By now, many will be familiar with Project MKULTRA. For decades, the CIA conducted highly unethical experiments on humans in order to perfect brainwashing, mind control and torture techniques.

Perhaps the program's most notorious aspect was the administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs to targets, particularly LSD. These substances were brought to Langley's attention in 1948 by Richard Kuhn, one of 1,600 Nazi scientists covertly spirited to the U.S. via Operation Paperclip following World War II. When MKULTRA was formally established five years later, some individuals consulted directly on the project.

The unwitting dosing of U.S. citizens with LSD is infamous; among those spiked were CIA operatives themselves. That the Agency exploited mental patients, prisoners, and drug addicts for the purpose - "people who could not fight back," in the words of an unnamed Agency operative - is less well-known.

A study by academics at the University of Ottawa's Culture and Mental Health Disparities Lab sheds significant new light on this underexplored component of MKULTRA and illuminates a hitherto wholly unknown dimension of the program; people of color, overwhelmingly Black Americans, were disproportionately targeted by the CIA in its service.

One of John Pilger's most remarkable documentaries, bringing a little-known story to a wide audience, is Stealing a Nation, about how British governments ruthlessly expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a crown colony in the Indian Ocean, in the late 1960s and early 70s to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.

The truth about the brutal removal of 1,500 islanders and the official conspiracy to deny the presence of an indigenous population did not emerge for another 20 years. Secret official files were unearthed at the Public Record Office, in London, by lawyers acting for the former inhabitants of the coral archipelago, who wished to return to their homeland. Historian Mark Curtis described the enforced depopulation in Web of Deceit, his 2003 book about Britain's post-war foreign policy. The British media all but ignored it, while the Washington Post called it a 'mass kidnapping'.

The corrosion of the materials will eventually trigger an environmental disaster.

Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Tuesday that up to 100,000 tons of chemical weapons of Nazi Germany left after World War II could be resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea ready to trigger an environmental disaster as they corrode over time.

Gazeta Wyborcza wrote that between 40,000 to 100,000 tons of war-era weaponry lie at the bottom of various parts of the Baltic Sea.

"The exact quantity is difficult to estimate today. It is similarly difficult to precisely define all the dumping sites. After the Potsdam conference, soldiers of the Soviet Union who disarmed ammunition depots in Poland and Germany were responsible for 'neutralising' German chemical weapons."

According to the newspaper, the chemical weapons in question are mainly barrels of mustard gas, aviation bombs, and mines containing chemical warfare agents, mainly mustard and arsenic.

On August 4th, I wrote an article criticising a NATO video that purported to debunk two "myths" about the organisation. The video claimed that "NATO is a defensive alliance" and "NATO does not seek confrontation". I described these claims as "false" on the grounds that NATO has carried out several offensive operations.

Logically, if an organisation has carried out offensive operations, it cannot be "defensive" - at least not wholly defensive, which is what "not seeking confrontation" implies.

Ian Rons has criticised my article. He begins by disputing that the invasion of Afghanistan was an offensive operation, noting that 9/11 was "the only time in NATO's history when the mutual defense clause, Article 5, was invoked".

I find vaccines quite fascinating. To be more accurate, I find the thinking and emotion around vaccines endlessly fascinating... and often quite disturbing. They have become, what we in the UK call 'national treasures.'

A national treasure is someone, such as Dame Judi Dench, or Sir David Attenborough. We laugh at their little jokes, we forgive them any possible weakness, we treat their statements as carrying a great and solemn weight. They have moved to a sainted realm.

If, for example, someone was to say about David Attenborough. 'God, what a terrible bore. Time he was put into a nursing home, and stopped moaning on about Climate Change...' This statement would not, I can guarantee, be met with Universal approval.' Moving on ...

Mithridatism. Most people have never heard of it.

'Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word is derived from Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity.'

From my favourite website of all time - Wikipedia. Hey, before you start, it's good for non-contentious subjects.

From mithridatism came the substance Theriac Mithridatium. Also called Galene, or Venetian treacle. These were the universal panaceas, designed to cure all ailments suffered by mankind ... and, of course, womankind. They were complex to prepare:

'The preparation of Galene was simple in that its ingredients were free of fractional measures. Four vipers cut down small were placed in a solution of sal ammoniac, about one gallon, to which were added nine specified herbs and Attic wine, together with five fresh squills also cut down small. The pot was covered with clay and set upon a fire. When the vapour came out of the four small holes left in the clay seal, dark and turgid, the heat had reached the vipers and they were cooked. The pot was left to cool for a night and day. The roasted matter was taken out and pounded until all was reduced to powder. After 10 days the powder was ready for the next stage of manufacture.

At the final stage the prescribed quantities of 55 herbs previously prepared by various processes, along with the prescribed quantity of squill and viper flesh powder (48 drachms), were added to hedychium, long pepper and poppy juice (all at 24 drachms); eight herbs including cinnamon and opobalsam (all at 12 drachms); 18 herbs including myrrh, black and white pepper and turpentine resin (at 6 drachms); 22 others and then Lemnian earth and roasted copper (at 4 drachms each); bitumen and castoreum (the secretion of beaver); 150 drachms of honey and 80 drachms of vetch meal.

The concoction took some 40 days to prepare, after which the process of maturation began. Twelve years was considered by Galen the proper period to keep it before use. Galen records that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius consumed the preparation within 2 months of its being compounded without ill effect.

Mithridatium was similar but contained fewer ingredients and no viper but did contain lizard! The other differences were that the opium content of Andromachus' theriac was higher than that of Mithridatium, which also differed in containing no Lemnian earth, copper or bitumen and 14 fewer herbal ingredients...' ¹

Simple to prepare ... I think I would prefer to make a bacon sandwich, thanks very much.

The Manifesto of Health Minister Roberto Speranza

An infection, even one as lethal as cancer, often begins with a single wound. Through this wound the pathogen enters the body by way of a single cell, where it pathologically replicates and corrupts those around it until eventually it consumes the entire host.

As goes infection, so goes totalitarianism. And in 2020, totalitarianism found its wound in the free world by way of Lombardy, Italy. More specifically, by way of one Health Minister Roberto Speranza, on whose order 50,000 Lombardy residents were placed under lockdown on February 21, 2020, the first lockdown in the modern western world. Within weeks, lockdown had spread to cities across Italy, until the entire nation was placed on lockdown on March 9. By April 2020, more than half the world's population — some 3.9 billion people — had been placed under lockdown.

These lockdowns were unprecedented in the western world and weren't part of any democratic country's pandemic plan prior to Xi Jinping's lockdown of Wuhan, China. They failed to meaningfully slow the spread of the coronavirus and killed tens of thousands of young people in every country in which they were tried, including Italy.

Archaeologists have found butchered bones from a mother mammoth and her calf and signs of controlled fire at the Hartley locality, an open-air site on the Colorado Plateau in northern New Mexico, the United States.

Recognizing early human occupation sites in the Americas traditionally rests on discovery of elaborately worked stone tools.

The origins of this technology trace back to the 'Upper Paleolithic revolution' in Europe approximately 45,000 years ago.

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 4,500-year-old temple dedicated to the Egyptian sun god Ra at the site of Abu Ghurab, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cairo.

The temple was built sometime during ancient Egypt's fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.) — a "period in which the cult of the sun reached its apex with the construction of a new type of monument specifically devoted to the sun god, commonly known as 'Sun Temple,'" said Massimiliano Nuzzolo, co-director of the archaeological dig and a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He co-directs it with Rosanna Pirelli of the University of Naples "L'Orientale" in Italy.

The sun cult was a powerful cult in ancient Egyptian religion. In later times, Ra merged with Amun — the chief god of Thebes (Luxor) — to form Amun-Ra who was regarded, at least by some Egyptians, as being the most powerful of the Egyptian gods. He was worshiped until around 1,500 years ago, the time that Egyptian polytheism became extinct.

The newly uncovered sun temple was made from mud bricks and measured at least 197 feet long and 66 feet wide (60 meters by 20 m). It contained an L-shaped entrance portico, a courtyard, storage rooms and rooms that may have been used for cultic purposes, Nuzzolo told Live Science in an email. "The walls of this building were all plastered in black and white and often also show traces of painting in red and blue," Nuzzolo said. The entrance portico was partially made of white limestone and had two limestone columns.

In Chapter 1, I broached the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, and introduced Francesco Carotta's very weird hypothesis that the historical model underlying the Lamb of God was one Gaius Julius Caesar. I finished with a quick overview of Caesar's character and accomplishments, the purpose of which was to establish, first, that Caesar's memory has been tarnished by his enemies and their fellow-travellers down through the ages; and, second, that his character shares many of the personality traits associated with Jesus - most notably the strong emphasis on mercy, and the over-riding concern with the welfare of the poor.

On its own that doesn't come anywhere near close to establishing the plausibility of the Jesus-Caesar connection. For that, we need to look at some of the specific incidents in Caesar's biography, which is what we're going to do now. Most of what follows is a distillation of Francesco Carotta's work, which goes into a great deal more detail than I'm capable of here; in other words, this is a light gloss that leaves a lot out. With that out of the way, here we go.

Caesar claimed descent from Venus¹, with his divine ancestry by way of the Roman founder Æneas. Similarly, Jesus was said to be descended from the line of David, and to be the literal son of Yahweh. It may also be notable that the dove was a symbol of Venus, and plays a prominent role in Christian symbolism.

In the lactose intolerant community, it's a bit of a running joke that you often throw caution to the wind and gorge on dairy products on a daily basis, damn the consequences.

A quick search on Twitter, for example, would find you plenty of examples of lactose intolerant users proclaiming that "being lactose intolerant won't ever stop me from tearing up a milkshake or some ice cream" or that "all lactose intolerant people do is eat dairy and tweet about eating dairy".

While sacrificing your bowel's peace for a bite of cheese might seem reckless, and a little bit sadistic, a study has found that humans have actually been eating dairy in the face of lactose intolerance for thousands of years.