Archaeologists are gushing after "an extraordinary find" of a perfectly preserved chariot with "no parallel in Italy thus far" was made at Pompeii.

The "exceptional discovery" has already been described by one expert in the ancient world as the equivalent of discovering a Roman-era sports car.

"Many of the vehicles I'd written about before ... are your standard station wagon or vehicle for taking the kids to soccer. This is a Lamborghini. This is an outright fancy, fancy car," said Eric Poehler, a classics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Based on a manual recently discovered in a 3,500-year-old medical papyrus, University of Copenhagen Egyptologist Sofie Schiødt has been able to help reconstruct the embalming process used to prepare ancient Egyptians for the afterlife. It is the oldest surviving manual on mummification yet discovered.

In ancient Egypt, embalming was considered a sacred art, and knowledge of the process was the preserve of very few individuals. Most secrets of the art were probably passed on orally from one embalmer to the other, Egyptologists believe, so written evidence is scarce; until recently, only two texts on mummification had been identified.

Egyptologists were therefore surprised to find a short manual on embalming in a medical text that is primarily concerned with herbal medicine and swellings of the skin. The manual has recently been edited by Schiødt.

The fact that Altinum had to be equipped with a port was taken for granted in consideration of the commercial role of the Roman city, a role well testified by the ancient authors and also by the material evidence found during the excavations.

Altinum was a centre for commerce coming from the north, through the Via Claudia Augusta, and from the Po Valley hinterland, as well as from maritime routes. Wood, oil and wine certainly passed through it, but the city itself was famous for the production of goods to be exported, such as wool. The reconstruction of its port system, however, has only recently been achieved and owes much to the impressive images from aerial and satellite photos and to geophysical investigations.

Non-invasive research is, in fact, providing a clear picture of the appearance of the urban port, while underwater investigations are making it possible to interpret Roman-era structures in the northern lagoon belonging to an extensive port system.

On February 23, 2021, China's Global Times published an editorial entitled "Five Eyes Today's Axis of White Supremacy" which condemned the new anti-Chinese attacks by the members of the Intelligence apparatus which has accelerated in recent weeks.

The editorial began by condemning the Canadian government's recent decision to unanimously condemn China as a sponsor of genocide during the embarrassing 266-0 vote on February 21, and then said:

"Canada, the UK and Australia, three members of the Five Eyes alliance, have recently taken action to put pressure on China. They have formed a US-centered, racist, and mafia-styled community, willfully and arrogantly provoking China and trying to consolidate their hegemony as all gangsters do."

While major mainstream press covering this editorial decried China Times's accusations as conspiratorial and foolish, it is worth asking if there is merit and truth underlying the condemnation?

For those who may not be aware, the Five Eyes is the name given to the British GCHQ-controlled surveillance structure that involves the four primary Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth countries (Britain, Canada, Australian and New Zealand) along with the United States.

On February 4, 2021 an incredible array of original documents were published online anonymously featuring the largest array of evidence that British Intelligence, GCHQ and MI6 operating through a multitude of front organizations like Bellingcat and the Integrity Initiative have been working non-stop for over 6 years to undermine Syria, Russia and an array of other sovereign nation states. These documents can be found in full here.

For those who may not know, The Integrity Initiative is an anti-Russian propaganda outfit funded to the tune of $140 million by the British Foreign office.

The exposure of the British hand behind the scenes affords us a unique glimpse into the real historical forces undermining America's true constitutional tradition throughout the 20th century, and also the organic formation of a world of sovereign republics from the 19th century to the present.

One of the biggest obstacles to seeing this modus operandi run by the British Empire is located in the belief in a mythology which has become embedded in the global psyche for over half a century and which we should do our best to free ourselves of.

Moscow is painfully aware that the US/NATO "strategy" of containment of Russia is already reaching fever pitch. Again.

This past Wednesday, at a very important meeting with the Federal Security Service board, President Putin laid it all out in stark terms:

We are up against the so-called policy of containing Russia. This is not about competition, which is a natural thing for international relations. This is about a consistent and quite aggressive policy aimed at disrupting our development, slowing it down, creating problems along the outer perimeter, triggering domestic instability, undermining the values that unite Russian society, and ultimately to weaken Russia and put it under external control, just the way we are witnessing it transpire in some countries in the post-Soviet space.

Not without a touch of wickedness, Putin added this was no exaggeration: "In fact, you don't need to be convinced of this as you yourselves know it perfectly well, perhaps even better than anybody else."

The Kremlin is very much aware "containment" of Russia focuses on its perimeter: Ukraine, Georgia and Central Asia. And the ultimate target remains regime change.

Putin's remarks may also be interpreted as an indirect answer to a section of President Biden's speech at the Munich Security Conference.

According to Biden's scriptwriters,

Putin seeks to weaken the European project and the NATO alliance because it is much easier for the Kremlin to intimidate individual countries than to negotiate with the united transatlantic community ... The Russian authorities want others to think that our system is just as corrupt or even more corrupt.

A clumsy, direct personal attack against the head of state of a major nuclear power does not exactly qualify as sophisticated diplomacy. At least it glaringly shows how trust between Washington and Moscow is now reduced to less than zero. As much as Biden's Deep State handlers refuse to see Putin as a worthy negotiating partner, the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have already dismissed Washington as "non-agreement capable."

Once again, this is all about sovereignty. The "unfriendly attitude towards Russia," as Putin defined it, extends to "other independent, sovereign centers of global development." Read it as mainly China and Iran. All these three sovereign states happen to be categorized as top "threats" by the US National Security Strategy.

Yet Russia is the real nightmare for the Exceptionalists: Orthodox Christian, thus appealing to swaths of the West; consolidated as major Eurasian power; a military, hypersonic superpower; and boasting unrivaled diplomatic skills, appreciated all across the Global South.

In contrast, there's not much left for the deep state except endlessly demonizing both Russia and China to justify a Western military build-up, the "logic" inbuilt in a new strategic concept named NATO 2030: United for a New Era.

The experts behind the concept hailed it as an "implicit" response to French President Emmanuel Macron's declaring NATO "brain dead."

Well, at least the concept proves Macron was right.

Want to avoid the joycamps? Afraid of being unpersoned? Then be a goodthinker and watch 1984! There's a reason the term "Orwellian" is used so often today. From the news to politics, the novels and allegories of writer George Orwell help explain how and why the Big Lies are disseminated, and with good reason. Orwell grokked the true nature of totalitarianism, and how its pathological twisting of reality perception helps it achieve and maintain power. In the year 1984, and in recognition of the the work's importance, filmmaker Michael Radford adapted the famous novel to the big screen with resounding results. True to the spirit of Orwell's text, it stands on its own as bleak glimpse at a Britain under the grip of Soviet-style pathocracy.

This week on MindMatters, we discuss Radford's insightful re-telling of the book and what makes it utterly worth the time and effort to watch. We delve into what makes 1984 even better than we remember it and required viewing for those seeking to understand the societal and political developments unfolding before our eyes. Exceptionally quotable, we also review the many gems of the script and book that distill and deconstruct the thinking and intentions of what a full-blown and truly psychopathic political system looks and sounds like. Few books and films get so close to describing reality as well as 1984 does.


Running Time: 01:05:19

Download: MP3 — 59.8 MB

Lesbos' Petrified Forest was formed when a volcano exploded in the island's north, covering the entire area with ash and lava. The area, which spans 15,000 hectares, is renowned for its vivid and colorful fossilized tree trunks. Experts have made an "extraordinary" discovery of a tree which is still intact after being petrified by a volcanic eruption 20 million years ago in Greece.

The huge tree measured 19.6 meters (21.4 yards) -- complete with branches and a root system --was discovered during in an excavation along the Kalloni-Sigri highway.

Nickolas Zouros, a professor of geology at the University of the Aegean, had been excavating the fossilized forest ecosystem but told CNN he had never uncovered such a find. Experts have found numerous examples of vegetation including conifers, fruit trees and oaks. Zouros added:

"We have a lot of findings over these years but the latest ones are the most important -- really extraordinary. This is not something very often found in excavations. We usually find logs without branches and roots. It's the only one found in the excavation found with the branches, the root system, and was found on a layer full of leaves -- we have all the organs of the tree in the regional system. This is unique, until now -- we have been excavating for 25 years and have never found such a tree."

Conifers, fruit producing trees, sequoia trees, pine, palm, cinnamon and oak trees are among the specimens uncovered in the petrified forest.

There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long - the story goes - was a gesture of Britain's benevolence.

New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik - published by Columbia University Press - deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.

It's a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today.

How did this come about?

It happened through the trade system. Prior to the colonial period, Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and paid for them in the normal way - mostly with silver - as they did with any other country. But something changed in 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade.

As a University of Queensland researcher examined a 4600-year-old Egyptian painting last year, a speckled goose caught his eye.

UQ scientist Dr Anthony Romilio said the strange but beautiful bird was quite unlike modern red-breasted geese (Branta ruficollis), with distinct, bold colours and patterns on its body, face, breast, wings and legs.

"The painting,Meidum Geese, has been admired since its discovery in the 1800s and described as 'Egypt's Mona Lisa'," he said.

"Apparently no-one realised it depicted an unknown species.

"Artistic licence could account for the differences with modern geese, but artworks from this site have extremely realistic depictions of other birds and mammals."

Dr Romilio said no bones from modern red-breasted geese (Branta ruficollis) had been found on any Egyptian archaeological site.

"Curiously, bones of a similar but not identical bird have been found on Crete," he said.

"From a zoological perspective, the Egyptian artwork is the only documentation of this distinctively patterned goose, which appears now to be globally extinct."