Sam Francis Knew What He Was Doing September 23, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Banking & Monetary Policy, CofCC Events, Economics and Finance.comments closed
That pretty much goes without saying, but I have even more evidence.
If you are a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, then you receive in the mail once every three months the Citizens Informer, which is the official publication of the CofCC. Because we’re an organization that focuses on race, most of the articles in the Informer follow suit.
In late 1999, the late great Dr. Samuel T. Francis agreed to become the Editor-in-Chief of the Citizens Informer, a position which he held for the rest of his life. The very first issue of the Informer published during his time was in late 1999. It was controversial in that the above-the-fold headline, the feature article, didn’t have anything to do with race. The title was “Glass-Stegall: RIP.”
Glass-Stegall was a Depression-era Federal regulation that erected a strict wall of separation between banks and financial/investment institutions. The purpose of Glass-Stegall was to prevent a financial institution making bad investment decisions from affecting people’s bank accounts. In late 1999, President Clinton signed a Phil Gramm-sponsored bill, that passed both the Senate and the House, that repealed Glass-Stegall. What it meant was that, since the wall was eliminated, that banks could go into the investment business, and investment houses could add banking functions, and/or that banks and financial houses could merge or purchase each other.
“Glass-Stegall, RIP” was controversial in that it dealt the banking, finance and economics, subjects that aren’t exactly the CofCC’s forte, purpose or reputation. What it did was outline why the repeal of Glass-Stegall was playing with fire. And while it didn’t say that a financial/banking/economic meltdown was an inevitable consequence of repealing Glass-Stegall, the article made that possibility clear.
Now I understand that it was prescient and prophetic, and why Sam gave it so much prominence. The almost daily news of a bank or financial institution failing or delcaring bankruptcy is probably the most pressing political issue at the moment, and while the markets are way too complex to affix blame to any one thing, the experts I trust are citing two main “matches” that were thrown into a house flooded with gasoline — One, the subprime mortgage racial pandering mania, and two, the repeal of Glass-Stegall in 1999.
It doesn’t seem that too many people are heeding the article’s advice. Merrill Lynch is one of the investment houses that have recently gone belly-up. Bank of America, a banking institution that is itself not underneath the sunniest of skies, for its eagerness to grant subprime racial pandering mortgages, has just purchased Merrill Lynch.
New to the Blogroll July 21, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Blogosphere, CofCC Events.comments closed
The CofCC gets two new homesteads in the blogosphere. The Great Southern CofCC, serving Greater Jackson and points south in Mississippi, starts a blog, and Illinois-Indiana-Ohio has its own news portal.
When That Midnight Choo Choo Leaves For Alabam’ June 19, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in CofCC Events.comments closed
It may really be a noon car instead of a midnight train, and our voyage may make the oil companies a little richer, to which we’re not looking forward, and Tommy Greenwell a little richer, to which we are looking forward, but we’re headed to the CofCC National Conference in Florence, Alabama tomorrow. Meaning that there will be no new posts on this blog until Monday.
CofCC National Website Is Safe Now (And Has Been For Several Weeks) May 12, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in CofCC Events, Computers & Technology.comments closed
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.
New to the Blogroll January 24, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Blogosphere, CofCC Events.comments closed
Indiana CofCC Blog. I’m “in” with the “in” crowd. Are you?
New to the Blogroll January 18, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Blogosphere, CofCC Events.comments closed
East Tennessee CofCC Blog. “Up on ole bloggy top…”
Guilty Feet Have Got No Rhythm November 26, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in CofCC Events, Politics.comments closed
Oh, the wasted chances that he was given…to become a truly stellar leader — Twice, the first in late 1998/early 1999, and the other after the Strom Thurmond birthday party in late 2002, when the mainstream media mentioned his name in juxtaposition with the Council of Conservative Citizens many times, he could have propelled himself to the stratosphere of American political power and respect, and could have turned the American body politic right-side-up for the sake of white racial nationalism.
Instead, he pandered and backpeddled (and made himself look like a liar in the process), and in spite of his supposed contempt for President Bush, whom he blames for his ouster as Senate Majority Leader in late 2002, he poodled right along with President Bush in the effort earlier this year to enact soft amnesty “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” and not long after, in a mafia-esque fashion, blamed talk radio for its failure, and stated that it was a “problem” that “had to be dealt with” (presumably with concrete shoes).
All that is moot now, because he will never dance again, come the end of this year.
Officially, Trent Lott is resigning from the Senate to “pursue other opportunities.” Translated into English, this means that he’s going to cash in on his political knowledge and influence, most likely by being hired by some D.C. law firm, a PAC, or another group of lobbyists. He won re-election in 2006, but he would be 71 years old at the end of this term, and he wanted to be able to “cash in” while he still had some coherent years left.
Speaking of opportunities, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has a big one, and his appointment to replace Lott will be a significant acid test. We might get the next Bilbo, but we’re also as likely to get a corporate stooge cheap labor-loving neocon. Barbour will communicate a lot about himself through his choice.
New to the Blogroll November 21, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Blogosphere, CofCC Events.comments closed
North Carolina CofCC Blog. Now all I need to do is know “Triad” from “Triangle.”
New to the Blogroll November 18, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Blogosphere, CofCC Events.comments closed
Northern California CofCC Blog. Another new chapter rises tall.
Poetic Justice Updates October 19, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Black Crime, CofCC Events, Ecology & Environment, Entertainment, Poetic Justice, Segregation Jim Crow & Apartheid, South Africa.comments closed
The Poetic Justice page on the St. Louis CofCC Static Webpage has a couple of updates.
(1) “Lucky Dube,” a South African reggae singer, was not so lucky. After making a career of writing anti-apartheid and anti-white music, he was carjacked and shot to death by two men last night in suburban Johannesburg. And it’s not surprising because:
South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, recording an average of 50 murders each day. U.N. crime statistics say one in three Johannesburg residents has been robbed. Rapes and assaults also are common.
He wanted equality, and he got equality.
(2) Timothy Treadwell, of “Timothy and the Three Bears,” had a movie made about his life’s story. Called Into the Wild, it stars Emile Hirsch as the Treadwell-like Christopher McCandless, and is directed by Sean Penn. The Post has the local showtimes. Netflix will have it in a few months.
New to the Blogroll September 18, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Blogosphere, CofCC Events.comments closed
Southern California CofCC Blog. A progenitor to the chapter under formation in southern Mexifornia.
Poetic Justice Page Updated September 18, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Africa, CofCC Events, Courts and Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Racial Pandering.comments closed
An update and an addition to the Poetic Justice section at the St. Louis CofCC Static Webpage:
1. Rachel Corrie’s family tried to sue Caterpillar, who made the bulldozer that ran her over and killed here. The Ninth Circuit Federal Courts of Appeals turned them down, citing judicial restraint (!!), and stating that for any court to hear this case would be for them to give themselves unconstitutional supervision over foreign policy.
2. Jacque Gorman narrative added. She is a retired teacher from Providence, R.I., who “fulfilled a lifelong dream” and “was in her glory” by traveling to Africa to teach children. Jungle diseases were probably not part of the “dream” and the “glory,” and the medical expenses have bled her family dry (and they can’t even afford to bring her home), so they’re running around Providence with their hands out.
CofCC in the News August 30, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in CofCC Events.comments closed
(1) The Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise, who had the story yesterday about Ozen H.S. that set the rightosphere on fire, has covered bloggers’ responses to the story. And guess which blog is cited first?
(2) Someone used a New Mexico state government computer to edit the Wikipedia entry for the CofCC in a defamatory manner.
WSJ: CofCC Blogs Are Running America July 5, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Blogosphere, CofCC Events, Immigration.comments closed
WSJ Recognizes Blogs, Talk Radio for Key Role in Immigration Debate
“Political activism on the Internet — and in the so-called blogosphere, in particular — has long been considered a liberal stronghold. But conservative bloggers show increasing signs of their own coming of age. They took a major leap forward by playing a central role in scuttling the Senate immigration bill. Meanwhile, many of the most popular talk-radio hosts are now posting on blogs, and the frequent collaboration of the two media is creating a unified conservative voice that is likely to be an important factor in the 2008 elections,” the Wall Street Journal writes.
When they say “conservative blogosphere,” they mean official CofCC blogs, unofficial blogs by CofCC members, and American Renaissance. Click here to stay in touch with the minds of America’s rulers.
Cybercast News Service Profiles Council of Conservative Citizens and its Role on Defeating Senate Soft Amnesty Bill July 3, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in CofCC Events, Immigration.comments closed
White Supremacists Influence Immigration Debate, Critics Say
By Jeff Golimowski and Katherine Poythress
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer and Correspondent
July 03, 2007(CNSNews.com) - Gordon Baum’s phone has been ringing a lot more lately in response to the immigration debate. “It’s really got people stirred up like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he said.
Baum is the CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a group that calls itself “a responsible, effective voice and active advocate for the no-longer silent conservative majority.” Others call the CCC one of a growing number of “far-right fringe groups” that mix white supremacist rhetoric with political discussion.
That “fringe” is becoming more vocal and having an increasingly significant impact on the immigration debate even though its members represent only an “infinitesimal” segment of the American population, according to observers on both the right and left.
Baum’s group is based on a series of principles, among them that the United States is a Christian country populated by European peoples, and it should stay that way.
“Diversity causes nothing but chaos and struggle,” he said. “Go to Israel and ask them if the diversity with the Palestinians worked out.”
Baum bristles at being accused of white supremacy. Yet he boasts that European peoples, despite representing only eight percent of the world’s population, “carry the whole standard for civilization. We can be proud of that.”
And, in contending that Latino immigrants won’t assimilate into American culture, he also argues against the acceptability of African-Americans in the United States.
“Blacks have been here for about 400 years,” Baum said. “Have we really successfully assimilated them?”
Mark Potock of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, a sometimes controversial advocacy group that monitors what it consders to be fringe organizations, said the CCC is not unique.
“The immigration debate has been very, very good to the radical right,” he said. “In 2000, our hate group count was 602 … the 2006 count was 844.”
Potock argued that there is a difference between what he calls bona fide “hate groups” and “nativist extremist” organizations. The latter, he said, don’t have an explicit, race-based philosophy but still espouse views close to those of white supremacist organizations, particularly about immigration.
Potock said these groups, which translate white supremacist messages into more acceptable language, are the real threat.
“The worry isn’t so much that you get a few thousand more people in hate groups,” Potock said. “The worry is, the ideology of hate groups start to infect the mainstream political discourse on immigration.”
This skewing of the debate, according to Potock, is hampering the country’s ability to have a legitimate discussion of immigration issues.
“I don’t think that all people in this country who feel immigration needs to be lowered are racists or unrobed Klansmen,” he said.
FBI Agent Stephen Kodak said the bureau’s numbers match the SPLC’s assertions. Although counting members in white supremacist groups is notoriously difficult, the bureau has seen some disturbing trends.
“We’ve seen a real increase in the neo-Nazi groups’ recruitment efforts over the immigration issue,” said Kodak. “They’re using the anti-immigration sentiment to try to get new members.”
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) — a conservative group that campaigns to reduce immigration — said the extremist fringe exists on either side of the immigration issue, “but that is true of any political movement.”
Mehlman said it’s unfair to lump the extremists in with either side of the debate.
“Mussolini made the trains run on time in Italy, but if my Amtrak train shows up on time, I don’t wonder if the fascists have taken over Amtrak,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with on-time trains — there may have been something wrong with Mussolini.”
He added that most Americans are aware that their interests are at stake in the immigration debates and believe they have a right to express themselves the same way immigrants are doing.
“I don’t think that most people are paying attention to a few radical crazies,” Mehlman said. “Who cares what this handful of loonies think?”
One will also notice the “Related Story” on CNS News, also dated today, linked to from that article.
As far as FBI Agent Kodak’s assertions, a relatively recent Ph.D. Dissertation at George Mason University contended that the true nature of the relationship between Federal law enforcement and the SPLC and other Paranoia-Industrial Complex groups is that the former uses the latter to engage in spying and voyeuristic functions that the former are legally prohibited from doing. If Mr. Kodak says that “bureau’s numbers matches the SPLC’s assertions,” it simply means that the FBI is yielding to the SPLC’s assertions, and is likely putting up a false front that it is doing research independent of the SPLC.
CofCC CEO Gordon Lee Baum on “Political Cesspool” Tonight June 26, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in CofCC Events, Immigration, Talk Radio.comments closed
To discuss today’s cloture vote, and other related issues. 7 PM CT. Listen here.
