Author Archives: circleof13

Archaeologists Uncover Lost Opioid Tradition in Ancient Egypt

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The popularity of the narcotic in ancient Egypt had been hinted at in medical texts from Hippocrates to Galen and Dioscorides, as well as in religious symbolism, such as the poppy goddess on Crete, but it had been difficult to prove.
[…]
The findings suggest a more sophisticated understanding of pain and mind altering experiences in ancient Egypt than previously thought. “If opiate use stretched from kings to commoners, we must reframe our perceptions about Egyptian medicine and opium’s role in its pharmacological sophistication,” writes Renton, in his email. “These findings would suggest that pain management, sedation, and perhaps controlled psychoactive experiences played meaningful roles in daily life and religious practice.”

https://nautil.us/archaeologists-uncover-lost-opioid-tradition-in-ancient-egypt-1247907/

A massive Cloudflare outage is affecting X, ChatGPT, and even Downdetector

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Cloudflare, a networking company that provides DDoS protection and delivery services for many companies around the globe, is experiencing a major outage that’s taking down sites across the web. Users are running into an error message when they try to access X, ChatGPT, and even the outage-tracking website DownDetector has an error message saying “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.”
[…]
The outage comes less than a month after a huge Amazon Web Services crash took down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and other services, which was followed by issues at Microsoft Azure that brought Xbox offline for hours.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/a-massive-cloudflare-outage-is-affecting-x-chatgpt-and-even-downdetector/ar-AA1QFzTQ

The Enduring Lesson of Jonestown

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The Jonestown legacy, first and foremost, is about honoring the victims of that horrible tragedy deep in the Guyanese jungle on November 18, 1978, including Maria Katsaris. But no less important is keeping the tragedy in front of our eyes as a reminder of the intimidation, fear, lies, and stifling of human freedom that are needed to keep a communist dictatorship alive, no matter how small. Jonestown was a repressive regime on a microcosmic scale, no matter how hard naysayers try to make Jim Jones the victim. Most importantly, as if we needed a reminder, Jonestown demonstrates once again that such regimes feed off the destruction of the family, the foundation of a free and peaceful political community.

https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-enduring-lesson-of-jonestown

Epstein Emails Raise Fresh Questions About Trump’s Treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell

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Blanche interviewed Maxwell in Tallahassee, Fl., on July 24 and 25. Days after the interview, Maxwell was transferred from a low-security federal prison in Florida to an all-women minimum-security prison northeast of Houston called Federal Prison Camp Bryan. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The contents of the emails immediately raised questions among some Administration critics about whether Blanche had pressed Maxwell enough during the interview. Lawyer George Conway wrote on X that he believes the emails show that Blanche’s questioning Maxwell “was either (a) completely incompetent; or (b) intentionally crafted not to elicit facts incriminating Trump.” Blanche replied on X that when he interviewed Maxwell, “law enforcement didn’t have the materials Epstein’s estate hid for years and only just provided to Congress. Stop talking. It’s unbecoming.”

Yet the Maxwell interview raised eyebrows separate from the recent emails. Cheryl Bader, a professor at Fordham Law and a former federal prosecutor, says several aspects of the Justice Department’s handling of Maxwell were out of the norm. It was “unusual” to have such a senior Justice Department official conducting such an interview, she says, noting that typically the prosecutor who handled the case would be involved in such an interview.

https://time.com/7334641/epstein-ghislaine-maxwell-trump-prison/

Circle of 13 Trivia

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Massacre of Kalavryta

The Holocaust of Kalavryta (Greek: Ολοκαύτωμα των Καλαβρύτων), or the Massacre of Kalavryta (Σφαγή των Καλαβρύτων), refers to the extermination of the male population and the subsequent total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, in Greece, by German occupying forces during World War II on 13 December 1943. It is the most serious case of war crimes committed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II.

On a mass murder mission named Unternehmen Kalavryta (Operation Kalavryta), which began from the coastal area of Achaea in Northern Peloponnese, Wehrmacht troops marched to the town of Kalavryta burning villages and murdering civilians on their way. When they reached the town they locked all women and children younger than 14 in the town's school and ordered all male residents 14 and older to a field just outside the village. There, the German troops machine-gunned down 1258 of them. There were only 13 survivors.

* * *

13 Seconds - Emmy Award-Winning Documentary
May 4, 1970
Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

Sixty-three shots in 13 seconds. Thirteen horrifying seconds in American history that resulted in the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others.

* * *

13 victims in 13 Seconds
Between sixty-one and sixty-seven shots were fired in thirteen seconds without order or warning. The outcome, four American students dead along with nine others injured. The four students shot and killed were Allison Krause, William (Bill) Shroeder, Sandra Scheuer, and Jeffrey (Jeff) Miller. Allison Krause was hit by a shot penetrating the left side of her body (through her arm and chest) about three hundred and fifty yards away. Bill was shot in the back four hundred feet away. Sandra was also shot about four hundred feet about but through her throat. Jeff was shoot in his mouth nearly two hundred and seventy-five feet away. A memorial for these students has been erected on the site where they died.


Of the thirteen shots that connected, seven were in the sides of the backs of students showing they were not advancing toward the Ohio National Guardsmen, they were fleeing. Therefore, not every student that congregated as the common was a participant in the peaceful demonstration that turned into a bloody murder scene. Some were walking to and from their classes, other were just spectators of the scene. The University was ordered closed immediately, first by President Robert White and then indefinitely by Portage County Prosecutor Ronald Kane under an injunction from Common Please Judge Albert Caris. Classes did not resume until the summer of 1970, and faculty members engaged in a wide variety of activities through the mail and off-campus meeting that enabled Kent State students to finish the semester.

Cont'd: https://circleof13.blogspot.com/2008/03/circle-of-13-trivia.html

Maryland task force says natural psychedelics are safe for therapeutic purposes

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Most notably, the group is recommending that a regulated psilocybin therapy program should be established in Maryland.
[…]
Furthermore, the assessment advocates for expunging the criminal records of Maryland residents who have been convicted of possessing psychedelic substances.

https://mugglehead.com/maryland-task-force-says-natural-psychedelics-are-safe-for-therapeutic-purposes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=maryland-task-force-says-natural-psychedelics-are-safe-for-therapeutic-purposes

A Garbage response. Russian prison sends Shirley Manson bureaucratic boilerplate, omitting name of hunger‑striking activist she appealed for

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he administration of Penal Colony No. 5 (IK-5) in Russia’s Oryol region has issued a formal, two-page response to a letter from Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson regarding the treatment of imprisoned Russian activist Mikhail Kriger. The letter never mentions Kriger by name—nor does it address the specific allegations of mistreatment that have led the activist to maintain a hunger strike for over a month. Instead, the document offers only a boilerplate description of the penal system’s legal framework and its corrective goals, describing the prison’s actions as “proper and lawful.”

The letter was shared with Mediazona by Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova.

https://en.zona.media/article/2025/11/10/garbage

Japanese anti-war groups fear Okinawa will once again become battlefield

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Anti-base and anti-war groups from across Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture have held a seminar in Tokyo, expressing concerns and doubts about the government’s military expansion in Okinawa and the southwestern islands.
[…]
Participants noted that the southwestern islands and other areas are at risk of being drawn into the frontlines of war, and that it is imperative to prevent the regional security situation from deteriorating further.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202511/16/WS691933bda310d6866eb29b7b.html

Was Covid Always a CIA Plot?

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A very brief overview of the timeline suggests that the CIA and the Intelligence Community are implicated in the creation of the virus, a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and censorship to evade any public scrutiny for their role in the pandemic.

2015: The Intelligence Community held quarterly meetings with Dr. Ralph Baric and discussed “possible human adaptation” to coronavirus evolution.

2019-2020: The CIA had a spy working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology doing “both offensive and defensive work” with pathogens, according to Seymour Hersh. That asset reports in early 2020 that there was a laboratory accident that resulted in the infection of a researcher.

March 18, 2020: The Department of Homeland Security replaced Health and Human Services as the lead Federal Agency responding to Covid, as explained in depth in Debbie Lerman’s The Deep State Goes Viral.

Spring 2020: The CIA offered bribes to scientists to bury their findings refuting the “proximal origin” theory advanced by Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a whistleblower. The House Oversight Committee explains: “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.” Then, however, the “six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.”

2020: Dr. Fauci began holding secret meetings at CIA headquarters “without a record of entry” in order to “influence its Covid-19 origins investigation,” according to a whistleblower. “He knew what was going on…He was covering his ass and he was trying to do it with the Intel community,” the whistleblower told Congress.”

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/11/15/was-covid-always-a-cia-plot/

The New Battlefield: Cognitive/Semantic Warfare

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Neuroweapons in Cognitive Warfare
When the Battlefield Is the Human Mind
https://osintteam.blog/neuroweapons-in-cognitive-warfare-21c5f54fb20a
In the evolving landscape of global conflict, traditional weapons are being replaced by more insidious and invisible tools. Among the most dangerous are neuroweapons — technologies and psychological strategies designed to directly manipulate, disrupt, or degrade human cognition, emotion, perception, and memory.

While cyberattacks target infrastructure, neuroweapons target the brain itself — the final frontier of warfare. These tools are not theoretical. They are being researched, tested, and in some cases deployed today under the broader umbrella of cognitive warfare.

If we fail to act now, these silent weapons will undermine societies from within, subverting free will, collapsing trust, and destroying the very faculties that make democracy and human dignity possible.
[…]
These tools may not kill but they can unmake a person, fracture a society, or erase shared reality.

Why Neuroweapons Are a Threat to Humanity

They Bypass the Body and Go Straight for the Self 
Unlike kinetic weapons, neuroweapons attack the core of identity: belief, memory, decision-making, and emotional balance. Victims may not even know they’ve been targeted until they’ve changed.
They Are Hard to Attribute and Easy to Deny
Neuroweapons leave no craters or scars. Their effects can be dismissed as mental illness, stress, or coincidence. This plausible deniability makes them the perfect tool for covert repression and political warfare.
They Can Be Used by Non-State Actors and ‘Black Sheep’ Insiders
It doesn’t take a state military to carry out neurowarfare. Rogue scientists, private intelligence contractors, criminal networks, or embedded actors in medical or tech systems can use them to target whistleblowers, activists, or civilians.
They Create Irreversible Damage to Minds and Institutions
Neuroweapons not only harm individuals; they erode public trust, delegitimize institutions, and degrade mental health at scale — leading to increased suicides, societal division, and economic collapse.

DARPA GARD: From Illusion of Defense to Semantic Weaponry – A New Era of Cyber Warfare
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/darpa-gard-from-illusion-defense-semantic-weaponry-new-katja-sidunova-kzqwe
GARD — Guaranteeing AI Robustness against Deception. The deeper I plunged into its intricacies, the clearer it became: this narrative transcends mere defense, venturing into the creation of an entirely new, unprecedented class of weaponry. The catalyst for this discourse stems from the official DARPA document HR001119S0026 and the analytical brief “GARD: The Science of Deception from DARPA”, which collectively paint a picture worthy of a dystopian thriller. The unsettling truth is, this isn’t fiction; it’s unfolding in our reality, right now.

We have grown accustomed to placing immense trust in artificial intelligence. It orchestrates our financial markets, assists in medical diagnoses, pilots aircraft, and safeguards national borders. But what if this intelligence can be manipulated to perceive what is absent? Or, conversely, to disregard an overt threat? The GARD program is not merely another research endeavor. It is Pandora’s Box, unleashing an era of semantic warfare, where the battleground is the machine’s very perception of reality.

[…]
This journey began with what are known as adversarial examples — minute, humanimperceptible alterations within a digital image (e.g., in a few pixels) that provoke neural networks into making egregious classification errors. A quintessential illustration: a “STOP” sign, subjected to such an attack, is misidentified as an “80 km/h Speed Limit” sign. This is no longer a benign vulnerability; it poses a direct and severe threat to safety, particularly for autonomous vehicles.

However, DARPA, through its GARD program, propelled this concept far beyond its initial scope. The focus dramatically shifted from the purely digital domain to the tangible world. The official program announcement explicitly details attacks on physical objects, such as “placing stickers on a road sign”. This fundamentally reshapes the strategic landscape. Now, an adversary need not compromise code or gain access to a neural network’s internal architecture. It suffices to manipulate the very physical reality that the machine “observes.”

Assessing “Cognitive Warfare”
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/11/14/assessing-cognitive-warfare/
Defining Cognitive Warfare

In Cognitive Warfare, the message is the munition, and the target is the mind of either specific individuals (e.g., elites, influencers, policymakers) or the collective population of a democratic state. Distorting what these individuals think is a precursor to how they think, and thus how they behave.

Early advocates such as the French officer, Francois du Cluzel, defined Cognitive Warfare as “the art of using technologies to alter the cognition of human targets, most often without their knowledge and consent.”[8] This early conception stressed Cognitive Warfare as an offensive form of cyber conflict; however, he recognized that countermeasures and preventive measures were required. Du Cluzel differentiated psychological operations from cognitive operations, but it is unclear whether the distinction is valid or of value. For du Cluzel, psychological warfare attempts to change what the target audience thinks, but Cognitive Warfare aims at shaping how they reason and their resultant behavior. This distinction lies at the heart of why human cognition is the central objective.

Cognitive War is the application of targeted and tailored messages and nonviolent methods used against civilian and military decision-makers or the general population of a target state to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired political, military, and informational outcomes.

While Cognitive Warfare is not new, there are a number of novel technologies that significantly enhance the reach and efficacy of activities that target the way decision-makers and individuals think about a crisis situation. Some have seen this as social media-based influence operations.[9] These technologies can be combined to “assess, access, and affect the cognitive space.”[10] While our competitors think in terms of systems and confronting and deceiving us, Western militaries orient on hardware, maneuver platforms, and kinetic operations.

Further reading:

The Matrix Has Upgraded Its Security
https://neo-concepts.com/ideas/semantic-control/

Forging the Semantic Key: AI-Assisted Resilience in an Age of Information Warfare
https://neo-concepts.com/posts/forging-the-semantic-key/