may have made them a little bit dirty. Hello everyone my name is Stephen welcome to film my run if you've not seen this channel before. I've been around a little while but I make real-world running videos so I film my marathons, my ultras, some triathlons as well in the real world and I edit them down and post them online. I've not really been into making review videos but I am starting to do so because everybody is asking me to make product reviews so here we are. Disclaimers out of the way I am not sponsored by Hoka. You may have seen my recent video of the CCC Ultra Race in Chamonix which was partly sponsored by Hoka but I am not a Hoka representative and the shoes I am going to show you today I purchased with my own money actually probably my wife's credit card but nevertheless my own money essentially but I am sponsored by a company called Zwift they're an e-sports company we do running and cycling online so you can go to Zwift.com forward slash running and sign up they also do cycling it's an online game but you actually do do the running and the cycling so you run on a treadmill in a virtual world and I do a lot of that and if you look at my channel here you'll see a lot of Zwift online running videos as well. So that's who I am let's get into the review of the Hoka Mofate Evos. Here they are they are somewhat dirty I was going to wash them but I thought no do you know what let's show you them as they are after they've been well used and these have been well used over the past few years. Let me see what Strava says. Strava says I have done over 150 miles in these 250 kilometers. I have been wearing Hoka's quite a lot over the past few years so I started off with some Challenger ATR's I've also got some Clifton road shoes and for a long time now I've been wearing the Speed Goat 2. The Speed Goat 2 was a great shoe but it did have some flaws and the flaws mainly centered on the upper and let me just show you. So if you had the original Speed Goat 2's you would see that they always split here look can you see that split there where the plastic met the material here there was always seemed to split at the bend of the foot there. Then they came out with the Hoka Speed Goat 2 version 2 which kind of did away with the split down here kind of made that a solid piece of plastic there so it didn't split anymore but the other big problem for me with Speed Goats was the vibram sole which certainly for me on some runs I found that the lugs were not deep enough and I didn't get enough grip on certain kind of rock or chalk that kind of thing so I thought I'd try something new. Step in the new Mofate Evo's way back in 2009 the Mofate was the first shoe Hoka made it's developed a lot obviously since then and we've had the Mofate speed and now the Evo's Hoka say the difference between the Mofate speed and the Evo here is to do mainly with the midsole in that they've used a different kind of cushioning two different kinds of cushioning one called R-Bound which is more durable and lighter apparently but I've never worn the Hoka speed so I can't comment on the difference between the two. So let's have a look at the main features of the Mofate Evo's we bought these brand new at the Hoka stand in Chamonix before the CCC race at the UTMB week as long as you're confident that you've got the correct fit for your feet trail shoes should just mold in and be perfectly fine I wore these brand new for a hundred kilometer race over tough terrain lots of climbing I mean if you know CCC you know what it's like and they were brand new when I put them on and this is what they look like 150 miles later if you want to see them on my feet brand you go and look at my CCC video on this channel you'll see them beautifully shiny and clean and then you'll see them totally covered in mud at the end of the race so go and do that. The upper is a Kevlar mesh material it feels very durable and over 150 miles in it hasn't ripped anywhere at all as far as I can see so it seems after 150 miles that it is a good solid strong material feels very comfortable as well on the upper foot underneath is the usual Vibram mega grip different to the Speed Gut 2's in that the lugs are definitely deeper and I've definitely noticed a difference when I'm going downhill on chalk or rock the grip is much much better than the Speed Gut 2's so the only time that I actually slipped over using these shoes during the CCC 100 K race was on a very steep section of grass where it had been raining so it wasn't like mud where you could kind of the the lugs go into the mud and grip the mud they kind of stayed on top of the grass and the grass was wet and I mean everybody was slipping I didn't see anyone who was able to stay upright so I don't think there's any trail shoe really that could have coped I've never worn the terror claws or mud claws but I don't think there are any shoes that could have coped with with that terrain particularly and all the other terrain that I ran on that I have run on in these shoes these shoes have managed very well indeed obviously you've got lovely thick cushioning perfect for really long distance running very comfortable as are the ATR's and the Speed Goats I've never had a problem with the comfort in the Hockers absolutely wonderful to wear for 100 mile races and longer the main weird thing that I've noticed about the evos is the tongue now if I compare let's get these speed goat twos you've got quite a thick long tongue here quite comfortable doesn't slip around it's perfectly alright why they've changed it in the Maffate evos I don't know this is I can't even really get it out for me but it's a very flat very thin tongue it does lie nice and flat against your foot but it is a bit weird and there is a problem with this because I have noticed when running long distances that this edge here the edge of the tongue digs into my foot and when I've taken my shoes off I have got a cut an abrasion on my foot where the tongue has dug in I guess that will only happen to you if you're wearing these shoes for really long distances but then again these shoes are made for running really long distances in so it's not a great thing and perhaps something they might think about changing in the future and one other thing I've noticed after 150 miles of running in this shoe there is one place where they seem to be coming apart a little bit if you can see right on the end of the toe here some of the stitching between the outsole and the material some of the stitching is coming a bit loose let's see if the other one the other one is worse so you can see here that's after 150 miles the stitching is just coming away there there's no rip of the material as such but it's definitely the stitching has definitely come away from the join between there and the outsole that said in terms of a trail shoe these are without doubt the best trail shoes I've worn certainly for running distances of a hundred miles and more absolutely will wear these from now on over and above challenger 80 hours over and above speed goat twos and even the version 2 speed goat to the grip is much better comfort is about the same but still great but durability these do seem to have lasted a lot better after 150 miles than the speed goat twos and certainly the challenges challenger 80 hours when I ran transvolcania and 75 kilometers over volcanic rock the souls of my challenger 80 hours were completely wrecked the same race and other 100 mile races with the speed goat twos very quickly the split in the side happened that hasn't happened with the version 2 speed goat twos but I feel the difference is the outsole on these is better than the speed goat twos version 1 or version 2 and so I will be sticking with these from now on in terms of price well there's your problem the evos are expensive probably one of the most expensive trail shoes you are likely to find about 150 UK pounds what's that is that 200 US dollars very expensive for me they're worth it because mainly what I do is long distance ultra running where taking care of my feet is very important so comfort durability of the shoe really important factors but for you obviously you have to decide whether it's worth spending that amount of money okay in terms of width you might have a problem if you need a wide toe box hooker generally do tend to be a little bit narrow although you know I used ultras in the past because I thought I needed a wide toe box but actually these have been fine as have my hooker Clifton's and the speed goats as well I've not really had much of a problem in terms of width certainly the speed goat twos are wider than the speed goat ones and these are about the same as the speed goat twos I'm not generally one to suffer with blisters or hot spots on my feet when running I tend to be very lucky in that regard so you might want to take this with a pinch of salt but I've not had any problems with hot spots or blisters or anything to do with problems with my feet when wearing these shoes but I don't tend to anyway I do wear in gingy socks and I do wear a little rubber toe cap over my big toe and I always make sure that I cut my toenails before I go in the long run so if you do suffer with blisters in any type of shoe maybe just make sure that you wear decent socks you take care of your feet in terms of cutting the toenails right down before you do a really long run and maybe yeah you might you might want to try the silicone or rubber toe caps you need to get specific running ones because the ones you can get off Amazon will shred very quickly so in summary it is a win for the Hocker Maffate Evos in terms of durability in terms of comfort and they look pretty good too so it's a win there in terms of price maybe not so much depending on what you think you're gonna need them for how much you're gonna use them it's very easy to get sucked into the hype about this shoe at the moment this shoe is the one that is being marketed by Hocker as the shoe for long-distance trail running and you know Jim Wamsley wears them Tom Evans who won the CCC that I raced in he wears them they really are being pushed by the Hocker team as the shoe to wear so perhaps you don't want to get drawn into the hype but honestly I urge you do try them out because in my opinion they are definitely the best shoe that Hocker have produced so far the most comfortable shoe that Hocker have produced so far and the most durable shoe that they've produced so far what else am I supposed to mention in a review of trail shoes upper durability comfort cushioning the sole grip heel drop I mean you know I guess I should try and create some kind of scoring mechanism for my reviews as yet I haven't worked out one but you know I will I I will I will at some point work out how to score all this stuff the problem is you don't want to copy other people do you so I need to kind of create my own what how do you do that because like this right the only there are only certain things you can score you can score the outsole you can score the upper you can score how good they look you can score the cut the price of them so there's only so many things you can do you know without I don't know appear like I'm copying Ethan for God's sake I mean let's be honest there are other reviewers out there who do product reviews I'm not I don't want to try and be like them I don't want to try and copy them but at the same time if we are reviewing a shoe there's you know there are going to be things that I mentioned that other reviewers mentioned which are the same doesn't mean I'm copying them or they're copying me but there will be of course things that I mentioned which other reviewers don't things I pick up on which other reviewers perhaps don't and vice versa suffice to say I absolutely love these Maffate Evo's I will be running in Maffate Evo's for the foreseeable future I think my many pairs of Speed Goat 2's will have to sit in the cupboard for quite a while from now on and that is it guys that is my review of the Hoka Maffate Evo's if you've got a comment if you've used the Evo's please do comment down below let me know what you think of them let me know what your choice of trail shoe is I am just getting into doing product reviews so let me know what you think we'll try and do more let me know if there's any products you'd like me to review if I can get hold of them I will do please click below to subscribe to the Filmira on YouTube channel and you know that bell icon thing that lets you know when I've uploaded do you know what I wish I was like eight years old and I could do all that smash that like button click the bell down below to get notifications it won't release a new video but I'm not eight so you know just do the stuff that you know you got to do if you want to see more videos by me if you want to see more product reviews subscribe and do let me know in the comments thanks a lot for watching till next time take care bye bye is that okay


Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the City Hall groundbreaking ceremony for the reconstruction of Sheboygan's historic City Hall built over 100 years ago. I'm David Bebel. I'm the Director of Public Works for the City of Sheboygan. I'll be your emcee for the groundbreaking event today. For an entire generation City Hall has stood steadfast and represented Sheboygan in the community well. However, with age City Hall is in need of some major work and in order to continue functioning and operating for offices. So to beg the question should we invest in City Hall or should we build elsewhere or build new and it was quite a debate for some time. However just restoring City Hall in its current layout did not solve the problem of creating open and inviting and accessible City Hall. Bray Architects our partner listened to all of the issues and debates of alternative sites constraints with City Hall at the assistance of the Building Use Committee and their excellent guidance throughout this process. They challenged us to try to preserve City Hall if at all possible. I'm here just here today to tell you that Bray Architects with Mr. Steve Coonan, Mr. Steve Yeager from Bray came through with a beautiful plan and ultimately a great project for us. It not only enhances City Hall by preserving City Hall but it also creates a new inviting open entrance on the facade of the North as you can see which really was the backside of City Hall and it's unfinished. It will be a great project once we're all said and done again accessibility will be it will be open it creates new customer service counters instead of individual offices which will open City Hall for a new modern office type of environment. Along with our team with EBI, Emmons Business Interiors, we've been working diligently at laying out new office spaces to make it functional not only for the occupants of the building but also for the residents as they come to City Hall for business and for help. So as today City Hall has stood for 100 years and today we will start not only the new process to reinvest in our history but also our future as well and with that I'd like to now introduce the Mayor of Sheboygan, Mr. Mike Van der Steen. Thank you very much for that introduction. Mike Van der Steen happy to be here with you all and thanks so much for coming out today for this important occasion. I'd like to introduce some guests that are with us. We have Representative Terry Cosma from the 26th Assembly District, Terry welcome and Tyler Vorpago of the Assembly District from the 27th. Thank you for coming. We also have some members of the Sheboygan County Board here, Bern Koch, Kirk Brower, Ed Procek, thank you gentlemen and we have some previous all the persons who were here today to Bill Field and Scott Lewandowski. I also would like to introduce our Council President, Todd Wolff, Todd and our Council Vice President, Mary Lyndonahue and we have some other all the persons here, Ryan Sorensen and Marcus Savoglio. Anybody else I missed? Okay and then I'd also like to recognize our Building Use Committee. This committee did a great job in evaluating all these proposals, spending a lot of time talking about all the options with the architects and Joe Clark is here from the Building Use Committee. Joe, why don't you give him a wave? Thank you for coming. Well you know after decades of discussion on the future of City Hall on April 4th of 2018 the Common Council voted unanimously to approve this project. This is a hundred year old building, actually 101 years old and and this improvements will improve the functionality to benefit the public and city staff. They concurred with the Planning Commission's recommendation and to stay in the current building because there was some talk of moving City Hall to another location and to build a more efficient floor plan with an entrance plaza and off-street parking north of the building rather than building a new City Hall. The original City Hall was built by Emel Construction Company at a cost of $150,000. Adjusted that to be about $3.7 million today. The finished building was turned over to Sheboygan Mayor Otto Joren's at a dedication ceremony on January 27th of 1917 and it was designed by architect W.H. Blooming with W.C. Weeks. The local architect is the associate architect. Staff for the current project was tasked with reviewing over 100 years of records that resided in the building and implementing our records retention policy and then they either had to pack that up or see that those records were destroyed. They also had to pack up all their offices to prepare for the renovation that begins today. All departments have moved to alternate locations for the anticipated 12 month construction period. Two office locations were secured for City Hall departments. Former Social Security Office across the street where all the more customer sensitive actions are taken and then the administrative offices which are going to be located in the Sheboygan County Highway Department offices. During this construction period, meetings of the City Committees will be relocated to meeting rooms at the Mead Public Library and the Common Council meetings will take place at the Sheboygan County Board Chambers in the Courthouse. We thank the library and the Sheboygan County Board for their assistance with these alternate meeting locations. I want to give my congratulations to all who have involved in this project. The important work was done by staff with the assistance of Bray Architects to develop an efficient floor plan and identify the furnishings, technology needs, improved accessibility, manage the architectural process and develop a realistic budget and identify temporary office sites and finally determining how to pay for the project. Today we officially turned Sheboygan City Hall over to Quash's construction to implement the plans that were drawn up by Bray and Associates Architects and look forward to returning somewhere around June of 2019 to take over the state-of-the-art offices that would be constructed inside of this 100-year-old building. Thank you very much for your attendance and thank you to everybody involved. Thank you Mayor. Next I'd like to introduce our City Administrator, Mr. Darrell Hofflin. Thank you, David. You've heard already a lot of great comments about this project. Building Youth Committee in 2015 was created for the sole purpose of guiding the process. Great political leadership with the different council presidents from Don Hammond, Marilyn Donahue, Todd Wolfe during those really four-year periods, sort of during the home stretch of discussion. Bray Architects, great job. You went through not only reviewing this set of plans, reviewed numerous plans of other locations, other existing buildings for retrofit, and ultimately again with feedback from elected officials we honed in on this site. As it was alluded to, this north side will be the new front of City Hall. You can see from the drawings a lot of glass. It's our goal for this building to reflect our specific goal of being more transparent with the citizens of the City of Sheboygan and I think hopefully again with this great architecture and with the new technologies that this building will afford us as we go forward we're really excited about those possibilities of remaining true to the citizens of Sheboygan. Regarding the financing of this project, roughly a $10.5 million project, again with council leadership we've been able to sock away, save money, and a little over half of the project cost will come from savings. In the next couple of weeks we'll be borrowing $5 million of that $10.5 million, so it really helped move this project forward knowing that not all of it would be a new debt service for the community. As Mayor Mike and Dave Beeple identified, we're really, I really want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to City staff. It's not easy to be uprooted, especially for those that have been at City Hall for two or three decades. A lot of historic files had to be gone through. Records retention programs, as it was alluded to, went into high gear, but ultimately the transition as late as last week Thursday or Friday was finalized as far as staff moving into their new temporary homes. So again I want to extend my appreciation to City staff for their accommodation and ultimately their their positive spirits and attitude as we settle in on our new location. Again we look forward to being back here for a ribbon-cutting in roughly a year, so please keep some time roughly June of 2019 for that. So again thank you for coming out today and look forward to participating with you with the shovels on on our formal groundbreaking ceremony. Thank you. Thanks Darryl for your very nice remarks. Next I'd like to introduce to you the General Contractor for the City Hall Project, Quasas Construction, and President for Quasas Construction, Mr. Matt Quasas. Thank you Dave. I really can't tell you how happy I am to be here today and be a part of this project. I think I speak for our whole team when I say that we wanted this project. We wanted to be a part of helping rebuild City Hall to work with the City, work with Gray, and really a number of other local contractors and subcontractors. We have a predominantly local team, SpectElectra, Clemen, a number of local subcontractors and suppliers really I think pursued this project aggressively and wanted to be a part of helping improve it downtown and really make City Hall the place we all want it to be. So we're very pleased. We don't normally get to be a part of groundbreaking speeches so this is something that's kind of new for me. Dave told me to limit my response to like 45 minutes. So I decided not to go through a month-by-month schedule to make sure that we're going to be on schedule and get you in June but just wanted to reiterate the fact that we have a great plan, a great team, and we are very very happy to be a part of this especially after we moved our office down the street. We would have been very sad to see another contractor sign up on this project so looking forward to getting started and to a very successful project so thank you. Thanks Matt for your comments we're really looking forward to working with your team. I guess in closing I just you know it this is going to be a big project and it took a lot of effort from many people and I like just to take a brief moment here to to recognize some of those those people that were truly instrumental in getting the success of this project to this point so far. You know Mr. Bernie Romer he's our purchasing agent for the city. Not many people get to see him but he's behind the scenes and he does all of our RFP writing and contractual type of solicitation and he helped tremendously with the abatement process that's going on currently so thank you Bernie.  Nancy Buss our finance director thank you Nancy for finding the money that's always important. Chad Peleshev instrumental in acquiring the social security building for our temporary offices so thank you Chad. The city attorney Chuck Adams reviewing our contractual documents and making sure our bonds and everything is all in order. A lot of behind-the-scenes type of paperwork that really there's a tremendous amount of effort that goes into it and Chuck during the move and a lot of things that you had to do I know it was a lot of work but I really do appreciate all your efforts in helping us through that that process. We also have Meredith from the city clerk's office making sure our council documents were getting through to the proper committees and making sure we had the proper documentation to get the contracts in front of the right committees and making sure everything was timely and prudent and obviously making sure the older persons were informed so thank you so much with that as well. Derek from transit which transit got to do as well we have all the parking lots around here and in temporary parking and moving city employees and then allowing contractors then to come behind and coordinating all the parking efforts is quite an effort so I think Derek from transit for all his efforts in that as well. Ryan Sazma from my office has been a tremendous help clearly there's a lot of civil and site work and with his staff he's been a help as well but I really have to really single out two important people that without their help I'm not sure we would be here today first is Dawn Sokolowski our management analyst from the department of public works she has led the communication and coordination of all the relocation of all the offices in City Hall and she's been able to do this with a pleasant smile and a great attitude throughout a very difficult task and it's amazing accomplishment so Dawn thank you if you could just raise your hand and lastly Mike Wilmes with my staff Mike is the superintendent of buildings and traffic for the department of public works he has been tremendously instrumental not not only with just the move but with his staff I think they're all inside the building Mike you know it's unfortunate I wish he could have been down here but yeah the staff about six or seven eight guys and for the last month have just been moving literally hundred years of files and people and desks it's amazing accomplishment but not only that Mike's knowledge of the building it's special issues it's been a tremendous help not only just in the design but also as we're entering into the construction phase Mike's been a tremendous help for me as a contractor and the architects just to get some background on certain things so I really might thank you so much if you could just stand up please I really like to give you a round of applause he's been a tremendous partner in this and I'm really grateful for your help and you're a true friend so what I like to do right now is officially break the ground so we're going to have some groups up here I think we'll just do this group the speakers first and then next mayor I think if you'd like to invite some of the council members up and get them up and then after that we'll do other dignitaries as well as the city department heads we like so we'll do a bunch of photos I guess so if you just would like to get in line and and we'll start breaking the ground thank you with the other alderman uh in the group please come up Terry Kotschma Tyler for Pondville can we get our city department heads next my chief of police big library Derek city attorney city clerk planning director thanks everyone we do have some refreshments in right on the garage here there's some cookies and some cake pops as well some water please please enjoy thank you


Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Keeping the World Company, and I'm joined by my co-host, Tim Apochella, and our special esteemed guest and historical scholar. That means a scholar who is into history rather than a scholar who is herself historical, okay? That's Jean Rosenfeld. She joins us, too. And we are going to talk about narratives. We can talk about the competing narratives around what is going on in the Middle East, and we're going to examine each one, how they got started, how they are playing out, what effect they're having, and what we can do about them. So Tim, let me start with you. How many narratives are we talking about? Are there two? That would be the easy answer, but possibly more. What do you think? Two would be the easy answer, and I'd like to go with that if I could, but I won't. You also have narratives from the NGOs. They're doing their job out there and reporting what they think are the facts. And so it's not just the media in Israel, in the Gaza area, and West Bank area. So you do have, again, these agencies that are reporting data that is pertaining to their mission, and the media services are picking up on those reports and they're reporting it. I've noticed a shift since we last spoke. I've seen more of a balanced reporting going back to the initial attacks against Israel, and now some of the details of how Israelis were slaughtered, wholesale slaughter. And those reports are very disturbing, and I don't know what prompted the media to shift back to Israel's initial attack by Hamas, but they're doing it at least in the last week. Well, they were seriously criticized for spending 95% of their time on the sad story of the people, the Palestinians in Gaza. And if they were criticized, a couple of them, I wouldn't say apologized, that's their own word. They corrected themselves.  So if they were doing it the wrong way, spreading the wrong message, putting the wrong emphasis on originally, and then they corrected themselves after they were criticized, the damage is already done. Do you agree? I absolutely agree.  Yeah. There are some narratives like that the hospital where the parking lot was blown up, and the first thing that happened instantaneously was that Hamas reported that it was the Israeli Air Force. That wasn't true. Some media just never accepted the Israeli proof that it wasn't true, that it was actually an errant rocket from the Jihad. And so the first story stuck. And if you looked across the world today, I suggest that in that sub-narrative, or maybe it's part of, you know, the larger Palestinian narrative, you will find most people accept what Hamas came up with as the story and reject or don't know about the Israeli side of it. Do you agree? Yeah, I do. I'd also like to offer an example of how a narrative sticks. And despite numerous retractions, the original narrative sticks. Remember Pizza Gate in New York City? You ask a lot of mega people, and they swear by the fact that Pizza Gate was a real story. And there was nothing as far as a retraction that appealed to them. So, you know, we do have, you know, responsible newspapers and media outlets that make mistakes. They're honest mistakes. The retraction is printed, but the retraction never has really remembered that often. And so that's part of the dilemma is that the human condition, the human brain, kind of sticks with what it hears first and kind of glosses over any retractions subsequently. Yeah, Jean, to you, on the larger picture here about humanity, you know, that Tim refers to, it seems to me that one station makes a mistake and goes for a certain blood and gore narrative. And then the others follow. So what you find is sort of a bubble of narrative. If the narrative that they copy is wrong, then they're all wrong. Likewise, I think that same phenomenon exists out in the street. If some group, if somebody going to call it influencers, pick up on a narrative and somebody copies them, they're likely to copy what's in that bubble. And then you have 100,000 people in London all on a narrative that could be wrong. Then my view that is wrong. What is this about human nature, about the species that calls for us to copy the first statement, copy the blood and gore approach, copy a narrative that is wrong. I would suggest you're the historian, but it seems to me that this has existed throughout history. Well, you know, I have heard others who are not historians that are more expert than I in psychology and come up with some ideas. First and foremost, your peer group. And you're disposed to listen to your peer group and your general attitude is going to be influenced by them. Mark Sageman has talked about terrorists recruiting among bands of brothers. These are young men who are pretty footloose and are searching for some hero role for themselves. And they tend to band together and think the same way. So they're ripe for recruitment. A second thing we've learned from a scholar named Ramsey McMullen some time ago about conversion. How do you convert somebody? What has happened with Hamas is they had these narratives ready for dissemination, many of them. And also the human rights groups like Amnesty International have already predisposed a lot of people to blame Israel for what's going on with their accusation of apartheid in the world court. So we have a number of things that are going on here, both at the personal level and at the NGO level, as Tim figured out. Jean, I want to ask you about something that was covered in the New York Times a week ago, and that is the change, the shift in liberalism in the world. Liberalism seems to fold around these things. You know, you talk about, for example, just one of many examples, Amnesty. Amnesty International, you know, before, in my view, it was a liberal organization. Now it's buying into a narrative that is not liberal at all. And that's so for a lot of liberal organizations and a lot of people, liberal, formerly people we would consider liberal. And it may be a factor in what's happening in the campuses and streets of the United States. But, you know, what is going on? Do you agree with that shift, the statement of that shift? And what is going on here that Amnesty International would actually side with terrorists? Amnesty International has prepared a number of reports on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Their earlier reports examined the Palestinian Authority and the government in Gaza, which took over from the Palestinian Authority around 2006. And they criticized the leadership of the Palestinians for not providing for their people, for not negotiating for peace, for a number of things. And then all of a sudden, recently, a year or so ago, they came out with a report that was so biased, I couldn't believe it. I mean, it wouldn't, if it were in a paper presented in my class on history, I would give it a failing grade because it's only one side. They used only Palestinian sources. They complained only about the Israeli government jailing people, not the Palestinian Authority, jailing their own people. They complained about Israel affecting the infrastructure of Gaza, did not complain about the fact that the Gaza leadership did not provide enough water and sewage and infrastructure as well. I don't know why they suddenly shifted their perspective, why they did not use their previous research and incorporate that into a more balanced report. You know, today, what's happening, if you look at the general news media, if you go to Al Jazeera, they have printed the Palestinian narrative, one to 10. And no other outlet that I know of has done that simple thing. And if you look at Fox News, it is four square behind the Israeli narrative. So what do you do when you go to the media? Well, you take the extremes and you drop them, you get rid of them. You look at what's in the middle, basically. But people don't know how to do that. The colleges have not really been teaching critical thinking. Too much bias and emotion has crept into the classrooms. One professor was just interviewed, I believe it was for now, and saying she had no idea when these protests broke out after October 6th that these students had so much emotion going. She had no idea. Well, where has she been? You know, if you talk to young people, they're very susceptible to the BDS movement, which has been going on for some time. And as I said before, the principle of Ramsey McMullen, if you have accepted certain things before something is across your threshold and trying to convert you, already accepted part of the message, the BDS message, which has been going on for a number of years, or the AI message that Israel is an apartheid state, then you're more disposed to accept the whole thing. Tim, to you on the timing issue, you know, we spoke a few minutes ago about, for example, the Hamas message gets out instantly as if it were planned, and I personally believe it was planned, and it circumvents the world. It's everywhere in minutes, you know, with social media, electronic communications, and it sticks, OK? So the question is, one is first in time, first to influence the world, that seems clear. But then it seems that, as Jean says, it picks up and it spreads through the bubbles of individuals and their peer groups and so forth. But my question to you is, what happens then? In other words, does it stay forever? Does it diminish over time? Are people capable? Are these groups capable of rethinking it? Or does it just get worse? Well... Oh, go ahead, Jean. I was just going to say one thing, and then I'll pass it to you, Tim. One thing I do want to say, too, is the importance of visuals. We're finding out that some of these photographs of Palestinian children in Gaza, the corpses lying on the ground, people sitting in the midst of rubble and despair, blood all over it. Those are from Syria from years ago. They're picked up and they're circulated by those who have the intention of doing it because they're already bought into the narrative. So you have an army of narrators on both sides who are promoting things by using, by falsifying, by using and abusing the media. I'm going to come back to you on that, but let me go to the question I put to Tim. What's the time factor here? What's the dynamic? I think if a lie has been accepted, it takes a lot of time to dispel that lie or a false narrative, a long time. And in some cases, it never is dispelled. Just look at urban myths. Some of these urban myths we have in this world, in this country, are ridiculous. And we all know they're not true, but yet they exist and they have a life of their own for decades. Just one example. I also want to kind of tag on to our discussion about the narrative. And I'd be interested in to see if Jean kind of agrees with my opinion or not. And that is, for years now, the narrative and the official position by the United States government was supportive of a two-state solution. And then we saw that two-state solution kind of evaporate because Netanyahu wanted to, didn't really support a two-state solution and he started immediately building developments in some of these areas that would be part of the two-state solution. So I think there was a narrative that Israel was not proactive or being aggressive enough for a solution that many countries bought off on, including the United States. And so that narrative isn't helpful as it pertains to this current crisis we're in. Jean, what do you think about that? Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu in the year 2000, when he wasn't prime minister, was between his administrations, went to a meeting of heads of state and military people in Herzliya and said straight out, he thought the biggest problem of the 21st century would be the desire for self-determination. And if you read that, it means Palestinian self-determination. And Gershom Gorenberg, the American journalist who made Aliyah to Israel warned shortly thereafter when he went back into power, when the Netanyahu administration again came on the line around 2009, that he was very, very worried because Netanyahu was gonna let the third temple messianists into his government. And he was not in favor of a two-state solution at all. And I don't think Israelis today agree with him. And I think if anything comes out of this terrible conflict, it will be, again, a real push by other world states to encourage a solution, a final solution to this whole problem politically, which is a two-state solution, at least right now. And you have to understand too that it wasn't just the United States and Israel that were backburning the two-state solution. It was Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the Palestinians felt they had to do something to get it back on the table. This is pretty extreme, but I think they may have achieved that. So, Jean, my question is just real quick is did that history basically create a broad brushstroke over today's reporting of events? Is that a precursor or was that a precursor that tainted objective reporting? In the sense that people were feeling that Israel wasn't serious about a Palestinian agreement. Yes, yes. I do believe that on the left, we talked about the shift, the liberal shift, some liberal shift, not all. I think that may have motivated liberals and organizations like Amnesty International to start listening more to the Palestinian narrative, yes. You know, I saw a video from Prager University and I guess they're on the Zionist side of all this, but what they said, Jean, was that on five and they showed you historically the five occasions, a two-state solution had been proposed to the Palestinians all the way to the early part of the 20th century and forward. They documented or at least they covered in their video what had happened to suggest or propose a two-state solution. And in each case, the Israelis or the Jews, depending on what time you're talking about, agreed. They were happy to do it. And in each case, the Palestinians, whatever you called them at the time, because the name, the nomenclature of Palestinian really only took place recently. I guess it was just before or just after the War of Independence in 47, 48. In each case, the Palestinian group rejected it. And that puts a certain light on this. Now, if you say, well, that's not a completely accurate statement. Okay, but it still hangs out there. For me, if it is an accurate statement, it is really a condemnation of the whole two-state idea because if they tried two states five times before, why in the world would it succeed now? The Palestinian camp narrative on this is, let's kill all the Jews and destroy the state of Israel. And we're not going to negotiate for peace. We're not going to cooperate in any way. We have to get to our mission. And so it really depends on the history, doesn't it? So were there five occasions? Can you talk to us about that? I can't talk to you about each occasion, except Oslo came the closest and then Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by groups that today support the extreme right coalition of Netanyahu's government. And this was a disaster for Israel, I feel. The biggest sticking point in my estimation for a solution on both sides is the settlements. The settlements have been, in essence, occupying land that the Palestinians want for their state. So in each, you have to look at each attempt for a solution to see what was it that, you remember it was Yasser Arafat and the PLO that were basically the ones that had to make the agreement. Were they serious? Probably not, because they not only didn't want settlements, they didn't want that small piece of land either. They wanted more land. And when once Netanyahu was on board, were the Israelis serious? Probably not. What's different about today is that we have a war going on. This is the worst outburst in terms of Israeli casualties and Palestinian casualties in the history of Israel. They've never seen anything like it. And it's threatening to be a wider war. The United States is engaged in a polarized world against Russia and its proxies in Iran and its proxies. So it's a changed situation. The stakes are much higher. And what we're witnessing right now, regardless of where the visuals and the reports are coming from, what we're witnessing right now is heartbreaking. Indeed, but one thing becomes clear is that this was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. This was really special and it really struck their conscience. It was beyond description, beyond imagination, and so their response, not all Israelis feel that way, but enough of them feel that way, if you could say this is Israeli response. And it's more than a response, I think. I think it's motivated by the notion that whatever you do, we give them land, give them all of Gaza, all of Gaza. Give them land on the West Bank, the same thing. They'll be back, not necessarily for more land, but to implement that mission of destroying Israel and killing Jews and not making peace.  And it goes further. You can never negotiate with peace with someone who was sworn not to negotiate for peace. So this is really, there's so many narratives and sub-narratives and exaggerations and PR campaigns going on in so many levels. I think just as this is the worst war Israel has seen since the Holocaust and its history, this is the worst propaganda war Israel has ever seen. And at first, let me offer that at first in the first few days, Israel could have taken command of the information, but didn't want to show the pictures of the people who were killed or worse, beheaded, burned alive, what have you. They didn't want to show it because it was distasteful. I mean, there's a certain thing in the Jewish culture that stands against making that public. It's disrespect for the body and the family and so forth. So they didn't show it. At the same time, Hamas is showing pictures of those kids in the streets and Hamas is ready. Hamas has those pictures of Syrian kids from another time, phony photographs from another time. We have seen that before. Remember a scandal about Reuters? This is a couple of wars ago, Reuters was taken in and there was a doll. I don't know if you remember this, there was a doll some kid was hanging onto, some Palestinian kid and Reuters published that. But then when you looked at it carefully, it was the same doll as in another picture and another picture and another picture suggesting that this was all staged. And it was, it was staged. It also is remarkable that these pictures we get from Gaza about all these kids, they flow at us.  So we talked about this, we all talked about this before it's the information war. We're dealing with an information war. And at first I think Israel didn't really report on that. Now later, they're reporting more on it and maybe that's maybe Tim that got something to do with the fact that the press is covering it because they're getting the information before they weren't. But Tim, I want to go to another question and this is the secondary thing. So you have all this narrative and misinformation, disinformation that's already sort of fixed in the channels of information around the world. Where does that take this war? Because as we've discussed before, in part, maybe in substantial part, this war is an information war. Hamas is sophisticated and it knows that. Where does that take this war? Well, in my opinion, it could further polarize positions. Netanyahu could just say, I don't care what's being reported anymore, it's all about much of its misinformation.  And so it hardens one's line, if you will. And that's not a position you really want to be in when you need allies in the Middle East and you're forcing your allies into a kind of a hardened position. And I think that's what happens is people just give up and say, world opinion be damned, we're moving forward. And in some cases, you could even accelerate or increase the amount of a kinetic war. Yeah, your comments remind me of a story in I guess it was today's times about one of the Arab nations, we called this ambassador to Israel. So they're cutting diplomatic ties and this, I forget, it's a smaller nation, a Bahrain was Bahrain. And they're cutting diplomatic ties and I expect other Arab countries will do the same. And we were, that is Israel was friendly with Bahrain before. There was a light at the end of that tunnel, but now not. And this could have other effects. So in the end, Gene, is Netanyahu gonna prevail if he ignores this world opinion that has been created and that is popping up hither and yon with protests and terminating negotiations with other Arab countries and the like, can he prevail this way? Let's assume he does have a terrific army. Let's assume that the Air Force really can destroy the tunnels. Let's assume that the troops are as strong as we would hope they would be. Can he prevail on the kinetic side and ignore the public relations side? He can prevail on the kinetic side and he can lose on the information warfare side, which may be more serious. You have to win on both. He's gotta win on both battlefields. And the information warfare is something that has a long shelf life. If the UN, for example, which is now saying that Israel may have committed humanitarian crimes in its conduct of the war, if there's enough opinion that Israel needs to be tried for that after the war, it will taint their victory on the kinetic side. Joe Biden is already now calling for not a ceasefire, but a pause. See, Hamas wants a ceasefire. And they're drumming up and ginning up world opinion as much as possible through the visuals for a ceasefire. Now, I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to pause, but it throws a jackhammer into the kinetic war. So you see how the information war can be more important than the kinetic war, can affect the kinetic war, in the meantime, we're losing sight of the fact that there are negotiations going on. And as long as there are negotiations going on with Hamas over the hostages, Israel needs a presence on the battlefield in order to negotiate for strength. So we have to look at three things, negotiation, the kinetic war, and then the information warfare. It's complex, but they all play into one another. And we have to look at what Hamas's preconceived ideas are and what their preconceived objectives are and what they're calling for and how they utilize what influence they have now on people who are convinced to change the equation in terms of a military victory. Well, when Luzo draws, seems that Israel, at least on the public relations side, has been damaged and it's really tragic because we did lose 1,400 people to horrific massacres. And that is no longer the issue. The issue was those children in those graphics in Gaza, even though the Israelis did the knock-knock thing on the buildings and asked them to move south and did all they could to limit the loss of life and so. But they believe that unless they do, this is to me a driving tactical issue. If unless they do something, it will happen again because Hamas, as long as it exists, is sworn to kill Jews, destroy the state of Israel. And if Hamas continues to exist, you can bet your bottom dollar this will happen again. So, I mean, Israel has a problem either way on the public relations side, but also if they capitulate, if they treat Hamas as a legitimate civilized organization, not a terror organization, it'll happen again, which is maybe the worst result of all. So I guess my question, Tim, is as Israel lost on a long-term basis the PR war, look at those college campuses, look at those universities, look at the liberals who have turned against it, look at the United Nations, doesn't do anything anyway, but look at Europe, look at this huge global effect that this PR war has had, is having, will have. Is this a permanent loss of respect for Israel? No, I don't think it's permanent, but it's gonna have an impact for a long time to come. I also, the PR war intertwines with the political war and I'll put this out there and I don't know it's an opinion. I think Netanyahu knows his political days are over. I think because Israel was caught off guard, that lands squarely at his desk. And I think Netanyahu is now thinking about legacy. And what is that legacy? Well, if I'm Netanyahu in my mind, I'm gonna show the, I'm gonna show in Israel history that I did everything I could to cut the head off of Hamas and I'm gonna do so damn PR, making Israel look bad for right now. And I don't know why I think this, but I think this think that Netanyahu likes to be that strong leader, be perceived as tough as Moshe Diane or George Patton or any other strong general. And I think that's the legacy he wants to leave Israelis to remember him by, that he wasn't couldn't capitulate to the terrorist acts of Hamas and he did everything in his power to stop it and cut the head off of Hamas. I don't know if he'll be successful because it's hard to decimate a terrorist organization when they easily infiltrate back into civilian populations. I saved the most difficult question for Eugene. Are you ready? Oh, okay. What, all that considered, what do we do? What do we do now? And I'll start with the campuses and the streets of the United States, which are really screwed up on this issue. What do we do now in terms of world opinion, in terms of relating to countries, allies in Europe and, gee, everywhere? What do we do now to protect and preserve Israel from being destroyed? What do we do now? We listen to the wisest voices in our midst and there are plenty of very wise voices. Gershom Gorinburg has called for Netanyahu to step down. I think there has to be more pressure on Netanyahu to step down. And that may be part, as I've said before, it's a radical idea that it's one that my son who is pro-Palestinian gave me and that could be part of the negotiation. Secondly, we need to have humanitarian causes and dial down the rhetoric and the emotion surrounding the terrible plight of the Ghazan people who are caught in this terrible war. We've never seen visuals and reportage like this before in wars like this. There have been wars like this and we can't avoid quote unquote collateral damage in urban warfare like this. Against an enemy that started the war is trying to create an opinion that it is a victim while it is refusing to negotiate the hostage release and it deliberately wanted to create this chaos. Who is going to confront Hamas and deal with Hamas? Only Israel is doing that. So that's one thing that we have to keep saying again and again.  Who is going to do that and how are we going to do it? And right now the Israelis are doing it for us at great human cost. But again, they are acting out of a moral tradition of a just war. They're employing the tactics. The tactics aren't going to always work, but whose fault is that? How do you compel Hamas to do the right thing as well? Let's keep our perspective straight here. Let's keep our facts straight. We need to do more for Palestinian people. We need to provide for them and I think Israel is doing more. They're letting more trucks in, they're letting more people out, they're trying to be careful that Hamas doesn't escape to the South as well and create mayhem. But it's an impossible task. This is terrible war. And somehow the United States, the United Nations, the other Arab nations need to step up to the plate, help the Palestinians, maybe through humanitarian causes, maybe by opening up the border more to Egypt, whatever they need to do. But you can't just lay this all on Israel and you can't tell Israel to stop fighting Hamas.  And I suggest that the conversion really needs to apply to the Palestinians because they have had a lifetime of hate and they are committed to killing Jews and destroying Israel. I remember one piece of footage that came out of Gaza and it was a woman who had been raped apparently and maybe tortured and she was in the back of a truck and she was naked. And she was being paraded through the streets of Gaza and the crowds were enormous and the crowds were celebrating all of that. Those crowds were not limited to Hamas. Those were Palestinian crowds. So I think the Palestinians have been affected more than anybody else by this PR campaign and they have been converted to the Hamas point of view and they have to be reconverted which is going to be very, very difficult. I don't think people recognize that. Tim, final thoughts. Final thoughts is, I think Netanyahu is going to do what he's going to do. I think he knows his career is over. And again, as I've already said, he wants a legacy of being the guy that did his best and is utmost to stamp out Hamas. I don't think he'll be successful but that's what he's going to try to do. And I don't see, we see a ceasefire in the immediate future at all. This is all an enormous historical tragedy. Looking at it from the point of view of an historian, you have to compare it with some of the greatest tragedies in human history. But, Jean, what are your final thoughts that you would leave with our audience? I think that the kinetic war is being somewhat moderated by the position of the United States because in a very practical terms, even though Netanyahu is a hardliner and he wants to stamp out Hamas, he's had to listen to the United States. Israel can't win this war without the United States. And they know there's going to be an election pretty soon. So that's one real politic factor here. I think, Tim, there will be a ceasefire sooner than perhaps we think. Being able to sustain this level of emotion, polarization, negative consequence, casualty levels is going to be well-nigh intolerable over the long term. And I think more and more certain Arab states are going to get into the mix in trying to effect this. But again, once again, what the Israelis can do and what the people who recognize that Israel is the only Jewish state in the world and a very necessary state are going to have to do, is they're really going to have to put the pressure on Netanyahu in a way that he's never felt before.  Put that pressure on right away or put it on later at some other demarcation point. I would like to offer my own last thought. It's like they say, are we going to have a World War III? Well, some people think we're already in World War III and that World War III is sort of a subdued version of what you might expect as a kinetic World War III. And in terms of applying that kind of analysis to what's happening in the Middle East, I think the Middle East has been at war since before 1947, and it's still at war. And furthermore, that it will always be at war. The only question is whether it breaks out into this kind of violence. But I think you talk about a war and stopping the war, it'll never stop. It is what it is. That's my closing thought. Anyway, thank you very much, Tim Epichelen and Gene Rosenfeld. Thank you for this interesting and very informative discussion, very thoughtful discussion. Some of these points have been really, really, really worthy. We'll see you next time. Aloha. Thank you.


What are you doing in my bathroom? Do you have no limits? No inhibitions? No boundaries? I know. I know how irresistible I am. Still, you know, let me take you to my office and answer some of your persistent questions and disentangle your bafflement. So, many of you have asked me about my recent video. You said, if the borderline becomes a secondary psychopath, does she also transition from purposefulness to intentionality? Does she then act intentionally? Similarly, the narcissist doesn't have a self. The psychopath has a self. The narcissist is interested only in narcissistic supply. The psychopath is interested in many other things, sex, power, money, etc., etc. What happens when the narcissist transitions to a psychopathic self-state or becomes a psychopath? Does he then develop overnight an instantaneous self? And does he then become interested in, I don't know, money, power, sex, and so on? Okay. Cool your heels. Let me explain to you the source of your confusion. Every mental health diagnosis has three elements. One is known as etiology, the causation, the reason for the evolution and development of the mental illness. The second part is the psychodynamics, the psychological internal processes which bring on the manifested illness, the way the illness manifests in specific cognitions, specific emotions, or lack thereof, no emotions, etc., etc. So this is the psychodynamics. And the third element is behavioural. Behaviors that are intimately and sometimes exclusively linked to highly specific mental health issues, disorders, and illnesses. To satisfy a diagnosis, all three elements must be present. Etiology, how did the disorder or the illness come about? The personal history of the patient, an amnesis. The childhood, adverse childhood experiences, parental background, etc., etc., so etiology, the psychodynamics, cognitions of the patient, emotions of the patient, impulses, inhibitions, etc., all the internal mechanism of the patient. And the third element, how does the patient behave? Does the behaviour of the patient conform to the behaviour expected in this particular disorder or illness? And usually these behaviours are listed in diagnostic manuals such as the diagnostic and statistical manual and the international classification of diseases, the ICD and the DSM. Okay, that's the background. Now what happens when we have comorbidities, when two or more mental illnesses, for example, when two or more personality disorders are diagnosed in the same person? For example, what happens when the patient is diagnosed with both narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy? Which of the two prevail? And the answer is that there is always a dominant disorder and a recessive disorder. There's always a disorder that defines the patient's psychodynamic and dictates most of the patient's behaviours. And there's a disorder that is in the background and that contributes to the behaviours of the patient only when the patient is exposed to extreme stress, anxiety, crisis, circumstances and changing environments. So this is the background. Now let's, for example, take psychopathic narcissist, a malignant narcissist. That is considered to be a comorbidity of narcissism, psychopathy and sadism. How can we tell when the person is a sadist, when this kind of person, the malignant narcissist, is a psychopath, when he's a narcissist and so on? The answer is that the dominant disorder in this case is actually narcissism. Gradiosity, entitlement, envy, exploitativeness, etc. Narcissism dominates and the main goal or motivation of the patient is to secure a regular flow of narcissistic supply. However, the malignant narcissist secures the supply by deploying, employing, leveraging and using psychopathic behaviours. So the malignant narcissist would behave the way a psychopath does but with a goal of obtaining narcissistic supply. It's an example of how a comorbidity operates. Similarly, someone with a borderline personality disorder is likely to transition to a secondary psychopathic self-state when she decompensates or acts out. That's very common actually. Well, in this case, does she become a full-fledged psychopath? Of course not. Her dominant disorder is borderline personality. Her personality organisation is a borderline organisation. However, when she transitions to a secondary psychopathic self-state, she is likely to behave the way a psychopath does. She is likely even to display traits of a psychopath to some extent. For example, she is likely to become reckless or defined. But she still would be a borderline. She would experience shame and guilt after the episode. Throughout the episode, she would depersonalise, derealise, dissociate, etc. These are all hallmarks of borderline, not of psychopathy. Similarly, a question about reality. A psychopath is reality attuned. His reality testing is relatively intact, not fully intact, but relatively intact. Compared to the narcissist, the psychopath is fully grounded in reality and can tell the difference between reality and fantasy, which a narcissist cannot. So, when we have a malignant narcissist, a psychopathic narcissist, can he or can't he tell when he is in reality and when he is in fantasy? It's a narcissist. So, he cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. His reality testing is severely impaired. He is unable to grasp reality as it is. He distorts reality cognitively. So, when we have comorbidities, one of the disorders is the major disorder. It is the outcome of the patient's etiology and an amnesis and personal history in autobiography. This dominant disorder dictates the psychological dynamics inside the patient, inner processes, thought processes, cognitions, emotions and so on. And yet, the patient is capable of behaving in ways which are typical of another disorder. So, if we have a narcissist who is a malignant narcissist, a psychopathic narcissist is capable of behaving the way a psychopath does. And so does the borderline. So, when we talk about transitioning to self-states, when we talk about the narcissist who can become a psychopath, a borderline who can become a psychopath, a psychopath who can become a narcissist, when we talk about these kind of transitions, especially after states of collapse, we are talking nearly and only and exclusively about behaviors, coping strategies. So, we are not talking about etiology. We are not talking about psychological processes and dynamics. We are therefore not talking about the totality of the disorder. We are talking only about behaviors. A narcissist could begin to behave as a psychopath does. And yet, it doesn't make the narcissist a psychopath. A borderline can display psychopathic behaviors and even attitudes and even traits. It doesn't make her a psychopath. A psychopath can suddenly become super grandiose and title indulging fantasy, extract narcissistic supply, etc. etc. These are all narcissistic behaviors. They don't render the psychopath a narcissist. I hope you got a picture. In a variety of mental health disorders, especially personality disorders, in times of crisis, in times of anxiety, of stress, of tension, changing circumstances, adverse environment, in these situations, the person transitions, but the patient does not transition from one personality disorder to another personality disorder. He doesn't develop full-fledged alternative. He simply adopts behaviors borrowed from other disorders. Similarly, the narcissist, when he is exposed to narcissistic modification, becomes as dysregulated as a borderline, emotionally dysregulated, develops suicidal ideation. So these are borderline behaviors and traits. And yet, it doesn't make the narcissist a borderline. He just borrows borderline mechanisms or borderline behaviors temporarily. And the last point and very important point is these self-states are temporary. They're not permanent.  It's a phase, it passes, it's transitional. When a borderline decompensates and acts out and switches to a secondary psychopathic state, it's temporary. It can take a day or two, a few hours, and she is back to her old self. When a psychopath becomes a narcissist, it's reactive.  And when a narcissist following modification begins to dysregulate emotionally, it's again limited in time. It's self-limiting. It's limited in time. It may take a few weeks, a few months, a few days, and it's over. And it's again his old grandiose, intractable, untreatable, hopeless, incorrigible self. In short, nwa.


Oshun State Governor, Senator Demola Delike, has declared himself as the State Commissioner for Works with his deputy as Commissioner for Sports and Special Needs. The Governor made the declaration during the inauguration of the State New Cabinet members held at the State Government Secretary Oshobo. The Governor had submitted 25 names for Commissioner nominees to the State House of Assembly for Screening and all of them were screened and confirmed as qualified. Speaking during the inauguration, Governor Delike said all through a merit-based process was ensured in the Cabinet selection with a view to scoring high goals on good governance. The Governor charged the members to come up with new innovative ideas that will re-engineer the State's economy in order to satisfy high expectations that the people of the State have in this administration. Some of the new Cabinet members expressed hope that their composition, which comprises technocrats, professionals and youths picked from across all senatorial districts in the State will help drive the Governor's agenda on even transformation in the State. We are expecting better performance from me and I know that I'm going to miss their expectation and special grace of God. We have the Governor and her agenda, my programme and we are keen to make it a better place for us. Our expectations are high. We have some of the best in the State. It's a combination of the youth, the professionals and what you'll expect in the State. We have professionals that were specifically elected so that they can be able to deliver dividends to the people of the State.


Well, with the past week's movement, I thought it was a perfect time to jump back in and do a live stream. And here we are. What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Thank you guys for tuning in. There's been a lot going on in the crypto market with the Bitcoin ETFs. We saw Bitcoin hit a new high that we hadn't seen in about two or three years of $49,000. And then after that, things have kind of plummeted. We've been pulling back. We're down about, we hit 21.5% with a, we had the high of, let's see, on the 12th. So 11 days ago, well actually on the 11th. So 12 days ago, we had a high of $49,000. And as of today, we have hit a low of $38,500. So currently we're sitting at about $39,000. And we will see how things go from here. So today in today's live stream, we're gonna be going over what might be causing Bitcoin to drop. So we have a few different, there's a few different possible reasons why this has been happening. And then we will also be talking, we'll also take a look at the chart and see technically what has, what could be causing Bitcoin to drop. And then we'll be looking for what's, what could be the bottom of this move? Where's the bottom? Where are we gonna get that bounce? And we're gonna talk about building those million dollar positions. Remember, we did a video recently, about two weeks ago, where we spoke about building that position for the long term for that bull run, where we could potentially build up a trade of about a million dollars, right? But the best time to build that trade was during a big pullback of over 15 to 20%, which is currently what we're getting right now. So we're gonna cover all of that in today's live stream. So make sure you guys tune in to the end. So without further ado, let me go ahead and pause the music and then we'll jump over to the monitor. Pause the music there. Oh, I think I can just lower it a bit. I don't know if you guys can still hear it or not, but as long as it's not overpowering my voice and we should be fine. So let's go ahead and jump over to the chart here. So as you guys can see, the main thing here is we have this massive, massive fall off. And if we just kind of zoom out a bit, let's go to the weekly. And let's actually change, because I have a lot of things drawn here on this chart, a lot of things that we've been tracking. So let's change to a cleaner chart. And this right here is basically as clean as you can get. Let's go to the monthly. And right off the bat, you can see that this monthly chart, it becomes a little obvious, right? So we had the big move up, then we had a big resistance up here, which is exactly where the rejection has occurred. And currently we have a bearish pin bar. So bearish pin bar is a bearish signal, of course. It basically indicates a reversal, trend reversal in the future basically, right? So in this case, it would be in the immediate future because we still have the Bitcoin halving coming up and we'll talk a little bit more about that, what that means and what we can expect with the Bitcoin halving coming up, what we can expect with prices, right? So currently you can see we're sitting about $39,100. And we've hit that resistance. We're now getting close to this Fibonacci support. So this Fibonacci support is sitting right around $37,000. And you can see that this level has been very, very big in the past. You can see it's been big here. It acted as both support and resistance. And then once again here, acted as big support. And then when we lost it, you can see these massive, massive moves to the downside when we lost that support there. So because of that, I'm expecting this to be once again a big, big level here for Bitcoin, big level of support overall. And we had a breakout above it, right? So this right here was a breakout over the last two months. We broke above it. And now what it looks like we're gonna be doing is retesting that breakout and confirming that as a support before a continuation higher. So that's why I'm saying even though we're down 21%, even though it's been such a big pullback, this is a healthy correction overall for Bitcoin's price. Because what we can expect here, like we can't expect price to just continue up. That that's unrealistic. But what we can expect here is the natural movement of prices, which is up, down, then higher, down, then higher, et cetera, right? So that's much more natural. Now there are a few things, warning signs that pointed to this over the last few months. And we spoke a lot about this. So it's clear to see it on the daily here. So we'll look at it there. If we go, just get our trend line, and it's not difficult, right? We get a trend line, we're looking at the RSI. We draw the trend line on how the RSI has been acting. Then we look at price, get a trend line. And once again, do the same thing, right? Mark the price, what's the trend of the price here? And we can see very, very clear that basically since we topped out here, that was in October, RSI started to trend to the downside while price continued going up to the upside and setting new higher highs. You see, here we're setting new lower highs, or yeah, lower highs, and here we're setting higher highs. So when we have something like this, I see someone says my volume is very low. Let me know if my volume is low, guys. I don't wanna, I don't know if it's just his volume or if it's the overall volume is very low. So if I am, let me know in the chat right now so I can adjust it. I already adjusted it a little bit. But overall, as you guys can see, whenever the price is going up with the RSI, going down, remember the RSI is a momentum indicator. So if momentum is dropping while price is going up, then something is wrong, right? Something is off. And that usually, for the most part, indicates that we need either, that we need some sort of pullback. We need a correction, right?  If you would have seen this right here in October and then in November, when we first realized that we're getting this bearish divergence, if you would have sold here, right? This is, you would have sold at, let's say you sold at the high, the high would have been around $35,000. So if you sold around $35,000, you would have missed out on another $15,000. You know, because, and that's the thing, we can't really guess when these pullbacks, when these corrections are gonna happen. So this has been here on the charts for a while now, and we've spoken about it for a while. However, there's no way to know when the correction is actually gonna happen. And then of course, with the Bitcoin ETF rumors and all of that going on, it held up Bitcoin's price through any pullback. Any pullback was getting bought up right away. And you can see here just over and over and over anytime we pulled back, it got right back up. And eventually we topped out here once that the news came that the Bitcoin ETF were officially approved. We had this top out here and then the next day, basically we just tanked for about 7.7% and then consolidated a bit and then we have continued down. We lost the 50 EMA. So this is the EMA 50 day moving average. We lost that, that was a significant one here. As you can see when we were following it, we stayed on top of it. We're bouncing on it for a little bit and then we lost it. So the next big areas here overall technically is $38,000 because if we look back on history, $38,000 has been a previous big level there. And as you can see, $38,000 is also in line with this Fibonacci level that's here at $37,000. So I think that could potentially be around the range where we can potentially bottom out. Anywhere between $37,000 to $38,000. If we go as low as $37,000 and if we go back here to this chart, well actually let's stay on the other chart. It's just easier to see what I'm showing you guys. If we go back here, you can see 21%. If we go all the way back down to this Fibonacci level, that's about a 24% pullback. Now, earlier this week we spoke about, we did a small report on, we did it in our Discord, we posted it on Instagram and we also posted it on Twitter talking about how far this pullback could go. So what we did was we looked back historically on previous pullbacks, right? And here you can see, you can see the pullbacks here. And historically, this was the last year. So once this move up, once we bottomed out and started a new move up, we tracked every single pullback. And you can see this pullback here was 22.5%. This pullback was 20.23% and this pullback was 21.68%. And if you remember doing those pullbacks, everyone was calling for the end of the world, right? Here we dropped down as low as 19,569. Everyone was calling for 15,000. People were calling for $12,000, right? Those were the two of the big targets we continued to see, especially $12,000. And what happened after that, we had a massive bounce and we continued on our way up. Then we set a new high of 31,000 and pulled back all the way down to 24,000. Now if you think back during that time period, this was mid-2023, people were calling once again for a retest of 20,000 for a retest of 18,000. And again, we got these 15,000 and $12,000 targets once again. None of that happened, Bitcoin continued up. Then again, we had a new high, 31,000, 32,000, right? And then we pulled all the way back to a low of 24,920. Once again, when we were here, people were calling for a pullback to $20,000 saying that the CME gap, et cetera, et cetera, pulled back to 18,000. And of course, those targets at $12,000 were still being called out. Of course, Bitcoin bounced. So I tell you guys all that so that you realize when we're in the thick of it, it feels like it could be the end of the world. It feels like we could just continue to drop and drop and drop and there'll be, we won't go back up. But that's why I like to zoom out and look at the past.  We're literally 1% off. I'm not saying that we're gonna go only to 22.5% because if we look back at the previous bull run, you know, last year alone was not enough data. So we wanted to get a little bit more data. And so we looked at the previous bull run and you'll see that during that previous bull run, we had very similar things.  So we're not gonna look at that, but here you can see we had a pullback 18%, pullback of 21%, 11%, 31%, 26%, right? So we had big pullbacks during that bull run. But if you average out all of these pullbacks during the bull run, the average pullback and during that bull run was 29, I'm sorry, was 21.9% was the average pullback. If we average out all the pullbacks last year in the entire year of 2023, the average pullback was 21.47%. So we're starting to see a trend, right? And of course in 20 and in the previous bull run, the biggest pullback was 31%, so that lets you know that that's a possibility, right? And the biggest pullback last year was 22.5%. So we're currently sitting at 21, if we said, okay, we're gonna go to 22, 22.5, that's around $38,000. If we spoke about 37,000 where that Fibonacci level is, that's about 24%, right, from the highs. And let's say that we went to the high, the 31% pullback like we saw during the previous bull run, something like this, that gives us a target of about $33,000. Now, I don't, I honestly, personally, I don't think we're gonna get a 31% pullback, but it is in the cards. It is in the probabilities, now although it might have the lowest amount of probability, it still is a probable scenario for the price here of Bitcoin. So that's something that we need to keep in mind. A 31% drop off is a possible scenario here. Now, another thing that we need to think about is the Bitcoin halving, right? So the Bitcoin halving is approaching and it's approaching quickly. Let me see here. Bitcoin halving countdown. So we're officially 83 days away from the Bitcoin halving. Now, the reason I bring this up is because historically speaking within 60 days of the Bitcoin halving, we have basically a pre-Bitcoin halving rally. So we're about 23 or three weeks away from that period where we get within that 60 day window, right? And that's what we're expecting at that point, Bitcoin to definitely bounce and begin to rally back up. Now, how high can it rally? I'm not sure. Maybe back to this $50,000 range. I think that's definitely a possibility. But first we're gonna have to survive these next three weeks. And I think if we're gonna get a further pullback, it's gonna be within these next three weeks. So something that could happen is we could see things consolidate here around $38, $39, $40,000. And then for the next three weeks or so. And then once we get within that 60 day period, then we could potentially start to see price get back above 40, 42, 45, and potentially all the way up to 50 again. So that's when I think we would really, we'll really see that next rally for Bitcoin until then. And so for the next 23 days, anything could happen basically. So we have to play very, very carefully here and as safe as possible because this is a probability. There's a few different probabilities, a 31% pullback, although it didn't happen at all last year. We didn't have these massive moves that we've had this quickly. So last year's moves, although we did have big moves, they weren't as fast, right? So they took more time to develop. You can see all this time for consolidation, all this time for consolidation, all this time for consolidation. Look how quickly this has been. There's been, after the big moves, there's been no consolidation. It's just continued up and continued up. So because of that, we could see a deeper pullback than what we saw last year, which its deepest pullback was 22.5%. But right now we're at 21.5%. And that was about the average during 2021 bull run and last year. Those were, that was about the average pullback. So I would love to see us just stay within this range, maybe consolidate and then start slowly moving up, hopefully bottoming out already here at 38,000. Because it is about the average of what we hit over the last year and what we hit in the 2020, 2021 bull run. So technically, from a technical aspect, that's basically how I'm looking at it, what I'm looking at and the levels that I'm watching, 37 or 38 being that main number. And then if we were to fall beyond that, 35,000 is also a support level. As you can see, it held up Bitcoin here. And then 33,000 really being that big level there to the downside, you can see at 33, we also have the 50 week moving average down here in that 32 to 33 range. So again, that's the lowest probability scenario, but it is a scenario to just kind of think about if you're needing to manage positions and things like that, depending on what happens. Now for a long-term, guys, for your long-term positions, there's nothing you have to do. I would instead, the only thing that I would do here on any long-term positions is buy more. That's it. Other than buying more, there's nothing to do here. For long-term positions. This is a perfect opportunity if you have missed out on any of this rally. This is the perfect opportunity now to add to your long-term portfolio, long-term positions for the next two years. You add here in the next year or two. Guys, this is guaranteed to go up. I'm expecting my conservative estimate is $100,000 for Bitcoin, $10,000 for Ethereum, you know, $250 for Solana, at least $200 for Avalanche, $5 for XRP, you know, $5 for Cardano. Like those are my, I feel like what are my conservative targets there? So if you guys have not added enough, if you don't feel like you have enough and you have some extra cash laying around that you're not doing anything with, this is a time to use it. This is a time to buy, right? So now that we looked at the chart, let's talk about some possibilities on what could be also apart from the technical analysis point of it, what else has been adding basically fuel to this fire? Now, one of the main things that has been happening here, and let me pull it up really quick. What was it? FTX. So let me pull up FTX real quick. So what happened with FTX? Let's pull this up here. So FTX has sold about $1 billion of grayscales Bitcoin ETF, which explains much of the outflow, right? So let's just kind of go over this article together so that you can understand it. So, let me see, let me go to where it actually starts talking. All right, so investors, and this has to do with grayscale Bitcoin trust, GBTC. So when the Bitcoin ETFs were approved, grayscales Bitcoin trust converted their fund into an ETF as well. And after that, investors sold more than $2 billion worth of GBTC since it was converted. So, and then the thing is that a large chunk of that was FTX's, from FTX's bankruptcy estate, dumping 22 million shares, which was worth about $1 billion. So that's where a lot of the outflow is going, is coming from right now. Now, because, and as you can see here in theory, now that FTX is done selling its substantial holdings, the selling pressure could ease since a bankruptcy estate liquidating holdings is a relatively unique event. So that could be part of the reason what's been adding on to the sell pressure recently. You know, basically a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin has been getting sold as they've been liquidating their position in GBTC. So that's one thing that could be basically adding on to the sell pressure there. And it's one thing that I definitely wanted to point out here during this livestream. Let me take a drink of water real quick. All right, now the next thing that could be adding on to this is of course a sell the news event, right? So what's a sell the news event? I'm sure you guys have heard it before where people say buy the rumor, sell the news. Well, that's basically what that means, right? Where people were buying down here, right? In September, October, November, that's when this ETF news began, right? And you can see how Bitcoin rallied during that time. So imagine if you, the people that bought when they bought the rumor, they bought around, let's say they bought at around 26 to $30,000 in that range, 26 to $28,000 probably is more likely. So within 26 to $30,000 they bought, let's see what that looks like. Let's say they bought at 30, let's say they bought at 30 and it went all the way up to $49,000 if they sold there, right? That's a 63% gain within, let's see, with from October to January. So in a quarter basically, in three months, they went from if they bought at $30,000 or if they bought at, where is this? This is about $30,000 if they sold up here in three months, they just made a 63% return. So if you have a whole lot of money, let's say you have $100 million, you just made $63 million, you could probably just sell everything and just sit out for a while, right? So that's kind of what we've been seeing here. Where a lot of these big, big money firms, institutional investors probably bought on the rumors of the BlackRock ETFs and then as soon as it was approved, they took that advantage of that to sell up there while media was covering it so much, right? So remember that during the ETF week for Bitcoin, it was everywhere. There was all over the media, that's all they were talking about on any show that had to do with finance, there are commercials, so retail, that's when their retail craze starts and that's what pushes the price all the way up or tops out and then what happens, all the people that bought down here sell and dump on all these people that are buying now based on all the media coverage, right? So they get dumped on, Bitcoin's dropped 21.5% and now they might start buying again, right? Those people that sold up there, they now is a time where they could potentially begin to fill their bags back up. So that's why we have to watch what happens here because basically the way that the markets work is that they want the average retail investor to suffer, right? They want them to suffer as much as possible and they wanna cause the max pain to the point where you start selling, right? That's what these are. These are shakeouts. They want you to sell your Bitcoin, right? And once the retail begins to sell, maybe you're like, nah, I'm gonna just hold, right? At 10%, they're like, yeah, that's fine, I'll hold at 15%, okay, it's now 15, but I know we're gonna bounce, I'll hold at 20%, nice, now people start to panic at 20%, right? Now they're down 20%, so if they bought $1,000, now they only have $800. 20%, they might start panicking here and this is where people might start panic selling. If we get to 25 or 30%, then retail is really gonna be panicking. And at that point is where the institutions, the market makers come right back in, buy it all up and move the price all the way back up and then Bitcoin will set new highs above 50, I think the next leg up could potentially retest the previous all-time highs. So what's gonna happen when we retest all-time highs? I think we're gonna get something similar to what we're seeing right now, right? I think that what's gonna happen here is we're gonna reach our max paying point, retail is gonna panic sell, institutions come back in, buy it all up, push prices back up all the way to previous all-time highs. Once we get back to those previous all-time highs, potentially even set any all-time high, what happens? Bitcoin is all over the news again. Bitcoin is all over the media. Media starts covering Bitcoin like crazy. People start, the ETF companies start running commercials for Bitcoin ETFs. All that begins to happen again, drives in more retail. As it drives in the more retail, they pump the price up and institutional investors that are gonna be buying down here at the mid-30s, that wrote it all the way up again, right? Let's say they buy down here, write it all the way up, let's say $75, let's say $70,000. 83% return. And what do they do? They're gonna dump it on everybody once again. They'll dump on retail. So this will probably pull back another 20, something percent, right? Back down to $50,000 or so, then that is just the whole process over and over. They'll buy back again once retail panics, they panic sell, they'll buy once again, push the price higher, set new all-time highs. And that's when we could potentially hit what I'm thinking is my target, which is $100,000. They'll double their money there at $100,000. I think that's when we see another potential sell here pullback where it could potentially drop back all the way for another 20, 20 something, maybe back to previous all-time high down here. And then at that point, I would think in 2025, and then at that point, I think once again, we get one last push maybe there, where they come back in, buy back at $70,000, push price to like 140, 150, maybe even 200 plus. So that's kind of the idea I have for the future here. And I'm just kind of thinking on how market makers like to play the game, right? Based on retail. They wanna bait retail in, dump on retail, bait retail to sell, then push price back up to bait retail back in again. And that just happens over and over and over again. So that's pretty much what we're gonna be watching here over the long term. For we're watching for those that max pain, we're looking for that max pain for retail where institutional and market makers are gonna come right back in and push prices right back up. And then we look for those points, right? So this was a perfect point here, 49 grand to dump on everybody. I think the next big point is gonna be at previous all-time highs, dump on everyone. And then after that, the next big selling point is gonna be around $100,000, dump on everyone again. So we'll see how that works out. That's just kind of my idea. Now let's talk about some potential trade setups here and we'll wrap things up with this. If you guys have any questions about anything that we're covering or that we've covered already, let me know in the chat and I'll be more than happy to answer those questions for you guys. All right, so let's see. So right now, I honestly don't like anything. If you're trying to catch anything down here, the issue is that you're basically trying to catch a falling knife, right? That's what I call trying to catch a falling knife. So imagine someone throws a knife at you and they say catch. That's what it feels like trying to enter a long position here. And the argument against a short position is that there's a lot of support here and we're already down 21.5%. So that's the issue at our current level with long and short. So if I'm looking for a long, I'm gonna be looking for a bounce. I wanna see a bounce back in Bitcoin's price. So the first level that I would watch is 40 grand. $40,000, I think a bounce above $40,000 would be interesting and could potentially be something. Have a very, very small position where we enter above $40,000. Keep a tight stop in case we just drop back down, get rejected and just take profits along the way. So I think that's the first area I'd be looking at. Second area is $42,000 and I'd be more confident with the $42,000 breakout entry. So those are the two levels that I'm gonna be watching here for breakouts this week and the next, right? If we fall further at $38,000, let's say if we fall below $38,000, then I'd potentially be interested in a bounce back above $38,000, I'd be interested in something there as well. So those are the three different areas that I'm currently watching. As far as short positions, I'm honestly not looking to short. One, we're down already 21.5%. Two, the overall trend is to the upside. Three, Bitcoin halving is coming guys and it's only a matter of time before Bitcoin's price starts moving back up. So due to those three things is why I am not personally looking to short anything right now at the current levels. So I think that pretty much wraps things up. We've covered, we broke down, we analyzed Bitcoin's chart, we took some predictions, we looked at the potential halving and how that could affect prices. We looked at some predictions for the rest of the year and next year, some potential selling points for market makers and how market makers are playing the game. And we also looked at some news that's been out, FTX putting sell pressure on Bitcoin through selling GBTC. We got the sell the news event. So a lot of different things, right? That all kind of just came together as a perfect storm for a sell off here for Bitcoin. So if you guys have any questions about anything that we covered make sure to drop it in the comments. I'm always happy to answer those questions for you guys. I'm always checking them. So if you have anything that at all that you wanna ask feel free to drop it in the comments. Other than that guys, again, this is a great buying opportunity for the long term for the next one to two years. If I didn't, I'm adding to my positions as we speak today over the next week. And these are any money that you're adding here remember is not to take profit right away it's just to hold on for the next one to two years through that bull run rally that we're expecting and historically has happened after the Bitcoin halving. So very excited for what 2024 is gonna bring us guys and very excited for these next two years. This next bull run could be crazy because now we have institutional investors through Bitcoin ETF. So it's gonna be crazy. I'm very excited for this year guys. And yeah, it's pretty much it for me guys. So if you guys are interested in knowing more you guys can join, you guys can follow me over on Twitter you guys can follow me on Instagram, TikTok and you guys can join the Discord for more information. So I share everything that I do personally the trades that I make personally my personal trades, whether it's leverage trades or option trades. And then we also have an algorithm bot that gives out signals as well in the Discord. So you guys if you want more information on that you could join through the link in the description right now. So thank you guys so much. I'll see you guys on the next one. As always peace and love.