Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Israeli Claims About an Iran ‘Threat’ Were Always a Lie. Now We Have Proof

Could it be that Israel’s 30-year narrative about Iran – one that persuaded US President Donald Trump to wage a criminal and disastrous war of aggression – was always a fiction, an invention cooked up in Tel Aviv?

Far from Tehran posing an existential danger to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades, might Israel’s real fear be that a stronger Iran would undermine its unique leverage over Washington, threatening its status as the region’s sole – and unmonitored – nuclear power?

Might large parts of the globe be facing economic meltdown simply so that Israel can remain the Middle East’s top dog – an unaccountable apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon?

We got a definitive answer last week, care of the New York Times. It is an uncompromising yes to all of these questions.

The newspaper reported that Netanyahu not only mis-sold Trump on the idea of quick regime change in Iran following a short “shock and awe” bombing campaign. He also identified to the White House who was going to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader.

Extraordinarily, according to the Times, Netanyahu named the man for the job as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The aim at the start of the air campaign was for Israel to kill Khamenei, then liberate Ahmadinejad from house arrest by striking the guards who were confining him.

Presumably, Ahmadinejad was then supposed to storm the citadel and seize the keys to the palace. But only Khamenei’s assassination went according to plan.

Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly been consulted on the scheme beforehand, is believed to have been injured in the Israeli strike near his home. He got cold feet, possibly suspecting he was being set up for assassination too, and went into hiding. His current whereabouts and medical condition are unknown.

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Colombia to the Right? Anti-Crime Outsider Crushes Election Expectations.

Up until 2022, Colombia had never had a left-wing president, at least not in modern history. But, for some reason, it tried to experiment with one between 2022 and 2026. Not only did they vote in a leftist, but they voted in a corrupt socialist clown. Four years of Gustavo Petro was, apparently, enough. 

As I wrote on Friday, the Colombian presidential elections were held on Sunday, May 31, and it was down to three candidates:  

On the left, you have Petro’s hand-picked candidate, senator, and human rights activist Iván Cepeda. He’ll be more of the same: heavy spending on social programs and pointless peace talks with gangs and guerrillas that go nowhere, instead of actually cracking down on crime. He’s leading in the polls right now, anywhere from 35 to 42%, depending on which poll you believe. 

But don’t panic. One reason why he’s leading in the polls is that the right is split between Abelardo de la Espriella, aka “El Tigre,” and Paloma Valencia. El Tigre is the outsider, a bombastic lawyer who has a little Trump and a little Nayib Bukele in him. He’s promising mega-prisons to deal with the criminal groups that plague the country and a crackdown on drugs and crime. And he’s gaining a lot of enthusiasm right now. Most of the emails I receive from Colombians want him to win. 

Valencia, a center-right senator, is more of an establishment conservative. She’s a big Petro critic and campaigns on stabilizing the country’s economy and restoring security. 

Valencia actually won the nomination as the right-wing candidate in the country’s primaries earlier this year. Cepeda was the left-wing winner. El Tigre (“The Tiger”) had to kind of do things on his own. And boy, did he. Even as I wrote about the election on Friday, he was not projected to perform as well as he did on Sunday. 

I should have know better — I’ve receive so many emails from Colombians over the last few months telling me that he was their guy.  

Going into, it looked like Cepeda would receive the most votes, and that the rest would be split between de la Espriella and Valencia, but de la Espriella actually came out on top with about a 3%-ish lead. 

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Did Iran Get Its Hands On A US Stealth Missile? JASSM-ER Wreckage Sparks Reverse-Engineering Fears

The U.S. committed nearly its entire stockpile of stealthy JASSM-ER cruise missiles to the military campaign against Iran and has fired at least 1,000 of these long-range, stealthy, precision cruise missiles to hit high-value IRGC targets.

One of the unavoidable risks of deploying advanced weapons, such as the JASSM-ER, is that unexploded or partially intact systems can fall into enemy hands, allowing adversaries to study U.S. technology, refine countermeasures, and accelerate the development of copycat versions.

A new report from Army Recognition, citing defense journalist Babak Taghvaee, claims Iran has recovered wreckage from a JASSM-ER near Arak, potentially giving Tehran access to fragments of the missile.

“The recovered debris reportedly includes composite airframe sections, structural components, propulsion fragments, and possible avionics elements that could reveal insights into stealth construction, fuel-efficient propulsion, and survivability design,” according to the military blog.

Army Recognition cited images posted on X by Taghvaee showing what is described as badly damaged JASSM-ER wreckage recovered in Iran. The missile appears largely intact and possibly unexploded, which, if confirmed, would give Tehran higher-value intelligence on the advanced missile.

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Publicly Funded Teachers Unions Join Newark Anti-ICE Protests as the Left MOBILIZES Against Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Agenda

Anti-ICE protests in Newark, New Jersey, are exposing a much larger problem than opposition to one detention facility. The demonstrations show how organized left-wing groups, labor activists and even teachers unions are joining forces to fight President Trump’s immigration agenda.

On the latest episode of The Patriot Perspective, the hosts discussed the protests outside the Newark ICE facility and the broader movement behind them. 

The concern is not simply that activists are protesting. Americans have a right to protest. The concern is that these demonstrations appear to be part of a larger political machine designed to pressure law enforcement, defend illegal immigration and undermine the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.

One of the most concerning developments is the involvement of teachers unions.

Teachers unions are supposed to represent educators and focus on schools, classrooms and students. 

Instead, union activists increasingly appear at protests that have nothing to do with education. Their presence at anti-ICE demonstrations shows how far these organizations have moved away from their original purpose and how deeply they have become involved in partisan politics.

That should concern every parent in America.

Public schools across the country face serious problems. Students are struggling with reading and math. Discipline problems have increased in many classrooms. Parents are frustrated with ideological curriculum, failing schools and education bureaucracies that resist reform. 

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Nothing more dangerous than a Netanyahu scorned

The emerging deal between the United States and Iran represents an existential danger to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future.

With his coalition fracturing and elections approaching, Netanyahu can’t survive a peace that leaves Hezbollah intact and Iran’s nuclear program deferred. The only path that may keep his future viable now runs through Lebanon.

This may help explain why, just hours after President Donald Trump announced that a deal with Iran was “largely negotiated” through talks that excluded Israel, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to “increase the blows” against Hezbollah, adding on Monday that “we are deepening our operation in Lebanon.”

Israel has now issued evacuation orders for two of southern Lebanon’s biggest cities, and Israeli aircraft have struck over 100 sites in southern Lebanon, adding to a death toll that has now surpassed 3,000 since the latest escalation in March, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. This comes as Lebanese and Israeli officials are engaged in historic, U.S.-brokered talks in Washington, including a security track that was due to be launched on May 29.

When the U.S. and Israel initiated strikes on Iran in late February, Netanyau framed the aims of the campaign in maximalist terms: destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capacity, sever Tehran’s support for regional proxies, and, most ambitiously, overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Three months later, Iran is still standing. The deal taking shape between the Trump administration and the Islamic Republic addresses almost none of these objectives in the preliminary phase, focusing instead on restarting maritime shipping and bringing an end to direct U.S.-Iran hostilities.

The blowback from Israeli politicians and commentators has been fierce. Israeli opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the deal was “bad for Israel, bad for the region, bad for the people of Iran.” Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a key coalition partner in Netanyahu’s government, framed the proposal in similar terms, calling it “an agreement that can harm the State of Israel.”

Against this background, Netanyahu’s predicament is especially acute. He co-launched a war that degraded Iran’s capabilities but failed to bring Tehran to heel. He has been excluded from negotiations on the conflict’s outcome and now faces an electorate that is expected to hit the polls as early as September. With these elections looming, only 10% of Israelis viewed the Iran campaign as a significant success when polled in mid-April.

The dominant analysis holds that Netanyahu is trying to drag out the election timeline, hoping to buy more time to achieve something he can market to voters on the security and diplomatic fronts. Lebanon is a key part of that calculation.

The immediate trigger for the escalation in Lebanon has a tactical dimension distinct from the emerging Iran deal. Hezbollah has deployed fiber-optic drones against Israeli troops occupying a self-declared buffer zone or “Yellow Line” in southern Lebanon. These cheap drones are unjammable because they avoid radio frequencies. Multiple Israeli soldiers have been killed or severely wounded by these drones, and some have struck civilian homes within Israel.

In response, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, approved a $700 million budget for counter-drone operations and added that playing defense was insufficient. “For every explosive drone, ten buildings in Beirut should fall,” Smotrich said. The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, agreed that Beirut should be struck. Ben-Gvir went furthest: “It is time for the Prime Minister to knock on Trump’s desk and inform him that we are returning to war in Lebanon. We need to cut off the electricity in Lebanon..and return to a fierce war.”

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Evidence Found in Ethiopia That Homo sapiens Cremated Their Dead 100,000 Years Ago, 60,000 Before the Oldest Known Record

The discovery, made at one of the best-preserved open-air sites of early Homo sapiens communities, includes bones burned at high temperatures alongside evidence of predation and sudden burial.

An international research team, which includes Ferhat Kaya, a researcher at the Academy of Finland at the University of Oulu, has discovered what could be the earliest evidence of human cremation. The findings were made in the Afar Rift in Ethiopia, a region recognized for hosting one of the best-preserved open-air archaeological concentrations corresponding to the earliest Homo sapiens communities.

Research in this area has been ongoing since 1981, and the new data offer a detailed view of how early humans lived, moved, and adapted to their environment 100,000 years ago.

Among the significant fossils found in the area are remains of Homo sapiens individuals, some of which show bones that had been exposed to high temperatures. This phenomenon, according to the researchers, could indicate the practice of cremation and, if confirmed, would represent the oldest known evidence of this funerary rite among humans.

However, the same bone remains also showed predator bite marks and signs of having undergone sudden burial, which adds a layer of complexity to interpreting the circumstances of their death and subsequent treatment.

The study published by the team emphasizes that local hydrological factors—particularly the flood cycles of the ancient Awash River—had a more decisive influence on the lives of these humans than global climate fluctuations. This conclusion is supported by the analysis of thousands of stone tools documented at the site, which indicate that human groups repeatedly returned to this area for short periods, taking advantage of a seasonal floodplain.

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Neanderthal ancestry may lower defenses against common DNA viruses in people today

Researchers have found surprising links that show that Neanderthal ancestry influences our immune system today in ways more nuanced than previously recognized. Their work is published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.

Viruses account for an estimated 10–20% of the global disease burden. Many DNA viruses can persist in the body for a lifetime, and virus load varies greatly even among people without symptoms. Throughout human history, they have posed persistent and rapidly evolving threats, placing strong adaptive pressure on our immune system.

Previous research has shown that many genetic variants involved in immunity bear the marks of these evolutionary battles—including signatures of natural selection and contributions from interbreeding with archaic humans.

While Neanderthal ancestry has previously been associated with beneficial effects in RNA virus defense, the new study highlights a contrasting trend for DNA viruses.

Because of past admixture with archaic humans, around 2% of the genome of present-day non-Africans is composed of Neanderthal DNA and an additional 2–4% of people in Oceania of Denisovan ancestry. These introgressed sequences have shaped many biological traits, including immunity. But their role in defenses against DNA viruses has remained largely unexplored.

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Scientists Found 71 Genetic Fingerprints of Human History. Not All of Them Make Sense.

Homo sapiens are one species. There are no subspecies of humans, and our last relatives in the genus Homo went extinct around 40,000 years ago. But what explains how similar we humans are to each other? And more importantly, what genetic variants make different human populations and individuals so unique?

Some of the things we inherit in our genes are completely random. This is known as genetic drift, a phenomenon that happens because some individuals leave behind more offspring than others do. Their genes are more likely to be spread throughout the population, but it’s not because natural selection decided that those genes necessarily offer any added benefits. In fact, it’s even possible that a few of those genes are detrimental. Genetic drift is part of evolution and something that defines the genetic fingerprint of a specific group, but it doesn’t work by promoting adaptations that will help our species in the future.

Genetic drift isn’t exclusive to humans, but a team of researchers from the Institute of Statistical Science in Taipei, Taiwan, created an algorithm to figure out how it affects the frequency of alleles in human populations. Alleles are alternative versions of a given gene that come about through mutations. The team accessed data from the 1,000 Genomes Project, a database of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are common genetic variations caused by a difference in a single nucleotide within a DNA sequence. The researchers then used their algorithm to analyze recurring patterns of alleles in populations from different continents, as well as in groups within those populations.

“At the global scale, genetic differences between subjects faithfully reflect the well-known history of human population migration and mixing,” they said in a study recently published in Scientific Reports. “In contrast, when examining the allele frequency patterns of individual loci, we discovered many minor yet non-negligible…evolutionary trajectories in the human genome.”

Out of 78 million SNPs, the researchers found 71 patterns that tell the ancient history of how allele frequencies ended up being arranged in particular ways among various groups. It was hardly surprising that over 90% of such variants occurred with more or less the same frequency no matter what continent the population was from. The locations of most allele frequency patterns are scattered throughout chromosomes and are usually found together in “hot spots.” These narrow segments of DNA are linked to gene functions and observable phenotypical (body) traits.

Then the team used what they called a local ancestry inference algorithm to look deep into chromosomes and determine what ancestral groups an individual is descended from. The results from this algorithm were then checked against data from 1,000 Genomes and Human Genome Population Diversity (HGPD) data. It turned out that most allele patterns observed were synonymous with simulations that highlight the randomness of genetic drift. But there were also minor differences that suggest drift isn’t the only evolutionary process influencing the genetic profile of an individual or population.

Many findings were consistent with the migration of human ancestors out of Africa and into Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. Allele frequencies in African populations were found to be distinct from those of Eurasians in 1.9 million locations on their DNA. The separation of African and East Asian populations from populations in Europe and South Asia was evidenced by variants in 570,000 locations. This reflects the known history of human migration, which has Eurasians as the first to break from their African ancestors and trek through Europe and East Asia. South Asian populations arose from admixture between groups from Central Asia and migrants who first traveled from West to East Asia before heading south.

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Stone Age humans built complex grass beds at Border Cave 200,000 years ago, study finds

Border Cave sits high in the Lebombo Mountains along the border of present-day South Africa and Eswatini. Archaeologists have excavated the rock shelter since the 1930s, though recent work has revealed unusual preservation of organic materials, including ancient grass bedding. Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand examined the deposits at a microscopic level and identified six different bedding microfacies, or microscopic sediment patterns linked to different types of bed construction and maintenance.

Only a few African Stone Age sites have produced bedding remains studied in such detail. Earlier microscopic work at Sibhudu Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter provided much of the current understanding of ancient bedding practices. The new study greatly expands the sample from Border Cave and shows a wider range of preserved bedding structures than previously known.

Some of the newly identified microfacies closely resemble bedding types from the other South African sites. Others appear unique to Border Cave. The differences include variations in ash content, the arrangement of plant remains, and signs of trampling or burning. Researchers suggest these patterns reflect differences in how people maintained their living spaces or the types of plants selected for bedding.

The study found repeated evidence that people often built beds on layers of ash. In many cases, bedding materials rested directly above ash deposits or mixed with ash-rich sediments. Researchers believe ash may have helped keep sleeping areas dry and warm while also discouraging insects. Earlier studies at Border Cave proposed a similar function.

The evidence does not always show whether people intentionally spread fresh ash before laying down bedding or reused ash already present on the cave floor. Some ash deposits appear thick and concentrated, while others form thinner scattered layers. Still, the repeated association between ash and bedding suggests this practice formed a regular part of cave life for thousands of years.

Microscopic analysis also revealed signs of repeated maintenance. Some bedding layers had been refreshed with new plant material, trampled by human activity, and partially burned several times. One especially well-preserved “grass mat” from younger deposits contained several overlapping layers of dried and charred plant remains. Researchers describe this as the first detailed microscopic study of such a preserved Stone Age grass mat.

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Police confirm body is missing Taos woman, LANL worker

New Mexico State Police confirmed Saturday night that human remains discovered off Rio Chiquito Road southeast of Taos belong to Melissa Casias, the missing Ranchos de Taos woman and Los Alamos National Laboratory worker who disappeared last June.

The single lane dirt road — Forest Road 437 — is accessible from N.M. 518 in Talpa, where security camera footage captured the last known sighting of Casias on June 26 of last year. Rio Chiquito Road extends deep into the Carson National Forest and provides access to the Garcia Park recreation area and several trails.

The body was discovered by a hiker in the McGaffey Ridge area of the national forest.

The Office of the Medical Investigator positively identified the deceased individual as Casias, however the cause and manner of death have not yet been determined, according to a state police press release. Police said a handgun was found “alongside the remains.”

The remains will undergo “further anthropological examination” by the medical investigator, according to state police, who “extend their deepest condolences to the Casias and Mondragon families during this difficult time.”

Jazmin McMillen, Casias’ niece, posted an official statement from the family on a Facebook page dedicated to finding the missing wife and mother. 

“We confirm that the remains found in Rio Chiquito are Melissa,” the post states. “There will be more information to come but what we can tell you now is she was located in an area previously searched. This is a lot to process, our hearts are heavy and we fully intend to continue to pursue answers for justice.”  

An investigation into the circumstances of Casias’ disappearance and her death is ongoing.

Casias, who lived with her husband in Ranchos de Taos, was reported missing after her daughter, Sierra Casias, came home from work and discovered her mother’s keys, wallet, and work and personal cell phones — both wiped of data — inside the house. Her mother’s car was parked outside the home and the front door was locked. Melissa Casias was an administrative assistant at LANL, where her husband, Mark Casias, also worked.

Her disappearance drew national media attention and has been featured on the Crime Junkie podcast, which reported the discovery of the human remains in a social media post Friday evening (May 29).

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