Secret HistoryS


Heart - Black

The Night of the Pencils: When Argentina's military dictatorship hunted down its young dissidents


telesur
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 18:07 UTC
argentina night pencils
In mid-September 1976, a group of 10 teenagers were abducted and disappeared by members of the Argentina junta's state security forces in the Argentine city of La Plata, about 33 miles from capital Buenos Aires. It was the beginning of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina until 1983.

The teens, all aged between 16 and 18, were captured in the middle of the night, of Sept. 16-17, by masked men who violently raided their houses and took them to clandestine detention centres in what is known as the "Night of the Pencils," because they were all idealistic high school students.

The students were illegally imprisoned and tortured, only four of them survived. Six of were brutally killed, adding numbers of dead and missing from dictatorship.

Francisco, Maria Claudia, Claudio, Horacio Daniel and Maria Clara remain disappeared. Pablo Diaz, Gustavo Calotti, Emilce Moler and Patricia Miranda miraculously survived.

Most of them had political militancy backgrounds as many of them had attended the 1975 spring protests in which they demanded the restoration of a preferential transportation fare, a benefit seen by them as a social gain lost due to the authoritarianism of the military government of their province.

Comment: Argentina's Dirty War was a brutal crackdown on political dissidents, human rights defenders, academics, church leaders, students, and other opponents of the right-wing regime. The war was also part of the U.S. backed Operation Condor, a state terror operation that carried out assassinations and disappearances in support of South America's right-wing dictatorships.

Declassified docs partially reveal U.S. role in Argentina dirty war - CIA/DIA docs remain classified

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Hourglass

Forgotten utopia?: The Indus people may have lived for 700 years without war, weapons or inequality

Shivali Best
Daily Mail
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 20:57 UTC
Indus valley
© De Agostini / Getty ImagesMany people believe that one mysterious, ancient society may have led a Utopian life. The Indus civilisation flourished from 2600 to 1900 BC, and it has been suggested that they lived in a real, functioning utopia
Many believe the idea of a utopian society is an impossible fantasy.

But there may have been one mysterious, ancient group of people that was able to fulfil the dream of life without conflict or rulers.

Remains of the Indus civilisation, which flourished from 2600 to 1900 BC, show no clear signs of weapons, war or inequality.

This is according to Andrew Robinson. the author of The Indus: Lost civilisations, who has written an in-depth piece in the New Scientist.

Comment: For more on the Indus civilization see:

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Hourglass

Mysterious 6,000-year-old fortresses in Jordan reveal surprisingly advanced early society

Philippe Bohstrom
Haaretz
Fri, 16 Sep 2016 20:06 UTC
Khirbet fortress
© Matthew Neale Dalton / APAAMEAerial view of Khirbet Abu al-Husayn, Jordan
Excavations in the volcanic desert of Jordan have uncovered three surprisingly advanced fortified settlements with artificially irrigated terraced gardens, dating to 6,000 years ago.

The remains of the fortified settlements were discovered atop hills at the edge of North-eastern Jordan´s scorched volcanic desert, close to the Syrian border. Radiocarbon dates date its era between 4000 and 3500 B.C.E., about 1000 years before the pyramids.

The discovery came as a surprise, since nothing like this old has been found in the inhospitable depths of the Jordan desert, a place that had been considered uninhabitable by primitive society.
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Info

Marble statues of goddess Aphrodite unearthed at Petra

Mindy Weisberger,
Live Science
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 07:14 UTC
Marble statues of Aphrodite
© Tom Parker
Marble statues of Aphrodite/Venus found at Petra in Jordan date to the second century.
Two marble statues representing Aphrodite/Venus, the Greco-Roman goddess of love, were found recently at Petra, an ancient desert city in Jordan.

The statues, which date to the second century A.D., are nearly intact and are remarkably well preserved, retaining traces of the paint applied to them centuries ago. They were discovered by archaeologists and graduate students from the U.S. working in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.

Carved in a distinctly Roman style, the statues hint at ways in which Rome influenced local culture in Petra, following its annexation of Nabataea — the Arabic kingdom that included Petra — in A.D. 106.

Petra is a sprawling city covering 102 square miles (264 square kilometers) in southern Jordan; it's partly freestanding and partly carved into the surrounding desert bedrock. Two thousand years ago, it was the Nabataean capital, serving as an important stopping point along major caravan routes. It is perhaps best known for its magnificent tombs, temples and other impressive buildings, and was featured as the purported hiding place of the Holy Grail in the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Archaeologists have been investigating Petra's ruins since the late 1920s, but there is still much to discover, according to archaeologist Tom Parker, co-director of the excavation team that found the statues. The team's three-year project focused on Petra's North Ridge, located in a previously unexplored area where the city's less privileged residents lived and were buried, said Parker, a history professor at North Carolina State University.
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Info

Statue of Cybele the Anatolian mother goddess unearthed in northern Turkey


Daily Sabah
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 05:22 UTC
Cybele the Anatolian
© Daily Sabah2,100-year-old statue of Cybele the Anatolian mother goddess unearthed in northern Turkey.
An estimated 2,100-year-old rare marble statue of Cybele, the mother goddess of Anatolia, has been unearthed in excavations in northern Ordu province located on the Black Sea coast.

The historic sculpture of Cybele sitting on her throne weighed a whopping 200 kilograms and was about 110 centimeters tall.

The statue is also the first marble statue found in Turkey in its original place.

The ancient artifact was unearthed in excavations launched by a team of 25 archeologists led by the head of the Department of Archeology in Gazi University, Prof. Dr. Süleyman Yücel Şenyurt, in the 2,300-year-old Kurul Kalesi, or the Council Fortress.

"We are continuing our work non-stop. Two days ago we found an extraordinary artifact. According to our research, the statue remained intact after the walls of the entrance of the fortress of Kurul collapsed during an invasion by Roman soldiers. This statue has also shown us that the fortress of Kurul in Ordu was a very important settlement [in ancient times]," Prof. Şenyurt said.

Saying that it was an incredibly rare find, the professor said that they were proud to unearth such an artifact in Turkey. He also said that the priceless statue would be later on transferred to the archeology museum in Ordu.
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Eagle

Dick Cheney's 'deep state' and "Continuity in Government" measures on 9/11

Prof Peter Dale Scott
Journal of 9/11 Studies
Wed, 14 Sep 2016 00:00 UTC
Dick Cheney
In 1993 I wrote a book, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, in which I said at the outset I was not going to try to solve the mystery of JFK's murder but to examine the politics of it.

I wish to argue here for similar research into the politics of 9/11. For the political consequences of 9/11 have been toxic, regardless of how the towers fell or who was responsible. The unusual process of their implementation deserves close study, a study which I believe will cast more light on 9/11 itself.

I hope in this paper to show that Dick Cheney responded to 9/11 by using devious means to install a small cabal of lawyers - most notoriously John Yoo - who proceeded conspiratorially in the next weeks to exclude their superiors, while secretly authorizing measures ranging from warrantless surveillance and detention to torture.

Some of these were measures which Cheney and Rumsfeld had previously been preparing for almost two decades, as central figures in the secret agency planning for so-called Continuity of Government (COG). It was revealed in the 1980s that these plans aimed at granting a president emergency powers, uncurbed by congressional restraints, to intervene abroad, and also to detain large numbers of those who might protest such actions.
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Brick Wall

Racism and the 1971 Attica Rebellion - 45 years later

Abayomi Azikiwe
Global Research
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 14:45 UTC
Attica Prison Rebellion
In looking at the heroic seizure of Attica Prison on September 9, 1971, we must acknowledge the real purpose of the prison system in the United States. The millions who remain incarcerated, paroled and supervised by the so-called correctional institutions are there not for the purpose of rehabilitation. Prisons are a mechanism to facilitate the continuing national oppression, super-exploitation and social containment of peoples of African and Latin American descent whom are considered the most dangerous subjects of the U.S. capitalist and imperialist system.

Those who took over Attica Prison recognized that their existence inside the walls was part and parcel of broader system of racism which extended back to the days of the Atlantic Slave Trade in North America and the entire western hemisphere. These men who rebelled during those fateful five days did so in response to the overall struggle for national liberation being waged on the outside.

By 1971, the African American movement against racism, national oppression and capitalist exploitation had reached an apex. For the previous 16 years, the African people had developed tactics from the collective boycott, to the sit-in, mass demonstrations, bloc voting, self-organization, urban rebellion and the armed revolutionary seizure of power.

Comment: 'Incarcerated Workers' stage nationwide prison labor strike 45 years after 1971 NY's Attica riot
"Inmates in Attica were rioting for many of the same conditions that inmates are striking for today," Crispino said, "an end to prison slavery, human dignity, adequate access to medical care, adequate access to wages."

The last one is a big one. While inmates across the country are protesting many problems, such as being served moldy food or, such as in Texas, being confined to concrete cells with no air conditioning with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees (38 C), the labor issue by sheer volume is the most contentious.

There are over 900,000 inmates working out of the 2.4 million prisoners in the country...

"We want to people to understand the economics of the prison system," Melvin Brooks-Ray, founder of the Free Alabama Movement and former inmate, told Wired. "It's not about crime and punishment. It's about money."

On Friday, protests across the country took place to show solidarity with the protesters behind bars.

The full effect of the protests will not be known until later, but perhaps this will be one step closer to fixing the problems that persist in the country that holds 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population.


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Blackbox

Flashback Why is NATO decimating the Balkans and trying to force Milosevic to surrender?

Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser
Emperor's Clothes
Wed, 29 Aug 2001 20:27 UTC
milosevic

Comment: This article is a must-read. Keep it in mind while pondering current events. The goals haven't changed, only the players, to some degree. Also consider when this article was written, less than two weeks before 9/11.


Recently the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic (ICDSM) received an email from some people in St. Petersburg. They were organizing a protest against globalization and The Hague 'tribunal,' and in support of Slobodan Milosevic.

Many people in the West don't realize that there is passionate support for Milosevic across the political spectrum in the former Soviet Union. For example, the Russian Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic is led by Alexander Zinoviev, the distinguished author and former Soviet dissident. At the same time, the Committee is strongly supported by the Communists.

Virtually all Russian citizens demand Milosevic be freed. They understand that in NATO's attempt to destroy Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and then Bulgaria and Greece, the ultimate target is the former Soviet Union.

NATO needs to crush Milosevic, and to tarnish the legend of Milosevic, because he stands for resistance to NATO, to neo-colonialism, to Washington's Imperial rule - to the new slavery brought to us thanks to this latest would-be Rome.

The following article is based on a letter of greeting we sent the demonstrators in St. Petersburg.

Comment: From September 12, 2016:
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has accused the United States and its Western partners of "destroying the foundations of the existing world order from the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the wars in Libya and Iraq."

Shoigu spoke on September 12 after U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter accused Moscow of having a "clear ambition to erode the principled international order." Carter said last week that Russia had engaged in "unprofessional behavior" in Ukraine, Syria, and cyberspace.

But Shoigu said in a statement that "the international order mustn't be mistaken with the American order." He also said that "maintaining the international order is the prerogative of the entire international community -- not only the Pentagon."


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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: America. Because 9/11. Because 'Murica.


Sott.net
Sun, 11 Sep 2016 16:00 UTC
11 september
On that fateful day in the year two thousand...and one, the world changed forever. Well, actually, it didn't change that much, it just got "more" - more obvious, more ridiculous, more dangerous, more murderous, and more "pretty much everything objectively bad that you can think of". Foreign nations were bombed, invaded, and occupied for the flimsiest of reasons - a time-honored tradition among world elites. Faceless foreigners were arbitrarily detained and tortured by the thousands, murdered by the hundreds of thousands or even millions - another Western value. Society went even further down the toilet into hedonism, a strong embrace of abject ignorance, and obsession with the trivial, mindless, and inane - a freedom the terrorists allegedly hate us for. All embrace the new American century.

So today, if you see what we see, if you feel as we feel, and if you would seek as we seek, then we would ask you to imaginarily stand beside us this 11th of September, on the 15th anniversary of that fretful day, and we will give you a 9/11 retrospective discussion that shall never, ever be forgot.

Running Time: 01:58:09

Download: MP3

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Document

Origins of al-Qaeda: The Base

Wayne Madsen
Global Research
Thu, 16 Jun 2016 22:49 UTC
Osama bin Laden 911
Erdogan: "Al-Qaeda fights ISIS too! Why are they bad?"
Global Research Editor's Note

This article originally published by Global Research in 2005 sheds light on the nature of Al Qaeda, an intelligence construct used by Washington to destabilize and destroy sovereign countries, while sustaining the illusion of an outside enemy, which threatens the security of the Western World.

In recent developments, the Obama administration has intimated that it will be supporting "moderate al Qaeda rebels" in Syria in its "counter-terrorism" campaign (i.e. bombing raids) allegedly against the ISIS, formerly known as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

The state sponsor of Al Qaeda goes after Al Qaeda? The fact of the matter is that both Al Nusra and the Islamic State (ISIS) are supported by Washington and its allies. And in recent developments, Washington has asked Moscow not to bomb the Al Nusra Front, which is categorized as part of the moderate opposition. The article below describes the origins of Al Qaeda: The Base, by Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence.

Michel Chossudovsky, June 16, 2016
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