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Book 2

The Enduring Relevance of Czesław Miłosz's 'The Captive Mind'

Robin Ashenden
Quillette
Fri, 19 Mar 2021 19:26 UTC
milosz
Anyone watching the shenanigans at the New York Times of late could be forgiven for thinking it was a modern-dress staging of The Crucible or a Soviet purge. The US's central "newspaper of record" (founded 1851) has recently, it seems, surrendered all editorial balance and autonomy.

Bari Weiss, the op-ed staff editor who quit her job there last August, said in a resignation letter that the paper's editorial staff were effectively in power no longer: "Twitter has become its ultimate editor." She spoke too of "constant bullying" by colleagues, a "civil war ... between the (mostly young) wokes" and "the (mostly 40+) liberals" and a culture of "safetyism" now prevalent in the newspaper. "The right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe," she wrote, "trumps what were previous considered core liberal values, like free speech."

The defenestration of Donald McNeil, a veteran science reporter who'd been with the paper since 1976 and has been nominated for a Pulitzer for his coverage of the pandemic, is a case in point. And McNeil's departure wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Last summer saw editorial-page chief James Bennet forced to walk the plank after printing an op-ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas). Eight hundred NYT staffers complained, saying that Cotton's op-ed put them in "danger."

The radical breakdown of editorial authority at the NYT would be of limited interest if it didn't have echoes elsewhere. From the forced resignation of editor Stan Wischnowski at the Philadelphia Enquirer last year for a badly worded headline to the sacking of Eton College teacher Will Knowland for free-speech related offences, one institution after another in the English speaking world seems to have capitulated to the new radical orthodoxy, with dissent punishable by enforced resignation or termination.

Comment: What Miłosz described in elegant prose, Lobaczewski described in clinical detail.

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Info

The murky origins of an enigmatic artifact

Amorina Kingdon
Hakai Magazine
Fri, 19 Mar 2021 23:19 UTC
Ushuaia, Argentina
© Photo by Helmut Corneli/Alamy Stock Photo
The view of Ushuaia, Argentina, is visible from the Beagle Channel. The channel connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as it zigzags across Tierra del Fuego, but 15,000 years ago, the channel was just a long inland lake.
In 2018, biologists in Ushuaia, Argentina, were scooping sediment from the bottom of the Beagle Channel, 1.5 kilometers from shore, when they discovered something unexpected in the dredged gravel and sand: a narrow, eight-centimeter-long projectile point made of stone. They alerted Atilio Zangrando, an archaeologist with Argentina's Austral Center for Scientific Research, who immediately realized that he was looking at something remarkable.

According to Zangrando, this is the first time that a projectile point has been found this deep underwater in the Beagle Channel, which zigzags across Tierra del Fuego. The extraordinary find now prompts the question of how the point got there.

Homing in on the projectile point's provenance would tell us something about early humans' relationship to the coast — like whether they hunted at sea, says Zangrando. Illuminating that relationship, however, requires knowing when the point ended up in the channel. That's because the water level in the Beagle Channel has changed dramatically since the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago. Back then, the channel was just a long inland lake. But as glaciers retreated and sea levels rose, the lake flooded, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. By about 9,000 years ago, the lake had become a channel.

So if the projectile point dates to the early stages of this transformation, then the spot where the biologists found it may have still been land, between the rising water and the retreating ice. Conversely, if the projectile point is much younger, then the spot was likely deep underwater. That could imply the point was used as a weapon for hunting at sea, says Zangrando, adding that people began using watercraft off the archipelago at least 7,000 years ago.
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Blue Planet

The US pivot to Asia: Cold war lessons from Vietnam to today

Cynthia Chung
Strategic Culture
Wed, 17 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
vietnam
© Strategic Culture/Wikimedia
There were Cold War preparations underway as early as August 1945 and the two regions selected, Korea and Vietnam, were pre-planned years in advance before the actual wars were to take place, Cynthia Chung writes.

In part one of this series, I discussed how a massive U.S. arms stockpile in Okinawa, Japan that was originally intended to be used for the planned American invasion of Japan was cancelled once the two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

L. Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy and was a former Col. in the U.S. Air Force, remarks in his book "The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy," that these massive arms shipments were not returned to the United States but rather, half were transported to Korea and the other half to Vietnam.

The implications of this are enormous.

Comment: See also:

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Colosseum

Bible scroll fragments, 6,000 year old mummified child & world's oldest basket found in Dead Sea 'Cave of Horror'

Amanda Borschel-Dan
Times of Israel
Tue, 16 Mar 2021 18:40 UTC
scroll
© Shai Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority
Sections of the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets scroll discovered in the Judean Desert expedition prior to their conservation.
In a stunningly rare discovery, dozens of 2,000-year-old biblical scroll fragments have been excavated from Judean Desert caves during a daring rescue operation. Most of the newly discovered scroll fragments — the first such finds in 60 years — are Greek translations of the books of Zechariah and Nahum from the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets, and are written in two scribal hands. Only the name of God is written in Hebrew in the texts.

The fragments from the Prophets have been identified as coming from a larger scroll that was found in the 1950s, in the same "Cave of Horror" in Nahal Hever, which is some 80 meters (260 feet) below a cliff top. According to an Israel Antiquities Authority press release, the cave is "flanked by gorges and can only be reached by rappelling precariously down the sheer cliff."

Along with the "new" biblical scroll fragments from the Books of the Minor Prophets, the team excavated a huge 10,500-year-old perfectly preserved woven basket — the oldest complete basket in the world — and a 6,000-year-old mummified skeleton of a child, tucked into its blanket for a final sleep.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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TV

Why Channel 37 doesn't exist on your tv (and what it has to do with aliens)

Ernie Smith
Tedium
Fri, 05 Mar 2021 20:13 UTC
vintage television static
© Dabarti/Shutterstock
I'm endlessly fascinated by stories of the quirks that were built into the TV system where the well-laid plans of the system simply fell apart because it was asked to do too many things.

Nearly five years ago, I wrote about one of them, the tale of how radio broadcasters were able to shoehorn an additional FM station into the radio because of the proximity of TV's channel 6 to the rest of the radio feed.

So when I was informed that there was another oddity kinda like this involving the TV lineups, I decided I had to take a dive in.

It's a tale that centers around channel 37, which was a giant block of static in most parts of the world during the 20th century.

The reason for that was simple: it couldn't fend off its scientific competition.
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Eye 1

Return of the Leviathan: The Fascist Roots of the CIA and the True Origin of the Cold War

Cynthia Chung
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 07 Mar 2021 01:41 UTC
Dulles Bros
© Jacob Harris/AP
John Foster Dulles (right) is greeted by his brother Allen Welsh Dulles on his arrival at LaGuardia Field in New York City in 1948.
In whose interest did the creation of the Cold War serve and continues to serve? Cynthia Chung addresses this question in her three-part series.

In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), at the behest of Congress, launched what became the largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history. As a result, more than 8.5 million pages of records have been opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246) and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (P.L. 106-567). These records include operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA, the FBI and Army intelligence. IWG issued three reports to Congress between 1999 and 2007.

This information sheds important light and confirms one of the biggest-kept secrets of the Cold War - the CIA's use of an extensive Nazi spy network to wage a secret campaign against the Soviet Union.

This campaign against the Soviet Union, which began while WWII was still raging, has been at the crux of Washington's tolerance towards civil rights abuses and other criminal acts in the name of anti-communism, as seen with McCarthyism and COINTELPRO activities. With that fateful decision, the CIA was not only given free reign for the execution of anti-democratic interventions around the world, but anti-democratic interventions at home, which continues to this day.
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Treasure Chest

Does this bronze age burial treasure reveal a powerful European female leader?

Tom Metcalfe
National Geographic
Thu, 11 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
Almoloya
© Cambridge University Press
La Almoloya, in Murcia, southern Spain, home to the El Argar, a society among the first to use bronze.
The lavish discoveries could undermine the idea that state power is almost exclusively a product of male-dominated societies, researchers say.

A trove of ornate jewelry, including a silver diadem, suggest a woman buried nearly 4,000 years ago in what is modern-day Spain was a ruler of surrounding lands who may have commanded the might of a state, according to a study published today in the journal Antiquity. The discoveries raise new questions about the role of women in early Bronze Age Europe, and challenge the idea that state power is almost exclusively a product of male-dominated societies, say the researchers.

The remains of the woman, alongside those of a man who may have been her consort, were originally unearthed in 2014 at La Almoloya, an archaeological site among forested hills about 35 miles northwest of Cartagena in southeastern Spain. Radiocarbon dating suggests the burial happened about 1700 B.C., and its richness suggests to the researchers that she, rather than he, may have been at the top of the local chain of command.

Comment: There have been times throughout history where women were leaders, co-rulers, even a few will have been warriors - at certain periods matriarchy appears to have been predominant - however we must be mindful that, increasingly, some researchers appear intent on projecting postmodern ideas into their discoveries:

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Colosseum

Researchers solve more of the mystery of Laos megalithic jars

University of Melbourne
Phys.org
Wed, 10 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
laos jar
© Plain of Jars Archaeological Research Project
Dr Shewan and collaborators present new radiocarbon results for site use and also introduce geochronological data determining the likely quarry source for one of the largest megalithic sites.
New research conducted at the UNESCO World Heritage listed 'Plain of Jars' in Laos has established the stone jars were likely placed in their final resting position from as early as 1240 to 660 BCE.

Sediment samples from beneath stone jars from two of the more than 120 recorded megalithic sites were obtained by a team led Dr. Louise Shewan from the University of Melbourne, Associate Professor Dougald O'Reilly from the Australian National University (ANU) and Dr. Thonglith Luangkoth from the Lao Department of Heritage.

The samples were analysed using a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) to determine when sediment grains were last exposed to sunlight.

Comment: See also:

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Solar Flares

The great Quebec blackout, March 13, 1989


Spaceweather.com
Sat, 13 Mar 2021 05:33 UTC
Sunspot 5395, source of the March 1989 solar storm

Sunspot 5395, source of the March 1989 solar storms. From "A 21st Century View of the March 1989 Magnetic Storm" by D. Boteler.
They call it "the day the sun brought darkness." On March 13, 1989, a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field. Ninety seconds later, the Hydro-Québec power grid failed. During the 9 hour blackout that followed, millions of Quebecois found themselves with no light or heat, wondering what was going on?

"It was the biggest geomagnetic storm of the Space Age," says Dr. David Boteler, head of the Space Weather Group at Natural Resources Canada. "March 1989 has become the archetypal disturbance for understanding how solar activity can cause blackouts."

It seems hard to believe now, but in 1989 few people realized solar storms could bring down power grids. The warning bells had been ringing for more than a century, though. In Sept. 1859, a similar CME hit Earth's magnetic field--the infamous "Carrington Event"--sparking a storm twice as strong as March 1989. Electrical currents surged through Victorian-era telegraph wires, in some cases causing sparks and setting telegraph offices on fire. These were the same kind of currents that would bring down Hydro-Québec.

Comment: What if ... a perfect CME hit Earth?

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Chalkboard

Mystery of 2,000-year-old Antikythera 'computer' may be closer to being solved

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Fri, 12 Mar 2021 10:00 UTC
Antikythera
© UCL
Computer model of how the Antikythera mechanism may have worked.
From the moment it was discovered more than a century ago, scholars have puzzled over the Antikythera mechanism, a remarkable and baffling astronomical calculator that survives from the ancient world.

The hand-powered, 2,000-year-old device displayed the motion of the universe, predicting the movement of the five known planets, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses. But quite how it achieved such impressive feats has proved fiendishly hard to untangle.

Now researchers at UCL believe they have solved the mystery - at least in part - and have set about reconstructing the device, gearwheels and all, to test whether their proposal works. If they can build a replica with modern machinery, they aim to do the same with techniques from antiquity.

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology

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