medialens | The goal of a mass media propaganda campaign is to create the
impression that 'everybody knows' that Saddam is a 'threat', Gaddafi is
'about to commit mass murder', Assad 'has to go', Corbyn is 'destroying
the Labour party', and so on. The picture of the world presented must be
clear-cut. The public must be made to feel certain that the 'good guys'
are basically benevolent, and the 'bad guys' are absolutely appalling
and must be removed.
This is achieved by relentless repetition of the theme over days,
weeks, months and even years. Numerous individuals and organisations are
used to give the impression of an informed consensus – there is no doubt! Once
this 'truth' has been established, anyone contradicting or even
questioning it is typically portrayed as a shameful 'apologist' in order
to deter further dissent and enforce conformity.
A key to countering this propaganda is to ask some simple questions:
Why are US-UK governments and corporate media much more concerned about
suffering in Venezuela than the far worse horrors afflicting war-torn,
famine-stricken Yemen? Why do UK MPs rail against Maduro while rejecting
a parliamentary motion
to suspend UK arms supplies to their Saudi Arabian allies attacking
Yemen? Why is the imperfect state of democracy in Venezuela a source of
far greater outrage than outright tyranny in Saudi Arabia? The answers
could hardly be more obvious.
tandfonline | In
1993, before WiFi, indeed before more than a small fraction of people
enjoyed broadband Internet, John J. Arquilla and David F. Ronfeldt of
the Rand Corporation began to develop a thesis on “Cyberwar and Netwar”
(Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1995Arquilla, J. J., and D. F. Ronfeldt. 1995. “Cyberwar and Netwar: New Modes, Old Concepts, of Conflict.” Rand Review, Fall. https://www.rand.org/pubs/periodicals/rand-review/issues/RRR-fall95-cyber/cyberwar.html archived at https://perma.cc/NNT3-C6U3. (Excerpted from “Cyberwar Is Coming,” by Arquilla and Ronfeldt.” Comparative Strategy 12: 141–165. 1993. doi:10.1080/01495939308402915 archived at https://perma.cc/8RQY-S3SW.)[Taylor & Francis Online], [Google Scholar]).
I found it of little interest at the time. It seemed typical of Rand’s
role as a sometime management consultant to the military-industrial
complex. For example, Arquilla and Ronfeldt wrote that “[c]yberwar
refers to conducting military operations according to
information-related principles. It means disrupting or destroying
information and communications systems. It means trying to know
everything about an adversary while keeping the adversary from knowing
much about oneself.” A sort of Sun Tzu for the networked era.
The
authors’ coining of the notion of “netwar” as distinct from “cyberwar”
was even more explicitly grandiose. They went beyond bromides about
inter-military conflict, describing impacts on citizenries at large:
Netwar refers to information-related conflict at a
grand level between nations or societies. It means trying to disrupt or
damage what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself
and the world around it. A netwar may focus on public or elite opinion,
or both. It may involve diplomacy, propaganda and psychological
campaigns, political and cultural subversion, deception of or
interference with local media, infiltration of computer networks and
databases, and efforts to promote dissident or opposition movements
across computer networks. (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1995Arquilla, J. J., and D. F. Ronfeldt. 1995. “Cyberwar and Netwar: New Modes, Old Concepts, of Conflict.” Rand Review, Fall. https://www.rand.org/pubs/periodicals/rand-review/issues/RRR-fall95-cyber/cyberwar.html archived at https://perma.cc/NNT3-C6U3. (Excerpted from “Cyberwar Is Coming,” by Arquilla and Ronfeldt.” Comparative Strategy 12: 141–165. 1993. doi:10.1080/01495939308402915 archived at https://perma.cc/8RQY-S3SW.)[Taylor & Francis Online], [Google Scholar])
While
“netwar” never caught on as a name, I was, in retrospect, too quick to
dismiss it. Today it is hard to look at Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s crisp
paragraph of more than 20 years ago without appreciating its deep
prescience.
Our
digital environment, once marked by the absence of sustained state
involvement and exploitation, particularly through militaries, is now
suffused with it. We will need new strategies to cope with this kind of
intrusion, not only in its most obvious manifestations – such as
shutting down connectivity or compromising private email – but also in
its more subtle ones, such as subverting social media for propaganda
purposes.
Many
of us thinking about the Internet in the late 1990s concerned ourselves
with how the network’s unusually open and generative architecture
empowered individuals in ways that caught traditional states – and, to
the extent they concerned themselves with it at all, their militaries –
flat-footed. As befitted a technology that initially grew through the
work and participation of hobbyists, amateurs, and loosely confederated
computer science researchers, and later through commercial development,
the Internet’s features and limits were defined without much reference
to what might advantage or disadvantage the interests of a particular
government.
To
be sure, conflicts brewed over such things as the unauthorized
distribution of copyrighted material, presaging counter-reactions by
incumbents. Scholars such as Harvard Law School professor Lawrence
Lessig (2006Lessig, L.2006. Code Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books. http://codev2.cc/ archived at https://perma.cc/2NCX-UGBE.[Google Scholar])
mapped out how the code that enabled freedom (to some; anarchy to
others) could readily be reworked, under pressure of regulators if
necessary, to curtail it. Moreover, the interests of the burgeoning
commercial marketplace and the regulators could neatly intersect: The
technologies capable of knowing someone well enough to anticipate the
desire for a quick dinner, and to find the nearest pizza parlor, could –
and have – become the technologies of state surveillance.
That
is why divisions among those who study the digital environment –
between so-called techno-utopians and cyber-skeptics – are not so vast.
The fact was, and is, that our information technologies enable some
freedoms and diminish others, and more important, are so protean as to
be able to rearrange or even invert those affordances remarkably
quickly.
WaPo | When government takes sides on a particular boycott and criminalizes
those who engage in a boycott, it crosses a constitutional line.
Cardin
and other supporters argue that the Israel Anti-Boycott Act targets
only commercial activity. In fact, the bill threatens severe penalties
against any business or individual who does not purchase goods from
Israeli companies operating in the occupied Palestinian territories and
who makes it clear — say by posting on Twitter or Facebook — that their
reason for doing so is to support a U.N.- or E.U.-called boycott. That
kind of penalty does not target commercial trade; it targets free speech
and political beliefs. Indeed, the bill would prohibit even the act of
giving information to a U.N. body about boycott activity directed at
Israel.
The bill’s chilling effect would be dramatic — and that
is no doubt its very purpose. But individuals, not the government,
should have the right to decide whether to support boycotts against
practices they oppose. Neither individuals nor businesses should have to
fear million-dollar penalties, years in prison and felony convictions
for expressing their opinions through collective action. As an
organization, we take no sides on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But
regardless of the politics, we have and always will take a strong stand
when government threatens our freedoms of speech and association. The
First Amendment demands no less.
WaPo | The Israel Anti-Boycott Act would extend the 1977 law to
international organizations, such as the United Nations or even the
European Union, that might parallel the Arab League’s original
“blacklist” of companies doing business with Israel, which was the heart
of its boycott.
It couldn’t come at a better time. Already, the
U.N. Human Rights Council has passed a resolution last year requesting
its high commissioner for human rights to create a database of companies
that operate in or have business relationships in the West Bank beyond
Israel’s 1949 Armistice Lines, which includes all of Jerusalem, Israel’s
capital.
If the high commissioner implements this resolution, as
he appears determined to do, it will create a new “blacklist” that
could subject American individuals and companies to discrimination, yet
again, for simply doing business with Israel.
Moreover, the European Union has instituted
a mandatory labeling requirement for agricultural products made in the
West Bank and has restricted its substantial research and development
funds to Israeli universities and companies to only those with no
contacts with territories east of the Armistice Line. None
of the many U.N. member states that are serial human rights violators
are accorded similar treatment. Not Iran. Not Syria. Not North Korea.
Only Israel.
These kinds of actions do not create the right
atmosphere to prompt resumption of peace talks between Israel and the
Palestinians that the Trump administration is seeking to jump-start.
gurdjiefflegacy |In 1888 the 16-year-old Gurdjieff
witnessed a strange incident: he saw a little boy, weeping and making
strange movements, struggling with all his might to break out of a
circle drawn around him by other boys. Gurdjieff released the boy by erasing part of the circle and the child ran from his tormentors. The boy, Gurdjieff
learned, was a Yezidi. He had heard only that Yezidis were "a sect
living in Transcaucasia, mainly in the regions near Mount Ararat. They
are sometimes called devil-worshippers." Astonished by the incident, Gurdjieff made a point of telling us that he felt compelled to think seriously about the Yezidis.(1)
Inquiring of the adults he knew, he received contradictory opinions
representative of the usual, prejudiced view of the Yezidis. But Gurdjieff remained unsatisfied.
This story is embedded in the narrative of Meetings with Remarkable Men, like one of the monuments in Turkestan which Gurdjieff said helps people find their way through regions in which there are no roads or footpaths. In chapter five Gurdjieff
placed another such marker, an echo of the earlier story. There, he and
Pogossian set off to find the Sarmoung Brotherhood, even if they must
travel, as Gurdjieff says, "on the devil's back." Enroute, far from any city, Pogossian throws a stone at one barking dog in a pack, and he and Gurdjieff
are immediately surrounded by fifteen Kurdish sheepdogs. Like Yezidis,
the two men cannot leave the circle of dogs until they are released by
the shepherds who own the dogs.(2)
Where does this incident happen?
If we set out Gurdjieff's journey with Pogossian on a map and,
following Gurdjieff's instructions, draw a line from Alexandropol
through Van, we see it passes through the Lalish Valley, location of the
tomb and shrine of Sheikh Adi, the principal saint of the Yezidi
religion. Extending the line further, it reaches Mosul, the major town
in the region and a center of Yezidism.(3) By setting such markers, is Gurdjieff advising that we too should "think seriously" about the Yezidis?
Gurdjieff has said that the teaching he brought is completely self-supporting and independent of other lines, was completely unknown up to the present time, and its origins predate and are the source of ancient Egyptian religion and of Christianity.
Why then, has he as much as asked us to look into Yezidism? Some,
swayed in a superficial sense by the subtitle of Ouspensky's book, Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, went hunting for the "missing link" in Gurdjieff's supposedly incomplete teaching. They tried to find this or that source from which he put it together, little realizing that it was they who were fragmentary, not the teaching.
The questions become instead: what ideas do we
encounter in a study of the Yezidis—and do these tell us anything? As we
acquaint ourselves with the Yezidis and their beliefs, we may see that Gurdjieff has led us to materials for a deeper understanding of the nature of an esoteric teaching, of the implications of a teaching transmitted "orally," and of the reasons for his unlikely choice of Beelzebub as the hero of the First Series.
andrewcollins | Is civilisation
the legacy of a race of human angels known as Watchers and Nephilim?
Andrew Collins, author of FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS, previews his history
of angels and fallen angels and traces their origin back to an extraordinarily
advanced culture that entered the Near East shortly after the end of
the last Ice Age.
Angels
are something we associate with beautiful Pre-Raphaelite and renaissance
paintings, carved statues accompanying gothic architecture and supernatural
beings who intervene in our lives at times of trouble. For the last
2000 years this has been the stereotypical image fostered by the Christian
Church. But what are angels? Where do they come from, and what have
they meant to the development of organised religion?
Many
people see the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament,
as littered with accounts of angels appearing to righteous patriarchs
and visionary prophets. Yet this is simply not so. There are the three
angels who approach Abraham to announce the birth of a son named Izaac
to his wife Sarah as he sits beneath a tree on the Plain of Mamre.
There
are the two angels who visit Lot and his wife at Sodom prior to its
destruction. There is the angel who wrestles all night with Jacob at
a place named Penuel, or those which he sees moving up and down a ladder
that stretches between heaven and earth. Yet other than these accounts,
there are too few examples, and when angels do appear the narrative
is often vague and unclear on what exactly is going on. For instance,
in the case of both Abraham and Lot the angels in question are described
simply as `men', who sit down to take food like any mortal person.
Influence
of the Magi
It was not until post-exilic times - ie after the Jews returned from
captivity in Babylon around 450 BC - that angels became an integral
part of the Jewish religion. It was even later, around 200 BC, that
they began appearing with frequency in Judaic religious literature.
Works such as the Book of Daniel and the apocryphal Book of Tobit contain
enigmatic accounts of angelic beings that have individual names, specific
appearances and established hierarchies. These radiant figures were
of non-Judaic origin. All the indications are that they were aliens,
imports from a foreign kingdom, namely Persia.
The
country we now today as Iran might not at first seem the most likely
source for angels, but it is a fact that the exiled Jews were heavily
exposed to its religious faiths after the Persian king Cyrus the Great
took Babylon in 539 BC. These included not only Zoroastrianism, after
the prophet Zoroaster or Zarathustra, but also the much older religion
of the Magi, the elite priestly caste of Media in north-west Iran. They
believed in a whole pantheon of supernatural beings called ahuras, or
`shining ones', and daevas - ahuras who had fallen from grace because
of their corruption of mankind.
Although
eventually outlawed by Persia, the influence of the Magi ran deep within
the beliefs, customs and rituals of Zoroastrianism. Moreover, there
can be little doubt that Magianism, from which we get terms such as
magus, magic and magician, helped to establish the belief among Jews
not only of whole hierarchies of angels, but also of legions of fallen
angels - a topic that gains its greatest inspiration from one work alone
- the Book of Enoch.
The
Book of Enoch
Compiled in stages somewhere between 165 BC and the start of the Christian
era, this so-called pseudepigraphal (ie falsely attributed) work has
as its main theme the story behind the fall of the angels. Yet not the
fall of angels in general, but those which were originally known as
'Œrin ('Œr in singular), `those who watch', or simply `watchers'
as the word is rendered in English translation.
The
Book of Enoch tells the story of how 200 rebel angels, or Watchers,
decided to transgress the heavenly laws and `descend' on to the plains
and take wives from among mortal kind. The site given for this event
is the summit of Hermon, a mythical location generally association with
the snowy heights of Mount Hermon in the Ante-Lebanon range, north of
modern-day Palestine (but see below for the most likely homeland of
the Watchers).
The
200 rebels realise the implications of their transgressions, for they
agree to swear an oath to the effect that their leader Shemyaza would
take the blame if the whole ill-fated venture went terribly wrong.
After
their descent to the lowlands, the Watchers indulge in earthly delights
with their chosen `wives', and through these unions are born giant offspring
named as Nephilim, or Nefilim, a Hebrew word meaning `those who have
fallen', which is rendered in Greek translations as gigantes, or `giants'.
andrewcollins | In both the book of Genesis (chapter six) and
the book of Enoch, the rebel Watchers are said also to have come upon the Daughters
of Men, i.e. mortal women, who gave birth to giant offspring called Nephilim.
For this transgression against the laws of Heaven, the renegades were incarcerated
and punished by those Watchers who had remained loyal to Heaven. The rebel Watchers'
offspring, the Nephilim (a word meaning "those who fell), were either killed
outright, or were afterwards destroyed in the flood of Noah. Some, however, the
book of Numbers tells us, survived and went on to become the ancestors of giant
races, such as the Anakim and Rapheim.
I wrote that the story of the Watchers
is in fact the memory of a priestly or shamanic elite, a group of highly intelligent
human individuals, that entered the Upper Euphrates region from another part of
the ancient world sometime around the end of the last Ice Age, c. 11,000-10,000
BC. On their arrival in what became known as the land or kingdom of Eden (a term
actually used in the Old Testament), they assumed control of the gradually emerging
agrarian communities, who were tutored in a semi-rural life style centred around
agriculture, metal working and the rearing of animal live stock. More disconcertingly,
these people were made to venerate their superiors, i.e. the Watchers, as living
gods, or immortals.
The precise same region of the Near East, now thought
to be the biblical Garden of Eden, has long been held to be the cradle of civilization.
Here a number of "firsts" occurred at the beginning of the Neolithic
revolution, which began c. 10,000-9000 BC. It was in southeast Turkey, northern
Syria and northern Iraq, for example, that the first domestication of wild grasses
took place, the first fired pottery and baked statues were produced, the first
copper and lead were smelted, the first stone buildings and standing stones were
erected, the first beautification of the eyes took place among woman, the first
drilled beads in ultra hard stone were produced, the first alcohol was brewed
and distilled, etc., etc. In fact, many of the arts and sciences of Heaven that
the Watchers are said to have revealed to mortal kind were all reported first
in this region of the globe, known to archaeologists as Upper Mesopotamia, and
to the people of the region as Kurdistan.
Sean Thomas acknowledges my help
at the beginning of the The Genesis Secret, which follows exactly the same themes
as From the Ashes of Angels (and my later book Gods of Eden, published in 1998),
including the fact that the Watchers and founders of Eden were bird man, i.e.
shamans that wore cloaks of feathers, and that local angel worshipping cults in
Kurdistan, such as the Yezidi, Yaresan and Alevi, preserve some semblance of knowledge
regarding the former existence of the Watchers or angels as the bringers of civilization.
Their leader, they say was Azazel, known also as Melek Taus (or Melek Tawas),
the "Peacock Angel". Azazel is a name given in the book of Enoch for
one of the two leaders of the rebel Watchers (the other being Shemyaza).
It
is an honour for my work to be acknowledged in this manner by Sean Thomas, especially
as The Genesis Secret has become a bestseller (as was From the Ashes of Angels
in 1996). I won't spoil the plot, so will not reveal Sean's conclusions, or indeed
the climax of the book, although I must warn you that it is extremely gory in
places!
wikipedia | The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch;[1]Ge'ez: መጽሐፈ ሄኖክ mätṣḥäfä henok) is an ancient Jewish religious work, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah,
although modern scholars estimate the older sections (mainly in the
Book of the Watchers) to date from about 300 BC, and the latest part
(Book of Parables) probably to the first century BC.[2]
It is wholly extant only in the Ge'ez language, with Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few Greek and Latin
fragments. For this and other reasons, the traditional Ethiopian belief
is that the original language of the work was Ge'ez, whereas
non-Ethiopian scholars tend to assert that it was first written in
either Aramaic or Hebrew; Ephraim Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew.[4]:6 No Hebrew version is known to have survived. It is asserted in the book itself that its author was Enoch, before the Biblical Flood.
Some of the authors of the New Testament were familiar with some of the content of the story.[5] A short section of 1 Enoch (1:9) is cited in the New Testament, Epistle of Jude, Jude 1:14–15,
and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 En 60:8),
although this section of 1 Enoch is a midrash on Deuteronomy 33. Several
copies of the earlier sections of 1 Enoch were preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
wikipedia | The Younger Dryas is a climatic event from c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 calendar years ago (BP). It is named after an indicator genus, the alpine-tundra wildflower Dryas octopetala, as its leaves are occasionally abundant in the Late Glacial, often minerogenic-rich, like the lake sediments of Scandinavian lakes.
The Younger Dryas saw a sharp decline in temperature over most of the Northern Hemisphere, at the end of the Pleistoceneepoch, immediately before the current, warmer Holocene.
The Younger Dryas was the most recent and longest of several
interruptions to the gradual warming of the Earth's climate since the
severe Last Glacial Maximum,
c. 27,000 to 24,000 calendar years BP. The change was relatively
sudden, taking place in decades, and it resulted in a decline of 2 to 6
degrees Celsius and advances of glaciers and drier conditions, over much
of the temperate northern hemisphere. It is thought to have been caused
by a decline in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning
circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, in turn thought to have been caused by an influx of fresh cold water from North America to the Atlantic.
The Younger Dryas was a period of climatic change, but the effects
were complex and variable. In the Southern Hemisphere and some areas of
the Northern Hemisphere, such as southeastern North America, there was a
slight warming.[1]
The presence of a distinct cold period at the end of the Late Glacial
interval has been known for a long time. Paleobotanical and
lithostratigraphic studies of Swedish and Danish bog and lake sites, like in the Allerødclay pit in Denmark, first recognized and described the Younger Dryas.[2][3][4][5]
wikipedia | The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis or Clovis comet hypothesis originally proposed that a large air burst or earth impact of one or more comets initiated the Younger Dryas cold period about 12,900 BPcalibrated (10,900 14C uncalibrated) years ago.[1][2][3]
The hypothesis has been contested by research showing that most of the
conclusions cannot be repeated by other scientists, and criticized
because of misinterpretation of data and the lack of confirmatory
evidence.[4][5][6][7]
The current impact hypothesis states that the air burst(s) or impact(s) of a swarm of carbonaceous chondrites or comet fragments set areas of the North American continent on fire, causing the extinction of most of the megafauna in North America and the demise of the North American Clovis culture after the last glacial period.[8]
The Younger Dryas ice age lasted for about 1,200 years before the
climate warmed again. This swarm is hypothesized to have exploded above
or possibly on the Laurentide Ice Sheet in the region of the Great Lakes,
though no impact crater has yet been identified and no physical model
by which such a swarm could form or explode in the air has been
proposed. Nevertheless, the proponents suggest that it would be
physically possible for such an air burst to have been similar to, but
orders of magnitude larger than, the Tunguska event
of 1908. The hypothesis proposed that animal and human life in North
America not directly killed by the blast or the resulting coast-to-coast
wildfires would have likely starved on the burned surface of the continent.
disinfo | Between 1969 and 1977, Apollo mission seismographic equipment
registered up to 3,000 “moonquakes” each year of operation. Most of the
vibrations were quite small and were caused by meteorite strikes or
falling booster rockets. But many other quakes were detected deep inside
the Moon. This internal creaking is believed to be caused by the
gravitational pull of our planet as most moonquakes occur when the Moon
is closest to the Earth.
An event occurred in 1958 in the Moon’s Alphonsus crater, which shook
the idea that all internal moonquake activity was simply settling
rocks. In November of that year, Soviet astronomer Nikolay A. Kozyrev of
the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory startled the scientific world by
photographing the first recorded gaseous eruption on the Moon near the
crater’s peak. Kozyrev attributed this to escaping fluorescent gases. He
also detected a reddish glow characteristic of carbon compounds, which
“seemed to move and disappeared after an hour.”
Some scientists refused to accept Kozyrev’s findings until
astronomers at the Lowell Observatory also saw reddish glows on the
crests of ridges in the Aristarchus region in 1963. Days later, colored
lights on the Moon lasting more than an hour were reported at two
separate observatories.
Something was going on inside the volcanically dead Moon. And
whatever it is, it occurs the same way at the same time. As the Moon
moves closer to the Earth, seismic signals from different stations on
the lunar surface detect identical vibrations. It is difficult to accept
this movement as a natural phenomenon. For example, a broken artificial
hull plate could shift exactly the same way each time the Moon passed
near the Earth.
There is evidence to indicate the Moon may be hollow. Studies of Moon
rocks indicate that the Moon’s interior differs from the Earth’s mantle
in ways suggesting a very small, or even nonexistent, core. As far back
as 1962, NASA scientist Dr. Gordon MacDonald stated, “If the
astronomical data are reduced, it is found that the data require that
the interior of the Moon be less dense than the outer parts. Indeed, it
would seem that the Moon is more like a hollow than a homogeneous
sphere.”
Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, while scoffing at the
possibility of a hollow moon, nevertheless admitted that since heavier
materials were on the surface, it is quite possible that giant caverns
exist within the Moon. MIT’s Dr. Sean C. Solomon wrote, “The Lunar
Orbiter experiments vastly improved our knowledge of the Moon’s
gravitational field … indicating the frightening possibility that the
Moon might be hollow.”
Why frightening? The significance was stated by astronomer Carl Sagan
way back in his 1966 work Intelligent Life in the Universe, “A natural
satellite cannot be a hollow object.”
The most startling evidence that the Moon could be hollow came on
November 20, 1969, when the Apollo 12 crew, after returning to their
command ship, sent the lunar module (LM) ascent stage crashing back onto
the Moon creating an artificial moonquake. The LM struck the surface
about 40 miles from the Apollo 12 landing site where ultra-sensitive
seismic equipment recorded something both unexpected and astounding—the
Moon reverberated like a bell for more than an hour. The vibration wave
took almost eight minutes to reach a peak, and then decreased in
intensity. At a news conference that day, one of the co-directors of the
seismic experiment, Maurice Ewing, told reporters that scientists were
at a loss to explain the ringing. “As for the meaning of it, I’d rather
not make an interpretation right now. But it is as though someone had
struck a bell, say, in the belfry of a church a single blow and found
that the reverberation from it continued for 30 minutes.”
It was later established that small vibrations had continued on the
Moon for more than an hour. The phenomenon was repeated when the Apollo
13’s third stage was sent crashing onto the Moon by radio command,
striking with the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT. According to NASA, this
time the Moon “reacted like a gong.” Although seismic equipment was more
than 108 miles from the crash site, recordings showed reverberations
lasted for three hours and 20 minutes and traveled to a depth of 22 to
25 miles.
Subsequent studies of man-made crashes on the Moon yielded similar
results. After one impact the Moon reverberated for four hours. This
ringing coupled with the density problem on the Moon reinforces the idea
of a hollow moon. Scientists hoped to record the impact of a meteor
large enough to send shock waves to the Moon’s core and back and settle
the issue. That opportunity came on May 13, 1972, when a large meteor
stuck the Moon with the equivalent force of 200 tons of TNT. After
sending shock waves deep into the interior of the Moon, scientists were
baffled to find that none returned, confirming that there is something
unusual about the Moon’s core, or lack thereof.
nature | Lunar-origin studies are in flux. No current impact model stands out as
more compelling than the rest. Progress in several areas is needed to
rule out some theories, support others or direct us to new ones.
First, a better understanding of what happened between the formation
of the disk and the accumulation of the Moon from the disk is essential,
because this phase established the Moon's properties. Did mixing
homogenize the composition of the disk and the planet before the Moon
formed? Were volatile elements lost from the disk, and, if so, did the
pattern of loss vary with the disk's temperature? Canonical impacts
produce a mostly liquid disk whereas in the high-angular-momentum
impacts, the disks are initially largely vapour. Such disk-evolution
models are technically challenging and will require a multidisciplinary
approach incorporating both dynamics and chemistry.
Second,
the likelihood that a resonance altered the Earth–Moon angular momentum
needs to be assessed for a variety of physical states of the early
Earth and Moon and using state-of-the-art models for the tidal
interactions between them.
Finally, further
isotopic comparisons of lunar and terrestrial materials would be
extremely valuable. They should include highly refractory elements, such
as calcium, to test the equilibration model. Finding that an element
that could not have mixed in a vapour phase in 100 years is the same in
the Moon and Earth but different in Mars would argue against
equilibration; finding Earth–Moon isotopic differences in such a highly
refractory element would support it.
Oxygen
provides arguably the most important isotopic constraint on lunar
formation. The distinct oxygen isotopic compositions of the Earth–Moon
system, Mars and most meteorites reflect different initial compositional
reservoirs in the inner Solar System. This simplifies the
interpretation of oxygen compositions compared with elements such as
silicon, whose isotopic abundances are affected by later planet-forming
processes (such as crustal extraction). Increasing the precision of
oxygen isotope measurements could potentially rule out some impact
scenarios.
It remains troubling that all of
the current impact models invoke a process after the impact to
effectively erase a primary outcome of the event — either by changing
the disk's composition through mixing for the canonical impact, or by
changing Earth's spin rate for the high-angular-momentum narratives.
Sequences
of events do occur in nature, and yet we strive to avoid such
complexity in our models. We seek the simplest possible solution, as a
matter of scientific aesthetics and because simple solutions are often
more probable. As the number of steps increases, the likelihood of a
particular sequence decreases. Current impact models are more complex
and seem less probable than the original giant-impact concept.
A
clue may lie in Venus. The assumption that the Moon-forming impactor
had a composition very different from that of Earth is largely based on
what we know about Mars. We do not know the isotopic composition of
Venus, the planet most similar to Earth in both mass and distance from
the Sun. If Venus's composition proves similar to that of Earth and the
Moon, Mars would then seem to be an outlier, and an impactor composition
akin to Earth's would be more probable, removing many objections to the
canonical impact.
Determining the isotopic
composition of Venus's key elements will probably require a mission to
the planet. Such a tantalizing prospect reminds us how much there is
still to learn in our Solar System backyard.
bibliotecapleyades |The ancient civilization of Egypt was nearly destroyed in a cosmic
catastrophe that endangered the entire planet, according to
Velikovsky. Everywhere, huge resources were devoted to study of the
skies. It's widely known that ancient civilizations in Asia, the
Americas, Europe and the Middle East were highly advanced in
astronomy.
While we accept this as a common feature of our past,
Why were so many people interested in the
study of the movements of the planets?
Why is the alignment of astronomical
instruments found in Babylon 2.5 degrees out from the
present alignment of the Earth?
Why did calendars constructed between the
middle of the second millennium BCE *
and 800 BCE have 360 days and months of thirty days?
Why do even earlier calendars have days,
months and years of different lengths again?
* Before
the Common Era
Velikovsky's answer was that the Earth and Mars had
been involved in repeated near collisions with a gigantic comet
since our recorded history began. The events described in the Exodus and in Egyptian
papyri are a vivid description of an age in chaos—plagues, turmoil
and darkness, and the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt toward a
"column of fire" in Sinai.
The Earth was momentarily slowed down and its axis slightly altered
as the comet passed by. Electrostatic forces caused discharges to
arc between the Earth and the comet turning the skies to fire and
the forests to flame. The crust was rent, volcanoes erupted,
earthquakes rocked and darkness enveloped the world—the time of the
Exodus.
Seven hundred years later Isaiah, Joel and Amos described
another series of upheavals; the Sun appeared to stand still in the
sky. Although slightly dislodged from its axis and orbit again, the
Earth fared better this second time.
These were, in fact, the last two acts of a cosmic
drama; the earliest act of which we have records is called The
Deluge.
All cosmological theories assumed that the
planets have evolved in their places for billions of years...
Venus was formerly a comet and joined the family of planets
within the memory of mankind... We claim that the Earth's orbit
changed more than once, and with it the length of the year; that
the geographic position of the terrestrial axis and its
astronomical direction changed repeatedly and that at a recent
date the polar star was in the constellation of the Great Bear.
—Worlds in Collision, p. 361
Velikovsky believed that the origin of the comet that
was responsible for changes in the Earth's orbit was in the
proto-star we know as Jupiter. This idea outraged the scientific
community. But his theories about the natures of Jupiter and Venus
have not yet been proven wrong. He said that because Venus was
younger than the other planets, its surface temperature would be
much hotter and its atmosphere denser than astronomers believed;
these predictions were proven correct.
He predicted Venus would be found to have orbital anomalies in
relation to the other planets; Venus has since been found to rotate
on its axis in reverse direction to the other planets, and its day
is longer than its year. We now know that parts of the atmosphere of
Venus rotate in 4 days (with winds of up to 400 km/h) while the
planet itself rotates in 243 days. Both these rotations are
retrograde.
One of Velikovsky's hypotheses for the slowing of the
Earth's rotation which made the Sun appear to stand still was that
the planet was engulfed in the extended atmosphere of the comet
Venus. Some of the diurnal rotation of the Earth was imparted to
this dust-cloud according to Velikovsky, which fits the eccentric
characteristics of the Venusian atmosphere.
The comet spiraled past the Earth in an ever-decreasing path around
the Sun before taking up its present orbit as the planet Venus. He
further cites evidence to show that the Earth interacted with Mars
on a number of occasions when writing was better developed than
during the Venusian encounters, after Venus flipped Mars out of its
orbit.
bibliotecapleyades |As mentioned in the beginning of this book, I have been for
many years interested in the work of George Gurdjieff. A series of
articles written by William Patrick Patterson for Telos Magazine
entitled “Gurdjieff in Egypt” and a subsequent video released by
Patterson with the same title rekindled my interest in Gurdjieff’s
work. In his second book, Meetings With Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff
had stated that he once had seen a map of “pre-sand Egypt” in the
possession of an Armenian monk. This map had stimulated Gurdjieff to
go to Egypt and search for teachings about human origins in ancient
wisdom schools.
Patterson had also been fascinated with Gurdjieff’s travels to Egypt
and had done extensive investigations of his work. Patterson is
convinced that Gurdjieff had seen an image of the Sphinx on the map
of “pre-sand Egypt” and went to Egypt to investigate for himself. Of
course, I contend that if the map was indeed of a “pre-sand Egypt”,
it would have contained the pyramids as well as the Sphinx at
ancient Giza before the current desert conditions. According to
Patterson, Gurdjieff had stated that his teachings had come from a
complete system of “Esoteric Christianity” that originated in
ancient Egypt many thousands of years before the time of Jesus. I
met Patterson at a talk he gave in Denver, Colorado in July of 1999.
Both Patterson and I agreed that Gurdjieff might have come in
contact with the indigenous tradition over 100 years ago, especially
in his extended stay in Ethiopia. Gurdjieff adamantly maintained
that the source of all modern esoteric systems had their origins in
predynastic Egypt, essentially supporting our paradigms of ancient Khemit.
However, Patterson also mentioned other statements of Gurdjieff that
stimulated further investigations on my part. Gurdjieff had stated
in his writings and discussions that he had found inscriptions on
the walls of the Temple of Horus in Edfu, which is in the south of
Egypt, that mentioned the myth of Atlantis. In his articles
Patterson mentioned a book by British Egyptologist E. A. Reymond,
The Origins of the Egyptian Temple, in which translations of the
texts of Edfu were given. Reymond called these inscriptions “The
Building Texts” and claimed they were the myths of the origins of
ancient temple buildings.
I found Reymond’s translations of the Edfu texts to be incoherent
and poorly done and decided to discuss these texts with Abd’El Hakim
in Egypt. On our tour in October of 1999, we went to the Temple of Horus at Edfu and found the inscriptions on the walls ourselves. It
became apparent to us that the texts at Edfu were copies of much
older texts, the temple having been built in the Ptolemaic period
ca. 200 BC, and were discussing events that had taken place in
ancient Khemit many thousands of years before the temple was built.
Gurdjieff had stated that the texts spoke of an advanced people,
whom Reymond referred to by the standard Orthodox translation of the
term Neter, as “Gods” who had come from an island that
had been
destroyed by a flood and had brought their wisdom to the ancient
Khemitians. However, Hakim’s interpretation was vastly different. I
believe the texts are referring to the time of the ancient Ur Nil
over 30,000 years ago when the vastness of the river had turned all
of Northern Africa into a series of large islands.
As the Khemitians
became united, they moved from island to island, erecting temples
and pyramids and creating the ancient Khemitian civilization. Once
again, this became a basis for the future myth of Atlantis. Hakim
was definite that the texts were not referring to a more advanced
non-Khemitian people coming from outside Africa, and teaching the
Khemitians how to build in stone. I propose that the ancient people
followed the river from the south and the west and formed the union
of the 42 tribes in the Land of Osiris, Bu Wizzer, and other ancient
sites in the south, such as Edfu and Abydos.
The texts are therefore
describing the Khemitian’s ascension into higher consciousness,
becoming “one” with the Neters, opening their senses and creating
high civilization. The texts discuss how the “Neters arrived” from
different islands, and began the process of erecting large--scale
edifices in stone. We did not find any references to cataclysms, but
even so, the ancient Khemitians may have “island hopped” until the
42 tribes united and coalesced into a coherent civilization.
There may have been an advanced island civilization in the Atlantic
(or Antarctica, as has been claimed) that perished as a result of
the great cataclysm proposed around 11,500 years ago. But it may
also be that there were large islands in Northern Africa as a result
of the ancient Ur Nil around this same time that were populated by
an advanced civilization of ancient Khemitians. The Myth of Atlantis
may have referred to the entire Global Maritime Culture that existed
in many parts of the world prior to 10,000 years ago, much of which
was almost completely destroyed by cataclysmic events. I believe
ancient Khemit should be included in that mythology.
Ancient Khemitian priests may have entertained Greek travelers with
stories of cataclysms destroying island civilization as an oral
history of the Global Maritime Culture that once existed, knowing
full well that ancient Khemit was part of that past glory, but not
revealing the complete story to the “barbarian” Greeks.
bibliotecapleyades |To comprehend fully the secret information in the Bible, it is
important to understand the extent of the subterranean tunnel system
and associated chamber facilities existing below the surface of the
Pyramid Plateau, for it was there that
major elements of Mystery School teachings developed.
What happened
under the sands thousands of years ago is not reflected in today's
history books, and discoveries made in the last eight decades or so
verify that point.
The Fayum Oasis district, just a few kilometers outside the boundary
of the Memphis Nome, presents a site of unusual interest. It was in
that lush, fertile valley that Pharaohs calling themselves the
"masters of the royal hunts" fished and hunted with the boomerang
(1), Lake Moeris once bordered the Fayum Oasis and on its shores was
the famous Labyrinth, described by Herodotus as "an endless wonder
to me".
The Labyrinth contained 1500 rooms and
an equal number of underground chambers that the Greek historian was
not permitted to inspect, according to Labyrinth priests, "the
passages were baffling and intricate", designed to provide safety
for the numerous scrolls they said were hidden in subterranean
apartments.
That massive complex particularly impressed
Herodotus
and he spoke in awe of the structure:
There I saw twelve palaces regularly disposed, which had
communication with each other, interspersed with terraces and
arranged around twelve halls. It is hard to believe they are the
work of man, The walls are covered with carved figures, and each
court is exquisitely built of white marble and surrounded by a
colonnade. Near the corner where the labyrinth ends, there is a
pyramid, two hundred and forty feet in height, with great carved
figures of animals on it and an underground passage by which it can
be entered. I was told very credibly that underground chambers and
passages connected this pyramid with the pyramids at Memphis.
The pyramids at Memphiswere the pyramids at Giza, for
Giza was
originally called Memphis (see reference, "Giza formerly Memphis" on
Nordan's map from Travels in Egypt and Nubia, 1757, on page 152 of
previous chapter).
Many ancient writers supported Herodotus' record of underground
passages connecting major pyramids, and their evidence casts doubt
on the reliability of traditionally presented Egyptian history. Crantor
(300 BC) stated that there were certain underground pillars
in Egypt that contained a written stone record of pre-history , and
they lined access ways connecting the pyramids.
In his celebrated
study, On the Mysteries, particularly those of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and the Assyrians,
Iamblichus, a fourth-century Syrian
representative of the Alexandrian School of mystical and
philosophical studies, recorded this information about an
entranceway through the body of the Sphinx into the Great Pyramid(2):
This entrance, obstructed in our day by sands and rubbish, may still
be traced between the forelegs of the crouched colossus. It was
formerly closed by a bronze gate whose secret spring could be
operated only by the Magi. It was guarded by public respect, and a
sort of religious fear maintained its inviolability better than
armed protection would have done. In the belly of the Sphinx were
cut out galleries leading to the subterranean part of the Great
Pyramid.
These galleries were so art-fully
crisscrossed along their course to the Pyramid that, in setting
forth into the passage without a guide throughout this network, one
ceasingly and inevitably returned to the starting point.
It was recorded in ancient Sumerian cylinder seals that the secret
abode of
the Anunnaki was,
"an underground place... entered
through a tunnel, its entrance hidden by sand and by what they
call Huwana... his teeth as the teeth of a dragon, his face the
face of a lion".
That remarkable old text, unfortunately
fragmented, added that "He [Huwana] is unable to move forward, nor
is he able to move back", but they crept up on him from behind and
the way to "the secret abode of the Anunnaki" was no longer blocked.
The Sumerian record provided a probable
description of the lion-headed Sphinx at Giza, and if that great
creature was built to guard or obliterate ancient stairways and
lower passages leading to subterranean areas below and around it,
then its symbolism was most appropriate.
Local 19th-century Arab lore maintained that existing under the
Sphinx are secret chambers holding treasures or magical objects.
That belief was bolstered by the writings of the first-century Roman
historian Pliny, who wrote that deep below the Sphinx is concealed
the "tomb of a ruler named Harmakhis that contains great treasure",
and, strangely enough, the Sphinx itself was once called "The Great
Sphinx Harmakhis who mounted guard since the time of the Followers
of Horus".
bibliotecapleyades |Although people long ago began to wonder
whether the "canals" on Mars were the creation of cosmic engineers, for
some odd reason it
has not occurred to look with the same eyes upon the peculiarities
of the lunar landscape much closer at hand.
And all the arguments
about the possibilities of intelligent life existing on other
celestial bodies have been confined to the idea that other
civilizations must necessarily live on the surface of a planet, and
that the interior as a habitat is out of the question.
Abandoning the traditional paths of "common sense", we have plunged
into what may at first sight seem to be unbridled and irresponsible
fantasy. But the more minutely we go into all the information
gathered by man about the Moon, the more we are convinced that there
is not a single fact to rule out our supposition.
Not only that, but
many things so far considered to be lunar enigmas are explainable in
the light of this new hypothesis.
wikipedia | In 1970, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, of what was then the Soviet Academy of Sciences, advanced an hypothesis that the Moon is a spaceship created by unknown beings.[2] The article was entitled "Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?", and was published in Sputnik,[10] the Soviet equivalent of Reader's Digest.[1][14]
Their hypothesis relies heavily on the suggestion that large lunar craters,
generally assumed to be formed from meteor impact, are generally too
shallow and have flat or even convex bottoms. They hypothesized that
small meteors are making a cup-shaped depression in the rocky surface of
the moon while the larger meteors are drilling through a rocky layer
and hitting an armoured hull underneath.[15]
telegraph | This is the Tower of the Winds, built by Ottavinao Mascherino
between 1578 and 1580, a place to which mere members of the public are
never normally admitted.
Here in the Hall of the Meridian, a
room covered in frescoes depicting the four winds, is a tiny hole high
up in one of the walls.
At midday, the sun, shining through the
hole, falls along a white marble line set into the floor. On either side
of this meridian line are various astrological and astronomical
symbols, once used to try to calculate the effect of the wind upon the
stars.
But this is not the real reason why this man with the
shabby trousers, the oddly distinguished-looking grey hair and the
abundance of irrelevant detail has come to the Vatican.
No, the
real reason for this lies elsewhere in the Tower of Winds, in rooms
lined with miles and miles of dark wooden shelves – more than 50 miles
of them in fact.
Here, bound in cream vellum, are thousands upon thousands of volumes, some more than a foot thick.
This is the Vatican secret archive, possibly the most mysterious collection of documents in the world.
Here you can find accounts of the trial of the Knights Templar held at
Chinon in August 1308; a threatening note from 1246 in which Ghengis
Khan’s grandson demands that Pope Innocent IV travel to Asia to ‘pay
service and homage; a letter from Lucretia Borgia to Pope Alexander VI;
Papal Bulls excommunicating Martin Luther; correspondence between the
Court of Henry VIII and Clement VII; and an exchange of letters between
Michelangelo and Paul III.
There are also letters from Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, St Bernadette, Voltaire and Abraham Lincoln.
And here too – depending on how much faith you have in the novels of
Dan Brown – lies proof that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and continued
their own earthly line.
Once, Napoleon had the whole of the secret archive transported to Paris.
It was brought back, albeit with some key documents missing, in 1817
and has remained in the Vatican ever since – a constant source of myth
and fascination.
But now the Vatican Secret Archive is secret no more.
wikipedia | The Vatican Secret Archives (Latin: Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum; Italian: Archivio Segreto Vaticano) is the central repository in the Vatican City for all of the acts promulgated by the Holy See. The Pope, as Sovereign of Vatican City and having primal incumbency, owns the archives until his death or resignation, with ownership passing to his successor. The archives also contain the state papers, correspondence, papal account books,[1] and many other documents which the church has accumulated over the centuries. In the 17th century, under the orders of Pope Paul V, the Secret Archives were separated from the Vatican Library, where scholars had some very limited access to them, and remained closed to outsiders until 1881, when Pope Leo XIII opened them to researchers, more than a thousand of whom now examine some of its documents each year.[2]
The use of the word "secret" in the title "Vatican Secret Archives"
does not denote the modern meaning of confidentiality. A fuller and
perhaps better translation of the Latin may be the "private Vatican
Apostolic archives". Its meaning is closer to that of the word
"private", indicating that the archives are the Pope's personal
property, not belonging to those of any particular department of the Roman Curia or the Holy See.
The word "secret" was generally used in this sense as also reflected in
phrases such as "secret servants", "secret cupbearer", "secret carver"
or "secretary", much like an esteemed position of honour and regard
comparable to a VIP.[3]
Parts of the Secret Archives remain truly secret, however: some
materials are still prohibited for outside viewing, including everything
dated after 1939.[4]
WaPo | Is this the woman that Michelle Obama sees when she looks in the
mirror now, free of the White House and the media scrutiny of
presidential politics? After more than a decade in public life, can she
freely shed the sheath dress and pearls for a wide brim black hat and dookie braids?
The
image, in case you haven’t seen it, is part of a birthday tribute to
the singer who posted portraits of black women — some famous, others not
— dressed in one of her iconic looks from the “Formation” video.
Counterpunch | Can’t empathize? Show this article to a friend; he or she likely can. One-third of Americans of working age have a criminal record. Obama smoked pot and snorted cocaine. George W. Bush had a DUI; Dick Cheney had two. Roughly 17% of all Americans (including children and other non-drivers) have a DUI conviction.
Let he who is without self-righteous BS Christian sanctimony cast the first deportation.
Trump and his fellow Republicans’ repugnant decision to expose
DREAMers — who, by definition, have clean criminal records — to
deportation is a classic example of the peril of the slippery slope.
This is what happens when the Left goes to sleep because a Democrat is
in the White House.
First Obama came to deport the children who knew no home other than
the United States, but we said nothing because they had criminal records
(even if they weren’t a big deal and/or referred to crimes that
occurred ages ago). Then Trump came for the kids with no criminal record
at all, but we said jack because they didn’t happen to have the right
immigration documents.
Florida Vacation
-
Five days in Cape Coral. Ate well, got some sun, got some color, got some
exercise. Alternating nights drinking. Cape Coral has canals, from above it
loo...
Wokeness in November
-
Regardless of one’s personal feelings about wokeness and the culture wars
(I think such things are important for many reasons, but have also spilt
plenty o...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
Silver
-
Noticed this.
Today is the 11th and Silver is from the 11th Group.
Silver is atomic number 47
"The number of protons in the nucleus of an atom, which de...
-
(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
-
With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
