Re: M-TH: Happy Labor Day !
Yes, Rob, There are a couple of other interviews with Marx and Engels on the Colorado Marxist archive. Somehow, it gives a very live feeling that you don't get even from the personal letters I have read. You really feel like you are part of a conversation with them.The terminology is so plain. Gives us another way to articulate Marxism Charles Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/04/99 03:28AM Thanks for the Chicago Tribune interview piece, Chas. I'd never even heard of it! A good read, eh? And a Happy Labour Day to you. Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: In thru the back door
Just received a mail with this link: http://www.cryptonym.com/hottopics/msft-nsa.html As I understand it, this means that the US National Security Agency has the potential to access any machine using Windows 95/98/NT ! Worried users might wish to download Cryptonym's programme that replaces the NSA key with a useless one (nb I haven't tried this and for all I know the whole thing could be a scam). Watch out- they're watching you! Russ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: In thru the back door
I always assume the police can access anything I write, including a tattoo underneath my armpit viewing it from a satellite. CB "r.i.p" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/06/99 12:18PM Just received a mail with this link: http://www.cryptonym.com/hottopics/msft-nsa.html As I understand it, this means that the US National Security Agency has the potential to access any machine using Windows 95/98/NT ! Worried users might wish to download Cryptonym's programme that replaces the NSA key with a useless one (nb I haven't tried this and for all I know the whole thing could be a scam). Watch out- they're watching you! Russ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: In thru the back door
On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, r.i.p wrote: Just received a mail with this link: http://www.cryptonym.com/hottopics/msft-nsa.html As I understand it, this means that the US National Security Agency has the potential to access any machine using Windows 95/98/NT ! Unlikely or at least there are better ways. The email below is from an mailing list for NT security. - From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Sep 6 19:39:32 1999 Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 20:49:07 -0500 From: Bruce Schneier [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Comments on the "NSA" key in Microsoft CryptoAPI This is a response to: http://ntbugtraq.ntadvice.com/default.asp?sid=1pid=47aid=52 A few months ago in my newsletter Crypto-Gram, I talked about Microsoft's system for digitally signing cryptography suits that go into its operating system. The point is that only approved crypto suites can be used, which makes thing like export control easier. Annoying as it is, this is the current marketplace. Microsoft has two keys, a primary and a spare. The Crypto-Gram article talked about attacks based on the fact that a crypto suite is considered signed if it is signed by EITHER key, and that there is no mechanism for transitioning from the primary key to the backup. It's stupid cryptography, but the sort of thing you'd expect out of Microsoft. Suddenly there's a flurry of press activity because someone notices that the second key is called "NSAKEY" in the code. Ah ha! The NSA can sign crypto suites. They can use this ability to drop a Trojaned crypto suite into your computers. Or so the conspiracy theory goes. I don't buy it. First, if the NSA wanted to compromise Microsoft's Crypto API, it would be much easier to either 1) convince MS to tell them the secret key for MS's signature key, 2) get MS to sign an NSA-compromised module, 3) install a module other than Crypto API to break the encryption (no other modules need signatures). It's always easier to break good encryption. Second, NSA doesn't need a key to compromise security in Windows. Programs like Back Orifice can do it without any keys. Attacking the Crypto API still requires that the victim run an executable (even a Word macro) on his computer. If you can convince a victim to run an untrusted macro, there are a zillion smarter ways to compromise security. Third, why in the world would anyone call a secret NSA key "NSAKEY." Lots of people have access to source code within Microsoft; a conspiracy like this would only be known by a few people. Anyone with a debugger could have found this "NSAKEY." If this is a covert mechanism, it's not very covert. I see two possibilities. One, that the backup key is just as Microsoft says, a backup key. It's called "NSAKEY" for some dumb reason, and that's that. Two, that it is actually an NSA key. If the NSA is going to use Microsoft products for classified traffic, they're going to install their own cryptography. They're not going to want to show it to anyone, not even Microsoft. They are going to want to sign their own modules. So the backup key could also be an NSA internal key, so that they could install strong cryptography on Microsoft products for their own internal use. But it's not an NSA key so they can secretly install weak cryptography on the unsuspecting masses. There are just too many smarter things they can do to the unsuspecting masses. Bruce --- The following is from the April Crypto-Gram, at: http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9904.html#certificates Attacking Certificates with Computer Viruses How do you know an e-mail is authentic? You verify the digital signature, of course. This means that you verify that the message was correctly signed, using the sender's public key. How do you know that the sender's (call her Alice) public key is valid? You check the signature on *that* public key. What you're checking is called a certificate. Someone else, call him Bob, signs Alice's public key and confirms that it is valid. So you verify Bob's signature on Alice's certificate, so you can verify Alice's signature on her e-mail. Okay, how do you know that Bob's signature is valid? Maybe Carol signs her key (creating another certificate). That doesn't actually solve the problem; it just moves it up another layer. Or maybe you signed Bob's key, so you know to trust him. Or maybe someone else whose key you signed has signed Carol's key. In the end, you have to trust someone. This notion of a certificate chain is one of the biggest problems with public-key cryptography, and one that isn't talked about very much. PGP uses the notion of "trusted introducers"; Bob signs Alice's key because Bob knows Alice and is her friend. You signed Bob's key for the same reason. So when Alice sends you an e-mail you can note that her public key is signed by Bob, and you trust Bob to introduce you to people. (Much like Bob bringing Alice along to
M-TH: Another interview
INTERVIEW WITH KARL MARX, HEAD OF L'INTERNATIONALE REVOLT OF LABOR AGAINST CAPITAL -- THE TWO FACES OF L'INTERNATIONALE -- TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY -- ITS PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES by R. Landor New York World, July 18, 1871 reprinted Woodhull Claflin's Weekly, August 12, 1871 London, July 3 -- You have asked me to find out something about the International Association, and I have tried to do so. The enterprise is a difficult one just now. London is indisputably the headquarters of the Association, but the English people have got a scare, and smell International in everything as King James smelled gunpowder after the famous plot. The consciousness of the Society has naturally increased with the suspiciousness of the public; and if those who guide it have a secret to keep, they are of the stamp of men who keep a secret well. I have called on two of their leading members, have talked with one freely, and I here give you the substance of my conversation. I have satisfied myself of one thing, that it is a society of genuine workingmen, but that these workmen are directed by social and political theories of another class. One man whom I saw, a leading member of the Council, was sitting at his workman's bench during our interview, and left off talking to me from time to time to receive a complaint, delivered in no courteous tone, from one of the many little masters in the neighborhood who employed him. I have heard this same man make eloquent speeches in public inspired in every passage with the energy of hate toward the classes that call themselves his rulers. I understood the speeches after this glimpse at the domestic life of the orator. He must have felt that he had brains enough to have organized a working government, and yet here he was obliged to devote his life to the most revolting taskwork of a mechanical profession. He was proud and sensitive, and yet at every turn he had to return a bow for a grunt and a smile for a command that stood on about the same level in the scale of civility with a huntsman's call to his dog. This man helped me to a glimpse of one side of the nature of the International, the result of Labor Against Capital of the workman who produces against the middleman who enjoys. Here was the hand that would smite hard when the time came, and as to the head that plans, I think I saw that too, in my interview with Dr. Karl Marx. Dr. Karl Marx is a German doctor of philosophy, with a German breadth of knowledge derived both from observation of the living world and from books. I should conclude that he has never been a worker in the ordinary sense of the term. His surroundings and appearance are those of a well-to-do man of the middle class. The drawing room into which I was ushered on the night of the interview would have formed very comfortable quarters for a thriving stockbroker who had made his competence and was now beginning to make his fortune. It was comfort personified, the apartment of a man of taste of easy means, but with nothing in it peculiarly characteristic of its owner. A fine album of Rhine views on the table, however, gave a clue to his nationality. I peered cautiously into the vase on the sidetable for a bomb. I sniffed for petroleum, but the smell was the smell of roses. I crept back stealthily to my seat, and moodily awaited the worst. He has entered and greeted me cordially, and we are sitting face to face. Yes, I am tete-a-tete with the revolution incarnate, with the real founder and guiding spirit of the International Society, with the author of the address in which capital was told that is it warred on labor, it must expect to have its house burned down about its ears -- in a word, with the Apologist for the Commune of Paris. Do you remember the bust of Socrates? The man who died rather than profess his belief in the Gods of the time -- the man with the fine sweep of profile for the forehead running meanly at the end into a little snub, curled-up feature, like a bisected pothook, that formed the nose. Take this bust in your mind's eye, color the beard black, dashing it here and there with puffs of gray; clap the head thus made on a portly body of the middle height, and the Doctor is before you. Throw a veil over the upper part of the face, and you might be in the company of a born vestryman. Reveal the essential feature, the immense brown, and you know at once that you have to deal with that most formidable of all composite individual forces -- a dreamer who thinks, a thinker who dreams. I went straight to my business. The world, I said, seemed to be in the dark about the International, hating it very much, but not able to say clearly what thing it hated. Some, who professed to have peered further into the gloom than their neighbors, declared that they had made out a sort of Janus figure with a fair, honest workman's smile on one of its faces, and on the other, a murderous conspirator's scowl. Would he light up the case of mystery in which theory
M-TH: Zapatistas's 2nd American Meeting in Brazil
Dear friends: Excuse me if you have by chance already received this message from other sources. Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 Subject: (en) FZLN,Second American Encuentro,Sept 4 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chiapas95-english) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From The Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN). Mexico. To Organizing Committee of the 2nd American Encuentro For Humanity And Against Neoliberalism To Organizations and individuals who are being called, from Belem, across the entire continent, to meet with us in Belem do Pará, Brazil. To The peoples of the American Continent: Brothers and Sisters: We received your Call to the 2nd American Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, to be held from December 6 to 11, 1999, in the City of Belem, Pará, Brazil. The beauty of the text could alone sustain, and be in keeping with, the abundance of dreams promised by the extremely rich diversity of Brazilian social movements and their struggles. By having you as our hosts, the intergalactics of all Our America will be able to feel at ease, and we will be inspired to share the experiences, ideas and most daring intentions for humanity and against (already, in itself, old) neoliberalism. The natural beauty of Belem / Pará, and the struggle of its residents to socialize it, points to a scenario that augurs a true encuentro of Our America with itself, that is, a truly wonderful encuentro of those who are seeking and struggling to make their dreams reality. Because of that, from La Realidad to Belem, a dream is drawn: that of Our America being free, democratic and just. It has been three years now since the 1st American Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, held in Chiapas, Mexico, and we are happy that Brazil, that country of continental dimensions and great variety of social struggles, is offering us the opportunity to join together, now in Belem do Pará, in order to continue the necessary coming together that will allow us to build, among all of us, the path of a future with peace. We Mexican zapatistas will be coming to Belem with the conviction that we will meet everyone there: social movements and organizations, citizens, religious, women, homosexuals, lesbians, young persons, unionists, campesinos, indigenous, blacks, political wings of various shapes, all, in order to confirm the breadth, diversity and strength of our hopes. We Mexican zapatistas are now beginning to prepare for our attendance and participation in the 2nd American Encuentro. To all of our brothers and sisters of the continent, we are saying: let us walk together to Belem. We are going ready to lend our modest contribution to the common struggle of Our America. But we are going, above all, with the intention of listening to, and learning from, all of your efforts. To our brothers and sisters of Mexico, we are calling you to build together a National Promotional Committee for the 2nd American Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, that will be in charge of the preparations for the participation of a broad Mexican delegation, open to any organization or individual who wants to participate in this encuentro. Together, we shall try to decipher the unknowns of this end of millenium, we shall share the ideas that move us and inspire us, we shall share and be inspired by the experiences of resistance and struggle against inequality, against oppression and against exclusion, battles which our American peoples fight every day. And in that way we shall continue to weave the immense net of all us who are confronting the cynicism of a system which knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. To our Brazilian compañeros, to our compañeros of Belem do Pará, we are grateful for your generous willingness to receive - in your enormous house in solidarity - a continent that, with all its wounds, will arrive willing to be a dignified and human future. Be assured that, from this moment on, we Mexican zapatistas will contribute all of our efforts towards the success of this effort of American unity. Liberty! Justice! Democracy! "FOR A WORLD WHERE MANY WORLDS FIT" The Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) This message is forwarded to you as a service of Zapatistas Online. Comments and volunteers are welcome. Write [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send submissions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 23:45:12 -0400 From: irlandesa [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FZLN: 2nd American Encuentro Sender: irlandesa [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Originally published in Spanish by the Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) _ Translated by irlandesa Date: Friday, September 3, 1999 22:03:11 -0500 From: fzln [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To subscribe from this list send a message containing the words subscribe chiapas95 to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Previous messages are available from http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html or gopher://eco.utexas.edu. ---
M-TH: Lamarck revisited?
Nature 2nd September Transgenerational induction of defences in animals and plants ANURAG A. AGRAWAL, CHRISTIAN LAFORSCH RALPH TOLLRIAN Predators are potent agents of natural selection in biological communities. Experimental studies have shown that the introduction of predators can cause rapid evolution of defensive morphologies and behaviours in prey and chemical defences in plants. Such defences may be constitutively expressed (phenotypically fixed) or induced when predators initially attack. Here we show that non-lethal exposure of an animal to carnivores, and a plant to a herbivore, not only induces a defence, but causes the attacked organisms to produce offspring that are better defended than offspring from unthreatened parents. This transgenerational effect, referred to as a maternally induced defence, is in contrast to the more common defences induced in single individuals within a generation. Transgenerational induction of defences is a new level of phenotypic plasticity across generations that may be an important component of predator-prey interactions. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
