Professor-rat's Blurty
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends View]
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 2:21a |
Bullmore Hi comrades, Just re-read the charge list again and they don’t actually state in any of the individual charges against the LPF 5 (free them now, free them now!) or the LPF as a whole how, or in relation to what, we supposedly broke DSP discipline and violated the DSP constitution. That is, they don’t state that it is in relation to the AVSN. Instead it’s some generic charge that could relate to just about anything. Will we bother to point this out to them or not? Comradely, Kim PS: What idiots, they can’t even draw up a charge sheet frigging properly. Thank Marx, these idiots are not going to the vanguard of any frigging revolution, we would all be fucked. FROM http://ozleft.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/australian-dsp-divides/Some red-fascist Leninist lunatics seem to have been under the foolish impression they were part of some sort of 'revolutionary' grouping. Naturally they have been purged from the reactionary parliamentary cretinous retarded DSP. Everybodys gotta learn sometime... Now for the reactionary municipalist cretinous and retarded SPA. You ain't no fuckin' revolutionists either and you never were and you most certainly never, EVER, will be, so just give it up faggots. | | 3:00a |
Don't just believe me...
...when I tell you 'Ablokeimet' (onyahoo) is a Leninist Tool.
According to Bob Gould Greg is serious and sensibly Leninist enough to pass muster with him too.
LEFTWRITES - * Bob Gould
at 2:55 pm on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Ablokeimet obviously has some serious understanding of the history of the Australian labour movement and some sense of the form of mass struggles, and I thank him for his pretty sensible observation.
Wonder how long Ainfos and Infoshop will continue to get played by this Leninist Tool?
IQ's seem to have dropped at Infoshop lately. | | 3:14a |
@ndy hasn't read the charges yet @ndy May 12th, 2008 at 10:13 pm Haven’t read the charges yet, but the minority appears to be what it says on the label: a Leninist Party Faction. I think some may drift towards Solidarity… http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/And I still haven't read the charges against me for being purged by @ndy off anarchobase...funny that. Why would any fascist liar need charges for anyway? Charges! We don' need no steenkin' charges!' Or maybe I 'self-purged', as Peter Boyle puts it so exquisitely? Yeah...I think thats what happened. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as their method is inevitably forced to take the lie as their principle. But this can then come back and bite you when yr whole life appears devoted to exposing the bad faith and deeds of others. Still! Lets not dwell on garden variety hypocrisy that actually gave me some invaluable publicity! Lets all revel in this liberal dollop of delicious shadenfreude regarding the permanent demise of Leninism in Oz! | | 3:49a |
A couple more fascist tools
HELEN SCOTT is associate professor of English literature at the
University of Vermont in Burlington, and is the editor of The Essential
Rosa Luxemburg (Haymarket Books, 2008).
PAUL LeBLANC is professor of history at La Roche College in Pittsburgh,
and is author of Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (Humanities Press, 1993). | | 4:07a |
Better fewer but better fewer
HAHAHA! Pretty soon all the Au Leninist sectlets will be able to meet in an old-fashioned phone booth.
I don't see any Prachandras around riding to the rescue either. Marxist parliamentary imbeciles around here regularly poll below the Donkey vote and if any Marxist here even LOOKED at a gun!
Well - a small blac bloc is enough to send them into a fit of vapors.
Back in the day some of these nutcase semi-religious Leninist sects could be considered dangerous. They could get hundreds in the street and some of those hundreds excited enough to invade the Melbourne Club and stuff like that. Looks like the Dialectics of Scientological Socialism aren't attracting quite enough Cleared Thetan cadres. Maybe they should concentrated at some point on 'better fewer, but better', but its far too late for that now. These clowns are rapidly going the way of the Dodo. Do vstrechi Nashi's! | | 9:41a |
Harry the piker
Harry Reid is pathetic trying to take credit for that puke Mukasy and dangle yet another pathetic carrot in front of the proverbial jackass donkey. ( Hearings on yet more pentagon criminality)
Harry Reid has a bombproof mandate from public opinion on the illegal invasion of SW Asia.
That he continues to decline to use his bully pulpit makes him an enabler, a collaborator and under the old rule of law, as guilty as any of the principal perps. Together with Pelosi they amount to a virtual Vichy regime within this new Forth Reich. Fuck Harry Reid and all who sail in him. | | 9:50a |
Not even to me
Pentagon to Analysts: Don't Say "Softball!"
From the Pentagon's Message Force Multiplier document pile comes an email exchange touting a "softball interview" between "military analyst" Jed Babbin and Gen. Casey on the Michael Medved show. The Pentagon official's response? All good, except using the word softball in writing could "compromise jed and general casey."
Greedy fucking Nazi stormtroopers. | | 9:54a |
Big love
Bad TV Movie
I hadn't seen much of the Vito Fossella story since late last week. So I hadn't seen that Fossella's secret life was much more involved then I'd realized. At first I'd thought that Fossella had simply had an extramarital affair in which he'd fathered a child -- not the most unusual story. And it actually struck me as a point in his favor that he was actually trying to be a father in his daughter's life -- something I still think is a point in his favor. Remember, part of what tripped him up was that he'd told the arresting officers in his DWI arrest that he was going to visit his daughter, who was sick. He probably could have weathered having a female friend bail him out of jail. Explaining what he meant by visiting his daughter was a bit more difficult.
Later of course it turned out that this wasn't an affair that was in the past: Fossella had an on-going relationship Laura Fay, the retired Air Force Colonel who mothered his child.
What I hadn't realized was that Fossella was juggling at a level usually reserved for the plot lines of thoroughly incredible hollywood movies.
Not only was Fossella keeping his wife and family in the dark about his girlfriend and child in Northern Virginia. He was also keeping his girlfriend and child in Northern Virginia in the dark that he was still married and had a family in New York.
According to the Daily News, which has basically owned this story, Fossella had told Fay that he was separated from his wife. And it wasn't until Fay saw a draft of his press release apologizing for the incident that she realized that he was actually still married.
--Josh Marshall
Josh, Josh, Josh. You never heard of the blind women and the elephant trick? | | 9:57a |
Never say never invest in pantsuit futures
Money Changes Everything
Bloomberg has a good rundown today of the constraints facing Hillary Clinton if she tries to recoup the $11.4 million she's loaned to her campaign. A number of readers have had questions about how the loan repayment would work and the rules and regs associated with personal campaign loans, and this piece should answer most of those.
Let me touch on one other aspect to this. A lot of attention has, legitimately, been focused on the fact that Bill is an indirect conduit for money to her campaign. His speaking or consulting fees can ultimately find their way to Hillary's campaign coffers in the form of those personal loans from the Clintons. One campaign finance expert interviewed last week said "the Clintons have effectively bypassed campaign finance reform in a manner that's ingenious -- using Bill Clinton effectively as a front for the fundraising."
There's more on this but Cindy McPercodan was in the news just the other day stating she will ' never' release her tax returns. Something is rotten in Denmark.
On edit -
TPMCafe Table for One: Larry Bartels
Larry Bartles sits down at the TPMCafe Table for One this week. His new book is Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. He introduces its theme of the political impact of the growing gap between rich and poor in his first post at Cafe.
--David Kurtz - TALKING POINTS MEMO | | 10:03a |
'God will speak through a burning Bush'
Some old coots get thrown in the pokie for little zingers like that.
HUMOR (Send your family-appropriate political jokes to fergus@nhgop.org): Almost seven years ago I sat, as did millions of other Americans, and watched as our government underwent a peaceful transition of power. At first, I felt a swell of pride and patriotism as I watched George W. Bush take his oath of office. However, all that pride quickly vanished as I later watched the Clintons board Air Force One for the last time. I saw 21 Marines, in full dress uniform with rifles, fire a 21-gun salute to the outgoing President and first lady. It was then that I realized how far America's military had deteriorated under the Clinton administration. Every last one of them missed.
Hopefully they've been taking target practise. Saw part of the Robert Hanssen movie yesterday. I like William Hurt as an actor but he didn't embody RB for me. Someone like William Shatner or Jason Alexander maybe.
The stripper role was well cast and some tradecraft got a run. Another flaw was not really summing up the scale of the damage, I think, but as I switched off before the end, I can't say if this was covered. They showed at least one execution of at least one double agent exposed by RB. One of the greatest spies in history deserves a better movie than this. | | 1:35p |
Encryption gap
'...Encryption is the answer. But it's complicated, right? That's the message I learned back in the early nineties when I tested a command-line version of Pretty Good Privacy. A lot has changed in the last 10 years. There are quite a few free encryption tools that are easy to use and can make encrypting sensitive information practically painless.
Before I discuss some of these tools, I need to mention a few points:
You're not playing "spy" here. This article isn't a primer on how to beat the CIA at its own game. What we're going to cover is how to make it impossible for a thief to exploit sensitive information contained on a stolen device.
Don't get hung up over the technical issues. Unless you're a mathematician, you're probably not going to be able to discern the advantages of one particular encryption algorithm, hash function or key length over another. Or, to put it another way, have you ever given a thought about the encryption scheme your local bank uses with its ATM?
Select a good passphrase. This is more important than the encryption algorithm. A simple password seriously reduces your security. Your passphrase should include several words with uppercase and lowercase letters, special characters and numbers. Don't use an obvious, popular tagline such as "Beam me up, Scottie."
Store plain text copies and passphrases in a safe and secure location. Encryption programs don't provide a "backdoor." Lose your passphrase and you lose your data.
TrueCrypt is one of the most popular free encryption software programs. It features "on-the-fly" encryption -- your data stays encrypted on disk and exists in unencrypted form only in your PC's RAM memory. (Under most conditions, RAM memory is flushed within seconds after you shut down or restart your computer.)
You can encrypt an entire hard drive or USB flash drive with TrueCrypt. This is called a partition/device-hosted volume. If you create an encrypted partition or device, all files currently stored there will be deleted. You'll have to back up the contents of your drive before creating the volume. If you've already got lots of files stored there, this is a pain.
An easier alternative is to create a file-hosted volume, which is simply a file that acts as a container for the individual files you wish to encrypt. I created a 50 megabyte file-hosted volume on my laptop and copied several sensitive documents totaling perhaps a couple of megabytes into it. In Windows Explorer, the file-hosted volume is listed as a single file with a size of 50 megabytes. I can even copy the file-hosted volume to a USB drive, burn it to a CD or attach it to an e-mail. It can only be mounted and opened using the TrueCrypt software and the passphrase I created to encrypt it.
You can make your file-hosted volume hide in plain sight by giving it an innocuous name like "06539f2a000cd99879" and saving it in a folder buried within your "Documents and Settings" folder. But one drawback to TrueCrypt -- indeed, to almost all encryption programs -- is that it's obvious to anybody who clicks on the Windows Start button that you've got the software installed on your computer. If you've installed the software, it follows that you've probably encrypted documents somewhere on the hard disk. How can you avoid being forced to decrypt your sensitive data in front of a curious Homeland Security agent?
TrueCrypt lets you create a hidden volume within another file-hosted volume. You give the hidden volume a different passphrase. If you're forced to decrypt your data, you enter the passphrase for the outer volume. (You should have previously copied some nonsensitive documents into the outer volume, just so there's something there. Otherwise, it looks suspicious.) The inner, hidden volume is transparent.
TrueCrypt is powerful and flexible, but it can be a bit intimidating to computer novices. A simpler program is Cryptainer LE, which also features "on-the-fly" encryption and file-hosted volumes. It's my choice for encrypting my flash drive. I use it practically every day. I simply double-click the program shortcut, enter my passphrase and Cryptainer decrypts my volume.
Unlike TrueCrypt, Cryptainer won't allow you to create partition/device-hosted volumes or hidden volumes, and the maximum size of file-hosted volumes is 25 megabytes. But I don't need these features to encrypt the dozen or so documents on my USB flash drive that I'm worried about, and the simplicity of the program is a real plus.
Another option is 7-Zip, a free file archiver similar to PKZIP or WINZIP. Use it to create a compressed, password-protected archive of files, which can be burned to a CD or attached to an e-mail. When you encrypt an archive with the program's 7z format, you can also opt to encrypt the individual file names. (Zip-formatted archives do not offer this feature.)
If you need to encrypt selected files in different folders, but you don't want to move them from their locations into a file-hosted volume, try AxCrypt. The program fully integrates with Windows Explorer -- right-click on a file to encrypt or decrypt it. AxCrypt automatically re-encrypts the file after you close it.
You can also create a self-decrypting file (.exe), which you can e-mail to others who haven't installed "AxCrypt on their PCs. All they need in order to view the document is the passphrase. Obviously, you don't want to include the passphrase and the self-decrypting file in the same e-mail. Send them the passphrase in a different e-mail or give it to them verbally.
AxCrypt also features a "shred" option, which overwrites a file with random data before it is deleted. (A more robust secure deletion tool is Eraser, which destroys sensitive data you want to delete from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Like AxCrypt, Eraser integrates itself into Windows Explorer, so you can right-click on files or folders to securely remove them.)
Let's say you've begun using TrueCrypt and Cryptainer. You've got several passphrases to remember. (You're not recycling the same passphrase over and over, right? That's not smart. If someone guesses your passphrase for one program, they'll also try it for every other program.) How do you deal with this? KeePass Password Safe is a free, open-source password manager.
With KeePass, you can put all your passwords in one database, which is encrypted with one master passphrase. Thus, you only have to remember one passphrase. Using the "auto-type" feature, you can easily create simple scripts that automatically enter passwords for you. (Trust me, it's easy to do.) And KeePass is secure -- your passphrases are encrypted even when they are stored in RAM memory. I've installed KeePass on my USB drive to store my passphrases for all the encryption programs mentioned in this article.
Lose a laptop and you're out $500 to $600. Lose your client's sensitive information -- well, that's a different story. Encryption can keep the story from having a bad ending.
Dan Giancaterino is the Internet librarian at Jenkins Law Library. He teaches 10 hands-on Web-based CLE classes and is a regular contributor to the Jenkins Blog and a contributing editor to the popular search blog ResourceShelf. | | 1:52p |
Travelling anarchists
May 7, 2008 (Computerworld) In late April, a federal appeals court essentially gave the U.S. government carte blanche to check any and every piece of data on your laptop. This appalling decision, under the guise of border security, even allows the government to confiscate your laptop for an unlimited period of time. This can happen whenever you cross a U.S. border.
In the guise of fighting crime, the government now has the ability to basically go through your entire life. I don't know about you, but pretty much everything about me is stored on my hard drive, including financial information, pictures and e-mails from a variety of sources. And of course, it holds sensitive, work-related information. Is this something I want prying eyes looking at? Is this information I trust the government to keep safe after it has accessed it? No way!
This decision highlights the need for every enterprise, and indeed even individuals who travel internationally, to make sure that their hard drives are encrypted. Further, it is imperative that a backup of the data be left in a safe place in case the government decides to confiscate your machine. Given that 75% or more of critical business information is stored on user PCs and often is never backed up, the potential for disruption is alarming.
So, here is what any company with international travelers should do immediately. First, if there isn't one in place already, obtain a good laptop security software suite from a reputable vendor (there are many on the market). Next, implement a secure storage capability on each device by turning on and maintaining file encryption. It isn't necessary to do whole disk encryption (available within Windows XP and Vista), which could cause performance issues. But specific files of sensitive information must be selectively encrypted. Next, make sure that all data files on every laptop are backed up to a server, or a portable hard drive provided to the end user, with appropriate nagging to make sure the user performs the backup regularly. Automated tools are available to accomplish this at a reasonable price, often within the same security suite required for encryption. Finally, inform every traveler of the new rules and make sure they understand that the new security regimen is not optional. | | 1:57p |
How they got Bob
According to the Bill Hurt art movie ( a four hour series over two days) Robert Hanssen was caught by fingerprints taken by US double-agents in Moscow with access to the rubbish bags used to transfer documents.
This could easily be disinformation designed to start an Angleton style Mole hunt so I have to suspend judgment on that one. The alleged fingerprints were also supposed to be backed up with text-analysis provided from an alleged intercepted letter from Hanssen to the Russians. ( Hanssen was supposed to have used some very familiar turn of phrase of his. This is how they caught the Unabomber btw )
Two workarounds to these problems are relatively simple.
1) Always use gloves and remember works like ' Without a trace'. Watch out for any stray DNA.
2) Run text through translators and stick to cliche's and technical terms. Don't wax philosophical.
Hanssen's tradecraft was good - but no-ones perfect. And then he got caught in the act. Timing in spywork is everything. | | 2:24p |
Brucellosis
Computer security is hard. Software, computer and network security are all ongoing battles between attacker and defender. And in many cases the attacker has an inherent advantage: He only has to find one network flaw, while the defender has to find and fix every flaw.
Cryptography is an exception. As long as you don't write your own algorithm, secure encryption is easy. And the defender has an inherent mathematical advantage: Longer keys increase the amount of work the defender has to do linearly, while geometrically increasing the amount of work the attacker has to do.
Unfortunately, cryptography can't solve most computer-security problems. The one problem cryptography can solve is the security of data when it's not in use. Encrypting files, archives -- even entire disks -- is easy.
All of this makes it even more amazing that Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs in the United Kingdom lost two disks with personal data on 25 million British citizens, including dates of birth, addresses, bank-account information and national insurance numbers. On the one hand, this is no bigger a deal than any of the thousands of other exposures of personal data we've read about in recent years -- the U.S. Veteran's Administration loss of personal data of 26 million American veterans is an obvious similar event. But this has turned into Britain's privacy Chernobyl.
Perhaps encryption isn't so easy after all, and some people could use a little primer. This is how I protect my laptop.
There are several whole-disk encryption products on the market. I use PGP Disk's Whole Disk Encryption tool for two reasons. It's easy, and I trust both the company and the developers to write it securely. (Disclosure: I'm also on PGP Corp.'s Technical Advisory Board.)
Setup only takes a few minutes. After that, the program runs in the background. Everything works like before, and the performance degradation is negligible. Just make sure you choose a secure password -- PGP's encouragement of passphrases makes this much easier -- and you're secure against leaving your laptop in the airport or having it stolen out of your hotel room.
The reason you encrypt your entire disk, and not just key files, is so you don't have to worry about swap files, temp files, hibernation files, erased files, browser cookies or whatever. You don't need to enforce a complex policy about which files are important enough to be encrypted. And you have an easy answer to your boss or to the press if the computer is stolen: no problem; the laptop is encrypted.
PGP Disk can also encrypt external disks, which means you can also secure that USB memory device you've been using to transfer data from computer to computer. When I travel, I use a portable USB drive for backup. Those devices are getting physically smaller -- but larger in capacity -- every year, and by encrypting I don't have to worry about losing them.
I recommend one more complication. Whole-disk encryption means that anyone at your computer has access to everything: someone at your unattended computer, a Trojan that infected your computer and so on. To deal with these and similar threats I recommend a two-tier encryption strategy. Encrypt anything you don't need access to regularly -- archived documents, old e-mail, whatever -- separately, with a different password. I like to use PGP Disk's encrypted zip files, because it also makes secure backup easier (and lets you secure those files before you burn them on a DVD and mail them across the country), but you can also use the program's virtual-encrypted-disk feature to create a separately encrypted volume. Both options are easy to set up and use.
There are still two scenarios you aren't secure against, though. You're not secure against someone snatching your laptop out of your hands as you're typing away at the local coffee shop. And you're not secure against the authorities telling you to decrypt your data for them.
The latter threat is becoming more real. I have long been worried that someday, at a border crossing, a customs official will open my laptop and ask me to type in my password. Of course I could refuse, but the consequences might be severe -- and permanent. And some countries -- the United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia -- have passed laws giving police the authority to demand that you divulge your passwords and encryption keys.
To defend against both of these threats, minimize the amount of data on your laptop. Do you really need 10 years of old e-mails? Does everyone in the company really need to carry around the entire customer database? One of the most incredible things about the Revenue & Customs story is that a low-level government employee mailed a copy of the entire national child database to the National Audit Office in London. Did he have to? Doubtful. The best defense against data loss is to not have the data in the first place.
Failing that, you can try to convince the authorities that you don't have the encryption key. This works better if it's a zipped archive than the whole disk. You can argue that you're transporting the files for your boss, or that you forgot the key long ago. Make sure the time stamp on the files matches your claim, though.
There are other encryption programs out there. If you're a Windows Vista user, you might consider BitLocker. This program, embedded in the operating system, also encrypts the computer's entire drive. But it only works on the C: drive, so it won't help with external disks or USB tokens. And it can't be used to make encrypted zip files. But it's easy to use, and it's free.
Bruce Schneier | | 2:40p |
The retreat from Moscow '...In 1999 the DSP announced that it had discovered that China was a capitalist state and had been since September 1992. This discovery was decided by a majority of delegates attending the DSP's 18th conference on January 5-10, 1999. Up until January 4, 1999, according to the second edition of the DSP program, the DSP maintained that China was, alternatively a 'workers' state' (p126) or a 'socialist state' (p146). Logically, any public statements by DSP members claiming China was not some form of workers' or socialist state up to January 4, 1999, were breaches of discipline. From January 11, 1999, it presumably became a breach of discipline to argue outside the DSP that China remained some form of workers' state. Therefore, for nearly seven years, all DSP members (no matter what they actually thought) were bound to publicly parrot a line that it now thinks was fundamentally mistaken. The DSP had a 14-month internal discussion on the class character of the Chinese state leading up to the congress. Non-members were out of the loop. Workers outside the tiny ranks of the DSP could garner no insights. They were merely been dished up with the end product, the new 'truth'. At the heart of the matter is a deep distrust for the great unwashed. Sects like the DSP really think that workers, the poor dears, can't really handle two different ideas on a page. ..' - FROM http://www.labortribune.net/ArticleHolder/DSPsplits/tabid/100/Default.aspxLinked to @ LARVATUS PRODEO Boyle actually sounds quite pragmatic and reasonable in dealing with obvious nutcases like Doug Lorimer, Jorge Whassisname (and quite possibly that American sex worker who penetrated everywhere.) His problem is an old one in sects that discriminate against common sense - actually the nuttier the belief the more millions you can raise. Either million man marches or millions in Hollywood circles. Pragmatism and sweet reason go out the window when there's a world to win! This split gives us another good snapshot of the DSP in disarray and Leninism in Oz imploding. I would now expect the DSP to liquidate the GLW and turn it over into a commercial print-shop and the lunar Leninists to dry up and blow away. For a good entertaining look at this process see ' More years for the Locust' ...oh and as anarchists are not immune from the ups and downs on the roundabouts ' The slow burning fuse'. | | 3:31p |
The weak and the Strom '...A culture that gags minorities from discussing its perspectives outside the ranks of the anointed sect only serves to sustain a sect culture and has nothing to do with generating ideas and activity to assist the working class train itself to become the ruling class...' - Marcus Strom http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/53773He's right. You need a Leninist culture that gags MAJORITIES comrades. If they make a fuss simply call them the minority or anti-socialist elements. If any petty bourgeois Marxists posing as 'workers' are going to mass-murder millions of peasants then you simply MUST have a strictly Leninist culture. Trotsky didn't just fall from the sky you know. | | 5:27p |
Red-fascist boys stick together
As a general rule
Venezuela and China on Friday signed an accord to build a refinery on Chinese soil as part of a broader plan to reduce Venezuela's reliance on U.S. energy markets.
"We're going to buy Chinese K-8 planes," Chavez said during his weekly Sunday broadcast, calling them "excellent planes for the boys."
"We continue working on the issue of military equipment, even though they accuse me of launching an arms race," he said. "I'm not launching an arms race. Military expenditures are necessary for the country's defense."
Venezuela has also bought 24 Sukhoi fighter jets and 100,000 Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles from Russia.
If only the local Leninist vanguard and the DSP could just get along half as comradely.
It takes a Potemkin village to build a red corridor
New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) The home ministry Monday sought a detailed report from the West Bengal government on the first phase of panchayat polls that has seen political clashes in recent days, especially in Nandigram. Paramilitary and police forces reportedly clashed with the cadres of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
On the basis of the report, the ministry is likely to hold a high-level meeting with senior officials to take stock of the situation, said officials.
Tasks of all socialists in the present famine
We must all take heart from comrade Lenin's example in the famine of 1921-2. Inviting in international aid while selling stolen grain to Sweden in order to industrialize by Taylor methods was strictly a masterpiece. No wonder comrade Stalin couldn't wait to ramp up this policy in the Ukraine a decade later - and he even won support for this from comrades Luxemberg and Trotsky!
Brilliant! Dizzy with success!
Its all their in the Marxist-Leninist praxis of dictatorship comrades - onwards to victory! | | 6:17p |
Let us now praise famous men
It would be churlish of us not to note Senior Senator John McCain's many centuries of service.
And President Bush's daughter Jenna is getting married this weekend in Crawford, Texas. It'll be a relatively small wedding. Only her family's loved ones will be there: the CEOs of the five major oil companies." --Jay Leno
"You know who's getting married tomorrow, do you have any idea? One of the Bush twins. Jenna Bush is getting married tomorrow in Crawford, Texas, and Vice President Dick Cheney will be there, so it's going to be a shotgun wedding." --David Letterman
I'd like to embed some links and mark-up some fancy italics for the occasion but that might take another seven or eight years. I hope the president settles down...he was seen fretting and looking worried about pardoning a Texan serial killer named Henry and the dream sequence from 'Dallas'.
Cheney had to tell him just quietly to go kill a few frogs on the edge of the lake.
Several old Nazi's at the wedding were seen openly crying and one said that he hadn't seen anything like it in sixty three years. Boy, that's got to be every Aryan blond girl's dream, don't you think? Getting married in Crawford, Texas? And to add a little icing to the cake, I understand they're gonna be honeymooning in Paraguay.
Jay Leno ( and pr)
"Hillary says she's staying in the race because there are new patterns emerging, such as lower educated white men are now supporting her. That's what she said. Polls show she has strong support among lesser-educated white males. So you know what that means: President Bush could be voting for her now." --Jay Leno
"The latest rumor is Hillary's campaign is going broke, and her staff have been told that the future campaign events are gonna have to cut back on the frills. Taking out all the frills. For example, when traveling, Bill and Hillary are gonna have to share a hotel room." --Jay Leno
"And, you know, I think she's starting to get a little bit desperate. ... Today, in a small town in West Virginia, Hillary Clinton told the crowd that not only are she and Bill husband and wife, but also brother and sister." --Jay Leno
"Right now, Barack Obama is trailing in the polls in West Virginia. Political experts say it's because Barack doesn't have a lot in common with West Virginia voters. Yeah, after hearing this, Barack said, 'Thank God!'" --Conan O'Brien
"The state of Israel turns 60 on Thursday, meaning it won't be long before it moves to Florida." --Amy Poehler | | 6:47p |
Leninists not Leninists No place for CPM cadres in Maoist stronghold of Purulia Kartyk Venkatraman http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/No-place-for-CPM-cadres-in-Maoist-strong hold-of-Purulia/308098/
Bandwan (Purulia), May 10 Seated on a rough bed in Sirka village, 80 kilometres from Purulia on the West Bengal-Jharkhand, Doctor Majhi looks like a man on the run. On Saturday, he declared expunging his ties with the CPM, a party for which he has been working since 1982. He is not alone, 11 other grassroots cadres of the CPM also announced the same.
The reason being one. “We’re scared for our lives. At the end of the day, we are farmers. How does it matter to us what the party does or does not? We have decided never to work for the party (CPM) again,” says Majhi.
In this Maoist-dominated area, the CPM cadres are facing the brunt of the ultra-Leftists’ attacks.
“In June last year, the Maoists held a meeting in the village school premises and told us specifically to stay away from party activities and live the life of farmers. We decided to abide by the diktat then. But with the panchayat elections approaching, the CPM party began asking us to run errands. So, today, we decided to declare that we’re no more CPM cadres in order to avoid any uncertainties and misconceptions,” he adds.
Not only Majhi, the unmarked mud huts across much of the length and breadth of Bandwan block point to the same reality. No hammer-and-sickle, no red statements.
After 30 years of unchallenged power in West Bengal, the Maoists have the CPM on the run in the five police station areas of Purulia — Bandwan, Asra, Bagmundi, Balarampur and Barabazar.
With systematic precision, Maoists have been targeting the heart of the CPM’s efficient and well-oiled electioneering machinery, periodically eliminating the prominent grassroots workers or intimidating them to return to the fields.
In the past five years, Maoists have gunned down at least 17 cadres at the local committee level.
“It seems that they want their message to get across. They have not targeted any medium-level or high ranking cadres much. They are telling the grassroots cadres to lay off,” says a CPM worker in Bandwan.
In the run-up to the 2008 panchayat polls, Maoists had gunned down a prominent CPM leader and Bandwan Zonal Committee member Ganapati Bhadra on May 4 at Bhomragara village. A day later, they shot dead another leader Dubraj Hembram in the same area. Today, on the eve of the polls, the handwritten posters of Maoists state it clearly: “Participate in these elections and face the same fate as Ganapati Bhadra”. In Bhomragara, the last week’s killing is still fresh in the minds of most of the people.
“No election campaigning has been done in our village. No politician has come here. Before the previous elections in 2003, the whole village was bustling with activity. Most of us have traditionally voted for the CPM. But this time the Maoists warned us they’d cut off our hands and burn our village if we step out to vote. We can’t decide on our own. Let’s see what the collective decision is on Sunday,” says Kananbala Kar. She is the relative of Bhadra and his uncle Rabindranath Kar, who was burnt alive with his wife on the night of December 31, 2006 by the Maoists.
In the entire block, the police are conspicuous by their absence. No patrols, no pickets. The gates of the Bandwan police station are locked from inside.
Inside the station, the police personnel put on a brave front saying they have enough armed men to counter the Maoists’ attack. Locals, however, say the police don’t come when there’s a threat from ultras.
“Police protection alone isn’t enough security for us to go out and vote. We may be safe on the poll day. But after that the police will go away and we’ll have to face the wrath of the Maoists,” says a local.
The story is the same in several villages in Bandwan, such as Gangamanna, Kunchia and Madla.
At the CPM office near Bhomragara, panchayat samiti candidate Ratan Soren, however, tries to play down the Maoist threat and sticks to his line: “The elections will be held in a free and fair manner and would see a healthy turnout. This time, we are not very worried about Maoist threats.”
But for how long is the question in everyone’s minds. | | 6:56p |
Poynter online
Salt Lake Tribune's Spanish-language ads anger some readers
Salt Lake Tribune
Ombud Connie Coyne explained the paper's position to callers but some "went wild and accused me of protecting 'illegals' who were sneaking into this country, taking jobs and government benefits and failing to learn English. ... I also explained we were about to launch a Spanish-language weekly, Ahora Utah, for those who did not read English well. The same folks went ballistic on that." || More editor/ombud columns:
(snip)
"Bleeding" was unfortunate word choice in Express-News fire story (E-N)
Romenesko
Might want to rethink 'ballistic' too. | | 7:09p |
Kinetic installations - no advertisments
A close shave
Performance art has obviously moved a long way in my day - from the gentle canvas regurgitations of Melbourne, Australia's Stork to the violent revolving door eruptions of the Irish artist, John Stone.
My own style demands a balance between these polarities.
Drunk with desire
Unpacking the slab of passionia and throwing myself wholeheartedly into the heavily contested bloggery terrain demands a strategy of high voltage tension. The joy of creation is only equaled by seeing the range that the work commands. Cold beer and strong crypto still rule the sine waves as performance art manque leaves the old world by setting sail in the opposot direction. Such is Wino life. | | 8:10p |
Has anyone seen Mike Hunt?
A NEW structure to bring together governments, businesses, universities and communities could tackle some of Australia's thorniest problems, according to federal Liberal frontbencher Mike Hunt.
The Opposition spokesman for climate change, the environment and water told the Future Summit yesterday that "network governance" could deal with issues such as clean energy or mental health that were not amenable to solutions by the market or governments alone.
This had occurred already with water policy, where farmers identified how they could make water savings and combined with researchers to deliver large reductions in their water usage by taking the piss.
An international example was the collaboration on nuclear fusion between experts from the US, the EU, Russia, China, India, Japan and Korea - countries that rarely worked together unless there was a world war.
"This is not about tearing down the federal-state structure of government but it is extremely feasible to alter the way it operates," Mr Hunt said.
He envisaged a permanent 'Mike Hunt' structure that dealt with three or four specific problems.
Addressing the same session, Australia and New Zealand School of Government dean Allan Fels said governance by wholistic network at the international level often was preferable to looking for overall lapidary global agreements.
It had proved to be a better approach in areas such as business regulation, tax and money laws, the pursuit of criminals, environmental protection and occupational health and safety.
"We have whole networks, particularly of professionals, sometimes legislators, regulators, law enforcers and NGOs who work to tackle these problems," Professor Fels said. "This is often a more productive way to go than weak external agreements."
Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development head Yehudi Blacher said an emerging part of government in his state was taking a more community-'gang-bang' oriented approach. This involved such elements as viewing the world through the eyes of the client, presenting a simpler face of government to communities and harnessing the capacity of local leaders. | | 8:16p |
Statistical analysis
CONSERVATIVE academics won't like it but they must break free of their intellectual silos and work together on the complex problems looming in the future.
That was the message delivered to the Future Summit yesterday by cosmologist Paul Davies, director of the Beyond Centre for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University.
Professor Davies, formerly with Macquarie University in Sydney, told the conference: "It's the new way of doing science. Australia must abolish traditional research boundaries such as biology, chemistry and computing technology and group around themes."
Professor Davies cited ASU, where experts from many scientific disciplines work in thematic areas such as biodesign, earth and space exploration and climate change prediction.
If Australia failed to follow the example, Professor Davies warned, it would miss out on economic growth and rises in living standards driven by scientific and technological advances. "These are areas of complex systems for which old academic boundaries are increasingly irrelevant."
He predicted major advances in the knowledge of cancer, genetics, the human brain and the formation of galaxies would come from the emerging "new sciences of complexity".
Rich discoveries would be made at the intersection of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information and quantum technology, he said. "These are all areas in which Australia currently enjoys strengths ... but what's needed is the vision to pull the pieces together."
Professor Davies argued that researchers must bolster the 300-year-old intellectual tools of observation, experimentation and theory design with high-powered computing systems.
"We will never understand the universal principles of complexity without detailed computer simulations," he said.
Professor Davies pointed to the Blue Brain study of human consciousness as an example. Using IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer, a Swiss team has simulated the brain's cortical column, comprising 10,000 brain cells, or neurones.
The goal goes beyond the quest for consciousness and artificial intelligence. - The Australian
Cross boundaries to catch the future, scientists urged - Leigh Dayton | | 8:19p |
ID Theft
The Insight show on SBS is covering ID theft and the idea of a personal digital identity has already been floated - only ten minutes before the end of the show! - only no mention of PRIVATE, ENCRYPTED ID's.
These PEIDs could be individually created then stored and only accessed through radically distributed P2P systems such as Freenet - with a relatively modest investment in remailer architecture and more broadband.
The obvious point-of-weakness in official ID cards is Democide.
Civil liberties is only now being mentioned with about five minutes to go.
Next week - should dentistry be covered by Medicare |
|