Great News as Microsoft Reverses Itself

Web & Tech

SECURITY

Just when you think you have Microsoft’s Bill Gates’ next move figured out, he goes and does the opposite.
Reversing a longstanding Microsoft policy, Gates told those attending the RSA security conference in San Francisco this past week that the company will ship an update to Internet Explorer separately from the next major version of Windows, currently using the code name Longhorn. A beta version of a secure and fully featured Internet Explorer 7 will début this summer, Gates said in his keynote address to conference participants.
In announcing the plan, Gates acknowledged something that many had been arguing for some time — that the browser itself has become a security risk. “Browsing is definitely a point of vulnerability,” Gates said.
Gates also ended speculation about whether Microsoft would shift to a paid model for their recently released (and invaluable, it turns out) AntiSpyware tool, when he announced that the company will continue to provide customers with its new anti-spyware software free. The pledge comes after the company had been testing its AntiSpyware application — technology it acquired with its purchase of security software maker Giant Software.
“Just as spyware (Windows Media Player video) is something that we have to nip down today, we have decided that all licensed Windows users should have that protection at no charge,” Gates said.

Teachers Win Significant Victory In B.C. Court of Appeal

BC Politics

BCTF

Dispirited because the creeps who run government affairs in British Columbia seem, almost always, to get their nefarious way when it comes to collective bargaining, stripping funding from programmes serving the interests of our most vulnerable citizens, or just generally riding roughshod over every cherished social programme caring citizens have put in place over the course of the past century?
Well, our provincial Lie-beral government doesn’t get its way every time.
British Columbia teachers, and advocates for the public education system, are celebrating a landmark Court ruling. The B.C. Court of Appeal has affirmed that teachers can grieve violations of the class size numbers in the School Act. The government had previously stripped class size limits from the teachers’ hard-bargained-for collective agreement, a move which resulted in larger classes and less individual attention for students.
According to a press release issued by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation …

In an unanimous decision handed down today, the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled in favour of B.C. teachers … ruling that “aggregate class sizes (are) a significant part of the employment relationship” … the Court of Appeal has ruled that an arbitrator can enforce the class-size limitations embodied in the School Act … BCTF President Jinny Sims said, “this is great news for students and teachers … the courts have once again ruled that this government is wrong.”


The BCTF was also awarded costs that the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association must pay.
Upon release of the ruling, Premier Gordon Campbell was quoted in The Vancouver Sun as saying “What I always try to do is follow what I understand the rules to be,” forgetting to add in his statement that the moon is made of cheese, employers always treat their employees fairly, and that he’s a ne’er-do-well renowned far and wide for being a lyin’ bastard.

British Columbia Budget 2005: Too Little, Too Late

BC Politics

BC-BUDGET-2005

After setting the record for the largest deficit in British Columbia history only two years ago, Gordon Campbell‘s Liberal government is about to close out 2004/05 with B.C.’s largest-ever surplus, at around $2 billion.
With the February 15th ‘Golden Era’ budget have the Lie-berals made the decision to reduce poverty and re-invest in public services for the benefit of all British Columbians? According to David Schreck, at Strategic Thoughts, the answer is: no.

The 2005 budget threw a few crumbs back to the masses in an attempt to buy forgiveness and the election, (translating) into a benefit of $34 a year compared to more than $20,000 a year they gave to top income earners in 2001. The spending side of the budget also looks like crumbs when the announcements are put in perspective relative to past cuts: if all of the monies for the homeless that were announced in Budget 2005 went just to the City of Vancouver, it wouldn’t scratch the surface of the problem; as well, under the Campbell government’s plan it will take until 2008 to get back to the 2001 level of funding for adult community living services; and remember June 2001 when the Campbell government announced $1.5 billion in personal income tax cuts … just 11,000 tax filers who report incomes in excess of $250,000 per year, received $200 million in tax cuts, or $20,000 a piece, while the rest of us had our taxes reduced by $34 to $386 a year.


Is B.C. doing better than it was four years ago, and is the current record surplus due to prudent Lie-beral fiscal management? VanRamblings suggests: absolutely not. Why is B.C. running a budget surplus? Could draconian cuts to services to children, seniors, the disabled and the very poorest among us have anything to do with the surplus? Yes.
Are record federal transfer payments to B.C. for health care and equalization a factor in our budget surplus? Yes. Are Crown Corporation revenues adding to the provincial bottom line, including a 50% increase in gambling revenues? Yes. Are large revenue gains that stem from Medical Service Plan premium hikes, tuition fee increases, and windfalls in property taxes and resource royalties also factors? Yes, again.
The next provincial election, May 17th, is only 86 days away. Will you be voting Lie-beral this time out?

Something Evil This Way Comes

Politics

NEGROPONTE

From 1971 to 1973, John Negroponte — confirmed by the Bush administration this past week as the first U.S. National Intelligence director — was the officer-in charge for Vietnam at the National Security Council under Henry Kissinger. During that period, former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Michael Levine was conducting undercover operations in Saigon, Thailand, and Cambodia where the U.S. government was smuggling heroin into the U.S. The government was utilizing caskets and body bags of those “Killed In Action” to smuggled the heroin.
From 1981-1985, Negroponte was assigned as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, where he illegally assisted the Contra war, aiding the Reagan administration in ‘disappearing’ close to 300 political opponents in classic death squad fashion. He supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, which the Contras used as a secret detention and torture centre. From 1989 to September 1993, Negroponte was ambassador to Mexico where he directed U. S. intelligence services in assisting the war against the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas.
According to the New York Times, under the diplomatic cover of his role as ‘ambassador’, Negroponte organized right wing death squads in Central America, leaving tens of thousands of people dead in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua as they murdered to prop up pro-U.S. dictatorships under President Ronald Reagan. The Times credits Negroponte with ‘carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua’ during his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.
In an article titled, Former death squad man to run Iraq, Kevin Ovenden writes in IndyMedia UK that …

  • Negroponte could give lessons to the most brutal dictatorships in the world on how to organise death squads, assassinate opponents and terrorise popular movements into submission
  • Negroponte, during his term as ‘ambassador’, oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. Much of that money was funnelled to the death squads in neighbouring Nicaragua and El Salvador
  • Negroponte concealed murder, kidnapping and torture by a CIA equipped and trained Honduran military unit, Battalion 3-16
    Negroponte, while at the U.S. embassy in Vietnam, coordinated pro-U.S. death squads from 1964 to 1968


Dave Lindorff, writing in Counterpunch, calls the nomination by President George Bush of John Negroponte both ‘obscene and predictable’.