As Settlers Pray for the Dead, Israel Weighs Retaliation

The Israeli Army described the attack as a carefully planned assault on Jewish settlers returning from Friday night prayers, a trap laid to draw security forces into an exposed alleyway. None of the worshipers were among the dead, Israeli officials said today.

They said that those killed were five border police soldiers, four regular army soldiers — two of them officers — and three civilian security guards from the nearby Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba.

The commander who died, Colonel Dror Weinberg, was the highest-ranking officer to be shot dead in the conflict, which has lasted more than two years.

Israeli forces responding to the ambush killed three Palestinians, whom they identified as the attackers.

The Islamist group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it retaliation for Israel's killing a week ago of its local leader in the West Bank city of Jenin. It was the deadliest assault on Israelis in Hebron in the two-year conflict.

The ambush was a devastating blow to the Israeli Army, which only on Friday morning had described Hebron, with the rest of the southern West Bank, as at least temporarily calm and under control.

Before the attack on Friday, the Israeli Army said it was seeking to ease restrictions on Palestinians, at least in the southern West Bank, as they celebrated the holiday of Ramadan. That step appeared sure to be reversed.

Before dawn today, Israeli helicopters fired rockets at a metal shop in Gaza City that the Israeli Army said was used to make weapons.

Today, army bulldozers leveled the orchard here where the Palestinians laid their ambush.

The attack came on a tranquil, moonlit night along a lonely stretch of road. Shortly after 7 p.m., Jewish settlers were returning from prayer at the Cave of the Patriarchs, revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of Abraham. Accompanied by a jeep from the border police, they walked along a dusty road known as "worshipers' lane" toward Kiryat Arba, at Hebron's edge.

The road, which passes through the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron, dips into a gully, which until today was planted with olive trees, before climbing past Palestinian homes toward a gate to Kiryat Arba.

As the security guards entered the alleyway, they ran into a wall of gunfire. The colonel, whose name was not immediately released, then arrived at the scene.

Soldiers said the colonel could be heard giving orders over the radio as his jeep entered the alleyway. He was also shot to death. Soldiers at the scene said the death of their commander contributed to the chaos of the continuing firefight, which they said lasted for more than two hours.

The civilian chief of Kiryat Arba's security was also killed, as was one officer of the border police, Israeli officials said.

Eleven of the 14 wounded were reported to be soldiers or policemen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/middleeast/17MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

After Attack, Sharon Calls for Securing Settlements
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called for strengthening the Jewish settlements in the Hebron area as he toured the West Bank town on Sunday, two days after Palestinian gunmen killed 12 Israeli security forces and guards here.…

According to Palestinians, the troops have taken over seven homes to use as lookout posts and have demolished two homes of suspected militants of the Islamic Jihad group, the group that carried out the attack.

Sharon said Sunday that Israel would bolster the Jewish settlements in the Hebron area by linking up several small settler enclaves in the city and the neighboring Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, just to the east of Hebron, Israeli radio stations reported.

It was not clear how Sharon intended to achieve this, and officials in Sharon's office were not immediately available for comment on the report.

About 450 Jewish settlers live in several enclaves near the center of Hebron, a city with about 130,000 Palestinian residents. In addition, several thousand settlers live in Kiryat Arba, about a half-mile away.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians live between the Hebron and Kiryat Arba settlements.

Israeli Housing and Construction Minister Natan Sharansky said Sunday that Israel might construct additions to the Jewish settlements to connect the two areas, which includes the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. However, it was not clear how Israel could do this without removing the Palestinians.

``We have to change the situation in the field,'' Sharansky told Army Radio. ``We have to build settlement contiguity between Kiryat Arba, the Cave of the Patriarchs and the settlement community in Hebron.''

Israeli troops moved into Hebron and other West Bank cities in June following a series of Palestinian suicide bombings. The army pulled out of Hebron three weeks ago, saying the area was calm.

Meanwhile, Jewish settlers placed three shipping containers in a vacant lot near the scene of the Friday night shooting, saying they were establishing a new Jewish outpost in Hebron. ``Death to Arabs,'' read the graffiti spray-painted on one of the containers, which will be used as makeshift homes, the settlers said.

The Palestinian Authority did not condemn Friday's shooting. The position is part of a policy under with the Palestinian leadership denounces violence inside Israel, but does not criticize attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians want these areas for a future state.

Jewish settlers vowed revenge for the shooting attack in a rally Saturday night.

In a sign of the tensions, Israeli forces closed a liaison office in Hebron, ordering Palestinian officers who coordinated activities with Israelis to leave, Army Radio reported.

As one of the most volatile West Bank cities, Hebron is a frequent scene of violence. Israeli soldiers control the city center where about the Jewish settlers, including many extremists, live in the midst of the large Palestinian population, many of them fundamentalist Muslims.

In 1994, an American-born Jewish settler killed 29 Muslim worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, reputed to be the burial site of the biblical Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and three of their wives. In 1929 and 1936, Arabs massacred Hebron's Jewish residents.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

Israel Weighs Response After 12 Killed in Hebron Ambush

Just Friday morning, a senior Israeli military official said the army had succeeded in securing Hebron and other southern West Bank cities, and as a result was easing restrictions in those areas. "We succeeded to clean these cities of terrorists," he said, referring also to Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jericho. He said the army still needed to concentrate on the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin.

Israeli officials immediately labeled Friday night's attack the "Sabbath massacre." The killings evoked a notorious ambush in Hebron in 1980, also on a Sabbath eve, in which six Jews were killed.

Hebron has been a flashpoint for decades. In 1994, a doctor from Qiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, originally of Brooklyn, fired on Muslims at prayer there. He killed 29 and wounded 150 before he was beaten to death.

In 1929, Arab residents of Hebron went on a rampage against the city's small Jewish population, killing dozens. That riot began on a Friday afternoon and lasted into Saturday.

Early today, hours after the attack, officials said the Israeli Army conducted a helicopter raid on Gaza City, striking a metal shop. No injuries were reported.

Friday night's violence, the deadliest Palestinian attack in three weeks, came as Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction was in negotiations with the militant group Hamas to achieve a limited ban on suicide bombing. The ban would apply only to attacks within the pre-1967 borders of Israel, not to attacks on soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But Islamic Jihad has not taken part in the talks, and leaders of the group interviewed Friday night said they rejected any such ban.

"We're going to continue resistance everywhere," Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, a political leader of Islamic Jihad, said by telephone from hiding in the Gaza Strip. "We are not committed to any kind of agreements."

He said of the Hebron attack, "We are congratulating the Islamic world — all Muslims — for such a successful operation."

Even Palestinians who oppose attacks in pre-1967 Israel overwhelmingly support attacks on settlers and soldiers in the West Bank, regarding such violence as lawful resistance to occupation.

Israel does not recognize such distinctions between its citizens on either side of the 1967 boundaries, and, officially, neither do Islamic Jihad nor Hamas, which consider all of Israel as occupied territory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/16/international/middleeast/16MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

News: FTC drawing the line on spammers

A coalition of government regulators led by the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday announced a crackdown on online spammers and scammers.

Altogether, the regulators announced they had filed more than 30 enforcement actions and had sent letters to about 100 alleged spammers warning them to cease sending the unwanted and often fraudulent commercial e-mail messages. Additionally, the regulators announced the results of an investigation into spam, concluding that Net users who post their e-mail addresses in publicly accessible places, such as on chat sites or newsgroups, are highly likely to receive spam as a result.

The regulators' action was the third such FTC-led initiative this year to combat spam, noted Brian Huseman, a staff attorney at the FTC.

The FTC trained its sights on spammers in January, announcing that it would begin taking legal action against those who sent deceptive e-mail messages. In April, the agency along with six U.S. states and Canada announced they had filed 63 enforcement actions and had sent warning letters to 500 sites accused of sending illegal chain letter scams. The FTC announced a similar enforcement action in July.

Although states such as California have enacted laws prohibiting spam, there is no comparable federal law. Despite this, the FTC has the power to combat deceptive practices, advertisements or outright fraud.

If a company promises in an e-mail to allow customers to "opt out" of receiving further messages but doesn't provide a legitimate opt-out address, the company could run afoul of the FTC. Likewise, the agency can take steps to quash pyramid schemes online or offline.

Legal actions taken by the FTC usually take the form of civil, not criminal, complaints that force parties found guilty to pay restitution and cease their activities.

In addition to the FTC, regulatory agencies involved in Wednesday's announcement included the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts; the New Hampshire Department of Justice; the attorneys general of Connecticut, Maine, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont; and consumer protection departments in New Jersey, New York City and New York state.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-965723.html

A Palestinian Camp Mourns Its Slain Children

Posters of children killed by Israeli Army gunfire covered the walls of the alleys among the bullet-scarred buildings of this refugee camp today, a reminder that two 2-year-olds were shot dead there in three days this week. An 8-year-old boy died of wounds received last month in the daily violence here, along the border with Egypt.
A Palestinian Camp Mourns Its Slain Children

PIP | Our Reports

All Pew Internet Project reports are based on our research, surveys, and analysis.
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/index.asp

Small Initiatives :: Newsletter Archive

back issues of the Small Initiatives The Sensible Internet Design Letter a weekly newsletter.
http://jaysmall.com/MyMail/archive.php?id=TSIDL

WorkZ.com - What Can the SBA Do For You?

The SBA maintains an extensive Web site that provides hundreds of resources and links for small-business owners. Among the offerings on the SBA's Web site are:

A network of investors willing and wanting to invest in smaller start-up businesses.
Free, online courses covering topics such as writing business plans and raising capital.

A section devoted to developing an online business.

The Online Women's Business Center, which caters to female entrepreneurs and addresses concerns and issues specific to female business owners. (Check out the "Expanding Your Business" section for advice on marketing your company, overseeing staff, and competing with larger businesses.)

Information for minority-owned and distressed-zone businesses, including loan and grant program opportunities for businesses that qualify.

Take advantage of access to the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), an organization that provides free professional counseling, workshops and seminars to small-business owners.

Use the Web site's networking and marketing tools to promote your Web site or to find business. You can post your business card to the Web site, access contractors through the SBA's PRO-Net site, or post your success story for everyone to read.

Sort through dozens of hyperlinks on topics including the Internet, home business and commerce.
http://www.workz.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl_page.html,template=1&content=2092&nav1=1&user=4c492ace5014

WorkZ.com - Top 20 Email Marketing Terms You Should Know

If you have ever felt out of your depth in a discussion about email marketing, rest assured you are not alone. The top twenty common email marketing terms and definitions below will help you expand your email marketing vocabulary and make you look and feel like an expert.
http://www.workz.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl_page.html,template=1&content=2612&nav1=1&user=4c492ace5014

Annan Presses Bush to Avoid a Rush to War

Secretary General Kofi Annan said today that the United States seemed to have a lower threshold for going to war in Iraq than other nations on the United Nations Security Council.

After meeting with President Bush, Mr. Annan urged the White House to be "a bit patient" against any rush toward military action. If it comes, he added, military action would have to be based on credible evidence of Iraq's obstruction, and not a "flimsy" excuse to go to war.

The secretary general's comments reflected the divergence of views between the Bush administration and some Security Council nations over what kind of obstructions would constitute the trigger for going to war.

Mr. Annan indicated that United Nations inspectors, with tough new powers under the resolution, are returning for what could be an indefinite program to inspect former and suspected weapons sites, to set up surveillance cameras and other monitoring equipment, and to run down every bit of intelligence on Iraqi efforts to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the missiles that could be used to hurl them across borders. But he refused to be drawn into discussing hypothetical details of what might constitute obstruction.

The position of the Bush administration has trended the other way. Mr. Bush and his senior aides have emphasized that President Saddam Hussein is unlikely to confess to years of concealing illicit stockpiles of weapons, including banned nerve agents and anthrax spores. Some conservative aides continue to denigrate the United Nations' role.

On Sept. 12, Mr. Annan had challenged Mr. Bush to work through the United Nations in words that were almost as forceful as those Mr. Bush used to challenge the Security Council to enforce its resolutions on disarming Iraq.

"I want to thank you, Mr. President," Mr. Annan said to Mr. Bush today in the presence of reporters. "Nobody knew which way you were going to go" in confronting Iraq. "I was pleading that we go the multilateral route. And I think we were all relieved that we did — you did."

But patience was Mr. Annan's watchword today. During a meeting with reporters before he went to the White House, he observed that the United States "does seem to have a lower threshold" for what would trigger war.

Still, he admonished, "We need to be patient and give the inspectors time and space to do their work. We should not be seen as rushing the process and impatiently moving on to the next phase."

Mr. Annan said Mr. Bush's uncompromising remarks showed that the American administration was engaged in a "psychological game" with Mr. Hussein, one that could be useful in persuading Mr. Hussein to cooperate unconditionally.

"One has to maintain the pressure," Mr. Annan said. "Quite frankly, for four years we were not able to get them to agree that we return to Iraq, but four days after the president's speech to the General Assembly" Iraq agreed to the return of inspectors without conditions.

Still, a number of Security Council members remain concerned that Washington was too eager to find a pretext to go to war.

Mr. Annan said any Security Council decision that finds Baghdad in "material breach" of the resolution must be based on serious or flagrant attempts to obstruct weapons inspectors. Otherwise, he said, it would look like a "flimsy or hasty excuse to go to war."

Such a pretext, he said, would draw opposition not only from Security Council nations, but also from ordinary Americans who have expressed a desire for Mr. Bush to work with the United Nations in confronting Iraq.

Mr. Annan indicated that any event that triggered war would have to show deliberate calculation on Iraq's part. "Whatever reason we decide to use military action to go to war, the circumstances must be seen as reasonable and credible, and not contrived or stretched," he said. "And if we do that, there will be general acceptance and people will understand."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/international/middleeast/14ANNA.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

As New Tape Is Evaluated, Bush Calls Qaeda Threat Real

The C.I.A. got the last hard evidence that he was alive in December 2001, when a radio transmission from Tora Bora was intercepted. American analysts said they believed they heard him issuing orders to Qaeda fighters over the radio.

As time had gone by since then without proof that he had escaped the Tora Bora battle, some American counterterrorism experts had begun to conclude that he was dead. Dale Watson, then the F.B.I.'s chief of counterterrorism, said in July he thought Mr. bin Laden was dead; some officers in the military's Special Operations Command also concluded that he had died in Tora Bora.

Even so, C.I.A. officials say the agency has continued to operate on the assumption that he is alive, largely because it has received a series of fragmentary intelligence reports about him. American intelligence officials also say that if other Qaeda leaders and Mr. bin Laden's family knew he was dead, they would betray that knowledge through differences in behavior.

One intelligence official said earlier this year that if Mr. bin Laden was dead, very few people inside Al Qaeda knew it, because the United States was not picking up any credible discussions among Qaeda operatives pointing to his death.

Intelligence officials said today that the C.I.A. still believed he was most likely hiding somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Officials said they did not believe he had fled to one of Pakistan's major cities. He is believed to be too easily recognizable to risk trying to pass undetected in a major city — especially with a $25 million price on his head.

If it is determined that he is alive, his ability to elude a huge American dragnet for the past year could raise new questions about the effectiveness of the administration's campaign against terrorism. Critics of the military operation in Afghanistan have already complained that American commanders failed to block potential escape routes into Pakistan, thus allowing thousands of Qaeda fighters bottled up in Tora Bora and at other battlefields to flee.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/international/14TAPE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

New Recording May Be Threat From bin Laden

Even with a $25 million price on Mr. bin Laden's head, American intelligence agencies have obtained little solid information about him. The failure to either kill or capture him has been a great frustration for the Bush administration.

Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush declared that he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," but after months of fruitless searching in Afghanistan and elsewhere, American officials gradually began to play down the importance of catching him. Mr. Bush and other officials began to say that Mr. bin Laden's fate had become almost irrelevant to the campaign against terrorism, because he was either dead or in hiding, and either way no longer as grave a threat to the United States as he had been.

Still, the doubts about whether he had survived American bombing raids in Afghanistan underscored the government's frustrations in trying to dismantle Al Qaeda, and the possibility that he was still at large seemed to bring the military action in Afghanistan to an incomplete end.

More troubling to American officials has been the evidence in recent weeks that Al Qaeda appears to be regrouping to launch another round of attacks against Western targets.

The sudden re-emergence of Mr. bin Laden (or someone who sounds like him) at a time when the United States is threatening war on Iraq complicates American policy.

Arab leaders have been warning since Sept. 11 that the failure of the United States to stem the Israeli-Palestinian violence would serve as the main recruiting tool for extremists, and that starting another conflict in the region would only strengthen the appeal from Mr. bin Laden for continued war against the West.

The tape seems timed to coincide with mounting anger in the Mideast over the threat of an invasion of Iraq if President Saddam Hussein does not allow renewed weapons inspections.

In the tape, several administration figures are named. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is accused of being responsible for the death of two million people in the Vietnam War. The man on the tape says both Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in their roles as leaders during the Persian Gulf war, visited more destruction on Baghdad than Halagu, the 13th-century Mongol and grandson of Genghis Khan, who sacked what was then a center of Islamic civilization.

The specific terrorist attacks that the man on the tape mentioned as a taste of things to come included the death of German tourists in a synagogue explosion in Tunisia on April 11, the attack against the French tanker in Yemen on Oct. 6, a bombing of French naval experts in Karachi on May 8, the killing of an American marine in Kuwait on Oct. 8, the Oct. 12 explosion in Bali, with its high toll of Australians and Britons, and the hostage-taking in a Moscow theater on Oct. 23.

In one of the references that showed the speaker was paying close attention to recent news, he dismissed reports that the bombing in Bali had meant to strike Americans rather than Australians. He said that despite warnings, Australia had joined American forces in Afghanistan and worked against Muslims in gaining independence for East Timor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/international/middleeast/13OSAM.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Bin Laden Alive and Kicking?

Experts said Wednesday they believed the voice on a tape broadcast by independent television station al-Jazeera was that of the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden.

Gulf officials as well as Muslim activists said they were convinced the audio tape carried the voice of the Saudi dissident with a $25 million reward on his head for allegedly masterminding last year's September 11 attacks.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-attack-binladen.html

Netanyahu Vows to Oust Arafat if Elected
Under gray skies on Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of Revital Ohayon, 34, and her two boys, Matan, 5, and Noam, 4, killed in the attack at Kibbutz Metzer.

Medics quoted in Israeli news reports on Tuesday said they had found Ms. Ohayon slumped over one of her children after she tried to shield the boys from the gunman who had burst into their bedroom.

Avi Ohayon, Ms. Ohayon's former husband, threw himself on the wreath-covered graves. "I wish I could also be with you," he sobbed in a eulogy. "I'm left with nothing."

In the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, thousands of Palestinians marched on Tuesday in the funerals of two local children killed by Israeli Army gunfire.

Nafez Mashal, 2, was struck by a bullet on Monday outside his house in Rafah as he chased a balloon, his father reported.

Residents said the shots from an Israeli Army watchtower near the border with Egypt were unprovoked. The army said soldiers were returning fire.

Another local boy, Muhammad Abu Naja, 8, died on Monday of wounds sustained on Oct. 17 when an Israeli tank fired shells into a densely populated refugee neighborhood, killing six other people and wounding dozens more.

The army said the shelling was in response to the firing of an antitank rocket at an army bulldozer working nearby.

Something strange and evil is going on here. Both sides are taking “eye for an eye” to insane lengths. A few months ago, after a similar attack that killed israeli children, tankfire killed palestinian children who were out because they believed the curfew had been lifted. The army made almost exactly the same excuses it's making today, but there was a videotape to prove the lie. It's no coincidence. It's no accident. Looking back, it's the tip of an iceberg. Moreover, written or unwritten, it's israeli policy.

AI

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html

WDVL: Practical XML for the Web - Page 16 - Introduction To Server-Side XML

This excerpt from Chapter 8 of "Practical XML for the Web" sets the scene for server-side XML, and shows what you can do with it, by way of a parallel example done in ASP, PHP, and JSP.
http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Languages/XML/PracticalXML/practicalXML3_1.html

Kibbutz Attack Threatens Ties to Arab Neighbors

The attacker who had infiltrated the kibbutz near the West Bank killed two other people before escaping, shattering the calm of this bucolic farming community and threatening the close ties it has formed over decades with neighboring Arab villages. Their representatives came today to pay their respects.

Ms. Ohayon, 34, was slain with her two sons, Matan, 5, and Noam, 4. Tirza Damari, 42, who was out walking with her boyfriend, had been gunned down on a path nearby. The boyfriend escaped unharmed. Yitzhak Drori, 44, the kibbutz secretary, was shot and killed in his car when he arrived on the scene.

At his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Mr. Arafat said a committee had been formed to look into the shooting. The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of his Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack. The Palestinian information minister, Yasir Abed Rabbo, called the attack a crime.

[Early on Tuesday, the Israeli Army swept into the Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank, Reuters reported, citing Palestinian witnesses. The army had no immediate comment, but had said earlier that it might hit Tulkarm and Nablus because of suspected links to the attack on the kibbutz.]

The attack that killed Ms. Ohayon and the others was also an assault on the relationships built over the years between the kibbutz and Arab communities around it. Founded in 1953 by immigrants from Argentina, the left-leaning kibbutz has a history of friendly relations with neighboring Arab villages in Israel and the West Bank. The ties have survived more than two years of surging violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Links are particularly strong with the Israeli Arab village of Meisir. Villagers work in Kibbutz Metzer's plastics factory, residents from each side visit the other to celebrate family events and the two communities sponsor joint youth activities.

Members of Kibbutz Metzer recently waged a public campaign on behalf of the neighboring village of Qafin in the West Bank. The kibbutz lobbied the Defense Ministry to change the location of a planned security fence separating Israel from the West Bank so it would not cut through Qafin's olive groves.

"We thought that if their groves would remain on this side of the fence, it would ignite hostility and create problems," said Danny Dovrat, a kibbutz member. The kibbutz insisted that the fence be built along the precise boundary that existed between the West Bank and Israel in 1967, and expressed willingness to cede some of its land for the project.

The fence did not go up soon enough to protect Kibbutz Metzer, which is situated in an area near the West Bank that is prone to infiltration by Palestinian militants.

At the funeral today of Mr. Drori, the kibbutz secretary, Arabs joined Jews in the procession behind his black-draped coffin.

"We are one family," said Abu Omar Abu Rakiya, 64, from Meisir. "For 50 years we've been eating and sharing with one another."

Muhammad Abu Obeid, 42, also from Meisir, said that on Sunday night he could hear the deadly gunfire from his home. "Every shot pierced our hearts," he said.

At Mr. Drori's grave, Doron Lieber, the kibbutz manager, mourned "reconciliation and coexistence that have been so profoundly murdered."

"We will not stop believing in coexistence, in compromise," he declared, "in giving life a chance."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/12/international/middleeast/12ISRA.html

Tempers Flare After U.S. Sends a Canadian Citizen Back to Syria on Terror Suspicions

Fifteen years after leaving Syria, Maher Arar finds himself back in his homeland, lost in the murky world of its security apparatus.

He is a Canadian citizen who has lived in Canada and the United States, but the United States authorities deported him to Syria on Oct. 10 on suspicions of belonging to a terrorist group. That decision has tested American-Canadian relations and apparently figures into the quiet relationship that the United States and Syria are working out in fighting terrorism.

American officials claim that Mr. Arar is a member of Al Qaeda, but the Canadians say they have no such information. The Syrians are questioning Mr. Arar closely, Western diplomats say, but officially the Syrian government has expressed outrage that he was deported to Syria instead of Canada.

"It's not democratic, or civilized, really," said Bouthaina Shaaban, a government spokeswoman, in an interview. She suggested that the United States would protest such an action affecting one of its citizens. "If any other country did this, they would label that quite strange," she said.

It was the first public acknowledgment in Damascus of Mr. Arar's presence, although the Syrian ambassador in Canada has discussed the case with Canadian news media.

Relations between Syria and the United States are normally strained, yet since Sept. 11 Syrian intelligence officials have helped the United States track down suspected militants. Syria has been in a position to help because of its deep roots in keeping tabs on extremists after crushing its own Muslim Brotherhood movement in the early 1980's.

Along with Mr. Arar, scores of people suspected of being Islamic militants are in Syrian prisons, and some are linked to Al Qaeda, according to local reports. One of the most prominent is Mohamed Heidar Zammar, a Syrian-born German citizen arrested in Morocco and sent to Syria. American officials suspect him of playing a role in the recruitment of Mohamed Atta, a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, though German authorities are less sure.

As for Mr. Arar, his colleagues at his former employer, MathWorks, a software company in Natick, Mass., have scoffed at the suggestion that he is a terrorist. His wife, Monia Mazigh, 32, says she cannot fathom why he was arrested. She said he had no political involvement and was devoted to his family and his work as a telecommunications engineer.

"If he is a member of Al Qaeda, why didn't they keep him there?" she said, referring to American officials. "I think the U.S. government made a serious mistake."

Reynald Doiron, a spokesman for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, said the Canadians had "never unearthed any information to corroborate or support the American statement."

The deportation angered the Canadian government, which protested to Washington. It aggravated a sore point over American antiterrorism measures that allow for the fingerprinting and photographing of foreign nationals — including Canadians — who were born in Syria, Libya, Sudan, Iraq or Iran upon their arrival in the United States.

Canadian political leaders and newspapers expressed outrage about the Arar case. "By sending Mr. Arar to that country, the U.S. has given the impression — right or wrong — that it is contracting out its dirty work," The Globe and Mail said.

Syria has allowed Canadian diplomats to visit Mr. Arar in prison, Mr. Doiron said, something it was not required to do. Syrian intelligence officials were present, he said. The diplomats are passing messages between Mr. Arar and his family. Mr. Doiron said Canada was not pressing for Mr. Arar's release. "We'll speak of release once Syrians have completed their investigation," he said.

The United States authorities have yet to explain on what basis Mr. Arar was sent back to Syria and not Canada, Mr. Doiron said.

"It's certainly not a friendly gesture between good neighbors," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/international/middleeast/11SYRI.html

A Palestinian Attack Kills 5 on a Northern Kibbutz

At least one Palestinian gunman attacked a kibbutz in northern Israel near the border with the West Bank late Sunday, killing five people hours after a suicide bombing was foiled in the same area, police officials said.

Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of Yasir Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack, which came as representatives of Fatah and Hamas met in Cairo to discuss a proposed halt to attacks in Israel.

Two hours after the shootings, an Israeli helicopter struck in Gaza, firing rockets into a metalworks factory, residents and security officials reported. The army said the factory had produced mortar shells used in attacks on Jewish settlements.

The violence came on the eve of a visit here by an American envoy to promote a peace blueprint proposed by the Bush administration.

Hours earlier in the same area, two Palestinians apparently on a suicide mission were killed when their vehicle exploded near the kibbutz. Border police officers on alert for a possible infiltration from the West Bank spotted the vehicle and ordered the driver to stop before it blew up, a police spokesman said. One passenger wore an explosive belt and the other carried a bag containing a bomb, Israeli radio reported.

Earlier on Sunday, the Palestinian cabinet gave qualified approval to an American blueprint for a Middle East peace settlement, while Mr. Sharon quashed criticism of the document in his cabinet, officials said.

Both Palestinian and Israeli officials seemed eager to avoid any appearance of obstruction of American policy as the Bush administration prepares for a possible war against Iraq.

The American envoy, Deputy Assistant of Secretary of State David Satterfield, is coming today to discuss the road map for peace drawn up by the Bush administration. The plan, which envisions a Palestinian state by 2005, calls for an end to attacks by Palestinians as well as for reforms within the Palestinian government and security services, for Israeli withdrawals from West Bank cities and for an eventual freeze on construction of Israeli settlements.

After a meeting of the Palestinian cabinet today in Ramallah, officials said the American blueprint was acceptable, although they added that more consultations were needed with Arab states and several conditions had to be met.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an adviser to Mr. Arafat, predicted that despite Palestinian reservations, "our response is going to be for sure a positive response" in the meetings with Mr. Satterfield.

Mr. Sharon, for his part, cut off discussion of the American proposal among cabinet members, according to accounts from people who were in the meeting. He reportedly intervened when Mr. Mofaz was asked by a minister to comment on the plan.

Mr. Netanyahu has waved off the American plan, saying it is not on the agenda as the United States prepares for action against Iraq.

In the West Bank, Israeli forces pulled back to the outskirts of Jenin after a two-week sweep against militants that culminated with the killing on Saturday of Iyad Sawalha, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group who was accused by Israel of masterminding two bus bombings that killed 31 people.
A http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/international/middleeast/11MIDE.html

Six Mozilla Security Bugs Posted

If you're using early copies of the Mozilla open-source Web browser, chances are your PC is vulnerable to attacks via a half-dozen security holes.

Pre-version 1.0 rollouts of the alternative browser project, which is backed by AOL-Time Warner's (Quote, Company Info) Netscape unit, contain about a half-dozen vulnerabilities.

It appears most of the bugs, which were posted on the BugTraq security list this week, have already been corrected in the latest version of Mozilla but at least one of the flaws is still affecting versions 1.0.1 and 1.1. (Download latest Mozilla releases here).

Mozilla users are urged to disable JavaScript as a temporary workaround until a fix is issued. The flaw exists in the "onunload" handler which loads an image from the referring server about a user's surfing movements.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/1495711

Israelis Pull Out of Jenin Before US Envoy's Visit

Israeli forces pulled back from the West Bank city of Jenin on Sunday as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon choked off criticism in his right-wing government of a U.S.-led ``roadmap'' to peace.

The army withdrew from the center of Jenin after its soldiers killed a senior Islamic Jihad militant blamed by Israel for 31 Israeli deaths, and ahead of the arrival in the region on Monday of a U.S. diplomat on a mission to promote the peace proposal.

Israel armor took up new positions in Jenin's outskirts two weeks after rumbling into the city with hundreds of infantry troops to mount house-to-house searches for militants.

Palestinian children attended school for the first time in two weeks in Jenin as a curfew was lifted.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html

Digital Web Magazine - Features: Accountability of Accessibility and Usability

Southwest's site committed the cardinal sin of Web accessibility: They did not use the ALT attribute for images that convey information. While ALT attributes aren't necessary for spacer images or purely ornamental images, ALT attributes are essential for all images that convey content. The text in an ALT attributes describes to users of non-graphical browsers (including screen readers) what information is displayed by the image. On the Southwest Home page, their company's logo didn't even have ALT text.
http://www.digital-web.com/features/feature_2002-11.shtml

Gymnast

5th Dec 1999 Newsflash:
Gymnast 3.5 is now FREEWARE! Use the
registration key GYM03-35672-11110-33170
and your evaluation copy will become
fully-functional.

Gymnast converts text files to Adobe Acrobat PDF format without the need for any additional Adobe software.

Gymnast supports hyperlinks, annotations, and automatic generation of bookmarks from headings. You can even include links to Web sites and other PDF files! Use it to publish electronic newsletters, brochures or price lists. Use it to compile database or spreadsheet reports for distribution to clients or staff. Use it to distribute readme files with your software. Produce professional-looking documents for the Web.
http://www.oakworth.demon.co.uk/gymnast.htm

Gymnast

5th Dec 1999 Newsflash:
Gymnast 3.5 is now FREEWARE! Use the
registration key GYM03-35672-11110-33170
and your evaluation copy will become
fully-functional.
Gymnast converts text files to Adobe Acrobat PDF format without the need for any additional Adobe software.

Gymnast supports hyperlinks, annotations, and automatic generation of bookmarks from headings. You can even include links to Web sites and other PDF files! Use it to publish electronic newsletters, brochures or price lists. Use it to compile database or spreadsheet reports for distribution to clients or staff. Use it to distribute readme files with your software. Produce professional-looking documents for the Web.
http://www.oakworth.demon.co.uk/gymnast.htm

WorkZ.com - 10 Ways to Lose Web Site Visitors

Are the features of your Web site aimed at customer usability, or did you or your designer sneak in a few ego-satisfying features?

Not that satisfying one's ego is necessarily a bad thing, but maybe your business Web site is not the right place to do it.
http://www.workz.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl_page.html,template=1&content=1991&nav1=1&user=4c492ace5014

News: MS Palladium: A must or a menace?

At the USENIX Security Conference held here recently, Microsoft developers touted the company's upcoming Palladium architecture as technology that would enhance privacy, stymie piracy and increase a corporation's control over its computers.

Others, however, see a more nefarious role for the security software.

Instead of just keeping hackers out, critics say programs like Palladium could also block computer users from certain data. For example, the technology could be used as a policing mechanism that bars people from material stored on their own computers if they have not met licensing and other requirements.

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and co-founder of the GNU project for creating free versions of key Unix programs, lampooned the technology in a recent column as "treacherous computing."

"Large media corporations, together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you," he wrote. "Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal."

He and others, such as Cambridge University professor Ross Anderson, argue that the intention of so-called trusted computing is to block data from consumers and other PC users, not from attackers. The main goal of such technology, they say, is "digital-rights management," or the control of copyrighted content. Under today's laws, copyright owners maintain control over content even when it resides on someone else's PC--but many activists are challenging that authority.

Microsoft denies that Palladium is designed as a mechanism to police consumers' use content. The company plans to release the technology in 2005, as part of a major update to Windows. "We get very strong feedback from our customers about the freedom for data migration," said Peter Biddle, a Microsoft product manager pushing the initiative. "We are not going to use Palladium to make our customers--our favorite people--angry at us."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-964876.html

Popular Linksys Router Vulnerable to Attack

A denial-of-service vulnerability in one of the most popular cable and DSL routers allows an attacker to crash the router from a remote location.

The Linksys Group Inc.'s BEFSR41 EtherFast Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port Switch is vulnerable to a remote DoS attack that requires the attacker to do nothing more than access a specific script on the router's remote management interface. The vulnerability affects all of the routers with firmware versions earlier than 1.42.7.


http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,663801,00.asp

Spamproof Your Site

Anyone who operates their own Website knows that you need to provide a way for visitors to contact you by email. The big challenge is to provide easy email access to your visitors, without letting junk mail flood your inbox.…
http://www.ecommercebase.com/article.php/914

Freelancers: Outperform The Agencies in 10 Steps!

We often think of interactive agencies as the model for efficiency, as businesses that deliver high quality solutions to clients as varied as they are.

However, while on the whole, clients benefit from working with outside agencies, the agency model is fraught with problems, often produces mixed results, and frequently fails to add real value to the business in question.

We've passed the phase when industry experts believed that companies with names like Scient, Razorfish and Sapient could help a business succeed in the new economy just because they sounded like they were on the cutting edge. We're now realizing that the new "new" economy is all about the consumer, and the creation of products and services that these people need.
http://www.ecommercebase.com/article.php/913

War and Politics: Islamists Gain Votes as U.S. Acts

The perception that Washington remains hostile toward Islam is helping drive the victories of some religiously oriented parties across the Islamic and Arab world, experts in the region said today.

Most Islamist parties have been gradually gaining supporters for years as secular parties have failed to solve grinding economic and social problems.

But their sudden gain in votes in recent elections in Pakistan, Bahrain, Morocco and Turkey is being viewed as a sign that voters — at least in those few countries that actually allow free elections — want to assert pride in their faith to the outside world.

"The population in Turkey, the population in Pakistan or the population in Morocco did not vote for Islamic parties just because they believe they have the capacity to solve social and economic problems," Muhammad Darif, a professor of political science at the Hassan II University law school at Mohammedia, Morocco, said in a telephone interview.

"Arab and Muslim populations think the war against terrorism is nothing but a war against Islam, the culture of Islam, the Arab culture," Professor Darif added. "The Islamist parties have been able to exploit this."

The recent election results may serve as an opportunity or a risk for the United States, the experts said. They said working with moderate Islamic groups could give Washington credibility it lacks, while opposing them would only fertilize already blooming anti-American sentiment.

"If the U.S. considers anyone who talks about Islam a criminal and pushes the Turkish military to suppress them, it will deprive itself of an ally," said Abdelmonem Said, the director of Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, speaking of the victorious Justice and Development Party in Turkey.

Although no single pattern fits all four countries, the results in each of the elections gave religiously oriented parties far larger margins than expected.

In Turkey, the winning party is likely to be the first in years to be able to govern without a coalition partner, as it is expected to take more than 360 of the 550 seats in Parliament.

Voters in Pakistan and Bahrain last month also gave religious parties a significant voice in their Parliaments. Islamist candidates took 78 of 392 seats in Pakistan's Parliament, while such parties control about half of the 40 seats in the newly elected assembly in Bahrain.

In Morocco, Islamist groups took 42 of 325 seats in elections in September, up from 14 in the last election.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/international/06ISLA.html

Yemen Killing Based on Rules Set Out by Bush

The lethal missile strike that killed a suspected leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen was carried out under broad authority that President Bush has given the C.I.A. over the past year to pursue the terror network well beyond the borders of Afghanistan, senior government officials said today.

The president was not asked to authorize the specific decision to fire the missile that killed the suspected Qaeda leader, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, the officials said. But Mr. Bush had been advised that the C.I.A was pursuing Mr. Harethi.

Under the rules that Mr. Bush had approved, his personal approval for specific operations was not required. He had delegated operational control over Predator strikes against Al Qaeda to his military and intelligence team. Officials would not identify the officials who did approve the strike.

The decision to approve the missile launch was made by "very senior officials" below the level of the president who had been closely monitoring the surveillance of Mr. Harethi and his associates, the officials said. They were seeking an opportunity to kill Mr. Harethi in a setting that would minimize the chance of unintentional casualties.

The missile strike represented a tougher phase of the campaign against terror and moved the Bush administration away from the law enforcement-based tactics of arrests and detentions of Qaeda suspects that it had employed outside Afghanistan in the months since the fighting there ended.

Instead, the officials said, the missile strike demonstrated that the United States was prepared to employ deadly force against individual suspects in countries like Yemen, where Al Qaeda is believed to have regrouped in recent months.

At the same time, the State Department's spokesman today reiterated American opposition to "targeted killings" of Palestinian militants by Israeli forces. The spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, rejected comparisons with Israel's practice against Palestinian militants, saying circumstances were not comparable.

The missile strike did not violate the longstanding ban on the assassination of political leaders because none of the men were regarded as leaders under the law, current and former officials said. Government officials have said since Sept. 11 that the assassination ban does not apply to Al Qaeda.

The possible risks of the Bush administration's more aggressive approach were immediately apparent. Today, the State Department announced that the American Embassy in Yemen would be closed for a security review.

The Yemenis were killed on Sunday when a Hellfire air-to-ground missile launched by a pilotless Predator aircraft struck the car in which six men were riding in barren stretch of desert outside Sana, the capital. All the men were killed, including the intended target, Mr. Harethi, a suspected senior Qaeda leader in Yemen and a suspect in the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in October 2000.

It was unclear how the target was identified, but the Predator's video can identify certain details such as the number of people in the car.

Although Mr. Harthi's name was not widely known publicly, intelligence and law enforcement officials had been tracking his movements for months, one official said.

The official would not describe the evidence linking Mr. Harthi to the Cole attack, but said his involvement was a widely accepted within intelligence and law enforcement circles.

Although investigators wanted to question Mr. Harethi about the Cole bombing, the C.I.A. did not seek input from or consult law enforcement officials prior to the Yemeni operation, a senior law enforcement official said. But today law enforcement officials said there were few complaints.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/international/middleeast/06YEME.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

WebsiteTips.com, html tutorial, web design tips, web page design tips, web design tips, fonts, articles, tutorials, resources, HTML

Websitetips.com, an educational resource, provides CSS, HTML, and XHTML tutorials, graphics tutorials, articles, tips, information and resources to build or improve your Web site presence.

You'll also find over 2,400 annotated resources around the web to HTML, CSS and color charts, font sites, search engine optimization sites, graphics and HTML tutorials and programs, usability and information architecture sites, informative articles, tips, and more.
http://www.websitetips.com/index.html

Accessibility, section 508, ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, Website Tips

The Accessibility category contains information to help designers, developers and site owners understand, learn, and create sites that are as accessible as possible to those with disabilities, text browsers, and more. Also included are resources for the Section 508 U.S. government guidelines for accessibility, tools, and more.
http://www.websitetips.com/accessibility/index.shtml#us508articles

The Search Engine Report, Nov. 4, 2002, Number 72

From The November 2002 Issue
Search Engine Strategies Comes To Dallas In December
The Search Engine "Perfect Page" Test
Yahoo Renews With Google, Changes Results
Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease
Google Filtering Of French & German Web Sites Revealed
Paid Inclusion Listings May Get Boosted At AltaVista
Search Engine Resources
SearchDay Articles
Search Engine Articles
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/current.html

The Search Engine Report - Articles By Date

http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/bydate.html

SearchDay - The Truth About Big Brother Databases - 3 October 2002

What information appears in commercial, or publicly accessible, databases about you? Any transaction or event that generates a public record may find its way online. If you purchase a home, for example, information about the sale, including the sale price, amount mortgaged, and the mortgagor, becomes public record.

Likewise, if you file for bankruptcy, own a business, obtain a professional license, or become involved in a lawsuit, then information about you resides in public records. Criminal convictions and, in some states, marriage, divorce, death, boat or vehicle ownership, vehicle accidents, applications for fishing or hunting licenses, and voter registration also produce public records.

Increasingly, public records reside in commercial or government-sponsored databases, but restrictions concerning their access and use make illegal some of the claims you read in the news. Major federal laws governing the sale or distribution of personal information include the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Drivers Privacy Protection Act, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd1003-big-brother.html

SearchDay - Introducing Search Engine Forums Spotlight - 21 October 2002

Many searchers don't realize it, but there's an active community of webmasters who thrive on keeping up with the cutting edge of search engine technology. These intrepid hawks pore over their SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) scanning for any clues to how search engines rank pages and process queries.

They post their findings to a number of discussion group forums, including WebmasterWorld, IHelpYouServices, SearchEngineForums, and others. And it's rare that a finding is posted without another member of the community replying, offering praise, scorn, or alternative interpretations. They're lively groups.

Why should searchers care about webmasters skirmishing over the arcana of search engine operations? Because these discussions can often offer valuable insights that may help you become a better searcher. You may not realize that Google recently made some changes to its results ranking algorithm, for example -- the company made an effort to downplay the changes.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd1021-seforums.html

SearchDay - Making Dynamic and E-Commerce Sites Search Engine Friendly - 29 October 2002

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies 2002 Conference, August 12-14, San Jose, CA.

Many dynamic and e-commerce web sites are unwittingly part of the Invisible web, but there are several strategies for making them more search engine friendly.

Sure, it's easy to talk about meta tags and copy writing techniques when you have a static Web site. But what can companies with database and e-commerce sites do? "Search engines can crawl dynamic sites, said Detlev Johnson, filling in for Mikkel deMib Svendson, CTO of RedZoneGlobal Denmark. "They just don't want to."

Before you tell your CEO that his expensive Web site should "thrown out" however, there are some efforts that can yield your dynamic site some visibility in the search engines.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd1029-ses-dynamic.html

Are Papers Ready To Cover War At Home?

Newspapers are gearing up to cover the probable U.S. war against Iraq -- but are they ready for the war at home that would likely result? Right now, it's impossible to say, based on coverage of the surprisingly strong turnouts for protest marches Oct. 26 in Washington and San Francisco.

The New York Times, for example, seemed to underplay its coverage of the march in the nation's capital -- then scrambled to reverse its judgment. The Boston Globe, meanwhile, might have overplayed coverage of that rally, one of the paper's editors tells E&P.

"The media is generally slow to pick up on citizen actions like that, but there's a growing awareness in newsrooms that there's something going on out there," says Peter Hart, media analyst for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

Sara Flounders, co-director at International Answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), which helped organize the rallies, says many papers ignored previous demonstrations until the Oct. 26 ones got too large to dismiss. (By police estimates, the Washington rally drew 100,000, making it the biggest antiwar march there since the Vietnam war, and the San Francisco rally drew about half that number.) Flounders adds that papers may cover rallies for a day, but write little about ongoing antiwar actions even as they constantly publicize the Bush administration's war plans.

But Roger Aronoff, a media analyst for Accuracy In Media, thinks the pendulum has swung too far at some papers. He calls The Washington Post's coverage of the Oct. 26 demonstration, for example, "too sympathetic" and says it "completely ignored who the leaders of the rally were." These leaders, according to Aronoff, included "hardcore Marxists" and "supporters of terrorist groups."

Reflecting the national split on this issue, The New York Times, over a four-day period, infuriated observers on both the pro- and antiwar sides. The day after the march, the Times ran a relatively short piece noting that the "thousands" of protesters in Washington comprised a smaller total than organizers had hoped for. Since the organizers had only taken out a permit for 20,000, this was, of course, quite false. Three days later, as if to make amends, the paper ran a second, longer story noting that the huge turnout "startled even organizers."

How did such different accounts of the same rally get published in the same paper? When E&P contacted the Times' Lynette Clemetson, author of the first story, she would only say: "I advocated for broader coverage of the march, and I regret that we didn't run a more comprehensive story."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1754818

Keep Hackers Out: Part Two, Professional Edition

The evolution of small-business firewalls—an essential tool for network defense—continues apace, giving you more for your money than ever before
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,644364,00.asp

Keep Hackers Out: Part One, Personal Edition

Keep Hackers Out: Part One, Personal Edition
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,653189,00.asp

Amnesty Accuses Israeli Forces of War Crimes

A new report by Amnesty International contends that Israeli forces committed war crimes in Jenin and Nablus this spring during a large-scale offensive in the West Bank, killing Palestinians unlawfully, blocking medical care, using people as human shields and bulldozing houses with residents inside.

The report was formally submitted to Israeli officials today.

"The information in this report suggests that the Israeli Defense Forces committed violations of international law during the course of military operations in Jenin and Nablus, including war crimes, for which they must be held accountable," the new report says in its conclusion.

A report issued by the group in July called attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli civilians crimes against humanity.

The army chief of staff at the time of the spring offensive, Shaul Mofaz, was recently chosen by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to be defense minister in a new coalition government he is trying to form. According to Israeli press reports, Mr. Mofaz returned a day early from a lecture tour in England last week after a Muslim group there filed a suit accusing him of war crimes.

The 76-page Amnesty International study, which used stronger language than a similar report in July by the United Nations secretary general, focuses on Israeli Army actions between April and June in Nablus and Jenin, in the West Bank. It is based on interviews with witnesses, medical crews and aid workers, visits to sites of the fighting, autopsies by a forensic specialist and assessments by a military expert.

The Jenin refugee camp and the old city in Nablus were the scenes of the fiercest fighting and the heaviest losses on both sides during the Israeli offensive, which began at the end of March after a series of suicide bombings and deadly shooting attacks in Israel.

Citing accounts by witnesses and on-site investigations by Amnesty International delegates, the report describes incidents in which unarmed Palestinian civilians were fatally shot in custody or while in their homes. In one incident on April 6, a man was shot and killed after he was seized with other men in the Jenin refugee camp, the report says. In another incident, the previous day, a woman was killed when soldiers used explosives to blow open the door of her house as she went to open it.

In Nablus, again on April 6, eight members of a single family were killed, including three children, their pregnant mother and an 85-year-old grandfather, when their house was bulldozed.

The report says soldiers used people as human shields, forcing them to walk in front of soldiers and to enter homes and rooms suspected of being booby-trapped or of sheltering gunmen.

"The soldiers would have us walk in front of them, sometimes with them resting their rifles on our shoulders," said Amer Abdel Karim, 24, who was arrested in the Jenin refugee camp on April 9. "At times they were exchanging gunfire and shooting from people's shoulders."
…
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/04/international/middleeast/04RIGH.html

Israeli Troops Kill 5 Palestinians

Israeli army troops killed five Palestinian men in three separate shootings in the Gaza Strip, army and Palestinian officials said Monday.

No weapons were found on any of the five, according to the two sides.

The army shot and killed three men in central Gaza late Sunday when they approached a heavily guarded border fence with Israel, an area that Palestinians have tried to infiltrate before, the army said. The bodies were found early Monday.

Also Sunday, near the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, troops shot and killed an 18-year-old Palestinian who tried to climb a fence bordering an Israeli-controlled area.

Palestinians said the unarmed man was mentally handicapped and wandered into the area by mistake. Troops opened fire because they suspected the man was carrying a weapon -- but when they reached the body they found he was not armed, the army said.

In Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, a 36-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by troops who opened fire from the nearby Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, a Palestinian hospital said. Palestinians said the man was unarmed. The army said it was not aware of the incident.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Gaza.html

eWEEK - Microsoft on Trial

Microsoft on Trial
http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,3960,207,00.asp

OJR article: The Antiwar Movement on the Web

As Congress debated the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy last week, people around the world were demonstrating in opposition to the impending conflict.

If you get your news by reading newspapers and watching television, you won’t find much coverage of the antiwar movement. But on the Web, there’s plenty of evidence of a global grassroots sentiment opposing the war. In fact the Internet’s crucial role in public debates has never been more evident.

The Web is proving to be increasingly important for both interested citizens seeking alternative perspectives, and antiwar activists seeking to mobilize the public.

“When sifting through the mounds of news, information, and PR spin, one should always keep in mind that unconscious bias and deliberate propaganda appear on all sides of the political spectrum.”
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/oleary/1034893068.php

Netanyahu Says Accepts FM Post if Elections Held

Palestinian officials have expressed alarm at the prospect of an Israeli government dominated by right-wingers and ultra-nationalists.

``There is no limit to the atrocities that can be expected by a government with the kind of names that have been emerging,'' Palestinian cabinet minister Ghassan al-Khatib told Reuters.


Netanyahu has at times been a close partner with Sharon -- who once served as his foreign minister -- but in recent years has criticized the Israeli leader for not employing tougher tactics against Palestinian suicide bombings and other violence in the uprising.

On Sunday, Netanyahu said the two had begun to discuss their political differences to find a common ground.

Netanyahu has advocated expelling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and has also come out against the creation of a fully-fledged Palestinian state.

Sharon faces fierce U.S. opposition to removing Arafat and has supported a Palestinian state after a lengthy negotiating process to be launched only after violence ends.

Sharon offered Netanyahu, popularly known as ``Bibi,'' the Foreign Ministry post on Friday after Labour's exit, which also left the Defense Ministry vacant.

Former army chief Shaul Mofaz, who led Israel's crackdown against the two-year-old Palestinian uprising for statehood until he stepped down in July, has accepted the defense portfolio. The appointment was to be brought to parliament for approval on Monday.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html

ChessGML to SVG

Displaying chess games in Web pages using ChessGML and SVG

If you have the Adobe SVG plug-in installed, you should see an animated chess game…

The ChessGML/SVG stylesheet is an XSLT transformation that converts chess games in PGN or ChessGML notation to an SVG file, which can simply be linked to from an HTML page for viewing in a browser that supports SVG.

The ChessGML game notation, created by Andreas Saremba, is an XML encoding for chess games as well as tournament tables. A ChessGML file can be generated by hand or converted from PGN (Andreas Saremba provides a converted with the SGML package). SVG is a vector graphics format for the Web, developped by the W3C. SVG is also an XML vocabulary, so we use XSLT, the XML-to-XML transformation language to perform the transformation. The advantages of using SVG for viewing chess in a browser are:

it is a vector graphics format, you can zoom in or out the board and you won't get bitmap artefacts
A game encoded in SVG comes as one file: no separate font or images. Everything is held together in the .svg file, which can easily be embedded in your html.

SVG, ChessGML, and XSLT are open standards, and many open source implementations exist. Only the Adobe SVG viewer isn't, but it is still freely available.

SVG, ChessGML, and XSLT are XML standards and therefore benefits from XML's accessibility, interoperability and usability features.

The ChessGML/SVG stylesheets are released under the W3C Software Notice and License.
http://people.w3.org/maxf/ChessGML/

Southeast Asia Remains Fertile for Al Qaeda

Previously, Al Qaeda targeted embassies and official buildings — or symbolic ones like the World Trade Center — but now these are so well protected that Al Qaeda is turning to so-called soft targets, like resorts.

A sketch of Al Qaeda's network in Southeast Asia, how it emerged and what its deadly potential is today, has been pieced together from interviews with intelligence and law enforcement officials in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as with American, Australian and European diplomats. Much of what they know comes from the interrogation of recently captured Qaeda operatives.

But as officials begin to establish a profile of the network, they realize there were many warning signs going back to the early 1990's in the Philippines and Indonesia. That is when Mr. bin Laden sent some of his most trusted lieutenants to Southeast Asia, to blend into their communities, often through marriage, while making common cause with radical Islamic groups.

The most wanted terrorist in Southeast Asia today is Riudan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, a Qaeda operative who has been instrumental in just about every terrorist action against the United States in the region in the last 10 years. Since the Bali bombing, which some investigators believe he masterminded, he has became the subject of an intensive manhunt by Indonesian authorities.

Officials are quick to acknowledge that their picture of Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia is incomplete, and it is as much what they do not know as what they now do that alarms them.

For example, hundreds of men in Southeast Asia have been trained at Qaeda camps, not only in Afghanistan, but also in the Philippines. "Who are they? Where are they?" asked an American intelligence official.

Although the camps used by Al Qaeda have been closed, that is little consolation to counterterrorism officials. Qaeda operatives need only a few safe houses to teach how to assemble explosives, said a Philippine intelligence officer, and houses are harder to find than camps.

To some experts, Al Qaeda looks like a multinational company, expanding its reach.

"Al Qaeda is the McDonald's of terrorism," said an Asian official. Mr. bin Laden sent his representatives to Southeast Asia and elsewhere, looking for potential franchisees, the official said. Then Al Qaeda provided the template for terrorist operations, and the local operators "were sent to Al Qaeda University in Afghanistan for training in explosives and weapons."

He described Mr. Hambali as the "managing director" for Southeast Asia. Unlike some corporate executives, he does not sit in his office, but gets out in the field and meets with his teams. As a young Islamic student in Indonesia, Mr. Hambali answered the call to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Then, in the early 1990's, he moved to Malaysia.

From there, he became a recruiter and travel agent for inexperienced young men who wanted to go off to Afghanistan for training, or for those with experience who wanted to fight in religious wars from Bosnia to Indonesia. He arranged for at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to meet in Malaysia, in early 2000, and then travel to the United States. One of his front companies wrote a letter that allowed Zacharias Moussaoui to enter the United States. (Mr. Moussaoui is on trial in Virginia in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.)

Mr. Hambali was present at the creation of what appears to be Al Qaeda's first major operational base in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines about a decade ago.

"Every major terrorist plot by Al Qaeda against the United States has some ties to the Philippines," Zachary Abuza, a professor at Simmons College, wrote in the recently published "Tentacles of Terror: Al Qaeda's Southeast Asian Network."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/28/international/asia/28ASIA.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Fair Trials in Security Cases

The Sixth Amendment guarantees people accused of crimes access to relevant witnesses. Lawyers for Mr. Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court for a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, have asked for access to, among others, Ramzi bin al-Shibh. The government contends that Mr. bin al-Shibh was a ringleader of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. If so, he would be in a position to know if Mr. Moussaoui was involved. (Whether he is credible would be up to a judge or jury.)

Federal law sets out procedures the government can use to safeguard national security while prosecuting crimes. The best solution would be for Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers to seek security clearance, then examine Al Qaeda witnesses under the court's guidance. The administration may try to finesse the issue by moving the case to a military tribunal, where a defendant would likely have fewer rights. That would set a terrible precedent. Military tribunals, if they are to be used at all, must not become a dumping ground where the government takes cases when it wants to reduce a defendant's rights. A third option for the government is seeking a plea bargain, as it did with John Walker Lindh, who also sought access to Al Qaeda prisoners.

In the case of Mr. Padilla, suspected of plotting to explode a dirty bomb in the United States, prosecutors have refused to give the defense a classified document describing the evidence. Mr. Padilla's lawyers have offered to seek security clearance, but the government says it would still refuse. Sharing evidence with lawyers who have security clearance has worked in other terrorism cases and is the right way to proceed here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/28/opinion/28MON3.html

The NYPL Picture Collection Online
The Picture Collection Online is an image resource site for those who seek knowledge and inspiration from visual materials. It is a collection of 30,000 digitized, public domain images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923. It consists of images of New York City, Costume, Design, American History and other subjects.
http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco/

Iranian Leader Says U.S. Helps bin Laden's Image

In a sharp criticism of the United States, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran said today that his country opposed a war against neighboring Iraq and charged that Washington's misguided campaign against terrorism had strengthened support for Osama bin Laden in the Muslim world.

"Have the erroneous policies of the United States made bin Laden more popular or more hated than before in various sectors of the Islamic world?" Mr. Khatami asked in a joint news conference with the Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, during a three-day official visit to Spain. "Have the erroneous policies of the United States weakened Islamic trends that favor wisdom and democracy? The United States with its hegemony has strengthened bin Laden, so we ought to condemn it in some way for supporting terrorism."

Mr. Khatami even likened the logic of Mr. bin Laden to that of President Bush.

"I hear a discourse from two poles," Mr. Khatami said in his native Persian. "One is the voice raised from Afghanistan by bin Laden that says, `Whoever is not with us must be destroyed.' The other is the voice from the United States that says, `Whoever is not with us is against us."' He added, "That is a logic which on one side leads to the most atrocious forms of terror and, on the other side, on the pretext of confronting terrorism, creates the worst type of atmosphere for waging war."

Iran's position toward Iraq is complicated by the fact that there is no love lost between Iran's ruling clerics and President Saddam Hussein. Mr. Khatami noted today that Mr. Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 and used chemical weapons against Iran during the eight-year border war that followed.

"Of course the whole world knows we've suffered greatly at the hands of Iraq and the Iraqi regime," Mr. Khatami said. He suggested that there was a double standard in the extraordinary reaction against Mr. Hussein today compared with the world's inaction when he turned chemical weapons against Iran and even against Iraqi civilians.

"If chemical weapons are bad, why when they were used against us or Iraqi citizens wasn't Iraq condemned and pressured?" he asked.

But Iran, which shares a long border with Iraq, is vehemently opposed to a unilateral American war against its neighbor and the installation of a government of Washington's choosing in Baghdad. Iranians of all political persuasions are deeply suspicious of American designs on the Persian Gulf, recalling that a C.I.A.-led coup overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and returned the shah to the throne.

"We have said several times that we are against any military attack on Iraq and any unilateral action in resolving international issues," Mr. Khatami said. "To intervene in the internal affairs of a nation is a dangerous precedent."

But he called on Iraq to comply with Security Council resolutions, and hinted that Iran would not object to the use of force against Iraq if the Security Council decided it had not. "If in the international scene there needs to be further steps taken, we believe that there should be support from the United Nations and the international community for these steps," Mr. Khatami said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/middleeast/30KHAT.html

Sharon Offers Foreign Ministry to Political Rival Netanyahu

Mr. Sharon's opposition to the Oslo accords has raised suspicions on the left that he harbors a secret plan to destroy them, and with them the possibility of a Palestinian state.

He is suspected by the right of having gone soft since his days as a general and defense minister. According to that theory, he embraced Labor to gain the political leverage to resist his own rightist base.

Mr. Netanyahu compromised with the Palestinians as prime minister in the late 1990's and, unlike Mr. Sharon, even shook Mr. Arafat's hand. But having repeatedly criticized Mr. Sharon as not doing enough to destroy Mr. Arafat's governing Palestinian Authority, he has become the favorite of the hard right within Likud.

If Mr. Sharon's coalition falls and elections are called, Mr. Netanyahu may be able to beat him in a primary. But turning down the post of foreign minister would carry some political risk, since he may be seen as serving his own ambition rather than the country in a time of crisis.

Likud politicians speculated that the two men had discussed some arrangement under which Mr. Sharon would eventually step aside in Mr. Netanyahu's favor.

On his last day as Mr. Sharon's defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Labor chairman, today kept up his criticism of the government, declaring that it was time for Israel to press diplomacy with the Palestinians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/02/international/middleeast/02ISRA.html

For Microsoft, Ruling Will Sting but Not Really Hurt

…in May 1998, the company dominated the personal computer business and was aggressively moving into the markets for software for hand-held computers, cellphones, television set-top boxes and data-serving computers.

More than four years later, little has changed. And there is little in yesterday's ruling on sanctions in the case by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Federal District Court in Washington that will slow down the big software maker.

By endorsing most of the Bush administration's settlement with Microsoft, reached last year, the judge adopted a fairly narrow view of the case and showed a reluctance to meddle in Microsoft's business practices and product designs. She rejected calls by nine dissenting states seeking tougher measures, like requiring Microsoft to offer a stripped-down version of its Windows operating system or to publish freely the programming code for its Internet browser.

In doing so, Judge Kollar-Kotelly chided the plaintiff states, writing that some of the proposed remedies appeared to be intended "simply for the sake of changing the status quo." In a passage that echoed Microsoft's complaint that its legal problems were the work of its rivals, she wrote: "Certain of Microsoft's competitors appear to be those who most desire these provisions."

Yet the ruling does not mean Microsoft is untouched. A federal appeals court last year found that Microsoft was a monopolist in the personal computer operating system market, and that it had repeatedly abused its monopoly power to thwart competition and stymie innovation. That means Microsoft is a court-decreed monopoly that is in the process of becoming regulated.

But based on Judge Kollar-Kotelly's ruling, that regulation will be done with a light touch. "It shows a great reluctance to go down the regulatory path," said Robert E. Hall, an economist at Stanford, who has done consulting work for Microsoft.

Her reluctance, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted, was grounded in the appeals court's ruling of June 2001. It upheld the monopoly ruling of the district court and several of its findings against Microsoft, but it also narrowed the scope of Microsoft's liability and brushed aside the lower court's order to break the company in two.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly did try to strengthen the controls in the Justice Department's settlement, which was joined by nine other states, in a couple of areas. In what she termed the "most forward-looking" portion of her ruling, she required Microsoft to share more technical information with rivals like I.B.M., Sun Microsystems and others who make server computers, which act as the data-serving hubs of computer networks.

In taking up server software, she rejected Microsoft's objections, a rare setback in the ruling for the company. By singling out server software, she implicitly recognized the emerging threat to Microsoft from Linux, an increasingly popular operating system that is distributed free and updated by a community of volunteer programmers.

The judge's order requires Microsoft to disclose the communications protocols in its Windows desktop PC software, so that competitors' server software can work as smoothly with Windows as the server operating systems sold by Microsoft do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/02/technology/02IMPA.html

Judge Backs Terms of U.S. Settlement in Microsoft Case

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Federal District Court in Washington did impose some new obligations on Microsoft that were not included in the settlement last November, requiring the software maker to disclose more information to competitors about its Windows operating system and to install a compliance committee made up of Microsoft board members.

But taking a narrow view of the case, the judge imposed few new restrictions that would slow Microsoft's aggressive push into new markets.

She largely dismissed the contention by nine states that broader restrictions on Microsoft were necessary to restore competition in the computer software industry. Instead, Judge Kollar-Kotelly criticized the states for suggesting that Microsoft should be punished for actions beyond those a federal appeals court found it liable for last year.

"This suit, however remarkable, is not the vehicle through which plaintiffs can resolve all existing allegations of anticompetitive conduct which have not been proved or for which liability has not been ascribed," Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

But for many of the economists, legal scholars and rival software developers who have been involved in the long-running case, the judge's decision falls far short of preventing Microsoft from abusing its market power in the future.

"We urged the court to look ahead, to expand the doctrine into new business areas," said Bill Lockyer, the California state attorney general who helped lead and finance the states' challenge after the federal settlement. "The court said, `I can't do that, if you want that you need to file a new lawsuit.' That obviously remains an option."

The long-anticipated ruling on how the court would restrict Microsoft's behavior comes more than a year after a federal appeals court found that Microsoft had repeatedly violated antitrust laws. The case has been widely viewed as the most important antitrust action since the government's attack on Standard Oil at the turn of the last century.

In a nod to the dissenting states, Judge Kollar-Kotelly ordered Microsoft to refrain from "threatening" retaliation as well. And in what could be a significant step, she allowed that the restrictions on Microsoft should apply to the server operating systems that are central to most business networks, in addition to personal computer operating systems.

Still, she granted almost none of the core proposals the states raised during an eight-week trial last spring.

"I'm sort of stunned by it," said Andrew Gavil, an antitrust law professor at Howard University who has been critical of the Justice Department settlement. "I can't imagine a more sweeping victory for the approach that the government and Microsoft took and the states couldn't get less out of it than they did."

Microsoft has long argued that it needs to be free to construct its software however it sees fit," Mr. Gavil said. "She bought into Microsoft's longstanding argument that there was very little relation between Microsoft's anticompetitive acts and their dominant position."

He said there was not much room for an appeal, and that it would be "very difficult to convince the court of appeals that she abused her discretion."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/02/technology/02SOFT.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

General for the Hawks
It was April 2, and Israel had just started a ground offensive into the West Bank after a series of suicide bombings. Yasir Arafat was pinned by Israeli forces in his compound in Ramallah, and Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli army chief of staff, saw his chance to act.

"We should kick him out," General Mofaz urged the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, while the two men met with troops.

The moment, captured by an Israeli television crew, was seen in Israel as classic Mofaz. Mr. Sharon's government — Israel's civilian leaders — had just voted not to exile the Palestinian leader. But that did not deter the general from pushing for his preferred policy.

Now, Mr. Mofaz, whose term as chief of staff ended in July, has been tapped by Mr. Sharon to oversee the generals himself, masterminding Israel's military strategy as defense minister. If the appointment is approved as expected by the government and Parliament, he will replace Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who pulled his moderate party, Labor, out of the government on Wednesday in a dispute over budget priorities.

Mr. Mofaz, 54, sometimes clashed with Mr. Ben-Eliezer, who criticized him as politicizing his job and at least once considered firing him.

But he has always seemed in step with Mr. Sharon. "I know," Mr. Sharon replied, when Mr. Mofaz urged Mr. Arafat's ouster on April 2.

It is a measure of Mr. Mofaz's impact on the conflict that Palestinians invoke his name with almost as much bitterness as they do Mr. Sharon's.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/international/middleeast/01MOFA.html

DVD Creation Guide DVD Creation Guide
http://www.pcmag.com/category2/1,4148,652761,00.asp

News: Web services look for common ground
The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), a consortium of companies working to make emerging Web services products compatible, said it has published its Basic Profile Working Draft to its Web site. ( http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/Basic/2002-10/BasicProfile-1.0-WGD.htm )

Web services is a conception of how to build software so that companies with different computing systems can interact and conduct transactions. Most major software makers, and a growing number of large companies, have adopted Web services as a way to build business software. But for systems to interact on a large scale, developers need to agree on which specifications to follow and how to use them.

The draft spells out how existing standards, including the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1, Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1, Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) 2.0, Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 and XML Schema, should be used to develop interoperable Web services.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-963769.html