St. Louis CofCC Blog

The Political Cesspool’s blog is now James Edwards’s personal blog.  As a reminder, TPC returns this Sunday, from 4 to 7 PM.

Want to keep the Rams? Looks like you’ll have to shell out a Cool Bill to do so. Turns out that there’s an obscure clause in the deal that bought the team from Anaheim to St. Louis in 1995 that stipulates that the St. Louis stadium must rank within the top 25% of NFL stadiums, i.e. in the top eight. What exactly is meant by being a top venue is not stated here, and one assumes that it is defined in the legalese. And as it turns out, that venue we built for them in the early-to-mid 1990s, the one that St. Louis just had to have, and was good enough for Pope John Paul II to host the largest indoor gathering in the history of the United States in January 1999, is just too old and passe to square with the legalese.

Of course, with A-B about to depart St. Louis, where is this revenue going to come from?

Mayor Slay:

In 2007, Anheuser-Busch had the following impacts on the City’s budget:

Employees: 5,033
Payroll taxes: $2,016,266
Earnings taxes: $3,483,833
Real property taxes: $5,939,434
Personal property taxes: $1,545,453

And those will be the exact number of employees that will keep their jobs, and the exact number of tax dollars the city treasury will continue to receive, according to the promises that InBev and the pro-buyout shylocks at A-B will make in order to grease the political skids to make this merger happen.  And those will be the exact number of employees that will lose their jobs, and the exact number of tax dollars that the city treasury will no longer receive, when those promises are broken.

AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — A construction crane collapsed Friday on New York’s Upper East Side, smashing into a 23-story apartment building as it fell to the ground, killing two construction workers and seriously injuring another.

It was the second deadly crane accident in 2 1/2 months and the latest of several construction mishaps in the city, which recently shook up its Buildings Department and beefed up inspections.

“What has happened is unacceptable and intolerable. Having said that, we do not know at the moment what happened or why,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a news conference, adding that it appears the builders followed regulations.

So, those who handled the cranes followed the rules, so it doesn’t appear that the city can sue.  Too bad that’s not Mikey’s attitude about gun dealers.

Dot Org has it.  Thought I doubt the study’s consummate methodology.  Do you really believe that Jamaica is safer than the U.S.A.?

As you read this St. Louis Post-Dispatch story, remember that those who do the most to overthrow their own existing social order to enshrine somebody else’s are always first to be eliminated when those “somebody elses” take over.

This narrative is most clear when reading the history of dictatorial regimes on the extreme ends of the political spectrum, but it’s also true in the American experience — some of the loudest pre-independence mouths for revolution, such as Thomas Paine, were socially ostracized after the ratification of the 1787 Constitution and the establishment of a government prescribed by it. The same Paine that could fulminate against the Crown could also hamper the newly-formed and relatively strong Federal government, whose formation and relative strength compared to the Articles of Confederation was not an object of universal countenance, meaning that the fledgling government had to use its legit powers to establish itself, and to show who’s boss.

Remember, the Alien and Sedition Acts were nothing more than a Federalist attempt to squelch the faction of the American body politic sympathetic to Thomas Jefferson and that would be come the Democratic-Republican Party, and would have succeeded if Jefferson had not won the election in 1800.

And while neither Bill nor Hillary should fear that Harlem’s denizens will actually assassinate them, nor use Federal power to diminish their civil liberties, the principle is still the same, even if the literal physical consequences are far tamer than they used to be.

You won’t be able to visit them for much longer.

If Anheuser-Busch takes the offer from Belgium-based InBev, it will probably be the final blow in the city of St. Louis.  Not only for the prestige angle, but in terms of total employment and revenue generation.  Since both the brewery and the World Headquarters are next to each other in south St. Louis city, all those employees pay city income taxes.  And the brewery jobs left at A-B are probably the last quintessential working middle class unionized jobs left in this city.  Even though, thanks to mechanization and computerization, there are only a small fraction of the people working in the brewery that there were during the days when my maternal grandfather worked there.

This offer from Belgium seems to be coming out of left field for everyone, but I don’t think it was such a shock for the Busches themselves.  Question:  Why did InBev make this offer?  If these were the days when Gussie Sr., Gussie Jr., or August III (he never took to the nickname “Gussie”) was on the throne, do you think a foreign conglomerate would have even made an offer?  The answer is no, because Senior, Junior and The Third were all loyal St. Louisans and Americans, unlike the Fourth Generation which now rules the roost, the one that’s rotten spoiled and has never known a life other than A-B being on top and the family being worth multiple billions.  I think InBev made this offer because The Family has been sending signals through channels that the rest of us aren’t privy to, that it’s interested in selling.  You know, it’s not good enough that A-B is constantly profitable, and The Family is worth more than $2 billion — better to gut St. Louis in more ways than one and to be worth $4 billion, isn’t it?

If my theory is right, then it doesn’t take a dummy to know what The Family’s answer is going to be.

What will the eventual purchase of A-B by InBev mean for St. Louis?

The first thing that will happen is that the actual brewery will close.  The St. Louis facility was A-B’s first and currently is the largest brewery by volume in the world still, but it’s the oldest and most expensive one in A-B’s repertoire.  The relative “drag” of the St. Louis brewery on A-B’s books has been an open secret in this town since about halfway through The Third’s reign, but he would have rather downed a warm Miller Lite than close the St. Louis brewery.  What’s surprising to me is that The Fourth Generation hasn’t closed it down, even without buyout offers.  A Belgian conglomerate would have even less loyalty to a faded town in the middle of America than even The Spoiled Brats.

The second thing that will happen is that One Busch Place will close.  InBev already has a World Headquarters in Belgium, and certainly doesn’t need two.  If it needs a building for its American operations (formerly known as Anheuser-Busch), then St. Louis is not a good choice anymore, thanks to another buyout of a few years ago, that being American swallowing TWA, eventually leading to Lambert losing its hub status.  Surely, InBev would have such an administrative headquarters in an American city near a hub, which is much cheaper to fly into and out of.  As it is, they have already set up shop in Philadelphia for its fledgling American business interests, so I have learned.  I predict that they’ll board up One Busch Place, and offer some of its employees (but not all) positions in Philly.

The third thing that will happen is that this will wreck and reverse the gentrification of the city neighborhoods around The Brewery.  It has already leveled off, and such an abandoned business property very near them won’t help matters.  Part of the yuppie allure of Soulard, Benton Park, Dutchtown and Carondelet was that they’re literally in The Brewery’s shadow, even as the yuppie libs themselves tend to prefer non-corporate brews.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch :

A St. Louis man shot in the back while running away from a street robbery can rest in peace, his family said today, after his killer was sentenced to life in prison.

The killer, Michael “Fang Fang” Hudson, was found guilty last month of first-degree murder and 21 other felonies. He was charged after a 25-day crime spree in St. Louis during the summer of 2004.

Prince Hammonds, 20, known as “Rambo” to his family, was killed on July 28, 2004, after Hudson stepped out of a stolen car and tried to rob Hammonds and his friends in the 3600 block of Michigan Avenue.

“He took a good person away from his family,” said Hammonds’ uncle, James Johnson.

Johnson wore a T-shirt to the sentencing hearing that read: “Justice has been done.”

A St. Louis jury convicted Hudson, 31, a professed drug dealer, after a series of witnesses identified him as the one who committed several robberies, a car-jacking and a shooting.

Yes, because when I was a little kid growing up, and learning about the ways of the world, I always dreamed of leaving it by being shot in the back at the age of 20. If Mr. Hammonds was somewhere out there awaiting the disposition of the criminal case against his suspected killer, and couldn’t rest in peace until such a time, then he shouldn’t rest so peacefully — after all, even people imprisioned for life have been known to break out of prison, commit other murders while on the lam, and if not that kill fellow inmates in the sling for lesser felonies, and murder prison guards.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch :

Turning streets into ‘Great Streets’

Outside Terry Gannon’s real estate office on Natural Bridge Road, schoolchildren walk home on uneven sidewalks, past nondescript buildings along the five-lane road. The street, which runs past the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is not pedestrian-friendly, she said.

“It’s just kind of boring,” Gannon added. “The state never cuts the grass. People throw trash out their window.”

She and other property owners in Normandy want more.

They are hoping for direction from East-West Gateway Council of Governments, which has selected their stretch of Natural Bridge, between Lucas & Hunt Road and UMSL, as one of four streets for the Great Streets Initiative.

The planning organization has hired consultants to work with property owners and governments to transform their streets into more walkable, bicycle-friendly areas with better traffic flow.

Sure, because bicycling or walking along Natural Bridge between Lucas & Hunt and UMSL is really way up there on my life’s to-do list. For that stretch of road, knit-picking about its pedestrian or bike friendliness is like arguing about how to drain the swamp when you’re already up to your neck in gators.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch :

SLPS will remain under state control until 2011

JEFFERSON CITY • The Special Administrative Board that runs St. Louis schools got a three-year extension on Thursday.

The State Board of Education voted to keep the appointed governing body in place until June 30, 2011. The decision took only minutes, a big contrast to last year, when the meeting establishing the new board drew busloads of angry St. Louis teachers and parents.

I predict this article will be re-run once every three years. The P-D might as well save this, and insert a PHP script that would insert the current date, three years after the current year, and the name of the current State Education Commissioner.

Remember this story from four days ago about black native-on-black immigrant violence in South Africa?  Yes, you guessed it.  South Africa is officially blaming the few remaining whites of Cape Town.

Not that they actually believe it, because if it were anywhere close to true, the government wouldn’t have been so hesitant to use the military to stop the violence, which it is finally doing.  After all, it’s far easier to blame the few remaining whites, rather than blaming other blacks, to grease the demagoguic wheels for further land, farm and property confiscation.

I’ll start with the bad, even though it would make more sense to start with the good.

The bad news:  There are only 29 graduates.  This probably means that those who wouldn’t have been accepted to any college have already dropped out of school.

The good news:  All of this year’s graduates of Wellston’s Eskridge H.S., the only high school in the Wellston S.D., which is virtually all black and currently under state control, have been accepted to at least one college or university.

Mayor Slay:

Newsweek’s ranking of the best public high schools in the country has several familiar names: Metro High School in the St. Louis Public School District ranks 118, the highest ranking of a Missouri public school. The only other local schools to make the list in the top 500 are Ladue’s Horton Watkins (206), Clayton High School (497).

Parents of children looking for a great public education should keep the rankings — and the City — in mind.

Yes, keep it in mind, and leave it in mind. Your kid isn’t getting into Metro unless he or she is something special. I’m wondering if their selective admissions is why they’re ranked so highly.

“We cannot win with egg heads and African-Americans. OK, that is the Dukakis Coalition, which carried ten states and gave us four years of the first George Bush.“

In case you’re wondering, the eggheads are the eastern one, and the African-Americans are the western one.

It will be if Gregory Rodriguez keeps writing columns.

The fear of white decline

Hillary Rodham Clinton is right. She has the broader and whiter political coalition, so she should, by all rights, be the Democratic presidential nominee.

After all, in other realms of the political process, we routinely refer to “black districts” or “Latino districts” and speak of the necessity of those jurisdictions to be represented by black or Latino elected officials. Well, then, because the American population is 66% white, maybe the United States is a de facto white district that should be represented accordingly.

(snip)

Since the civil rights movement, though, it’s also been taboo to speak of the collective interests of white people in polite company. To mention whites as an interest group — in the way we do minority groups — hearkens back to segregation and worse.

(snip)

Is this white supremacy? No, in fact it might be its opposite, an acknowledgment that white privilege has its limits. With immigration and globalization reformulating who we are as a nation, it isn’t the white elites that are threatened by the changes; rather, it’s the nearly 70% of whites who are not college educated who figure among the most insecure of Americans. Many feel that their jobs are being outsourced or taken by immigrants — legal or otherwise — and that their culture is being subsumed. When Clinton promises to make their voices heard, she’s appealing not to Anglo-Saxon racial triumphalism but to the fear of white decline.

This hearkens back to a debate earlier this decade between The Bard and former San Francisco Police Department Detective Lou Calabro. The latter was (and still is) lobbying for the adoption of European-American history and heritage months/events, while the former thought that doing so would mean that white America would be accepting a demotion from being synonymous with America to being merely one of many racial groups within America.

This writer sided with Sam at first, but is now leaning toward Calabro’s mindset, because we need to have something that legitimizes whiteness, all whiteness, and whiteness alone, and something that gets white people thinking about whites. Also, it’s not as if we weren’t demoted anyway; adopting Calabro’s idea means that our demoted selves realize that we are a people and have been demoted; Sam’s ideas would mean that our demoted selves would still wander around deracinated and oblivious.

Read the rest of the article.

Politico:

GOP fails to recruit minorities

Just a few years after the Republican Party launched a highly publicized diversity effort, the GOP is heading into the 2008 election without a single minority candidate with a plausible chance of winning a campaign for the House, the Senate or governor.

At a time when Democrats are poised to knock down a historic racial barrier with their presidential nominee, the GOP is fielding only a handful of minority candidates for Congress or statehouses — none of whom seem to have a prayer of victory.

Of course not. A political party that built its successes on the hopes and fears of white working middle class voters, and still gets virtually all of its votes from whites even though the party repeatedly flips white voters the bird, won’t see any of those voters embrace black and Hispanic Republican candidates.

In related news, political pundits are surprised by how many black Republicans are endorsing Obama for President. It doesn’t surprise me. Not only can racial loyalty explain it, most black “Republicans” aren’t really Republicans, and certainly not conservative. They only joined the Republican Party because there are so many black Democrats, that it takes a long time and a lot of dues-paying to become somebody. Since (1) There are so few black Republicans, and (2) The party establishment is spending an insane amount of resources to attract them, a black man or woman who cuts his or her teeth in the Republican Party will become a celebrity far sooner. So what if they have to feign a little bit of neo- or pseudo-conservatism every once in awhile. That they turn right around and “jilt” McCain for Obama only seems surprising to the people that run the Stuck-on-Stupid Party.

Do the paramedics that try to save black shooting victims get shot themselves by black thugs.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch :

Salvador L. Duran, 22, is accused of raping a woman from Troy, Mo., police say. Duran, of the first block of Hickory Ridge Court in Troy, was charged Saturday with forcible rape.

The woman told police Duran forced her to have sex in his car parked in front of her friend’s house in the first block of Wilhoit Court. He had just given her a ride from a pharmacy in Troy.

After being arrested, Duran told police he is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, police said.

I wonder why Senor Duran volunteered his legal status. My bet is that he thinks he could get deported in lieu of facing the music.

Troy is in Lincoln County, and while you might want to fill in the blank with sundry comments about Abraham Lincoln and racial equality, hold off: It was named for a different and earlier Lincoln.

I glossed over this story last week, about a study, authored by Duke Prof. Jacob Vigdor, and released by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a supposedly conservative think tank, that Mexican and Latin American arrivals aren’t assimilating into the American culture.

When I first read the story, I knew that the definition of “assimilation” has been dumbed down over the decades, and that if Mexicans and other Latin Americans aren’t “assimilating” even under the new diluted definition, it is because Mexicans come here to find Mexico already, so they already have here where they came from there. The future challenge will be for white Americans to assimilate into Mexico.

There is another reason why assimilation isn’t happening these days. The Bard, from the March 1990 issue of Chronicles:

It is especially complicated when, as today, there are major obstacles to assimilation. Sociologist Nathan Glazer, a supporter of immigration, points out that the discrimination and prejudice that in earlier eras helped accelerate the acculturation of new immigrants is today largely illegal. Civil rights legislation, equal opportunity codes, and court decisions have weakened the power of private and social institutions, no less than that of public authorities, to induce immigrants to conform to American norms. Today’s “cultural authorities” legitimize and instigate “alternative life styles,” eschew stereotypes, scorn WASP ethnocentrism, and indulge every known form of deviation and idiosyncrasy from the religious exotica of Santeria to the perversions of the National Man-Boy Love Association. Restaurants where once only the coated and tied dared enter now beg their customers to wear shirts and shoes. “Popular opinion,” writes Mr. Glazer, “now questions the legitimacy and desirability of forcefully imposing a common identity on immigrants and members of minority groups.”

In other words, “back then,” immigrants (who were mostly white) were forced to assimilate (genuinely) because the natives then were able to get away with what are now termed as “Federal civil rights violations” and force the newcomers to behave like the Romans do while in Rome.  Today’s largely non-white arrivals, combined with the full force and weight of the Federal government prohibiting white natives from “discriminating” and being “prejudiced,” means that the newcomers can turn the new country into the old country, even as the “assimilation” bar is far lower than it used to be.

Prof. Vigdor was a guest on the Laura Ingraham radio show this morning. He reiterated his findings about Mexican and Latin American arrivals. But then the “conservative” Ingraham then bragged that the daughter she just adopted, a Guatemalan native, was assimilating into the American culture very well thank you, because she liked Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants. Wow, cartoons, one of which speaks Spanish half the time (Dora) — what a whiz-bang, profound definition of the American culture, Laura. Proving the point that not only does “assimilation” not mean what it used to, but so doesn’t “conservative.”

Then Prof. Vigdor, seeming to debate with Ingraham, said that the reason Mexicans and Latin Americans weren’t “assimilating” into Dora, Spongebob and shopping malls is that they were here illegally, and thus were living in the shadows, and afraid to participate in the American culture (i.e. turn the TV on). So, the obvious solution is hard or soft amnesty for illegal aliens. That way, this will speed up the process of the USA becoming Mexico, and the process of white Americans assimilating into Mexican culture. He didn’t really say that last sentence, but that’s what will happen.

Thankfully, Ingraham had the sense to press him on that point, but the kind of “conservatism” that is supposed to debate the even less conservative conservatism of the Manhattan Institute can’t be trusted with American immigration policy, if you expect America to remain American, beyond the scope of cartoons and malls.

More Annie Malone Parade violence, but you wouldn’t know it by reading Channel 5’s telling:

Gunshots Send Crowd Running At Annual Annie Malone May Day Parade

Gunfire erupted Sunday afternoon at the annual Annie Malone May Day Parade downtown, one of the largest African-American heritage parades in the country.

A juvenile was taken into custody, accused of firing into the crowd at 10th and Market. Newschannel Five’s cameras were actually rolling when the gun went off.

Three shots caused the crowd to run.

While police say no one was stuck by bullets, several people, including a pregnant woman were trampled in the rush to get away.

So, “juveniles” were somehow in the middle of guns firing themselves.

Philadelphia Inquirer:

Crowded city jails may get worse
Crime crackdown expected to add to a vexing problem.

As a crackdown on crime continues in Philadelphia, city officials are concerned it will only exacerbate a crisis in city prisons.

Driven, in part, by a growing backlog of criminal cases, the daily jail count on April 19 reached 9,334 - a record in the city prison system’s 320 years. And there’s fear that a surge in arrests will put the city on a fast track to surpassing 10,000.

The influx of inmates is expensive, draining tax dollars away from recreation programs, pothole repairs, and other general city services.

It is also dangerous, increasing tensions among prisoners and between inmates and the correctional staff.

Expanded and redesigned for 6,433 inmates, Philadelphia’s six major jails are bursting at the seams. A lawsuit filed last month contends that more than 2,000 inmates are confined three to a cell, with many sleeping in plastic shells on floors of cells built for only two.

To cope, the city has agreed to transfer 200 prisoners to a renovated private jail in North Philadelphia as of July 15.

I noticed in this article that the Inquirer provided a table, showing that Philadelphia has the highest incarceration rate per capita for large American cities. I noticed that Phoenix was in second place, and while Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the sheriff of Maricopa County, which contains Phoenix, and not just the city, that Philly might do well to find its own Joe Arpaio, some vacant land in the city (which I’m sure there is), and some tents.

Remember, this is a black/liberal city that is generally lenient toward black suspects and defendants. The only way you end up in the city can and stay there is if you’re awaiting trial for a very serious crime, or you committed a serious misdemeanor. Plain words, there are hardly any people cooling their heels at the graybar hotel for minor offenses. There’s just not enough jail space for the major offenders, much less the minor ones.

Reuters:

Anti-foreigner violence spreads in South Africa

A wave of xenophobic attacks spread through South African townships on Monday and mobs beat foreigners and set some ablaze in scenes reminiscent of apartheid era violence.

Two people were killed and more than two dozen shacks were torched in the Tembisa township near Johannesburg, the South African Broadcasting Corp. said. Police, struggling to restore order, said at least 13 people were killed over the weekend.

Immigrants from African neighbors are accused by many in the townships, among South Africa’s poorest areas, of taking jobs and fuelling the high rate of violent crime. Local media report about 20 dead since trouble broke out a week ago.

So, black immigrants into a black-run country are being harassed and attacked by black natives. Remember, these are the same black natives that couldn’t wait to get rid of apartheid and the white minority government that enforced it.

Remember this writer’s thesis: Blacks will complain about white racialist policies like segregation, Jim Crow and apartheid, but then enact it themselves and far more brutally, against their own people, once they get power.

The Australian:

Our ‘hidden’ migrants

AUSTRALIA is undergoing an unparalleled movement of people and ethnic change through “hidden immigration”, but lacks a comprehensive policy to deal with it, according to an eminent demographer.

Monash University professor Andrew Markus said raw immigration numbers masked the magnitude of a demographic revolution that had produced a population where one in four residents was born overseas.

At 24 per cent, the overseas-born proportion of the population is twice that of the US at 12per cent, and three times that of England and Wales at 8 per cent, where racial tensions have flared again.

“Opinion polls in England in July 2007 and March 2008 indicated that immigration and race issues are the main concern of electors,” Professor Markus said.

He said that while Australians had been tolerant and migrants committed to their new home, strong political leadership was required to convince the nation of the benefits to all of high immigration to avoid a backlash.

It is not surprising that Australia’s white population is declining rapidly.  There are perhaps 19 million white people, staring up at hundreds of millions of Indonesians, more than a billion Chinese, more than a billion Indians, and several hundred million Indochinese.  One non-white immigrant, therefore, impacts the racial makeup of Australia more than it does the U.S.A.  And assuming that nearly all of that 24% foreign born is non-white, and that some of its native born population is, counting the Abos, Australia and the U.S.A. are probably down to around two-thirds white.

As many of you know, the CofCC National Website was recently cracked.

The reason why I’m writing this post here is that the internet search engine Google still reports that CofCC.org contains malware that may harm your computer.  The problem was fixed several weeks ago, but Google’s interent bots have not yet passed by CofCC.org to see the current lack of a problem.  This is deterring traffic to CofCC.org, so I am posting this here on the St. Louis CofCC Blog, in order to place this on a source that Google isn’t scaring people from visiting.

Let me repeat this again.  CofCC.org is currently safe, and has been for a couple of weeks.  Do not hesitate to visit!

***

So, what happened?  I’ll give two different explanations.  The first version is a technobabble-free version that cuts to the chase, and the second version has all the technobabble.

***

Technobabble-Free Version:

Somebody cracked into CofCC.org’s photo gallery program, and inserted a program that gave six consecutive viruses to most people who visited CofCC.org.  Many other blogs that use WordPress software were also similarly hacked, so the CofCC.org Staff does not believe that we were politically targeted.  The viruses reportedly do everything from insert spyware, to turn a user’s computer into a mechanism to pump out e-mail spam, to giving the user cockroach-themed screensavers, to outright data destruction.

***

Technobabble Version:

One or more people were able to maniuplate PHP vulernabilities to crack into blogs that use the WordPress.org blogging system *and* the Coppermine photo gallery management system.  CofCC.org uses the former, and did use the latter until these attacks.  If you have a WordPress blog like the one you’re reading now, whose URL is (something).wordpress.com, you were never affected, because the wordpress.com’s servers are far more secure, and the WordPress.org that wordpress.com uses is more mature and less bleeding-edge than the WordPress.org scripts that one could download and install on the server hosting one’s own blog.  Remember, WordPress.org is the “software” (really, scripts), while wordpress.com is a blog hosting server.

The crackers inserted an ActiveX control whose purpose was to insert six consecutive viruses into the computers of people that used them to visit CofCC.org (et al).  Since Internet Explorer Version 6, by default, allows the running of ActiveX controls without user permission, those who used IE6 to visit CofCC.org and did not change that setting did run that script and get the viruses.  However, if you had a good anti-virus program that you kept updated on a daily basis, it very likely would have caught those viruses and either quarantined them, deleted them, or tried to heal them, even if you used IE6.  (Note:  IE 3.x, 4.x and 5.x also allow unattended ActiveX controls to run, so the same applies to those versions).

The newest IE, version 7, does not allow ActiveX controls to run without user permission by default.  If you run across a website that wants to install an ActiveX control, you will see a yellow horizontal bar across the top of your browser window that looks like this:

This is an example of a “non-malicious” ActiveX control, inasmuch as you want to believe that WGA is not malicious.  During the time when CofCC.org was attacked, you saw such a yellow bar once CofCC.org’s content was loaded.  It was from a supposedly reputable company asking you to install the “add-on” (ActiveX Control).  Hopefully, you knew that CofCC.org has no need or desire to force an ActiveX control upon its users, and you figured something was amiss, and rejected the request.  But if you did accept it, you got the six virsues just as much as users of older versions of IE did, anti-virus program notwithstanding.

As for the acuity of anti-virus programs to catch the viruses — AVG, the most popular freeware anti-virus, caught them.  Kaspersky, one of the more popular commercial packages, caught them.  Norton, probably the most popular anti-virus solution, had mixed results.  If you can supply me with reports about other anti-virus programs, please contact me (see “Contact Us” above).  In the time since this crack occurred, AVG updated its free AV to version 8.0, and when you install it, you also install an IE 6/7 add-on and a Firefox 1.5/2.0 extension called “AVG Safe Search,” that checks the results of Google, Yahoo and MSN searches for various malware.  At the time of this writing, it reports CofCC.org in Google as okay (note the star with the checkmark) even as Google itself does not:

Those who use any browser other than IE and IE shell apps (Deepnet Explorer, Maxthon, MyIE, and Avant are examples of browsers that use IE’s rendering engine but has its own GUI — they all require user permission for ActiveX controls to run, even when they were running on top of Pre-IE7 Trident), you had no problems.  Those who used Firefox and Opera never saw anything wrong.  If you use Mac OS, and any of its browsers (Safari, Firefox, Opera), you never had any problems.  If you used the recently-released Safari browser for Microsoft Windows, you never had any problems.  If you run Linux and use any of its browsers (Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Dillo, etc.), you never had any problems.  ActiveX is a Windows-only technology.

BUT WAIT — some Firefox users have e-mailed the CofCC National Website (this writer reads all e-mails that come into CofCC.org, and responds to those that need a response), and said that Firefox blocks them from accessing CofCC.org.  The reason for that is that Firefox 2.x and 3.x, by default, blocks malicious websites.  (Firefox 1.0.x and 1.5.0.x does not, so it never blocked CofCC.org by default, uesr-installed extensions notwithstanding).  And how does Firefox 2/3 know what is a malicious website?  It doesn’t by itself; it relies on Google’s databases to tell it which ones have problems.  (Google and the Mozilla Corporation/Foundation have a very close relationship; the latter derives most of its revenue from the former.)  Remember, as of the time of this writing, Google still reports that CofCC.org may harm your computer.  The irony of this is that Firefox users were never affected, because Firefox can’t run ActiveX scripts (save the few rare people who have installed a Mozilla non-supported extension to do that, or those who used the Mozilla-supported IETab or IEView extensions to view CofCC.org within Firefox using the IE rendering engine — in those instances, user permission is required to download and/or run the ActiveX controls).  Those who don’t use Windows were never affected.  Still, if you use Firefox on Mac, or Firefox on Linux, or Firefox on BSD, or Firefox on anything else, and do not disable the malicious website blocking, CofCC.org is blocked as of the time of this writing, even though those OSes are safe, and the crack neither depends on Firefox nor a non-Windows OS.  This writer turns that functionality off in Firefox, as he finds it redundant.

So, what did these viruses do?  There are conflicting reports, coming from those who e-mail CofCC.org, to those who visited the other WordPress/Coppermine websites and blogs so cracked, but they range from mere spyware that reads the user’s browser cookies and sends the results back to the cracker(s), to hijacking the user’s computer to turn it into a stealth SMTP server for the purpose of pumping out spam e-mails, to installing screensavers that show cockroaches eating the user’s desktop icons, to outright data destruction, and evisceration of the Master Boot Record, making the user’s computer unbootable.

This writer leans toward the spyware/smtp theories.  I did these things:  (1) Do a fresh install of Windows XP within a virtual machine with XP has the host.  In other words, XP under XP.  Install AVG 7.5.x anti-virus in the virtual machine, then update AVG virus definition files.  Start IE6 (XP installs 6, not 7, by default).  Go to CofCC.org.  Watch as AVG catches the six viruses.  Record the name of each one before healing it.  Put those six virus names aside.  (2)  Install IE6 under Wine in Linux.  Record the time when the installation was finished.  (B/C AVG for Windows won’t run very well in Wine.)  Start IE6, visit CofCC.org, wait until the site is loaded.  Then use a Linux file manager to search for newly installed files in the Wine directory that were created between the time IE6 was finished installing and the present time.  Write the filenames down.  (3) Using the lists generated in (1) and (2), Google each name to see what information exists about the viruses.  Since the viruses were all legit-looking Windows system DLLs (hence AVG wanted you to try to “heal” them first), they wanted to give the operating system and especially Internet Explorer some level of new functionality.  And that means spyware.  Doing these tests in the sandboxed environments of (1) a VM, and (2) a compatiability layer, means that anything nasty these viruses could do would only be done within the sandbox, just in case they had nasty intentions and, in the instance of (1), AVG didn’t catch them.

So why do other people report other bad results of these viruses?  I just so happened to get the exact same six virus attempts when I did (1) and (2) above, but it’s possible that the cracker(s) pumped different viruses out at different times.  Maybe it was more than one group of crackers who had different malicious goals.  Maybe the DLLs are “time bombs” of a sort, that do less malicious things at first then gradually do more malicious things.

Why doesn’t the CofCC.org staff think this was a political attack?  As I have mentioned, other websites were cracked similarly, and the thing they all have in common is that they use the WordPress.org blogging system AND the Coppermine photo gallery manager.  Political websites of all sorts were cracked, and many non-political websites were, also.  The CofCC.org Staff is aware that certain far-left websites are taking credit for the particular attack of CofCC.org, but there are a multitude of groups in the Middle East that take credit every time a sewer manhole pops open in New York City.  If you catch my drift.

So, to summarize, this was a WordPress.org/Coppermine/PHP/IE/Windows hole.  And to reiterate, CofCC.org IS SAFE NOW, and has been for several weeks.

Thank you for your concern and your patience.

WBAP-820-AM Fort Worth-Dallas:

The People Have Spoken

The two beacons of illegal immigrant exclusion laws won the mayor’s office yesterday in their respective cities. Farmer’s Branch voters elected Tim O’Hare over Gene Bledsoe by a wide margin, with Irving voters deciding to re-elect Herbert Gears to lead their city with 54% of the ballots.

Both O’Hare and Gears have spearheaded the fight to exclude illegal immigrants in their cities attracting the ire of Washington D.C., the focus of the national news media and the desperation of other American mayors who want to follow in their footsteps looking for a solution to the national issue of undocumented workers.

Remember that Irving isn’t some just dot on the map.  It is a major Metroplex suburb with over 200,000 residents, and, according to Wikipedia:

Several large businesses have headquarters in Irving, including Chuck E. Cheese’s, Commercial Metals, ExxonMobil, Gruma, Kimberly-Clark, Michaels Stores, National Care Network, Omni Hotels, Southern Star Concrete, Inc., Xero Hour, Zale Corporation, Fluor Corporation and LXI Enterprise Storage.  The city is also home to the national headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America.  The Dallas Cowboys play at Texas Stadium in Irving until a new stadium is finished in Arlington, Texas, in 2009.

Farmers Branch, which borders Irving to the east, has about 27,000 people, which makes it small in terms of the Metroplex, but it would be a major suburb in St. Louis.  Taken together, Irving and Farmers Branch have about 236,000 people, so yesterday’s elections in those two cities are the functional equivalent of a relatively major city electing an anti-invasion mayor.  Considering these cities were in a border state, the open borders lobby probably made a big ruckus.  But the voters had other ideas.

The New York Times profiles what may be a Missouri constitutional amendment that will require those who register to vote to submit proof of citizenship.  They go on and on like it’s such an extreme and drastic proposal, but they are virtually the same as Missouri’s driver’s license law enacted about three years ago.

Actually, I have never been a fan of merely registering to vote by filling out a postcard and sending it in the mail.  The method of registering to vote should be one where, with a few exceptions, one should show a little bit of ambition in order to register to vote.

Unlike California, it’s not yet the case in Missouri that there is a huge problem with illegal aliens voting.  The bigger problem is the voter fraud that revolves around the political machines of natural-born citizenry of a certain type.  These measures would not deter such fraud.

Also, I wish the General Assembly would submit the MCRI as a constitutional amendment up for the vote this fall, or better yet, enact it as a matter of legislation.  That way, the Ward Connerly organization wouldn’t have had to try to pound the pavement to gather signatures.

Taki’s got it.  It’s worth the time.

I’ll add that white college grads are even less likely to get jobs commensurate with their education, thanks to affirmative action, even though their debt is the same.  In fact, the jobs they get are ones they very well could have had without a college education.  Therefore, the Education-Industrial Complex actually reduces the standard of living of whites.

KSDK:

ATF Chief: Crime Rose as Cities’ Funding Dropped

Violent crime has increased in some cities in recent years in part because local police are too cash-strapped to fight it, the ATF chief said Monday.

The comments by Michael J. Sullivan, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, echo pleas by mayors across the country for more federal dollars to combat crime.

Now the ATF cares about cities.  Usually, when they get involved with abusing firearms dealers and owners enforcing gun laws, it’s nowhere near protected racial minorities, even though they would make a far greater dent in serious violent crimes by focusing their enforcement in cities and their notorious citizens.  Later in this article, we find out that:

Whether the Senate will ever vote on Sullivan’s own confirmation. Sullivan, still the U.S. attorney in Boston, was nominated as ATF’s chief in March 2007. But Idaho’s Republican senators so far have blocked the nomination out of concern the ATF has become overly aggressive in enforcing gun laws.

Sullivan said the ATF last year did compliance checks on about 10,000 gun dealers and brokers, and suspended the licenses of 97 — fewer than 1 percent. He said the ATF is trying to balance regulating gun dealers equally across the country.

The ATF has been particulary abusive in Idaho.  For instance, it considers literally not dotting the lowercase “i” letters in people’s names, writing a two-digit (e.g. 07) as opposed to a four-digit (e.g. 2007) year on paperwork, and posting signs about required background checks inside gun stores that aren’t large enough or have a big enough typeface (font), as major transgressions worthy of trying to revoke the shop owner’s FLFD license.

So I think Sullivan is bloviating about cities and Federal money in order to grease the wheels among left-wing Senators to make his nomination official, so that he’ll be an “official” agency head and therefore be eligible for a Federal pension.

AFP:

US police deaths climb sharply: FBI

The number of US police officers killed criminally or accidentally last year climbed by around 20 percent compared with the previous year, preliminary data released Monday by the FBI showed.

Fifty-seven police officers were killed feloniously in the line of duty in 2007, up from 48 the previous year, the report said.

Most of the officers were shot; two were killed with vehicles.

(snip)

The report did not specify the causes of the accidental deaths.

And it’s not that Agence France Presse, which is even more left-wing than the American MSM, would tell us the reason even if this FBI report stated it.  As such, you can probably deduce that the reason is taboo and politically incorrect.

Brian Ross:

President Bush signed into law today an obscure but important measure which, its supporters say, will help reduce sex trafficking and exploitation of guest workers in a U.S. territory.

Although under U.S. control, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands has maintained lax immigration laws in contrast to the mainland. With help from Congressional Republicans and now-imprisoned superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, CNMI for years successfully fought off legislation proposed to tighten security and improve working conditions on the islands.

The bill Bush signed today extends U.S. immigration laws to CNMI and establishes a guest worker program there.

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