China’s Top Drone Maker Removes Security Features at a Very Weird Time

DJI has ended enforced no-fly zones in U.S. markets.

By Faine Greenwood, an expert on unmanned aerial vehicles, technology in humanitarian aid, remote sensing, spatial data, and data policy and ethics.

January 15, 2025, 12:11 AM

As the FBI and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was scrambling to find the pilot whose DJI drone illegally collided with an aircraft battling the devastating Los Angeles fires, the globally dominant Chinese manufacturer of that same drone made a startling announcement this week: It would be turning off controls worldwide, known as geofences, that actively prevented its drones from flying over airports, military bases, and disaster response zones (among other restricted areas).

According to the DJI announcement, the changes would shift restricted zones or no-fly zones in the United States to “enhanced warning zones, aligning with the FAA’s designated areas.” Since 2015, in the wake of an incident where a hapless DJI drone pilot accidentally crashed his aircraft onto the White House lawn, DJI drones had shipped with software that prevented them from taking off in or flying into certain constantly updated restricted areas, including national security locations around Washington, D.C., and over active wildfires and other disasters in temporarily restricted areas. DJI’s most recent update turns that hard geofence feature off, substituting it with a in-app alert that irresponsible pilots can, presumably, simply ignore.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/15/dji-china-drones-geofencing-security-us/

Trump Inauguration Monday

All the work you did in the November election will finally be realized on Monday when Donald Trump takes office. Hearings on Trump's nominees have already begun and will continue. Trump's team has prepared countless executive orders that will go into effect on Day 1. The beginning of America's golden age will be at noon this Monday.

Our enemies are aware. One of the largest drone manufacturers - DJI - is a Chinese company. Just this week, leading right up to the inauguration, DJI happened to turn off geofencing on their American drones, allowing them to travel into no-go zones. This is not a mistake. Our enemies know that our new golden age is beginning.

But Donald Trump and his incredible team won't be stopped. Reports suggest that hundreds of deep state employees are planning to resign in protest - because they know that Trump's team will hold them accountable for what they've done to our country.

https://secure.winred.com/tarrant-county-republican-party/donate-today

Cox Report and the Threat from China

by Joseph Cirincione

published byCarnegie on June 7, 1999

program

Nuclear Policy

The Nuclear Policy Program aims to reduce the risk of nuclear war. Our experts diagnose acute risks stemming from technical and geopolitical developments, generate pragmatic solutions, and use our global network to advance risk-reduction policies. Our work covers deterrence, disarmament, arms control, nonproliferation, and nuclear energy.

Learn More

Source: Carnegie

by Joseph Cirincione

Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment

Presentation to the CATO Institute, June 7, 1999

Everyone who wants to talk about Chinese nuclear forces will have to start for at least the next year with a discussion of the Cox Report. In brief, the Cox Committee report, like the Rumsfeld Commission before it, has taken a real problem and hyper-inflated it for political purposes.

I had the privilege of serving on the professional national security staff of the House of Representatives for over nine years. I know congressional reports. I have written congressional reports. This is no congressional report. It is a propaganda piece. With it’s unprecedented, expensive, glossy publication style it is much more like the "Soviet Military Power" series produced by the Reagan Administration than it is like any other committee report.

It compares unfavorably, for example, with the sober, serious, balanced report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on the same subject, released a few weeks before the Cox report. This is what a congressional report should be. The Shelby report is hard-hitting and critical of the Administration. But it is not hysterical and not, as Cox Committee member Congressman Norm Dicks admitted about his report, a "worst case assessment."

Turning to the substance, House Majority Leader Dick Armey summarizes the report for us when he says, "It’s very scary, and basically what it says is the Chinese now have the capability of threatening us with our own nuclear technology."

He gets that information directly from the Report’s overview, which states:

"These thefts of nuclear secrets from our national weapons laboratories enabled the PRC to design, develop and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible."

"The stolen US nuclear secrets give the PRC design information on thermonuclear weapons on a par with our own….the stolen information includes classified information on seven US thermonuclear warheads."

Then, later on p. 60 of Volume I of the report, "The stolen US secrets have helped the PRC fabricate and successfully test modern strategic thermonuclear weapons."

These are dramatic statements. The are also not true, at least according to the combined judgement of all of our national intelligence agencies and an independent review panel led by Adm. David Jeremiah and including Brent Scowcroft. It is understandable that the Cox Committee made mistakes. After all, according to Committee Member John Spratt, they only turned to the matter of Chinese espionage on October 21, and concluded taking testimony on the issue on November 15 and filed their report Jan. 3.

The Committee had spent most of its time in 1998 investigating charges that critical technology was transferred to the PRC by major US corporations while using Chinese rockets to launch American satellites. Many in the Republican leadership had hoped this investigation would lead to impeachment charges against the President. A number of Republican leaders went to the floor of the House and Senate and accused the President of treason for allegedly facilitating this transfer of information. These charges could not be substantiated. The Cox Committee then hurriedly took testimony from only three witnesses on the nuclear weapons security issue: DOE intelligence official Notra Trulock, a CIA analyst, and a Los Alamos employee. The Cox report basically presents the Notra Trulock view of China, unchallenged and unbalanced.

China’s Changing Nuclear Posture

Let’s take a step back and review what China’s nuclear capabilities are.

Deep in China’s Henan province, a hundred miles from the ancient city of Xi’an, China has deployed in silos and in caves about 20 Dong Feng-5 missiles. They are deployed with their liquid fuel tanks empty and with their 4- and 5-Megaton nuclear warheads detached and stored separately. Though each has enough explosive power to vaporize an average city, the force pales in comparison to the 5,500 warheads the United States deploys on its modern, highly accurate missiles, or even the 144 warheads the United Kingdom carries on its Trident sea-launched ballistic missiles.

Of the five recognized nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China), China has the oldest, least capable, and most stable nuclear deterrent force. China deployed the first Dong Feng-5 (or "East Wind") in 1981. Slowly, over the years, the numbers have grown to the current 20 missiles deployed. For two decades, this atomic arsenal, along with dozens of intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles and air-dropped bombs, has served China’s strategic interests.

China has plans to modernize the missile force, and actually has been trying to implement those plans for well over a decade. They are worried about the survivability of their force, and, thus, China’s military and political leaders want new, modern, solid-fueled missiles like their nuclear peers. The force may increase in number and will likely be more accurate. Like the other powers, China may opt for multiple warheads atop each missile. Like the other powers, China uses a variety of methods to acquire the information it needs to develop its weaponry, including espionage.

Earlier this year, the Cox committee report—then classified—recommended that the Executive branch conduct a comprehensive damage assessment on the implications of China’s acquisition of US nuclear weapons information. The Administration did so, forming a team of officials from the CIA, DIA, DOD, NSA, INR, FBI and other agencies and the nuclear laboratories. An independent panel of nuclear experts, Chaired by Admiral David Jeremiah and including General Brent Scowcroft, Dr. John Foster and others then reviewed their damage assessment. In April, they issued their report. This net assessment has been lost in the political firestorm generated by recent congressional hearings and reports. It deserves to be read carefully. They reached two critical conclusions.

The Damage Assessment team concluded:

"China's technical advances have been made on the basis of classified and unclassified information derived from espionage, contact with US and other countries' scientists, conferences and publications, unauthorized media disclosures, declassified US weapons information, and Chinese indigenous development. The relative contribution of each cannot be determined."

This means that we do not know, and may never know, whether the Chinese got most of their information from spying or from the Internet.

The tip-off that China had at least some classified information on US weapons designs came from an unusual 1995 incident. In an apparent attempt to establish a double-agent, a Chinese national walked into a US office in Asia with an armful of top-secret Chinese documents. One of these was a paper dated 1988 listing the characteristics of a number of deployed US nuclear weapons. While much of this information, such as yield, weight, and accuracy was readily available, one tidbit was not—the radius of the primary stage of the W-88 warhead. This sent alarm bells ringing, and it is the basis for the charge that China has design information on all our current nuclear warheads. But the suspect nature of this double agent and the documents he produced make it difficult to evaluate the seriousness of the situation.

The discovery this March that critical nuclear design data was illegally moved from a classified to an unclassified computer at Los Alamos National Laboratory is much more serious. Even here, it is still not known if any of the information actually reached China.

We do know, however, that whatever information China accessed has had little impact on their nuclear weapons. The Damage Assessment panel concluded:

"Significant deficiencies remain in the Chinese weapons program…. To date, the aggressive Chinese collection effort has not resulted in any apparent modernization of their deployed strategic force or any new nuclear weapons deployment."

"China has had the technical capability to develop a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) system for its large, currently deployed ICBM for many years, but has not done so. "

This assessment directly contradicts the central message of the Cox report. China will modernize its nuclear forces and its conventional military forces. But it is so far behind the United States and our allies that America’s military leaders conclude unanimously, as Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Command Admiral Dennis Blair testified this year, "China would not represent a serious military threat to the U.S. for at least 20 years."

Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Patrick Hughes concludes bluntly in his annual threat assessment, "There is no indication that China will field the much larger number of missiles necessary to shift from a minimalist, retaliation strategy to a first-strike strategy." This did not square with the views of the majority members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who pushed him on the issue in a series of questions for the record. General Hughes response (just released by the Committee) is that he has "high confidence" in this assessment and further, that "China’s defense expenditures are not expected to increase significantly for nuclear defense modernization."

This DIA assessment is consistent with the policy of a minimum deterrence force that China has pursued since it first began its nuclear weapons program. China has never had any intention of making the same mistake the Soviet Union and the United States made during the Cold War: engaging in an expensive race that produce over 125,000 nuclear weapons (at the cost on the U.S. side alone of over $5 trillion). China has sought a minimum force, adequate to deter a nuclear adversary from attacking first, knowing that there would be a nuclear launch in response.

The overall situation encapsulated by James Mulvenon, a RAND Corporation military analyst, who says:

"The US is no more at threat now than before this alleged espionage. It is only half the battle to steal technology. China has not fielded any weapon—and does not appear to be planning to—that has any technology said to be stolen."

Mr. Mulvenon testified before the Cox panel, but apparently he was not asked for his assessment of the espionage impact and his views or the views of the majority of intelligence and military experts on this issue are not reflected in the panel report.

Obviously, China’s plans could accelerate. If the United States and Japan increase their military presence on China’s borders by deploying missile defenses, if the US enters into a de facto military alliance with Taiwan over missile defenses, or if India were to deploy nuclear-armed missiles in significant numbers, China’s military could well demand and get a greater share of China’s scarce resources.

The overall Chinese strategic vision remains the same: China wants 20 to 30 years of international peace and stability in order to modernize its economy and raise the standard of living for its population. Only then would true military modernization be possible. During this economic modernization process much could change in China, including the very nature of the regime. In fact, some would say that democratization is essential for China’s sustained economic growth.

Much depends on how America handles this critical relationship. Campaign agendas or political hyperbole should not overrule the sound judgements of our military leadership nor stampede us into reckless confrontations or expensive new military programs.

Joseph Cirincione is the Director of the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project. He served for nine years on the professional staff of the House Armed Services Committee and Government Operations Committee.

Link to The Cox Committee Report

https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/1999/06/cox-report-and-the-threat-from-china?lang=en

Case No. 25 PO 00002 3G

PO Rec No.: 323314

254400044

FILED

2025 JAN-7 PM 4:58 JUSTICE PEACE

IN THE JUSTICE COURT OF DAYTON TOWNSHIP

JOSHUA JAMES COX

Applicant,

VS.

BILLY DUNN

Adverse Party.

COUNTY OF LYON, STATE OF NEVADA

TEMPORARY PROTECTION ORDER AGAINST STALKING OR HARASSMENT

Expiration: This order was issued by the Court above on January 7, 2025 and will expire

on FEBRUARY 21, 2025 at 11:59 pm unless the Court orders otherwise. Hearing to Extend:

There will be a hearing to determine whether to extend this order on FEBRUARY 18, 2025 at 3:00 pm at the Court listed above.

If you do not attend, the court may rule against you.

The Applicant filed a verified application for a protective order. The Court has jurisdiction over this matter. See NRS 200.591, et seq. The Court finds that stalking, aggravated stalking and/or harassment has occurred. Accordingly, and good cause appearing, it is the ORDER of the Court that the following orders apply to the Adverse Party:

1. YOU ARE PROHIBITED from threatening, physically injuring, or harassing the

Applicant and/or the following persons:

Protected Parties: The following persons are protected under this order: Applicant: JOSHUA JAMES COX

2. YOU ARE ORDERED to not contact the protected parties at all in any way,

including but not limited to in person, by phone/text, by email, or through social

media.

3. YOU ARE ORDERED to stay away from Applicant's residence located at: 2024 LONNIE LANE, DAYTON, NV 89403

02020 Nevada Supreme Court

Temporary Protection Order Against Stalking or Harassment (Revised October 2020)

Page 1 of 3

How do you know the person you need protection from (check all that apply)?

We are related by blood or marriage. Explain We are or used to be friends/acquaintances.

We are

neighbors

or reside in the same

We are or were co-workers.

Other: (specify relationship):

in any court?

neighborhood.

Are there any other current or prior court cases that involve you and the Adverse Party

No.

Yes. If you know, please list the case type, county, state, and case number:

Firearms/Guns.

Does the Adverse Party own a gun or have a gun in his/her possession or control?

Yes

I don't know.

Most Recent Event. Think about the most recent event. These questions ask about the most recent event only.

Approximate date it happened:

City/State/Location where it happened:

Did the other person use or threaten to use a weapon? No Yes.

What Happened? Explain the most recent event and describe any injuries. Give specific and detailed information about the event. You can list past events on the next page. If you are filing on behalf of a child, include details about who happened to the child.

I WAS LEAVING CALIFORNIA ON JANUARY 2ND WHEN THE CFO

AT MY JAR MESSAGED ME AND

ASKED ME TO MEET HER IN HER OFFICE SOMETIME THAT WEEK. I INFORMED HER THAT I WAS OUT OF TOWN BUT WOULD BE THERE IN THE MORNING (JANUARY 3RD). I ASKED WHAT IT WAS ABOUT AND

02020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Order

(Revised October 2020)

Page 3 of 8

SHE SAID THAT SOMEONE THAT SHE DIDN'T KNOW WAS TEXTING HER AND 14 OTHER PHONE NUMBERS. AND THEY SENT HER A VIDEO ALSO, BILLY DUNN who RESIDES AT 2031 LONNIE LANE WAS THE PERSON THE OWNERS SENDING THE TEXTY AND VIDEO, HE SENT THESE TO AND FAMRY MEMBERS THAT HE IS STALKING, HARASSING AND CYBER BULLYING ME AND OTHER PEOPLE ONLINE. HE MIGHT DO: IT IS ESCALATING AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE

EMPLOY ME.

Attach more pages if you need more room (pages 4a, 4b, 4c).

C2020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Order (Revised October 2020)

Page 4 of 8

Past Event(s).

Think about any other times the person you want protection from threatened or abused you happened. and/or the child/children. The following questions ask about any past events that may have

Approximate Date:

What Happened:

JUNE 12TH 2024 I GOT HOME

FROM WORK AND MY NEIGHBOR APPROACHED WE AND ASKED IF I SAW A POST THAT BILLY SUNN HAD POSTED ON A TACEBOOK GROUP (RE DAYTON NEVADA JOB SEEKERS). I TOLD HIM NO I HAVEN'T SEEN IT AND ASKED TO SEE IT HE HAD AN A. I., APP ASE TO MAKE A STORY ABOUT ME COMMITTING SUICIDE. I HAVE REPORTED THE VIDEOS ONLINE, BUT I KNOW IT ISN'T ENDUGH AND MY FAMILY AND EMPLOYERS AFE WORRIED FOR ME AND WHAT HE MIGHT DO NEXT!

Approximate Date: What Happened:

10. Law enforcement involvement.

Was law enforcement informed?

Yes

a. If so, please provide a copy of the police incident report Was anyone arrested? No Yes (Who),

Is the Adverse Party in jail? A No

Yes

C2020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Onder (Revised October 2020)

Page 5 of 8

Case No. 25 PO 00002 3G

If you want to dispute this order or have it changed, you can request a

hearing by filing a written request with this court. Court staff will give you information about how to file your request. The court will set a hearing on your request as quickly as

possible.

ORDER TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

Any law enforcement officer, with or without a warrant, may arrest and take into custody the Adverse Party, when the law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe that (a) an Order has been issued pursuant to NRS 33.270 against the Adverse Party; (b) the Adverse Party has been served with a copy of the Order; and (c) the Adverse Party is acting or has acted in violation of the Order. This arrest may occur regardless of whether the violation occurred in the officer's presence.

Any law enforcement agency in this state may enforce a Court Order issued pursuant to NRS 33.270 without regard to the county in which the Order is issued.

January 7, 2025

121

amil

CAMILLE VECCHIARELLI Justice of the Peace

(Revised October 2020)

Temporary Protection Order Against Stalking or Harassment

Page 3 of 3

About Extended Protection Orders: This application automatically asks the judge to issue up to a 45-day temporary protection order without notifying the other person first.

You can also ask for an extended order that could last for up to 2 years.

If you do, the judge will set a hearing. You and the other person will have to appear in court and explain your side before the judge can extend the protection order.

12.

Length of Protection Order.

I want an order up to 45 days only.

I want an order up to 45 days PLUS an extended order that could last up to 2

years.

13. Other Exhibits. You may attach documents, pictures, or anything else that you would like the judge to look at and consider when reviewing your application. The Adverse Party will receive a copy of all documents/evidence you provide.

Describe what you are attaching: Phoras OF TEXTS TO MY EMPLOYER AND PICTURES POSTED ON SOCIAL MEDIA OF ME ALONG WITH THE FICTITIOUS STORY HE HAD MADE AND POSTED. POLICE REPORT FILED ONLINE ALSO.

14. This document does not contain the personal information of any person as defined by NRS 603A.040.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the law of the State of Nevada that the foregoing is true and correct.

Dated MONDAY JAMY 6, 2025.

Submitted by:

Adh

Toster

(your signature)

Joshut J. Cox

(print your name)

VERIFICATION

I declare that I am the applicant in the above-entitled action; that I have read the foregoing application and know the contents thereof; that the pleading is true of my own knowledge, except for those matters therein contained stated upon information and belief, and that as to those matters, I believe them to be true. I declare under penalty of perjury under the law of the State of Nevada that the foregoing is true and correct.

Dated MONDAY ANUARY 6, 2025.

Submitted

by: Vacher

Page 8 of 8

(your signature)

Joshua J. Cox

(print your name)

Application for Protection Order (Revised October 2020)

Work. The Adverse Party should stay away from my workplace.

Do you and the Adverse Party work at the same place?

No Yes

Is your work address confidential? No Yes (do not write details below)

HODGES TRANSPORTATION INC.

Employer

605 FORT CHURCHILL RD.

Address

SILVER SPRINGS, NV 89429 2YON

City, State, Zip Code

County

Employer

Address

City, State, Zip Code

School/Daycare. The Adverse Party should stay away from my school and/or the child's school/daycare.

County

Is the school/daycare address confidential? No Yes (do not write details below)

School/Daycare

Address

City, State, Zip Code

County

School/Daycare

Address

City, State, Zip Code

Other Places. The Adverse Party should stay away from the following places that I and/or the minor children go to regularly.

Location

Why?

Address

Location

Why?

Address

County

City, State, Zip Code

County

City, State, Zip Code

County

Application for Protection Order (Revised October 2020)

Page 7 of 8

Founded in 1957, NATC is a privately owned, independent test, evaluation, design, and engineering facility offering development and certification testing to customers worldwide. We have provided services for more than 1,000 vehicle systems and components for automotive, commercial, construction, military, and public utility applications, and we have logged more than 50 million test miles and advanced the state of the art in test procedures, data acquisition, and analysis.

Successful production of a new car, truck, bus, or component depends on teamwork to meet customer expectations. We have spent over 60 years developing partnerships with our customers. Our divisions are dedicated to providing value-added technical solutions to the worldwide transportation industry. Our substantial international experience, allows us to evaluate products intended for global markets knowledgeably and objectively. We have compiled an extensive database of worldwide operational and infrastructure conditions allowing accurate definition of user duty cycles and creation of test programs that are representative of service environments around the world.

Along with worldwide duty cycles, data acquisition, and advanced engineering analysis, we provide complete prototype fabrication capabilities for one-stop solutions from design to product verification.

Between our four locations, we have the experience to cover all your engineering and testing needs.

https://natc-ht.com/about-us/

Mary Hitz/NATC/HODGES

Engineering Coordinator at Nevada Automotive Test Center

Nevada Automotive Test Center

Carson City, Nevada, United States Contact info

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-hitz-natc-hodges-91563813/

Jesus Cox 2024 Lonnie Lane

Jan 17, 2025

Who on Lonnie Lane in Dayton, Nevada has an unopened jar of Joshua Cox's honey? Cox might have wanked some of his penis into the honey he gave to his neighbors! I hope it's not too late, but don't eat the honey.

Did Joshua Cox get done filing sexual harassment on me through the COURT of law? Is that why Joshua Cox hasn't lived with his wife Laurie (Lawrence) for 10 years? Joshua Cox wants to mock me for wanting to be married yet out work lazy bum while Joshua Cox can't even live with his wife undoes all his hard labor through retarded surveillance conspiracy. Joshua Cox told everyone he wanted to kick my ass but then wusses out and files restraining order on me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6jtPHT3UnE

MEMORANDUM FOR OO-ALC/CCD September 24, 2006

FROM: SUSAN L. DUNN

2995 N 1050 E

N. OGDEN, UTAH 84414

SUBJECT: EEO Complaint/reprisals

This EEO complaint is about reprisals due to a sexual harassment and hostile work environment suit, case number 8L1M06060 filed by me against my immediate supervisor 309 EMXG/Steven M. Thomas/QPC, this reprisal suit is also to include Buddy Paden/QPQ my 2nd line supervisor. The reprisal issues and dates are as followed: On Sept 21, 2006 someone changed my chart that I changed on Monday the 18th Sept. So the wrong (old) information was still on it for the bi weekly meeting. I think Steve did this because it was hi lighted in red font for everyone to see. I’m the only person he does this to. When other people numbers are wrong or information incorrect, he doesn’t hi light theirs in red. Showing prejudice, ostracizing and humiliating me in front of my peers. On or about Sept 12, 2006 Steve called an office meeting and when I went in and sat down he told me the meeting was about the Deficiency reporting problems and didn’t concern me and told me I should leave and said “Goodbye” with a big sneer on his face, as he shut the door behind me. As all my co workers were in attendance watching me be dismissed by Steve, I was feeling ostracized and demoralized and not a part of his group. On August 8, 2006 after the Quality Management Board dry run, I asked Buddy if I was going to talk at the QMB and he said no, that he was going to. I then gave him a copy of the MXW (Wing) Program Manager’s (Mr. Fred Smith) Executive Summary about the “Scrap Material Reclamation Function” surveillance in which I was given a noteworthy kudos for being the 309 EMXG group POC (I’ve done this for almost a year). Buddy Paden called me later that afternoon and told me that “I’m going to make your day” and told me to give my SMRF book and any other information I had and to catch Warren Ferree up and that Warren was going to be the Group’s POC now. When I talked to Warren he didn’t know why they passed the job to him. I was doing an excellent job and I feel that this was an act of reprisal. I enjoyed this job a lot and did very well at it. By taking this job away management can use this against me on my next appraisal. This is also age discrimination and sexism. On August 2, 2006, My boss Steve Thomas was talking to Mike Perez (who sits 4 feet from me in our cubicle), about the Quarterly Award Ceremonies and the people who were participating in the cheering competition were “faggots” . Since I attended also I felt Steve was calling me a faggot. He also was belittling us women in the office because we wouldn’t help carry in 40 lb. boxes of paper in from the dock. After I complained to

Col. Hoffman about this incident he asked me to send him a memo, and on Aug. 3, 2006 I did. Later on (that same day) after I sent the memo, Steve sent me a 192 page OC-ALC IG report which he got on July 25, 2006 FYI to him, and told me I had 3 days to get a draft on his desk. I also feel the August 2nd and August 3rd events were sexual harassment and reprisal. Since March 1, 2006 I have had such deterioration of my health, specifically of my heart, I’ve had to take time off to have many tests and procedures done, all because of the anxiety and hostile work environment created by Mr. Steven Thomas and now my temporary 2nd line supervisor is contributing also, with these reprisals based on my first EEO complaint. For this damage I’d like the remedy to be firing Steve Thomas from his supervising job and returning 175 hours of my sick leave. Buddy Paden told me once that they fire people downtown if they can’t meet their suspenses. Steve has said on more than one occasion that he would demote me if I couldn’t handle an 11’s job. He said that whatever I did over in Commodities as an 11 they don’t give people that grade over here in Electronics doing that. Possibly he will downgrade my position he always holds that over me. This is all part of my stress and anxiety levels. Another remedy I would like, is to be reassigned immediately into a Deficiency Reporting job outside Electronics, any action point, support point, single point of contact office, file manager office for the DR system. Possibly reassign me back into the 1910 series I came out of. And reassign me to a different Directorate. I would take a job at the Utah test training range as long as I didn’t lose pay. I think that is Civil Engineering outfit. I hereby designate William Dunn as my representative and he can be reached at 801-737-5932.

Signed___________________________________________________

Personal Representative______________________________________

Pope Francis apologizes for using homophobic slur in closed-door meeting with bishops

A Vatican spokesperson shared an apology from Pope Francis after Italian media reported he used a homophobic slur in a meeting with bishops.

Ryan Ross

published 4:42p.m. ET May 28, 2024

https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2024/05/28/pope-francis-apologizes-for-using-homophobic-slur-in-meeting/73883299007/

If these top level intellectuals who advocate the establishment of a One World Government intended to put God’s plan for the rule of the whole of the universe into effect upon this earth it hardly seems likely that they would pack the civil services of ALL remaining governments with homosexuals. Any person who has had to live in London, Ottawa and/or Washington knows that as far as homosexualism is concerned all three are modern cities like Sodom and Gomorrah. “Burgess and McLean Case” is typical of what I mean. Professor Pitrim Sorokin of Harvard University published an exposure of this angle of the Luciferian conspiracy in a book entitled The American Sex Revolution. The author states that perverted sexual behaviour plays a major part in modern U.S. political life and that sex bribery and blackmail are now as prevalent as monetary corruption. He states “sexually infamous persons, or their protege, are being appointed to ambassadorships and other high offices; profligates sometimes become popular mayors of metropolises, members of cabinets, or leaders of political parties. Among our political officials there is a vast legion of profligates both heterosexual and homosexual. Our morals have changed so notably that continency, chastity, and faithfulness are increasingly viewed as oddities."

Satan Prince of this World

by William Guy Carr

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hw94yTrcRzvZjNQOo8T5_w-jqL8v5IMu/view?usp=sharing

AI Overview

Learn more

Both "Evan" and "Jean" are variations of the name "John" and ultimately derive from the Hebrew name "Yochanan," meaning "God is gracious"; "Evan" is a Welsh variation while "Jean" is the French version, essentially sharing the same core meaning of "God is gracious.".

Breakdown:

Evan: A Welsh form of "John," meaning "God is gracious".

Jean: The French version of "John," also signifying "God is gracious".

Key points:

Origin: Both names stem from the Hebrew name "Yochanan".

Language variations: "Evan" is Welsh, while "Jean" is French.

Meaning: Both names essentially mean "God is gracious".

Generative AI is experimental.

Evan Wyman

in Dayton, NV (Nevada)

Age 27

Current Address (Since January 2020)

2033 Lonnie Ln

Dayton NV 89403

Jean Rae Malone's Nevada Voter Registration

Dayton, Nevada

Jean Rae Malone (age 66) is listed at 2030 Lonnie Ln Dayton, Nv 89403 and is affiliated with the Non-Partisan Party. Jean is registered to vote in Lyon County, Nevada.

Overview of Jean Rae Malone

Lives in: Dayton, Nevada

Phone: View phone number Ad

Age: 66

Jean Malone's Voter Registration

Party Affiliation: Non-Partisan

Registered to Vote In: Lyon County, Nevada

Registration Date: 12/18/2023

Voter Status: ActivePrecinct: 13.00

Congressional District: Cd2

House District: Ad39

Senate District: Sd17

School Board District: Ed2

https://voterrecords.com/voter/129532222/jean-malone

9:14

Jean>

Hi how you doing I have a favor to ask you could you tell Billy to take my info off his wall it really upset me that my kids names were all there even Shay no one cares who I am but I do l cried when I saw my boys name on there I haven't done anything to him I am only asking once if he won't take it off I will file a police report on him I don't think he will want that they can come and go thru his phone and computer so can you at least ask him thanks we tried to help you but you just ignored us so you are on your own to deal with him we're all done trying to help anymore so please see what you can do

iMessage

CERTIFICATE OF FOSTER PARENTHOOD

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT SUE DUNN

HAS BECOME A FOSTER PARENT ON THIS DAY DEC. 25, 1986 OF A BOWLSIE CREATION OF LITTLE PEOPLE.

Frances & Bowles

FRANCES A. BOWLES

A SPECIAL CREATION FOR A SPECIAL FRIEND SUSAN JEAN LITTLE SU SU)

HAS BEEN CREATED ESPECIALLY FOR YOU

Susan Lohrey Dunn's Nevada Voter Registration

Dayton, Nevada

Susan Lohrey Dunn (age 73) is listed at 2031 Lonnie Ln Dayton, Nv 89403 and is affiliated with the Republican Party. Susan is registered to vote in Lyon County, Nevada.

Overview of Susan Lohrey Dunn

Lives in: Dayton, Nevada

Phone: View phone number Ad

Age: 73

Susan Dunn's Voter Registration

Party Affiliation: Republican Party

Registered to Vote In: Lyon County, Nevada

Registration Date: 05/28/2015

Voter Status: ActivePrecinct: 13.00

Congressional District: Cd2

House District: Ad39

Senate District: Sd17

School Board District: Ed2

https://voterrecords.com/voter/124466056/susan-dunn

2030-2031 APPARITION CHARACTERISTICS

Another general rule for predicting oppositions of Mars is from the following: the planet has an approximate 15.8-year periodic opposition cycle, which consists of three or four Aphelic oppositions and three consecutive Perihelic oppositions. Perihelic oppositions are also called "favorable" because the Earth and Mars come closest to each other on those occasions. We sometimes refer to this as the seven Martian synodic periods. This cycle is repeated every 79 years (± 4 to 5 days) and, if one were to live long enough, one would see this cycle nearly replicated in approximately 284 years. The 2031 Mars apparition is considered Transitional (between Aphelic and Perihelic) because the orbital longitude at opposition will be 68.4° from the aphelion longitude of 70° Ls and 111.6° Ls from perihelion (250° Ls).

NOTE: Ls is the planetocentric longitude of the Sun along the ecliptic of Mars’ sky. 0° Ls is defined as that point where the Sun crosses the Martian celestial equator from south to north, that is the planet’s northern hemisphere vernal equinox. The other Ls values that define the beginnings of Martian northern hemisphere seasons are: summer, 90° Ls; autumn, 180° Ls; and winter, 270° Ls. For Mars’ southern hemisphere these values represent the opposite seasons. Distance (A.U.) - Distance from Earth to Mars in astronomical units, where one (1) A.U. equals 92,955,807.267 miles or 149,597,870.691 km.

Opposition occurs 11 months after conjunction when Mars is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. At that time, the two planets will lie nearly in a straight line with respect to the Sun, or five weeks after retrogression begins. Opposition will occur at 1157 UT on May 04, 2031 (138.4° Ls) with an apparent planetary disk diameter of 16.7 arcsec. Mars will remain visible for more than twelve months after opposition and then become lost in the glare of the Sun around May 31, 2032 as it approaches the next conjunction (July 11, 2032). The cycle is complete in 780 Earth days.

Closest approach occurs at 0350 UT on May 12, 2031 (142.1° Ls) with an apparent planetary disk diameter of 16.9 at a distance of 0.5533578 astronomical units (AU) or 51,437,823 miles (82,781,152 km). During closest approach in 2031 the apparent diameter of Mars will be 2.4 arcsec larger than it was at the same period in 2029; however, it will be 17.1 degrees lower in the sky - not quite as good for observing the Red Planet for observers in the northern hemisphere. It should also be noted that closest approach between Earth and Mars is not necessarily coincident with the time of opposition but varies by as much as two weeks.

https://www.alpo-astronomy.org/jbeish/2031_MARS.htm

Grammar - Conjunction Junction - Schoolhouse Rock

With lyrics by Bob Dorough, Jack Sheldon providing lead vocal and Terry Morrell backing vocal, "Conjunction Junction" is another great "Schoolhouse Rock!" short animated musical that entertains while educating about the importance of "hooking up words and phrases and clauses" with and, but, or. The leading character is a train conductor who has those words printed on the side of the train cars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjdCFat9rjI

Philalethes, who in his Entrke ouverte au Palais ferd du Roi has dealt at greatest length on the practice of the Work, mentions the hermetic star and infers the cosmic magic of its appearance.

'It is the miracle of the world, the assembly of superior virtues in the inferior ones. That is why the Almighty has marked it with an extraordinary sign. The Wise Men saw it in the east, were struck with amazement and knew at once that a King most pure had been born into the the world.

'As for you, as soon as you see his star, follow it to the Cradle, where you will see the lovely Child." Then the Adept reveals the manner of operating :

'Let four parts be taken of our fiery dragon, which hides our Preface to the Second Edition 15 magic steel in its belly, and nine parts of our lodestone; mix them together, by burning Vulcan, in the form of mineral water, on which a scum will float which must be removed. Throw away th crust, take the inner part, purge three times, by fire and by salt, which will be done easily if Saturn has seen his image in the mirror of Mars.'

Finally Philalethes adds :

'And the Almighty sets his royal seal on the Work and adorns it specially therewith.'

Fulcanelli

Mystery of the Cathedrals

http://www.mtanthony13.org/library/Fulcanelli%20-%20The%20Mystery%20of%20the%20Cathedrals.pdf

Fire as the agent of Truth

Asha Vahishta is closely associated with fire. Fire is "grandly conceived as a force informing all the other Amesha Spentas, giving them warmth and the spark of life."[27] In Yasht 17.20, Angra Mainyu clamours that Zoroaster burns him with Asha Vahishta. In Vendidad 4.54-55, speaking against the truth and violating the sanctity of promise is detected by the consumption of "water, blazing, of golden color, having the power to detect guilt."

This analogy of truth that burns and detecting truth through fire is already attested in the very earliest texts, that is, in the Gathas and in the Yasna Haptanghaiti. In Yasna 43–44, Ahura Mazda dispenses justice through radiance of His fire and the strength of aṣ̌a. Fire "detects" sinners "by hand-grasping" (Yasna 34.4). An individual who has passed the fiery test (garmo-varah, ordeal by heat), has attained physical and spiritual strength, wisdom, truth and love with serenity (Yasna 30.7). Altogether, "there are said to have been some 30 kinds of fiery tests in all."[28] According to the post-Sassanid Dadestan i denig (I.31.10), at the final judgement a river of molten metal will cover the earth. The righteous, as they wade through this river, will perceive the molten metal as a bath of warm milk. The wicked will be scorched. For details on aṣ̌a's role in personal and final judgement, see aṣ̌a in eschatology, below.

Fire is moreover the "auxiliary of the truth," "and not only, as in the ordeal, of justice and of truth at the same time."[11] In Yasna 31.19, "the man who thinks of aṣ̌a, [...] who uses his tongue in order to speak correctly, [does so] with the aid of brilliant fire". In Yasna 34-44 devotees "ardently desire [Mazda's] mighty fire, through aṣ̌a." In Yasna 43–44, Ahura Mazda "shall come to [Zoroaster] through the splendour of [Mazda's] fire, possessing the strength of (through) aṣ̌a and good mind (=Vohu Manah)." That fire "possesses strength through aṣ̌a" is repeated again in Yasna 43.4. In Yasna 43.9, Zoroaster, wishing to serve fire, gives his attention to aṣ̌a. In Yasna 37.1, in a list of what are otherwise all physical creations, aṣ̌a takes the place of fire.

Asha Vahishta's association with atar is carried forward in the post-Gathic texts, and they are often mentioned together. In Zoroastrian cosmogony, each of the Amesha Spentas represents one aspect of creation and one of seven primordial elements that in Zoroastrian tradition are the basis of that creation. In this matrix, aṣ̌a/arta is the origin of fire, Avestan atar, which permeates through all Creation. The correspondence then is that aṣ̌a/arta "penetrates all ethical life, as fire penetrates all physical being."[12]

In the liturgy Asha Vahishta is frequently invoked together with fire. (Yasna l.4, 2.4, 3.6, 4.9, 6.3, 7.6, 17.3, 22.6, 59.3, 62.3 etc.). In one passage, fire is a protector of aṣ̌a: "when the Evil Spirit assailed the creation of Good Truth, Good Thought and Fire intervened" (Yasht 13.77)

In later Zoroastrian tradition, Asha Vahishta is still at times identified with the fire of the household hearth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asha

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the late Spring and Autumn period (roughly 5th century BC). The work, which is attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu ("Master Sun"), is composed of 13 chapters. Each one is devoted to a different set of skills or art related to warfare and how it applies to military strategy and tactics. For almost 1,500 years, it was the lead text in an anthology that was formalized as the Seven Military Classics by Emperor Shenzong of Song in 1080. The Art of War remains the most influential strategy text in East Asian warfare,[1] has influenced both East Asian and Western military theory and thinking, and has found a variety of applications in myriad competitive non-military endeavors across the modern world including espionage,[2] culture, politics, business, and sports.[3][4][5][6]

The book contains a detailed explanation and analysis of the 5th-century BC Chinese military, from weapons, environmental conditions, and strategy to rank and discipline. Sun also stressed the importance of intelligence operatives and espionage to the war effort. Considered one of history's finest military tacticians and analysts, his teachings and strategies formed the basis of advanced military training throughout the world.

The book was translated into French and published in 1772 by the French priest Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot; it was re-published in 1782. A partial translation into English was attempted by British officer Everard Ferguson Calthrop in 1905 under the title The Book of War. The first annotated English translation was completed and published by Lionel Giles in 1910.[7] Military and political leaders such as the Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong, Japanese daimyō Takeda Shingen, Vietnamese general Võ Nguyên Giáp, is cited along with American military generals Douglas MacArthur and Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. as having drawn inspiration from the book.[8]

Outside of military use, The Art of War has also become a source of inspiration in business, politics, sports and esports, and its usage has extended to film and television.

History

Text and commentaries

The Art of War is traditionally attributed to an ancient Chinese military general known as Sun Tzu (pinyin: Sūnzǐ), meaning 'Master Sun'. Sun Tzu is said to have lived in the 6th century BC, but the earliest parts of The Art of War probably date to at least 100 years later.[9]

Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, the first of China's 24 dynastic histories, records an early Chinese tradition that a text on military matters was written by one "Sun Wu" (孫武) from the State of Qi, and that this text had been read and studied by King Helü of Wu (r. 514–495 BC).[10] This text was traditionally identified with the received Master Sun's Art of War. The conventional view was that Sun Wu was a military theorist from the end of the Spring and Autumn period (776–471 BC) who fled his home state of Qi to the southeastern Kingdom of Wu, where he is said to have impressed the king with his ability to quickly train even court women in military discipline and to have made Wu's armies powerful enough to challenge their western rivals in the state of Chu. This view is still widely held in China.[11]

The strategist, poet, and warlord Cao Cao in the early 3rd century AD authored the earliest known commentary to the Art of War.[10] Cao's preface makes clear that he edited the text and removed certain passages, but the extent of his changes were unclear historically.[10] The Art of War appears throughout the bibliographical catalogs of the Chinese dynastic histories, but listings of its divisions and size varied widely.[10]

Authorship

Fragments of The Art of War discovered as a part of the Yinqueshan Han Slips, showing the version of The Art of War that was popular in Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD)

Beginning around the 12th century, Sun Tzu's historical existence began to be questioned by Chinese scholars, primarily on the grounds that he is not mentioned in the historical classic Zuo Zhuan, which mentions most of the notable figures from the Spring and Autumn period.[10] The name "Sun Wu" (孫武) does not appear in any text prior to the Records of the Grand Historian,[12] and has been suspected to be a made-up descriptive cognomen meaning "the fugitive warrior", glossing the surname "Sun" as the related term "fugitive" (xùn 遜), while "Wu" (wǔ 武) is (1) the ancient Chinese virtue of "martial, valiant" and (2) a Jianghuai dialectal synonym of 士; shì "knight",[13][14] which corresponds to Sunzi's role as the hero's doppelgänger in the story of Wu Zixu.[15] In the early 20th century, the Chinese writer and reformer Liang Qichao theorized that the text was actually written in the 4th century BC by Sun Tzu's purported descendant Sun Bin, as a number of historical sources mention a military treatise he wrote.[10] Unlike Sun Wu, Sun Bin appears to have been an actual person who was a genuine authority on military matters, and may have been the inspiration for the creation of the historical figure "Sun Tzu" through a form of euhemerism.[15]

In 1972, the Yinqueshan Han slips were discovered in two Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) tombs near the city of Linyi in Shandong.[16] Among the many bamboo slip writings contained in the tombs, which had been sealed between 134 and 118 BC, respectively were two separate texts, one attributed to "Sun Tzu", corresponding to the received text, and another attributed to Sun Bin, which explains and expands upon the earlier The Art of War by Sunzi.[17] The Sun Bin text's material overlaps with much of the "Sun Tzu" text, and the two may be "a single, continuously developing intellectual tradition united under the Sun name".[18] This discovery showed that much of the historical confusion was due to the fact that there were two texts that could have been referred to as "Master Sun's Art of War", not one.[17] The content of the earlier text is about one-third of the chapters of the modern The Art of War, and their text matches very closely.[16] It is now generally accepted that the earlier The Art of War was completed sometime between 500 and 430 BC.[17]

The 13 chapters

The Art of War is divided into 13 chapters (or piān); the collection is referred to as being one zhuàn ("whole" or alternatively "chronicle").

The Art of War chapter names and contents

Chapter Lionel Giles (1910)[19] R. L. Wing (1988) Ralph D. Sawyer (1996) Chow-Hou Wee (2003) Michael Nylan (2020) Contents

I Laying Plans The Calculations Initial Estimations Detail Assessment and Planning

(Chinese: 始計; pinyin: shîjì) First Calculations Explores the five fundamental factors (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership, and management) and seven elements (which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the way or moral law, which side’s general is more capable, which side has superior in right time and right place, which side's laws and regulations can be enforced more strictly, which side has more resources, better equipment and stronger army, which side's officers and men are more well-trained and more capable of fighting, which side's rewards and punishments are more fair and clear) that determine the outcomes of military engagements. By thinking, assessing and comparing these points, a commander can calculate his chances of victory. Habitual deviation from these calculations will ensure failure via improper action. The text stresses that war is a very grave matter for the state and must not be commenced without due consideration.

II Waging War The Challenge Waging War Waging War

(Chinese: 作戰; pinyin: zuòzhàn) Initiating Battle Explains how to understand the economy of warfare and how success requires winning decisive engagements quickly. This section advises that successful military campaigns require limiting the cost of competition and conflict.

III Attack by Stratagem The Plan of Attack Planning Offensives Strategic Attack

(Chinese: 謀攻) Planning an Attack Defines the source of strength as unity, not size, and discusses the five factors that are needed to succeed in any war. In order of importance, these critical factors are: Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army and Cities.

IV Tactical Dispositions Positioning Military Disposition Disposition of the Army

(Chinese: 軍形) Forms to Perceive Explains the importance of defending existing positions until a commander is capable of advancing from those positions in safety. It teaches commanders the importance of recognizing strategic opportunities, and teaches not to create opportunities for the enemy.

V Use of Energy Directing Strategic Military Power Forces

(Chinese: 兵勢) The Disposition of Power Explains the use of creativity and timing in building an army's momentum.

VI Weak Points and Strong Illusion and Reality Vacuity and Substance Weaknesses and Strengths

(Chinese: 虛實) Weak and Strong Explains how an army's opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of the enemy and how to respond to changes in the fluid battlefield over a given area.

VII Maneuvering an Army Engaging The Force Military Combat Military Maneuvers

(Chinese: 軍爭) Contending Armies Explains the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon the commander.

VIII Variation of Tactics The Nine Variations Nine Changes Variations and Adaptability

(Chinese: 九變) Nine Contingencies Focuses on the need for flexibility in an army's responses. It explains how to respond to shifting circumstances successfully.

IX The Army on the March Moving The Force Maneuvering the Army Movement and Development of Troops

(Chinese: 行軍) Fielding the Army Describes the different situations in which an army finds itself as it moves through new enemy territories, and how to respond to these situations. Much of this section focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.

X Classification of Terrain Situational Positioning Configurations of Terrain Terrain

(Chinese: 地形) Conformations of the Lands Looks at the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. Each of these six field positions offers certain advantages and disadvantages.

XI The Nine Situations The Nine Situations Nine Terrains The Nine Battlegrounds

(Chinese: 九地) Nine Kinds of Ground Describes the nine common situations (or stages) in a campaign, from scattering to deadly, and the specific focus that a commander will need in order to successfully navigate them.

XII Attack by Fire The Fiery Attack Incendiary Attacks Attacking with Fire

(Chinese: 火攻) Attacks with Fire Explains the general use of weapons and the specific use of the environment as a weapon. This section examines the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attack and the appropriate responses to such attacks.

XIII Use of Spies The Use of Intelligence Employing Spies Intelligence and Espionage

(Chinese: 用間) Using Spies Focuses on the importance of developing good information sources, and specifies the five types of intelligence sources and how to best manage each of them.

Cultural influence

Military and intelligence applications

See also: Wen and wu

Across East Asia, The Art of War was part of the syllabus for potential candidates of military service examinations.

During the Sengoku period (c. 1467–1568), the Japanese daimyō Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) is said to have become almost invincible in all battles without relying on guns, because he studied The Art of War.[20] The book even gave him the inspiration for his famous battle standard "Fūrinkazan" (Wind, Forest, Fire and Mountain), meaning fast as the wind, silent as a forest, ferocious as fire and immovable as a mountain.

The translator Samuel B. Griffith offers a chapter on "Sun Tzu and Mao Tse-Tung" where The Art of War is cited as influencing Mao's On Guerrilla Warfare, On the Protracted War and Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War, and includes Mao's quote: "We must not belittle the saying in the book of Sun Wu Tzu, the great military expert of ancient China, 'Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster.'"[20]

During the Vietnam War, some Viet Cong officers extensively studied The Art of War and reportedly could recite entire passages from memory. General Võ Nguyên Giáp successfully implemented tactics described in The Art of War during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu ending major French involvement in Indochina and leading to the accords which partitioned Vietnam into North and South. General Giáp, later the main PVA military commander in the Vietnam War, was an avid student and practitioner of Sun Tzu's ideas.[21]

Outside East Asia

The United States' defeat in the Vietnam War, more than any other event, brought Sun Tzu to the attention of leaders of U.S. military theory.[21][22][23] The Department of the Army in the United States, through its Command and General Staff College, lists The Art of War as one example of a book that may be kept at a military unit's library.[24] The Art of War is listed on the US Marine Corps Professional Reading Program (formerly known as the Commandant's Reading List). It is recommended reading for all United States Military Intelligence personnel.[25] The Art of War is also used as instructional material at the United States Military Academy (commonly known as West Point), in the course Military Strategy (470).[26] It is also recommended reading for Officer cadets at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Some notable military leaders have stated the following about Sun Tzu and The Art of War:

"I always kept a copy of The Art of War on my desk."[27] – General Douglas MacArthur, 5 Star General and Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

"I have read The Art of War by Sun Tzu. He continues to influence both soldiers & politicians."[28] – General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State.

According to some authors, the strategy of deception from The Art of War was studied and widely used by the KGB: "I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness".[29]

Application outside the military

The Art of War has been applied to many fields outside of the military. Much of the text is about how to outsmart one's opponent without actually having to engage in physical battle. As such, it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat.

The Art of War is mentioned as an influence in the earliest known Chinese collection of stories about fraud (mostly in the realm of commerce), Zhang Yingyu's The Book of Swindles (Du pian xin shu, 杜騙新書, c. 1617), which dates to the late Ming dynasty.[30]

Many business books have applied the lessons taken from the book to office politics and corporate business strategy.[31][32][33] Many Japanese companies make the book required reading for their key executives.[34] The book is also popular among Western business circles citing its utilitarian values regarding management practices. Many entrepreneurs and corporate executives have turned to it for inspiration and advice on how to succeed in competitive business situations. The book has also been applied to the field of education.[35]

The Art of War has been the subject of legal books[36] and legal articles on the trial process, including negotiation tactics and trial strategy.[37][38][39][40]

The book The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene employs philosophies covered in The Art of War.[41]

The Art of War has also been applied in sports. National Football League coach Bill Belichick, record holder of the most Super Bowl wins in history, has stated on multiple occasions his admiration for The Art of War.[42][43] Brazilian association football coach Luiz Felipe Scolari actively used The Art of War for Brazil's successful 2002 World Cup campaign. During the tournament Scolari put passages of The Art of War underneath his players' doors at night.[44][45]

The book Sun Tzu Soccer by Liam Shannon is a direct translation of The Art of War into soccer language and scenarios.[46]

Playing To Win by David Sirlin analyses applications of the ideas from The Art of War in modern esports.[47] The Art of War was released in 2014 as an e-book companion alongside the Art of War DLC for Europa Universalis IV, a PC strategy game by Paradox Development Studios, with a foreword by Thomas Johansson.

Film and television

The Art of War and Sun Tzu have been referenced and quoted in many movies and television shows, including in the 1987 movie Wall Street, in which Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) frequently references it.[48] The 20th James Bond film, Die Another Day (2002) also references The Art of War as the spiritual guide shared by Colonel Moon and his father.[49] In The Sopranos, season 3, episode 8 ("He Is Risen"), Dr. Melfi suggests to Tony Soprano that he read the book.[50]

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation first-season episode "The Last Outpost", first officer William Riker quotes The Art of War: "Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy". Captain Picard expressed pleasure that Sun Tzu was still taught at Starfleet Academy. Later in the episode, a survivor from a long-dead nonhuman empire noted common aspects between his own people's wisdom and The Art of War with regard to knowing when and when not to fight.[51]

The Art of War is a 2000 action spy film directed by Christian Duguay and starring Wesley Snipes, Michael Biehn, Anne Archer and Donald Sutherland.[52]

Notable translations

Sun Tzu on the Art of War. Translated by Lionel Giles. London: Luzac and Company. 1910.

The Art of War. Translated by Samuel B. Griffith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1963. ISBN 978-0-19-501476-1. Part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Translated by Thomas Cleary. Boston: Shambhala Dragon Editions. 1988. ISBN 978-0877734529.

The Art of Warfare. Translated by Roger Ames. Random House. 1993. ISBN 978-0-345-36239-1.

The Art of War. Translated by John Minford. New York: Viking. 2002. ISBN 978-0-670-03156-6.

The Art of War: Sunzi's Military Methods. Translated by Victor H. Mair. New York: Columbia University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-231-13382-1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War

A famous Jesuit General Michael Angelo Tambourini once boasted, in 1720, to the Duke of Brissac: " See, My Grace [my Lord], from this room, I govern not only Paris, but China; not only China, but the whole world, without anyone knowing how it is managed."

"Andrew Steinmetz, History of the Jesuits, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Lea and Blanchard Publ.,/New York: Richard Bentley, 1848), pp.107, 168-169; see also, Constitution of the Jesuits, edited by Paris Paulin (1843); Eugene Sue (Marie Joseph), The Wandering Jew, (London: Chapman and Hall, 1844/ New York; Harper & Brothers,, 1845), Bk I, Chap. XV, P. 183; see also, p. 618, and Bk. II, p. 21; Abrige de I'Hist. Eccles. de Racine, Chap. xii. P. 77." page 129 Chapter XII "Unhesitating Obedience: The General And The Holy Office" Codeword Barbelon book One by P.D. Stuart

"Steinmetz was fourteen years a Jesuit; see also, Constitutions of the Jesuits, ed. by P. Paulin (1843); Morale Pratique Des Jesuites: Histoire De La Persecution De deux Saints, Vol. I (Cologne, 1669), pp. 50 and 51." "Epilogue-For Such A Time As This"

Pope Francis Lord of the World by P.D. Stuart

Corporatism is a political system of interest representation and policymaking whereby corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, come together and negotiate contracts or policy (collective bargaining) on the basis of their common interests.[1][2][3] The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "body".

Corporatism does not refer to a political system dominated by large business interests, even though the latter are commonly referred to as "corporations" in modern American vernacular and legal parlance. Instead, the correct term for that theoretical system would be corporatocracy. The terms "corporatocracy" and "corporatism" are often confused due to their similar names and to the use of corporations as organs of the state.

Corporatism developed during the 1850s in response to the rise of classical liberalism and Marxism, and advocated cooperation between the classes instead of class conflict. Adherents of diverse ideologies, including economic liberalism, fascism, and social democracy have advocated for corporatist models.[1] Corporatism became one of the main tenets of Italian fascism, and Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy advocated the total integration of divergent interests into the state for the common good.[4] However, the more democratic neo-corporatism often embraced tripartism.[5][6]

Corporatist ideas have been expressed since ancient Greek and Roman societies, and have been integrated into Catholic social teaching and Christian democratic political parties. They have been paired by various advocates and implemented in various societies with a wide variety of political systems, including authoritarianism, absolutism, fascism, liberalism, and social democracy.[7][8]

Kinship corporatism

Kinship-based corporatism emphasizing clan, ethnic and family identification has been a common phenomenon in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Confucian societies based upon families and clans in Eastern and Southeast Asia have been considered types of corporatism. Islamic societies often feature strong clans which form the basis for a community-based corporatist society.[9] Family businesses are common worldwide in capitalist societies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

Cox Report

The Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, commonly known as the Cox Report after Representative Christopher Cox, is a classified U.S. government document reporting on the People's Republic of China's covert operations within the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. The redacted version of the report was released to the public on May 25, 1999.

Committee created by the U.S. House of Representatives

The report was the work product of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. This special committee, created by a 409–10 vote of the U.S. House of Representatives on June 18, 1998, was tasked with the responsibility of investigating whether technology or information was transferred to the People's Republic of China that may have contributed to the enhancement of the nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles or to the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.

A similar investigation had already begun in the U.S. Senate under the leadership of Senator Fred Thompson (Republican-Tennessee). Thompson had opened his hearings on China's influence in America's 1996 presidential and congressional elections 11 months earlier (on July 8, 1997).

The Chairman of the committee was Republican Rep. Christopher Cox of California, whose name became synonymous with the committee's final report. Four other Republicans and Democrats served on the panel, including Representative Norm Dicks, who served as the ranking Democratic member. The committee's final report was approved unanimously by all 9 members. The redacted version of the report was released to the public May 25, 1999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox_Report

Pope Francis Lord of the World by P.D. Stuart

Case No. 25 PO 00002 3G

PO Rec No.: 323314

254400044

FILED

2025 JAN-7 PM 4:58 JUSTICE PEACE

IN THE JUSTICE COURT OF DAYTON TOWNSHIP

JOSHUA JAMES COX

Applicant,

VS.

BILLY DUNN

Adverse Party.

COUNTY OF LYON, STATE OF NEVADA

TEMPORARY PROTECTION ORDER AGAINST STALKING OR HARASSMENT

Expiration: This order was issued by the Court above on January 7, 2025 and will expire

on FEBRUARY 21, 2025 at 11:59 pm unless the Court orders otherwise. Hearing to Extend:

There will be a hearing to determine whether to extend this order on FEBRUARY 18, 2025 at 3:00 pm at the Court listed above.

If you do not attend, the court may rule against you.

1. YOU ARE PROHIBITED from threatening, physically injuring, or harassing the

Applicant and/or the following persons:

Protected Parties: The following persons are protected under this order: Applicant: JOSHUA JAMES COX

2. YOU ARE ORDERED to not contact the protected parties at all in any way,

including but not limited to in person, by phone/text, by email, or through social

media.

3. YOU ARE ORDERED to stay away from Applicant's residence located at: 2024 LONNIE LANE, DAYTON, NV 89403

02020 Nevada Supreme Court

Temporary Protection Order Against Stalking or Harassment (Revised October 2020)

Page 1 of 3

How do you know the person you need protection from (check all that apply)?

We are related by blood or marriage. Explain We are or used to be friends/acquaintances.

We are

neighbors

or reside in the same

We are or were co-workers.

Other: (specify relationship):

in any court?

neighborhood.

Are there any other current or prior court cases that involve you and the Adverse Party

No.

Yes. If you know, please list the case type, county, state, and case number:

Firearms/Guns.

Does the Adverse Party own a gun or have a gun in his/her possession or control?

Yes

I don't know.

Most Recent Event. Think about the most recent event. These questions ask about the most recent event only.

Approximate date it happened:

City/State/Location where it happened:

Did the other person use or threaten to use a weapon? No Yes.

I WAS LEAVING CALIFORNIA ON JANUARY 2ND WHEN THE CFO

AT MY JAR MESSAGED ME AND

ASKED ME TO MEET HER IN HER OFFICE SOMETIME THAT WEEK. I INFORMED HER THAT I WAS OUT OF TOWN BUT WOULD BE THERE IN THE MORNING (JANUARY 3RD). I ASKED WHAT IT WAS ABOUT AND

02020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Order

(Revised October 2020)

Page 3 of 8

EMPLOY ME.

Attach more pages if you need more room (pages 4a, 4b, 4c).

C2020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Order (Revised October 2020)

Page 4 of 8

Past Event(s).

Think about any other times the person you want protection from threatened or abused you happened. and/or the child/children. The following questions ask about any past events that may have

Approximate Date:

What Happened:

JUNE 12TH 2024 I GOT HOME

Approximate Date: What Happened:

10. Law enforcement involvement.

Was law enforcement informed?

Yes

a. If so, please provide a copy of the police incident report Was anyone arrested? No Yes (Who),

Is the Adverse Party in jail? A No

Yes

C2020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Onder (Revised October 2020)

Page 5 of 8

Case No. 25 PO 00002 3G

If you want to dispute this order or have it changed, you can request a

hearing by filing a written request with this court. Court staff will give you information about how to file your request. The court will set a hearing on your request as quickly as

possible.

ORDER TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

Any law enforcement agency in this state may enforce a Court Order issued pursuant to NRS 33.270 without regard to the county in which the Order is issued.

January 7, 2025

121

amil

CAMILLE VECCHIARELLI Justice of the Peace

(Revised October 2020)

Temporary Protection Order Against Stalking or Harassment

Page 3 of 3

Between our four locations, we have the experience to cover all your engineering and testing needs.

https://natc-ht.com/about-us/

Mary Hitz/NATC/HODGES

Engineering Coordinator at Nevada Automotive Test Center

Nevada Automotive Test Center

Carson City, Nevada, United States Contact info

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-hitz-natc-hodges-91563813/

In 1917, the Virgin appeared in Fatima. "The Mother of God" was a smashing success, playing to overflow crowds. As a result, the Socialists of Portugal suffered a major defeat. "Roman Catholics world-wide began praying for the conversion of Russia and the Jesuits invented the Novenas to Fatima which they could perform throughout North Africa, spreading good public relations to the Muslim world. The Arabs thought they were honoring the daughter of Muhammad, which is what the Jesuits wanted them to believe. "As a result of the vision of Fatima, Pope Pius XII ordered his Nazi army to crush Russia and the Orthodox religion and make Russia Roman Catholic." A few years after he lost World war II, Pope Pius XII startled the world with his phoney dancing sun vision to keep Fatima in the news. It was great religious show biz and the world swallowed it. "Not surprisingly, Pope Pius was the only one to see this vision. As a result, a group of followers has grown into a BLUE Army world-wide, totaling millions of faithful Roman Catholics ready to die for the blessed virgin. "But we haven't seen anything yet. The Jesuits have their Virgin Mary scheduled to appear four or five times in China, Russia, and major appearance in the U.S.

"What has this got to do with Islam?

Note Bishop Sheen's statement: "Our Lady's appearances at Fatima marked the turning point in the history of the world's 350 million Muslims. After the death of his daughter, Muhammad wrote that she "is the most holy of all women in Paradise, next to Mary."

"He believed that the Virgin Mary chose to be known as Our Lady of Fatima as a sign and a pledge that the Muslims who believe in Christ's virgin birth, will come to believe in His divinity.

"Bishop Sheen pointed out that the pilgrim virgin statues of Our Lady of Fatima were enthusiastically received by Muslims in Africa, India, and elsewhere, and that many Muslims are now coming into the Roman Catholic Church."

How the Vatican created Islam (remnantofgod.org)

http://www.remnantofgod.org/books/docs/how-the-vatican-created-islam.pdf

Pope Paul VI (Latin: Paulus VI; Italian: Paolo VI; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, Italian: [dʒoˈvanni batˈtista enˈriːko anˈtɔːnjo maˈriːa monˈtiːni]; 26 September 1897 – 6 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his death in August 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council, which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms. He fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements. In January 1964, he flew to Jordan, the first time a reigning pontiff had left Italy in more than a century.[9]

Montini served in the Holy See's Secretariat of State from 1922 to 1954, and along with Domenico Tardini was considered the closest and most influential advisor of Pope Pius XII. In 1954, Pius named Montini Archbishop of Milan, the largest Italian diocese. Montini later became the Secretary of the Italian Bishops' Conference. John XXIII elevated him to the College of Cardinals in 1958, and after that pope's death, Montini was with little opposition elected his successor, taking the name Paul VI.[10]

He re-convened the Second Vatican Council, which had been suspended during the interregnum. After its conclusion, Paul VI took charge of the interpretation and implementation of its mandates, finely balancing the conflicting expectations of various Catholic groups. The resulting reforms were among the widest and deepest in the Chuch's history.

Paul VI spoke repeatedly to Marian conventions and Mariological meetings, visited Marian shrines and issued three Marian encyclicals. Following Ambrose of Milan, he named Mary as the Mother of the Church during the Second Vatican Council.[11] He described himself as a humble servant of a suffering humanity and demanded significant changes from the rich in North America and Europe in favour of the poor in the Third World.[12] His opposition to birth control in the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae was strongly contested, especially in Western Europe and North America. The same opposition emerged in reaction to some of his political doctrines.

Pope Benedict XVI, citing his heroic virtue, proclaimed him venerable on 20 December 2012. Pope Francis beatified Paul VI on 19 October 2014, after the recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession. His liturgical feast was celebrated on the date of his birth on 26 September, until 2019 when it was changed to the date of his sacerdotal ordination on 29 May.[2] Pope Francis canonised him on 14 October 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Paul_VI

It will be lawful for an ecclesiastic, or one of the religious order jeg. a Jesuit, to kill a calumniator who threatens to spread atrocious accusations against himself or his religion," is the rule given by the Jesuit Francis Amicus. Clement XIV was in their eyes such a calumniator. Indeed, as we have read, the Jesuit oath states, "I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulation cord, the steel of the poniard (a dagger) or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank. dignity, or authority of the person or persons...." That would include 'popicide'! Several historians have opined that the poison given to Pope Clement XIV was administered by one of his regular guests or a servant. And it is a fact that every week the pope met with his Jesuit confessor.

Even to this day, of those who have access to the pope, the Jesuits are always the best positioned. The Jesuits know all the secrets of the popes and have the most intimate access to the Roman pontiffs. Indeed, some of the Pope's closest advisors are Jesuits. Further, it is a requirement that the pope's confessor must be a Jesuit. Jean Lacouture's work Jesuits: A Multibiography confirms that Pope Paul VI (Cardinal Montini) had as his confessor a Jesuit priest. And the Jesuit Cardinal Paolo Dezza, with whom the Pope is said to have had "almost daily meetings," tells us that the "White Pope" has private "monthly face-to- face meetings" with the "Black Pope."" This quote is verbatim.

Nor were these weekly meetings a peculiarity of Paul VT's papacy "The Pope's confessor, an ordinary priest, must be a Jesuit: he must

25 Charles Newdigate, Glimps of the Great Secret Society, op. cit., p. 40: and Wylie, History of Protestantism, op. cit.

26 R. W. Thompson, Footprints of the Jesuits, op. cit., pp. 224-227. 27 Francis Amicus, Cursus Theologici, Tomus v., Duaci, 1642, Disp. 36,

Sect. 5, n. 118.

28 Jean Lacouture, Jesuits: A Multibiography, op. cit., p. 463, para. 1. See also, p. 444 (Pope Pius XII also having Jesuit Father Robert Leiber. as his confessor). Only a Jesuit can be the Pope's confessor: p. 445.

252

Order out of Chaos: the Jesuits, Their rise, fall...Audacious Return the Vatican once a week at a fixed time, and he alone may absolve the Pope of his sins. In fact, Cardinal Dezza was confessor to two Popes- Paul VI and John Paul I-both of whom 'chose him as confessor.

The reader may be surprised to learn that there have been several such Papal assassinations, and attempts at assassinations. Malachi Martin, the former Jesuit professor and Vatican insider, says that the tensions between Paul VI and the Jesuit General was so high that the Pontill was thinking about "dissolving the Company a second time." He was not to live to execute any such plans. In 1970, Pope Paul VI was almost stabbed to death by Benjamin Mendoza y Amor Flores. Malachi Martin writes: "Had it not been for that still collar and the speed of Paul's private secretary, Monsignore Macchi, who caught Mendoza's arm and slowed its force, Paul VI would have been killed. As it was, he was wounded slightly on both sides of the neck." Then, on July 14, 1978, for no apparent reason, Paul VI fell into unconsciousness for four hours and died soon after of a massive heart attack. It would be remiss of me not to point out that almost every pope who has sought to dissolve the Jesuits has had an untimely and sudden demise.

Likewise, Paul VI's successor Pope John Paul I inherited a financial scandal involving the Jesuits, the Vatican Bank and its American director, Bishop Paul Marcinkus. John Paul I decided to act: he went to bed with a copy of his speech about his plans to either terminate or reorganize the Jesuits. He was found dead by his housekeeper the following morning." In an earlier age so untimely a death might have stirred deep suspicions. Time magazine, October 9, 1978, notes: "If this were the time of the Borgias," said a young teacher in Rome, "there'd be talk that John Paul was poisoned."

29 Nino Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, (New York: Trident Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 78. Nino Lo Bello was the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestsellers. The Vatican Empire, Vatican U.S.A., European Detours, The Vatican Papers, and Nino Lo Bello's Guide to the Vatican. For eight years, he was Italian correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and served as special correspondent to the International Herald Tribune for more than a

quarter-century.

30 Malachi Martin, The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 401; see also his comments on pp. 231-233 regarding the murder of

Pope Sixtus V in 1590.

Martin, The Jesuits, The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the

Roman Catholic Church, op. cit., p. 44.

253

CODEWORD BARBELON

Three years later, on May 13, 1981, the successor to John Paul I, "ope John Paul II, was struck by two bullets from the semiautomatic istol of hitman Mehmet Ali Agca. Three weeks prior to the ssassination attempt John Paul II had a meeting with six of the most owerful cardinals in the Vatican and was in deadlock talks with the esuit General. The topic? The forced resignation of the Jesuit General Pedro Arrupe!" John Paul had written a letter to Father General Arrupe, insisting on appointing the 80 year old Jesuit Cardinal Paolo Dezza as his personal delegate to the Jesuits, with power to govern the Society of Jesus. After the failed attempt on his life John Paul II withdrew his demands, and lived a long life-unlike Pope Clement XIV.

Not long thereafter the attempted assassination of John Paul II by Mehmet Ali, May 1981, the Jesuit General Pedro Arrupe" made this marvellous admission: "The Company is feared everywhere.... The people say, "These Jesuits are wily! And so powerful!****

Returning to the suppression. For all its "comprehensive" and bold declarations, Pope Clement's decree of 1773 proved only partially successful and palpably shortlived. After Clement's suspicious and untimely death, Cardinal Braschi was elected Pope Pius VI, on February 15, 1775. The successor to the unfortunate Clement XIV was no less in fear of the Jesuits. A former pupil of the Society of Jesus, he knew their wrath. Almost immediately he sought to secure the release of Fr. Ricci, the Jesuit General, and his assistants from the prison in Castel San Angelo. But Charles III. King of Spain, insisted on their detention. Moreover, the Jesuits were never suppressed in Russia or Germany. Pius VI, seeing the fate of his predecessors, colluded with Frederick II of Prussia to "saving the Jesuits." On March 12, 1783. Pius VI "approved" the maintenance of the Jesuits in Russia.

138

32 Malachi Martin, The Jesuits..., op, cit., pp. 79-80, 94.

33 Pedro Arrupe (1907-1991) "the 28th Superior General". For nearly 20

years, he was the central figure in the renewal of the Society after Vatican Council II. From the Basque country of Spain, he put his medical training on hold to join the Jesuits. He was expelled from Spain in 1932, along with all the Jesuits by the Spanish government. 34 Jean Lacouture, Jesuits: A Multibiography, op. cit., p. 472; Alain. Woodrow, Les Jesuits (Paris: Jean-Claude Lattés, 1984), p. 267. 35 Lacouture, Jesuits: A Multibiography, op. cit., p. 305.

36 Histoire religieuse, politique et litteraire de la Compagnie de Jesus, op

cit, p. 485.

254

"Order Out of Chaos: The Jesuits, Their Rise, Fall, And Audacious Return" Codeword Barbelon book One

by P.D. Stuart

https://www.facebook.com/billy.dunn.50767/posts/pfbid02fbtfkCQezZXRYQgVMyXWcurYudxodaRdzAGY1QqL7ZfbB9grFKAHvPVKhSXoS1M6l

Luxor Las Vegas

The hotel includes 4,407 rooms.[49] It originally opened with 2,526 rooms, all of them located in the pyramid.[50] The rooms line the pyramid's interior walls, and walkways outside the rooms overlook the atrium.[51] The interior of the pyramid uses inclined elevators, traveling at a 39-degree angle, to bring guests to their rooms.[11][7] The structure features eight elevators, with two at each corner of the pyramid.[6] The two additional hotel towers added in 1996 are located just north of the pyramid.[21][23] The ziggurat-shaped towers,[23] designed by Klai Juba Architects,[52] are 22 stories and added nearly 2,000 additional rooms.[21][23] The exterior of the hotel structures, including the pyramid, is made up of black glass panels.[48]

The Luxor includes a 65,214 sq ft (6,058.6 m2) casino.[53] Upon opening, it featured 2,500 slot machines, many of them Egyptian-themed. The casino also included 82 table games, a poker room, and race and sports books.[11] A high-end gaming pit was added in the 1996–97 renovation.[21] Giza Galleria, a small retail mall with 18 tenants, was also opened.[23][54][26] In addition, the Mandalay Place mall is located on a skybridge that connects Mandalay Bay with the Luxor.[55]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Las_Vegas

Obsidian (/əbˈsɪdi.ən, ɒb-/ əb-SID-ee-ən ob-)[5] is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock.[6]

Obsidian is produced from felsic lava, rich in the lighter elements such as silicon, oxygen, aluminum, sodium, and potassium. It is commonly found within the margins of rhyolitic lava flows known as obsidian flows. These flows have a high content of silica, giving them a high viscosity. The high viscosity inhibits diffusion of atoms through the lava, which inhibits the first step (nucleation) in the formation of mineral crystals. Together with rapid cooling, this results in a natural glass forming from the lava.[7]

Obsidian is hard, brittle, and amorphous; it therefore fractures with sharp edges. In the past, it was used to manufacture cutting and piercing tools, and it has been used experimentally as surgical scalpel blades.[8]

Origin and properties

The Natural History by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder includes a few sentences about a volcanic glass called obsidian (lapis obsidianus), discovered in Ethiopia by Obsidius, a Roman explorer.[9][10][11][12]

Obsidian is formed from quickly cooled lava, which is the parent material.[13][14][15] Extrusive formation of obsidian may occur when felsic lava cools rapidly at the edges of a felsic lava flow or volcanic dome, or when lava cools during sudden contact with water or air. Intrusive formation of obsidian may occur when felsic lava cools along the edges of a dike.[16][17]

Tektites were once thought by many to be obsidian produced by lunar volcanic eruptions,[18] though few scientists now adhere to this hypothesis.[19]

Obsidian is mineral-like, but not a true mineral because, as a glass, it is not crystalline; in addition, its composition is too variable to be classified as a mineral. It is sometimes classified as a mineraloid.[20] Though obsidian is usually dark in color, similar to mafic rocks such as basalt, the composition of obsidian is extremely felsic. Obsidian consists mainly of SiO2 (silicon dioxide), usually 70% by weight or more; the remainder consists of variable amounts of other oxides, mostly oxides of aluminum, iron, potassium, sodium and calcium.[21][22] Crystalline rocks with a similar composition include granite and rhyolite. Because obsidian is metastable at the Earth's surface (over time the glass devitrifies, becoming fine-grained mineral crystals), obsidian older than Miocene in age is rare. Exceptionally old obsidians include a Cretaceous welded tuff and a partially devitrified Ordovician perlite.[23] This transformation of obsidian is accelerated by the presence of water. Although newly formed obsidian has a low water content, typically less than 1% water by weight,[24] it becomes progressively hydrated when exposed to groundwater, forming perlite.

Pure obsidian is usually dark in appearance, though the color varies depending on the impurities present. Iron and other transition elements may give the obsidian a dark brown to black color. Most black obsidians contain nanoinclusions of magnetite, an iron oxide.[25] Very few samples of obsidian are nearly colorless. In some stones, the inclusion of small, white, radially clustered crystals (spherulites) of the mineral cristobalite in the black glass produce a blotchy or snowflake pattern (snowflake obsidian). Obsidian may contain patterns of gas bubbles remaining from the lava flow, aligned along layers created as the molten rock was flowing before being cooled. These bubbles can produce interesting effects such as a golden sheen (sheen obsidian). An iridescent, rainbow-like sheen (fire obsidian) is caused by inclusions of magnetite nanoparticles creating thin-film interference.[26] Colorful, striped obsidian (rainbow obsidian) from Mexico contains oriented nanorods of hedenbergite, which cause the rainbow striping effects by thin-film interference.[25]

Occurrence

Obsidian is found near volcanoes in locations which have undergone rhyolitic eruptions. It can be found in Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Australia,[27] Canada, Chile, Georgia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Scotland, the Canary Islands, Turkey and the United States. Obsidian flows which are so large that they can be hiked on are found within the calderas of Newberry Volcano (Big Obsidian Flow,[28] 700 acres) and Medicine Lake Volcano in the Cascade Range of western North America, and at Inyo Craters east of the Sierra Nevada in California. Yellowstone National Park has a mountainside containing obsidian located between Mammoth Hot Springs and the Norris Geyser Basin, and deposits can be found in many other western U.S. states including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Washington,[29] Oregon[30] and Idaho.

There are only four major deposit areas in the central Mediterranean: Lipari, Pantelleria, Palmarola and Monte Arci (Sardinia).[31]

Ancient sources in the Aegean were Milos and Gyali.[32]

Acıgöl town and the Göllü Dağ volcano were the most important sources in central Anatolia, one of the more important source areas in the prehistoric Near East.[33][34][35]

Prehistoric and historical use

The first known archaeological evidence of usage was in Kariandusi (Kenya) and other sites of the Acheulian age (beginning 1.5 million years BP) dated 700,000 BC, although only very few objects have been found at these sites relative to the Neolithic.[36][37][38][39][40] Manufacture of obsidian bladelets at Lipari had reached a high level of sophistication by the late Neolithic, and was traded as far as Sicily, the southern Po river valley, and Croatia.[41] Obsidian bladelets were used in ritual circumcisions and cutting of umbilical cords of newborns.[42] Anatolian sources of obsidian are known to have been the material used in the Levant and modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan from a time beginning sometime about 12,500 BC.[43] Obsidian artifacts are common at Tell Brak, one of the earliest Mesopotamian urban centers, dating to the late fifth millennium BC.[44] Obsidian was valued in Stone Age cultures because, like flint, it could be fractured to produce sharp blades or arrowheads in a process called knapping. Like all glass and some other naturally occurring rocks, obsidian breaks with a characteristic conchoidal fracture. It was also polished to create early mirrors. Modern archaeologists have developed a relative dating system, obsidian hydration dating, to calculate the age of obsidian artifacts.

Europe

Obsidian artifacts first appeared in the European continent in Central Europe in the Middle Paleolithic and had become common by the Upper Paleolithic, although there are exceptions to this. Obsidian played an important role in the transmission of Neolithic knowledge and experiences. The material was mainly used for production of chipped tools which were very sharp due to its nature. Artifacts made of obsidian can be found in many Neolithic cultures across Europe. The source of obsidian for cultures inhabiting the territory of and around Greece was the island of Milos; the Starčevo–Körös–Criș culture obtained obsidian from sources in Hungary and Slovakia, while the Cardium-Impresso cultural complex acquired obsidian from the island outcrops of the central Mediterranean. Through trade, these artifacts ended up in lands thousands of kilometers away from the original source; this indicates that they were a highly valued commodity.[45] John Dee had a mirror, made of obsidian, which was brought from Mexico to Europe between 1527 and 1530 after Hernando Cortés's conquest of the region.[46]

Middle East and Asia

In the Ubaid in the 5th millennium BC, blades were manufactured from obsidian extracted from outcrops located in modern-day Turkey.[47] Ancient Egyptians used obsidian imported from the eastern Mediterranean and southern Red Sea regions. Obsidian scalpels older than 2100 BC have been found in a Bronze Age settlement in Turkey.[48] In the eastern Mediterranean area the material was used to make tools, mirrors and decorative objects.[49]

The use of obsidian tools was present in Japan near areas of volcanic activity.[50][51] Obsidian was mined during the Jōmon period.

Obsidian has also been found in Gilat, a site in the western Negev in Israel. Eight obsidian artifacts dating to the Chalcolithic Age found at this site were traced to obsidian sources in Anatolia. Neutron activation analysis (NAA) on the obsidian found at this site helped to reveal trade routes and exchange networks previously unknown.[52]

Americas

Lithic analysis helps to understand pre-Hispanic groups in Mesoamerica. A careful analysis of obsidian in a culture or place can be of considerable use to reconstruct commerce, production, and distribution, and thereby understand economic, social and political aspects of a civilization. This is the case in Yaxchilán, a Maya city where even warfare implications have been studied linked with obsidian use and its debris.[53] Another example is the archeological recovery at coastal Chumash sites in California, indicating considerable trade with the distant site of Casa Diablo Hot Springs in the Sierra Nevada.[54]

Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans' use of obsidian was extensive and sophisticated; including carved and worked obsidian for tools and decorative objects. Mesoamericans also made a type of sword with obsidian blades mounted in a wooden body. Called a macuahuitl, the weapon could inflict terrible injuries, combining the sharp cutting edge of an obsidian blade with the ragged cut of a serrated weapon. The polearm version of this weapon was called tepoztopilli.

Obsidian mirrors were used by some Aztec priests to conjure visions and make prophecies. They were connected with Tezcatlipoca, god of obsidian and sorcery, whose name can be translated from the Nahuatl language as 'Smoking Mirror'.[46]

Indigenous people traded obsidian throughout the Americas. Each volcano and in some cases each volcanic eruption produces a distinguishable type of obsidian allowing archaeologists to use methods such as non-destructive energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence to select minor element compositions from both the artifact and geological sample to trace the origins of a particular artifact.[55] Similar tracing techniques have also allowed obsidian in Greece to be identified as coming from Milos, Nisyros or Gyali, islands in the Aegean Sea. Obsidian cores and blades were traded great distances inland from the coast.[56]

In Chile obsidian tools from Chaitén Volcano have been found as far away as in Chan-Chan 400 km (250 mi) north of the volcano, and also in sites 400 km south of it.[57][58]

Oceania

The Lapita culture, active across a large area of the Pacific Ocean around 1000 BC, made widespread use of obsidian tools and engaged in long distance obsidian trading. The complexity of the production technique for these tools, and the care taken in their storage, may indicate that beyond their practical use they were associated with prestige or high status.[59]

Obsidian was also used on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) for edged tools such as Mataia and the pupils of the eyes of their Moai (statues), which were encircled by rings of bird bone.[60] Obsidian was used to inscribe the Rongorongo glyphs.

Current use

Obsidian can be used to make extremely sharp knives, and obsidian blades are a type of glass knife made using naturally occurring obsidian instead of manufactured glass. Obsidian is used by some surgeons for scalpel blades, although this is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on humans.[61] Well-crafted obsidian blades, like any glass knife, can have a cutting edge many times sharper than high-quality steel surgical scalpels: the cutting edge of the blade is only about three nanometers thick.[62] All metal knives have a jagged, irregular blade when viewed under a strong enough microscope; however, obsidian blades are still smooth, even when examined under an electron microscope.[63] One study found that obsidian incisions produced fewer inflammatory cells and less granulation tissue in a group of rats after seven days but the differences disappeared after twenty-one days.[64] Don Crabtree has produced surgical obsidian blades and written articles on the subject.[62] Obsidian scalpels may be purchased for surgical use on research animals.[65]

The major disadvantage of obsidian blades is their brittleness compared to those made of metal,[66] thus limiting the surgical applications for obsidian blades to a variety of specialized uses where this is not a concern.[62]

Obsidian is also used for ornamental purposes and as a gemstone.[67] It presents a different appearance depending on how it is cut: in one direction it is jet black, while in another it is glistening gray. "Apache tears" are small rounded obsidian nuggets often embedded within a grayish-white perlite matrix.

Plinths for audio turntables have been made of obsidian since the 1970s, such as the grayish-black SH-10B3 plinth by Technics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian

The Black Stone (Arabic: ٱلْحَجَرُ ٱلْأَسْوَد, romanized: al-Ḥajar al-Aswad) is a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.

The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic pagan times. According to Islamic tradition, it was set intact into the Kaaba's wall by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 605 CE, five years before his first revelation. Since then, it has been broken into fragments and is now cemented into a silver frame in the side of the Kaaba. Its physical appearance is that of a fragmented dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of pilgrims. It has often been described as a meteorite.[1]

Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba as a part of the tawaf ritual during the hajj and many try to stop to kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that Islamic tradition records that it received from Muhammad.[2][3] While the Black Stone is revered, Islamic theologians emphasize that it has no divine significance and that its importance is historical in nature.[4]

Physical description

The Black Stone was originally a single piece of rock but today consists of several pieces that have been cemented together. They are surrounded by a silver frame which is fastened by silver nails to the Kaaba's outer wall.[5] The fragments are themselves made up of smaller pieces which have been combined to form the seven or eight fragments visible today. The Stone's exposed face measures about 20 centimetres (7.9 in) by 16 centimetres (6.3 in). Its original size is unclear and the recorded dimensions have changed considerably over time, as the pieces have been rearranged in their cement matrix on several occasions.[1] In the 10th century, an observer described the Black Stone as being one cubit (46 cm or 18 in) long. By the early 17th century, it was recorded as measuring 140 by 122 cm (4 ft 7 in by 4 ft 0 in). According to Ali Bey in the 18th century, it was described as 110 cm (3 ft 7 in) high, and Muhammad Ali Pasha reported it as being 76 cm (2 ft 6 in) long by 46 cm (1 ft 6 in) wide.[1]

The Black Stone is attached to the east corner of the Kaaba, known as al-Rukn al-Aswad (the 'Corner of the Black Stone').[6] Another stone, known as the Hajar as-Sa’adah ('Stone of Felicity') is set into the Kaaba's opposite corner, al-Rukn al-Yamani (the 'Yemeni Corner'), at a somewhat lower height than the Black Stone.[7] The choice of the east corner may have had ritual significance; it faces the rain-bringing east wind (al-qabul) and the direction from which Canopus rises.[8]

The silver frame around the Black Stone and the black kiswah or cloth enveloping the Kaaba were for centuries maintained by the Ottoman Sultans in their role as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The frames wore out over time due to the constant handling by pilgrims and were periodically replaced. Worn-out frames were brought back to Istanbul, where they are still kept as part of the sacred relics in the Topkapı Palace.[9]

Appearance of the Black Stone

The Black Stone was described by European travellers to Arabia in the 19th- and early-20th centuries, who visited the Kaaba disguised as pilgrims. Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt visited Mecca in 1814, and provided a detailed description in his 1829 book Travels in Arabia:

It is an irregular oval, about seven inches [18 cm] in diameter, with an undulated surface, composed of about a dozen smaller stones of different sizes and shapes, well joined together with a small quantity of cement, and perfectly well smoothed; it looks as if the whole had been broken into as many pieces by a violent blow, and then united again. It is very difficult to determine accurately the quality of this stone which has been worn to its present surface by the millions of touches and kisses it has received. It appeared to me like a lava, containing several small extraneous particles of a whitish and of a yellow substance. Its colour is now a deep reddish brown approaching to black. It is surrounded on all sides by a border composed of a substance which I took to be a close cement of pitch and gravel of a similar, but not quite the same, brownish colour. This border serves to support its detached pieces; it is two or three inches in breadth, and rises a little above the surface of the stone. Both the border and the stone itself are encircled by a silver band, broader below than above, and on the two sides, with a considerable swelling below, as if a part of the stone were hidden under it. The lower part of the border is studded with silver nails.[10]

Visiting the Kaaba in 1853, Richard Francis Burton noted that:

The colour appeared to me black and metallic, and the centre of the stone was sunk about two inches below the metallic circle. Round the sides was a reddish-brown cement, almost level with the metal, and sloping down to the middle of the stone. The band is now a massive arch of gold or silver gilt. I found the aperture in which the stone is, one span and three fingers broad.[11]

Ritter von Laurin, the Austrian consul-general in Egypt, was able to inspect a fragment of the Stone removed by Muhammad Ali in 1817 and reported that it had a pitch-black exterior and a silver-grey, fine-grained interior in which tiny cubes of a bottle-green material were embedded. There are reportedly a few white or yellow spots on the face of the Stone, and it is officially described as being white with the exception of the face.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone

BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with US$11.5 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2023.[1] Headquartered in New York City, BlackRock has 70 offices in 30 countries, and clients in 100 countries.

BlackRock is the manager of the iShares group of exchange-traded funds, and along with The Vanguard Group and State Street, it is considered to be one of the Big Three index fund managers.[3][4] Its Aladdin software keeps track of investment portfolios for many major financial institutions and its BlackRock Solutions division provides financial risk management services. As of 2023, BlackRock was ranked 229th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue.[5]

BlackRock has sought to position itself as an industry leader in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in investments.[6] The U.S. states of West Virginia,[7] Florida,[8] and Louisiana[9] have divested money away from or refuse to do business with the firm because of its ESG policies. BlackRock has been criticized for investing in companies that are involved in fossil fuels, the arms industry, the People's Liberation Army and human rights violations in China. The company has also faced criticism for its close ties with the Federal Reserve during the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackRock

Academi, formerly known as Blackwater and Blackwater Worldwide, is an American private military contractor founded on December 26, 1997,[2] by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince.[3][4] It was renamed Xe Services in 2009, and was again renamed to Academi in 2011, after it was acquired by a group of private investors.[5] In 2014, Academi merged with Triple Canopy to form Constellis Holdings.[6][7][8]

Constellis and its predecessors provide contract security services[9] to the United States federal government. Since 2003, it has provided services to the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 2007, Blackwater received widespread notoriety for the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, when a group of its employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20. Four employees were convicted in the United States and later pardoned on December 22, 2020, by President Donald Trump.[10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company)

Black project is an informal term used to describe a highly classified, top-secret military or defense project that is not publicly acknowledged by government, military personnel, or contractors.

United States and black projects

In the United States, the formal term for a black project is an unacknowledged special access program (SAP). Black projects receive their funding from the black budget.

The US depends on private defense contractors to develop and build military equipment. The two most notable examples are Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The R&D department of Lockheed Martin is commonly referred to as Skunk Works; it is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified R&D programs, and exotic aircraft platforms.

Two well known sites for testing of black projects are the Nevada Test site and Area 51.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_project

Blackmail is a criminal act of coercion using a threat.

As a criminal offense, blackmail is defined in various ways in common law jurisdictions. In the United States, blackmail is generally defined as a crime of information, involving a threat to do something that would cause a person to suffer embarrassment or financial loss.[1] By contrast, in the Commonwealth its definition is wider: for example the laws of England and Wales and Northern Ireland state that:

A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces...[2][3]

In popular culture, 'blackmail' involves a threat to reveal or publicize either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to family members or associates rather than to the general public.

Acts of blackmail can also involve using threats of physical, mental or emotional harm, or of criminal prosecution, against the victim or someone close to the victim.[4][5] It is normally carried out for personal gain, most commonly of position, money, or property.[4][6][7][8]

Blackmail may also be considered a form of extortion[4] and may be covered in the same statutory provision as extortion.[9] Although the two are generally synonymous, extortion is the taking of personal property by threat of future harm.[10] Blackmail is the use of threat to prevent another from engaging in a lawful occupation and writing libelous letters or letters that provoke a breach of the peace, as well as use of intimidation for purposes of collecting an unpaid debt.[11]

In many jurisdictions, blackmail is a statutory offense, often criminal, carrying punitive sanctions for convicted perpetrators. Blackmail is the name of a statutory offense in the United States, England and Wales, and Australia,[12] and has been used as a convenient way of referring to certain other offenses, but was not a term used in English law until 1968.[13]

Blackmail was originally a term from the Scottish Borders meaning payments rendered in exchange for protection from thieves and marauders.[6][11][14] The "mail" part of blackmail derives from Middle English male meaning "rent or tribute".[15] This tribute (male or reditus) was paid in goods or labour ("nigri"); hence reditus nigri, or "blackmail".

Etymology

Objections to criminalization

Some scholars have argued that blackmail should not be a crime.[17][18][19][20] Objections to the criminalization of blackmail often rest on what legal scholars call "the paradox of blackmail": it takes two separate actions that, in many cases, people are legally and morally entitled to do, and criminalizes them if done together. One American legal scholar uses the example of a person who threatens to expose a criminal act unless he is paid money. The person has committed the crime of blackmail, even though he separately has the legal right both to threaten to expose a crime and to request money from a person.[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail

A lava lamp is a decorative lamp, invented in 1963 by British entrepreneur Edward Craven Walker, the founder of the lighting company Mathmos.

It consists of a bolus of a special coloured wax mixture inside a glass vessel, the remainder of which contains clear or translucent liquid. The vessel is placed on a base containing an incandescent light bulb whose heat causes temporary reductions in the wax's density and the liquid's surface tension. As the warmed wax rises through the liquid, it cools, loses its buoyancy, and falls back to the bottom of the vessel in a cycle that is visually suggestive of pāhoehoe lava, hence the name. The lamps are designed in a variety of styles and colours.

Lava lamps can be associated with hippie and cannabis cultures.[1][2]

Operation

A classic lava lamp contains a standard incandescent or halogen lamp which heats a tall (often tapered) glass bottle. A formula from a 1968 US patent consisted of water and a transparent, translucent, or opaque mix of mineral oil, paraffin wax, and carbon tetrachloride.[3]p. 2, line 30 The clear water or mineral oil can optionally be coloured with translucent dyes.

Common wax has a density much lower than that of water and would float on top at any temperature. However, carbon tetrachloride is denser than water (also nonflammable and miscible with wax) and is added to the wax to make its density at room temperature slightly higher than that of the water. When heated, the wax mixture becomes less dense than the water, because it expands more than water when both are heated.[3]p. 1, lines 40 & 45 It also becomes fluid, causing blobs of it to ascend to the top of the lamp. There, they cool, increasing their density relative to that of the water, and descend.[3]p. 1, line 47 A metallic wire coil in the bottle's base breaks the cooled blobs' surface tension, allowing them to recombine.

Video of an orange lava lamp in operation

Since 1970, lava lamps made for the US market have not used carbon tetrachloride, the use of which was banned that year due to toxicity.[4] Haggerty, their current manufacturer, has stated that their current formulation is a trade secret.[5]

The underlying fluid mechanics phenomenon in lava lamps is a form of Rayleigh–Taylor instability.

The bulb is normally 25 to 40 watts. It generally takes 45–60 minutes for the wax to warm up enough to form freely rising blobs, when operating the lamp at standard room temperature, and as long as 2 to 3 hours if the room is cooler.

Once the wax is molten, the lamp should not be agitated, or the two fluids may emulsify, and the fluid surrounding the wax blobs will remain cloudy rather than clear. Some recombination will occur as part of the normal cycle of the wax in the container, but the only way to recombine all of the wax is to turn off the lamp and wait for a few hours. The wax then settles back to the bottom, forming one blob once again. Severe cases can require many heating-cooling cycles to clear. [6]

In 2015, a new design was introduced that uses ferrofluid in place of wax.[7]

History

British entrepreneur Edward Craven Walker had the idea for the lava lamp in 1963 after watching a homemade egg timer, made from a cocktail shaker filled with liquids, as it bubbled on a stovetop in a pub.[8] This precursor was designed and patented GB patent 703924 by Donald Dunnet.[9] Craven Walker hired British inventor David George Smith to develop the device and the chemical formula it required. Smith is credited as the inventor on the original U.S. patent 3,387,396 for a "Display Device" filed and assigned to Craven-Walker's company in 1965, and subsequently issued in 1968.[3] Craven Walker's company, Crestworth, was based in Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom. He named the lamp "Astro" and had variations such as the "Astro Mini" and the "Astro Coach" lantern.

In 1965, Adolph Wertheimer and Hy Spector were intrigued by Walker's product when they saw it at a German trade show. They bought the American rights and began the Lava Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago to sell what they called the Lava Lite Lamp. In the late 1970s, US rights were sold to Larry Haggerty, who created a subsidiary of his company, Haggerty Enterprises, called Lava World International, which produced American lava lamps for over 30 years.[10]

In 2003, American lava lamp maker Lava World International (formerly Lava-Simplex-Scribe Internationale) moved its production to China. In 2008, it was acquired by Talon Merchant Capital and its name was changed to Lava Lite LLC. As of 2016, lava lamps were being sold under Lifespan brands in North America.[11] In 2018, the "Lava Lamp" brand was acquired by toy and gift maker Schylling Inc. of North Andover, MA.[12] who continue to hold the US trademark rights to both the shape and name of LAVA lamp.[13]

When the American rights were sold, Craven Walker retained the rights for the rest of the world, and took on two business partners in the late 1980s, Cressida Granger and David Mulley. They eventually took over the company and changed its name to Mathmos in 1992. Edward Craven Walker remained a consultant to them until his death in 2000. Mathmos continues to make Lava Lamps and related products. They have won two Queens Awards for Export, and the Best Multi-Media prize at the Design Week awards.[14][15] Astro lava lamp was launched in 1963 and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013.[16] Mathmos lava lamps are still made in the original factory in Poole, Dorset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_lamp

As the fertility goddess, Ishtar was often associated with eggs, which were seen as a symbol of new life and rebirth. In ancient times, people would decorate eggs in honour of Ishtar and give them as gifts to one another during the spring equinox, which marked the beginning of the agricultural season.

Over time, decorating eggs spread to other cultures and religions. In Europe, for example, people began decorating eggs during the Christian celebration of Lent, a period of fasting and repentance leading up to Easter. Eggs were seen as a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the new life he brought to the world.

In many countries, people dye eggs in bright colours and decorate them with intricate designs and patterns. Some cultures even have special games and competitions centred around egg decorating and hunting.

https://www.sbs.com.au/language/assyrian/en/podcast-episode/what-is-the-connection-between-easter-and-ishtar/duroih1gj

The nuclear egg: challenging the dominant narratives of the atomic age

By Hebatalla Taha

August 15th 2022

While researching early Egyptian perspectives on nuclear weapons, I repeatedly came across the symbol of the egg. The atomic bomb, and atomic technology more broadly, was frequently imagined and drawn as an egg in the period after August 1945 in Egyptian magazines and popular science journals. Cartoonists, journalists, and even some scientists narrated the dawn of the atomic age through this recurring visual. The atomic bomb, some authors suggested incorrectly, was the size of an egg. The description of the atomic bomb as tiny likely emerged because of the association of atoms as miniscule, though others have offered more scientific explanations for the visual. Today, this visualization has largely faded, though it is still invoked in some jokes.

The image of the egg can be contrasted with other unrealistically small depictions, such as Albert Camus’s description of the bomb being the size of a football. However, it is notable that the mushroom cloud, considered to be the uncontested image of the nuclear age, barely featured in early Egyptian accounts of nuclearization. By going beyond this iconic image, which reflects the specific vantage point of the US, we can better understand the agency of actors typically seen as lying beyond the scope of nuclear politics. In a recent article published in a special section of International Affairs, dealing with Feminist Interrogations of Global Nuclear Politics, I discuss the implications of the visual of the egg, alongside several other images and metaphors that featured in Egyptian nuclear imaginations. In doing so, the article challenges the dominant narratives, histories, and aesthetics of the atomic age.

https://blog.oup.com/2022/08/the-nuclear-egg-challenging-the-dominant-narratives-of-the-atomic-age/

The Arab Spring (Arabic: الربيع العربي, romanized: ar-rabīʻ al-ʻarabī) or the First Arab Spring (to distinguish from the Second Arab Spring) was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and economic stagnation.[1][2] From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Rulers were deposed (Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia in 2011, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya in 2011, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011, and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in 2012) or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.[3] A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām! (Arabic: الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام, lit. 'the people want to bring down the regime').[4]

The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities,[5][6][7] pro-government militias, counterdemonstrators, and militaries. These attacks were answered with violence from protesters in some cases.[8][9][10] Multiple large-scale conflicts followed: the Syrian civil war;[11][12] the rise of ISIL,[13] insurgency in Iraq and the following civil war;[14] the Egyptian Crisis, election and removal from office of Mohamed Morsi, and subsequent unrest and insurgency;[15] the Libyan Crisis; and the Yemeni crisis and subsequent civil war.[16] Regimes that lacked major oil wealth and hereditary succession arrangements were more likely to undergo regime change.[17]

A power struggle continued after the immediate response to the Arab Spring. While leadership changed and regimes were held accountable, power vacuums opened across the Arab world. Ultimately, it resulted in a contentious battle between a consolidation of power by religious elites and the growing support for democracy in many Muslim-majority states.[18] The early hopes that these popular movements would end corruption, increase political participation, and bring about greater economic equity quickly collapsed in the wake of the counter-revolutionary moves by foreign state actors in Yemen,[19] the regional and international military interventions in Bahrain and Yemen, and the destructive civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.[20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations members in 2015, created 17 world Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They were created with the aim of "peace and prosperity for people and the planet..."[1][2][3] – while tackling climate change and working to preserve oceans and forests. The SDGs highlight the connections between the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development. Sustainability is at the center of the SDGs.[4][5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals

Elon Musk: “We’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”

Eric Berger – Jan 3, 2025 9:28 AM | 1.1k

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/elon-musk-were-going-straight-to-mars-the-moon-is-a-distraction/

Spring 2030 in United States

Spring Starts: Wednesday, Mar 20 6:51 am PDT

https://www.calendardate.com/spring_2030.htm

Easter in 2030

Date: April 21, 2030

Day: Sunday

Dates of Moon Phases in 2030 Year

New Moon

Apr. 2, Tue 03:04 PM

https://www.calendar-12.com/moon_phases/2030

2030-2031 APPARITION CHARACTERISTICS

https://www.alpo-astronomy.org/jbeish/2031_MARS.htm

Hadrian's Tomb

The tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian, also called Hadrian's mole,[1] was erected on the right bank (or northern edge) of the Tiber, between 134 and 139 CE.[2] Originally the mausoleum was a decorated cylinder, with a garden top and golden quadriga. Hadrian's ashes were placed here a year after his death in Baiae in 138, together with those of his wife Sabina, and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius, who died in 138. Following this, the remains of succeeding emperors were also placed here, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217. The urns containing these ashes were probably placed in what is now known as the Treasury Room, deep within the building. Hadrian also built the Pons Aelius facing straight onto the mausoleum – it still provides a scenic approach from the center of Rome and the left bank of the Tiber, and is renowned for the Baroque additions of statues of angels holding aloft instruments of the Passion of Christ.[citation needed]

Decline

Much of the tomb contents and decorations have been lost since the building's conversion to a military fortress in 401 and its subsequent inclusion in the Aurelian Walls by Flavius Honorius Augustus. The urns and ashes were scattered by Visigoth looters during Alaric's sacking of Rome in 410, and the original decorative bronze and stone statuary were thrown down upon the attacking Goths when they besieged Rome in 537, as recounted by Procopius. An unusual survivor, however, is the capstone of a funerary urn (probably that of Hadrian), which made its way to Saint Peter's Basilica, covered the tomb of Otto II and later was incorporated into a massive Renaissance baptistery.[3] The use of spolia from the tomb in the post-Roman period was noted in the 16th century – Giorgio Vasari writes:

...in order to build churches for the use of the Christians, not only were the most honoured temples of the idols [pagan Roman gods] destroyed, but in order to ennoble and decorate Saint Peter's with more ornaments than it then possessed, they took away the stone columns from the tomb of Hadrian, now the castle of Sant'Angelo, as well as many other things which we now see in ruins.[4]

Legend holds that the Archangel Michael appeared atop the mausoleum, sheathing his sword as a sign of the end of the plague of 590, thus lending the castle its present name. A less charitable yet more apt elaboration of the legend, given the militant disposition of this archangel, was heard by the 15th-century traveler who saw an angel statue on the castle roof. He recounts that during a prolonged season of the plague, Pope Gregory I heard that the populace, even Christians, had begun revering a pagan idol at the church of Santa Agata in Suburra. A vision urged the pope to lead a procession to the church. Upon arriving, the idol miraculously fell apart with a clap of thunder. Returning to St Peter's by the Aelian Bridge, the pope had another vision of an angel atop the castle, wiping the blood from his sword on his mantle, and then sheathing it. While the pope interpreted this as a sign that God was appeased, this did not prevent Gregory from destroying more sites of pagan worship in Rome.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_Sant%27Angelo

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound, atop the site, is the second oldest mosque in Islam,[23] and one of the three Sacred Mosques, the holiest sites in Islam; it is revered as "the Noble Sanctuary".[24] Its courtyard (sahn)[25] can host more than 400,000 worshippers, making it one of the largest mosques in the world.[23] For Sunni and Shia Muslims alike, it ranks as the third holiest site in Islam. The plaza includes the location regarded as where the Islamic prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven,[26] and served as the first "qibla", the direction Muslims turn towards when praying. As in Judaism, Muslims also associate the site with Solomon and other prophets who are also venerated in Islam.[27] The site, and the term "al-Aqsa", in relation to the whole plaza, is also a central identity symbol for Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians.[28][29][30]

Since the Crusades, the Muslim community of Jerusalem has managed the site through the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf. The site, along with the whole of East Jerusalem (which includes the Old City), was controlled by Jordan from 1948 until 1967 and has been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. Shortly after capturing the site, Israel handed its administration back to the Waqf under the Jordanian Hashemite custodianship, while maintaining Israeli security control.[31] The Israeli government enforces a ban on prayer by non-Muslims as part of an arrangement usually referred to as the "status quo".[32][33][34] The site remains a major focal point of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount

On 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck twice and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately and later sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court. The Pope forgave Ağca for the assassination attempt.[1] He was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey in June 2000. Ağca converted to Roman Catholicism in 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Pope_John_Paul_II

Shanksville is a borough in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, United States. It has a population of 197 as of the 2020 U.S. census.[2] It is part of the Somerset, Pennsylvania Micropolitan Statistical Area and is located 78 miles (126 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 226 miles (364 km) west of Philadelphia.

Shanksville garnered global attention during the September 11 attacks when United Airlines Flight 93, bound from Newark, New Jersey for San Francisco, crashed in adjacent Stonycreek Township after its passengers rebelled against the flight's al-Qaeda terrorist hijackers. It was the only one of the four hijacked planes that failed to reach the terrorists' intended target.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanksville,_Pennsylvania

Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus II; Italian: Giovanni Paolo II; Polish: Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła [ˈkarɔl ˈjuzɛv vɔjˈtɨwa];[b] 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his death in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II

As May 18 dawned, Mount St. Helens's activity did not show any change from the pattern of the preceding month. The rates of bulge movement and sulfur dioxide emission, and ground temperature readings did not reveal any changes indicating a catastrophic eruption. USGS volcanologist David A. Johnston was on duty at an observation post around 6 mi (10 km) north of the volcano: as of 6:00 am, Johnston's measurements did not indicate any unusual activity.[9]

At 8:32 am, a magnitude-5.1 earthquake centered directly below the north slope triggered that part of the volcano to slide,[31] approximately 7–20 seconds after the shock,[9] followed a few seconds later by the main volcanic blast. The landslide, the largest subaerial landslide in recorded history, traveled at 110 to 155 mph (177 to 249 km/h) and moved across Spirit Lake's west arm. Part of it hit a 1,150 ft-high (350 m) ridge about 6 mi (10 km) north.[9] Some of the slide spilled over the ridge, but most of it moved 13 mi (21 km) down the North Fork Toutle River, filling its valley up to 600 feet (180 m) deep with avalanche debris.[31] An area of about 24 sq mi (62 km2) was covered, and the total volume of the deposit was about 0.7 cu mi (2.9 km3).[9]

Scientists were able to reconstruct the motion of the landslide from a series of rapid photographs by Gary Rosenquist, who was camping 11 mi (18 km) away from the blast 46°18′49″N 122°02′12″W.[9] Rosenquist, his party, and his photographs survived because the blast was deflected by local topography 1 mi (1.6 km) short of his location.[32]

Sound of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, as heard from 140 miles away

Duration: 44 seconds.0:44

Amateur recording of a series of booms produced by the eruption, as heard from the town of Newport, Oregon (audio filtered and amplified).

Problems playing this file? See media help.

Most of St. Helens's former north side became a rubble deposit 17 mi (27 km) long, averaging 150 ft (46 m) thick; the slide was thickest at 1 mi (1.6 km) below Spirit Lake and thinnest at its western margin.[9] The landslide temporarily displaced the waters of Spirit Lake to the ridge north of the lake, in a giant wave about 600 ft (180 m) high.[33] This, in turn, created a 295 ft (90 m) avalanche of debris consisting of the returning waters and thousands of uprooted trees and stumps. Some of these remained intact with roots, but most had been sheared off at the stump seconds earlier by the blast of superheated volcanic gas and ash that had immediately followed and overtaken the initial landslide. The debris was transported along with the water as it returned to its basin, raising the surface level of Spirit Lake by about 200 ft (61 m).[9]

Four decades after the eruption, floating log mats persist on Spirit Lake and nearby St. Helens Lake, changing position with the wind. The rest of the trees, especially those that were not completely detached from their roots, were turned upright by their own weight and became waterlogged, sinking into the muddy sediments at the bottom where they are in the process of becoming petrified in the anaerobic and mineral-rich waters. This provides insight into other sites with a similar fossil record.[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens

Updated May 18, 2023 Defense Primer: Directed-Energy Weapons Both the 2022 National Defense Strategy and the House Armed Services Committee’s bipartisan Future of Defense Task Force Report have identified directed energy as a technology that could have a significant impact on U.S. national security in the years to come. As the Department of Defense (DOD) continues to invest in directed-energy (DE) weapons, Congress may consider implications for defense authorizations, appropriations, and oversight. Overview DOD defines DE weapons as those using concentrated electromagnetic energy, rather than kinetic energy, to “incapacitate, damage, disable, or destroy enemy equipment, facilities, and/or personnel.” DE weapons include high-energy lasers (HEL) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons; other DE weapons, such as particle beam weapons, are outside the scope of this In Focus. HELs might be used by ground forces in short-range air defense (SHORAD), counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS), or counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) missions. The weapons might be used to “dazzle” (i.e., temporarily disable) or damage satellites and sensors. This could in turn interfere with intelligence-gathering operations; military cmmunications; and positioning, navigation, and timing systems used for weapons targeting. In addition, HELs could theoretically provide options for boost-phase missile intercept, given their speed-of-light travel time; however, experts disagree on the affordability, technological feasibility, and utility of this application. In general, HELs might offer lower costs per shot and— assuming access to a sufficient power supply—deeper magazines compared with traditional munitions. (Although a number of different types of HELs exist, many of the United States’ current programs are solid state lasers, which are fueled by electrical power. As a result, the cost per shot is equivalent to the cost of the electrical power required to fire the shot.) This could in turn produce a favorable costexchange ratio for the defender, whose marginal costs would be significantly lower than those of the aggressor.

Similarly, HPM weapons could provide a nonkinetic means of disabling adversary electronics and communications systems. These weapons could potentially generate effects over wider areas than HELs, which emit a narrower beam of energy. As a result, some analysts have noted that HPM weapons might provide more effective area defense against missile salvos and swarms of drones. HPM weapons have also been considered for use as nonlethal “heat ray” systems for crowd control. Directed-Energy Weapons Programs A number of countries are investing in directed-energy weapons programs. This In Focus discusses a selection of unclassified DE weapons programs in three leading military powers: the United States, China, and Russia. United States DOD requested approximately $1 billion for unclassified DE programs in FY2024. (For additional information about specific U.S. DE weapons programs, see CRS Report R44175, Navy Lasers, Railgun, and Gun-Launched Guided Projectile: Background and Issues for Congress, by Ronald O'Rourke, and CRS Report R45098, U.S. Army WeaponsRelated Directed Energy (DE) Programs: Background and Potential Issues for Congress, by Andrew Feickert.) DOD does not currently have any DE programs of record. DOD directed energy programs are coordinated by the Principal Director for Directed Energy within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD[R&E]). The Principal Director for Directed Energy is additionally responsible for development and oversight of the Directed Energy Roadmap. According to OUSD(R&E), DOD’s current DE roadmap outlines DOD’s plan to increase power levels of DE weapons from around 150 kilowatts (kW—a unit of power), as is currently feasible, to 300 kW by FY2023, “with goal milestones to achieve 500 kW class with reduced size and weight by FY2025 and to further reduce size and weight and increase power to MW [megawatt] levels by FY2026.” For reference, although there is no consensus regarding the precise power level that would be needed to neutralize different target sets, some analysts believe that lasers of around 100 kW could engage unmanned aircraft systems, small boats, rockets, artillery, and mortars, whereas lasers of around 300 kW could additionally engage cruise missiles flying in certain profiles (i.e., flying across—rather than at—the laser). Lasers of 1 MW could potentially neutralize ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons. In addition to the DE roadmap, OUSD(R&E) manages the High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI), which former Principal Director for Directed Energy Dr. Jim Trebes notes is “to demonstrate laser output power scaling while maintaining or improving beam quality and efficiency.” HELSI is intended to strengthen the defense industrial base for potential future directed energy weapons by providing near-term prototyping opportunities for industry partners. Dr. Trebes additionally notes that OUSD(R&E) has completed a DOD-wide Laser Lethality Analysis Process Review to identify future needs for the Department and best practices for DE development and use. According to OUSD(R&E), DOD is also testing a Directed Defense Primer: Directed-Energy Weapons https://crsreports.congress.gov Energy Lethality Database that is to serve as a searchable repository for the department’s DE analyses. China According to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, China has been developing DE weapons since at least the 1980s and has made steady progress in developing HPM and increasingly powerful HELs. China has reportedly developed a 30-kilowatt roadmobile HEL, LW-30, designed to engage unmanned aircraft systems and precision-guided weapons. Reports indicate that China is also developing an airborne HEL pod. According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, China is additionally pursuing DE weapons to disrupt, degrade, or damage satellites and their sensors and possibly already has a limited capability to employ laser systems against satellite sensors. China [has likely fielded] a ground-based laser weapon that can counter low-orbit spacebased sensors ... and by the mid-to-late 2020s, it may field higher power systems that extend the threat to the structures of non-optical satellites. Russia Russia has been conducting DE weapons research since the 1960s, with a particular emphasis on HELs. Russia has reportedly deployed the Peresvet ground-based HEL with several mobile intercontinental ballistic missile units. Although little is publicly known about Peresvet, including its power level, some analysts assert it is to dazzle satellites and provide point defense against unmanned aircraft systems. Russia’s deputy defense minister Alexei Krivoruchko has stated that efforts are underway to increase Peresvet’s power level and to deploy it on military aircraft. Reports suggest that Russia may also be developing HPMs as well as additional HELs capable of performing antisatellite missions. Potential Issues and Questions for Congress Technological Maturity Directed-energy weapons programs continue to face questions about their technological maturity, including the ability to improve beam quality and control to militarily useful levels and the ability to meet size, weight, and power (SWaP) and cooling requirements for integration into current platforms. Some DE systems are small enough to fit on military vehicles, but many require larger and/or fixed platforms that could potentially limit deployment options and operational utility. In what ways, if any, are DOD technology maturation efforts reducing the SWaP and cooling requirements of DE systems? Weapons Characteristics Although HELs may offer a lower cost per shot than traditional weapons such as missiles, they are also subject to a number of limitations. For example, atmospheric conditions (e.g., rain, fog, obscurants) and SWaP and cooling requirements can limit the range and beam quality of HELs, in turn reducing their effectiveness. Traditional weapons, in contrast, are not affected by these factors. How, if at all, might HEL limitations be mitigated by technological developments, concepts of operation, or other methods? What impact might a failure to mitigate these limitations have on future military operations? Mission Utility Given the strengths and weaknesses of DE weapons, DOD is continuing to examine their role within the military. DOD is additionally conducting multiple utility studies to analyze potential concepts of operation for DE weapons and to assess the scenarios in which they might be militarily useful. How might Congress draw upon the conclusions of these analyses as it conducts oversight of DE weapons programs? What is the appropriate balance between DE weapons and traditional munitions within the military’s portfolio of capabilities? Defense Industrial Base Some analysts have expressed concerns that, in the past, DOD did not provide stable funding for DE weapons programs or sufficient opportunities for the DE workforce. According to OUSD(R&E), HELSI is intended to address these concerns by providing industry with assured prototyping opportunities. In what ways, if any, has HELSI strengthened the defense industrial base for DE weapons? What, if any, challenges does the base continue to face and how might they be mitigated?

Intelligence Requirements

Some analysts have questioned whether DOD has sufficient knowledge of adversary DE weapons systems and materials to develop its weapons requirements. DOD is currently attempting to further define its DE collection requirements for the intelligence community (IC) through the Directed Energy Lethality Intelligence initiative. To what extent, if at all, is this initiative improving connectivity between DOD’s DE community and the IC? What collection requirements, if any, remain? Coordination within DOD Pursuant to Section 219 of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 114-328), OUSD(R&E)’s Principal Director for Directed Energy is tasked with coordinating DE efforts across DOD and with developing DOD’s Directed Energy Roadmap, which is to guide development efforts. To what extent are the military departments and defense agencies adhering to this roadmap? What, if any, additional authorities or structural changes would be required to ensure proper coordination throughout DOD? Related CRS Products CRS Report R46925, Department of Defense Directed Energy Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress, coordinated by Kelley M. Sayler. This report was originally co-authored by John Hoehn. Kelley M. Sayler, Analyst in Advanced Technology and Global Security IF11882 Defense Primer: Directed-Energy Weapons https://crsreports.congress.gov | IF11882 · VERSION 8 · UPDATED Disclaimer This document was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS serves as nonpartisan shared staff to congressional committees and Members of Congress. It operates solely at the behest of and under the direction of Congress. Information in a CRS Report should not be relied upon for purposes other than public understanding of information that has been provided by CRS to Members of Congress in connection with CRS’s institutional role. CRS Reports, as a work of the United States Government, are not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Any CRS Report may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without permission from CRS. However, as a CRS Report may include copyrighted images or material from a third party, you may need to obtain the permission of the copyright holder if you wish to copy or otherwise use copyrighted material"

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11882

It's hard to see how the fishing industry will pick itself up again. Takeshi is moving away from the coast as is his neighbor and fellow fisherman. His wife has refused to return here since the tsunami hit. At the age of 77, he is unlikely to be able to start from scratch. But he picks up any remnants of his fishing gear he can find, just in case. What is left intact barely fills one small basket. His neighbor finds his clock. It has stopped at 3:22pm -- the exact moment his life changed and countless others ended." Misplaced trust: 30-foot tsunami wall didn't save Japanese village by Paul Hancocks

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/31/japan.tsunami.village/index.html

Skull and Bones, The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut."

"There is a secret that binds the two men who would be the next leader of the free world. President George W Bush and Senator John Kerry both spent a portion of their youth laying bare their sex lives in Gothic rituals presided over by a human skull and the skeletal remains of various other animal species in a windowless building known as the Tomb. They also formed an unusual attachment to the number 322, which holds a special resonance for the club's members." Skeletons in the closet

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/20/usa.internationaleducationnews

"It is perhaps worth noting, in light of George W.'s controversial episode at Bob Jones University and the specter of anti-Catholicism, that at one point in the proceedings every initiate kisses the slippered toe of the "Pope." At last the initiate is formally dubbed a Knight of Eulogia. Amid more raucous ritual he is cast from the room into the waiting arms of the patriarchs."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/05/george-w-knight-of-eulogia/304686/

"A major landslide occurred 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Oso, Washington, United States, on March 22, 2014 (3/22/2014), at 10:37 a.m. local time. A portion of an unstable hill collapsed, sending mud and debris to the south across the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, engulfing a rural neighborhood, and covering an area of approximately 1 square mile (2.6 km2). Forty-three people were killed and 49 homes and other structures destroyed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Oso_mudslide

Published: 10 October 1996

Russian documents Set out 'tectonic weapon' research

Carl Levitin

Moscow. The first official details have emerged in Moscow of ambitious research into 'tectonic warfare' carried out by the former Soviet Union and subsequently by the government of Russia, and involving atte mpts to stimulate 'artificial' earthquakes as weapons of destruction. According to documents obtained by the newspaper Moscow News, two research programmes, the first known as ' Mercury ' and the second as ' Volcano', were aimed at creating new earthquake epicentres by using underground nuclear explosions . Geophysicists are aware that impending earthquakes may be triggered by underground nuclear explosions . But Western geophysicists remain sceptical about tectonic warfare and have all but abandoned research after two unsuccessful phases of activity in the 1960s and 1980s, says Roger Clark, a lecturer in geophysics at the University of Leeds. Clark is not at all surprised that th e Russians tried to create earthquakes and control their location electromagnetically, however. "This sort of science is very much part of their heritage. We don't think it is impossible, or wrong , but past experience suggests it is very, very unlikely. "

The programme , which was secretly launched by the Communist rulers of the former Soviet Union in 1987, and has been unofficially known to Western geophysicists for several years, is now believed to have been abandoned. It would certainly contravene the terms of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Russia signe d at the United Nations in Geneva last month . The Mercury project was launched in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, but came to a halt when the republic became independent. It was superseded by the Volcano project. Three underground nuclear tests are believed to have taken place at sites in Kyrgyzstan.

According to the documents, the Mercury project was launched by a secret decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. The objective was to "develop a methodology for remote operation on an earthquake epicentre by using weak seismic fields and research possibilities of transferring the seismic energy of an explosion ".

The documents say that the Mercury project involved 22 scientific and industrial organizations, including the Geological Institute of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences in Baku. The remit extended to developing the electronic equipment to be installed aboard space satellites that would control the tectonic weapon. The scientists were given three years to complete research, with testing planned for 1990.

During the research phase, Azerbaijani scientists grew increasingly confident and, according to the documents, were sure that " after [a] nuclear explosion, subterranean energy may accumulate at huge distances from the epicentre and reach massive capacity, after which the next directed explosion can release it all ".

Underground testing began at the town of Batken in Kyrgyzstan, and was directed by lkram Ke rimov , of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences. The documents say that scientists detonated an underground nuclear charge and tried to control the direction of seismic energy release d using British-built equipment known as 'system 9690 ' .

A report prepared by the Mozhaisky Military Engineering Institute concluded that the test had been a success. But progress slowed considerably following Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union. At about this time , Russia embarked on a more comprehensive tectonic warfare programme known as the Volcano project. The Earth Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) became the project headquarters .

Research was scheduled to be completed in 1992, with underground testing beginning the following year. The final test was carried out at a place code-named S36NZ-0Kh; Moscow News believes the letters 'NZ' refer to Novaya Zemlya, where Soviet nuclear testing began in the 1950s."

https://www.nature.com/articles/383471a0

Extrusive (Volcanic) Rock Classification

Volcanic rocks are classified based on their chemical composition as determined by analytical techniques that identify the proportion of major elements found in them. Unlike for plutonic rocks, it is not possible to classify volcanic rocks based on the minerals found in them.

Some volcanic rocks contain some crystals (phenocrysts) that grew in the magma chamber prior to eruption, but others contain no crystals at all or are volcanic glass (obsidian).

In addition to the mafic (low silica) basalt, and the silicic rhyolite, several subdivisions exist between the two compositional end members.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/igneous.htm

THE CONCLAVE OR CELESTIAL CITY

Containing an epitome of the twelve degrees of the Philosophic Chamber of the Ancient and Accepted Rite.

The twelve degrees preceding the Rose Croix are as we have shown, associated with the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

From these fixed signs, the Rite passes to the Sun, Moon and the Planets.

From these the Rite looks to the four elements or four components of man, etc., and from these it considers the spirit and matter, or infinite and finite of the Universe and of man.

In the Rose Croix Degree, we have seen the son of masonry and heard the promise of universal peace and joy. Now let us proceed to seek the methods of realization, and learn how to restore the lost Eden and reedify the Celestial City."

Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated

THE COMPLETE RITUAL OF THE

Ancient AND Accepted Scottish Rite,

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED.

Volume 2

https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/scotchritemasonr02blan/scotchritemasonr02blan.pdf

Today in History: October 1, Las Vegas music festival shooting

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published 9:00 PM PST, September 30, 2024

Today in history:

On Oct. 1, 2017, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a gunman opened fire from a room at the Mandalay Bay casino hotel in Las Vegas on a crowd of 22,000 country music fans at a concert below, causing 60 deaths and more than 850 injuries.

https://apnews.com/today-in-history/october-1

Mount St. Helens Erupts After 18 Years

By Tomas Alex Tizon

Oct. 1, 2004 1:36 PM PT

Times Staff Writer

SEATTLE — A giant plume of steam shot up into the sky above Mt. St. Helens this afternoon in what has been the most dramatic sign yet of the recent increase in volcanic activity on the mountain.

Scientists said the column of steam and some ash rose about 15,000 feet high and was drifting southwest in the direction of Vancouver, Wash. and Portland. However, the steam cloud posed little threat to residents and was expected to result at most in a light dusting of ash, officials said.

Television cameras captured images of the white and gray plume that erupted about noon and rose into clear blue skies. Most of the cloud had dissipated within an hour.

Earlier in the day, scientists said that they were examining images of cracks on the glacier inside the volcano crater to determine if it was connected to existing activity.

Officials on Thursday said there was a 70% chance that Mt. St. Helens, which erupted in a huge and deadly explosion 24 years ago, could experience a small to moderate eruption.

https://www.latimes.com/la-100104volcano_lat-story.html

October 1, 2004 Explosion at Mount St. Helens

USGS

May 6, 2013

http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/682

[no spoken words]

On October 1, 2004, an explosion in the crater of Mount St. Helens sent ash and water vapor several thousand feet into the air. It was the dramatic beginning of an eruption that continued for the next 3+ years. The explosion fractured Crater Glacier and hurled rocks for at least one-half mile across the western half of the glacier and the 1980-1986 lava dome. USGS scientists on a helicopter flight captured the explosion on video. The view from the air is to the west.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1NDvy-PrzA

Full official record: What the mufti said to Hitler

The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends, Haj Amin al-Husseini told the Nazi leader in 1941, because they had the same enemies — namely the English, the Jews and the Communists

By ToI Staff

21 October 2015, 7:09 pm

The following is an official German record of the meeting between Adolf Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, on November 28, 1941, at the Reich Chancellory in Berlin. (Source: Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Series D, Vol XIII, London, 1964.)

GRAND MUFTI:

The Grand Mufti began by thanking the Fuhrer for the great honor he had bestowed by receiving him. He wished to seize the opportunity to convey to the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich, admired by the entire Arab world, his thanks of the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially the Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches.

The Arab countries were firmly convinced that Germany would win the war and that the Arab cause would then prosper. The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews and the Communists. Therefore they were prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in the war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion.

The Arabs could be more useful to Germany as allies than might be apparent at first glance, both for geographical reasons and because of the suffering inflicted upon them by the English and the Jews. Furthermore, they had had close relations with all Muslim nations, of which they could make use in behalf of the common cause. The Arab Legion would be quite easy to raise. An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries and the prisoners of Arab, Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan nationality in Germany would produce a great number of volunteers eager to fight. Of Germany’s victory the Arab world was firmly convinced, not only because the Reich possessed a large army, brave soldiers and military leaders of genius, but also because the Almighty could never award the victory to an unjust cause.

In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq. They had the fullest confidence in the Fuhrer and looked to his hand for the balm on their wounds, which had been inflicted upon them by the enemies of Germany.

The Mufti then mentioned the letter he had received from Germany, which stated that Germany was holding no Arab territories and understood and recognized the aspirations to independence and freedom of the Arabs, just as she supported the elimination of the Jewish national home.

A public declaration in this sense would be very useful for its propagandistic effect on the Arab peoples at this moment. It would rouse the Arabs from their momentary lethargy and give them new courage. It would also ease the Mufti’s work of secretly organizing the Arabs against the moment when they could strike. At the same time, he could give the assurance that the Arabs would in strict discipline patiently wait for the right moment and only strike upon an order from Berlin.

Illustrative: Hitler hosts Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1941 in Germany. (Heinrich Hoffmann Collection/Wikipedia)

GRAND MUFTI:

‘The Arabs could be more useful to Germany as allies than might be apparent at first glance, both for geographical reasons and because of the suffering inflicted upon them by the English and the Jews’

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition

by email and never miss our top stories

Newsletter email address

Your email

Get it

By signing up, you agree to the terms

With regard to the events in Iraq, the Mufti observed that the Arabs in that country certainly had by no means been incited by Germany to attack England, but solely had acted in reaction to a direct English assault upon their honor.

The Turks, he believed, would welcome the establishment of an Arab government in the neighboring territories because they would prefer weaker Arab to strong European governments in the neighboring countries and, being themselves a nations of 7 million, they had moreover nothing to fear from the 1,700,000 Arabs inhabiting Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Palestine.

France likewise would have no objections to the unification plan because it had conceded independence to Syria as early as 1936 and had given her approval to the unification of Iraq and Syria under King Faisal as early as 1933.

In these circumstances he was renewing his request that the Fuhrer make a public declaration so that the Arabs would not lose hope, which is so powerful a force in the life of nations. With such hope in their hearts the Arabs, as he had said, were willing to wait. They were not pressing for immediate realization for their aspirations; they could easily wait half a year or a whole year. But if they were not inspired with such a hope by a declaration of this sort, it could be expected that the English would be the gainers from it.

HITLER:

The Fuhrer replied that Germany’s fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the functions of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.

Germany was at the present time engaged in a life and death struggle with two citadels of Jewish power: Great Britain and Soviet Russia. Theoretically there was a difference between England’s capitalism and Soviet Russia’s communism; actually, however, the Jews in both countries were pursuing a common goal. This was the decisive struggle; on the political plane, it presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews. It went without saying that Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle, because platonic promises were useless in a war for survival or destruction in which the Jews were able to mobilize all of England’s power for their ends.

The aid to the Arabs would have to be material aid. Of how little help sympathies alone were in such a battle had been demonstrated plainly by the operation in Iraq, where circumstances had not permitted the rendering of really effective, practical aid. In spite of all the sympathies, German aid had not been sufficient and Iraq was overcome by the power of Britain, that is, the guardian of the Jews.

The Mufti could not but be aware, however, that the outcome of the struggle going on at present would also decide the fate of the Arab world. The Fuhrer therefore had to think and speak coolly and deliberately, as a rational man and primarily as a soldier, as the leader of the German and allied armies. Everything of a nature to help in this titanic battle for the common cause, and thus also for the Arabs, would have to be done. Anything however, that might contribute to weakening the military situation must be put aside, no matter how unpopular this move might be.

Germany was now engaged in very severe battles to force the gateway to the northern Caucasus region. The difficulties were mainly with regard to maintaining the supply, which was most difficult as a result of the destruction of railroads and highways as well as the oncoming winter. If at such a moment, the Fuhrer were to raise the problem of Syria in a declaration, those elements in France which were under de Gaulle’s influence would receive new strength. They would interpret the Fuhrer’s declaration as an intention to break up France’s colonial empire and appeal to their fellow countrymen that they should rather make common cause with the English to try to save what still could be saved. A German declaration regarding Syria would in France be understood to refer to the French colonies in general, and that would at the present time create new troubles in western Europe, which means that a portion of the German armed forces would be immobilized in the west and no longer be available for the campaign in the east.

The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart:

1. He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.

2. At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.

3. As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.

Once Germany had forced open the road to Iran and Iraq through Rostov; it would be also the beginning of the end of the British World Empire. He (the Fuhrer) hoped that the coming year would make it possible for Germany to thrust open the Caucasian gate to the Middle East. For the good of their common cause, it would be better if the Arab proclamation were put off for a few more months than if Germany were to create difficulties for herself without being able thereby to help the Arabs.

He (the Fuhrer) fully appreciated the eagerness of the Arabs for a public declaration of the sort requested by the Grand Mufti. But he would beg him to consider that he (the Fuhrer) himself was the Chief of State of the German Reich for five long years during which he was unable to make to his own homeland the announcement of its liberation. He had to wait with that until the announcement could be made on the basis of a situation brought about by the force of arms that the Anschluss had been carried out.

The moment that Germany’s tank divisions and air squadrons had made their appearance south of the Caucasus, the public appeal requested by the Grand Mufti could go out to the Arab world.

GRAND MUFTI:

The Grand Mufti replied that it was his view that everything would come to pass just as the Fuhrer had indicated. He was fully reassured and satisfied by the words which he had heard form the Chief of the German State. He asked, however, whether it would not be possible, secretly at least, to enter into an agreement with Germany of the kind he had just outlined for the Fuhrer.

HITLER:

The Fuhrer replied that he had just now given the Grand Mufti precisely that confidential declaration.

GRAND MUFTI:

The Grand Mufti thanked him for it and stated in conclusion that he was taking his leave from the Fuhrer in full confidence and with reiterated thanks for the interest shown in the Arab cause.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-official-record-what-the-mufti-said-to-hitler/

Rabb (Arabic: رب, lit. 'lord') is an Arabic word to refer to God as Lord[1] The term is used by Arabs and Punjabis.[2][3]

In the Quran, God refers to himself as "Rabb" in several places. When it is used with the definite article (al-Rabb) the Arabic word denotes "the Lord (God)". In other cases, the context makes it clear as to whom the word is referring to, in this case, "rabb" refers to "owner, master", for example rabb al-dar (رَبُّ ٱلْدَّار) means "master of the house/residence".

God in Islam is referred to by many qualities and attributes. In the first Surah, Al-Fatihah of the Quran, introduces this Title "Rabb" in the first Verse, "All Praise and Gratitude is due to God, Rabb of all the worlds and Universe", thus stating clearly that God takes care, nourishes, fosters through every stage of existence, in which everything between that exists.

In the Indo-Gangetic plain, especially in the Punjab region, the term "Rabb" or "Rab" is used by Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians to refer to God.[3]

See also

Rabbi – Hebrew word with a similar etymology

Rebbe – Yiddish term derived rabbi, it mostly refers to the leader of a Hasidic Jewish movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabb

Volkswagen (VW; German pronunciation: [ˈfɔlksˌvaːɡn̩] ⓘ)[Note 1] is a German automobile manufacturer based in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Established in 1937 by The German Labour Front, it was revitalized into the global brand it is today after World War II by British Army officer Ivan Hirst. The company is well known for the Beetle and serves as the flagship marque of the Volkswagen Group, which became the world's largest automotive manufacturer by global sales in 2016 and 2017.[1]

The group's largest market is China (including Hong Kong and Macau), which accounts for 40% of its sales and profits.[2][3] The name Volkswagen derives from the German words Volk and Wagen, meaning 'people's car'.

History

1932–1940: People's Car project

Volkswagen was established in 1937 by the German Labour Front (German: Deutsche Arbeitsfront) as part of the Strength Through Joy (German: Kraft durch Freude) program in Berlin.[4] In the early 1930s, cars were a luxury—most Germans could afford nothing more elaborate than a motorcycle, and only one German out of 50 owned a car. Seeking a potential new market, some car makers began independent "people's car" projects – the Mercedes 170H, BMW 3/15, Adler AutoBahn, Steyr 55 and Hanomag 1.3L, among others.

The growing trend was not nascent; Béla Barényi, a pioneering automotive engineer, is credited as already having conceived the basic design during the mid-1920s. Josef Ganz developed the Standard Superior (going as far as advertising it as the "German Volkswagen"). In Germany, the company Hanomag mass-produced the 2/10 PS "Kommissbrot", a small, cheap rear-engined car, from 1925 to 1928.[5] Also, in Czechoslovakia, the Hans Ledwinka-designed Tatra T77, a very popular car amongst the German elite, was becoming smaller and more affordable at each revision. Ferdinand Porsche, a well-known designer for high-end vehicles and race cars, had been trying for years to get a manufacturer interested in a small car suitable for a family. He built a car named the "Volksauto" from the ground up in 1933, using many popular ideas and several of his own, putting together a car with an air-cooled rear engine, torsion bar suspension, and a "beetle" shape, the front bonnet rounded for better aerodynamics (necessary as it had a small engine).[6]

In 1934, with many of the above projects still in development or early stages of production, Adolf Hitler became involved, ordering the production of a basic vehicle capable of transporting two adults and three children at 100 km/h (62 mph). He wanted a car every German family would be able to afford.[6] The "People's Car" would be available through a savings plan at 990 ℛ︁ℳ︁ (US$396 in 1938)—about the price of a small motorcycle (the average income being around 32 ℛ︁ℳ︁ a week).[9][10]

It soon became apparent that private industry could not turn out a car for only 990 ℛ︁ℳ︁. Thus, Hitler chose to sponsor an all-new, state-owned factory using Ferdinand Porsche's design (with some of Hitler's design suggestions, including an air-cooled engine so nothing could freeze). The intention was that German families could buy the car through a savings scheme ("Fünf Mark die Woche musst du sparen, willst du im eigenen Wagen fahren" – "Five Marks a week you must set aside, if in your own car you wish to ride"), which around 336,000 people eventually paid into.[11] However, the project was not commercially viable, and only government support was able to keep it afloat.[12][Note 2] Due to the outbreak of war in 1939, none of the participants in the savings scheme ever received a car. In 1950, a lawsuit was issued that, after 12 years of trial, ultimately provided a credit of 12% off the list price of a new VW base model or 5-times less the value paid into the saving scheme.[13]

Prototypes of the car called the KdF-Wagen (from the German term Kraft durch Freude, meaning "Strength Through Joy") appeared from 1938 onwards. The first cars had been produced in Stuttgart. The car already had its distinctive round shape and air-cooled, flat-four, rear-mounted engine. The VW car was just one of many KdF programs, which included things such as tours and outings. The prefix Volks ("People's") was not just applied to cars, but also to other products in Germany—the Volksempfänger radio receiver for instance. On 28 May 1937, Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH ("Company for the Preparation of the German Volkswagen Ltd."), or Gezuvor[14] for short, was established in Berlin by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, the national labour organization of the Nazi Party. More than a year later, on 16 September 1938, it was renamed to Volkswagenwerk GmbH.[15][16]

Erwin Komenda, the longstanding Auto Union chief designer, part of Ferdinand Porsche's hand-picked team,[6] developed the car body of the prototype, which was recognisably the Beetle known today. It was one of the first cars designed with the aid of a wind tunnel—a method used for German aircraft design since the early 1920s. The car designs were put through rigorous tests and achieved a record-breaking million miles of testing before being deemed finished.

The construction of the new factory started in May 1938 in the new town of "Stadt des KdF-Wagens" (renamed Wolfsburg after the war), which had been purpose-built for the factory workers.[15] This factory had only produced a handful of cars by the time war started in 1939. None were actually delivered to any holder of the completed saving stamp books, though one Type 1 Cabriolet was presented to Hitler on 20 April 1944 (his 55th birthday).[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen

1984 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI vs. 2022 VW Golf GTI: Will the Real GTI Please Stand Up?

Does the 2022 GTI live in the first car’s shadow—or does it cast one of its own?

Nick Yekikian-Writer Darren Martin-Photographer Nov 05, 2021

The original 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI is one of the all-time greats—a wheeled ball of joy that can still put a smile on your face nearly 40 years after it first arrived on U.S. shores. But there's a new GTI for 2022, and it's the most powerful car ever to wear the famed badge. For all its technological advancement, I wanted to know if the new MkVIII GTI still captures the spirit of the original MkI, so I organized a comparison drive with a beautiful 1984 Rabbit GTI from Volkswagen's heritage collection. And that meant I'd need someone to help me out.

That someone is me, senior editor Aaron Gold—with the emphasis, according to young Nick, on the senior part—and one of the few staffers old enough (just barely!) to remember the impact of the original GTI. The new GTI's high-tech horsepower is all well and good, but I'm here to make sure the whippersnappers remember that simplicity can be life's greatest joy.

Since Aaron hails from an era where fuel injection was the bleeding edge of automotive innovation, I'd better introduce the new GTI. The MkVIII is the quickest GTI ever made. Its 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder makes 242 horsepower and 273 lb-ft of torque. All the oomph is routed through a seven-speed twin-clutch auto. You can still have a six-speed manual too, but it's the slowest way to go. Volkswagen's trick DCC adaptive dampers take care of the suspension, an extremely clever limited-slip differential helps put power down, and the new car even has four-wheel disc brakes—something Aaron can't say about the original.

And that leaves me to introduce the MkI GTI. Cast your mind back to 1984, when Volkswagen was best known for its air-cooled models that were still viable used-car purchases at the time. VW was trying to establish the Rabbit as a modern-day replacement for the simple, economical Beetle, and the GTI was the last thing we expected the company to do. Its feature list—multipoint fuel injection, front-wheel drive, five-speed stick, MacPherson struts and a trailing-beam rear axle—was exotic stuff in early '80s America..

Aaron will probably tell you the MkI is quick enough, but that's only true because his first car was a horse and buggy. On any road, anywhere, any time, the old Rabbit GTI wouldn't be able to figure out where in the distance its progeny had disappeared to. On any twisty back road, anything that isn't at least as fast and as capable as the new BMW M3 would have the devil's own job of trying to shake off the 2022 GTI—and even then, I have my doubts. It is a truly next-level machine. You'll barely believe you're in a hatchback, much less one based on a humble compact car.

My first car was actuallya 1982 Chrysler K-car—not much faster than the horse and buggy, as it happens—and Nick is right, I think the '84 Rabbit GTI is plenty quick. Its 90 horsepower wasn't a monster number even back then, but this was a time when the base model Rabbit made do with a mere 65 horses.MTtimed the 2,011-pound '84 GTI to 60 in 9.6 seconds, impressive for the early to mid 1980s.

But this isn't the 1980s, and yet I still think the GTI remains impressive for how it delivers its power. An eight-valve engine is like a sandwich—the meat is in the middle. It feels flat under 3,000 rpm, and there's no high-rev surge like in a modern 16-valver. To counter this inherent inflexibility, VW fitted it with a close-ratio five-speed transmission perfect for keeping it right in that magic rev range. A GTI with a stick is good in any gear, but in the first-generation GTI, shifting to keep the engine in its powerband is one of the unadulterated joys of driving it. No, the old GTI can't outrun the new one—but that isn't really the point of the old car, and wasn't even when it was new.

But outright performance is most definitely the point of the new one. Thanks to the improvements VW made over the MkVII, it's the most competent GTI Americans have ever had access to. Push it hard in the curves, and the GTI delivers thrills as reliably as a Prius delivers good fuel economy. It drives exactly as you hope it will, grippy and well composed. And thanks to that well-sorted electronic limited-slip diff, you can use the MkVIII's additional power without having it leak out through a spinning inner front wheel. And, of course, the car is as usable every day as a GTI should be, comfortable when you aren't ripping it, and is so chock-full of tech that even this millennial was wowed.

The same can be said of the original GTI, but for us older folks. Obviously the levels of grip are nowhere near the new GTI's, but we were still wowed when it first hit our shores. I thought the GTI would be at its best in sharp, slow corners, although to be honest I hadn't really taken into account the frantic arm-flailing required due to its slow, non-assisted steering.

It's good fun, I assure you, good fun! Instead, this grizzled oldster found the MkI GTI most impressive in broad, high-speed corners. Turning in takes a leap of faith, but the GTI takes a set and rides it all the way through, with composure and stability that impress even by the standard set by the new 2022 GTI.

He's not wrong. The old GTI's steering is more like tug-of-war than steering, especially in the sharper bends. It's much happier in the long, open sweepers, even if you're never really setting anyone's hair on fire while you're carving them. If there is a link in terms of the way the two drive, it certainly isn't the way they steer.

What these two genuinely have in common, though, is just how easygoing they can be when you're, say, cruising up PCH or on the 405. The new car is firmer and better controlled, and the old car's ride is comically soft in comparison. But neither presents any real-world compromises, and you could use them both every day with ease. In that sense, the new car retains every ounce of the original's essence.

That said, the two are more different than they are alike, and the huge gap in on-the-limit performance between new and old creates a small problem for the MkVIII. Somewhere in the quest for hot-hatch dominance—a journey that the GTI has been on for the better part of four decades—the boundless joy that makes the MkI so charming was replaced with a clinical sharpness. It doesn't make the current GTI any worse; if anything, it's the best GTI VW has ever made from a performance perspective. But there's something missing from the new car's package, something you can't really put your finger on. And, as we've found in other reviews, the capacitive controls for volume and temperature are both ill-conceived and poorly located, a rare—and annoying—misstep in a modern GTI.

Don't tell Nick, but I think he's judging the new GTI a little harshly. The original GTI is bound to be a thrill to someone who has never driven anything like it. Cars have increased in complexity so gradually that we don't realize how many layers have been built up between the driver and the road until a car like the '84 GTI takes them all away. Even if, like Nick, you aren't old enough to remember the bad old days of primitive emissions equipment and goose-down-soft suspensions, you can understand why driving the first GTI is magic.

Maybe Aaron's right. He has been doing this for a little while longer than I have, after all. It's safe to say every GTI has a certain magic to it, it's just that what kind of magic you're experiencing depends on how old your GTI is. The original car has a palpable, nostalgia-inducing charm I wasn't expecting—and I wasn't even alive to experience it when it was new! It fizzes and buzzes and scoots its way into your heart. The new car, well …

The new GTI is the culmination of what the first-gen car's German engineers dreamed of way back when: power with efficiency, grip with comfort, compliance with control. The old GTI barely cracked open the technology tap, while the new GTI uses its electronics to forge a connection between driver and car that simply wasn't possible in 1984.

I'm glad Nick's eyes have been opened to the fun that can be had with 90 horsepower and a beam rear axle—but I hope the experience will increase his appreciation for the modern-day marvel that is the all-new 2022 Volkswagen GTI.

I'd still take the original over the new car, Aaron, but I'd probably really miss the air conditioning.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/1984-volkswagen-rabbit-gti-vs-2022-vw-golf-gti-feature-review/

The Origins and Practices of Holidays: Ostara, Holi, and Purim

by Dhruti BhagatAttention: This post is over 3 years old and the information may be out of date.March 18, 2019

March 20, 2019 - Ostara

Ostara is a Wiccan holiday and one of their eight Sabbats. Ostara celebrates the spring equinox. The word Ostara comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess name, Eostre. Eostre represented spring and new beginnings.

The celebration of spring is present in many ancient customs, across all cultures, and it seems that Wicca has borrowed from many of them for Ostara. Like many other spring celebrations in other cultures, Ostara symbolizes fertility, rebirth, and renewal. This time of year marked the beginning of the agricultural cycle, and farmers would start planting seeds.

Photo of March Hares that are fighting. Photo Courtesy of Flickr user Nic Relton. Not for commercial use.

Many of the symbols of Ostara have roots in other traditions, and the use of rabbits and hares is one such example. In medieval times in Europe, the March hare was seen as a fertility symbol, and a sign of spring. This species of rabbit is nocturnal most of the year, but in March, it is mating season for the animal. During mating season, March hares are seen all day long. Additionally, females of this species can get pregnant with a second litter while pregnant with their first litter. This explains why they were used as symbols for fertility.

Modern day Wiccans or pagans might go outside to meditate and perform a simple ritual to welcome the spring. Another common way to celebrate the coming spring is to plant seeds. Some families incorporate seasonal candy, such as peeps and chocolate rabbits, with their kids to help them get in the spirit of the event.

https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/the-origins-and-practices-of-holidays-ostara-holi-and-purim/

From Ishtar to Eostre: Reframing the Near Eastern Origins of an Anglo Saxon Goddess Paperback – April 8, 2022

by Steff V Scott (Author)

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

See all formats and editions

On the 27th March 2013, The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official) posted a meme to their Facebook Group stating that the Anglo-Saxon Goddess Eostre, and the Christian festival of Easter, had their origins in the Goddess Ishtar-Astarte. This meme was met swiftly with fury and derision. Firstly by Christian Groups who were horrified that a Pagan Goddess of ‘death and resurrection’ was even suggested to be linked with their Saviour’s own ‘death and resurrection’ festival. Especially one whose name sounds exactly like ‘Easter’. But what happened next would set the stage for a decade to come. In a strange turn of events, the Germanic Neo-Pagan community took up the cause with a score to settle. For the next nine years they would dispute and debunk any and all links between Ishtar and Eostre. They would claim that “Ishtar-Astarte is a foreign Goddess of Middle Eastern descent” and that “she wasn’t venerated anywhere outside of that region!” However, therein lies the problem. A rigid academic investigation into the subject shows that Ishtar-Astarte’s worship was prevalent not only in the “Middle East” but down the Levantine Corridor, into Egypt and across Northern Africa, through ancient Greece and Rome, across Europe, up to Iberia, and even into the British Isles where she had at least SEVEN altars dedicated to her. From there, her worship spread to the Germanic sources. We have at least THREE Germanic Academic texts which categorically state that Eostre and Ostara was originally the Goddess Ishtar-Astarte. All of which predate Jacob Grimm’s ‘speculation’ on Eostre by quite some time. She was the Goddess who endured. From her first Temple in Mesopotamia c.3600 - 3200 BCE to her first Temples in Egypt c.1427 - 1400 BCE. From her first Temple in Cyprus c.1200 BCE to her first Temples in North Africa, Spain, and Portugal during the Phoenician Expansion Period c.900 BCE. From her first Temple in Rome around c.217 BCE to her first Altars in Britannia c.117 to 138 CE, and to the point where her worship finally died out around c.1900 CE in modern Turkey, only a few hundred years ago. The fact that the endurance of Ishtar-Astarte worship spans almost six millennia, and half the world over, should not be taken lightly. This was a Goddess elevated above all others during much of her history, and who went on to influence a great many other deities. No other Goddess in recorded history was venerated for so long and by so many.

https://www.amazon.com/Ishtar-Eostre-Reframing-Eastern-Origins/dp/1838253807

The Star of Ishtar or Star of Inanna is a Mesopotamian symbol of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna and her East Semitic counterpart Ishtar. The owl was also one of Ishtar's primary symbols. Ishtar is mostly associated with the planet Venus, which is also known as the morning star.

History

The star of Inanna usually had eight points,[1] though the exact number of points sometimes varies.[2] Six-pointed stars also occur frequently, but their symbolic meaning is unknown.[3] The eight-pointed star was Inanna's most common symbol,[1] and in later times became the most common symbol of the goddess Ishtar, Inanna's East Semitic counterpart.[1] It seems to have originally borne a general association with the heavens,[1] but, by the Old Babylonian Period, it had come to be specifically associated with the planet Venus, with which Ishtar was identified.[1] Starting during this same period, the star of Ishtar was normally enclosed within a circular disc.[3]

During later times, slaves who worked in Ishtar's temples were sometimes branded with the seal of the eight-pointed star.[3] On boundary stones and cylinder seals, the eight-pointed star is sometimes shown alongside the crescent moon, which was the symbol of Sin, god of the Moon, and the rayed solar disk, which was a symbol of Shamash, the god of the Sun.[4][2]

The rosette was another important symbol of Ishtar which had originally belonged to Inanna.[5] During the Neo-Assyrian Period, the rosette may have actually eclipsed the eight-pointed star and become Ishtar's primary symbol.[6] The temple of Ishtar in the city of Aššur was adorned with numerous rosettes.[5]

Flag of Iraq

In Arabic, the symbol is known as (Arabic: نجمة عشتار, romanized: najmat eshtar). The stars of Ishtar and Shamash featured on the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Iraq from 1932 to 1959.

A simplified version with red rays and a yellow centre was incorporated into the flag of Iraq from 1959 to 1963. It also featured in a combination with the sun of Shamash on the national emblem of Iraq from 1959 to 1965.[7][8][9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_Ishtar

The Coat of Arms of the Chigi Family

29/7/2024

Some popes left their mark on the Eternal City more than others and one such figure was Alexander VII (r. 1655-67).

Alexander VII was born Fabio Chigi, a member of a princely Roman family of Sienese extraction. The heraldic arms of the Chigi family, which takes the form of six mountains surmounted by an eight-pointed star, can be seen all over Rome.

The Chigi coat of arms is sometimes quartered with that of the Della Rovere family, a privilege conferred on Agostino Chigi (1465-1520), an immensely wealthy banker and patron of the arts, by Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere, r. 1503-13). Rovere is the Italian word for oak and, unsurprisingly, the family's coat of arms incorporates an oak tree.

The Chigi family's motto is Micat in Vertice (It shines at the summit).

https://www.walksinrome.com/blog/six-mountains-and-a-star-the-coat-of-arms-of-pope-alexander-vii

Latium is a 1669 work by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was dedicated to Pope Clement X and a 1671 edition was published in Amsterdam by Johannes van Waesbergen.[1] The work was the first to discuss the topography, archeology and history of the Lazio region.[2] It was based partly on Kircher's extensive walks in the countryside around Rome, although it included sites that he had probably not visited in person.[3] The work included many illustrations of the contemporary countryside, as well as reconstructions of ancient buildings.[4]: 92 It also included an account of his discovery of the ruined sanctuary at Mentorella, which he had already recounted in his 1665 work Historia Eustachio Mariana.[4]: 94

Contents

Kircher’s stated purpose in Latium was to use the physical remains of ancient Latium as illustrations of human mutability and transience.[5] It was divided into five books. The first covered the origins and ancient history of the Latins. The second contained chapters describing (I) the region of Monte Cavo, Lake Albano and the ancient town of Alba Longa; (II) Tusculum; (III) the ancient Praeneste and the modern town of Palestrina, and (IV) the region of Labici and the ancient Hernici tribe. The third book examined the ancient history of Tivoli and the fourth, the countryside and ancient remains around it. The fifth book was devoted to the Pontine marshes.[1][6] The Pontine Marshes to the southeast of Rome had been discussed by Kircher in his 1658 work Scrutinium Physico-Medicum because they were a source of malaria that prevented the agricultural development of the neighbouring region and imposed a heavy burden of disease on its population. Kircher was probably one of the first people to recommend the taking of quinine in Rome to counter malaria. Pope Urban VIII had brought in the Dutch engineer De Wit to begin draining the marshes and in Latium Kircher noted these efforts approvingly, illustrating the devices used to pump out the water.[7]

Ancient history of Latium

In Book I, Kircher advanced the theory that Latium had been populated after the time of the Tower of Babel, or possibly before. Indeed he held that it had originally been settled by Noah, and that this was supported by local legends about Saturn and Janus, who he believed were in fact Noah himself.[5] Thus, he held, the mythological account of the castration of Saturn was a variant of the Biblical story of the discovery of Noah's nakedness by Ham. Such speculative theories were to be developed in his later works Turris Babel and Arca Noë.[8]: 44

During his countryside walks, Kircher was searching for evidence that would allow him to reconstruct the history of the region from its earliest times right up to the pontificate of Pope Alexander VII. Although the timeline he constructed was highly inaccurate, the evidence he gathered was the first attempt at a complete chronological reconstruction of the region’s history.[9]

The Nile mosaic

Around 1600 a Roman mosaic was discovered at the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste. It is known to modern scholarship as "the Nile mosaic" because it is understood to represent the course of the River Nile from the mountains of Ethiopia through Sudan and Egypt to the sea. However in Book III of Latium Kircher offered a completely different interpretation of the piece, based on the idea that it depicted ceremonies in honour of the goddess of fortune. The upper part, he said, depicted wild animals, representing fortune's dangers. He noted that the people of ancient Praeneste were devotees of Hercules, who was famous for having destroyed monsters and overcome ill fortune. Beneath this, he said, was depicted the veneration of the goddess and consultation of her oracle. He correctly identified the temple of Serapis but this did not serve as a clue of the mosaic's real subject. At the bottom there are festivals and processions in honour of the goddess.[4]: 87–88

Illustrations

Latium was published in folio with 27 engraved plates. These included illustrations, maps, and plans, including 15 double-page foldouts.[10] The illustrations included views of the countryside, sculptures, mosaics, coins and mechanical devices such as watermills.[6]

The frontispiece was by Romeyn de Hooghe. It depicted a seated figure of the genius loci Latia. On one side of her stands a mountain on which Atlas hold up the world, and on the other figures a volcano. These emblems represent, perhaps, the temporal and spiritual power of Rome respectively. Above her hang both ancient and contemporary arms. Romulus and Remus and their she-wolf adopted mother play behind her back while a putto presents her with the papal tiara and the keys of Saint Peter. She is wearing regalia that show that her presence and her power are intimately connected with the Catholic Church.[3] Her crown identifies her as the protector of a city, and the star above it is the symbols of the Chigi family to which Pope Alexander VII belonged. She holds a long sceptre topped with the hand of justice and her eyes fall on a mitre, a cardinal's hat, and other Catholic religious objects. Her robe covers the imperial eagle and her foot rests on the orb of temporal power, indicating her primacy over the Holy Roman Emperor. Beneath Latia is inscribed the Latin motto 'Latium cui par nihil est, nihil Secundu' ('Latium, to which none is equal, and second to none'). At the bottom of the illustration the male figures are the gods of the river Tiber and its Tivoli tributary the Aniene. The female figure with butterfly wings is the goddess of the Aniene, otherwise Ino, resting on symbols of her mythological shipwreck.[4]: 39

The imagery of the frontispiece was intended to emphasise the purpose of Kircher’s claim that his contemporary Rome was connected not just to the ancient city that preceded it, but to a both the ancient classical and biblical worlds. The figure of Latia was Etruscan, the sceptre she hold resembled the regalia of ancient Egypt, while Greece was represented by the winged figure of Ino.[9]

The illustration depicting the apotheosis of Homer was signed by Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi. The aerial view of Palestrina and the plate of the Nile mosaic were signed by Agapito de Bernardini.[6]: 178 [4]: 51 The maps in the book were the work of Innocenzo Mattei.[11] The book also reused a number of earlier illustrations from previously published works, by Étienne Dupérac, Daniele Stoopendahl and Matteo Greuter. The image of the reconstruction of Hadrian’s villa was a replica of the illustration by Francesco Contini and the image of the temple of Fortune was a replica of a piece by Domenico Castelli.[6]: 182

Critical reception

The work was criticised by many scholars of Kircher’s time for its inaccuracies and speculations about ancient history. Raffaello Fabretti pointed out that Kircher’s text was full of mistakes,[5] his images of aqueducts were inaccurate and his map wrongly located the source of the Aqua Virgo near Colonna.[12] Kircher intended to write a similar work on Etruria, entitled Iter Etruscum, but this was never published, because the Jesuit censors would not approve it.[3][13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latium_(1669)

Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus: a Roman work of the entire Society, 304 §2

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

THE American Capitol abounds with clues of its Roman origins. “Freedom,” the Roman goddess whose statue crowns the dome, was created in Rome at the studio of American sculptor Thomas Crawford. We find a whole pantheon of Roman deities in the great fresco covering the dome’s interior rotunda: Persephone, Ceres, Freedom, Vulcan, Mercury, even a deified George Washington. These figures were the creation of Vatican artist Constantino Brumidi. The fact that the national Statehouse evolved as a “capitol” bespeaks Roman influence. No building can rightly be called a capitol unless it’s a temple of Jupiter, the great father-god of Rome who ruled heaven with his thunderbolts and nourished the earth with his fertilizing rains. If it was a capitolium, it belonged to Jupiter and his priests. Jupiter’s mascot was the eagle, which the founding fathers made their mascot as well. A Roman eagle tops the governing idol of the House of Representatives, a forty-six-inch sterling silverand- ebony wand called a “mace.” The mace is “the symbol of authority in the House.”4 W h e n the Sergeant-at-arms displays it before an unruly member of Congress, the mace restores order. Its position at the rostrum tells whether the House is in “committee” or in “session.” America’s national motto “Annuit Coeptis” came from a prayer to Jupiter. It appears in Book IX of Virgil’s epic propaganda, the Aeneid, a poem commissioned just before the birth of Christ by Caius Maecenas, the multi-billionaire power behind Augustus Caesar. The poem’s objective was to fashion Rome into an imperial monarchy for which its citizens would gladly sacrifice their lives. Fascism may be an ugly word to many, but its stately emblem is apparently offensive to no one. T h e emblem of fascism, a pair of them, commands the wall above and behind the speaker’s rostrum in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. They’re called fasces, and I can think of no reason for them to be there other than to declare the fascistic nature of American republican democracy. 6 A fasces is a Roman device. Actually, it originated with the ancient Etruscans, from whom the earliest Romans derived their religious jurisprudence nearly three thousand years ago. It’s an axe-head whose handle is a bundle of rods tightly strapped together by a red sinew. It symbolizes the ordering of priestly functions into a single infallible sovereign, an autocrat who could require life and limb of his subjects. If the fasces is entwined with laurel, like the pair on the House wall, it signifies Caesarean military power. The Romans called this infallible sovereign Pontifex Maximus, “Supreme Bridgebuilder.” No Roman was called Pontifex Maximus until the title was given to Julius Caesar in 48 BC. Today’s Pontifex Maximus is Pope John Paul II. As we shall discover in a forthcoming chapter, John Paul does not hold that title alone. He shares it with a mysterious partner, a military man, a man holding an office that has been known for more than four centuries as “Papa Nero,” the Black Pope. I shall present evidence that the House fasces represent the Black Pope, who indeed rules the world. Later, I will develop what is sure to become a controversial hypothesis: that the Black Pope rules by divine appointment, and for the ultimate good of mankind.

Rulers of Evil

by F. Tupper Saussy

https://archive.org/details/rulers-of-evil-f.-tupper-saussy_202201/Rulers%20of%20Evil%20F.%20Tupper%20Saussy/

CHAPTER SEVEN – SHABTAI, SHIMON AND SHARON – DESTROYING THE JEWS ALM 1 - THE DEUTSCH DEVILS

Rabbi Marvin Antelman was right all along. Way back in 1974, he identified the source of all the evil against Jews and humanity but his message and style were too unaccessible to get through to anyone but the most advanced students of antisemitism. What he lacked most was simplicity, a common enough failure of thinkers decades in advance of their contemporaries. What he needed was someone to put out a Cliff's Notes simplified explanation of his thesis...and someone, without intention, just did. The name of the book is, 50 Jewish Messiahs by Jerry Rabow (Gefen Publishing, Jerusalem). It is an informative but shallow overview of just what the title says, but in its shallowness lies vital depth. We begin with Chapter 17, about the "most damaging messiah to the Jewish people," Shabbatai Zvi. First we'll read Rabow and then add commentary opening Rabbi Antelman's work to the wide world. Recall that there are various accepted English spellings for Shabtai Tzvi, and the Sabbataians. The spelling presented depends on the writer:

pp 91 - Shabbatai Zvi was born in Smyrna, Turkey on the ninth of Av, 1626. The ninth day of Av is the day of a triple tragedy for the Jewish nation. According to tradition, the First Temple, the Second Temple and Bar Kokhba's Betar fortress all fell on this day.

pp 93 - He changed the holiday celebrations and violated the dietary prohibitions. All of this followed from his declaration that the usual rules were inapplicable to messianic times.

pp 95 - He declared that the coming of the messianic era meant that the biblical commandments were no longer binding. He proclaimed that God now permitted everything. ** This is Rabbi Antelman's central assertion; that Shabbataism was the polar opposite of Judaism. That Shabbatai Zvi's program was to destroy all the tenets of the Torah and replace them with their opposites. Incredibly, more than half the Jews of the world at the time, believed he would be revealed as their promised messiah: **

pp 101 - Then he finally made the announcement for which the Jewish community had been waiting for 1600 years - he would begin the Redemption on the 15th day of the month of Sivan, June 18, 1666. ** There are many who will recognize the significance of the date. June is the sixth month, 18 divided by three is 6+6+6 and 1666 is clear enough. Either he knew what he was doing or the prophesies of the emergence of an evil false messiah or anti-Christ are right, and Shabbatai Zvi was him. **

pp 110 - Through all of this, Shabbatai continued to issue proclamations of the theological changes wrought by the coming of the messianic age. Shabbatai's new prayer was, "Praised be He who permits the forbidden." Since all things would be permitted in the age of the messiah, Shabbatai declared many of the old restrictions of the Torah no longer applicable. He abolished the laws concerning sexual relationships. He eventually declared that all of the thirty six major biblical sins were now permitted and instructed some of his followers that it was their duty to perform such sins in order to hasten the Redemption. ** Shabbatai's fall from grace among the great masses of Jews came in September 1666, when the Sultan of Turkey threatened him with torture unless he converted to Islam. He relented and most of Jewry abandoned him. But not all. A core of his followers kept their messiah alive and kicking hard. **

pp 112 - In order to bring on the Reformation, Shabbatai had descended into the darkness of the Muslim world to gather the scattered fragments of the light of creation hidden there. There was an outward reality and an inner reality. Nathan transformed Shabbatainism into a theology of paradox. Once the followers accepted the concept of paradox, they would be able to keep on believing in Shabbatai Zvi...An inner circle of his followers accepted the explanations of Nathan and continued to believe in Shabbatai the Messiah. ** The Shabbatai followers continued their hidden life in the Turkish sect of the Donmeh, whose activities continue to this day, as reported extensively this year, even by the staid Jerusalem Post. One of the Donmeh followers was Jacob Frank, who would transform Europe and the world into a Shabbataian hell barely a century later. **

pp 121 - The Donmeh now converted the Shabbataian Purim into an annual orgy, when members exchanged spouses for a ceremony called "extinguishing the lights." The Donmeh justified their Purim orgies, and their regular practise of sharing wives and engaging in other sexual activities, by citing biblical precedents.

pp 123 - Although Jacob Frank (1726-1791) was born fifty years after the death Shabbatai Zvi, he deserves to be regarded as Shabbatai's true successor.

pp 125 - Frank's followers requested ecclesiastic protection on the grounds that their own beliefs were not Jewish but rather, "anti-Talmudist."..The bishop declared that the "anti-Talmudists", Frank's followers, were entitled to practise their religion, and ordered that all copies of the Talmud within his diocese be seized and burned. Now under the protection of the crown, adoring followers gave Frank huge donations to his movement.

pp 127 - He extended the paradoxical teachings of Shabbatai Zvi that the coming of the messianic age had transformed sexual prohibitions of the bible into permissions and even obligations. According to Frank, engaging in sexual orgies now became the means to purify the soul from its sins. Debauchery became therapy...Frank convinced his followers that the only way for their special form of Judaism to survive was for them to outwardly become Christians, just as the Donmeh had descended into the world of Islam...In February, 1759, the Frankists told the Church they were ready to be baptized...The Frankists promised to deliver 5000 new Christians from Poland, Moravia, Hungary and Turkey.

pp 130 - The Frankists also became involved in international political intrigue, and sent secret emissaries to the Russian government and the Eastern Orthodox Church offering to help in the overthrow of Poland and the Catholic Church...By 1786, Frank suffered temporary financial problems, and moved his court to Offenbach, near Frankfurt. There Frank's money problems were somehow solved. The source of Frank's immense wealth is not clear. He may have used his movement's system of secret messengers and clandestine cells to engage in the constant political turmoil involving Austria-Hungary, Turkey and the Balkans.

** And now we reach the final depth of Rabow's understanding and let Rabbi Antelman take over. **

Frankfurt at the time was the headquarters of the Jesuit, Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati, as well as Rothschild Brothers' financial empire. This is worth repeating: Frankfurt was the birthplace of both the Illuminati and the Rothschild empire. When Jacob Frank entered the city, the alliance between the two had already begun. Weishaupt provided the conspiratorial resources of the Jesuit Order, while the Rothschilds contributed the money. What was missing was a means to spread the agenda of the Illuminati and that the Frankists added with their network of agents throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Jacob Frank became instantly wealthy because he was given a nice handout by Mayer Amshel Rothschild of Frankfurt. There is no other explanation. And from this starting point, Rabbi Antelman gave us a blueprint for the war against Judaism and all its good, and indeed against humanity and all its moral treasures. A movement of complete evil now took hold. The Jesuits' goal was the destruction of the Protestant Reformation leading to a return of one pope sitting in judgement on all mankind. The Rothschilds goal was to control the wealth of the planet. And the Frankist vision was the destruction of Jewish ethics to be replaced by a religion based on the exact opposite of God's intentions. When these factions blended, a bloody war against humanity, with the Jews on the front lines, erupted and it is reaching its very pinnacle at this moment. Rabbi Antelman traces the means of the worldwide reach of this ugliness. By the 1770s, the Illuminati was exposed and banned in Germany and then throughout Europe. Weishaupt made a strategic change that worked miracles for the international spread of his goals. He infiltrated agents into the Freemasonic lodges of England and Scotland, changing their highest tenets to his own, until every lodge in every nation accepted them. Thus, the Illuminati now had two centers of activity, Germany and Britain. It was from Germany to London that the apostate Jews Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were sent to devise the rot of communism. Shortly after that task was done, the Rothschilds sent their agents John Jacob Astor and Jacob Schiff from Germany to America. They financed the robber barons like Rockefeller and Morgan, who in 1922, founded the Council On Foreign Relations, to overthrow the American constitution and switch the nation's diplomacy to Illuminatiism.

THE REAL WAR AGAINST THE JEWS AND HUMANITY

In 1932, how many organizations in Germany represented German Jewry? Over 250. In 1933, how many? One, and one only; Labour Zionism. We will return to the significance shortly. First, Rabbi Antelman's account continues. To corrupt the Jews, the Frankists adopted, at first, a humane policy of sorts. With Rothschild money and Jesuit power, the so-called Enlightenment was initiated by the German Jewish apostate Moses Mendelsohn. Napoleon was financed to liberate the Jews wherever he conquered and from Germany, the Reform and Conservative movements were financed to further dilute the faith and introduce totally foreign concepts to their congregations. But the pace wasn't fast enough. The ornery Jews just weren't cooperating with evil, so those stubbornly accepting Torah morality would have to be removed permanently and only those practising Shabbatainism would be permitted to survive. Yes, in the 2000 years of European Jewish history there were pogroms, Crusades and Inquisitions, the latter aided and abetted by the Jesuits. But compared to what happened from the 1880s on, life was a tolerable picnic. The turning point in the final war against the Jews was the founding of Zionism by the Shabbataians. The final aim of the movement was to establish a Shabbataian state in the historical land of the Jews, thus taking over Judaism for good. To foment the idea, life had to made so intolerable for Europe's Jews, that escape to Palestine would appear to be the best option. The Cossack pogroms were the first shot in this campaign and for them, the Frankists turned to the Jesuits and their influence over the Catholic Church. The Jesuits had done more to spread communism, beginning with their feudal communes in South America, and now they wanted to punish the anti-papists of Europe by imprisoning them behind communal bars. The deal was simple: The Jesuits provided the Cossacks, the Frankists, the communists. And naturally, the Rothschilds would provide the moolah. Once the situation turned foreboding, the German-writing intellectuals took over. In Vienna in 1885, the journalist Natan Birnbaum fired the opening salvo which successfully planted the fast-growing seeds of Zionism. He was followed by another Vienna writer, Peretz Smoleskin, who provided more intellectual justification for returning to a safe home in Israel. However, neither man had the charisma of still another Vienna writer, Theodore Herzl. He could rally the masses as neither of them could and he was chosen to be the spokesman and symbol of the movement. Read any honest biography of Herzl and the same quandary appears. Herzl claimed he wrote the Judenstaat one summer in Paris. But Herzl wasn't in Paris when he said he wrote the most influential book of Zionism. It had to have been written for him. Anyone who reads Herzl's dreadful plays, has to doubt his sudden departure from literary mediocrity.

In 1901, Herzl appeared in Britain where he was not well received. We are told he backed another option, creating a Jewish sanctuary in British - controlled East Africa. If the idea caught on, it would neutralize the Shabbataians' game plan. Herzl died not long after and not one biography of him tells us how. He entered a Paris sanatorium for a not known condition and never emerged. This was highly fortunate for the British Freemasons doing the Shabbataians' bidding, for they replaced Herzl with one of their own, a German-educated Jew named Chaim Weizmann. In time, a cockamamie legend was fabricated involving the Balfour declaration creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a reward for Weizmann finding a way to make acetone for explosives from dried up paint. Not one explosion in World War One came from this magic process. But the British took great pains to capture Palestine from the Turks and appoint the leaders of the upcoming Shabbataian state. Meeting in London during the War, Weizmann and Balfour had to deal with the problem of the people already living in Palestine, most of whom were religious Jews, who were the majority in such major centers as Jerusalem, Sfat and Tiberius. The myth of an ancient Palestinian Arab indigenous population is belied by any number of reports by visitors as talented as Twain and Balzac, who accurately noted the paucity of Arabs in the land during the 19th century. The later economic success of the new enterprise drew hundreds of thousands of Arabs from as far away as Iraq to the region with consequences the Illuminati were possibly well aware of. To neutralize the religious Jews, many of whom had been living in the land since antiquity, Balfour and Weizmann inducted Rabbi Avraham Kook into the fold and after the war, he was appointed the first Chief Rabbi of the enterprise, while Weizmann was made the first head of the Jewish Agency. Kook proceeded to strip the landed Orthodox Jews of their real estate and political rights, while introducing a new concept into Judaism; the purity of land redemption. His philosophy was based on profound historical truth, nonetheless, his followers don't understand how he and they are playing out the Shabbataian nightmare. Stage one was complete. Now the real business at hand was revved up. Rabbi Antelman proves that the American President Woodrow Wilson was thoroughly corrupted by the Frankists through their agent Colonel House. It was Wilson who put an end to America's open immigration policy. Until then, despite all their despair, most Eastern European Jews rejected Palestine as an escape route, the majority choosing America as their destination. From now on very few would enjoy that option. It would have to be Palestine or nowhere. We now jump to 1933. Less than 1% of the German Jews support Zionism. Many tried to escape from Naziism by boat to Latin and North American ports but the international diplomatic order was to turn them back. Any German Jew who rejected Palestine as his shelter would be shipped back to his death. By 1934, the majority of German Jews got the message and turned to the only Jewish organization allowed by the Nazis, the Labour Zionists. For confirmation of the conspiracy between them and Hitler's thugs read The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black, Perfidy by Ben Hecht or The Scared And The Doomed by Jacob Nurenberger. The deal cut worked like this. The German Jews would first be indoctrinated into Bolshevism in Labour Zionism camps and then, with British approval, transferred to Palestine. Most were there by the time the British issued the White Paper banning further Jewish immigration. The Labour Zionists got the Jews they wanted, and let the millions of religious Jews and other non-Frankists perish in Europe without any struggle for their survival. But not all Jews fell for the plan. A noble alternative Zionism arose led by Zeev Jabotinsky. He led the Jews in demanding free passage to Palestine and a worldwide economic boycott of the Nazi regime. The Labour Zionists did all in their power to short-circuit the opposition. First, they forced all the German Jews in Palestine to use their assets to buy only goods from Nazi Germany. This kept the regime afloat. Then Chaim Weizmann and his Jewish Agency employed their appointed agents in the US to neutralize Jabotinsky and his followers using any means at their disposal. This culminated in Jabotinsky's suspicious death in New York in 1941. Later, Jabotinsky's most literate advocate, Ben Hecht, was run over by a truck on a Manhattan sidewalk. His crime was being the first to widely expose the Jewish Agency-Nazi plot. Into this plot against the Jews we add the Jesuits, who wished with all their hearts, to wreck the land that produced Luther, but the Vatican's role in the Holocaust is not the focus of this overview. We now return to America where the Jewish leadership used all their contacts and resources to make good and certain that the unwanted non-Shabbataian Jews of Europe never again saw the light of day. We return to a quote from Jerry Rabow: pp 132 - Frankist families, both those living as Christians and those living as Jews, tried to marry only among themselves. In the summers, the German groups regularly held secret meetings in the resort of Carlsbad...It is said by the middle of the nineteenth century, the majority of the lawyers in Prague and Warsaw were from Frankist families. United States Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter is reported to have received a copy of Eva Frank's portrait from his mother, a descendent of the Prague Frankist family. Here is a quote from Frankfurter: "The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise their power from behind the scenes."-- Justice Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court.

The difference between Rabow and Rabbi Antelman is the latter proves that literally all of FDR's court Jews were German-descended Sabbataians, determined to purge Jewry of its unnecessary European, non-Sabbataian morality-believing cohorts. Here is a short list of these Jewish community leaders:

Felix Brandeis - Received Secondary School education in Germany. There, Englishman Jacob de Haas introduced him to Zionism.

Here is a telling quote from the latter Frankist family:

Henry Morgenthau Jr., Stephen Wise, Bernard Baruch, Judah Magnes, Felix Warburg - All descended from German Jews.

"We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent." -- Statement made before the United States Senate on Feb. 7, 1950 by James Paul Warburg ("Angel" to and active in the United World Federalists), son of Paul Moritz Warburg, nephew of Felix Warburg and of Jacob Schiff, both of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. which poured millions into the Russian Revolution through James' brother Max, banker to the German government.

When World War II ended, barely 100,000 European Jews survived and when they arrived in Palestine they had to obey Bolshevik edicts or starve to death. However, they weren't enough to stave off the number one threat to the Frankist state, the Arabs. The wrath of the savage tribes threatened the whole enterprise and only the infusion of large numbers of soldiers could stave off their invasion. To that end, European-controlled Arab dictators were persuaded to go against their national interests, stir up bloody anti-semitism and get the Sephardic Jews to Israel. Their first reward was wealth through seizure of Jews' assets. Before the Sabbataians introduced it, there was no such thing as Jewish selfhatred. Their religion and heritage came as naturally as breathing. This was the state the Eastern Jews were in when they were driven to Israel. There, the Frankists had to apply all the lessons they learned turning German Jews into their image to change the newcomers. Every effort was made to divest these peoples of their faith and the results were often shattering. This is one reason, for instance, why Moroccan Jews who fled to France are so much better off than their families in Israel. Initially, the American Frankists supported the new nation, believing it would soon spread darkness to the nations. But the Jews didn't cooperate and held on to their decency. That is when the CFR unleashed its evilest Frankists on the Jews once again. The most prominent of this lot is the German-born Henry Kissinger but the list is long and includes the Austrian-educated Madeleine Albright, and German descendents such as Joe Lieberman and Sandy Berger. Today, the Frankist agenda is being promoted through the thinking of the German-born American philosopher, Leo Strauss. To show you all is not what it

seems, here are a few words about him from a Jewish writer for the Executive Intelligence Report, run by the Germacentric, Lyndon LaRouche:

"If Strauss' influence on politics in the capital of the most powerful nation on Earth was awesome in 1996, it is even more so today. The leading "Straussian" in the Bush Administration is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who was trained by Strauss' alter-ego and fellow University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom. Wolfowitz leads the "war party" within the civilian bureaucracy at the Pentagon, and his own protege I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and chief national security aide, directing a super-hawkish "shadow national security council" out of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House. According to Bloom biographer Saul Bellow, the day that President George H.W. Bush rejected Wolfowitz and Cheney's demand that U.S. troops continue on to Baghdad, during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Wolfowitz called Bloom on his private phone line to bitterly complain. It seems that "Bush 41" was not enough of a Nietzschean "superman" for Wolfowitz's taste."

Compare that report with this one recently published by the Jerusalem Post.

LONDON- A British coroner has rejected a German police claim that a 22 year old Jewish man from London, Jeremiah Duggan, committed suicide in March after attending a meeting of the far-right Schiller Institute in the German town of Wiesbaden. The Schiller Institute draws its inspiration from American conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, who was among the speakers at the meeting... He said, "Mum, I am in deep trouble. I am frightened." As he attempted to give his location, the line went dead."

Duggan made the fatal mistake of getting too close to the true connection between LaRouche and the Frankists. Their program calls for the brainwashing of Jews to hate themselves and they don't cotton to rebels. Here is how that is accomplished through the Israeli higher education system, as reported by Caroline Glick this week in the Jerusalem Post:

"Students speak of a regime of fear and intimidation in the classroom. Ofra Gracier, a doctoral student in Tel-Aviv University's humanities faculty explains the process as follows: 'It starts with the course syllabus. In a class on introduction to political theory for instance, you will never see the likes of Leo Strauss or Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. You will only get Marx and Rousseau and people like that. So, if you want to argue with Marx, you are on your own. You don't know anything else.'"

The fatal error of Israeli Jews was rejecting the Frankists and their Labour Party. The Shabbataians would rather see the Arabs overrun Israel than witness the revival of a state run by true Judaism. They have thoroughly financed and infiltrated the high leadership and especially, far left groups, to prepare the ground for defeat. And if utter demoralization doesn't do the trick, read another local report issued this week:

PREPARATIONS TO USE FIREPOWER AGAINST JEWS.

Our contacts have reported that the following has been introduced by the people preparing MEGA YAMIT. IBA "B" reported, in three consecutive reports following the Geha Junction islamic mass murder assault that GERMAN EXTREME RIGHT WING Jews were those that performed the bombing. (Refer to the IBA "B" records) .

Rabbi Antelman was right. He looked at the enemy and saw the mirror opposite of real Judaism. A war to the finish is on in Israel and it is being spread to the rest of the planet. Our salvation can only arise when the Arabs realize the Jews of Israel are fighting the same battle they are and against the same enemies. If they can't overcome the brainwashing and hatred, they'll go down along with Israel. And then the rest of the planet might just follow.

FRIDAY January 9th 2004

Dear Mr Chamish,

I read with particular interest your analysis of the problems related to the Donmeh and the Shabbataians, in particular your concluding remarks in which you state that: "Our salvation can only arise when the Arabs realize the Jews of Israel are fighting the same battle (that) they are (fighting) and against the same enemies." It will perhaps come as something of a surprise to learn that there are some Muslims who agree with much contained in your assessment. As a convert to Islam (from a somewhat ecumenical family - predominantly Christian but with two converts to Judaism my sister and cousin) so yes, in the words of David Dimbleby, we now do have a long weekend. I believe that the only way out of the present state of affairs is to seek out the facts, publish, or be damned. Your piece filled in a number of important gaps which, unless you have the sort of inside information, that you obviously have, would have taken a lot more time than I currently have available to spend on this very important subject. My own observations are included in a book we published back in 1991 entitled Satanic Voices - Ancient & Modern this was a reply to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. I am in the process of extracting the relevant passages to send to you, which relate to the Donmeh and the Islamic prophecies which precisely predict the events which led to the disastrous state of affairs you describe so well, and with which we largely agree.

With best regards

Shabbat Shalom

Yours sincerely

David M Pidcock

The Islamic Party of Britain "

Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism and the Holocaust by Barry Chamish

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B66Pc9x2hkIrV2Y3QWxPbkpKYWc/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-5ak831cRNQohyyjZYfFKvw

XXXI

JEWISH MASONRY: B'NAI B'RITH AND THE MODERN STATE OF ISRAEL

Masonry is a Jewish institution whose history, degrees, charges, passwords and explanations are Jewish from beginning to end."

Dr. Isaac Wise, a Jewish scholar.

שלום על ישראל

IT HAS LONG BEEN OPINED BY SOME THAT Freemasonry, as we know it, has a Jewish origin. Whether that be true or nay, I cannot say. This view proffers that the basis of "Speculative" Masonry, its symbolism and code of thics, is Jewish Gnosticism, as seen in the Rite of Mizraim (Hebrew for ypo), which Rite is said to have been founded by Mitzraim (Mizraim), The second son of Ham (Genesis 10:13, 14).

What I do know as fact is that in 1843, the Jewish lodge B'nai B'rith meaning Sons of the Covenant)-the international Jewish Masonic Society-was founded in New York by several Jews from Germany, and raised into Lodges, to form a Jewish Branch of Freemasonry. This the International Order of B'nai B'rith officially established as a Jewish equivalent to Masonic organisations such as the Independent

Order of Odd Fellows.

Domenico Margiotta (a ceding 33rd Degree Mason), in his book made in 1874 between the greatest and most well-know Freemason Adriano Lemmi, page 225, purports to give the full text of a secret treaty Albert Pike, then the representative of the Supreme Dogmatic Directory of the Scottish Rites (Headquarters at Charleston, U.S.A)

Cornelia Wilhelm, Proceedings of the.

General Convention of the

Constitution Grand Lodge B'nai B'rith, The Independent Orders of B'nai Brith and True Sisters:... (Stuttgard, Germany: Steiner Verlag, 1964).

243

SHALL I BE A MASON?

and the Jew Armand Levi representative of the B'nai B'rith lodges of America, Germany and England. The following is an extract:

The Supreme Dogmatic Directory of Universal Freemasonry recognises the Jewish Lodges, such as they already exist in the principal countries. The secret of the existence of the Confederation (of B'nai B'rith lodges) will rigorously be kept by those members of High Grade Masonry to whom the Supreme Dogmatic Directory will JUDGE IT ADVISABLE TO MAKE IT KNOWN.

The central headquarters of the B'nai B'rith will be at Hamburg, and the sovereign body will take the title of Sovereign Patriarchal Council. Neither the Sovereign Patriarchal Council of Hamburg, nor any lodges under its obedience, will figure on the annual reports of the Sovereign Administrative Directory; but the Sovereign Patriarchal Council will send direct to the Sovereign Dogmatic Directory a contribution representing 10 per cent of the personal subscriptions of members of the Jewish Lodges.

The reader will note that the treaty states the "secret of the existence of the Confederation [between B'nai B'rith, or the Jewish Lodges will be kept rigorously by those members of the masonry of high grade" "to whom Supreme Dogmatic Directory... judgels] it advisable to make it known," or reveal.

Quoting de la Rive's Les Juifs dans la Franc-Maçonnerie, author Edith Starr Miller states: "Under the terms of this document (given in full on p, 225 of Adriano Lemmi by D. Margiotta), Jewish Masonry. unlike Gentile Masonry, was not to be graded, its members were exempt from belonging to any other official rite and 'the secret of its existence' was to be most secretly kept by those members of High Masonry who had been informed by the Supreme Dogmatic Directory of its existence." There is some doubt as to the accuracy of the above last-quoted statement, as Jewish Masonry does seem to have degrees. In the agreement signed between Armand Levy and Albert Pike, the Jewish Lodges were recognized and welcomed into the organization of Freemasonry practically on their own terms. Under its terms, the only

2 Edith Starr Miller (Queenborough), Occult Theocracy, op cit., p. 289.

244

Jewish Masonry: B'nai B'rith and the Modern State of Israel on-Jews who can enter the B'nai B'rith Lodges are visitors of the ighest degree Inspectors General of the PALLADIUM RITE. Jews on e other hand have free access to the ordinary Masonic Lodges. The following is from Finkelstein's American Jewish History:

The Founding of

the B'nai B'rith

The 12 men who gathered in the Sinsheimer cafe in New York City on the October 13. 1843, were Jewish immigrants from Germany. Tired of the heavy-handed dogma that surrounded synagogue life, they founded an organization based on Jewish ideals that could unite all Jews in a fraternal setting.

The Independent Order of B'nai Brith, in the preamble to its constitution, stated its dedica- tion to "uniting Israelites in the work of pro- moting their highest interests and those of humanity, of developing and elevating the mental and moral character of the people of our faith; of inculcating the purest principles of philanthropy, honor, and patriotism of supporting science and art, of alleviating the wants of the victims of persecution; providing for protecting and assisting the widow and orphan on the broadest principles of humani- ty" They formed themselves as a secret organization with regalia, degrees, and pass- words, adopting rituals commonly used by other fraternal organizations such as Masons and Odd Fellows By 1880 there were over 300 B'nai B'rith lodges throughout the country with thousands of members

Confirmation

ed in the United States in 1846 at New York's Temple Emanu-El and was quickly adopted by other femation ceremony took place in Germany in 1830 as a Reform alternative to bar mitzva Mum congregation While the centuries-old bar mitzvah ceremony focused on boys at the age of 13 and ther

To confirmation included both boys and girls at age 16 or 17 when they were nature ses the pving of the Torah Today it has been widely adopted by the various branches of Adam as an the tenets of Andanum The confirmation ceremony is held on the holiday of Shawut, which the Bar or Bat Mitzvah (Enenberg and Scolnic 2001 201

See, Norman Finkelstein's American Jewish History (Philadelphia,

PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 2007).

245

SHALL I BE A MASON?

How do the Jews explain their involvement in Freemasonry, which the Bible so clearly condemns? In 1855, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900) justified Jewish participation in fraternal orders by asserting that "Masonry is a Jewish institution whose history, degrees, charges, passwords, and explanations are Jewish from the are Jewish from the beginning to end, with the exception of only one by-degree and a few words in the obligations....

It is by this rationale that B'nai B'rith (said to be a "Philanthrophic and Humanitarian" organization, and a "Confederation... not bound by the frontiers of any land") is able to justify having both men and women chapters, or lodges. The female chapters include B'nai B'rith Women's Auxiliary, and Business and Professional Women of Hadassah."

Historian James Webb observes, "the chief debt of the ritual magician is to Jewish mysticism [viz., Kabballah, or Cabala]... The

3 The nineteenth century leader of the American Reform Judaism movement and a Mason himself.

4 Dr. Isaac Wise, Scottish Rite Mason, The Israelite (1855), see Journal of Jewish Art (Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1984), p. 95; Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939 (Harvard University Press, 1970), Norman Finkelstein, American Jewish History

(Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 2007), p. 63; Journal of Jewish Art, Volumes 10-11 (Center for Jewish Art of the Hebrew University, 1984), p. 95; The Jewish People in America: A time for gathering: the second migration, 1820-1880 (American Jewish Historical Society/The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 162.

5 Proceedings of The...general Convention Front Cover B'nai B'rith. Supreme Lodge 1930.

Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the... Congress, Volume 99, Part 9 Front Cover United States. Congress U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1953.

Definition: "Kabalah (Heb.) The hidden wisdom of the Hebrew Rabbis of the middle ages derived from the older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Kabalistic." (Blavatsky Theosophical Glossary, p. 168). The roots of the Kabbalah are in ancient Babylon (preserved and taught by the Magis and Chaldees) where the southern kingdom of Judah was exiled in 586 B.C. Many of the Jews who eventually returned from Babylon to Israel brought with them the Babylonian mystery tradition, which was to become an oral tradition taught to succeeding generations of Jews. According to one writer, "After the destruction of the Temple, the center of Jewish religion shifted to Rabbinic authority. It was during the Middle Ages that the rabbis

246

Jewish Masonry: B'nai B'rith and the Modern State of Israel

wish genius for complicated metaphysics and occult speculation has rovided occultists with some of their most erudite Traditional sources

INSPIRATION.

In her book, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity New York, 1880-1939, Daniel Soyer writes':

Jews, many of them German-speaking, also participated in the nine- teenth-century boom of fraternal orders. Some joined the general or ders, including Masonry, which, despite its Protestant overtones, at- tracted many Jews with its universalistic and liberal religious ideal. The Masons' use of Old-Testament imagery and Hebrew words helped Jews to feel at home in the order, even as many Jewish businessmen identified strongly with the craft's middle-class constituency. Individual Jews joined general lodges, while others joined all-Jewish or mostly Jewish branches of the Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Harugari, and Hermanns Soehne.

Other Jews found the fraternal idea appealing but preferred to im- plement it within the confines of their own religious and ethnic group. By the 1880s Jewish fraternal societies enrolled more members than any other Jewish organizations in America. B'nai B'rith (Sons of the Cove- nant) was the first and largest, with 25,000 members in 1880, followed by Independent Order Free Sons of Israel with 11,000, Kesher shel Barzel (Bond of Iron) with 9,000, and Improved Order Free Sons of Israel with 3,300. Other orders established in the nineteenth century included the Independent Order of True Sisters (closely allied with B'nai B'rith), Order Brith Abraham, Independent Order Sons of Benjamin, American Star Order, Improved Order of B'nai B'rith, Independent Order Brith Abraham, Order Ahavas Israel, Independent Order Free Sons of Judah, Independent Order Sons of Abraham, Independent Order of American Israelites, Independent Western Star Order, and Knights of Zion.

mous Talmudists and Kabbalists."

1974), p. 216, 217.

ompiled the oral traditions of Babylon in various books which became he Kabbalah.... the dispersed Jews came under the baleful influence of James Webb, The Occult Underground (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press, New York, 1880-1939, citing Tony Fels, "Religious Assimilation in a Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in Praternal Organization: Jews and Freemasonry..." American Jewish History 74 (June 1985): 369-403; Edward E. Grusd, B'nai B'rith: The ory of a Covenant (New York: Appleton-Century, 1966), p. 97,

247

SHALL I BE A MASON?

was founded

It is also a noteworthy fact that the Rotary International by three Jews Paul Harris, Hiram Shorey, and Gustavus Lochr (members of B'nai B'rith) in Chicago on February 23, 1905. The Lions Club, another group with Masonic connections, was also founded in Chicago in 1917 by the Jew Melvin Jones, a Freemason and member of B'nai B'rith. Are these mere coincidences? Both the Rotary Club and Lions Club can be found in large numbers all over the world.

In 1908, B'nai B'rith's membership was 35,870, with 481 lodges and 10 grand lodges distributed over the United States, Germany..." But today, it has grown to be a countrywide (and now worldwide) federation of multistate districts and local lodges, and Hadassah, women's lodges.

Some years ago, The General Jewish Council's booklet described the American chapter of B'nai B'rith as "a national fraternal society with over 75,000 members." This includes the so-called Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

It is said by many that B'nai B'rith is probably the most powerful Masonic organisation in the whole Masonic confederation. In fact, contrary to what many Evangelical Christians teach and believe, the evidence seem to suggest that it was B'nai B'rith!, not the providence of God, nor even the efforts of Western European powers alone that secured the 'restoration' of the Jewish State. It seems that it was Freemasonry that aided the Jewish restoration to Israel. Proof?

On January 29, 2014, B'nai B'rith World Center director Alan Schneider addressed the monthly dinner meeting of the Jerusalem Rotary Club on the topic "B'nai B'rith in Israel Laying the Foundations for the Jewish State". Schneider presented to the club members a detailed account of B'nai B'rith's activities in pre-State Israel beginning in 1888 with the establishment of the Jewish Lodge that pioneered settlement, community cohesiveness, the Hebrew language. Jewish culture, medicine, youth and adult education, and COUNTER- MISSIONARY activity in Jerusalem, Jaffa and outlying Jewish

communities.

Schneider further informed the attendees of the dinner that the lodge (viz. B'nai B'rith) also conducted dangerous clandestine missions in the 1890 to establish B'nai B'rith lodges in Jewish communities in the Levant including Beirut, Izmir, Alexandria and Sofia. Schneider also addressed Israeli diplomats preparing for new foreign appointments

10 The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information (University Press, 1910).

248

Jewish Masonry: B'nai B'rith and the Modern State of Israel

they were soon to take up in the summer (2014). In that talk, Schneider gave an overview of B'nai B'rith's scope of members and activities around the world and about B'nai B'rith's cooperation with Jewish organizations and Israeli diplomatic legations."

WIT

There, reader, the real, but hidden power that secured the restoration of the nation of Israel as a Jewish State in the Middle East.

http://www.bnaibrith.org/center-stage/schneider-addresses-rotary-

stry-of-foreign-affairs

249

Shall I be a Mason: Life or Death

by P.D. Stuart

https://www.facebook.com/billy.dunn.50767/posts/pfbid02uBvd6PmtG389h7CGzSkqdcry9BYwL6Ni5WWHUD4421e139ZqFu9YS3ZowW7xU9Zal

Himmler used the Jesuits as the model for the SS, since he found they had the core elements of absolute obedience and the cult of the organisation.[59][60] Hitler is said to have called Himmler "my Ignatius of Loyola".[59] As an order, the SS needed a coherent doctrine that would set it apart.[61] Himmler attempted to construct such an ideology, and deduced a "pseudo-Germanic tradition" from history.[61] Himmler dismissed the image of Christ as a Jew and rejected Christianity's basic doctrine and its institutions.[62] Starting in 1934, the SS hosted "solstice ceremonies" (Sonnenwendfeiern) to increase team spirit within their ranks.[63] In a 1936 memorandum, Himmler set forth a list of approved holidays based on pagan and political precedents meant to wean SS members from their reliance on Christian festivities.[64] In an attempt to replace Christianity and suffuse the SS with a new doctrine, SS-men were able to choose special Lebenslauffeste, substituting common Christian ceremonies such as baptisms, weddings and burials. Since the ceremonies were held in small private circles, it is unknown how many SS-members opted for these kind of celebrations.[65]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology_of_the_SS

From modest beginnings the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons), became a virtual state within a state in Nazi Germany, staffed by men who perceived themselves as the “racial elite” of Nazi future.

In the Nazi state, the SS assumed leading responsibility for security, identification of ethnicity, settlement and population policy, and intelligence collection and analysis. The SS controlled the German police forces and the concentration camp system. The SS conceived and implemented plans designed to restructure the ethnic composition of eastern Europe and the occupied Soviet Union.

From 1939, the SS assumed responsibility for “solving” the so-called Jewish Question; after 1941, its leadership planned, coordinated and directed the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question. This “solution” was the annihilation of the European Jews, which we now refer to as the Holocaust

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss

2 §1. The character and charism of the Society of Jesus arise from the Spiritual Exercises which our holy father Ignatius and his companions went through. Led by this experience, they formed an apostolic group rooted in charity, in which, after they had taken the vows of chastity and poverty and had been raised to the priesthood, they offered themselves as a HOLOCAUST to God,[2] so that serving as soldiers of God beneath the banner of the cross and serving the Lord alone and the Church his spouse under the Roman Pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth,[3] they would be sent into the entire world[4] for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine. [5]

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

[666] 6. 1On the side of the superior general, what will aid toward this union of hearts are the qualities of his person [G], to be treated in Part IX [723-25], with which he will perform his office, 2which is to be for all the members a head from which the influence required for the end sought by the Society ought to descend to them all. 3It is thus from the general as head that all authority of the provincials should flow, from the provincials that of the local superiors, and from the local superiors that of the individual members. 4And from this same head, or at least by his commission and approval, should likewise come the appointing of missions. And the same should apply to communicating the graces of the Society. 5For the more the subjects are dependent upon their superiors, the better will the love, obedience, and union among them be preserved."

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

"Head:

1. See Illness, mental

2. The superior general, head of the Society [666]"

page 463

The CONstitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

Revelation 13:18

New International Version

"18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[a] That number is 666."

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2013%3A18&version=NIV

BULL of Pope Boniface VIII promulgated November 18, 1302

For, according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is a law of the divinity that the lowest things reach the highest place by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back to order equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior. Hence we must recognize the more clearly that spiritual power surpasses in dignity and in nobility any temporal power whatever, as spiritual things surpass the temporal. This we see very clearly also by the payment, benediction, and consecration of the tithes, but the acceptance of power itself and by the government even of things. For with truth as our witness, it belongs to spiritual power to establish the terrestrial power and to pass judgement if it has not been good. Thus is accomplished the prophecy of Jeremias concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power: ‘Behold to-day I have placed you over nations, and over kingdoms‘ and the rest. Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: ‘The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man‘ [1 Cor 2:15]. This authority, however, (though it has been given to man and is exercised by man), is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him (Peter) and his successors by the One Whom Peter confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven‘ etc., [Mt 16:19]. Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13:2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings, which is false and judged by us heretical, since according to the testimony of Moses, it is not in the beginnings but in the beginning that God created heaven and earth [Gen 1:1]. Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff."

https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm

[529] C. 1The entire purport of this fourth vow of obedience to the pope was and is with regard to missions; 2and this is how the bulls should be understood where they speak of this obedience in all that the sovereign pontiff may command and wherever he may send one, and so on."

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus: a Roman work of the entire Society, 304 §2

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

LII-

THE INQUISITION IN MINUTE DETAIL: THE FIRST HOLOCAUST

Cruelties committed by the Inquisition. Those who survive the first tortures are tied dom upon their backs, a large cauldron turned upside down is placed upon their naked stomachs, with a number of large dormice underneath. A fire is lighted upon the top of the cauldron, which enrages the dormice; and as they are unable to creep under the edges of the cauldron, they burrow into the entrails of the victim

OR NEARLY SIX CENTURIES, WROTE PETER DE ROSSA. "Not one of the eighty popes (from the thirteenth century to nineteenth) said a word against the diabolical machinery of the inquisition, rather they cach added their own cruel touch to the awful machinery of death. The Church of Rome, at times, even waded through the blood of Roman Catholics to get to the Protestant "heretics."

THE

The real object of the Inquisition, it has been asserted. "was to discover errors in doctrine, to stop them from being propagated, and endeavour to enlighten and to win back those who had been perverted by the apostles of error." So says a Catholic apologist. We are even told that "the popes were obliged to employ stratagem in order to protect the penitent heretics from the merciless severity of the Inquisition." But, the fact is that the Holy See, in 1215 at the fourth Lateran Council, in the

1 Peter de Rossa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy (1988).

344

The Inquisition In Minute Detail...

third canon of that Council declared that "the heretics who are condemned shall be handed over to the secular arm, in order that they may receive their merited punishment," in the MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE MIDDLE AGES! Indeed, one historian, giving a detailed account of trials before the tribunals of the Inquisition, tell us that the civil punishment was only inflicted after the day of the Church's mock trial

called the Auto-da-fe ("Act of Faith").

In 1252, the pope even made a decree stipulating the exact details of how the prisoners of the Inquisition were to be tortured-including children from the age of twelve and upwards.

But for all its horrors, it was popish Spain that refined to an art the punishments Catholics invented to use against those who refused to accept their faith. In 1481, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. the Inquisition was provided with "a new code of regulations," giving it even more formidable powers:

It was then that it got the name of The Holy Office, and was superintended by a grand inquisitor-general and a council.

When the Holy Office had a heretic, or anyone suspected of being one, lafter being arrested, its agents stripped the accused person of all he had about his person, and took a detailed inventory of his clothing and furniture.... The money so seized, whether in gold or silver, belonged by right to the tribunal, and went to defray the costs of the procedure. These formalities over, the accused...was taken to prison.

Of prisons, the Inquisition had several kinds: 1st, the common prison, in which were confined persons accused merely of ordinary misdemeanour, and who, consequently, were allowed to communicate with their families and friends; 2nd, the prison of mercy or of penitence, which was set apart for those who were to be detained only temporarily; 3rd, the intermediate prison, reserved for those who had committed some ordinary delinquency which brought them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office; 4th, the secret prison, the inmates of which were kept in solitary confinement.

lon] the day of trial.... after a long interrogatory linterrogation). if the prisoner failed to avow his guilt, he was taken to the torture chamber, preceded by the Inquisitor and the four mystenous men in black.... Here he was again exhorted to abjure his errors, and, if these fresh entreaties were powerless to move lum, he was handed over to the torturer, who put him to the torture with one of the four agencies employed by justice-the cord, the scourge, fire, or water."

P. L. Jacob, (a Catholic) Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages, (London: Chapman & Hall, 1874), pp. 435-436.

345

CODEWORD BARBELÓN Bk 2

Reader, we cannot find expressions strong enough to characterise the brutish, raw violence to which the Church of Rome had recourse with a view to establishing her anti-christian 'religion. John Lothrop Modey, speaking of papal persecution in the Netherlands, says: "Upon February 16, 1568, a sentence of the Holy Office (the Inquisition) condenmed ALL the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics.... The mos concise death warrant that was ever framed. THREE MILLIONS of people, men, women and children, were sentenced to the scaffold..." Although not put into full effect, "Alva's contemporary Grotius states that 100,000 genuine martyrs suffered death in the Netherlands for conscience' sake. Gibbon declared that this number, executed in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries and of the Roman Empire."

More than fifty million members of the human family are estimated to have been slaughtered under the sanction of the Catholic Church (Dowling, History of Rome. Bk. 8). How could such a degraded, inhumane, barbaric system claim to be the religion of Jesus Christ? Where in the Bible does it say the life of the heretic should be taken?

In Rome today, you will find, on the outside the Lateran Church, a plaque depicting Pope Innocent VIII's 1487 order against the Christian Waldenses (Vaudois or Albigenses) in these words: "That abominable sect of malignant to be crushed like venomous snakes." Why? They would not accept the pope as their head. R. W. Thompson writes:

The Waldenses were burned; they were cast into damp and bomd dungeons; they were smothered in crowds in mountain cavems mothers and babes, and old men and women together; they were sen out into exile in the winter night, unclothed and unfed, to climb the snowy mountains; they were hurled over the rocks; their houses and lands were taken from them; their children were stolen to be indoctrinated with the religion which they abhorred. Rap individuals were sent among them to strip them of their propert persecute and exterminate them. Thousands... old men, wouse and children, WERE HUNG, QUARTERED, BROKEN UPON THE WHEEL, OR BURNED ALIVE and their property confiscated...

John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I (London:

John Chapman, 1856), part 3, chap. 2, p. 626.

4 W.L. Bruckman, THE GLORY OF BELGIUM (London, New York, Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton), see footnote on pp. 10-11.

5 John Dowling, History of Romanism (1871), Bk. 6, chap. 5: sect. 62. 6 R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power, op. cit., p. 416.

346

The Inquisition In Minute Detail...

In 1209 (July 22nd), Pope Innocent III caused the Waldenstan town of Beziers to be taken by assault and made a scene of terrible camage: his "crusaders gave no quarter-twenty thousand inhabitants were massacred without distinction of age or sex, and seven thousand were burnt in a church in which they had taken refuge."

In a few decades, hundreds of thousands of Waldenses dissenters were killed by the Pope's army. Two cities, of considerable size, Beziers (Braziers) and Carcasone, were destroyed; their occupants thrown from the top of high cliffs, hanged, DISEMBOWELED, PIERCED THROUGH REPEATEDLY, drowned, put out to be tom by dogs, burnt alive, and even crucified! One victim, "Paul Garnier was slowly sliced to pieces at Rora. Thomas Margueti was mutilated in an indescribable manner at Miraboco, and Susan Jaquin cut in bits at La Torre, Sara Rostagnol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and so left to perish on the road between Eyral and Lucerna. Anne Charbonnier was impaled and carried thus on a pike, AS A STANDARD, from San Giovanni to La Torre. Daniel Rambaud, at Paesano, had his nails torn off, then his fingers chopped off, then his feet and his hands, then his arms and his legs, with each successive refusal on his part to abjure the Gospel.... In June, 1556, Barthelemi Hector, of Poitiers, was burned at Turin, for having sold copies of the Bible to the shepherds of the Alps."

Said the same author. "On Saturday, 24th April, 1655, at four o'clock in the morning, the signal for a general massacre of the Vandois was given: Sick persons and old people, men and women, were burned alive in their houses, or hacked in pieces, or mutilated in horrible ways. or flayed alive, or exposed bound and dying to the sun's noontide heat, or to ferocious animals; some were stripped naked, bound up in the form of a ball... and then rolled over precipices... Next, alter massacre and abduction, came incendiarismr. monks and priests, and other zealous propagandists, went about with lighted torches and projectiles, burning down the houses.... lal sister had seen her brother's mouth filled with gunpowder, and the head then blown to atoms...." These people, "so simple, so Christian, were made a prey to the DEMON of popery, cruel in its superstition BEYOND THE CRUELTY OF THE

MOST BARBAROUS SAVAGES.

TP. L. Jacob, Military and Religious Life..., op. cit., p. 430. Alex Muston (transl.), A History of the Waldenses: The Israel of the Alps

2nd edn. (London: Ingram, Cooke, & Co., 1853), p. 46.

9 Ibid., p. 138.

347

CODEWORD BARBELON BK 2

I shall next quote from one who was intimately acquainted with the Inquisition, Don Juan Antonio Llorente, derived from orginal documents in the archives of the Supreme Tribunal and those of the Subterranean Tribunals of the Holy Office. I quote Llorente from his Critical History of the Inquisition in Spain, cited in page 207 of History of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. 1, by William H. Prescott

Don Juan Antonio Llorente is the only writer who has succeeded in completely lifting the veil from the dread mysteries of the Inquisition. It is obvious how very few could be competent to this task, since the proceed. ings of the Holy Office were shrouded in such impenetrable secrecy, that even the prisoners who were arraigned before it, as has been already stated, were kept in ignorance of their own processes. Even such of its functionaries, as have at different times pretended to give its transactions to the world, have confined themselves to an historical outline, with meagre notices of such parts of its internal discipline as might be safely disclosed to the public.

Llorente was secretary to the tribunal of Madrid from 1790 to 1792. His official station consequently afforded him every facility for an acquaint- ance with the most recondite affairs of the Inquisition; and, on its suppres sion at the close of 1808, he devoted several years to a careful investigation of the registers of the tribunals, both of the capital and the provinces, as well as of such other original documents contained within their archives, as had not hitherto been opened to the light of day.

Llorente thus speaks in his Preface:--

In order to write an exset history, it was necessary to be an Inquisitor, or Se entary of the Inquisition. In this way alone could be seen the bulls of the pope the orders of the kings, the decisions of the council of the Inquisition, the original trials and other papers of its archives. Perhaps I am the only one, who at the pre sent time can poss all of these documents. I was Secretary of the Inquisition of the Court of Madrid, in the years 1789, 1790, and 1791. I knew its establishment sofficiently to consider it vicious in its origin, constitution, and laws, in spite of the apologetic writings in its favour. I immediately devoted myself to the collection of papers, abridging the most voluminous, but copying literally all that was impert ant. My perseverance in this labour, and in that of collecting all the suppressed books and pamphlets that I could find among the depositories of former inquisitor provided me with a great sumber of interesting documents. I at last obtained the whole of the archives in 150), when the tribunal was abolished. I hope that I shall not be thought arrogant is mying, that I alone can satisfy the cariosity of th who wish to know the trae tory of the Inquisition of Spain. I merely mean, that supply in a great degree, my want of talent" I hop

In the early chapters of his work. Llorente gives a sketch of the ancient Inquisition, from its origin in 1203, down to the estab lishment of the modern tribunal by Ferdinand V. in 1481. Llo rente, with all his opportunities, was able to collect bat meagre details of the ancient Inquisition: its existence during the dark ages being unfavourable to critical inquiry.

348

The Inquisition In Minute Detail...

To begin to understand the scale of atrocity of the inquisitions, consider the career of Torquemada (1420-1498), Grand Inquisitor of Spain. During his 18- year term, well over 100,000 heresy cases were tried in Spain alone, of which 97.322 were imprisoned and/or lost their property, at least 90,000 were torrared (many to death) and 10.220 were burned. These are numbers so large they seem incredible, but which were given by Llorenie, the Spanish historian of the Imp sition, who was well-qualified to judge their accuracy. If we take only half of Torquemada's rate of 5975 victims per year (people imprisoned, robbed, tor tured or killed by the Church) and multiply it for the 6 major Western Christian powers (Spain, France. England, Germany, Italy, Slavic countries) over 500 years (roughly 1150-1650), we reach a figure of nearly 9,000,000 victims of the various inquisitions. This does not include groups slaughtered in Europe by crusaders, or by general decree. It also does not include those threatened, harassed, lynched or punished without trial, such as known Jews. These victims add millions more to the body count. We can easily say that Christian Inquisitions killed at least 10 million, and cruelly ruined the lives of at least 10 million more.

Sober reader, the Seventh chapter of Daniel has been precisely fulfilled in the Catholic Church: "The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth... and shall devour the whole earth.... tread it down, and break it to pieces."

I quote next Grattan Guiness Romanism and the Reformation, 1881:

Stay, I will take you to the Inquisition. You shall enter its gloomy portals; you shall walk through its dark passages; you shall stand in its infernal torture-chamber; you shall hear the cries of some of its victims; you shall listen to their very words. What agonies have been suffered in these somber vaults, unseen by any human eyes save those of fiendish inquisitors! What cries have been uttered in this dismal place which has never reached the open world in which we live. Locked doors shut them in; stone walls stifled them. No sound escaped, not even that of a faint and distant moan. But now and then a victim found release; one and another have come forth from the torture-chamber pale and tremblingly, maimed and mutilated, to tell the things they experienced when in the hands of the holy inquisitors. We shall call in some of these as witnesses.

This book is Limborch's History of the Inquisition. It tells the story of its origin seven hundred years ago.... it describes its ministers and methods, its vicars, assistants, notaries, judges, and other officials. It describes the power of the inquisitors, and their manner of proceeding. It unveils their dread tribunal; opens their blood-stained records; describes their dungeons, the secret tortures they unflicted. the extreme, merciless, unmitigated tortures, and also the public... burning of heretics. What a record! What a world of tyranny and intolerable anguish compressed into that one word-the Inquisition!

349

CODEWORD BARBELON Bk 2

Tyranny over the conscience! Men in the name of Jesus Christ stretching and straining, maiming and mangling their fellow men, to compel them to call light darkness, and darkness light. To bow down to man and worship him as God; to call the teaching of Chris beress, and the teachings of antichrist Divine! Tremendous was the power of that dread[ed] tribunal. In Spain and Portugal it completely crushed the Reformation. No secrets could be withheld from the inquisitors; hundreds of persons were often apprehended in one day, and in consequence... from their examinations under torture, thousands more were apprehended.

the inquisition [cells were filled and emptied again and ag torture-chamber was a hell. The most excruciating engines wer employed to dislocate the limbs of even tender women. Thousands were burned at the stake. The gospel was gagged and crushed....

"The place of torture," says a Spanish historian, quoted by Limborch, Page 217, "is generally an underground and very dri room.... There is a tribunal erected in it in which the inquisitor inspector, and secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be tortured brought in, the executioner, who is waiting for him, makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with a black linen garment down to his feet and tied close to his body. His head and face are all concealed with a long black carl, only two little holes being left in it for him to see through.

All this is intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror in mind and body, when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who thus looks like the very devil.

Today, the infallible Church of Rome would have us to believe that such atrocities were the product of darker, less civilized times and that she has changed. But if she has changed' WHAT WAS SHE BEFORE?

TORTURE BY Ut

For more, see Juan Antonio Llorente's Critical History of the Inquisition in Spain 189

350

"The Inquisition In Minute Detail: The First Holocaust"

Codeword Barbelon book Two

by P.D. Stuart

https://www.facebook.com/billy.dunn.50767/posts/pfbid023VqYNt4iwNSk8BREzesUxR1gPEDTrmnE648pn3nATw2NNfWCjamzEtr9zdXMcftkl

What the Bible says about Holocaust

(From Forerunner Commentary)

Ezekiel 9:4

In order to sigh and cry successfully, we must believe God. This is vital! In this context, it means that we need to believe how He defines sin. For instance, we must never come to think that "weeping for Tammuz" (Ezekiel 8:13-14) is really not all that bad. God calls it an abomination! If He calls it that, that is exactly what it is, and we need to accept His definition.

To use a more contemporary example, many "good" folk in the world observe Christmas, sincerely believing that they are worshipping God. They will actually say, "This is how I worship God," but we understand that how they worship God does not amount to a hill of beans! Only God can define how we are to worship Him, and it is for us to follow Him and act accordingly. We need, then, not just to know the law, but also to believe that it defines sin for all time.

Some people can see sin right before their eyes, they can hear it around them, they can live amidst it, but they can never sigh and cry over it because they refuse to allow God's law to be the standard of their behavior. History is replete with examples of this, but we will look only at one. Who of the Jewish leadership—except for Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and perhaps a few others—sighed and cried over the perpetration of an illegal trial that resulted in Christ's death?

In John 16:20, where He is speaking to His disciples on the evening before His crucifixion, Jesus says, "Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice." The world, rejecting God's standards, rejoices at injustice and sin. Human nature can and does rationalize large-scale sin and social injustice, such as the Holocaust, sin that fills the land with vast violence. It can simply rationalize such atrocities on racial, economic, and religious grounds.

We in God's church must come to avoid partiality, mentioned in Leviticus 19:15, as we interpret the news and the social injustices that we see around us. After all, God did not ask Ezekiel to identify Israel's sins in his tour of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 8. God identified the sin for him, even when it was committed in secret. God calls out the sins in His Word, defining the abominations in His law, and we need to know those laws and believe that they are indeed sin. And we need to cry and sigh.

Charles Whitaker

The Torment of the Godly (Part Two)

Joel 2:1-29

As one reads Joel, it is important to catch the changes in verb tense and in chronology. The first chapter describes a historical locust plague, one of such magnitude that the prophet sees it as a punishment from God and urges the people to fast and repent before God. Chapter 2 moves on to God's army of locusts, speaking of them in the present tense. It is easy to see the depictions of the locust plague as the testimony of a person who actually witnessed the calamity. The description is immediately followed by another call to repent from God Himself (Joel 2:12-17).

Then, in verse 18, the tense of the verb changes from present to future tense. This is significant because it signals that the locust plague of chapters 1 and 2 is a type of something similar in the end time. The language changes slightly to describe the future fulfillment, and the reader has to understand that it applies only in type to the historical fulfillment. By the time we read the end of Joel 2, the focus is primarily on the future event. In fact, the locust plague of ancient Judah is almost entirely forgotten.

We can see this in verses 26-29. In the first two of those verses, Joel writes about the post-restoration people of God: “My people shall never be put to shame.” This cannot be true of the ancient Jews, who have repeatedly been put to shame down through the centuries. The history of the Jews has been a litany of distrust, accusation, oppression, exile, exclusion, and even holocaust. Clearly, Joel is looking far into the future.

Mike Fuhrer

What Is Joel 2 Really About?

Revelation 16:13-14

When this occurs, the human beings involved in these decisions will have no idea that they are being influenced by spirit beings. Satan and his demons are invisible and accomplish their work by broadcasting attitudes and putting thoughts in people's minds. These thoughts and attitudes seem normal and natural to the people involved, yet their result is utterly inhuman and unnatural, such as the Holocaust, the Inquisition, "the killing fields," "ethnic cleansing," "total war," and the like. What has occurred throughout all of human history will happen again.

It has been said that human history is little more than a chronicle of man's wars. These wars are the result of men being influenced by invisible, evil spirit beings ever since Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out from the presence of God (Genesis 3:22-24). No people and no generation have ever been immune from Satan's attempts to keep men separated from God.

Earl L. Henn

The Great Conspiracy

Revelation 20:10

To understand Revelation 20:10 correctly, we must put it into its proper chronological context. Once we know when it occurs, much of the confusion about this verse clears up.

Though only twelve verses separate Revelation 19:20 from 20:10, one thousand years elapse between their respective events. The Beast and the False Prophet are cast into the Lake of Fire when Christ returns (Revelation 19:11-21). Soon afterward, a strong angel imprisons Satan in the bottomless pit for the thousand years of the Millennium (Revelation 20:1-3). When the thousand years are about to pass, Satan is released, and he gathers Gog and Magog to fight against the saints (verses 7-9). After God defeats this futile attempt, He casts the Devil, a spirit being, into the Lake of Fire to “be tormented forever and ever” (verse 10).

Obviously, the flames of the Lake of Fire will utterly consume mortal men like the Beast and False Prophet. The apostle Peter describes the end-time fire as an all-devouring holocaust: “[T]he elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (II Peter 3:10). In no way could the Beast and False Prophet survive a thousand years of such high-temperature burning! The laws of nature simply will not allow it.

The translators of the King James and New King James versions render the final clause of the first sentence of Revelation 20:10 as “where the beast and the false prophet are.” The present-tense verb “are” is not in the Greek text; it is an understood verb. In English grammar, such silent verbs take the same tense as the verb in the main clause of the sentence. The translators ignored this rule, however. The primary verb of the sentence, “was cast” (an aorist verb usually translated as simple past tense), demands that the understood verb should be “were [cast]” (past tense) to agree with the plural subject “the beast and the false prophet.”

Deceived by the unbiblical doctrine of the immortal soul, the translators had to deny nature and break the rules to make this verse fit their understanding! On the other hand, we can confidently assert that our teaching agrees with Scripture, nature, and grammar.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh

https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/2135/Holocaust.htm

John 16

1599 Geneva Bible

16 1 He foretelleth the disciples of persecution. 7 He promiseth the Comforter, and declareth his office. 21 He compareth the affliction of his, to a woman that travaileth with child.

1 These [a]things have I said unto you, that ye should not be offended.

2 They shall excommunicate you: yea the time shall come, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doeth God service.

3 And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.

4 But these things have I told you, that when the hour shall come, ye might remember, that I told you them. And these things said I not unto you from the beginning, because I was with you.

5 But now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?

6 But because I have said these things unto you, your hearts are full of sorrow.

7 [b]Yet I tell you the truth, It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, that Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart, I will send him unto you,

8 [c]And when he is come, he will [d]reprove the [e]world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.

9 Of sin, because they believed not in me:

10 Of [f]righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye shall see me no more.

11 Of [g]judgment, [h]because the prince of this world is judged.

12 [i]I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

13 Howbeit, when he is come which is the spirit of truth, he will lead you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, shall he speak, and he will show you the things to come.

14 [j]He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.

15 All things that the Father hath, are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and show it unto you.

16 [k]A [l]little while, and ye shall not see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me: [m]for I go to the Father.

17 Then said some of his disciples among themselves, What is this that he saith unto us, A little while, and ye shall not see me, and again a little while, and ye shall see me, and, For I go to the Father.

18 They said therefore, What is this that he saith, A little while? we know not what he saith.

19 Now Jesus knew that they would ask him, and said unto them, Do ye inquire among yourselves, of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me?

20 Verily, verily I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, and the world shall rejoice, and ye shall sorrow, but your sorrow shall be turned to joy.

21 A woman when she travaileth hath sorrow because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

22 And ye now therefore are in sorrow: but I will see you again, and your hearts shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from you.

23 And in that day shall ye ask me nothing. Verily, verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name, he will give it you.

24 Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my Name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.

25 [n]These things have I spoken unto you in parables: but the time will come, when I shall no more speak to you in parables: but I shall show you plainly of the Father.

26 [o]At that day shall ye ask in my Name, and I say not unto you, that I will pray unto the Father for you:

27 For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.

28 I am come out from the Father, and came into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father.

29 [p]His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and thou speakest no parable.

30 Now know we that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee. By this we believe, that thou art come out from God.

31 Jesus answered them, Do you believe now?

32 [q]Behold, the hour cometh, and is already come, that ye shall be scattered every man into his own, and shall leave me alone: But I am not alone: for the Father is with me.

33 [r]These things have I spoken unto you, that [s]in me ye might have peace: in the world ye shall have affliction, but be of good comfort: I have overcome the world.

Footnotes

John 16:1 The ministers of the Gospel must look for all manner of reproaches, not only of them which are open enemies, but even of them also which seem to be of the same household, and the very pillars of the Church.

John 16:7 The absence of Christ, according to the flesh, is profitable to the Church, that we may wholly depend upon his spiritual power.

John 16:8 The Spirit of God worketh so mightily by the preaching of the word, that he constraineth the world, will it, nill it, to confess its own unrighteousness, and Christ’s righteousness and almightiness.

John 16:8 He will so reprove the world, that the worldlings shall be able to present no excuse.

John 16:8 He respecteth the time that followed his ascension, when as all gainsayers were manifestly reproved through the pouring out of the holy Ghost upon the Church: So that the very enemies of Christ were reproved of sin, in that they were constrained to confess that they were deceived, in that they believed not, and therefore they said to Peter, Acts 2, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

John 16:10 Of Christ himself: For when the world shall see, that I have poured out the holy Ghost, they shall be constrained to confess that I was just, and was not condemned of my Father, when I went out of this world.

John 16:11 Of that authority and power, which I have both in heaven and earth.

John 16:11 That is, because they shall then understand and know indeed, that I have overcome the devil, and do govern the world, when all men shall see, that they set themselves against you in vain, for I will arm you with that heavenly power, whereby you may destroy every high thing which is lifted up against the knowledge of God, 2 Cor. 10:12.

John 16:12 The doctrine of the Apostles proceeded from the holy Ghost, and is most perfect.

John 16:14 The holy Ghost bringeth no new doctrine, but teacheth that which was uttered by Christ’s own mouth, and imprinteth it in our minds.

John 16:16 The grace of the holy Ghost is a most lively glass, wherein Christ is truly beholden with the most sharpsighted eyes of faith, and not with the bleared eyes of the flesh: whereby we feel a continual joy even in the midst of sorrows.

John 16:16 When a little time is once past.

John 16:16 For I pass to eternal glory, so that I shall be much more present with you, than I was before: for then you shall feel indeed what I am, and what I am able to do.

John 16:25 The holy Ghost which was poured upon the Apostles after the Ascension of Christ, instructed both them in all chiefest mysteries and secrets of our salvation, and also by them the Church, and will also instruct it to the end of the world.

John 16:26 The sum of the worship of God, is the invocation of the Father in the Name of the Son the Mediator, who is already heard for us, for whom he hath abased himself, and is now also glorified.

John 16:29 Faith and foolish security differ very much.

John 16:32 Neither the wickedness of the world, neither the weakness of his own can diminish anything of the virtue of Christ.

John 16:33 The surety and stay of the Church dependeth only upon the victory of Christ.

John 16:33 That in me you might be thoroughly quieted. For by (peace) is meant in this place, that quiet state of mind, which is clean contrary to disquietness and heaviness.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2016&version=GNV

Search This Blog

Protestant Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus

China’s Top Drone Maker Removes Security Features at a Very Weird Time

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fox News Host Faults 'The Native Americans' for California Fires

Raoul and The Kings of Spain

Why Trump can’t build iPhones in the US