song another one bites the dust. While its iconic has 21 seconds of buildup before Freddie Mercury vocals kick in. Let's go. Down the street with during the 2010s introductory length has shrunk to just 12 seconds. Another great example here is work by Rihanna and Drake. The first words come in at just ten seconds. So this partly reflects a trend that songs in general have become shorter since the 1980s. But the thing is, they've only become 10% shorter on average. Whereas introductions have become over 40% shorter. So it's not just the fact that songs are getting shorter that intros are shorter. Is that we're really trying to get to the punch very quickly. And so that trend continues even now. Are we getting to the zero second intro before the vocals come in? We're getting pretty close. I don't think we'll ever completely get there. But yeah, in the 2020s, we're still seeing very short introductions, recent example, Miley Cyrus's number one hit flowers, the vocal begins just 8 seconds into the song. We were good we were gone kind of even if we look at this on a relative basis, in the 1980s, introductions took up on average 8.6% of a song in the 2010s they accounted for 5.4%. So again, just reinforcing this point that it's not just shorter songs in the absolute or relative sense. It's that intros are getting shorter at a much faster rate. What's behind that though? What is it that pop consumers are revealing of their preferences here? So there's a couple of things you can point to. First of all, people always like to point to, say, Gen Z, a shorter attention spans, crave instant gratification. That's probably part of it, but I don't think it's the biggest factor. First of all, there's just so much content out there whether that be music or television or TikTok, artists have to get your attention quickly to do that an introduction is usually out of the question. We have to hook you fast, but there's also a financial incentive here. For an artist to get paid, a user has to listen to a song on their streaming service for at least 30 seconds. So you need to, again, hook that person fast if you want to make a buck. And I think that's actually the more important factor here. Artists throughout history are always reacting to technology. For example, song introductions used to be quite short, also in the middle of the 20th century, right at the start of the Hot 100 in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But there was a very different incentive that caused this. It was actually that a vinyl record, a vinyl single, could only hold so much sound. So songwriters had to work within those constraints. These days we're just seeing a slightly different constraint, one that's built around the financial incentives that come with streaming services. So artists are always going to do this. It's not as glamorous as this idea of always just following your muse, but it's definitely part
The Economist: The Intelligence
"syria" Discussed on The Economist: The Intelligence
"For a good number of years, property prices in the rich world just kept rising. Meaning easy money for homeowners and landlords. These days, if your wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar, you might be getting nervous. Those house prices are tumbling. The squeeze is spreading, America, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Britain, but few property markets are as worrisome as South Korea's. House prices in Korea fell by 2% in December. That was December from November very steep fall just for a single month. It's actually the biggest single drop since official figures began in 2003. Mike bird is our Asia business and finance editor and is a co host of money talks. Our sisters show on business, finance, and economics. Things are looking pretty brutal, particularly in the capital city of Seoul, where prices are down by more than 20% since their peak in late October 2021. So bad news if you've just bought a house in Seoul. So what's the backstory here? How did South Korea get here? Well, South Korea is a country of really loves investing in housing. The South Korean Central Bank started raising interest rates in the middle of 2021. 7 months before the Federal Reserve did and almost a year before the European Central Bank did. And that means basically that Korean households, people with mortgages in particular have had the interest rates, they pay on those mortgages, steadily climbing up for quite a while now. The bank of Korea's benchmark rate is at three and a half percent, which is a 14 year high officials raise the rate again in January. You can see the effects of this in the broader economy as well. Private consumption fell by 0.4% in the final quarter of 2022. That's really the biggest part of most economies. This isn't helped by the fact that Korea is going through a pretty difficult time in terms of what economists would call the external performance. Exports dropped by 17% year on year in January. So there's nothing going on outside that would cushion the blow. So what can we already see in terms of the effects of all this on Korean households? What Korean households to start with are extremely indebted. So household debt runs to about 200% of disposable income in Korea. For example, in the UK, which is also a sort of mortgage loving country. Household debt runs to more like a 148% of household disposable income. A huge proportion of South Korean housing loans are floating rates, most mortgages are fixed rate in the U.S., which means you don't pay a different interest rate until you renegotiate your mortgage when it's term runs out in Korea as soon as the bank of Korea raises interest rates. You start paying more as a mortgage holder. So this hike in interest rates has fed through pretty quickly and people are really feeling the squeeze. The danger is that you get these bursts of force selling. So instead of people moving out when they want to move out, there are people in South Korea right now really looking at their mortgage burden looking at the money that they're paying and saying, listen, I just can't do this anymore. And when you get these periods of force selling, what happens is prices can collapse very, very quickly. And the country has a really, really strange rental system that makes things a bit worse here. Strange rental system in what way. So the system is known as chansey, basically tenants pay enormous lump sums to their landlords sort of 60 or 80% of the value of a property. It's a relic of a long time ago. Careers rapid industrialization in the 60s, 70s, 80s, mortgages are very hard to come by banks really only lent to companies. It didn't lend to households. What happens is the landlord holds the lump sum for two years. They can invest that money in whatever they want. Often, they're buying other properties with the money and at the end of the two years, they give the cash back to their tenants. Now, when there's market boom, when everything's going well, this is great, right? The problem in a downturn is that some landlords have invested in things that are now worth less than they were when their tenants handed them the money. You get these people who have bought these risky assets, had a bad time, lost the money, and you get a lot of stories coming out about these sudden defaults. So it really doesn't help the sort of overall economic situation. Having that sort of uncertainty and some people suddenly finding themselves pretty heavily out of pocket. So given those risks baked into the system in South Korea, surely the Central Bank is aware of them. What's it going to do about all this? Well, it's a difficult one to say, there's a sort of split opinion on the matter. You have some economists that think this is going to very naturally limit the amount of interest rate hikes that the bank of Korea can pursue, that the economic impacts are now. So obvious that they can't go that much further. That's the view of Nomura, a Japanese bank that the economic research is there, who expect that the bank for creator is going to have to reverse course pretty soon in the spring and actually start cutting interest rates for the rest of the year. Others, including an economics consultancy called Oxford economics, think the bank of Korea has to keep going. It's usually a pretty conservative Central Bank. They're pretty worried about inflation. I think this is a hard one to call personally. These sort of housing downturns are a really often what does stop a Central Bank from raising interest rates any further. There's a lot of economic research noting how closely aligned business cycles and housing markets are with each other. And when house prices start to come down, people really do not want to spend, they don't want to invest in other things. And you can see economic contractions happen pretty quickly. So how much can we use the case of South Korea as a kind of bellwether here? Does the strangeness of the rental market to make it not a very good indicator of what might happen elsewhere? I think to be honest, the thing that you want to look at when you're comparing these housing markets is in large part that the household debt levels. So it offers a glimpse of what to expect for some countries. You look at places like Australia, Canada, some of the Scandinavian economies, Norway and Sweden in particular, the Netherlands. They've all got very, very high household debt levels quite inflated property prices, and they all started raising interest rates after South Korea. So they may have a little bit further to go before the pressure feeds through to household finances in the way it has in Korea. But I do think it's a good example in general of how high house prices and high household debt can really constrain monetary policy. You look at the bank of Korea, there really having to worry about. This situation rather than looking at what the level of inflation is as they would really prefer to do. So when you have these high household debt levels, it really stops central banks
The Economist: The Intelligence
"syria" Discussed on The Economist: The Intelligence
"Weeks since massive earthquakes hit turkey and northern Syria, turning the region into the site of a colossal humanitarian disaster. Officially, more than 46,000 people have been killed. Of those almost 6000 are in Syria, but in reality, that number is probably far higher. The northwest of the country, where most of those deaths have occurred, has already been shattered by more than a decade of Civil War. Yet far from providing the means to help his people, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has arguably compounded the situation. He seems determined not to let this disaster go to waste, using it to ease sanctions on his brutal regime. Since the earthquakes hit northwest Syria two weeks ago, we've seen more than 140 trucks from the United Nations cross into the region carrying tents, heaters, color and testing kits. Greg carlstrom is our Middle East correspondent. But the number could have been much higher and the demand for aid in northwest Syria is certainly much higher. And the reason for that is because Bashar al-Assad has spent years trying to block help from entering that region. But in the wake of this kind of devastation, this does seem like a real opportunity for at last some good press for mister Assad. Why has he continued to block it? To understand why you have to look at the state of Syria, which is no longer a country after a decade of Civil War. It has been carved up into this patchwork of stateless. You have parts of the northwest that are controlled by either rebel groups or occupied by turkey. You have the northeast, which is controlled by a Kurdish led administration. And then you have about 70% of the country that is actually controlled by the Assad regime. All of these areas are impoverished, all of them to greater or lesser extents are cut off from the rest of the world. If you focus on the northwest, parts of it are controlled by Islamist rebels and the strongest of those rebel groups was a formerly Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. So in the mind of the Assad regime, this is a region teeming with terrorists and extremists and it needs to be cut off from the world and that has been their policy for a number of years now. In truth, this is a region home to more than 4 million people. Most of whom are destitute civilians who are still opposed to the regime and really that's why the regime wants to keep it cut off from the world. And even after this disaster remains cut off, but you mentioned some aid is getting through how has it worked so far? The rebel government in the northwest has been very reluctant about accepting offers of help from other parts of Syria. It's refused offers from the regime in Damascus. It also shortly after the earthquake turned back and aid convoy that was organized by that Kurdish led government in the northeast. There's a lot of bad blood after a decade of war and there's some understandable paranoia in the northwest about offers of help from the regime, which has a history of weaponizing aid everything from robbing aid convoys as they went to besiege areas to sending expired food to hungry people. And so for that government in Idlib in the northwest, they want aid to come via turkey. Since 2014, there's been a UN Security Council resolution that allows the UN to deliver aid from turkey into northwest Syria without the consent of the regime in Damascus. But Russia, which is the Assad regime's ally on the Security Council, has been trying for years to shrink or even stop those aid shipments since 2020. It has forced the Security Council to limit those shipments to using just one border post between turkey and northwest Syria, and unfortunately that border post was in an area that was quite badly damaged by the earthquake. And so that hampered the flow of aid just when demand for aid was highest. What asset is now agreed to do is to let aid flow through two additional border posts between turkey and northwest Syria. And that should help to ease the passage of these convoys into the northwest. And what do you make of that change of stance, the allowing of aid through new roots? I think it's self interested rather than benevolence. Assad has been something of an international pariah for the past 12 years. Both in the Arab world and in the west. Now what we've seen even before the earthquakes was that the Arab opposition to him was softening. You've had countries like the United Arab Emirates reopen their embassy in Damascus, but you now have even officials in Saudi Arabia, which was a staunch opponent of the regime, saying it's time for a policy change over the weekend, the Saudi foreign minister was speaking at the Munich security conference, and he said, it's a paraphrase we now have to accept that asset is here to stay. And so the regime feels like this is its moment to emerge from the diplomatic wilderness and what they would really like to do is to push the west to ease the sanctions, which in the regime's tellings are hampering earthquake relief that arguments is not true, but that is the story that it is trying to tell and making a small gesture towards the rebels in the northwest is something that they think might give them some good PR in a moment when they really need it. So you say that the sanctions are not the reason that aid has been hampered. What do you mean by that? You can look at the list of planes that have landed at the airport in Damascus over the past two weeks carrying earthquake aid. There have been dozens of flights that have arrived and some of them have come from donor countries like Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, all of which are close American partners. None of which have been prevented from sending aid because of sanctions. Now, there are some effects on the margins from sanctions. We've seen the stories of people who have tried to organize crowdfunding campaigns to do earthquake relief in Syria and they've had those campaigns blocked to alleviate that America's Treasury Department came out shortly after the earthquakes and it issued a very broad waiver covering transactions related to earthquake relief. So there are some effects on the margins from sanctions, but there has been a very quick effort to make sure that sanctions don't get in the way of sending it to Syria. Well, you suggest that they don't hurt much, but they certainly also don't help. They don't help. The point of sanctions is to hobble the state to reduce the capacity of the Syrian state. That obviously has consequences for civilians. Now, I think it's worth saying the biggest issue for them is that they are governed by a violent kleptocratic regime that was willing to destroy large parts of the country in order to stay in power. That has much greater consequences than sanctions do. That being said, they do have an impact. And it's an ongoing impact. If you look at something like the Caesar act in American law, which was passed in 2019, that imposed the furthest reaching package of sanctions on Syria. It aims at a number of economic sectors. Two of those are the energy sector and the construction sector. Syria is a country that has widespread blackouts and fuel shortages. There is vast damage to housing and infrastructure because of the war. So if you have a package of sanctions that is meant to hamper investment in energy and construction, that is, of course, going to make it more difficult to rebuild the country. Or even to see its way through the present crisis. So it stands to reason that those at least should be paused, right? It's a very difficult dilemma. When you talk to Syrians about sanctions, some of them will say, you know, the regime is not going to rebuild. Even if you ease sanctions and give it a big pot of aid for reconstruction, that money is going to wind up stolen. It's not going to help many Syrian civilians. And that anyway, it sets a terrible precedent and it's a terrible moral decision. But you also find more and more Syrians, including those who were staunchly opposed to the Assad regime who took part in the revolution who will now argue, listen, sanctions are not going to achieve their political goal of compelling the regime to reform. And the only thing they do at this point is they deepen the misery of people still living in regime held areas. There are no easy answers. It's a very difficult question morally politically diplomatically, but it's a question that I think more and more governments are going to have to confront. So the Americans have loosened the screws a bit Saudi foreign minister hints at a new tack that could be taken with Syria. There is a path for a kind of reputation rehabilitation. Do you think that's the way things will now go? I think there is certainly a path for that. But I think there's a difference between rehabilitating its reputation and unlocking large amounts of aid and financial help, which it's so desperately needs. You look at the past several years, the UAE, which was the first country in the gulf to reopen its embassy in Damascus and reach out to the regime, has not invested significant amounts of money in Syria, China, which never severed ties with Syria, which is on quite good political terms with the regime invest very little in Syria. Donors are not lining up to put money into an extremely corrupt country that has been decimated by war. So I think what we're probably going to see is a political rehabilitation of the regime. But that is not going to unlock the sort of help. Unfortunately, that
Red Blonde Fox
"syria" Discussed on Red Blonde Fox
"In syria world fittest and the ra out. Move own her greenbriar her a in her ear thick more heard or ever our early.
Today in Focus
"syria" Discussed on Today in Focus
"In syria. I still is but back in two thousand eleven. They were a series of detentions in in southern syria of a fifteen year old child and a couple of other young boys in captured the imagination. Because i was saying to represent what was the state's primal instinct which was to crack down ruthlessly on anyone who did try to speak truth to power or war threatened the chair the presidency in any way the scenes are unprecedented day after day of protests. Darah the genesis is serious turmoil. Strangers have kept on going onto the streets. Did you manage to get into syria. At the time. I got into syria in two thousand twelve. Th in the note was crossing the border from lebanon into homes. That was early. Two thousand twelve at that point the town. Of course it and the villages leading to homes which was serious third city. We're very much in the hands of what by then was a an active and armed opposition The the earliest months of the uprising against what was the mood like it was a it was a a mood of excitement of of anticipation and trepidation. In a way that he knew that the uprising managed to lunch at that point along. The lebanese border had been matched by similar movements in northern syria in the south. Even near damascus. And i realize that. They was a momentum against the syrian security apparatus. Which until that point had been seen as all pervasive is omnipotent and the the democracy that we saw the open defiance against the regime was more or less the strength of a straight this combustible nature these street protests in the very reality the emerging reality that people in the towns and villages of syria could really start to take a stake in what was happening to them was electrifying sue. Was that how. The situation shifted from demonstrations tae effective civil war. The shift from a protest movement to a civil war started about august. Two thousand eleven now armed. Opposition to president. assad has emerged. It's called the free syrian army. It's a fledgling revolutionary army. They are former syrian soldiers. They say they refused orders to fire on their own countrymen. The position determined that in order to achieve skulls it needed to revert to weapons and at the same time. The charlotte last side had determined that rather than grant concessions to protesters. He needed to crack down very heavily on them. Now he draws to do so by the security chiefs from his father's era and also by his mother who took a very active role in those months in particular. This is the second half of two thousand eleven in convincing but shah that that concessions were assigned witness and that the only way to deal with what was taking place in the country was to crack down on those who who were conducting these opposition protests. And who was. He actually fighting. And how effective whereby there were myriad groups who would taking the fought to bizarre left side at that time they were members of the civil society who would sought refuge in in weapons. They were members of the rural community. Farmers others. Who had lived largely for psych and lives in towns and villages died. Risen up against them as well. They were those who are more conservatively islamic minded. They were defectors from the syrian army to so many different groups with many different agendas and the issue over the next for five years would be whether they could move into one common goal and pose enough of a threat to the rest of the sharon. And you were reporting on all of this. You saw consequences. You saw the human cost. Tell me about that from two thousand twelve. Three to two thousand. I was able to cross the boorda into opposition. How syria around fifteen times. And every time. I did cross We saw a different phase of the conflict early on this excitement this adrenaline. From that point on every time. I did cross the there was a more of a sense that this will wasn't going to win. At any point soon the opposition became entrenched. They were very heavily. Weaponized frontline positions which were being consolidated board going anywhere by mid two thousand twelve was in ellipoid at the time Would cross the border from turkey. We were on the front lawn of a very heavy clashes between the syrian regime in the position and we sold to pick trucks arrived at the front lawn and on the back of them. There were fifteen guys. They were from north africa. The influence of foreign fighters who became the forerunners of of the islamic state in many ways started to taika a hold in the conflict. And i think i think by late two thousand twelve. The conflict itself had become very complex very splintered and something which became increasingly easier. Full the syrian regime in its allies to manipulate and to eventually conquer. What did the west day while this was happening early on in the conflict. The the attractive the us in particular which had been Excited by what it stayed in egypt the the power of the street exposing the fragility of authority they and supporting the stinger of osteo barak the egyptian president of standing they. Then turn them onto syria now. Syria was a far more complicated corner. The middle ages which is reasonably self contained. A syria had iran is a very strong ally. It had been seen as central to the so-called Resistance visited israel. Syria had retain truth-ler java lebanon for many years throughout the civil war in the decade bionz. So it was clear early on that. Syria was a complex place on syria. Obviously this is a a very tough issue. I have indicated repeatedly that Present allison has lost legitimacy. He needs to step down So far he hasn't gotten the message and instead has doubled down in violence on his own people The international community has sent a clear. Message that Rather than drag his country into civil war he should move in the direction of a political transition but At this point the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty so initially. The american response was to send intelligence offices and determine without they were part of the opposition that worthy of supposing or that could be supported in all not in any meaningful way against bashar al-assad By late two thousand eleven the the turks have become involved our president doda gone had had taken offense to how the regime and the gulf states in particular cutoff had started to send weaponry through to the opposition groups in the north and at the same time the the saudis had been in jordan speaking to the jordanians about whether it might be possible to Convince the american military to to invade syria from jordan attack. Damascus in a short time so there are a whole series of relations going on in the western sphere and in the east about what was what was to common and how to how to influence it and i think the best way to characterize what took place places that nobody really knew. Nobody really took a significant stake and while all this was happening. How things for assad was there ever a point where he looked really vulnerable to points. Throughout the woolwich bishara was vulnerable. I was that moment in late. Two thousand twelve early two thousand thirteen where the opposition had broken into the security perimeter in damascus and the second was in august two thousand fifteen where the opposition groups in the north. Those who had been vetted by the americans by the cia were making significant inroads into the charlotte military. The certain military was crumbling and it was it was then that an iranian general qassem soleimani who would played a very formidable. The writings in syria took with him to moscow maps so the conflict put them on the table in front of got him putin and said that the military will full and so will be shah within three weeks. If you don't help us do something about it. And it was september. Two thousand fifteen that putin. The russian president made the decision to formally intervene in syria. Sending his air force to bomb the opposition in the northwest in the northeast and to take a airbase. Where ever since he has used it. As the as the hub of out russian influence in the country which spread rotten. Into the into the minas chooses the military and across the industrial heartland of the country of russian. Now a significant stake. And what do we know about al assad at that time how did this change things for him while the russian intervention was decisive in the sense that the the american backed opposition push which had done so much damage to the syrian army. More or less stopped in its tracks. It said it was entering the campaign to fight the islamic state which was very active across northern syria. But the first three or four weeks. The russian bombs were dropped on the opposition position as those who had been vetted by the americans in those who washington thought might have consolidated into an effective opposition or effective leadership group. If they're allowed to russia sold the americans had been taking a stake in is very much threatening to charlotte last night. They did everything they could to to stop. That and there were successful in doing so that saved serene president bought it made by charlot. Saad somebody who was subordinate to putin in many ways and that remains the case today amal all this is happening while this geo politics is going on. What's happening for people on the ground in syria. I spent a lot of time in opposition syria in the northwest. Which even today is a miserable corner of syria thereof three to three and a half meeting people from elsewhere in the country. Who was sleeping in bed. Some graveyards or in school yards many of which have been bombed The georgian of lost six or seven years of school. Are they getting by on on eight through ngos or some food from the turks and there are people with very little prospect of of of advancing themselves At any point in the next few years sierra remains a long way away from any sense of real reconciliation so for now it's just survival in the open while the great powers gannett. What comes next so across the country. I think a good estimate would be that asset has effective control the not total control a roughly sixty percent of syria. Now coming up. I saw tens.
Today in Focus
"syria" Discussed on Today in Focus
"Syria martin. Can we start by going right back. Tell me about assads life. Before he came to power the shah was the second son of hafiza lesser the serene dictatorship long standing. He deserves a western educated son. hadn't been seen as Material early on his older brother. Brazil had been killed in a car crash near damascus airport and he was brought back from abroad. Broadway had been studying ophthalmology. He was presented to his country as a mild mannered western educated leader. Who was prepared to introduce some reforms.
Today in Focus
"syria" Discussed on Today in Focus
"Today following elections in syria we looked at the shah alam assad's brutal hold over the country after he survived the arab spring and then ten years of civil war year. Two thousand shar. Alyssa succeeded his father. As president of syria he was just thirty. Four years old had studied in london and some hope he would open up the autocratic country of girls allergic. He set the tone with an inauguration speech in which he called for new ideas. Indeed seem the new era for a couple of freezers. One young motivated and stick leader. The western educated nine also need some of the steps. He took like releasing political prisoners that his father kept for twenty years twenty five years in some cases muhammad. Al abdulla is a syrian. Human rights activist. Now he's living in the us but then he was studying law in the capital city. Damascus the the period of openness was called damascus spring but was a very short spring indeed if all along assad had reverted to his father style of governance muhammad was jailed simply as a result of his activism in the notorious prison. You'll be abused and beaten up and beating on the face slapping and cuffing to the back said in a solitary run for around two months under scanner ground sunlight of course that was a bad experience but also heating other being tortured others being tortured in a database. It's it's a very horrifying thing by the time. Demonstrations spread across the country in twenty eleven muhammad was living outside syria. But it was still a heady moment. I was excited scared. I was excited because the decisions were so so so so so so big. They were nice organized and peaceful them. It reassured me that we were not this country is oppressed people are oppressed. People are aware of this. Muhammad was also aware of what asset was likely to do next. Basically he's going to be brutal he's gonna kill people he's going to be violent he's going to use force against people and that is exactly what happened in a decade long campaign by the president against rebel forces and civilians sometimes adler on the brink of losing the country but time and again he held on and last week after an election western leaders called neither free nor fair he announced he had won ninety five percent of the vote for ten years. The guardians martin chula has covered the entire conflict. Shower lozad is largely responsible for the super war. Which is collapsed. Syria the deaths of five hundred thousand people in war the turtle disintegration of the economy and the displacement of more than half of series prewar population many of whom remained outside the country's borders even now from the guardian. I'm donna did i invite guests. How shall i last. Saad clawed his way.
KQED Radio
"syria" Discussed on KQED Radio
"Egyptian mediators are holding talks with Israel and Hamas today in an effort to solidify their fragile cease fire that took effect early Friday. From Jerusalem. NPR's Jackie Northam reports So far the truce is holding. There were clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at the El Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday, but otherwise there's been calm. Israeli military are assessing the 11 Day old conflict. Senior officer said more than 1000 airstrikes had badly damaged Thomas's military infrastructure, but he also wondered how long it would be until the next battle with Hamas. U S Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to arrive in the area in the coming days is part of US efforts to build on the ceasefire. Meanwhile, people in Gaza continued to dig out more than 1800 homes and buildings were destroyed and there's a shortage of clean water and electricity. Jackie Northam NPR NEWS Jerusalem The top U S general for the Middle East. Frank McKenzie has paid an unannounced visit to Syria. He's praising plans to repatriate 100 Iraqi families from a huge refugee camp in Syria, which he says is a breeding ground for Isis insurgents. That's what concerns me is The ability of Isis to reach out touch these young people and turn them in a way that unless we can find a way to take it back, it's gonna make us pay a steep price down the road. All Hall camp and northeast Syria's.
The Last American Vagabond
"syria" Discussed on The Last American Vagabond
"That's what this is about now. Going forward i find it really telling as well as she points out. Of course if the bbc was just to contemn condemn her for driving a car with a popular image of assad in the back window which there is an image of assad which is a very common thing for these cars as even have a bartlett spoken to in in in syria and that she said it's not it's another person's car in syria. So there's your explanation regardless it wouldn't matter if it was but it says of course the bbc if the bbc wishes to content. Condemn vanessa for driving a car with popular image of assad. One hopes. The bbc will equally be condemned the white helmets for displaying al- qaeda or isis or other extremist militias seeing signs and signals. But of course not of course they won't do that. Why would they do that because that would make them. Actually objective balance showing all sides. No they don't wanna do that as she points out. There's also the issue of the bbc producers driving around in vehicles with isis. In sydney on display does chloe and remember. This is khloe that we've already spoken about that. Her locked account where you can't see i. I'm probably blocked for all. I know because. I called her out yet. Another to protected. Because that's what good journalists today. They hide their information for people. You gotta love him their propaganda. I mean they are their goal is to manipulate your perception. Not inform you. That's why khloe blocks tweets but it says as you can see there. i mean. look this is youtube. Oh from youtube. These these are this is from the saving serious children from the bbc. That's that's an isis symbol in. The back of their truck are driving right. Here's another and this is the absurd. This was that fake fake manipulated joke of a thing where this guy walks around like. He's all burnt and broke couple. Everyone's standing around and perfectly fine but no low. Behold there's isis symbol in the back of the truck they. Bbc's team was working in embedded with isis. But nobody can. But that's totally fine. But she has the picture of the president of a sovereign country in the back of a car..
The Last American Vagabond
"syria" Discussed on The Last American Vagabond
"The collaboration between israel and what they term the pragmatic saly islam steitz hence the normalization of relations between israel in uae for example the growing normalization between saudi arabia and israel. And so now. What you see is the corporatization of that new front that that sunni islam zionist us. Saudi arabia will hubby front line against iran. I mean they even talk about anti-ram operations that talking of course of multi spectrum was talking about cyber attacks that looking about all manner of not ways of targeting iran preemptively of course kiro. Israel's brush is almost always based in preemptive aggression which they then justify as cooling at self-defense. While we're defending ourselves against the potential of iranian and biden is actually using that same language cross volunteer right in the uk. The united states in israel's ended of the ones that opened our not openly necessarily but embrace the bethlehem doctrine which is what three m events comes from. But they won't let you see it. Let's talk you know you can't look into how they dissect it you know. He came out under the whole thing with salamone right where they had basically admit well all we needed. Was you know to know that this guy might in some day in the future do something and so then we can just murder people and they basically admitted that was really embarrassing moment for them. You know and point out here in yemen for instance. I know we're probably you're probably gonna lose power. A few minutes here is look at look at how insulting it is that we know this. So the m. I six the cia are involved in yemen. They're they're making it worse. We know you. And i actually previously discussed the uae torture prisons where the cia was photographed. Right there watching it happen and yet we all act like we don't know what's going on in the world's worst humanitarian crisis. You know just shortly you this this disgusting lack of concern for human rights human safety liberty freedom. Whatever you wanna call it as they pretend that's what they're doing and it's it's like that all across the world you know it's going no i mean i think you know To register the fact that the us for example is moving patriot. missiles onto old edifice. Sorry onto socotra which is of course belonging to yemen off the coast of yemen and The uk is effectively moving backing to auden words. Crews that was basically under british colonial rule previously. So you know yes. This is neo-colonialism on steroids. But if we come back to syria ulcer in the nose ace lot ernie as the us increasing its military footprint under the covers the pandemic the uk now is also a funding approach the northeast to expand the isis camp. So all this movement oldest shifting around the vices it will become official that there is a nicest camp within the isis. Of course. We're going to be british isis operatives. They're gonna be american isis operatives french german. see all all nationalities in these protected camps. Is this the moment where we see them. Actually and continue to make the argument that we should somehow relations with this group because that's been made before and they flow theorists. Sort of how we now work with you know. We're making deals with the taliban despite them literally..
The Last American Vagabond
"syria" Discussed on The Last American Vagabond
"See the order your way ahead right but yeah i've sleet and i think you know i think another able development that we've noticed Ours is nowadays are ramping. A legal cases against president assad Were saying revivalism at the icc case which already reported on a couple of years ago where seeing the change of the prosecutor. They ic- from ben souda who was criticized for not having In cases to the icc to a qc british qc carrying con Who has a reputation for bringing cases in an who has connections to the lawyers that running illegal operations against president assad with some degree of backing from the uk foreign office where saying the recent trials germany plants of their alleged a form of security officers accused torture way saying the report. That's just come out. published thomas phipps that he used to Further attack me on twitter with arrest. Seeing what. I'm calling the milosevic operation. If you it's they they haven't won militarily they have one or diplomatically they have one in the media as being salih explodes a non release. Uk for an office documents exposing the extent to which the office was involved in the black hole against syria and so now rather than retreating Let's make a deal right now. You know this is the nature of the imperialist nations. They can't expect lost. You know if you look now. What's happening in yemen. The recent exposure of british m. sex cia operations in the al-qaeda health are traits To the east of yemen aleta province where they were basically trying to slit members of unscrew intelligence to go. Sorry. i'm sorry. They always a delay between us with this. But i just wanna make sure that people who tease for those that don't know the the the other other name that were the answer. All go ahead please. continue. Yeah i mean little bit It's been of a Yes a media yet i am pro-trade than as great yeah of guerrillas will run on an actual resistance movement. What i found interesting was the reason. I say that is not to argue that what we should call them but just so people know what we're talking about interesting though. Is that the way. I see them trying to play that. Is you have the saudis which is named after a family name. so it's a monarchy. It's an authoritarian rights but this is an elected government but they try to make it out to be the family name so feel like that's kind of how they're trying to play that which is funny. That's my thoughts on it. Yeah i mean you know. The the current government in yemen the which was elected constitutionally on the yemen constitution is made up. I think of around thirty yet political party so this is a power-sharing Accomplishing government and unsure la is representative of the resistance against nee colonialism in particularly against arm saudi occupation and resuls plundering etc. That has been going on for decades and the corruption etcetera etcetera etcetera But actual yemenis who would co opted into british intelligence american intelligence Captured and questions and it turns out that only six..
The Last American Vagabond
"syria" Discussed on The Last American Vagabond
"Science are never to talk a government. They are always to target the people. And if you look for in a pack they'll say that themselves right. Is it sort of the the department of war becomes the department of defense and we act like that never happened you know. It's it's clear that they've spoken on the record before you know the the kissinger's of the world's you kind of talk about it in their circles in about how they use people at about how the sanctions are about making them. What the term they use Scream was a term that was used in regard to south america or pompeo saying if you want your people to eat do what we're saying these are all things that they state and then try to really backward and go with. No this is what actually meant you know. They know this. The sanctions are about bringing people to desperation so that they revolt on their government. And the interesting. Part as i always point out is. It's nothing no that's happening. It's we're we're going to drive under such a desperate state that they don't really care what happens next as long as the terrible things stop right. That's an seemingly it's worked in the past. That's why i sorta point out that right now. We are under us sanctions as americans that without exactly will be. Yeah i mean this is the whole point. The whole crave mid nineteen Of what you wanna cool that heights. Constructs whatever louise effectively. The hybrid strategy now being turns on domestic relations right caddy. That you know everything. They're using everywhere else in a domestic health setting. You know it's the security state that they're building around us right now. You know exactly in a. And and that's what i keep saying. People keep signs meal while you know while we to thought zaria all the stuff is up because its interconnected is a mirror of what is happening here in syria. If you actually consider what's happening here it's it's an example of how to survive in how to resist yes in a- Equally this entire power grab is all about creating isolationism making us all start to to to withdraw inwards start looking outwards into start. Considering the other issues that are going on under the umbrella of For everyone is focused on on on looks out on. You know their depression their site. All the issues that are being created by the disproportionate measures taken against a virus and an fox. What is going on onto that is an increase in the aggression against countries like yemen like syria..
The Last American Vagabond
"syria" Discussed on The Last American Vagabond
"Just shows you how hypocritical they are now bringing it back to the idea that we're dealing with isis in the sense. I believe i believe it's my opinion. Absolutely the first part more than anything that they use this to justify why they're there but also. What are your thoughts on the concept of the catchy rockets that keep getting used and how there is countless examples of isis. Having these using these in syria you know. Do you think that's what's happening. Or what are your thoughts on the whole dynamic with the rockets. They wouldn't be used by the which just insulting to our intelligence. But yeah i mean. I you know it's very possible. Of course that this is a false flag operation to justify they aggression from biden in particular This insane narratives. That biden knocked out iranian positions. I mean this is exactly the same narrative that we hear. All the time from israel illegally Bombing syria as a literally on sunday night. Just after i'd finished misled neasden. They all done. It was pretty early and because normally In the morning this was around ten o'clock at night biden is using the same narrative. Basically he's saying this is a preemptive self defense strikes to protect our assets which are rapidly becoming vulnerable liabilities in iraq. Concordes am and that justified. He's hitting a buddha point with iraq and syria Bukamal i think i'll massieu made a very good point. He said this is a message from biden. And it's it's attacking the main border crossing between Let's say friendly and syria. It's the border crossing which is defended very much of the peon year which of course biden israel will describe is iranian proxies. They are not in. This is an organization its military organization that was established to to challenge isis and actually defended the country against isis. When america did nothing you know when isis was was on the point of invading back that interest. Pm you that drives the but not delivered knocks lebanese not iraqi army and the americans with this with the agree the obvious influence and and and aid of sony..
The Last American Vagabond
"syria" Discussed on The Last American Vagabond
"But you know dell carla del ponte in from the un from it earlier events where she has stated on record that it was at the rebels. The evidence pointed to or the fact that madison regard to. I believe it was. I mean it's a more than once in fact for mattis where he admitted that the evidence they have for a saw gassing people simply wasn't there and it's just we have all this stuff or the fact that the duma venezuelan completely just dismantled and just they can not only they just get up and continue to state. We have all these times that us odd is used these weapons. And it's just like it's the. Where's the disconnect here. I get that we see this. And i do argue that most people probably recognize it. But how was it the entirety of the un. Why doesn't the un stand up collectively and be like you. We all know that's not true. It's like it perpetuates the system of allowing these criminal governments to just completely stay there lies with no pushback teams. It's interesting i mean the. Un itself is entirely compromised station. I agree and which is basically an outright another outreach agent. So there for the us uk said. I'm sorry there's a little bit of thoughts on somebody like like even rallies let's say obviously he was clearly pushed out of that scenario but he made a big deal about when he stood up and spoke during one of trump's Un leading meetings where he made this huge speech. And i even point that at the time i said the future regime change for belinda. Called it right on right because he stood up and said everything. We're talking about in front of everybody in the un. So i was thinking about that that. Yes i agree. The un as an institution is clearly toothless tiger. It's it's been co-opted but there are still in entities. I would argue. Maybe trying to do what they think is right or at least doing what they think is beneficial to them and in the lions. What's right. sometimes you know slamming. There are countries for example that have and behind the scenes puget syria for example. They may abstain inside votes but effectively. They know what's going on but I mean i remember. I think it was around or two or three years ago. I actually had a meeting at one of the year on offices with. I'm not going to because it was an off off the record meeting but it was. Someone relatively high up in connection with the syria And i had a meeting with them about the white helmets at that time off to the massacre in russia dean and that would have been two thousand and seventeen when it was believed that the white helmets and the armed groups that actually taken children that dying injured children away from the scene of the booming. As far as i know at least fifty of those children that were taking still missing. Suspected used are for organ trafficking. What are you on the possibility that it's also for things such as I i'm blanking on his name all of a sudden it's an odd name you'll remember. I'm sure the the bbc producer that admitted that they had arranged the dead bodies. And so on like that's the thing that pops into my mind. The idea that those are could be used for other. Yes yes the rich potential for that. I did also at the same time interview. parents in particular these children have been abducted and they receiving information from incited that the children would kept together. White helmets were invoked in that the kids being moved around whenever they they might stage another chemical weapon event So yeah you know..
Ron Paul Liberty Report
"syria" Discussed on Ron Paul Liberty Report
"These places and the stuff did in libya and He he His he hasn't for filled the image. That has been put on him and probably still exists. That he's the peace candidate he got. He got the nobel peace prize so he must be a peaceful person but even trump with his shortcomings has to be given a couple of points for not being as bad as as biden and yet trump certainly Even dealing with around. It's it's nothing to brag about from a constitutional libertarian viewpoint. Here that's true in the reason we're bringing it. Up of course is on thursday. One of president obama's first foreign policy actions was again start launching missiles into syria and it did. The administration in in a corner is theory that border with iraq. And what was happening. There is that the syrian military was cooperating with iraqi popular mobilization forces and these are militias that were formed in two thousand fourteen when isis overrunning iraq. And it was extremely dangerous so they form these militias to explicitly for fighting isis in iraq. And they made a lot of headway and getting isis out of iraq. Well this this group was acting with the syrian military on the border to prevent isis from going back and forth and for some reason biden administration decided to throw a few bombs. Their way what they did is they claimed they blame them for some rocket attacks on the us embassy in iraq and in other facilities. They blame this group the groups that we didn't do it. Why would we do that. Too busy. fighting isis You should be too So they they attacked him on thursday. Apparently at least twenty two people were killed. I think seventeen of them were from the members of this Iraqi militia group but it raises some huge questions about the biden foreign policy and we both read scott ritter scrape piece on it. Basically saying it's an incomprehensible foreign policy. Because how is it that you're attacking and fighting the people who are fighting isis at the same time saying that. We're there to fight isis..
Republic Keeper - with Brian O'Kelly
"syria" Discussed on Republic Keeper - with Brian O'Kelly
"S context so Sixty minutes is cbs's newsmagazine program. Right and of course the the job of all the news magazine programs is to Promote whatever the left wants right the especially biden administration and so But that doesn't mean that everything that they report isn't right or everything. The report isn't true right and so sixty minutes is doing a hit piece on assad to prop up what the biden administration wants to do. But that doesn't mean these aren't sure stories. I want you to listen real quick to the regime in syria. What's it about. And why should we care. We've got better evidence against assad and his clique. then we had against milosevic in yugoslavia. We had in any of the war crimes tribunals in which i've involved in some extent even better than we had against the nazis nurenberg because the nazis didn't actually take individual pictures of each of their victims with denting information on. You'd love to go to court with this would be a great trial against the assad himself in trouble is assad has nearly won the war the us and others have imposed sanctions but most criminals will be safe in syria. The un tried to refer syria to the international criminal court. But that was vetoed by russia and china if assad gets away with impunity. What has the world lost. If the word is that you can commit those crimes and the you can get away with it and this is the way. You supress a popular uprising. Then others will do the same thing. The future will be much more dangerous than the than the past and a lot of what we built will be destroyed. And ron in the chat. Make a great point here. You know the the ideas you know. We wanted saddam taken out. Who replaces him. You know you're into the malls and around who replaces him and you know. It's not just a matter of ending the one bad guy. It's sometimes figuring out what would happen in the vacuum. And i again. I don't pretend that. I know whether this is right or wrong. I'm just giving you some context around it and Bosscher assad all of everything else. Set aside bashar. Al assad is a real live bad guy. This is an interview with photographer. They would document what they did. When i would take photographs. I would think how can this government be of doing this to its own people. I would also.
Biz Talk Radio
"syria" Discussed on Biz Talk Radio
"Well preserved for our Children. This is the last best hope of man on earth or will sentence them to take the last step into 1000 years of darkness way will simply apply the government that common sense that we all used in our daily lives. Now, here's your host, Dan Celia. Good morning. Welcome back to financial issues on the in Syria is great to be here on this Wednesday, January 13th And I would suspect that we've got some members of OPEC, particularly Saudi Arabia, dancing in the streets. 11 month high hit yesterday in Brent crude oil. That's gotta feel good to them, and I think they are fueling as though they're finally getting something accomplished in the fact that Fracking companies might be hurting a little bit. But here in the U. S with oil at $53, it is officially over $53 a barrel. It's up about 1.5% here this morning. So we're going to continue to see gasoline prices going up. I don't I don't know about anybody else. I don't like what I'm seeing. I don't like all the things that are already happening. You've got an OPEC plus one The one is Russia, so OPEC plus Russia So I don't know. Um Well, we'll see what happens. They understand that they have zero concerns anymore. They know that President Trump so they think is not going to be coming down on them. They believe that it is over for President Trump. And won't they be surprised if it isn't As a matter of fact..