Thursday, January 22, 2026

Introduction To This Blog System

                                                                                                                                                                                  

Image used by permission

Postings may be later combined into a compound posting on this blog. Many of the postings concern my observations in various branches of science, but there are also many on technology, religion, economics and, general world issues.

I would really like to thank everyone who reads any of these blogs for your interest.
 
SCIENCE WRITING
 
Most of the postings on this blog are visits to various places around the world, and articles about such topics as history and religion. But much of the writing is about science. I do not write about what is already known but only if I can write something new, or at least a new way of looking at things.
 
If you would like a quick background in the science and mathematics that everyone should really know in the 21st Century, the posting "Scientific Literacy" provides this in about a hundred paragraphs. Similarly, "The Way Things Work" provides a quick background in everyday technology.
 
I am a Christian and I want to show that belief in God is not unscientific at all. I was interested in science long before I was interested in religion, and have never had any trouble believing that God created everything.
 
There are five major scientific theories, each arranged in the form of a textbook. The first four of the following five are on this blog.
 
"The Theory Of Stationary Space" is my cosmological theory of how so much revolves around time being explained by us being in four-dimensional space, with the dimension that we cannot access being perceived as time. This is my version of string theory, with matter actually being strings in four dimensions rather than particles in three dimensions. Everything is ultimately based on negative and positive electric charges, with energy being able to overcome the laws of attraction and repulsion of electric charges. No one has ever explained exactly what time is, and a myriad of explanations of other things fall right into place around it.
 
"The Flow Of Information Through The Universe" is about how so much can be explained by seeing how there is a limited amount of information, and it must be the same information that constructs the highest levels as the lowest levels. A ready example is how the orbits of planets around the sun is based on the orbitals of electrons around the nucleus, in the atoms of which the sun and planets are composed. This concept is extremely useful because, understanding this, we can study things that we cannot directly see by analyzing things that we can see because all must be built on the same information.
 
"The Theory Of Complexity" is about what information actually is, how energy and information is really the same thing, and how we see the universe as we do because of our perspective of being at a higher level of information than our inanimate surroundings.
 
"The Lowest Information Point" is about how, since information and energy is really the same thing and the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, it also always seeks the "Lowest Information Point". So much is explained by how the universe prefers equalities to inequalities and related ratios where the numerator of one ratio is also the denominator of the other. This explains so much from why dust particles are as big as they to why the planets and stars are the scale that they are.
 
"The Story Of Planet Earth", on the geology blog, is about how virtually every major feature of the earth's surface, both on land and seafloor, can be explained by lines of magma emergence from below that were affected by the landing of three Continental Asteroids. Many people believe that land originated from a past "super-continent", but there is no explanation of where it came from.
 
There are a few of what we could call "minor" theories, where there is not as much written as with the major theories. On this blog, there is "How Biology And Human Life Fits Into Cosmology". On the meteorology and biology blog, there is my theory of the nature of water, "Water Made Really Simple".
 
There are compound postings about science which are groupings of writing about a certain topic.
 
Scientific compound postings include, "Computer Science", "Atomic Science", "Measurement", "A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law", "Our Solar System", "Mind-Bending Cosmology", "The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple", "In Appreciation Of Electrons", "The Science Of Human Society " and "Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts from Space".
 
Compound postings about history and the world include "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", "Niagara Stories", "Economics", "How History Repeats Itself", "The Meaning Of Freedom", "The Western Hemisphere", "Our Language" and, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris".
 
There are two compound postings about prophecies and the Bible. There is "The Aztec Prophecy" than, for prophecies that are directly made in the Bible there is "New Insight Into Bible Prophecy".
 
"Investigations" is the compound posting that is a collection of any posting about an investigation.
 
The rest of the postings are individual postings. For more detailed information about this blog, see the posting "Thanks To Readers". For general topics of conversation, see "Thoughts And Observations", on the world and economics blog.  
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Other Blogs And Books

                                                                                                                             

Lights at night 

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.

On this blog, you can see a list of all postings by clicking on the year or month to the right. But on the topical blogs, that is not the case. If you click on a year or month on those blogs, it will display the postings themselves, but the list on the right will still only show those postings that were added most recently.

To access a list of all postings on those blogs, it is necessary to click on the arrow in front of the year or month in question.

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ is my geology and global natural history blog for topics other than glaciers. My natural history blogs concerning the impact of glaciers is http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

 http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

 http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.

http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

On my photo blogs, Blogspot will not hold all of the photos in each blog in a straight line. To see all of the photos, you must click on the bottom posting listed on the right at the top of the blog after seeing all that there are in the initial showing. The last posting in the North America blog should be "Tijuana, Mexico" and the last posting in the Europe blog should be "Notre Dame Cathedral Door And Arc De Triomphe, Paris". Each photo in the photo blogs can be clicked on to enlarge it to full screen.

My autobiography is http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek".   

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A Journey Around Belgium

Last week we visited Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. Today's visit is to the rest of the country. We will start at Antwerp, in northern Belgium, and move clockwise.

Antwerp was once possibly the busiest port in the world. It was a center of international trade in commodities such as sugar and spices. It is today a center of oil refining, with crude oil that has been brought in by ship. Belgium split away from the Netherlands, in 1830, because it wanted to remain Catholic. There are statues of Mary on many street corners in Antwerp.

The following scenes begin in the Grote Markt, or Main Square of Antwerp. The stone buildings with peaked roofs were guild houses. The first six images are from Google Earth and Street View.







There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >,  After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.











In the eastern part of Belgium is the city of Liege. It is a former industrial city that, like Antwerp, dates from medieval times. There was a parallel movement to the French Revolution in Belgium that destroyed the old Cathedral of St. Lambert in Liege. The Prince Bishop Palace, next to it, is still there today. The first six images of the palace are from Google Earth and Street View.







https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6461712,5.5723117,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBaB9gMFyGgawj6KAps2HoQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Here is more of the central area of Liege. The first two images are from Google Earth and Street View.



https://www.google.com/maps/place/Li%C3%A8ge,+Belgium/@50.6406819,5.5715268,3a,75y,304.72h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swI5nyJrpWYFADQecvv_kmg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DwI5nyJrpWYFADQecvv_kmg%26yaw%3D304.71942!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x47c0f74b8eacfcfb:0x40099ab2f4d6b40!8m2!3d50.6402286!4d5.5689372!16zL20vMGQ0azI?authuser=0&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTExMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

In the southern part of Belgium is the city of Charleroi. This was once an important industrial city that originally began with a Spanish fort. Remember that Belgium is split between French and Dutch speakers and this is why Antwerp, in the northern part of the country, is a Dutch name while Liege and Charleroi are French names. Georges Lemaitre, who first thought of the Big Bang, was from Charleroi. The first three images are from Google Earth and Street View.




https://www.google.com/maps/place/Charleroi,+Belgium/@50.4116489,4.4448473,3a,75y,83.13h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sdTwBXoFVoJXH5RZ4zb1Caw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DdTwBXoFVoJXH5RZ4zb1Caw%26yaw%3D83.13281220131915!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x47c225f096ca39c9:0x40099ab2f4d6410!8m2!3d50.408128!4d4.4476076!16zL20vMDE3cGdy?authuser=0&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTExMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Continuing to move clockwise around Belgium, we next come to the magnificently-preserved early medieval city of Ghent. This was a city that historically produced a lot of cloth and wool, but with Belgian independence in 1830, lost it's direct access to the sea. The first nine images are from Google Street View. The first three of those are of the castle.




















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Belgium's Georges Lemaitre

It was a Belgian priest who first came up with the idea of the Big Bang.

In the early Twentieth Century it was discovered first, that what were thought to be nebula within our galaxy were actually entirely different galaxies and second, that these galaxies were actually moving away from each other. The more distant the galaxies, the faster they seemed to be moving away from us.

What this meant was, not only was the universe much more vast than had been supposed but it was also expanding. Until then it had been thought that our galaxy encompassed the entire universe.

Working with the then-new telescope atop Mount Wilson, near Los Angeles, Edwin Hubble is generally given credit for discovering the expansion of the universe, which also points to the universe having the beginning that we refer to as the "Big Bang".

Hubble got the revolutionary space telescope, which has far and away exceeded all expectations, named for him.

But Hubble wasn't the first one to propose that the universe had a beginning and was expanding. At the time the scientific community accepted the "Steady State" concept of the universe, that it had always existed and didn't have a beginning. A Belgian priest, who was also a graduate in physics, thought of it first.

His name was Georges Lemaitre. Hubble did the actual observing that confirmed the universe was expanding outward, which definitely pointed to it having a beginning, and deserves credit for establishing that there are many galaxies other than our own. But even the Wikipedia article on Hubble states that Georges Lemaitre wrote about it first.

There was a lot of skepticism but it turned out to be correct. The beginning of the universe was named the "Big Bang", but that term was coined by Britain's Sir Fred Hoyle, who was making fun of the idea. But today it is virtually universally accepted as the beginning of the universe.

Georges Lemaitre deserves more credit and name recognition. His native language was French. Does the Francophone community know that it was one of their own who correctly postulated that the universe had a beginning? I think he is already appreciated in Belgium, but not as much in the outside world.

How about the Catholic Church? We cannot say that this insight was a miracle but it verifies the biblical theology that the universe was created at a certain point by God. The universe had not always been there, as the scientific community had believed. 

I once visited the Mount Wilson Observatory, above Los Angeles. This is where it was discovered that there are many galaxies, other than our own, and confirmed that the universe is expanding outward which means that it had a beginning.

PROOF OF THE BIG BANG 

Most scientists agree that the universe began with what is referred to as the "Big Bang". Scientists didn't arrive at the Big Bang, it was actually introduced by the Belgian Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre, based on the Christian idea of the beginning, but is now very widely accepted in the scientific community. Before the Big Bang there was the "Steady State" Theory of the universe.

However there have always been a few doubters and doubt about the Big Bang still persists. For some reason my native Britain has been a haven for Big Bang doubters. The name of the "Big Bang" was actually coined by Sir Fred Hoyle, who was making fun of the idea.

I find that we do not even have to go beyond the earth to prove that there must have been a Big Bang. We can see it just by tracing where energy comes from. There are only three ultimate sources of energy on earth, the sun, the supernova that preceded the sun, and the Big Bang.

Solar energy, from the sun, is all around us. The sun makes plants grow so all of our food and hydrocarbon fuel is from solar energy. The uneven heating of the earth by the sun creates wind energy. The sun evaporates water and, if it falls as precipitation to a higher level, it gives us hydroelectric power. 

The sun was preceded by a large star that exploded in a supernova. Some of the matter fell back together by gravity to form the present sun and Solar System. We know that the sun is such a second-generation star because it contains heavy elements that are beyond it's current stage in the stellar fusion process.

Tides can be harnessed and used to generate electricity. Tides also move boats, and other floating objects, which takes energy. Tidal energy does not come from the sun. The supernova threw the matter that formed the earth and moon out into space and tidal energy is a redirection of that, it comes from the supernova.

The ordinary stellar fusion process only goes as far as iron. Elements heavier than iron are put together from lighter atoms only when energy is released by a supernova. It takes this tremendous energy to crunch the smaller atoms together.

Some of these new heavy atoms are less-than-stable and gradually release particles or radiation in order to seek a more stable state. These emissions are known as radioactivity. This also releases heat, which builds up from radioactive decay inside the earth. Geothermal heat, some of which may also be directly left over from the supernova, is thus supernova energy. This includes the energy released by volcanoes.

Some of the heavy atoms that are crunched together from smaller atoms only during the tremendous release of energy by a supernova can be split by a high-speed neutron. These are thorium, the 235 isotope of uranium, and man-made plutonium. When this happens some of the binding energy of the nucleus of the atom is released. This is the basis of nuclear fission energy and so the energy from nuclear reactors and conventional nuclear bombs ultimately comes from the supernova that preceded the sun.

During the ice ages vast sheets of ice form at high latitudes. The centrifugal force of the earth's rotation pulls the ice sheets in the direction of the equator. These moving glaciers greatly change the landscape. This energy comes ultimately from the supernova. If there is a landslide the kinetic energy in the falling rocks is from the supernova.

But there is one energy source that cannot be accounted for by energy from either the sun or the supernova. That source is nuclear fusion. Nuclear fission, the splitting of a heavy atom, is the opposite process. As the name implies nuclear fusion is the fusing of two or more small atoms together into a larger atom. The new larger atom contains less overall internal energy than the smaller atoms that were fused together to form it. The excess energy is released and that is why fusion is a source of energy.

Natural fusion takes place in the centers of stars. The gravity there is strong enough to overcome the electron repulsion between atoms and fuse lighter atoms into heavier ones. The excess energy is released as radiation, which is why stars shine. The current stage of fusion in the sun is crunching four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, with the excess energy being released as sunshine.

Fusion of atoms can be done artificially, by pushing the atoms together with lasers or confining very high temperatures in a magnetic field. As with stars the excess energy is released when small atoms are fused into a larger one. There is a lot of hope for fusion as a future source of energy but, at the time of this writing, fusion is still at the experimental stage, no one has yet succeeded in making it into a practical source of energy.

We know from science class that energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed in form. There are a number of ways that we get energy whose ultimate source is either the sun or the supernova that preceded the sun. The energy from the sun is not rooted in the supernova that preceded it because that star exploded before all of it's hydrogen atoms had fused into heavier atoms and then that process continued as some of the matter of the exploded star fell back together by gravity to form the sun and Solar System.

But neither of these sources can explain where the energy in nuclear fusion comes from. Since energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed in form, it must have come from somewhere. Since it is the internal energy in all atoms, some of it being released when atoms fuse together, it must be from before the formation of atoms.

It's source can only be the Big Bang and it thus proves the reality of the Big Bang. Georges Lemaitre was right.
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News This Week

MEDICAL EVACUATION IN SPACE 

The medical evacuation in space this week is reminiscent of the oxygen tank explosion on Apollo 13, and astronauts are going back far into space. To read about the Apollo Space Program, see the compound posting "The Moon", August 2023, section 5) The Apollo Space Program.

CANADA AND THE CARIBBEAN 

With all the talk of the U.S. acquiring Greenland, whatever happened to the Canadian plan to buy the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean? Then Canadians would have a warm place to go in the winter, and their money would stay in Canada. There was so much talk about it but it never got beyond the discussion stage.

THE EXERCISE PRESIDENT 

Yoweri Museveni is the recently reelected President of Uganda. He is setting a great example by remaining dedicated to his fitness program at age 81.

"THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS"

There was a short story from the 1950s called "There Will Come Soft Rains". I read it when I was in community college. It was set in the well-off future, August 2026. An automated house is continuing to do everything for the family that lives there, such as automatically cooking and cleaning, not realizing that there has been a nuclear holocaust and the family has been killed. Back then the story seemed to be far in the future but time flies and August 2026 is this year.

THE PRIME NUMBER FLAG 

With all the discussion in the U.S. about adding a 51st State, whether it be Canada or Greenland or Venezuela, there is one thing that we should really give some thought to. What about the flag? Each state is represented by a star on the flag. The thirteen red and white stripes represent the thirteen original states. Adding a new state will require replacing all flags, including those on signage and paperwork.

The next question is how to rearrange the stars on the flag to fit in another one. Until 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii were added, the flag with 48 stars looked like this. Two images from the Wikipedia article "Flag of the United States". 48 is fortunately divisible as 6 x 8.

Since Alaska and Hawaii were added, the flag looks like this. The solution was to alternate five rows of six stars with four rows of five stars.

51 is a prime number. So how do we fit in another star and keep a regular pattern? 

America has five inhabited territories. These are Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Marianas Islands and, the Virgin Islands. Adding those to the flag would bring 56, which is 8 x 7. Maybe the territories could be represented by a circle, instead of a star.

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Apocalyptic Developments

This is in regard to the scenario described in the parallel postings "The End Of The World As We Know It" and "Inducing The Apocalypse", both January 2026.

We know that the Antichrist will have a lot of control over the world. Starlink has emerged as a powerful force in global communication. About two-thirds of all satellites in orbit are Starlink satellites. Starlink satellites act as phone towers in low earth orbit. A user is handed from one satellite to another, as they pass overhead, just as a user in a moving vehicle is passed from one tower to another. Whoever controls Starlink has a lot of power over the world. A country can shut off or monitor it's phone and Internet services, but it is very difficult to do the same with Starlink users. Starlink has the power to favor one country or group over another, in a conflict, by allowing or blocking access. 

ICE is viewed by many as really diminishing democracy in America. But we know that the Antichrist will be the greatest dictator that the world has ever seen, and that means that we should expect some decline in global democracy. But not complete decline because the Antichrist will get his authority from the will of the people.

The existing world order, of law and order, is in danger of giving way to a "great power" era, in which the great powers like America and Russia do pretty much whatever they want to. Donald Trump, instead of supporting law and order, is doing almost as much as Vladimir Putin to tear it down. America taking Greenland by force would probably mean the end of NATO. Europe is caught in the middle, with Donald Trump on one side and Vladimir Putin on the other. But we know that the Antichrist will be from Europe, and will be the greatest leader that the world has ever seen. What Europe could do now is to come up with a great leader of it's own, who could deal with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump is setting the stage for the Antichrist, and all that he will have to do is to step into the role that Donald Trump has created.

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The Islamic Republic Survives

The Islamic Republic of Iran has survived yet again. I followed the Iranian Revolution as it was going on and have seen it's fall wrongly foretold many times.

Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, from a fifteen year exile, in February 1979. The July 16, 1979 issue of Time Magazine featured a profile of Khomeini and expressed doubt that this "philosopher king" could rule a modern country like Iran for long. They were wrong.

In September 1980, war began between Iran and neighboring Iraq. Iran is larger than Iraq but the general opinion seemed to be that the revolutionary government of Iran, still in the turmoil of the revolution and cut off from America as it's main ally, wouldn't survive the invasion of the Iraqi Army that had been well-supplied by the East Bloc. They were wrong.

In June of 1981 came the Haft e Tir Bombing. At a meeting of the Iranian Government, a massive bomb had been smuggled in. Dozens of the top members of the government were killed. It seemed very unlikely that the government would survive this, especially since Iraq was taking an early lead in the war, but it did.

The war with Iraq went on for eight years, with a horrific cost to Iran in lives, money and property. By 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been the driving force behind the revolution, was clearly in the final days of his life. There were opinions everywhere that the Islamic Revolution would die with Khomeini, but it didn't.

Since then, according to the Wikipedia article "Ali Khamenei" who had been the president under Khomeini and succeeded him as supreme leader, there have been eight major bouts of protests in the country. The massive protests that have just died down is only the most recent one. Each time observers have predicted that this is the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic, and each time they have been wrong.

Crushing economic sanctions were placed on Iran but haven't succeeded in bringing down the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is battered and bruised and weakened but, as always, it is still standing.

Part of the issue is that secular people do not understand people who are driven by religion. The belief that God is on one's side, or that one is doing God's work, is a very powerful force. I find that so many people have a "nationality" way of thinking and just don't get religion. I have long thought that a religious Christian, a religious Moslem and, a religious Jew have a lot more in common with each other than any of them do with a non-religious person, even if they share the same secular culture and DNA.

Here is a link to "How Secularism Leads Us Astray".

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-secularism-leads-us-astray.html?m=0

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The Second Leader Rule

Here is something that the revolutionary government of Iran has going for it. I wrote this in 2016, after the death of Fidel Castro. But Castro had long since stepped aside, from an actual leadership position, to make way for his brother. What makes it look like the government of Ali Khamenei is here to stay is simply that he is of much lower profile than his revolutionary predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini.


I have a rule that gives us an idea of what to expect for Cuba, now that Fidel Castro is gone. The rule is called "The Second Leader Rule". A revolution is typically consolidated and led by a charismatic, high-profile leader. But some revolutions last, while others don't. I notice that the security of a revolution is revealed by the nature of it's second leader, the one that follows the typically charismatic and high-profile first leader.

If the revolution is secure, is here to stay, the second leader will be much more low-profile than the first leader. This means that the revolution has succeeded and has entered into an institutional phase, where the primary focus is now day-to-day administrative tasks. If the second leader is high-profile and charismatic, like the first leader, that is not a good sign. It means that the revolution has not yet completed the consolidation phase, and the revolution is not likely here to stay. My definition of revolution is an abrupt change in the social order.

Almost everyone knows who George Washington is. But he was followed by a successor of far lower profile, his vice-president John Adams. This represented a good sign for the American Revolution as it indicated that the consolidation phase had been successfully completed, and the revolution had moved into the institutional phase.

Ali Khamenei is the current Supreme Leader of Iran, the successor of Ayatollah Khomeini who died in 1989. Khamenei has inherited all of the power that comes with being Supreme Leader but, despite the similarity in their names, is of far lower profile than Khomeini was. The spell-checker on this blog doesn't even recognize his name.

But this is a good sign for the Iranian Revolution. One may approve or disapprove of it, the revolution may adjust it's tone or come to agreement with former opponents, but the succession to a lower-profile leader is a sign that it is here to stay. Khomeini was the revolutionary, and Khamenei is his successor as the administrator. That can only mean that the revolutionary phase was a success.

In China, we see another example of a high-profile revolutionary followed by an administrator of a much-lower profile. Chairman Mao was the revolutionary, and Deng Xiaoping the administrator. This means that so-called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" is here to stay.

If Soviet Communism was meant to last, it would have followed this pattern also. Lenin, the initial leader and the revolutionary, would have been followed by a lower-profile administrative leader like Leonid Brezhnev. Instead Lenin was followed by Josef Stalin, who had a profile at least as high as Lenin. The fact that consolidation of the revolution had not been completed by it's first leader was not a good sign for it's future.

Nikita Khrushchev, the third leader, had a high profile too, although not as high as Lenin and Stalin. It took more than forty years, and three high-profile leaders, to settle into the administrative phase, with a lower-profile leader. Not much more than twenty years later, Soviet-style Communism entered a second revolutionary phase with another high-profile leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, but this phase never saw completion as it was the end of large-scale Communism.

North Korean Communism is another case in point. It had it's revolutionary leader in Kim Il Sung, with all of the personality cult that revolutionary leaders often have. But if his system was really secure, he would have been followed by a lower-profile administrative type of leader. Instead, his successor was his equally high-profile son Kim Jong Il, who in turn was followed by his equally high-profile son, the present leader Kim Jong Un.

All of this looks very good for the social order in Cuba. The revolutionary, Fidel Castro, being followed by his brother Raul, of much lower profile, means that the Cuban Revolution is here to stay. It is very reminiscent of George Washington being followed by John Adams.
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Remember The Mongols

The world is disturbed by how brutally Iran came down on the recent protesters. But there is something that we have to remember, and that thing is history. It is so important because we tend to repeat it, sometimes intentionally but often without realizing it.

The area of western Asia and easternmost Europe might be a nice place in daily life but it has a history of harshly dealing with rebellions and uprisings. Aside from Iran, there was Saddam Hussein putting down rebellions against his rule in Iraq. In Syria, the Assad Dynasty bombed their own cities from the air. The Kurds are spread over areas of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and, Syria, but don't have a state of their own. All four countries have been harsh in dealing with uprisings by them.

In easternmost Europe there was the brutality of the consolidation of the rule of Josef Stalin, the brutality of the Eastern Front in the Second World War, and the current brutality of the war in Ukraine.

But there is a common factor in all of this, and that factor is the history of the Mongols. The Mongols once ruled this area and they were especially brutal with cities that resisted their rule. Saddam Hussein's capital of Baghdad was once possibly the most important city in the world, until it was destroyed by the Mongols. The Ottomans were one of the greatest empires ever, but early in their history lost the Battle of Ankara, which is now the capital of Turkey, to the Mongols. Damascus, the capital of Syria, was besieged by the Mongols. Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, was so devastated by the Mongols that it didn't regain it's importance until the Nineteenth Century.

So any brutal repression of uprisings in this area is a legacy of the Mongols. History is a powerful force and the Mongols are still with us. It is very true that "There is no such thing as the past".

There was another historical factor at work with IS, Islamic State, that had nothing to do with Islam. IS was proclaimed in Mosul, which was once the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. The territory conquered by IS was roughly the same as that of the Assyrians, in ancient times, and the Assyrians were even more brutal than the Mongols.

We have got to expect that there will be violence in America. The legacy of the battles against the native Indians, the Civil War and the "Wild West" are very much still with us.

Why does England have disturbing stabbing attacks? By the second civil war, the Anglicans and the Puritans in the Stuart Era, guns had been developed. But in the first civil war, the War of the Roses that led to the Tudor Era, combat was still done with swords and lances and arrows, and that history is still with us.

Here is a link to "Why We Should Understand The Mongols".

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/05/why-we-should-understand-mongols.html?m=0

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The Prince Miracle Of Niagara

How about a miracle that you can see here? More has been added to this.

What no one knows is how much I miss the dog that we used to have. The dog's name was Prince and he lived from 1980 to 1993. Prince was a sheltie.

The thing that reminds me the most about Prince is the stars in the winter. The brightest star in the sky, Sirius, is in the constellation Canis Major and is known as the "Dog Star". The stars of the constellation look like a dog playfully jumping and that is just how Prince used to jump.

Prince used to hate vacuum cleaners and my mother used to have to shut him in the bedroom so that she could vacuum. Prince would scratch the door and these scratches are still there.

The Bible doesn't state whether animals can be in Heaven. But what I know is that God is the one who makes the rules and over the years I have asked God that Prince, as well as our other pets, might be in Heaven.

Something interesting happened, after I had made a charitable donation. For some reason I remembered a church near where I used to live as a boy on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. I was never in the church but the name of it was St. Andrews, on Morrison Street. I went through a childhood phase where I didn't understand why my parents didn't give me a middle name and I thought of adopting Andrew as my middle name, especially since the Queen had a son the same age as me named Andrew.

I went to have a look at the church on Google Street View and saw something amazing. In the cloud, right above the bell tower and cross of the church, is an unmistakable dog that looks just like Prince as shown in the photo, as indicated by the red dot. The imagery on Google Street View has since been updated but this is still visible if you go to "see more dates" and go to July 2023.

This is just like how Prince used to stand. He appears to be barking while looking upward, with his tail swished to his left, just like in the photo.

Here is a closer look. The green dot is on his head, you can clearly see his right eye and open mouth. The purple dot is his right front leg. The red dot is his right haunches and the yellow dot is his tail. This is also what his ears looked like when seen from this angle.

I used to often chase Prince to exercise him. On his back you can clearly see a figure running, below the red dot in the following image.

My parents completely spoiled Prince. There were these rectangular dog biscuits that he really liked. I can't remember the name of them. It got so that Prince had to have a biscuit to do anything, to go outside, to come back in, or to go to bed. The rectangular object in front of Prince, shown by the red dot in the following image, looks just like one of his biscuits. It looks like he is barking at something and will be quiet if we give him a biscuit, although even that didn't work with the vacuum cleaner.

This is absolutely awesome. I am going to see Prince again and it will be for all of eternity. God gave me a miracle like this so I could show it to you because you can have miracles too. 

This is the Prince Miracle. God has given me a miracle that I can show you here. Niagara Falls is the site of a miracle that can be seen anywhere. A short distance from where this took place is where I first read the Bible. We used to have Bible readings in the gym at Valley Way School. 

THE BOULDER LANDING ON THE FEET OF THE STATUE

Now let's go on to another subject, the Book of Daniel in the Bible.

The second chapter of the Book of Daniel, in the Old Testament of the Bible, has the famous prophecy of the statue that, from top to bottom, represent the four successive dominant empires of the future. These are Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece and, Rome. By the time this prophecy was made, the time of Egypt and Assyria as the greatest powers had passed. But a great boulder, not the work of humans, will land on the feet of the statue and shatter it.

This impact represents the failure of the godless and idolatrous empires and nations, before God sends Jesus back to run the world directly. But why would God choose to illustrate it with imagery such as this, a boulder landing on the feet of a statue? Remember that the Book of Daniel is very old, from the Babylon-Persian era and well before it was known that there would be great European powers, Greece and Rome.

Since the order of empires moves from top to bottom on the statue, this means that the feet represent the Roman Empire, which was centered on the Italian Peninsula. In the following image from Google Earth notice that, on a map, the peninsula is in the form of a boot and Sicily is in the form of a boulder about to land on it.

BACK TO THE PRINCE MIRACLE 

Now, considering that the geography of Italy and Sicily corresponds to the scenario in the Book of Daniel, what do you notice about the Prince Miracle?

The congregation of St. Andrew's Church seems to be primarily Indian. We see the dog and the rectangular biscuit above the cross of the church. Notice that the geography of India can be defined by a cross and neighboring Pakistan is shaped like a dog. The geography clearly includes the dog's tail, head, body and, both sets of legs. In the following image, from the Wikipedia article "East Pakistan", India is shown with the cross and Pakistan is in light green.

The rectangular biscuit in the clouds represent Bangladesh, shown in dark green. Not only is Bangladesh roughly rectangular in geographical shape but there is a definite circle in the middle of the rectangular biscuit in the cloud. This looks just like the Flag of Bangladesh. Image from the Wikipedia article by that name.


The name of the dog is Prince and the name of the church is St. Andrew's. Now that Prince Andrew has fallen, it looks like God wants people from India, Pakistan and, Bangladesh to take over Christianity as they have taken over cricket.


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