!nooticers imagine the smell black lives matter

About 400 million Hindu pilgrims from around the globe are expected to bathe in and around the Ganges in the religion's biggest display of unity.

Tens of millions of Hindus are convening this week in what is expected to be the world's largest human gathering, where a staggering number of devotees, tourists, politicians and celebrities take sacred dips at the convergence of two holy rivers in India.

The religious festival, called the Maha Kumbh Mela, happens every 12 years on the banks of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in the northern Indian city of Prayagraj. Officials this year expect up to 400 million people — more than the population of the United States — to visit the site in Uttar Pradesh State over the next six weeks.

A major display of Hinduism, the event has recently become an important political event with the rise of Hindu nationalism, backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing political party. It is also a massive logistical undertaking for government officials working to prevent incidents like stampedes and the spread of diseases.

What is the Maha Kumbh Mela?

The Maha Kumbh Mela, or "great festival of the sacred pitcher," is the world's largest religious ceremony. Based on a Hindu legend in which demons and gods fight over a pitcher carrying the nectar of immortality, the centuries-old ceremony centers on a series of holy baths, which Hindus say purify their sins.

The holy baths are preceded by processions involving people singing and dancing in vibrant attire, in ornately decorated chariots and wielding ceremonial spears, tridents and swords. To participate, people travel from all over India and the world to the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, a sacred site that is also said to be the end point of a mythical third river, the Saraswati.

The timing of the festival, which this year ends on Feb. 26, is based on the astrological alignment of the sun, the moon and the planet Jupiter, which takes around 12 years to orbit the sun. Smaller versions of the festival happen in one of three other Indian cities — Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain — roughly every three years.

How big is the festival?

The scale of the Maha Kumbh Mela is astonishing. The last one, in 2013, drew 120 million people in Prayagraj, according to a government estimate. An intermediate festival in 2019, though less significant religiously, attracted 240 million people.

This year, the city, home to about 6 million residents, is preparing to host 300 to 400 million people, government officials said. In preparation, the state has built a temporary campsite across a 10,000-acre area, with tens of thousands of tents and bathrooms, roads, parking lots, water and electricity infrastructure and thousands of security cameras and drones.

A religious procession in Prayagraj on Sunday, ahead of the Maha Kumbh Mela.Credit...Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Many of those preparations — which will most likely make this the most expensive Maha Kumbh Mela to date, at about $800 million — are meant to prevent deadly stampedes and outbreaks of disease, which have happened in previous festivals. The event is also expected to generate billions of dollars in revenue for the state government, officials said.

To accommodate the bathers, the government has also installed a platform made of sandbags along a seven-mile stretch of the Ganges riverbank. On Monday and Tuesday, millions of pilgrims poured into the river on those steps in the chilly morning fog, praying for happiness, health and prosperity.

What is the festival's significance today?

The Maha Kumbh Mela has always been an important symbol of Hinduism, though it was usually not politicized until the recent rise of the idea of India as a Hindu nation. This year's festival is the first since Mr. Modi's Hindu nationalist political party, the B.J.P., became the country's ruling party 11 years ago.

"It would be interesting to see if Prime Minister Modi goes," said Arati Jerath, a political analyst in New Delhi. "It's supposed to be the biggest and most auspicious time to take a dip in the Ganges."

Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh's chief minister who is also a hard-line Hindu priest, changed the name of the festival's host city in 2018 to Prayagraj from Allahabad. The move, part of a wave of changes brought on by the B.J.P., replaced the Muslim name given by the 16th-century Mughal emperor Akbar with one that references the Hindu pilgrimage site.

In 2019, when India held a general election, the Kumbh Mela presented a major political opportunity to Mr. Modi and his party to appeal to a receptive audience of millions. Mr. Modi won that election.

The next general election is farther away this time, scheduled for 2029. But Mr. Modi, who won by a smaller margin while his party suffered losses in last year's vote, has put himself in promotional posters for the festival nationwide and called it an embodiment of "India's timeless spiritual heritage" on social media, tying the spiritual event to the country's national identity.

"The B.J.P. is hoping to use it to solidify its Hindu nationalist base," Ms. Jerath said. But she added it was unclear if that would necessarily earn the party more votes. "Whether it works or not, I don't know, but it certainly helps to take the B.J.P. one step closer to its goal of turning India into a Hindu majoritarian nation."

!dramatards !chuds !nonchuds

TikTok is preparing to go dark for U.S. users this Sunday if the Supreme Court does not grant its emergency appeal to halt a law that will ban the app unless Chinese parent ByteDance divests its stake, according to reports.

TikTok is in danger of being banned in the U.S. under a federal law set to take effect Sunday, Jan. 19, unless the Supreme Court grants an injunction blocking it. On Wednesday, the court did not issue a ruling in the matter.

At this point, TikTok plans an "immediate" shut down of the app for U.S. users unless the Supreme Court grants a reprieve, The Information reported, citing anonymous sources. Reuters also reported on TikTok's preparations to suspend service for American users in the absence of a favorable Supreme Court ruling.

If the ban goes into effect Jan. 19, TikTok users will see a pop-up message in the app directing them to a website with information about the ban, per the Reuters report. In addition, TikTok plans to give users an option to download their data, according to the report.

Congrats BURGERS ON BECOMING BHARATIYA

This video by popular TikTok personality Soupy is going viral with 1.2 million likes and 3.9 million views in 15 hours. Gen z is not happy. pic.twitter.com/bhfCPv1do7

— Memes (panda era) (@OrganizerMemes) January 13, 2025

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The racist rednecks really deserve globalization good and hard.

Following up on reporting by my fellow MNN correspondent @darkdeity.

It was a standoff that lasted 6 hours that everyone watched on TV there, probably like OJ Simpson's slow speed car chase. Except OJ Simpson didn't think he had mystical psychic powers and consult with shamans all the time who told him he could get away with it.

Background: To put this into American terms. Basically the FBI has an arrest warrant for the President. The Secret Service says "we don't care, we protect the President". They tried on Jan 3 and then gave up because, really, wtf do you do in that situation? It's something nobody is prepared for. So they went back and regrouped.

They come back today in overwhelming force. If I'm understanding various reports correctly, they sent in 3,000 cops this time. They forced some kind of Mexican standoff situation where they dared the President's bodyguard to stop them and stared them down. There was real fear that this would end up with shooting. But the bodyguards eventually backed down. I want to imagine somebody doubted the cops' resolve and then one pulled out a .44 Magnum and pointed it at his head and asked "Do you feel lucky, punk?"

It has been reported that veteran personnel of the police's Mobile Detective Unit, Narcotics Investigation Unit and Anti-Corruption Investigation Unit have been dispatched for the warrant execution

Gives you an idea of who this is. It's not a bunch of commies, it's Steve McGarret, Joe Friday, Elliot Ness, Kojak, [insert some morally upright cop from your millenial/zoomer shows, if there are any these days]. They're just trying to enforce the law.

The police are also reportedly considering measures to arrest any individuals who obstruct the team's investigation, including the deputy chief of the PSS Kim Seong-hoon and the head of the Bodyguard Division Lee Kwang-woo who had warrants for their detention issued against them Tuesday night.

Please do.

a bunch of stuff about the 55th Security Brigade

This is the military unit that is the garrison for the capital. Nobody likes to talk about it, but this is what really matters when it comes down to it. They could have easily stopped it but they didn't. Probably because they don't want this insane guy running the country any more than everyone else does. Remember that through the 1980s (I swear it wasn't that long ago, I'm not that old) all power in the country was ultimately based on who could get military units to fight for them. So them sitting this one out is a relief to everyone involved except Yun and his partisans.

Further Reading

I've reported extensively on these topics but if you want some more background:

55th Security Brigade's response to Yun's orders to arrest his political opponents

From 2 years ago during the election why people think that him and his wife are total fricking weirdos.

Okay this one is just funny

Why the rightoids are so afraid of communism - because it's real

My last post about this lamenting that the left is apparently just as bad

Seriously tho, just search for "author:redactor0 korea". A variety of material and all of it is gold.

https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1i1jko0/sec_sues_elon_musk_alleging_failure_to_properly/

https://old.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/1i1k45w/sec_sues_elon_musk_over_twitterrelated_securities/

https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1i1kn55/sec_sues_elon_musk_over_twitterrelated_securities/

NYTIMES

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/technology/sec-elon-musk-securities-violations.html

U.S. securities regulators sued Elon Musk in federal court in Washington on Tuesday in an enforcement action arising from his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, now called X.

The lawsuit against Mr. Musk, who has become a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, is likely to be one of the more contentious final acts of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Gary Gensler, its departing chair.

The S.E.C. contends that in buying Twitter in 2022, Mr. Musk violated securities laws by amassing a large stock position in the social media company without filing the proper notification. The complaint said he had waited 11 days before filing the required disclosure with the S.E.C.

The regulatory filings are required so investors in the marketplace can monitor the moves of large investors and potential takeover bids.

Because Mr. Musk did not disclose his position, he was able to continue buying Twitter stock at an artificially low price, the S.E.C. said in its lawsuit. The move "allowed him to underpay by at least $150 million" for the additional shares before he belatedly disclosed his stake, the lawsuit continued.

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Musk had taunted the S.E.C. in posts on X about the potential for filing a lawsuit. In December, he shared a letter that his lawyer, Alex Spiro, had sent to the agency, rejecting a settlement offer in the case.

On Tuesday, Mr. Spiro denounced the S.E.C.'s latest filing.

"Today's action is an admission by the S.E.C. that they cannot bring an actual case, because Mr. Musk has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is," Mr. Spiro said in a statement. The agency had waged a "multiyear campaign of harassment" against Mr. Musk but filed "a single-count ticky-tack complaint," Mr. Spiro added.

This is the third time the S.E.C. has gone to court with Mr. Musk. The first lawsuit, during Mr. Trump's first term in office, arose from inappropriate market-moving posts on social media in which Mr. Musk mused about taking his electric car company, Tesla, private.

Before filing the lawsuit on Tuesday, the S.E.C. had also sought to force Mr. Musk to comply with a subpoena seeking to take his deposition.

With Mr. Gensler stepping down with the inauguration of Mr. Trump on Monday, it is unclear whether incoming regulators will pursue the litigation. The president-elect has said he intends to nominate Paul Atkins, a former S.E.C. commissioner and pro-business conservative, to succeed Mr. Gensler.

Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in criminal law, said the lawsuit appeared to be part of a pattern of cases filed by Biden administration appointees "on their way out."

It will be up to the new administration and Mr. Trump's appointees to decide whether to "back off and withdraw" cases like the one against Mr. Musk, he said.

The S.E.C. and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have filed a flurry of lawsuits in the waning days of the Biden administration. As with the case against Mr. Musk, it is unclear how these last-minute actions will fare under the new administration.

The S.E.C. filed the lawsuit against Mr. Musk on Tuesday after the close of business on the East Coast without the usual fanfare associated with a big case. The news release announcing the filing did not include a quote from Mr. Gensler or any other top official with the agency — a rarity for an action against a high-profile businessperson.

Mr. Musk has been by Mr. Trump's side almost every day since the presidential election. He is living all but full time at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and club in Florida, and attending meetings and events with the president-elect.

Mr. Trump also appointed Mr. Musk as co-chair of a governmental task force that aims to come up with ways to cut the federal budget.

The S.E.C. has pursued its current investigation of Mr. Musk for years, beginning shortly after he announced in April 2022 that he had amassed a controlling stake in Twitter.

Although Mr. Musk initially said in an S.E.C. disclosure that he had planned to be a passive shareholder in Twitter, he quickly pivoted and made an offer to buy it outright for $44 billion. In July 2022, he tried to back out of the purchase, but the company sued to force the deal through. Mr. Musk completed his purchase that October, and later changed the company's name to X.

The S.E.C. has battled Mr. Musk to compel his testimony in the case. In October 2023, the agency sued him in an effort to force him to testify about his share purchases. Mr. Musk appeared for testimony a year later. The billionaire also agreed to pay almost $3,000 to compensate the S.E.C. for travel costs it incurred in sending its employees to take his testimony.

But in November, a federal judge in San Francisco denied the S.E.C.'s request to impose sanctions on Mr. Musk. The next day, in a post on X, Mr. Musk taunted the agency with a crude joke.

Mr. Musk's takeover of Twitter has been the subject of several lawsuits and investigations by the federal authorities. The Federal Trade Commission investigated whether X had the resources to protect users' privacy after he laid off much of its staff and after several senior executives responsible for privacy and security resigned.

That agency has also sought to depose Mr. Musk. Former Twitter shareholders have also sued Mr. Musk, accusing him of fraud in a case related to his belated disclosure of his stake in the company.

LA Mayor Bass appointee who oversaw fire department was put on leave over alleged city hall bomb threat https://t.co/O6dsY8RKBE pic.twitter.com/epxSp8oC57

— New York Post (@nypost) January 14, 2025