Confession: This blog's readership dipped soon after ISIS threatened the government of Baghdad. I guess Cannonfire readers don't really want to delve very deeply into those issues.

Okay. You want something weird? You want to run your eyeballs over a couple of stories that'll blow a hole the size of an Oreo cookie right through the top of your cranium?

Here. Have a big bowl-full of horror.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing brain chips that will implant or remove specific memories from a subject, a prospect some may deem chilling...

"Some may deem chilling"? Jesus, who wouldn't find that prospect chilling?

MIT Review’s Brian Bergstein admits that the notion of implanting or removing specific memories “often sounds creepy,” but that it will be useful in treating PTSD, reducing anxiety or combating addiction and depression.

Scientists are heralding the beginning of a “golden age” where minds could be manipulated to function better, although LeDoux acknowledges that ethical implications include the possibility that the application of the technology could lead to the creation of “fearless monsters.”

DARPA’s push for brain chips that could erase or implant memories takes on a somewhat sinister tone given the organization’s prior advocacy of edible “authentication microchips” and electronic tattoos that can read a person’s mind.

"Often sounds creepy"...? A "somewhat sinister tone"?

The author of this piece, Paul Joseph Watson, has a genuine gift for understatement. I can't wait for this guy's upcoming history of World War II. I'm told that he describes Adolf Hitler's "mildly unpleasant personality" and Josef Stalin's "reported slight tendency toward paranoia." The final chapter begins with these words: "August 6, 1945, proved to be a rather unusual day for the citizens of the Japanese city of Hiroshima."

What's that? You think that story wasn't weird enough? You want to read something even weirder?

Okay. If you insist.

European Royals Killing Naked Children For Fun At Human Hunting Parties?

Mind you, I'm not saying that this story is credible. I never promised you credible, did I? I promised weird. And this one just keeps getting weirder and weirder:

Teens were drugged, stripped naked, raped, hunted down in the woods and killed by European royals according to this week’s latest eyewitness to testify before the International Common Law Court of Justice in Brussels. The woman was the fourth eyewitness to give accounts about these human hunting parties of the global elite Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult network. A former member of the Netherlands criminal drug syndicate known as Octopus testified that victims were obtained for these human hunting parties from juvenile detention centers in Belgium and Holland.

Almost needless to say, a story like this needs a Pope or two.

Named as present in Ninth Circle activities were Pope Francis, former Pope Ratzinger;Anglican, United Church of Canada and Catholic Church officials including Cardinals; members of European royalty including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip; officials of the Canadian, Australian, UK and US military and governments including the USA’s CIA, plus prominent government ministers, judges, politicians and businessmen from the US, Belgium, Holland, Canada, Australia, France, Ireland and the UK.

“I saw the former Pope Joseph Ratzinger murder a little girl″ another witness confirmed. “It was at a French chateau in the fall of 1987. It was ugly, horrible and didn’t happen just once. Ratzinger and Bernhard were some of the more prominent men who took part.”

The boys would have their penises cut off and displayed as trophies. Why would anyone do this? Because they're Cat-licks. And royals. And Cat-licks and royals just do shit like that.

As you might have guessed, these claims all stem from a series of "recovered memory" sessions -- although in this case, I'm not sure if we are dealing with the recovered memories of real people or fictional people.

The ICLCJ Court received a collection of Jesuit archival records about a child sacrificial cult known as the Knights of Darkness.

Care to humor us with some documentation?

The International Common Law Court of Justice appears to be an elaborate internet hoax. It isn't an actual court with legal standing. Hell, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page!

Near as I can tell, this silly pseudo-court was invented by a defrocked Canadian minister named Kenneth Annett. He has made his concoctions seem credible by devising a number of fairly well-designed websites which (at first glance) appear to be independent, and which all reference each other. For more on this strange personage, see here:

Annett has "convicted" two consecutive Popes of genocide and child trafficking, issuing "international arrest warrants" for them.[9] He has also issued a proclamation dissolving Canada.[10] And Great Britain, though that one was only on Twitter.

Although I could be wrong, I believe that Canada and Great Britain are still in existence. Snopes has taken notice of Annett and his antics.

The standard occult reference books give us no hint of either "Ninth Circle Satanism" or the "Knights of Darkness." The terms do not appear in the works of Nicholas Goodrick-Clark, James Webb, Gary Lachmann and other scholars of esoterica. Moreover, I don't recall seeing any mention of those two groups in any of the more sensationalistic examples of occult literature (and I've read more of that crap than a respectable writer should admit in public). Annett seems to have concocted both organizations.

In 1933 the Knights were established by the Catholic Jesuits and Nazi Waffen S.S. Division. The records showed Ratzinger was identified as a member of the Knights while working as an S.S. Chaplain’s assistant at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in Germany. The records also stated that Ratzinger participated in child sacrificial rites using kidnapped children from the camps or political prisoners.

Alas, "the records" remain invisible to us mere mortals.

In the real world, the Nazis viciously persecuted the Jesuit order. See here and here and here. Alas, my more bigoted readers will probably refuse to accept any amount of evidence.

Ratzinger was born in 1927, and thus was still a teen when World War II ended. He lived in Bavaria (in southern Germany), and his compulsory military service placed him first in Munich and later on the Austrian border. He was never anywhere near Ravensbruck, a women's camp located north of Berlin. Neither was he an assistant to an S.S. chaplain. His vocation began after the war.

Have you had enough weirdness for the day, or shall I dig up some more?