Secret History
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was a Jewish Communist Bolshevik, anarchist, escapee from an insane asylum, conspirator to violence and murder, trouble-maker and nymphomaniac, and not necessarily in that order. From her teen-age days, Goldman studied the Bolshevik anarchists, leading her imagination to images of a social order with freedom of action unrestricted by man-made law. Goldman quickly came to support politically motivated murder and violent revolution, and the assassinations of politically significant individuals, as a tool for social change. She became a firm proponent of violence whenever words failed to do the job, an attitude some historians describe as 'propaganda of the deed', i.e. if they won't listen to us, we will kill them. According to the Jewish Womens' Website, "Desiring a state of absolute freedom and believing it would never come about through gradual reform, Goldman and her comrades advocated complete destruction of the State."[1]
"Madman, thou errest. I say, there is no darkness but ignorance"There is a very real attempt to rewrite history as we speak. A history that is at the root of what organises our world today, for it is understood that who controls the past, will have control over our present and our future.
- William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
This attempt to rewrite history is of the most paramount significance because it is what is used today to shape who we regard as a "friend" and who we regard as a "foe." Thus who controls the "narrative" of history, will also control who we see ourselves "aligned" with.
There is a consequence to this which can only lead to further disunity, to further conflict, to further war. It can only be remedied when the past is finally acknowledged.
There is still time to change this dreadful course.
The discovery, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, was made with the aid of a number of medieval Persian manuscripts, which led the researchers to an archaeological site in Chahak, southern Iran.
The findings are significant given that material scientists, historians and archaeologists have long considered that chromium steel was a 20th century innovation.
Dr Rahil Alipour (UCL Archaeology), lead author on the study, said: "Our research provides the first evidence of the deliberate addition of a chromium mineral within steel production. We believe this was a Persian phenomenon.
"This research not only delivers the earliest known evidence for the production of chromium steel dating back as early as the 11th century CE, but also provides a chemical tracer that could aid the identification of crucible steel artefacts in museums or archaeological collections back to their origin in Chahak, or the Chahak tradition."
Chahak is described in a number of historical manuscripts dating from the 12th to 19th century as a once famous steel production centre, and is the only known archaeological site within Iran's borders with evidence of crucible steel making.

Over the past several years, excavation in one of the largest settlements in western Anatolia has unearthed enlightening information on the textile history of the region
Turkish archaeologists have unearthed parts of a loom, textile tools and accessories dating back 4,000 years in the country's west.
Excavation and restoration teams have been working at the Beycesultan settlement in Denizli province for over a decade. Excavation in what is one of the largest settlements in western Anatolia has unearthed enlightening information on the textile history of the region.
"Last year's findings related to textile production had excited us. During this year's excavation works, the remaining parts of the house were unearthed," Esref Abay, head of the excavation team, said on Wednesday.

The texts describing the wizard battle are from the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Egypt. This image shows the shrine of St. Macarius in the monastery.
More than 300 Christian apocryphal texts are known to exist, Tony Burke, a professor of early Christianity at York University in Toronto, Canada, wrote in the book he edited "New Testament Apocrypha More Noncanonical Scriptures (Volume 2)" (Eerdmans, 2020). "Apocryphal texts were integral to the spiritual lives of Christians long after the apparent closing of the canon and that the calls to avoid and even destroy such literature were not always effective" wrote Burke.
Ancient Christians often debated which texts told the truth about Jesus and which did not. By the end of the fourth century the church had 'canonized' the texts which they thought were accurate and included them in the bible.
How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq
By Robert Draper
Penguin Press, 480 pp., $30
Robert Draper is a veteran journalist and a staff reporter at the New York Times magazine. He has just published a comprehensive look at how the U.S. decided to invade Iraq in 2003. His stunning, thorough account is based largely on interviews with some 300 people, including just about all the major figures except George W. Bush himself. So why did the New York Times Book Review assign only an 11-paragraph review, which it buried on page 15? Especially as Draper's study is not only historically indispensable, but is also an up-to-date warning that the U.S. could be tricked into a war with Iran, with some of the same culprits responsible?
Quite possibly, Times editors were embarrassed by Draper's Chapter 17, "Truth and the Tellers," which is a brilliant dissection of how the mainstream U.S. media, including his own paper, joined in the drumbeat for war. Draper points out that Times reporter Judith Miller, who was eventually professionally disgraced for reporting false stories about Iraq's (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction leaked by pro-war Bush officials, was actually something of a scapegoat. The paper's top brass, including executive editor Howell Raines, encouraged her and others, while sidelining skeptical reports by different reporters. Draper notes that Miller "was certainly not responsible for the [articles] written by her colleagues that the Times editors decided not to publish."

These footprints were made by ancient humans’ muddy feet as they traversed a lakeshore in Saudi Arabia about 120,000 years ago.
Now, these ancient footsteps offer rare evidence of when and where early humans once inhabited the Arabian Peninsula. "These are the first genuine human footprints of Arabia," says archaeologist and team leader Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
The Arabian Peninsula has long been considered the obvious route that early members of our species took as they trekked out of Africa and migrated to the Middle East and Eurasia. Stone tools have suggested ancient humans explored the Arabian Peninsula at various times in prehistory when the climate was wetter and its harsh deserts were transformed into green grasslands punctuated with freshwater lakes. Yet so far, researchers have only found a single human finger bone dating to 88,000 years to prove modern humans, rather than some other hominin toolmaker, lived there.
Comment: PysOrg adds:
In total, seven out of the hundreds of prints discovered were confidently identified as hominin, including four that, given their similar orientation, distances from one another and differences in size, were interpreted as two or three individuals traveling together.
The researchers argue these belonged to anatomically modern humans, as opposed to Neanderthals, on the basis that our extinct cousins aren't known to have been present in the wider Middle East region at the time, and based on stature and mass estimates inferred from the prints.
"We know that humans were visiting this lake at the same time these animals were, and, unusually for the area, there's no stone tools," said Stewart, which would indicate the humans made a longer term settlement there.
"It appears that these people were visiting the lake for water resources and just to forage at the same time as the animals," and probably to also hunt them.
The elephants, which had gone extinct in the nearby Levant region some 400,000 years ago, would have been particularly attractive prey, and their presence also suggests other plentiful freshwater resources and greenery.
In addition to the footprints, some 233 fossils were recovered, and it's likely that carnivores were attracted to the herbivores at Alathar, similar to what is seen in African savannas today.

DNA from a female skeleton named Kata found at a Viking burial site in Varnhem, Sweden, was sequenced as part of the study.
Collard is a member of an international team of researchers that has just published the results of the world's largest DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons, in this week's edition of Nature.
Led by Prof. Eske Willerslev of the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen, the research team extracted and analysed DNA from the remains of 442 men, women and children.
The remains were recovered from archaeological sites in Scandinavia, the U.K., Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and Russia, and mostly date to the Viking Age (ca. 750-1050 AD).
The team's analyses yielded a number of findings. One of the most noteworthy is that contrary to what has often been assumed, Viking identity was not limited to people of Scandinavian ancestry — the team discovered that two skeletons from a Viking burial site in the Orkney Islands were of Scottish ancestry.
Comment: Added here (with some cross reference to the above): World's 10 most mysterious plane disappearances and strangest aircraft crashes
2014 was also an unusual year: SOTT EXCLUSIVE: Year of the planes: Cluster of plane problems as 2014 comes to a close

Unique discovery of the perfectly preserved extinct cave bear showing its teeth after up to 39,000 years.
Until now only the bones of cave bears have been discovered.
The new finds are of 'world importance', according to one of Russia's leading experts on extinct Ice Age species.
Scientist Lena Grigorieva said of the island discovery of the adult beast: 'Today this is the first and only find of its kind - a whole bear carcass with soft tissues.
'It is completely preserved, with all internal organs in place including even its nose.
Comment: It would appear that the true nature of Christianity has been obscured thanks to suppression, redaction and tales written, oftentimes, many hundreds of years after some of the real events described in parts of the Bible, and other historical documentation, took place: