Secret HistoryS


Info

Handwritten parchments about King Arthur, Merlin and the Holy Grail discovered in university library

Laura Geggel
Live Science
Fri, 01 Feb 2019 08:28 UTC
Ancient Parchment
© University of BristolA close-up of one of the fragments that mentions Merlin.
The librarian hadn't fallen under a magical spell, but he still felt enchanted when he unexpectedly discovered seven handwritten parchments detailing the legendary adventures of Merlin and King Arthur. For years, the documents had lain hidden at the University of Bristol in England.

The parchments were discovered in a book dating to the 16th century, Michael Richardson, the Bristol special collections librarian, said in a statement. He happened across the parchments while seeking materials for students who needed historical documents from medieval times.

Specifically, the parchments were found bound inside a four-volume edition of the writings of French scholar and reformer Jean Gerson (1363-1429). When Richardson recognized several Arthurian names, he contacted his colleagues to help decipher the text.

The team hopes to learn how the fragments came to be bound in the Gerson volumes. They also plan to fully translate the text from Old French to modern English in a new publication, which will explain the writing's history.
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Archaeology

Kweneng: 200-year-old lost city discovered under South African foliage


RT
Fri, 01 Feb 2019 14:33 UTC
Lost city
© Reuters / Wits University
Archeologists have discovered a lost 200-year-old city on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, that was once home to more than 10,000 people.

The metropolis, called Kweneng, was previously thought to be a scattering of ancient stone huts, but three decades of intricate research have finally revealed it to have been a city of 800 homesteads.

Comment: See also: Laser technology shines light on South African lost city of Kweneng

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Bad Guys

The complete guide to the NY Times' support for US-backed coups in Latin America

Adam H. Johnson
TruthDig
Fri, 01 Feb 2019 11:12 UTC
nyt new york times
On Friday, The New York Times continued its long, predictable tradition of backing U.S. coups in Latin America by publishing an editorial praising Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. This will be the 10th such coup the paper has backed since the creation of the CIA over 70 years ago.

A survey of The New York Times archives shows the Times editorial board has supported 10 out of 12 American-backed coups in Latin America, with two editorials-those involving the 1983 Grenada invasion and the 2009 Honduras coup-ranging from ambiguous to reluctant opposition. The survey can be viewed here.
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Star of David

Former Carter aide: Barbara Walters boasted of love affairs with Israeli ministers while covering Camp David

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:26 UTC
Moshe Dayan Barbara Walters
A new book says that Barbara Walters boasted of love affairs with Israel's foreign and defense ministers, Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman, in 1978-1979 while she was covering Camp David negotiations for ABC news.

In "Jimmy Carter: The White House Years", Carter's former domestic policy adviser, Stuart Eizenstat, quotes Gerald Rafshoon, Carter's former communications director, as saying that Walters- who was 49 and divorced at the time -bragged to him of having affairs with the ministers, both of them Israeli generals.

Eizenstat reports that on day 3 of the heated negotiations at Camp David in September 1978, a busload of reporters were granted access to the retreat for just 45 minutes, and Walters went missing, hiding in the ladies' room in order to "hang back to interview Dayan and Weizman."
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Dig

Siberia's Denisova cave continues to shed light on enigmatic extinct human species

Will Dunham
Reuters
Thu, 31 Jan 2019 10:01 UTC
denisova cave
The entrance to Denisova Cave, which contains evidence of previous habitation by extinct human species, in the Anui River valley in the Altai mountains of Siberia, Russia
Scientists using sophisticated techniques to determine the age of bone fragments, teeth and artifacts unearthed in a Siberian cave have provided new insight into a mysterious extinct human species that may have been more advanced than previously known.

Research published on Wednesday shed light on the species called Denisovans, known only from scrappy remains from Denisova Cave in the foothills of the Altai Mountains in Russia.

While still enigmatic, they left a genetic mark on our species, Homo sapiens, particularly among indigenous populations in Papua New Guinea and Australia that retain a small but significant percentage of Denisovan DNA, evidence of past interbreeding between the species.

Comment: In light of numerous studies and discoveries from the archaeological and genetic record, a great many theories about the history of humanity don't stand up to scrutiny: The 'Out of Africa' theory for all human species has been debunked; neanderthals and denisovans were much more sophisticated than presumed; there is burgeoning evidence for multiple episodes of interbreeding between our early human ancestors; and the dating for for all of this is being pushed much further back with each new discovery.

See also:

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Info

German archaeologist on the latest research at Gobekli Tepe


Arkeolojik Haber
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 21:00 UTC
Archaeologist Dr. Lee Clare says; As mentioned previously, our scientific research is currently in what I would refer to as a "transitional phase". Freed of its old paradigm, I believe that we will see Göbeklitepe in a completely different light.
Gobekli Tepe_1
© Arkeolojik Haber
Coordinator of research and fieldwork at Göbeklitepe from the German Archaeological Institute, Dr. Lee Clare answered Arkeofili's questions.
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Attention

Amnesty International's problematic collaboration with UK and US intelligence

Alexander Rubinstein
MintPress News
Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
Benenson/Smith
© Uppsala-Bild/Creative CommonsPeter Benenson, left, with George Ivan Smith at a 1966 Nordic Africa Institute Seminar.
Amnesty International, the eminent human-rights non-governmental organization, is widely known for its advocacy in that realm. It produces reports critical of the Israeli occupation in Palestine and the Saudi-led war on Yemen. But it also publishes a steady flow of indictments against countries that don't play ball with Washington - countries like Iran, China, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea and more. Those reports amplify the drumbeat for a "humanitarian" intervention in those nations.

Amnesty's stellar image as a global defender of human rights runs counter to its early days when the British Foreign Office was believed to be censoring reports critical of the British empire. Peter Benenson, the co-founder of Amnesty, had deep ties to the British Foreign Office and Colonial Office while another co-founder, Luis Kutner, informed the FBI of a gun cache at Black Panther leader Fred Hampton's home weeks before he was killed by the Bureau in a gun raid.

These troubling connections contradict Amnesty's image as a benevolent defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and more concerned with the dignity of the United States and United Kingdom's image in the world.
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Blackbox

Forgotten history: New documentary explores the Finders conspiracy

Derrick Broze
The Conscious Resistance
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 17:17 UTC
finders cult
The Conscious Resistance Network presents:

Who Will Find What The Finders Hide? Pt 1

Researched, Written & Narrated by Derrick Broze
Produced and Edited by Jeremy Martin
Funded by our Patreon supporters

In our last documentary we talked about powerful billionaire and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and showed how Epstein and his co-conspirators, were able to escape punishment for their role in abusing over 40 young girls. We noted that Epstein and people like him do not act alone in their efforts to feed their depraved desires. In Epstein's case, he had an inner circle of people who helped him acquire young girls. In other cases there exist networks of individuals helping to pressure or even kidnap young children and force them into sexual bondage.

This time, we are going to explore the story of a cult that was suspected of international human trafficking in 1987. The Finders cult was a young group of men, women, and children who claimed to be nothing more than former hippies living an alternative lifestyle and practicing alternative parenting. The Finders were founded by a mysterious man with military connections nicknamed "The Game Caller" who believed in turning his life, and the lives of those around him, into a constant game or experiment.

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Attention

New documentary accuses Belgian mercenary of killing Dag Hammarskjold

Emma Graham-Harrison, Andreas Rocksen and Mads Brügger
The Guardian
Sat, 12 Jan 2019 18:20 UTC
Jan van Risseghem
Jan van Risseghem at the controls of an Avikat Fouga jet.
Jan van Risseghem was only a teenager when his mother ordered him to flee Nazi-occupied Belgium for her native England with his brother Maurice. After hiding in a convent, and an epic journey across the war-torn continent, they reached safety in Portugal, then took a ship north.

Once in England, the pair signed up with the Belgian resistance, and with the help of an uncle enrolled for flight training with the RAF, a decision that shaped not just their war, but the rest of their lives.

Half a century later, flying skills he learned in Britain would also make the younger van Risseghem internationally notorious, when he was publicly linked to the plane crash that killed Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN secretary general, in 1961.

His plane, the Albertina, came down in forest just outside the town of Ndola in present-day Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia, just after midnight on 18 September, as it approached the town's airport.

Fifteen people on board died immediately, and the only survivor in hospital a few days later. The same day, a US ambassador sent a secret cable - one that stayed buried in files for decades - speculating about possible sabotage and apparently naming Van Risseghem as a suspect.

But his name would not be connected with Hammarskjöld's in public until many years later, after the Belgian pilot had returned to his quiet hometown of Lint with his British wife, raised two sons and mourned the death of one, retired, and then died a war hero himself.

Comment: See also: Inquiry: Who or what brought down Dag Hammarskjöld

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USA

Washington's long and bloody history of violent intervention in Latin America


Associated Press
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
US war with Mexico 1846
© U.S. Army Signal Corps / APThis file photo of a painting depicts street fighting during the siege of Monterey, Mexico in Sept. 1846 during the U.S. War with Mexico. The United States invaded Mexico in 1846 and captured Mexico City in 1847. A peace treaty the following year gave the U.S. more than half of Mexico's territory, what is now most of the western United States.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accuses the United States of trying to orchestrate a coup against him. While the U.S. says it's trying to rescue Venezuela's democracy, Washington has a long history of interventions - military and otherwise - in Latin American politics.

Since the advent of the Monroe Doctrine in the early 19th century, the United States has involved itself in the daily affairs of nations across the hemisphere, often on behalf of North American commercial interests or to support right-leaning forces against leftist leaders.

That military involvement petered out after the end of the Cold War, although the U.S. has been accused of granting at least tacit backing to coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Honduras in 2009.

The Trump's administration leading role in recognizing Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela returns the U.S. to a more assertive role in Latin America than it has had for years.

Comment: More on US regime change operations in Latin America and other countries:

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