Secret HistoryS

USA

The US is not a democracy and it never was

Gabriel Rockhill
Counterpunch
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 09:35 UTC
Capitol Hill
© Getty Images
One of the most steadfast beliefs regarding the United States is that it is a democracy. Whenever this conviction waivers slightly, it is almost always to point out detrimental exceptions to core American values or foundational principles. For instance, aspiring critics frequently bemoan a "loss of democracy" due to the election of clownish autocrats, draconian measures on the part of the state, the revelation of extraordinary malfeasance or corruption, deadly foreign interventions, or other such activities that are considered undemocratic exceptions. The same is true for those whose critical framework consists in always juxtaposing the actions of the U.S. government to its founding principles, highlighting the contradiction between the two and clearly placing hope in its potential resolution.

The problem, however, is that there is no contradiction or supposed loss of democracy because the United States simply never was one. This is a difficult reality for many people to confront, and they are likely more inclined to immediately dismiss such a claim as preposterous rather than take the time to scrutinize the material historical record in order to see for themselves. Such a dismissive reaction is due in large part to what is perhaps the most successful public relations campaign in modern history. What will be seen, however, if this record is soberly and methodically inspected, is that a country founded on elite, colonial rule based on the power of wealth-a plutocratic colonial oligarchy, in short-has succeeded not only in buying the label of "democracy" to market itself to the masses, but in having its citizenry, and many others, so socially and psychologically invested in its nationalist origin myth that they refuse to hear lucid and well-documented arguments to the contrary.

Comment: The main mistake of all those who miss Obama and accuse Donald Trump of being some sort of modern Hitler is not what they have to criticize about the current government (which is somewhat inaccurate already), but that they live under the illusion that there ever was a genuine government of the people and for the people in the United States of America. At least the friction between Trump and the 'deep state' has brought the lies and contradictions of the US political system to the surface for all to see.

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Wedding Rings

Student's gold pendant find is worth ยฃ145,000 and 'rewrites' Anglo Saxon history

Henry Bodkin
The Telegraph
Mon, 04 Dec 2017 09:04 UTC
Anglo Saxon pendant found at a grave in Windfarthing, Norfolk.
© The British MuseumThe Anglo Saxon pendant found at a grave in Windfarthing, Norfolk.
The discovery of an "exquisite" gold pendant by a student metal detectorist is being credited with rewriting the understanding of Anglo-Saxon history.

Thomas Lucking is in line for a ยฃ145,000 pay-out after unearthing an aristocratic burial site in a part of Norfolk overlooked by generations of archaeologists because of its poor soil.

The find of the female skeleton wearing a pendant of gold imported from Sri Lanka and coins bearing the marks of a continental king is prompting a fundamental reassessment of the seats of power in Anglo Saxon England.

Comment: So the Anglo Saxons were importing gold all the way from Sri Lanka and using the currency of a continental king?

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Info

Cross-disciplinary study reveals the need for a rewrite of pre-Columbian history

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 02:19 UTC
Sarcophagi of the Chachapoya people
© C. BarbieriThe distinctive sarcophagi of the Chachapoya people.
A combination of linguistic analysis and genetic sequencing has revealed a hitherto unknown element of South American history - and dented the fearsome reputation of the Incas in the process.

A team led by Chiara Barbieri from the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany set out to interrogate some unusual results turned up in a linguistic survey of native-speakers in the Chachapoyas region of northern Peru.

The participants, all elderly, spoke a variant of a tongue called Quechua - a family of pre-Columbian languages that across the Amazon and Andes regions has millions of speakers. The version used in Chachapoyas was assumed to be closely related to one used in parts of Ecuador.

However, detailed analysis showed that wasn't the case - the Chachapoyas version was linguistically distinct. A follow-up DNA study revealed that the people in the region were to a large extent genetically distinct as well - leading to a major rethink of the accepted Inca Empire narrative.

At its height, the Inca Empire was the largest in the world. It began in the Peruvian highlands in the early Thirteenth Century and continued until being finally destroyed by invading Spaniards in 1572.
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Calendar

The enigma of the Coligny Calender


Malaga Bay
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 02:03 UTC
Libra Zodiac Sign
© Wikimedia Commons
Tracking down a solution for a calendar riddle wrapped up in an enigma is not something that happens everyday.

The riddle wrapped up in an enigma is the 2nd century AD Coligny Calendar that contains 62 lunar months spread over five years.
Coligny Calendar
© Malaga Bay
The so-called "Calendar of Coligny" is a fragmented bronze plaque that was found in 1897 in the remains of a Roman Temple of Apollo in Coligny, Ain, France.

Coligny Calendar - Marc Carlson - 9 June 2004
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/calendar/coligni.html

The restored tablet contains sixteen vertical columns, with 62 months distributed over five years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coligny_calendar

It shows 12 repeating units comprised of alternating 29 and 30 lesser units, and so appearing to correspond to the 13 lunar months of the solar year made up of 29 or 30 days.

Coligny Calendar - Marc Carlson - 9 June 2004
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/calendar/coligni.html

See: https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/the-heinsohn-horizon-calendar-conundrum/
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Folder

Ottoman archives hold records of Jerusalem deeds

Yeni ลžafak
Truthaholics
Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
Jerusalem deeds
© Unknown
There are 171,306 deeds recorded in 46 registries of Jerusalem in Ottoman archive records. Of these, 133,365 are private property and 37,671 belong to foundations. In addition to this, Turkey's archives also have records of Jerusalem between the hijri years 950 and 1917.

Among the records of private property were 139 deeds belonging to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, 137 of which were transferred to the treasury in the past. The remaining two are in Jerusalem's Erihav region. The records show that there is a plot of land approximately 30,000 square meters in size that is recorded under the name of Sultan Abdul Hamid II [1842-1918].

The deeds proving that Palestine belongs to Palestinians were handed to Palestinian officials. Israel did not ask for deed records from Turkey. Had Israel requested these records, it would mean that Israel would be accepting that it is occupying Palestine.

A memorandum was signed between Palestine and Jordan. Procedures such as the maintenance and repair of foundations in Jerusalem were transferred to Jordan. Therefore, in 2016, upon the request of Jordan, Turkey provided copies of the deeds of foundations in Jerusalem to Jordan.
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Vader

US repeatedly promised Russia "no NATO eastward expansion" - declassified docs


Sputnik
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 18:18 UTC
Reagan Gorbachove
© Sputnik/ Yuryi Abramochkin
NATO expansion was a key issue as the US, Western European and Soviet leaders negotiated the reunification of Germany.

US and Western European leaders repeatedly promised their Soviet and Russian counterparts in the early 1990s that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, according to a series of declassified documents posted by George Washington University's National Security Archive on Tuesday.

"US Secretary of State James Baker's famous "not one inch eastward" assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991," a press release summarizing the document cache stated.

Comment: Russia's mistake was in actually believing the U.S. would stand by its word. The suffering of the 90s brought on by the West's pillaging of the country taught them otherwise. They have taken the lesson to heart

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Bad Guys

Did the CIA use Gloria Steinem to subvert the feminist & civil rights movements for the purpose of further separating people?

Stuart Jean Bramhall
Stuart Jean Bramhall
Tue, 13 Oct 2015 12:51 UTC
Co-opting Radical Feminism for Corporate Interests

Gloria Steinem
© Ms. Foundation for WomenGloria Steinem
While preeminent American feminist Gloria Steinem's CIA background receives wide attention on the Internet, it's a totally taboo topic in either the corporate or the so-called "alternative" media. Steinem's work for the CIA front group Independent Research Service first entered the public domain in 1967 when Ramparts magazine exposed both the Independent Research Service and the National Student Association as CIA front organizations.

Fearing unflattering publicity, Steinem gave interviews to both the New York Times and the Washington Post defending her CIA work (see video below). In both articles, she claims to have taken the initiative in contacting Cord Meyers, who headed the CIA's International Organization Division and their top secret Operation Mockingbird.* Her goal, allegedly, was to seek CIA financing to encourage American participation in the seventh postwar (Soviet-sponsored) World Youth Festival in Vienna in 1959.

Comment: How feminism continues to separate people:

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Fish

Ancient fish hook reveals women did all the hard work 12,000-years-ago

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 11 Dec 2017 15:31 UTC
Fish Hook
© O'Connor et al, ANUFish-hooks placed around the neck and jaws of an adult Indonesian woman.
The discovery of five 12,000-year-old fish-hooks has exploded the assumption that during the Pleistocene era fishing was men's work.

In a paper published in the journal Antiquity, a team led by Sue O'Connor from the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific, reports finding fish-hooks fashioned from sea snail shells in a rock shelter on the island of Alor in Indonesia.

The hooks had been deployed as grave goods - items left on or next to a corpse. In this case, they had been placed carefully under the chin and around the jaws of a deceased adult female.

Items used in burial or other funeral practices provide strong clues to the cultural values of the people involved, because they are inevitably either items associated with the person during life or things thought to be required for success in the afterlife.
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Cow

The medieval craze for almond milk and how cows milk was mainly consumed as butter or cheese

Jim Clarke
Atlas Obscura
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 12:00 UTC
A woodcut illustration from the Kuchenmaistrey, the 15th century-era German cookbook, depicting two cooks in the kitchen. Public Domain
© Public DomainA woodcut illustration from the Kuchenmaistrey, the 15th century-era German cookbook, depicting two cooks in the kitchen.
In recent years, almond milk has been touted as the future of non-dairy delicacies. It's become a staple for lactose-intolerants and coffee shops alike. Yet almond milk's popularity today pales in comparison to the high and late Middle Ages, when the upper class went nuts for it.

Almonds have been central to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines as far back as the Roman era, yet almond milk is likely a religiously-motivated, European innovation. The first mention of almond milk appears in a medical context in 12th century Salerno, but it quickly spread from the Mediterranean as far as Germany, England, and Denmark. During Lent, European Christians were barred from consuming milk, as well as eggs and meat. So they needed a substitute.

While making almond milk is straightforward, it involved a considerable amount of labor. First, cooks ground up a generous number of almonds and steeped them in hot water. Then, they strained the mixture through a fine mesh or cheesecloth. The resulting mixture-fairly thick, and not chunky or textured at all-became an ideal thickener for a dish.
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Archaeology

Archaeologists confirm multiple ancient Bronze age tools made from meteorites, knowledge of time needs to be 'revised'

Chris Ciaccia
Fox News
Sat, 09 Dec 2017 12:00 UTC
Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have discovered that ancient Bronze Age tools were created using iron from meteorites at a time before humans were unable to smelt iron ore.
Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have discovered that ancient Bronze Age tools were created using iron from meteorites at a time before humans were unable to smelt iron ore.
Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have discovered that ancient Bronze Age tools were created using iron from meteorites at a time before humans were unable to smelt iron ore.

Archaeologists have unearthed new ancient iron artifacts that utilize iron from meteorites, at a time when early humans were not thought to be able to smelt iron ore.

According to a study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the artifacts were determined to have extraterrestrial iron using an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer. The spectrometer is used to detect iron elements in the tools and other objects and has been an advancement in techniques used for testing as it does not degrade the items, a key fear for archaeologists.

Comment: Also See:

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