US officials defend troubled vaccine rollout

Issued on: 03/01/2021 -

Number of deaths officially linked to Covid-19 in 2020, by age group,
according to provisional US CDC data. Patricio ARANA AFP

Washington (AFP)

US officials on Sunday defended the stumbling campaign to vaccinate millions of Americans against the coronavirus, saying they expected much more to be done in coming weeks after delays.

"There have been a couple of glitches, that's understandable," top US scientist Anthony Fauci said on ABC. He said there would always be challenges in "trying to get a massive vaccine program started and getting off on the right foot."

Some 4.2 million Americans have received initial doses of the two-dose vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, but that is far below official predictions of 20 million by the new year.

Part of the problem, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on CNN, is that "this virus also occurred in the midst of a surge, and a lot of the local capacity to be able to vaccinate was being used for testing and responding to surges."

President Donald Trump has placed the onus on the states to orchestrate vaccine distribution once they receive their supplies.

"The vaccines are being delivered to the states by the Federal Government far faster than they can be administered!" he tweeted Sunday.

- Trump dismisses death toll -

Fauci said he saw "some little glimmer of hope" in the fact that 500,000 people are now being inoculated a day, a far better number than when the program started last month, and "I think we can get there if we really accelerate, get some momentum going."

Adams said he, too, expects vaccinations to "rapidly ramp up in the new year."

Troubling reports have emerged of vaccine going bad due to poor organization, lack of healthcare professionals to administer it and, in one isolated case, sabotage.

Some people have also waited in line for hours only to be turned away.

In Tennessee, elder citizens, some with walkers, were reported standing along a busy highway while waiting for their vaccinations.

Health officials also rejected unsubstantiated suggestions by Trump that the Covid-19 toll -- total deaths now surpass 350,000 -- has been exaggerated.

The president tweeted Sunday that "the number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov's ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. 'When in doubt, call it Covid.' Fake News!"

But Adams, who was nominated by Trump, said he saw no reason to question the numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Fauci said that "those are real numbers, real people and real deaths."

© 2021 AFP

Norway landslide: Seventh body found among collapsed houses

Rescue workers are still searching for three people who remain unaccounted for after a landslide swallowed homes in the Norwegian town of Ask.



Rescue teams have been working day and night in difficult conditions in the hope of finding survivors

Norwegian rescue teams discovered a seventh body on Sunday, four days after a landslide buried several homes in a small village near the capital, Oslo.

A police statement announced that the body had been found at about 5.30 p.m. local time. A sixth body had been recovered just before 1 p.m.

Rescue teams again worked through the night in the village of Ask, where a landslide swallowed homes on Wednesday. Three people are still believed to be missing. 

"We are working hard in the depression created by the landslide," the head of the rescue operation, Goran Syversen, told journalists.

"We have five teams working at the same time. They are doing very difficult work which is not without risk. Nevertheless, we are making good progress."


During the winter months Norway has a limited number of daylight hours which has furthered hampered rescue efforts

A fifth body was discovered earlier on Sunday. Police uncovered three bodies on Saturday and one on Friday.

The first deceased person found on Friday has been identified as a 31-year-old man, while the identities of the other victims have not been released.

Search teams have been hindered by unstable ground, poor weather conditions and a limited number of daylight hours.

As such, they have resorted to the use of heat-sensitive drones, helicopters and rescue dogs.

Authorities say the chances of a second landslide are relatively low.

Norway's second-biggest earthfall

On Wednesday morning, a torrent of mud buried parts of the Ask village, 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of the capital Oslo.

At least 10 people were injured, one of which had to be transported to Oslo for treatment.

Norway's King Harald V and his family visited the village on Sunday to pay their respects. "I'm having trouble finding something to say, because it's absolutely horrible," the king said after the visit.

"This terrible event impacts us all. I sympathize with you who are beginning the new year with sadness and uncertainty," he added in a televised statement. 

Prime Minister Erna Solberg called it one of the biggest landslides in the country's history.

Experts explained that the disaster was caused by a "quick clay slide" measuring around 800 by 300 meters (2624 by 984 feet).

There had been warnings of potential accidents due to the clay since 2005.

More than 1,000 people from the 5,000 living in the village were evacuated and authorities said that up to 1,500 may have to be relocated.

nm,ab/mm (dpa, AFP, LUSA)

Death toll continues to rise days after major landslide in Norway

Issued on: 03/01/2021 - 

Rescue crews work in the area at Ask in Gjerdrum, Saturday Jan. 2, 2021, 

after a massive landslide smashed into a residential area near the 

Norwegian capital on Wednesday. AP - Tor Erik Schroeder

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Rescue workers have uncovered a sixth body from a landslide that buried homes in a village near Norway's capital Oslo, police said Sunday, with four people still missing.

The body was recovered just before 1 pm (1200 GMT), a police statement said. Rescue teams still hope to find survivors four days after the tragedy occurred.

A torrent of mud shifted houses hundreds of metres (yards), destroying many of them, in the village of Ask, 25 kilometres (15 miles) northeast of Oslo, on Wednesday.

The head of the rescue operation, Goran Syversen, told journalists earlier Sunday: "We are working hard in the depression created by the landslide.

"We have five teams working at the same time. They are doing very difficult work which is not without risk. Nevertheless, we are making good progress."

Search and rescue teams have been using sniffer dogs, helicopters and drones in a bid to find survivors.

"We are searching where we believe we might still find survivors," said the head of the team of firefighters, Kenneth Wangen, adding that the search zone had been expanded.

The teams, who are also seeking to rescue family pets, were digging channels in the ground to evacuate casualties.

Police said earlier that a fifth body had been found just before 6 am on Sunday. Three were discovered on Friday and one on Saturday.

The first person found on Friday was identified as 31-year-old Eirik Gronolen, while the identities of the four other dead have not been released.

But police have published the names of all 10 people, including a two-year-old and a 13-year-old, who went missing on Wednesday.

Ten people were also injured in the landslide, including one seriously who was transferred to Oslo for treatment.

About 1,000 people of the town's population of 5,000 have been evacuated, because of fears for the safety of their homes as the land continues to move.

"It is a completely surreal and terrible situation," one of the evacuees, Olav Gjerdingen, told AFP, adding that his family were sheltering at a hotel.

Royal visit

The rescuers received a visit Sunday from King Harald, his wife Sonja and Crown Prince Haakon, who lit candles for the victims in a local church.

"I'm having trouble finding something to say, because it's absolutely horrible," the king said after the visit.

"This terrible event impacts us all. I sympathise with you who are beginning the new year with sadness and uncertainty," he said in a televised statement.

The authorities have banned all aircraft from the disaster area until 3 pm Monday as they conduct aerial searches.

The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) said the disaster was a "quick clay slide" of approximately 300 by 800 metres (yards).

Quick clay is a sort of clay found in Norway and Sweden that can collapse and turn to fluid when overstressed.

(AFP)

 DEC 30, 2020

Fifth body found in Norway mudslide, five still missing

Issued on: 03/01/2021 -

Oslo (AFP)

Rescue workers have uncovered a fifth body four days after a landslide buried homes near Norway's capital, police said Sunday, as the search goes on for five people still missing.

The tragedy occurred in the early hours of Wednesday when houses were destroyed and shifted hundreds of metres under a torrent of mud at the village of Ask, 25 kilometres (15 miles) northeast of Oslo.

"Just before six am a deceased person was found," a police statement said.

The discovery of a fourth body had been made Saturday after three were recovered the day before at the bleak, snow-covered scene at Ask, in Gjerdrum municipality.

Police on Saturday identified the body of the first person found on Friday as 31-year-old Eirik Grønolen.

The identities of the four other dead have not been released.

But police on Friday published a list of the names of all the eight adults, a two-year-old and a 13-year-old child who went missing on Wednesday.

Ten people were also injured in the landslide, including one seriously who was transferred to Oslo for treatment.

About a thousand people have been evacuated out of a local population of 5,000, because of fears for the safety of their homes as the land continues to move.

Search and rescue teams have been using sniffer dogs, helicopters and drones in a bid to find survivors.

The search teams were also digging channels in the ground to evacuate casualties.

Experts say the disaster was a "quick clay slide" of approximately 300 by 800 metres (yards).

Quick clay is found in Norway and Sweden and notorious for collapsing after turning to fluid when overstressed.

The royal court said in a statement that King Harald, his wife Sonja and Crown Prince Haakon were to visit the disaster area later Sunday morning.

© 2021 AFP

Brazil wildfires surge again in 2020
Issued on: 03/01/2021 - 

Burnt areas of the Amazon rainforest, near Boca do Acre, Brazil, 

in 2019 -- the number of wildfires in Brazil increased 12.7 percent 

in 2020 Lula SAMPAIO AFP/File

Rio de Janeiro (AFP)

The number of wildfires in Brazil increased 12.7 percent last year to a decade-high, according to official figures likely to add to pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro's government over the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

There were a total of 222,798 wildfires across Brazil in 2020, the highest number since 2010, according to the Brazilian space agency, INPE.

That included more than 103,000 fires in the Brazilian Amazon, an annual increase of nearly 16 percent, said INPE, which uses satellite images to track fires and deforestation.

It also included more than 22,000 fires in Brazil's share of the Pantanal, the world's largest wetlands, which were devastated last year by an annual increase of more than 120 percent.

The Amazon and Pantanal are two of Earth's most valuable ecosystems.

The Amazon, the world's biggest rainforest, is considered vital to curbing climate change because of the carbon dioxide it absorbs from the atmosphere.

About 60 percent of the rainforest is in Brazil.

The Pantanal, further south, is a paradise of biodiversity that stretches from Brazil into Bolivia and Paraguay.

Nearly a quarter of the Brazilian Pantanal was devastated by fires last year, amid the region's worst drought in nearly half a century.

Images of charred landscapes strewn with animal carcasses shocked the world, drawing criticism of Bolsonaro's government for failing to stop the destruction.

Bolsonaro, a far-right climate change skeptic, also faces attacks over the sharp rise in Amazon deforestation on his watch.

Activists say his push to open protected Amazon lands to agribusiness and mining and his government's funding cuts for environmental protection programs are fueling the destruction.

Deforestation wiped out an area larger than Jamaica in the Brazilian Amazon in the year to August, a 12-year high, according to the space agency's PRODES monitoring program.

Experts say the fires in the Amazon are mostly set by people clearing land for farming and ranching.

The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon had already risen by 48.7 percent in 2019, Bolsonaro's first year in office, triggering global outcry.

© 2021 AFP

Woman Brilliantly Trolls Anti-Vaxxer Facebook Group

By James Felton  28 DEC 2020

A woman has brilliantly trolled an anti-vaxxer Facebook group named "vaccines exposed".

Anti-vaxxers have infiltrated much of social media in a way that's of concern as the new COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out. Between July and August alone, engagement with anti-vaccine Facebook posts trebled, according to analysis from the Guardian.

Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook have all promised to take measures to deal with misleading content about vaccines and vaccine safety, from removing posts to deleting groups and users in violation of the rules.

Of particular concern are closed Facebook groups where only those who have been allowed to join can view the posts, making it difficult for others to counter any misinformation therein. One such group, "vaccines exposed", contains a lot of misinformation you've probably seen screenshots of elsewhere. Think 5G causes COVID-19 (which, as we've pointed out before, is as non-sensical as saying the radio causes super gonorrhea or Tom Cruise causes bread), or the vaccine contains a tracking chip.

Fortunately, there are heroes out there who will correct people within these groups, or at least annoy them thoroughly. An Internet user that goes by the name of Deb Deblinger (actually seasoned troll Ben Palmer) falls into the latter category and is quite effective at it.

In a troll for the ages, she managed to join the group by telling them that she was one of the participants in the Pfizer vaccine, and had a "horrible experience" that she needed to share with everyone.

Like a classic troll, she waited patiently for somebody to ask her what had happened, before leaping into some nonsense now that she'd got them on the hook.

"So when I first got there, there was absolutely NO place to park," the post read. "Then, I left my keys in the locked car. So I had to call Triple A and wait for them to get there. And of course that took forever. Then, as I was waiting, some guy walked by me and gave me a rude look like I was loitering or something.

Then when Triple A got there I found out the doors weren't even locked. Ugh. So then I was like an hour late for the study and so I was last in line to get the vaccine. I got vaccinated though so now I have a decreased chance of contracting COVID. So that's cool. But it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had."

Well played, Deb (by which we mean Ben).

Conspiracy theories run wild on Amazon

The e-commerce giant has become a hotbed for Covid-19 and QAnon disinformation.


Amazon says that, like other book sellers, it offered customers titles from a wide variety of viewpoints, and its content policies dictated what could be sold on its online marketplace. | Michel Spingler/AP Photo


By MARK SCOTT

12/23/2020 

LONDON — Amazon is profiting from disinformation linked to Covid-19 falsehoods and QAnon, the debunked conspiracy theory, according to POLITICO’s analysis of hundreds of books sold on the e-commerce giant’s global online marketplace.

Across the company’s multiple European and U.S. sites, more than 80 titles advancing claims that the ongoing pandemic is a hoax; that vaccines are harmful; and that people should be wary of national lockdowns are easily found — often promoted by Amazon’s own algorithms to entice people to buy conspiracy-laden books.


Roughly 100 books associated with the QAnon movement — or unproven claims there is a so-called deep state plot to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency — are also readily available within Amazon’s online marketplace, in several languages, based on the analysis.

These titles have often garnered thousands of positive reviews in which customers praise conspiracy theories which hold that Bill Gates, Angela Merkel and other global leaders are using the ongoing pandemic to undermine people’s freedoms for their own gain. Many of the books are included in Amazon’s subscription services, Kindle Unlimited and Audible, which allow people to read and listen to a selection of e-books and audio books for a monthly charge.

Other social media giants like Facebook and Google’s YouTube have banned QAnon content from their networks, in part because of its connections to real-world violence. These platforms have clamped down on Covid-19 disinformation, including Facebook banning anti-vaccine ads and other dubious content from its global network.

On Amazon, many of the Covid-19 and QAnon books are either self-published or promoted by small publishing houses, then printed and sold through the company’s own publishing division. The e-commerce giant typically takes at least a one-third cut of all e-book sales, while it pockets around 15 percent when people purchase traditional books, according to the company’s policies.

POLITICO could not determine how much money the U.S. tech giant had made through the sale of these digital and traditional books, though it is likely to be a mere fraction of its yearly book revenue — a figure that Amazon does not break out from its financial earnings. But many of the conspiracy theory titles, including “Vaccines Are Dangerous – And Don’t Work” by Vernon Coleman, a well-known anti-vaccine influencer, are best-sellers in several health, politics and alternative medicine book categories on Amazon, according to POLITICO’s analysis.

“Amazon is falling short by allowing people to promote these conspiracy theories,” said Ciaran O’Connor, a disinformation researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank in London that tracks extremist material online. It “offers online influencers with an infrastructure to monetize content and material directly linked to disinformation.”

In response, Amazon said that, like other book sellers, it offered customers titles from a wide variety of viewpoints, and its content policies dictated what could be sold on its online marketplace. The tech giant outlaws pirated content and counterfeit goods from being sold on its platform, but does not have specific rules linked to disinformation or conspiracy theories. The company has also removed several QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy books from its sites in recent months.

“Our shopping and discovery tools are not designed to generate results oriented to a specific point of view,” said Dagmar Wickham, a company spokesperson, when asked why Amazon was recommending QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy theory books to people on its sites.
Shift in focus

For much of 2020, attention has centered on how the biggest social networks — Facebook, Google and Twitter — have become hotbeds for disinformation tied to Covid-19 and QAnon. But as these platforms have taken steps to remove such material, online users have shifted their focus to less-policed parts of the web to spread conspiracy theories across digital audiences, according to disinformation experts.

That has thrown up difficult questions about the right to publish and read content that, while objectionable to some people, does not break specific laws, and whether tech companies should clamp down on material that either promotes political divisions or undermines medical responses to the global pandemic.

Since the summer, Spotify, Soundcloud and other audio streaming services have seen a marked increase in conspiracy podcasts. Fringe online groups have also promoted Amazon, whose online marketplace has become a go-to source for many during national lockdowns, as a key source of income and influence, based on POLITICO’s review of hundreds of conversations on Telegram, an internet messaging service favored by white nationalists and other extremist groups.

“A lot of this stuff exists because platforms haven’t had to think about it before,” said Jonathan Bright, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Junk content will exist in the least regulated parts of the internet.”

To determine how widespread disinformation was on Amazon, POLITICO worked with researchers from King’s College London and the University of Amsterdam who started with 16 widely available QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy books on the e-commerce giant. The academics then relied on the company’s own recommendations — based on automated algorithms that serve up other titles that may be interesting to its customers — to compile a list of more than 100 books with ties to disinformation and conspiracy theories.

POLITICO also conducted a separate review of Amazon’s U.S., British, German and French sites by searching for books associated with QAnon and Covid-19, and similarly used the company’s own recommendations to put together a list of 70 different books. While the English-language online marketplaces had the most conspiracy theory content, Amazon’s German and French versions also listed reams of such material, often associated with local groups like Germany’s right-wing identitarian movement and Didier Raoult, the French doctor who promoted an antimalarial drug to treat Covid-19.

“Amazon’s ecosystem, even before Covid-19, seems to have been a rich place for hyper-partisan literature that skews predominantly to the right,” said Marc Tuters, an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, who worked on the disinformation project. “Predominantly rightwing publishers are using Amazon to reach the widest audience possible.”

Everywhere you look

It does not take long to find disinformation on Amazon.

A search for QAnon or Covid-19 returns scores of books with titles like “Scamdemic: the COVID-19 agenda” and “QAnon: the awakening begins,” based on POLITICO’s analysis.

Many of these titles are written by leading online influencers such as Alex Berenson, whose skeptical take on the global pandemic was initially rejected by Amazon’s self-publishing division. His book was eventually added to the online marketplace, and became a bestseller, after Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive who has also expressed doubt about nationwide lockdowns, criticized the e-commerce giant on social media for censoring the book. The company said it had removed Berenson’s book “in error.”

Much of this material blurs the line between political, often anti-government, content and outright falsehoods, making it difficult, if not impossible, to remove the books for breaching Amazon’s content policies. But unlike other platforms that have tried to reduce the spread of conspiracy theory-related posts and videos, the e-commerce giant has actively promoted these titles to potential customers, based on POLITICO’s review of the company’s online sales network.

On Amazon’s U.S. site, Dave Hayes, a well-known QAnon influencer, has published a series of e-books to decipher the movement, garnering thousands of positive reviews despite the claims being mostly debunked. Almost all the reviews were positive and did not run with disclaimers — steps that other social networks have taken when handling user-generated conspiracy theory content. Such commentary can nudge people to buy the books, but there are few, if any, professional reviews of the QAnon-related content on Amazon, according to the University of Amsterdam’s Tuters.

“The Qanon posts describe an effort to take America back from the globalists and Deep State bureaucrats who’ve been in control of governments, banks, and politicians for decades,” one reviewer, who gave the book five stars, wrote. “This is not some wild story or conspiracy.”

The e-commerce giant also bundles QAnon books together as potential purchasing suggestions for would-be customers.

On Amazon’s British site, for instance, “QAnon: An Invitation to The Great Awakening” — a so-called field guide to the movement — is packaged together with two other titles that associate QAnon with “destroying the new world order.” The bundle, collectively costing £31.15, is “dispatched from and sold by Amazon,” according to each book’s page on the online marketplace.

The company’s recommendation engine, an automated tool that offers up other titles people may be interested in, based on others’ purchasing histories, similarly pushes people towards conspiracy theories and disinformation.

In France, a book titled “COVID-19: the oligarchy exposed,” written by a former senior official from the National Rally, the country’s far-right political party, outlines why global elites are behind the ongoing crisis and how vaccines could prove to be dangerous. It blurs the line between political speech and conspiracy theories

Yet on the book’s Amazon page, the e-commerce giant recommends other books — covering everything from claims Emmanuel Macron, the French president, caused the virus to spread, to why Didier Raoult’s debunked Covid-19 treatments were correct — that skew more toward outright disinformation. Similar suggestions appear on all of the QAnon and Covid-19 books available on the company’s multiple sites reviewed by POLITICO.

“With Covid-19, people are already moving away from trusted institutions,” said Claire Wardle, co-founder of FirstDraft, a nonprofit organization that works with news outlets to combat disinformation, including falsehoods linked to the global pandemic. “They search out information that reinforces their existing beliefs.”

Leonie Cater contributed to this report.

'A violation of trust': Alberta doctors decry government vacations abroad

© Provided by Calgary Herald Rockyview General Hospital. Thursday, Dec. 10, 2020.


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The revelation that at least five Alberta MLAs travelled abroad over the holidays amid strict COVID-19 restrictions has left some doctors in the province feeling frustrated.

The vacation destinations for the elected officials dot North America. Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard and Calgary-Klein MLA Jeremy Nixon both visited Hawaii. Arizona was the sunny locale visited by Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan, while Calgary-Peigan MLA Tanya Fir jetted to Las Vegas and backbencher Pat Rehn took a trip to Mexico.

On their website, the Alberta government advises against non-essential travel outside of Canada, aligning with a federal advisory.

Premier Jason Kenney said on New Year’s Day sanctions would not be issued to any government officials who spent their holidays on foreign soil. He said he issued a directive forbidding future out-of-country unrelated to government business.

The news was upsetting for Dr. Fiona Mattatall, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Calgary’s Rockyview General Hospital.

“It made me really angry and frustrated, and as I sorted through where that’s coming from, I realized it’s essentially coming from what I see my patients going through,” Mattatall said, estimating she sees about 50 patients each week.

“They’ve been changing a lot in their lives to keep themselves and their unborn child safe, and (I’ve been) hearing the sacrifices that people are making for their families and for their neighbours. I think it’s been hard coming to terms with knowing as Albertans we’re being given restrictions and then the people who are giving them out are not abiding by them.”

Mattatall worked early Saturday morning, and said she saw patients who felt “extremely angry” because they had altered celebrations around the holidays and foregone interactions with loved ones that would normally be an indispensable part of being an expectant parent.

“It’s extremely frustrating they’re not following the same precautions as the rest of Albertans to keep everyone safe,” she said.

© Provided by Calgary Herald

In mid-December, the province introduced strict measures meant to curb the rapidly rising spread of COVID-19, including implementing an ongoing ban on all social gatherings that lasted over the holidays.

Dr. Shazma Mithani is an emergency room physician in Edmonton. She suggested it was hypocritical for government officials not to follow the “spirit of the rules” while most Albertans give up Christmas traditions to adhere to public-health orders.

“I don’t know if it’s naive, but it did surprise me. Like the premier said yesterday, elected officials and people in public service are held to a higher standard, and knowing that and believing that, I was very surprised to hear that so many of the staffers and MLAs have left the country,” Mithani said.

“Unanimously, everybody is upset. It really feels like a violation of trust.”

Mithani said her family cancelled a ski trip to British Columbia booked months ago as the second wave worsened.

“We chose not even to leave the province, and we haven’t even left the city,” she said. “We chose to stay in Edmonton because it’s the safest thing to do and it’s in the spirit of these recommendations.”

Mattatall said she’s unaware of any colleagues who have left the country, saying a beach vacation is “the further thing” from a health-care worker’s mind currently.

Both doctors said they were frustrated those who travelled did not face consequences from Kenney.

On Wednesday, when the province last provided updated data on severe outcomes from COVID-19, there were 921 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 152 of whom were in intensive-care units.

At least 1,046 Albertans have died of the virus, with nearly half of that count coming in December alone.

In 1918, Children Of California Went On A State-Ordered Squirrel Killing Frenzy

CALIFORNIA GROUND SQUIRRELS : A BULLETIN DEALING WITH LIFE HISTORIES, HABITS AND CONTROL OF THE GROUND SQUIRRELS OF CALIFORNIA / [BY J. GRINNELL, J, DIXON AND OTHERS]. PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA INTERNET ARCHIVE.


By James Felton 30 DEC 2020

In April of 1918, while the world was at war, the children of California set about systematically slaughtering over 100,000 squirrels.

Californian ground squirrels were considered a pest by the state, given their habit of devouring around 30 million dollars worth of crops every year. After years of farmers trying to chase them down like Elmer Fudd had failed to get them under control, the state stepped in with its own idea: Get children to murder every last one of the adorable little irritants.

As you'd imagine, getting kids to go outside and wipe a species off the face of the planet isn't the easiest thing in the world – even in the days before the PS5 and Shrek. As well as the struggle of making them go outside, try telling a kid "here's a list of animals I want you to kill" and see what sort of look you get in return. Fortunately, the state had a plan. They would simply launch a $40,000 propaganda campaign against the squirrels, likening them to top-ranking Germans.

The campaign, which would involve creating competitions between schools and schoolchildren for who could kill the most critters, was kicked off by the state commissioner George H. Hecke who called for children to form "a company of soldiers" to get out there and destroy "the squirrel army", which is an unusually combative term for "squirrels".

Speeches were given to rally the troops, and some of the most deranged posters you'll ever see distributed to (presumably quite baffled) kids. As well as painting the squirrels as greedy jerks under catchy slogans such as "kill the squirrels" and "slay the mother squirrel during breeding season", squirrels were dressed up as Kaiser Willhelm. 

The picnic seems quite cute until you notice the guns and poison.

  Public Domain via Internet Archive.

Public Domain via Internet Archive.

After the propaganda campaign came the killing. In what was termed "squirrel week" – which was a lot more genocidal than the adorable name implies – kids were asked to bring the tails to schools as proof of the kill and subsequent dismemberment. This was because in the lead-up to squirrel week, the instruction had been to send them directly to the horticultural commission, which had begun to reek of death due to the "accumulation of ground squirrel tails" in the office.

The methods of killing ranged from poison to shooting and everything in between.

"All the killing devices of modern warfare will be used in the effort to annihilate the squirrel army including gas poisoned barley and other destructive agents," a news report read at the time.

"Large quantities of these supplies are being rushed to the fronts where the fighting will be the fiercest. The battle will gain in intensity as days pass and will be at its height during state “Squirrel week” to be proclaimed by the governor from April 29 to May 4."

The leaflet campaign had clearly been effective, as the week-long frenzy brought in an astonishing 104,509 tails. The Commissioner congratulated the children in the local paper for their "patriotic service" and encouraged them to do it in their spare time for fun now that the competition was over, rather than, for instance, giving badminton a try.

With the week over and the prizes given out, the killing nevertheless continued in some counties unabated, with one frankly terrifying kid bringing in 3,780 dead squirrels, which I guess at least helped with his math.

[H/T: Atlas Obscura]

CANADIAN PROVINCES SHOULD DO THIS

UK names Tesco and Pizza Hut for biggest breaches of minimum wage law

Updated / Thursday, 31 Dec 2020

Tesco was 'extremely disappointed and surprised' at being publicly named for making what it described as a technical error that it had self reported to authorities

Tesco and Pizza Hut were the two biggest offenders among 139 employers who failed to pay staff the UK minimum wage between 2016 and 2018, the UK government said today after it resumed a policy of publicly naming firms that broke rules.

Supermarket chain Tesco, Britain's largest private-sector employer, underpaid 78,199 staff by a total £5.1m.

Pizza Hut failed to pay staff £845,936 which they were due.

"It is never acceptable for any employer to short-change their workers, but it is especially disappointing to see huge household names who absolutely should know better on this list," UK Business Minister Paul Scully said.

Other employers, mostly smaller businesses, underpaid staff by around £700,000 in total, with some individual workers losing thousands of pounds.

Britain's minimum wage stands at £8.72 an hour for workers aged 25 and over, and will rise by 2.2% from April as well as being extended to workers aged 23 and 24.

Younger workers and apprentices receive a lower minimum wage.

The list published by Britain's business ministry did not distinguish between employers who deliberately broke the law and those who made errors applying the sometimes complex rules.

Tesco said it was "extremely disappointed and surprised" at being publicly named for making what it described as a technical error that it had self reported to tax authorities.

"We take our obligations to our colleagues very seriously and all colleagues were reimbursed in full in 2017," it said in a statement.

The UK government said underpayments by employers often reflected deductions for the cost of food, parking costs, clothing or equipment which took wages below the legal minimum.



Pizza Hut said tax authorities had alerted it and other businesses in the sector to errors relating to deductions for staff uniform costs, which it corrected in 2018.

"It is important to stress that there was never any intent to underpay our employees," a spokesperson for Pizza Hut Restaurants said.

The UK government temporarily suspended naming firms that broke rules in 2018, before deciding to restart the practice in 2020 after issuing new guidance.

Source: Reuters

Rep. Gohmert Calls for Street Violence

as Another Legal Loss Sends MAGA World Spiraling

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Far-right conspiracy theorists and ultra conservative members of the GOP—who have less and less daylight between them as the days go by—have gone into collective meltdown mode, apparently triggered, at least in part, by calls for violence by Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Trump-allied lawyer L. Lin Wood

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On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Kernodle, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dismissed a hail-mary lawsuit filed by Gohmert and 11 Arizona Republicans that attempted to give Vice President Mike Pence the ability to overturn the results of the November presidential election won by Joe Biden.

As the president of the Senate, Pence will preside over the ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes, which have already certified Biden as the clear winner, on Wednesday.

In an interview Friday evening on pro-Trump news network Newsmax, Gohmert falsely claimed that letting the will of the voters stand would “mean the end of our republic, the end of the experiment in self-government."

Gohmert then seemed to encourage violence as a means to this end. “But bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy’—basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.”

Louie Gohmert on Newsmax: "But if bottom line is, the court is saying, 'We're not going to touch this. You have no remedy' -- basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM." pic.twitter.com/cZIdGTiQls— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2021

Gohmert, a former judge, sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees federal courts and law enforcement.

At the same time, pro-Trump lawyer Wood fanned the flames by suggesting Friday that Pence could “face execution by firing squad” for “treason” if he doesn’t go along with the attempt to subvert the election—which Trump’s own former Attorney General, William Barr, declared free of any fraud that could have potentially swung the results.

This prompted some key Trump loyalists like Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney, to swiftly distance themselves from Wood.

“I do not support the statements from Attorney Lin Wood,” Ellis said in a tweet late Friday. “I support the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.”

Trump-loving Newsmax host Greg Kelly, who called Wood a “legend” for “getting to the bottom of this mess in Georgia” just two weeks ago, apparently woke up to reality on Friday.

“This WHIPE just called for the arrest of Mike Pence,” he tweeted. “Wood is doing a crazy man act.”

In another, he wrote: “His heart may be in the right place but his BRAIN is either TOTALLY FRIED. Or OWNED BY CHINA.”

How it started / how it's going, Newsmax edition pic.twitter.com/hA98s7Q90i— Will Sommer (@willsommer) January 2, 2021

Trump himself has gleefully poured gasoline on the fire, tweeting his support for street protests planned for Jan. 6 in D.C., during which his supporters will reportedly try to stop lawmakers from getting to the Capitol and finalizing the election results. Pence’s role is merely a constitutional formality.

Eleven Republican senators also said Saturday they would object to certifying the Electoral College vote on Wednesday—a stunt that will most likely have no impact on the result but will perpetuate Trump’s claim that the election was somehow stolen from him.

Wood’s broadsides are only the latest in his increasingly unhinged—and so far unsuccessful—attempts to undermine Biden's victory.

He has filed lawsuits in Georgia and Michigan to stop the states from certifying their results, all to no avail. He recently suggested that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is a pedophile and was behind Justice Antonin Scalia's 2016 death from natural causes, and has publicly embraced the QAnon conspiracy movement.

His Friday remarks had QAnon types excitedly welcoming "the great awakening," a mass delusion that expects “criminally corrupt government leaders, celebrities, religious leaders, media figures, and corporate heads [to] be tried and punished for crimes involving treason, human trafficking, ritual sacrifice and unspeakable perversions.”

Wood fired back at Ellis on Twitter, saying that he has been “fighting” for the rule of law since “7 years before you were born.” Following questions about Wood’s mental state, he posted another tweet saying that he was “fine,” signing off his message with a quote from Vernon Linwood Howard, author of, among other things, The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power.

“A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.”

The Daily Beast was unable to reach Gohmert for comment, and left a phone message at Wood’s home. He did not reply.

Trump is the first sitting president to lose a re-election campaign in nearly three decades. He continues to blame his loss on nebulous claims of voter fraud, and has since lost every court challenge but one.

The president is now attempting to convince supporters that next week’s special Senate election in Georgia is “both illegal and invalid” because of another nonsensical conspiracy theory involving what he claims are “massive changes made to the voting process.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The Sunburst hack was massive and devastating – 

5 observations from a cybersecurity expert

by Paulo Shakarian, The Conversation

Some of the exposed organizations, like Microsoft, made limited use of the SolarWinds software, which appears to have contained the damage they suffered. 

Credit: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA

So much remains unknown about what is now being called the Sunburst hack, the cyberattack against U.S. government agencies and corporations. U.S. officials widely believe that Russian state-sponsored hackers are responsible.

The attack gave the perpetrators access to numerous key American business and government organizations. The immediate effects will be difficult to judge, and a complete accounting of the damage is unlikely. However, the nature of the affected organizations alone makes it clear that this is perhaps the most consequential cyberattack against the U.S. to date.

An act of cyberwar is usually not like a bomb, which causes immediate, well-understood damage. Rather, it is more like a cancer—it's slow to detect, difficult to eradicate, and it causes ongoing and significant damage over a long period of time. Here are five points that cybersecurity experts—the oncologists in the cancer analogy—can make with what's known so far.


1. The victims were tough nuts to crack

From top-tier cybersecurity firm FireEye to the U.S. Treasury, Microsoft, Intel and many other organizations, the victims of the attack are for the most part firms with comprehensive cybersecurity practices. The list of organizations that use the compromised software includes firms like MasterCard, Lockheed Martin and PricewaterhouseCoopers. SolarWinds estimates about 18,000 firms were affected.

As CEO of cybersecurity firm Cyber Reconnaissance Inc. and an associate professor of computer science at Arizona State University, I have met security professionals from many of the targeted organizations. Many of the organizations have world-class cybersecurity teams. These are some of the hardest targets to hit in corporate America. The victims of Sunburst were specifically targeted, likely with a primary focus on intelligence gathering.

2. This was almost certainly the work of a nation—not criminals

Criminal hackers focus on near-term financial gain. They use techniques like ransomware to extort money from their victims, steal financial information, and harvest computing resources for activities like sending spam emails or mining for cryptocurrency.

Criminal hackers exploit well-known security vulnerabilities that, had the victims been more thorough in their security, could have been prevented. The hackers typically target organizations with weaker security, like health care systems, universities and municipal governments. University networks are notoriously decentralized, difficult to secure, and often underfund cybersecurity. Medical systems tend to use specialty medical devices that run older, vulnerable software that is difficult to upgrade.

Hackers associated with national governments, on the other hand, have entirely different motives. They look for long-term access to critical infrastructure, gather intelligence and develop the means to disable certain industries. They also steal intellectual property—especially intellectual property that is expensive to develop in fields like high technology, medicine, defense and agriculture.

The sheer amount of effort to infiltrate one of the Sunburst victim firms is also a telling sign that this was not a mere criminal hack. For example, a firm like FireEye is an inherently bad target for a criminal attacker. It has fewer than 4,000 employees yet has computer security on par with the world's top defense and financial businesses.

3. The attack exploited trusted third-party software

The hackers gained access by slipping their malware into software updates of SolarWinds' Orion software, which is widely used to manage large organizational networks. The Sunburst attack relied on a trusted relationship between the targeted organization and SolarWinds. When users of Orion updated their systems in the spring of 2020, they unwittingly invited a Trojan horse into their computer networks.

Aside from a report about lax security at SolarWinds, very little is known about how the hackers gained initial access to SolarWinds. However, the Russians have used the tactic of compromising a third-party software update process before, in 2017. This was during the infamous NotPetya attack, which was considered the most financially damaging cyberattack in history.

4. The extent of the damage is unknown

It will take time to uncover the extent of the damage. The investigation is complicated because the attackers gained access to most of the victims in the spring of 2020, which gave the hackers time to expand and hide their access and control of the victims' systems. For example, some experts believe that a vulnerability in VMWare, software that is widely used in corporate networks, was also used to gain access to the victims' systems, though the company denies it.

I expect the damage to be spread unevenly among the victims. This will depend on various factors such as how extensively the organization used the SolarWinds software, how segmented its networks are, and the nature of their software maintenance cycle. For example, Microsoft reportedly had limited deployments of Orion, so the attack had limited impact on their systems.

In contrast, the bounty the hackers stole from FireEye included penetration testing tools, which were used to test the defenses of high-end FireEye clients. The theft of these tools was likely prized by hackers to both increase their capabilities in future attacks as well as gain insights into what FireEye clients are protecting against.

5. The fallout could include real-world harm

There is a very thin, often nonexistent line between gathering information and causing real-world harm. What may start as spying or espionage can easily escalate into warfare.

The presence of malware on a computer system that gives the attacker greater user privileges is dangerous. Hackers can use control of a computer system to destroy computer systems, as was the case in the Iranian cyberattacks against Saudi Aramco in 2012, and harm physical infrastructure, as was the case Stuxnet attack against Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010.

Further, real harm can be done to individuals with information alone. For example, the Chinese breach of Equifax in 2017 has put detailed financial and personal information about millions of Americans in the hands of one of the U.S.'s greatest strategic competitors.

No one knows the full extent of the Sunburst attack, but the scope is large and the victims represent important pillars of the U.S. government, economy and critical infrastructure. Information stolen from those systems and malware the hackers have likely left on them can be used for follow-on attacks. I believe it is likely that the Sunburst attack will result in harm to Americans.


Explore furtherData crunching consequences of SolarWinds cyberattack
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