More Hack Attacks on Windows

PC World is reporting that once again the wonderful world of Bill Gates is under attack, which hurts you and me...not his bottom line of course. If you build it the hackers will come....why can't you get a good set of blinds for windows?

Windows Flaw Makes Surfing Riskier Also: Hackers may use Outlook e-mail messages to take over your computer.

Two examples of computer code that exploit a flaw in Windows Media Player have become available only days after Microsoft released a patch to fix the bug.

Windows Media Player Worm Set To Strike

An exploit against the Windows Media Player vulnerability disclosed by Microsoft two days ago may be only hours away from hitting unpatched users, a security company said Thursday.

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Stephen Mulroney Brian Harper

So who is our new PM? Stephen Mulroney it appears, or is it Brian Harper? Mulroneyites are calling the shots in the backrooms of the new government as I have pointed out here much to the chagrin of all the young neo-cons who are Blogging Tories.

Insiders say the two men appreciate that each offers a quality lacking in the other. Harper is the studious policy wonk, Mulroney the crafty old-school politician.

And it makes perfect sense, despite the Reform/Alliance origins of the Conservatives, the old boys that sought to regain power, those not Progressives/Red Tories of the Clark variety, rallied around the McKay merger.

The could smell the blood in the water after Adscam. It was they who ran both McKay and Stronach against Harper, sending him a message that this was no longer Presto's party.

The message was hammered home after the Harperites failed to get elected in 2004, their new Conservative alliance held their first Consvention in 2005 and the writing was on the wall. The social conservatives were not as powerful as they thought. Abortion was off the table. The only sop they got was over Same Sex Marriage. Most other Convention issues, including bi-lingualism, long time bugaboo of the Reform/Alliance unilingual English first types, were also accepted despite the right wing Reformers. The party moved to the centre, thanks to the pull of the backroom boys. The Mulronites.

Then their crowning moment came last summer when Harper failed to bring down the government. His authoritarian leadership challenged by Stronach crossing the floor, left the Harperites with egg on their face and with no plan to appeal to the centre, which spelled sure defeat in any upcoming election.

The night of the long knives happened and over the summer Harper purged his inner circle and embraced Mulroney and his back room boys for advice.

Having been out of power so long and knowning full well that the Manning style of Reform/Alliance politics may sell in the West they didn't in the rest of Canada, especially Quebec, Harper needed the Mulronite machine to win. As a result he made a deal with devil. And the rest is history. We have gone back to the future, forward to the past.

Until there is another election expect that Mulroney will be the eminence de gris in the Harper Government. His Cardinal Richelau. For without him Harper cannot govern. For the Reformers/Alliance have always been a populist opposition party not fit to govern, nor prepared to.

Nor should we expect the Mulroneyites to give up power, now that they have achieved it again. Harper may be his own man for now, but Mulroney is the ultimate political animal, and he will make sure that his puppet government dances as he wants it too. He will do it with a smile and a kinfe behind his back, as Joe Clark can testify to. Harper will be given leeway to think he is doing things his way, but in the backrooms where the real power lies, it is now in the hands of BM.

Harper has made a deal with the devil and sold his soul for power. Principles, well those went out the door January 24.


Also see:

Not Your Daddies Conservative Party, well maybe...

Derek Burney Voice of America

The Tories First Scandal

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Will Klein Share Chretiens Fate?

I have been saying this for the past year since Klein announced his pending retirement, see here and here, but its nice to see someone on the right finally adimit it, but only after Martin and Chretien are no longer in office.

Deja vu? asks BBSIs it just me or does this sound strangely like the Chretien/Martin debacle? The forces pushing for Ralph's ouster might want to go back and study a little recent history. Do they want to risk a repeat of the Liberal's internal war in their own party?

And of course the real reason for the sexist and racial slur uttered and reported on faithfully by Ric Dolphin for the Western Slander was to show that the old boys network in the Tories are tired of Ralph. They are acting just like the Martinites and their quiet quizzling backstabbers did in pushing Chretien to quit. And look where it got them. Hey there might be a silver lining to all this yet. In other words the upcoming convention and leadership vote may not be going Ralph's way. The rattling of knives you hear are out for the Kings head.

Rick Bell covers the internecine intrique in his latest column in the Calgary Sun.

In this real life story, the king is Ralph and he has said he will leave in 20 months. He made his intentions quite clear last fall when he spoke about people lining up to replace him.

"These guys can kick tires. They can kick tires until their toes are blue but I ain't goin' until 2007 unless the party tells me they don't want me or I'm dead. Alright? Period."

Well, Ralph is very much alive but Tories at next month's party convention will get a chance by secret ballot to tell Ralph whether they want him.

And there are those in the party, and not a small number, who are pushing for the premier to lose the vote on his leadership, or secure a win so narrow he will be embarrassed into exile.

After all, in this place, the person who succeeds Ralph becomes premier, not just leader.

In recent days, an article in the Western Standard takes the rebellion in the ranks to a new depth, quoting unnamed Tories who believe Ralph's wife Colleen is keeping Ralph from leaving. One source maintains once Colleen is no longer the premier's wife she be- comes "just another Indian."

No party people are pointing fingers at the off-the-record racist. In fact, every single Conservative you speak to insists their outrage against this verbal swill be put on the record. But all kinds of back-stabbing bravado continues behind the scenes with no names attached.

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Your Papers Please

Minister of Public Safety Oberfuerher Stockwell Day has decided that he should close down the Firerarms Registry cause its been a billion dollar boondoogle. Instead he wants to replace it with a National ID card and registry. Which will cost billions and be a greater infringement on our personal freedom by impacting all Canadians. Now whose the Statist?! So much for the Conservatives and their paper thin veneer of being Libertarians.

Tony Blair tried this in England to hue and cry and lost the vote. It is a major concern around the world as more and more statists attempt to impose ID cards using the hysteria around the phony war on terror as an excuse to increase monitoring of citizens. In fact statists have attempted to introduce National ID cards well before the 9/11 disaster.

Maybe Oberfuerher Day is being clever and thinks this issue will get the Liberals on side. Liberals will not prop up Conservative government: Bill Graham

The Conservatives are out of step with their rank and file on this issue, while having the support of the same Canadians who support the Firearms Registry, which is the majority of Canadians. And ironcially being the government in Ottawa if they push this National ID card, they will be alienating the West as a 2003 SES poll shows.


Or perhaps Stockwell Day is just hastening the day of Rapture and the coming of the Apocalypse since he is a born again evangelical Christian who believes in that bunkum.




A tip o the blog to My Bhlag and Progressive Right for this.



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How Many Audits Does It Take?

The new Minister of State Security Stockwell Day has announced that he wants yet another audit of the Firearms Registry.

Not satisfied with the previous audits; the first were internal audits done in 2000-2001, followed by the damning Auditor General audit in 2002 then followed by another damning independent audit in 2003 by Raymond V. Hession and KPMG

So how many audits do ya need Stockwell to tell you that the cost overruns were caused by Privatization and Contracting Out of services. Stockwell like Vic Toews, Minister of Justice,cannot believe the facts that are as clear as the noses on their faces. Contracting Out and Privatization created the cost over-runs:

Canada’s Billion Dollar P3 Boondoggle

What the Liberals and Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know

The real story behind the cost overruns at the Canadian Firearms Centre

"Just read your piece on the firearms P3 – quite a revelation. I am amazed we have never heard this before – congratulations for bringing it to light."
Murray Dobbin, author of Paul Martin Canada's CEO

Once again the Tory ideology that privatization, contracting out and Public Private Partnerships P3's are the solution to reducing government spending and costs falls flat on its face in the light of the facts of the Firearms Registry cost over runs. They just can't beleive it to be true. All the new audit will show is what the Auditor General and Hessions KPMG audit did and I reported in the article above.


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Idiot Provacatuer Redux

I posted a teaser, a portion of my article Idiot Provacatuer about Ezra LeRant and his Western Slander running the Mohammed cartoons on Vive le Canada, and what a firestorm of comments it generated you can read them here.




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Russia's Army of Slaves

I blogged here a year ago about the new trend in privatization, that of the use of mercenaries, so called contractors, in the War in Iraq.

It's a new phase of war and the advent of the Market State that Phillip Bobbit writes about which is why his quote runs in my side bar;

A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries.

This is occuring in Russian today as well. It is one of the side effects of the introduction of capitalism, sans democracy, into an authoritarian state.

Russian officer hired out troops for slave labour

Kontonistov was deputy commander of a division of the Strategic Rocket Forces in Siberia's Novosibirsk region, a unit that services Russia's nuclear missiles. He hired out his troops to local businesses, according to Interfax news agency, a practice believed to be commonplace in an army in which poorly paid officers say they have to find ways to supplement meagre incomes.

In the West we call this a Private-Public-Partnership, P3's.

The rest of the article goes on to discuss the fact that the Russian 'conscript' army is a horror show of abuse. Something Russian Mothers have been saying for almost twenty years now.

The cases have drawn attention once again to the wretched conditions suffered by military conscripts. All Russian men are supposed to serve two years in the military between the ages of 18 and 28. Reports of brutal initiation ceremonies and bullying are common.


Conscription in Russia has existed since the days of the Tzar, with only a few breaks.It did not begin with Stalin as some on the right like to assert using him as their boogyman. It began under the Tzar.

The Bolsheviks did not allow a conscript army, rather they formed the volunteer Red Army. Conscription did not come even with the invasion by the Western Expeditionary Forces, which included Canada, at the end of WWI.

The Soviet Military Experience : A History of the Soviet Army, 1917 - 1991

Roger Reese's book covers the entire period of the Soviet Army's existence, from it's revolutionary birth in 1917, until it's counter revolutionary demise in 1991. Reese analyses how the Soviet Army was intended to be unlike no other army ever previously conceived, made up of volunteers and loyal party supporters with the aim of being a tool of political expression for the party as much as a military force. He also shows how idealistic considerations for the running of the Army had to give way to practical issues for the effective running of the Army, and how this moved the Army closer to that of the Tsarist Army which many revolutionaries passionately sought to avoid. He also examines the performance of the Army during the Second World War, and the impact this had on dynamics and the moral state of the organisation, as well as refuting the argument that the Great Purges of 1937 - 1938 had an impact on the fighting ability of the Soviet Army. He then goes on to outline the stagnation of the Army which resulted in it reflecting many of the values of the Tsarist regime it replaced. Reese's focus for the book is a look at the Red Army merely in quantitative terms, but in terms of it's interaction with society and the health of the organisation internally. A interesting and well written read.

Conscription was introduced after Hitler invaded the USSR. It continued after the war as Russia faced off against the US in the Cold War, and it was used to reinforce Russias control over its authoritarian state regimes in Eastern Europe. It allowed for employment of the vast army of otherwise unemployed in Russia. Still even after WWI the Russian Army was modeled on the authoritarian armies of the past, both Russian and German.

It was not Afgahistan that was Russias Vietnam it has been Chechnya. Which coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It left the old Soviet military regime in a powerful position, thanks to the Cold War which placed both the US and USSR under the control of their respective 'Military Industrial Complexes'.

Since the war in Chechnya Russian Mothers have organized, like their Argentinian counterparts the Mothers of the Disappeared, to denounce the treatment of their sons in Russias conscript army.

While few are now sent to serve in the violent North Caucasus, near Chechnya, it is estimated that hundreds die each year through accidents or through the ritualistic bullying inflicted by superior officers. Forty-six soldiers died of non-combat injuries in one week alone last year.

The story goes on to talk about the most recent case of torture by officers of a rank and file conscript. Giving more credence to the case of civilians who suffered atrocities at the hands of Russian troops during the Chenchin war.

The case came amid growing public disgust over the fate of Andrei Sychev, a 19-year-old conscript at a tank academy in the eastern town of Chelyabinsk. He was reportedly beaten and tortured by his superior officers during a drunken rage on New Year's Eve, during which he was tied to a chair and repeatedly hit. He did not receive medical treatment for several days, by which time gangrene had set in, forcing doctors to amputate his legs, genitals and fingers. He was taken off a ventilator only on Monday.

If the bastards can do this to their own, what will they do to the enemy. Well this is what happens in Authoritarian regimes with hierarchical regimentation and a 19th century military hierarchy.

A volunteer army, a free standing militia is always the sign of a free peoples, because it can only exist because people volunteer to support their state. A volunteer Red Army, opps sorry its now Red, White and Blue, the old Tzarist colours, a volunteer Army in Russia is a much need reform.

Unfortunately given that the army is where the surplus unemployed are shipped too, Russia is unlikely to embrace even this modest reform. Instread it will contnue to brutalize conscripts, they are after all expendable, and use them for slave labour. All the atrocities of the bad old days of the Tzar have once again been revealed in 'Modern Russia'.

Unfortunately as we have seen as long as the military funtions based on its 19th century model, even in the United States, then a volunteer army does not assure you of ending abuse, there have been many cases of hazing in the US forces as well, though not nearly as bad as this. Nor does a volunteer army mean that it won't be an army of the otherwise unemployed, as the U.S. has also shown. Finally once in conflict its desertion rates will be high, but no more so than Russias which is high as well. Nor does a volunteer army mean there won't be mercenaries, private contractors, as we have seen in Iraq.

The only real volunteer armies that have existed are those during Revolutions, the Paris Commune in France, the October and February revolutions in Russia, and during the Spanish Civil War. The later was an all volunteer army including International Brigades, volunteers from around the world including Canada, and they were truly a volunteer army, electing their officers, debating strategy, and treating each other as comrades not conscripts.





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Workers vs Worker

In our society we like to pit worker against worker and this is what CUPE faces in Ontario with changes to their pensions plans. Unfortunately their own members have weakened their cause by breaking with union solidarity over plans for a one day walk out.CUPE solidarity breaks This tactic has been dismissed by many as extreme.

Except that when doctors do it, they call it a study session, the public supports them. So maybe CUPE Ontario should call it a study session.

On why blue collar workers and para professsionals are discriminated against by the media and the pundits when it comes to their work being as important as cops and firefighters.

Let's see last time their was a garbage strike in Toronto did the cops, firefighters or doctors clean up the mess? Nope. Neither did the Premier, his cabinet, the MLA's or the politicos in city hall.

And this issue is about downloading the public pension plan to municipalities, which also don't like it. But the cops and firefighters do because while other unionized workers and taxpayers face cost increases they get benefit increases.Premier turns up heat as CUPE tries to cool it


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Paying Peter not Paul

ACE agrees to pay $266-million to investors
Globe and Mail - 10 hours ago
The parent company of Air Canada is rewarding its shareholders with a controversial $266-million payout, barely 17 months after exiting bankruptcy protection. It means ACE's largest shareholder, New York-based hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management LP, stands to collect almost $30-million in cash.

And not a penny to the workers who made the biggest investment of all with wage and benefit cuts. Without which Robert Milton would not have his cozy well paid job and the shareholders would have been shit out of luck. Air Canada Profits From Bankruptcy


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The Crime of Privatization

Here is another example of the criminal nature of contracting out and privatization.

Payments may have lasted six years

The American company accused of offering secret commissions to two Edmonton police officers to get an untendered $90-million photo-radar contract may have offered the inducements for more than six years.

The RCMP did not release details of the charge against Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services, but the publicly traded company was required to report the allegations to its investors through the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to a document filed Wednesday with the SEC, the charge covers the period from Jan. 1, 1998, to June 14, 2004.

The RCMP charged the company Wednesday with offering secret commissions to two members of the Edmonton police service's traffic section. The officers were also charged with Criminal Code offences.

Det. Tom Bell faces three counts of breach of trust and one of accepting a secret commission.

Staff Sgt. Kerry Nisbet, the former head of the traffic section, faces two charges of breach of trust and one of accepting secret commissions.

Let's understand one thing, whether it is legal or illegal, its all about insider deals and low ball bidding. There are no real savings to taxpayers, you and me, the workers who are also employed either in the public sector or private sector. The only savings made in contracting out is by underpaying workers. Profits are pocketed not for the public good but the private fortunes of a few. And here is a perfect case where companies engage in bribery, good old crony capitalism, and kick backs to get contracts. Not unlike the Third World. In fact the very nature of privatization of government services is prone to exactly this problem, not as an anomaly but as business as usual.

"The commission is going to look at where did this go wrong, and how did it go wrong," Billett said at a news conference.

"Do we continue with ACS? Do we extend their contract? The (request for proposals) has gone out and we do have some options," he said.

The charges stem from a 19-month RCMP investigation into allegations that at least three traffic officers accepted perks from ACS. The city granted the company an untendered photo-radar contract worth an estimated $90 million over 20 years, based on the recommendation of the police service.

The fact is that the photo radar should never have been privatized. It was just the cops were too lazy to want to administer it, and the police, the city and the police commission mutually agreed that it was better to spend the money on cops than on civilians to operate the photo radar. Even though it brings in oddles and oddles of money.

So instead a private company was hired untendered, opps there is part of the problem, and then tips cops for their private profit. And this is saving us money? No we are being ripped off. And the police commision should have canceled the contract immediately and brought the whole thing back in house. It will pay for itself, and if the cops don't want to do the work, another city department could.

Here is another irony the RCMP investigation is secret but under U.S. corporate reporting rules the news is released for public perusal thanks to the SEC. So we find out what is happening not from the police commission, a civilian oversight committee but from the SEC. And these guys on the commission still want to go ahead with contracting photo radar out as if nothing has happened. That's criminal.


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