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Buddhist Monks are just happy all the time, right?

I thought they were super-humans who never got annoyed, never had a negative thought and were non-materialistic.

While filming the new LIFE: Done Differently series, I spent time at the Nan Tien Temple in Wollongong with the Buddhist Monks.

The Nan Tien Temple was founded in 1965 by Venerable Master Hsing Yun.

It is the biggest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere.

And the name is fitting. Nan Tien in Chinese, means Paradise of the South.

The Temple: At First Glance

Id never been to a Buddhist temple before, so I was really excited to immerse myself in the experience.

When I arrived at the temple, I was eagerly waiting outside the gated community, until security buzzed me in.

The first thing I noticed when I got inside, was how beautiful the gardens were. Id never seen trees so perfectly trimmed before!

The temple grounds were very quiet. Walking around was so calm and relaxing. Very different to the city lifestyle Ive become accustomed too.

Seeing all the monks walking around, I was starting to get really excited to learn all about their lifestyle.

Shortly after exploring the grounds, I met Venerable Dr Juewei, who was going to be guiding me through my temple experience.

Venerable Dr Juewei is a very impressive woman. She has several degrees under her belt and is the head of the Nan Tien Institute, where they teach Buddhism., and numerous other courses.

She lives by the strict routine of a Buddhist Monk lifestyle, as well as running an entire university, so its fair to say, I was lucky she could fit me into her schedule.

Buddhist Monk Lifestyle

I got to sit down and have a long chat with Venerable Dr Jeuwei.

She was so friendly, calm and everything you thought a monk would be.

I also learnt a lot from her. Mainly, that my initial beliefs about monks were wrong.

Monks arent happy all the time.

Monks do have negative thoughts.

Monks do get annoyed.

Interestingly enough, I even saw some of the Monks using their own iPhones.

They are human just like the rest of us. Its how they approach life and deal with negativity, that makes them unique.

They cant hide from conflict between other monks. They all live together in the temple and have very strict daily routines that make it hard to avoid each other.

When someone does wrong by them, they dont look at the other person, they look inwards within themselves, how they can react in the best way they can.

How they handle lifes obstacles isnt rocket science either.

Its simply just practising mindfulness.

Focusing on their breathing.

They practise mindfulness in their day-to-day life, and whenever faced with a difficult situation, they just take it back to the breath.

It was interesting learning from Venerable Dr Juewei about their goal of striving to nirvana.

Buddhists strive for the journey to perfection.

No one is perfect, but its striving towards perfection that attracts Buddhists focus.

Day in the life of a monk

Its a busy life being a monk. They have a strict structure to their day from the moment they wake-up, right up until bedtime.

Thanks to the team at Nan Tien Temple, I got to live a day in the life of a Buddhist Monk.

I stayed overnight at the temple, and hit the pillow early, as I had my alarm set for 4.50am the next morning, to be up in time for the morning ritual.

I woke up, had a quick shower and then struggled, but eventually got into my robe.

I was wearing a grey robe, all the other monks were wearing fancy orange and black robes, so I really stood out as the newbie.

I then made my way down to the temple for the morning ritual.

At 5.20am, a Monk started to bang the big drum. This is to wake up all the other Monks in the temple. The drum is like a communal alarm clock.

One by one, the monks all walked into the temple (myself included, in my grey robe).

The ritual was an incredible experience, so much was going on.

Singing. Bells ringing. Everyone dropping to the floor and back up again.

I was clearly out of my depth and couldnt keep up with the pace of the ritual.

It was really therapeutic listening to all the monks chanting around me.

They conclude the ritual with a meditation session. I was hopeless at meditation.

I couldnt keep my eyes closed. I couldnt cross my legs. I couldnt hold in my giggles. It was a terrible attempt. Im getting better at it though, slowly, day by day.

We then went for breakfast. The monks eat all their meals in silence, or as they call it, mindful eating. They think about all the hard work that went into getting the food on the table and appreciating the taste.

It was definitely a new experience for me, as Im used to being on my phone or watching television over breakfast, not giving food a second thought.

I then joined the monks in their daily mindful walking exercise. This is where they do laps of the courtyard just focusing on their steps. It really cleared my head.

Tai Chi was next. I did Kung Fu when I was younger, so I felt like this should be easy for me to pick up. I gave myself a 4/10 for effort. The Monks made it look so easy, I was struggling to keep up with their effortless flow of movement.

Life Lessons

I feel like we can all take parts of the Buddhist Monk lifestyle and apply it to our own lives.

How often do we see somebody over-react or do something they later regret, because they acted on their emotions without thinking?

Making a conscious effort to focus on your breathing can help prevent that.

It does take practise and must be a priority in your life for it to be effective.

Ill be honest, I really struggled with practising mindfulness in all the tasks. Its easier said than done. Im working on it.

Also recognising that no one is perfect, but we can all aim to strive towards perfection. Similar to the saying, aim for the stars, land on the moon. We can always aim higher and set higher goals in life if we want more success.

Although living in a temple is definitely not appealing to me, I think I can definitely take away some of the Buddhist ways of doing life and apply them to my own.

Things Ill be taking away from the Buddhist lifestyle and focusing on this year -

1) Meditate regularly to allow a healthy mind, which leads to a healthy life.

2) Always strive for perfection in everything I do.

Read more:

A Monks life: what living behind temple walls is really like - 7NEWS.com.au

Mushim Ikeda is a Buddhist teacher and writer who leads community engagement at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California. Ikeda teaches meditation retreats for people of color, women, and social justice activists nationally.

She recently worked with Center for Healthy Minds collaborator Helen Weng and Center faculty member Larissa Duncan on a project to expand diversity throughout a neuroscience study on meditation. In this Q&A, Ikeda shares how mindfulness meditation can be both inclusive and exclusive, both healing and traumatizingall depending on peoples lived experiences and how theyre met with care during meditation practice or in their community.

Marianne Spoon: How might peoples identities and life experiences affect their meditation practice and their well-being?

Meet the Greater Good Toolkit

From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.

Mushim Ikeda: Its important to note that there are hundreds of kinds of meditations, which are techniques and activities we are doing with bodies and minds. Here Ill talk about mindfulness meditation, which is the same as insight meditation and vipassana meditation in the Buddhist tradition. The specific technique of mindfulness meditation is a thoroughly embodied practice. And by that, I mean that we understand that mind and body are not a binary. Often, this practice is learned by the directed activity of another human being (a teacher), and therefore in terms of diversity, the instructional language that is used is very important if someone is starting out.

As we know, because we live in society where there are structural and institutionalized forms of prejudice, some peoples access to education and access to medical care can be limited. Then there is more structural inequity that is also structural violence. This is especially true for people who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) or identify as LGBTQIA, or people with disabilities and illness, or people who are neurodivergent. Huge portions of our society fall into groups who are targeted in structural discrimination, where their basic human rights and basic needs as human beings are not met equally.

For meditation instructors to not understand that many people are likely experiencing repeated and complex trauma, their ways of leading meditation can be insensitive at best to deeply damaging at the worst. They might re-traumatize the very people they are trying to help.

MS: What does taking trauma into account look like when youre leading a meditation?

MI: At the East Bay Meditation Center where I am, all of the teachers are moving into or are using and continuing to learn trauma-informed and disability-justice informed instructional language. They are based on the idea that the very words we use and the way the teacher delivers actual wordstone of voice, spacing, special attention to actual wordsmatter. The most simple way to get at this is to note the research we receive about trauma. People with trauma find it difficult or impossible to learn if they feel they are commanded with no choice or agency. That is why the instructions and variations of what is being told to them are important. If a meditation teacher says, Now do this. Now do that, this may not be suitable for all people.

The same is true for focusing on the breath, which is common in some widely practiced meditations. Some people have suffered traumas in which theyve been threatened with violence by having air supply cut off (being choked), and, therefore, their awareness of breath is highly activating their trauma reaction.

A teacher needs to be aware of this possibility and probability because we live in a highly traumatized society. Instead of using a language of command, we use invitational language. We give people a lot of choices within the parameters of meditation techniques. We use invitations such as If this is accessible to you, If this is available to you, If you like, You might try both and see what makes you feel safer.

It is really recognizing that not all bodies are the same and that people are not the same psychologically, either. I want to especially acknowledge that this approach comes from groundbreaking work coming to us from the Niroga Institute, Access-Centered Movement, Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, and Dr. Helen Wengs intersectional neuroscience research method.

MS: How has this awareness evolved for you as a teacher?

MI: When I originally trained in Zen Buddhism in the United States and Canada, it was standard to talk about spiritual surrender, so it has been a part of my vocabulary. However, at least 20 years ago, I was giving a talk to a People of Color meditation group at San Francisco Zen Center, and there was an immediate and very clear response from several Black-identified participants who experienced racism in daily life and whose ancestors were violently oppressed for generations. They said: Surrender? Hell no!

Thats when I realized the impact of my words was different than my intention. The responsibility was on me as a teacher to change and to use more skillful speech. I realized the importance of taking into account the trust and relationships between people of different statuses within the hierarchy of power and authority. An embodied meditation practice includes teachers being ethical and transparent, and students being empowered to understand that teachers serve community and that community does not serve or submit to the teacher.

When it comes to trauma-informed teaching, I dont want to be uniqueI want to be part of a larger movement, one where diversity is present in every group, including disability. There can be ways to be more resilient to trauma and build up resilience in communities targeted for oppression, and its a primary part of what were doing at the East Bay Meditation Center.

MS: What has been your experience working with scientists to broaden the benefits of meditation to more people?

MI: To be frank, being truly inclusive in research is good science. If there is a research study that does not have awareness of people who represent what we call the many dimensions of diversity, how can we claim that it helps most people?

Society tends to fracture across lines of difference, which can have profound implications for ethical, legal, and social institutional policies and structures that deeply, deeply affect human be-ing and human beings. In intersectional and inclusive neuroscience, there is no average brain or body. There is no such thing. These dimensions of diversity need to be included rather than excluded in order to get more accurate research findings that will be of help in understanding neuroscience itself.

For those interested in learning more, Ikeda recommends this podcast from Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness author and therapist David Treleaven, on mindfulness and social justice.

This article was originally published on the Center for Healthy Minds. Read the original article.

Excerpt from:

How Meditation Can Be More Sensitive to Trauma - Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley

November 10, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) The COVID-19 pandemic was manufactured by the worlds elites as part of a plan to globally advance transhumanism literally, the fusion of human beings with technology in an attempt to alter human nature itself and create a superhuman being and an earthly paradise, according to a Peruvian academic and expert in technology.

This dystopian nightmare scenario is no longer the stuff of science fiction, but an integral part of the proposed post-pandemic Great Reset, Dr. Miklos Lukacs de Pereny said at a recent summit on COVID-19.

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Indeed, to the extent that implementing the transhumanist agenda is possible, it requires the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a global elite and the dependence of people on the state, said Lukacs.

Thats precisely the aim of the Great Reset, promoted by German economist Klaus Schwab, CEO and founder of World Economic Forum, along with billionaire philanthropists George Soros and Bill Gates and other owners, managers, and shareholders of Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Finance who meet at the WEF retreats at Davos, Switzerland, contended Lukacs.

Transhumanism is far from a benign doctrine. Rather, it is at complete enmity with Christianity, Lukacs pointed out during the virtual in Truth Over Fear Summit organized by California-based Catholic writer and broadcaster Patrick Coffin.

Transhumanists take science as their religion and believe in a philosophy of absolute relativism that claims that individuals can change reality at will, and they seek to relativize the human being and turn it into a putty that can be modified or molded to our taste and our desire and by rejecting those limits nature or God have placed on us.

Transhumanism therefore requires the destruction of the Judeo-Christian morality, which is based on absolute principles and values.

Those raising alarm about the Great Reset often overlook the crucial role of technology in the plans of the meta-capitalists, contended Lukacs, who has Ph.D. in management from the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR) from the University of Manchester.

The COVID-19 pandemic was just another social engineering project deliberately planned and implemented by predatory meta capitalism to achieve the ultimate end: redefining and reconfiguring the human nature and condition, he argued in a presentation in Spanish.

I have the firm conviction that this pandemic has been manufactured and its purpose is none other than to initiate, as they say, or implement the Great Reset, which will open the door to the advancement of the transhumanist agenda, he said.

Indeed, WEFs Schwab has been promoting the Great Reset as a way to harness the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a term he coined, which, he declared in January 2016, will affect the very essence of our human experience.

Schwab described the Fourth Industrial Revolution then as a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines among the physical, digital and biological spheres, Lukacs said.

Those technologies include genetic engineering such as CRISPR genetic editing, artificial intelligence (A.I.), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, and quantum computing.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is nothing other than the implementation of transhumanism on a global level, emphasized Lukacs.

Transhumanism as a political ideology and cultural movement was defined in 1998 by Swedish economist Nick Bostrom, then a professor at Oxford, and David Pearce, a British philosopher, who that year founded the World Transhumanist Association.

More recently, Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and author of Homo Deus, who is regarded as a great visionary, has been promoting transhumanism.

Transhumanists propose to use technology to alter human nature to produce human beings with super longevity, super intelligence, super well-being, Lukacs said.

They reject the Christian belief in absolute truth, and that God created human person in His image and likeness, and see absolute values as a brake for their pretensions of transhumanist and globalist progressivism.

Thats why the approval of abortion is key to understanding why we are entering fully into this transhumanist agenda of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Lukacs said.

When abortion was approved, the political, economic order and moral values on which Western civilization is based collapsed.

Abortion means nothing other than the transition of the human being from a subject of rights to an object of commercialization, to an object of experimentation, he said.

Life ceases to have an inherent value, an inherent dignity. It becomes an object of consumption, an object of production, and this aligns perfectly with the goal of transhumanists to experiment with the human being.

Transhumanism is a struggle against those propositions of absolute values, said Lukacs, and what it embodies in progressivism is absolute relativism.

Evidence that absolute relativism has caught hold in the Western world is the rapid and widespread rise in trangenderism.

Lukacs also noted cases of transspecisim, transageism, transableism, and transracism.

Examples of these attempts to reshape ones reality at will include the American known as Lizard Man, the Canadian man living as a six-year-old, the British woman who blinded herself because she wanted to be disabled, and the German woman who injected herself with melatonin to darken her skin to identify as black.

These are previous states of transhumanism, a kind of accustoming, especially of the new generations, to accept this diversity, Lukacs said.

While many transhumanist proposals are rooted in science fiction, Lukacs pointed out they now have the technology to attempt to realize their mad aspirations.

Transhumanists propose to increase longevity by using CRISPR genetic editing, which has been used to triple the lifespan of mice. Thus, using this technique on human beings, it is conceivable that people could live to the age of 200 or 300 years old, he said.

They propose to increase human intelligence by planting chips in people that have greater processing capacity than the human brain.

An example is Elon Musks NeuraLink, which is an interface that is applied to the cerebral cortex and which Musk says will help people with Alzheimers or epilepsy, but which Lukacs speculates could open the door to neuro-hackers.

There is also the post-humanist school of transhumanism, of which economist Bostrom is a proponent.

Bostrom proposes that at some point it will not even be necessary to have a physical body, but we will be a set of information, that we will be able to upload our thoughts to the Cloud, that we will be able to form a great collective intelligence with other human beings, Lukac said.

As for the promise of super wellbeing, philosopher Pearce said it was the hedonist imperative to genetically modify us to aspire to super well-being.

What Pearce is saying is that through genetic modification, were going to be virtuous human beings, and that we have to forget about pain and suffering, we have to get rid of those genes that make us aggressive, violent, jealous, that force us to fight and kill each other, said Lukacs.

When you put all these things into the balance, what you are realizing is what you are looking at is literally the destruction of human beings, of Homo sapiens, and their conversion to Homo deus.

But as with the Great Reset, the elites twist the language and disguise their transhumanist agenda behind vaguely benign phrases, so Schwabs Fourth Industrial Revolution is sold to us as an idea thats not necessarily going to affect us, or that it is progress that will benefit humanity, he said.

However, just as ordinary people will suffer in the Great Reset under the architecture of oppression, as Edward Snowden phrased it, so they will bear the brunt of the experimentation by transhumanists.

Its very worrying because for achieving that kind of dream, many, many mistakes will happen for sure. ... The burden will be carried by the people that get affected by this in their health, in their lives, in their economic situation and in their psychological or mental state, said Lukacs.

Its a very, very costly experiment. And [the elites] are not going to bear any responsibility for this. Trust me, he told Coffin.

For them, its wonderful. For the rest, this is just dystopian.

Lukacs also contended that the global elites encountered an unexpected roadblock to their plans in U.S. president Donald Trump.

Actually, the structure of power is not that complicated, he told Coffin in an online Q&A session.

At the top are the meta-capitalists or capitalists that have so much financial muscle that they can play beyond the rules of capitalism; actually, they make the rules of capitalism or remake them, he said.

And you have those guys on Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Finance, Big Construction, everything big, the big corporate transnational world. Those are the billionaires who through their philanthropies, their billion-dollar pledges and all this kind of stuff, they ... funnel money downwards to all the politicians, who are basically rented politicians, they rent them, they run the world for them, he said.

Its really the privatization of power through philanthropy, added Lukacs.

And then, of course, you will have a layer of middle ground or middle level institutions, NGOs, universities, foundations, and then youll go down to grassroots local government. Its a ... pyramidal structure.

But Trump is one key public figure who could evidently not be rented.

It is so obvious that in the States right now for the past, what, four, five months, a state coup has been in the making. As simple as that. I have no problem in saying it openly, Lukacs told Coffin.

Thats the situation. They have tried to oust a president that was democratically elected because they are desperate. China is still progressing. And ... their partners in the West, theyre just not catching up. So, they are a little bit desperate. China is not going to wait.

For more information on Truth Over Fear Summit, go here. Premium passes are still available.

Related:

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Meet the liberal billionaires trying to become cyborgs

See the original post here:
Transhumanism: Expert exposes liberal billionaire elitists ...

Companies today are strategizing about future investments and technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, or growth around new business models. While many of these trends will make for solid investments for the next 5-10 years, fewer companies are considering the revolutionary convergence of disparate trends pulled from technology, behavioral and societal changes, and medical advances to understand how they will converge to transform society. This transformation will be messy, complex, and sometimes scary, but signals already point to a future of humanity that will blur our identities into transhumanism.

Transhumanism and the Future of Humanity

To understand this topic, our Visionary Innovation Group looked at three fundamental pillars of humanity and how they will evolve over the coming 10-15 years: our bodies, our thought, and our behavior. After identifying the driving forces that will transform these fundamental pillars, we extracted key themes emerging from their convergence. Ultimately our goal was to determine the ways in which the changing nature of humanity and transhumanism would affect individuals, society, businesses, and government.

A few of the trends that emerged from this study include the following seven trends. We hope they will spark discussion and innovation at your organizations.

The coming years will usher in a number of body augmentation capabilities that will enable humans to be smarter, stronger, and more capable than we are today. Wearables will be one form of body augmentation, but they will far surpass the fitness trackers of today. In the future, we can expect the arrival of contact lenses that can take pictures or video, universal language translator earbuds that allow us to communicate anywhere in the world, and exosuits that increase physical strength. We will also see increased use of implants ranging from brain microchips and neural lace to mind-controlled prosthesis and subdermal RFID chips that allow users to unlock doors or computer passwords with the wave of a hand. However, the most powerful body augmentation will come from biological augmentation as a result of increased insight into our genomes, advances in IVF technology that may allow us to select the most intelligent embryos, and powerful CRISPR gene-editing technology which may one day give us the ability to eliminate all heritable diseases. [i]

These body augmentation capabilities will give rise to humans that are more resilient, optimized and continually monitored. They will also lead to implications around which job opportunities are available to those with and without augmented abilities, as well as impacting sports competition with hierarchies based on body augmentation. We already see the early days of this with questions around leg prosthesis and whether they provide runners with increased speed compared to that of an average human. At the same time, augmented bodies will usher in risks such as espionage potential via contact lens camera hacks, or even more worryingly, risk of a stratified human race based on those who can afford augmentations and those who cannot.

Both wearable and implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are in development from organizations that include Elon Musks Neuralink, Facebook, and DARPA. These devices will dramatically alter the ways in which we communicate with each other, as well as digital devices. Today, when I speak with others, I am limited by the speed with which I can speak and the words on the tip of my tongue. When I interface with a computer, I am limited by the speed that I can type. BMIs will change all of this to enabling communication at the speed of thought in its full, unfiltered state. Mark Zuckerberg has described the following scenario: Today, when we share our vacation experiences, we upload photos and videos. With BMIs, I can share my full sensory and emotional vacation experience with my friends and family. [ii]

Early innovators such as UBER are already harnessing the incredible combined power of behavioral science, gamification, and AI. Ubers behavioral science techniques include cueing up the next drive as the default option, not revealing the profitability of that ride (which is an uncertainty technique that is most often used in gambling), and giving drivers awards such as Above and Beyond that spur dopamine release. Gamification techniques used by the company include a graphical interface that brings a video-game like quality to the drive, as well as prompting goals that are always just out of reach to encourage continued pursuit.[iii]

Even governments have taken up these tactics with behavioral science units in both the UK and US. While these groups are focused on socially beneficial programs, they must be monitored to ensure they do not drift into more controlling engagements. In addition to applying these techniques to employees and citizens, it is easy to see how they will be increasingly be applied to consumers to drive more frequent and volume-driven purchases. By 2030 we can expect that behavioral scientists will be in demand in corporate HR, strategy, and consulting departments.

The adoption of virtual reality can play an influential role in our ability to understand perspectives other than our own at the current moment. For example, VR could be used to understand the plight of refugees, giving us the opportunity to step into their shoes, which may make us more likely to take action or donate money.[iv] Other examples may include stepping into the shoes of our future selves, and looking at the lives we will live 40-50 years down the road if we save $200 a month vs. $2000. This application can bring home the need to save over the short term desire to spend. BMIs may also advance our ability to empathize if we are able to understand someone elses full perspective straight from their own brain, rather than if they are trying to communicate it and misspeak or their intention is misinterpreted by the listener.

We already see an advanced degree of personalization in marketing practices, but this will be extended in the future to touch virtually all aspects of our lives. For example, in addition to location and past purchase history data, marketers may be able to use emotional filters based on our activity to change the tone of their message on the spot in response to our current mood. Personalization will also extend to our homes, as we are currently seeing with smart home devices that can set moods with lighting and music. Eventually, we may see AI personalization affect our career trajectory, playing a guiding role in the positions we are offered based on our personal strengths. It is inevitable that our diets and medical treatment will be far more personalized based on the information that our genome reveals about us. Personalisation will eventually give way to customisation at mass scale where products and services will be completely configured to personal needs and preferences.

We will see the rise of AI in our career settings as described in much work focused on smart factories, industrial IOT, and related topics. Most employees will have an AI counterpart with which they collaborate or through which their work is amplified. Some futurists predict that by 2026 companies will have an AI machine as a member of their board of directors[v]. Integration of BMI into workplaces will usher in heightened cybersecurity concerns, and we may see eventual scenarios in which companies are sponsoring nootropic supplements and neurostimulation devices to improve employee focus and increase the speed of new skills acquisition.

As these widespread and revolutionary technologies come at us from every angle and affect our bodies, thought processes, and behaviors, society will engage in growing philosophical debate around what our values are as individuals, as a country, and as a species. What do we value most? Is it intelligence, self-fulfillment, success, happiness, quality of life for all, or something else? As we increasingly have the tools to engineer any of these outcomes, some will have to take priority over others. For example, if one country decides that they want to create a nation of super-intelligent and physically augmented citizens, will other countries decide they have no choice but to follow suit? These and related questions that get at the heart of who we are as humans and what we value in our society will have tremendous ramifications.

Are you ready to be augmented into a super human? Frost & Sullivan explores these themes and many others in detail in a recently published study, Transhumanism: How humans will think, behave, experience, and perform in the future, and the implications to businesses. If you would like to explore this topic in more detail, you can access the study here.

This article was written with contributions from Lauren Taylor, Principal Consultant in Frost & Sullivans Visionary Innovation Group.

[i] National Geographic. April 2017. How Humans Are Shaping Our Own Evolution. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/04/evolution-genetics-medicine-brain-technology-cyborg/

[ii] MIT Technology Review. March 2017. The entrepreneur with the $100 million plan to link brains to computers. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603771/the-entrepreneur-with-the-100-million-plan-to-link-brains-to-computers/

[iii]The New York Times. April 2017. How Uber uses psychological tricks to push its drivers buttons. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/uber-drivers-psychological-tricks.html

[iv] City Lab. October 2016. What if virtual reality can make us better citizens? https://www.citylab.com/life/2016/10/virtual-reality-empathy-natural-world/502694/

[v] The World Economic Forum. January 2016. The 10 skills you need to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

Original post:
Transhumanism And The Future Of Humanity: 7 Ways The World ...

Antivaccine conspiracy theorists blame vaccines for many things, such as autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, autoimmune diseases of all kinds including fake ones, childhood obesity, this generation of children supposedly being the sickest generation, infertility due to primary ovarian insufficiency, and even death, as in death by sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Basically, whatever the health issue, to antivaxxers, it is, first and foremost, always about the vaccines. Always. No mater how implausible and lacking in evidence the link between vaccines and a given disease or health condition is, antivaxxers will find a way to blame it on vaccines. Indeed, even now, in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, theyve found ways to blame the influenza vaccine for COVID-19, particularly now that flu season is here. However, one of the wildest claims Ive ever seen about vaccines is that they are transhumanism, a claim being made by ber-quack Dr. Joe Mercola in an article on The Vaccine Reaction, the house blog of Barbara Loe Fishers antivaccine group the Orwellian-named National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), entitled Will New COVID Vaccine Make You Transhuman?, an article based on a video by one Dr. Carrie Madej:

Two years ago, in October 2018, Forbes contributor Neil Sahota, a United Nations artificial intelligence adviser and UC Irvine professor, warned that transhumanism is fast approachinglikely faster than you think.1 In the past few years, there has been considerable discussion around the idea we are slowly merging with our technology, that we are becoming transhuman, with updated abilities, including enhanced intelligence, strength, and awareness, Sahota writes.

The goal of the transhumanist movement, or Human 2.0, is to transcend biology into technology. Or, as Dr. Carrie Madej explains in the video above, to meld human biology with technology and artificial intelligence.

Two visible proponents of transhumanism are Ray Kurzweil (director of engineering at Google since 2012) and Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink).

Well get to the video in a minute, because it is truly beyond the pale. I had never heard of Carrie Madej, DO before (or, if I had, I didnt remember her). The website featuring her video, Stop World Control, describes her thusly:

Dr Carrie Madej directed two large medical clinics in the state of Georgia, USA. Since her twenties she has been fascinated by vaccines and studied them ever since. Her in depth research led her to discover what the proposed technologies are for the new COVID-19 vaccines. What she is revealing is alarming.

This video is an in depth documentary that shows how these new vaccines can alter our DNA, turning us into hybrids. The plans are to connect humans to artificial intelligence and global control networks. This is the start of transhumanism, turning us into HUMANS 2.0.

Study. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Seriously, I bet that Dr. Madej studies vaccines in the same way that Mike Adams does, her being a physician notwithstanding.

In any event, I found out a bit more. Dr. Madej is an internist in McDonough, Georgia. Shes Medical Director of Phoenix Medical Group of Georgia, where she has a full time practice in Internal Medicine. Her Twitter feed is a wretched hive of scum, quackery, and conspiracy theories. Unsurprisingly, she is an antimasker, seems to buy into every major conspiracy theory about COVID-19 out there, and has appeared on The Alex Jones Show, antivaxxer Sherri Tenpennys show, and on Mike Adams show. She also gave a virtual speech to the gathering of antimaskers and COVID-19 lockdown protesters at Trafalgar Square last month. Its odd that I havent heard of her before.

So what is transhumanism? However, I describe it, Im sure someone will object, but here goes anyway. Basically, it is a social, scientific, and philosophical movement devoted to the idea that humans can be enhanced by technology, be it biological, computer-based, or physical. The idea is that such technologies would augment or increase human perception, physical abilities, intelligence, and cognition, and also radically improve human health and extend human life spans. Unsurprisingly, the movements adherents tend to be employed in technology, biotech, and academia, and there is a strong link between libertarianism and transhumanism. The ultimate outcome is thought to be the singularity, a time when computers become so advanced that artificial intelligence transcends human intelligence, potentially erasing the boundary between humanity and computers, even leading to the merging of humans and computers. Personally, Ive always looked a bit askance at transhumanism, because there is certainly a lot of woo in the movement. Moreover, transhumanists do tend to assume that the coming singularity will necessarily be a good thing. Science fiction, however, provides many potential counterexamples, SkyNet in the Terminator movies and the Borg in Star Trek being two of the most famous of them.

Nonetheless, I am not opposed on general principle to human-enhancing technologies. After all, what is medicine but an effort over many millennia to overcome the inherent biological weaknesses and defects in humans in order to enhance and extend lifespans by preventing at least premature death from infirmity and external disease? True, there is a philosophical argument to be had over how much modification might be too much, but thats not what Mercola and his antivax cranks are about. Rather, just as antivaxxers have used the COVID-19 pandemic and President Trumps Operation Warp Speed program to stoke fear that any new COVID-19 vaccine will be unsafe, having been rushed to approval too quickly with inadequate safety testing, and thereby to cast doubt on all vaccines, here antivaxxers are painting COVID-19 vaccines as incipient transhumanism in order toyou guessed it!spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about all vaccines. Naturally, theyre focusing on mRNA vaccines, such as the COVID-19 vaccine candidates from Moderna, BioNTech, Fosun Pharma, and Pfizer:

Many of the COVID-19 vaccines currently being fast-tracked are not conventional vaccines. Their design is aimed at manipulating your very biology, and therefore have the potential to alter the biology of the entire human race.

Conventional vaccines train your body to recognize and respond to the proteins of a particular virus by injecting a small amount of the actual viral protein into your body, thereby triggering an immune response and the development of antibodies.

This is not what happens with an mRNA vaccine. The theory behind these vaccines is that when you inject the mRNA into your cells, it will stimulate your cells to manufacture their own viral protein. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine will be the first of its kind. No mRNA vaccine has ever been licensed before. And, to add insult to injury, theyre forgoing all animal safety testing.

First of all, this is a bit silly. If theres one thing about mRNA, its that (1) it doesnt integrate into the genome of the cells that it enters, meaning that it cant permanently reprogram a cell and (2) its a remarkably unstable molecule, which is why RNA vaccines currently have to be stored at -90C and why theres been concern about the mass distribution of such vaccines, given that few doctors offices and clinics have the capability of storing doses at that cold a temperature and there would be concern about keeping the vaccines sufficiently cold during transport. (Its also why Moderna is working to make its vaccines more stable, now claiming that they can be stored at -20C and will be stable for about a week at 2 to 8C, and other companies making mRNA vaccines are frantically working to make the required storage conditions less frigid.) Indeed, some of these logistical issues are why Ive always been a bit skeptical of RNA vaccines. Im not skeptical that they can work. Im sure they can. The problem is that Im not convinced that whatever advantages they might have outweigh the many disadvantages in terms of their storage and distribution, slick videos by companies like Moderna notwithstanding:

So how do RNA vaccines work? The idea is that the mRNA (messenger RNA) gets into the human cells and does its thing, providing the template that the cells ribosomes use to translate the genetic code in the mRNA into protein, in this case the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which is secreted and generates an immune response. I was quite amused by how impressed Mercola was by Dr. Carrie Madejs claims. First:

Madej goes on to discuss how this mRNA vaccine is going to be administered. Rather than a conventional injection, the vaccine will be administered using a microneedle platform. Not only can it be mass produced quickly, but it can also be administered by anyone. Its as simple at attaching an adhesive bandage to your arm.

The adhesive side of the bandage has rows of tiny microneedles and a hydrogel base that contains luciferase enzyme and the vaccine itself. Because of their tiny size, the microneedles are said to be nearly painless when pressed into the skin. The idea is that the microneedles will puncture the skin, delivering the modified synthetic RNA into the nucleus of your cells. RNA is essentially coding material that your body uses. In this case, as mentioned, the instructions are to produce the SARS-CoV-2 viral protein.

The part of Dr. Madejs video where she describes this couldnt be more obvious. While explaining the microneedle platform, the video flashes an image of a viper and its long fangs, ready to strike. Shes also conflating technology being developed with the actual Moderna vaccine and other RNA vaccines. Right now, they are not going to be delivered using microneedle bandages. Thats a technology thats still being tested. Dr. Madej is getting ahead of herself here. After all, the current form of the Moderna vaccine doesnt use microneedles. Its a standard vaccine thats injected, two shots given a month apart, and is intended to work as described in the video above.

I also laughed out loud reading the above passage. The nucleus of your cells? Nonsense! Thats not how protein synthesis works! mRNA is translated to protein in the cytoplasm (the part of the cell outside the nucleus but within the cell membrane). After DNA in the nucleus is transcribed to mRNA by an enzyme called RNA polymerase, the mRNA thus produced is transported out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm, where ribosomes use it as the template to make proteins. Sure, the system is more complicated than that, but I dont need to go into how some mRNAs start out as longer precursors that are spliced into the final mRNA before being used in translation. The basic outline above is enough for a lay person to understand why Dr. Madej is full of you-know-what. Heres a handy-dandy image from Wikipedia:

Seriously, Drs. Mercola and Madej need to pick up a Biology 101 textbook. No, really. This stuff is in the early chapters about cell biology. Its really, really basic. It gets worse, though:

Dr. Madej says this is not true. Well whoop-de-doo and la-dee-da! No, seriously. This is not a DNA vaccine. It is not possible for the RNA to become stable and be taken up into the genome. (Indeed, RNA viruses that can integrate into the genome rely on first being reverse transcribed into DNA.) Again, this is not even Molecular Biology 101. Its high school Biology 101. As for transfection, all that is is a technique to introduce RNA or DNA into cells. Most commonly its used to introduce plasmids (circular lengths of DNA containing genes of interest) into cells. Methods range from really old school methods that I used in graduate school 30 years ago, such as calcium phosphate precipitation (which is horrendously inefficient) to various liposome-based methods. (Liposomes are small spheres of lipid, which can bind to the cell membrane and fuse with it, thus delivering plasmid into the cytoplasm.) While, it is true that the introduction of mRNA into a cell will produce a temporary change, namely the cells ribosomes using the mRNA to make the desired protein, that temporary change is just that. It has nothing to do with altering the cell permanently, and as soon as the mRNA degrades naturally the cell will go back to normal. Seriously, Dr. Madej, molecular biologists are laughing at you.

Dr. Madej is also apparently all worked up about a protein called luciferase. Luciferase is an enzyme that is commonly used in molecular biology because it produces bioluminescence. (More specifically, it acts on a compound called luciferin.) Most commonly, its used as a reporter gene. The idea is that you insert the gene for luciferase into a plasmid after various DNA sequences that regulate gene expression (how much mRNA and protein the gene makes). These sequences are known as promoter or enhancer regions. You then transfect cells with the plasmid. By measuring changes in light emission of the cells, either by harvesting them and extracting the proteins and measuring how much bioluminescence is produced when substrate and appropriate cofactors are added, or by looking at them under an appropriate microscope, you can see how various manipulations of the cells (e.g., drugs, changes in the media, changes in expression of other genes) communicate with the reporter/enhancer sequences to increase or decrease the activity of the reporter gene luciferase.

So whats the obsession with luciferase, other than that some cranks (Im looking at you, Mike Adams) have latched onto its name to associate it with the Devil? Lets see:

Another part of the delivery system that raises its own set of questions is the use of the enzyme luciferase, which has bioluminescent qualities. While invisible under normal conditions, using a cellphone app or special device, you will be able to see a glowing vaccination mark.

As described in the journal RSC Advances7 in 2015, luciferase gene-loaded quantum dots can efficiently deliver genes into cells. The abstract discusses their use as self-illuminating probes for hepatoma imaging, but the fact that quantum dots can deliver genetic material is interesting in itself.

The hydrogel, meanwhile, is a DARPA invention that involves nanotechnology and nanobots. This bioelectronic interface is part of how the vaccination mark will be able to connect to your smartphone, Madej says, providing information about blood sugar, heart rate and any number of other biological data.

It has the potential to see almost anything that goes on in your body, Madej says. This will have immediate ramifications for our privacy, yet no one has yet addressed where this information will be going. Who will collect and have access to all this data? Who will be responsible for protecting it? How will it be used?

Again, this is not how the Moderna and other mRNA vaccines are going to be administered, at least not now. Also, the reference she cites merely describes using luciferase vectors as a way to image liver cancers. As for the luciferase, as its just there to show where the vaccine was injected and to demonstrate that cells did take up whatever was on the microneedles. Im also amused how Dr. Madej apparently doesnt know how to pronounce luciferase. I laughed out loud when she first mispronounced it, although she started pronouncing it closer to the correct pronunciation as time went on. Moreover, luciferase is an enzyme, and, unless the vector used to introduce it into human skin cells truly did integrate with the nucleus, any luminescence from luciferase would be temporary. The enzyme would degrade, over time, as would the plasmid that makes it.

As for the marking, Ive discussed that before. Shes appears to be referring to quantum dot tags, basically copper-based quantum dots embedded in biocompatible, micron-scale capsules. Theyre tagged with a near-infrared dye thats invisible, but the pattern they set can be read and interpreted by a customized smartphone. Even these are not permanent, as the currently estimated time during which they can be read is five years.

None of this stops Dr. Madej from going full conspiracy crank:

Were gonna be branded. Each person will have their own ID. This reminds me of World War II. You know, its something to think about, being branded like a product in the storeSo well be branded. What can that be used for. There are lots of technologies out there, and thats something we need to be concerned about.

Gee, that reference to World War II and branding wouldnt be a reference to the Nazis tattooing prisoner identification numbers on the inmates in their concentration camps, would it?

Theres so much more in this video that I might have to do a second post at some point. (The segment on Hydrogel make me chuckle and groan in equal measure) However, this post is about COVID-19 vaccines and the claim that they will us transhuman. Whats depressing is that there are real issues to consider when it comes to using technology like quantum dots to mark us, but the paranoid conspiracy mongering, coupled with the ignorance of basic biology, used by cranks like Mercola and Madej obscures any legitimate concerns, subsuming them into full blown QAnon-like conspiracy:

Getting back to the mRNA vaccines, time will tell just how hazardous they end up being. Clearly, if the changes end up being permanent, the chance of long-term side effects is much greater than if they end up being temporary.

In a worst-case scenario, whatever changes occur could even be generational. The problem is these issues wont be readily apparent any time soon. In my view, this vaccine could easily turn into a global catastrophe the likes of which weve never experienced before.

We really should not be quick to dismiss the idea that these vaccines may cause permanent genetic changes, because we now have proof that even conventional vaccines have the ability to do that, and they dont involve the insertion of synthetic RNA.

No, we do not, and the example cited doesnt show what Mercola thinks it does:

After the H1N1 swine flu of 2009, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (a fast-tracked vaccine used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked9 to childhood narcolepsy, which abruptly skyrocketed in several countries.

Children and teens in Finland, the U.K. and Sweden were among the hardest hit. Further analyses discerned a rise in narcolepsy among adults who received the vaccine as well, although the link wasnt as obvious as that in children and adolescents.

A 2019 study16 reported finding a novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival.

They also confirmed a strong association between vaccine-induced narcolepsy and a certain haplotype, suggesting variation in genes related to immunity and neuronal survival may interact to increase the susceptibility to Pandemrix-induced narcolepsy in certain individuals.

Steve Novella has discussed the issue of whether Pandemrix caused a spike in the incidence of narcolepsy in these countries. Its important to note that this is a strange case. The association was only observed in specific countries and not in others (including the US) in which the vaccine does not appear to be a consistent or unique risk factor for narcolepsy in these populations. Overall, it was a confusing set of data to derive any clear picture of whether the H1N1 vaccine was a true risk factor. On the other hand, there are data suggesting that Pandemrix might trigger the production of antibodies that can also bind to a receptor in brain cells that help regulate sleepiness in genetically susceptible people. Basically, the whole situation is confusing, and its not clear if any of the H1N1 vaccines truly caused narcolepsy.

Also, the study cited by Mercola does not show that the H1N1 vaccine caused permanent genetic changes. The investigators did a genome-wide association study (GWAS), a type of study that frequently finds associations that do not hold up to scrutiny but can nonetheless be useful for hypothesis generation. What this study shows is an association between the haplotype and vaccine-induced narcolepsy, not that the H1N1 vaccine produced permanent genetic changes. Mercola is either grossly ignorant of basic biology, or hes lying, knowing that his audience doesnt know the difference. Take your pick.

The bottom line is that Mercola and Madej are doing nothing more than putting a COVID-19-based spin on an old antivaccine trope, one that I first saw eight years ago, when Sayer Ji claimed that vaccines are transhumanism in the service of subverting evolution by interfering with how we have co-evolved with pathogens. A few years later, antivaxxer Sherri Tenpenny was making the same sort of nonsensical argument, but by then antivaxxers had started pointing to DNA vaccines as a hopelessly unnatural corruption of our genes that reminds me a lot of the claim that trace amounts of contaminating DNA from the cell lines used to grow viral antigens for some vaccines can somehow get into the brain, express non-self proteins, and trigger an autoimmune response causing autism. (Truly, to antivaxxers, DNA and RNA are magic!) Again, its all an appeal to nature as being somehow always superior to anything humans can do. They view vaccines as unnatural to the point of altering what human beings are.

Of course, just because something is natural does not make it good, benign, or even just neutral. Nature is harsh, and the battle for survival brutal, and its completely natural for all manner of animals to be eaten by bigger, faster, and hungrier animals, and its just as natural for humans do die horrible deaths from infectious diseases. Yet the mindset behind so much of alternative medicine and antivaccine views is that natural is always good and that anything synthetic should be viewed with extreme suspicion. Its silly, because even natural nutrients and medicines are just as much chemicals as any synthetic nutrient or chemical. We have to judge whether such chemicals are harmful based on science and where the evidence leads us, not based on whether the chemical is natural or not.

In the end, theres so much antivaccine and COVID-19 pseudoscience coming from Madej that I suspect this will not be the last time I write about her. She really is an up-and-coming crank, and now that Mercola has amplified her message I expect, alas, to see a lot more of her. Shes an all-purpose conspiracy theorist.

See more here:
Dr. Carrie Madej: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are transhumanism ...

Agenda 21 is the blueprint for a global communist dictatorship, tying together many aspects of the NWO: depopulation, smart meters, surveillance, transhumanism and microchipping.

Communism is coming to America and the world, this time cloaked in green, not red. Private property is under attack. Land is being grabbed by stealth. The US Federal Government is claiming control over more and more land, and kicking rightful owners off their property through the use of Eminent Domain, a law letting the Government take land anywhere (and usually by undercompensating the owners too). The Government (through its numerous agencies like the EPA) is also laying claim to all waterways (including small streams) in America. Cunningly, all of this is being sugar-coated and done in the name of sustainability, saving the environment and with the use of other nice-sounding PR terms like smart growth. Thats right; the United Nations communist Agenda 21 has arrived, and green is the new red.

So what is Agenda 21? It is the global scheme being implemented in America and elsewhere to place concentrated power in the hands of a few central planners, who will then decide in a top-down fashion where everyone will live, where they can go and where they will be forbidden from entering. It plans to create non-human zones where ordinary people will never be allowed to set foot (but there will be one rule for the masses and another rule for the elite). Around these non-human zones will be placed buffer zones. Then, in the little bit of land left, there will be a dozen or so mega-regions human habitats with incredibly high population density. These will become smart cities, with mass transit (instead of cars), high rises and people stacked up on top of each other in tiny box-sized apartments. You will be asked to need less and accept living in a cardboard box, all for the supposed sake of the Earth while the elite administrators live in their mansions out of sight in another sector. Agenda 21 even contains plans for the Government to decide whether you own a car, whether you can grow your own food and what materials your dwelling will be made of!

But thats not all: Agenda 21 is the master plan behind the smart deception. In planned smart cities, smart meters will be prevalent, cameras will be everywhere and everyone will be under constant surveillance 24/7. Eventually the plan is to link all machines, appliances and devices to a smart chip or microchip which the elite want you to have embedded under your skin. This chip will be necessary for you to access money, food, transport, entry to your dwelling and buildings, etc., but it will also be subject to remote control from authorities. Humans will become mere automatons, nodes on a massive smart grid, thus fulfilling the ambitions of the transhumanism agenda.

This isnt conspiracy theory; its conspiracy fact. Recently a Colorado woman lost custody of her son for speaking out against Agenda 21. This tyrannical plan is being carried out as we speak.

Agenda 21 came onto the world stage at the 1992 Rio Earth Conference, and has its origins at the Club of Rome, one of the Round Table think tanks and secret societies that run the world, alongside the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. The Club of Rome decided the best way to achieve world government would be to devise a grand global threat with which to scare the whole of humanity, and it came up with the idea that mankind itself was that threat. This quote is from their 1991 report, The First Global Revolution: In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together all these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.

Of course, this kind of thinking is utterly insane. There is nothing wrong with human beings living on Earth. The real problem is the deluded mindset which is in all of us, but which runs the show in the minds of our possessed leaders; the same mindset whose greed has no limits and which is utterly without compassion or empathy. However, the elite instead pretend the mass of humanity is the problem, spouting their propaganda that we should feel guilty just for breathing out carbon dioxide. As the Club of Rome admitted, the idea of man-made global warming was contrived to control humanity and is part of the junk science of Agenda 21. More than 1,000 dissenting scientists from around the globe have now challenged the man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and have busted its credibility.

Agenda 21 is the blueprint for a global communist dictatorship, tying together many aspects of the NWO: depopulation, smart meters, surveillance, transhumanism and microchipping.

The insidious thing about Agenda 21 is that its very cleverly hidden. At first glance, who would object to the idea of cleaning up the planet, living in better harmony with Nature and living more smartly and sustainably? Yet, as with many aspects of the global conspiracy, you only get the truth if you look past the veneer and dig beneath the surface. It turns out that the elite have their own meaning for each of their key terms. They state in their documents that sustainable does not mean self-sufficient, and they explicitly define things they deem not sustainable: ski runs, grazing of livestock, plowing of soil, building of fences, industry, single family homes, paved and tarred roads, logging activities, dams and power line construction. These are all targeted to be banned, and yet life without some of them would mean a return to the Stone Age!

The whole foundation of sustainable development according to Agenda 21 is a world without private property. This is the 1st plank of the Communist Manifesto. Using a mixture of half-truths, it claims in its documents that land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principle instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore, contributes to social injustice.

While its true that our current society is full of wealth and power inequalities, getting rid of the ability to own your own land, and putting all land on Earth into the hands of elite bureaucrats to distribute as they see fit, is definitely not the answer. Thats a recipe for tyranny, and once again, whether its Obamacare, gun control or Agenda 21, it all boils down to the same distorted idea: collectivism.

To revisit, collectivism is the idea that the group is superior to the individual, and that the abstract needs of the group should come ahead of the concrete needs of the individual. It sounds all fine and dandy in theory, and to some degree an individual must sacrifice some of his desires to work harmoniously in a team or live harmoniously in a community, but thats not what this is all about. Whenever collectivism is applied to politics, it becomes Marxism, Socialism or Communism, and horrible results ensue. The individual becomes nothing. The State becomes everything. Power gets concentrated in a tiny percentage of hands (like a Central Committee) who become the new ruling elite. They claim to represent everyone and manage affairs and wealth distribution for the good of all, but in reality they become unaccountable tyrants who force their will on anyone who stands in their way.

Agenda 21 is entirely and utterly collectivist. Its a global communist scheme aiming to create a hierarchical One World Government (Global Governance or the New World Order) with the power to control everyones behaviors, habits and lives. It goes against everything in the Constitution relating to individual rights and freedoms. It goes against the Declaration of Independence and everything Americans fought for in the late 1700s to become a free republic.

An important thing to note is that Agenda 21 is not a treaty. It was never ratified by the US Senate. Therefore, it is not the law of the land. Agenda 21 is soft law or policy which covertly influences a countrys legislation at all levels, national, state and local. Not only does it give the appearance of being green, but it also gives the appearance of being local, when in fact it is being orchestrated globally through ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives), as exposed by Rosa Koire.

In conclusion, Agenda 21 is a grave threat to humanity, and a very dangerous one because it is so well hidden. It ties together so many aspects of the global conspiracy, including depopulation, smart meters, surveillance, transhumanism and microchipping, all wrapped up in a global communist dictatorship. However, despite all this, it can be stopped.

The situation were facing now is reminiscent of what it must have been like for the Native American Indians when white man arrived. Those who escaped being killed were forced off their land into reservations. Try substituting the New World Order elite for white man, the mass of ordinary Americans for the Indians and human habitats for Indian reservations, and you may get a clearer glimpse of the predicament were in. Its time to stand up, be strong and take action before this scheme gets too far advanced.

The solution is to look beyond the nice-sounding environmental language and realize that the green movement has been hijacked. We need to reject the calls, coming from a rich elite, that we must live on less while they secretly plot to take all the good property and houses on the planet and leave the masses squashed in shoebox apartments in smart cities. Take action locally, e.g. by ensuring your local council is not being fooled by ICLEI Agenda 21 policy. Use the resources at ToolsForFreedom to educate yourself (e.g. the Agenda 21 Land Grab Package), and then tell everyone you know about the threat to our sovereignty. Call us and we will provide free catalogs to anyone. Raising widespread awareness is a big part of halting Agenda 21.

The truth is that we can find a way to better live in harmony with the planet without enslaving ourselves and losing our individual rights, freedom and form of government in the process. Freedom requires constant vigilance and determined action to uphold it. The time for that action is now.

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Agenda 21 How Would You Like to be Forced into a Human ...

SALT LAKE COUNTY, Utah Before coronavirus gripped the world, aging adults could connect with one another in person. But now, a lot of them are stuck in isolation to protect themselves from COVID-19.

"We know that social isolation and boredom can be a big part in the issues that older adults face, even before the pandemic started," said Afton January, a spokesman for Salt Lake County Aging and Adult Services. "So we thought about what we could do to make sure that we are still talking with and engaging with and connecting with our senior center participants."

This problem inspired Salt Lake County Aging and Adult Services to create the Virtual Senior Center.

It's an online space that offers a variety of classes for people aged 60 and older.

Allison Dieterle is one of the 500 aging adults now using the service.

She said she's been doing classes at the Virtual Senior Center since it moved online last summer.

"I dont know that Im tech savvy, but theyve really made it as easy as possible," Dieterle said. "I take Zumba, I take enhanced fitness, I take Thai Chi, I take yoga, I take a mindfulness class. Its amazing."

The Virtual Senior Center is giving her and other seniors like her a chance to make new friends and boost their technology skills at the same time.

"I wouldnt know how to start a Zoom call, but I can join one," Dieterle said.

To take part in the classes, that's just about all they need to know, but there are even classes on the Salt Lake County Aging and Adult Services YouTube page that teach seniors how to use a smartphone.

There's also a hotline that aging adults can call to get help and get signed up at 385-468-3299.

"We have the capacity to grow," January said. "We see about 15,000 people at our senior centers every year, so maybe by this time next year the dream would be to have the Virtual Senior Center serving all of those people."

Thanks to a grant through Cares Act funding from Utah State University, Salt Lake County Aging and Adult Services was able to buy 30 new iPads.

These can be loaned out to seniors who may not have access to their own computer, smartphone or tablet to take part in these virtual classes.

"We open all of our classes 15 minutes before the start time just to allow people the chance to chat with the other people in the class because theyve made friends with each other," said Marianne Christensen, the health promotion manager at Salt Lake County Aging and Adult Services said,

Salt Lake County Aging and Adult Services says it does intend to keep the Virtual Senior Center going even after the pandemic so it can continue to fight senior isolation and loneliness.

Go here to see the original:

Salt Lake County's Virtual Senior Center helps fight isolation and loneliness during the pandemic - fox13now.com

Eric Webb , Matthew Odam |Austin 360

Austin businesses areworkingto get food to people who need it, asa batteredcitysresidentscontinue toface power outages, water outagesand below-freezing temperatures.

Good Work Austin, a consortium of area restaurantsformed during the coronavirus pandemic, isworking to get free meals to people in need this week. Major local brands, includingDeep Eddy Vodka,Kendra Scottand Bumble, along with the Austin Winter Storm Relief Fund,have made donations to area restaurants to provide free meals.

As roads become safer and more easily navigable,more restaurants are opening and offering free food either on their own dime or in partnership with various sponsors. There also are many restaurants delivering meals directly to frontline workers and warming centers throughout the city.

Email modam@statesman.com and ewebb@statesman.com to suggestadditions.

More: How to help, and what to do if you need it, during Texas' historic freeze

Heres a list of spots to pick up a free meal, while supplies last and if it is safe to get to the location. Check social media accounts or contact the restaurant to verify supply.

UPDATED LIST FOR SATURDAY, FEB. 20:

Oakmont.100 French toast fried chicken meals and 50 ham and cheese breakfast sandwiches starting at 11 a.m.Sponsored by RVShareandAustin Winter Storm Relief. 1106 W 38th St.oakmontfood.com.

Moody's.300 burgers starting at 1 p.m. for University of Texasstudents (please show an ID).Sponsored by Deep Eddy.2530 Guadalupe St.moodysaustin.com.

JP Pancake Co. 300 meals starting at 1:30 p.m.Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief.2512 Rio Grande St.jpspancakecompany.com.

Plow Burger at Buzz Mill. 100 burgers starting at 2 p.m.1505 Town Creek Drive.Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief.plowburger.com.

The Cavalier.100 biscuits & gravy starting at 3 p.m.Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief.2400 Webberville Road,Suite A.thecavalieratx.com.

Burro Cheese Kitchen.200 grilled cheese sandwiches starting at noon.Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief.80 Rainey St.burrocheesekitchen.com.

Sugar Mama's Bakeshop. Biscuits and gravy from 10 a.m. until they're gone.1905 South First St.

The following meals are being provided byWhole Foods Market,Good Work Austin, Austin Food & Wine Alliance and Les Dames d'Escoffier Austin Chapter. All are first come, first served.

Buenos Aires Caf. Meals from noon to 5 p.m.1201 E. Sixth St., 512-382-1189.

Chareon Express. Meals from 4 to 7 p.m.(vegetarianoptions). 5610 N. I-35.

Contigo. Meals from 10 a.m. to noon and 4 to 6 p.m.(vegetarian options).2027 Anchor Lane,512-614-2260.

Salty Cargo. Meals from noon to 7 p.m. 1700 W. Parmer Lane, Suite 100, 737-465-1821.

Southside Flying Pizza. Meals from noon to 9 p.m.(vegetarian options). 2206 S. Congress Ave., 512-442-4246.

Also, some more charitable food news Saturday: Brooklyn Decker and Andy Roddickwill donate 2000 tacos to Dell Children's. Austin Winter Storm Relief will donate 80 meals from V-Nam Bistro to Baylor Scott & White Round Rock, 500 meals from various restaurants toIDEA Public Schoolswarming centers and50 meals to Dell Seton.

Also, Holy Cross Worship Center in Del Valle is offering boxes of food and milk, one per household, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday; 4972 Texas 71 East, Del Valle.

PREVIOUSLY ONFRIDAY, FEB. 19:

Emergency food and water distribution will be available Friday at Dove Springs Rec Center (1:30 p.m., 5801 Ainez Drive), Millennium Youth Center (2:30 p.m., 1156 Hargrave St.), Dailey Middle School (2 p.m., 14000 Westall St.) and Navarro High School (2:30 p.m., 1201 Payton Gin Road), according to City Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison.

The Alcove Cantina. 205 free hot meals beginning at 1 p.m. Sponsored by AffiniPay and Deep Eddy Vodka.119 E. Main St., Round Rock.alcovecantina.com.

Buenos Aires Cafe. 200 meals of Milanesa and potatoes; spaghetti and meatballs; and stew beginning at 11 a.m. Sponsored by Pernod Ricard USA. 1201 E. Sixth St. buenosairescafe.com.

Chilantro. 400 bowls beginning at noon. Sponsored by Cotton Global Disaster Solutions. 11005 Burnet Road #108. chilantrobbq.com.

China Harbor. 300 meals of chicken fried rice or chicken lo mein beginning at 1 p.m. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief. 801 E. William Cannon Drive. chinaharboraustin.com.

First Chinese BBQ. Bento boxes with bbq pork, chicken or duck. Beginning at 1:30 p.m. until gone. In partnership with delivery service Chowbus, so mention Chowbus at pickup. 10901 N. Lamar Blvd. firstchinesebbq.com.

Justine's. To-go containers filled with spaghetti Bolognese, seafood chowder, French onion soup, ratatouille and more, beginning at 3 p.m. until supplies run out. Drive up, let them know how many people are in your familyand theyll bring the food out.710 E.5th St.justines1937.com.

Old Thousand. 100 meals at each location beginning at 2 p.m. Sponsored by Cotton Global Disaster Solutions. 4805 Burnet Road and 1000 E. 11th St. oldthousandatx.com.

La Pera. 200 el camaron crispy taco meals beginning at 3 p.m. Sponsored by Loreal Luciana. Pickup at East Austin Culinary Studio, 2100 Robert Browning St. laperaaustin.com.

New Fortune Chinese. Stir-fried beef flat noodle with sesame basil. Beginning at 5 p.m. until gone. In partnership with delivery service Chowbus, so mention Chowbus at pickup. 10901 N. Lamar Blvd. newfortunetx.com.

Nixta. Teaming with Dough Boys for 100 servings of penne Bolognese, beginning at 5 p.m. 2512 E. 12th St. nixtataqueria.com.

Phonatic. 400 chicken or beef pho served at two locations beginning at 2 p.m. when you mention Koko. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief. 2525 W. Anderson Lane and 200 University Blvd. in Round Rock. pho-natic.com.

Saigon le Vendeur. Giving away bnh m while supplies last Friday and Saturday beginning at noon. Water came back on today at their sister restaurant, Le Bleu, and the team hopes to have meals available there, as well, soon. 2404 E. Seventh St. instagram.com/saigonlevendeur.

Schlotzsky's Northcross. 300 small sandwiches beginning at 11 a.m. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief. 2545 W. Anderson Lane. schlotzskys.com.

Tacodeli. 500 tacos each at two locations beginning at noon. Sponsored by Nutrabolt and C4. 7301 Burnet Rod and 12001. tacodeli.com.

Thai Fresh. 50 meals starting at 11 a.m. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief. 909 W. Mary St. thai-fresh.com.

Twin Lion. 200 meals beginning at noon. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief. 4815 W. Braker Lane. twinlionchineserestaurant.com.

PREVIOUSLY ON THURSDAY, FEB. 18:

Chilantro. 200 free bowls, 12:30-2pm. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief Fund.11005 Burnet Rd #108. chilantrobbq.com.

CM Smokehouse.275 meals;brisket orpork taco with chips,or duck or turkey wings starting at 3 p.m. Sponsored bySamantha Ushiro.2027 S. Lamar Blvd.

Dipping Springs Tender Co. 50 meals of chicken tenders and sides from 1 to 5 p.m. Sponsored by Austin Eastciders. 979 Springdale Road. dippingspringstender.com.

Flyrite Chicken. 150 chicken sandwiches and tots as of noon until supplies run out. Sponsored by Karbach Brewing and Bev Wine.2129 E. 7thSt.flyritechicken.com.

Hestia. 1200 total meals from 2 to 5 p.m. Sponsored by Spa Sway, Austin Winter Storm Relief Fund and more. 607 W. Third St. hestiaaustin.com.

Juan in a Million. 1,000 free tacos starting at 11 a.m. Sponsored by former UT Longhorn star Michael Huff.2300 E. Cesar Chavez St. juaninamillion.com.

Lazarus Brewing Co. The brewery has reopened its doors and serving free tacos until supplies run out; you can also contact them to donate tacos to those who need them.1902 E. Sixth St.lazarusbrewing.com.

Lick It Up. Burrito, tostada and taco meals delivered to Austin Pets Alive staff at 11 a.m. Sponsored by Feathers Boutique. lickitupeats.com.

Maggiores. 115 meals of 16 pizza, starting at 11:30 a.m. Sponsored by Affinipay. 1420 Cypress Creek Road, #1000. magstexas.com.

Play. 150 meals (TBD) available at 5 p.m. Sponsored by Red Bull USA.620 W. SixthSt.

Rebel Cheese. 25 were available meals as of noon.Sponsored by Austin Eastciders.2200 Aldrich St.rebelcheese.com.

Sip Pho.300 bowls of pho, sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief Fund.512 W. 29th St. sippho.com.

Thai Fresh. 200 meals beginning at 1:30 p.m. Text curbside 512-200-7423 and mention 365austin for one free meal per person. 909 Mary St. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief Fund. thai-fresh.com.

Tommy Want Wingy. 125 10-piece wings and fries meals. 11 a.m. until all gone. Sponsored by Red Bull USA. 121 Pickle Road. tommywantwingy.com.

Uncle Nickys. 200 meals, per two different locations; pasta bolognese or pasta with vegetarian red sauce from 2 to 6 p.m. Sponsored by Affinipay. 1123 E.11th St. and 4222 Duval St.unclenickys.com.

Vaquero Taquero. 125 meals of two tacos, 11am-3pm. Sponsored by Red Bull USA. 104 E 31st St. vaquerotaquero.com.

Veracruz All Natural at The Line Hotel.300 free tacos, beginning at 5 pm. Sponsored by Austin Winter Storm Relief Fund. 111 E. Cesar Chavez St. veracruzallnatural.com.

The Well. 600 free bowls of pho beginning at noon. Sponsored by 2nd StDistrict, Sway Spa and private sponsors.440 W 2nd St. eatwellatx.com.

PREVIOUSLY ON WEDNESDAY, FEB. 17:

OMG Squee(Instagram: @squeeclub), 4607 Bolm Road:As of10 a.m., gettwodonuts and choice of hot coffee/tea/hot chocolate when you mention Deep Eddy Vodka.

Chi'lantro(Instagram: @chilantro),1201 Barbara Jordan Blvd., No.1460:As of12:30 pm, getsoy glazed chicken bowls when you mention Deep Eddy Vodka.

Winter storm:Boil water notice issued for Southwest Austin, Lost Creek; other areas told to limit usage

China Harbor(Instagram: @chinaharbor_austin),801 E.William Cannon Drive:As of noon, get aveggie or chicken combo with rice and soup when you mention Deep Eddy Vodka.

The Well(Instagram: @eatwellatx),440 W. Second St.:As ofnoon, theyre serving200free hot stewsandcoffees when you mention Kendra Scott.

Veracruz All Natural(Instagram: @VeracruzTacos) at theLine Hotel, 111 E. Cesar ChavezSt.:Beginning at 3 p.m., theyre serving200 free tacos at pickup window when you mention Kendra Scott.

Burro(Instagram: @BurroCheeseKitchen),80 Rainey St.:Beginning at 4 p.m.,theyre serving200 grilled cheese sandwiches and chips when you mention Kendra Scott.

Southside Flying Pizza(Instagram: @SouthsideFlyingPizza) at2702 E. Cesar Chavez St. and11600 Menchaca Road: Theyre serving free pizzas when you mention Deep Eddy Vodka.

Hestiaat 607 W. Third St., No. 105: Beginning at 3:30p.m., theyll have two meal options (400 total meals), withsupport fromBumblevegetarianpanzanellawith roasted cauliflower, basil, onion and tomatoes, and alsoroastedchicken, sweet potatoes, smoky barbecuesauceandpapas bravas.

Nixta Taqueria(Instagram:@nixtataqueria) at 2512 E. 12th St.: Beginning at 3:30 p.m., they'll serve pozole and tacos for free.

Kendra Scott also willbe providing Southside Flying Pizza to nurses at Dell Seton.

Winter storm: Boil water notice issued for Southwest Austin, Lost Creek; other areas told to limit usage

Weather updates: What you need to knowWednesday: Winter storm warning, more wintry mix overnight

Additionally, Good Work Austin was working Wednesday to provide meals atSouth Pro Lodge,GivensRecreation Center, DittmarRecreation Center,NorthwestRecreationCenter,North Pro Lodge,Sunrise Food Pantry & Angel House, Palmer Event Center and Micah 6 Food Pantry, but meals had not yet been fulfilled for all locations as of Wednesday morning. Restaurants providing food includeEasy Tiger, Black Star Co-opandLOcaDoOro.

Adam Orman, co-founder ofLOcaDOro and organizing force behind Good Work Austin,was on his way to drop off food Wednesday morning at one of the recreation centers before heading to other shelters and restaurants for food pick-up.

This morning has been somewhat more hopeful, Orman said. The brands involved have been helpful for restaurant outreach. Today, we have more money than food, because so many restaurants are without deliveries, or are without power, or people cant get into their restaurants. Today is a scramble to find enough restaurants to fill the citys needs and the hospitals needs."

More: Austin restaurants open for takeout during winter storm Tuesday

Orman said its helpful to have morehands ondeck in the middle of the week. Good Work Austin started having conversations with Austin Public Health on Friday, he said, because the organization has a regular contract with the city to provide meals for those in need.

When things started to get really rough and they opened the shelters, Orman said, his group mobilized Sunday to get the first round of meals out and figure out the plan for the coming days.

Every day,we havent even known who was going tohave power, who wasgoing tobe able to drive, he said. We should be able to get more food out today and by tomorrow...Its just a really slow process.

Orman said hes sticking to daylight hours to make food deliveries; at his own restaurant,LOcaDOro, he thinks theyllrun out of food on Wednesday.

Hopefully thatll get backfilled by the folks who are just now able to get started, he said,"and Ill be able to stay at home and coordinate.

Good Work Austins network of community-minded restaurants was not organized until last year, during the pandemic; Orman is grateful the connection with the city was already in place.The groupwill continue its efforts as long as they can during the emergency period.

I think it makes the most sense to keep doing this a couple of days. Its exhausting in the meantime," Orman said.

I am grateful that there are so many local businesses that want to help and people that want to volunteer," he added. Wewant to make sure the restaurants getpaid,the volunteers get paid. Nobody should be driving out in this (expletive) for free.

Donations are being accepted through Good Work Austin; go to GoodWorkAustin.org for more info. You can also make a donation through the Austin EMS Emergency Relief fund to help feed emergency workers.

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These Austin restaurants, businesses are serving free meals this week - austin360

Next Friday will mark the Makha Bucha, also known as Magha Puja Day, another important day for Buddhists. It falls on the Full Moon day of the third lunar month in which 1,250 enlightened monks (or arahant) gathered to listen to Buddha teach his principles known as Ovadha Patimokha more than 2,500 years ago. The teaching roughly consists of three major concepts: do good, abstain from bad action and purify the mind.

Horse-drawn carriages wait for passengers at the entrance gate of Wat Phrathat Lampang Luang. The temple was built in the 13th century to house Buddha relics, which are stored in its bell-shape stupa. The large vihara or Viharn Luang is made of wood and has old and fading murals telling the story of the past lives of Buddha. Wat Phrathat Lampang Luang is located in Koh Kha district about 18km from the city.

To observe the day, Buddhists normally go to a temple to make merit. One of my favourite places is Wat Phrathat Lampang Luang in Lampang province, about 600km north of Bangkok. The old temple is known as one of the most beautiful temples in the North. Locals believe that the temple is designated for people who were born in the astrological Year of the Ox -- which is this year -- because the temple was built and completed in the Year of the Ox.

Some compare the temple to a well-preserved art gallery, with its old Lanna architecture and designs. (Lampang was part of Lanna Kingdom, one of the ancient Siamese kingdoms, founded by King Mangrai in the 13th century.) The Viharn Luang or main hall is unique. The wooden structure was built in 1476 without walls and has dozens of large wooden pillars fully covered with shining gold lacquer patterns. The pavilion houses a seated principal Buddha sculpture called Phra Chao Lan Thong as well as 500-year-old murals painted in Lanna style. The art depicts the story about the last 10 lives of Buddha.

Another highlight is the old Lanka-style bell stupa or chedi, which contains Buddha's relics, or phrathat, in the Thai language. According to folklore, Buddha once visited the site and donated his hair, which has been kept in the stupa together with his relics, part of his right forehead and neck bones. During important Buddhist holidays like the coming Makha Bucha, people visit the temple to perform a wian tian candle ceremony. Adherents walk around the stupa three rounds while holding a lit candle and three incense sticks to pay homage to Buddha, his teachings and the enlightened monks.

Another old temple that has outstanding architecture is Wat Pong Sanuk Nuea located in Muang district. The highlight is the wooden vihara called Viharn Phrachao Phan Ong. It was built in the form of a pavilion with a three-tiered roof, reflecting the mixed designs of Lanna, Myanmar and Chinese arts. The structure houses four seated Buddha images on a platform and is decorated with a relief of animal sculptures including elephants, nagas, singhs or mythical lions, and eagles on its base. The temple also has a museum that displays a collection of Tripitaka boxes. Be reminded that while wandering in the temple, you may come across some friendly dogs and an unfriendly big black one in the area. Be careful.

Before leaving Lampang, don't forget to check out the ceramics, a well-known product of the province. Choices of ceramic factories are plenty including Dhanabadee Ceramic Group, which also has a museum to show visitors the history and process of making ceramic rooster bowls. Another site worth visiting is the Ban Thung Chi Royal Project initiated by HM Queen Sirikit the Queen Mother in 1996. It is located in Muang Pan district, about a 30-minute drive north of the city.

The project is open for the public to see every step of ceramic kitchenware production or join a ceramic workshop that can be arranged for group visitors in advance. The site also supports about eight handicraft groups including woodcarving, sewing and weaving. The centre helps create jobs for up to 1,400 people most of whom are from ethnic groups in the area.

Their handmade products are available at affordable prices at the souvenir shop inside the royally-initiated project.

About 35 people work in the ceramics factory in Ban Thung Chi Royal Project in Muang Pan district. The theme of its tableware is related to nature featuring a green banana leaf, a lotus leaf or a leaf of thong kwao (bastard teak). They accept made-to-order work such as producing vases with patterns or in large sizes. Some samples are displayed in an exhibition room. Every piece is made by hand. The centre is open daily from 8.30am to 4.30pm. Contact 054-823-138 for more details.

If you see people go inside Viharn Phra Phut, a prayer hall, located next to the ancient stupa of Wat Phrathat Lampang Luang, and they close the wooden door, it does not mean that you are not allowed to get in. It is because they want to see the projected image of the stupa. Known in Thai as ngao phrathat, the colour picture reflects through a tiny hole in the window and falls on a white screen to prevent visitors from stepping on the image of the sacred site. The hall also houses a big seated Buddha statue and beautiful decorations in the Lanna style.

Ying Changarun, 47, is a Hmong living in Ban Mai Phatthana in Muang Pan district. She is also a farmer and the president of Ban Mai Phatthana Coffee Group. About 90% of the people in the community grow arabica coffee, about 500 tonnes a year. When they have free time, women will make clothes and decorate them with their fine stitching. It is a tradition that every Hmong woman must learn how to make their traditional costumes. The neat sewing shows that the person who makes it is patient and studious the qualification of a good wife. Although the belief is fading as the younger generation prefers having fashionable clothes over traditional ones, Ying and some of her peers still keep the tradition alive and pass the sewing skill to their daughters. The needlework earns extra income for the group. Their works are available at the Ban Thung Chi Royal Project.

Sopa Phojai, 49, is a farmer who also works for the Ban Thung Chi Royal Project in Muang Pan district during her free time to earn extra income. She has been a craftsperson for 18 years and can produce about 16 pieces a year. Each piece sells for about 5,000 baht. Her works are available at the royal project as well as in Bang Sai Arts and Crafts Centre in Ayutthaya.

Spanning Wang River in the city of Lampang is Ratchadaphisek Bridge, also known as the White Bridge. It was originally made of wood when it was built in 1893 by Prince Boonyawat Vongmanit, the last ruler of Lampang, to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King Rama V. The bridge was destroyed several times during big floods in the past until it was rebuilt as a concert arch bridge in 1917. You may find choices of food at the northern end of the bridge where Thetsaban 3 market is located, or the other end at local restaurants. Try to avoid going there during rush hour as you may get stuck in traffic. The car parking area is quite limited.

Located along the walkway on the southern bank of Wang River and under the Ratchadaphisek Bridge, Lampang's street art was created in 2018 by an initiative of Songpol Sawattham, the governor who retired in 2019. He aimed to introduce a new tourist attraction in the city. Among the 30 paintings, you may find cute pictures of children and tourism highlights of the province such as pictures of a white rooster, which is a logo of the province, and ceramic bowls.

Located in the compound of Wat Pong Sanuk Nuea, a museum exhibits a collection of old Tripitaka wooden boxes. When I was there the door was closed but it was not locked. I went in and it felt a bit eerie while wandering inside the museum. However, the beauty of those art pieces kept me there for almost 30 minutes. Unfortunately, there was no information about each exhibited item.

Located along the walkway on the southern bank of Wang River and under the Ratchadaphisek Bridge, Lampang's street art was created in 2018 by an initiative of Songpol Sawattham, the governor who retired in 2019. He aimed to introduce a new tourist attraction in the city. Among the 30 paintings, you may find cute pictures of children and tourism highlights of the province such as pictures of a white rooster, which is a logo of the province, and ceramic bowls.

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Finding peace in northern Thailand - Bangkok Post

Yilan Foods niu rou mian, or Taiwanese beef noodle soup. Photo: Momo Chang

A new Taiwanese food pop-up has arrived in Oakland, serving a stellar bowl of niu rou mian, or beef noodle soup. Yilan Foods operates out of the kitchen at Ninna Restaurant on Piedmont Avenue and has consistently sold out of its signature noodle soup dish as well as its lu rou fan, or stewed fatty pork over rice, since it opened in October.

Yilan Food is currently open on Sundays for pre-order pickup and delivery in Oakland. (It also has an outpost in San Francisco.) Its hours are limited, as the pop-up is still in its early days.

A group of friends came up with the idea for Yilan Foods and started fine-tuning its recipes just a month ahead of the pop-ups public launch. The founders consist of Itthisak Rampaiyakul, a classically trained chef and owner of Ninna Restaurant (which has permanently closed with its regular Thai food menu); Eric Sim, a home cook; Alex Tong, who went to culinary school with Rampaiyakul and worked with him at the now-shuttered, historic Grand Cafe in San Francisco; and Christopher Lam, who went to high school with Rampaiyakul and runs the business side of the endeavor.

For all of the founders, food is a way to connect to their roots. In particular, the menu and recipes are inspired by Sims roots. Growing up, it was hard to find Taiwanese food and ways to connect to my culture, said Sim, whose father is Chinese Malaysian and whose mother is Taiwanese. His mother is from Yilan, a mostly farming region just east of Taipei. Sim grew up in Oakland, where Cantonese was the predominant language, making him feel like somewhat of an outsider.

For a long time in Oakland, there was a dearth of restaurants specializing in Taiwanese food. In recent years, restaurants and pop-ups like Taiwan Bento in Uptown and Good to Eat Dumplings in Jack London Square started selling traditional Taiwanese dishes.

While Yilan has regional dishes such as green onion pancakes, Sim said the pop-up isnt specifically focused on food from Yilan, but Taiwanese food in general. Taiwan is known for xiao chi, or small bites, often served on the street and at night markets. While it originates from the Sichuan province of China, beef noodle soup has become eponymous with Taiwanese food.

At Yilan Foods, beef noodle soup is the star, and it frequently sells out, sometimes as quickly as within 45 minutes of opening for pre-orders online.

Yilans version of beef noodle soup ($15) features hong shao (red-braised) meat in a collagen-laden broth. Along with slow-braised beef shank, beef neck bones and foot bones add gelatin and flavor to the soup, which is both subtle and rich, but not oily. The broth is ladled over fresh wheat noodles topped with sauteed bok choy and pickled mustard greens. Most restaurants serve beef noodle soup with chunks of beef shank, but Yilans version has sliced meat, more akin to what you would find in pho. Still, its a very traditional bowl of Taiwanese beef noodle soup one Id recommend to my parents, who were raised in Taiwan and are accomplished home cooks. And the portion is large enough for leftovers.

Im a firm believer that moms make the best soup, Tong said, acknowledging all the excellent home cooks out there. If theres a mom that can slang beef noodle soup, its probably better than ours. Despite Tongs modesty, the fact that Yilan Foods consistently sells out of its fare, just through Instagram and Facebook posts and word of mouth, is telling. Yilans beef noodle soup is mildly spicy. I recommend adding beef tendons ($3), gelatinous chunks that almost melt in your mouth, to your order.

Yilans other offering is lu rou fan, another Taiwanese staple. In Taiwan, the braised pork rice dish is often served as a snack or mini-meal. Yilans version is generous, enough for a meal for one, plus leftovers. Often, the dish features minced pork belly, but some versions have larger, chunkier pieces of pork such is Yilans lu rou fan, which has the addition of shiitake mushrooms and is served in an aesthetically pleasing to-go presentation, with pickled daikon and half a soft-boiled egg steeped in Puerh tea. The egg is more akin to a ramen egg than a traditional hardboiled tea egg. I personally prefer mine hardboiled, but the soft-boiled egg is a nice twist and makes the dish a little more modern. At $13 for a large bowl, Yilans lu rou fan is an extremely hardy and satisfying meal.

Id be remiss if I didnt mention Yilans housemade chile sauce. Tong who has worked in the restaurant industry for years including a stint at Four Seasons in Las Vegas put a lot of work into perfecting this highly addictive chile oil. A side portion comes with an order of beef noodle soup, but you can purchase an additional serving for $1. Made with high-quality chile peppers and Sichuan peppercorn, the sauce is fragrant and will elevate any dish that needs some spice. (I saved my sauce and used it with ramen and congee I made at home.) Yilan Foods eventually hopes to sell the sauce in larger portions; I see this becoming a pantry staple for many home cooks.

Yilans menu just offers two staple dishes at the moment, but the team is currently fine-tuning a vegetarian lu rou fan, which would make the pop-up one of the only local spots that sells a veg-friendly version. Recently, Yilan added two side dishes ($6 each): garlic cucumbers, and wood ear mushrooms marinated in vinegar.

Down the line, the Yilan team hopes to move into a brick-and-mortar space. The ride has been pretty crazy, Sim said. I didnt think it would gain so much traction. Its a very pleasant surprise.

And perhaps even further down the line, the founder-friends have plans to introduce locals to more Taiwanese food. Tong has been experimenting with making his own you tiao, or fried donut sticks. Typically a breakfast food that can be dipped or thrown into hot soy milk or incorporated in other dishes jianbing, for example Tong hopes to eventually serve fan tuan, sticky rice rolled around you tiao that can be made sweet or savory. Fan tuan are a highly portable, filling food that is usually eaten for breakfast and is harder to find in this area. Its a favorite amongst our team, Tong said.

While Sim is the only one with family from Taiwan, all of the Yilan team members have cultural connections with the project. Lams parents, for example, are ethnically Chinese from Vietnam, and he grew up mostly eating Vietnamese food. Yilans lu rou fan reminds Lam of a braised pork belly and egg dish from Northern Vietnam, thit kho. Its really cool connecting dishes from my childhood to dishes were serving in the restaurant now, he said.

For Sim, the last time he visited Taiwan was with his mom when he was 14. Her family was very poor, he recalled, describing the home as a shack in a rice paddy field. Yilan Foods is a homage to her, and to all immigrant parents who brought their children to the U.S. for a better life.

Yilan Foods East Bay pickup location is at Ninna Restaurant, 4066 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Pre-order online starting at noon on Wednesdays for pickup between 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Sunday; delivery is available for an extra cost.

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Yilan Foods in Oakland is constantly selling out of its Taiwanese food - Berkeleyside