Episode 21 The Murder of Tutankhamen

The History of Ancient Egypt

Professor Robert Brier

Film Review

The only intact pharaoh’s mummy found in an Egyptian tomb, Tutankamen’s remains had to be sawed in half and chiseled out of the coffin. They were x-rayed for the first time in the 1960. The lack of wisdom teeth and open epiphyseal plates* in the long bones suggest he was 18 when he died. In addition the skull shows evidence he suffered a head injury prior to death. Also found in his tomb were his internal organs preserved in little jars.

Only eight when his father Ankenaten died, he had to marry his nine year-old half sister Ankhesenamun (daughter of Ankenaten’s chief wife) to become pharaoh. Under the guidance of Ankenaten’s vizier (prime minister) Ay, Tutankaten signaled the end to Egypt’s monotheistic heresy by packing up the city of Akhet Aten  (see Egypt’s Ankenaten: The World’s Firt Montheistic Ruler) and moving Egypt’s religious capital back to Thebes.

Brier believes Tutankaten may have been murdered, as did Akasanamen his widow. There’s a letter in the Hittite archives she wrote the Hittite king (in modern day Turkey), even though the Hittites were Egypt’s traditional enemies. She asked him to send her a son she could marry and make king of Egypt. She also mentioned being fearful of her impending forced marriage to a commoner (Ay, now Tutankaten’s vizier). The Hittite king subsequently sent an envoy to Egypt who was murdered.

After marrying Akasanamen, Ay made himself pharaoh. Although there are no images of her in his tomb, two rings have been discovered showing Aye’s and Ankasanamun’s name linked in a single cartouche.

When this lecture was filmed in 1999, Brier believed his suspicions would be confirmed with a CAT scan and DNA studies. An  autopsy subsequently performed in 2010 suggests Tutankaten most likely died of malaria and a skull fracture related to congenital bone disease.

*The calcification of rapidly dividing epiphyseal cells in the long bones at the end of puberty make further skeletal growth impossible.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy/

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/1492791/1492841

© AFP 2023 / STR

Sputnik International

[…]

China sold off a record $53.3 billion of Treasury and agency bonds in the first quarter of 2024, a move seen as part of Beijing’s drive to diversify from US dollar assets. This comes as gold’s share in China’s official reserves rose to 4.9% in April, the highest on record.

“It is a wise decision to diversify away from USD and to hold physical gold in your own country instead,” Claudio Grass, an expert on monetary history, economics and an independent precious metals advisor based out of Switzerland, told Sputnik.

He called US bonds “a bad investment” because “they have not worked, especially since 2022, and are guaranteed to lose money.”

“Gold outperformed USD bonds by 75% since 2020. In addition, the USD has been used for decades already as a political weapon and with the arbitrary confiscation of assets due to pressure from the US government, the Chinese seem to be aware of the risk that their property could also be confiscated at any time,” the expert said.

Dwelling on a common trend of countries seeking to cut Treasury holdings and buy more gold, he said that “by now it should be obvious that the US government is the world bully today.

“In addition, there is the BRICS alliance which is gaining track and challenging the current world order. Also, emerging markets are buying up the gold because of these geopolitical changes and uncertainties. On top of it, they contribute today almost 50% to the world GDP vs only 19% in the year 2000; there is more capital available to exchange for physical gold,” according to the expert.

Asked how the latest developments could affect the greenback on the global markets, Grass argued that “it will lead to the collapse of the USD and the current system.”

He recalled that history shows that mankind has had “a major global economic crisis and major wars every 80 years.” Per Grass, the global community currently is “in the transit period and we don’t know yet what will come out of it. Physical gold, however, will shine and protect the people who own it.”

Bloomberg News earlier reported that China selling off Treasury bonds is “garnering renewed investor attention amid signs that tensions between the world’s largest economies may worsen.”

This comes as Beijing vowed to retaliate against the Biden administration’s tough new levies on a wide array of Chinese-made goods, ranging from semiconductors and solar power cells to electric cars – the latest move in the escalating trade war between China and the US.

The PRC’s Commerce Ministry warned that it would “take resolute measures to safeguard its own rights and interests” in response to the US’s 25-100% tariff hikes, accusing Washington of turning economic and trade issues into an instrument of “domestic political considerations.”
The developments were preceded by a spate of restrictive measures imposed on China by the Trump administration after it launched a trade war with Beijing in 2018, with Team Biden declining to roll back any of the restrictions put in place by its predecessors. China responded to the Trump-era measures with tit-for-tat restrictions on American exports, ranging from food goods to major American brand name products like Harley Davidson motorcycles and Jack Daniels whiskey.

In stark contrast, Beijing continues to deepen a comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction with Moscow, which was confirmed during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent talks with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as part of his two-day visit to China earlier this week.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the eighth Russian-Chinese Expo and the fourth forum of inter-regional cooperation in Harbin on Friday, Putin underscored that Moscow supports Beijing’s intention to localize production on Russian soil and is ready to provide Chinese investors with privileges.

“Large-scale joint projects are also being implemented in the field of industrial cooperation, Chinese automakers are actively entering the Russian market… I would like to emphasize that Russia not only welcomes the attitude of Chinese business to localize production on our territory, but is ready to provide investors from China with economic benefits, assistance and support, as well as access to a unique Russian technological base, our highly qualified personnel,” Putin said.

He added that the Russian-Chinese “indissoluble partnership directly contributes to the growth of the economies of both countries, reliably ensures energy security, stimulates the creation of new industries and high-paying jobs, as well as improves the well-being and quality of life of our citizens.”

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20240518/china-sells-off-record-amount-of-dollar-assets-as-us-remains-the-worlds-bully-1118514205.html

Massie strongly believes that the Federal Reserve is responsible for the current inflation crisis gripping the nation. He argues that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve printed trillions of dollars and loaned them to the Treasury Department, fueling unprecedented deficit spending. According to Massie, this process of debt monetization has devalued the dollar and led to the high inflation rates observed today.

In Massie’s view, debt monetization is a collaborative effort between various entities, including the White House, Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Congress, Big Banks, and Wall Street. He claims that this coordinated effort disproportionately benefits the wealthy and connected while adversely affecting retirees whose savings are eroded by inflation. Massie asserts that the most effective means of combating inflation is the elimination of the Federal Reserve.

[…]

Via https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2024/05/end-the-fed-thomas-massie-introduces-bill-to-abolish-the-federal-reserve/

By Sharyl Attkisson

The following is an excerpt from MedPage Today via Wall Street Journal.

Fraudulent studies have infiltrated top scientific journals, “leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue,” the Wall Street Journal  reported.

“Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole,” the article stated.

Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, New Jersey, which is slated to close 19 journals, has taken the largest hit, WSJ reported.

The problem is due to paper mills — entities that, “for a price, will list a scientist as an author of a wholly or partially fabricated paper,” WSJ noted. The paper mills then submit the work, “generally avoiding the most prestigious journals in favor of publications such as one-off special editions that might not undergo as thorough a review and where they have a better chance of getting bogus work published.”

And, on the other side, there are motivating factors at play, WSJ noted.

“World-over, scientists are under pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals — sometimes to win grants, other times as conditions for promotions,” WSJ wrote. “Researchers say this motivates people to cheat the system. Many journals charge a fee to authors to publish in them.”

At Wiley, closures are due to multiple factors, WSJ reported. Though a spokesperson for Wiley confirmed to WSJ that some of the journals were affected by paper mills, they declined to provide an exact number.

Link to article here.

[…]

Via https://sharylattkisson.com/2024/05/fake-scientific-studies-forcing-closures-of-medical-journals/

A Midwestern Doctor

Story at a Glance:

•Repeatedly forcing the public (e.g., through mandates) to use unsafe and ineffective therapies (that injured millions) has created a public relations disaster for the establishment.

•One of the mysteries of the COVID-19 response is what could have possibly justified breaking the public’s trust in the medical institutions our society revolves around. Here I will review the most compelling explanations we’ve come across after three years of investigating this commonly asked question.

For decades, I’ve noticed propaganda campaigns in the media will subtly signal what is in the works and it’s been a longstanding challenge for me to see if I can use those signals to accurately predict the future (e.g., this is how I predicted the course of the pandemic at the end of 2019).

In organic chemistry, one of the common subjects students are tested on is chemical synthesis. In synthesis problems, students are given a set of chemical reactions that can be performed, and are then expected to deduce how a combination of those reactions can be sequentially performed to transform a starting chemical to the desired final product.

The reason it’s essentially possible to “predict” the future by studying a public relations (propaganda) campaign is that like the synthesis problems, the PR field has a fairly limited number of tools to accomplish its agenda, and as a result, if you see one step being enacted, it often cleanly fits into a 10-step campaign you’ve seen conducted before (e.g., if it matches the 4th step of the previous campaign, you can reasonably infer the 10th step will likely to come to pass in the future).

As a result, I tend to view many media campaigns as “synthesis” problems. I consider their sponsors’ likely goals, the sequential steps that would need to be taken to enact those goals, and then see if what I’m currently observing fits into one of those sequences.

In turn, I’ve been amazed at how frequently this process has allowed me to know what’s in the pipeline, and over the years, I’ve reached a few key conclusions:

1. Synthesis problems are something college students typically struggle with (while not that complicated, they differ from the typical “first-order” thinking students are typically tested on, where they are just expected to memorize things and then regurgitate them). I believe this same blind spot is what prevents people from recognizing that when the same propaganda “synthesis” campaigns are conducted in the media again and again.

2. While propaganda is incredibly effective and appears monolithic (e.g., consider the complete insanity it made people unshakably believe throughout COVID-19), the majority of people who orchestrate it typically aren’t that intelligent or creative. Instead, they tend to use the same proven steps again and again, which while not optimal, are effective enough to accomplish their goals because they always have the weight of the mass media behind them.

Note: one of the best illustrations of this was Trump’s interactions with the media, as he regularly gave the response which effectively countered the current PR campaign against him. Yet rather than adapt and effectively respond to Trump’s response, the entire media would double-down on its initial message, frequently leading to their PR campaign boosting rather than undermining Trump’s popularity. Yet, despite this approach clearly not working, the media kept on doing it, which I took as a sign their adaptability within their campaigns was actually quite limited.

3. One of the biggest “red flags” for me is seeing a propaganda campaign unfold that is structured in a significantly different way from the baseline I’ve come to expect from watching previous iterations of those campaigns.

For example, I am used to the media whipping up hysteria about an inconsequential infectious disease (e.g., bird flu) every few years. The key thing which told me COVID was going to turn into a global disaster was the fact during the first few months (November 2019-March 2020) the media instead downplayed it as much as possible (e.g., the “it’s just a flu bro” meme was everywhere and anyone who raised concerns about it was accused of being racist towards Chinese people). Given that the entire biosecurity apparatus has been begging for something like COVID-19 for decades to justify their existence (and funding), the fact that they were downplaying it signaled that something much more nefarious was in the works.

[…]

Via https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dissecting-the-new-york-times-plea