In the News (from Yahoo): “McDonald’s posts sizzling 80% profit rise in 2008” US fast-food giant McDonald’s said Monday its 2008 net profit soared 80 percent from the previous year, lifted by a growing demand from consumers seeking low-cost meals in a deepening global recession.

My Comment: The government should open up public cafeterias with a “dollar menu” providing three meals a day for those enrolled in the system of global education (public courses for everyone, such as, “The Global World and Its Laws” and “The Rules of Conduct in the New World”).

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What the Global Education System Should Teach People
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In the News: (from Fayette Front Page): Senators Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., today introduced legislation to create a Financial Markets Commission that will be charged with fully investigating the near collapse of the banking system and the loss of tens of trillions of dollars. “If our nation is going to learn from history, we must know exactly what happened and why. We need to take a long hard look at how our financial system spiraled downward so far so fast,” Conrad said. “The final report of this commission will help make sure this does not happen again.”

My Comment: We cannot understand any phenomenon in our world from our level. Even Einstein said that in order to solve a problem, it is necessary to rise above it – to its source or initial origin. I hope this commission will be created, and even more than one – that it will be created in all the countries, and that it will be common, international. And I hope these commissions will somehow hear Kabbalah’s explanation of the reason, course, and purpose of the crisis, as well as the way to control it.

Kabbalah reveals that if we want to control the crisis through our actions, there is only one single opportunity in our world for us to influence the events: by continuously creating a better and better environment (society) that will influence every person. This environment will change everyone’s priorities from corporeal (receiving and using others) to spiritual (bestowal and love).

There are no other free actions we can make, because the rest of our actions are dictated by our natural egoism. They are elicited in us by egoism’s constant growth and change, without any participation on our part. Therefore, the reason for the crisis is the qualitatively new egoism that is being revealed in us.

The goal of the crisis is to bring us to similarity with Nature, the quality of bestowal and love. The means of attaining this goal, which is mandatory for all, is to change the environment that surrounds each and every one of us, or in other words, to change the external influence on every person. And to do this, we have to engage all the mass media channels and begin a broad action of worldwide education about the new reality of a united humanity.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What the Global Education System Should Teach People
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In the News (from VOA News): “Researchers Investigate Biology of Social Conformity” According to researcher Vasily Klucharev of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, the study shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal, making people think they made a mistake.

My Comment: Kabbalah explains that a person is always under the influence of the environment and unwillingly perceives others’ opinion as his own (see the article “The Freedom”). We cannot avoid being slaves of our environment. Our freedom lies in finding an environment that will give us the correct opinion – one that’s directed at the goal of creation.

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In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “His Empire in Tatters, German Billionaire Takes Life” Adolf Merckle, one of Germany’s wealthiest men, committed suicide. Mr. Merckle’s body was discovered Monday night near train tracks… In a rare interview last month, Mr. Merckle told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he had survived “many so-called stock-market crashes” but that he “couldn’t calculate a banking and financial crisis of this dimension.”

My Comment: He’s right: there’s never been a crisis like this in all of human history, because the current crisis is “qualitative.” It was caused by the human society’s opposition to Nature. Society has become global and interconnected like a “small village” where everyone is completely interdependent (“the Butterfly Effect”). However, our mutual egoistic hatred destroys all the connections. The effect of broken connections in a single system manifests as a crisis in the system – a crisis in all areas of our activity.

The crisis will not end until we find a solution – a way to be together, united by bonds of bestowal and love. This is what is required of us by the system that we have found ourselves in. We cannot escape these closed connections. We will have to observe the rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We can do this through suffering (as we always have) or by realizing that it’s necessary (the method of Kabbalah). The choice is ours.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: People Don’t Realize That We Are Living In a New World
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Baal HaSulam Article: “Introduction to the Book, The Tree of Life”, Item 4

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In the News (from The Associated Press): “Group of 6 arrested in western Ariz. fires includes 4 firemen” Four firefighters and two others have been arrested on suspicion of igniting between 15 and 20 fires in western Arizona to make money by fighting the very blazes they lit, officials said Tuesday.

My Comment: Egoism forces people to harm others in any way possible for the sake of their own benefit. The same can be said of doctors and others who manufacture food fillers, useless and harmful drugs, and so on. Our society is built so as to use people in every way possible. Instead of, “Everything for the people, everything for their benefit,” what we have is, “Everything for the sake of one’s profit, everything to harm people” (and this harms both those who do it and to whom they do it).

In the News (from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany): “Does persistent low fertility threaten the future of European populations?” Three stylized demographic facts are nowadays taken for granted by many Europeans: First, European birth rates are very low and further declining. Second, the currently low fertility will inevitably lead to rapid population aging and population decline in the future. Third, these trends are unsustainable in the long run… Perhaps no one summarized the fears of shrinking Europe more succinctly than Pope Benedict XVI: “…the problem of Europe, which it seems no longer wants to have children, penetrated my soul. To foreigners this Europe seems to be tired, indeed it seems to be wishing to take its leave of history” (Vatican 2006).

My Comment: Egoism doesn’t need anybody; it wants to feel special and unique. The same thing will happen in all the countries as their population’s egoism develops. But the emergence of the quality of bestowal and love in people will naturally make them desire to have children in order to continue their kind.

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In the News (from Investor’s Business Daily): “U.K. In Recession, Banks Sinking Fast, But Gov’t Boxed In” Britain’s plunging pound, shrinking economy and crumbling financial system are inviting comparisons to Iceland, which asked for an IMF bailout last year after its banks failed and its currency collapsed.

My Comment: The more people resist and stubbornly refuse to learn from nature about how to come out of the crisis, the more countries will end up like Iceland. People still don’t realize that we are governed by the law of integral interdependence, where everyone is unified and equal. And the only way to overcome the crisis is to equalize all humanity with this law.

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In the News (from Impactlab): “City Life Is Bad For Your Brain” The urban environment impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. “The mind is a limited machine,” says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, “And we’re beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations.”

My Comment: Man was created to exist in balance with nature, to be a harmonious part of the correct eco-sphere. This can be achieved when everyone comes to an agreement, in two stages: “Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you,” and then, “Love your neighbor as yourself. If we build the world and the environment based on these attitudes to everything outside us, then the environment will be optimal for man. Someday, we will get there; Nature will force us to.

News Report (from CNN): “Behavioral screening – the future of airport security?” Security experts say focus is shifting from analyzing the content of carry-ons to analyzing the content of passengers’ intentions and emotions… Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person’s reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration, signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack.

My Comment (a joke): One day they’ll invent a device that will be able to tell whether a person “loves his neighbor” or not. (They’ll also do this using the external signs, or maybe by one’s immediate reaction to something.) Whoever loves his neighbor is good for society, and whoever does not (whoever hasn’t attained it yet) is an anti-social element.

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Questions I received on the Israeli Palestinian conflict:

Question: Why did Israel choose this time of all others to start a war?

My Answer: The war in Gaza started because of the falling oil prices. Hamas would be nonexistent without help from Iran, and Iran’s plan is to become an Arabic superpower, which is only possible if oil is expensive. Therefore, in order to raise the oil prices, Iran ordered Hamas to start the war.

Question: How is it possible to manage without the tunnels used for delivering goods?

My Answer: There are over 1500 tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, and these tunnels are the basis of Hamas’s socio-economic power. Hamas builds the tunnels and sells each one for $170,000. Hamas also receives $16,000 for giving permission for a tunnel to be dug. Moreover, the goods delivered through these tunnels are taxed by Hamas, resulting in millions of dollars in profit.

This is why Hamas reacted the way it did when its “economy” was shut down. And there is no other opportunity for them to make a profit in Gaza. The solution lies in replacing the terrorist government with a peaceful one, which will start building the economy and making its own living.

Question: If the quality of life improves for the residents of Gaza, will terrorism vanish?

My Answer: Any normal government takes care of its citizens and tries to provide them with jobs, safety, and national security. A terrorist government, on the other hand, tries to deprive its citizens of all these, in order to receive humanitarian aid and then distribute it by reselling it. Therefore, the more impoverished the nation is, the better it is for the terrorist government, because people think less and will agree to anything. This is why the Hamas government didn’t build bomb shelters in Gaza, and why the Palestinian terrorists always shoot from behind the backs of the civilians.

Question: But can’t the international community restore order?

My Answer: No one is interested in this; everyone profits off of it. Hence, when the terrorists are retaliated against, they appeal to the international community, shouting, “Look! They attacked us.”

Question: But isn’t it the UN’s mission to bring peace to the world?

My Answer: The United Nations profits from the world’s tragedies. The workers of the UN line their pockets with the money that “sticks to their hands” during the distribution of resources. This is why they’re interested in having the conflict continue and having Gaza remain impoverished, in order to steal from the resources released by their organizations.

As we can see, money is at the core of the whole conflict, and this is also why the current global crisis is economic in nature. This is exactly the kind of crisis that is capable of changing the entire world.

Related Material:
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Fighting Terror the Right Way
From Chaos to Harmony: “The Crisis as an Opportunity to Restore Balance”

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News Report (translated from InoPressa): An Internet store is selling stale products for a third of the price. This is legal in Great Britain, and the number of people willing to consume expired goods just to save money is growing at an enormous rate.

My Comment: Why eat food that has expired!? We have to produce the exact amount of goods necessary, so we won’t have to destroy them. The crisis will teach us the best way to treat nature, life, and the integral system of nature and society. It will teach us to produce and consume only what is necessary for the body, and to direct all the “extra” energy toward bringing all of humanity to one level of bestowal and love, both physically and spiritually.

Related Material:
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News Report (translated from Utro.ru): Just as everywhere else in the world, one of the consequences of the financial crisis in Russia is the rise of unemployment rates. During the days of the holiday vacation, unemployment in Moscow increased by 100%. Moreover, experts from the Social Opinion fund report that the actual number of Russians who have recently lost their jobs exceeds official data by 5-6 times.

My Comment: The same thing is happening all over the world. We must produce only what is necessary for a normal existence, and distribute the work among many people. As for our free time, it must be filled with education: we must all learn how to live in balance with nature. This is something we have to learn, just as a small child has to be taught how to live in our world. Similarly, all of us – the entire humanity, must get down to studying. This is what the crisis is pushing us toward.

We have found ourselves on a different planet, one with different external qualities. On this planet, the only thoughts, decisions, desires and actions that will prove successful are those aimed at the common good!

Therefore, the television should create and broadcast educational programs or “classes” that everyone will have to take. And then everyone will have to take exams, just like when we were in school. The whole world must “take their seats in the classroom.” We must use all means of communication to teach people how to live in the new natural (altruistic) conditions. The sooner society begins to understand and actualize this, the sooner we will begin to feel that we are living in a world that’s bountiful, safe and comfortable. Kabbalah offers you the wisdom of how to exist in the new world.

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