Secret HistoryS


Star of David

Israel's secret history of assassinations

Rod Such
The Electronic Intifada
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Meir Dagan
© Middle East EyeFormer head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, principle source for "Rise and Kill First"
Israeli television recently aired a video of two Israeli soldiers filming themselves in the act of shooting a Palestinian protester at the Gaza boundary while cheering. Filming one's own crimes against humanity - shooting Palestinians for sport - suggests a sense of security in never being held accountable.

Even more evidence of this impunity is apparent in Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by veteran Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court might want to consider this book Exhibit A if Israeli government and military officials are ever indicted for war crimes. It contains open admissions of guilt in plotting and executing extralegal assassinations in violation of international law.

"Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world," Bergman writes. In many cases, these so-called targeted killings over the last two decades also involved the deaths of nearly a thousand bystanders, according to Bergman's calculations - those numbers, however, fail to include the tens of thousands killed in overt acts of war and collective punishment that mostly go unmentioned in this book.
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SOTT Focus: The Truth Perspective: Lord of the Underworld: The Secret Life of Carl Jung


Sott.net
Sat, 16 Jun 2018 16:00 UTC
carl jung
C. G. Jung
Carl Jung is a giant of 20th century history and thought, widely regarded as a pioneer of the psychology of the unconscious. His defection from Freud and his ideas like the archetypes of the unconscious are widely known, even if many have not read his works. But there is a hidden side to the man that few are aware of. From visions of the gods to an acceptance of polygamy and a plan to revitalize civilization by returning to the paganism of the past, Jung privately held some ideas that don't appear in his published works - and which may come to many as a shock.

Today on the Truth Perspective we'll be taking a closer look at the hidden Jung: his encounter with the deranged Otto Gross, his libertine views on sexuality, his modelling of psychoanalysis on ancient mystery cult initiations, his interest in mediumship, and his trance-induced visions of the underworld. If you thought you know Jung, chances are you don't. Tune Saturday, June 16, 12 pm EDT.

Running Time: 01:29:45

Download: MP3

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Dig

Genetic studies show previous models of ancient populations in the Americas as 'unrealistically simple'


Ancient Origins
Sat, 16 Jun 2018 15:00 UTC
ancient migration north america
© Page Museum/Travis S./CC BY-NC 2.0First Americans, photo of mural in the Page Museum, Los Angeles
A new genetic study of ancient individuals in the Americas and their contemporary descendants finds that two populations that diverged from one another 18,000 to 15,000 years ago remained apart for millennia before mixing again. This historic "re-convergence" occurred before or during their expansion to the southern continent.

The study, reported in the journal Science, challenges previous research suggesting that the first people in the Americas split into northern and southern branches, and that the southern branch alone gave rise to all ancient populations in Central and South America.
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Water

'Enhanced interrogation': It was only torture when the Commies did it

James Henry
WhoWhatWhy
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 17:23 UTC
waterboarding
© Getty Images
Back when the existential competition between the communist USSR and the capitalist USA was reaching its fevered pitch, the CIA published a report on Communist bloc interrogation techniques - which it denounced as "police tactics which would not be condoned in a democratic country."

The 1956 CIA study was commissioned amid Cold War hysteria surrounding reports of the Communists' seeming ability to "brainwash" prisoners - coaxing them to "confess" to all manner of things that were untrue.

"The Communists," the report's authors explain, "do not look upon these assaults as 'torture.'" Instead, interrogators, "in a typical legalistic manner," use methods that allow them to conform to Communist theory which demands that "no force or torture be used in extracting information from prisoners."

What were those nefarious techniques favored by the Communists? Well, they were not the waterboarding, forced rectal feeding, sexual threats, or mock burials almost universally considered torture that were deployed during the Bush-Cheney administration's "enhanced interrogation" program.

Instead, the Communists' "brain washing" featured some of the CIA's milder (still terrible) interrogation techniques, including the systematic use of stress positions, "isolation, anxiety, fatigue, lack of sleep, uncomfortable temperatures, and chronic hunger" - with the ultimate goal of making the prisoner "docile and compliant," according to the 1956 report titled: "Brainwashing: From A Psychological Viewpoint."

The Communist interrogation regime was designed with the goal of "breaking the will" of prisoners, and to get high-profile prisoners to admit to their own guilt - regardless of actual culpability - during "show trials" and the like.

"But these [Soviet] methods do constitute torture," the CIA's author declares, "and physical coercion should never be considered otherwise [emphasis added]."

Comment: They were right, such tactics would not be condoned in any real democratic country. So what does that say about the U.S.?

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Hammer

Recent geological study suggests humans traversed Alaska's southern coast to spread into the Americas


Ancient Origins
Thu, 31 May 2018 00:00 UTC
Rock analysis migration americas
© Jason BrinerUniversity at Buffalo Ph.D. candidate Alia Lesnek works at Suemez Island.
When and how did the first people come to the Americas?

The conventional story says that the earliest settlers came via Siberia, crossing the now-defunct Bering land bridge on foot and trekking through Canada when an ice-free corridor opened up between massive ice sheets toward the end of the last ice age.

But with recent archaeological evidence casting doubt on this thinking, scientists are seeking new explanations. One dominant, new theory: The first Americans took a coastal route along Alaska's Pacific border to enter the continent.

A new geological study provides compelling evidence to support this hypothesis.
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Book

Einstein's private travel diaries reveal 'shocking' xenophobia during trip to Asia

Alison Flood
The Guardian
Tue, 12 Jun 2018 17:32 UTC
Albert Einstein
© Doreen Spooner/Getty ImagesUnfamiliar face of an icon … Albert Einstein in 1921.
The publication of Albert Einstein's private diaries detailing his tour of Asia in the 1920s reveals the theoretical physicist and humanitarian icon's racist attitudes to the people he met on his travels, particularly the Chinese.

Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. In China, the man who famously once described racism as "a disease of white people" describes the "industrious, filthy, obtuse people" he observes. He notes how the "Chinese don't sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse." After earlier writing of the "abundance of offspring" and the "fecundity" of the Chinese, he goes on to say: "It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary."

Ze'ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, said: "I think a lot of comments strike us as pretty unpleasant - what he says about the Chinese in particular.

"They're kind of in contrast to the public image of the great humanitarian icon. I think it's quite a shock to read those and contrast them with his more public statements. They're more off guard, he didn't intend them for publication."

Comment: Shock! Einstein wasn't perfect? Guess we all have our dark side. He may have not particularly liked the Chinese but what one thinks about someone and how they actually treat them are 2 different things.

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Blackbox

Was Ludwig Wittgenstein a Mystic?

John Horgan
Scientific American
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 13:57 UTC
Ludwig Wittgenstein
© WikimediaLudwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, was described by his fellow philosopher Bertrand Russell as “the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived.”
The philosopher's greatest work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, only makes sense in the light of mysticism

If you bring together two enigmas, do you get a bigger enigma, or do they cancel each other out, like multiplied negative numbers, to produce clarity? The latter, I hope, as I take on Wittgenstein and mysticism.

I've been puzzling over these topics since my philosophy salon met to discuss "The Mysticism of the Tractatus," written in 1966 by B.F. McGuinness. The salon consists of eight or so people, most with graduate degrees in philosophy, who gather in the salon-runner's living room to jaw over a paper. Ludwig Wittgenstein, whom Bertrand Russell described as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived," published only one book during his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. First issued in German in 1921, Tractatus is a cryptic meditation on what is knowable and unknowable.
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Question

'One of a kind, 3,000-year-old' sculpture found in Israel puzzles archeologists

AP
Guardian
Sun, 10 Jun 2018 05:52 UTC
king’s head
© Ilan Ben Zion/APThe biblical-era figurine of a king’s head has been put on display at the Israel Museum.
An enigmatic sculpture of a king's head dating back nearly 3,000 years has left researchers guessing at whose face it depicts.

The 5cm (two-inch) sculpture is an exceedingly rare example of figurative art from the region during the ninth century BC - a period associated with biblical kings. It is exquisitely preserved but for a bit of missing beard, and nothing quite like it has been found before.

While scholars are certain the stern-bearded figure wearing a golden crown represents royalty, they are less sure which king it symbolises, or which kingdom he may have ruled.

Comment: The bible has never been shown to be based on any factual evidence and there is much to gain in the Israeli community by associating this 'one of a kind' artefact with the biblical story of a land called Israel.

But it's not the first time archeologists have made massive leaps of faith in attributing finds in this way. Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Treasure Chest

Divers discover remains of 334-year-old merchant ship, Britain's richest shipwreck


Sputnik
Mon, 11 Jun 2018 15:49 UTC
treasure
© CC0
Underwater explorers have discovered fragments of Britain's richest shipwreck due to recent storms shifting sand and allowing them to reveal cannons and anchors at Loe Bar, near Cornwall.

The merchant ship, called the President and owned by the East India Company, sank in 1684 with a cargo of precious diamonds and pearls worth $10.7 million (8 million pounds) today. Divers from Historic England David Gibbins and Mark Milburn explained that until recently weather conditions hadn't permitted them to get in the water, as the "entry and exit are treacherous even with the smallest waves."

"The site was first reported by divers twenty years ago and was designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. Mark and I are licensed by Historic England to monitor the wreck, but for many years it has been covered by sand," Daily Mail cited them as saying.
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Info

Inca civilization was better at skull surgery than Civil War doctors

Lizzie Wade
Science Magazine
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 19:05 UTC
Skull Surgery
© D. Kushner et al., World Neurosurgery 114, 245 (2018)This unfortunate individual, who lived in Peru between 400 and 200 B.C.E., suffered a skull fracture (white arrow) that was likely treated with trepanation, but died less than 2 weeks later.
Cranial surgery without modern anesthesia and antibiotics may sound like a death sentence. But trepanation-the act of drilling, cutting, or scraping a hole in the skull for medical reasons-was practiced for thousands of years from ancient Greece to pre-Columbian Peru. Not every patient survived. But many did, including more than 100 subjects of the Inca Empire. A new study of their skulls and hundreds of others from pre-Columbian Peru suggests the success rates of premodern surgeons there was shockingly high: up to 80% during the Inca era, compared with just 50% during the American Civil War some 400 years later.

Trepanation likely started as a treatment for head wounds, says David Kushner, a neurologist at the University of Miami in Florida. After a traumatic injury, such surgery would have cleaned up skull fractures and relieved pressure on the brain, which commonly swells and accumulates fluid after a blow to the head. But not all trepanned skulls show signs of head injuries, so it's possible the surgery was also used to treat conditions that left no skeletal trace, such as chronic headaches or mental illnesses. Trepanned skulls have been found all over the world, but Peru, with its dry climate and excellent preservation conditions, boasts hundreds of them.

For the new study, Kushner teamed up with John Verano, a bioarchaeologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, to systematically study trepanation's success rate across different cultures and time periods. The team examined 59 skulls from Peru's southern coast dated to between 400 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E, 421 from Peru's central highlands dated from 1000 C.E. to 1400 C.E., and 160 from the highlands around Cusco, capital of the Inca Empire, from the early 1400s C.E. to the mid-1500s C.E. If the bone around the surgical hole showed no signs of healing, the researchers knew the patient died either during or very shortly after the surgery. Smooth bone around the opening showed that the patient had survived for months or years after the procedure.
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