USA - The folks at Union Theological Seminary are taking the concept of “talking to your plants” to a frightening new level. Each year, students at the seminary pay a ridiculous amount of money to go to the school, and they are there to be trained to be the Christian leaders of tomorrow. But instead, they are being taught to confess their “climate sins” to potted plants, and eventually these impressionable young minds will be leading churches and Christian institutions all over America. I realize that this story is so bizarre that it sounds like somebody made it up, but it is actually true.

UK - Eating meat could be banned like smoking, one of Britain’s foremost barristers has predicted, as he called for the offence of ‘ecocide’ to be introduced to prosecute those who damage nature on a massive scale. Michael Mansfield QC warned that the farming of livestock for meat was destroying the planet and called for legislation to criminalize those who cause global warming and the willful destruction of wildlife. In a message delivered at the launch of the Vegan Now campaign, which encourages people to stop eating meat and dairy, Mansfield said he had a ‘single message’ to make ecocide a crime.

IRAN - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called violent attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure in Abqaiq and Khurais “an act of war,” as evidence suggests that Iran is the culprit. This marks the most dangerous escalation between the US and Iran since the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. However, this confrontation has major implications for the growing US–China strategic rivalry. Amidst historic US–Iran tensions, Beijing is doubling-down on its strategic partnership with Tehran, ignoring US efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic from global markets. Following an August visit by Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Beijing, the two countries agreed to update a 25-year program signed in 2016, to include an unprecedented $400 billion of investment in the Iranian economy – sanctions be damned. The capital injection, which would focus on Iran’s oil and gas sector, would also be distributed across the country’s transportation and manufacturing infrastructure.

USA - Central banks are losing control, and are admitting they don’t even understand what is happening. I quoted St Louis Reserve Bank president, James Bullard, who commented, “Something is going on, and that’s causing I think a total rethink of central banking and all our cherished notions about what we think we’re doing… We just have to stop thinking that next year things are going to be normal.”

USA - Aram Sinnreich recently went grocery shopping at a Whole Foods Market in his hometown of Washington, DC, and realized he had left his wallet at home. He had no cards and no cash, but he had no reason to worry — at least, not about paying for his food. “I used my iPhone to pay, and I unlocked it with my face,” he said. That’s when it struck him: We are just one small step away from paying with our bodily features alone. With in-store facial-recognition machines, he wouldn’t even need his smartphone. Sinnreich, associate professor of communication studies at American University, said he got a glimpse of the future that day. Removing the last physical barrier — smartphones, watches, smart glasses and credit cards — between our bodies and corporate America is the final frontier in mobile payments. “The deeper the tie between the human body and the financial networks, the fewer intimate spaces will be left unconnected to those networks,” Sinnreich said.

JAPAN - Outraged South Korean officials demanded answers this week after Japan revealed plans to discharge radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean… "senior Japanese officials, including Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada, have expressed their support for the idea of dumping tainted water into the ocean." “What’s more worrisome is that some Japanese are seeing Korea’s protest in the context of an ongoing bilateral trade dispute,” it continued. “The release of contaminated water will affect not only Japan and South Korea but also the rest of the world. This is certainly an issue that needs global monitoring and cooperation.”

USA - The peak-level virtual signaling over plastic straws — peddled by the left-wing media and 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — is why I dedicated a chapter in my new book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know to detailing the often overlooked fact that about 90 percent of the planet’s plastic waste comes from a few rivers in and around Asia and Africa.

VATICAN - The Vatican published the list of participants in its upcoming pan-Amazon Synod Saturday, which includes as “special invitee” Jeffrey D Sachs, who is among the world’s foremost proponents of population control. In his 2008 book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Sachs argued for legalizing abortion as a cost-effective way to eliminate “unwanted children” when contraception fails. Abortion, he wrote, is a “lower-risk and lower-cost option” than having unwanted children born into the world. The “legalization of abortion reduces a country’s total fertility rate significantly, by as much as half a child on average,” he wrote approvingly... As Stefano Gennarini wrote in 2015, Jeffrey Sachs and Ban Ki-moon are “arguably the most powerful proponents of abortion and population control in the world.”

VATICAN - Brenna Cussen Anglada recalls a visitor to Wisconsin’s St Isidore Catholic Worker Farm who arrived believing that nature would be better off without humans. “At the end of the summer,” Ms Cussen Anglada says, “she realized not only that she loved nature but that nature loved her.” This visitor’s time at the Catholic Worker farm helped her realize that solutions to the environmental crisis were not only about eliminating problems but restoring relationships. This is precisely what Pope Francis exhorted the church to in “Laudato Si’.”

UNITED NATIONS - In 2015 the UN published a document of almost 15,000 words entitled “Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” This document is a stream of consciousness of pious platitudes about meeting 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), and thereby meeting the most pressing “necessities” of humanity. Spearheading the agenda forward was Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic church.

USA - Are we about to see US financial markets go crazy? That is what Goldman Sachs seems to think, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that great financial chaos has been unleashed during the month of October. When the stock market crashed in October 1929, it started the worst economic depression that we have ever witnessed. In October 1987, the largest single day percentage decline in US stock market history rocked the entire planet. And the nightmarish events of October 2008 set the stage for a “Great Recession” that we still haven’t fully recovered from. So could it be possible that something similar may happen in October 2019? According to CNBC, Goldman Sachs is warning that the stock market could soon “go crazy again”. ”For investors taking a breather from the chaos in August, buckle up as the market is about to go crazy again”, Goldman Sachs warned.

CHINA - Activists spanning over 150 countries participated in the global climate strike Friday, but activists in China — the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitter — were noticeably silent as protests were not authorized in the country, according to reports. Thousands gathered in cities across the globe — including London, Berlin, Tokyo, and Washington, DC — to protest anthropogenic climate change and the purported lack of urgency to address it. However, there was a remarkable lack of participation from individuals in China — the planet’s worst greenhouse gas emitter...

UK - Psychological child abuse at the hands of sociopathic adults is as twisted and evil as physical abuse. When kids are fed propaganda that they are going to die if they don’t strike for global warming, it’s time to say ‘Enough!’ One 15 year old states, “We believe there is no point in going to school if we are not going to have a future to live in.” These young kids have no ability or tools to understand reality, and are being mercilessly used to further the global warming hysteria of climate extremists. It is not a mistake that the only solution ever offered is Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy.

UK - Brexit Party MEP Richard Tice has revealed the real reason the EU are so desperate to keep the UK shackled to the bloc. Richard Tice explained the EU is “essentially bust” without the UK’s financial contributions, and that is why Brussels heavyweights keep saying they “regret” the 2016 referendum result. On Wednesday the European Parliament debated Brexit and numerous MEPs from across the bloc said how they “regretted” the UK’s decision to leave. But Mr Tice has said their only regret is the loss of Britain’s money and reiterated the Brexit Party’s stance that the UK must leave the EU without a deal to rid Britain of the EU’s “daft rules and regulations”.

MIDDLE EAST - The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) quotes people familiar with the matter on Sunday, Houthi rebels in Yemen have warned foreign diplomats that Iran is preparing a follow-up strike to the missile and drone attack on Saudi Arabian oil and gas facilities a week ago that knocked-off 5% of the global oil supplies. The sources confirm that the last attack was forced by Iran and are said to have passed the information to the Saudi and the US about the warnings. Should there be another attack, it could flare-up the tensions between the US and Iran and propel oil prices through the roof once again. Both crude benchmarks settled the week nearly 6% higher, with WTI flat at the close above the 58 handle while Brent finished near 64.60 region.