Okay, well, welcome back everyone. I hope you had a nice break. Personally, I did my five minutes of yoga since I've essentially stuck on the stool to 9pm this evening. That was seemed like the best thing for it, but I hope you enjoyed your drink or however else you spent the time. We've got a really exciting session coming up now with four trade specialists joining us to debate essentially the issues that we set out in the earlier session. In case you're just joining us, I'm Natalie Bennett, Green Party member of the House of Lords, and I'm chairing this for the greenhouse think tank and the Green European Foundation, trying to be as minimalist as I can. So what we're going to now is a debate around the question starting from the UK, but of course from many different perspectives. We've got trade and climate negotiations that are happening in parallel, beside each other and pulling in very different directions. But we've only got one world. They both set the policies have to operate within it. How can these agendas be reconciled? And we've got four great speakers to address that question. We've got Saskia Brickmont, who's a Belgian Green politician at an MEP since 2019. It's on a number of committees, including the Committee on International Trade. We have Jean Blalock, who's the Campaigns and Policy Manager for the Campaign Organization Justice Now. Anna Kavaziani is a German politician from the Alliance 90, the Greens since 2019, also on the Committee on International Trade. And Ellie Chownes, who's joining me on a Zoom call for the second time in a week. This was our MEP for the West Midlands when we had them, as we now sadly don't. And he's a councillor on Herefordshire County Council and the International Spokesperson for the Green Party of England and Wales. So I'm going to call on our speakers in that order to answer that question of trade and climate negotiations pulling in different directions. But to make sure everyone's staying awake out there, just a reminder that after these speakers have spoken, we'll go again into small breakout groups and have a discussion before we come back to the speakers for a Q&A. So starting with you, Saskia, if we may, how do we reconcile the trade and the climate agendas? Hello, everybody. Thank you, first of all, for this invitation and for allowing us to speak today with you. And for the very insightful presentation and this also excellent study that would be very interesting to reproduce in the other countries. So this is a big question and with Anna Cavadini, we will present you issues that are no on the table of the European Parliament and that are being negotiated now and where we can influence because as you pointed, the Green Deal is presenting very strong objective as zero carbon society by 2050. Although what we see is that to main European policies where we could act where we could influence, which are the cap. So the common agricultural policy, which also emits a lot of emissions and the trades policy needs to be reformed in order to really become compliant with the agreements and the Green European, the Green Deal at the European level. So I will focus my intervention on the TPR, the trade policy review. It's no open and it's after the trade for all strategy from 2015. This trade policy review is no open to consultation. It has been launched in June and the purpose is to review the EU trade policy, its achievements, its functionings and its goals. So the European Commission has submitted 13 questions and every NGO citizen, the national parliament also can answer and contribute to this reflection until mid-November. So I invite you all to contribute and of course a specific contribution on climate would also be helpful I think. So what is at stake is of course to bring trade policy within the framework of the European Green Deal. That's one of the main goals we want to achieve also. And this is something that we wouldn't have achieved with Commissioner Oghen, the previous commissioner, but we're not putting our hope. Even if it won't be a revolution, but still it has another approach. We think it has another approach as the new commissioner designates Don Brovskis and we will be holding the hearing soon, beginning of October. And of course we will ask him questions about his view on the future of trade policy at the European level and how he thinks he can make it compliant with the Green Deal. So what we have to know is that today there are about 250 multilateral environmental agreements that are into force dealing with various environmental issues and around 20 of them contain provisions to control trade to prevent environmental damage. But the enforcement mechanisms are absent today in most of them, which is something we need to improve of course and what also needs to be known is that their consistency and compatibility with the WTO roles have never been challenged. So this is important to know because it's often we hear that new mechanisms, new regulations need to be compliant with WTO rules and that's of course also a debate will have when it comes to the debate on the carbon adjustment mechanism at the borders. And this would be also an interesting topic for a new session because it's debated now at the parliament level. So free trade agreements and investment agreements should explicitly reckon that multilateral environmental agreements will prevail over trade provisions. This is something we're working on of course and in case of a dispute. We should discourage parties to initiate WTO disputes to challenge other parties adoption or implementation of FTAs consistent climate response measures. We can do that through our trade agreements. It's today not sufficient to solve the problems only by focusing on environmental provisions and commitments because we know that trade liberal liberalization growth in exports of particular products is correlated with the development of unsustainable production techniques. However, environmental degradation is in general highly linked to other issues like poor institutions poorly defined property rights or inadequate regulatory and fiscal policies. We also need and this is another challenge to make the Paris Agreement an essential in essential close of the free trade agreements. So it's possible to mainstream climate and biodiversity and also human rights goals in trade policy. I take an example and I think Anna will come back on this issue specifically of the EU Mercosur agreement. The deal as it is drafted won't prevent further deforestation while studies and a recent study on the impact of trade on biodiversity really shows it. Studies show that deforestation significantly increases over the three years following the enactment of a regional trade agreement, which coincides with an increase in agricultural and land conversion of course, because of the new deal. We also need to improve and to work on a real grievance and remediation mechanism. And this is interesting to note that the new chief trade enforcement officer which has a transversal role to also include the sustainable development chapters issues in in trade. So he announced forthcoming initiative yesterday in in time to really adopt grievance and remediation mechanism. It's important also for compelling partner countries to to act. A reform of the WTO is also needed. It should offer an opportunity to push forward the possibility to distinguish products according to their process and production methods. It has been said, we need also to work with developing countries and they should be compensated in case of adverse impacts of such measures and take into account the common but differentiated responsibility principle. This is also something really important for us. It's also something we mentioned in the EU Africa strategy where Inter also inter international trade also plays a role. And what we should really also keep in mind is that when we as Europeans implement the European Green Deal. It has consequences it has consequences for the partner countries for instance a higher protection of habitats in the EU can also result in important devastation water and air pollution in other countries and more generally natural resources depletion. So we need to bear that in mind in order to really work in partnership because of course we need to work on resilience and relocating strategic productions and it has been said before in the previous panel. But we really have to think globally and act together with the partner countries in order also to allow their to develop their own resilience and not to impact further the situation in the partner countries and specifically the development developing countries. So I will end it here for the trade policy review I think it's a real great opportunity to rediscuss the future of European trade and international trade. Since the outbreak of the crisis and the Covid crisis we feel and Anna can contradict me but I think in the European Parliament there's more sensitivity to issues such as resilience and the need to work on the supply chains and to go forward on the climate issue in order to revise the way we lead trade policies although of course colleagues and right wing colleagues of course are still in a kind of a conservative approach and this is something we really face really hard in the international trade committee which is much more conservative and business as usual minded than the environment committee which just adopted which just voted on the new climate law and adopted a more ambitious goal diminishing by 60% the emissions by 2030 which is ambitious so we'll see where it leads and of course for more coherence trade policy needs to be aligned on this climate goals. Thank you very much Saskia and you know it's good to have some positivity in there. I suspect more positivity than we're going to hear when we get to the UK, although I will also note that the David Newman was commenting in the chat box that you chaos theory at work that it was the rules the Covid rules being broken at a golf day in Northern Ireland a golf day in Ireland that led to lots of things changing about the approach to EU trade policy. But now we're going to move on to Jean Blalock who's the campaign and policy manager for global justice now, who I assume is going to reflect on what's happening in the UK Parliament and you we might be overwhelmingly optimistic about the EU but I'm afraid certainly from my perspective, it looks worse in the UK but you know Jean, hopefully whatever good news you can give us as well as the bad that'd be great. Over to you Jean. Thanks very much. So yeah just to I work on the trade campaign at Global Justice now for anybody who doesn't know us where a democratic social justice organization which campaigns as part of the global movement to challenge the powerful and create a more just and equal world and for us trade campaigning is a key part of that and the question posed around that we have trade and climate negotiations in a single world pulling in different directions is a key example of why trade campaigning is one of the things that we work on because yes this is this is this is a major issue in the in the UK. We the UK government is attempting to do several high risk trade deals in a hurry. In the context of Brexit of which the most scary and frightening is the US UK deal. We know for instance leaks from the negotiations about that that in about the second meeting that they ever had the UK tentatively raised the issue shall we talk about climate and the US said no. Absolutely not. Never. If you want to talk about climate the entire deal is off and in all of the meetings that those leaks showed the responses from thereafter. There was no further discussion about climate. And I mean the question the two to two sets of negotiations. The problem is that trade negotiations and trade agreements trade deals are powerful other than a military or security issue on the international stage. A trade agreement will override everything else including climate negotiations. We have given trade agreements teeth we have given them meaningful sanctions and we have allowed them to dictate to everything else and that's a problem. Because trade deals therefore can block climate action. They you know in a couple of ways in general we know that at the minute we've had a lost decade where we've had more than one lost decade but the you know of inaction over the climate and we really need a step change to actually change it step up a gear in what's actually being done and for that we need binding regulation. It's the only way that we are going to force major corporations and changes in policy around the world is to have real binding regulations that will make people change direction but trade deals are written to prefer and to privilege voluntary self regulation. They will have clauses written into them they're called necessity clauses that say that regulations and rules and laws should be the least burdensome necessary to achieve an object and it is therefore always possible for corporations so will the least burdensome necessary is voluntary self regulation and that's a strong driver against any climate action that we know that we need to take. Trade deals also have provisions in them the notorious corporate courts ISDS investor state dispute settlement which allows corporations to sue governments outside of the national legal system for amounts far higher than they might be able to get for anything that they might challenge within domestic law. In courts that only have to look at investors rights and we've already seen these being used to challenge climate decisions so we seen in the Netherlands at the moment where the Netherlands is facing out cold power and is being threatened with a corporate court case from a company Unipa which owns cold powered fire stations. And we see this is being used in a way to sort of create a chilling effect for other governments who might consider the same or at least ensure a massive payout for corporations so that if they're going to lose out they want to get they want to get more compensation than they would otherwise be entitled to which is something that we can see happening in Germany at the minute the same sort of thing is happening in Canada as well with ISDS trade deals can also make the climate crisis worse. So they encourage trade in fossil fuels and fossil fuel intensive sectors at a time when we should be keeping fossil fuel in the ground, and they can undermine a just transition. So steps that we need to take some of the enablers that are talked about in the report. We need to have targeted subsidies to build a sustainable economy they need to make sure that things are focused on building decent jobs so that people do not lease out globally the need for technology transfer between the north and the south. All of these things could be ruled out by trade deals. So what do we need to do well to record you can't really reconcile these two things what we need to do is take away the power of trade deals. We need to stop them being able to override the rest of international law and the and ensure that instead they support the policy and goals of other areas of policymaking whether it is climate whether it is health whether it is food. All of these things that go towards building up a more just and sustainable world. I mentioned the problem of ensuring that the things that we want to do do not conflict with the trade rules. Trade rules are not given they're not you know they're not just a fact of life they are created from policy decisions. If trade rules are causing a problem for us taking action on the climate. We need to change the trade rules. We need a fundamental change really in what trade deals are for so that they are not about removing barriers from the from trade they're not about enforcing an extreme free market view but they are instead about pushing boundaries and responsibilities on trade to ensure that they can actually support the goals that we need from elsewhere. And as well as that basic change to trade policy in the short term we need to stop the bad high risk trade deal so we need to stop a US trade deal we need to stop the EU Mercers for trade deal. I'll leave it there. That's great thank you very much, Jean and that set that out very clearly and you may hear some of those words repeated back to you from the House of Lords. I'll be borrowing some of your phrases next week. We're going back to the broader European perspective now with our next speaker, Anna Kavazieny, who's perhaps a European but also a German perspective and part of the trade committee so over to you Anna. Yeah thank you Natalie and also thanks Saskia and Jean for for your input and I can very well build on what you have said already. And also of course thanks for the invitation I also read the report with a lot of interest. So because we usually face difficulties in calculating the CO2 impact of trade agreements and not so many researchers are doing that so for me, the report was very very interesting to read. And also some of the conclusions. I mean, we for example as German greens have really difficult to speak them out like we need less trade. There are very hard times to really be super super open about this we have like a lot of things we want to change but the report is also really making a point for like having less trade at the end and I think it's a very valuable thing to to discuss as a kind of end goal. So Saskia and Jean have already outlined the big problem like the scenery and also talked about the huge things we need to change. I want to give two very concrete examples. Saskia and me are working on in the European Parliament and privacy also Ellie who was also a member of our international trade committee in a very very good and smart colleague that we are missing a lot. As Jean has put out the big problem is that trade agreements really have kind of the function as an international constitution. So they have like the above EU right above national law. So the way how international trade agreements are shaped really has a huge influence on our policymaking. And you can see this very well with two examples that I want to address today. One is the aforementioned micro sewer agreement. The EU is already negotiating since 20 years with the micro sewer countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay and a trade deal of the old sort because the mandate is 20 years old. And we think as gruelines that this micro sewer deal is really one of the worst examples and probably the best illustrations why international trade agreements are bad for the climate, because as Saskia mentioned already, you have on the one hand, rising agriculture exports from the micro sewer countries, especially Brazil, that, yeah, will very likely lead to more deforestation because the cattle and the poultry and the ethanol has to be grown somewhere. And on the other side, you don't have sanctions mechanisms or proper enforcement mechanisms for good things like human rights or deforestation of Paris agreements that is also mentioned in the agreement but cannot be enforced. So, we are at the moment, trying to really stop the negotiations or bury this agreement, because as the European Parliament we cannot put forward amendments for us it is like impossible to put forward amendments this is also one reason why often it's so hard to change trade policy or to change the course of trade policy we can only say yes or no at the end. So the green strategy is at the moment to bury it. When we talk about which kind of deal we would like to have, if the greens were like in having the absolute power or whatever. We always try to say that it is important that we have deforestation free supply chains to really make sure that none of the products that is exported needs to hire deforestation rates in the micro sewer countries and that mostly clean goods are basically traded but not the dirty goods. And other bad example of trade policy or of an agreement that is out now in the world is the energy charter treaty. It's when she talked about the very dangerous investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, so the energy charter treaty is an old treaty from the 90s. Several states are members like the EU countries but also former Soviet Union countries and some other countries so in total I think 58 And this agreement makes it possible for fossil fuel investors to sue states when they change the energy policy so when they kind of phase up coal, when they phase out fossil fuels and then it is possible for them to go to a private international like It's not even a judge or it's not even a court, it's just like a private kind of court system and sue the states for a lot of money so we think this treaty also really hinders the energy transition. And the interesting thing is, we are fighting at the moment to reform it or to end it at EU level and it's not even only a green position, it's also a position of the commission and a majority of the groups in the European Parliament but it's so hard to change. Because any change of the content of the treaty needs anonymity and as I said you have like 58 states, you have also states like Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan or Japan who don't want to change anything.  So the energy charter treaty is another example of first how international trade agreements or investment agreements hinder the energy transition. And it is also an example second for how difficult it is, even if you have a consensus, you have a kind of consensus in the European Union on that to change something because they're kind of set in stone. So, with this I also lead to my last point. I think the problem is at the moment that trade policy is likely or trade agreements, international trade rules, the WTO rules are really set in stone and are really hard to change.  We kind of killed the TTAB agreement because, yeah, it was so much activism and campaigning before, okay, then Trump was elected but I still think it was mainly the activism and politicians who killed it. But that doesn't mean that then the structural changes are coming.  And that's why it is very important what Saskia mentioned the trade policy review that we at the moment put so much pressure on the Commission that they come up with some structural changes. And campaigning and civil society is again super, super important. And of course I think this is my last point, it is important to change a little bit the rulemaking of how international trade is made. And for example, we Greens ask for the European Parliament also voting on the mandate. So the mandate is at the beginning of a trade negotiation. So far it is only the Council and the Commission who decide on what is in the mandate. It's like the negotiation directive. And the Parliament can only say something at the end after like six years, seven years, 20 years of negotiations. So we want that the Parliament is from the beginning included in the decision maker on the negotiation directives. And that also ideally we are able to put forward amendments to the negotiations or to the text because like this only having a yes or no at the end puts a lot of pressure on the parliamentarians to say yes, because it was negotiated so long. And the narrative is always like, yeah, we need more free trade and whatever we need more export opportunities for businesses. So it's, it's very hard to only say yes and no, I think it would be better if we could put forward also amendments. And I leave it here I could talk forever about trade but I hope it was like more or less understandable what my points were. Thank you. Thank you very much, Anna. I think that was very clear. And it's really from a British parliamentary perspective, just hearing, I understand why you want more control and control that starts earlier but the idea that Parliament has any control at all over trade deals. That's what we're fighting for what we'll be fighting for in the trade bill because at the moment effectively. Since we've left the EU the British Parliament has no say in this at all, which is something that I suspect Ellie Chowns might be going to comment on but we haven't had a pre discussion for this. So I'm just going to hand over to Ellie to say what she wants to say on this topic and before I do that just a reminder that we'll be having a short group discussion about this. So at any time they occurred here to post questions in the chat that some people are already doing. So over to you, Ellie. Thank you, Natalie and thank you everyone else and I have to say it's such a pleasure to see Saskia and Anna again after all this time. And thank you both then to Jean for your really interesting and detailed contributions. I'm going to be much more general and broad but and I'm setting a timer for three minutes I'm just going to be really brief, I think. And partly to make up for the fact that I don't have any detailed knowledge on this topic really anymore from the, from how I did the, when I was on the International Trade Committee but I just want to talk about a couple of things. My first response to that question how can you reconcile the climate and the trade negotiations when they're operating completely separately with I don't know, you know, isn't that the kind of core real difficulty operating in separate tracks we need to get them embedded so that trade and climate are kind of really working together and I think people have touched on a couple of things so Regulatory, regulatory, right, so we've talked about how there can be environmental kind of clauses in trade agreement, but they need to be enforceable and they need to be enforced which requires political will and pressure. Perhaps there's more to be done in terms of valuation so that the environment is valued in similar terms in which kind of the benefits of trade are valued economically and so that that can be integrated to that's one dimension.  The second dimension is kind of philosophically right we've had decades of emphasis on globalization in which the globalization that's been talked about has all been in terms of trade, increasing, increasing kind of financial connections around the world and you know look where that's going, it's not been, it's not been a great path, but we have to admit that it has had poverty reduction benefits from a lot of people. The massive reduction in monetary poverty in China, for example, is directly related to their engagement in trade. And so, you know, what we need to do is move away from that type of globalization to one where we're thinking globally in terms of the biosphere, but we're trading locally as much as possible and I think that that is what the report, the greenhouse report that we're discussing today, has set out so clearly in terms of the kind of blockers and enablers, how we can move to that. And that's not in any way similar to the sort of dynamic that we've got in British politics at the moment, which is talking about kind of more local control over trade in a really kind of closed-minded, terribly destructive sort of way. We can see that trend within global discussions as well. It's not just a UK thing, but it's really, really kind of emphasized by Brexit. And that brings me on to my third point really, which is politically, how can we get these agendas aligned. And the truth is, by getting people into positions of political power, who are absolutely committed to integrating trade and climate. Now, we have a particular problem in the UK. We've got an appalling electoral system. We have total under-representation of the sort of progressive views that are represented by Jean and by Anna and Saskia. We've got to change that. And I think that there's an element of kind of hope in what Anna was saying just then about activism, changing things, you know, activism on Mercosur, activism on TTIP, activism even on the Vietnam case, you know, we didn't kind of win that, but activism is important. It does kind of, it keeps the pressure on, it makes some shift happen. That takes me to the end of my three minutes. I'm going to stop there, but I think we have got to not give up and be active in politics and on the streets on these things. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Ellie, for your very much discipline, self-discipline, and also thank you for setting out a positive vision of doing things ourselves. You know, I have a saying that politics should be what you do not have done to you, which feeds very nicely into our next session, which is discussion in groups of four. You'll be sent off to rooms. You should be familiar with this by now. A chance to toss around with a few other people, share your thoughts, and perhaps come back with some questions. Do type them in the chat box as they occur to you, and we'll come back to our panel to reflect on those questions and what each other sees. Okay, so welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a nice chat there. A reminder to everybody to stick any comments, questions that you have in the chat box, where are we picking things up from. And I'm going to start with the question that David Newman put in about, and perhaps broaden it out a little as well. David asks, with the UK government willing to break international agreements. And here, of course, we're talking about the internal markets bill in the UK, which would overwrite tear up the withdrawal agreement that was only agreed earlier this year. And I'm going to drip this to either Saskia or Anna, whoever'd like to pick this up to start off with. Could this be a precedent for other states overriding trade agreements on non trade policy grounds, which is an interesting positive take potentially David on this. I'd like to throw into this mix, starting with Saskia and Anna. We didn't mention that the UK, and I know the government is very keen on the idea of free trade zones and setting up free trade zones in the UK. At the end of the Brexit transition period. So I guess you what impacts positive and negative do you see current and future UK policies having perhaps Saskia if we could start with you. Thank you. I didn't find a mic. I think Anna is really much more on the UK EU negotiations. And so it would be interesting also to go to her. I have to say I'm, I'm in doubt about what what's going to happen and taking a little bit. D zooming a little bit I just chatted briefly with Gina about the possibilities to still in some way influence each other positively also how can, how can we keep or types or links. UK and EU in order to go hand in hand together and I don't think it will be possible with Johnson. Let's hope that the future politics will will will of course change and that will be able to build on new basis even if if Brexit goes through. We still together need to work hand in hand. And I also believe that we can be a model as greens and and I don't talk only about the political side but also as as Ellie mentioned that we have to be stronger together and geo civil society and economic academic level and political level in order to show that we can work together. I take the example of the insane flows, imports and exports of products of salmon for example from the UK and the EU that is exported and the other side we import almost as many tons of salmon from from other countries, and we have together to rethink those flows those imports and exports in order to relocalize and become more resilient and this is true for the UK this is true for the other countries and I think we have to to to keep working that way even though on a political level for the moment we are in this trouble with with Johnson. Thanks for reminding us that this is only a temporary situation. Perhaps Anna if you'd like to sort of come in on your thoughts on on the UK's impact and what what what difference it's making in the current situation. Thank you so much. First of all, one word on on the question of breaking international trade rules. I mean, it is always somehow possible because as you know there's not an international police or not an international army lucky that will intervene if you break international trade rules. But what you can really see is that trade rules are much stronger enforced than for example, human rights conventions or other environmental rights so I think this is a huge imbalance imbalance there's human rights and trade rules basically an international enforcement. And you can also see that very little states actually break international trade rules because at the end. I think it's also about international reputation. It's about fearing the loss of investors or whatsoever but often really trades as states, for example, do if the what the WTO says if there's a court case at the WTO or something. But of course the person who's at the moment, breaking all international trade rules is Trump and no surprise he's just doing whatever he wants to. And you can see that this also creates a huge chaos and a huge like time download spiral so I guess the option is probably not breaking international trade rules but really trying to change them. This would still be my personal, my personal way forward on the second question. I find it quite interesting that the European Union has such a such a strong stance on this level playing field. Not only the Greens, as you know it is really like the EU Commission, the chief negotiator brand the majority of the parliament, even the conservatives, you know they kind of make this very very strong and level playing field is of course at the tool to prevent social dumping environment dumping and prevent what Johnson was talking about these like export zones or whatever to make great Britain like a assembly hub and work with dumping. So, I think probably like, and I'm sure you're doing that already like greens and also civil society should at this point of time really trying to influence put pressure on the government to accept this level playing field idea because it means high environmental and social standards I guess. So, what is the last sentence on that was really surprising to me is that the US so firm on it because when we started negotiating whatever in February. I was sure that the greens will be probably the last one once in the European Parliament at the end fighting for that, and that the you will just give into Johnson but so far they didn't and I think this is at least a good thing, although of course I'm also worried about that. This chaos continues and then there will be no deal at the end. Thank you very much Anna and yes, I mean worrying about no deal and just offering a personal view I think crash out as I would describe it is now the most likely outcome but perhaps Jean, you're the logical person to come to with that question about asking about civil society what's being done what pressures being put on UK government and how you see really the political landscape. So over to you Jean. Yes, I mean, I think, well, there's a lot of pressure at the moment around both the EU negotiations and the US negotiations because it's, it's not a it's not a coincidence that the government has chosen to run the two negotiations in parallel but at the start of the year very deliberately decided to start formal negotiations with the US at more or less the same moment as it began the formal negotiations for any new deal. And that's because I mean this issue of the level playing field. I mean, there is pressure from so many as somebody in the chat was talking about the CBI for instance, I mean, what one of the unusual things at the moment in the is that you see organizations like the CBI struggling to have any influence whatsoever over the UK government. Because for, for, for many of the people within government who are the leading components of Brexit, it is exactly to change our regulations that they saw the point of Brexit as being so I mean there's a story in the news today about that Dominic Cummings say talking in not about climate issues but around digital issues online issues, and saying well one of the, you know, the great opportunities of Brexit is to tear up the EU's rules on privacy and GDPR. So, I mean, I think it's, it's important to understand that for many people the purpose of these kinds of trade negotiations is to move the UK away from the EU's pattern of regulations towards the US pattern of regulations. And here I mean I, as a trade campaigner I end up talking about chlorine chicken far more than I would ever really want to talk about chlorine chicken you cannot escape it. And, but it's, it's merely iconic it's the issues that come around an issue like that. They're not, it's not the issue is not about one product whether we're going to start importing one product onto a supermarket shelves. It's whether we're going to import the entire US regulatory approach, whether we're going to move away from the precautionary principle of the EU. The whole approach that basically puts the burden on a manufacturer or a seller to prove that something is safe before it goes on the market and that if there is uncertainty to, to take a better safe than sorry approach, as opposed to the US approach where the burden is put on the consumer. Or the regulator to prove that something is dangerous for it to be taken off the market. And that that means it's entirely clear that for many in the UK. Well, okay, so for people like the trade minister Liz trust for Boris Johnson, that's an opportunity for them to move to the US regulatory approach, which includes on environmental regulation and on climate action. And it's clear that one of the reasons that Trump wants a deal with the, with the UK is to undermine the EU. I mean, it's not that the UK is that important to him and himself, but one of the things to do is to peel the UK away from the EU's regulatory system. I mean, there's a lot at stake in these types of trade negotiations. It's not, it's not just about sort of what you might think of as trade. It's really about. Well, in some cases, our entire approach to how we want our society to be governed and regulated. Sorry, that got a bit apocalyptic. Thank you very much. I think perhaps you've illustrated particularly to our European guests. It's something that I think generally across Europe has not perhaps been widely understood, although perhaps is becoming more understood is how much Britain now has a far right Trumpian government. And also just to comment on the chlorinated chicken, one of the things I find whenever I talk about that, because it is a useful shorthand for that whole deregulation US type approach. I get lots of people coming to me saying well I'm vegan or vegetarian so I'm not really worried about the chicken. At which point I point out that there's also scores of pesticides used on fruit and vegetables in the US that are banned in the EU and currently in the UK.  I'm just going to come to Ellie for some final comments because we're just about out of time. But I think there was a question in the chat box from Liz Levedal talking about how often, I've lost it on the spot, but basically talking about how you as greens as people from our side of politics on the left of politics, we tend to get really involved in engaging things like environmental committees, getting engaged in committees about labour rights, those kind of issues. You were on the trade committee when you were an MEP. I guess it would be interesting to know why you did that, what barriers you found, how that's influenced your thinking going forward. I think this whole report today obviously is greens very much engaging in these issues, but what was the experience and what kind of reception did you get over to you, Ellie? Interesting question. I mean, I chose to be on the trade and international development committees because that's kind of my professional background and that's sort of what I've gone back to now with my work at the university. But I suppose, you know, there's a broader question there about greens getting involved in areas that are traditionally not seen as green. You know, people expect us to do environment committee type stuff and maybe not the kind of the stuff with numbers on it about jobs and international trade and so forth. And I think, of course, we've absolutely got to engage in it. And for me personally as an experience working with amazing people like Saskia and the rest of the team, you know, actually greens have got an awful lot of really important stuff to say on trade, as this report kind of demonstrates as well. And I think that I suppose we bring a kind of, you know, we're very values driven, right? So we bring an approach to discussions of trade that is very much rooted in concern about people concerned about the environment. We don't just think that trade numbers are abstract, we know that they have real, real costs. And I mean, if I could just kind of reflect back on a couple of the questions that David Newman also asked in the chat that were reflected on earlier. You know, that one about whether Boris Johnson's example of breaking international trade law could be a model for others. I mean, absolutely not. Obviously, we've already seen that Boris Johnson's government is very happy to break our own domestic law, as they did with suspending Parliament last year. Now they want to break international trade law. You know, where, where does it end? I really don't know. And I'm totally with Anna on this, you know, breaking stuff is much easier to do than building it up. But that is actually what the European Union, that's one of the things that I really believe, believe in and believed in being part of it. You know, it's doing that careful, patient, close, you know, detailed work of trying to build up better ways, better rules that we can all collectively live by and work by. And then there was another question from David, actually, which was about having decision makers share the costs or pay the costs of the decisions that they make and the environmental damage that that does. And that, you know, that fundamental principle, pollute to pay is so kind of fundamental to what greens are trying to achieve. And absolutely, you know, perhaps there's stuff that could be done to extend kind of magnet steel type laws to cover environmental damage as well. I don't know, perhaps that's an agenda, but fundamentally, I think that as we've seen actually with GDPR, the gene was just talking about, you know, greens actually got a lot to say in areas that maybe traditionally, you know, beyond the sort of environmental areas, like privacy, like digital, but actually it just is just so important to have greens in the room saying those things and making those arguments. I can, I can only absolutely agree. And I want to say thank you very much to all of our panelists. I think that was a really fruitful discussion. If I can just take the chair's property for a minute or so to reflect back on that, I must admit I agree with everyone who said you breaking rules is not the answer. I think Johnson has done lots of rule breaking in the UK and I very much suspect we're about to see with Trump. If he loses the election and attempt to break entirely break the US Constitution, which is going to put us into some very difficult challenging times for the US and possibly for the whole world. And I think what you just said, Ellie, about Jitski style sanctions, of course, that makes me think very much of the push to have a global law and ecocide balancing the, the, the genocide law. And I think that something that we haven't perhaps really focused on all, but we've certainly talked about an around a lot in we've seen lots of questions in the chat is the question of do you ban things or do you tax them really heavily. Those are some of the questions that we really are sort of asking and tackling today and perhaps this report tackles. So I'm going to finish now we're going to finish pretty well on time. So I'm going to hand back to Anna or whoever from Greenhouse is go to sort of do the final wrap up technical things. But I really again want to repeat my thanks as chair to everyone who's spoken today, everyone who's come along and participated and had a chat and posted questions. I think we've done our best. We've had lots of discussion about democracy, and we've done our best to make this within the limits of our technology, a democratic kind of event. And I think that's really made it much richer. So thank you everyone for your time for your participation for your knowledge and contributions and handing back now to Anna, all the organizers. Thank you ever so much, but naturally for doing such a great job chairing. I'd like to thank all the speakers and everybody for contributing and everybody's put questions in the chat and we participated in the discussions in the breakout rooms. I particularly like to thank Peter for doing all the technical stuff as well as doing his presentation and everything. And Sarah Finch, who's perhaps hasn't been prominent in this, but has been very much done a lot of the behind the scenes work in organizing this event. And so please fill in the short feedback survey that you could be getting. And on that survey, there's a couple of boxes that you could take if you want to receive news from Greenhouse and from the Green European Foundation. So hopefully won't overwhelm your inbox. Now as part of this project, there's a few mini reports that are that will be be produced soon. One is about how to frame sustainable resource use and how this intersects with climate climate challenge. And the second about the infrastructure requirement for zero carbon. Can we build our way out of the climate emergency. And the other just to flag finally a few other greenhouse publications that are relevant to this issue. One is another Brexit is possible by Emma Dawney. So that's putting the sort of case for the UK post Brexit becoming more self-reliant if you like, rather than going for the global Britain type aim.  They're both on the Greenhouse websites under publications and reports. So if you scroll down on that page, you can see all our various reports. So I think that's it. So thanks ever so much for taking part. So thank you very much everybody.


OK, good evening, and welcome to the second session of the Jews for Judaism Counter-Missionary Survival Seminar. Tonight's topic is the real Messiah, part one. Stay tuned for next week, part two. So tonight's class is going to be a very critical class because we're going to discuss the central claim of Christianity. The word Messiah in Greek is Christos. And when people refer to Jesus as Jesus Christ, Christ is not his last name, like Jesus Goldberg or Jesus Cohen. But Christ means Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. That's the claim they're making. They're making the claim that Jesus was the Christ, meaning Jesus was the Messiah. Our question tonight is going to be, how do we evaluate that claim? How do we know whether or not someone was the Messiah or whether someone is the Messiah? Obviously, to answer this question, we have to have a clear and accurate definition of what is the Messiah. Without a clear definition, there's no way of evaluating whether or not someone is or isn't. Let me give you an example. This morning, I was listening to the radio, and they asked the question of their listeners, how many of them thought that the terrible bombing in Boston was an act of terror? How many people thought the terrible bombing in Boston was an act of terror? And it was reported that 82% of the people listening to this radio station thought that the act that the bombing in Boston was an act of terror. I thought this was very strange. To me, it was 100% clear that the bombing in Boston was an act of terror. 100% clear. I was wondering, why did only 82% of the people think that it was an act of terror? What did they think it was? So it was clear to me that the problem here was what is the definition of terror? Obviously, not all of the people answering this question had the exact same definition of what is terrorism. So our question tonight, the issue tonight is going to be, what is the definition of the Messiah? What is the meaning of the Messiah? Who is the Messiah? What is the Messiah? And once we have a very clear definition, if we have a clear template, then we can evaluate anyone, whether they are or they aren't. That's the job for tonight. That's our assignment for tonight. So let's begin with trying to understand at the beginning tonight simply the meaning of the word. The word Messiah in Hebrew is masiach. Masiach. Masiach basically means to anoint. To anoint in the Bible was the act of usually pouring oil on someone or something in order to dedicate that person or that thing into the service of God. So for example, when you go through, when you read through the Bible, you'll see that when the Jewish people built the Mishkan, the tabernacle in the desert after they came out of Egypt, they anointed the vessels of the Mishkan. They anointed the menorah and the altar, et cetera. They took oil and they poured it over the parts of the Mishkan. We go through the Bible, we see that there were special people who were anointed, who had oil put on their head. For example, Aaron, the first high priest, was anointed with oil. So the high priest, the Koen Gadol, was anointed, was someone who was anointed. And that person would be called an anointed one. The person would be called a Mashiach, a Mashiach, a Messiah. We see in the Bible that the kings, the Jewish kings, like Sha'ul, Saul, the first king, was anointed with oil. He had oil put on his head. So Sha'ul would be called a Mashiach, a Messiah. David, David, the second king, is anointed with oil. And so he is called an anointed one, a Messiah, a Mashiach. There are times in the Bible where we see that prophets, a Navi, a prophet could be anointed with oil. So the important thing to understand is that in our Bible, in our Tanakh, in the Jewish Bible, there are many messiahs. That's an important thing to understand. There are many people who could be called a Messiah. It's not just one Messiah. There are many people. If you were living at the times of the Bible and you asked someone, where is the Messiah, they would say, which one? Are you referring to the high priest? Are you referring to the king? Are you referring to the prophet? Question tonight that we're going to try to analyze though is, does the Bible teach us anything about a special Messiah who would come in the future? And that Messiah we call the Messiah, the Messiah. In Hebrew, we would say ha Mashiach, ha Mashiach. Not just any Messiah, but the Messiah. So again, we start off tonight understanding that in the Bible, there are many messiahs. But where does the Bible speak about the Messiah? And the important thing to understand is the Bible never speaks about someone that the Bible calls the Messiah. Now that would have made the class tonight much shorter. It would have been a very easy class if you could go to the Bible, open up the index. The index of a Bible is called a concordancia of concordance.  And let's say you would find 25 places where the Bible, the Torah, speaks about the Messiah. And you would know exactly what the Bible teaches us about the Messiah. The problem for us tonight is that word never appears in the Bible to describe someone who is going to come in the future. How do we discover? How do we know that there is such a concept in the Bible? How do we know that the Bible has such a concept of a special anointed person who will come in the future that we call the Messiah? So let's try to understand how this concept developed. Number one, first part. The first thing to understand is that if you read through the entire Bible, you read through our entire Bible, you'll find there is one primary theme. When the Bible speaks about the future. One primary theme. Now there are times occasionally, there are times occasionally when a prophet speaks about the future when he's warning the Jewish people to improve. Sometimes the prophet might say to the Jewish people, if you don't improve, God will punish you. That's a prediction. So for example, when Jonah, the prophet, comes to Nineveh. So Jonah says that in 40 days, Nineveh will be overturned unless the people there improve. So there the prophet is making a prediction. And occasionally, you will find in the Bible times when the prophet makes a prediction, warning the people about what is going to happen if they don't improve. However, most of the predictions in the Bible, most of the we call prophecies in the Bible that speak about the future, are describing a special world, a new kind of world that will exist, meaning this. For most of human history, for most of human history and for most of Jewish history, the world has been a broken place. The world has been a place of war. The world has been a place of suffering. The world has been a place of unhappiness. The Jewish people have suffered throughout our history. The world is not the way it is supposed to be. The prophets all spoke about a time in the future when the world will be improved. The prophets all described a world where the world is going to be what we call a utopia, a paradise. That's the major theme in the Bible when the prophets spoke about the future. Let's try to understand what picture they painted. What kind of picture do they paint? The first theme that we'll discuss, if you want to follow in these sheets, it starts on page four. But the first theme that the prophets described was that the Jewish people would return to live in their homeland in Eretz Yisrael, in the land of Israel. Meaning from much of Jewish history, from much of Jewish history, we have been in Galut, we have been in exile. The prophets tell us that in the future, in the future, all the Jewish people will return to their homeland. All the Jewish people will return to live in the land of Israel. That includes, by the way, not just the Jewish people who are living in the world today, but we know that over 2,000 years ago, we had 10 of our tribes were taken into exile and basically disappeared. We call them the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. And so the prophets here predict, they tell us that in the future, all those people, they were called the tribes of Israel, the ones that remained, we are from what's called the tribes of Judah, the kingdom of Judah. But the 10 Northern tribes from the kingdom of Israel that went into exile, they will be reunited with us. So not only will all the Jewish people that we know, all the Jewish people that we know today, come back to live in the land of Israel. But we're told that the lost tribes, those 10 lost tribes from the kingdom of Israel, they will also reunite with us. That's an amazing prophecy that the Jewish people will be reunited in our homeland. The second theme that I want to point out is on page 5. And this theme tells us that when the Jewish people, when the Jewish people return to our land, we will rebuild the Beit HaNiktash. We will have the holy temple restored in Jerusalem. Today, we do not have a holy temple. So the prophets tell us we will have a third temple in Jerusalem that I want to describe, is that the prophets teach us on the top of page 6. The prophets teach us on the top of page 6 that not only will the Jewish people return to the land of Israel, but the Jewish people will return to the observance of the Torah. So the prophets teach us that it's not only going to be a physical return of the Jewish people, it will be a spiritual return where all the Jewish people will now observe the Torah. Today, in the world today, maybe 15%, 20%, I'm not sure the exact numbers. But it's not a majority of the Jewish people today who observe the Torah. It's a small percentage. The prophets teach us that in the future, when we come back to our land, all the Jewish people will observe the Torah. On the bottom of page 6, the next theme that I want to point out is the theme that this will begin a reign of peace throughout the entire world. This is probably one of the major themes that the prophets speak about. Again, we are living today, right now, in a world where there are many wars going on, many people being killed every day. The Jewish people still live in our land today under attack. There are terrorist attacks. There are rockets and missiles being fired at Israel. Today, as we sit here in Toronto, our brothers and sisters living in Israel are in fear of the Iranians building a nuclear bomb and threatening the land of Israel. So the prophets tell us that in the future, there will be universal peace. Peace for the Jewish people living in the land of Israel and peace throughout the entire world. As a matter of fact, the prophets tell us that all of the weapons of war will be destroyed. All the weapons of war will be destroyed. On page 7, we find an amazing additional element of what this paradise will look like. When we study the Bible, we are taught that one of the major purposes of the Jewish people, one of the major reasons why God shows us to be His special people, is so that we should be an or lagoyim, a light to the nations. So in the beginning of Buresheet, in the beginning of Genesis, God says to Abraham, through your people, all of the nations of the world will be blessed. Before God gives the Jewish people the Torah at Mount Sinai, God says that you will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a Mamlechet Kohanim, the Goi Kadosch. The Jewish people are supposed to be teachers of the rest of the world. The prophet Isaiah tells us the Jewish people are supposed to be God's witnesses. God's witnesses. We are supposed to testify about God to the world. And so one of the themes in the Bible is that in the future, the world is going to turn to the Jewish people and ask us to teach them about God. It's one of the most amazing prophecies in the Bible. Again, the Bible says that we are supposed to be teachers. We're supposed to be a light. And the Bible tells us that one day, the nations will turn to our light. The prophet Zechariah, the prophet Zechariah, in chapter 8, verse 23, says that in those days, 10 people from every nation in the world will grab hold of a Jew and ask us to teach them about God. They will say, we have heard that God is with you. We want you to teach us about God. So one of the major themes in the Bible is that in the future, the entire world, every human being, will come to believe in God. Now, this that I have described to you is a pretty amazing picture. The prophets teach us something that is incredible. The prophets are telling us that in the future, the world is going to be a different place. The prophets tell us that in the future, the Jewish people are going to be living in their homeland. They're going to have a temple. They're going to all observe the Torah. We're going to be a light to the nations of the world. We're going to spread the knowledge of God to the rest of the world. And the whole world will become a world where, since everyone is a child of God, everyone in the world is a brother and a sister where all brothers and sisters were the children of one God. So there will be peace throughout the entire world. It's an amazing, amazing description of a totally transformed world, a utopia, a paradise. Now, the interesting thing is that if you were to read through all of the passages on these pages, what's interesting is that all they describe is a transformed world. They don't mention any particular person who will be playing a special role at that time. So if we are looking for information about the Messiah, it's not going to be in those passages. All of these passages in the Bible just talk about a transformed world, but they don't mention any special person. It's one of the reasons why some people, I believe, mistakenly thought that the Bible only describes a messianic age, but not a Messiah. There are people who believe that the Bible only speaks about a messianic age, but not about a person that we call the Messiah. The reason I believe they are incorrect is because if we turn to page 8, if we look at page 8, we will see that there are among these hundreds of passages. Let me make this clear to you. When it comes to this original collection of material in the Bible, we're talking about probably at least 100, if not more, at least 100 passages that speak about a transformed world. And I describe that in the circles that you see there, the big circle I call A. The A circle is the big circle because here we're talking about, let's say approximately 100 passages in the Bible, approximately 100, probably even more. But inside that big set, it's a set, again, of passages that describe a transformed utopian world, there is a smaller set that we call the B, the B circle. And those passages in the B circle, they speak about not only a transformed utopian world, they speak about a special person who will be a descendant of King David, he will be a descendant of King David, and he will be the king, he will be the king of the Jewish people at that time. It's important to remember that the Bible never calls that person the Messiah. The Bible never calls that person the Messiah. However, we know that person will be a king. As a matter of fact, one of the promises that God made to King David was that any future king has to be a descendant of him. David was told that he will be the origin, the source of all future kings. And so what we have here is a picture in the Bible of approximately 10 passages, about 10 passages, that describe this special king who will rule as the leader, as the ruler of the Jewish people, when the whole world is transformed into a paradise, when the Jews have come back to their land, when the temple's been rebuilt, when the Jews return to the Torah, when we spread the knowledge of God to the rest of the world, and when the whole world is living in peace, we're told there's going to be a special king from the line of David, and that is the Messiah. That particular Messiah, that particular anointed one, we call the Messiah. We call that anointed one the anointed one. Again, the Bible never calls this person the Messiah, but obviously he is. What the Bible is describing here, very simply, is a special Messiah, a special anointed one, a special king who will rule when the world has reached its goal, when the world has been transformed into the kind of world it is supposed to be. We're going to read some of the highlights of what the Bible describes here. And I want you to pay careful attention. In Isaiah chapter 11, the Bible tells us there will be a descendant of Jesse, Yishai. Yishai we know is the father of King David. So the Bible tells us there will be a descendant of Yishai and the spirit of God will rest upon him. He will have a spirit of wisdom and understanding, and he will be filled with a spirit of the fear of God. He will be a very special person, wise and righteous, and we're told he will judge with righteousness and we're told that he will be a righteous person and a wise person. And we're told that when he is here, we're told that the wolf will be able to live with the sheep and the prophet Isaiah here describes all the animals that would never get along living together in peace. And then finally, Isaiah says here in chapter 11, verse nine, they will neither hurt nor destroy in all of my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. Again, these are the two themes. It says, why will there be no more destruction and no more people hurting each other? Why? Because the knowledge of God will be spread across the world like the waters that cover the sea. The prophet Yermiyahu, Jeremiah in his 23rd chapter tells us again, the days are coming, he says. It's going to happen in the future where God says, I will raise up for David a righteous descendant, a righteous branch, and he will reign as king and deal wisely. So again, a wise and righteous king from the line of David. And Jeremiah says that when he is ruling, Israel, Judah will be safe. We're not going to be in safety. We're not going to have to worry about any more war and terrorism. The prophet Ezekiel, Yecheskel in his 37th chapter. I want to share this with you because it's probably the most compact passage that tells us exactly what this Messiah will be. Ezekiel, Yecheskel says, my servant David, God says his servant David will be a king over the Jewish people. And God says they will follow my ordinances and keep my decrees and fulfill them. The Bible says we're going to follow God's Torah. And then it says they will live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, in which your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children's children will live there forever. My servant David will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant. And I will bless them and I will multiply them. And I will set my sanctuary among them forever more. They're going to have their holy temple. My dwelling place will be with them. I will be their God and they will be my people. Then the nations of the world will know that I am God who sanctifies Israel when my sanctuary is among them forever more. When will the world finally realize that God means business?  Now, what I would like to review now with you, what I think is very important is to understand three things about this definition. Again, what I tried to show you very simply tonight is that there are two sets in the Bible.  And then a smaller collection that describes the same transformed world but also tell us there'll be a special king that will reign as the ruler of the Jewish people when all of that happens. So the bottom line here is that what we know, what we see from the Bible is that the Messiah will be the wise and righteous descendant of King David who will rule Israel as their king when the world has been transformed into a utopia. The important thing to understand, this is a fine point, but an important point is that the Bible does not spend a lot of time describing this person. There are only let's say 10 passages that speak about him. And all we know is that he will descend from David, he will be wise, he'll be righteous. But the Bible spends most of its time describing not the Messiah, but the Bible spends most of its time describing what the world will look like when the Messiah is here. That's the important thing to understand that the emphasis in the Bible is describing what the world will look like when he, the Messiah, is here. So there are three parts to this chart that I want to go over with you now. Part number one is that this description I've just painted for you is exhaustive. By exhaustive I mean that it uses up, it uses up all the material in the Bible that describes a descendant of David who will come in the future. In other words, there is nothing else in the Bible. There is not one other description in the Bible of a descendant of David who will come in the future and do anything else. Now why is this important? Because it's very obvious that Jesus, not just Jesus, no one has accomplished this, right? I mean that we Christians often ask me, they'll say, if you don't believe in Jesus, they say, how will you know when, who the Messiah is? How will you know who the Messiah is? And I say, how will I know? It's very simple. I'll look out the window, I'll read the newspaper, and I'll see, have all these things happened. Again, what the Bible is telling us is we will know who the Messiah is based upon whether or not the world has been transformed. So if I see the Jewish people have returned to their land, they've built the temple, the whole world is chasing after the Jewish people, teach us please about God. All the Jewish people are observing the Torah. The whole world becomes believers in God, and all the weapons of war are destroyed in this peace throughout the world. That's pretty obvious. I'll see that the Messiah has come. Tell you a story. Many years ago, I went to a meeting of Christians. Most of them are very nice to me.  I was shocked. I said, why do you say that we are all very stupid? So he asked me a question. He said, who was the greatest rabbi that ever lived?  He says, well, I'll tell you.  That's what he told me.  I said, what's wrong with listening to the rabbis? So he said, well, wasn't Rabbi Akiva the greatest rabbi that ever lived? He wanted to know why I thought the greatest rabbi was. I don't know. He said, Rabbi Akiva wasn't Rabbi Akiva the greatest rabbi that ever lived. And I said, Rabbi Akiva is probably in the top 10. So he said to me, well, Rabbi, let's go back. Didn't Rabbi Akiva make a very, very serious mistake when he assumed that Bar Kokhba was the Messiah? Now, in case you had not heard of Bar Kokhba, he was a Jewish general. He led a rebellion against the Romans. About a hundred years after Jesus and Rabbi Akiva pointed to him and said, he is going to be the Messiah. So this Christian said to me, look, if your greatest rabbi, Rabbi Akiva, was wrong about the Messiah, then maybe all the other rabbis are wrong for not believing in Jesus.  That was his whole argument. So I smiled inside because this is a very famous story that happened to one of our great rabbis over a hundred years ago, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. It happened to him on a train. He heard a missionary talking to some Jews. I just said the same thing now. Rabbi Chaim of Brisk said, I asked this Christian the following question. I said, you're putting down all the Jews for listening to the rabbis because you assume that our greatest rabbi was wrong. I said to this Christian, how do you know Rabbi Akiva was wrong? I asked this Christian, what makes you so sure that Rabbi Akiva was wrong? I said, how do you know that Bar Kokhba wasn't the Messiah? How do you know Bar Kokhba was not the Messiah? And the Christian looked at me and said, what are you talking about? Bar Kokhba, he was killed by the Romans and did not bring peace to the world. I said, if it was so obvious that Bar Kokhba wasn't the Messiah because he was killed by the Romans and didn't bring peace to the world, that's the same exact thing that happened to Jesus. He was killed by the Romans and didn't bring peace to the world. So the problem basically at this point for Christianity is that we have in the Bible a very clear description of what the Messiah will be. And the primary thing to understand is that the Bible describes what the world will look like when the Messiah is here. 2,000 years ago when Jesus came, the world did not look like this. The world did not meet any of these requirements. The world was still a broken world. The Jews were still suffering. There was war throughout the world. Not everybody believed in God. Most of the world were pagans. So it's very clear that the Bible has a job description. Jesus did not fulfill the job description. Why is it so important to say that this diagram is exhaustive? Meaning there's nothing else in the Bible about a descendant of David who will come in the future. Because what I've done now in number one over here is to eliminate, we've eliminated any alternative job description. Meaning what the Christian cannot come to me now and say is, look, you have made a very pretty diagram here but there are many, many other passages in the Bible that talk about this descendant of David and he will do other things, right? And maybe Jesus did those things. The problem is there isn't anything else in the Bible about a descendant of David who will come in the future. So this description I've given you is exhaustive. There's not anything else in the Bible about a descendant of David who will come in the future. Number two, this description that we've studied tonight is clear and consistent. Now this is very important to understand not just for tonight, but for the rest of the class, for the rest of the next weeks. Because the question is, how do you know whether anything that you're studying, whether you're right, whether you really understand something properly? So I believe that in order to know that you understand the Bible properly, you can test that if your understanding is clear and consistent. Let me explain what this means. By clear, what I mean is that we are looking at passages where everyone agrees to what it means. There are sometimes when you read the Bible, and that's just the Bible. Sometimes you could read any text and not everybody agrees. Once everyone doesn't agree, right, then you could have your opinion, you could have your opinion. But here we're dealing with passages which are clear. Now how do we know when something is clear? We know something is clear when everyone agrees. When everyone agrees, it's clear. So the interesting thing is that when it comes to these passages, it's not just the Jewish people who say they are describing the Messiah. All the Christians agree with us. Everyone agrees. Yes, these passages are speaking about the Messiah. That's how I know we can be comfortable in the way we're understanding this material because there's no dispute. Everyone agrees. Secondly, not only is the material clear, meaning the passages that this is based upon are clear, but they're consistent. By that I mean, this whole picture I've developed is not only based upon one isolated passage in one book of the Bible, right? If I were to tell you the whole concept I have of the Messiah is based upon one passage in the book of Jeremiah, that's not so strong. But what I've shown you is it's a picture that is corroborated, meaning it, so it's a picture which is corroborated, it's substantiated, not just by one passage. It's consistently spoken about in many passages of the Bible, in many books of the Bible. Jeremiah speaks about it. Isaiah speaks about it. Ezekiel speaks about it. Hosea speaks about it. Many of our prophets speak about the exact same description of this descendant of David. So again, we can feel comfortable, not just comfortable, we can feel certain that our description is accurate because it's clear and it is consistent.  You can see it. Let me explain what this means. If you read through the entire Bible, try to find out how often does the Bible speak about believing in the Messiah, to believe in the Messiah. That expression never comes up. We live here in a wonderful country. Stephen Harper is our prime minister. Anyone tell you, I happen to personally believe that Stephen Harper is the prime minister. Or would anyone say, you know, I happen to personally believe that Barack Obama is the president of the United States. You would think someone like that was strange. What do you mean you believe it to be true? It's not anything you believe in. We know that Barack Obama is the president of the United States. He won the election. He's sitting in the White House. He's the president. So the Bible never speaks about believing in the Messiah. Why? Because as I said before, we will know who the Messiah is because we'll be able to look out the window. We'll be able to read the newspaper. The signs of when the Messiah is here are visible. You can see with your own eyes how the Jewish people return to their homeland. Has there been a temple that's been rebuilt?  This is not something you have to believe in. This is something that you will know when it happens. Everybody in the world is going to know it. And so the Bible never speaks about believing in the Messiah. However, what do Christians always speak about? All Christians speak about is, do you believe in Jesus? Because they don't have a Messiah concept that you can see. Their concept of the Messiah, as we'll see in coming weeks, their concept of the Messiah is not empirically verifiable. It's not something that you can see. It's something that you have to believe on faith. So again, it's very, very important to understand these three aspects, these three aspects of the Jewish Messiah. Number one, that it's a description that is exhaustive. Number two, it is clear and consistent. Number three, it is empirically verifiable. It should be clear at this point the Messiah has not yet come. It's nothing personal against Jesus. It's nothing personal against Jesus. As a matter of fact, there have been many people in Jewish history, many people who claimed to be the Messiah. None of them has fulfilled what the Bible teaches us. The Bible gives us a description. The Bible gives us a template. The Bible gives us a job description. It has not been fulfilled by anyone. To us as Jews, it is clear, that the Messiah has not yet come. I want to share two more points before we conclude for this evening. Point number one is actually very complicated and I'm not going to deal with it in great detail, but just that you should know there is a potential problem here. One of the things that is the clearest about the Messiah is that the Messiah has to be a descendant of King David. That's one of the clearest things in the Bible because in every passage about the Messiah, it speaks about him as basically a descendant of David. So the question is, was Jesus a descendant of David? Was Jesus a descendant of David? Now the Christian Bible spends a lot of time trying to substantiate, trying to prove that Jesus was a descendant of David. And in two chapters in the Christian Bible, two different chapters, it gives the whole genealogy, gives the whole list of people going from King David all the way down to Jesus. Try to trace to give you all of the names. There are many, many problems with these lists. What problem is that one list is much bigger than the other list? And that's very strange because let's say, for example, someone wrote my biography, right? And they were going to trace me back to my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Let's say, I came all the way from King David. So let's say one of them had 30 generations and the other one had 40 generations. Why is that? Why is one list so much bigger than the other one? The other problem is if you compare the two chapters in the Christian Bible, all the names are basically different except for two. How is that possible?  Which one is it? So one of the problems is that the Christian Bible tries to prove that Jesus comes from David and yet the evidence it brings is contradictory. That's one problem. Another problem is that in the Christian Bible we're told something very strange. We're told that Jesus didn't really have a father. One of the beliefs of Christianity is a belief in what they call the virgin birth. It means that Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not have relations with a man. She was married to a man named Joseph. She was married to Joseph, but they never had relations. And so Jesus did not have, according to the Christian Bible, a father. So what happens is in these lists that they provide, all they really do is trace his mother's husband back to King David, but then the Christian Bible says, but this man, Joseph, was not the father of Jesus. So all of their efforts to try and trace Jesus back to King David is sabotaged because they say that his mother's husband was not his father. All they really do, all the Christian Bible really does is to trace Joseph back to Jesus. Again, Joseph is the husband of Mary, but the Christian Bible says that Joseph, though, was not the father of Jesus. So here we have a problem. How does Jesus trace himself back to King David? And there are many, many other problems. We're not gonna go into all of them. Just be aware that when it comes to the genealogy, when it comes to the ability to trace Jesus all the way back to King David, there are serious problems. I wanna share one last problem with you. And that is on page 14 of your source sheets. So here we have an interesting prophecy from the Jewish Bible, which tells us that before the coming of the Messiah, before the coming of the Messiah, Elijah the prophet is going to return. Jewish people were very in tune with Elijah the prophet. It's interesting that in the Jewish Bible this prophet never died. We're told that at the end of his life he went up to heaven, never died. And the Bible tells us in the last few verses of the prophet Malachi, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord, before this incredible time, when basically it's the day, doesn't mean a 24 hour day, it means this era, this time, when it'll be the time of the Lord because it's talking about that time when the whole world will believe in God. So before that time comes, the prophet tells us that Elijah the prophet, Elijah the prophet will return. Pretty simple. All Jews basically and all Christians believe this is a messianic prophecy. If it really is a messianic prophecy, if it really is Elijah the prophet return before Jesus came. Again, if Christians are claiming that Jesus was the Messiah, then Elijah the prophet would have had to have returned before Jesus came. Did Elijah the prophet return or not? So in the Christian Bible, we're told that Elijah the prophet did return. And he came as this very famous person back then named John the baptizer. It was a famous Jew at the time of Jesus whose name was Jochenan, Jochenan John. And he would help people to repent, to do chuvah by taking them into the Jordan River and putting them in a big mikvah, it was called a mikvah, right? And he was a way of preparing them, helping them to become better people. So the Christian Bible says that this person named John the baptizer was Elijah the prophet. Again, that's the claim that is made. That's the claim that is made. And we understand why they make that claim. Because again, the Jewish Bible says that if someone is the Messiah, then Elijah the prophet had to have come back before that person. So for us, the question is, was John the baptizer, was this person Jochenan? John the baptizer, was he Elijah the prophet, Eliyahuahnavi or not? Was he or wasn't he? So it's interesting that in the Christian Bible, in one of their books, they ask him, the Jewish people ask this John the baptizer, they say, are you Elijah? They ask him, are you Elijah? And he says, no, I am not. So it's very hard to insist that no, he really is Elijah the prophet. When they ask him straight to his face, he says, no, I'm not. Another problem is that the prophet Malachi tells us that when Elijah the prophet returns, he's going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. It's not clear what that means, but it seems to be something significant. And there's no evidence that John the baptizer accomplished that in any way. So here we have two additional problems with Jesus. Again, I just wanna sum up now. The major problem that we have as Jews in terms of Jesus being the Messiah, is that the Bible has a job description. The Bible has a template. The Bible has a clear picture of who the Messiah will be. He will be a wise and righteous descendant of King David, who's going to rule Israel when the whole world has been transformed into a paradise. The whole world has not been transformed into a paradise. It's clear to us, there's no Messiah yet. Secondly, we saw that in the Bible, the Messiah has to be a descendant of King David. It's not so clear to us that Jesus really was. And finally, the Bible teaches us that before the Messiah comes, Elijah the prophet has to return. And we have no evidence that Elijah the prophet returned before Jesus came. So that's basically the class for tonight. We call it the real Messiah part one. Next week, we're going to continue with the real Messiah part two because there are many questions that come up now. For example, what do Christians say about all of this? I mean, I think I made a pretty clear case tonight why Jesus could not have been the Messiah. And so next week, we're going to begin to study what do the Christians say in response to tonight's class. Okay, thank you all very much. And before you leave, if there are any questions, I'll be happy to try and answer any questions. Okay, yes, don't believe that they hadn't. Right, that's what they believe. They say it was a miracle.


a top Mustang stadium after Stevenson picks up the 14-5 win over Albright in the Matt Commonwealth semifinals joined now by the coach the Mustangs head coach Kathy Rayleigh again we get to do good cop today nothing but good cop after a big victory congratulations have to be the bad cop on today I'm a second half bad cop well see I was wondering about that in the second half because you guys were so good in the first half and I don't know if it was just that you lose intensity you know the last several games of the season we have been a first half half team where we come out on fire we move the ball well where we take good chances and we drive hard and then we get in the second half and we don't think we have to work hard and and what we just briefly talked about is whoever wins the next game we're gonna have to fight hard for two halves and that's gonna be very important they're gonna have to put together 60 minutes of really good lacrosse how about the way you jumps right out of the gate yeah yeah well I think we had a good game plan going in and I and I knew we could beat them in transition we're faster in transition than they are and we saw that two weeks ago when we when we played them so we really wanted to push it in transition wanted to go I love when our defenders take shots especially in the first half there's nothing to lose we should be there to back them up which we were most of the time make that goalie make a panic save as they're driving in from the defensive end so I was really happy to see that we had some defenders with goals today which is great our ball movement was good our tack was good just the second half but it's kind of late the lights went out a little bit of the fire that we had in the first half yeah I could keep I could talk about that sorority play all day that was awesome that was awesome all right you you know it appeared as there was a lot of attention paid to the conference player of the year yes and with her sort of being taken away a little bit somebody else decided to step up a little bit and deliver a double hat trick today yes yes indeed and we have been waiting for this player to explode since the beginning of the year she has the capabilities she's delightful with the ball she's delightful off ball if she's not getting somebody open she's open herself she has such a knack this is a player that this won't be the last time we talk about her she's got three more seasons ahead of her after this one and we can't wait to see what she accomplishes as she matures into a fitter faster and better player overall so we're really excited about it well you get the chance to play for the title again and we don't know yet I mean we've been talked a lot about the season about where you were to where you are and again second in the second half of standing I would assume you've got to be in general far more pleased with where this team is going into whatever it's going to be on Saturday I am so pleased to be playing for the championship again you know today in 2014 we actually won the Mac championship on May 3rd so trying to get out there and in three more days and doing it again we're a different team then we saw Messiah we saw Messiah either like very early March I think so we're a different team I think that with we really push hard for 60 minutes we have a shot if we're thinking we're gonna play 30 it's probably not gonna go but you know Mac pulled it together today her play was better than it's been in four or five games Jamie and Sarah are just absolutely awesome today and how they moved the entire defense moved well together Gabby de Jello awesome so I really want to make sure that we continue with that we're gonna have to really go at each other in practice tomorrow with our messiah scout ed team and just we got to go at them if we're afraid it's it's a done deal already we might as well not get on the bus I hope the next time we talk we're talking about a conference championship we're talking about getting ready for the NCAA tournament coach congratulations on a great day congratulations she is coach Kathy Rayleigh joining us in the all-access postgame show


Everybody force and Sean here ripping 2023 bowman draft sapphire edition five box number 11 random teams style. Good luck everybody It's random then we'll rip all teams in on this We'll go eight times two and six one two three four five six seven and eight Braden K down to Peter N and eight times on the teams one Two three four five six seven and eight our hopes over Mars I'm thinking it. I'm thinking we're gonna hit some some nice stuff in there cubs down to Cardinals Sometimes those older Like high-end box that just like sitting sitting the back for a bit just sit there and you see them like every day And then you get the rip in there's something huge in it Like that that that dine that Danny Shealy pulled that was nuts Braden K with the Cubs Mike C Marlins Lance H Phillies Michael G Pirates Rick C Yankees Christopher L Red Sox Mike S Braves Chris WD backs sander with the Stroh's Chuck S Blue J's Michael A Giants Mike S Mets Ryan D Rockies Mitchell K Mariners Charles A Royals Jacob F Guardians Jeff M Dodgers Austin L Angels Alex P Rangers Ryan D Padres Jeff M White Sox Chad E twins Jordan K Ray's Braden a Tigers Jordan K Orioles Jeff W Brewers Jeff M a's Peter N Nationals Jeff W Reds and Peter N with the Cardinals Link to the results is in chat right now. Just dropped. Those are available anytime at latent sports cards comm Thank you all for joining. Let's go ahead and get started here What do we got spots fly and now holy cow dual case down to six first fall is down to 16 Whoo, both losses are in the teens now Nt at 24. All right go Five sapphires. Oh boy.  We're gonna got one hot barasha counter at one Papadia Papadia Dayton and Duquesne I guess that's what we got until the magic game really Stakes after magic game we got pelicans nuggets. That's okay. I don't mind that pelicans playing well Right louder howke schleiger and Gordon. I like what's inside They're fun team to watch to Coop at Pete's Sim and Diaz Luisa made up followed by yellow to 75 Levi Wells for the Orioles First numbered card goes Baltimore to 75 still in the head and D on Jorge Like the stream and subscribe everybody. Would you appreciate it Bradfield? My yeah, Eldridge first and don't eat a Valdes Samuel Bessio and our first auto is green And it is gonna be twins Luke Kishall We're Kishall Kishall there you go nice hit for the twins. It's Chad No, man, I'm ready Jonathan. What's going on brother Walters and Toran. I'm ready 25 and a half hours. Who's counting?  What is up with the snakes here? Chris W with the snakes this time 38 of 50 gold Troy. We'll mag that Drew Jones Christian opper.  You bring a winnaker Davis and de la Santos Roman Anthony and Jake the Leo Paul are you rooting for Miami or rooting for the Chiefs? I'm curious Yeah, let's hear what you say Loser all Montez yellow match on out of 75 Cubs. Holy cow Braden with the Cubs 6 of 75 to Ryosin Carrico Ronan through the magazine Sapphire This time I guess I root for the Dolphins. I'm go dolphin not huge on them winning or like I'm not huge on either team and they're like against them. I mean Drew Hachenberg hits Morris and Sabah Kool What did what are those go for Timmy and who signs that Homer Bush Mickey and Minnie? Xavier Isaac Jack Mahoney and Conor Holler and like the Like the 22 year old that puts on the suit at the park whoever shift it was I Think I feel like three bucks per auto. Yeah, three bucks per auto Jose de Paula You know they sell the autograph books there. Yeah, man rough just killing man I feel like my brother had one of those when we were younger money over there. Yeah, they are Gold Marcella Meyer Red Sox So I'm Jay blazing Jay blazing Jacob Jacob what up what up? Yeah, I fish you know, that's I'm not I'm not touching now and Jason Woodward and Jacob Cravey Now it's touching now and Jack Winninger Nivens Barofin and Muth Come on guys. Hell's Lee. What the hell's Lee? Brock Rodin a first woman auto is Matt Shaw Whoa braiding again Two boxes got an auto Shaw and a yellow sapphire Shaw Napchick and Montgomery Yeah, I think gaming should be live. I would assume on Friday night. They're alive Amarion Boyd yellow to 75 coles cone wetter Reds Marcus Brown and Levi Wells They pretty much only break off in that it's live currently for the most part Jadenham Parada Jacob Wilson and Hunter Owen Geez Dean Hunter Holland first gold Cade Morris Mets out of 50 Felene Salasen Arielle Castro Speaking of fanatics live everybody. There's the one-of-one promo this weekend. So Kyle's breaks tomorrow. You hit a one-of-one You will get $500 in that it's live break credit and then You're in chat when somebody hits a one-of-one. We'll give away $500 break credit to the chat 500 500. I guess if you hit it and you're in chat, you get it twice You get a grand if you're in chat when you hit it It's joined to give away hero Wyatt Clare's Clark Jonah Cox and Ryan Clifford Jorge Teddy McGraw Zach Levinson and Jason choreo Phillip Abner yellow to 75 Brewer's Eric Patalante color match action there. It's a good one four of 75 Christian Campbell Louisa or yeah, Louisa, Nalakunya They they still just have iOS and desktops. You can join on desktop Nathan Detmer Jackson Bowmeester Travis Honeyman and Alex Ramirez. We just keep we were told very recently soon That's where it's all very recently. We're also told that when the app came out, but they did just launch another pretty large update It seems like they had a lot kind of Coming up on the beginning of the year here because they've just put out another back-end update And I think some more front like like app updates and stuff So it's been busy first couple weeks. I'd say in all honesty Chase Jaworski green out of 99 is Jack Hurley DBACs. We're a magnet for this guy tonight 49 of 99 You Andrew Vargas and noble mire. Oh, yeah, Paul was you that ass and chat Not really a fishing auto we have every now and then but not really Yeah, they take forever to do especially if you do like like we're in like the timer like resets They take forever man. We got time for that. Yeah, usually I mean whoop whoop probably will at some point We're gonna break there a little more. We're gonna expand pretty soon here And do some more so I think we're gonna get more styles going over there But yeah, just like a work in progress for us got Gutierrez or the orange of Justin Crawford for the Phillies one of 25 Sweet orange Justin Mercedes and Chase Davis first Hello there, Jace Cam Fisher and a black sapphire of jet the Met nine of ten jet Williams Mets Gonzales and JC young Roger Garriott's yellow out of 75 calling out for the Mets very nice 30 of 75 Hunter Haas and Quinn McDaniel asked by that guy writes the defender. Oh In a hard foul Flop you should get LSE basketball game going How many how many injuries a lot of you know Jackson Meryl Max Anderson match Just run 30 yards and what happens out there Magic shake with a basketball Wyatt Langford sapphire Colescona wetter Nassan Zonatello and Drew Gilbert Like the stream everybody Emmanuel Bonilla gold sapphire selections Chase Davis. Did you have voice crack? She's Davis chase Like a concerned mother, that's what I sounded like there we go Cardinals that would be Peter Peter N He Peter and and for nice chase 9 to 50 rock of fortnight Brooks Lee chase Davis Jacob Gonzalez Do know Devin Salted Bond and William Bergoglia. Sounds like you're still singing a singing a rolling in the deep over there Mm-hmm. Got Luke Kishall gold auto is Jacob Gonzalez 11 of 50 for Chicago the White Sox Jeff M We're gonna mag the Gonzalez Seth Keener and my mahiah Gavin Cross with the yellow Chris Clark to 75 angels Walton and Thornton of Raddenburg Whitman and Riley Trey Morgan and another gold here is gonna be CJ K. Fisk guardians. Very nice. Got to love that 24 50 Grant Taylor and white hudble Maybe tougher University of Washington now man got your coach gone Quarterback top two receivers few others good defenders like that's a big overhaul there done Marauders trusser Christian Campbell and Zach Levinson just got to hope their pockets are fat Honestly Well as your green and sapphire selections of Colin Halk Mets Colin Halk Mets Travis honeymoon first and Alex Ramirez Joe Petrano followed by a gold noble Maier. That's sweet Top 10 pick right yet 10th overall the pitcher for Miami 42 of 50 The wendry Vargas noble Maier Yeah, I'm happy. They got they got Rod Mayo. I would have been okay with the fraybel, but Mayo hasn't earned it. I would think for sure rhymer bowman Mercedes and Chase Davis Now we just even GM and we need a frickin plan Justin Crawford green auto Cardinals Travis honeymoon number to 99 65 of 99 Gonzalez and JC young Sabin Sabios yellow out of 75 Lewis and jalicunia Mets Hunter Haas and Quinn McDaniel I think this ability part is very important because there's a lot of people in that those a lot of guys the locker room right now They probably don't feel super great about being an organization, but they keep a guy there that like Knows what it takes and like has been with Belichick for a while now and different coaching the linebackers coach for what 2019 Played for him. So like that's I think a good quality to have I just hope it works out as him as like a leader Jack Hurley Jackson choreo J. Beshears and Cole Young, but it seems like linebackers meant make pretty good coaches though I mean look at Pierce with the Raiders good start for him Welcome to Francisca and an orange Andrew Pinkney for the Nats at 25 All right y'all Clemmie and bias to close it out of the break. Let's do a recap all the color and autos Your limo. Yeah, we got the apopka limo waiting It's a gutted. It's a gutted school bus. Yeah the old kind with the manual door. Yeah, it's a gut at Hearst All 40s All right numbered of Acunia Clark Hauke Matonte scone wetter Wells Goldmire capis gold staff our selections chase Davis Cade Morris Marcello Meyer Pinkney Crawford and Jet Williams To me go right. Yeah exactly Ryan's a beast. I know it's not the same thing, but like game Campbell was about a fullback The dogs man they understand to take understand it dude Autos you got honeyman Hurley and kashal all to 99 Lot of numbers in this one gold Gonzalez auto for the white socks They saw auto cubs yellow sapphire Shaw for the cubs in a gold Tommy Troy for the D-backs Thanks everybody moving on to number 12