Inside the Bolivarian Revolution

Gloria La Riva discusses recent developments in Venezuela, why the U.S. government is bent on overthrowing the revolutionary process and talks about what progressives and revolutionaries living in the U.S. can do to show solidarity with the Venezuelan people. Among other topics, she focuses on the major gains in education and health care there.

La Riva is a PSL leader from San Francisco and active in the Committee to Free the Five. She has travelled extensively to Venezuela and Cuba.

mp3 (49:05, 16.8mb)

Recorded at a Party for Socialism and Liberation meeting in L.A. May 26, 2006.

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“When these investigations come out, there’s going to be a firestorm,” said retired Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, formerly a top lawyer for the Marine Corps. “It will be worse than Abu Ghraib – nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib.”

‘Worst war crime’ committed by US in Iraq

John Kline, the Republican Congressmen for Minnesota who is a retired marine colonel, was briefed on the findings. “This was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians,” he told the New York Times. “This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity.”

When the Lynndie England case first broke, a friend who was wounded in ‘Nam said, ‘that little girl didn’t do that on her own, she’s a private, they don’t do anything on their own. Someone ordered her to do it.’

The commandant of the marine corps, Gen Michael Hagee, flew to Iraq on Thursday to instruct his troops that they must abide by the Geneva Convention and the US military’s own rules of engagement.

This ranks up there with Ken Lay’s slimy, santimonous proclamations that he was innocent. Hagee is either covering up or incompetent. Regardless, ultimate responsibility for the atrocity is his. He should resign or be relieved of duty. Then be indicted for war crimes.

Were the world of D.C. and the Pentagon not so awash in imperialist bloodlust and greed, it would be a given he would resign in disgrace. But given the current climate, he’ll probably be quietly forced out then make $500k a year working for a defense contractor.

It’s the system that is corrupt. It’s the system that must change.

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If you are an experienced user, you probably want Windows Automatic Updates either off or on “download updates but let me choose when to install them.” Then you can choose when to install them, as recent updates have in fact created serious problems for some. Let others beta-test the new patches for a few days before you install them.

Norton/Symantec Security, in its infinite brain-damaged wisdom, will try to turn Auto Updates back on and will tell you it’s a security risk if you don’t. Ignore it. Of all the security programs, Norton is by far the stupidest and most intrusive, and idiot features like this simply prove that.

To change auto updates, go to Control Panel/ Automatic Updates.

But wait, there’s more.

Security research firm eEye warned Thursday that a high-risk vulnerability exists within Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus 10.x that could allow for code execution. According to an advisory posted on eEye’s Web site, the flaw does not require any user interaction to be exploited.

Especially troubling is the fact that that after the vulnerability is exploited, a hacker gains access to a command shell. This means that the attacker would be able to perform just about any action, and opens up the possibility of a worm automatically infecting systems.

This from a program that is supposed to be protecting your system. That’s it. All Symantec programs are coming off our two remaining computers that still use them. Not only are their programs clueless, ponderously slow, and annoying, they are also dangerous.

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