"How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys."
- Emma Bull

"Of course it's all connected; every facet of life is inextricably linked. It all began at the very beginning and continues today and into the future, all as part of the grand plan, all as part of the grand illusion that will be revealed only when the Creator sees fit."
- Eamonn Gabriel

"Coincidence is best regarded as a crack in time, a gap in time's narrative that requires filling in, elaboration. You see, when the entire story is laid before you the concept of coincidence simply vanishes and understanding takes its place."
- Eamonn Gabriel

Many readers of my book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments, have written to me asking for further information about the varied connections between Frank Olson's death and Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. The following is an initial effort to answer those questions, and to further detail these connections. Of course, many of these connections are explained in greater detail in my book.

Loulan was discovered in 1980, but it was 3800 years ago that she died on the trade route known as the Silk Road. The natural dryness and salty soil preserved her and over two hundred other mummies, individuals who had lived in several closely located settlements along the trade route. The mummy has been called the Loulan Beauty because of her amazingly preserved stately facial features that have remained quite beautiful even in death.

Unfortunately, the region where she and the others were found is politically unstable and the discovery of the mummies in the Tarim Basin in China was seen as a possible instigating factor for unrest. The Chinese government has been reluctant to allow full access to the mummies because of their racial identity. The Tarim mummies are Caucasian and this fact has given credence to the claims of the local peoples, the Uyghur, who look more European than Asian that they are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the area and not later arrivals, as Chinese history claims.

Victor Mair, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was instrumental in getting access to these mummies. He and Paolo Francalacci, a geneticist, were finally able to obtain some genetic samples in 1993. Their findings revealed that the mummies are indeed European but they probably migrated from the Siberian region and are unrelated to the Uyghur. The Chinese government did allow further testing in 2007 and 2009 and the finding supported the Siberian connection as well as suggesting the mixing of people from Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Europe and other unknown sources. It is unfortunate that the Beauty and the others are at the centre of this controversy because it has distracted somewhat from the fact that there were Europeans in China at least a thousand years before conventional history has Caucasians in this area of the world.

Number three in our weekly series of Great Comets: The Comet of the Black Death, or Comet Negra. Hard to beat this one for dramatic impact.

The Comet of the Black Death is said to have coincided with the great plague, the "Black Death," that killed half the population of Europe from 1346 to 1350. The plague is thought to have originated in Central Asia and, transmitted by fleas on rats, been carried along the Silk Road into Europe.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicted the Black Death this way, in his 1562 painting "The Triumph of Death":
There are other theories, too, about the origin and spread of the Black Death. One says that a comet or fragments of a comet precipitated the Black Death. If you remember that scientists have said that the last Ice Age was caused by an asteroid impact, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that a piece of a comet striking the Earth could have disrupted the atmosphere enough to initiate the famines and plagues that characterized the Black Death:

"In France . . . was seen the terrible Comet called Negra. In December appeared over Avignon a Pillar of Fire. There were many great Earthquakes, Tempests, Thunders and Lightnings, and thousands of People were swallowed up; the Courses of Rivers were stopt; some Chasms of the Earth sent forth Blood. Terrible Showers of Hail, each stone weighing 1 Pound to 8; Abortions in all Countries; in Germany it rained Blood; in France Blood gushed out of the Graves of the Dead, and stained the Rivers crimson; Comets, Meteors, Fire-beams, corruscations in the Air, Mock-suns, the Heavens on Fire . . ."

A 16th century manuscript featuring an image that looks like a kangaroo could prove that Portuguese explorers discovered Australia before the first recorded European landing in 1606

A drawing of a kangaroo on a 16th century Portuguese manuscript could potentially change the world's understanding of Australia's history.

The manuscript, which is thought to date from between 1580 and 1620, appears to show a small kangaroo within the letters of its text. If the image actually is a kangaroo, the drawing suggests that Portuguese explorers may have discovered Australia before the first recorded European landing on the continent by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606.

The document, which contains text or music for a liturgical procession, was recently acquired by the Les Enluminures Galley in New York, which has valued the item at $15,000 (£9,174). It was previously in the possession of a rare book dealer in Portugal.

Laura Light, a researcher at the gallery, told Australia's The Age newspaper that "a kangaroo or wallaby in a manuscript this early is proof that the artist of this manuscript had either been in Australia, or even more interestingly, that travellers' reports and drawings of the interesting animals found in this new world were already available in Portugal."

The text also includes the image of two half-naked men wearing crowns of leaves, which researchers believe may represent Australian aborigines.

Cairo: Archaeologists in Egypt believe they have discovered the remains of a previously unknown pharaoh who reigned more than 3600 years ago.

The skeleton of King Senebkay were uncovered at South Abydos in Sohag province, about 500 kilometres south of Cairo, by a University of Pennsylvania expedition working with the government, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said.

Never before heard of in ancient Egyptian history, King Senebkay's name was found inscribed in hieroglyphics written inside a royal cartouche - an oval with a horizontal line at one end signalling a royal name, the ministry said in a statement.

Romanian archaeologists have made ​​a sensational discovery in Hunedoara County, Romania. They discovered a huge city, the oldest in Transylvania, and even older than the Egyptian pyramids.

It happens often when the romanian archeologists have the chance to recover what existed on the lands where the romanian territory is settled. What they recovered is hidden under layers of soil, but only when the authorities want to build something new there. In this case, it is the oldest town in Transylvania which was built around 4200 B.C., even before the egyptyan pyramids (2630 - 2311 B.C.). The settlement was discovered while road workers were digging to arrange Nadlac - Sibiu highway.

In our first radio show of 2014, we spoke with Robert Kirkconnell, author of American Heart of Darkness, Volume I: The Transformation of the American Republic into a Pathocracy. Robert has his own radio show, has taught high school level education for 14 years and is a decorated combat veteran who served 27 years in the U.S. Air Force.

We discussed his book and ongoing research into the astonishing transformation of the United States from a constitutional republic into a pathocracy - a country ruled by psychopaths. Why and how does a country espousing such benevolent intentions as 'spreading freedom and democracy' wind up committing such atrocious crimes against humanity?

Running Time: 02:00:00

Download: MP3

Many interesting personalities emerged during the last days of Rome's Republic, but one man stood head and shoulders above the rest. In what turned out to be our most popular radio show last year, the following SOTT Talk Radio show we did about Julius Caesar (part 2 on this subject, you can listen to part 1 here) took a deeper look at the life and times of man who was at once politician, statesman, engineer, inventor, astronomer, historian, poet, author and military general.

Caesar emerged at a time of political intrigues, civil war and rebellion. Standing for social justice, inclusive democracy and economic empowerment of the people, he sought to transform the conditions of ordinary people. But he encountered tremendous resistance from the ruling oligarchy, whose efforts to thwart him culminated in his assassination at the height of his power in 44 B.C.

Caesar's legacy is a mixed one. Was he really the tyrannical demagogue portrayed by Cicero and other contemporary historians? Or must his deeds be re-examined in light of the discovery by Francesco Carotta and others that his life and achievements were the model for the story of 'Jesus'?

Running Time: 02:25:00

Download: MP3

The recent storms that battered Ireland's countryside and coastlines unearthed a hidden gem amidst the devastation to properties and landscape.

The storms have exposed evidence of life dating back to the Neolithic period on Connemara's Omey island. Large linear archaeological deposits of up to a meter thick have been exposed on the western and northern shorelines of the tidal island off Claddaghduff.

The Irish Times reports two sets of medieval burial sites, traces of sunken dwellings and parts of a Neolithic bog which had been covered over for millennia by shifting sands, have been revealed.

Scores of skulls excavated in the heart of London have provided the first gruesome evidence of Roman head hunters operating in Britain, gathering up the heads of executed enemies or fallen gladiators from the nearby amphitheatre, and exposing them for years in open pits.

"It is not a pretty picture," Rebecca Redfern, from the centre for human bioarchaeology at the museum of London, said. "At least one of the skulls shows evidence of being chewed at by dogs, so it was still fleshed when it was lying in the open."

"They come from a peculiar area by the Walbrook stream, which was a site for burials and a centre of ritual activity - but also very much in use for more mundane pursuits. We have evidence of lots of shoe making, so you have to think of the cobbler working yards from these open pits, with the dog chewing away - really not nice."

"We believe that some of the heads may be people who were killed in the amphitheatre. Decapitation was a way of finishing off gladiators, but not everyone who died in the Roman amphitheatre was a gladiator, it was where common criminals were executed, or sometimes for entertainment you'd give two of them swords and have them kill one another. Other heads may have been brought back by soldiers from skirmishes, probably on the Hadrian or Antonine walls - again, it would have taken weeks to bring them back, so not a nice process."

The 39 skulls were excavated at London Wall almost within sight of the Museum of London in 1988, and deposited at the museum, but the scientists have only recently applied improved forensic techniques to them. Redfern and her colleague Heather Bonney, from the Earth Sciences Department of the Natural History Museum, publish their results for the first time this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science.