Hacked!

I am just recovering from another cyber-attack. This time, it came from someone (might even have been a machine) gaining access to my email account, by which they then persuaded my bank to transfer a significant sum of money to an account in America. Unfortunately, my account manager, who I will call Sam, was out of the office last Friday when the attack was launched. So it was his stand-in who had to deal with his mails and who was duped into processing the request through.

After the weekend, and on reviewing his emails on Monday morning, Sam sussed that something was very wrong. The giveaway for him was the differences between the way the scammer wrote and the way I write. Furthermore the scammer suggested that he would be 'unavailable for the rest of the day because he would be at his office'. Sam knew that unless my circumstances had changed drastically over the weekend, there was no way I could be at any office. So he promptly checked with his Friday stand-in to find out if any money had gone out. Indeed, money had gone from my account.

Now that I have had time to exhale, I am thinking that there could be a connection between my near-death experience (exaggerating here, of course) and the government impasse that has seized America during the last week. While I am not deluded in thinking that my few dollars will help Obama in his stance against the fundamentalist hordes, poor Federal government employees, forced to go on unpaid leave, might be tempted to use alternative means to keep the wolf from the door.

            I hope these poor guys will forgive my slander, but cyber-attacks come from all quarters these days. It was quite a body-blow when we learned this week that Canada has been conducting cyber spying on Brazil, through its shady CSEC that very few of us had heard about. I googled them to see what they are about and found out that the Communications Security Establishment Canada is a very swish organization which even have the brass to advertise openly online for operatives. I didn’t see anything that fitted my skills set, but I applied anyway, since I reckon I qualify on a number of general grounds: no criminal record, a clear conscience resistant to polygraph testing and, so far, an uninteresting credit and financial history. Perhaps I might get lucky. Then, there will be no hiding place for that villain.

I should say though, that apart from the inconvenience of having to go through the hassle of sterilizing my computer and changing passwords, the injury has been relatively slight. The bank fully reimbursed my account. They, in turn, suffered only a minor loss resulting from variations in Canadian-US dollar exchange rates that occurred over that weekend.

And now, finally. Apologies if you received an email, purporting to come from me, inviting you to buy foreclosed real estate.

Tell Fren Tru

“Do I seem like I smoke marijuana?"

 

This was how the Prime Minister of Canada, Mr Stephen Harper, responded when asked by a journalist whether or not he had ever smoked pot. The question came up because a number of other high-profile Canadian politicos have been confessing all over the place to having tried the weed.

Politicians who admit involvement with pot come in all shapes, sizes and genders, so the Prime Minister’s looks are not a reliable guide as to whether he indulges or not. In any case, the admission of pot-smoking by anyone seeking or occupying high office is, commonly, a well-crafted PR event, with the respondent being careful to say only that they merely “try” the substance. I suppose the use of the verb “to try” takes the edge off the perceived misdemeanour somewhat: Pot light, so to speak. Very few actually say they smoke it, implying that their engagement is that of a dilettante who wishes merely to investigate the substance’s possibilities. The hearer is left to flounder in a sea of ambiguity as to what is meant by “trying”; whether it means merely taking a puff (without inhaling), or inhaling (perhaps only shallowly), or going all the way and taking a reckless, deep, no-holds-barred drag that allows full exchange of the weed’s vaporous  ingredients with the blood circulating within the lungs.

Using or trying or smoking, according to the degree of ambiguity in the confession, can be casual, occasional, regular or even “all the time,” as the city of Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford admitted on camera recently.

            Of course, in today’s Canada, the debate really is not whether a Prime Minister or wannabe Prime Minister or a colourful city mayor smokes a joint. The more serious issue is whether laws prohibiting smoking and/or possession for personal use should be repealed. Repeal would undoubtedly relieve the law-enforcement authorities of policing these relatively minor infractions and could perhaps, ultimately, render traffickers obsolete.

            For many, however, legalizing pot could be a step too far, the beginning of the slide toward legalization of “harder” drugs. On the other hand, fall-out from legalizing the hard drugs might be much more benign than doomsters suppose, considering that a major consequence of the legal prohibition of hard drugs, as well as of marijuana, is fostering the creation and maintenance of criminal cartels that cause more harm to individual lives and to society than the drugs themselves.

            Troublesome and complex, no doubt, but these are issues that need thorough debate if we are to achieve best solutions.

Tell Fren Tru

PS: As I finish writing this post, I hear that police in Toronto have been busy raiding a grow-op planted within innocent-looking corn-rows in a farmer’s field in the northern suburbs. The street value of the 600 plants confiscated was an estimated $2m. Meanwhile, the state of Washington in America is writing rules regulating the location of outlets out of which pot can be legally sold in the state.

Hewing Wood and Drawing Water Young

This business about child labour is troublesome. A regular West Africa correspondent for the BBC looked into the matter recently and declared herself quite unable to draw the line between teaching a child the skills of life on the one hand and on the other, avoiding abuse in the child who does work:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23332948

No doubt, many countries have come a long way since dark satanic mills blighted lives, including those of children in the now well-developed countries. But it must be difficult to preach the gospel of a labour-free childhood to the peasant living today in his or her African village and convince them of the evils of making their able-bodied child toil, fetch and carry when there is no other way in which food or water and other commodities can be delivered into the home. Indeed, such parents may be struggling mightily to provide the wherewithal of life, sustained by nothing more than the hope that when they are gone, their children would have acquired the skills by which to do likewise for their own.  

            I myself, at a tender age, had to fetch water, pound rice and even turn a cauldron or two of foo-foo meal over an open fire. And indeed, this was almost universally the case for those of my generation in many other families. Looking back, few of us have had any reason to regret or wish our life had been otherwise.

            Twenty-thirteen is of course another time altogether, and all of us now expect higher standards in our societies, whether in Africa or elsewhere. But how do you free children from the bondage of living within an impoverished community where existence may still be just a hand-to-mouth one? I think we all know the answer, which is that every child must be able to go to school, where he or she is taught by competent, knowledgeable and empathetic teachers.

That is one of the millennial challenges. Any takers?  

Tell Fren Tru