Secret HistoryS


Star of David

Flashback Rights groups demand Israel stop arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine

Azov rifle
© screenshotAn Azov militiaman with a Tavor rifle
A group of more than 40 human rights activists have filed a petition with the High Court of Justice, demanding the cessation of Israeli arms exports to Ukraine. They argue that these weapons serve forces that openly espouse a neo-Nazi ideology and cite evidence that the right-wing Azov militia, whose members are part of Ukraine's armed forces, and are supported by the country's ministry of internal affairs, is using these weapons.

An earlier appeal to the Defense Ministry was met with no response.

The ministry's considerations in granting export licenses for armaments are not disclosed to the public, but it appears that the appearance of Israeli weapons in the hands of avowed neo-Nazis should be a consideration used in opposing the granting of such a license.

Nevertheless, this is not the first time in which the defense establishment is arming forces that embrace a national socialist ideology. In the past, Israel has armed anti-Semitic regimes, such as the generals' regime in Argentina, which murdered thousands of Jews in camps while its soldiers stood in watchtowers guarding the abducted prisoners with their Uzi submachine guns.

Robot

How Education International is pushing teachers' unions into the 4th Industrial Revolution

Kid with visor
© Mark PegrumMobility-Mixed Reality And The Crossing Of Linguacultural Boundaries
Why have teachers' unions been pushing ed-tech that is driving schools into the 4IR? Look no further than Education International, a global federation tied to UNESCO & the WEF that dominates most teachers' unions in the US and beyond.

For nearly a hundred years, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) - the two largest teachers' unions in the United States - have cozied up to corporate foundations, such as the Rockefeller philanthropies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with multinational technology companies, including IBM and Microsoft. After almost a century of cutting side deals with Robber Barons and Tech Barons alike, the AFT and the NEA are now parroting the Gates Foundation's "Reimagine Education" campaign, which is being buoyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Altogether, the AFT, the NEA, the WEF, and UNESCO are all "reimagining" a new post-human education system as they simultaneously push for ed-tech overhauls. As documented in my investigative series, "Teachnocracy," these overhauls seek to privatize public schools through partnerships with Big Tech corporations that facilitate online "distance learning" to accommodate indefinite classroom health restrictions in a post-COVID world.

Magnify

Timeline: Euromaidan, the original "Ukraine Crisis"

maiden ukraine
As Russia actually do launch an invasion or "special operation" in Ukraine, we thought now was a good time to recap on how we got here.

The historical, political and ethnic divisions in Ukraine go back decades, if not centuries, but we don't have the space for that kind of deep-dive. For now, we'll be keeping it to three simple parts: The fall of Viktor Yanukovych, the Crimean referendum, and the ensuing civil war which puts the region in a direct path to the events of today.

Much like our 30 Facts on Covid, this piece is intended as a quick reference guide to help get friends and family up to speed on the recent history of Ukraine, a handy index of contemporary sources, or a refresher course for those who've forgotten the details.

Anyway, let's get to it.

Comment: See also: Russia Launches Massive Military Operation in Ukraine - Reports of Multiple Explosions, Attacks on Military Targets From Donbass to Kiev


Dominoes

Today's Emergency Act, and Anti-Russian false flags echo the Gouzenko Hoax that unleashed the Cold War

five eyes
© Redit.com/KJN
Today, a new coordinated psychological operation has been sprung to convince every living patriot across the Five Eyes sphere of influence that the enemy of the free world who lurks behind every conspiracy to overthrow governments, and western values are Russia and China.

Over the past months, slanderous, and often conjectural stories of Chinese and Russian subversion has repeatedly been fed to a gullible western audience desperate for an enemy image to attach to their realization that an obvious long-term conspiracy has been unleashed to destroy their lives. While the left has been fed with propaganda designed to convince them that this enemy has taken the form of the Kremlin, the conservative consumers of media have been fed with the narrative that the enemy is China.

The reality is that both Russia and China together have a bond of principled survival upon which the entire multipolar order is based. It is this alliance which the actual controllers of today's empire wish to both destroy and ensure no western nation joins...especially not the USA.

Archaeology

5,300-yo skull offers earliest known evidence of ear surgery

ancient ear surgery skull
© Scientific ReportsArchaeologists found a 5,300 year old skull, possibly from an elderly woman, that showed signs of early ear surgery.
Some 5,300 years ago, humans in what is now northern Spain cut into an elderly woman's skull, likely in an effort to relieve her ear pain. Now, reports Judith Sudilovsky for the Jerusalem Post, archaeologists say the woman's skull represents the earliest known evidence of ear surgery.

Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study centers on a skull discovered in 2018 among the remains of around 100 people in a large, single-chamber tomb called the Dolmen of El Pendón. The tomb — made up of two upright stones supporting a flat, horizontal stone — is located in Reinoso, a town in the Spanish province of Burgos, and remained in use between roughly 3800 and 3000 B.C.E., notes Vishwam Sankaran for the Independent.

Info

Archaeologists discover ritual hunt site in Jordan from 7,000 BCE

Ancient Artifacts
© REUTERS / MUATH FREIJTwo statues uncovered by archaeologists in the southeastern Jordanian desert are pictured during a news conference in Amman, Jordan February 22, 2022.
A team of French and Jordanian archaeologists made an exciting discovery on Tuesday when they unearthed a ritual hunting site that is roughly 9,000 years old. The team found over 250 artifacts that have led them to believe neolithic humans' hunting strategies were much more advanced than previously thought.

"This is a unique site where large quantities of gazelles were hunted in complex rituals. It has no rival in the world from the Stone Age," said Wael Abu-Azizeh, the co-director of the South Eastern Badia Archaeological Project (SEBAP). The crew has been working on the site since 2013.The archeologists found traps made for hunting gazelles, made up of long converging stone walls meant to trap the gazelles so that they could be killed more easily.

These structures are referred to as "desert kites", or mass traps, and though there are many found throughout deserts in the Middle East and southwest Asia. Archaeologists say these are the oldest, largest, and best preserved.

"The site is unique, first because of its preservation state," said Abu-Azizeh. "It's 9,000 years old and everything was almost intact."

Also found on the site were two carved standing stones both with images of human-like figures. One of which is accompanied by the neolithic hunters' interpretation of their desert kite, as well as an altar, hearth, and marine shells.

Blue Planet

How early Africans lived, traveled and interacted revealed in ancient DNA

Rockshelter
© Jacob Davis.Hora Rockshelter in Malawi, where recent excavations uncovered two of the individuals analyzed in a collaborative study of ancient DNA.
A new analysis of human remains that were buried in African archaeological sites has produced the earliest DNA from the continent, telling a fascinating tale of how early humans lived, traveled and even found their significant others.

An interdisciplinary team of 44 researchers outlined its findings in "Ancient DNA reveals deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers." The paper was published today in Nature and reports findings from ancient DNA from six individuals buried in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia who lived between 18,000 and 5,000 years ago.

"This more than doubles the antiquity of reported ancient DNA data from sub-Saharan Africa," said David Reich, a professor at Harvard University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute whose lab generated the data in the paper. "The study is particularly exciting as a truly equal collaboration of archaeologists and geneticists."

Document

Documents reveal US gov't spent $22M promoting anti-Russia narrative in Ukraine and abroad

Ukrainians
© Efrem Lukatsky/APUkrainians attend a rally in central Kiev, Ukraine, Feb. 12, 2022, during a protest against the potential escalation of the tension between Russia and Ukraine.
Amid soaring tensions with Russia, the United States is spending a fortune on foreign interference campaigns in Ukraine. Washington's regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has spent $22.4 million on operations inside the country since 2014, when democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown and replaced by a successor government handpicked by the U.S. Those operations included propping up and training pro-Western political parties, funding pliant media organizations, and subsidizing massive privatization drives that benefit foreign multinational corporations, all in an effort to secure U.S. control over the country that NED President Carl Gershman called "the biggest prize" in Europe.

Demwashing the CIA

The National Endowment for Democracy was set up in 1983 by the Reagan administration after a series of public scandals had seriously undermined both the credibility and the public image of the CIA. That the organization was established and continues to function as a cutout group doing much of the agency's dirtiest work is not in question. "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA," Gershman himself said, explaining its creation. "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," NED cofounder Allen Weinstein told The Washington Post in 1991.

Archaeology

Huge Roman mosaic unearthed in London in 'once-in-a-lifetime find'

roman mosaic london
© MOLAArchaeologists said the discovery comes form ‘the heyday of Roman London’
The discovery is evidence of wealthy Romans 'living the good life', say archaeologists

Archaeologists working on a site in Southwark Street have uncovered the largest area of Roman mosaic to be discovered in London for half a century.

The precious tile work from "the heyday of Roman London" was discovered at a building site near the Shard in Southwark.

It once decorated the floor of a Roman dining room, experts believe.

Flowers and geometric patterns adorn the two embellished panels, which are thought to be almost 2,000 years old.

Books

"The most fateful error": Why isn't America listening to the advice on NATO expansion of its foremost 20th century expert on Russia?

George Kennan
"Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era," George Kennan said
The US diplomat George Kennan, an astute observer of Soviet Russia under Stalin, offered his observations later in life on the question of NATO expansion. The tragedy of our times is that those views are being ignored.

Winston Churchill once famously quipped that the "Americans will always do the right thing, but only after all other possibilities are exhausted." That bit of dry British humor cuts to the heart of the current crisis in Ukraine, which is loaded with enough geopolitical dynamite to bring down a sizable chunk of the neighborhood. Yet, had the West taken the advice of one of its leading statesmen with regards to reckless military expansion toward Russia, the world would be a more peaceful and predictable place today.