The Mandela Effect

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For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it means that present day records are notably different than your personal memory. Not just yours. Everyone’s. The record has changed. The original record. But your mind is a steel trap, and you have lived your life according to linear time. The hypothesis, as I see it, is this: Sentient manipulation of past events creates divergent time lines. My response at first was probably what yours is now: The what? Here is what science knows about time travel. I wrote in depth about this in my book Remembering the Future.

Can you travel back into your past and alter something that will change yourself in the present? And could you travel into your future and also alter your present? It looks like it might be possible, and it’s not science fiction.

Both Einstein and the Eastern mystics have explained that what we call the past, present and future are an illusion: A fabric of space/time, in which all exist seamlessly together. In this view, “…the future and the past are not any different, so there's no reason why you can't have causes from the future just as you have causes from the past," according to David Miller of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney in Australia.

And now, some new thinking and research suggests that, in fact, the present can change the past, with implications for the present; and, that the future can also change the present. This is known as “retrocausality” and has interesting implications for your life — at least, metaphorically, aside from the quantum physics it’s based on. It’s that you might be able to change something about your present life that was originally set in motion in your past. Or, that you might be able to use the future — even though it hasn’t “happened” yet, from your time-frame, to also change something in the present.

Psychotherapy patients and well as others who feel stuck and unable to change or grow are often taken back to past events to clear the script. This process has been developed into an entire industry, and there are many masters out there who can do this better than me. Okay, well not many, but there are some. I address this phenomenon in my book Remembering the Future. I can tell you than a great resource is also a book called Parapsychology: The Controversial Science. There are many excellent experiments that were conducted to objectively validate that past events can be changed.

One laser beam was divided into two, so that photons in one beam were entangled with those in the other. One beam passed through a double slit to a photon detector, while the other passed through a lens to a movable detector, but more slowly, and which could sense a photon in two different positions. In one position, the movable detector measures each photon as a particle, while in the other, it captures it as a wave. Either one forces its twin in the other beam to be measured in the same way, through some

form of “communication” to the past. The energy left the source as a wave, and then retroactively changed to behave as a particle, before it went through the slit.

Comparing the beam that wasn’t delayed with the one that was showed a shift occurred a few microseconds before the respective choice was made on the delayed photons. Hence, retrocausality has been proven and repeated thousands of times since Dr. Thomas Young first offered the original proof. That is, the other beam arrived at its detector before the choice was made on the other one. Here’s a longer description of the process and a visual portrayal of how it works. 

In effect, the results of your choice can be seen before you’ve even made it.

In another experiment, printed records from a random number generator were sealed in a vault by date and then were significantly altered by conscious observation and manipulation. So, could you make a different choice in your past, and its consequences would now appear in the present? The answer is irrefutably yes. 

Keeping in mind that what we label past, present and future are all one, then an event in either the past or the future could alter the one we call “present.” To understand this from another perspective, if someone could view your activity from several light years away — say from the distance of Alpha Centauri — that person would see your activity that spanned — in your Earth-bound existence — several decades past and present. In effect, whatever is in store for your life has already occurred.  It’s visible to the Alpha Centauri observer. That also suggests that you can change it as you go along.

If you could shift something that occurred or that you experienced in your past, that created your future — now your present, then you may be able to actually change your life condition. Or that of others. Or the actual record of the present could differ with almost everyone’s memory of that event. Almost. Some people, who are not conscious that they are conscious, may be altered with your manipulation of the past. In other words, they will remember it the way the record shows, and not the way you remember it. Could a retroactive shift transform your present? Absolutely.

What I mastered in the book was the ability to place something specific and clear in the future, and then come back to the past and manipulate the events in the past to make that future manifest.

 Want to give it a try? Here are some suggestions:

1.  Identify some meaningful turning points or events in your life in which you made a decision or were moved by circumstances to go in one direction vs. another, and that you know it forged a path in your life that you wish it hadn’t. It might have concerned a feature of your personality that became reinforced through your behavior, associations, or personal values. Perhaps particular interests that grew, or an educational choice you made. Or a relationship you began or committed to.

2.  Write down what you wish you had known then and how you would have liked to act differently, in that turning point. Then, envision inhabiting the person you were at that earlier time. Show your earlier self what he/she needs to know or do, right now, in order to shift direction or change in some way. Do this exercise during meditation or period of quite reflection. If you need some lessons in meditation, I suggest Flower of Life meditation. I had two master teachers, Drunvalo Melchizedek, and Maureen St. Germain.

3.  Now envision that you’ve actually become the person who could have emerged from that earlier shift. You must be absolutely clear with as much detail as possible. Consider that there is no difference between your direct observation and reality. This is not delusion, unless it involves the observation of others. In other words, you can’t remember that you are an accomplished neurosurgeon, if there is no one on whom you have accomplished a surgery. Imagine incorporating the emotions, state of mind and capacities that would have resulted from that experience.  Envision that you are that person you might have been. Reflect on how you can integrate the results of the past you’ve “changed”  into your actual life, today. What new intentions or emotions arise within you, and what can you could do with them? Remember, your experience of reality is constructed within your head, your consciousness. That’s what can change by “changing” your past. What you will find is that there is a narrow range of possibilities for you. The past, after all, has already happened. You can change perspectives, recover lost knowledge, and even bulk up your skill sets like math or music. But the latitude is narrow.

4.  Next flip this around: Teleport yourself into the future that you desire for your life, up ahead. Use your imagination to envision that person you would like to be, in your future, the person who’s already there, viewed from that Alpha Centauri location in space/time.  From within that person, speak to who you are right now.  Tell your present self what you need to alter, change or develop from this immediate moment forward, in order to be pulled to that future version of yourself that you want to become.  Doing this reminds you of the vast power — and importance — of having an ideal for your life: a positive vision of something that constantly beckons you and keeps pulling you along the path towards it, as it tells you that it’s already there — or could be. Applying pressure or energy to those present events, which are really in the past of your future, will effect that future, or at least something quite different that a random future. There is a slightly narrow funnel extending to the future for a short time, but after that I call it the potential of all potentialities. There is absolutely an unlimited future for you. Think about that for a minute. Unlimited.

There are examples. Many examples. Some of these are so stark and so plain to see, it’s as though we did it on purpose to slap our present self into realizing our power over time.

The Berenstein Bears.

Now, if you don’t know about The Berenstein Bears, they were a series of children’s books, and eventually a cartoon, created by Stan and Jan Berenstein. They focused on a family of bears, and did the usual educational children’s book/tv series thing. Simple enough. I remember them, vaguely, and I believe I owned a book or two when I was a kid. It’s been a while.

So what’s the problem?

They’re not The Berenstein Bears. They’ve never been The Berenstein Bears. Despite the fact that many others remember them as The Berenstein Bears, and I myself still pronounce their name as The Berenstein Bears, this is false. This is wrong.

They are The Berenstain Bears.

It was such a strange feeling to find that out. To see Google correcting my spelling, to see the Wikipedia entry titled The Berenstain Bears, to see book covers that seemed at odds with the memories I had in my head. What was going on?

The “problem,” as it were, became clearer when I found this post by someone named Reece (“a graduate student of physics”) at a blog titled the Wood between Worlds (an interesting place, check it out).

Reece’s post is a trip down the rabbit hole for anyone, like myself, who remembers that cartoon family as The Berenstein Bears, not The Berenstain Bears. And with it comes a strange hypothesis.

Did something in our universe change to make this happen? “Somehow, at some time in the last 10 years or so, reality has been tampered with and history has been retroactively changed,” Reece explains, “The bears really were called the ‘BerenstEin Bears’ when we were growing up, but now reality has been altered such that the name of the bears has been changed post hoc.”

Reece’s proposal is essentially that somewhere along the way we shifted into an almost indistinguishable parallel universe. Almost, as there are minor differences, many we probably haven’t realized yet.

“…we moved to the stAin hexadectant, while our counterparts moved to our hexadectant (stEin). They are standing around expressing their confusion about the ‘Berenstein Bears’ and how they all remember “Berenstain Bears” on the covers growing up.”

In a later post, Reece would tackle some of the flaws in the idea. Many people do remember them as The Berenstain Bears, including members of the Berenstain family, of course. But perhaps these individuals are simply native to this Berenstain universe, and notice no difference. Others (perhaps yourself included) don’t remember one way or the other.

Perhaps we all just read it and heard it incorrectly.

Of Bears and Time TravelAnother possibility, however, is that what we’re dealing with isn’t a matter of parallel universes naturally diverging, but rather a meddling time traveler interfering with the past. In fact, at least one individual has made the connection between this curious problem and John Titor, musing that Titor’s travels in our worldline caused a divergence that not only prevented the Y2K Bug, but also changed the spelling of Berenstein Bears.

“…To me, this BerenstEin (which it WAS, and was supposed to have remained) Phenomenon is an Echo of Proof that OUR World-line was Affected by the Time/Dimensional Traveler, John Titor. Maybe he wasn’t in Our Specific World-line in 1975, but whatever he did There (or Then) caused Ours to be Created as a Branch-off from that point.”

Could our false memories, in fact, be alter-vús?

Well, myself, I’m willing to admit that I probably read the name wrong. It’s just one of those things that happens, and as always I ride that line between skepticism and belief.

Or maybe I didn’t, and one of the above theories is true.

Either way, it’s an intriguing outcome of events when so many people remember something a certain way, only to find out that the reality is entirely different. Check the links I shared above, dive down the rabbit hole yourself. There are apparently other inconsistencies. What do you remember?

Yesterday, I found myself over at the subreddit r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix. And, wouldn’t you know it, the top post over there is about something called the Mandela Effect. This is the apparent name for phenomena like the Berenst#in Bears problem, in which we remember something contrary to reality.

Exploring it further, I found that the name, coined by Fiona Broome, stems from the absurd number of people who seem to “remember” that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s, and not at his home in Johannesburg in 2013. In fact, there’s even a subreddit dedicated to this kind of stuff at r/MandelaEffect, and you can read Broome’s own website on the subject at MandelaEffect.com.

Other examples of this “effect” include a portrait missing from this universe of Henry VIII, in which he’s holding a turkey leg, New Zealand being in a different location, and perhaps strangest of all, the color Chartreuse being “something other than yellow-green.” You can check out Broome’s full list of anomalies here.

Alternate Time Streams or False Memories?

However, the problem with something like the Mandela Effect is this: just because you hear something or even see something, that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Sometimes we read something incorrectly, or experience false memories. Sometimes we’re told something, even (well, especially) by the news media, that’s incorrect. We assume it’s true, because why not, and go about our business.

Then, when we later find out that Nelson Mandela has only recently died, or New Zealand is in a different location on the map, or that the Berenstein Bears are actually the Berenstain Bears, this information clashes with what we thought we knew. And if enough people are misinformed about the same topic, I imagine that’s when we run into the so-called Mandela Effect.

In other words, that’s a roundabout way of saying sometimes we’re wrong.

But that’s a boring way to look at things, isn’t it? As I said before, this is an interesting phenomenon, regardless of whether you want to ascribe it to parallel universes or false memories. The brain is a tricky thing, and the universe is trickier. Head over to Mandela Effect, explore the possibilities, and draw your own conclusions.

Do you have any memories that don’t quite mesh with our current reality?

If you’ve seen the movie, you know the iconic scene: Forrest Gump is sitting on a bench, and offers a chocolate to the woman sitting next to him. What does he say, again? “My momma always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’” That’s how many remember it. But you know what? It’s actually “Life was like a box of chocolates.” Curious that even this video’s title got it wrong.

In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Evil Queen gazes into her mystical mirror and says, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Except she doesn’t: it’s actually “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

It’s been quite a few months since the Internet had its collective nervous breakdown over the fact that the Berenstein Bears are actually the Berenstain Bears .

That revelation was a wild ride for just about everyone who considered it, but there are thousands of such things that are all around us. There are probably some in your own unique life. Inconsistencies lead some to believe that they’re actually living in a parallel time line.

This phenomenon has come to be called the Mandela Effect. It’s the strange problem of having memories that go against reality. You could even call them Alter-vus. Some people think there may have been a meddling time traveler. Given the meaningless nature of many of these changes, like the bears or robots or movie lines, I have a feeling that the travelers are us. As we are waking up, our observations of the past are having these effects on the records.

If we are not misremembering things on a massive scale, then this opens possibilities. It is happening. It happened. Now, what might be the results if we do this on purpose? What happens if we design a change and then go an effect it? Can we save the world? Can we destroy it? The answer to both questions is yes. What you need to know is that there are very powerful groups who are manipulating the past and the future to make themselves very powerful. These principles are true and can be used for good or for ill. The issue is that you and I are not using this very well.

So let’s have a look at some of these other incorrect memories that people have reported. Perhaps you share their experiences – perhaps you’re from another world!

New ZealandWhere would you say New Zealand is located on the map? Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. But some remember it being to the northwest of Australia, when in actuality it is to the southeast.

Forrest GumpIf you’ve seen the movie, you know the iconic scene: Forrest Gump is sitting on a bench, and offers a chocolate to the woman sitting next to him. What does he say, again? “My momma always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’” That’s how I remember it. I have said it a hundred times with Forest Gump’s actual voice. But you know what? It’s actually “Life was like a box of chocolates.” Go look it up in YouTube. Get out your old VHS of the movie and watch it again. You’ll see. The record, all the records, have been changed to was.

Star WarsIn yet another iconic movie scene, Darth Vader has bested Luke Skywalker in combat at Cloud City, and he reveals a startling truth: “Luke,” he says, “I am your father.” Or does he? In reality, he says, “No, I am your father.”

When Fred Rodgers sang his well-known tune at the beginning of his show, Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood, maybe you sang along. Try it with me: “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, it’s a…” Wait, that’s actually not quite correct.

It’s “A beautiful day in this neighborhood.” When I go back and look at the film record, his mouth shapes the word THE, but the sound coming out is THIS.

Cris Johnson, Nicolas Cage’s character in the movie NEXT said “Here's the thing about the future. Every time you look at it, it changes — because you looked at it — and that changes everything else.”

I know you think it was just a movie. Well, it was just a movie. But I can tell you that I believe humans are the only sentient beings on Earth that can behold the principle of time. We can

Defeating the Political Establishment

Mr. Farage – who led his party (UKIP) to victory in the 2014 European Parliamentary elections, to a whopping 4m votes in the 2015 UK general election, and mostly importantly, to Britain voting to leave the European Union in 2016 – has used the “People’s Army” moniker to describe his party’s supporters for years.

Introduced by Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, he told the crowd that UKIP and Brexit campaigners had defeated the UK political establishment including the big banks, the corporations, the political classes, the pollsters, and the “liberal elite” by talking to people about controlling their country, their borders, and having self-respect for themselves.

He hit out at U.S. President Barack Obama, who visited Britain during the campaign and threatened to send the country “to the back of the queue” for a trade deal with the United States if Britain voted for Brexit.

Mr. Farage has previously called Mr. Obama “despicable” and said he refused to repeat his behaviour by telling Americans how to vote.

But echoing his words from an earlier interview with Breitbart London, Mr. Farage said: “I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me. In fact, I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if she paid me!”

The crowd, massively receptive to Mr. Farage’s comments, cheered repeatedly when he mentioned how they too could defeat the political status quo.

Breitbart London understands that Mr. Farage met Mr. Trump at a fundraising dinner earlier in the evening, where they discussed Brexit and how Mr. Farage led Britain out of the European Union.

And Mr. Farage mentioned “Project Fear” – the tactic used by the establishment to threaten Britons with economic collapse, with depression, and even with war if Britain left the EU.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron’s name prompted boos from the crowd in Jackson.

Mr. Trump hailed Mr. Farage as the man behind the Brexit campaign, stating after his speech, “What a job he did… against all odds”.

Robot Wars

Leading experts say robots with the ability to kill targets of their own choosing are less than 10 years away from being a reality. These machines will mark a dramatic escalation in computer AI from the drones and robots currently in use, all of which still require a human to press the “kill button”. The US, the UK, Russia, China and Israel are in an “arms race” to develop the first killer robots. In a series of exclusive interviews, leading experts told The Sun Online machines making life or death decisions will likely be developed within the next 10 years.

Fears are now growing about the implications of creating such smart machines, as are concerns they will fall into the hands of terrorist groups such as ISIS.

Locked in this new race for military supremacy is Britain, the US, China, Russia and Israel – all of which have robot programmes of varying advancement. Toby Walsh, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, described the machines as “the next revolution in warfare”.

Unlike current drones or bomb disposal robots, they will be capable of tracking and killing people at their own discretion – a prospect he finds “terrifying”.

He said: “There’s an arms race between the US, China, Russia, the UK and Israel – they’re technologically the most developed countries.”

One such creation was a 132ft-long warship currently being trialled by the US Navy that acts as a fully autonomous submarine hunter.

With no crew to feed, it can cruise across oceans non-stop for up to three months.

Another is a self-driving tank being tested by Vladimir Putin’s military – which has the ability to select and kill anyone it deems an enemy.

“We will fairly soon have autonomous weapons that will target, track and kill without human involvement,” Dr Porter said.

“That is what happens at the minute (but) there’s still a human in the loop and from a military perspective, that’s the weak link. It would be much better – from a military perspective – if that is removed.”

One such robot currently in action is the Samsung SGR-1, an immobile device installed on South Korea’s side of the DMZ. The US Navy’s driverless “Sea Hunter” can travel at sea for three months and is designed to sniff out enemy submarines. The Samsung SGR-A1 robot is installed on the Korean DMZ and machine guns anything that enters its two mile target radius. That is a 10 thousand foot kill zone. And I thought my field sentry was pretty good. That is a 55-gallon drum that is buried to a few inches below the lid. It has a periscoping machine gun emplacement that comes up out of the ground

and puts 5 rounds into anything that is around 98.6 degrees and 16 inches tall. The mechanism is fast enough to clear an area the size of a football field of people in less than 60 seconds. The drum carries 10 thousand rounds of ammo. One or two of these would have secured the Benghazi compound without ever being seen before it is needed. Just retreat to the safe room and press the button. In a few minutes, the game is over.

Using heat and motion detectors to sense movement, it machine guns with deadly accuracy anything who steps within its two mile radius.

Currently, more than 80 countries use some form of robotics in their military, as do some insurgent groups such as Hezbollah.

Peter Singer, a pre-eminent expert in 21st century warfare, said these robotics are becoming more advanced, in both civilian life and war.

He told The Sun Online: "What was once science fiction is the new normal of war. They will come in more shapes, forms and sizes and take on more roles.

"Just as we are starting to see driverless cars, we will also see robotics in war become more autonomous, doing more and more on their own."

Although he was sceptical that wars would become entirely humanless, he warned a key battleground would be the "fight in the cyber domain".

"Both human and robotic systems are increasingly dependent on cyberspace for their communications, navigation, (and) coordination.

"Indeed, 98 percent of US military communications go over the internet. Whoever owns this space, or takes it away from others, would be at a huge advantage."

In his latest book, Ghost Fleet, he identified 21 different examples of autonomous robots being planned for battles in land, air and sea. Noting that "US, China, Israel are among the leaders" of the arms race, he added all large UK military defence firms were also looking at robotics.

"It is parallel to other arms fields. US systems are more advanced, but more expensive than the Chinese."

This rapidly advancing technology has prompted warnings from many of the world's leading thinkers. Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are among those to have recently called for controls on the technology.

Dr Porter has campaigned for similar measures, warning the killer machines will inevitably fall into the hands of groups such as ISIS.

"This is a technology that is advancing very rapidly and there's a bit of a race to get something out there.

"It would be be very hard to take these semi-autonomous drones out of the US's toy box and tell them they can't play with them anymore.

"They will quickly become available on the black market and used by terrorists and used against civilians. Drones are not expensive, not compared to nuclear bombs."

The collateral damage with robots is unlike that of bombing from the air. There is no driver in many cases, so kill decisions are antiseptic and do not result in the stress on the human asset.

The Crimean ElectionsWhile Ukraine’s authorities have branded the upcoming elections in Crimea “illegal,” the republic’s chief prosecutor noted that Kiev’s current regime, itself, was installed undemocratically, while slamming its statement as “speculative and irresponsible.”

“This is nothing but senility and we can say that their senility is progressing,” Natalya Poklonskaya told RIA Novosti. “They should rather deal with their own elections, bearing in mind that in 2014 they had an illegal armed power grab, after which they just appointed their own people to all the posts, in violation of the Ukrainian Constitution. They have plenty of things to do there.”

Her remarks came soon after the Ukrainian Ministry for Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons issued a statement in which it called all elections that are to take place in the Republic of Crimea on September 18 – all-Russia election day – “illegal,” while threatening to hold all those who participate in organizing the polls criminally responsible.

Prosecutor Poklonskaya called these threats “speculative and irresponsible,” saying that the Kiev authorities were merely trying to distract Ukrainian citizens from the country’s dire problems.

Natalia Poklonskaya became Crimea’s chief prosecutor at age 33 very soon after the republic seceded from Ukraine and joined the Russian Federation in 2014. The newly installed regime in Kiev reacted by threatening her with arrest, and Ukrainian nationalists reportedly even plotted to assassinate her, but were thwarted by Russian security services.

In June of this year, Poklonskaya announced that she herself would be running in the September elections for a seat in Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of the country’s legislative branch, on the ticket of United Russia, a centrist, pro-Putin political party.

“I plan to work in the State Duma if I am elected. This is a new level and I plan to apply the skills and knowledge I have received while working in law enforcement,” Poklonskaya told reporters. “[President] Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] has charged us with renewing the State Duma and I would like to be a part of this process.”

The Bail-in BeginsThe S&P 500's largest corporate pension funds are stealing a staggering $376 billion from their workers by underfunding their pension funds, new figures from Citibank reveal.

The top 25 of these plans accounted for $225bn of that underfunding.

Citigroup’s Chief US Equity Strategist Tobias Levkovich warned, “Pension under-funding continues to be a major issue for S&P 500 constituents as very respectable equity market gains over the last seven years have not substantially alleviated pension pressures.”

“Major issue” is something of an understatement as the S&P 500 corporate pensions have been underfunded since before the start of the Great Recession, hitting $376bn last year, a 22% increase from the 2008 level of $308bn.

The oil crash, and not corporate greed, is to blame, according to Citigroup, claiming decreased prices hurt a wide range of industries and personal income (not to mention some national economies).

Energy workers have the most to worry about as the capital-intensive industry was the least-funded sector despite the billions of dollars in profit.

Legacy companies like General Electric, General Motors and Boeing lead the table in underfunding almost 700,000 current employees, partly because they have to pay for the golden retirement plans for their executives such as Jack Welch.

Only 30 companies in the S&P 500 were fully funded as of year end 2015, with almost half of the overfunded companies coming from the financial sector.

Desperate for fund yields, South Carolina and Hawaii have turned to the risky business of selling puts, a tactic eerily reminiscent of those used in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Using puts, a contract is sold by the investor to the owner of a stock offering security on the investment.

If the stock falls below a given price, the put guarantees the investor will either buy the declining stock or cover the loss in value.

This gives pension funds regular income and is considered a low-risk tactic as funds are set aside to cushion the blow of any payouts.

The contract cost increases as market swings are expected, relying on buyers overpaying for insurance.

Where it becomes a huge risk is when an unexpected downturn occurs leaving pensions in South Carolina and Hawaii exposed to huge losses.

This would echo to last decade when credit default swaps were sold on mortgage-backed securities, a bet once considered a sure thing.

Pension funds in Hawaii and South Carolina are plying an arcane options strategy called cash-secured put writing. In a typical trade, the investor sells a contract, known as a put, to someone who owns stocks and is willing to pay up for protection in case they decline. If, within a certain time, the shares fall below a given price, the investor buys the stocks at that price, or covers their lost value.

The upside for the pension funds, which are writing options on the S&P 500 index, is that they earn regular income. The strategy aims to work like a volatility dampener. If stocks fall, the income the funds have collected on the options contracts should help cushion any hit they take on the puts and their own separate stockholdings. The pension funds set aside some cash-like instruments such as Treasurys for the payouts, so they aren’t caught without money if the market goes against them.

The cost of options tends to rise when investors expect big market swings, so the strategy does best when investors are fearful and paying up for protection against a downturn—and a downturn doesn’t materialize.

But if protection is cheap and the market takes a big fall, the pension fund can end up with losses. 

History has told us that the pension fund managers and brokers make a fortune in fees and commissions, along with the attorneys and accounting firms, the actual pensioner pays the price in lost value. There comes a point where you might be picking up pennies in front of a steamroller,” Nathan Faber, vice president of investment strategies at Newfound Research, warned in the WSJ.

If pension underfunding continues in the same alarming direction, funds will need to be found eventually, whether through bailout or massive benefit cuts, both likely to be at the cost of the taxpayer.

The Clinton Plan for 401k

Imagine there were no 401(k)s. You wouldn't stop saving for retirement, right? Right? Don't worry, I won't tell Suze Orman. Not that CNBC's personal finance guru would get mad at you -- according to a new paper, most households wouldn't sock away any less for their golden years if we eliminated 401(k)s. Which raises a $100 billion question...

As far as tax expenditures go, the one for retirement savings is a biggie. Remember, "tax expenditure" is just econospeak for the various deductions, exclusions, and preferential rates -- in other words, subsidies -- that litter the tax code. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), excluding pension contributions and earnings from taxes will cost us about 1.2 percent of GDP over the next decade, or an average of $240 billion a year. That's a lot of spending -- that's what tax expenditures are, just disguised spending -- without much bang for the buck. Maybe just a penny's worth.

In fact, one penny's worth is exactly how much extra saving a dollar's worth of retirement subsidies produced in Denmark, according to the recent paper by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard, Soren Leth-Petersen and Tore Olsen of the University of Copenhagen, and Torben Heien Nielsen of the Danish National Centre for Social Research. In other words, we might be spending $240 billion to get people to save $2.4 billion more.

But don't the trillions of dollars in 401(k) accounts tell a different story? Not necessarily. There isn't enough data for the U.S., but Chetty et. al. looked at the numbers for Denmark, which has accounts similar to our 401(k)s, to examine how much more incentives to save get us to save. The first chart shows how much households contributed to tax-preferred accounts after subsidies increased and the second chart shows how much they contributed to non-tax-preferred accounts, again after subsidies increased. It's a bit hard to see, but the decrease in the latter almost completely offsets the increase in the former -- households saved an average of 1 cent more.

Households save where the subsidy is, but don't save more because of the subsidy. It turns out the best way to get households to save more is ... to make them save more. In other words, automatically take a percentage of each person's paycheck and put it in a retirement account, as a default. If this sounds familiar, it's because that's how the payroll tax works -- except it's how you think the payroll tax works now. There's a misconception that the money the government withholds from you every month ends up in an account with your name on it that eventually becomes your Social Security benefits. It doesn't. The money the government withholds every month pays for current retirees, which is why the system needs some kind of tweak over the next few decades as the Boomers retire. 

A system of forced, or nudged, saving wouldn't replace this social insurance, but rather the wasteful dinosaur that is the 401(k). It's mostly the well-off, who have retirement savings to move around, who move their savings to where the subsidies are. The 401(k) doesn't do much if your goal is to get people who don't save much to save more, and it doesn't do this at quite the cost.

So, the government plans to take your 401k account. Don’t worry, it won’t affect you. I doubt more than 5 or 10 listeners to this program have one. That is an account for the successful and the upper middle class. They are a very small voting block, and besides, it is clear they are hoarding money that should have gone to the needy of this country. The planners are gonna buy a government bond with what they take, that will guarantee you 3% plus inflation, and then we will require that you put 5% of your pay into your 401(k) every year, although it's not yours anymore, it's the government's. You will be issued an IOU that you can collect when you reach reitement age. What age is that? That has yet to be determined.  So the government is getting all of the money up front.  What they're doing is eliminating the deduction.  You don't get a tax break anymore.  The government is taking all the money and holding it at a promised 3% plus inflation return for your retirement.  And so whatever the amount of your Social Security was in August of 2008, added to your Social Security trust fund account, whatever the hell that is when you retire, divided by whatever monthly is what you will end up with.

The reason they're doing this is because the tax deduction is costing the government $240 billion a year.  All the 401(k) holders combined are contributing $240 billion total to the 401(k), government doesn't get that, and they need it now, see.  Government needs it.  I mean, we got a real problem.  We got a fiscal cliff.   They need the money, not you.  So the original rule that you started your 401(k) is now being yanked out from underneath you.  And, see, whatever you have in your 401(k) now, you will keep.  It's a tax break.  Everybody that has their 401(k) plan will be grandfathered in, but instead of getting a tax deduction like a decrease in your taxes by whatever your tax rate is, then you're gonna get $600 a year

Retirement is an American's reasonable expectation. We put money into investment plans so that our work today funds our hard-earned leisure of tomorrow.

But many in Washington see our investment accounts not as the expressions of well-planned, disciplined decisions but as untapped reservoirs of wealth they can drain to fix the problems that they caused.

The tax protection that 401(k)s have now can be wiped out by grasping politicians who refuse to do what's right, which is to severely cut spending.

The war on retirement, particularly 401(k)s, is quiet now. But that's because it's a cold war.

And like the postwar tensions between the East and West, it could erupt at any time into a hot war.

One group of retirement plan professionals is warning that the hostilities might be closer than many of us think. The American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries launched on Monday, according to Reuters, "a media campaign intended to educate U.S. employers and workers that the federal government might consider changing the tax benefits of retirement savings accounts."

A website set up by the ASPPA advises account holders to tell lawmakers to "keep their hands off your retirement savings" and explains that "Congress needs to reduce the deficit, and part of deficit reduction will most likely be 'tax reform' that increases tax revenue" — the strong suggestion being that Washington is coming after Americans' 401(k)s.

If the ASPPA were alone in issuing its warnings, it could be written off as the hyperbole of an isolated group. But Washington's lust for Americans' retirement investments is well documented.

President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, for instance, proposed lowering the cap on the amount workers could place in their 401(k)s without incurring taxes.

And nearly three years ago, Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara wrote on these pages about the Treasury and Labor departments "asking for public comment on 'the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams.'"

"In plain English," said Gingrich and Ferrara, "the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years."

More than 60 million American workers have a 401(k) or similar — 403(b) or 457(b) — plan. But taxing these accounts or lowering the amount that can be contributed to them tax-free would do little to close the deficit and cut the debt.

Total assets in 401(k)s are roughly $3 trillion. So even if they were seized in their entirety, they would merely retire less than 19% of Washington's $16.3 trillion debt.

Taxed at 50%, 401(k)s would narrowly cover the $1.3 trillion deficit that Washington rang up in 2012.

Already a large chunk of America's retirement is held in the federal government's hands. Between 1937 and 2009, Social Security took in nearly $14 trillion in payroll tax revenue.

In all but 11 of those years, the government collected more than it spent on benefits.

Yet despite all the surpluses, the Social Security program is in financial trouble and Congress needs more revenue to fix it, just as it is looking for more of other people's money to avoid the fiscal cliff plunge.

Don't think for a minute that 401(k)s aren't on the table as a part of the solution.

And when they are served up in front of hungry politicians, they can be quickly devoured. All that will be left for the account holders will be a few crumbs.

The thing is, you were encouraged to save money, and you did. Then, when it accumulated to a large enough amount, the government decided that you could not be trusted with it to use for your retirement. People were getting debit cards to it. They were taking it out, paying the penalty, and paying their kid’s student loans off. That had to stop, because you were wasting the money on things that had nothing to do with the government. So, they are taking it. To protect it from you.

LIGO Detects Second GW EventGravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in space-time produced by some of the most violent events in the cosmos. The theory is that black holes are black, because the gravity of a mass at least four times that of our own Sun is packed into the smallest place possible, and that gravity is so strong that photons of light cannot escape the Event Horizon.

They carry unique information about the origins of the Universe and studying them is expected to provide important insights into the evolution of black holes, stars, supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.

However, they interact very weakly with particles and require incredibly sensitive equipment to detect.

Physicists on the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Virgo Collaboration are using a technique called laser interferometry. You can buy a simply one to tell the distance between two points like a surveyor. People use them to sense vibration by making the laser interfere with itself destructively.

It goes back to Dr. Thomas Young’s double slit experiment. Dr. Young used a single light source that shined on a shield with two slits in it. Effectively this looked like two pebbles being dropped into a smooth pond a distance apart. The waves go out in all directions, but when they collide with one another various degrees of one of two things happens. Either the waves add to each other, or they cancel each other out. When a wave hits a wave, it builds up higher. When a wave meets a valley, they cancel each other out. Hence Constructive or Destructive interference.

Now, the way LIGO works is like a giant laser framing square. I mean giant. Each side of the framing square is 4 kilometers long. The tunnels are so long, that if you stand at the apex, you cannot see the end of it. I have been to all of them in the US.

One source of very stable light is beamed at a half-coated prismatic mirror that splits the beam in two. One beam goes down one tunnel, and one goes down the other. When it gets to the end, it reflects off a very flat and stable mirror and come back to the prism. That beam goes back and forth many times, so that the beam ends up being about 20 thousand miles long.

Then, the beams are collided into one another and tuned until the cancel each other out to zero. A dark spot. Now, the theory is that lasers travel along the fabric of spacetime. If that fabric warps or ripples, then the laser has to travel that ripple. The odds that both beams will ripple exactly the same amount are infinitesimal. A small light signal is realized, when spacetime vibrates.

The advantage to using both observatories is that they are far enough apart, that the base of the triangle allows is to locate the source in space.

LIGO’s first detection of gravitational waves and a pair of colliding black holes occurred September 14, 2015.

On December 25, 2015, at 10:38 p.m. EST (7:38 p.m. PST), the scientists observed gravitational waves for the second time.

The gravitational wave event, named GW151226, was detected by both of the twin LIGO detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington.

“We report the observation of a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar-mass black holes,” the scientists said.

“The signal, GW151226, was observed by the twin detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) on December 26, 2015 at 03:38:53 GMT. The signal was initially identified within 70 s by an online matched-filter search targeting binary coalescences.”

The team has concluded that these gravitational waves were produced during the final moments of the merger of two black holes — 14 and 8 times the mass of the Sun — to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole with 21 solar masses.

In comparison, the black holes detected September 14 were 36 and 29 times the Sun’s mass, merging into a black hole of 62 solar masses.

“It is very significant that these black holes were much less massive than those in the first detection,” said Louisiana State University scientist Prof. Gabriela Gonzalez, spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

“Because of their lighter mass, they spent more time — about one second — in the sensitive band of the detectors. It is a promising start to mapping the populations of black holes in our Universe.”

During the merger, which occurred about 1.4 billion years ago, a quantity of energy roughly equivalent to the mass of the Sun was converted into gravitational waves.

The GW151226 signal comes from the last 27 orbits of the black holes before their merger.

“GW151226 perfectly matches our theoretical predictions for how two black holes move around each other for several tens of orbits and ultimately merge,” said Prof. Alessandra Buonanno, LSC principal investigator and a physicist at the University of Maryland.

“Remarkably, we could also infer that at least one of the two black holes in the binary was spinning.”

Based on the arrival time of the signals — with the Livingston detector measuring the waves 1.1 milliseconds before the Hanford detector — the position of the source in the sky can be roughly determined.

The discovery is reported in the journal Physical Review Letters .

SDR UpdateThe IMF recently implemented a major portion of “A multiyear, multistep plan to position the SDR as the leading global reserve asset. The study recommends increasing the SDR supply to make them liquid and more attractive to potential private-sector market participants such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. The IMF study recommends that the SDR bond market replicate the infrastructure of the U.S. Treasury market, with hedging, financing, settlement and clearance mechanisms substantially similar to those used to support trading in Treasury securities today.” Why are they doing this? Primarily, it is because there is no liquidity left in the market, as a whole. That means virtually everything is being bought with debt or debt instruments. Credit cards, mortgages, securities, and the wagers on them like puts or calls.

Not that you’d use SDR to buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, but they are being used in the system now to do just that. SDRs are about to be issued any day now in bank note form but may never be used on an everyday basis by ordinary citizens around the world. We will just use the tools of the SDR like a debit card or a cell phone. It will just be credits or units; little ones and zeroes. Dollar will be an increment of the past very soon. But even such limited usage does not alter the fact that the SDR is world money controlled by elites. These elites are few,

powerful, and motivated to control the world for their benefit. If that helps you, that is good. If that does not help you, there is no more that you can do about it. You might as well shoot arrows at clouds. That is the closest you will ever get to affecting them.

In fact, it enhances that role by making the SDR completely invisible to the average world citizens. The SDR is about to be issued in abundance to IMF members and can also be used in the future for a select list of the most important transactions in the world, including balance-of-payments settlements, oil pricing and the financial accounts of the world’s largest corporations, such as Exxon Mobil, Toyota and Royal Dutch Shell. That is precisely why Dodd-Frank legislation has been extracting the value out of your community to a central location. All the value is being taken. That is why it was made illegal for the bank to loan money to startup companies. Once the jobs are gone, they stay gone, because the banks are forbidden from helping new business with anything more than a checking or a savings account. That’s so they can extract that value to their central location.

If you start up a business, and you get an investor, and you take that money and put it into the bank to draw on to run your business, that money is immediately extracted to a global central location. It is gone. You get charged about $250 a year for keeping in there, too. That is for each account. It is through this method, that all the wealth of the world is being stolen away to a central place and then leveraged into SDR Bonds.

The genius of the scheme is that the SDRs would create inflation, but ordinary people wouldn’t know SDRs were causing it. It might even look like growth, but make no mistake. It is the exact opposite of growth. Any inflation caused by massive SDR issuance would not be immediately apparent to citizens. The inflation would show up eventually in dollars, yen and euros at the gas pump or the grocery, but national central banks could deny responsibility with ease and point a finger at the IMF. So the idea is to make the inflation slow and steady, and of course to make sure that no one reports on it. No one, but X-Squared Radio, that is. Every day, your buying power is drained away by inflation in food, energy, education, and healthcare.

John Maynard Keynes once mused that not one man in a million was able to understand the process by which inflation destroys wealth. And that has a simple cause. Only printing money or enacting unfunded mandates causes inflation. It is much more likely that not one woman or man in ten million understands special drawing rights, or SDRs. Still, the SDR is poised to be an inflationary precursor par excellence. The SDR’s mix of opacity and unaccountability permits global monetary elites to solve sovereign debt problems using an inflationary medium, which in turn allows individual governments to deny political responsibility. In other words, the elites can tweak the money supply, and no one can tell who is doing it. No one goes to jail for another LIBOR scandal, because there is no trail to follow.

The SDR’s stealth qualities begin with its name. Like Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund, the name was chosen to hide its true purpose. Just as the Federal Reserve and IMF are central banks with disguised names, so the SDR is world money in disguise. Some monetary scholars, notably Barry Eichengreen of the University of California at Berkeley, object to the use of the term money as applied to SDRs, viewing the units as a mere accounting device used to shift reserves among members. But the IMF’s own financial reports refute this view. Its

annual report contains the following disclosures: The SDR may be allocated by the IMF, as a supplement to existing reserve assets. . . . Its value as a reserve asset derives from the commitments of participants to hold and accept SDRs. In other words, as long as it is accepted for payment, it is real. Think of it as road gravel that the elites believe is gold.

The SDR is also used by a number of international and regional organizations as a unit of payment. Yogi Bera used to say that cash was the same as money. Participants and prescribed holders can use and receive SDRs in transactions among themselves, because they are playing the game.

As money is classically defined as having three essential qualities—store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange—this disclosure clinches the case for the SDR as money. The IMF itself says the SDR has value, is a unit of account, and can be used as a medium of exchange in transactions among designated holders. The three-part money definition is satisfied in full.

The IMF makes no secret of its ambitions to replace the US dollar with the SDR as a reserve currency. This was revealed in an IMF study released in January 2011, consisting of a multiyear, multistep plan to position the SDR as the leading global reserve asset. Christine Legarde was bold, aggressive, and paid absolutely no attention to the objections of America whatsoever.

The IMF will increase the SDR supply to make them liquid and more attractive to potential private-sector market participants such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Natural sellers of SDR-denominated bonds such as Volkswagen and IBM are eager to begin paying their debts with them. Sovereign wealth funds are recommended as the most likely SDR bond buyers for currency diversification reasons. The IMF study recommends that the SDR bond market replicate the infrastructure of the U.S. Treasury market, with hedging, financing, settlement, and clearance mechanisms substantially similar to those used to support trading in Treasury securities today.

The problem with the Federal Reserve is that it is so broke that it is now buying back their own bonds at a discount. It’s sort of like selling a piece of property on owner-financed note. Then, you buy back the property at a discount. Now, you are owed money by the buyer, who is you, and the value of the property is less than the amount you loaned in the first place. The buyer walked away with little more than the tax benefit of the loss, but the Federal Reserve may have received a few interest payments, but now the asset is discounted on their books. Clear as mud, right? The point is the markets want another financial source besides the Federal Reserve. Once that happens, the power of the Fed goes away. The dollar becomes worthless.

So, where is the money? That is the global question for which there is only one answer. Gold. To understand gold, it is first useful to know what gold is not

.

Gold is not a derivative.

A gold exchange-traded fund listed on the New York Stock Exchange is not gold. A gold futures contract traded on the CME Group’s COMEX is not gold. A forward contract offered by a London Bullion Market Association bank is not gold. Contracts are not gold.

Outright physical gold ownership, without pledges or liens, stored outside the banking system, is the only form of gold that is true money, since every other form is a mere conditional claim on gold.

Gold is not a commodity

The reason is that it is not consumed or converted to anything else; it is just gold. It is traded on commodity exchanges and is thought of as a commodity by many market participants, but it is distinct. Economists as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx defined commodities generally as undifferentiated goods produced to satisfy various needs or wants. Oil, wheat, corn, aluminum, copper, and countless other true commodities satisfy this definition.

Commodities are consumed as food or energy, or else they serve as inputs to other goods that are demanded for consumption. In contrast, gold has almost no industrial uses and is not food or energy in any form. It is true that gold is desired by almost all of mankind, but it is desired as money in its store-of-value role, not for any other purpose. Even jewelry is not a consumption item, although it is accounted as such, because gold jewelry is ornamental wealth, a form of money that can be worn.

Gold is not an investment

Don’t let anyone fool you, including the TV commercials. An investment involves converting money into an instrument that entails both risk and return. True money, such as gold, has no return because it has no risk. Sure, the price goes up and down, but make no mistake. It is the dollar that is changing value, not the gold. Gold buys the same amount of land today as it did in 1850.

Legendary banker J. P. Morgan said it best: “

Money is gold, and nothing else.”

More simply it means that gold is money, and not value. The true value is in what can be done in exchange for the gold. Land, a building, a service, a piece of art, a composition. This is the value. Gold is just the money, an immoveable system of exchange.

For central banks, the debate is over—gold is money. Today central banks are acquiring gold as a reserve asset at a pace not seen since the early 1970s, and this scramble for gold has profound implications for the future role of every currency, especially the U.S. dollar.

The facts speak for themselves and require little elaboration. Central banks and other official institutions such as the IMF were net sellers of gold every year from 2002 through 2009, although sales dropped sharply during that time from over 500 tonnes in 2002 to less than 50 tonnes in 2009.

Beginning in 2010, central banks became net buyers, with purchases rising sharply from less than 100 tonnes in 2010 to over 500 tonnes in 2012. In the ten-year span from 2002 to 2012, the shift from net sales to net purchases was over 1,000 tonnes per year, an amount greater than one-third of annual global mining output. Increasingly, gold is moving directly from mines to central bank vaults.

The Gold SDR

Up until a few weeks ago, the SDR created and tested by the IMF was based on paper and intimidation. The reason the central banks have been accumulating gold, at highly discounted prices I might add, is because the SDR is going to switch completely to a gold-backed form of money. One currency, gold-backed, for all.

Stop the Presses

Everyone is printing money. In the six years from 2008 to 2014, the Federal Reserve has increased base money from about $800 billion to over $4 trillion, a more than 400 percent increase. While the turnover or velocity of money has been in sharp decline, the quantity of money has skyrocketed, helping to offset the slower pace of spending. The combination of massive money printing and zero interest rates has also propped up asset prices, leading to a stock market rally and a strong recovery in housing prices since 2009. After all, stock certificates are just money. You print them, sell them, and then you have a loan without recourse. It means, you got a loan from your shareholder that you never have to pay pack.

The Coming Avalanche

In capital markets, regulators too often do not stay safe; rather, they increase the danger. Permitting banks to build up derivatives books is like ignoring snow accumulation. Allowing JPMorgan Chase to grow larger is like building a village directly in the avalanche path. Using value at risk to measure market danger is like building a ski lift to the unsteady snowpack with free lift tickets for all. Current financial regulatory policy is misguided because the risk-management models are unsound. More unsettling still is the fact that Wall Street executives know the models are unsound but use them anyway because the models permit higher leverage, bigger profits, and larger bonuses. The regulators suspect as much but play along, because they secretly want to land a juicy high-paying job at one of the banks they regulate. It happens every single day.

Metaphorically speaking, the bankers’ mansions are high on a ridgeline far from the village, while the villagers, everyday Americans and citizens around the world, are in the path of the avalanche. Financial avalanches are goaded by greed, but greed is not a complete explanation. Bankers are parasites that entirely characteristic of a society nearing collapse. Wealth is no longer created; it is taken from others. That is what Dodd-Frank is all about. Bleed all the value out of every town, every village, and every household and hoard it into a central location. They don’t know which snowflake will cause the avalanche. They each individually hope they can get their own wealth and get out of town to the tropical island before the avalanche occurs.

The greatest risk to China in the near future is that inflation will emerge in the United States before China obtains all the gold it needs. In that case, the combination of China’s faster growth and higher gold prices will make it costly to maintain its gold-to-GDP ratio. However, China is very close to acquiring sufficient bullion, to ensure a hedged position because whatever is lost to inflation will be gained in higher gold prices. At that point, China can give a green light to U.S. inflation. In other words, let the avalanche begin.

The Three Paths to the Avalanche

The first is world money, the SDR; the second is a gold standard; and the third is social disorder. Each of these outcomes can be foreseen, and each presents an asset-allocation strategy best able to preserve wealth. T

The substitution of SDRs for dollars as the global reserve currency is already under way, and the IMF is implementing it as we speak. Any movement toward gold dollars or gold SDRs will be inflationary because gold will have to be revalued sharply higher in order to support world trade and finance with existing stocks of gold. Social unrest is being engineered through a massive media campaign to highlight and divide ideologies inside United States and Europe into violent groups willing to go to war. Everything from ISIS to Black Lives Matters is a creation of media manipulators trying to get the public to step into the streets with their guns. Republicans and Democrats have developed a neofascist machine that is chewing up assets and power as fast as possible. The public sees this and is thirsting for an outsider to clean up the mess.

Juno’s First Orbit Completed TodayNASA's Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter today. The time of closest approach with the gas-giant world was 6:44 a.m. PDT (9:44 a.m. EDT, 13:44 UTC) when Juno passed about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. At the time, Juno was traveling at 130,000 mph (208,000 kilometers per hour) with respect to the planet. This flyby was the closest Juno will get to Jupiter during its prime mission.

"Early post-flyby telemetry indicates that everything worked as planned and Juno is firing on all cylinders," said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

There are 35 more close flybys of Jupiter planned during Juno's mission (scheduled to end in February 2018). The August 27 flyby was the first time Juno had its entire suite of science instruments activated and looking at the giant planet as the spacecraft zoomed past.

"We are getting some intriguing early data returns as we speak," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "It will take days for all the science data collected during the flyby to be downlinked and even more to begin to comprehend what Juno and Jupiter are trying to tell us."

While results from the spacecraft's suite of instruments will be released down the road, a handful of images from Juno's visible light imager -- JunoCam -- are expected to be released

the next couple of weeks. Those images will include the highest-resolution views of the Jovian atmosphere and the first glimpse of Jupiter's north and south poles.

"We are in an orbit nobody has ever been in before, and these images give us a whole new perspective on this gas-giant world," said Bolton.

Spitzer Scope Goes Where No One Has Gone BeforeCelebrating the spacecraft's ability to push the boundaries of space science and technology, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope team has dubbed the next phase of its journey "Beyond."

"Spitzer is operating well beyond the limits that were set for it at the beginning of the mission," said Michael Werner, the project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We never envisioned operating 13 years after launch, and scientists are making discoveries in areas of science we never imagined exploring with the spacecraft."

NASA recently granted the spacecraft a two-and-a-half-year mission extension. This Beyond phase of the Spitzer mission will explore a wide range of topics in astronomy and cosmology, as well as planetary bodies in and out of our solar system.

Because of Spitzer's orbit and age, the Beyond phase presents a variety of new engineering challenges. Spitzer trails Earth in its journey around the sun, but because the spacecraft travels slower than Earth, the distance between Spitzer and Earth has widened over time. As Spitzer gets farther away, its antenna must be pointed at higher angles toward the sun to communicate with Earth, which means that parts of the spacecraft will experience more and more heat. At the same time, Spitzer's solar panels point away from the sun and will receive less sunlight, so the batteries will be under greater stress. To enable this riskier mode of operations, the mission team will have to override some autonomous safety systems.

"Balancing these concerns on a heat-sensitive spacecraft will be a delicate dance, but engineers are hard at work preparing for the new challenges in the Beyond phase," said Mark Effertz, the Spitzer spacecraft chief engineer at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado, which built the spacecraft.

Spitzer, which launched on Aug. 25, 2003, has consistently adapted to new scientific and engineering challenges during its mission, and the team expects it will continue to do so during the "Beyond" phase, which begins Oct. 1. The selected research proposals for the Beyond phase, also known as Cycle 13, include a variety of objects that Spitzer wasn't originally planned to address -- such as galaxies in the early universe, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way and exoplanets.

"We never even considered using Spitzer for studying exoplanets when it launched," said Sean Carey of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. "It would have seemed ludicrous back then, but now it's an important part of what Spitzer does."

Spitzer's exoplanet exploration

Spitzer has many qualities that make it a valuable asset in exoplanet science, including an extremely accurate star-targeting system and the ability to control unwanted changes in temperature. Its stable environment and ability to observe stars for long periods of time led to the first detection of light from known exoplanets in 2005. More recently, Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) has been used for finding exoplanets using the "transit" method -- looking for a dip in a star's brightness that corresponds to a planet passing in front of it. This brightness change needs to be measured with exquisite accuracy to detect exoplanets. IRAC scientists have created a special type of observation to make such measurements, using single pixels within the camera.

Another planet-finding technique that Spitzer uses, but was not designed for, is called microlensing. When a star passes in front of another star, the gravity of the first star can act as a lens, making the light from the more distant star appear brighter. Scientists are using microlensing to look for a blip in that brightening, which could mean that the foreground star has a planet orbiting it. Spitzer and the ground-based Polish Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) were used together to find one of the most distant planets known outside the solar system, as reported in 2015. This type of investigation is made possible by Spitzer's increasing distance from Earth, and could not have been done early in the mission.

Peering into the early universe

Understanding the early universe is another area where Spitzer has broken ground. IRAC was designed to detect remote galaxies roughly 12 billion light-years away -- so distant that their light has been traveling for roughly 88 percent of the history of the universe. But now, thanks to collaborations between Spitzer and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, scientists can peer even further into the past. The farthest galaxy ever seen, GN-z11, was characterized in a 2016 study using data from these telescopes. GN-z11 is about 13.4 billion light-years away, meaning its light has been traveling since 400 million years after the big bang.

"When we designed the IRAC instrument, we didn't know those more distant galaxies existed," said Giovanni Fazio, principal investigator of IRAC, based at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "The combination of the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer has been fantastic, with the telescopes working together to determine their distance, stellar mass and age."

Closer to home, Spitzer advanced astronomers' understanding of Saturn when scientists using the observatory discovered the planet's largest ring in 2009. Most of the material in this ring -- consisting of ice and dust -- begins 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Saturn and extends about 7.4 million miles (12 million kilometers) beyond that. Though the ring doesn't reflect much visible light, making it difficult for Earth-based telescopes to see, Spitzer could detect the infrared glow from the cool dust.

The multiple phases of Spitzer

Spitzer reinvented itself in May 2009 with its warm mission, after the depletion of the liquid helium coolant that was chilling its instruments since August 2003. At the conclusion of the "cold

mission," Spitzer's Infrared Spectrograph and Multiband Imaging Photometer stopped working, but two of the four cameras in IRAC persisted. Since then, the spacecraft has made numerous discoveries despite operating in warmer conditions (which, at about minus 405 Fahrenheit or 30 Kelvin, is still cold by Earthly standards).

"With the IRAC team and the Spitzer Science Center team working together, we've really learned how to operate the IRAC instrument better than we thought we could," Fazio said. "The telescope is also very stable and in an excellent orbit for observing a large part of the sky."

Spitzer's Beyond mission phase will last until the commissioning phase of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, currently planned to launch in October 2018. Spitzer is set to identify targets that Webb can later observe more intensely.

"We are very excited to continue Spitzer in its Beyond phase. We fully expect new, exciting discoveries to be made over the next two-and-a-half years," said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Spitzer, based at JPL.

Alien Radio Signal Detected Berkeley| A team of astrophysicists linked to the University of California, has announced this morning, that one of the radio telescopes they use to search for extraterrestrial intelligence intercepted a transmission which they believe could be a message from an alien life form.

The scientists, directed by Professor Dan Werthimer, are part of the SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) project, a program that attempts to intercept and decode radio transmissions from outer space.

They announced that the Arecibo radio telescope, located in Puerto Rico, received on the afternoon of March 19, a strong narrowband radio signal bearing the expected hallmarks of a non-terrestrial communication, originating from outside the solar system. The message lasted a total of 134 seconds and consisted of a signal of varying intensity, which the scientists converted into a strange alphanumeric code, spelling: 9HY9HY-H1C6N7O8P15-KT61L5-PKT6H9HY8F3.

The Arecibo radio telescope, which intercepted the signal, is the world’s largest single-aperture telescope.

The scientists say the signal does not resemble any form of communication used on Earth, but they believe it could be some sort of extremely complex extraterrestrial Morse code.

“Some segments of the signal are recurrent, and we believe they could be words or letters” says Professor Werthimer. “We don’t know yet, what the message means, but we are almost certain that it was sent by some form of extraterrestrial intelligence. One segment, which spells “H1C6N7O8P15″, even seems to refer to the atomic numbers of hydrogen (H), carbon (C), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), and phosphorus (P), the components of DNA. I believe it’s not only a message from an extraterrestrial life form… but it was sent specifically for us!”

According to Professor Werthimer, the fact that certain series of symbols repeat themselves could suggest the message is actually from an unknown form of coherent language.

This is not the firsts time that a SETI project receives a message from outer space, but this is by far the longest and clearest message ever received.  The various SETI programs have found a total of around 400 suspicious signals over the years, but there is not enough data to prove that they come from extraterrestrial intelligence.

The most interesting other case was the Wow! signal, which was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while he was working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University, then located at Ohio Wesleyan University’s Perkins Observatory in Delaware, Ohio. Unfortunately, it was observed for only a very short time and disappeared before it had been identified.

The scientists are now trying to identify the source of the signal, in order to eventually respond to the message, but it could take months or even years before they are able to locate it.

Global War Warnings Abound

Remember how a couple of days ago the German government advised its citizens to start stockpiling food and water? Well, today they have announced that they are considering reintroducing conscription…the draft, to ‘help with any future disaster’.

And Germany isn’t alone. There are increasing hints in countries around the world that something big is on its way…and it won’t be pretty.

Germany may reintroduce a form of national service for civilians to help the army deal with a future disaster. Since the strategy was leaked to the media there has been intense debate about stockpiling food and water. In a crisis civilians might be obliged to help direct traffic or provide fuel and accommodation for the military.

Germany only scrapped the draft in 2011. However, it was not removed from the country’s constitution, which means it would be incredibly simple to reinstate. The German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) put the following list on their website as a guide for people to follow when getting prepared:

28 litres (6.2 gallons) of drinking water 4.9kg (10.8 pounds) of bread, noodles, rice, potatoes 5.6kg (12.3 pounds) of vegetables and pulses (preferably pre-cooked) 3.6kg (eight pounds) of fruit and nuts (in jars or tins)

This it states is a survival list that should last an individual for two weeks in the event of a national emergency.

Wolfgang Kast, a public health manager with the German Red Cross said,

“People have become less and less prepared for an emergency”.

…We’ve got accustomed – not least because of the internet – to having everything available at all times,”

In addition to the food list he suggested medicines, a flashlight, spare batteries, and candles. Hardly comprehensive, but it’s a start.

Of course, I have been telling you to get prepared with some basics for quite some time. Old record, right? But, one of the things that we have learned over the course of the last seven and a half years is that government usually does a terrible job of taking care of people during a disaster, so it is every citizen’s responsibility to be prepared. And that means taking proactive steps, like having an evacuation plan, having a fully stocked disaster supply kit. If your local authorities ask you to evacuate, you have to do it. Don’t wait.

This was followed by DC Homeland Security Director Christopher Geldart issuing a warning to residents:

Everyone needs to dust off their evacuation plans, understanding Metro isn’t a reliable option over the next year.

“When we put more vehicles on the road– like an emergency happening in the middle of the day and everybody leaving at the same time– that’s going to cause backup and it’s going to take people a good time to get home,” Geldart said. “It will take longer– much longer– than they are used to. So what we’re telling folks is, you need to have a plan with your family.” (source)

Why are we doing this? Because the American election is upon us, and there is a risk that the Democrats could lose power for an entire generation if they lose this election. They are desperate. That being said, a terrorist act would most assuredly elect Trump. But a war? That would be different.

Washington, DC — President Barack Obama shocked the country not long ago with news that he is running for a third term. I know you don’t believe me, but it is true.

“I can’t abandon the American people now when they need me more than ever,” Obama told reporters at a press conference this morning. “We’ve come this far as a nation, now is not the time to do something different. This is the change you wanted and this is the change you’re getting.”

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told CNN he does not agree with Obama and his announcement. “This defies everything the Constitution stands for,” Paul said. “We cannot let this man have a third term.”

In the history of this country only two presidents have served more than two terms, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The major problem for Obama when he runs in 2016, is the 22nd Amendment. In short, the 22nd Amendment states, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…”

The U.S. Constitution does make an exception in the 22nd Amendment though: “This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.” This means Obama’s third term presidential run is only valid if he receives 75% approval from the Congress. I can tell you right now that if Hillary is taken out by an indictment or health collapse, then the Democrat Party only has one chance to maintain its parasitic function. They must elect Obama for a third term. With the support of 75% of the electorate, the Amendment would be repealed in hours.

A bill to abolish the 22nd Amendment was recently introduced into Congress by New York Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano and is gaining popularity. This is exactly the kind of news that makes an Obama 2016 Presidential run possible. In fact, the resistance to term limits is universal among Democrats.

Paul Horner who is a spokesman for the Obama Administration told reporters how amazing this news is for the country. “Obama is guaranteed to win in 2016 and then we’ll all be able to enjoy this great man for another four years. He is only 55 years old, and could serve just like Putin for another decade. The whole world wants this, as opposed to Donald Trump. Things could not get any better for the American people.”

People are unlikely to anticipate cataclysmic events. We are stubborn, and we tend to look away from what is too painful to think upon. For example, when it came to the strategic consequences of nuclear weapons, Hudson Institute founder Herman Kahn (said to be one of the real-life people on which the title character in the film “Dr. Strangelove” was based) understood that this emotional barrier to “cold, calculating, unimpassioned” reasoning poses a fatal threat to humanity. We have to get past this and start thinking about the unthinkable.

When it comes to physical mayhem and destruction, there’s little doubt that the Democrat’s psyche has gotten past the reluctance to contemplate physically horrible, apocalyptic destruction. Every single war we have perpetrated has been done to make our central government stronger, and our State governments weaker. Indeed, a wasteland future is now routinely the stuff that entertainment dreams are made on, with plenty of CG violence to round out the nightmare. Survival in such bleak circumstances is not only contemplated, it is the stuff of zombie and deep impact stories.

When Neville Chamberlain came to terms with Hitler at Munich in 1938, there was no need to explain how on earth he could do so, despite gruesome images of Nazi atrocity. Those portraits of evil were not yet hung in the rogue’s gallery of human moral perception. But today there is no denying Iran’s complicity, support and leadership of groups guilty of terrorist practices as horrendous in their furious religiosity (and hatred of all things Jewish and/or truly Christian) as were the atrocious crimes fueled by the elitist race hatred of the Nazis. There is no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our government at the presidential level. The blatant smuggling of nearly $2 billion in illegal funds to Iran in the form or cash and sub-alarm level

bank transfers while effectively baring the president’s ass to national television is an indicator of the banality of law enforcement. There is no sheriff in town. None at all.

We have been force fed steady diet of meticulously depicted violence, served up in the form of police assassinations, racial riots, and sharia mayhem. But if Americans would just think clearly about the Obama faction’s role in arming ISIS terror, or their treacherous deal with the moguls of Shiite terrorism in Iran, we could stop this in less than an hour.

The fact that Obama consorts with such masterminds of evil ought to produce the sort of revulsion that demands an emetic remedy, lest we die. So does the likelihood that Obama, Hilary Clinton and their friends in the Muslim Brotherhood had a hand in arming the malevolent Islamic State forces Obama’s de facto alliance with Iran now purports to fight. But does it make us angry enough to act? No.

The “experts” and pundits are apparently reacting with alarm to Obama’s apparently self-contradictory ambition to fake a triumph for his foreign-policy legacy. Most don’t even hint at what may be his most sinister aim, i.e., “to take America down.” They don’t see the fundamental change Obama was talking about, even though it is right in their faces.

The Obama administration appoints people at the highest level disloyal enough to form a de facto alliance with America’s most outspoken and implacable enemies. They have agreed to look the other way while Iran finishes the work needed to construct weapons that put them in a position to force us to choose between complying with their agenda and unleashing nuclear destruction. They smuggled billions in cash, because the banks aren’t releasing the sanctioned funds fast enough to make this happen by the lame duck deadline.

Who among us thinks that, like the generation left over from the triumphs of the last World War, our current self-serving politicos have the experience, patriotism and courage to face that choice of evils? Who is honestly sure that they aren’t already preparing an exit strategy that leaves their own personal power intact, even if America is no longer free?

What if Obama isn’t looking to his “legacy”? What if the threat of nuclear devastation he helps to arm with this agreement (an America-hating Iran with nuclear bombs) is for the purpose of ensuring that the 2016 election never takes place?

There it is. I’ve said it. The unthinkable scenario predicated upon the thought that Barack Obama and those who lifted him to power are precisely what they appear to be – the enemies of America. Why is it at all inconceivable that people willing to collude with and arm our boldest enemies may be doing so for the sake of their own power? You’re kidding me, right? Why should not consider what is plain before our face? There is a strong possibility that the Obama faction has agreed to help Iran achieve hegemony in the Middle East in order to help themselves to dictatorial control over the United States? What certainty do we have that, in some secret, back-channel codicil, this agreement is not already in place?

Note that this question isn’t just about Obama. It’s about the elitist faction that lifted him to power. It’s about their true objective, which is to overturn the exceptional constitutional sovereignty of the American people. It’s about the goal of restoring the norm of elitist tyranny

characteristic of human governments throughout the history of the world. It’s about the 89% of the electorate that has chosen to vote for themselves a check from the US treasury in exchange for their free and sovereign citizenship in the concept known as America. You only think you have 80 days to make up your mind. You may not have 8 hours left. You have agreed to kick the can of Obama’s illegitimate presidency down the road to this spot. We may only be moments away from events that will overrule the election of 2016.