Snark of the Day

Must Be Hard to Face a Huge, Unexpected Bill, Amirite?

—The subhead for a story in The Register about an $847,000,000.00 judgement against Verizon for patent infringement.

There is, as there always is, a story behind all of this.  This case was held in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the most patent troll friendly jurisdiction in the nation, and it was presided over by Judge Rodney Jockstrap Gilstrap, who is the most patent troll friendly judge in the USA. (So much so that he typically hears over ¼ of all patent cases in the country.

There are literally thousands of offices in and around Marshall and Beaumont, Texas which are nothing but a door with a name on it.  They are used by patent trolls as "Headquarters" in order for them to have their case heard there.

I can't speak to the specifics of the patent, it about various radio signal technologies, and if it were in my wheel house, I would still find the obscure verbiage of patents hard to penetrate, but the plaintiff is a non-practicing entity (NPE, better described as a patent troll), so I'm inclined to call bullsh%$ on the verdict.

I cannot believe that I am saying this, but I'm with Verizon on this one.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

It appears that the Department of Defense ran a secret program to spread fear uncertainty and doubt about the Sinavac Covid vaccine.

But this wasn't just an anti-Sinavac program, it was also an attempt to discourage people using things like Chinese masks, and Chinese Covid tests, and seems to have been structured to discourage people generally from engaging in remediation during the apogee of the pandemic.

This is not only stupidly hostile, it also facilitated the spread of the disease, so, to quote the movie The Hunt for Red October, "You arrogant ass, you killed us!"

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real.”

After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.

Sinavac was not the most effective vaccine, it needed a series of 3 shots rather than 2 for the MRNA equivalents, but this action doubtlessly resulted in the deaths of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people for no good reason at all.

………

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China’s vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details.

Why the f%$# would you want to do this?

………

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”

………

China’s growing influence fueled efforts by U.S. military leaders to launch the secret propaganda operation Reuters uncovered.

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”

"Didn't do a good job?"  More like being big pharma's bitches and refusing to allow for compulsory licensing of the vaccines.

So instead, you killed people, and made the pandemic worse everywhere, including in the United States.

In a just world, there would be an investigation with a number of general officers, most prominently Special Operations Command Pacific General Jonathan Braga, who appears to be the prime mover in this effort would be subjects of courts martial and would be separated from the service.

This is insane.

Maybe Ireland if Trump Wins

Only about 15 km off the coastIreland is offering as much as $92,000.00 to entice people to make a home on sparsely populated islands off their west coast.  

It looks like a lovely place, but you have to restore an abandoned home, and it is a bit remote, only having ferry access.

I also imagine that finding kosher food there would be a bit of a chore:

Ireland announced a new scheme offering generous cash grants to people willing to move to approximately 30 islands of the country's wild west coast. But some prerequisites have to be met to receive the funds.

The "Our Living Islands" scheme offers up to €84,000 (about $92,000) to people who want to move to the beautiful, sparsely populated islands on the Atlantic coast — which are not connected to the mainland by bridges and cut off by the tides.

Options include Inis Mór, which was used as a filming location for the recent hit film "The Banshees of Inisherin," as well as Árainn Mhór, a "rich and vibrant" island off the coast of Donegal.

………

The goal is to refurbish vacant or derelict buildings on islands into long-term homes as part of a broader initiative to revitalize life and the community on the islands, and increase the population, the government said.

Vacant Home Officers will identify empty and derelict properties on our island.

"As a result of delivering this policy, we will see more people living on the islands and more people working on our islands, with good career prospects, regardless of where their employer is headquartered," Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys, said in a statement to receive any funding. However, a person must own property on one of the islands built before 1993 that has been vacant for at least two years.

 I wonder if I could telecommute from there.

Quote (Dialogue) of the Day

Link

Elizabeth Appleboom: I hate Dr. Seuss, he isn't even a real doctor!

Claire Agustus: There's nothing wrong with taking creative liberties with a pen name.

Elizabeth Appleboom: It devalues all the works actual doctors do to earn the title.

Marten Reed: Just like every black metal musician's pseudonym devalues the work the actual servants of Morgoth do to please their dark master.

I really like that line.

I highly recommend the web comic Questionable Content.

It's up 5 days a week, and I rarely miss it.

It Was Inevitable

The government of Niger has revoked the operating license of the French government owned nuclear fuel company Orano at the Imouraren mine, likely because it has not done anything to develop its concession, and hence deliver any royalties, for nearly a decade:

Orano said it has been excluded from the Imouraren mine in northern Niger which sits on an estimated 200,000 tonnes of the metal, used for nuclear power and weapons.

Mining was meant to have started at Imouraren in 2015 but development was frozen after the collapse in world uranium prices in the wake of the 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster.

The Niger government did not immediately comment on the company's statement. But it had vowed to review mining concessions in the country and the mining ministry had warned that it would take away Orano's licence if development work had not started by June 19.

A week before the deadline, Orano told AFP that "preparatory work" had recently started at Imouraren.

Yeah, like 3 porta-potties, I guess.

………

The junta vowed to review foreign mining concessions in the country after it took power in July last year.

The military rulers have also turned against France, ordering out French troops based in the country and increasing criticism of the former colonial power. Niger has increasingly turned to Russia and Iran for support.

Chinese, Australian, US, British, Italian, Canadian, Russian and Indian firms have secured uranium mining licenses in recent years. In 2022 there were 31 prospecting permits and 11 mining licences.

The Azelik mining company, majority held by Chinese interests, is increasingly taking over uranium mining in the north of the country that have been suspended for the past decade because of poor profitability.

Considering the terms of the concessions that prior regimes in Niger gave to French interests, the term larceny comes to mind, I am surprised that they could not make the numbers work.

There have been a string of coups in the Sahel over the past few years, and anger over the continued French economic and political dominance over their former colonies has been a driving force behind the military overthrow of these government.

To the Juntas now ruling these countries, hating on the French is both good policy and good politics.

Gee, Now There is a Surprise

Microsoft, the cloud service for Scottish Law enforcement, admitted to the the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) that it would not keep their data in Scotland.

Given that both Microsoft and the SPA have publicly promised, "Data Sovereignty," this is a bit of a kick in the teeth:

Microsoft has admitted to Scottish policing bodies that it cannot guarantee the sovereignty of UK policing data hosted on its hyperscale public cloud infrastructure, despite its systems being deployed throughout the criminal justice sector.

According to correspondence released by the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) under freedom of information (FOI) rules, Microsoft is unable to guarantee that data uploaded to a key Police Scotland IT system – the Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) – will remain in the UK as required by law.

While the correspondence has not been released in full, the disclosure reveals that data hosted in Microsoft’s hyperscale public cloud infrastructure is regularly transferred and processed overseas; that the data processing agreement in place for the DESC did not cover UK-specific data protection requirements; and that while the company has the ability to make technical changes to ensure data protection compliance, it is only making these changes for DESC partners and not other policing bodies because “no one else had asked”.

The correspondence also contains acknowledgements from Microsoft that international data transfers are inherent to its public cloud architecture. As a result, the issues identified with the Scottish Police will equally apply to all UK government users, many of whom face similar regulatory limitations on the offshoring of data.

The short version of this is, "You cannot rely on Microsoft for your security."

The slightly longer version of this is, "If you rely on Microsoft for your security, you are a f%$#ing moron."

Where are the Prosecutions?

Rather unsurprisingly, it has been determined that 95% of all deaths in ICE custody were preventable.

If you are holding someone in custody, you have an obligation to take care for their safety and health, and the immigration enforcers are ignoring that.  This is criminal negligence, and should be prosecuted:

Nearly all of the deaths in U.S. immigration detention facilities over a five-year period were preventable, but no officials have faced serious accountability, a new report found.

Of the 52 people who died in detention under the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from January 2017 to December 2021, 49 of the deaths, or 95%, were preventable or possibly preventable if appropriate medical care had been provided. The new report, “Deadly Failures: Preventable Deaths in U.S. Immigration Detention,” reviewed more than 14,500 pages of documents published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight on June 25.

None of the private prison corporations—which currently hold more than 90% of the detainees under ICE custody—have faced meaningful consequences as million-dollar contracts have been doled out to the same facilities where preventable deaths have occurred, the report showed.

“It is a system that’s rotten to the core,” said Eunice Hyunhye Cho, senior attorney at ACLU’s National Prison Project and lead co-author of the report. “From bottom to top, you see some very minimal slaps on the wrists and blaming of the lowest level employees, but there’s really no true accountability regarding the disaster of the medical care system in ICE’s detention facilities,” she said.

After deaths in detention, ICE failed to conduct rigorous investigations—failing to interview key witnesses, omitting key inculpatory facts, and allowing evidence to be destroyed, the report stated. ICE also withheld information from the relatives of the deceased. To obtain the medical record of a loved one, a family has to take ICE to court and litigate for years to receive often incomplete files.

“It is a system of impunity and lack of transparency as ICE and private corporations are working hand in hand in perpetuating dangerous and deadly conditions,” Cho said.

This is a feature, not a bug.

The current immigration enforcement agencies have cruelty and brutality as policy. 

It is seen as a disincentive to potential illegal immigrants.  The cruelty is literally the point.

The Supreme Court Just Exonerated Richard Nixon

In a nakedly corrupt and partisan decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that the President of the United States has absolute immunity for any actions he takes in an official capacity.

Many people have noted that this technically means that Biden could order a drone strike on Donald Trump, as his role of commander-in-chief of the military is explicitly an official role.

Also, it means that a drone strike on Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barret is legal.

More significantly, and more likely, this ruling means that if the President orders the military to commit a war crime, the President cannot be prosecuted.

So, if Biden were to use the military to detain Cliven Bundy, Ammon Bundy, and Ryan Bundy, and transport them to the Guantanamo Bay prison, or if Donald Trump were to order his troops to open fire on asylum speakers on the border, or if George W. Bush were to authorize the use of torture, there could never be a a prosecution.

As an FYI to the historically challenged, the second case, Trump massacring immigrants than Biden locking up the Bundy's, and George W. Bush did explicitly authorize torture, but his successor, Barack Obama, decided not to prosecute anyone for torturing.

In any case, we are f%$#ed until the corrupt members of the Supreme Court leave the court:

Welp, Donald Trump won. The Supreme Court today ruled that presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts, then contended that pressuring the vice president and the Department of Justice to overthrow the government was an “official act,” then said that talking to advisers or making public statements are “official acts” as well, and then determined that evidence of what presidents say and do cannot be used against them to establish that their acts are “unofficial.”

The ruling from the Supreme Court was 6-3, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, on a straight party-line vote, with all the Republican-appointed justices joining to give the president the power of a king. While some parts of the federal indictment against Trump will be remanded back down to the district-court trial judge to determine whether any of Trump’s actions were “unofficial” (“unofficial” acts, the court says are not entitled to immunity), Trump’s victory in front of the Supreme Court is total. Essentially, all he has to do is claim that everything he did to plot a coup was part of his “official” duties, and the Supreme Court provided no clear method or evidentiary standard that can be used to challenge that presumption.

• Legally, there are two critical things to understand about the totality of the court’s ruling here: The immunity is absolute
• There is no legislative way to get rid of what the court has given

On the first point, the immunity granted to Trump in this case far exceeds the immunity granted to, say, police officers or other government officials, when they act in their official capacities. Those officials are granted “qualified” immunity from civil penalties. Because the immunity is “qualified” it can be taken away (“pierced” is the legal jargon for taking away an official’s qualified immunity). People can bring evidence against officials and argue that they shouldn’t be given immunity because of the gravity or depravity of their acts.

I think that taking the Andrew Jackson tactic, "Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

The Supreme Court, or at least ⅔ of the Supreme Court, are partisan and corrupt.

At the very least, the people should calling the Supreme Court, or at least ⅔ of the Supreme Court, partisan and corrupt.