The attack occurred during the Iran-Iraq war, which had begun in 1980 with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran. The US government backed Saddam, and sent warships to the Persian Gulf to support the Iraqi war effort.

One of those warships was the USS Vincennes which, on 3 July 1988, fired two missiles at Iran Air Flight 655 while it was making a routine trip to Dubai.

Washington claimed the US Navy had acted in self-defence, but this wasn't true. The plane had not, as the Pentagon claimed, moved "outside the prescribed commercial air route", nor had it been "descending" towards USS Vincennes at "high speed".

The US thus shot down a civilian airliner, and haphazardly tried to cover it up. Some 66 children were among the 290 civilians killed.

It may seem strange to invite an economist to give a keynote speech to a conference of the social sciences. Economists have been characterized as autistic and anti-social in the popular press for good reason. They are trained to think abstractly and use a priori deduction - based on how they think societies should develop. Today's mainstream economists look at neoliberal privatization and free-market ideals as leading society's income and wealth to settle at an optimum equilibrium without any need for government regulation - especially not of credit and debt.

The only role acknowledged for government is to enforce the "sanctity of contracts" and "security of property." By this they mean the enforcement of debt contracts, even when their enforcement expropriates large numbers of indebted homeowners and other property owners. That is the history of Rome. We are seeing the same debt dynamic at work today. Yet this basic approach has led mainstream economists to insist that civilization could and should have followed this pro-creditor policy from the very beginning.

The reality is that civilization could never have taken off if some free-market economist had got into a time machine and travelled back in time five thousand years to the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Suppose that he would have convinced ancient chieftains or rulers how to organize their trade, money and land tenure on the basis of "greed is good" and any public regulation is bad.

The ancient stronghold is believed to be part of the lost city of Natounia.
Nestled in a valley shadowed by mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan sits an ancient fortress that archeologists think may be the lost, royal city of Natounia, based on the discovery of intricately carved rock reliefs depicting an ancient leader, a new study finds.

The stronghold, known as Rabana-Merquly, was once part of the Parthian Empire (also known as the Arsacid Empire), which reigned(opens in new tab) between 247 B.C. and A.D. 224. The Parthians were bitter enemies of the Roman Empire, and fought various battles against them for over 250 years(opens in new tab). Now, new research at this 2,000-year-old fortress suggests that it served as one of the empire's regional centers.

During a recent expedition, an international team of archeologists discovered twin rock reliefs(opens in new tab) at the two entrances to the settlement, which is situated at the base of Mount Piramagrun in the Zagros Mountains. The matching reliefs are said to depict a king of Adiabene, a kingdom that was part of the Parthian Empire, according to researchers.

"Based on the dress of the figure, in particular his hat, we think that the fortress was built by the ruling dynasty of Adiabene close to the kingdom's eastern border," study lead researcher Michael Brown, a researcher at the Institute of Prehistory, Protohistory and Near-Eastern Archaeology of Heidelberg University in Germany, told Live Science in an email. "The twin rock reliefs are rare examples of near life-size monuments of rulers from the Parthian period, and they allow us to link the fortress with those who built it."

He added, "Both reliefs are located immediately next to the two gated entrances and were clearly designed to make a political statement — they can be characterized as ancient propaganda."

Next month is the thirtieth anniversary of the most entertaining and damning chapter in Al Gore's career.

By the mid-nineteenth century, our knowledge of atmospheric chemistry was sufficiently advanced for a few sharp minds to ponder whether an increase in carbon dioxide might increase global temperature. The speculation remained entirely theoretical until 1957 when an international collaboration of top geophysicists — including the Soviets — used buoys, weather balloons and so forth to collect data. The undertaking was led by Dr Roger Revelle then based at California's Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Today's global warming debate is hyper-partisan but all agree Revelle's standing is impeccable.

Before this research, many assumed the ocean was absorbing most of the increase in carbon dioxide caused by industrialisation. Revelle's data, however, indicated only half was. So what was happening to the other half? Would the planet soon overheat?

The question dominated Revelle's career and for much of that time he was inclined to think it would. Revelle shared his concern with decision-makers in DC and the press. In late 1957 a newspaper report on Revelle's research was the first to use the term 'global warming.' Revelle focus however was getting more data and understanding it better.

The bridge was built in a poorly chosen site, experts say.

After a period of unusually hot weather and low rainfall, it's now possible to see the resurfaced remains of an ancient bridge in the Tiber River in Rome, Italy.

A severe drought in Italy has revealed an archaeological treasure in Rome: a bridge reportedly built by the Roman emperor Nero that is usually submerged under the waters of the Tiber River.

The dropping water levels of the Tiber, which according to Reuters is flowing at multi-year lows, have exposed the stone remains of the Pons Neronianus (Latin for the Bridge of Nero), WION news , a news agency headquartered in New Delhi, India, reported.

The broken figurine was covered by a bracelet with a red bottom, the color which represented fertility. A schematic stone with etched eyes and mouth was also uncovered.

The excavation is being carried out in conjunction with the French Center for Research in Jerusalem under the co-direction of Dr. Julien Vieugue.

"This woman ceramic figurine is a hallmark of Yarmukian culture," Eirikh-Rose said. "This is one of the largest examples of the figurine found. It is of a large, seated woman with big hips, a unique pointed hat and what is known as 'coffee-bean' eyes and a big nose. One hand is positioned on her hip and the other one under her breast."

Symbolism

Though dubbed "coffee-bean" eyes, the traditional eyes of the figurine more likely represented kernels possibly of wheat, or more likely barley, she said.

America's sudden love affair with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Kiev's military forces is reminiscent of an old campaign to exalt a previous ally of geopolitical circumstance: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Just as in the Georgian strongman's heyday, the US political establishment and media-entertainment complex have responded to a crisis in Eastern Europe by portraying their preferred combatants as heroic friends who must be supported. In fact, Zelensky and his country's defenders have been painted as freedom fighters battling to save democracy from evil aggressors - even as Kiev bans opposition parties, shuts down media outlets, and otherwise silences critics of the regime.

For instance, outlets such as Newsweek and the Associated Press have touted Zelensky as a "defiant hero" and a "modern Churchill." The comparison to former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill wasn't sufficiently glowing for CNN, which said Zelensky is a "more unlikely hero."

After all, the liberal network argued, Churchill was "an imperialist rather than a pure believer in democracy." Zelensky, despite taking such actions as arresting the main opposition party's leader and banning critical TV and online outlets, apparently qualifies as a greater democrat than a man who lost office, by the ballot box, shortly after his greatest victory.

While the July 14 Bastille Day doesn't mean much for most North Americans, it is a very big deal in France where this strange French national holiday is similar to America's July 4th Independence Day, except with one important exception.

While the July 4, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence ushered in a new and improved potential for humanity, the July 14, 1789 storming of the Bastille ushered in a five year bloodbath of chaos that derailed the potential for a genuine republican revolution to manifest itself on the European continent.

With this anniversary in mind, and with the danger of new chaotic upheavals directed by intelligence agencies threatening to rip across the trans-Atlantic community, I thought it worth republishing this essay which was the effect of a 2009 lecture 'How the British Sabotaged the French Revolution' which I had delivered to a group of the Montreal Schiller Institute*.

Michael Hudson's Major Lecture at the Global University in China on July 11th, 2022 - and posted with Dr Hudson's permission

Why it lacks resilience, and What will take its place [1]

The greatest challenge facing societies has always been how to conduct trade and credit without letting merchants and creditors make money by exploiting their customers and debtors. All antiquity recognized that the drive to acquire money is addictive and indeed tends to be exploitative and hence socially injurious. The moral values of most societies opposed selfishness, above all in the form of avarice and wealth addiction, which the Greeks called philarguria - love of money, silver-mania. Individuals and families indulging in conspicuous consumption tended to be ostracized, because it was recognized that wealth often was obtained at the expense of others, especially the weak.

The Greek concept of hubris involved egotistic behavior causing injury to others. Avarice and greed were to be punished by the justice goddess Nemesis, who had many Near Eastern antecedents, such as Nanshe of Lagash in Sumer, protecting the weak against the powerful, the debtor against the creditor.

That protection is what rulers were expected to provide in serving the gods. That is why rulers were imbued with enough power to protect the population from being reduced to debt dependency and clientage. Chieftains, kings and temples were in charge of allocating credit and crop-land to enable smallholders to serve in the army and provide corvée labor. Rulers who behaved selfishly were liable to be unseated, or their subjects might run away, or support rebel leaders or foreign attackers promising to cancel debts and redistribute land more equitably.

The most basic function of Near Eastern kingship was to proclaim "economic order," misharum and andurarum clean slate debt cancellations, echoed in Judaism's Jubilee Year. There was no "democracy" in the sense of citizens electing their leaders and administrators, but "divine kingship" was obliged to achieve the implicit economic aim of democracy: "protecting the weak from the powerful."

One of the outcomes of the alleged new SARS Covid virus that publicly emerged in 2019 is that the medical specialization of virology has been raised to a stature almost Godlike in the media. Few understand the origins of virology and its elevation into a leading role in today's medicine practice. For this we need to look at the origins and politics of America's first medical research institute, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, today Rockefeller University, and their work on what they claimed was a polio virus.

In 1907 an outbreak of a sickness in New York City gave the director of the Rockefeller Institute, Simon Flexner, MD, a golden opportunity to lay claim to discovery of an invisible "virus" caused by what was arbitrarily called poliomyelitis. The word poliomyelitis simply means inflammation of the spinal cord's grey matter. There were some 2,500 New Yorkers, mostly children, designated with some form of poliomyelitis, including paralysis and even death, that year.

Flexner's Fraud

The most striking aspect of the entire polio saga in the USA during the first half of the 20th Century was the fact that every key phase of the business was controlled by people tied to what became the Rockefeller medical cabal. This fraud started with claims by the Director of the Rockefeller Institute, Simon Flexner, that he and his colleague, Paul A. Lewis, had "isolated" a pathogen, invisible to the eye, smaller even than bacteria, which they claimed caused the paralyzing sickness in a series of outbreaks in the US. How did they come to this idea?