Category Archives: General

Mind-altering ‘brain weapons’ no longer only science fiction, say researchers

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The book traces the fascinating, if appalling, history of state-sponsored research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemicals.

During the cold war and after, the US, Soviet Union and China all “actively sought” to develop CNS-acting weapons, said Crowley. Their purpose was to cause prolonged incapacitation to people, including “loss of consciousness or sedation or hallucination or incoherence or paralysis and disorientation”.

The only time a CNS-acting weapon was used at scale was by the Russian Federation in 2002 to end the Moscow theatre siege. Security forces used fentanyl derivatives to end the siege, in which armed Chechen militants had taken 900 theatregoers hostage.

Most of the hostages were freed, but more than 120 died from the effects of the chemical agents and an undetermined number suffered long-term damage or died prematurely.

Since then, research has made significant advances. The academics argue that the ability exists to create much more “sophisticated and targeted” weapons that would once have been unimaginable.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/22/mind-altering-brain-weapons-no-longer-only-science-fiction-say-researchers

Jeffrey Epstein asked US ambassador to Turkey to ‘make him smile’ with ‘child’ photo

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Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein told current US ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack to “make me smile” with pictures of him and a “child”, according to a 2016 email that was released in a trove of correspondence by Congress on Wednesday.

“Send photos of you and child.. – make me smile,” Epstein, the disgraced late financier, wrote to Barrack in March 2016.

Epstein then responded to an email from Barrack, writing, “Photos look good.”

It is unclear what “child” Epstein was referring to in his email and what photos were contained in the emails sent by Barrack.
[…]
‘Smart’ shoes
The trove of emails also shows Epstein’s direct contact with at least one elite citizen of the UAE.

In 2011, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the chairman and CEO of DP World, emailed Epstein about sneakers embedded with GPS tracking devices advertised to monitor children. The email was titled, “Gps GTX Smart Shoe.”

Epstein responded: “thanks, great idea, i really like your friend”.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeffrey-epstein-asked-us-ambassador-turkey-make-him-smile-child-photo

Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert 2019 [medical publication from 2019]

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Abstract
Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30157295/

Investigative journalist takes Aleksandar Vučić to the Milan Prosecutor’s Office, suspicions that he was the organizer of the “human safari” in Sarajevo

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The investigation launched in Milan aims to clarify the role of Italian citizens suspected of participating in the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo.

According to Margeti, the positions held by Aleksi’s unit – where Vučić allegedly served – coincide with the locations identified as the sites of these “human safaris”.

The journalist further argues that Vučić and another member of the unit, Zlatko “Zak” Novakovic, were among the few fighters who spoke foreign languages ??and therefore may have been in contact with foreign visitors to frontline positions.

https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/gazetari-investigativ-con-ne-prokurorine-e-milanos-aleksander-vucicin-i104505

ICE detainee found dead and “hog-tied” in shower at Noem facility

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A Chinese immigrant died under suspicious circumstances at a Pennsylvania ICE detention center, and the autopsy tells a different story than the government’s official report.

Chaofeng Ge, 32, was found dead on August 5, 2025, just four days after being detained at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center run under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Medical examiners found him in a shower stall in what they called a “hog-tied” position — his hands and feet tied together behind his back with bedsheets, with a noose made from bed linens around his neck.

https://boingboing.net/2025/11/20/ice-detainee-found-dead-and-hog-tied-in-shower-at-noem-facility.html

Normalizing Far-Right Ideologies in the Western Balkans: Croatia’s Role at Home and Abroad

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The Croatian government’s normalization of the neo-Nazi far-right is intrinsically linked to its undermining of democracy in post-war Bosnia, a country facing secession threats by a Bosnian Serb leader in its worst political crisis in peacetime, one that has profound security risks, given the ethnonationalist partitionist violence that sparked the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The far-right ideology expressed in July’s concert in Croatia and the sentiment reflected in subsequent Nazi graffiti there that went un-condemned by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) political party were the backbone of the Croatian ethnonationalist war of aggression against central and western Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Today’s leader of the HDZ’s sister party in Bosnia, the HDZ BiH, is alleged to have requested Bosniaks from Croat-run concentration camps to use as forced labor when he was general director of the Soko factory in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, an allegation he denies.

Croatia’s normalization of this ideology suggests it may be turning to the dark politics of the past to shape the Western Balkans of today. At the same time, the region has become fertile ground for Russian influence, including the Kremlin’s support of the Bosnian Serb separatist leader, Milorad Dodik, who regularly cooperates with HDZ BiH political figures and endorses their political objectives.

https://www.justsecurity.org/125043/croatia-far-right-western-balkans/

Roll-back of digital rights prepared in secrecy

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Today, the Commission published its proposal for ‘simplification’ of digital rules, a package intended to deregulate digital laws to support businesses. The deregulation of the EU’s digital rulebook comes at a time when the tech industry is spending a record-breaking €151 million on EU lobbying. Most prominent is an attack on data privacy rules (GDPR) to support the development of artificial intelligence.

Corporate Europe Observatory published a new piece of research documenting how Big Tech has influenced the digital omnibus.

Key findings include:

Key demands from Big Tech firms and their affiliated lobby associations to water down the AI Act and weaken data protection made it into the Commission’s proposals;

Big Tech weaponised the Trump administration to attack the EU’s digital rulebook;

The Commission has opened the doors to business lobby groups in highly secretive meetings. Crucial steps in the preparation of the digital omnibus were five so-called Reality Checks, meetings heavily dominated by industry. Out of 138 invitees, 114 were business representatives. Only 9 civil society organisation representatives were invited.

Corporate Europe Observatory has retrieved a document which shows that the Commission has decided to exempt ‘Reality Checks’ from transparency measures that apply to other meetings with “interest representatives”.

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/11/roll-back-digital-rights-prepared-secrecy

Operation Gladio: The CIA’s Secret Army In Europe

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Three years after the end of World War II, the 1948 Brussels Treaty created the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union. And after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in 1949, the Western Union was left “devoid of its newly-expanded authority,” according to the University of Luxembourg.

But the Clandestine Committee was transformed into the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) in 1952 and, along with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), was linked to NATO. According to “The Cold War,” it was through this network that NATO member states organized the stay-behind network across Western Europe that would become known as Operation Gladio.

The CIA, with the help of MI6, was also instrumental towards setting up the stay-behind espionage networks. According to “The Declassified History of American Intelligence Operations in Europe” by Matthew M. Aid, the CIA intended to do “whatever it took” to prevent Western European countries from having any communist influence in their governments. And by the late 1960s, the CIA was “covertly financing dozens of underground stay-behind agent networks in thirteen Western European countries, including supposedly neutral Sweden.”

https://www.grunge.com/717106/operation-gladio-the-cias-secret-army-in-europe/