June 8, 1968. Running for the Democratic nomination, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the crowded “pantry” (actually, a food preparation area) of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after his primary election victory.1 His alleged killer, 24-year old Palestinian-American Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, never got close to Kennedy. He fired shots that hit five bystanders as Kennedy supporters struggled to subdue him; but none of his shots hit Kennedy. The fatal shot behind Kennedy’s ear came from just 1-3 inches away, according to Thomas Noguchi MD, who performed the autopsy.
On April 4, 1968, a single bullet from an assassin’s rifle killed renowned civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Many investigators have argued that James Earl Ray, the alleged gunman, was part of a conspiracy, and some have pointed to FBI or CIA. But he pleaded guilty and was treated as a lone gunman. A very few observers have suggested that the KGB perpetrated King’s murder. Now Kenneth J. Dillon of Scientia Press has devised a theory that shows why we should consider the KGB the leading suspect. See https://www.scientiapress.com/kgb-theory. Here Dillon is interviewed by Stephen J. Dillon.
Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) was a noted historian, polymath, and theorist of the evolution of civilizations.
Born and raised in Boston, Quigley planned to pursue a career in biochemistry. But he soon shifted to history, to which he brought an analytical, scientific approach and a questing spirit. After receiving a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D in history from Harvard University,1 he taught at Princeton and Harvard. In 1941 Quigley joined the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he came to teach a highly regarded course, “Development of Civilization”.
On April 27, 1996, 76-year old William Colby, former director of the CIA, disappeared from his vacation home on the water at Rocky Point, Maryland. Colby had spent the day at a marina fixing his sloop. He returned home after 6 pm, phoned his wife, who was visiting her mother in Texas, and told her he was tired and would eat supper, then go to bed. He watered his trees, met with his gardener and his visiting sister around 7:15 pm (sunset was at 7:57), and fixed himself a meal. The next day there was no sign of him. Eventually, a neighbor phoned the police. They found his supper half-eaten. The computer and radio were on. His canoe was missing.1
By the next day a full-scale search with helicopters and divers was under way.
August 4, 1962. Celebrity actress Marilyn Monroe died in her bedroom in Los Angeles (or in the guest house near her house, from which she was carried back to her bedroom).1
On October 12, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was murdered on the canal towpath in Georgetown1. A divorced artist from a prominent family, Meyer was known by insiders to have been President John F. Kennedy’s senior female consort during his White House years, though the story never leaked to the public.
Her murder and the ensuing trial of Raymond Crump, Jr., an African-American laborer found by the police in the vicinity of the murder, drew a good deal of attention at the time. Crump had been identified by a gas station attendant helping start a car on a road overlooking the canal. Hearing cries of “Somebody help me. Somebody help me” and two shots, the attendant ran to look.
Sometimes a storyteller misses the real meaning of the story.
By all accounts, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dangerous episode of the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union came frighteningly close to launching nuclear attacks at each other. Only fear, luck, and occasionally inspired negotiating moved them onto the path of resolving the crisis−via a humiliating Soviet withdrawal in the face of U.S. nuclear superiority.
Historians have identified many motives for the initial Soviet decision to place missiles in Cuba.
Students have long struggled, often in vain, with the rules of Latin grammar. The structure of sentences in Latin seems strange to the mind of an Indo-European native speaker. Also strange is Latin’s heavy use of gerundive and absolute constructions: all those verbal nouns entail a very different pattern of thinking than goes on in modern Indo-European languages.
The famous spiral disk found in Phaistos, Crete in 1908 has long defied efforts to translate it or even to identify the language in which it is written or what kind of a document it might be (it is here in color to aid analysis). Though many scholars and amateurs have proposed theories and even translations, none has seemed persuasive to the great majority of observers. A skeptical view holds that the disk is a forgery, but most scholars reject this. Many scholars agree that the small sample of language in the disk makes a breakthrough very unlikely unless and until other samples of the writing are found.
The Internal Armed Conflict in Colombia since 1948
by Stephen J. Dillon
El Bogotazo and La Violencia
On April 9, 1948, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá, Colombia, and nothing would ever be the same. Gaitán was the leader of the Liberal Party, nicknamed “The People’s Leader” for his social-populist stance, and had been highly influential for nearly twenty years, having successfully mobilized public opinion against the United Fruit Company in 1929, while representing the interests of the oppressed workers of the Banana Zone. He had meetings scheduled for that afternoon with Fidel Castro, then a student activist, and Rómulo Betancourt, former president of Venezuela, but when he went out for lunch, he was killed by Juan Roa Sierra, a young shoeshiner with delusions of grandeur. The circumstances of his assassination remain ambiguous, but a conspiracy is suspected.
The Afghan Herbal Medicines for Addiction and Depression project aims to conduct clinical trials of promising herbal medicines drawn from Afghanistan’s high-potential medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP) sector, in keeping with traditional Unani medicine. Addiction (overwhelmingly from opiates) and depression (some from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the horrors of Afghanistan’s wars, and some from mistreatment of women) represent especially salient targets, and they possess worldwide importance. Unani herbal medicines have been reported in preliminary Iranian clinical studies to be effective and safe in these indications, and they possess certain advantages over synthetic drugs. However, thorough, scientific, multicenter trials need to be done.
Every nation has divisive issues. While most are perennials, over time new issues gain salience as others fade. At times of rising political and social tensions, such as the US since 1990, divisive issues multiply and take on a sharper edge.
If we wish to cope with these issues or even resolve some of them, it is useful to have a shared understanding of what they are