The Proletariat Congress

It is bound to happen to most of us sooner or late. It will happen to you. You may not know it now, but it will happen and when it does, it will irritate you to no end. Am I talking of death or tax? No, this is the other thing in life that can be considered inevitable: Windows XP turning on its user!

It happen to me! And why did this horrible thing happen to me? What could I have been possibly doing at the time to deserve having this happen to me? Was I looking at a website I shouldn’t be looking at or was I doing something else equally as naughty? What could I have possibly done to incur the wrath of Microsoft, who feels it necessary to treat legitimate users like common thieves?

What did I do to deserve this? I was only trying to plug my MP3 player into a USB port on the back of my computer and I unplugged my USB mouse. Now, when I plugged my mouse back in, I found it wasn’t working and I tried to reset the wireless receiver for my mouse as well as the mouse. Upon failing to do so, I got a pop-up window telling me that it was an unrecognisable USB device, so I rebooted.

Upon rebooting back into Windows, I encountered a window telling me that “significant changes” were made to my hardware so I had to reactivate Windows. I had known about this kind of thing (see: Namaste, Microsoft)but until tonight, it had never happened to be before. Alas…

Mind you, I haven’t had this install of Windows up for long. I recently got a better desktop (Athlon Dual-core 4200+) than the one I had before, which was an Athlon AMD 3200+ , and I had to upgrade from my old, loyal faithful 60gig IDE drive since my newer machine had no way for my IDE drive to work. So, on my first SATA drive, I installed my copy of Windows XP Pro (Vista is too buggy for my liking and takes way too much file control away from me) and I had no problems with my legitimate product key. This was back in December of 2007.

Now when Windows Activation pops up, after your first boot, it kindly informs you that you have 3 days to register your product. It registered successfully. Fast forward to today where my itsy-bitsey little itty-witty action of unplugging my wireless USB mouse triggers a ‘significant change’. So, now I can’t even use my legitimate key.

I wasn’t even touching any part of the MoBo. It was something as meaningless as a mouse. Mice break all the time. Why should Windows think that this is a ‘significant change’? Do they want to inconvenience their clients; their business clients whose last concern is that replacing a mouse would amount to a loss of productivity because they have to reactivate Windows in order to continue business? Or do they reserve this “privilege” for home users who are likely to only buy a Windows (genuine) product once every few years?

Microsoft is nothing else knows how to make the Windows experience nothing short of aggravating. Thanks to this, I, or rather my husband, (since I’m at work tomorrow), has to call Microsoft’s ‘support’ desk to resolve this. Too bad I’m going to miss the fireworks.

When faced with life or death, most people unless they know that death is inevitable will choose life because they know that they have families that love them and wish them good health. To lose a family member hurts and those who are faced with this know it and display the will to live and to once again laugh and share in the merriment of life with their friends and family.

One British woman, Lorraine Allard, decided that she would rather not. Instead, she refused to accept medical treatment for a disease that decades of research and sacrifice have long since learned how to fight and nearly cure. The woman foolishly chose to not accept chemotherapy, and carried to term an unborn foetus at the cost of her life.

Either way, there was still going to be a ‘death’.

If she had accepted the treatment the doctors felt she needed, the cancer wouldn’t have advanced into the stage where it would be incurable. But, she didn’t listen to the doctors when told that she would have to abort the barely development foetus in order to be able to receive the life saving treatment that would have made the difference for the children she already had and depended on her.

Accept a medical abortion in order to allow her to fight back at the bowel cancer that had spread to her liver or bring another child into an over populated world? These were the choices.

She didn’t accept the treatment and carried the foetus as long as she could before an early labour was induced, allowing her to deliver the foetus naturally at 26 weeks, giving the child a mere 50% chance at survival.

Some forums on the internet have people praising her for a ‘sacrifice’ and speak a though she were brave for her choice. As though she was truly a model human. The media (such as FOX, Daily Mail) have used positive words to describe her actions. They have chosen words that convey a noble action when the action was anything but brave.

It was foolish. Simply put, it was foolish. She left behind a husband who now has to bring up four children alone. At the time when her doctors suggested that she abort the foetus for medical reasons, she had three daughters, two of whom are old enough to remember this, to know that their mother would rather die than fight back against cancer and live to see them grow up.

Her son, the one born at the cost of her life could very well have issues over this if he cannot accept or handle the fact that he “killed mom”.

The daughters who remember could very well grow up to resent their brother, who they will associate with the death of their mother.

People are free to make their own choices, and if those choices are foolish, the rest of us are free to mock those people for such choices. This woman made such a choice and people shouldn’t be praising her for dying and leaving the man who loves her without the mother of his children to face the world.

The spineless, cowardly Canadian Conservatives have blindly caved into American pressure once again. The ever weak-kneed Tories have decided roll over on Bush’s command and remove the US and Israel from its torture watch list because the two allege that they would never be involved in such inhumane activities nor should they be associated with rogue states like Iran and Syria. Those states engaged in torture. The US simply engages tactics to up the extraction of information using provisory amenity readjustment; it’s not really torture if the Americans do it…

Nor is it torture when the Israelis kill bystanders in their fight against Hamas or when they leave eight hundred thousand or so people in the Gaza strip without power. It’s not torture when they do it because they’re “protecting” Israelis from those poor Palestinians civilians… err, I mean, evil Islamic terrorists who just want to live in their homeland. Never mind that this affects everything including hospitals, medical clinics, water works, houses et cetera. Of course, that doesn’t matter to Israelis because the Palestinians aren’t “God’s Chosen”.

Gaza City plunged into darkness

Rather than worrying about the people who are suffering, I mean, “enjoying” their provisory amenity readjustment, the resolutely obtuse Harper administration has elected to willfully ignore the plight of those in these two nations in favour of international relations. Never mind that Canadians would rather keep rogue nations on the torture watch list, even if they are our “allies”. Of course, if they were truly worried about international relations, they would be in contact with our NATO allies who have qualms about engaging in such inhumane activities, with a flagrant disregard for human rights.

Like the good Harper ass-sucking Tory he is, Maxime Bernier, the Foreign Affairs Minister has come out (sorry, it’s not a closet; Harper won’;t give up the key for it), assuring America and Israel that it was simply an error and that it was never meant to be. He attempted to make it crystal clear that they, the Tories would never see to displease their extraterritorial overlords ever again. This pleased Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, who had been most displeased upon seeing the document naming Israel along with the rogue state of Iran. He was most insulted but was placated upon receiving reassurances from Bernier that it would never happen again.

The US Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins has uttered his displeasure with the government by terming it “offensive” that his country was considered on par with such insolent nations like China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Afghanistan and Syria. He had a wee tantrum has he told a well-controlled press conference about the gross error in judgement made by the puppet government in Ottawa, saying it was, “Quite frankly it’s absurd. For us to be on a list like that is just ridiculous.”

How can it be ‘ridiculous’ when the two nations are known to engage in such activities that are contrary to the well being of others in the world? How is it not torture? Is it only torture when your enemy does it? Or because you’ve made the claim that you’re not actually torturing people because you’re simply trying to protect the world from terrorists? Sorry, playtime’s over children, let the adults take over and you can go sit in the corner and think about the crimes you’ve committed as you wear that lovely orange state-issued jump suit that you’ve given to the detainees at Gitmo.

Canada to rewrite Manual US criticized

Israeli envoy slams torture claim

Ottawa reverses torture stance

Canadian FM regrets ‘torture list‘

The year is 1986, we’re near the the city of Tchernobyl, Ukraine, in one of the satellite states of the USSR. Today also happens to be April 25. All is calm, yet many live near a nuclear power plant, which supplies many with clean-burning electrical power, which is supposed to be more environmentally friendly than coal-fire plants. Each of the four reactors can create 1000 Gigwatts of power. On the same day, April 25, just before the evening shift came in, an order to meet peak evening demand came in, leaving the evening shift take handle it. Yet at 1:23:40, it took only seconds and limited knowledge of the state of the state one of the reactors to lead to one of the greatest nuclear disasters in history, rivalled only by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other places with problems in the same time period were Sellafield, Ireland and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.Fast forward to the year 2008, a good 22 years after Tchernobyl, to Ottawa, where a minority government is getting a might to big for its britches. A childish regime that doesn’t like to play nice with others in the playground and will take the ball home when the others don’t let him play by his rules. This kind mentality pervades the political front in Ottawa, and the casualty today is the former Canadian Nuclear Safety president, Linda Keen, whose only mistake was doing her job. She was fired by the minority government for refusing to start up a reactor that produced medical isotopes, being more than 50% of the world supply.

There had been rumours about a shortage of these isotopes, though it’s easily attributed to media sensationalism; anything to make a catchy headline and an engaging byline. There was no impending crisis despite the media’s twist on the story. It was easy to see that this was for safety and if there really was a shortage, the safety watch dog would have done something to alleviate public concerns while the safety upgrades go under way.

The Nuclear Safety Commission is a quasi-judicial arms-length body in charge of overseeing nuclear safety in Canada. As the police are there to enforce the law of the jungle in our streets, the Safety Commission is there to ensure that we don’t get exposed to the ill-effects caused by a nuclear meltdown. They are an inpendant commission who carry out safety inspections and ensure compliance.

The reactor had been shut down during a routine inspection that found the facilities weren’t in compliance with an earlier safety report to have the reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s shut down because it hadn’t added the cool pumps, which would help in avoiding meltdowns during seismic activity. The reactor had been shut down in November of 2007, and would have been reopened once the upgrades had been done, and at the time of the firing, one of the two necessary upgrades had been completed, with another one due shortly after it.

On December 11th, the AECL had met with a House committee to give an update on it, and had given an estimate of 16 days or so to complete the upgrade. Neither the minority government nor the opposition governments were listening to this. Against the Nuclear Safety Commission and Linda Keen’s orders, they passed legislation, permitting the reactor to be brought back online despite that the existing safety concerns surrounding the Chalk River facilities, and the fact that there is known low but still detectable seismic activity in that region.

This put her at odds with Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, one of the many spineless “Yes” men in the Harper administration, who love nothing more than making senior bureaucrats operate under the party banner. It should be noted that Harper has referred to Keen has that “Liberal appointee”, effectively bringing petty partisan politics into a ring where nuclear safety is tantamount to the industry where a single fault in a reactor is the difference between life and death, as history has shown us with Tchernobyl.

16 hours before Keen was expected to testify before a House committee about the reason behind keeping the reactor down, she was fired from her position, and all because she was doing her job and not bending over backwards to cater to a childish regime that doesn’t have the guts to speak to the media directly and prefers to act like a cowardly little bully, retreating when the big boys start to call the shots.

A clearly partisan move. An attempt to silence her and keep the media in the dark about the truth. Of course, this takes into account that the voting public lives under a rock with its fingers shoved in its ears. It’s too bad the Conservatives think this; they’d know otherwise, except they’ve lost their collective head, which is shoved 20,000 leagues up the ass they so willingly kiss.

PM defends firing of nuclear watchdog

Ousted regulator just doing her job

Concerns over nuclear safety