The True Meaning of Easter

When Joseph got the message from the Spirit that he must take his family and flee Bethlehem, he took them to Egypt. I have been to Egypt 4 times, and each time I visited the town where Jesus grew up. Abydos is home to Seti I, but it was not built by accident in this location. Seti sent his engineers out for years to find the even more ancient structure known as the Osirion. Some say it is at least 10 thousand years old, built around the same time as the Pyramids in Giza. It is built on a spring and is constantly flooded with fresh water. It’s excavation was begin in 1913, but was really taken to the industrial level when Hanny El Zeini was appointed to take over the operation.

Still, although the manager of a large sugar processing plant, the work was going slowly because he did not know where to lok for everything. That is until the enigmatic Dorothy Eady showed up. Dorothy Louise Eady, also known as Omm Sety or Om Seti (16 January 1904 – 21 April 1981), was Keeper of the Abydos Temple of Seti I and draughtswoman for the Department of Egyptian Antiquities. She is especially well known for her belief that in a previous life she had been a priestess in Ancient Egypt, as well as her considerable historical research at Abydos. Her life and work has been the subject of many articles, television documentaries, biographies. A New York Times article described her life story as "one of the Western World's most intriguing and convincing modern case histories of reincarnation."

During her early period she reported night time visitations by an apparition of Hor-Ra. He slowly dictated to her, over a twelve-month period, the story of her previous life. [15] The story took up around seventy pages of cursive hieroglyphic text. It described the life of a young woman in Ancient Egypt, called Bentreshyt, who had reincarnated in the person of Dorothy Eady.[16] Bentreshyt ("Harp of Joy") is described in this text as being of humble origin, her mother a vegetable seller and her father a soldier during the reign of Seti I (c.1290 BC to 1279 BC).[15] When she was three, her mother died, and she was placed in the temple of Kom el-Sultan because her father couldn't afford her. There, she was brought up to be a priestess.[15] When she was twelve years old the High Priest asked her if she wished to go out into the world or stay and become a consecrated virgin. In the absence of full understanding and without a practical alternative, she took the vows.[15]

During the next two years, she learned her role in the annual drama of Osiris's passion and resurrection, a role that only virgin priestesses consecrated to Isis could perform.[17] One day Seti I visited and spoke to her. They became lovers, eating "the uncooked goose", an Ancient Egyptian term that has been compared to "eating the forbidden fruit." When Bentreshyt became pregnant she told the High Priest who the father was. The High Priest informed her that the gravity of the offence against Isis was so terrible that death would be the most likely penalty at a trial.[18] Unwilling to face the public scandal for Seti, she committed suicide rather than face trial.[19]

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On 3 March 1956, the fifty-two-year-old Omm Sety left for Abydos.[30] She set up home in Arabet Abydos, which sits in the cradle of the mountain Pega-the-Gap. The Ancient Egyptians believed this mountain led to Amenti and the afterlife. It was here that she began to be called 'Omm Sety', because it was customary in Egyptian villages to refer to a mother by the name of her eldest child.[31]

Abydos had an special significance for her, because it is where she believed Bentryshyt had lived and served in the Temple of Seti.[32] She had made short pilgrimages to the site before, during which she had demonstrated her advanced knowledge. At one of these trips to the temple, the chief inspector from the Antiquities Department, who knew about her claims, had decided to test her by asking her to stand at particular wall paintings in complete darkness. She was instructed to identify them based on her prior knowledge as a temple priestess. She completed the task successfully, even though the painting locations had not yet been published at this time.[33]

She spent the first two years listing and translating pieces from a recently excavated temple palace. Her work was incorporated into Edourard Ghazouli's monograph "The Palace and Magazines Attached to the Temple of Sety I at Abydos". He expressed particular thanks to her in this work and was impressed by the skills she showed in translation of enigmatic texts, along with other members of the Antiquities Department.[34] In 1957, she wrote out a liturgical calendar of feast days based on Ancient Egyptian texts.

On reaching the age of sixty in 1964, Omm Sety was faced with mandatory retirement by the Antiquities Department and advised to seek part-time work in Cairo.[68] She went to Cairo, but only stayed one day before returning to Abydos. The Antiquities Department decided to make an exception to their retirement age rules and allowed her to continue her work at Abydos for a further five years, until she retired in 1969. [68] Her $30 a month pension was supplemented by needlework sold to friends and tourists, who also brought gifts of clothes, food, and reading materials.

What was the ceremony that was done at Abydos in Jesus’ day? It was called the Passion. It was the death and resurrection of Osiris. Jesus watched it every year during his youth. When he was a late teenager, he left to visit the countries to the East. Tibet, Nepal, and other countries record him visiting there. He learned from them, yes, but the legend says he taught there as well. His message of one God was rejected, but he was a powerful being and was a healer and great student.

When he was 30, he returned to the area around Jerusalem, arriving first in the New Testament at the river Jordan where his cousin, John was baptizing people. John’s message was well received by the Zoroastrians of the region. This began his mission of three years. It is important to note that certain things had to be done, even by Jesus, the world’s only sinless being. He had to learn perfection and become complete, just like you do.

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He left the baptism and went into the desert to fast and pray, and to commune directly with the Father. No matter what any person will tell you, Jesus and his Father…our Father…are two separate and distinct beings with their own personalities. If you have a different tradition than this, that is fine. Hear me out, and then when you die you will see that I am correct. Until then, listen carefully and search your heart to see if these words are not true.

In the desert, he received many things, and I am not going to discuss the temptations as they are not my message tonight. But, he did meet someone else very important.

5:2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.

3. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.

4. And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.

5. So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee.

6. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec.

7. Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;

8. Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;

9. And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;

10. Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchizedec.

So, in order to understand what this means, you must think about how Aaron got his priesthood, and how then the Melchizedec priesthood was bestowed. It is given in each dispensation by the last key holder of that priesthood from the last dispensation. It has always been done this way, and not man can change this. So, who gave Jesus this priesthood by the laying on of hands?

HEB 7:1 For this Melchizedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him;

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HEB 7:2 To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace;

HEB 7:3 Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.

HEB 7:4 Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.

Who was he? None other than the king of Jeru-Salem. Now, the story goes that Nir, Noah’s younger brother, was several hundred years old as was his wife. He was a high priest, and as such had temple duties that required him to practice celibacy while he was serving. This can last for several years.

Behold, the wife of Nir, whose name was Sopanim, being sterile and never having at any time given birth to a child by Nir -

Sopanim was in the time of her old age and in the day of her death. She conceived in her womb, but Nir the priest had not slept with her. From the day that that The Lord had appointed him to conduct the liturgy in front of the face of the people.

When Sopanim saw her pregnancy, she was ashamed and embarrassed, and she hid herself during all the days until she gave birth. Not one of the people knew about it. When 282 days had been completed, and the day of birth had begun to approach, Nir remembered his wife, he called her to himself in his house, so that he might converse with her.

Sopanim came to Nir, her husband; and, behold, she was pregnant, and the day appointed for giving birth was drawing near. Nir saw her and became very ashamed. He said to her, "What is this that you have done, O wife? Why have you disgraced me in front of the face of these people? Now, depart from me and go where you began the disgrace of your womb, so that I might not defile my hand on account of you, and sin in front of The Face of The Lord."

Sopanim spoke to her husband, Nir, saying, "O my lord! Behold, it is the time of my old age, the day of my death has arrived. I do not understand how my menopause and the barrenness of my womb have been reversed." . Nir did not believe his wife, and for the second time he said to her, "Depart from me, or else I might assault you, and commit a sin in front of the face of The Lord."

And it came to pass, when Nir had spoken to his wife, Sopanim, that Sopanim fell down at Nir's feet and died. Nir was extremely distressed and said in his heart, "Could this have happened because of my word? And now, merciful is The Eternal Lord, because my hand was not upon her."

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The archangel Gabriel appeared to Nir, and said to him, "Do not think that your wife Sopanim has died because of your error, but this child, which is to be born of her is a righteous fruit, and one whom I shall receive into paradise, so that you will not be the father of a gift of God."

Nir hurried and shut the door of his house. He went to Noah, his brother, and he reported to him everything that had happened in connection with his wife. Noah hurried to the room of his brother. The appearance of his brother's wife was in death and her womb was at the time of giving birth.

Noah said to Nir, "Don't let yourself be sorrowful, Nir, my brother! For The Lord today has covered up our scandal, in that nobody from the people knows this. Now let us go quickly and bury her, and The Lord will cover up the scandal of our shame." They placed Sopanim on the bed, wrapped her around with black garments, and shut the door. They dug a grave in secret.

When they had gone out toward the grave, a child came out from the dead Sopanim and sat on the bed at her side. Noah and Nir came in to bury Sopanim and they saw the child sitting beside the dead Sopanim, wiping his clothing. Noah and Nir were very terrified with a great fear, because the child was fully developed physically, he spoke with his lips and blessed The Lord.

Noah and Nir looked at him closely, saying, "This is from The Lord, my brother." And behold the badge of priesthood was on his chest, and it was glorious in appearance. Noah said to Nir, "Behold, God is renewing the priesthood from blood related to us, just as He pleases.."

Noah and Nir hurried and washed the child, they dressed him in the garments of the priesthood, and they gave him bread to eat and he ate it. And they called him Melchizedek .

Noah and Nir lifted up the body of Sopanim, divested her of the black garments, and washed her. They clothed her in exceptionally bright garments and built a grave for her. Noah, Nir, and Melchizedek came and they buried her publicly. Noah said to his brother Nir, "Look after this child in secret until the time, because people will become treacherous in all the earth, they will begin to turn away from God, and having become totally ignorant, and in some way when they see him, they will put him to death."

Then Noah went away to his own place, and behold, great lawlessness began to become abundant over all the earth in the days of Nir. And Nir began to worry excessively about the child saying, "What will I do with him?" And stretching out his hands toward heaven, Nir called out to The Lord, saying, "How miserable it is for me, Eternal Lord, that all lawlessness has begun to become abundant over all the earth in my days! And I realize how much nearer our end is, on account of the lawlessness of the people. And now, Lord, what is the vision about this child, and what is his destiny, or what will I do for him, so that he too will not be joined with us in this destruction?"

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The Lord heeded Nir and appeared to him in a night vision. And He said to him, "Behold already, Nir, the great lawlessness which has come about on the earth, which I shall not tolerate anymore. Behold, I plan not to send down a great destruction onto the earth. But, concerning the child, do not worry, Nir; because I, in a short while, will send My archangel Gabriel. And he will take the child and put him in the paradise of Edem.

He will not perish along with those who must perish. As I have revealed it, Melchizedek will be My priest to all holy priests, I will sanctify him and I will establish him so that he will be the head of the priests of the future."

Nir arose from his sleep and blessed The Lord, Who had appeared to him saying:

Blessed be The Lord, The God of my fathers,

Who has not condemned my priesthood

and the priesthood of my fathers,

because by His Word, He has created a great priest

in the womb of Sopanim, my wife.

For I have no descendants.

So let this child take the place of my descendants and become as my

own son, and You will count him in the number of your servants."

"Therefore honor him together with your servants and great priests and me your servant, Nir. And behold, Melchizedek will be the head of priests in another generation. I know that great confusion has come and in confusion this generation will come to an end, and everyone will perish, except that Noah, my brother, will be preserved for procreation. From his tribe, there will arise numerous people, and Melchizedek will become the head of priests reigning over a royal people who serve You, O Lord."

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It happened when the child had completed 40 days in Nir's tent, The Lord said to the archangel Gabriel, "Go down onto the earth to Nir the priest, and take the child Melchizedek, who is with him. Place him in the paradise of Edem for preservation. For the time is already approaching, and I will pour out all the water onto the earth, and everything that is on the earth will perish. And I will raise it up again, and Melchizedek

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will be the head of the priests in that generation." And Gabriel hurried, and came flying down when it was night, and Nir was sleeping on his bed that night. Gabriel appeared to him and said to him, "Thus says The Lord: 'Nir! Restore the child to me whom I entrusted to you.' "

Nir did not realize who was speaking to him and his heart was confused. And he said, "When the people find out about the child, then they will seize him and kill him, because the heart of these people are deceitful in front of The Face of The Lord." And he answered Gabriel and said, "The child is not with me, and I don't know who is speaking to me."

Gabriel answered him, "Do not be frightened, Nir! I am the archangel Gabriel. The Lord sent me and behold, I shall take your child today. I will go with him and I will place him in the paradise of Edem.”

In the desert, while Jesus was praying and fasting, it was none other than Melchizedec who came and physically laid his hands upon the Son of God to give him the priesthood with which he acted for the rest of his existence. It was this high priest who cared for the bones of Adam and Eve, ruled Salem, and gave the priesthood to the Son.

Now, my message tonight is not about the life of Jesus, but you needed to know where he came from, where he lived, what he was doing between the ages of 2 and 30. Very little happened during his 3 year mission that he did not expect, nor for which he was not prepared. His mission was known to Him because He was in constantly improving communication with His Father in heaven.

I want to share with you the events of the day of His arrest until the day of His Resurrection. Most Christian traditions focus on the crucifixion, but avoid the resurrection. I think when you hear this, you will change your mind to agree with me. I no longer have faith in this. No, I do not. Faith is for things that you do not know. I know this to be true, and you may not. Yet.

The Last Supper

Now it is important to know just how big the Passover supper was, and how many people came from all over the world to be there in Jerusalem for it. Add to that the many thousands who knew who he was and what he had done to the wicked priests who had corrupted temple worship to a very profitable business. Jesus had declared that very week, as he tossed the money changers out a second time, that “My house shall not be a den of thieves.”

My house is a powerful claim, and absolutely infuriated the priesthood leadership of Jerusalem. The people had three thoughts about this man.

He was the Messiah and would lead them in victory to defeat the Romans and the wicked church leaders.

He was the Messiah and could heal them of all their poverty of overthrow the rich

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He was on the wrong side of the church, but it didn’t matter to them. They would hold back to make sure they ended up on the winning side.

The fact that there were so many people in Jerusalem, the temple leadership simply could not sacrifice enough lambs to provide meat for everyone. There were thousands of houses that had supper going on. Lamb meat is a delicacy and especially the wealthy had to have generous portions to feed their gluttonous families and friends who they were entertaining. Think of Thanksgiving dinner, and you get the idea. Who is thankful? Not many, but they will have a turkey nonetheless, right?

So the meal was spread over two nights. The Paschal supper was the first night, and the main feast was the night of the 15th day after the full Moon. The offering had to be made before a quorum of 30 (Pesahim 64b). In the Temple, the Levites sang Hallel while the priests performed the sacrificial service. In those days, there simply was not enough room in the Temple for all the lambs and goats.

Jesus called for his Last Supper on the First Night. Before they consumed the meal, some important things took place.

Jesus taught that in order to be a good master, you must first be a good servant. In fact, a master should act as a servant of the people, not to practice unrighteous dominion. It nauseates me when rulers of our day call themselves public servants. They are the dross of humanity. They feast themselves on the labor of the middle class and are lap dogs to the wealthy.

The end result is something like a factory inside the temple grounds working around the clock to sacrifice lambs. The reason Jesus has his last supper on this night, instead of the official night will soon be made clear.

Before the supper could take place, Jesus takes off his outer garments down to his girdle and begins washing the feet of the Apostles.

John 13:14 "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15: For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. 16: Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. 17: If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them."

I really don’t think it is vital that you know the importance of this ordinance of washing to understand Easter, but it is important that all masters, bosses, husbands, fathers, etc learn the lesson here that there is no power given to you to lord over anyone, except by Satan. The power from God is to serve more people than yourself. The more people you serve, the greater your station in heaven.

The symbols of the last supper itself are clear enough. You eat the bread and drink the wine as a replacement of the lamb at the meal. Passover is completed here. The whole reason for the Passover was being made clear in the next 72 hours. You don’t

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keep framing the building after it has been painted and the certificate of occupancy has been issued. Jesus was the Passover, get it?

Now, they are full and tired and they go up and out of the city to the garden on the hill known as Gethsemane. It has ancient olive trees there, and it is a good place to be alone to pray with a magnificent view of the city. The Sanhedrin, sort of the CIA of the church, want to take him when he is alone, rather than in public where he is very popular.

In the Garden, Jesus divides his 11 remaining Apostles, as Judas was off doing his betrayal with the Sanhedrin, into two groups. 8 are left in the outer area to pray. Peter, James, and John were transfigured and were given the higher priesthood by Jesus hands directly. They went deeper into the Garden with him. He tasks them to pray as well to help him. Jesus goes still deeper into the darkness of the Garden, as the Moon is waning now to near newness.

The process of weighing the sins of the whole world upon him begins. This is vital to the whole atonement. He is the lamb. Like the lamb in the Passover, the sins are laid upon him, and then he will be slain for those sins, and then the sins will be taken from the sinner who consumes the meal of that slain lamb. The physical and spiritual pain is enormous, enough to cause him to bleed from his pores. Now, some say he bled from every pore. Obviously, this is not so, for when he came out to awaken Peter James and John to help him pray, they would have said, “What happened to you? You’re covered in Blood!”

This process took some hours, and even friends as angels who knew him and supported him came through the veil to comfort him, but it was not enough. When this process was as complete as it could be, he emerged in some form of composure to awaken the rest. He could sense the guards coming up the hill to get him.

John 18:3 Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.John 18:4 Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?John 18:5 They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.John 18:6 As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.John 18:7 Then asked he them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth.John 18:8 Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way:

At that moment, the anger in the crowd spills over.John 18:10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.

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John 18:11 Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?In Luke 22:50 it is added: And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.Luke 22:51 51And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him.

Then, he lets them up off the ground, and they are allowed to take him. But, imagine their thoughts. “Hey, this man held me to the ground like a child without even touching me. I am going to arrest him? With what power?”

They try him illegally overnight, and plan their method of public humiliation to bring his popularity to an end. We see this every day in US politics. The CIA works this plan all over the world with whores, drugs, bribery, and campaign contributions. If that does not work, they just assassinate the leader they want replaced. Simple and effective, especially when they are the ones doing the autopsy, the burial, and get to write the history and news briefs.

The following morning they take him to their weak governor, Pontius Pilate. He needs the Sanhedrin, and they are well aware of it. So, they get him to do their bidding by their craft of wickedness, the same as it is done in Washington today. Congress is weak and corrupt beyond measure, so much so that the president does not even speak to them anymore, unless it is to order them to do something.

What the Sanhedrin do not know, is that behind the peon governor is a very sharp wife. She has had a series of dreams that she shares with her husband. She is trying to save him from being manipulated by the Sanhedrin, who she knows will trick her husband and then betray him as a Roman enemy. She tells Pontius not to harm Jesus, for he is a good man that has done only good, and the Sanhedrin and especially the Pharisees, the rule of law folks, hate him for it and want him dead.

Pontius thinks himself clever, and denies a hearing, as the Sanhedrin make the legal error of saying he is from Galilee, under the jurisdiction of a lower court in Antipas. Off the Sanhedrin go to dot the legal “i.” Antipas mocks Jesus with requests for parlor tricks which Jesus denies. Antipas sends him back to the governor.

Now, Pontius has a dilemma. He uses the law and local customs to try to get out of killing Jesus. He uses a local custom, because it is Passover, to allow the people to choose a prisoner to free. He knows Jesus is immensely popular. He knows another terrorist, Barabbas, is a killer and a dangerous man. He allows the people a choice between the two to free.

The local Jews are as weak then as they are today. They look around and see the bejeweled Sanhedrin and their large phylacteries, and wait to see what they say. When one of them shouts, “Barabbas,” then they all know what to chant to be sure they are

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still in good standing with the church. Pontius can scarcely believe his ears, or the unbelievable weakness of the Jews in the crowd.

Matt 27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made , he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying , I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.Matt 27:25 Then answered all the people, and said , His blood be on us, and on our children.

And believe me, it was.

Pontius tried one last thing to prevail upon the mercy of the people to spare this innocent man. He had him scourged. Some scriptures say flogged, but this is not the case. Scourging killed most men. When well laid on, the bits of metal tied into the leather strips would lay the flesh open. They poured salt on it to keep it from getting infected, but if you have ever been to this land, you would know that any wound could kill you, even today. He thought that if he lived, they would lose their thirst for his blood, and let him go.

His hope was in vane, because the church wanted him dead to stop the prophesy of the Messiah. Why? Because Jesus had not come to overthrow the Romans and put them back in charge. In fact, since the moment Jesus arrived, he sought to discredit them and their genealogies and their high offices. They had enough, and they meant to have the Romans kill him before the Sabbath.

Now, it is important to know why crucifixion was used by the Romans, and why the crosses were placed on the hill called Golgotha. Pilgrims coming to town for business or worship needed to know the wrath of the Romans would be swift, if they tried to make trouble. There was only a small garrison there in Jerusalem, even though there were millions of Jews. The price for insurrection was on display for visitors to see to stop this in advance.

Have you ever seen the billboards on the freeways? How about for DUI? “He just blew $10,000.” Or seat belts laws. “Click it or ticket.” That one costs you $430 in North Carolina. How do you feel when you see a man in black with body armor, a loaded 40 caliber automatic, stun gun, baton, and black sunglasses walking into your store? Or when a cop car pulls in behind you? You see? One cop can keep the peace in a crowd of thousands, because everyone knows what will happen if anyone raises a finger to defend themselves against anything he wants to do.

Hundreds of thousands of criminals had been crucified on that hill. The holes in the stone had been used so many times that the area stunk of death and baked blood and flies. Most people diverted their eyes and made sure to stay completely silent and invisible around Roman guards. Women did not have much to fear, for most Roman soldiers were homosexual. It had been a method of maintaining discipline and ensuring men would worship their bodies with muscle and endurance and fight to the death. To

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this very day, ISIS and other terror groups will rape and kill anyone who tempts them. It is a powerful and ancient Satanic initiation to become part of their ranks.

Yes, that is right. All ISIS soldiers have been sodomized by the group to be granted the right to fight with them. It completes the sale of their soul to Satan. It is rumored that Skull and Bones and the highest criminal gangs in DC and in the banks succumb to the same rite of passage. Now you know why they will not betray unto death. Because they have been sodomized to seal their oath. Ambassador Chris Stevens was raped to death by mercenaries to flaunt their obedience to Hillary’s order that he not live to tell about the laundering of Libya’s weapons to Al Qaeda forces in Syria. Sending her server to the bottom of Potomac River in blatant disregard of Congressman Gowdy’s subpoena assures she will never reveal the abomination of what she did in Benghazi. As long as that secret is safe, she will be crowned as the next president of the United States.These heinous acts serve as modern day crucifixes. People fear death. Men and women such as these rule by fear. So they use the fear of death to control the masses. It has worked for thousands of years.

Then, as now, this tactic was used in the area of heresy against the church. Oh, the church has changed a little. Now, we worship the government. Then, they worshipped the church leadership. We have separated church and state. Now, there is only one church and one religion that is allowed. In this church, there is no such thing as holy matrimony, and children have replaced lambs in the sacrificial rites.

And so the people shouted all the louder for Jesus to be crucified as an example that no man can aspire to actually be the Messiah.

Now, it is important to note another Roman rule for the road toward Golgotha. No men were allowed to congregate along the way. This was highly illegal and you could be slain by the sword for entertainment if you were caught in any kind of group. The same as today. Gathering without a permit will get your head bashed in and an arrest on your record. You get arrested for this, you lose many rights; you cannot carry and conceal a weapon. You cannot get a Visa to leave the country, you may be placed on a limited fly list, and you will have your bank accounts scanned for cash deposits and withdrawals.

Only women were allowed to line the road, and weep and wail. This was fine. So it is understandable that when Jesus finally collapsed after being up all night, being scourged, and then forced to drag a wooden cross the top of the hill, it was a pilgrim named Simon who was conscribed to carry the cross for him. He was alone. He was handy. No Roman was going to carry the stinking wood stained with the blood of hundreds of other men.

Now there is a certain anonymity that is afforded a soldier. You’re in uniform. You’re following orders. No one knows your name. You have been taught that the enemy is not human. You have been trained to know that only disorder and failure to follow orders will cause the government to collapse. You know that your brothers depend

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upon you doing your job, to protect their lives as well. In this case, your soldier brother may also be your lover.

The Romans had therefore perfected the art of crucifixion. Some were tied to the cross with ropes. Some were nailed through the palms and through the feet. But special care was taken for high profile or very large and strong prisoners who might survive for hours or even days on the cross. They added a nail through the bones of the wrist with particular care to pierce the Ulnar or Median Nerves. These two bundles carry millions of highly sensitive signals to the brain. The Ulnar nerve goes along the outside of the elbow, which if you have ever hit it on something you’ll know it controls the ring and little fingers and the skin on outside of the hand on that side.

Piercing this nerve with a nail ensures that the man will feign pulling himself up to get a breath. The body tends to avoid pain, and so you won’t do things that hurt. Jesus hung there from the 6th hour, which is about 3 PM to nearly the 9th hour, which is nearly 6PM. I say nearly, because Jewish law would not allow prisoners to die on the Sabbath, which begins on the 9th hour of the evening before the Sabbath, Friday night.Jesus was a large and very strong man, but he was also God’s only begotten, so he was half god.

1. Luke 23:34: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.2. Luke 23:43: Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.3. John 19:26–27: Woman, behold your son. Son Behold your mother.

Now it is important to remember that God cannot dwell where there is sin. From the moment the Earth was created for us, God was with His Son. He communicated with Him real time, all the time. But right now, as by the plan, the most bitter part of this cup was about to be swallowed. God the Father had to leave His Son to complete the task on his own. The atonement would mean nothing otherwise. The instant He left, the Son could feel it. The weight became almost more than He could bear. But he did bear it. He did become the Christ at this moment. He did become the Savior at this moment. His whole sinless life had become perfect through the things that he suffered. And very soon you hear Him declare this.

4. Matthew 27:46 & Mark 15:34 My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?5. John 19:28: I thirst.6. John 19:30: It is finished.

What was finished? Well, I am glad you asked. While in the temple below 250,000 lambs were being slain for the sins of those people who would have their annual family celebration, the real lamb of God was carrying their sins, and all of our sins, on his soul. Alone.

7. Luke 23:46: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. He did not whisper this. He shouted it very loudly. No one had ever spoken with such power from the

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cross. Men were too weak. But this man was now the Christ. He was the author and the finisher of our faith. He was powerful, and the power of his voice struck fear into the Romans and the people who could hear him.

Okay, enough about the cross. Let’s move three days later. Who was the first one to his tomb? That’s right. It was Mary Magdalene. She was closest to him in many ways that we cannot discuss here tonight, but I want to teach you something I know about love. He took me there about 15 years ago. It was a simple thing that we had skipped over many times. I mean we read it, but we also skipped over it. There were more important things to learn about this resurrection. Or were there?

John 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.2 Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.3 Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre.4 So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.5 And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,7 And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.9 For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.10 Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.11 But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,12 And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.13 And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

This is what He taught me, and what I want to share with you. Jesus had been sent to Earth and lived a life that changed the world, a life that holds more than 2 billion

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Christians to his message. He was the only begotten of God in the flesh. He takes every human’s sins through the veil and pays the price for us to actually move from mortality to immortality without sin, and that mission would not be complete until he returns to His Father to be crowned. But before that, before His own Father, is Mary. He was proving to her his love for her as a woman, and His woman before all other beings in the universe was Mary. This was the love he taught me. It is this love that would save the world.

It is this I pray for every day, not just this time of year. Now, you have heard it. Please share it with others. Amen.

Smart Meters Blow Up

A power surge left thousands without power for most of the day in Stockton after smart meters on their homes exploded on Monday.The explosions started after a truck crashed into a utility pole, causing a surge around 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning.When the customers in more than 5,000 homes get their power back on will depend on how badly damaged their meters are.Neighbors in the South Stockton area described it as a large pop, a bomb going off, and strong enough to shake a house.“The neighbor across the street, his meter doesn’t look as bad but his receptacles are all blackened.” said Brad Abernathy.PG&E says a dump truck crashed near its Alpine substation on Arch Road. When the truck hit the utility pole, the top wire fell onto the bottom wire, creating a power surge.“The top lines are considered our freeways. The bottom lines are our distribution lines taking power directly to homes,” said PG&E spokeswoman Brandi Ehlers. “So  when the two collide, they’re at different voltages and the higher voltage wins out, causing an overload.”Power is expected to be back to most customers by Monday evening, but the damage varies by home.

Russia has Continued to Modernize WeaponsThe Russian military is in the midst of a sweeping modernization program, and it is currently developing some incredibly impressive offensive and defensive next-generation weapons that are designed to be used in a future war with the United States.  The key to winning World War III will be to strike hard and to strike fast, and the Russians understand this.  Meanwhile, the U.S. military has totally shifted gears from a “Cold War mindset” and is now completely focused on fighting smaller regional wars in the Middle East and elsewhere.  As a result, U.S. strategic forces have suffered.  There has been very little effort to modernize, and many of our nuclear missile silos are using technology that is ridiculously outdated.  For example, CBS News has documented that eight inch floppy disks are still being used in many of our missile silos.  And don’t expect things to change any time soon.  At this point, the U.S. military plans to keep Minuteman

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intercontinental ballistic missiles that were originally deployed in the 1960s and 1970s in service until 2030.What all of this means is that the Russians are feverishly preparing to fight World War III and we are not.  The following are just a few of the next-generation weapons that Russia will use against the United States during the next great global war…The Sarmat Intercontinental Ballistic MissileMost Americans have heard of the infamous SS-18 “Satan” intercontinental ballistic missiles.  But these are now being replaced by the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile…The Sarmat (also known as Sarmatian) is a Russian liquid-fueled, MIRV-equipped, super-heavy thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile in development as of early 2015, intended to replace the previous SS-18 Satan and carry extensive counter-missile defense measures. Its large payload would allow for up to 10 heavy warheads or 15 lighter ones, and/or a combination of warheads and massive amounts of countermeasures designed to defeat the anti-missile systems. The Sarmat is expected to be ready for deployment around 2020, but other sources state that the program is being fast-tracked and it could comprise up to 80 percent of Russia’s land-based nuclear arsenal by 2021.As you can see below, these missiles are extremely huge…

The Borey Class Nuclear SubmarineOf even greater concern than the Sarmat are the new Borey class nuclear submarines that Russia is building.  The following is from an article about the launch of one of these new submarines, the Vladimir Monomakh, in 2013…Russia recently launched its near silent nuclear submarine following several years of development.The Borey Class submarine, dubbed Vladimir Monomakh, has a next generation nuclear reactor, can dive deeper than 1,200 feet, and carries up to 20 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).Each of these “Bulava” ICBM’s can carry ten detachable MIRV warheads, what they call “re-entry vehicles,” capable of delivering 150 kiloton yields per warhead (luckily, tests of the warheads only yielded 11 “successes” out of almost 20 attempts). Which doesn’t

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mean they aren’t a concern, MIRV’s are what shook the Cold War to its foundation when they first appeared in the 1970s.One of the primary things that has U.S. military planners worried is how quiet these subs are.  In fact, according to an RT article these subs are supposed to be “almost silent”…It belongs to a class of missile strategic submarine cruisers with a new generation of nuclear reactor, which allows the submarine to dive to a depth of 480 meters. It can spend up to three months in autonomous navigation and, thanks to the latest achievements in the reduction of noise, it is almost silent compared to previous generations of submarines.So why is that a problem?Well, imagine a scenario where Russian nuclear subs approach our coastlines completely undetected and launch a barrage of missiles toward our cities and military bases.  We could be wiped out before we even knew what hit us.If you don’t think that this could ever happen, just consider the following excerpt from a Fox News article published back in 2012…A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks and its travel in strategic U.S. waters was only confirmed after it left the region, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.It is only the second time since 2009 that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores.If we can’t detect them, how are we going to defend against them?  Here is a look at one of them in the water…

The Bulava Submarine-Launched Nuclear MissileThe Borey class submarines are going to be carrying Bulava submarine-launched nuclear missiles.  The Russians have had some difficulties with the development of these missiles, but most of those difficulties now appear to be ironed out.  The following is a description of these missiles from globalsecurity.org…The Bulava (SS-NX-30) is the submarine-launched version of Russia’s most advanced missile, the Topol-M (SS-27) solid fuel ICBM. The SS-NX-30 is a derivative of the SS-

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27, except for a slight decrease in range due to conversion of the design for submarine launch. The SS-27 has is 21.9 meters long, far too large to fit in a typical submarine. The largest previously deployed Russian SLBM was the R-39 / SS-N-20 STURGEON, which was 16 meters long. Russian sources report that the Bulava SS-N-30 ballistic missile can carry ten warheads to a range of 8,000km. Other sources suggest that the Bulava might have a range of 10,000 km, and is reportedly features a 550 kT yield nuclear warhead. Apparently up to six MIRVs can be placed at the cost of offloading warhead shielding and decoys.The Bulava is specifically designed to avoid interception, and each warhead is independently maneuverable to help ensure that they reach their targets intact.  The following was written by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Tom Spahn…Similar to its land-based variant, the Topol-M SS-27, to thwart evolving Western ballistic-missile-defense shields, the Bulava can conduct evasive post-launch maneuvers and deploy a variety of countermeasures and decoys to defend against interception. Its ten hypersonic, independently maneuverable warheads are protected against both physical and electromagnetic-pulse damage to ensure that they can reach their targets intact.The Barguzin Strategic Missile TrainWhen nuclear missiles are in a stationary location (such as a missile silo), they can be pretty easy to target.  But if you put them on a mobile platform, you can gain quite a strategic edge.With that in mind, the Russians have reintroduced the strategic missile train…A Russian military source outlined the capabilities of Barguzin strategic missile train. The country may roll out five such disguised mobile launch platforms each carrying six RS-24 Yars missiles in five years.A ‘nuclear train’ – properly called BZhRK, short for ‘combat railway missile complex’ in Russian – is a mobile platform for transporting and launching strategic nuclear missiles. Similarly to nuclear submarines, such trains are hard to wipe out in a preemptive strike because of their mobility and ability to be disguised as regular freight trains.The Soviet Union had 12 such nuclear trains, each carrying three RT-23 Molodets (SS-24 Scalpel in NATO disambiguation) missiles, but they were released from combat duty after Russia and the US signed the START-2 treaty in 1993 and eventually decommissioned.Last year the Russian military said that nuclear trains – which are no longer banned under the New START treaty – would be revived.The S-500 Missile Defense SystemLastly, I want to discuss a very important weapons system that I recently mentioned in another article.It is called the S-500 missile defense system, and it fundamentally changes the balance of power between the United States and Russia.Once fully deployed, the S-500 will be able to intercept our intercontinental ballistic missiles.  This means that the concept of “mutually assured destruction” does not necessarily apply any longer.  If the Russians can take out most of our nukes with a devastating surprise first strike and intercept whatever we are able to launch back at them with the S-500, the cost/benefit analysis of a nuclear conflict completely changes.The following information about the S-500 comes from military-today.com…

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The S-500 is not an upgrade of the S-400, but a new design. It uses a lot of new technology and is superior to the S-400. It was designed to intercept ballistic missiles. It is planned to have a range of 500-600 km and hit targets at altitudes as high as 40 km. Some sources claim that this system is capable of tracking 5-20 ballistic targets and intercepting up to 5-10 ballistic targets simultaneously. It can defeat ballistic missiles traveling at 5-7 kilometers per second. It has been reported that this air defense system can also target low orbital satellites. It is planned that the S-500 will shield Moscow and the regions around it. It will replace the current A-135 anti-ballistic missile system. The S-500 missiles will be used only against the most important targets, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, AWACS and jamming aircraft.

Meanwhile Back at the Public American Weapons Propaganda Factoryeaders of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency were effusive about the new technology.It was the most powerful radar of its kind in the world, they told Congress. So powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the country.ADVERTISEMENT If North Korea launched a sneak attack, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — would spot the incoming missiles, track them through space and guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy them.Crucially, the system would be able to distinguish between actual missiles and decoys.SBX “represents a capability that is unmatched,” the director of the Missile Defense Agency told a Senate subcommittee in 2007.In reality, the giant floating radar has been a $2.2-billion flop, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.Although it can powerfully magnify distant objects, its field of vision is so narrow that it would be of little use against what experts consider the likeliest attack: a stream of missiles interspersed with decoys.SBX was supposed to be operational by 2005. Instead, it spends most of the year mothballed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.Airborne Laser

The concept: A fleet of Boeing 747s, each modified to fire an infrared chemical laser through a 5-foot-long telescope in its nose. The laser would incinerate enemy missiles shortly after launch, before they could release decoys that might fool U.S. radar.Major contractors: Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp.

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Early optimism: “We are building forces of good to defeat the force of evil. And in that vein today we are taking a major step to give the American people their first ‘Light Saber.’” — Henry A. Obering III, then-director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Oct. 27, 2006.Problems: Because of the laser’s limited range, each 747 would have had to fly near or within an adversary's borders, leaving it vulnerable to antiaircraft missiles. To operate at a safer distance, the laser would have had to be 20 to 30 times more powerful. And the laser's potassium hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide fuel posed severe safety risks to the crew.Disappointment: “I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense … who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed.” — Robert M. Gates, then-secretary of Defense, May 20, 2009.Status: Killed in 2012.Cost: $5.3 billion.Kinetic Energy Interceptor

The concept: The fastest U.S. rocket-interceptor, to be fired from land or Navy ships at enemy missiles during their early “boost” phase.Major contractors: Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co.Early optimism: “That high acceleration with the mobile capability of Kinetic Energy Interceptor is very, very attractive.” — Henry A. Obering III, then-director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, April 7, 2005.Problems: Extending 40 feet, the KEI would have been longer than anything ever launched from a modern Navy ship. To carry it, Navy vessels would have had to be retrofitted at a cost of billions of dollars. And the interceptor’s range was too limited to allow it to be land-based. It would have had to be positioned so close to its target that it would be vulnerable to attack.Disappointment: “No matter how successful tests might one day have been, the system would have had negligible utility.” — National Academy of Sciences review panel, Dec. 31, 2012.Status: Killed in 2009.Cost: $1.7 billion.Multiple Kill Vehicle

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The concept: A “bandolier” of eight to 20 miniature interceptors that would destroy missiles and decoys.Major contractors: Raytheon Co. and Lockheed Martin.Early optimism: “The Multiple Kill Vehicle is a transformational program adding volume kill capability to the ballistic missile defense system as early as 2013.” — U.S. Missile Defense Agency news release, July 19, 2006.Problems: The technical challenge of creating and launching tiny “kill vehicles” that could find and destroy far heavier warheads in space proved insurmountable. Among many other obstacles, existing ground-based rockets would have had to be retrofitted or replaced. The concept never reached the stage where a test flight could be conducted.Disappointment: “To more effectively hedge against future threats, we propose to … terminate the Multiple Kill Vehicle … in lieu of more operationally efficient alternative technology architectures.” — Patrick J. O'Reilly, then-director of the Missile Defense Agency, May 21, 2009.Status: Shelved in 2009.Cost: $700 million.

The concept: A floating radar powerful enough to detect and track long-range missiles and distinguish enemy warheads from decoys.Major contractors: Boeing Co. and Raytheon Co.Early optimism: “It is the most powerful radar of its kind in the world and will provide ... a highly advanced detection and discrimination capability.” — Henry A. Obering III, then-director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, May 10, 2006.Problems: The radar’s field of vision is so narrow that it could not reliably track a sequence of incoming missiles. Its sensitive instrumentation is prone to corrosion at sea, and it needs millions of dollars in fuel to operate for even short periods.Disappointment: "Just how this was going to fit into the [missile defense] system — I don’t think anybody paid much attention to that.… SBX was designed for a mission other than that required.” — Radar specialist David K. Barton.Status: Downgraded to “limited test support status.” It sat idle in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for more than eight months in 2013.Cost: $2.2 billion.Sources: Statements posted by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Boeing Co., Raytheon Co., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp.; transcripts of congressional testimony; a National Academy of Sciences-sponsored report, “Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense,” Dec. 31, 2012; interviews with missile defense specialists.

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The project not only wasted taxpayer money but left a hole in the nation’s defenses. The money spent on it could have gone toward land-based radars with a greater capability to track long-range missiles, according to experts who have studied the issue.Expensive missteps have become a trademark of the Missile Defense Agency, an arm of the Pentagon charged with protecting U.S. troops and ships and the American homeland.Over the last decade, the agency has sunk nearly $10 billion into SBX and three other programs that had to be killed or sidelined after they proved unworkable, The Times found.“You can spend an awful lot of money and end up with nothing,” said Mike Corbett, a retired Air Force colonel who oversaw the agency’s contracting for weapons systems from 2006 to 2009. “MDA spent billions and billions on these programs that didn’t lead anywhere.”The four ill-fated programs were all intended to address a key vulnerability in U.S. defenses: If an enemy launched decoys along with real missiles, U.S. radars could be fooled, causing rocket-interceptors to be fired at the wrong objects — and increasing the risk that actual warheads would slip through.In addition to SBX, the programs were:• The Airborne Laser, envisioned as a fleet of converted Boeing 747s that would fire laser beams to destroy enemy missiles soon after launch, before they could release decoys.It turned out that the lasers could not be fired over sufficient distances, so the planes would have to fly within or near an enemy’s borders continuously. That would leave the 747s all but defenseless against antiaircraft missiles. The program was canceled in 2012, after a decade of testing.The cost: $5.3 billion.• The Kinetic Energy Interceptor, a rocket designed to be fired from land or sea to destroy enemy missiles during their early stage of flight. The interceptor was too long to fit on Navy ships, and on land, it would have to be positioned so close to its target that it would be vulnerable to attack. The program was killed in 2009, after six years of development.The cost: $1.7 billion.• The Multiple Kill Vehicle, a cluster of miniature interceptors that would destroy enemy missiles along with any decoys. In 2007 and 2008, the Missile Defense Agency trumpeted it as a “transformational program” and a cost-effective “force multiplier.” After four years of development, the agency’s contractors had not conducted a single test flight, and the program was shelved.The cost: nearly $700 million.These expensive flops stem in part from a climate of anxiety after Sept. 11, 2001, heightened by warnings from defense hawks that North Korea and Iran were close to developing long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States.President George W. Bush, in 2002, ordered an urgent effort to field a homeland missile defense system within two years. In their rush to make that deadline, Missile Defense Agency officials latched onto exotic, unproven concepts without doing a rigorous analysis of their cost and feasibility.Members of Congress whose states and districts benefited from the spending tenaciously defended the programs, even after their deficiencies became evident.These conclusions emerge from a review of thousands of pages of expert reports, congressional testimony and other government records, along with interviews with dozens of aerospace and military affairs specialists.“The management of the organization is one of technologists in their hobby shop,” said L. David Montague, a former president of missile systems for Lockheed Corp. and co-chairman of a

This leads, he said, to programs that “defy the limits of physics and economic logic.”Of the SBX radar, Montague said: “It should never have been built.”

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Retired Air Force Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command and a member of the National Academy panel, said the agency’s blunders reflected a failure to analyze alternatives or seek independent cost estimates.“They are totally off in la-la land,” Habiger said.Senior officials who promoted the four programs defend their actions as having helped to create a new missile defense “architecture.” Regarding SBX, they said it was much less expensive than a network of land-based radars and could be put in place more rapidly.Henry A. Obering III, shown in 2007, championed troubled projects as director of the Missile Defense Agency. (Virginia Mayo / Associated Press) Henry A. Obering III, a retired director of the Missile Defense Agency, said any unfulfilled expectations for SBX and the other projects were the fault of the Obama administration and Congress — for not doubling down with more spending.“If we can stop one missile from destroying one American city,” said Obering, a former Air Force lieutenant general, “we have justified the entire program many times over from its initiation in terms of cost.”The agency’s current director, Vice Adm. James D. Syring, declined to be interviewed. In a written response to questions, the agency defended its investment in the four troubled programs and asserted that the nation’s missile defense system was reliable.“We are very confident of our ability … and we will continue to conduct extensive research, development and testing of new technologies to ensure we keep pace with the threat,” the statement said. It called SBX an “excellent investment.”Boeing Co., the agency’s prime contractor for homeland defense, designed SBX. Raytheon Co. built the system’s radar components. Both companies are among the world’s biggest defense contractors and are major political donors. A Boeing spokesman said that SBX has “sufficient capability to execute its role with speed, precision and accuracy.”Representatives of Raytheon declined to be interviewed.The Missile Defense Agency came into being during the Reagan administration and has 8,800 employees and a budget of about $8 billion a year.

The agency oversees several missile defense systems. Aegis defends Navy ships. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system safeguards troops in the field.A third component is the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, designed to protect the U.S. homeland from long-range missiles. All four of the troubled programs examined by The Times were intended to bolster GMD.The country’s defense against a massive missile strike by Russia or China still depends on deterrence: the Cold War notion that neither nuclear power would attack the U.S. for fear of a devastating response.GMD is intended to protect against a limited attack by a less-imposing adversary, such as North Korea or Iran, by destroying enemy warheads in flight, a supreme technical challenge.Rocket-interceptors would climb into space from silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and Ft. Greely, Alaska. At the tip of each interceptor is a heat-seeking “kill vehicle” designed to separate from its boost rocket in space, fly on its own and crash into an incoming warhead.GMD’s roots go back to the Clinton administration. Its development was accelerated after Bush, in December 2002, ordered the Pentagon to field “an initial set of missile defense capabilities” to protect the U.S. homeland by 2004.Then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld exempted the Missile Defense Agency from standard procurement rules, freeing it to buy new technology without the customary vetting. Rocket-interceptors were deployed before the kill vehicle and other crucial components had been proved reliable through testing.

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Despite its shortcomings, GMD became operational in 2004. In the nine flight tests conducted since then, the system has successfully intercepted a mock enemy missile only four times.GMD’s ability to distinguish missiles from decoys, debris and other harmless objects — “discrimination,” in missile defense jargon — has been a persistent concern.Powerful, precise radar guidance is key to effective missile defense. Without it, the system cannot be depended on to distinguish real from illusory threats and track enemy missiles so the kill vehicles can find and destroy them.

In the event of an attack, radar would also have to provide immediate, accurate “hit assessments” — confirmation that an enemy missile had been destroyed. Defense experts say that without this information, GMD could rapidly deplete its limited inventory of interceptors: four at Vandenberg and 26 at Ft. Greely.Existing early-warning radars, based on land in Alaska, California, Britain and Greenland and on Navy ships, provide some of the needed capability. But their range is limited by Earth’s curvature, and neither they nor orbiting satellites are powerful enough to determine whether approaching objects are benign or threatening.X-band radar is powerful enough. Its short wavelength — located in the X band of the radio wave spectrum — allows for more detailed imagery, and thus better discrimination.Missile defense plans drawn during the Clinton administration envisioned as many as nine land-based X-band radars to complement the early-warning radars and provide complete coverage across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.In 2002, faced with Bush’s deadline for deploying GMD by 2004, Missile Defense Agency officials chose not to add multiple X-band radars on land and opted instead for a single, seaborne version.It would be based at a specially prepared berth in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, an ideal location for detecting a North Korean missile attack, and would be moved around as needed.Thus was born SBX.Boeing’s designs called for the huge radar to be seated atop a specially modified off-shore drilling platform.The Missile Defense Agency acquired the platform from a Norwegian company in 2003 and had it towed across the Atlantic to a shipyard in Brownsville, Texas. There, it was fitted with a propulsion system, a helicopter landing pad and living quarters for a crew of about 100. Cranes lifted the radar and its pearl-white protective dome into place.The semi-submersible structure was nearly 400 feet long and 26 stories high. It weighed 50,000 tons. Nice target, huh?Obering and his predecessor as director of the missile agency told Congress that SBX would be operational by the end of 2005. That proved incorrect.SBX met standards for commercial ships — but agency officials had failed to take into account the Coast Guard’s stricter standards for vessels destined for the kind of hazardous conditions found in the Aleutians.To meet the requirements, the missile agency had to spend tens of millions of dollars to fortify SBX against the sustained 30-foot swells and fierce gales common at its intended home port in Adak, Alaska, known as the “birthplace of the winds.”That work, completed by Boeing in September 2007, included installing eight 75-ton anchors embedded in the ocean floor at Adak.Missile Defense Agency officials spoke glowingly of SBX’s technical capabilities.“It is the most powerful radar of its kind in the world and will provide the [GMD] system a highly advanced detection and discrimination capability,” Obering told the Senate’s defense appropriations subcommittee on May 10, 2006.

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Agency news releases touted SBX’s ability to perform critical “hit assessment functions,” informing U.S. commanders instantly whether rocket-interceptors had taken out incoming missiles.At a Senate hearing on April 11, 2007, Obering was asked about the GMD system’s ability to distinguish enemy missiles from decoys. He replied that SBX would help give the U.S. “a tremendous leg up” in this regard.

To emphasize his point, Obering testified repeatedly that SBX could see a 3-inch-wide object from across the continent.“If we place it in Chesapeake Bay, we could actually discriminate and track a baseball-sized object over San Francisco,” he told a Senate subcommittee on April 25, 2007.Yet because of Earth’s curvature, SBX would not be able to see a baseball at such a distance — about 2,500 miles — unless the ball was 870 or more miles above San Francisco.That is about 200 miles higher than the expected maximum altitude of a long-range missile headed for the U.S., technical experts told The Times.“In the practical world of ICBM [inter-continental ballistic missile] threats, this baseball analogy is meaningless,” said C. Wendell Mead, an aerospace engineer who served on the National Academy of Sciences panel.Obering, in an interview, said his remarks to Congress were intended not to mislead but rather to provide “a good layman’s view of the range of the radar.” He added, “The range of that radar is farther than anything else we had.”SBX’s powers of magnification belied a fundamental shortcoming. The radar’s field of vision is extremely narrow: 25 degrees, compared with 90 to 120 degrees for conventional radars.Experts liken SBX to a soda straw and say that finding a sequence of approaching missiles with it would be impractical.“It’s an extremely powerful soda straw, but that’s not what we needed,” said Harvey L. Lynch, a physicist who served on the National Academy of Sciences panel.In the event of an attack, land-based early warning radars could, in theory, identify a specific point in the sky for SBX to focus on. But aiming and re-aiming the giant radar’s beam is a cumbersome manual exercise. In combat conditions, SBX could not be relied on to adjust quickly enough to track a stream of separate missiles, radar specialists said.SBX’s limitations make it “irrelevant to ballistic missile defense,” said David K. Barton, a physicist and radar engineer who took part in the National Academy review and who has advised U.S. intelligence agencies.

“Wherever that beam can be pointed, it can cover whatever is within it,” Barton said. “But obviously that isn’t going to cover the whole Pacific for a stream of attacking missiles that are separated by many minutes.... Even if there are only four missiles, [an adversary] could separate them.”Ronald T. Kadish, the Missile Defense Agency’s director from 1999 to mid-2004, defended the decision to develop SBX, saying it was “four or five times” less expensive than installing land-based X-band radars.Another “important consideration,” Kadish said in an interview, was that the seaborne radar could be made operational quickly, compared with the time it would take to build an X-band installation in Alaska or negotiate with foreign governments for other sites on land.Kadish, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, said SBX “seemed to provide the basis for detection and discrimination that we were lacking.”The National Academy review, however, found that the missile agency “unnecessarily compromised the performance” of GMD by failing to make greater use of X-band radars on

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land. The panel’s 2012 report said the homeland defense system’s “discrimination problem must be addressed far more seriously.”A panel of the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board, after a two-year review, reached a similar conclusion in 2011: “The importance of achieving reliable midcourse discrimination cannot be overemphasized.”To address this vulnerability, the U.S. had installed one land-based X-band radar in Japan in 2006, and a second was added in 2014. The two radars are well positioned to detect launches from North Korea. Yet both would lose track of U.S.-bound missiles after about 930 miles because of Earth’s curvature.Barton said that to give rocket-interceptors enough time to knock out enemy missiles, U.S. radar would have to track the incoming weapons continuously after launch, “from cradle to grave.”One of SBX’s intended functions was to participate in tests of the GMD system. A mock enemy missile would be launched over the Pacific, and SBX would track the target and guide rocket-interceptors.The radar’s performance in those exercises has fallen short.ADVERTISEMENT During a 2007 test, “SBX exhibited some anomalous behavior,” requiring “adjusted software,” the Pentagon’s Operational Test and Evaluation Office said in a report.The report said SBX had not served as the primary radar for any test in which an interceptor had managed to destroy a target.In January 2010, SBX was the sole radar for a test in which an interceptor tried to knock out a target launched from the Marshall Islands. SBX “exhibited undesirable performances that contributed to the failure to intercept,” the Pentagon evaluation office reported.Outside experts who had access to flight-test data from the 2010 test told The Times that SBX failed to “discriminate,” mistaking falling chunks of unspent rocket fuel or other material for the target missile.In a June 2014 test, an interceptor destroyed its target, but SBX’s “hit assessment” did not reach commanders in control of the system, according to a report by the Pentagon’s evaluation office.In an attack, an immediate and accurate hit assessment would be crucial.Patrick J. O’Reilly, director of the Missile Defense Agency from 2008 to 2012, explained why: Without the assessment, “the commanders could order the soldiers to shoot additional interceptors at targets that have actually already been destroyed — or to stop shooting at targets that haven’t been destroyed,” he said in an interview.O’Reilly said it was “worrisome” that commanders did not receive the hit assessment in the 2014 test.An agency spokesman, Richard Lehner, said an investigation into the matter is “nearing closure.”Senior military leaders had grown disillusioned with SBX years earlier. The vessel burned millions of gallons of fuel to power the radar or move about. It had to be resupplied at sea, and wind and salt water posed unrelenting challenges for sensitive instruments.In 2009, then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates canceled plans to send SBX near the Korean Peninsula to monitor the launch of a North Korean test rocket. Gates said he could not justify the mission’s cost, estimated at tens of millions of dollars.Beginning two years later, operational control of the radar was shifted from the Missile Defense Agency to the Navy. “It was obviously part of a major weapon system at sea,” recalled O’Reilly, who supported the move.The Navy’s Pacific Command insisted on extensive modifications to bring SBX up to survival standards for combatant vessels. The cost ran to tens of millions of dollars — emblematic of the floating radar’s tortuous history.

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SBX was never based at its specially prepared Alaskan berth. In 2012, it was downgraded to “limited test support status.”In 2013, the radar sat idle in Pearl Harbor for more than eight months, records show.To date, SBX has cost taxpayers about $2.2 billion, according to the Missile Defense Agency.The government recently began seeking proposals for a new radar to help fulfill SBX’s original purpose.It will be installed in Alaska, on land. The target date is 2020, and the estimated cost is $1 billion

Gun Control UpdateWith Brownback signing this bill into law, Kansas becomes the fifth state in the U.S. to not require a permit for concealed carry – joining Alaska, Arizona, Vermont, and Wyoming. The legislation goes into effect July 1 and allows residents 21 years of age and older to carry a concealed firearm without a permit, noted The Kansas City Star.The National Rifle Association pointed out that Arkansas and Montana also allow concealed carry, but not in the entirety of their respective states. The map below shows the states that allow concealed carry (before the Kansas law goes into effect):

“We’re saying that if you want to do that in this state, then you don’t have to get the permission slip from the government,” Brownback said during the bill signing Thursday. “It is a constitutional right, and we’re removing a barrier to that right.” Along with the NRA, the legislation had the support of the Kansas State Rifle Association.A statement on the KSRA website says:In Kansas, it is already legal to carry a firearm openly, as long as the individual is not prohibited by law from possessing a firearm. However, under current law, if a firearm becomes covered by a coat or if a woman prefers to carry a firearm for self-protection in her purse, one would need to possess a concealed carry permit.This Constitutional Carry legislation gives Kansans the freedom to choose the best method of carrying for them, based on their attire, gender and/or physical attributesStill, the new law was not without its skeptics, specifically with regard to the training requirement that the new bill does away with. “That’s a major responsibility to carry a gun, whether it’s concealed or not. And it’s scary,” Democratic state Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau told The Kansas City Star Thursday. “I predict from the legislation that — and it’s going to go quick, it’s going to be July 1 — we’re going to see some accidents, possibly deaths.But state Rep. Travis Couture-Lovelady, a Republican who sponsored the House bill, quickly dismissed those concerns. “We haven’t had any of the Wild West shootouts. We haven’t had any of the blood running in the streets that folks feared,” he said. “Training is an ongoing, personal responsibility.

Weatherman is HistoryThe days of the weather man could be numbered.Researchers from London and Edinburgh are developing a computer that can collate meteorological information and then produce forecasts as if they were written by a human.

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Useing a process known as 'natural language generation' (NLG), it has the potential to one day be used in humanoid robots on our TV screens.

These computer-generated weather updates are being tested by scientists at Heriot-Watt University and University College London.Using Met Office data, the researchers are developing new algorithms for automatically generating detailed reports.

If the project is successful, a prototype system will be tested by generating local weather reports on the BBC's website.Currently, the BBC website features 10 reports written by meteorologists. Each of these forecasts cover a large area of the country, such as London and South East England, but there are more than 20,000 individual locations that need tailored reports.

NLG is the process of producing readable texts in English, or other languages, automatically on a computer.Typically, the program starts with statistics and figures, or any information that isn't written in language. This includes tables of numerical data or a collection of entries in a database. 

Is China Really a Threat to the USA?

Among the most colossal shifts of our time has been the rise of China, from the black hole of Mao’s ruinous communism to a power increasingly to be reckoned with around the globe.

But what is today’s China? Is it still communist? Capitalist? Is it friend or foe to the U.S.? Should we fear China’s rise? Resist it? Welcome it? What lies ahead?

These are the big questions tackled by PJTV in a special in-depth series of video reports, “Made in China.” Hosted by PJTV’s Bill Whittle, with Scott Ott, this is a three-part exploration of what China has become, where it came from, and what might lie ahead.

This is not your standard “mainstream media” China debate. For insights, PJTV enlisted people who have both firsthand experience with China and great respect for the principles of freedom and free markets; who proceed from the understanding that China’s model of a quasi-market economy coupled with continuing repression by

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China’s Communist Party is not – as some would have it – a recipe for stability. It is profoundly unstable.

In the first segment, PJTV focuses on “China: Still Communist, or Have They Gone Capitalist?” Hillsdale College economics professor Charles Steele explains that China is still trying to walk a line between the two: It certainly has markets, but they are hugely subject to government intervention. Coming from utter destitution under Mao’s communism, the result of even limited freedom to do business and own property has been to lift more people out of poverty than has ever happened before, anywhere in the history of mankind. But China’s continuing political repression has left it with enormous and potentially explosive problems, yet to be solved. Terry Jones of Investor’s Business Daily jumps in to explain why China’s economy is running into growing difficulties, a shrinking work force, and why he believes “What has been called the China Miracle is officially over.”

The second segment, which addresses the implications of the raw repression with which China’s Communist Party keeps power, is titled, “From Mao to Tiananmen Square: Chinese Communists are Murderers.” For a clear-eyed reminder of the real character of communism and its role in shaping the government of today’s China, PJTV turns to Marion Smith, of the Victims of Communism Foundation. More insight comes from Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute, who argues that China today is more fascist than communist, and who along the way explains why evil comes of a system in which the imperative is not equality of rights, but equality of outcome.

Full disclosure: I’m also one of the commentators for this segment on Chinese communism. In 1989, I covered the massive Chinese uprising centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and its bloody suppression on June 4. I witnessed both the tremendous yearning of China’s people for the kind of freedom that made America great (in Tiananmen they built their own Statue of Liberty), and I saw some of the killing with which they were silenced. This PJTV special was a chance to share some thoughts on what today’s America could or should do to address the continuing repression, beyond my regular column at PJ Media.com.

In the final segment, Bill Whittle asks, “Made in China: Will They Attack Us?” He gets disturbing answers from experts Gordon Chang, Yaron Brook and the Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano. Some things depend on what America does next, and with China – as its ruling Communist Party tries to navigate the instabilities and domestic discontent it has wrought – we are entering a dangerous passage

WHAT IS NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION (NLG)? 

NLG is the process of producing readable texts in English, or other languages, automatically on a computer.

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Typically, the program starts with statistics and figures, or any information that isn't written in language. These includes tables of numerical data or a collection of entries in a database. Alternatively, NLG will rephrase a block of texts to make it easier to read and understand. It is often referred to as a translator that converts computer speak into natural language, which is tricky for computers due to variances in tone and grammar.  Alternatively, NLG will rephrase a block of text to make it easier to read and understand. It is often referred to as a translator that converts computer speak into natural language, which is tricky for computers due to variances in tone and grammar. The project is called Domain-Independent Language Generation (DILiGENt) and is being run by Dr Verena Rieser from Heriot-Watt University's School of Mathematical and Computer Science, with Dr Andreas Vlachos and Dr Sebastian Riedel from the Computer Science department at University College London.  'Machine learning for Natural Language Processing (NLP) is what DILiGENt is all about,' said Dr Rieser. 'Large companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo are making substantial new investments in this field and there are start-up opportunities emerging. 'The UK is a world leader in this kind of research but we are under-represented in using machine learning approaches for NLG. This project will help to strengthen this research strand.'These developments could also help overcome problems with Apple's Siri or Google Voice which often offer repetitive responses to questions or directions.

Cometary ElectrochemistryIt is a great paradox in comet science: We are told that a comet nucleus is a ball of ice, or dirty snowball, or icy fluff ball that accreted billions of year ago in the solar system’s infancy. Comets are said to sublimate ices as they move toward the sun, and solar warming is responsible for much cometary activity. Yet this reasoning leaves unexplained countless puzzles in comet science. We ask the question, can the science of electrochemistry provide an answer to many comet mysteries?

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What I’m going to do here is start to give you an illustration of what can happen actually in comets. So as you can see the title of my talk here is, Cometary-Electrochemistry. And actually, that’s the only thing that’s new here, the term. When you look at the literature, for instance, you see that astro-electrochemistry, there’s plenty of material there. Astro-electrochemistry means that a lot of the reactions that happen in space are driven by a potential difference. In addition, I came across a series of Russian scientists who actually proposed that electricity in the nucleus of comets can drive the deicing process of, say, water or methane. So those ideas are not new. What is new here is the idea that you have electrochemistry or electricity driving chemical reactions either in the nucleus of the comet or in the coma of the comet. That’s what is new, and that’s what I’m going to talk about.  And I figure that most of you don’t know who I am. So I just want to pinpoint the fact that I live in Singapore, I’ve been living and working there for four years, and I think some of you have been there before. So this is the outline of my talk, I’m going to be brief and simple, because the audience here is very diverse. I’ll tell you a little bit about what electrochemistry is, the composition of comets, and how the combination of these two concepts can actually provide us a framework of reactions happening in comets.   I will also mention the electrochemical model in question; the question about cyanide production and how that model can explain this, and I just make one prediction: if this model is correct, then there is one observation we should see in the future.  So what is very interesting from a chemistry standpoint is that energy in a way, or electricity is kind of free in nature. This is a very good example here; and you probably know this. This is a zinc material, and here we have a copper. And once we connect these two, what happens is that electrons that are actually in the zinc will go in the direction of the copper. Now electrons flowing in a particular direction is electricity. This happens spontaneously. So nature actually gives us “free energy,” the energy you need depends on how you arrange these materials. So that’s the main concept here.  Now another concept I want to pinpoint here is this: In electrochemistry, if you have this particular cell which is a potential cell as a function of time, what’s going to happen is, the zinc material will actually dissolve. It gives us electrons, and at the same time dialectric coming from the atom, the atom becomes an ion. So on the negative side, in the negative region of the particular cell you get dissolution. And on the positive region here in the copper, you’re going to get an accumulation material. This material comes in because this copper here is a solution, a copper solution. Any other material will be attractive because in these regions you’re going to have extra electrons that will be attracted to it, it will capture those electrons, and the material will accumulate.  So the key point here is that you have active electrodes, you’re going to have dissolution on the negative region, and you’re going to have accumulation of material on the positive region. That’s the key part of this slide.  Now energy, as I said before, is not just stored in metals; we can harness it. It’s not difficult to harness it. We actually do it all the time. An example of this is batteries. Batteries are energy. There is a store, and the only difference here is, how is it arranged?  Another concept that I want to introduce here on this slide is the idea of having inert electrodes. Here I show you active electrodes, actually the electrode itself dissolves and accumulates. And in this particular example here I say that you have electrodes which actually provide only the surface where the electrochemical reaction occurs. Good examples of this are carbon, gold, palladium, platinum, for instance, because there are no reactive materials. Now this going to

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come in handy when you think about the nucleus of a comet. A reaction is actually occurring in that particular case and location.  Now, I know that some of you know about electrochemistry; electrochemistry is a very difficult subject. So what I’m going to do here is tell you, what is the main concept of electrochemistry? It’s very simple: you can have a reduction and oxidation reaction. Here’s an example of an oxidation reaction, which occurs in the negatively charged region. And I’m doing this on purpose because the technology we use in electrochemistry is different from physicists and engineers, in terms of cathode and anode. So in the negatively charged region you have for instance an atom or iron atom, it gives off three electrons and you get an ion. Right? These electrons over here, if you’re able to push them in a particular direction is what gives us a current. And the reduction will occur in the positively charged region. A good example here: two protons plus two electrons will give you hydrogen gas.  Now, this is the basics of electrochemistry; this is all I’m going to say about electrochemistry at this point. What I’m going to do now is talk about comets. What is the composition of comets? Well, now we know that comets are actually formed by several kinds of minerals. This is a good example over here, this is olivine, associated with volcanism and associated with high temperatures, and maybe with lightning. And these are just various forms of olivine, and what I will pinpoint to you is the fact that they are rich in transition metals. Transition metals are important in electrochemistry because  either they provide a surface, or they provide electrons that are easy to reduce and oxidize. They have various oxidation states. Another point that I want to pinpoint here is that these are all silicates; silicate and oxygen are very abundant. Oxygen is a very electron-rich atom, which can also provide the electrons to provide current, provided you have a potential difference.  Another example is pigeonite, associated with Mars and moon meteorites. Again, very rich in iron. Cubanite, copper, iron and sulfur form in liquid water. This has been found in comets; this is very interesting because that means there is a very complex chemistry going on here.  Other transition metals that have been found in the nuclei of comets are titanium, vanadium in the form of nitride, platinum, osmium, ruthenium, tungsten, and molybdenum, just to mention a few. So you can see it’s very complex, the composition for electrochemistry is complex in comets.  In the coma of comets, this is several of the gases that have been identified: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, a series of oxides with nitrogen, sulfur oxides, hydroxyl, and I left out molecular oxygen and molecular nitrogen. So, you find all these compounds in comets.  That will tell you already that this is very complex chemistry going on.  In addition to that, you find organic molecules. Methane, cyanide, methanol, ethane, ethene, ammonia, carbonates. Again, the level of complexity is beginning to get higher, I would say.  And, more complex organic molecules have been identified in comets. Aminoacetonitrile, for instance, acetic acid, amorphous carbon (you can think about charcoal), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are very important in agriculture for instance – people who work in agriculture always talk about Ph’s, because they control basically the Ph of soil for instance – and surprisingly glycine, that is an amino acid.  So, how can this model work? I’ve talked about electrochemistry, I’m talking about the composition of comets. So how can we apply this electrochemical model?

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 Here is a cartoon, and it’s not up to scale as you can see. Here we have the Sun, here we have the solar wind which I will call the proton flux, because that is most of its composition even though we have some electrons in there. And here we have a nucleus, a dust tail, an ion plasma tail, and a coma. This is what we see; this is the typical observation for comets. So what I’m proposing here is, this paradigm or this model can be true if we show that we have a potential difference. In this particular case, I’m making the sun the positive region because of the protons of the solar wind, and the nucleus will be the negative region. Now if you are able to show this, then you can apply without fear an electrochemical model. So this is the key part, and I think this is why it’s going to take us a lot of time in the future, trying to show that there’s a potential difference here. You can do it indirectly.  Now, in detail, how is this model going to work? Well, it will work in the following way? Here is an electrode, a negative region, which can be the nucleus, because it’s rich in minerals, with silicates and transition metals. And here would be the solar wind which surrounds the nucleus as the comet approaches the Sun. Ok, so what we need to do here, like I said before, is to have a potential difference. If this is the case, this will drive any reaction. The key part here is, is that potential difference big enough to drive any potential that you want? We do this in the lab all the time. Now, this potential difference is going to create a current flow from the nucleus toward the positive region, which is the solar wind. While doing so, you’re going to see the coma. Why? Because, what happens is you have this flow of electrons, electrons are going to collide with some of the electrons in these molecules, say for instance, carbon monoxide. So electrons that are being driven from the nucleus toward the positive region will go to the coma, collide with some of the gases, it’s going to excite electrons from the C0 (carbon monoxide) to a higher energy state. When it decays down, it is going to give off energy. This energy is  what see in terms of the visible range. So the intensity of the coma, and the color of the coma will depend on what kind of gas is being excited. So it depends on the abundance.  So what kind of reactions can we have on the nucleus, and it might be complex to some of you because this is chemistry. But I will keep it simple here. We know that Iron two plus, for instance, exists on these minerals. It’s already an ion, but say you have a potential difference, (inaudible), this is possible, you can give off another electron, this electron means current. The same for manganese, and so on and so forth. You can even have manganese reaction with some of the water vapor, or gases that can be in a coma. You can have more complex structures, you can have solids, manganese oxide, for instance, and again you get current. Some of the silicate material that I showed you that are part of the mineral, can react with protons from the solar wind, and you can get some hydroxyls. The possibilities are endless. We don’t really know exactly what’s happening there. The point here is that you can get current and you can get material.  What happens on the positive side? On the positive side, I can envision only one type of reaction. And it is the formation of hydrogen gas. That’s it. All right?  So, in more detail, if we have a comet here (this is a cartoon), this model can actually explain the plasma formation of the coma, depending again on the abundance of all these gases, and maybe all the gases that I left out. So, for instance, if you have eighty percent cyanide abundance, you get one particular color and a particular intensity. If you have oxygen at a higher abundance of eighty percent, the color of the coma and the intensity of the coma is going to be different. Let me see if I can finish this up soon. 

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The plasma tail can be explained by the formation of irons. The plasma tail is mostly composed of irons, it can be explained here. In addition to that, the dust tail can be explained by the formation of these solids: oxides, hydroxides, in addition to that also some chunks of minerals.  And most importantly here, when I started thinking about this particular model, I predicted the formation of hydrogen gas even before I read the literature, because I have no background on comets. And what we are able to see here which is very exciting is that with the Hale Bopp comet, for instance, a hydrogen cloud was actually observed, a very large hydrogen cloud. So this model explains that.  So how can we know there is an electrochemical process going on in comets? There was this particular observation a few years ago, cyanide formation and no dust formation. So what happened here is this: in the standard model, whenever you have sublimation of a gas, dust will always form, because the idea is that you have a dirty ball — a dirty “ice ball” – so sublimation of water will actually bring out the formation of the gas — or excuse me, of particles. In this case, we don’t see that. So how can we explain this electrochemically? Two different ways. One way is the standard electrochemistry, where the reaction actually occurs on the nucleus. And I was able to see, for instance, and I’m rushing here because of time, I was able to see here that amines are actually the precursor for cyanide formation, provided you have acetic conditions. In the presence of protons in the solar wind, it makes it amenable, or viable. Here we have a methylamine, we have a glycine, a more complex amines – but as long as you have these structures there, in the coma or in the nucleus you can get cyanide.  I’m going to keep this slide here, I’m going to mention really quick: this is a way that you can actually do experiments on the lab. You can actually have those gases in this container; here you have two electrodes, tungsten and stainless steel.  You apply a potential and you carry the reaction. When you have the reaction you apply electric field; you push it into mass spectrometer, and you can detect the product. And this work has been done already by Navarro-Gonzalez of National University of Mexico — he was trying to simulate reactions in the ionosphere of Titan – and that’s what he did. And this is the 1997 work by C.N. Matthews, I think it was mentioned yesterday, this particular experiment will actually give you amino acids. But this particular experiment will also give you, if you have a combination of methane and ammonia, will also give you cyanide radicals. If you have a coronal discharge, and this has been done, this is experimental data, you will also get hydrocarbons and cyanide. Importantly, if you simulate lightning, nitrogen and methane, you also get hydrocarbons and cyanide. So there’s two possibilities here. And I’ve got a few more slides, I think, to go. Here what I’m going to show you briefly is, you can have reversibility, between c0 and alcohols. C0 and alcohols and methane. So there’s no direct connection between c0 and cyanide, which I was looking for. It’s a two-step proces. You can have the reduction of c0 into methane, and this can be…maybe electrical discharge will form cyanide. It’s two-step process. I didn’t find one that works directly. And so this is the last slide here. Bare with me, I’ve got seventeen minutes and I think I’ve got one minute left. This is a graph of voltage in this direction, and this is current here in this direction. If you start with voltage A — and I give you direction over here – if you have two electrodes and a solution, for instance, or you have gases, if you go from voltage A to voltage B, and you have chemicals in the system, you will be able to see some sort of reduction process here. So whatever chemical it is you will gain an electron or several of electrons. And you move it all the way to voltage B, and then if you reverse it, whatever compound you form here by the reduction process will be oxidized. And eventually you get to this point. And so here you have

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reduction oxidation, this is a typical [inaudible] process. Now how can this apply to comets? Well, this is the sun and here is the orbit of the comet. And this is direction of the comet. If you go in this direction, for instance, as the comet approaches the Sun, you should be able to see a reaction, whatever that reaction would be — it depends on the composition. As the comet departs the Sun, you should be able to see another type of reaction. If it is reversible, you should be able to see the reversibility here. But, OK, maybe it’s not reversible. But you should be able to see a reaction here, and a reaction here. So this is the prediction that I make.  And a good example here is: going between amino and cyanide. I don’t know if NASA has made these observations, but this should be something that should occur.  All right, so this is the last slide here. Thank you for your time. What I’m saying here is, this is an illustration, this is still not a theory, this is just an illustration because I only had four weeks to work on this. But it seems to me that this electrochemical mode, provided that you have a voltage difference, can account for the hydrogen gas formation, the plasma in the coma, dust tail formation, and the ionized plasma that you see. And also any other reaction that doesn’t involved dust formation. And this model can actually allow us to predict based on the reversibility of electrochemical systems, what will happen. Thank you for your time. 

Black Holes: The Edge of NowhereRip up a piece of paper, and you can piece it back together. Burn a book, and you could theoretically do the same.But send information into a black hole, and it's lost forever – or at least that's what many physicists have been arguing for nearly half a decade.Now, one scientist says this may not be true, and that interactions between particles emitted by a black hole can reveal information about what lies within.For nearly 40 years, physicists have argued that black holes suck in information and then evaporate without leaving behind any clues as to what they once contained. Now, one scientist says this may not be true'According to our work, information isn't lost once it enters a black hole,' says Dejan Stojkovic, an associate professor of physics at the University at Buffalo. 'It doesn't just disappear.'His new paper presents explicit calculations demonstrating how information is preserved, he says. 

This is an important discovery because even physicists who believed information remains in black holes have struggled to show, mathematically, how this happens.The research marks a significant step toward solving the 'information loss paradox,' a problem that has plagued physics for almost 40 years, says Dr Stojkovic.

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The paradox posed a huge challenge for the field of physics because it meant that information inside a black hole could be permanently lost when the black hole disappeared.

This is a violation of quantum mechanics, which states that information must be conserved.In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes were capable of radiating particles, and that the energy lost through this process would cause the black holes to shrink and eventually disappear.But last year, Hawking revised his theory by declaring that black holes were in fact 'grey'The grey hole theory would allow matter and energy to be held for a period of time before being released back into space.How exactly it's possible to recover information from a black hole has remained a topic of debate.Instead of looking only at the particles a black hole emits, the latest study also takes into account the subtle interactions between the particles.Interactions between particles can range from gravitational attraction to the exchange of mediators like photons between particles.Such 'correlations' have long been known to exist, but many scientists discounted them as unimportant in the past.'These correlations were often ignored in related calculations since they were thought to be small and not capable of making a significant difference,' Stojkovic says.'Our explicit calculations show that though the correlations start off very small, they grow in time and become large enough to change the outcome.'

STEPHEN HAWKING SAYS BLACK HOLES ARE 'GREY'

In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes were capable of radiating particles, and that the energy lost through this process would cause the black holes to shrink and eventually disappear.But last year, Hawking revised his theory by declaring that black holes were in fact 'grey'

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The grey hole theory would allow matter and energy to be held for a period of time before being released back into space.He says that the idea of an event horizon, from which light cannot escape, is flawed.He suggests that instead light rays attempting to rush away from the black hole’s core will be held as though stuck on a treadmill and that they can slowly shrink by spewing out radiation.Hawking told the journal Nature: 'There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory. [But quantum theory] enables energy and information to escape from a black hole'.A full explanation of the process, Hawking admits, would require a theory that successfully merges gravity with the other fundamental forces of nature.

Banker ParasitesThe Bank of England has published a research report that documents the parasitic activities of large investment banks with surgical precision.  Reporting real numbers removes subjectivity from the picture.  And the real numbers show that a substantial majority of banking business is "incestuous" -  involved in transactions with other financial institutions and only a small amount of banking interacts with the real economy which produces goods and services.

It was about one year ago that the Bank of England published a research report that documented the well known (but often obscured from view of the broad public) fact that banks create deposits by writing loans with money "created out of thin air" based upon the security of assets lent against. That paper, "Money creation in the modern economy" now has a companion of comparable importance: "Investment banking: linkages to the real economy and the financial system" by Kushal Balluck of the Bank's Banking and Insurance Analysis Division. This is a clear and complete summary of banking sector activities and an empirical assessment of the money volumes of various banking functions.The study finds that the revenue of the largest global investment banks is 75% derived from interbank activities and only 25% from activities in the "real economy". In other words, investment banking is much more about "making money" and much less about "making goods and services" than some may have heretofor thought. Certainly those who proclaim that their bank is "doing God's work" would want to portray that just the opposite were true, unless, of course, money is their god.

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So there is a reason that financial system assets are much larger than global GDP. It's because many of those assets are unrelated to GDP, which is a measure of the production of goods and services. The relationship of banking to the real economy has been a matter of discussion for some time, especially since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008.Balluck has clearly diagrammed the business activities of the large investment banks with an emphasis of showing how the financial institutions interact with the real economy which produces godds and services. See Figure 1 and Figure 2.

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Click for larger image.

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Balluck compares the balance sheets of the global investment banks 2008 and 2013. He says:The amount of debt securities - corporate bonds, government bonds and securitised assets - held by the major global investment banks fell by over 40% during this period.

When the total of all estimated "real" assets held for was determined, he says:Taken together, investment banks also had smaller lending portfolios through securities financing transactions in aggregate in 2013 than they did in 2008.But the story in derivatives assets, those assets that are strictly financial system related without direct real economy asset backing, is different:

In contrast, activity in derivative markets has continued to grow since the crisis, albeit at a slower pace than it did prior to the crisis.The notional values of banks' open derivatives contracts has risen by nearly 16% between 2008 and 2013 to a value equaling almost $500 trillion. This 6.6x the global GDP for 2013, according to the World Bank. The same ratio in 2008 was nearly the same: 6.9 times the GDP..So while the banks have reduced "real" debt securities by 40% from 2008 to 2013 they have increased derivative assets (let's call them "phantom" assets) by 18%. If normalized to global GDP, these percentages become real debt securities reduced by 50% and phantom securities reduced by only 4%.Another revealing ratio is presented in the Balluck paper: The ratio of notional value of derivatives ($500 trillion) to real bank assets held for trading and securities financing operations ($3 trillion) is 167:1.

Balluck speaks to the uncertainty about this and mentions a factor (compression) which has kept the total value of derivatives from increasing even more:It is impossible to know with certainty what has driven this increase, but it may be due to the long-term growth in the use of derivatives as they have become more popular for hedging risks. The rise could also reflect greater use of derivatives for speculative purposes. The notional values of derivatives have increased despite a recent increase in the use of compression services, which cancel offsetting derivative trades, by investment banks.

Note: Financiers may argue that the notional value of derivatives are an incorrect measure for assessing risk because the derivative positions are largely offset with counterparties within the system and only a very small fraction, say 1% or less should be netted out after all counterparties settle, represent the amount at risk. This can be accepted only if there is a very naive

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assumption: All counterparties will be there to settle. We have the proof of what happens when even one small counterparty cannot fulfill its contracts in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy of 2008. Lehman Brothers had a miniscule position in derivatives (less than 0.01% of the global nominal total). But the financial system collapsed because no one knew which Lehman counterparties would be affected and how that would impact their ability to honor their other contracts. Within a day AIG was determined to have been swimming naked and became a ward of the government. The important risk factor is the total nominal value of derivatives because the structure is like an array of dominoes stood on end - when one falls, depending on where it is in the array a few more will fall or most could fall. Without a map of the contract dependencies the systemic risk is not known. And there is no map, no transparency in this morass.Balluck devotes four pages of his paper to a detailed discussion of the risks involved and another page and a half about measures that have been attempted to deal with and contain these risks. These two sections should be read -they are as good a detailed summary as I have seen.

These large global investment banks have gotten themselves in a too big to fail (TBTF) position because of the banking services they provide to the real economy, both public and private. They are getting government support for their financial engineering adventuring activities because they do a small amount of their activity in the real economy.When will this nonsense stop?

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