Secret HistoryS


Microscope 1

Divers in Mexico discover underwater tunnel network that could shine new light on ancient Mayan civilization

Samuel Osborne
The Independent
Wed, 17 Jan 2018 17:22 UTC
Sac Actun underwater cave system
© Herbert Mayrl/Courtesy Gran Acuifero Maya Project (GAM)/Handout via REUTERSScuba divers tour an area of Sac Actun underwater cave system
A team of divers have discovered what is believed to be the biggest flooded cave on the planet in eastern Mexico.

By connecting two underwater caverns, the Gran Acuifero Maya (GAM) project identified the 216-mile (347km) cave after months of exploring a maze of underwater channels.

The project, which is dedicated to the study and preservation of the subterranean waters of the Yucatan peninsula, said the discovery could shine new light on the ancient Maya civilisation.

Near the beach resort of Tulum, the group found that the cave system known as Sac Actun, once measured at 163 miles (263km), communicated with the 52-mile (83km) Dos Ojos system, the GAM said in a statement. Because of this, Sac Actun has now absorbed Dos Ojos.
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USA

'Made in America': El Salvador's mass graves are the worst "shitholes"

Roberto Lovato
Latino Rebels
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 12:00 UTC
Victims of the El Mozote Massacre
© Magnum Photos/CCVictims of the El Mozote Massacre
My journalist's hiking boots still have leftover feces and dirt from the ultimate shitholes of El Salvador: its mass graves. Many of the thousands of graves that my sources there have mapped were dug by U.S.-trained and funded security forces in the 80s. Most of the rest were dug more recently by L.A.based-gangs steadily deported to El Salvador by U.S. immigration authorities since the 90s.

President Trump's characterization of Africa, Haiti and El Salvador as "shitholes" disturbed me, but I wasn't sure why. The comments were made during a discussion about the temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran, Haitian and other immigrants Trump had just rescinded. In search for an answer, I went home and pulled out and studied my boots , which were tattered after too many visits to mass graves, mass graves with the remains of Salvadorans-in El Salvador, in Mexico and in the deserts of south Texas. Wearing my hiking boots during visits to numerous sites along this chain of devalued life led me to the conclusion that mass graves were the ultimate shitholes.

Comment: See: Senators Cotton and Perdue: "Trump didn't say shithole"

For more on the supposed Trump comment and it's relevance to the state of world affairs, check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: Left by the Wayside on a Right-hand Turn: What Happened to SOTT.net?

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Top Secret

Drugs and corruption: How US money propped up former Peruvian president Fujimori

Brian Saady
Activist Post
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Fujimori
Where corruption and drug trafficking is rampant, the US and CIA are sure to be lurking in the shadows.
Last month, the President of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, pardoned the country's former dictator, Alberto Fujimori, who had been convicted of authorizing extrajudicial murders and corruption. Thousands of protestors responded to the pardon by organizing in the streets of Lima.

Many people wonder why Kuczynski issued this pardon to Fujimori, who embezzled as much as $600 million of public funds, according to Transparency International. After all, the current President had promised during his campaign to not pardon Fujimori.

It appears that a quid pro quo prompted this decision. Kuczynski faced an impeachment vote stemming from his involvement with the Brazilian construction giant, Odebrecht, which has paid massive bribes to many high-level Latin American leaders in exchange for lucrative contracts. Thus, it was quite suspicious that Kuczynski's company received a $782,000 consulting fee from Odebrecht while he served as Peru's Minister of Economy.

Comment: It's no surprise the Clinton's and Bush's both supported Fujimori and that the CIA continued to fund Montesinos. Much of the 'drug wars' was a means of consolidating power and getting rid of competitors, while propping up the drug cartels that were willing to do business with the CIA and corrupt government officials.

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Archaeology

Syria's de-mining operation uncovers ancient Greek mosaic floor

Ali al-Karmali
Al Sura Media
Sun, 14 Jan 2018 23:16 UTC
mosaic demining syria
One section of the ancient Greek floor found in Hama’s countryside
Ancient Greek mosaic floor piece found in Hama countryside in Syria

During a routine mine excavation the Syrian Engineering corps found a strange looking slab of material underneath the earth. After some careful digging what they uncovered shocked all parties, an ancient Greek mosaic floor. Syrian authorities for archaeology were contacted urgently and the process of professional excavation began. The Syrian engineers were shocked that such pieces of human history had survived being in the countryside of Hama city which faced heavy battles between the Syrian government and opposition forces.
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Bizarro Earth

From Siberia to Crimea: A look back at US-Russian relations and imperial interests

Lyle J. Goldstein
National Interest
Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
War in Russia
One is tempted to conclude that the Washington foreign-policy establishment has learned little over the past century

Strolling the cavernous and well-appointed halls of Russia's carefully renovated Central Naval Museum [Центральный Военно-морской Музей] near the Neva River in St. Petersburg, one can find an assortment of interesting artifacts, not least the small skiff in which Peter the Great learned to sail more than three centuries ago now. Among the many captured battle standards from Sweden, Turkey and Germany that are proudly displayed, a few of the expansive oil paintings took me by surprise. There was, for example, a picture depicting the Russian fleet at anchor off of Kodiak in Alaska during the mid-eighteenth century. Another showed the Soviet Navy's first submarine kill by torpedo on July 31, 1919. On that day, the British destroyer HMS Vittoria was sunk by the Bolshevik submarine Pantera under the command of Alexander Bakhtin. I had known, of course, that Allied forces intervened in the Russian Civil War during 1918-22, but was not aware that the intervention had occasioned such deadly incidents.

Comment: Another prime example of how history gets glossed over in favor of the current imperial narrative. See also:

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Archaeology

Oldest of its kind: Ancient icy tomb of Scythian prince discovered in Siberia

Kastalia Medrano
Newsweek
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 10:02 UTC
Kuran
© kavehfarrokh.comKurgan diagram
Archaeologists working in Siberia have discovered an undisturbed ancient kurgan - a tomb of a Scythian prince. The tomb appears to be both the oldest and largest of its kind ever recorded in southern Siberia, according to a press release from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Gino Caspari, a Swiss archaeologist with Bern University, first identified an intriguing circular structure while studying high-resolution satellite imagery of Siberia's Uyuk River Valley and suspected it could be a kurgan, according to the press release. A collaboration between Caspari and researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as the State Hermitage Museum carried out a preliminary dig over the summer of 2017; they found that Caspari had been right. A paper describing the research was published in the scientific journal Archaeological Research in Asia.

The tomb, Tunnug 1, lies in a southern Siberian swamp that's part of the Russian republic of Tuva. Caspari told Newsweek that the tomb dates to a crucial period around 3,000 years ago, between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, when "radical social changes" began to give rise to a nomadic culture. Little is known about this period, largely because very few archaeological remnants from it have yet been recovered. Tunnug 1, Caspari said, gives researchers a "huge chance" to learn more about this era of Eurasian prehistory.


Comment: More from ScienceDaily:
Caspari was able to prove that the burial mound -- referred to as Tunnug 1 (or Arzhan 0) -- was similar in construction to the kurgan Arzhan 1 located only ten kilometres away to the northeast. Arzhan 1 had long been regarded as the earliest Scythian princely tomb in the region, which is also known as the "Siberian Valley of Kings" owing to the numerous kurgans found there. The earliest princely tombs consist of a stone packing with a circular arrangement of chambers. The walls of the chambers are made of larch logs.

Wooden beams found by Caspari during the test excavation date back to the 9th century BC, predating Arzhan 1, which was built at the turn of the 9th to the 8th century BC and excavated in the 1970s. "We have a great opportunity here," says a delighted Caspari, commenting on the results of the trial dig published in the current issue of Archaeological Research in Asia (*).

"Archaeological methods have become considerably more sophisticated since the 1970s. Today we have completely different ways of examining material to find out more about the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age," remarks the SNSF-funded researcher. He also stresses that the way we look at prehistoric times is changing radically thanks to genetics, isotope analysis and geophysical methods as well as developments in geographic information systems and remote sensing.


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Info

DNA analysis finds food poisoning bacteria caused Mexican epidemic

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 18:11 UTC
Europeans storming Mexico painting
© Prisma/UIG via Getty ImagesA 16th Century engraving depicting Europeans storming Mexico. Pathogens not shown.
It is well known that when Europeans arrived in the New World they brought with them appalling diseases to which the indigenous population, having never been exposed to them before, were particularly susceptible. Very large numbers died of from illnesses including smallpox, measles, mumps and influenza.

These acknowledged killers, however, were comparatively late arrivals in Europe's brutal colonisation.

In Mexico, at least, another disease laid waste to the locals, starting in 1545, very soon after the invaders landed. And with the next disease came a new word, growing out of the local tongue: cocoliztli, meaning pestilence, or epidemic.

Between 1545 and 1550, a disease roared through the indigenous Mexican population, killing an estimated 800,000. And while there is plenty of evidence to support the fact that the epidemic took place, until now there has been precious little to identify the pathogenic culprit.

Researchers led by Ashlid Vagene of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, have now unmasked the killer. To do so they extracted biological material from between the teeth of 24 corpses interred in a cocoliztli cemetery in the town of Teposcolula-Yucundaa in the Oaxaca region of Mexico.
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Handcuffs

Politization of child support: From welfare state to police state

Stephen Baskerville
Independent Institute
Mon, 04 May 2009 16:17 UTC
greetings from the welfare state
Family fragmentation costs taxpayers at least $112 billion annually in antipoverty programs, justice and education systems, and lost revenue, according to a report released last week. Astonishingly, the report's publisher, Institute for American Values, is using these findings to advocate even higher costs, through more federal programs.

As welfare and child support enforcement programs show, there is zero proof that further government intervention into families would be a good investment for taxpayers.
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Magnify

The CIA's long-standing policy of assassinating international leaders - and getting away with it

Vladimir Platov
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 14 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
CIA assassination plans
The history of the US Central Intelligence Agency is replete with numerous examples of political assassinations, not only in the US, but also of leaders of countries Washington disagrees with. So today, the CIA has actively begun developing various methods for the deliberate elimination of the US's newest political opponent, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, involving not only special forces in this task, but also the special services of countries that cooperate closely with the CIA.

Evidence of this, in particular, can be found in the $310,000 of the country's defense budget for 2018, officially laid out by the South Korean government; the cost of eliminating North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un. These funds will be spent on training and equipping a special "decapitation unit" dedicated to the North Korean leadership, the creation of which became known on December 1. The squad will include about one thousand commandos, whose task in the event of a war will be to find and kill Kim Jong-un and other top leaders of the neighboring state. As a source in the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Korea told the newspaper Korea Herald, the squad's special equipment will include drones, suicide bombers, reconnaissance drones and even heavy grenade launchers. The structure and training plans of the squad are classified, but according to the information of the South Korean media, the soldiers of the new squad will train according to methodology used by the US special purpose team SEAL Team Six, which assassinated Osama bin Laden.


Comment: ...which may have in fact never happened as purported: Did part of SEAL team Six die in a helicopter explosion during the Bin Laden raid?

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Map

Artefacts dating back to Ice Age found by villagers near Thirsk, UK


The Northern Echo
Sun, 14 Jan 2018 19:24 UTC
VILLAGERS are going public on an astonishing range of historic finds, discovered during a massive archaeological exploration.
Thirsk UK excavation
© UnknownTESTPIT: Volunteers get to work on the Thornton Le Street dig
Volunteers have found more than 2,500 artefacts - many going back thousands of years to the last Ice Age - which give tempting glimpses into the history of the tiny community of Thornton-le-Street.

The village between Northallerton and Thirsk is at the centre of a £98,000 heritage Lottery Fund project exploring Roads into the Past.

On Saturday, February 10 organisers will hold an open day, when there will be displays and talks on some of the artefacts uncovered so far, with experts on hand to answer questions.
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