Secret HistoryS


Nuke

CIA declassified files: US and Soviet nuclear sub crash off Scotland 'almost sparked global war'


RT
Wed, 25 Jan 2017 14:21 UTC
USS James Madison submarine
© US Navy / Wikipedia
Newly declassified CIA files indicate that a US submarine laden with 160 warheads collided with a Soviet vessel off the coast of Scotland in 1974. Experts say it could easily have caused nuclear war.

The files seem to confirm the long-rumored Cold War incident occurred near Holy Loch, Argyll, where the US once had a permanent nuclear base. Chillingly, the crash took place just 30 miles (48km) off the coast of Glasgow.

While the US never officially confirmed the crash had taken place, the documents show it was reported at the highest levels at the time in a memo to Henry Kissinger - then secretary of state to President Gerald Ford - on November 3, 1974.
Read More...
Dig

Archaeologists say Jersey was Neanderthal vacation hot spot


Sputnik
Wed, 25 Jan 2017 06:12 UTC
Archaeologists Say Jersey Was Neanderthal Vacation Hot Spot
© Flickr/ Erich Ferdinand
Archaeologists exploring the island of Jersey, off the coast of Normandy, France, have discovered that Neanderthals were regular guests at La Cotte de St Brelade, despite a vastly-changing climate and an altering landscape.


Comment: See also:

Newly-found evidence suggests that the ancient people regularly returned to a coastal cave on the island, beginning at least 180,000 years ago, until around 40,000 years ago, when they became extinct.

A recent study conducted by archaeologists from Southampton University, along with researchers from other British universities and the British Museum, has increased our understanding of how our ancestors used available resources at the prehistoric site, mapping their movements by re-examining artefacts excavated from the cave.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Chalkboard

Prehistoric architects with no written language or numbers built sophisticated architectural complexes in US Southwest


Past Horizons
Tue, 24 Jan 2017 19:06 UTC
Sun Temple
© Dr. Sherry TowersSatellite image of Sun Temple archaeological site with illustrations demonstrating its geometrical properties.
Imagine you are about to plan and construct a building that involves several complicated geometrical shapes, but you aren't allowed to write down any numbers or notes as you do it. For most of us, this would be impossible.

Yet, new research from Arizona State University has revealed that the ancient Southwestern Pueblo people, who had no written language or written number system, were able to do just that - and used these skills to build sophisticated architectural complexes.

Dr. Sherry Towers, a professor with the ASU Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, uncovered these findings while spending several years studying the Sun Temple archaeological site in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, constructed around A.D. 1200.

"The site is known to have been an important focus of ceremony in the region for the ancestral Pueblo peoples, including solstice observations," Towers says. "My original interest in the site involved looking at whether it was used for observing stars as well."

However, as Towers delved deeper into the site's layout and architecture, interesting patterns began to emerge.

"I noticed in my site survey that the same measurements kept popping up over and over again," she says. "When I saw that the layout of the site's key features also involved many geometrical shapes, I decided to take a closer look."
Read More...
MIB

The Golitsyn-Nosenko Affair: How the CIA was duped by a fake KGB defector for 2 generations

Filip Kovacevic
Newsbud
Thu, 19 Jan 2017 17:38 UTC
kgb symbol
Whether or not there was in fact any Russian "hacking" of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it is not possible to deny the ineptness and incompetence of the CIA in dealing with this issue. The public statements of its leading figures as well as the declassified reports released to the public so far have only further discredited the CIA leadership in the eyes of objective observers and impartial intelligence specialists. Any student in the top 25 percent of my classes could have written a segment on the RT TV channel included in the recent report. And I am sure that he or she would have used more recent sources than the fall of 2012.[1]

It is mind-boggling to think that the U.S. taxpayers have been subsidizing this kind of shoddy work with tens of billions of dollars every year. How many hospitals and schools could have been built and how many people could have obtained decent health care and received university scholarships on this money! There is no doubt in my mind that all those responsible for this tragic waste of money and other resources must be fired and replaced by conscientious individuals whose expertise will rise above political opportunism.

This is not the first time that the CIA has proven to be woefully inadequate to protect the key national security interests of the U.S. In fact, it appears that its biggest and most damaging failure took place in the 1950s when the formidable Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, penetrated it by recruiting an insider who was never discovered. It all went downhill from then on.
Read More...
Ice Cube

What New England's '1816 Mackerel Year' can tell us about climate change

Sumayah Aamir
I4UNews
Tue, 24 Jan 2017 13:48 UTC
Hundreds of articles have been written regarding the biggest volcanic eruption which took place in Indonesia. This was in Mt. Tambora and took place over 200 years ago on the historic timeline.

One of the effects of this natural explosion on the surrounding climate and ecosystem is extant even now and needs to be brought into the awareness of the public. A few distinguished environmentalists and scientists managed to offer a study on the matter which got published in a journal recently.

1816 mackerel fishing
© NOAA Library, Silver Spring, Md.Penobscot Bay fishermen cleaning mackerel near their saltwater farm. The shore mackerel fishery documented in Alexander and colleagues' paper lasted for over 100 years.
The eruption of Mt. Tambora led to the fish and fisheries in the surrounding waters to undergo a high degree of disturbance. The study which took place regarding this was almost a forensic one. The eruption had effects on New England, Europe, China and many other places for almost a year and a half. Proof of this devastation and destruction was searched for on home ground. Such data as was forthcoming from fish exports, weather reports, dam development and town planning was collated and tabulated in complex patterns to get to the bottom of the anomaly that had taken place due to a natural process.

Comment: To read a treatise about the importance of seeing reality over illusion, seeking the truth over lies, then this book is a must read: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection
Review: "Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection"

Read More...
Sherlock

Ancient Cypriot Goddess sculpture discovered off Turkish coast


Archaeology
Mon, 23 Jan 2017 13:29 UTC
Hürriyet Daily News reports that a 2,700-year-old terracotta statue has been discovered at a shipwreck site under more than 140 feet of water off the coast of southwestern Turkey. The statue, discovered by a team of archaeologists from Dokuz Eylul University, is of the lower half of a woman's body, and is thought to represent a Cypriot goddess.
ancient goddess statue
© Dokuz Eylul University, Marine Science and Technology Institute
The statue and other cargo items, including ceramic plates and amphoras, had been covered with sand. "When we cleaned its surroundings, we saw the toes of the sculpture," said team leader Harun Özdaş. "Then we uncovered the lower part of the body. The goddess sculpture had a dress on it. We know that such sculptures were made of two pieces.

This is why we believe that the upper part of the sculpture is in the same place." The team will return to the site, with the permission of Turkey's Culture and Tourism Ministry and the support of the Development Ministry, to look for the rest of the goddess later this year.
Read More...
Document

Fake news purveyor: How the NYT plays with history

Robert Parry
Consortium News
Thu, 19 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
New York Times NYT media propaganda

By failing to tell the hard truth about Establishment wrongdoing, The New York Times — along with other mainstream U.S. media outlets — has destabilized American democracy, reports Robert Parry.

Whenever The New York Times or some other mainstream news outlet holds itself out as a paragon of professional journalism - by wagging a finger at some pro-Trump "fake news" or some Internet "conspiracy theory" - I cringe at the self-delusion and hypocrisy.

No one hates fake news and fact-free conspiracy theories more than I do, but the sad truth is that the mainstream press has opened the door to such fantasies by losing the confidence of the American people and becoming little more than the mouthpiece for the Establishment, which spins its own self-serving narratives and tells its own lies.

Rather than acting as a watchdog against these deceptions, the Times and its mainstream fellow-travelers have transformed themselves into little more than the Establishment's apologists and propagandists.

If Iraq is the "enemy," we are told wild tales about how Iraq's non-existent WMD is a danger to us all. If Syria is in Washington's crosshairs, we are given a one-sided account of what's happening there, black hats for the "regime" and white hats for the "rebels"?

If the State Department is backing a coup in Ukraine to oust an elected leader, we are regaled with tales of his corruption and how overthrowing a democratically chosen leader is somehow "democracy promotion." Currently, we are getting uncritical stenography on every conceivable charge that the U.S. government lodges against Russia.

Yet, while this crisis in American journalism has grown more severe in recent years, the pattern is not entirely new. It is reflected in how the mainstream media has missed many of the most significant news stories of modern history and has, more often than not, been an obstacle to getting at the truth.
Read More...
Boat

Scientists' dilemma whether 'Furku.Al' rock inscription is genuinely of Viking origin

Camilla Turner
The Telegraph
Sun, 22 Jan 2017 09:13 UTC
Furku-Al
© Internet-us.comBoulder appears to say "Furku.Al"
When a resident on the Isle of Eigg decided to clean his drains, he had no idea that he would stumble upon a mystery that would baffle archaeologists around the world. The islander's discovery of a boulder with the letters "Furku.Al" scratched into its surface has sparked a lively debate among experts as to whether it is a genuine runic inscription.

The resident alerted Camille Dressler, chair of the Eigg History Society, about his potentially significant find, and she sent a photograph to Historic Environment Scotland (HES). "It looks quite ancient. We are intrigued by it," Ms Dressler told The Daily Telegraph. "We just hope it is a genuine Norse inscription as that would highlight the Norse heritage of the island." The island, which off the coast of Scotland and is home to around 100 residents, was invaded by the Vikings around 1,300 years ago.

John Borland, a survey manager and member of the HES Heritage directorate, wrote to Ms Dressler, explaining that he consulted several experts in runic inscriptions about the find. "My reading of the inscription was furkusal. Whilst this might be a recognisable Norse name, I thought it more likely that it was a humorous (attempted, anyway) play on words," he said.
Isle of Eigg
© Stephen Finn/AlamyResidence of the find, Isle of Eigg
Read More...
Archaeology

Hoards of the Vikings - Evidence of trade, diplomacy, and vast wealth on an unassuming island in the Baltic Sea

Daniel Weiss
Archaeology.org
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 14:00 UTC
The accepted image of the Vikings as fearsome marauders who struck terror in the hearts of their innocent victims has endured for more than 1,000 years. Historians' accounts of the first major Viking attack, in 793, on a monastery on Lindisfarne off the northeast coast of England, have informed the Viking story. "The church of St. Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God," wrote the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin of York, "stripped of all its furnishings, exposed to the plundering of pagans....Who is not afraid at this?" The Vikings are known to have gone on to launch a series of daring raids elsewhere in England, Ireland, and Scotland. They made inroads into France, Spain, and Portugal. They colonized Iceland and Greenland, and even crossed the Atlantic, establishing a settlement in the northern reaches of Newfoundland.
Viking hoard
© Gabriel Hildebrand/The Royal Coin Cabinet, Sweden
This array of silver coins, bracelets, and other forms of Viking wealth typifies the hoards found deposited at numerous sites across the island of Gotland.
But these were primarily the exploits of Vikings from Norway and Denmark. Less well known are the Vikings of Sweden. Now, the archaeological site of Fröjel on Gotland, a large island in the Baltic Sea around 50 miles east of the Swedish mainland, is helping advance a more nuanced understanding of their activities. While they, too, embarked on ambitious journeys, they came into contact with a very different set of cultures—largely those of Eastern Europe and the Arab world. In addition, these Vikings combined a knack for trading, business, and diplomacy with a willingness to use their own brand of violence to amass great wealth and protect their autonomy.
Read More...
People

CIA declassifies records of Project Star Gate experiments involving supernatural abilities

Jay Syrmopoulos
The Free Thought Project
Sun, 22 Jan 2017 17:11 UTC
telepathy
The CIA has published online nearly 13 million pages of declassified records, including papers on the US role in overthrowing foreign governments, but some of the most mind blowing information is in reference to the secret 'Star Gate' telepathy project.

The details of CIA's "Project Star Gate" are riveting, and expose uncharted waters to be researched as far as there is virtually no mainstream science or pop culture awareness of the phenomena exposed in the project - and is often ridiculed as the stuff of science fiction.

The revelations come as part of a massive almost 13 million file dump of declassified reports - that are now available on the internet for the first time.

Project Star Gate, was the code name for a CIA project that attempted to harness what until now has been thought of as "supernatural" or psychic abilities for military and intelligence use - noting in some of the documents that the method was "passive," "inexpensive," and that there was "no known defense."

The papers show how the CIA was attempting to harness these abilities in individuals to spy on people and alter important objects, amongst other abilities.

Comment: See also:

Read More...