A ship cannon found off Marstrand has been dated by researchers to the 14th century. This means it could be the oldest artillery piece so far found in Europe.
In an interdisciplinary study published in the English maritime historical journal The Mariner’s Mirror, Swedish, German, and British researchers have examined a ship cannon discovered in 2001 off Marstrand.
The reason they believe it is a ship cannon, rather than a transported cannon, is because it still had remnants of a charge left in the powder chamber when found. In other words, it was loaded and ready for use. It is also thanks to these remaining charges that they have been able to date the ship cannon to the 14th century.
– The results show that the Marstrand cannon is very likely from the 14th century, making it one of the absolute oldest artillery pieces found in Europe,says Staffan von Arbin, marine archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, who led the study.
Researchers have documented the find, located at a depth of 20 meters by sport divers, using among other things 3D scanning. Further, they have conducted a chemical analysis showing that it is made of copper alloy and contains about 14 percent lead and only smaller amounts of tin. According to researchers, this was not optimal for casting cannons, and they therefore suggest it probably broke and was repaired.
– It’s clear that the person who cast the cannon did not have the necessary knowledge and understanding of different copper alloys’ properties, says von Arbin.
The next step is to try to locate the ship to which the Marstrand cannon belonged. The ship is likely heavily decayed, say researchers, but they believe it should still be possible to find wreckage.
Carlsten is a 17th-century stone fortress on Marstrand island. Artist unknown.
Marstrand is a picturesque seaside locality on the western coast of Sweden, known for its stunning archipelago and rich maritime history. One of its most iconic landmarks is Carlsten Fortress, a 17th-century stone fortress that offers panoramic views of the area. The locality is a hub for boating and sailing activities, and it has historically been an important trading port.
Marsrand is a popular tourist destination, particularly in the summer, offering a range of activities from kayaking to hiking in nearby nature reserves. Marstrand is easily accessible from major cities like Gothenburg, making it a convenient getaway for both locals and tourists.
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In just a few years, El Salvador defeated the brutal gang crime that had plagued the country for decades. President Nayib Bukele has been accused of being “undemocratic” by his globalist opponents, but among Salvadorans themselves he has achieved near-heroic status and is now spearheading a Bitcoin revolution.
El Salvador, literally “the Savior” or in other words “the land of the Savior”, formally became an independent country in 1842. The liberation of the Latin American country came after a civil war in the relatively newly formed country of the Central American Federation, which in 1823 had freed itself from the Mexican Empire, a Mexico that just two years earlier, in 1821, had proclaimed its independence from the Spanish crown.
Despite its name, the tiny nation would have to wait patiently for its salvation. El Salvador would come to be dominated by corrupt forces and has been known more than any other in modern times as part of Central America’s so-called “banana republics”, not only because of the presence of US-based corporate giants where the country went so far as to adopt the US dollar as its own currency, but also because El Salvador has long been known as a particular den of brutal and literally devil-worshipping criminal gangs, such as MS-13 and Barrio 18, which still have a strong presence even in the organized crime world.
Before that, the country was mainly associated with the protracted civil war that raged there for 13 long years between 1979 and 1992 in one of the many Cold War proxy conflicts between pro-American and pro-Soviet forces in the country.
Two years after theoutbreak ofthe Salvadoran civil war, Nayib Bukele was born in 1981 in the capital, San Salvador. His father, Armando Bukele Kattán, was a prominent Palestinian businessman and Muslim leader who arranged for his first-born son to study law at the Central American University in El Salvador. Nayib never completed his degree, however, and instead went into business. According to him, this experience would allow him to develop two skills that he later described as crucial to his political career – communicating and leading with clarity.
Bukeles’ political career began in earnest in 2012 when he was elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, a small municipality outside the capital San Salvador. His successes there – including economic reforms and social programs – led him to become mayor of the capital San Salvador in 2015. During this time, he distinguished himself as a simultaneously pragmatic, outspoken and visionary leader.
Despite the enormous risks involved in challenging the political establishment, which was completely infested by the tentacles of gang crime, Bukele came to increasingly openly criticize them for destroying the country and for betraying their voters.
Bukele meets the people.
In 2017, Bukele was expelled from his then-party, the FMLN, following internal conflicts, and founded his own party, Nuevas Ideas, which would become the platform for his daring campaign to run for president on a message of renewal and modernization. Despite difficult obstacles put in his way by political opponents, Bukele eventually won the 2019 elections by a historic margin, becoming the first president since 1992 not to belong to the two dominant parties, the socialist-oriented FMLN or the more bourgeois-conservative ARENA.
“They can kill anybody”
However, the difficulties were not over despite the electoral victory of the Salvadoran president, with his opponents sparing no means to stop him. They still controlled the Supreme Court and 90% of the legislature.
– I had to veto everything, and they override my vetoes. And they enact, they approved over 70 laws that I veto, Bukele explains in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson.
The only solution Bukele saw was to also win a majority in the country’s Congress, which he would also succeed in doing. Today, only the electoral court, controlled by the liberal opposition, tried unsuccessfully to have the president impeached and jailed, which Bukele himself believes failed only because of the establishment’s fear of a large-scale popular revolt if he were to be removed from office.
Bukele tells Carlson that his first priority was to fulfill his election promise to tackle organized crime once and for all.
– You can’t do anything unless you have peace. And once you achieve peace, then you can struggle for the other things, like infrastructure, wealth, well being, quality of life. So we had to start with peace. And in the case of El Salvador, we were literally the murder capital of the world, says Bukele.
Bukele salutes the Salvadoran army.
One of the first things he did was to double the number of soldiers in the country’s army, equip them with modern equipment and then systematically deploy them to fight organized crime with a determination that had previously been lacking. The gangs, understandably, did not appreciate this and tried to fight back – including a murder wave that killed 87 people in the small country in just three days.
– They can kill anybody. And if the state goes after them, the state has no intention of killing or harming anybody but the gang members. So you have 70,000 objectives, which were the 70,000 gang members, but they have 6 million possible targets (the population of the country). So it was almost an impossible task, said the president.
El Salvador’s new high-security prison CECOT, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo – or “terrorist prison” in English, houses the most serious gang members with a capacity for 40,000 prisoners. Life in the prison is extremely strict, with the only leisure time consisting of simple exercise and services by priests.
Even independent analysts point out that El Salvador is a very different country today than it was when Mr. Bukeles took office and that, according to the country’s official statistics, it has become the least crime-ridden of the American continents, including Canada and the United States.
– We’re safer than any other country in the western hemisphere. If I would have said that five years ago, they would say that I was crazy, right?
Mr. Bukele himself stresses that his government has not had access to any magic recipes, but that it has been able to solve the problem of gang crime because it had the political will and determination to actually do it.
– There’s always going to be crime, people breaking laws, but violent crime, people murdering and raping each other, is a voluntary decision that a government makes. Why would a government choose to have that? he asks.
Massive popular support
Politically, Bukeles’ El Salvador has also broken the mold on covid policy, with the government choosing to encourage healthy eating and exercise, rather than forcing the controversial covid vaccines on the population with covid passes. It was also one of the few countries to offer the drug hydroxychloroquine as an alternative treatment for COVID-19, something that Bukele pointed out was used by most world leaders themselves.
The focus of Bukele’s policies has been to push for economic reforms and, as part of this, he has made El Salvador the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender – meaning that it will be accepted as valid payment for all forms of debt and transactions. Enthusiasts of the new crypto-economy are now gathering in El Salvador, which many believe could become a new “tiger economy” in the Americas.
In the Western media, Bukele has been portrayed as something of a “dictator” who has rejected “human rights” in the context of mass arrests of suspected gang members and periods of prolonged military surveillance of specific areas of the country. Both domestic and international critics have accused the president of trying to centralize power, create a police state and undermine so-called democratic institutions and principles.
When he was re-elected in 2024 in a spectacular landslide with 84.6% of the vote, he responded to these criticisms in his much-publicized acceptance speech to the population by putting their rights before those of organized criminals.
– We are the safest country in the American continent. And what did they tell us? “You’re violating human rights”. Whose human rights? The rights of honest people? No. Perhaps we have prioritized the rights of the honest people over the criminals’ rights. That is all we have done, and that’s what you say is a human rights violation, Bukele declared.
Bukele with his wife Gabriela Roberta Rodríguez de Bukele. Photo: Casa Presidencial El Salvador
In an ironic response to similar epithets directed at him, he has referred to himself on Twitter/X as the “World’s coolest dictator”. The President has also become known for his extensive use of social media, particularly X, which he uses to communicate directly with the people, and sometimes to consult with the public on his decision-making.
This digital presence has made him very popular also among younger generations, who often see him as a modern leader of a very different type than the political establishment that ruled the country in the past.
The warning to the West
Bukele expresses personal criticism of the soft approach to criminals in the West, of which he considers El Salvador to be a part, pointing out that they are often seen as individuals with rights that need to be protected – even if they are violent killers and organized gang members. This attitude, according to Bukele, ultimately leads to a point where civilization itself begins to crumble.
– So western civilization reached the peak. We can all agree that we’re in the decline. So that is happening because we’re not maintaining, we’re not giving the correct maintenance to the civilization, he says, explaining that we are no longer striving to do things as well and grandly as possible.
– Democracy works, but if you don’t maintain it, it will fall like the wall.So what we have right now is a huge erosion of Western civilization, Bukele concludes.
He points out that governments today seem mostly interested in appeasing individual constituencies to get their votes – for example, by giving them large sums of money or other generous promises, and that they no longer seem to care about what is good for the nation as a whole.
– You cannot go on. I mean, it’s like obvious. It’s like somebody eats too much, right? I mean, you can be a little fat, right? It’s fine. But then if somebody’s morbidly fat, somebody will come and say, okay, you mean you have to stop, right? Because, you know, your heart would. Your heart can’t take it anymore.
US taxpayers should know that their government is using their money to fund communist movements against a democratic elected (and with a 90% approval rating) government in El Salvador.
One focus for the outspoken president, now that the gangs have been defeated, is to attract investors and tourists to the country – rather than being a haven for murderers and violent criminals. “There is enough money when no one steals“ is one of many similar quotes that sum up Bukele’s vision for the country’s future and have made him so popular with his own people.
Bukele often posts pictures showing how the country’s military and police fight organized crime. Photo: Nayib Bukele/FB
Many also argue that the success is an expression of the rise of a new generation of national populist leaders in a near-global revolt against the globalist “rainbow empire” characterized by gender ideology, demographic upheaval, coddling of violent criminals, and a huge gap between the political establishment and the population at large.
The Salvadoran president has also not been shy about explicitly criticizing influential globalists such as George Soros and others who he says have pushed for these kinds of developments in the West, and still have too much power over politics in many countries.
In his victory speech to the people in 2024, Bukele also articulated the importance for small nations to be alert to the actors of global politics, with El Salvador being just one example of many nations that have suffered in the wake of various factions of globalist-oriented actors and great powers.
– The civil war in El Salvador, which officially left over 85,000 Salvadorans dead, and displaced over 1 million people, was sponsored by two separate powers. There was a conflict between the West and the Soviet Union, and they wanted to fight, but not on their own soil. They didn’t want to provide the cannon fodder. So they decided to fight in other places around the world, and one of those places that they chose to fight was here in El Salvador. They tricked us. They told us to kill each other and we did as they said.
Bukele concluded by adding his view that there are now powerful players on the global stage who fear the example El Salvador has already shown.
– We will continue to do the impossible, and El Salvador will continue to set an example for the world.
Young people are unsure of boundaries in relation to sex, according to a study conducted by Swedish and Norwegian researchers at the National Knowledge Center on Violence and Traumatic Stress in Oslo.
he study included twelve focus group interviews with a total of 63 young participants. In addition, individual interviews were conducted with 34 young people who had experienced violence, 19 young people who had sexually harmed others, and school staff.
One of the conclusions of the study is that many young people do not have a clear idea that they have the right to set boundaries during sexual intercourse, with one participant in the study, for example, expressing uncertainty as to whether it was normal for their breasts to turn blue after sexual intercourse.
Erika Gyllenswärd, business developer and expert on domestic violence at the Swedish Police Authority, welcomes the study and believes that part of the explanation for the problem is the influence of pornography.
– Many young people don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like and think they have to do or agree to certain things.Rough pornography becomes sex education and they think that’s how it should be done, she says to TT.
At the same time, the researchers emphasize the importance of society understanding the perspective and situation of young people.
“Most important of all:We must listen to the young people themselves”, they write.
The peyote cactus has been considered a sacred medicinal plant by local cultures in North America since ancient times.However, the plant is now said to be under threat of overexploitation mainly due to its growing popularity and a renaissance in the West for psychedelic drugs, where the peyote cactus has gone far beyond its traditional contexts.
Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) is a succulent plant in the cactus family. The blue-green cactus grows naturally in the southwestern United States and down to central Mexico. It contains several alkaloids, including the hallucinogenic substance mescaline. The plant is slow-growing and can take up to thirty years to flower, but if allowed to thrive it can live for over a hundred years. In Sweden, the plant is legal to grow, but not to cultivate or extract mescaline from. Due to its psychoactive properties, the plant is completely banned from possession in the United States.
At the same time, for over 2 000 years, peyote has been used in religious and ceremonial contexts and for its medicinal properties, as has the closely related San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi), originally named by the Inca as Wachuma but later named after St. Per, San Pedro, in adaptation to the Spanish Christianization of the region.
Peyote cactus has been used ceremonially and medicinally mainly by indigenous tribes in North America, including the Huichol, an indigenous people in Mexico. In 1994, an exemption was created in the United States in the form of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which made it legal to use, possess and even transport peyote for traditional religious purposes.
For example, the Native American Church (NAC) is a syncretic religious movement in the United States which, in accordance with this legislation, combines traditional indigenous beliefs with elements of Christianity. It is particularly strongly associated with the Peyote, and has sometimes even been referred to as “Peyotism”. Around 400,000 people are estimated to be affiliated with NAC in some form today.
According to the NAC, there is a story of an Apache woman who fell behind her group during a forced removal by the US government under the Indian Removal Act in the 1830s. The woman was dehydrated, malnourished and near death, but just as she was about to give up, she heard the peyote speak to her and, according to the story, she survived and then took the plant to the Apache medicine men and elders, who began to meditate and pray with it.
– It gave us hope and helped us process our thoughts, emotions and life purpose, Adrian Primeaux, who is from the Yankton Sioux and Apache tribe, explains to AP News.
Described as sacrament
Frank Dayish, former vice president of the Navajo Nation and chairman of the Council of the Peyote Way of Life Coalition, compares peyote to communion as a sacrament in Christianity.
– Peyote is my religion, he says. Everything in my life has been based on prayers through that sacrament.
In both NAC and Huichol’s culture, the plant is considered a bridge between the human and spiritual worlds. In the NAC, peyote is typically consumed during sacred night ceremonies in a hogan, a traditional Navajo building, or a teepee. The ritual usually begins around eight o’clock in the evening and includes prayer, singing and sacramental consumption of peyote. The effect of mescaline lasts for ten to twelve hours and is said to induce spiritual or philosophical insights as well as visual experiences. The ritual ends in the morning with a communion breakfast.
Since 1846, the official Mexican pharmacopoeia has also recommended the use of peyote extract in microdoses as a tonic for the heart. The plant is also used medicinally to relieve fever, healing of wounds, bone fractures and rheumatism. At the same time, according to WebMD, there is currently limited scientific documentation on the medicinal properties of the plant.
Overexploitation
Over the past two decades, there have been concerns about the lack of availability of peyote, pointing out that illegal and excessive harvesting threatens the species and has destroyed significant parts of its sensitive habitat. Members of the Native American Church say the situation has worsened as new groups use it in health rituals.
In Mexico, the peyote is said to have been overexploited to the point that it is now classified as critically endangered and there is now a heated debate about whether the peyote should be cultivated outside its natural habitat. Scientists argue that cultivation is necessary to protect the species, while the NAC believes it would weaken the plant’s sacred position, with many members of the NAC considering the plant’s habitat to be of great importance. Hershel Clark, Secretary of the Teesto Chapter of the Azee Bee Nahagha of Diné Nation in Arizona, believes that the ceremonial protocols they follow were given by the grace of the Creator and have been preserved in their storytelling.
– That’s why we don’t support greenhouses, growing it outside its natural habitat or synthesizing it to make pills, he says.
At the same time, many also advocate for the decriminalization of the cactus among other things to facilitate its cultivation. Particularly in Western countries, psychedelic substances, also known as entheogens, such as psilocybin, have gained strong recognition with a surge in research into the treatment of mental disorders such as depression. In Australia, for example, MDMA and psilocybin were approved for medical use last year. In Brazil, research has also been conducted on the traditional drink ayahuasca, based on Amazonian plants, and its effects on depression. Indigenous people in the Amazon region of Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador have used the drink for therapeutic and spiritual purposes since ancient times.
Australian singer and doctor, Iyah May, has stirred the pot with her provocative song Karmageddon, which addresses the political divide in society, corporate greed and public apathy.The song’s socially critical lyrics led to her manager leaving her after she refused to make changes.
Iyah May, born Marguerite Clark in 1990 in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, initially pursued a career in medicine and trained as a doctor. Music entered the picture while she was a medical student in New York, where a meeting with rapper Shaggy led to her performing with him. This inspired her to focus on music instead of a medical career, as reported by ProtectNFM.
At the same time, as the coronavirus crisis was in full bloom, May went back to work full-time as an emergency room doctor, putting her music on hold for a while.
“Man-made virus”
In 2024, she released the song Karmageddon, which criticizes social issues such as political corruption, abortion, the Israel-Palestine conflict, corporate greed, media manipulation and cancel culture. It places a strong emphasis on the influence of big pharmaceutical companies and their role in shaping public health narratives, with the text mentioning, among other things, “man made viruses” in reference to the companies.
“Man made virus watch the millions die. Biggest profit of their lives. Here’s inflation that’s your prize. This is Karmageddon. Turn on the news and eat their lies”, reads part of the chorus.
May says that her background as a doctor, and in particular her experiences working on the frontline during the coronavirus crisis, have greatly influenced her song lyrics. She highlights issues she witnessed first-hand as a doctor, such as inequalities in healthcare and social exploitation.
“Fuelled by my own despair over a divided world and deceitful corporations, I channelled my frustration into Karmageddon. My career as a doctor has been greatly impacted, and I was affected on a deep and personal level”, May says of the song on her website.
Despite the dark tone of Karmageddon, May describes the song as “a message of hope and unity” where art can be a way to inspire and even heal. Karmageddon is a call to confront social divisions and to unite. At the time of writing, the song has received 1.5 million views on YouTube since its release in December.
Manager wanted to change the song
Karmageddon has received a lot of attention, with both appreciation for the song’s straightforward content and backlash. May’s manager wanted her to change the lyrics because of its “controversial” content but May chose to stand up for her song instead, leading her manager to terminate her contract, reports Where is the Buzz.
“I wish this story wasn’t true but it is”, May wrote in a post on social media. “My manager didn’t agree with the lyrics in my song and refused to work with me and support me until I changed the lyrics. So I said, ‘bye’”.
While artists often believe that it is difficult to succeed without the support of a management team, May has found that she has received more attention since. Fans have rallied around the artist, sharing the song widely and celebrating its unapologetic honesty.
“I’m not the only one feeling this way”, May wrote in another post.
May continues to forge her own path as a fully independent artist and has hinted that there is an upcoming EP on the way in 2025, but not given much detail around it. However, it seems that for the time being, she has put her medical career on the back burner and is now planning to make a full commitment to music again.
