Lee Ardis

BRICS will discuss a new currency and possible de-dollarization during the summit: Report

As leaders of the BRICS nations-Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa prepare for the group’s summit from August 22-24 in South Africa, discussions of creating a new BRICS currency to offset the dominance of the US dollar are gaining momentum.

“One of the main topics on the agenda, other than the group’s expansion, is a push to conduct more trade among BRICS nations in local currencies and reduce the reliance on the US dollar,” Alarabia reported.

The bloc has been working to reduce its reliance on the US dollar for more than a decade, but after Russia invaded Ukraine, when the US imposed severe economic sanctions on Moscow, the concept of de-dollarization—or lessening the US dollar’s dominance in international trade and finance—became more popular.

“The BRICS countries are trying to accelerate the process of reducing their reliance on the dollar,” Papa, a Senior Fellow at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, told Al Arabiya English. “While Russia has always been committed to de-dollarization due to sanctions-related risks, now we see other countries, especially Brazil, becoming more vocal about acting on this agenda.”

Although the movement towards de-dollarization is gaining momentum, it is neither simple nor quick, given the numerous economic and political obstacles that still need to be overcome. For instance, the US dollar makes up 58 per cent of the world’s foreign exchange reserves and more than 80 per cent of all international trade.

Despite the dollar’s dominance, some analysts believe it is plausible to envision a new BRICS currency being used for trade.

“It (de-dollarization) might work this time because their (BRICS) ambition for an actual currency seems to have scaled down. It is no more this fanciable notion of a shared currency like the Euro; instead, they seem to be focusing more on the use of the currency in international trade, which is why it is more seriously a viable possibility,” Jo Sullivan, a former White House economist, told Al Arabiya English.

According to Sullivan’s analysis in a Foreign Policy piece, each of the BRICS countries is an “economic heavyweight” in their respective regions and can, therefore, cover all their import costs independently.

Massachusetts Bans Couple From Adopting Foster Kids Because They’re Conservative Christians

A religious couple in Massachusetts took the Commonwealth to court today for banning them from welcoming vulnerable children into their home through the Commonwealth’s foster care program. In Burke v. Walsh, Mike and Kitty Burke wanted to foster and someday adopt children in need of a family. Even though Massachusetts has a foster care crisis, state officials refused to let the Burkes foster any children in the state.

The reason was their religious beliefs about marriage, sexuality, and gender. With the help of Becket, the Burkes are asking the court to ensure that qualified families no longer suffer for their religious beliefs and that vulnerable children are given a loving home.

Mike and Kitty Burke are a Catholic couple from Massachusetts who have long wanted to become parents. Mike is an Iraq war veteran, Kitty is a former paraprofessional for special needs kids, and together they run a business and perform music for Mass. Mike and Kitty began exploring becoming foster parents through the state’s foster care program, hoping to care for and eventually adopt children in need of a stable, loving home like theirs.

“After months of interviews and training, and after years of heartbreak, we were on the verge of finally becoming parents,” said Mike and Kitty Burke. “We were absolutely devastated to learn that Massachusetts would rather children sleep in the hallways of hospitals than let us welcome children in need into our home.”

Children in foster care throughout Massachusetts are waiting for families like the Burkes. The Department of Children and Families (DCF) currently does not have enough foster homes or facilities to meet the needs of the children in its care, leaving over 1,500 children without a family. The crisis has become so extreme that the state has resorted to housing children in hospitals for weeks on end. Now more than ever, Massachusetts needs the help of parents like Mike and Kitty to foster children in need.

During their application process, the Burkes underwent hours of training, extensive interviews, and an examination of their home. Mike and Kitty completed the training successfully and received high marks from the instructors. However, during their home interviews, the Burkes were troubled that many questions centered on their Catholic views about sexual orientation and gender dysphoria. In response, the Burkes emphasized that they would love and accept any child, no matter the child’s future sexual orientation or struggles with gender identity.

As Israeli Airstrikes Target Damascus, Is Isaiah’s Prophecy Regarding Syria On The Horizon?

Overnight on Sunday, Israel reportedly carried out airstrikes in Syria, specifically targeting the capital of Damascus.

In recent months, Israel has carried out many strikes in Damascus for two reasons. Number one, Damascus International Airport is a transit point for Iranian weapons shipments heading through Syria to southern Lebanon and into the hands of Iran’s most lethal proxy, Hezbollah. Number two, a good deal of Iranian backed militias are based in and around Damascus, the home to weapons factories, which presumably produce advanced weapons that could and would be used against Israel.

So, what went down Sunday night in the Syrian capital? According to media sources in the region, Israel carried out strikes in Damascus, killing four soldiers of the Syrian army of Bashar Al Assad and also wounding several others. The Syrian regime works in tandem with Iran and Hezbollah throughout the country at these weapons factories, which were reportedly targeted last night.

Last year Israel shut down Damascus International Airport for the better part of a week because of weapons shipments coming in, many times, disguised as civilian flights.

Iran hasn’t quite gotten the memo. The more Israel has struck the Iranian regime and its assets in and around Damascus, the more it seems they continue to push. What we have here is essentially a collision course where Iran and Hezbollah say, “We are in Syria to stay,” and Israel says, “Oh, no, you don’t. This is a non-starter for us and an absolute red line,” for obvious reasons.

Iran wants to use Syria as a launching pad for attacks against Israel. They want to duplicate in Syria what they have very successfully accomplished next door in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles pointed at every inch of Israel.

Iran is working to transport precision-guided missiles (PGMs) through Syria. Those precision-guided missiles do exactly what their name says; they’re designed to hit targets with greater accuracy and greater precision. Iran is hell bent on accomplishing this and Israel is determined to stop them.

Israel, as is its MO, did not comment on the strikes. I’m sure Iran and the Assad regime are fuming, but the answer is simple: Stop building weapons to attack Israel inside of Syria, and get Iran and Hezbollah out of the country. That’s the ultimate solution, but we know that’s not going to happen without force.

There’s clearly a showdown coming in Syria. It would encompass Syria, Lebanon, and Israel going toe to toe with Iran and their various jihadist allies in those two countries. Of course, the entire ring of fire that surrounds Israel would ignite in that event, getting Gaza, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad involved, even perhaps the Houthis in Yemen further to the south. That day is coming and may be rapidly approaching as we see hostilities ramp up along the Israel-Lebanon border, and of course, in Syria.

Reas more at: harbingersdaily.com

AI-supercharged Neurotech Threatens Mental Privacy: UNESCO

The combination of “warp speed” advances in neurotechnology, such as brain implants or scans that can increasingly peek inside minds, and artificial intelligence poses a threat to mental privacy, UNESCO warned on Thursday.

The UN’s agency for science and culture has started developing a global “ethical framework” to address human rights concerns posed by neurotechnology, it said at a conference in Paris.

Neurotechnology is a growing field seeking to connect electronic devices to the nervous system, mostly so far to treat neurological disorders and restore movement, communication, vision or hearing.

Recently neurotechnology has been supercharged by artificial intelligence algorithms which can process and learn from data in ways never before possible, said Mariagrazia Squicciarini, a UNESCO economist specialising in AI.

“It’s like putting neurotech on steroids,” she told AFP.

Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences, said that this convergence of neurotechnology and AI was “far-reaching and potentially harmful”.

“We are on a path to a world in which algorithms will enable us to decode people’s mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions and decisions,” she told the conference.

In May, scientists in the United States revealed they had used brain scans and AI to turn “the gist” of what people were thinking into written words — as long as they had spent long hours inside a large fMRI machine.

Later that month, billionaire Elon Musk’s firm Neuralink received approval to test its coin-sized brain implants on humans in the United States.

BEST BUY: Workers Can Display Gay Pride Flags, But Not Crosses

Investigative journalist James O’Keefe has obtained audio recordings of a Best Buy manager in Jacksonville saying that LGBT flags are permissible in the Geek Squad office, but Christian crosses would not be allowed. The manager explained that people can choose their religion, but they can’t choose their gender. The worker said he was also not allowed to have a Bible in the office area — because it was not work appropriate. Perhaps it’s time that Best Buy gets the Bud Light treatment?

Watch at: www.toddstarnes.com

California Child Marriage Ban Faces Opposition From Planned Parenthood

With child marriage still legal in California, advocates are mounting a campaign to push the state to enact a ban, but their effort is facing surprising opposition from progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.

Dozens of survivors of forced or child marriages traveled to California’s state Capitol in Sacramento last month to protest the state’s existing laws. Dressed in wedding dresses with their wrists tied and mouths taped shut, they called on state lawmakers to finally outlaw the practice.

California, a solidly Democratic state, was on track to be the first to pass an absolute ban on marriages for children under 18. But the legislative proposal was met with opposition from liberal organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Children’s Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The pushback comes out of concerns that imposing an age requirement could set the stage for a slippery slope when it comes to constitutional rights or reproductive choices, specifically that an age requirement could impede a minor’s ability to seek an abortion.

California and Mississippi are the only two states where there is no minimum age requirement to get married. Most states have a minimum marriage age of 16 with parental consent, although it can range from as low as 14 to as high as 18, according to voting rights organization Wisevoter.

Newsweek reached out to Planned Parenthood via email for comment.

Minors seeking to wed in California need approval from a guardian and a court order. But those calling for a ban on child marriages point out that when it comes to issues like statutory rape, California’s definition of unlawful sexual activity between a child and an adult does not apply if the two parties are married.

Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California spokesperson Jennifer Wonnacott told the Los Angeles Times that it “strongly supports protecting youth from abuse of all kinds” but said those protections should “not impede on the reproductive rights of minors and their ability to decide what is best for them, their health and their lives.”

An analysis from Unchained At Last, a nonprofit dedicated to ending forced and child marriages in the U.S., found that between 2000 and 2018, 23,588 minors were married in California, making it the state with the second-highest number of child marriages behind Texas.

Meet The Company Trying To Control Your Mind

By Ben Shapiro

There’s a group of people who control what you are allowed to see — the news you read, the videos you watch, the posts you engage with.

You haven’t heard of them. You don’t know their names, but they determine, through methods both direct and indirect, whether you are allowed to be exposed to particular messages. Their decisions can bankrupt companies, silence voices and fundamentally shift cultural norms. Who are these people and how do they do this?

Well, at the top level you have a network of global elites who have created a universal framework full of guidelines and ratings designed to enforce “approved” narratives and punish disapproved ones. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it isn’t a secret and we’re not guessing.

First, you have the World Economic Forum, the WEF, and their platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. Second, you have the World Federation of Advertisers, the WFA, who represent mega-corporations that control 90% of global advertising dollars. WFA members are a who’s who of global business and include some of our recent wokeified favorites like Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, Hershey, Procter & Gamble, Lego and Disney.

There is barely a billionaire Fortune 500 CEO, heavyweight philanthropist, government or woke nonprofit that isn’t associated with the WEF or the WFA.

In 2019, the WFA established the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. Within months, the WEF adopted GARM as part of its platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. GARM is a cross-industry alliance that brings these mega-corporations — the advertisers — together with Big Tech companies like Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram; Google-owned YouTube; the CCP’s TikTok; and even Snapchat and Pinterest.

This unholy alliance created something they call the Brand Safety Floor & Suitability Framework. Think of Brand Safety as a dog whistle for censorship. They say it themselves: The Brand Safety Floor means, “Content not appropriate for any advertising support.” In other words, if you publish content that violates these guidelines, you will be blacklisted from 90% of the advertising revenue in the marketplace.

So, what have these global elites decided to put in their censorship framework? They started with things we can all universally agree on, like preventing the distribution of child pornography or the advocacy of graphic terrorist activity. But they don’t draw the line at what is objectively criminal, abusive or dangerous. They continue expanding the guidelines to include far more subjective parameters.

For example, the framework lists subjective terms like “hate speech” as a problem. It says that anything surrounding transgenderism that they decide is dehumanizing or discussing what they deem to be a debated social issue in an insensitive way is off limits.

The framework is deliberately vague, allowing those in control to pick and choose how they enforce it and against whom.

So, how exactly do the approved narratives set by these global entities get enforced all the way down to the daily content you consume?

Well, here’s how. We’ll start with NewsGuard. NewsGuard is an organization that formulates ratings for American media. They rank news sites on a 0-to-100 scale based on nine supposedly apolitical criteria. These criteria are anything but apolitical. They often align with left-wing positions.

During the height of COVID-19, NewsGuard falsely labeled and downgraded 21 news sites, only well after the fact admitting that they either “mischaracterized the site’s claims” about the lab leak theory — referring to the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theory” — or “wrongly grouped together unproven claims” about the lab leak with the “separate, false claim” that the “COVID-19 virus was man-made” without explaining that one claim was unsubstantiated and the other was false.

“NewsGuard apologizes for these errors,” they said. “We have made the appropriate correction on each of the 21 labels.”

And when you compare their ratings of Left-leaning news organizations to Right-leaning news organizations, you see the same bias appear.

The Media Research Center, a free-speech nonprofit, studied NewsGuards’ ratings. The study found glaring examples of bias by NewsGuard.

The Left’s BuzzFeed managed a 100 out of 100 perfect score, despite its reporting on the Steele dossier and alleging collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia.

The study found that The Global Times, a Chinese propaganda government outlet, scored a 39.5 — that is 27 points higher than the U.S.-based conservative outlet The Federalist. Despite a scandal at USA Today revealing the publication of multiple fabricated sources in their stories and their own fact-checking operation misleading readers on the history of the Democratic Party and the KKK, USA Today maintained the 100 out of 100 rating by NewsGuard.

NewsGuard is also working with others to use AI technology to enforce Brand Safety standards at scale, by identifying scalable hoaxes and misinformation in order to streamline blanket removal. This means that the news that you read, news that is supposed to be fair and objective or at least diverse, must adhere to GARM, the WEF, the WFA and their subjective and biased standards in order to be deemed monetizable.

25 major rabbis rule it’s forbidden to use AI

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. PSALMS 115:4 (THE ISRAEL BIBLE)

A group of 25 rabbis including prominent heads of yeshivas called to ban the use of artificial intelligence chatbots such as chat GPT. The ruling reported in The Yeshiva World News, said the following:

“We were horrified to hear how Satan is spreading out its hooves to stomp on the vineyard of God to infiltrate into our souls and to destroy our future by confusing our brains and the hearts of all of Israel,” the ruling stated. “[AI] has the ability to introduce all of the abominable views of the world including heresy and abomination. In addition to this, it pulls the men out of humanity entirely. And whoever begins to use this is enticed and pulled from smaller sins to greater sins and he will fall into a minefield of sin. Even though right now the greatness of the danger is not recognizable it will become clear to us. So great is the danger that we have come to warn people to be smart and to see what the outcome will be on our souls.”

“To prevent this danger from manifesting, it is forbidden to connect with or to use chat that uses artificial intelligence whether it is by telephone or text or by computer. “It is forbidden to use it in any way, even if it is necessary for business, and even more so when it comes to issues of Torah. This is for men and for women, great are small, young men, young women and children. And it is upon the parents and the educators to take care that their children and their students are careful and cautious in this great prohibition.”

“And there is no way of making this permissible.”

This ruling comes one month after more than a dozen rabbis of the ultra-Orthodox Skver Hasidic sect released a letter banning the use of Open Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools including ChatGPT and other similar AI apps.

“We are declaring that this is like internet without a filter, and is open to all abominations, heresy, and heathenry without limits, and brings to all the prohibitions which are considered, ‘You shall not stray after your heart and after your eyes,’ (Numbers 15:39) and it is obvious that it is considered a severe offense,” the rabbis wrote.

Israel365 News posed the question to Rebbe IO, a chatbot that has Biblical and rabbinic literature as part of its database. The question was posed: “Is artificial intelligence halachically permitted?”

Halacha is the collective body of Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Written and Oral Torah.

“The question of whether artificial intelligence is halachically permitted is a complex one that requires careful consideration,” the AI responded. “While the Torah does not explicitly address artificial intelligence, we can draw upon its principles to guide our understanding.”

Disney Uses Occult Rituals For New Movie

When most people hear the words “Disney magic,” they think of the cruise ship or the decades of charming and delightful adventures that inspired generations of childhood wonder for millions of viewers, not cloaks, daggers, and dark rituals done in the dead of night. Recent promos for Haunted Mansion rely on precisely that.

Disney and horror rarely dwell in the same house, but the studio can have some truly unsettling and eerie creations when they do. As the studio prepares to welcome all foolish mortals to the Haunted Mansion with the upcoming film adaptation, they might be working some black magic in the process.

Occult Rituals of the Haunted Mansion

Fans of the prolific Disney Parks attraction know the sordid history of the Gracey Manor’s lore. From ghostly butlers to murderous pirates with a collection of dead brides, the original Disneyland attraction was one of the earliest examples of Disney’s darker side. The studio embraces that original flavor with some of Haunted Mansion’s latest marketing.

Hitting theaters July 28, 2023, the newest posters for Haunted Mansion depict its lead characters framed on the faces of tarot cards. Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, and all the rest are depicted as representing select cards in the deck, clearly a nod to the ones seen on Madam Leota’s table in the seance room. While this is creative marketing on Disney’s part, it might have a deeper meaning.

Tax-Funded Ohio Group Sponsors Program to Teach Children How to Be Drag Queens

An organization funded by Ohio taxpayers is sponsoring a tutorial program to teach children how to become drag queens.

The Fairview, Ohio, Colors+ Youth Center is offering monthly programs to teach children how to become drag queens, according to the group’s website.

The youth center is working in collaboration with Drag Queen Story Hour Cleveland to offer a Saturday event featuring a “drag performer reading an age-appropriate book with positive themes for LGBTQ+ youth highlighting inclusivity, creativity, and love.”

The center employs drag performers including Sassy Sascha, Rhett Corvette, Veranda L’Ni, and Zoey Zegai to read to children, the site adds.

Along with the story hour, the center also hosts “monthly drag tutorials by a local drag performer who teaches the fundamentals of drag (makeup, costume design, and performance).”

The center also notes that the drag operation is funded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Cuyahoga Arts and Culture is a taxpayer-funded organization that, according to its webpage, “is one of the largest local public funders for arts and culture in the nation, helping hundreds of organizations in Cuyahoga County connect millions of people to cultural experiences each year.”