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12th-century three-person toilet found in London's river Thames goes on display


Guardian
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:59 UTC
3 person toilet seat
© David Levene/The Guardian
Conservator Luisa Duarte working on the 12th-century toilet seat.
A rare 12th-century toilet seat built to accommodate three users at once is to go on display for the first time at the Museum of London Docklands.

Nine hundred years after the roughly carved plank of oak was first placed over a cesspit near a tributary of the Thames, it will form the centrepiece of an exhibition about the capital's "secret" rivers.

The strikingly well preserved seat, still showing the axe marks where its three rough holes were cut, once sat behind a mixed commercial and residential tenement building on what is now Ludgate Hill, near St Paul's Cathedral, on land that in the mid-1100s would have been a small island in the river Fleet.

Comment: See also:

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Sherlock

New book blames CIA operative Robert Maheu for murder of RFK - gets coverage in WaPo

Neal Colgrass
newser.com
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 17:13 UTC
Sirhan Sirhan and RFK
© Miss Open
The assassination of Democratic Party candidate Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles the night he won the California presidential primary in June 1968 dealt a shocking blow to the national consciousness.

After all, the murder came less than five years after the shooting death of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and the official investigations into both deaths would prove to be highly controversial, creating generations of conspiracy theorists eager to explore whether there were mysterious forces behind the two deaths.

Lifelong information activist and researcher Lisa Pease has immersed herself in the case of RFK since 1992, when she stumbled across extensive Los Angeles Police Department case files on the assassination when she opened the wrong drawer at the Los Angeles Public Library's main downtown branch. Delving into the files and conducting countless interviews ever since, she has crafted the massive 512-page new book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, which pokes many holes in the official story that former Pasadena resident Sirhan Sirhan was his killer.

Comment: Neal Colgrass at newser.com writes:
The cloak-and-dagger figure who likely inspired the TV show Mission: Impossible also planned Robert F. Kennedy's assassination - at least according to a lengthy new book on the subject, the Washington Post reports. In A Lie Too Big to Fail, author Lisa Pease contends that Robert Maheu, an ex-FBI agent and CIA contractor, may have had Sirhan Sirhan hypnotized into firing blanks at Kennedy in June 1968 while the real killers shot the senator from behind. Maheu was indeed a shadowy figure who helped the CIA with jobs they didn't want to handle (like hiring the mob to murder Fidel Castro) and worked as Howard Hughes' right-hand man as the magnate supported CIA missions and purchased big portions of Las Vegas. But was Maheu behind Kennedy's killing?


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Russian Flag

1919-2019: UK Has Been Blackening Russia's Name For at Least 100 years

Neil Clark
RT
Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:06 UTC
russophobia

This is just the latest outbreak of russophobia in a very old pattern
The Western powers have Russia in their sights. Propaganda is at fever pitch. Sounds familiar? No, I'm not talking about 2019, but 1919, when Churchill was supporting military intervention against the Russian government.

One hundred years ago, World War I may have ended but the world was hardly at peace.

Then, as now, Russia was a target. Bolshevik rule, only established in late 1917, was threatened by a Western-backed foreign intervention to help the anti-Bolshevik White Army regain power.

Today, the biggest hawk on the scene in Britain is Gavin Williamson, the defense secretary. In 1919, it was one Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war. At least the titles they gave government ministers were more honest in those days.

In March 1919, Churchill went over to Paris, where the Versailles Peace Conference was taking place, to push for more war.

The great cigar-smoker denounced "the baboonery of Bolshevism" and, as historian AJP Taylor records, persuaded the Supreme Council to "try intervention on a large scale."
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Archaeology

Iguana-sized cousin of dinosaurs discovered in Antarctica


The Archaeology News Network
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:14 UTC
iguana fossil antarctica
© Adrienne Stroup, Field Museum
The midnight sun over Early Triassic Antarctica." Along the banks of a river, three archosaur inhabitants of the dense
Voltzia conifer forest cross paths: Antarctanax shackletoni sneaks up on an early titanopetran insect, Prolacerta lazes
on a log, and an enigmatic large archosaur pursues two unsuspecting dicynodonts, Lystrosaurus maccaigi
Antarctica wasn't always a frozen wasteland--250 million years ago, it was covered in forests and rivers, and the temperature rarely dipped below freezing. It was also home to diverse wildlife, including early relatives of the dinosaurs. Scientists have just discovered the newest member of that family--an iguana-sized reptile whose name means "Antarctic king."

"This new animal was an archosaur, an early relative of crocodiles and dinosaurs," says Brandon Peecook, a Field Museum researcher and lead author of a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describing the new species. "On its own, it just looks a little like a lizard, but evolutionarily, it's one of the first members of that big group. It tells us how dinosaurs and their closest relatives evolved and spread."
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Books

'History of the County of York ' tells of medieval nun who faked her own death to escape convent

Alison Flood
The Guardian
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 20:30 UTC
medieval archives bishop register
© University of York
‘Extraordinary - like a Monty Python sketch’ … Gary Brannan and Sarah Rees Jones examine one of the archishops’ registers.
A team of medieval historians working in the archives at the University of York has found evidence that a nun in the 14th century faked her own death and crafted a dummy "in the likeness of her body" in order to escape her convent and pursue - in the words of the archbishop of the time - "the way of carnal lust".

A marginal note written in Latin and buried deep within one of the 16 heavy registers used by to record the business of the archbishops of York between 1304 and 1405 first alerted archivists to the adventures of the runaway nun. "To warn Joan of Leeds, lately nun of the house of St Clement by York, that she should return to her house," runs the note written by archbishop William Melton and dated to 1318.
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Info

New research says stone megaliths was spread by a mysterious seafaring culture from northwest France

Charles Q. Choi
Inside Science
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 15:00 UTC
Haväng megalithic grave, Sweden
© Bettina Schulz Paulsson
Haväng megalithic grave, Sweden.
New research suggests that megaliths -- monuments such as Stonehenge created from large rocks during the Stone and Copper Ages in Europe -- owe their origins to a mysterious culture from northwest France with advanced seafaring technology.

Roughly 35,000 megaliths are known throughout Europe, including standing stones, stone circles and megalithic tombs. Most megaliths date from 4500 to 2500 B.C., are concentrated in coastal areas along the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and share similar or even identical architectural features, said archaeologist Bettina Schulz Paulsson at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

The origins of megaliths have proven controversial for more than a century. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, archaeologists believed the practice may have originated at a single point in the Near East, and then spread westward through migrant priests or prospectors. Later, the rise of radiocarbon dating led to the currently dominant argument that the concept of megaliths arose independently multiple times across Europe.

Schulz Paulsson's new study reviewed data from 11 different languages that analyzed 2,410 radiocarbon dates for megalithic sites and related areas throughout Europe to better understand the way megaliths spread across the continent.
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Hammer

Key to Hitler's success were attacks on capitalism that were considered 'progressive'

Ludwig von Mises
Mises Institute
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 00:00 UTC
Hitler portrait
© commons.wikimedia.org
The following, written in 1940, is excerpted from Interventionism, An Economic Analysis, which was originally part of Nationaloekonomie, the German predecessor to Human Action:

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini constantly proclaim that they are chosen by destiny to bring salvation to this world. They claim they are the leaders of the creative youth who fight against their outlived elders. They bring from the East the new culture which is to replace the dying Western civilization. They want to give the coup de grace to liberalism and capitalism; they want to overcome immoral egoism by altruism; they plan to replace the anarchic democracy by order and organization, the society of "classes" by the total state, the market economy by socialism. Their war is not a war for territorial expansion, for loot and hegemony like the imperialistic wars of the past, but a holy crusade for a better world to live in. And they feel certain of their victory because they are convinced that they are borne by "the wave of the future."
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Blue Planet

Understanding the horrors of modern Africa via Indian Ocean slave trade, from clans to Al Shabab

Geoffrey Clarfield
Quillette
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 00:00 UTC
Slavers Africa
© David Livingstone
“Slavers Revenging Their Losses,” a 19th-century engraving contained in an 1866 book based on the sketches and reports of David Livingstone.
On January 15, and well into the morning of the next day, terrorists affiliated with the Somali Jihadi group Al Shabab forced their way into an upscale Nairobi hotel and business centre, killing 21 innocent civilians. Kenyan authorities, with some help from Western allies, killed some of the terrorists and captured the rest. Al Shabab justified the attack by denouncing the Kenyan government's participation with African Union forces in Somalia, which has been in a state of civil warfare since the early 1990s.

I had driven by the targeted complex a couple of days before the attack, and once lived in this neighbourhood back when Kenya was my permanent home. On this visit to the country, I've noticed that - notwithstanding January's terrible tragedy - tourism is booming, agriculture is bountiful and the Kenyan elite are benefiting from the massive Chinese investments that have transformed the landscape. The overall degree of improvement depends on which expert you believe. But the plethora of expensive cars that now jam the streets of Nairobi, and the building boom on display in many parts of the city, do suggest a surging economy.

Anyone who knows the history and tribal dynamics of East Africa and the Horn will understand that even if the Kenyan government pulled all its troops out of Somalia, Al Shabab likely would still try its best to destabilize this country. I outlined the reasons for this decades ago, when I first briefed visiting Canadian and U.S. military personnel here in Nairobi. Many of the things I told them remain as true now as they were then. That's because the most important factors at play are rooted in history, not in recent geopolitical developments.

Specifically: Many modern problems in the area are rooted in the Indian Ocean slave trade - a scourge that was distinct from the better known slave trade that preyed on West Africa. In the eastern part of the continent, there was little to no European involvement. The practice was indigenous and ancient, and lasted more than a thousand years.
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Arrow Up

Just get over it: Asia rules

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 00:00 UTC
Chinese guy phone
© iStock
An elderly Chinese man reads a message on a mobile phone in old wooden house.
The greatest merit of Parag Khanna's new book, The Future is Asian, is to accessibly tell the story of a historical inevitability - with the extra bonus of an Asian point of view. This is not only a very good public service, it also blows out of the water countless tomes by Western "experts" pontificating about Asia from an air-con cubicle in Washington.

Asia hands from the West tend to be extremely protective of their extra-territoriality. In my case, I moved to Asia in 1994, and Singapore was my first base. In time I found out - along with some of my colleagues at Asia Times - nothing would ever compare to following the ever-developing, larger than life Asian miracle on the spot.

Khanna has always been in the thick of the action. Born in India, he then moved to the UAE, the West, and is now a resident in Singapore. Years ago we spent a jolly good time in New York swapping Asia on-the-road stories; he's a cool conversationalist. His Connectography is a must read.

Khanna found a very special niche to "sell" Asia to the Western establishment as a strategic adviser - and is very careful not to ruffle feathers. Barack Obama, for instance, is only guilty of "half-heartedness". When you get praise from Graham Allison, who passes for a Thucydides authority in the US but would have major trouble understanding Italian master Luciano Canfora's Tucidide: La Menzogna, La Colpa, L'Esilio, you know that Khanna has done his homework.

Of course, there are a few problems. It's a bit problematic to coin Singapore "the unofficial capital of Asia". There's no better place to strategically follow China than Hong Kong. And as a melting pot, Bangkok, now truly cosmopolitan, is way more dynamic, creative and, let's face it, funkier.
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Bad Guys

The results of US 'regime change' in Latin America & the Caribbean


The Unz Review
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 11:32 UTC
Juan Guaido
As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed.

We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century.

We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US 'regime changes' throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Comment: For more context on Venezuela's coup check out this history of the country's economic and political situation since Chavez was elected in 1998:



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