Microsoft crashes out worldwide, ICE locations in California revealed
Happy Friday the 13th! Especially if you're working with Microsoft communications today. Please enjoy the down time.
Weekly wrap-up here at The National Riot, lots of items to note.
About 2 and a half weeks ago, Microsoft announced a buyout for 60,000 of its employees – roughly 27 percent of its workforce, according to CNBC. They'd already announced 5,000 layoffs in July. This is to save money because the company is investing so much money in A.I.
Well, the past day and a half – Microsoft 365 is down, bad. No Outlook, no Teams, no Copilot – global, widespread outages for more than 12 hours. OpenAI and Anthropic couldn't connect to Microsoft either. Kind of an issue!
I hope you had the good luck to have experienced that today. AP reports the company claims 450 million paid subscriptions to Microsoft 365.
But also affected: hospitals and doctors couldn't process prescriptions and medications. In Colorado, people couldn't post bond to bail out people in jail. Japanese government was disrupted. Supreme Court proceedings in the Philippines also came to a halt.
I wonder if the reduction in force of human personnel at the company had anything to do with all this?
Not going to go off on an A.I. tangent today, but I'll just note the Jensen Huang sex spy scandal at NVIDIA damaged the stock, and affects the A.I. companies that rely on their chips, including obviously OpenAI and Anthropic – both companies have been borrowing money from NVIDIA, so there are knock-on effects.
Yes, the U.S. government learned about the honeytrap situation as early as May this year, but didn't bother to warn Huang or the company – even going on to do a photo op at the White House with Huang, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk last month. By the way, Trump dumped a million dollars in NVIDIA stock from his personal portfolio in August.
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Remember that hack of the Dept of Homeland Security 2 weeks ago that exposed about 40,000 ICE agents and CBP officers – nearly a fifth of all DHS personnel?
The hack was reportedly pulled off by the Department of Peace and the data was posted online by a group called Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Well, the good people at L.A. Taco – an online news site that covers food, politics and activism in Southern California – dove deep into that data this week – and they just published a map of buildings and locations and operations where DHS has been operating in the state – DHS, ICE, Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations – take a look.
Also, don't forget to check out The Ice List – and as always, report any ICE activity you see in your neighborhood to StopIce.net.
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Speaking of which, just last Friday, ICE goons blocked the entrance to a hospital in a neighborhood on the Eastside of Los Angeles – Boyle Heights, to be specific, a historic center of immigration in the city, home to many ethnicities over the decades, and a hotbed of Chicano activism from the Civil Rights Era onward to today.
Masked agents brought a person in their custody to the emergency room at Adventist Health White Memorial Medical Center for treatment – it's not clear for what treatment, but we've all seen how they treat their "detainees."
While they were there, they blocked the entrance to the hospital's emergency room with their vehicles – preventing ambulances from accessing the hospital and forcing them to go to other locations, endangering lives, full stop. White Memorial did not authorize this blockade, and ICE refused to move.
ICE agents reportedly tried to insist on being present during the emergency-room treatment of the detainee, but hospital officials refused – good on them for that stand.
Crowds gathered at the entrance – and as always, ICE goons escalated, with physical pushback and macing people – including a direct attack on a 14-year-old girl.
The hospital had to call the LAPD. As we know, L.A. cops are sympathetic to ICE and didn't do much – but at the very least, they did not arrest anyone in the crowd.
HOWEVER – ICE agents themselves detained 2 American citizens at the scene.
Check out Status Coup News on Youtube for video from the scene last weekend.
To her credit, the new mayor-elect of Los Angeles, Nithya Raman, who pulled off a last-minute entry upset in the race, showed up in support in the hours afterward with a bullhorn, leading the crowd in an anti-ICE chant and a promise to keep pressuring ICE to get the hell out of L.A.
ICE officials issued a statement Saturday, saying "ICE does not target hospitals, schools or churches. This is just another false narrative to try to demonize our brave ICE law enforcement, who are facing more than a 1,600% increase in assaults, a 3,300% increase in vehicle attacks, and an 8,000% increase in death threats."
First of all, those numbers are pure make-believe.
And second of all, Why do you think that is, fellas?
YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE.
AND SOME OF YOU ARE GOING TO PRISON.
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Quick follow-up on Veterans Day this week:
Whiskey Pete awarded a medal to the soldier who reprimanded him and his group at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Tuesday after the group took a fun photo and laughed loudly at the memorial. I'm frankly stunned Hegseth did a smart thing to do damage control. But of course, you do not under any circumstances gotta hand it to him.
Also, just for the record, on that same day – on VETERANS DAY – this administration got the Veterans Administration budget cuts it sought – via a willing Congress – the House of Representatives passed the "Taking Care of America's Veterans Act" – and cut $57 billion in future disability benefits.
The bill passed with a voice vote. No individual votes are on record, because:
No one on the Democratic side of the aisle – looking at you Hakeem Jeffries – demanded a recorded vote, using the electronic system to register who, exactly, voted to cut veterans benefits.
That is a procedural breakdown from the guy who's set to be the Speaker of the House in January – a massive fuck-up.
I earlier predicted Schumer gotta go as incoming Senate Majority Leader – and it looks like Chris Van Hollen has the juice this week to take him out – but I said Jeffries would likely survive to make it to House Speaker in January. But he's gotta go too.
Ayanna Pressley, you up?
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By the way, last week – the day after the Republican electoral map wipeout – Whiskey Pete ordered the escalation of more National Guard troops onto the streets of D.C., this time bolstered with "several dozen" police cars, Humvees, and "light medium tactical vehicles" – even boats – ostensibly as more backup to deal with "crime emergency" in D.C., which was the excuse they activated all those troops in August last year.
That's troubling enough, in light of the GOP rebuke at the polls, and you know, Trump's history of fucking with D.C. ... like wanting to put down protests or say, antifascist revolt, with armed troops on the ground.
Just yesterday, Thursday, a mass shooter opened fire in Logan Circle in D.C., killing one person and injuring 5 others before turning the gun on himself. Hm, that didn't work.
Politico reports the National Guard troop deployment in the city is now expected to last through Inauguration Day 2029.
Inauguration Day, you say. Hm, probably nothing.
The deployment is running at $1.4 billion through 2028.
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Finally, on a lighter note, Katie Miller – Stephen's ugly wife (no, I don't care about being petty about these vampires) – was on CBS News and complained that Republican moms were too busy to vote – presumably the tradwives had a bunch of chores last Tuesday, maybe the menfolk didn't let them out of the house – and blamed them for the Republican blowout.
"You see that moms are too busy raising their children and taking care of them to get to the polls."
Norah O'Donnell pressed her – and Katie Miller admitted that she herself did not vote. "I did not vote in Virginia because in Virginia, when you vote, you dox your own address," she said. "So I prefer my safety and security over giving that up."
Checkmate, libs.