The Book of Enoch is an ancient text attributed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. It is divided into five main sections. The first section, the Book of the Watchers, describes the fall of a group of angels who descend to Earth and engage in sinful behavior, teaching forbidden knowledge to humanity. Enoch is appointed as a messenger to the fallen angels, warning them of their impending judgment.
The second section, the Book of Parables, contains apocalyptic visions given to Enoch. These visions include prophecies of the final judgment, the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of a new and righteous kingdom.
The third section, the Book of Astronomy, presents a detailed account of the movements of the heavenly bodies and their significance in the ordering of the universe.
The fourth section, the Book of Dream Visions, features Enoch's visions of the future, including the fate of the righteous and the wicked.
The fifth section, the Epistle of Enoch, describes Enoch's teachings to his sons, emphasizing the importance of righteousness, repentance, and the fear of God.
Overall, The Book of Enoch provides insights into angelology, cosmology, and eschatology, and it is considered a valuable text for understanding ancient Jewish and Christian traditions.
There are a lot of books of the canonical Bible she could’ve used here, but she chose The Book of Enoch? I think she’s hunting at something.
TheHill | Across news sites, Democrats are warning of the imminent death of democracy. Hillary Clinton has warned that a Trump victory would be the end of democracy. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is warning of “executions.” Even actors like Robert DeNiro are predicting that this may be our very last democratic election.
Yet these harbingers of tyranny are increasingly pursuing the very
course that will make their predictions come true. The Democratic Party
is actively seeking to deny voters choices in this election, supposedly
to save democracy.
Henry Ford once promised customers any color so long as it is black.
Democrats are adopting the same approach to the election: You can have
any candidate on the ballot, as long as it’s Joe Biden.
This week, the Executive Committee of the Florida Democratic Democracy told voters that they would not be allowed to vote against Biden. Even though he has opponents in the primary, the party leadership has ordered that only Biden will appear on the primary ballot.
And if you want to register your discontent with Biden with a
write-in vote, forget about it. Under Florida law, if the party
approves only one name, there will be no primary ballots at all. The
party just called the election for Biden before a single vote has been
cast.
This is not unprecedented. It happened with Barack Obama in 2012 and,
on the Republican side, with George W. Bush in 2004. It was wrong then,
and it is wrong now.
As Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.)
noted, “Americans would expect the absence of democracy in Tehran, not
Tallahassee. Our mission as Democrats is to defeat authoritarians, not
become them.”
In Iran, the mullahs routinely bar opposition candidates from ballots as “Guardians” of the ballots.
There is good reason for the Biden White House to want the election called before it is held. A CNN poll found that two out of three Democrats believe that the party should nominate someone else. A Wall Street Journal poll that found 73 percent of voters say Biden is “too old to run for president.”
The party leadership is solving that problem by depriving Democratic voters of a choice.
In other states, Democratic politicians and lawyers are pursuing a
different strategy: “You can have any candidate, as long as it isn’t
Trump.”
They are seeking to bar Trump from ballots under a novel theory about
the 14th Amendment. In states from Colorado to Michigan, Democratic
operatives are arguing that Trump must be taken off the ballots because
he gave “aid and comfort” to an “insurrection or rebellion.” Other
Democrats have called for more than 120 other Republicans to be stripped
from the ballots under the same claim tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
pacemaker | I've been waiting for today, knowing it was pre-planned and coming. Today in Riyadh at the China-Arab Summit President Xi of China formally invited the Arab nations to trade oil and gas in yuan on the Shanghai Exchange. Now the way diplomacy works (because it seems to have been forgotten in the West) is that Xi would not have made the invitation unless all the Arab states gathered in Riyadh - and particularly Saudi Arabia as host - had already agreed as a matter of joint policy to take action accordingly. Oil and gas will price in Shanghai and in yuan, breaking the dollar monopoly the US has imposed and enforced since 1974. Since the dollar-for-oil monopoly was the lynchpin of Bretton Woods II stability, it follows Bretton Woods II ended today.
To
refresh memories, President Nixon unilaterally repudiated the US treaty
obligation under the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement to redeem dollars for
gold in 1972. The chaos in foreign exchange markets that followed led
to instability, made worse with the inflationary OPEC oil embargo of
1973-74.
In July 1974 the US Treasury Secretary William Simon and US Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger made a top-secret flight to Riyadh to meet
King Fahd. They offered a deal: sell Saudi oil exclusively for US
dollars and buy US Treasuries with the proceeds, or we kill you, your
entire family, and occupy the oil fields with the US military. Unsurprisingly, they left with a secret agreement.
The
same deal was more or less extended to all of OPEC. Leaders like Saddam
Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya who strayed from the US
dollar were killed, their countries destroyed and destablilsed, as an
example to others. Iran, Syria, and Venezuela have resisted more
successfully, but have been badly destabilised by US occupation, oil
theft, attempted coups, attempted assassinations, and economic
sanctions.
So today marks a big and admirably brave shift. After sending all the
weaponry it could spare to Ukraine all year, ending oil and gas trade
with Russia under sanctions, weakening allies with surging inflation,
and depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of a record amount of oil
to blunt inflation before the midterm elections, the US is not in an
ideal position to launch wars in every Arab state at once. In fact, it
probably can't launch a war or coup even in Saudi Arabia because Saudi
Arabia will have prepared and provided for that risk. In any event, a
new war in the Middle East would make the inflationary shock of the
Ukraine war pale in comparison.
Signs of a shift have been in the wind all year. The fist bump and
low-key reception of President Biden compares poorly to the lavish state
reception of President Xi. Then Biden's attempt to get GCC states to
sanction Russia was unanimously rejected.
And
OPEC's outright refusal to defer oil production cuts until after the
American midterm elections was a further sign Saudi and OPEC+ no longer
take orders from Washington. Saudi took the unusual step of officially
rejecting the US request in public.
When
a presidential state visit by Xi to Saudi began leaking in the fall I
began to watch for confirmatory signs of OPEC moving East. There were
quite a few, but nothing as momentous as the extravagant welcome for
President Xi to Riyadh and the China-Arab Summit. President Xi and King
Salman signed a 30-year Strategic Partnership Agreement for cooperation
on virtually all forward economic plans yesterday: energy, telecoms,
investment, trade, infrastructure, regional development, Belt & Road
Initiative, etc. Significantly, the Agreement bars interference in
domestic affairs by either nation, a principle China has urged widely
for many years.
cointribune | Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon
in 1973. That is, just two years after the end of the gold standard.
The collapse of the international monetary system established in 1944
at Bretton Woods should have dug the grave of the dollar. But that was
without counting on Henry Kissinger and his brilliant geopolitical poker
move: the petrodollar…
Indeed, the beginnings of the petrodollar date back to 1945, when
American President Roosevelt, returning from the Yalta Conference with
Stalin and Churchill, met with King Abdul Aziz aboard the USS Quincy.
This meeting was later called the Quincy Pact. Kranklin Roosevelt
secured a guarantee from Saudi Arabia to supply American energy needs
for 60 years.
Owing to current events, it is worth noting that the American
president had to promise not to allow the creation of a Jewish state in
Palestine. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on one’s view,
Roosevelt died two months later and his successor Harry Truman, hand in
hand with the British, recognized the State of Israel immediately after
its creation.
Despite this betrayal, Saudi Arabia did not sever ties. It needed
Washington to counter the growing popularity of Nasser in Egypt. His
pan-Arab socialist policy was indeed an existential threat to the Saudi
monarchy. The United States saw an opportunity to counter the USSR,
which was then allied with Cairo.
But let’s focus on H. Kissinger.
The Masterstroke
His poker move took place in June 1974 during a meeting with King
Faisal bin Abdul Aziz in Saudi Arabia. It was the climax of a
Machiavellian plan rooted in the Israeli-Arab War of Yom Kippur (1973).
At the time, Kissinger convinced President Nixon to intervene in
favor of Israel. Henry Kissinger was indeed Jewish. In retaliation,
Saudi Arabia raised the price of a barrel of oil from $3 to $12.
This is exactly what Henry Kissinger wanted, who ended up simply threatening Saudi Arabia to use force to address what he then called the “strangulation of the industrialized world”. It wasn’t a bluff. The London Sunday Times revealed in February 1975 the existence of operation “Dhahran Option Four” which envisioned invading Saudi Arabia.
King Faisal heard these drumbeats loud and clear and, by the end of 1974, reached an agreement with Kissinger, who promised unlimited arms sales and a return of Israel to its 1948 borders.
In exchange, the kingdom had to commit to two things:
To sell its oil EXCLUSIVELY in dollars, To invest its dollar surpluses in US debt.
The petrodollar was born, thanks to H. Kissinger, who was undoubtedly a key player in the special relationship that the United States maintains with Israel.
The European nations that had the audacity to exchange their dollars for gold were forced to accumulate dollars again to buy the oil essential to any industrialized nation. Checkmate.
As for the agreement on Israel’s borders, it was quickly forgotten after the assassination of King Faisal a few months later…
epochtimes | Mr. Schumer warned that the rise in anti-Semitism is "a five-alarm
fire that must be extinguished." This comes amid the latest conflict
between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, which started on Oct. 7
when Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 in Israel, the largest single-day
massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were killed.
He
lamented anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the United States
ranging from protests on college campuses to coverage in the media to
boycotting and vandalism of Jewish businesses. He also cited examples of
Jews being persecuted throughout history, from the Crusades to pogroms
to expulsions from countries including England and Spain.
In the United States, there was a 388 percent increase in
anti-Semitic incidents between Oct. 7 and Oct. 23, according to the
Anti-Defamation League. Additionally, Jews are the leading target for
religious-related hate crimes in the United States, according to the
FBI.
Mr. Schumer emphasized that there is a difference between criticizing Israeli government policies and demonizing Israel.
"This
speech is not an attempt to label most criticism of Israel and the
Israeli government, generally, as anti-Semitic," he said. "I don't
believe that criticism is."
Double Standard Applied to Jews
He also criticized double standards regarding Israel compared with other
countries, such as people celebrating when a new country is founded but
being against the formation of the Jewish state, which occurred in
1948. He even referenced the 1947 United Nations partition plan that
would have created a Jewish state and an Arab state in what was the
British mandate of Palestine—which the Jews accepted and the Arabs
rejected.
"The double standard has been ever present and is at the root of anti-Semitism," Mr. Schumer said.
"The
double standard is very simple. What is good for everybody is never
good for the Jew, and when it comes time to assign blame for some
problem, the Jew is always the first target. And in recent decades, this
double standard has manifested itself in the way much of the world
treats Israel differently than anybody else."
"The double standard has been ever present and is at the root of anti-Semitism," Mr. Schumer said.
"The
double standard is very simple. What is good for everybody is never
good for the Jew, and when it comes time to assign blame for some
problem, the Jew is always the first target. And in recent decades, this
double standard has manifested itself in the way much of the world
treats Israel differently than anybody else."
"The double standard has been ever present and is at the root of anti-Semitism," Mr. Schumer said.
"The
double standard is very simple. What is good for everybody is never
good for the Jew, and when it comes time to assign blame for some
problem, the Jew is always the first target. And in recent decades, this
double standard has manifested itself in the way much of the world
treats Israel differently than anybody else."
dailymail | Sources who spoke to DailyMail.com shed
light on how the CIA has allegedly coordinated the secret recovery and
storage of these alleged crashed or landed UFOs.
Late CIA expert Jeffrey Richelson
wrote in his 2016 book, The US Intelligence Community, that the Office
of Global Access helped provide 'worldwide collection capability'
'There's
at least nine vehicles. There were different circumstances for
different ones,' one source briefed by UFO program insiders told
DailyMail.com. 'It has to do with the physical condition they're in. If
it crashes, there's a lot of damage done. Others, two of them, are
completely intact.'
The source said the
CIA has a 'system in place that can discern UFOs while they're still
cloaked,' and that if the 'non-human' craft land, crash or are brought
down to earth, special military units are sent to try to salvage the
wreckage.
Another source with knowledge
of the OGA's role said that they specialize in allowing the US military
to secretly access areas around the world where they would usually be
'denied' – for example behind enemy lines.
'They
are basically a facilitator for people to get in and out of countries,'
the source said. 'They are very clever at being able to get anywhere in
the world they want to.'
Multiple
sources briefed on the OGA's activities told DailyMail.com that most of
its operations involve more conventional retrieval missions, such as
stray nuclear weapons, downed satellites or adversaries' technology.
But they claimed some missions coordinated by the OGA have involved retrieval of UFOs.
'The
task at hand is simply to get it into custody and protect the secrecy
of it,' one source said. 'The actual physical retrieval is by the
military. But it's not kept under military control, because they have to
keep too many records. So they start moving it out fairly quickly into
private hands.'
Documents published by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
in December 2016 showed that the OGA was one of 56 offices in the CIA,
with its chief and deputy making up two of a total 286 director-level
officials in the spy agency.
An
unclassified organizational chart published by the CIA in October 2015
lists the OGA among nine offices in the 'Science and Technology' wing of
the agency.
Late CIA expert Jeffrey Richelson wrote in a 2016 book
on the agency that the OGA was established in 2003, and cited a CIA
description that it 'integrate[s] analysis, technology, and tradecraft
to attack the most difficult targets, and to provide worldwide
collection capability.'
Wolfe's
bio cryptically adds that he 'was responsible for leading and managing
strategic, unwarned access programs that deliver intelligence from the
most challenging denied areas' and 'served as program manager with
responsibility for the end-to-end system acquisition of an innovative
new source and method for the IC [Intelligence Community].'
Two
sources told DailyMail.com that the OGA coordinates with Special
Operations Forces such as SEAL teams or Delta Force under the Pentagon's
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), or nuclear weapons experts
such as the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST), to collect the
crashed or landed craft.
But another
source, who has briefed members of Congress on alleged crash retrievals,
said that NEST had not been involved in any of these operations.
A spokesperson for the agency also denied involvement.
'[NEST]
personnel encounter materials from unknown origins on a regular basis,'
a spokesperson said. 'In fact, one of NEST's missions is to help
determine the origin of nuclear material interdicted outside of
regulatory control or used in a nuclear device.
'During its operations, NEST has never encountered any material related to UAP.'
In a written statement, a JSOC spokesperson told DailyMail.com: 'We have nothing for you on this.'
A
former SEAL team member told DailyMail.com that they had been on
operations coordinated by the CIA to retrieve high-value stray enemy
weapons, and that they knew of colleagues who had been on similar
operations where they recovered technology that appeared highly advanced
– though not necessarily out-of-this-world.
'Absolutely that happens,' the ex-SEAL said. 'Even ordinance or a weapon that we've never seen, we recover and bring it back.'
One
source said that the Air Force Special Operations Command's 24th
Special Tactics Squadron, based at Pope Field Army Airbase in North
Carolina, has also been involved in securing areas for UFO crash
retrievals.
Sources said the CIA office
then often hands the wreckage or material over to private aerospace
contractors for analysis, where it is not subject to rigorous government
audits and can be shielded with protections for trade secrets.
'The
CIA is the portfolio manager or owner of the UAP [Unidentified
Anomalous Phenomena] crash retrieval operation,' one source, who has
shared their information with Congress, told DailyMail.com.
'The
Department of Energy national labs are materials analysis contractors
whenever recovered radioisotopes are involved but not always just
radioisotope materials. The aerospace-defense industry are also
contractors that specifically do not handle any recovered radioisotopes,
but they handle the other non-radioactive material – and intact craft.'
Today, I sent my colleagues my plan for the final work period of the first session of the 118th Congress—including negotiations on long-term government funding, the national security supplemental, the NDAA and other bipartisan legislation. pic.twitter.com/o78jRJTvpe
Apparently the NDAA wasn't being voted
on yesterday as congress wasn't in session. The staffer for Turner hasn't
heard of any discussions about the bill so that is curious.
I am now going to be calling the republicans but
would appreciate more help in doing so. Be respectful with the people
taking the calls. You can find the numbers for both Republicans and
Democrats here: https://www.uapcaucus.com/call#call
Four Republicans are colluding to
block this amendment from passing: Mike Turner of Ohio, Mike Rogers of
Alabama, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Mike Johnson of Louisiana:
Rep Mike Turner: (202) 225-6465
Rep Mike Rogers: (202) 224-3261
Sen Mitch McConnell: (202) 224-3135
Rep Mike Johnson: (202) 225-2777
My call notes:
I’m
calling about the UAP Disclosure Act, which enables Americans to get
transparency and accountability on matters related to UAPs. I've been
closely following the developments in this area, especially after the
July 26 UAP Hearing, where credible witnesses provided testimony under
oath.
I’ve
heard that X is not in favor of the UAP Disclosure Act amendment to the
NDAA because AARO is still funded, and they say this will be
duplicative funding, but it is not. Without AARO, there is no
centralized place that will handle these programs; its entire purpose is
funding authorization for UAP programs. At the same time, AARO is
currently toothless without the UAP Disclosure Act amendment. All pieces
of this amendment are critical to its functionality, including a
civilian review board to help ensure accountability.
This
is a bipartisan issue; the number of people who care about this issue
are growing, and know that it is the number one most important issue.
The DOD can never pass their audits and these SAPs could be the reason
why. If X cares about appropriate fiscal spending, then it’s imperative
to support this amendment (while keeping funding for AARO intact).
math.columbia.edu | Last month I recorded a podcast with Curt Jaimungal for his Theories of Everything site, and it’s now available with audio here, on Youtube here. There are quite a few other programs on the site well worth watching.
Much of the discussion in this program is about the general ideas I’m
trying to pursue about spinors, twistors and unification. For more
about the details of these, see arXiv preprints here and here, as well as blog entries here.
About the state of string theory, that’s a topic I find more and more
disturbing, with little new though to say about it. It’s been dead now
for a long time and most of the scientific community and the public at
large are now aware of this. The ongoing publicity campaign from some
of the most respected figures in theoretical physics to deny reality and
claim that all is well with string theory is what is disturbing. Just
in the last week or so, you can watch Cumrun Vafa and Brian Greene
promoting string theory on Brian Keating’s channel, with Vafa
explaining how string theory computes the mass of the electron. At the
World Science Festival site there’s Juan Maldacena, with an upcoming program featuring Greene, Strominger, Vafa and Witten.
On Twitter, there’s now stringking42069,
who is producing a torrent of well-informed cutting invective about
what is going on in the string theory research community, supposedly
from a true believer. It’s unclear whether this is a parody account
trying to discredit string theory, or an extreme example of how far gone
some string theorists now are.
To all those celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, may your travel
problems be minimal and your get-togethers with friends and family a
pleasure.
Update: If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing and don’t want to hear about spinors and twistors, Curt Jaimungal has put up a shorter clip
where we discuss among other things the lack of any significant public
technical debate between string theory skeptics and optimists. He offers
his site as a venue. Is there anyone who continues to work on string
theory and is optimistic about its prospects willing to participate?
Forbes | Serbian-American physicist engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla is
nowadays famous for his work on electricity and energy. He developed the
alternating current system, making it possible to transmit electricity
over vast distances, and worked on wireless communication and energy
transfer. He was a brilliant, but also very eccentric thinker, claiming
to get visions and displaying odd behaviour in public like an obsession
with personal hygiene and pigeons. Maybe the more enigmatic parts of his
personality make him such an interesting subject for conspiracy
theories. Tesla is credited to have worked on unknown energy-sources,
caused the Tunguska explosion with his "death-ray" prototype, and supposedly worked on an earthquake-generator.
In 1896 Tesla was working on oscillations for wireless energy
transfer. The idea was to build a steam-powered oscillator, able to
create various changing frequencies. If the frequency matched the
resonance frequency of a receiving device, this device should transform
the mechanical oscillations back into an electric current.
In 1897 the device was ready and in 1898 Tesla supposedly managed to
oscillate his laboratory at 48 E. Houston St., New York, enough, that
alarmed neighbors called the police, fearing an earthquake happening.
Tesla later explained the principle to reporter Allan L. Besnson, who in
February 1912 published an article about Tesla's resonator in The World Today magazine:
"He put his little vibrator in his coat-pocket and went out to hunt a
half-erected steel building. Down in the Wall Street district, he found
one, ten stories of steel framework without a brick or a stone laid
around it. He clamped the vibrator to one of the beams, and fussed with
the adjustment until he got it. Tesla said finally the structure began
to creak and weave and the steel-workers came to the ground
panic-stricken, believing that there had been an earthquake. Police was
called out. Tesla put the vibrator in his pocket and went away. Ten
minutes more and he could have laid the building in the street. And,
with the same vibrator, he could have dropped the Brooklyn Bridge into
the East River in less than an hour."
The "earthquake-generator" could also be used for more peaceful
applications. Tesla imagined an array of smaller devices distributed all
over the planet to relieve energy from Earth and also to send energy
from one spot to another. A transmitter, a device consisting of a piston
vibrating inside a cylinder, transforms electric energy into
vibrations. Using the rocks in the underground as sort of conductor, the
vibrations are sent to a receiving device and the oscillations
transformed back into electricity, to be used locally. However, the
"telegeodynamics" system by Tesla never managed to get beyond the
prototype. In reality, the device was not powerful enough to send energy
through Earth. Dampening of the oscillations by structures and the
underground was far too strong.
Another vision by Tesla was more successful. He imagined using the
oscillations generated by his device to study Earth. Seismic waves
generated by an oscillator and projected into the underground are
reflected back to a receiver by faults or different layers of rocks.
Studying the reflected waves, geologists may be able to X-ray Earth
(Tesla also made important contributions to modern X-ray technology). Modern seismologists still use this principle. Pulses of energy,
generated by electromagnetic devices, controlled explosions or
mechanical pistons, are sent deep into the underground. Geophones record
the reflected signals and geologists use the collected data to generate
a model of the geological structures hidden beneath the surface.
grahamhancock |Gods of the Bible is just my last attempt to bring some
light to our ancient past through the narrative found in the Bible. I
aim to narrate, understand, and describe in detail the reasons and
habits of that group of individuals called “Elohim,” of whom Yahweh was
part, one of many. Yahweh was the Elohim of the family of Israel — and
only of them and their descendants. I deny the universality of the
Bible. The Old Testament records Israel’s covenant and relationship with
Yahweh. Other Elohim, as we have seen above, had inherited other
peoples, families, and nations.
The Elohim of other peoples are mentioned and addressed several times
in the Old Testament. These passages suggest that these “foreign
Elohim” were similar to Yahweh and had identical abilities and habits.
The Elohim had advanced technology unavailable to our ancestors; lived
longer than humans but were mortal; had weapons and tools that could do
wonders; they were more powerful and knowledgeable, and yet they could
be abandoned, betrayed, and deceived, just like humans, because they
knew a lot but were not omniscient.
The space of a short article would only allow for briefly summarizing
some of the aspects of the Elohim that I have detailed in this new book
and all my previous works.8
Still, perhaps it is not superfluous to end by mentioning something
about the fascinating biblical term “ruach.” This term has always been
translated as “spirit” through the influence of the Greek culture and
the so-called Septuagint version of the Bible, which renders it with
“pneuma.” The Ancient Hebrew term “ruach” actually had a very definite
and concrete meaning as it stood for “wind,” “breath,” “moving air,”
“storm wind,” and, in a broader sense, “that which moves quickly through
the air space.” In modern biblical translations, the term “ruach” is
always rendered as “spirit” because it responds to monotheistic
theology’s spiritualist needs.
In the Old Testament, however, this “ruach” appears to be flying
through the air, making noise, and taking people from one place to
another, with a loud clangor and visible manifestations, taking off and
landing in specific geographical locations — in very concrete ways.
The two following passages illustrate what has just been said.
“The [ruach] lifted me and brought me to the gate of the house of Yahweh that faces East.
There at the entrance of the gate were twenty-five men, and I saw among
them Jaazaniah, son of Azzur, and Pelatiah, son of Benaiah.” (Ezekiel
11:1)
“Look,” they said, “we, your servants, have fifty able men. Let them go and look for your master. Perhaps, the [ruach] of Yahweh has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or valley.”
“No,” Elisha replied, “do not send them.” But they persisted until he
was too embarrassed to refuse. So he said, “Send them.” And they sent
fifty men, who searched for three days but did not find him. (2 Kings
2:16-17)
I left the word “ruach” untranslated, as the reader can see. If you
follow monotheistic exegesis and replace “ruach” with “spirit,” the
passages become incomprehensible. But it is difficult to interpret the
term “ruach” spiritually without distorting the text’s meaning. I give
countless similar examples about “ruach” and other words and biblical
passages in Gods of the Bible, always underlining the
concreteness and realism of the Ancient Hebrew language and the ancient
Semitic culture, which was the culture of a pastoral people that Yahweh
had found in the desert, landless.
I began and ended Gods of the Bible with the same spirit
that moved me twenty-five years ago when I first picked up my pink
notebook and then discovered the little mistake that began my
professional career as a translator of the Old Testament with Edizioni
San Paolo. Since then, I have found many more errors in the Bible — and
not all were done in good faith. The list is long and cannot be
continued here. But I hope at least to have been able to open a dialog
with all those who, with an open mind, are interested in learning more
about humankind.
I am not looking for absolute truths but for a glimmer of reality. As
I gaze into the impending sunset, the peaks of the Alps, silhouetted
against the evening sky, glow pink. A mountain peak is all I hope for. I
leave the climb to heaven to others.
I take Gods of the Bible from its stack and open it in the
last light of day. I find the best summary of what has been said on the
page that opens before me. It is good never to ignore the authoritative
voices of the past whose intentions are free from the controversies of
the present. I find the voice of a great historian of antiquity who had
no reason to lie or embellish. And I realize it is not for heretics like
me to explain the meaning of such words, but for the “guardians of the
discourse” that exclude apriori hypotheses they cannot accept. I pretend
what I read is true.
“Armies clashed in the sky, swords blazed, and the temple
shone with sudden flashes. The doors of the sanctuary were suddenly
torn open, and a superhuman voice cried out that the gods were
fleeing, and at the same time, there was a great uproar as if men were
fleeing.” (C. Tacitus, Histories, V 13)
archive | Did a highly advanced civilization exist in prehistory? Is the Giza
Pyramid a remnant of their technology? Then, what was the power source
that fueled such a civilization? The technology of harmonic resonance,
claims renowned master craftsman and engineer Christopher Dunn. In a
brilliant piece of reverse engineering based on twenty years of
research, Dunn reveals that the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually a
large acoustical device! By its size and dimensions, this crystal
edifice created a harmonic resonance with the Earth and converted
Earth's vibrational energies to microwave radiation. The author shows
how the pyramid's numerous chambers and passageways were positioned with
the deliberate precision to maximize its acoustical qualities. This may
be the same technology discovered by Nikola Tesla and the solution to
our own clean energy needs.
ttbrown | First Joe Rogan, now David Grusch. Ol’ TTB does seem to be getting around these days…
By now you have probably heard of David Grusch, the former military intelligence officer who testified before Congress on the U.S. Government’s secret UFO – oh, excuse me, we’re supposed to call them unidentified aerial phenomena
now – initiatives. His appearance and subsequent notoriety has caused
quite a stir, though it’s not clear the testimony shed any really clear,
fresh light on what’s been happening off the public record for the past
80 years.
The centerpiece of this production is a series of conversations with
David Grusch, the military/intelligence veteran who testified before
Congress in July about what the U.S. has been keeping under wraps about
UFOs, crash retrievals and recovered (i.e. dead) alien ‘biologics.’
I really don’t know what to make of Grusch. I don’t doubt the
veracity of his testimony, but it seems to me he goes right the edge of
new revelations without really getting there.He
is billed as a “whistleblower” but I keep getting the impression of guy
who puts the whistle in his mouth but for whatever reason doesn’t quite
blow on it.I get that he
is constrained by external forces and NDA commitments, but too much of
the discussion between he and Jesse (and Jesse’s crew) dwells on pure
speculation.
On the
other hand, that speculation is quite comprehensive. In the course of
two hours they manage to cover just about every possibility re: what the
hell is really going on out-and-up there.Extraterrestrial visitors?Top secret domestic (or foreign) military research?Time travelers?Take your pick – or maybe it’s all of the above.
About
46 minutes in, Jesse neatly segues into a discussion of Townsend Brown
and how his story dovetails into the mysteries David Grusch has exposed.Jesse has graciously given me permission to extract that portion of the documentary, so here’s that segment:
theguardian | On January 31 2003, less than 24 hours before the Columbia space shuttle broke up, Nasa announced that it would no longer be funding its Breakthrough Physics Propulsion Programme - the world's largest visible antigravity project.
A working antigravity technology is still decades away at least, but the origins of one of the most promising branches of research can be found in an Ohio garage, almost 100 years ago.
Thomas Townsend Brown was born in Ohio in1905, two years after the Wright brothers took off. By his teens he was already dreaming about space travel, tinkering in his parents' garage with the ideas that would obsess him for the rest of his life. One day, while experimenting with X-ray tubes, he applied a high voltage electrical charge to a capacitor (a device for storing electricity) attached to a glass tube suspended from the ceiling. To Brown's astonishment, the tube began to rotate, apparently propelled by electricity itself.
Aged 18, Brown was taken under the wing of Dr
Paul Biefield, a close friend and colleague of Albert Einstein. Biefield
was deeply impressed with Brown's discoveries and together they
proposed the Biefield-Brown effect. This states that when an electrical
current is applied to a capacitor, it will move in the direction of the
flow of current - towards its positive pole. And so the fledgling field
of electrogravitics was born.
By the early
1950s, Brown had developed platforms, three feet in diameter, which he
is said to have demonstrated hovering and rotating. The American
military classified the results, but they neglected to support Brown's
research. This proved to be the story of his life. Brown never got the
funding he wanted, but he continued to develop his ideas until his death
in 1985.
But the story continues in the
research of groups exploring electrogravitics, among them Boeing, Nasa
and BAe Systems. Closest to Brown's original vision are the "Lifters"
being built by American Antigravity and others - skeletal metal frames
that can lift a pound in weight, propelled by electric currents. Thomas
Townsend Brown's name may be forgotten, but his dream lives on.
sputnik | US
politicians have been quick to make glib comparisons between Russia's
de-Nazification operation in Ukraine and Hitler's invasion of Europe or
terrorist outrages. Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence
officer, said Joe Biden couldn't even string such an argument together.
US President Joe Biden lacks the mental ability to draw parallels between Russia and Hamas, says a former US Marine.
The
Washington Post ran an op-ed under Biden's byline at the weekend,
likening the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas' breakout
from the besieged Gaza Strip on October 7 to Russia's military operation
in Ukraine in defence of the Russian-speaking Donbass region —
following eight years of Ukrainian shelling of civilians.
Biden "didn't write this" as he "doesn't have the mental capacity," Ritter told Sputnik.
"I'm
not picking on him, I'm just being honest," he said. "This was written
by his national security staff. It was edited by Jake Sullivan. I
believe [US Secretary of State] Tony Blinken came in with a lot of stuff
that this was a collaborative effort by the people who are managing Joe
Biden."
"This
is the story, not the content of the op-ed," Ritter stressed. "The
story is that Joe Biden, the president of the United States is lacking
in such mental capacity that the presidency is being managed by people
who weren't elected to do that job. That's what people should be worried
about."
But
he said the words attributed to Biden no longer carry the same weight
as comments by previous presidents, thanks to the proliferation of
alternatives to the mainstream media.
"So
when Joe Biden or his managers publish an op-ed of this nature, it no
longer has the same cachet, the same impact that it would have ten years
ago," Ritter argued. "Today, it's immediately cancelled out as
ridiculous as absurd."
Ritter wrote for Consortium News last week that Biden and Blinken were being disingenuous in their call for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, given that no Israeli leader in decades has been serious about implementing it.
"Even
if such a governing coalition could be crafted together to politically
sustain the idea of a two-state solution that fails to resonate with
Israelis and Palestinians alike, there remains the ultimate hurdle that
needs to be cleared before any notion of a lasting peace between Israeli
and Palestinian states premised on the notion of equality — Israel’s
nuclear weapons program," Ritter wrote.
The former weapons inspector said Israel's nuclear program had been "shrouded in ambiguity from the moment it was born, back in the 1960s when they actually produced a weapon."
"The
United States has been the principal reason why this has happened,"
Ritter pointed out. "The Nixon administration was confronted with the
fact that Israel had nuclear weapons. We knew it. And they were in
violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, because even if they
didn't sign the treaty, we signed the treaty. And the treaty only allows
five declared nuclear powers. So we would have to sanction Israel."
MSDNC | But at a press conference at the end of the meeting, Biden made a
pointed remark that underscored the gulf between the two countries.
Asked by a reporter if he stood by his characterization of Xi in June
as a “dictator,” Biden answered that he did. “Well, look, he is. I
mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country
that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally
different than ours,” Biden said. “Anyway, we made progress.”
As he said this, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was seated in the front row, visibly winced. Blinken’s apparent pain at his boss’ blunt language has gone viral — inspiring mockery
of the Biden administration, and prompting some right-wing commentators
to describe Biden’s language as a sign of senility-induced
incompetence. David Sacks, a right-wing venture capitalist, posted on X,
“This was a bumbling act of senility in which Biden fell for a
reporter’s obvious gotcha question, erased the whole point of the
diplomatic summit, and caused his own staff to shake their heads in
disbelief.” Ian Miles Cheong, a right-wing commentator, observed in a response to Sacks: “China would be foolish to trust anything the Biden administration offers them at this point.”
Is
Biden’s age a valid concern as he pursues another term in office? Yes.
Does that definitively explain his behavior here? No. The simplest
explanation is that Biden was being Biden.
First, it’s unclear that Biden’s comment could even be characterized as a
gaffe. The question, after all, was whether the president would disavow
a view he articulated just a few months ago. Biden knew if he changed
his position he would be vulnerable to attacks of inconsistency out of
political expediency. China has the same style of government today that
it had in the summer, and there is nothing inaccurate about what Biden
said. Biden is also aware that the right is constantly looking to attack
him for being soft on China, and that very well may have happened if he
had used softer language. It’s a bit of a damned-if-you-do,
damned-if-you-don’t scenario when it comes to Biden’s critics on the
right.
Second, even if one assumes that Biden veered from the kind
of language his staff advised him to use, anyone who hasn’t been living
under a rock knows that Biden has misspoken, said something off-color,
or unexpectedly deviated from talking points for his entire political career — particularly in the realm of foreign policy.
As senator, vice president and now president, Biden tends to feel
confident making edgy off-the-cuff remarks that cause others headaches.
It’s difficult to argue that any impolitic comment he makes can be
attributed to his age when this is the same man who, as vice president, forced former President Barack Obama to change his position on same-sex marriage by freelancing on the issue on “Meet the Press.” (Biden has even called himself “a gaffe machine.”)
So even if one wants to argue that Biden was behaving incompetently,
the bar for proving that it has to do with declining mental acuity is
high.
Blinken’s reaction was funny to witness, a rare
example of a seasoned diplomat shedding their poker face. But it doesn’t
mean Blinken thought Biden didn’t know what he was doing — he could’ve
simply disagreed with the president’s on-the-fly judgment. It’s possible
he would have preferred that Biden had, for example, ignored the
reporter’s question and shifted the topic to focusing on the progress
that had been made at the summit, thereby neither confirming nor denying
the question. Perhaps Blinken would’ve valued such a response after a
summit when the U.S. and China made substantial diplomatic progress and
their heads of state were unusually chummy with each other — including sharing nostalgic photos, exchanging birthday wishes and showing off their presidential cruisers.
But unlike Blinken, Biden is primed to consider domestic audiences more
than international ones; their judgment on this could simply be
irreconcilable.
zerohedge |Media Matters has opted for new tactics in its campaign to drive advertisers from X.
Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user
experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest
advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving
the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they
actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.
Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed.
First, Media Matters accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media
Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting
entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce
extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers.
The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a
single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it
could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers.
But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce.
Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating
between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the
average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally
received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.
Media
Matters omitted mentioning any of this in a report published on
November 16, 2023 that displayed instances Media Matters “found” on X of
advertisers’ paid posts featured next to Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist
content. Nor did Media Matters otherwise provide any context regarding
the forced, inauthentic nature and extraordinary rarity of these
pairings.
However, relying on the specious narrative propagated by
Media Matters, the advertisers targeted took these pairings to be
anything but rare and inorganic, with all but one of the companies
featured in the Media Matters piece withdrawing all ads from X,
including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and IBM—some of X’s largest
advertisers. Indeed, in pulling all advertising from X in response to
this intentionally deceptive report, IBM called the pairings an
“entirely unacceptable situation.” Only Oracle did not withdraw its ads.
The
truth bore no resemblance to Media Matters’ narrative. In fact, IBM’s,
Comcast’s, and Oracle’s paid posts appeared alongside the fringe content
cited by Media Matters for only one viewer (out of more than 500
million) on all of X: Media Matters. Not a single authentic
user of the X platform saw IBM ’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to
that content, which Media Matters achieved only through its manipulation
of X’s algorithms as described above. And in Apple’s case, only two out
of more than 500 million active users saw its ad appear alongside the
fringe content cited in the article—at least one of which was Media
Matters.
Media Matters could have produced a fair,
accurate account of users’ interactions with advertisements on X via
basic reporting: following real users, documenting the actual, organic
production of content and advertisement pairings. Had it done so,
however, it would not have produced the outcome Media Matters so
desperately desired, which was to tarnish X’s reputation by associating
it with racist content. So instead, Media Matters chose to maliciously
misrepresent the X experience with the intention of harming X and its
business.
Further, X CEO Linda Yaccarino
- who has reportedly been under pressure all day by various ad
companies to resign - defended the company in a statement on Monday.
"If you know me, you know I'm committed to truth and fairness," she posted.
"Here's
the truth. Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM's, Comcast's, or
Oracle's ads next to the content in Media Matters' article.
Only 2 users saw Apple's ad next to the content, at least one of which
was Media Matters. Data wins over manipulation or allegations. Don't be manipulated. Stand with X."
The
attacks on X make clear that the real concern of Democratic Party
elites is their lack of control over the public conversation.
From
1996 to 2016, Democrats felt they controlled the elite policy and
political conversation through the news media. After that appeared to
fall apart in 2016, and as Democrats, including Podesta, blamed social
media for Clinton’s loss, they stepped up their effort to take control
over Twitter and Facebook, which they did, demanding and winning the
censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, and deplatforming Trump.
The
strategy of Democratic Party leaders, including Clinton, Podesta, and
Obama, has been, since 2016, to label Trump-supporting Republicans as
racists, Nazis, and antisemites. The attacks on Elon Musk’s X must be
taken in this context.
The real agenda behind the
Media Matters attack on X is the same as the one behind the Democrats’
attack on Trump and the Republicans. Democrats want to control the
conversation.
Without censorship, voters can
see that the border is a disaster, the Ukraine war was a tragic failure,
and that Democrats have been censoring them.
...
...we must have greater control over the content we receive through social media platforms.
WaPo | Today, the world faces an inflection point, where the choices we make — including in the crises in Europe and the Middle East — will determine the direction of our future for generations to come. What will our world look like on the other side of these conflicts?
Will we deny Hamas the ability to carry out pure, unadulterated evil? Will Israelis and Palestinians one day live side by side in peace, with two states for two peoples?
Will we hold Vladimir Putin accountable for his aggression, so the people of Ukraine can live free and Europe remains an anchor for global peace and security?
And the overarching question: Will we relentlessly pursue our positive vision for the future, or will we allow those who do not share our values to drag the world to a more dangerous and divided place?
Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests — and for the good of the entire world.
The United States is the essential nation. We rally allies and partners to stand up to aggressors and make progress toward a brighter, more peaceful future. The world looks to us to solve the problems of our time. That is the duty of leadership, and America will lead. For if we walk away from the challenges of today, the risk of conflict could spread, and the costs to address them will only rise. We will not let that happen.
We have also seen throughout history how conflicts in the Middle East can unleash consequences around the globe.
We stand firmly with the Israeli people as they defend themselves against the murderous nihilism of Hamas. On Oct. 7, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people, including 35 American citizens, in the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. Infants and toddlers, mothers and fathers, grandparents, people with disabilities, even Holocaust survivors were maimed and murdered. Entire families were massacred in their homes. Young people were gunned down at a music festival. Bodies riddled with bullets and burned beyond recognition. And for over a month, the families of more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas, including babies and Americans, have been living in hell, anxiously waiting to discover whether their loved ones are alive or dead. At the time of this writing, my team and I are working hour by hour, doing everything we can to get the hostages released.
jonathanturley | Below is my column in The Messenger on the view of diplomats in the
Biden Administration that the President is spreading “misinformation.”
My interest in the story is less the merits than the allegation. The
President is facing the same allegation of ignoring fact and spreading
disinformation that has resulted in thousands being banned or
blacklisted on social media. The Biden Administration has pushed for
such censorship in areas where doctors and pundits held opposing views
on subjects ranging from Covid-19 to climate control. The question is
whether Joe Biden himself should be banned under the standards
promulgated by his own Administration.
Here is the column:
An internal State Department dissent memo was
leaked this past week, opposing the Biden administration’s position on
the war between Israel and Hamas. What was most notable about the memo
is that some administration staffers accused President Joe Biden of “spreading misinformation.”
It was a moment of crushing irony for some of us who have written and testified against
the Biden administration’s censorship efforts. The question is whether,
under the administration’s own standards, President Biden should now be
banned or blacklisted to protect what his administration has called our
“cognitive infrastructure.”
For years, the administration and many
Democrats in Congress have resisted every effort to expose the sprawling
government censorship program that one federal judge described as an “Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.'” As I have written previously, it included grants to academic and third-party organizations to create a global system of blacklists and to pressure advertisers to withdraw support from conservative sites.
As a result, over the last four years,
researchers, politicians, and even satirical sites have been banned or
blacklisted for offering dissenting views of COVID measures, climate
change, gender identity or social justice, according to the House
Judiciary report. No level of censorship seemed to be sufficient for
President Biden, who once claimed that social media companies were “killing people” by not silencing more dissenting voices.
Now, though, President Biden himself is
accused — by some in his own administration — of spreading
misinformation and supporting war criminals.
Israel is a stronghold for us…It's like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East…If Israel disappears, Russia, China and the BRICS+ countries will control 90% of the world's oil, and this will be a disaster.pic.twitter.com/OWmu2peyFF
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