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.

Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think

If you’re curious about modern holiday beliefs and calendar customs, you might be reading or doing research about them online. Chances are, you come across some stories that the presenters claim are ancient, and reach into the pre-Christian past. One popular story you might have seen recently involves the origin of the Easter Bunny. Essentially, the tale is that Ostara, the ancient Germanic goddess of the spring, transformed a bird into a hare, and the hare responded by laying colored eggs for her festival. Some online sources, such as Goddess Gift, claim this story is very old indeed.  Others, such as Family Christmas Online, say it was invented in the 1980s.

So whom should you believe?  As it turns out, neither one!  I’ve traced the story back to the late 19th century.  So it may not be ancient, but it’s not that new either.

Let me back up a moment to set the scene. On Easter Sunday 2016, I had the pleasure of appearing on CBS Sunday Morning as a folklore expert in a segment on the Easter Bunny. The resulting story can be viewed at this link. The interview gave me an incentive to organize my thoughts on the matter and publish two blog posts, which you can view here and here. In the comments section of the first of these posts, reader Holly B. asked about the story of Ostara and the hare.

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Michigan Republican admits to taking bribes while overseeing state medical cannabis board

A former Michigan House speaker was indicted along with two lobbyists and a medical marijuana business owner as part of a bribery scheme.

Rick Johnson, the Republican former House speaker and chairman of the state medical marijuana licensing board from 2017 to 2019, was charged with accepting bribes, while registered lobbyists Brian Pierce and Vincent Brown were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and John Dalaly, who had sought a business license, was charged with payment of bribes, reported the Detroit Free Press.

“Unfortunately, a small percentage (of public officials) abuse the public trust,” said James Tarasca, special agent in charge of the FBI in Michigan. “Public corruption is a top criminal priority for the FBI. Public corruption erodes confidence and undermines the strength of our democracy.”

James Totten, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, said a five-year investigation determined that Johnson was the “heart” of the bribery scheme that involved more than $100,000 in cash payments from companies and lobbyists seeking licenses from the board he led.

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Eat Me, MSNBC

I’m going to be interviewed on MSNBC today by Mehdi Hasan, the author of a book called Win Every Argument. I’m looking forward to it as one would a root canal or rectal.

I accepted the invitation because it would have been wrong to refuse, on the off chance he was planning a good-faith discussion. If you’re reading this, things have gone another way.

I last appeared on MSNBC six years ago, on January 13, 2017, to talk with Chris Hayes and of all people Malcolm Nance, about the then-burgeoning Trump-Russia scandal.

The Trump-Russia story was white-hot and still in its infancy. That same day, news leaked from Israel that Americans warned the Mossad not to share information with the incoming administration, because Russia had “leverages of pressure” on Trump. Asked by Chris about the scandal generally, I made what I thought was a boring-but-true observation, that we in the media didn’t “have any hard evidence” of a conspiracy, just not a lot to go on. This was the TV equivalent of a shrug.

Nance jumped on this in a way I remember feeling was unexpected and oddly personal. “Matt’s a journalist. I’m an intelligence officer,” he snapped. “There is no such thing as coincidence in my world.” Chris jumped in to note reporters have different standards, and I agreed, saying, “We haven’t seen anything that allows us to say unequivocally that x and y happened last year.”

“Unequivocally” seemed to trigger Nance. With regard to the DNC hack, he said, “That evidence is unequivocal. It’s on the Internet.” As for “these links possibly with the Trump team,” he proclaimed, “You’re probably never going to see the CIA’s report.” Nance went on to answer “no” to a question from Chris about whether leaks “were coming from the intelligence community,” Chris wrapped up with a sensible suggestion that we all not rely on a parade of “leaks and counter-leaks,” and the segment was done.

To this day I get hit probably a hundred times a day with the question, “What happened to you, man?” What happened? That segment happened, but to MSNBC, not me.

That exchange between Nance and me was symbolic of a choice the network faced. They could either keep doing what reporters had done since the beginning of time, confining themselves to saying things they could prove. Or, they could adopt a new approach, in which you can say anything is true or confirmed, so long as a politician or intelligence official told you it was.

We know how that worked out. I was never invited back, nor for a long time was any other traditionally skeptical reporter, while Nance — one of the most careless spewers of provable errors ever to appear on a major American news network — became one of the Peacock’s most familiar faces.

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DRONES AND MOTOS

THE LOOK ON Miriam’s face was abject fear. Her pink, white, and green veil had mostly slipped from her head, and her dark eyes grew wide as she stared down at her lavender smartphone. In a flash, she pulled it to her ear. “Allo!” she said, her pitch rising as her other hand nervously cradled her chin.

In the courtyard of her family’s tree-lined compound in a well-to-do neighborhood in Niger’s capital, members of Miriam’s ethnic group had been describing jihadist attacks on their historic community in a rural region to the north. Now, the six or seven men wearing tagelmusts — a combination of turban and scarf worn by Tuareg men to provide protection from sun and dust — were also glued to their phones as chimes announced incoming texts and calls. Voices on the phones sounded panicked. There were gunshots, and a familiar roar rumbled through the desert scrubland 100 miles away. At any moment, relatives warned, they expected an attack by the “motorcycle guys.”

Over the last decade, Niger and its neighbors in the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have taken the notion of the outlaw motorcycle gang to its most lethal apogee. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on “motos” — two to a bike, their faces obscured by sunglasses and turbans, armed with Kalashnikovs — have terrorized villages across the borderlands where Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger meet. These militants, some affiliated with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State group, impose zakat, an Islamic tax; steal animals; and terrorize, assault, and kill civilians.

Jihadist motorcyclists, Miriam reminded me, had thundered into the village of Bakorat on March 21, 2021. As described afterward by one of the survivors, the motos “swept into the village like a sandstorm, killing every man they saw. They shot one of my uncles in front of me. His 20-year-old son ran to save him, but he perished as well. We found them, slumped over each other.” Attacking in overwhelming numbers and with military precision, the jihadists executed men and boys while looting and burning homes. “They attacked the well like it was a military objective, opening fire on the dozens of men there. As they killed, I heard the attackers saying, ‘This is your time … for working with the state,’” another survivor told Human Rights Watch. “I collapsed, seeing the carnage … my father, my brothers, my cousins, my friends lying there, dead and dying.” Human Rights Watch said more than 170 people were massacred near Bakorat and Intazayene villages and nearby nomad camps that day. Miriam and her relatives put the number at 245.

As we sat in the courtyard, it all seemed to be happening again.

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Supreme Court rules West Virginia transgender athletes can compete on female sports teams

The Supreme Court has ruled that transgender athletes in West Virginia can compete on female school sports teams in response to a challenge by the state to allow it to enforce a law that prohibits such athletes from doing so.

In a brief, unsigned order, the justices denied the state’s emergency request to lift an appeals court’s injunction, which enabled a transgender girl to compete on her middle school’s female teams until the three-judge panel reaches a final decision.

The appeals panel is now set to hear the student athlete’s appeal in full, and the case could ultimately return to the high court.

Justice Samuel Alito in a statement joined by Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting from the decision said the case “concerns an important issue that this Court is likely to be required to address in the near future.”

West Virginia in 2021 became the seventh state in the nation — and the sixth that year — to enact a law prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams. The measure, officially titled the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” bars transgender female athletes from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity in public elementary schools, high schools and universities.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) could not cite a specific example of a transgender athlete with an unfair competitive advantage in his state when asked during an interview following his approval of the bill, but he said his experience as a girls’ basketball coach led him to believe the legislation is fair.

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Sabotage in Space: Russians Accuse Kiev of Targeting Civilian Satellites – Threaten ‘Appropriate Response’

From the bottom of the sea, high up to the Stratosphere: after the Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed in a deep sea op, Russians state that the next target for sabotage may be up in space.

TASS reported how the Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to Ukraine’s attempts to influence Russian civilian communications satellites.

Foreign Ministry statement:

“The Kiev regime, with the participation of specialists from a number of foreign states, is attempting to influence Russian civilian communications satellites.

This is an outrageous violation of international law. The Russian side has the right to respond appropriately. All the necessary opportunities are available for this.”

Moscow has not clarified which foreign states would be aiding Kiev in this effort, nor was it clear the precise way in which Kiev is trying to disrupt these craft. Satellites have indeed become a much debated topic in this war.

TASS: “Western governments and private companies have provided Ukraine with satellite coverage for months.

Most notably, the Starlink satellites operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX have become important tools for the Ukrainian troops in the ongoing conflict with Russia.”

Russian diplomats have warned that these satellites may end up becoming a legitimate military target.

This new spatial development comes just as it surfaces that SpaceX is further limiting Starlink service in Ukraine.

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Is Telling Someone To ‘Die’ on Facebook Protected by the First Amendment?

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment,” the U.S. Supreme Court said in the 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, “it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” In practice, that principle means all sorts of despicable utterances, including “hate speech,” are constitutionally protected.

But the Court also has said that the First Amendment has its limits. One of them involves “true threats” of violence. In the 2003 case Virginia v. Black, the justices defined that category as “those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” The First Amendment, the Court held, “permits” the government “to ban a ‘true threat.'”

Deciding what counts as a “true threat” is no easy task, however. In April, the justices heard oral arguments in Counterman v. Colorado, which asks “whether, to establish that a statement is a ‘true threat’ unprotected by the First Amendment, the government must show that the speaker subjectively knew or intended the threatening nature of the statement, or whether it is enough to show that an objective ‘reasonable person’ would regard the statement as a threat of violence.”

Billy Raymond Counterman was convicted under a Colorado anti-stalking law after sending a musician numerous Facebook messages from various accounts. “Fuck off permanently,” one message said. “You’re not being good for human relations,” said another. “Die. Don’t Need You.”

The state law under which Counterman was convicted makes it a crime to repeatedly make “any form of communication with another person….that would cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress and does cause that person….to suffer serious emotional distress.” Whether or not Counterman intended to convey a threat was immaterial under that law.

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FBI and Army members raided the wrong hotel room during a training exercise and detained a guest inside

Members of the FBI and the US Army Special Operations Command who were conducting a training exercise in downtown Boston raided the wrong hotel room and detained the person inside before realizing their mistake, the FBI said in a statement to CNN.

The FBI said its Boston division was helping the military with a training exercise around 10 p.m. Tuesday “to simulate a situation their personnel might encounter in a deployed environment.”

“Based on inaccurate information, they were mistakenly sent to the wrong room and detained an individual, not the intended role player,” the FBI said.

“First and foremost, we’d like to extend our deepest apologies to the individual who was affected by the training exercise,” USASOC Lt. Col. Mike Burns told CNN.

The exercise was meant to “enhance soldiers’ skills to operate in realistic and unfamiliar environments,” Burns said, adding the incident is under review.

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