Episode 1 Introduction

The History of Ancient Egypt

Professor Robert Brier

Film Review

According to Brier, Egypt was the most advanced civilization in the ancient world. He credits its success as a civilization to the rich topsoil produced by the Nile overflowing year after year. Their phenomenal agricultural productivity enabled them to produce sufficient food to support a standing army and longstanding internal and external security.

In addition to building massive pyramids and temples, the Egyptians also discovered medical science, monotheism and mummification two thousands years before any other civilization. Egyptian civilization lasted so long that they also produced the world’s first archeologists to help document their early history. Fortunately the dry desert air was very important in preserving colorful Egyptian artifacts.

The ancient Greeks traced their cultural lineage to the Egyptians and learned both philosophy and stone building from them.

There are three approaches to studying Egyptology: Philology (the study of the Egyptian language), the study of Egyptian art and the writings of the world’s first historian the Greek Heredotus. Herodotus visited Egypt in 450 BC

Egyptian art changed very little over ancient its two thousand year history. Creativity and innovation were discouraged because because the main purpose of Egyptian art was to decorate the pharaoh’ tombs, which were intended to last an eternity. The pharaoh’ tombs incorporated not only art but all the furniture, cosmetics, games and jewelry they would need for the afterlife.

The Egyptians were the first to use a grid method in drawing to achieve accurate mathematical proportions.

They left lots of written records, and much of their art and writings concerned warfare. The Egyptians ruled the entire known world, required them to engage in more or less continual warfare. Another use for written language was to cover tombs and coffins with magic spells their occupants could recite to return power to their legs and breath to their lungs.

Film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/1492791/1492793

Dr Eddy Betterman

While solar panels on residential rooftops and businesses are popular all over California, helping to reduce energy costs for people who have them, the fact remains that everyone else is subsidizing these solar panels out of their own pockets.

Electricity prices in California are steadily increasing as the Golden State converts its grid into a “green” energy production system.

Last year, residential electricity prices in California rose by 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, representing an increase of 11.9 percent. The average homeowner in California resultingly pays 28.9 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, making California the third-most expensive state for electricity in the United States behind Connecticut and Hawaii.

While a 3 cent per kilowatt-hour increase may not sound like much to some, it is only the beginning of California’s energy woes. Because the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a new green energy scheme scheduled for full implementation in 2032, the clock is ticking for a transition that one media outlet says means California energy rates “are headed for the exosphere.”

“The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a scheme that aims to add more than 25 gigawatts of renewables and 15 gigawatts of batteries to the state’s electric grid by 2032 at an estimated cost of $49.3 billion,” reports Watts Up With That.

“In addition, the California Independent System Operator released a draft plan to upgrade the state’s transmission grid at a cost of some $30.5 billion. The combined cost of those two schemes is about $80 billion.”

Recognizing that inflation, particularly in utilities, continues to climb, the $80 billion estimate is likely far too low. By the time those latter years getting closer to 2032 arrive, assuming current economic conditions continue or worsen, the true price tag could balloon to a figure much, much higher than what state officials are anticipating.

“Whatever the ultimate price tag, the state’s aggressive alt-energy plans will inflict more economic pain on the low-income residents of a state with the dubious distinction of having the highest poverty rate in the United States.”

(Related: California landfills are piling up with green energy waste, which is highly toxic and environmentally destructive.)

California’s green energy producing more carbon than pre-renewables

California has been on the green energy path for many decades, but things really got going in 2008 when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order calling on state utilities to derive one-third of their power from so-called renewable sources by the year 2020.

At the time, Schwarzenegger called the plan “the most aggressive target in the nation,” but what he did not clearly iterate is the fact that this massive conversion would come with a seriously high price tag, especially for the state’s poor and ever-dwindling middle class.

In order to convert that much energy production to renewables, California utilities had to make some major upgrades and transitions. In 2008, just 3.1 percent of California’s energy production came from wind and solar. Today, that figure has increased to 25.7 percent, which is pretty close to Schwarzenegger’s energy targets.

Despite all these changes, though, California’s electric generation still produces the same amount of carbon, which climate lunatics everywhere are convinced is destroying the planet. Furthermore, California’s total electricity use continues to fall, meaning all that new renewable energy is doing absolutely nothing to reduce carbon.

Put differently, California’s increasingly green energy grid is producing the same or more carbon output than its pre-renewables grid, and this at the same time that electricity usage rates are falling.

“All-sector electricity use in the state fell 11.2% between 2008 and 2023,” Watts Up With That explains. “That reduction in power use has likely helped reduce the state’s overall CO2 emissions, which … have declined since 2008.”

“But California is nowhere near net zero, and the carbon intensity of electricity production hasn’t budged in more than a decade.”

In other words, overall carbon dioxide emissions in California are falling somewhat due to varying factors, one of them not being its increasingly renewables-based energy grid.

While solar panels on residential rooftops and businesses are popular all over California, helping to reduce energy costs for people who have them, the fact remains that everyone else is subsidizing these solar panels out of their own pockets.

The Public Advocates Office released a report back on February 8 revealing that solar incentives in California will cost “customers without solar an estimated $6.5 billion in 2024.”

If you live in California, it makes sense to take advantage of these subsidies if you do not already have solar. And if your rooflines point in the best directions, you can take advantage of the lucrative energy buyback programs that The Public Advocates Office admits work in the favor of homeowners.

All in all, these types of climate programs are great for people with means, but not so great for the state’s poor who do not have solar panels and basically pay for them through increasingly higher electricity prices.

“The average customer without rooftop solar pays 10 percent to 20 percent on their electricity bills to subsidize rooftop solar on the homes of others,” reads a letter sent from the Legislative Analyst’s Office to Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-L.A.) back in January.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/04/03/california-energy-prices-soaring-green-disaster/

Currently, the possibility of “direct intervention” by the West in Ukraine is being discussed in newspapers around the world.

What few know, however, is that, in practice, this is already a war between Western and Russian troops. 

Large numbers of mercenaries from NATO countries are fighting in Ukraine, mainly participating in terrorist raids against demilitarized regions on the Russian border.

With the Ukrainian failure in the special military operation zone, the neo-Nazi regime is focusing its attention against Russian border cities.

Since late 2023, Belgorod and Kursk have been bombed frequently.

Western missiles and drones kill Russian civilians in these regions where there is no military mobilization, which makes the attacks truly terrorist.

As experts have already said, these border attacks have no military relevance.

Kiev’s aim is to divert attention from its defeat on the battlefield and show its Western sponsors that the military aid provided is being used “appropriately” – reaching deep into Russia.

The problem is that this “PR stunt” is absolutely illusory. In practice, most of the Ukrainian missiles supplied by the West are shot down by the Russian defense, just as land incursions are quickly neutralized by Russian troops.

Publicly, the West quickly replaces Ukrainian material losses. What is little talked about, however, is that NATO is also already supplying Kiev with human resources. Thousands of foreign mercenaries are fighting against Russia. Border raids are largely being operated by these foreigners. I witnessed this personally in March when I was in Belgorod during a BRICS Journalists Association’s press expedition.

Our main objective was to cover the bombings carried out by the Kiev regime to harm the Russian electoral process.

In Belgorod, I spoke to civilians in the affected regions and received some important information about those responsible for the attacks. For example, on March 12, there was a land invasion in the village of Kozinka (Belgorod oblast). At the time, the enemies were quickly neutralized by the Russians. Fleeing from the fire, the invaders abandoned their dead and wounded soldiers as well as various equipment along the way.

The Russians thus captured the belongings of a Swedish mercenary neutralized on the border.

A notebook and diary were found with personal notes describing his work as a pro-Ukrainian soldier. In his notes, the Swedish citizen had important information about the use of special weaponry and military medicine techniques. There were also notes in his notebook on sabotage tactics and reconnaissance operations, as well as a collection of basic phrases in the Ukrainian language.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/western-mercenaries-participating-attacks-against-russian-borders/5853692

Dmitry Orlov

The investigation of the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack is moving forward and is coming ever closer to proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the entire event was organized by the US and that Victoria Nuland of the US State Dept. was its inspiration.

Recall, if you will, that the White House was the first to (supposedly) know who was behind the attack: it was (supposedly) ISIS-K. The K is for Khorasan, which is a historical region comprising a vast territory now lying in northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. As it applies to ISIS, it is a misnomer coined in an effort to misdirect. ISIS was organized with US help on the territories of Iraq and Syria and was deployed in a failed effort to overthrow the government of Syria. The effort was going well, but then Russia intervened and pretty much blasted ISIS straight out of the gene pool. Some straggling remnants of ISIS were then transplanted to Northern Afghanistan — again, with US help — in the hopes of using it to foment trouble for Russia by destabilizing the Central Asian states. But then the US abandoned its Afghani heroin-growing mission because Mexican-made fentanyl (using Chinese precursors) was so much cheaper and the Mexican drug cartels were paying US officials good money to keep the southern border open for their drug mules.

So, what happened to ISIS-K? There is no reason to think that it was ever in Iran or in southern Turkmenistan and Taliban representatives have reported that there is no trace of ISIS-K in Afghanistan either — they left with the Americans. Where did they go to? Well, to the Ukraine, apparently! This makes the White House gambit of blaming ISIS-K for the Crocus attack in order to deflect the blame from the Kiev régime, parroted by officials and news media in the EU, particularly daft: when pointing fingers, it is very important to make sure that you are not pointing at yourself. Take note: ISIS-K is now ISIS-U, its leaders now sheltering in Kiev. One is even known to have taken part in a failed cross-border attack on Russia’s Belgorod region.

The four gunmen involved in the Crocus attack, all now in Russian custody and quite talkative, were not ISIS. The signature of an ISIS attack is different: its members are appropriately brainwashed to be fearless and willing to martyr themselves; they never do terrorism for hire; they always try to take hostages; and they always try to make political demands. The four Crocus miscreants were sad, unemployable migrant workers; they did it for the promise of paltry sums of money; they did not take hostages and they did not make any political demands; and they were afraid to the point that one of them ran off into the woods and climbed a tree (a dog sniffed him out).

Notably, the four were captured and arrested while driving to the Ukrainian border where Ukrainian officials had promised to take them across it and to a hero’s welcome in Kiev. Was Victoria Nuland planning to be on hand to give them cookies? No, Victoria had been fired for attempting to do her own thing — insubordination, that is. She even went as far as holding a bizarre press conference on an empty street in Kiev at which she promised the Russians a big surprise prior to the elections. (She’s completely mad, you know.)

And what was that big surprise? Well, Victoria thought it would be a great idea to organize a big terrorist attack in Moscow on the eve of Putin’s reelection (at which he won 87.28% of the popular vote). She was aiming to have it happen at the concert of the wildly popular patriotic pop singer Shaman (Yaroslav Dronov) but the head terrorist, after having a quick walk around the venue and taking note of the tight security, postponed it.

Perhaps Victoria had tried to call it off but failed. It often happens when dealing with hit men: canceling a hit can be more expensive than ordering it to begin with. In this case, the hit men in question were working for the Kiev régime, which is currently very much starved of fresh money and weapons and, being true to form, most likely used this occasion to make some unreasonable demands, which Victoria was in no position to meet. There was no conceivable reason or justification for carrying out the terrorist attack after the election — and yet it was carried out. Victoria had put herself in the position of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and there was no other choice but to fire her as expeditiously as possible.

Official statement from the Syrian Ministry of Defence:

At 1:45 am, the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo, targeting several points in Aleppo countryside, in conjunction with a drone attack carried out by terrorist organizations from Idlib and Aleppo western countryside, in an attempt to target civilians in Aleppo city and its surrounding.

The aggression resulted in the martyrdom and injury of several civilians and soldiers, and material losses to public and private property.

Israeli warplanes infiltrated Syrian airspace via Jordan. They used the Syrian airspace over the illegal US base in Al Tanf (on the border with Jordan) to proceed towards the depths of the central Syrian Badia or desert area at low altitude to avoid detection. The missiles were fired from the Athriya area with U.S. cover towards several targets in the eastern Aleppo suburbs that until December 2016 were occupied by the Western-midwived terrorist gangs.

Simultaneously terrorist groups in Idlib (north-west) dominated by HTS (Al Qaeda) launched a massive attack with suicide drones on civilians in Aleppo City in an attempt to divert the Syrian Air Defence teams.

The Israeli aggression targeted the Jibreen area of eastern Aleppo, close to the Aleppo International Airport and the Ibn Al Khaldoun psychiatric hospital whose patients were terrified having already endured the five year occupation by the same terrorist gangs.

This combined attack was intended to stretch the capability of the Air Defence in defending Aleppo against the dual attacks.

Israel not only targeted Jibreen, it also targeted Kfarjoum to the West of Aleppo.

Sites hit included a gas station, weapon depots and various buildings and is considered as the most intensive attack on the Aleppo governorate by Israel – so far there are at least 30 martyrs (the number is still expected to rise) including women and children. Friends in Aleppo described it as “judgement day”, the explosions were so loud and the attack so intense.

[…]

Explosions continued for at least two hours due to the interception of the Syrian Air Defence combined with the fire and explosions from the weapons depots.

The day before at 5.50pm Israel had carried out a failed assassination attempt against a farm in Bahdaleyah town next to Sayyeda Zainab in the southern Damascus countryside. The farm was completely destroyed but the Hezbollah fighters had evacuated minutes before the strike and escaped. Two civilians were injured.

The two attacks within eight hours demonstrates Israel’s mounting desperation to inflict damage upon Hezbollah bases and fighters in Lebanon and Syria which is known to be the backbone of the resistance and a safe haven for the Hezbollah forces who were instrumental in the liberation of specific Syrian territory from US allied terrorist groups since the regime change war began in 2011.

Both aggressions targeted Hezbollah sites. The attack on Aleppo was unexpected – it is far away from the southern Lebanon front and logistically speaking it is not a natural target for Israel.

Therefore it can only be interpreted as an Israeli attempt to expand the war against Hezbollah specifically while triggering an escalation from the north-western Al Qaeda groups to further pressure the Syrian Arab Army forces and Air Defence teams and to distract the Syrian-based Resistance groups away from any attacks on Israel.

[…]

What this does show is that Israel is cornered. It is losing the ground war in Gaza against a relatively ill-equipped, starving and besieged Palestinian Resistance while the IOF forces on the ground in Gaza commit hourly atrocities against civilians, all caught on camera. Israel’s image as the ‘most moral army’-’only democracy in the middle east’ is irretrievably destroyed.

Article in the Telegraph. Reported by The Cradle:

Israeli intelligence officials told The Telegraph that the government’s stated goal to “eradicate Hamas” in the Gaza Strip has become unachievable after the US “turned its back” on Tel Aviv by abstaining during a UN Security Council (UNSC) vote earlier this week.

“If you’d asked me this a month ago, I would definitely say yes [we can eliminate Hamas] because, at that time, the Americans were backing Israel,” an Israeli intelligence official told the British daily, reportedly suggesting this assessment “had now changed.”

“The US doesn’t support going into Rafah, which they did before, so the cards right now are not good, meaning Israel has to do something dramatic and drastic to change the momentum and climate,” the source added, highlighting that “pressure is mounting on Israel to reach some sort of a deal, which means Hamas could survive. Both Hamas and the Iranians are playing on that.”

In the north on the border with Lebanon the 200,000 settlers and businesses that fled the conflict are destined to never return. Yemen has effectively blockaded an arterial sea route and even with the aid of the ‘normalised’ Abrahamic Accords regional countries like UAE, Jordan etc Israel’s economy is dying and military morale is on its knees.

The veils have been lifted. Israel is trying to expand the war to gain a victory which will ensure its survival. It has clearly demonstrated its allegiance to the Zionist-allied Al Qaeda factions in Idlib and is losing face globally. It has isolated itself even from the U.S. thanks to Netanyahu-hubris. It is trapped and flailing but perhaps at its most dangerous.

It is worth noting that ISIS attacks have also been increasing exponentially since October 7th, many coming from the US illegal military base at Al Tanf, used by Israel to launch attacks on Syria.

It is no longer possible to deny that the clear and present axis of terrorism in Syria is US-UK-Israel-Turkey-EU-Jordan-ISIS-Al Qaeda. The battle lines are no longer blurred, they are crystal clear. Those Palestinian supporters still promoting Idlibistan as a beacon of support for Palestine should take note.

Will Israel maintain escalation? What will the U.S. and U.K. do with elections looming? Whatever the outcome the Resistance is ready. Israel, the Zionist colonialist settler state, will not win this war.

[…]

Via https://beeley.substack.com/p/israels-attacks-on-syria-take-a-new?r=9kugt&triedRedirect=true

By Vanessa Allen

A statement from his office said the 74-year-old was undergoing surgery last night for a hernia. Deputy prime minister and justice minister Yariv Levin would stand in while he was sedated.

Mr Netanyahu has come under growing pressure from the families of the captives to strike a deal with Hamas to free them.

He has insisted Israel will keep fighting until it has destroyed the terrorist group’s military capabilities.

Egyptian broadcaster Al-Qahera reported that negotiations for a truce between Israel and Hamas were due to resume in Cairo yesterday. Protesters in Tel Aviv chanted: ‘Enough killing, enough despair.’

Shira Albag, whose daughter Liri, 19, was among the youngest to be taken hostage, said: ‘The people of Israel won’t forget or forgive anyone who prevents a deal that would bring them [the hostages] back to us.

‘After 176 days, 4,244 hours, the excuses have run out.’ Relatives said it was time to step up the protests and to call for Mr Netanyahu to leave office.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was taken by Hamas, said the prime minister’s handling of the negotiations was ‘criminal’.

Addressing crowds in Jerusalem, she said: ‘You [Netanyahu] are the obstacle… You are the one who stands between us and the return home of our loved ones. From now we will work to immediately replace you… We will publicly hound you.’

Protest leaders called on supporters to gather outside the Knesset in Jerusalem for a four-day demonstration, and to erect a tent city.

In Tel Aviv, organisers said Saturday’s demonstration was the biggest seen since the October 7 attacks. Demonstrations blocked major roads and 16 people were arrested.

Clashes with police were also recorded in Jerusalem, where hundreds of protesters broke through barriers to demonstrate near Mr Netanyahu’s home.

In a televised press conference last night before his scheduled surgery, Mr Netanyahu said he was ‘working night and day, burning the midnight oil’ to make sure the hostages were brought home.

He said: ‘I underwent an examination. I thank the people who have already called to show concern for my health, including reporters and I assure you that I will get through this treatment successfully and return to action very quickly, very quickly.’

The prime minister also warned that those calling for him to resign would ‘paralyse’ the country’s efforts to bring the war to an end.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13257871/Tens-thousands-Israelis-streets-Jerusalem-biggest-protest-against-Benjamin-Netanyahu-start-Hamas-war.html