This is My Shocked Face

So after months of accusations, the various European and American intelligence agencies are saying that the damage to communications cables in the Baltic are the result of accidents.

Gee, who could have seen that coming!

Ruptures of undersea cables that have rattled European security officials in recent months were likely the result of maritime accidents rather than Russian sabotage, according to several U.S. and European intelligence officials.

The determination reflects an emerging consensus among U.S. and European security services, according to senior officials from three countries involved in ongoing investigations of a string of incidents in which critical seabed energy and communications lines have been severed.

The cases raised suspicion that Russia was targeting undersea infrastructure as part of a broader campaign of hybrid attacks across Europe, and prompted stepped-up security measures including an announcement last week that NATO would launch new patrol and surveillance operations in the Baltic Sea.

But so far, officials said, investigations involving the United States and a half-dozen European security services have turned up no indication that commercial ships suspected of dragging anchors across seabed systems did so intentionally or at the direction of Moscow.

So, the problem seems to be the greedy and negligent ship owners, like the ones who knocked over a bridge in my town, aren't Russian moles?

They are just corrupt capitalists?

The problem is deeper than Russian rat-fuckery.  It's that shipping is dedicated to socializing the negative consequences of their ineptitude and malice while privatizing the profits that result.

Maybe if we started arrested shipping executives whose chronically under maintained ships and chronically under trained crews do this, we would see a change in behavior.

Everything That Is Wrong with the Democratic Party Establishment (There Is No Democratic Party Establishment) in One News Story

Kamala Harris' former PR flack is suggesting that Joe Biden resign a couple of days before his term ends so that Kamala can be the first Black Woman President.

Seriously, in a world of useless gestures that cost a f%$# ton of money, Harris spent a billion dollars on the campaign, this reaches new levels of stupidity:

Jamal Simmons, a former aide to Vice President Harris, called for President Biden to resign so that the vice president can have his role for a short amount of time.

“Joe Biden’s been a phenomenal president, he’s lived up to so many of the promises he’s made. There’s one promise left that he could fulfill, being a transitional figure,” Simmons said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on a panel featuring anchor Dana Bash, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.

“He could resign the presidency in the next 30 days, make Kamala Harris president of the United States,” he continued, drawing shocked reactions from others.

I get that he has a sad because of the elections results.  Hell, I has a sad because of the election results, and I never liked Kamala Harris, but an empty gesture which shows a profound lack of interest in ……… the public? ……… The votors? ……… People who are not delusional narcissists.

I get the feeling, and were it said at a cocktail party, it ……… OK, it would still be stupid, awful, and deplorable, but not AS stupid, awful, and deplorable.

The whole Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) needs to be sent to Butte, Montana to staff Casagranda's Steakhouse.

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.

Boeing F%$#ed Up Again

This is not a safety issue per se, but rather a sales weasel releasing embargoed data to the press about the door blowing off the 737 without notifying the NTSB.

This is safety investigation 101, and as a result, the NTSB has rescinded Boeing's access to the investigation data as a result:

The National Transportation Safety Board late Wednesday offered a sharp rebuke of Boeing after learning the company held a media event on June 25 with around four dozen U.S. and international journalists inside its Renton, Washington factory, which included brief comments about Alaska Airlines 1282.

Boeing is a party to the NTSB’s investigation of the Jan. 5 accident, which occurred when a plug exit violently departed a newly built 737 Max 9 soon after takeoff from Portland International Airport in Oregon. Preliminary information indicates that the bolts designed to hold the exit in place were not on the airplane when it left Boeing’s factory in Renton.

“During a media briefing Tuesday about quality improvements at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, a Boeing executive provided investigative information and gave an analysis of factual information previously released,” the board said in a statement to The Air Current. “Both of these actions are prohibited by the party agreement that Boeing signed when it was offered party status by the NTSB at the start of the investigation. As a party to many NTSB investigations over the past decades, few entities know the rules better than Boeing.”

In an unusual step, the NTSB is taking action against the plane maker for its comments, including removing its access to the docket of information gathered through the investigation. The NTSB will subpoena any relevant records from Boeing, and the plane maker will not be given the opportunity to ask questions of witnesses at the planned August hearing into the accident. Boeing remains a party to the investigation.

Additionally, the NTSB said, “Given that Boeing is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice in relation to its Deferred Prosecution Agreement stemming from Boeing’s interactions with the FAA prior to the Boeing MAX fatalities, the NTSB will be coordinating with the DOJ Fraud Division to provide details about Boeing’s recent unauthorized investigative information releases in the 737 MAX 9 door plug investigation.”

This is the first time ever that I have heard of the NTSB referring something to the DoJ.

Generally, the Bureau is loathe to involve criminal authorities in their investigation.  They believe that that doing so will prevent cooperation, and hence prevent safety lessons.

It appears that the NTSB is sick and tired of Boeing's bullsh%$.  

Not a good look.

Another Day, Another Clarence Thomas Bribe

It's ever reliable Leonard Leo this time, who dropped over a million dollars on a professionally run public relations campaign for the benefit of Clarence Thomas.

Even if  Clarence Thomas is just stupid and not corrupt, Leo is clearly offering considerations with the expectation that it will influence Thomas' decisions.

Jail Leo, and there is no issue of meddling in the business of the court, or jail Thomas, because he is a corrupt piece of crap, or jail them both, because this is incredibly corrupt:

The 25th anniversary of Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court was approaching — a moment that would draw attention to his accomplishments on the bench but also to the misconduct claims that had nearly derailed his rise. Among the wave of retrospective accounts set to come out that year, 2016, was a star-studded HBO film dramatically recounting Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations.

That spring, a flurry of opinion articles defending Thomas and railing against the film appeared in news outlets, penned by a D.C. lawyer who had worked in the George H.W. Bush White House during the confirmation. Websites celebrating Thomas’s career — and attacking his onetime accuser — popped up. And on Twitter, a new account using the name “Justice Thomas Fan Account” began serving up flattering commentary.

………

It was not apparent at the time, but the rush of favorable content was part of a coordinated and sophisticated public relations campaign to defend and celebrate Thomas, according to a Washington Post examination of public and internal records and interviews with people familiar with the effort. The campaign would stretch on for years and include the creation and promotion of a laudatory film about Thomas, advertising to boost positive content about him during internet searches and publication of a book about his life. It was financed with at least $1.8 million from conservative nonprofit groups steered by the judicial activist Leonard Leo, the examination found.

………

The public relations campaign shows how he has continued to exert influence in support of right-leaning justices after helping them secure lifetime appointments. It adds to an emerging portrait of Leo as a behind-the-scenes benefactor, defending the justices from public criticism and exalting their jurisprudence while tending to personal matters including private travel and a spouse’s employment.

Leo steered tens of thousands of dollars in consulting payments to Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, in 2012, The Post reported recently. He also arranged a fishing trip to Alaska for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in 2008, a vacation that included a free ride on the private jet of a billionaire businessman who later had interests before the court, ProPublica reported. Those and other revelations about wealthy conservative donors gaining access to justices outside the public eye have brought scrutiny to the court in recent months.

Leonard Leo makes William Magear "Boss" Tweed look like an amateur.

How is this not illegal, and why isn't someone in the DoJ looking for something chargeable.

Not The Onion

Uber just suspended its chief of diversity, equity and inclusion for allegations of sensitivity INSENSITIVITY.

Specifically Bo Young Lee is alleged to have conducted multiple multiple meetings to help people understand and appreciate "Karens".

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

Uber has suspended its head of diversity, equity and inclusion after Black and Hispanic employees complained about the workplace events she moderated exploring the experience of white American women under the title “Don’t Call Me Karen”.

The ride-hailing app has confirmed that it has asked Bo Young Lee, who has led its DEI department for five years, to take a leave of absence while the company works out “next steps”. Her suspension is the latest wave of chaos to strike the $72bn company over its corporate culture.

Lee’s suspension, which was first reported by the New York Times, follows mounting internal discontent over two “Don’t Call Me Karen” sessions that she convened on Zoom for up to 500 employees. The events, one in April and the second last week, were billed as “diving into the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience from some of our female colleagues, particularly how they navigate around the ‘Karen’ persona”.

………

Uber has labored hard to improve and modernize its workplace culture after the 2017 resignation of its chief executive, Travis Kalanick, following months of scandals. Under his leadership, the company was alleged by a whistleblower to have fostered widespread gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

Kalanick’s replacement as chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, vowed to turn around the culture. His efforts have included a focus on DEI, led by Lee, whom he brought into the company in 2018.

Uber is a horrible company. It makes its money by abusing its drivers.

Any alleged focus on DEI is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

There is difference between an evil company that makes its money by ruthlessly exploiting workers, and one that makes its money by ruthlessly exploiting workers with regular DEI training sessions.

I'm sure that there is some sort of pithy, "Arbeit macht frei," reference I could make here, but my writing skills are insufficient to find it.

Needs to be Said

In my reporting on clean energy misinformation I've seen one argument over and over.

Wind turbines kill birds.

While this is true, it misses an important piece of context:

Fossil fuel power plants kill 35x more birds per GWh than wind turbines do.

🧵

— Michael Thomas (@curious_founder) November 22, 2022

Rule 1 of Fossile Fuel Companies is that they lie

In 2012, researchers at Vermont Law School set out to answer this question.

They found that wind turbines kill 0.27 birds per gigawatt-hour (GWh). But fossil fuel power plants kill a staggering 9.4 fatalities per GWh.https://t.co/dDt1uCtUtq

— Michael Thomas (@curious_founder) November 22, 2022

Rule 2 is see rule 1

I am not surprised that fossil fuel companies and their paid lackeys will discuss the negative externalities of alternative energy sources, but assiduously cover up their own.

You have the impacts of habitat destruction through things like mountain top removal coal mining, acid rain, oil spills, toxic waste, etc.

Even if one does not believe that anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat for our society, (I do believe that it is an existential threat) it is clear that there is an extensive and heavily funded campaign to minimize the perception of the risks, and the costs, involved.

Every time someone talks about the unacceptable costs of sustainable energy production, you need to fact check every word that they say, including the, "And," and the, "The."

Equally important, particularly for journalists, when quoting people like this, you need to follow the money, and find out who is funding their efforts to oppose an energy transition, and then you need to put this information in your story every time you write something.

Calling out propaganda as such is not biased reporting, it is the essence of good reporting.

Not the Onion

In the latest episode of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, we discover that the White House Briefs TikTok is briefing TikTok influencers on the Ukraine.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

Seriously, this buggers the mind:

National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki gathered 30 TikTok stars via Zoom Thursday, March 10th for a briefing on the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine late last month, TikTok became an unlikely source of real-time information for millions around the world. While the app has proven to be a useful tool for reporters, its algorithm has also harbored dangerous misinformation and Russian propaganda.

Psaki led the briefing alongside Matt Miller, a special adviser for communications at the White House National Security Council. In a recording obtained by The Washington Post, Biden officials emphasized the influence these creators have in online discussions surrounding the crisis. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest,” said White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty. “So we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source.”

The briefing’s attendees were mostly Gen Z TikTokers — many with upwards of half a million followers — whose content leans towards politics, history, and culture. “People in my generation get all our information from TikTok,” Khalil Greene, who attended the briefing, told The Washington Post. “It’s the first place we’re searching up new topics and learning about things.”

I weep for our nation.

I Suggest Naming it, "Painful Rectal Itch"

It comes from the SNL skit
(Season 1, when it was funny)

It appears that Facebook, Inc. is looking at changing its name.

I suggest that they change their name to, "Painful Rectal Itch," because with a name like that, it has to be good.

Seriously, this is the stupidest idea since Comcast decided to rename its consumer hostile internet service "Xfinity."

Your company is viewed as complete sh%$ because it IS complete sh%$, and the sh%$ is a direct result of the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is a genuinely horrible human being who has constructed the company in his own image:

Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment for this story.

Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that, over the next several years, “we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

It's lipstick on a pig, and it is futile. (See the Xfinity case)

If you want your company to be viewed more favorably, you need to change your contemptible behavior.

Evil Is as Evil Does

It turns out that One America News (OAN) was created at the specific request of AT&T management.

Given that AT&T, ore more accurately the monster created from the bones of AT&T when it was acquired by former baby Bell SBC, has been ineluctably evil for decades, this is not a surprise:

One America News, the far-right network whose fortunes and viewership rose amid the triumph and tumult of the Trump administration, has flourished with support from a surprising source: AT&T Inc, the world's largest communications company.

A Reuters review of court records shows the role AT&T played in creating and funding OAN, a network that continues to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.

“They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. “They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.”

Since then, AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.

………

After this story was published, AT&T issued a statement saying it has “never had a financial interest in OAN's success and does not 'fund' OAN.”

Although the contracts are confidential, in court filings Herring cited monthly fees included in one five-year deal with AT&T. According to an AT&T filing citing Herring’s numbers, those fees would total about $57 million. Greer said that figure is inaccurate, but declined to say how much AT&T has paid to air OAN, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

………

The records include a reported offer by AT&T to acquire a 5% equity stake in OAN and AWE, though the two sides ultimately signed a different deal. The court filings also cite a promise by OAN to “cast a positive light” on AT&T during newscasts.

Some "Journalism" you got there, huh?

………

In a pivotal moment for the company, the Herrings say in court filings, depositions and sworn statements, unidentified AT&T executives told them there was an audience for another conservative news network. Herring seized the opportunity.

In his 2019 deposition in the labor suit unrelated to AT&T, the elder Herring said he created OAN for two reasons.

“To make money, number one,” Robert Herring said. “But number two, is that AT&T told us … they wanted a conservative network.”

The lawyer questioning Herring, Rodney Diggs, followed up.

“So,” the lawyer said, “AT&T kind of dictated the kind of network that they wanted. Because there was an opportunity, you jumped at it?”

“Yes, sir,” Herring replied.

If you have AT&T, you might want to reconsider your provider.

Gee, Now There's a Surprise

It turns out that the evidence that Russia put bounties on American Troops was decidedly sketchy.

The technical term for this is, "low to moderate confidence."  The layman's term for this is, "Likely bullsh%$."

Color me not surprised. This allegation has been made against the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

It's bullsh%$.  It's always been bullsh%$.

When you invade someone's country, the occupied citizenry will try to kill you for free:

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

………

“We have noted our conclusion of the review that we conducted on the bounties issue and we have conveyed through diplomatic, intelligence, and military channels strong, direct messages on this issue, but we are not specifically tying the actions we are taking today to that matter,” a senior administration official told reporters in reference to the bounty claims.

According to the officials on Thursday’s call, the reporting about the alleged “bounties” came from “detainee reporting”–raising the specter that someone told their U.S.-aligned Afghan jailers what they thought was necessary to get out of a cage. Specifically, the official cited “information and evidence of connections to criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government” as sources for the intelligence community’s assessment.

Given the rather dubious history regarding intelligence reports from tortured prisoners, I think that it's safe to call bullshit, particularly since any halfway competent intelligence agency would be using cut-outs if they were making payments.

Also, there never was a justification for the Russians to do this.

Also, with 2,312 deaths in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, if the Russians wanted to kill Americans, they would have done a better job.

F%$# Zuck

We have yet another Facebook whistle-blower, this time they are claiming Facebook ignored fake accounts used from despots and foreign governments to harass opponents online and manufacture consent.

This is not a surprise.  Facebook has been ignoring fake accounts so that they can sell non-existent eyeballs to advertisers for years.

The former Facebook data scientist Sophie Yang thinks that Facebook is not taking the issue seriously.

I think that Facebook DOES take this seriously.  They simply CHOOSE to profit from it:

Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them.

………

The memo is a damning account of Facebook’s failures. It’s the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It's also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed.

………

These are some of the biggest revelations in Zhang’s memo:

• It took Facebook’s leaders nine months to act on a coordinated campaign “that used thousands of inauthentic assets to boost President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras on a massive scale to mislead the Honduran people.” Two weeks after Facebook took action against the perpetrators in July, they returned, leading to a game of “whack-a-mole” between Zhang and the operatives behind the fake accounts, which are still active.
• In Azerbaijan, Zhang discovered the ruling political party “utilized thousands of inauthentic assets... to harass the opposition en masse.” Facebook began looking into the issue a year after Zhang reported it. The investigation is ongoing.
• Zhang and her colleagues removed “10.5 million fake reactions and fans from high-profile politicians in Brazil and the US in the 2018 elections.”
• In February 2019, a NATO researcher informed Facebook that "he’d obtained Russian inauthentic activity on a high-profile U.S. political figure that we didn’t catch." Zhang removed the activity, “dousing the immediate fire,” she wrote.
• In Ukraine, Zhang “found inauthentic scripted activity” supporting both former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a pro–European Union politician and former presidential candidate, as well as Volodymyr Groysman, a former prime minister and ally of former president Petro Poroshenko. “Volodymyr Zelensky and his faction was the only major group not affected,” Zhang said of the current Ukrainian president.
• Zhang discovered inauthentic activity — a Facebook term for engagement from bot accounts and coordinated manual accounts— in Bolivia and Ecuador but chose “not to prioritize it,” due to her workload. The amount of power she had as a mid-level employee to make decisions about a country’s political outcomes took a toll on her health.
• After becoming aware of coordinated manipulation on the Spanish Health Ministry’s Facebook page during the COVID-19 pandemic, Zhang helped find and remove 672,000 fake accounts “acting on similar targets globally” including in the US.
• In India, she worked to remove “a politically-sophisticated network of more than a thousand actors working to influence" the local elections taking place in Delhi in February. Facebook never publicly disclosed this network or that it had taken it down.

………

In her post, Zhang said she did not want it to go public for fear of disrupting Facebook’s efforts to prevent problems around the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, and due to concerns about her own safety. BuzzFeed News is publishing parts of her memo that are clearly in the public interest.

………

Zhang said she turned down a $64,000 severance package from the company to avoid signing a nondisparagement agreement. Doing so allowed her to speak out internally, and she used that freedom to reckon with the power that she had to police political speech.

………

A former Facebook engineer who knew her told BuzzFeed News that Zhang was skilled at discovering fake account networks on the platform.

“She's the only person in this entire field at Facebook that I ever trusted to be earnest about this work," said the engineer, who had seen a copy of Zhang’s post and asked not to be named because they no longer work at the company.

“A lot of what I learned from that post was shocking even to me as someone who's often been disappointed at how the company treats its best people," they said.

………

Still, she did not believe that the failures she observed during her two and a half years at the company were the result of bad intent by Facebook’s employees or leadership. It was a lack of resources, Zhang wrote, and the company’s tendency to focus on global activity that posed public relations risks, as opposed to electoral or civic harm.

No, it's malice, and it comes from the top.

Expect an insincere apology from Mark Zuckerberg in 3………2………

………

Katy Pearce, an associate professor at the University of Washington who studies social media and communication technology in Azerbaijan, told BuzzFeed News that fake Facebook accounts have been used to undermine the opposition and independent media in the country for years.

“One of the big tools of authoritarian regimes is to humiliate the opposition in the mind of the public so that they're not viewed as a credible or legitimate alternative,” she told BuzzFeed News. “There's a chilling effect. Why would I post something if I know that I'm going to deal with thousands or hundreds of these comments, that I'm going to be targeted?”

Pearce said Zhang’s comment in the memo that Facebook “didn’t care enough to stop” the fake accounts and trolling aligns with her experience. “They have bigger fish to fry,” she said.

………

They said Facebook has at times made things worse by removing the accounts or pages of human rights activists and other people after trolls report them. “We tried to tell Facebook that this is a real person who does important work,” but it took weeks for the page to be restored.

Facebook is notorious for this, and they honestly don't care.  If they did, they would change it.

………

Zhang outlined the political processes within Facebook itself. She said the best way for her to gain attention for her work was not to go through the proper reporting channels, but to post about the issues on Facebook’s internal employee message board to build pressure.

“In the office, I realized that my viewpoints weren’t respected unless I acted like an arrogant asshole,” Zhang said.

Surprising, a toxic founder created a toxic workplace.

Even by the psychopathic standards of Silicon Valley, Facebook is remarkably evil.

So Not a Surprise

It turns out that the anti-quarantine protests are AstroTurf:

Gun advocacy and conservative groups are responsible for astroturfing the reopen America campaign that has swept the US in recent days, according to research from cybersecurity experts.

………

But according to new research from cybersecurity researchers, many of these protests are neither spontaneous nor organic. Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs and researchers at DomainTools have separately analysed web addresses including the word "reopen." And interestingly, they’ve found that many of these can be linked to domains associated with gun advocacy groups, lobbyists, and other conservative organisations.

Published today, a report from DNS-focused cybersecurity firm DomainTools concludes that over 500 new domains related to the protests have been registered in the past month. Many of them are linked to only a few groups.

What, you mean that these protests, meticulously photographed by the media to create an artificial impression of large size and popular support are just an exercise in propaganda?

Well knock me over with a Chevy Chevelle SS 454 with a Holley four-barrel carb with a Turbo 400 automatic and Positraction.

Tweet of the Day

A short little history of war propaganda:

Vietnam 1964 - Gulf of Tonkin incident

Gulf War 1990 - Incubator Babies

Iraq War 2003 - Imaginary WMDs

Libya 2011 - Nonexistent massacres in Benghazi#Syria 2019: Video from a Kentucky military show passed off as Syrian war footage https://t.co/AWS9QKBOMn

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) October 15, 2019

When issues of war and peace come up in America, the only way to get an accurate story is to find a foreign source.

Yeah, 80% of the Way to Bond Villain Status

One of the cave divers involved in the Thai soccer team cave rescue suggested that Elon Musk had no clue what he was talking about.

Elon Musk responded by called the cave diver a pedo:

The Elon Musk story took a bizarre turn Sunday morning, as the world famous entrepreneur took to Twitter to suggest a critic of his submarine rescue plan is a pedophile.

Musk’s tweet was directed at British cave diver Vern Unsworth, who had participated in the rescue of 12 Thai children and their soccer coach from a water-filled cave. In a recent CNN video news report, Unsworth had belittled Musk’s plan to deploy a mini-submarine made by SpaceX engineers to rescue the children.

“He can stick his submarine where it hurts,” Unsworth said when asked about Musk’s plan. “It just has absolutely no chance of working.”

Musk tweeted Sunday that he’ll send a sub through the cave to prove it could have worked, followed by an attack on Unsworth:

“We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.” Musk tweeted.

Seriously, this guy made his fortune by figuring out how to ignore banking laws, and by getting lucky.

The idea that he is a visionary, as opposed to a self-absorbed and conceited ass does not match the facts at hand.

If the above doesn't make you wonder about Musk, the fact that he is a major donor to a Republican PAC dedicated to preserving their House majority should give you pause:

Now reports indicate that Musk was one of the top donors for a Republican PAC named Protect the House.

Filings show that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO donated $33,900 to the PAC, which is dedicated to keeping Republicans in control of Congress. The PAC raised over $8 million in quarter two, according to filings compiled by ProPublica.

The top donors of the PAC include Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas casino magnate, and Robert McNair, the owner of the NFL's Houston Texans. Although Adelson and McNair's contributions far outweighed Musk's — Adelson and McNair each gave $371,500 respectively, while Musk gave $33,900 — Musk was one of the top 50 donors of the PAC.

Seriously, there is nothing more pathetic than a rich businessman who believes his own PR.

Journalism Fail

If you read stories about student loans in new sources like, "The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNBC," you have probably seen quotes from student loan expert "Drew Crowd".

The kicker is that Drew Cloud does not exist. He is a fraud promulgated by the student loan firm Lend EDU:

Drew Cloud is everywhere. The self-described journalist who specializes in student-loan debt has been quoted in major news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNBC, and is a fixture in the smaller, specialized blogosphere of student debt.

He’s always got the new data, featuring irresistible twists:

One in five students use extra money from their student loans to buy digital currencies.

Nearly 8 percent of students would move to North Korea to free themselves of their debt.

Twenty-seven percent would contract the Zika virus to live debt-free.

All of those surveys came from Cloud’s website, The Student Loan Report.

Drew Cloud’s story was simple: He founded the website, an "independent, authoritative news outlet" covering all things student loans, "after he had difficulty finding the most recent student loan news and information all in one place."

He became ubiquitous on that topic. But he’s a fiction, the invention of a student-loan refinancing company.

After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. "Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education," wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.

Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn’t respond to additional inquiries.

And on Monday, as The Chronicle continued to seek comment, Cloud suddenly evaporated. His once-prominent placement on The Student Loan Report had been removed. His bylines were replaced with "SLR Editor." Matherson confirmed on Tuesday that Cloud was an invention.

One hopes that editors at the publications that were taken in by the fraud are busy cutting their reporters new assholes over this one.

I See What is Going On Here………

I have previously noted that Trump's new Communications Director Anthony "Mooch" Scaramucci bears a scary reselblance to the Boneitis guy from Futurama.

Well, the good folks at The Daily Show noticed something else, that Scaramucci's body language Parallels are rather striking: (The whole video is worth a watch, but the specific clip starts at 9:12)

At first, I found it profoundly creepy, and then I realized what it was, an exercise in sucking up to Trump.

He almost certainly practiced in front of a mirror, as a way to make "The Donald" feel comfortable.

I've actually found myself doing something similar occasionally, when I am dealing with Asian professionals.

I tend to mimic their body language that they use to show that I am listening attentively.

Mooch has simply taking it to an outrageous level, and he has almost certainly done so in a far more conscious and practiced way.

What it reveals is that Mr. Scaramucci is a remarkably accomplished and devoted suck up.

He's perfect for the Trump administration.

This is Brilliant

Over at Pando, they have a positively brilliant take-down of Rachel Whetstone's exit from Uber.

The short form is that the senior vice-president of communications and public policy for Uber is a rat, and knows when a ship is sinking, and this is brilliantly brutal:

Okey dokey.

As regular Pando readers will know, the idea that Whetstone would leave Uber to avoid drama is so far beyond laughable that it has travelled the entire circumference of the globe and returned back to laughable again. Rachel Whetstone started out in Westminster -- where she and her husband Steve “I support Donald Trump” Hilton helped reinvent the UK’s “nasty” conservative party as the friendly, lovable, electable party that regained power and brought the world… Brexit.

Having left London, for a variety of dramatic reasons, she then headed to Google where she is most famous for picking a very public and highly dramatic fight with (her old pal) Rupert Murdoch. Finally she ended up at Uber where she immediately began bringing even more drama to the already dramatic company, starting with the infamous dinner at which Emil Michael pledged to spend a million dramatic dollars dramatically smearing Pando’s own Sarah Lacy.

Simply put, Rachel Whetstone hates drama like David Mamet hates drama, like Shakespeare hates drama, like Ru Paul performing Tom Stoppard at Devin Nunes High School For Thirteen-Year-Old Girls hates drama.

No, Rachel Whetstone didn’t leave Uber because she hates drama.

For Rachel Whetstone to leave Uber there can only be one reason: Uber is totally, irreversibly f%$#ed. So irreversibly f%$#ed that anyone left behind when the other shoe drops will be so irreparably damaged by association that THE PERSON WHO MADE THE TORIES ELECTABLE AGAIN doesn’t want the karma.

(%$# mine)

Paul Bradley Carr owes me a screen wipe.

Not Your Call

Well, after a freakout from the right wing, the DOJ has agreed to release the full transcripts from the Orlando shooter during his rampage:

The Orlando killer pledged allegiance to the Islamic State while in the midst of murdering 49 people at a gay nightclub last weekend. But for a few hours Monday, we couldn't read that part of Omar Mateen's phone conversations with dispatchers and police because the FBI took it out of transcripts of 911 calls it released.

To Republicans, the redacted transcripts were yet another example of how the Obama administration is mishandling this whole war on terror by ducking every opportunity to avoid talking about the real issues behind it — and specifically, Islam.

………

The pressure worked. The FBI reversed course Monday afternoon and released the redacted parts of the transcript in which Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, saying the political debate over the redaction had become a distraction.

It's more than that, it's public records, and the Department of Justice wanted to suppress these records because they did not approve of that message:

[FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ron] Hopper Hopper said authorities also did not want to “give credence to individuals who have done terrorist acts in the past.”

“We’re not going to propagate their violent rhetoric,” he said.

Mr. Hopper, that decision is is not your call, nor should it be.

Your job is not to determine what news is available to the general public.

Yes, Dumping the ABM Treaty was Such a Good Idea………

The insistence that missile defense is not directed at Russia is literally laughable

Not.

It appears that in response to the installation of ballistic missile defense in Europe has led Russia to leak plans of a massive nuclear armed torpedo:

Then came the new U.S. missile defense in Europe. All Russian protests and warnings against stationing such capabilities have not been able to deter the U.S. for proceeding with it. Should the missile defense project go forward Russia will have to invent new means to reintroduce a significant second strike capability. Both sides, Russia says, would be better off by not introducing these new capabilities.

To strongly send that message the Russian military scientists went back into the archives to find some old crappy idea that could overcome missile defense and be horrible enough in its effects to recreate some deterrence.

The scientists came back with an odd idea the "human rights activist" Andrej Sakharov once promoted:

At the height of the Cold War, August 12, 1953 have been produced successfully tested the new Soviet weapons of terrible destructive force - a thermonuclear bomb. One of the creators of the bomb, the newly elected member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the 32-year-old Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov suggested as a "means of delivery" to use the developed nuclear submarines of project 627, equipping each of them a giant torpedo under the 100-megaton thermonuclear charge (approximately 6000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima). As conceived by the young academician exploding the U.S. coast ocean, these torpedoes were to cause a tsunami of unprecedented power, the height of 300 meters, which would be simply washed off American cities, causing irreparable damage to the United States.

The planned U.S. "missile defense" systems would have some difficulties hitting such a torpedo.

Thus the Kremlin decided to reuse this old Sakharov idea to scare the U.S. off from its current "missile defense" course:

On November 10, 2015 President Putin held a regular meeting with his generals in Sochi to discuss development of the Russian strategic forces. The president used the occasion to complain again about U.S. missile defense plans and to warn that Russia will do whatever it takes to preserve the strategic balance.

The meeting was filmed (vid) by a major Russian TV station and "just by chance" the cameraman caught a power point page (also at 1:46 min in the video) one of the attending Generals was reading:

Russian television cameras caught a page in a briefing book describing the development of a new nuclear weapons system called Status-6. It’s nothing less than an underwater drone designed to carry a thermonuclear weapon into foreign ports. If detonated, Status-6 would be capable of dousing cities like New York in massive amounts of radioactive fallout.

"Massive amounts of radioactive fallout" or, in the old version, a 300 meter high tsunami - choose whatever you like better but you will probably be hit with both.

I think that this is deliberate leak, intended as a warning regarding the US plans for BMD.

Certainly the range figures are highly suspect, having a speed of 100 kts, a max depth of 1,000 meters, and a range of 10,000 km.

That range would require nuclear propulsion, which I do not see as particularly feasible, since using some derivative of Russian thermionic reactors developed for space would mandate a much slower speed, as the output of such a system tops out at a few kW.

The depth and speed are certainly achievable though, given that the crush depth of the (manned) Alpha class boats appears to be above 1000 m, and the speed of modern heavyweight torpedoes (and I am not counting the supercavitating ones here, those are exclusively short range) are in excess 60 kts, at ranges in excess of 50 km.

As to the warhead size, the Tsar Bomba had a 50 MT yield, and that was a two stage weapon, with the tertiary stage eliminated because of fallout concerns, though with a weight of 30 tons, I cannot see it on a large torpedo unless its weight could be reduced by about ¾.

A more realistic scenario, at least to the degree that the end of the world can be called "realistic", is to place SSBNs relatively close to the US (say 2000-3000 miles), and fire missiles on depressed trajectories, but that is not as "sexy" as some sort of new Russian "super-weapon".

Of course, we could avoid such idiocy if the United States as a nation was not so dedicated to maintaining the perception of American hegemony in all aspects of power in the guise of "Exceptionalism". 

This serves neither world nor the United States, as evidenced by increases in death rates among middle aged white males in the US.

This happened in the USSR before its collapse, and the explanation at that time was that excessive military spending was sucking the marrow out of their society, and it appears that this is what is happening in the US now.