Secret History

The revelations of Wikileaks: No. 9 - Opening the CIA's vault

Patrick Lawrence
Consortium News
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC

As its publisher remains in prison awaiting judgment on his extradition case, we continue our series of looking at WikiLeaks' significant revelations contributing to the public's right to know.

On Feb. 6, 2017, WikiLeaks released documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency's espionage program in the months leading up to and following France's presidential election in 2012. The agency used spies and cyberweapons to infiltrate and hack into the major political parties with competing candidates — the Socialists, the National Front and the Union for a Popular Movement. Their candidates — respectively François Hollande, Marine Le Pen and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy — were also spied upon individually, as were many other prominent political figures.

The objectives of the program included ascertaining the contending parties' political strategies and platforms, their views of the U.S., and their relations with the European Union, with other European nations (Germany, Britain) as well as Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, and others. The CIA's French operation lasted 10 months, beginning in November 2011 and enduring until September 2012, several months after Hollande won the election and formed a Socialist government.

WikiLeaks' disclosure of the agency's project bears a special irony: It was just as WikiLeaks published this material in 2017 that the CIA helped propagate unsubstantiated (and later discounted) "intelligence" that Russian hackers and propagandists were interfering with France's presidential election that year. Similar allegations (similarly lacking in evidence) were floated as the European Union held parliamentary elections in May 2019.

As WikiLeaks reported at the time of the releases on the CIA's covert activities in France, those revelations were to serve "as context for its forthcoming CIA Vault 7 series." WikiLeaks' apparent intent was to display a CIA's hacking operation in action.

Ancient Maya had incredibly effective water filtration system

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Sat, 24 Oct 2020 12:00 UTC

Tikal

Water is essential for basic human survival. But it can also be dangerous; contaminated water can spread deadly diseases that have the potential to eradicate whole communities. Safe, clean water offers humanity one of its best chances to thrive.

Several ancient civilisations, including the Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans, filtered their water. Sanskrit writings dating back to 2,000 BCE also mention water treatment methods. Now, archaeologists have discovered the Maya of Central America did too - and their water filtration system was incredibly effective.

In a reservoir in what was once the major Maya city of Tikal, the ruins of which crumble in a rainforest in present-day Guatemala, archaeologists have found zeolite and quartz - minerals that are not local to the area, and which are both effective at helping remove contaminants such as microbes, heavy metals, and nitrogen compounds from water.

Comment: Meanwhile 1,900 years ago in France: The brilliance of ancient engineers shown in watermill complex in southern France

See also:

And check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology

Inks containing lead on Egyptian papyri unveil ancient writings

University of Copenhagen
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 20:19 UTC

Analysing 12 ancient Egyptian papyri fragments with X-ray microscopy, University of Copenhagen researchers were surprised to find previously unknown lead compounds in both red and black inks and suggest they were used for their drying properties rather than as a pigment. A similar lead-based "drying technique" has also been documented in 15th century European painting, and the discovery of it in Egyptian papyri calls for a reassessment of ancient lead-based pigments.

© The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection
Detail of a medical treatise (inv. P. Carlsberg 930) from the Tebtunis temple library with headings marked in red ink.

The ancient Egyptians have been using inks for writing since at least 3200 BC, using black inks for the primary body of text and using red inks to highlight headings and keywords. In a new study published today in PNAS, a cross-disciplinary team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen have employed advanced synchrotron radiation based X-ray microscopy equipment to investigate red and black inks preserved on a sample of 12 papyrus fragments from Roman period Egypt (around 100 to 200 AD).

"Our analyses of the inks on the papyri fragments from the unique Tebtunis temple library revealed previously unknown compositions of red and black inks, particularly iron-based and lead-based compounds." says Egyptologist and first author of the study Thomas Christiansen from the University of Copenhagen.

Chemistry Professor and co-author Sine Larsen adds:

The iron-based compounds in the red inks are most likely ocher - a natural earth pigment - because the iron was found together with aluminium and the mineral hematite, which occur in ocher. The lead compounds appear in both the red and black inks, but since we did not identify any of the typical lead-based pigments used to colour the ink, we suggest that this particular lead compound was used by the scribes to dry the ink rather than as a pigment.

A similar lead-based drying technique was used in 15th century Europe during the development of oil painting, and the researchers believe that the Egyptians must have discovered 1,400 years earlier that they could ensure their papyri did not smear by applying this particular ink. According to the researchers, their discovery calls for a reassessment of lead-based compounds found in ancient Mediterranean inks in that drying techniques may have been widespread much earlier than previously believed.

Treason in America: An overview of the FBI, CIA and matters of 'National Security'

Cynthia Chung
Strategic Culture
Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC

© The Guardian
President John F. Kennedy, wife Jacqueline, Texas Gov. John Connally, wife Nellie
Dallas, Texas • November 22, 1963

"Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
- Sir John Harrington.

As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to bottom.

This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet's father. This is showcased in the play by reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with him.

Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the persisting "ruling system," of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of affairs truly originate from?

Comment: The argument for full declassification in a timely fashion has long been tabooed by the same organizations and power structure that would be implicated in the reveal - a disservice to the many in the service and protection of the few.

Other articles of interest by Cynthia Chung:

The brilliance of ancient engineers shows in watermill complex in southern France

Ross Pomeroy
Real Clear Science
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 16:53 UTC

An international team of scientists has reconstructed the hydraulic operations of the 1,900-year-old Barbegal industrial watermill complex in southern France, revealing the subtle brilliance of antiquity's engineers.

The Barbegal watermill complex was a set of sixteen water wheels arranged in two parallel columns of eight along a thirty-meter slope near the French town of Arles. It's been hailed as having the "greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world." Each wheel was connected to a grinding mechanism, which milled grain into flour, perhaps as much as 25 tonnes per day from the entire complex. When the complex was constructed at the end of the 1st century, the area was part of the Roman Empire. Archaeologists have speculated that Barbegal could have supplied bread to the 27,000 inhabitants of the local town of Arelate. It may also have been used to produce mass quantities of hardtack, a long-lasting, dry, salted biscuit, for sailors at the nearby harbors.

Professor Emeritus Dr. Cees Passchier of Johannes Gutenberg University and his colleagues sought to understand the workings of this impressive industrial watermill. Unfortunately, today it's in ruins and all the wooden machinery has long since decayed.

Fossil footprints mark a toddler's perilous prehistoric journey

Katherine Kornei
New York Times
Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:43 UTC

Mammoths and giant ground sloths roamed the same terrain that a young adult swiftly moved through while toting a young child.

The human footprint sequence from the Pleistocene era extends more than a mile and includes at least 427 human prints. The out-and-back journey was probably completed in no more than a few hours, the researchers suggested.Credit...Reynolds et al., Quaternary Science Reviews 2020

Several thousand years ago, a young adult moved barefoot across a muddy landscape. A toddler was balanced on the adult's hip. There were large animals — mammoths and ground sloths — just over the horizon. It was a perilous journey, and scientists reconstructed it by closely studying an exceptional set of human and animal footprints found recently in the southwestern United States.

Bronze Age herders 'less mobile than previously thought'

University of Basel
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 12:00 UTC

Bronze Age pastoralists in what is now southern Russia apparently covered shorter distances than previously thought. It is believed that the Indo-European languages may have originated from this region, and these findings raise new questions about how technical and agricultural innovations spread to Europe. An international research team, with the participation of the University of Basel, has published a paper on this topic.

During the Bronze Age (ca. 3900 - 1000 BCE), herders and their families moved across the slopes of the Caucasus and the steppes to the north, taking their sheep, goats and cattle with them. It is believed that the Indo-Germanic groups, who brought the Indo-European languages and technical innovations such as wagons, domestic horses and metal weapons to Europe, may have originated from this region.

Comment: A point that the above does not address is why numerous studies document changes in DNA that occurred with the advent of farming:

Medieval plague outbreaks picked up speed over 300 years

Manchester University
Heritage Daily
Tue, 20 Oct 2020 19:29 UTC

McMaster University researchers who analyzed thousands of documents covering a 300-year span of plague outbreaks in London, England, have estimated that the disease spread four times faster in the 17th century than it had in the 14th century.

The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show a striking acceleration in plague transmission between the Black Death of 1348, estimated to have wiped out more than one-third of the population of Europe, and later epidemics, which culminated in the Great Plague of 1665.

Researchers found that in the 14th century, the number of people infected during an outbreak doubled approximately every 43 days. By the 17th century, the number was doubling every 11 days.

Comment: For fascinating insight into the Black Death, see:

Indus Valley civilization earliest known producer of dairy and dairy products, according to new research.

Alexandru Micu
ZME Science
Mon, 19 Oct 2020 17:40 UTC

The lands that make up modern-day Pakistan and India have been producing dairy for almost five thousand years now, according to researchers at the University of Toronto Mississauga. The team explains that dairy has been produced and consumed by the people of the Indus Valley Civilization from as far back as 2500 BCE.

Original cheese

"We found that dairy was an integral part of their diet at a site that dates to about 2500 BCE," says Chakraborty, who is conducting his post-doctoral research with Heather Miller, an anthropology professor at UTM.

The Indus Valley Civilizations, also known as the Harappans, built one of the greatest empires of the ancient world. Much of the foundations of their success have been lost to time — for example, we don't have a great idea of how they managed to feed so many people. The study goes some way towards helping us understand the Harappan diet.

According to the findings, dairy was an important part of their diet. It helped fill hungry bellies at home, and likely greased the wheels of commerce.

Huge cat found etched into desert among Nazca lines in Peru, a geoglyph from 200-100BC

Sam Jones
The Guardian
Sun, 18 Oct 2020 08:53 UTC

© Jhony Islas/AP
The feline figure, seen on a hillside in Nazca, Peru, has been cleaned and conserved since its discovery.

The dun sands of southern Peru, etched centuries ago with geoglyphs of a hummingbird, a monkey, an orca - and a figure some would dearly love to believe is an astronaut - have now revealed the form of an enormous cat lounging across a desert hillside.

The feline Nazca line, dated to between 200BC and 100BC, emerged during work to improve access to one of the hills that provides a natural vantage point from which many of the designs can be seen.

A Unesco world heritage site since 1994, the Nazca Lines, which are made up of hundreds of geometric and zoomorphic images, were created by removing rocks and earth to reveal the contrasting materials below. They lie 250 miles (400km) south of Lima and cover about 450 sq km (175 sq miles) of Peru's arid coastal plain.

"The figure was scarcely visible and was about to disappear because it's situated on quite a steep slope that's prone to the effects of natural erosion," Peru's culture ministry said in a statement this week.

"Over the past week, the geoglyph was cleaned and conserved, and shows a feline figure in profile, with its head facing the front."

It said the cat was 37 metres long, with well-defined lines that varied in width between 30cm and 40cm.

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Secret History

The revelations of Wikileaks: No. 9 - Opening the CIA's vault

Ancient Maya had incredibly effective water filtration system

Inks containing lead on Egyptian papyri unveil ancient writings

Treason in America: An overview of the FBI, CIA and matters of 'National Security'

The brilliance of ancient engineers shows in watermill complex in southern France

Fossil footprints mark a toddler's perilous prehistoric journey

Bronze Age herders 'less mobile than previously thought'

Medieval plague outbreaks picked up speed over 300 years

Indus Valley civilization earliest known producer of dairy and dairy products, according to new research.

Huge cat found etched into desert among Nazca lines in Peru, a geoglyph from 200-100BC

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