Russian to Judgement
He’s discussing the recent poisonings of a Russian double agent in Russia.
He’s skeptical of the current narrative, as we all should be in this world of “81mm Aluminum Tubes.”
I’d take his arguments at the link with a grain of salt, but I love the pun.
Verizon Forced To Briefly Give A Damn About Its Neglected Broadband Networks
New York state is suing Verizon for broken promises.
We really need to end barriers to municipal broadband to compete with these ratf%$#s.
The New York Times editorial board has come out against Gina Haspel running the CIA, and called her a torturer.
No euphemisms here:
President Trump has displayed enthusiasm for brutality over the past year. He has told the police to treat suspects roughly, praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines for murdering people suspected of drug ties and called for the execution of drug dealers.
………
Previously, anyone alarmed by Mr. Trump’s cavalier embrace of government-sanctioned cruelty was reassured by his vow to accept the advice of his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, who opposes Torture and promised at his Senate confirmation hearing that he would uphold American and international laws against it.
Now we have reason to be uneasy yet again.
When it comes to Torture, no American officials have been more practiced in those heinous dark arts than the officers and employees of the Central Intelligence Agency who applied it to terrorism suspects after 9/11. Few American officials were so directly involved in that frenzy of abuse, which began under President George W. Bush and was ended by President Barack Obama, as Gina Haspel.
………
As an undercover C.I.A. officer, Ms. Haspel played a direct role in the agency’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which suspected militants were remanded to foreign governments and held at secret facilities, where they were Tortured by agency personnel.
Ms. Haspel ran the first detention site in Thailand and oversaw the brutal interrogations of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Mr. Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in a single month; his C.I.A. Torturers bashed his head into walls and subjected him to other unspeakable brutalities. This cruelty stopped when investigators decided he had nothing useful to tell them.
………
The use of Torture and secret foreign prisons — think of the deeply disgraceful events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — was a boon to terrorist groups, helping their propaganda and recruitment efforts. Such activities were also an irritant to key allies and even put American forces and personnel at risk of legal liability and being subjected to harsh treatment when they are detained.
Ms. Haspel is reportedly respected by many C.I.A. officers. But she effectively ran an illegal program, and her promotion to such a top administration position, unless she forcefully renounces the use of Torture during her confirmation hearing, would send an undeniable signal to the agency, and the country, that Mr. Trump is indifferent to this brutality, regardless of what Secretary Mattis believes. Members of Congress and public interest groups need to stand up and make clear that, otherwise, the appointment is wrong.
(Emphasis mine)
She, and her defenders, are saying that she was just obeying orders.
That argument did not carry the day in Nuremberg, and they should not carry the day now, and the New York Times agrees.
And corporate criminals don’t come any whiter than Elizabeth Holmes:
Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of blood testing startup Theranos, has been charged with engaging in a “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC says she and the company’s president raised more than $700 million using an “elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”
No, she won’t be going to jail over this. In fact, even though she faces some serious penalties over the charge — she’s losing control of the company and won’t profit if it is sold — she also doesn’t have to admit wrongdoing as part of a settlement with regulators.
To recap, Theranos was once a Silicon Valley favorite because of its promise that its technology could allow for a wide variety of blood tests with just a droplet of blood. That all began to fall apart when the Wall Street Journal raised serious questions about the accuracy of the tests, prompting a government agency to shut down one of its labs.
………
Here’s are some of the things Holmes has agreed to do to settle with the SEC.
She’ll give up financial and voting control of the company.
- Holmes has to pay a $500,000 fine.
- She cannot be a director or officer of a publicly traded company for 10 years. Theranos is a privately-held company, which means she can continue to be CEO.
- She has to return 18.9 million shares of Theranos stock.
- She will give up her majority voting control of the company by converting her shares to Class A Common shares from Class B Common share
She should be in jail, and she should be banned from managing publicly traded companies for life, but she does not even have to admit liability.
Well, I suppose she’s commiserating with David Petraeus about how unfair this all is.
It’s appears to be heading to a recount with a margin in the ¼% to ½% range (about 600 votes), with the Democrat leading.
In any case, it appears to be a roughly 20% swing from Trump, so whether or not the Democrat, Connor Lamb, or the Australopithecus, Rick Saccone actually ends up filling out remaining term of Tim Murphy, who resigned following allegations of sexual improprieties.
Whatever the results, I expect the Democratic party establishment to claim that this shows that they need to make no changes to their strategy, because, as Upton Sinclair noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
(Update 24 hours later) Lamb has been declared the winner by a few hundred votes.
No update on the recount.
There are a growing number of reports of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) searching the electronic devices of passengers on domestic flights in the US, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has sued the federal agency for records.
The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a lawsuit against the TSA on Monday demanding that the government disclose its policies for searching the computers and cellphones of domestic travelers, arguing that anecdotal accounts have raised concerns about potential privacy invasions.
“We’ve received reports of passengers on purely domestic flights having their phones and laptops searched, and the takeaway is that TSA has been taking these items from people without providing any reason why,” the staff attorney Vasudha Talla told the Guardian. “The search of an electronic device has the potential to be highly invasive and cover the most personal details about a person.”
A TSA spokesman, Matt Leas, declined to comment on the lawsuit but said: “TSA does not search the contents of electronic devices.”
Over the past year, civil liberties groups have repeatedly raised concerns about US border agents expanding the invasive searches of international travelers’ phones. Some travelers reported authorities demanding they unlock their devices and allow officials to review text messages, social media accounts, photos and other private information – without warrants or reasonable suspicion. Now, there are questions about whether similar practices could be happening for passengers traveling within the US, raising fears that the government may be increasing surveillance and privacy violations at airports.
This is f%$#ed up and sh%#.
So, Donald Trump has fired Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State (via Twitter, no less) and announced his intent to replace him with current CIA head Mike Pompeo.
This is not a shock, it’s been telegraphed for a while, and it is a not an outrage.
What is an outrage is who has been named to replace Pompeo at the CIA, Gina Haspel, the inspiration for the main character in the Leni Riefenstahl Kathryn Bigelow film Zero Dark Thirty, who ran the CIA torture camp in Thialand, and then destroyed evidence to evade Congressional oversight:
Donald Trump’s pick for head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, reportedly oversaw a black site prison in Thailand where terrorism suspects were tortured. She briefly ran the prison in 2002, anonymous officials told the Associated Press.
Deputy CIA director could face court deposition over post-9/11 role in torture
If the US Senate confirms Haspel, she would be the first female director of the agency, but the historic significance of her nomination was immediately overshadowed by her reported link to the black site, where two suspected al-Qaida members were waterboarded.
“The fact that she’s been able to stay in the agency, rise in the agency and now is in line to be director should be deeply troubling,” Larry Siems, author of the Torture Report, a book analysing government documents relating to Bush-era torture released in 2014, told the Guardian.
Haspel also drafted a cable ordering the destruction of CIA interrogation videos in 2005.
A US justice department investigation into the tapes’ destruction ended without charges, but the event helped spark a landmark investigation into US detentions and interrogations.
Christopher Anders, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, claimed Haspel “was up to her eyeballs in torture”.
Anders urged the CIA to declassify her torture record before the Senate considers her nomination.
She has been described as having, “Ran a laboratory for torture.”
This crap has me agreeing with John Sidney McCain III, who has described her as a representing, “One of the darkest chapters in American history,” which is a complete mind f%$# to me.
While we are at it, it should be noted that German prosecutors are considering issuing an arrest warrant against Haspel for her torture.
Once again, the world has exceeded my already blindingly low expectations.
She should be in jail, but Obama decided, in defiance of signed treaties, to prosecute any of the torturers.
Thanks, Obama.
If you oppose women having control over their own bodies, you support their enslavement, and Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) has said that he is fine with supporting candidates who want to strip women of control over their own bodies:
Democrats will not withhold financial support for candidates who oppose abortion rights, the chairman of the party’s campaign arm in the House said in an interview with The Hill.
Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said there will be no litmus tests for candidates as Democrats seek to find a winning roster to regain the House majority in 2018.
“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” said Luján, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman. “As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.”
So, you are going to support segregationist candidates in predominantly white districts in Alabama then?
Of course not, but women are expendable to Luján and his ilk.
Dpo not give to the DCCC.
Rather unsurprisingly, it appears in Foreign Policy magazine, in all caps, “THE MEETING IS THE CONCESSION“.
For more than 2 decades the US policy has been that there should be no talks without full capitulation by the DPRK.
This is not a sane or consistent way to conduct foreign policy.
This weekend, my 2 brothers and my dad all got together and went to the beach at Neskowin, Oregon.
Much drinking ensued.
I figured that I would share some pictures for everyone to appreciate/mock.
Back to the chain gang tomorrow.
See the attached Imgur album.
GUESS WHO’S RAISING BIG $ AGAIN? @HillaryClinton soliciting major donors to give $10k+ to join finance committee of her nonprofit group Onward Together, which will hold a donor mtg in April with her & @GovHowardDean. pic.twitter.com/cXymVcOc0Q— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) March 7, 2018
Apologies to Dr. Seuss and Art Buchwald:
“Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don’t care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
If you like
You can go
In an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, do, DO!
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton
I don’t care how.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car
If you wish.
If you wish
You may go
By lion’s tale.
Or stamp yourself
And go by mail.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton
Don’t you know
The time has come
To go, go, GO!
Get on your way!
Please Tony B.!
You might like going in a Zumble-Zay.
You can go by balloon . . .
Or broomstick.
Or
You can go by camel
In a bureau drawer.
You can go by bumble-boat
. . . or jet.
I don’t care how you go.
Just get!
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton!
I don’t care how.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
I said
GO
And
GO
I meant . . .
The time had come
So . . .
Hillary WENT.”
One of the reasons why Russia can credibly meet or beat the US in terms military-related technological superiority is that top mathematical and physics grads have been going into finance since the mid 1980s.
It’s interesting how, when people complain about crowding out from government deficits, it never seems to extend to how a parasitic financial industry is diverting intellectual capital to unproductive uses.
In fact, if you read trade magazines like Aviation Week, it becomes clear that a major hurdle for high tech operations is the fact that there is no one is stepping up to replace the current (near retirement) cadre of technical employees.
These folks know how to count, and so are going to finance where it is more remunerative.
Stephen Colbert is Colberting Congress:
We now know why the Cole bombing lawyers at Guantánamo resigned, they found a microphone concealed in the room used for lawyer-client conferences, and the court has refused to discuss this. Under these conditions, now only would I have resigned, I’d have seriously considered defecting to Russia and revealing all the crap that they have pulled:
Lawyers for the alleged USS Cole bombing mastermind quit the capital case after discovering a microphone in their special client meeting room and were denied the opportunity to either talk about or investigate it, the Miami Herald has learned.
The narrative, contained in a 15-page prosecution filing obtained by the Herald, is the first authoritative description of the episode that caused three civilian defense attorneys to resign from the death-penalty case of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri on ethical grounds: Rick Kammen, a seasoned death-penalty defender, and Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears. In fact, the prosecution says the listening device that lawyers discovered in an early August inspection of their special meeting room was a legacy of past interrogations — and, across 50 days of ostensibly confidential attorney-client meetings, was never turned on.
The description, an eight-paragraph, declassified version of something the public was not allowed to know until this week, was contained in a prosecution filing at the U.S. Court of Military Commissions Review signed by the chief prosecutor for military commissions, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, and three appellate lawyers on his staff.
It says that, after the three lawyers quit the case in October, prison workers “removed flooring, walls, and fixtures” in an attorney-client meeting site exclusively used by Nashiri and his lawyers and “confirmed that legacy microphones, which were not connected to any audio listening/recording device nor in an operable condition, were removed.”
I don’t believe them, and neither do the lawyers who quit:
Kammen, reached by the Herald, called the prosecution account “outrageous” and “really grotesque selective declassification” designed to permit “some portion of the truth to seep out, but only in ways that the government feels will help it.”At the time of their resignations, Kammen said he was only allowed to say that something had occurred, which he could not describe; that he sought discovery from the judge in order to investigate the episode as well as a hearing, and the requests were denied it. The judge’s denial is classified.
“Our concerns were much greater than what they appear to admit was there,” he said. He added, however, that even the portion the prosecution now permits the public to know “demonstrates that either Colonel Spath was lied to by the government or in many of his statements he was lying to the public, the press and the victims in a way that was absolutely shameful and disgraceful — by casting it as fake news.”
………
War court watchers wondered why the discovery was considered a national security secret in the first place.
“If this really was an innocuous slip-up with unplugged microphones, why has the government apparently tried so hard to cover it up?” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, told the Herald.
“What else is being kept secret?” Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said in a tweet.
These military commissions have always been a travesty, as this incident clearly shows.
Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud.
The obvious follow-up question is, “What about the other guys?”
People like Lloyd Blankfein, Tim Sloan, Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, etc.
A federal judge on Friday sentenced Martin Shkreli, the notorious former hedge fund manager, to seven years in prison for defrauding his investors of $10 million.
In imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto roughly split the difference between the 15 years prosecutors asked for and the up to 18 months sought by Shkreli’s defense team. Shkreli, 34, who delivered a tearful speech to Matsumoto apologizing for his conduct and pleading for leniency, did not react to the sentence.
A complicated picture of Shkreli emerged from the trial, said Matsumoto, who said the case had given her a case of insomnia. “It is more than clear that Mr. Shkreli is a gifted individual with a passion for science,” she said. But his crimes are serious and it is important to send a message that such fraud should be not tolerated, she said. “White collar offenders like Mr. Shkreli use their intelligence and acumen to elude detection,” she said.
Shkreli, best known for raising the price of an AIDS drug by 5,000 percent when he was chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, was convicted last August of defrauding the investors in his hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. Shkreli lied to obtain investors’ money and then didn’t tell them when he made a bad stock bet that led to massive losses, prosecutors argued. Instead, they said, he raised more money to pay off other investors, or took money and stock from Retrophin, a drug company he founded.
We need to throw a whole bunch more people in jail, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Flying into a no longer epicly carpeted Portland International Airport (PDX) and then going to Nescowin to hang with my dad and my brothers.
Some beer will be consumed, and much flatulence is anticipated.
Sorry folks, but that is about as gangsta as the Saroff males get.
The long suffering Saroff females on the other hand………
Let’s look at the checklist of scary sh%$ that Alexa does:
And here is the final bit, unexpected bursts of weird incongruous laughter.
I can only conclude that this is a result of Bezos attempting to upload his consciousness to the cloud:
Over the past few days, users with Alexa-enabled devices have reported hearing strange, unprompted laughter. Amazon responded to the creepiness today in a statement to The Verge, saying, “We’re aware of this and working to fix it.”
………
As noted in media reports and a trending Twitter moment, Alexa seemed to start laughing without being prompted to wake. People on Twitter and Reddit reported that they thought it was an actual person laughing near them, which is certainly scary if you’re home alone. Many responded to the cackling sounds by unplugging their Alexa-enabled devices.
I’m beginning to think that this whole Internet thing was a mistake.
The Democratic side is going to a runoff, with Lizzie Fletcher getting the most votes with the condemned by the DCCC Laura Moser close behind.
The Emily’s List endorsed Fletcher is a union buster lawyer, so even if the DCCC had not released an opposition research dump on Moser, she would have my support.
With the DCCC’s war on Moser though, I’m actually interested in what would otherwise be an obscure, Congressional race.
It’s highly unlikely that either can win the general: 7% more Republicans turned out than Democrats, and for them, the primary was meaningless, with the incumbent getting 76% of the vote.
Moser’s campaign website is here.
Send her money, and tell the Blue Dog loving DCCC to go cheney themselves.
Some days, it’s Republicans who stun me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.
Some days, it’s Donald Trump who stuns me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.
Some days, it’s Democrats who stun me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.
Some days, it’s Monsanto who stuns me with their ability to exceed my lowest expectations.
And then, there is Facebook:
Facebook has apologized for sending out a survey to find out how the social network should respond when adult men ask teenaged girls for sexually explicit images.
The survey, which went out to an undisclosed number of users of the social network over the weekend, posed this question:
In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook’s policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14 year old girl for sexual pictures.
- This content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it.
- This content should be allowed on Facebook, but I don’t want to see it.
- This content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it.
- I have no preference on this topic.
Missing is any acknowledgement that soliciting sexual imagery from minors is a crime in many countries, including the US and the UK, to say nothing of facilitating the distribution of such content on your website.
How I long for the quiet competence and high moral standards that Microsoft showed (only by comparison) when it ruled the world.
Pharma bro Martin Shkreli will have to forfeit $7.6 million, including his copy of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin as a result.
My heart bleeds borscht:
The disgraced pharmaceutical executive and hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli must forfeit $7.36 million in assets (PDF) to the federal government following his fraud conviction, a judge ruled Monday. The assets set for forfeiture (PDF) include the single copy of the Wu-Tang album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin that Shkreli reportedly bought for $2 million, as well as a painting by Pablo Picasso.
The forfeiture follows Shkreli’s conviction last October on three of eight counts of securities and wire fraud. The federal government had indicted Shkreli in December of 2015 for running a Ponzi-like scheme, alleging he defrauded investors in two hedge funds he managed and siphoned millions from his pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, to cover losses.
Oh, the horror.
*For the snark impaired, if I do actually start a GoFundMe, it will be done ironically.