The estimated shortfall of $2.7 trillion could have been an $890 billion surplus but for the Bush proposals, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

How Tax Cuts Trickle Down
In a sorry effort to protect President Bush's tax-cut mania, the Republican leaders of Congress have unveiled proposals for slashing the most basic government programs for years to come. With rationalizations running from tragic to ludicrous, House budgeters envision cuts of $470 billion in "waste, fraud and abuse" in Medicare, Medicaid, education, child care and other vital programs, from transportation to health care, the environment to science research. The regressive 10-year plan, matched by an equally hypocritical Senate version, is a triumph of ideological rant over budget reality. Government now must be drastically crimped to pay for the rolling deficits resulting from Mr. Bush's triumphalist rewards for upper-bracket Americans.

The G.O.P. leaders endorse the next chunk of detaxation despite Congressional findings that two-thirds of the deficits running through the decade will be caused by the Bush tax cuts, not simply the failing economy.


The estimated shortfall of $2.7 trillion could have been an $890 billion surplus but for the Bush proposals, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The president's next $1.4 trillion cut, geared to the affluent, will average $90,000 a year for millionaires, according to the Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. You would think a sense of embarrassment might strike the Republicans in blessing such a boon for a fortunate minority while taking a cleaver to programs vital for most taxpayers, notably a woeful $12 billion cut in food stamps. But they seem intent on ideology trumping responsibility.

The contradictions of the Republicans' plans are legion. They intend to somehow cut Medicare by $214 billion this decade even as the president vows $400 billion in prescription help for retirees. A $93 billion Medicaid cut is blithely ordered by lawmakers who do not have enough daring to ask the president about the missing budget costs for the looming Iraq war. The cuts, the largest in history, are mean spirited in the face of the Bush Republicans' deepening embrace of deficit spending. And deficit spending, firmly blessed by the administration, will be the rule once Congress gets beyond this period of public relations budget fantasizing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/opinion/16SUN1.html

Troubleshooting Q&A - March 13, 2003
Firewalls vs. Proxy Servers

Do you think that a firewall and a proxy server are one and the same? You're not alone. This week we'll discuss the differences between firewalls and proxies. We'll also introduce a site that will help you measure the bandwidth of your cable or DSL connection.

By Ron Pacchiano
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/qa/qa20030313.shtml

Coming to Grips With the Unthinkable in Tulsa
Americans tend to think of lawless nations in Africa and Eastern Europe when the discussion turns to mass murder and crimes against humanity. But a commission created by the Oklahoma Legislature spent the late 1990's searching for mass graves in and around Tulsa. The missing dead — who could number as many as 300 — were shot, burned, lynched or tied to cars and dragged to death during the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. This was a nightmarish disturbance in which an army of white Tulsans reduced to ashes 35 square blocks of what was then the most affluent black community in the United States.

The Tulsa Race Riot Commission closed up shop without finding the bodies that witnesses recall seeing stacked like cordwood along railroad sidings and on street corners. But the commission report shows without question that the city encouraged the loss of life and property by deputizing what amounted to a lynch mob. The state may also have been at fault in failing to protect the community. Witnesses recall seeing white police officers looting and burning, and in some cases killing unarmed black citizens without provocation.

The survivors and their families presumed that the ghastly detail in the riot report would move the city and state to make restitution, especially in cases where lost property and life could be documented. The Legislature has instead decided to bury the report and deal with the matter partly by giving the survivors commemorative medals.

These aging men and women, many in their 90's, have not been content to go quietly to the grave. Instead, they have filed suit seeking damages, represented by a legal team including Charles Ogletree, the Harvard law professor, and the trial lawyers Johnnie Cochran Jr. and Willie Gary. The arrival of the high-profile legal team sent a shock through sleepy Tulsa. But the most electric moment came when 88-year-old John Hope Franklin, one of the most important historians of the 20th century, was found to have joined the suit as a plaintiff.

Mr. Franklin served as an adviser to the riot commission. His support for the suit represents a powerful condemnation of the State Legislature. His name resonates in the black Tulsa community of Greenwood, where a boulevard is named in his honor. Greenwood, such as it is, might not even exist if not for his father, the estimable lawyer B. C. Franklin (1879-1960), who was practicing in the community at the time of the riot. B. C. Franklin somehow managed to avoid being killed and was briefly held captive after the conflagration. After his release, he turned immediately to the task of fighting the city in court. The accounts of this period in his autobiography, "My Life and an Era," published posthumously, will be quoted often if this newly filed lawsuit comes to trial.

In 1921, The Tulsa Tribune primed its city for the riot with months of race baiting during which it referred to Greenwood as "niggertown." The immediate spark for the riot was a now-lost Tribune article that encouraged readers to lynch a jailed black man who had been accused — falsely as it turned out — of trying to rape a white woman. The mob that showed up to lynch the prisoner exchanged shots with a group of black men who tried to stop it.

City officials then made the fatal mistake of deputizing the white mob, to which arms were handed out indiscriminately. As many as 10,000 whites, including the police and the National Guard, poured across the tracks into Greenwood, burning, looting and shooting. One white witness reported seeing officers in uniform robbing unarmed black citizens at gunpoint and shooting those who resisted. While the police were thus engaged, an execution squad composed of Klansmen roamed the riot zone, killing black men on sight. Eyewitnesses tell of seeing corpses piled in the backs of wagons and pickup trucks or stacked along the street. Those bodies, which were never found, were thought to have been spirited into secret mass graves.

Greenwood had been a black city within a city that included as many as 15,000 people and supported 191 businesses, including 15 doctors, 2 dentists, a chiropractor and 3 law offices. After the riot, as B. C. Franklin writes: "As far as I could see, not a Negro dwelling-house or place of business stood." Thousands of blacks were confined to makeshift prison camps. Those who worked for white Tulsans were allowed to go out to their jobs. But blacks were required under pain of arrest to wear or carry ID tags furnished by the city.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/opinion/16SUN3.html

"We see President Bush's proposals as a serious assault on the Administrative Procedure Act, a stealth attack on the rights of citizens to fair, impartial hearings. These hearings guarantee due process of law, as required by the Constitution."

Bush Pushes Plan to Curb Medicare Appeals
The Bush administration says it is planning major changes in the Medicare program that would make it more difficult for beneficiaries to appeal the denial of benefits like home health care and skilled nursing home care.

In thousands of recent cases, federal judges have ruled that frail elderly people with severe illnesses were improperly denied coverage for such services.

In the last year, Medicare beneficiaries and the providers who treated them won more than half the cases — 39,796 of the 77,388 Medicare cases decided by administrative law judges. In the last five years, claimants prevailed in 186,300 cases, for a success rate of 53 percent.

Under federal law, the judges are independent, impartial adjudicators who hold hearings and make decisions based on the facts. They must follow the Medicare law and rules, but are insulated from political pressures and sudden shifts in policy made by presidential appointees.

President Bush is proposing both legislation and rules that would limit the judges' independence and could replace them in many cases.

The administration's draft legislation says, "The secretary of health and human services may use alternate mechanisms in lieu of administrative law judge review" to resolve disputes over Medicare coverage.

Under the legislative proposal, cases could be decided by arbitration or mediation or by lawyers or hearing officers at the Department of Health and Human Services. The department recently began testing the use of arbitration in Connecticut under a law that permits demonstration projects.

The department said there was an "urgent need for improvements to the Medicare claim appeal system," in part because the number of appeals was rising rapidly.

Consumer groups, administrative law judges and lawyers denounced the proposals. Judith A. Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Willimantic, Conn., said, "The president's proposals would compromise the independence of administrative law judges, who have protected beneficiaries in case after case, year after year."

Beneficiaries have a personal stake in the issue. When claims are denied, a beneficiary often must pay tens of thousands of dollars for services already received.

In a typical case, an administrative law judge ordered Medicare to pay for 230 home care visits to a 67-year-old woman with breast cancer, heart disease and arthritis. Medicare officials had said the woman should pay the cost. But the judge ruled that because the woman was homebound, the services were "reasonable and necessary."

When federal agencies issue rules or decide cases, they generally must follow the Administrative Procedure Act, a 1946 law intended to guarantee the fairness of government proceedings.

Ronald G. Bernoski, president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges, said:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/politics/16HEAL.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

"An American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool by Al Qaeda and other groups," a senior American counterintelligence official said. "And it is a very effective tool."

Anger on Iraq Seen as New Qaeda Recruiting Tool
On three continents, Al Qaeda and other terror organizations have intensified their efforts to recruit young Muslim men, tapping into rising anger about the American campaign for war in Iraq, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials.

In recent weeks, officials in the United States, Europe and Africa say they had seen evidence that militants within Muslim communities are seeking to identify and groom a new generation of terrorist operatives. An invasion of Iraq, the officials worry, is almost certain to produce a groundswell of recruitment for groups committed to attacks in the United States, Europe and Israel.

"An American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool by Al Qaeda and other groups," a senior American counterintelligence official said. "And it is a very effective tool."

Another American official, based in Europe, said Iraq had become "a battle cry, in a way," for Qaeda recruiters.

The surge in Qaeda recruitment efforts has been most visible in Germany, Britain, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, the officials said. Investigators have significantly increased their use of informants and, in some cases, bugging devices, to monitor mosques and other gathering places, where they have observed a sharp spike in anti-American oratory.

For example, German domestic intelligence agents have eavesdropped on increasingly shrill sermons in mosques about the possibility of war with Iraq, a message that officials there say has clearly resonated with young people. The officials expressed deep concern that the angry climate would lead to a torrent of new recruits.

"I can't use numbers, but we know the activity is increasing and the willingness to participate and to listen to radical messages is on the rise," says Carl Heinrich von Bauer, ministerial counsel at the Interior Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia. He is the chief of the German state department that is responsible for monitoring terrorism. "There are more people coming to hear radical talks," he said. "Also we are seeing people go suddenly from jeans to traditional dress and long beards."

That target audience, officials say, is a somewhat changed one — younger people, many of them converts to Islam, easily susceptible to the appeal of violence. In addition, more women are being attracted to Al Qaeda, albeit in secondary roles, officials say.

"We have noticed an increasing number of people who seem to be willing to use violence for Islamic causes since Sept. 11 and especially in recent months because of Iraq and Palestine," said Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's top investigative judge on terrorism cases.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/international/middleeast/16RECR.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

It's Democracy, Like It or Not
Since its emergence as a world power at the beginning of the last century, the United States has often made cold-eyed compromises with the crosscurrents of democracy around the world. From Latin America to Asia, Africa and beyond, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have welcomed democracy when it serves American interests, and been far more ambivalent when it complicates American strategic goals or national security.

Mr. Bush may welcome the idea of an Iraq more democratic than Saddam Hussein's despotic regime, but his administration bemoaned the democratic vote of Turkey's Parliament to deny American troops access to Turkish soil, and the resistance of democracies in "old Europe" to a march to war. The president would doubtless blanch at plebiscites that installed Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, or a Palestinian democracy that kept Yasir Arafat in power.

Last week, Mr. Bush said he would seek another vote of support from the United Nations Security Council, that unruly parliament of nations, for action against Iraq, "no matter what the whip count is." But he insisted in almost the same breath that "we really don't need anybody's permission" to defend American interests.

Such a gap between preachment and practice is common to all powerful democracies. Only tyrannies can be entirely consistent. But from its earliest days, the American ideal promised something more, and was held up as a global example.

Yet for most of the 19th century, the United States bought or won territory from foreign powers in war, avoided alliances and stood alone. And even though the United States helped found the United Nations and the post-World War II international security framework, it has faced varying degrees of anti-Americanism and charges of hypocrisy.

"It's something much deeper now," said James Chace, a professor of government and public law at Bard College. "What's happening is that the manner in which this administration has largely talked about the world, the kind of general arrogance and bullying tone, just reinforces the sense that we are now seen, and I think rightly, as an imperial power."

"The question," he added, "is whether it will be seen as relatively benevolent, or not."

"When it comes to the Middle East, we have to face the fact that the critical mobilizing issue is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser. "Democracy is a consequence of incremental hard work. It's not the consequence of either direct repression, à la Ariel Sharon, or bringing the entire Middle East structure tumbling down, à la Bush. It's an incremental process of building confidence, establishing relationships and pushing people in the direction of compromise."

"Grand-sounding rhetoric on the sidelines, followed by an intense war, which is likely to produce local resentments and further alienate the world, is not going to either produce democracy, or ultimately increase Israel's security," he added. "If we had democracy today in Egypt, we wouldn't have Mubarak but some members of the Muslim Brotherhood. If we're not careful, and pushed for a plebiscite in Saudi Arabia, Prince Abdullah might not do as well as Osama bin Laden."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/weekinreview/09PURD.html

SearchDay - Writing for Search Engines - 13 March 2003
Creating search engine friendly web pages goes far beyond tweaking codes -- it's a delicate balancing act between pleasing the search engine and the people who will ultimately read (and act) on your content.

All too often I've seen aspiring webmasters obsess over meta tags, keyword density, and the other arcana that's supposedly important for successful search engine optimization. While there's no denying that a certain amount of basic "blocking and tackling" helps improve search engine rankings, ultimately it's the quality of content that counts.

In short, content that pleases search engine users, and fulfils and information need or prompts them to purchase something, is good. Content that's highly optimized for search engine algorithms, but fails to satisfy search engine users, is virtually doomed to a fate of obscurity.…
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/03/sd0313-sewriting.html

Blurbs: Writing Previews of Web Pages
On the web, a blurb is a line or short paragraph (20-50 words) that evaluates (or at least summarizes) what the reader will find at the other end of a link. A good blurb should inform, not tease. Usability testing will help you determine the best way to lay out your blurbs, but this document will help you write the content.
http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/handouts/TW/web/blurbs.htm

Titles for Web Pages: In-Context and Out-of-Context (D.G. Jerz; UWEC)
Most writers know the value of an informative title, but many beginning web authors don't know that each web page needs two kinds of titles.

The in-context (IC) title always sits at the top of a page, with the rest of the document immediately beneath it. The in-context title of this page is "Two Kinds of Titles for Web Pages (In-Context and Out-of-Context)".

The out-of-context (OOC) title is frequently displayed by search engines or archive pages, as part of a long sorted list. The out-of-context title for this page probably appears in the stripe at the very top of your web browser window: "Titles for Web Pages: In-Context and Out-of-Context (D.G. Jerz; UWEC)".…
http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/handouts/TW/web/titles.htm

Bombs and Blood
They seemed like very nice people, the men and women, some with children, who dropped by to see the Liberty Bell, which is housed in a one-story shedlike pavilion with large windows in the roof.

My mind wandering, I imagined the visitors as casualties of war. I glanced up at the sunlight streaming through the roof and could visualize an incoming warhead, a missile that perhaps had strayed off course and was heading toward us. It wasn't hard to imagine the damage. The pavilion and everyone in it would be obliterated.

This is the fate soon to be visited upon a certain number of innocent Iraqi civilians (no one knows how many) if the president goes ahead with the war he has pursued so relentlessly. We should outlaw the term collateral damage. Above all else, the damage done by the weapons of war is to the flesh, muscle, bone and psyches of real people, some of them children. If we're willing to inflict such terrible damage, we should acknowledge it and not hide behind euphemisms.

I interviewed a number of people in the vicinity of Independence Mall about their views of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. No one I spoke with was particularly well informed. But what struck me about those in favor of invading Iraq was the cavalier way in which they talked about it. Their message, essentially, was: "Saddam's a bad guy. It's time for him to go."

I got no sense that they thought of war as a horrible experience. No one mentioned the inevitable carnage. No one spoke as if they understood that war is always hideous, even if it's sometimes necessary.

The children in Iraq are already in sorrowful shape. The last thing in the world they need is another war. More than half the population of Iraq is under the age of 18, and those youngsters are living in an environment that has been poisoned by the Iran-Iraq war, the first gulf war and long years of debilitating sanctions.

One out of every eight Iraqi children dies before the age of 5. One-fourth are born underweight. One-fourth of those who should be in school are not. One-fourth do not have access to safe water.

This generational catastrophe is the fault of Saddam Hussein, no question. But those who favor war should at least realize that the terrain to be invaded by the most fearsome military machine in history is populated mostly by children who are already suffering.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/opinion/13HERB.html

Assassins Leave Grisly Trail in Serbia
FEBRUARY 2003 Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic of Serbia survives when a truck tries to run into his motorcade near Belgrade's airport.

JUNE 2002 Gen. Bosko Buha, the deputy chief of Serbian public security, is shot dead in front of a hotel in Belgrade.

AUGUST 2001 Monir Gavrilovic, a former Serbian secret police official, is shot dead in a suburb of Belgrade.

FEBRUARY 2001 Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic survives when attackers shoot at his car in Belgrade.

APRIL 2000 Zika Petrovic, head of the state-owned Yugoslav Airlines, is shot dead while walking his dog near his home in Belgrade.

FEBRUARY 2000 Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic is shot dead in a Belgrade soccer club.

JANUARY 2000 Zeljko Raznatovic, a feared Serbian paramilitary leader under indictment for war crimes and known as Arkan, is shot dead in a hotel lobby in Belgrade.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/international/europe/13SBOX.html

Judge Affirms Terror Suspect Must Meet With Lawyers
In a 35-page ruling, the judge showed impatience and irritation with the government over its failure to agree on conditions for a meeting between Mr. Padilla and his lawyers. Mr. Padilla, who has been accused of plotting to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States, is being held in a Navy brig in South Carolina.

"Lest any confusion remain," the judge wrote, "this is not a suggestion or a request that Padilla be permitted to consult with counsel, and it is certainly not an invitation to conduct a further `dialogue' about whether he will be permitted to do so."

"It is a ruling — a determination — that he will be permitted to do so," the judge added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/12/national/12DIRT.html

I Vant to Be Alone
It will go down as a great mystery of history how Mr. Popularity at Yale metamorphosed into President Persona Non Grata of the world.

The genial cheerleader and stickball commissioner with the gregarious parents, the frat president who had little nicknames and jokes for everyone, fell in with a rough crowd.

Just when you thought it couldn't get more Strangelovian, it does. The Bush bullies, having driven off all the other kids in the international schoolyard, are now resorting to imaginary friends.

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars here yesterday and reassured the group that America would have "a formidable coalition" to attack Iraq. "The number of countries involved will be in the substantial double digits," he boasted. Unfortunately, he could not actually name one of the supposed allies. "Some of them would prefer not to be named now," he said coyly, "but they will be known with pride in due time."

Perhaps the hawks' fixation on being the messiahs of the Middle East has unhinged them. I could just picture Wolfy sauntering down the road to Baghdad with our new ally Harvey, his very own pooka, a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit that the U.S. wants to put on the U.N. Security Council.

Ari Fleischer upped the ante, conjuring up an entire international forum filled with imaginary allies.

He suggested that if the U.N. remained recalcitrant, we would replace it with "another international body" to disarm Saddam Hussein. It wasn't clear what he was talking about. What other international body? Salma Hayek? The World Bank? The Hollywood Foreign Press Association?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/12/opinion/12DOWD.html

Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and Surreal World
Senior American officials said physical torture would not be used against Mr. Mohammed, regarded as the operations chief of Al Qaeda and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. They said his interrogation would rely on what they consider acceptable techniques like sleep and light deprivation and the temporary withholding of food, water, access to sunlight and medical attention.

American officials acknowledged that such techniques were recently applied as part of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the highest-ranking Qaeda operative in custody until the capture of Mr. Mohammed. Painkillers were withheld from Mr. Zubaydah, who was shot several times during his capture in Pakistan.

But the urgency of obtaining information about potential attacks and the opaque nature of the way interrogations are carried out can blur the line between accepted and unaccepted actions, several American officials said.

Routine techniques include covering suspects' heads with black hoods for hours at a time and forcing them to stand or kneel in uncomfortable positions in extreme cold or heat, American and other officials familiar with interrogations said. Questioners may also feign friendship and respect to elicit information. In some cases, American officials said, women are used as interrogators to try to humiliate men unaccustomed to dealing with women in positions of authority.

Interrogations of important Qaeda operatives like Mr. Mohammed occur at isolated locations outside the jurisdiction of American law. Some places have been kept secret, but American officials acknowledged that the C.I.A. has interrogation centers at the United States air base at Bagram in Afghanistan and at a base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a suspect in the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks, were initially taken to a secret C.I.A. installation in Thailand but have since been moved, American officials said.

Intelligence officials also acknowledged that some suspects had been turned over to security services in countries known to employ torture. There have also been isolated, if persistent, reports of beatings in some American-operated centers. American military officials in Afghanistan are investigating the deaths of two prisoners at Bagram in December.

American officials have guarded the interrogation results. But George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, said in December that suspects interrogated overseas had produced important information.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have said that American techniques adhere to international accords that ban the use of torture and that "all appropriate measures" are employed in interrogations.

Rights advocates and lawyers for prisoners' rights have accused the United States of quietly embracing torture as an acceptable means of getting information in the global antiterrorism campaign. "They don't have a policy on torture," said Holly Burkhalter, the United States director of Physicians for Human Rights, one of five groups pressing the Pentagon for assurances detainees are not being tortured. "There is no specific policy that eschews torture."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/international/09DETA.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

If a Terror Suspect Won't Talk, Should He Be Made To?
The Philippine police knew they had an unusual case when they arrested Abdul Hakim Murad on Jan. 6, 1995. After Mr. Murad accidentally set a small fire in his Manila apartment, the police reportedly found gallons of sulfuric acid and nitric acid, as well as beakers, filters, funnels and fuses. A week before Pope John Paul II was to visit Manila, they had uncovered a bomb-making factory.

In many countries, terrorism suspects like Mr. Murad rarely receive the local equivalent of the Miranda rights; instead, they are tortured. Perhaps the authorities are trying to get sensitive information, perhaps they are trying to dispense extra-legal punishment. The methods vary, from gentler tactics, occasionally referred to as "torture lite," like sleep deprivation, to hard torture, like the administration of electric shocks. If a prisoner happens to die, this can be explained away as a suicide or "a sharp drop in blood pressure," as the Egyptian authorities have described the demise of prisoners who were brutalized to death.

Mr. Murad, a Pakistani, was not a talker. Although a computer in his apartment contained information about his plans, he resisted requests to give details of what he was doing. His interrogators reportedly beat him so badly that most of his ribs were broken; they extinguished cigarettes on his genitals; they made him sit on ice cubes; they forced water down his throat so that he nearly drowned.

This went on for several weeks. In the end, he provided names, dates and places behind a Qaeda plan to blow up 11 commercial airliners and fly another one into the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also confessed to a plot to assassinate the pope.

Mr. Murad's case has been used, in some quarters, to justify torture. Without violent pressure, terrorists might never talk, and then their plans will proceed and civilians will die. This thinking is receiving renewed attention after the arrest, in Pakistan, of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's chief of operations and the operational mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

…United States officials have said that Mr. Mohammed, or any other terrorist suspect, would not be tortured. But if he prefers not to talk, should he be made to?

The easy answer, in these times of war and fear, is yes. But relieving a suspect of his fingernails is not always the best way to get him to talk, and if he does talk, he may not tell the truth. A suspect who wants to avoid the unkindness of having his teeth extracted with a set of dirty pliers may say whatever he thinks his torturers want to hear.

Beyond that, many terrorism experts believe that in the long run torture is a losing strategy. Pain and humiliation will turn some innocent suspects into real terrorists and turn real terrorists into more-determined monsters.

James Ron, a professor of conflict studies at McGill University in Canada, is the author of a lengthy report on torture in Israel. He met with Israeli officials and soldiers, as well as Palestinian detainees who said their interrogators made it known that they had detailed information about terrorist groups. Mr. Ron believes this intelligence was gathered largely by the use of physical and economic coercion, but at a significant and counterproductive cost.

"Most studies show that torture is hugely degrading and humiliating, in addition to being painful," Mr. Ron said. "Some people get destroyed in the process and curl up in a ball and go away, but some people fight back. If you're doing this to just 10 people it's perhaps not a security threat, but if it's the F.B.I. and all its allies across the world, then it's a big deal. A large chunk of the people who are being interrogated aren't militants, they just might know someone who is. If they weren't committed anti-Americans now, they would be after this process."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/weekinreview/09MAAS.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

How a War Became a Crusade
To those who worry about the frequent use of religious language, Mr. Bush's supporters insist that the rhetoric of Providence is as American as cherry pie. This is true, but it is crucial to understand that Providence can acquire various meanings depending on the circumstances. The belief that one is carrying out divine purpose can serve legitimate needs and sustain opposition to injustice, but it can also promote dangerous simplifications — especially if the believer has virtually unlimited power, as Mr. Bush does. The slide into self-righteousness is a constant threat.

The great rhetoricians of Providence have resisted the temptation of self-righteousness. When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail that "we will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands," he was seeking common ground with white Southerners, not predicting perdition for satanic segregationists.

Likewise, when Abraham Lincoln invoked Providence in his second inaugural address, his message to the victorious North and the defeated South was one of reconciliation. By characterizing the Civil War as a national expiation for the sin of slavery, he wanted "to bind up the nation's wounds" and make some moral sense of the appalling losses on both sides. At its best, providentialist thinking can offer a powerful antidote to self-righteousness.

Too often, though, American politicians and moralists have reduced faith in Providence to a religious sanction for raw power. In the 1840's, with the emergence of the idea that the United States had a manifest destiny to expand to the Pacific, the hand of God was no longer mysterious (as in traditional Christian doctrine) but "manifest" in American expansion. As for the natives who unproductively occupied the Great Plains, Horace Greeley, the journalist, said in 1859: "`These people must die out — there is no help for them. God has given this earth to those who will subdue and cultivate it, and it is vain to struggle against his righteous decree."

By the end of the century, Senator Albert Beveridge and other imperialists had made Manifest Destiny a global project, insisting that God had "marked" the American people to lead in "the redemption of the world."

In the wake of World War I, Woodrow Wilson showed that it was possible to use redemptive rhetoric for aims that went beyond nationalism, and yet to still fall victim to hubris. By intervening in the war and ensuring a just peace, said Wilson, "America had the infinite privilege of fulfilling her destiny and saving the world."

The failure of Wilson's postwar dream helped make most Americans skeptical of world-saving fantasies during World War II. Thus our most necessary war was also the most resistant to providentialist interpretation. It was a dirty job, and somebody had to do it: that was the dominant view, among policymakers and the public. Only in retrospect has World War II acquired an aura of sanctity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/opinion/11LEAR.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Software Pioneer Quits Board of Groove
Mitchell D. Kapor, a personal computer industry software pioneer and a civil liberties activist, has resigned from the board of Groove Networks after learning that the company's software was being used by the Pentagon as part of its development of a domestic surveillance system.

Mr. Kapor would say publicly only that it was a "delicate subject" and that he had resigned to pursue his interests in open source software.

The company acknowledged the resignation last week when it announced that it had received $38 million in additional financing.

"Mr. Kapor resigned from the board to focus 100 percent of his time on nonprofit activities," said a spokesman for Groove Networks, whose software has been used to permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to share data in tests of the surveillance system, Total Information Awareness.

However, a person close to Mr. Kapor said that he was uncomfortable with the fact that Groove Networks' desktop collaboration software was a crucial component of the antiterrorist surveillance software being tested at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Information Awareness Office, an office directed by Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter.

The project has generated controversy since it was started early last year by Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan, whose felony conviction as part of the Iran-contra scandal was reversed because of a Congressional grant of immunity.

The project has been trying to build a prototype computer system that would permit the scanning of hundreds or thousands of databases to look for information patterns that might alert the authorities to the activities of potential terrorists.

Civil liberties activists have argued that such a system, if deployed, could easily be misused in ways that would undercut traditional American privacy values.

"Mitch cares very much about the social impact of technology," said Shari Steele, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that was co-founded by Mr. Kapor in 1990.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/business/11PRIV.html

Measuring Lost Freedom vs. Security in Dollars
Civil liberties and privacy may be priceless, but they may soon have a price tag.

In an unusual twist on cost-benefit analysis, an economic tool that conservatives have often used to attack environmental regulation, top advisers to President Bush want to weigh the benefits of tighter domestic security against the "costs" of lost privacy and freedom.

In a notice published last month, the budget office asked experts from around the country for ideas on how to measure "indirect costs" like lost time, lost privacy and even lost liberty that might stem from tougher security regulations.

The budget office has not challenged any domestic security rules, and officials say they are only beginning to look at how they might measure costs of things like reduced privacy. But officials said they hoped to give federal agencies guidance by the end of the year. And even if many costs cannot be quantified in dollar terms, they say, the mere effort to identify them systematically could prompt agencies to look for less burdensome alternatives.

The issues are not always abstract. American universities are worried that ever-tighter scrutiny of foreign students will cause them to lose market share in foreign students to Australia, Canada and Europe.

Airlines, meanwhile, are eager to increase use of advanced passenger screening systems. Civil rights advocates say the systems would single out some people with particular ethnic backgrounds, but they might also help business fliers whisk through security checkpoints as seemingly low-risk "trusted travelers."

Jarring as it may seem to assign a price on privacy or liberty, the idea has attracted an unusual array of supporters, including Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, who said the approach might expose wrong-headed security regulations.

"As long as they're going to deal with monetary evaluations, I told them they should start asking about the cost of destroying democracy," said Mr. Nader, who lobbied Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the budget office director, on the issue. "If the value assigned to civil rights and privacy is zero, the natural thing to do is just wipe them out."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/politics/11SECU.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Palestinians Approve Limited Scope for Premier Post
The prime minister's precise powers were left vague enough that it will largely be up to the first holder of the job to define and develop them, maneuvering between Mr. Arafat and the reform-minded Palestinians and foreign governments that are trying to curb his authority.

Mr. Arafat, who under the law adopted today has the power to nominate and fire the prime minister, has chosen for the position Mahmoud Abbas, his No. 2 in the hierarchy of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The parliament did not formally endorse that choice today, and Mr. Abbas, a critic of the Palestinians' armed uprising, has said he wants to be sure the position has authority before he accepts it.

But the Palestinian legislators were acting with Mr. Abbas in mind, many of them in the hope that he will use the post aggressively to reform Palestinian governance.

We cannot make the change at once," said Suleiman al-Rumi, an opposition legislator from Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. "We take powers one by one. We build stone by stone." The legislative changes made today require Mr. Arafat's approval.

During a day of procedural bickering over precise statutory wording, Mr. Rumi was at one point teased by Gazan colleagues for not playing his usual troublemaking role. But, pronouncing himself satisfied as he collected his papers this evening, he said, "There is nothing to oppose here."

Israel denied 10 legislators permission to travel here from Gaza, and at least one, Marwan Barghouti, is in detention, accused by Israel of terrorism, a charge he denies. Nevertheless, this was the best-attended session in Ramallah of the 88-member Palestinian Legislative Council since the early days of the conflict more than two years ago, because Israel eased its usual restrictions to let most attend.

That, together with Israel's muted response to the appointment of Mr. Abbas, was a sign that Israel would like to see this process succeed — or at least that it would not like to be seen as the reason for its failure.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/international/middleeast/11MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Annan Says U.S. Will Violate Charter if It Acts Without Approval
Secretary General Kofi Annan warned today that if the United States fails to win approval from the Security Council for an attack on Iraq, Washington's decision to act alone or outside the Council would violate the United Nations charter.

"The members of the Security Council now face a great choice," Mr. Annan said in The Hague, where he was trying to broker a United Nations deal on Cyprus. "If they fail to agree on a common position and action is taken without the authority of the Security Council, the legitimacy and support for any such action will be seriously impaired."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/international/middleeast/11NATI.html

U.S. Says U.N. Could Repeat Errors of 90's
Fearing defeat in the Security Council, Britain — apparently with the Bush administration's reluctant acquiescence — raced to offer compromises that might induce uncommitted Council members to vote in favor of military action. Chief among them is the listing of specific disarmament "benchmarks" that Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leader, would have to meet to avoid war.

"What people are asking us to do is define more precisely for them, to define what it is that would allow us to say, yes, he is cooperating, or not," Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said today. One such benchmark, he said, would be whether Iraq was allowing its weapons scientists to be interviewed outside the country.…

Britain is also considering calls to extend a deadline beyond March 17, which several undecided nations have said would be essential. Exactly how far the deadline would be extended is uncertain. Britain may be willing to consider an extension of one or two weeks, officials said, while the undecided nations would prefer something closer to a month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/international/middleeast/11IRAQ.html

Growing Number in U.S. Back War, Survey Finds
But a majority of respondents, 52 percent, say inspectors should be given more time to search for evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons on the ground in Iraq. Still, that number has dropped over the past month, and there has been an increase in the number of Americans who say the United States has done enough to find a diplomatic solution in Iraq.

Taken together, the Times/CBS News findings suggest that President Bush has made progress, at least at home, in portraying Saddam Hussein as a threat to peace while rallying support for a war over rising objections in the international community. They also signal that the nation may be moving toward the traditional wartime rallying around the president that the White House — and Mr. Bush's Democratic opponents — have anticipated.

At the same time, there was evidence that many Americans remain perplexed about what Mr. Bush is doing and why he is doing it. While Mr. Bush says his main goal is disarming Iraq, Americans are more likely to say he is motivated by a desire to oust Mr. Hussein from power. A majority of Americans say the White House has failed to tell them what they need to know about the justification for a pre-emptive attack.

Respondents were nearly evenly divided when asked if Mr. Bush was being guided by the memory of his father's dealings with Mr. Hussein in prosecuting what would be the nation's second war against Iraq in 12 years. Nearly half said Mr. Bush was driven by the personal desire to accomplish what his father did not when he cut off his invasion of Iraq in 1991 without ousting Mr. Hussein. Younger men in the poll were more apt to see a familial motivation for the president.

There is clear concern among Americans that the United States is paying a price internationally for Mr. Bush's aggressive posture. The number of Americans who believe that their president enjoys the respect of world leaders has dropped to 45 percent from 67 percent in the space of a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/politics/11POLL.html

Tax Cuts and War Have Seldom Mixed
In the current situation, the Bush administration argues that a war against Iraq is bound to be short and relatively inexpensive, so there is no risk in cutting taxes.

"The cost of the war will be small," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Ways and Means Committee this week. "We can afford the war, and we'll put it behind us."

W. Elliot Brownlee, a tax historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, chuckled when he was told of Mr. Snow's remark. "That's what might have been said at the outset of almost any of the significant wars," Mr. Brownlee said.

For instance, after the attack on Fort Sumter started the Civil War, most experts predicted that the war would last a few months at the most, and President Abraham Lincoln's Treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase, estimated that the war would cost $320 million.

In fact, the war lasted four bloody years and cost $5 billion, more than 15 times Chase's forecast.

In the early days of the military buildup in Vietnam, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson also thought they could safely cut taxes and meet military expenditures. Business taxes were cut in 1962, and income taxes were cut across the board in 1964.

But as the United States' commitment in Vietnam grew, budgetary strains mounted.

In in his State of the Union Message in 1967, Johnson asked Congress for a tax increase to keep the budget deficit "within prudent limits and to give our country and our fighting men the help they need in this hour of trial."

Congress balked for a time. But in 1968, a 10 percent surcharge was imposed on individual and corporate income taxes. Under President Richard M. Nixon, taxes were raised again in 1969.

The history of wartime taxes in this country can be found in Professor Brownlee's book "Federal Taxation in America: A Short History" (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1996); in "The Great Tax Wars," by Steven R. Weisman (Simon & Schuster, 2002); and in a 2002 Library of Congress report, "Financing Issues and Economic Effects of Past American Wars," by Marc Labonte.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/politics/09TALK.html

Is It Good for the Jews?
While the polls show that the attitudes of American Jews on a war with Iraq are not appreciably different from those of the general electorate, most of the big Jewish organizations and many donors (with the important exception of Hollywood donors) are backing war.

I don't for a second believe that Mr. Bush is marching to war to secure the votes of Palm Beach County. But Republican strategists do foresee — and savor — the fact that a victory in Iraq could give the president new inroads with a small but politically active and traditionally Democratic constituency.

"If the policy succeeds in the war and the peace," one Republican strategist said, "then I think you'll see a further tectonic shift of Jewish political support, both in terms of money and votes, toward Bush. That's not why it's being done, but it will be a consequence if they're successful."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/08/opinion/08KELL.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Troop Movement Could Cost $25 Billion, Congressional Office Finds
The Congressional Budget Office estimated today that simply sending troops and equipment to the Persian Gulf to fight Iraq and returning them home would cost nearly $25 billion and that the total cost of a potential war would doubtless be much higher depending on how long hostilities lasted and how much was spent on reconstruction and other assistance.

The Bush administration has repeatedly refused to predict what a war might cost. At his news conference on Thursday night, President Bush said that the money would be requested from Congress "at the appropriate time" and that the price of doing nothing would be far greater than the price of going to war.

Last week, a senior Defense Department official suggested that a war might cost $60 billion or more.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/08/politics/08BUDG.html

Just War — or a Just War?
For a war to be just, it must meet several clearly defined criteria.

The war can be waged only as a last resort, with all nonviolent options exhausted. In the case of Iraq, it is obvious that clear alternatives to war exist. These options — previously proposed by our own leaders and approved by the United Nations — were outlined again by the Security Council on Friday. But now, with our own national security not directly threatened and despite the overwhelming opposition of most people and governments in the world, the United States seems determined to carry out military and diplomatic action that is almost unprecedented in the history of civilized nations. The first stage of our widely publicized war plan is to launch 3,000 bombs and missiles on a relatively defenseless Iraqi population within the first few hours of an invasion, with the purpose of so damaging and demoralizing the people that they will change their obnoxious leader, who will most likely be hidden and safe during the bombardment.

The war's weapons must discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. Extensive aerial bombardment, even with precise accuracy, inevitably results in "collateral damage." Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf, has expressed concern about many of the military targets being near hospitals, schools, mosques and private homes.

Its violence must be proportional to the injury we have suffered. Despite Saddam Hussein's other serious crimes, American efforts to tie Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been unconvincing.

The attackers must have legitimate authority sanctioned by the society they profess to represent. The unanimous vote of approval in the Security Council to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction can still be honored, but our announced goals are now to achieve regime change and to establish a Pax Americana in the region, perhaps occupying the ethnically divided country for as long as a decade. For these objectives, we do not have international authority. Other members of the Security Council have so far resisted the enormous economic and political influence that is being exerted from Washington, and we are faced with the possibility of either a failure to get the necessary votes or else a veto from Russia, France and China. Although Turkey may still be enticed into helping us by enormous financial rewards and partial future control of the Kurds and oil in northern Iraq, its democratic Parliament has at least added its voice to the worldwide expressions of concern.

The peace it establishes must be a clear improvement over what exists. Although there are visions of peace and democracy in Iraq, it is quite possible that the aftermath of a military invasion will destabilize the region and prompt terrorists to further jeopardize our security at home. Also, by defying overwhelming world opposition, the United States will undermine the United Nations as a viable institution for world peace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/opinion/09CART.html

Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein
The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) was one of a series of crises during an era of upheaval in the Middle East: revolution in Iran, occupation of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by militant students, invasion of the Great Mosque in Mecca by anti-royalist Islamicists, the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan, and internecine fighting among Syrians, Israelis, and Palestinians in Lebanon. The war followed months of rising tension between the Iranian Islamic republic and secular nationalist Iraq. In mid-September 1980 Iraq attacked, in the mistaken belief that Iranian political disarray would guarantee a quick victory.

The international community responded with U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire and for all member states to refrain from actions contributing in any way to the conflict's continuation. The Soviets, opposing the war, cut off arms exports to Iran and to Iraq, its ally under a 1972 treaty (arms deliveries resumed in 1982). The U.S. had already ended, when the shah fell, previously massive military sales to Iran. In 1980 the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran because of the Tehran embassy hostage crisis; Iraq had broken off ties with the U.S. during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The U.S. was officially neutral regarding the Iran-Iraq war, and claimed that it armed neither side. Iran depended on U.S.-origin weapons, however, and sought them from Israel, Europe, Asia, and South America. Iraq started the war with a large Soviet-supplied arsenal, but needed additional weaponry as the conflict wore on.

Initially, Iraq advanced far into Iranian territory, but was driven back within months. By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism. (It had been included several years earlier because of ties with several Palestinian nationalist groups, not Islamicists sharing the worldview of al-Qaeda. Activism by Iraq's main Shiite Islamicist opposition group, al-Dawa, was a major factor precipitating the war -- stirred by Iran's Islamic revolution, its endeavors included the attempted assassination of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.)

Prolonging the war was phenomenally expensive. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. Agriculture Department provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans for purchases of American commodities, to the satisfaction of U.S. grain exporters.

The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country's official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan. These were prepared pursuant to his March 1982 National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 4-82) asking for a review of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

One of these directives from Reagan, National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 99, signed on July 12, 1983, is available only in a highly redacted version [Document 21] (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq21.pdf). It reviews U.S. regional interests in the Middle East and South Asia, and U.S. objectives, including peace between Israel and the Arabs, resolution of other regional conflicts, and economic and military improvements, "to strengthen regional stability." It deals with threats to the U.S., strategic planning, cooperation with other countries, including the Arab states, and plans for action. An interdepartmental review of the implications of shifting policy in favor of Iraq was conducted following promulgation of the directive.

By the summer of 1983 Iran had been reporting Iraqi use of using chemical weapons for some time. The Geneva protocol requires that the international community respond to chemical warfare, but a diplomatically isolated Iran received only a muted response to its complaints [Note 1]. It intensified its accusations in October 1983, however, and in November asked for a United Nations Security Council investigation.…
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

News: Web sites cringe over CDA case
A controversial case before a federal appeals court could significantly restrict legal protections that have long absolved Internet companies from responsibility for their customers' actions.

The issue stems from a libel lawsuit filed by actress Christianne Carafano over postings that appeared on the dating site Matchmaker.com. Her suit was filed against the company that operates the site, Metrosplash, which was acquired by Lycos in June 2000 for about $44 million in cash.

Carafano, whose roles under the stage name Chase Masterson include Leeta on the TV show "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," sued Metrosplash after someone posted a personals ad that mixed accurate information, including her name and address, with alleged falsehoods.

In March 2002, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California rejected Carafano's libel claim, citing traditional defamation law that makes malice difficult for public figures to prove. In his decision, however, Judge Dickran Tevrizian also said Metrosplash was not shielded by Section 230 of the landmark Communications Decency Act, which has long protected online companies from being held responsible for material that others post on their sites or send through their servers and networks.

"The language of the statute itself requires this court to determine whether Matchmaker, as a provider of an interactive computer service, is an information content provider, i.e., is partly responsible for the creation or development of the information being provided," Tevrizian wrote in the decision. "This court concludes that Matchmaker is such an information content provider. Consequently, the immunity of Section 230 does not extend to it as a matter of law."

The ruling is believed to be the first significant challenge to the core protections of the Communications Decency Act, which were drafted seven years ago at the behest of Internet service providers such as America Online. The statute, which granted broad immunity for ISPs and other companies doing business online, states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

Congress initially created Section 230 as what experts describe as a political quid pro quo with online companies. The CDA criminalized "indecent" material, potentially making ISPs and sites liable for what their users published through them, and Section 230 was intended to create a "safe harbor" for the companies to win their support of the law.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-991327.html

News: Trustworthy Computing: What's next?
Mike Nash, vice president of the security business unit at Microsoft, is the executive responsible for the security component of Trustworthy Computing push. CNET News.com recently spoke with Nash about the effect of the Slammer worm on the Trustworthy Computing initiative and where Microsoft expects to take its security program in its second year.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-990919.html

"It's going to affect the cases that arise over infringement because Justice Stevens emphasizes that infringement is about the interests of consumers, not just protection of companies. A lot of judges and lawyers have lost sight of that,"Paul Levy said.

,Paul Levy said
News: Net critics win Supreme Court clout
Americans who own Internet domains that criticize corporations or use their trademarks received a surprise legal boost on Tuesday, thanks to a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 9-0 decision, the justices effectively narrowed the scope of a federal trademark law that frequently is invoked in spats over domain names. The effect is to make it more difficult for trademark owners to win lawsuits over alleged infringements of their intellectual property rights.

Even if consumers recognize a word or phrase as a trademark, the court ruled, "such mental association will not necessarily reduce the capacity of the famous mark to identify the goods of its owner."

Tuesday's decision arose out of a lawsuit brought by undergarment-vendor Victoria's Secret against a sex toy shop called Victor's Secret in Elizabethtown, Ky. In an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court said Victoria's Secret had not proven that the value of its trademark to identify its own stores or products had been reduced.

Under a federal law called the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, actions that effectively dilute the value and distinctiveness of the trademark can be punished. Dilution is defined as the "lessening of the capacity of a famous mark to identify and distinguish goods or services."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-991052.html

The War on Schools
There's something surreal about the fact that the United States of America, the richest, most powerful nation in history, can't provide a basic public school education for all of its children.

Actually, that's wrong. Strike the word "can't." The correct word is more damning, more reflective of the motives of the people in power. The correct word is "won't."

Without giving the costs much thought, we'll spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an oil-powered misadventure in the Middle East. But we won't scrape together the money for sufficient textbooks and teachers, or even, in some cases, to keep the doors open at public schools in struggling districts from Boston on the East Coast to Portland on the West.

In Oregon, which is one of many states facing an extreme budget crisis, teachers have agreed to work two weeks without pay, thus averting plans to shorten the school year by nearly five weeks. A funding crisis in Texas, where the state share of school financing has reached a 50-year low and is expected to go lower, has local officials preparing for cuts in everything from extracurricular activities and elective subjects (like journalism) to teachers, counselors and nurses.…

Similar stories can be heard in state after state. In New York, more than 1,000 students, teachers, administrators and activists traveled to Albany on Tuesday to march against proposed state budget cuts that are so severe they mock the very idea of the sound, basic education the state is obliged by law to provide.…

There is no way to overstate the gulf between the need for funding and the reality of funding in urban school districts. And that gulf is widening, not narrowing.…

Education is the food that nourishes the nation's soul. When public officials refuse to provide adequate school resources for the young, it's the same as parents refusing to feed their children.…

It's unconscionable. It's criminal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/opinion/06HERB.html

At Least 10 Die as Bomb Shreds Bus in Israel
"The bus exploded," a witness who gave his name as Dore told Israel Radio, Reuters reported. "The entire bus was damaged. The entire bus caught fire. The entire top of the bus is totally destroyed — the windows, doors. Nothing is left."

"I saw people dying, being burned to death," another witness told Channel One television.

Officials said because of the hour, the bus would have been packed with students from the nearby University of Haifa.

There was no immediate reaction from Israeli officials or the Palestinian Authority.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a spokesman for the militant Hamas group, praised the attack but did not claim responsibility, The Associated Press reported. "We will not stop our resistance," he said. "We are not going to give up in the face of the daily killing" of Palestinians.

The attack coincides with a two-week-old Israeli military offensive against Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip in which dozens of Palestinians have been killed, including some civilians.

Earlier today Israeli troops arrested 20 Palestinians throughout the West Bank and demolished the home of an Islamic militant in a continued security clampdown.

The fresh sweep followed a day of clashes in which three Palestinians were killed and Israel drew rare criticism from the White House over Palestinian civilian casualties.

Palestinian witnesses said troops entered the West Bank cities of Qalqilya and Jericho today, as well as villages outside Bethlehem, to make the arrests, Reuters reported.


"We condemn these incursions into Qalqilya and Jericho," a Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said. "The Israelis are exercising their authority either by reoccupation or incursion to arrest, to kill, and to assassinate."

On Monday, while arresting a leader and several members of Hamas in a refugee camp south of Gaza, Israeli forces killed eight Palestinians, including gunmen who engaged in a firefight. Among the dead was a pregnant woman, killed when a wall fell on her as soldiers demolished the home of a neighbor, an Islamic Jihad militant.

Israel expressed regret for the death, while blaming terrorists whom it described as hiding in a civilian population.

At the White House, Ari Fleischer, the press secretary, said when asked about Israel's policy of demolishing the homes of those it accuses of terrorism, "We have long stated that Israel has a right to defend itself, but it's important for Israel to act in a way that is reflective of the needs and legitimate aspirations of the innocent."

He continued, "We have concerns about actions that go beyond and that bring harm to the innocent, including innocent Palestinians."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/international/middleeast/05CND-MIDE.html

Five Years of Search Engine Changes
The act of searching really hasn't changed all that much in the last fives years. Surfers still type in words and phrases in a quest to find the perfect web site to meet their needs, just like they did five years ago. Searches are still looking for the most accurate results and the least amount of spam.

What has changed is the quality of the results they now receive and the engines and directories that provide them. Alta Vista, the king of search up until 1999 was already being replaced with Inktomi as the engine of choice for portal site Yahoo! Google was just starting to be discovered by the general public and Microsoft had just launched their own search engine and portal site in beta.

The indexing abilities of search engines has improved dramatically, and index sizes have reached impressive levels. In late 1998, Google was boasting an index of about 25 million pages, compared to over 3 billion today. The quality of results has improved as well. All of the engines remaining as viable players have taken lengthy steps towards installing and improving spam filters to keep results clean and relevant.…
http://websearch.about.com/library/weekly/aa021803b.htm

The Search Engine Report, March 4, 2003, Number 75
The Search Engine Report is a monthly newsletter that covers developments with search engines and changes to the Search Engine Watch web site, http://searchenginewatch.com/.

In This Issue

+ Search Engine Strategies In Boston Today, Sydney This Month, London In June
+ Google Throws Hat Into The Contextual Advertising Ring
+ Up Close With Google's Contextual Ads
+ Overture CEO Ted Meisel Speaks On Acquisition Plans
+ MSN Search: We're In No Rush To Change
+ Google Acts To Protect Trademark
+ Where Are They Now? Search Engines We've Known & Loved
+ Overture To Buy FAST Web Search Division
+ Overture To Buy AltaVista
+ Singingfish Grows As Multimedia Search Provider
+ Google Buys Blogging Company - But Why?
+ Search Engine Resources
+ SearchDay Articles
+ Search Engine Articles
+ List Info (Subscribing/Unsubscribing)

Past articles may be found at http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/bydate.html.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/current.html

"Regrettably, from time to time, false job postings are listed online and used to illegally collect personal information from unsuspecting job seekers…"

News: Monster.com warns of ID theft
In an attempt to curb identity theft on its service, online career listing site Monster.com has begun warning its users of fake job postings bent on stealing personal information.

The largest U.S. online job board, a division of TMP Worldwide, sent e-mails to its users this week telling them that fraudulent job positions were being posted as a way to obtain personal information. The e-mail offered suggestions to prevent theft, such as never revealing social security, credit card or nonwork-related information to potential employers.

"Regrettably, from time to time, false job postings are listed online and used to illegally collect personal information from unsuspecting job seekers," according to a copy of the e-mail forwarded by a reader. "The placement of such false job postings is a violation of the Monster terms of use and may also be a criminal violation of federal and/or state law."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-990612.html

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A Pivot Point for the Middle East
Since last June, the Bush administration has premised its policy toward peace in the Middle East on what is apparently a paradox: it has sought an act of selfless statesmanship from a leader, Yasir Arafat, whom it regards as no statesman.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the administration has intently worked toward what it calls regime change, but in the Palestinian Authority it has contented itself with periodic public gestures and demands. It has refused to send high-level envoys to Mr. Arafat, while demanding that he step aside as Palestinian leader in the interests of restarting peace negotiations and ultimately of achieving a state for his people. Mr. Arafat has not done so, contending that it is up to the Palestinians to pick their leaders.

While this impasse has endured, so has the essential dynamic of the conflict, despite all the suffering and violence by both Israelis and Palestinians in the last year. As the administration's attention shifted to other crises, Palestinian attacks continued, Israeli soldiers operated more and more freely in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israeli blockades of Palestinian cities tightened and Israeli settlements grew.

The impasse over Mr. Arafat is also likely to muffle the immediate effects of two significant developments here this week, a renewed vow by President Bush to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's formation of a new right-wing Israeli government.

…Mr. Bush predicted that new leadership in Iraq would better position Palestinians "to choose new leaders" and halt all violence.

That message has important implications for the second development. Mr. Sharon created his coalition with the participation of two parties that oppose any Palestinian state — a declared goal of Mr. Bush and a declared concession of Mr. Sharon — and that passionately support the settler movement, which the United States has traditionally considered an obstacle to peace.

Mr. Bush appeared to be softening the demands on Israel in a draft for a "road map" to peace by the so-called diplomatic quartet of the United States, United Nations, the European Union and Russia. As drafted, the plan called for immediate concessions by both sides, including insisting that Israel dismantle settlement outposts built since March 2001.

The Israeli government has proposed numerous modifications to the road map, and the Bush administration has repeatedly postponed its announcement of a final plan.

As long as the Americans keep the pressure on Mr. Arafat and do not demand action against settlements or progress toward negotiations — that is, as long as Mr. Sharon can continue functioning as he has been — the far-right in the government and the hawks in Mr. Sharon's Likud Party are unlikely to become restive. They may not even urge Mr. Sharon to renegotiate his pledge to Mr. Bush two years ago not to harm Mr. Arafat, because as long as Mr. Arafat remains in the West Bank, their potential disagreements with Americans and each other over proceeding toward peace are moot, at least judging by Washington's present approach. Mr. Sharon has said that his pledge not to harm Mr. Arafat was all that kept him from trying to force him into exile last year.

At bottom, leaders on both sides are seeking to keep their options open until the expected war in Iraq is under way, which they think will cause the White House to return its attention here and perhaps adjust its policy. "Once this operation starts, things will start moving again here," said Shmuel Sandler, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University.

If concessions are demanded, Mr. Sharon can argue that his right-wing coalition gives him little room to maneuver. Or, if he wishes to act on his stated desire for an agreement that yields a limited Palestinian state in less than half of the West Bank and Gaza, he can sustain a break with the right and seek support from other factions, including the left-of-center Labor Party.

For his part, Mr. Arafat has edged toward meeting the administration's demand, saying he will shortly appoint a prime minister, although he has not yet said who will it will be or what powers he will have. More than a year after being declared "irrelevant" by the Israeli government and shunned by the United States, Mr. Arafat remains at the pivot point of peace in the Middle East.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/international/middleeast/02MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Does Democracy Avert Famine?
Few scholars have left more of a mark on the field of development economics than Amartya Sen.

The winner of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, Mr. Sen has changed the way economists think about such issues as collective decision-making, welfare economics and measuring poverty. He has pioneered the use of economic tools to highlight gender inequality, and he helped the United Nations devise its Human Development Index — today the most widely used measure of how well nations meet basic social needs.

More than anything, though, Mr. Sen is known for his work on famine. Just as Adam Smith is associated with the phrase "invisible hand" and Joseph Schumpeter with "creative destruction," Mr. Sen is famous for his assertion that famines do not occur in democracies. "No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy," he wrote in "Democracy as Freedom" (Anchor, 1999). This, he explained, is because democratic governments "have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes." This proposition, advanced in a host of books and articles, has shaped the thinking of a generation of policy makers, scholars and relief workers who deal with famine.

Now, however, in India, the main focus of Mr. Sen's research, there are growing reports of starvation. In drought-ravaged states like Rajasthan in the west and Orissa in the east, many families have been reduced to eating bark and grass to stay alive. Already thousands may have died. This is occurring against a backdrop of endemic hunger and malnutrition. About 350 million of India's one billion people go to bed hungry every night, and half of all Indian children are malnourished. Meanwhile, the country is awash in grain, with the government sitting on a surplus of more than 50 million tons. Such want amid such plenty has generated public protests, critical editorials and an appeal to India's Supreme Court to force the government to use its surpluses to feed the hungry.

All of which has raised new questions about Mr. Sen's famous thesis. In an article critical of him in The Observer of London last summer, Vandana Shiva, an ecological activist in India, wrote that while it is true that famine disappeared in India in 1947, with independence and elections, it is "making a comeback." The problem, she added in an interview, "has not yet reached the scale seen in the Horn of Africa," but if nothing is done, "in three or four years India could be in the same straits."

To Mr. Sen, though, it is not the thesis that needs revision but the popular understanding of it. Yes, famines do not occur in democracies, he said in a phone interview, but "it would be a misapprehension to believe that democracy solves the problem of hunger." Mr. Sen, who is the master of Trinity College at Cambridge University, said his writings on famine frequently noted the problems India has had in feeding its people, and he was baffled by the amount of attention his comments about famine and democracy had received. The Nobel committee, in awarding its prize, did not even mention this aspect of his work, he said, adding, however, that many newspapers had seized on it and misrepresented it.

Mr. Sen's views about famine and hunger have recently been put to the test by Dan Banik, an Indian-born political scientist at the University of Oslo. Mr. Banik has spent much of the last several years in India, studying the parched, desperate Kalahandi region of Orissa. In that area alone, Mr. Banik said by phone from India, he found 300 starvation deaths in six months. And they are hardly unique. "I have collected newspaper reports on starvation for six years in Indian newspapers," he said, "and there's not a state where it hasn't happened. Starvation is widespread in India."

He quickly added, however, that the toll was nowhere near the hundreds of thousands that constitute a famine. In fact, Mr. Sen's theory about famines not occurring in democracies "applies rather well to India," he said. "There has not been a large-scale loss of life since 1947." At the same time, he said, "there have been many incidents of large-scale food crises that, while not resulting in actual famines, have led to many, many deaths."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/arts/01HUNG.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Former Klansman Is Found Guilty of 1966 Killing
Ben Chester White used twists of wire to hold the soles on his shoes, patched his own clothes with scrap and said "yes, sir," to white men, and when he made a little money, he wrapped the $1 bills in wax paper so they would not be ruined by his own sweat. He was not registered to vote, and had never fought against the segregation that was as much a fact of life for him as a hoe handle or cotton sack.

He died huddled in a car's back seat, killed by men who needed a piece of bait, who needed to kill a black man so brutally in the summer of 1966 that the act itself would lure the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Natchez, Miss., so that they could assassinate him.

Today, in a federal courtroom in Jackson, Mr. White, the 67-year-old field hand, became, officially, a martyr of the civil rights movement.

"Imagine the hatred," said Paige Fitzgerald, a trial lawyer with the United States Department of Justice, after helping to convict Mr. Avants.

It was just the latest of several convictions over the last decade of old killers in civil rights cases who thought they had gotten clean away. But it was the first federal murder trial, and the first to involve a victim who was not a civil rights hero or well-known casualty, like Medgar Evers, a civil rights hero in Mississippi, or the four girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing.

"This courtroom has been a time machine where the past and the present have collided," said Jack Lacy, the federal prosecutor who tried the case here.

He was acquitted in state court in 1967, despite the testimony of an F.B.I. agent who said that Mr. Avants had confessed to the crime, and he seemed destined to live out his life a free man.

But the revelation that Mr. White's body had been found on federal land, in a national forest, gave prosecutors a way around the double jeopardy protections that had shielded Mr. Avants, and, years ago, they began building their case. Everything he had ever said about the case was relevant and damaging, all over again.

This week, the F.B.I. agent who had heard him confess in 1967, Allan Kornblum, returned to Mississippi to again tell the jury what he heard.

"I blew his head off with a shotgun," Mr. Kornblum testified that Mr. Avants told him in 1967.

But this time, in a racial climate that is more prone to automatically condemn such behavior than to automatically dismiss it or condone it, as was the case then, the jury came back with a guilty verdict.

For Mr. White's son, Jesse White, it was like finally being fed after living his whole life hungry.

"Like a good meal," said Mr. White, 65. "It feels good."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/national/01SLAY.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Palestinian Assets 'a Mess,' Official Says
The Palestinian Authority's top finance official said today that he had identified $600 million in Authority assets in 79 commercial ventures, including money that he said appeared to have given rise to Israeli accusations of slush funds controlled by Mr. Arafat and others.

"Of all the issues in public finance that cause us to have a bad name, this probably is the one that had the biggest neon sign on it," said the finance minister, Salam Fayyad, a former official of the International Monetary Fund who has been praised by American and Israeli officials as an energetic reformer.

In an interview here, Mr. Fayyad described a jumble of individually managed investments of public money in concerns ranging from Canadian biopharmaceuticals to Algerian cellphones.

While declining to discuss in detail the performance of officials who previously controlled the investments, Mr. Fayyad said the money would now be managed by a publicly accountable board of directors of the new Palestine Investment Fund.

Mr. Fayyad commissioned a study by Standard & Poor's and the Democracy Council, a nonprofit organization, as part of an effort to track down the Palestinian Authority's assets and put its finances on a sounder footing.

The groups have produced a 345-page report, which Mr. Fayyad released today, of the 10 largest investments, which amount to more than half of the total assets. They are continuing their work on the 69 other investments.

"It's a mess," Mr. Fayyad said of the scattered portfolio. "We are all over the place. I mean, what business do we have being in 79 commercial ventures? Really."

He said he planned to begin selling off the assets, depending on market conditions. "Commerce is an honorable profession, but it's not for the state," he said. He said the rate of return on the assets varied widely, as did their present value.

For example, the report pegs the present market value of the Palestinian Authority's 23 percent stake in the Oasis Hotel Casino Resort in Jericho, in the West Bank, at $28.5 million.

The casino was once a popular destination for Israelis, but it has been closed during the current conflict. The Authority's investment would presumably be worth far more if the casino were functioning.

The study covers only the finances of the Palestinian Authority, which by agreement with Israel has limited power to govern Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and not of the Palestinians' umbrella organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Authority identified what investments should be examined, according to a spokesman for Standard & Poor's.

Palestinians have long criticized some Authority officials as corruptly profiting from monopolies in goods like cement, but the report does not accuse any officials of corruption.

Under pressure from the United States, Israel has begun releasing customs duties and other taxes paid by Palestinians that by agreement it is supposed to pass to the Authority. Israel had sequestered the money, which amounts to more than $100 million dollars, saying the Authority would use it to finance terrorism.

Mr. Fayyad said the Authority had begun using the money to pay off unpaid bills — some dating to 1999 — for things like electricity, water and gasoline.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/international/middleeast/01PALE.html

Iraq Says It's Destroyed Four Missiles
The U.N. order said Iraq must destroy the missiles, their unassembled components, fuel, engines, launchers and software. The program that created the missiles also must go -- its scientists dispersed and its records wiped out.

U.S. analysts worry that if Iraq is still hiding chemical and biological weapons, it could load them on the Al Samoud 2 to target U.S. forces deployed in the Persian Gulf region, now 225,000 strong.

Iraq has begun taking inspectors to disposal sites where it says it unilaterally destroyed biological weapons.

Inspectors returned Saturday to al-Aziziya, an abandoned helicopter airfield 60 miles southeast of Baghdad where Iraq says it destroyed R-400 bombs filled with biological weapons in 1991.

At the site, bulldozers moved mounds of earth to reveal rusty, dirt-caked warheads and bomb fragments, some as large as cars. Nearby, missiles bearing U.N. identification tags rusted in a parched field.

An American U-2 reconnaissance plane flew over Iraq for more than six hours Friday -- the fourth such flight in support of the U.N. inspections, Iraq said.

Inspectors also visited a military unit responsible for securing Saddam's hometown, Tikrit, and a base of the elite Republican Guard near Baghdad on Saturday.

Travelers and U.S. intelligence sources have recently reported that the Republican Guard has been converging on Tikrit and Baghdad, preparing for what many see as a final stand in the event of a U.S. invasion.

( AP URLs are reused, however the International Index from the AP http://www.nytimes.com/pages/aponline/world/will often enable you to find the article under a new URL)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

Fred Rogers, celebrated host of `Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,' dies at 74
Mr. Rogers worked in broadcasting for more than 50 years, but he's best known for the 33 years he spent writing and starring in PBS's "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

On television he was ever tolerant and always understanding, and that carried over to his humble real-life demeanor. His persona was no act. There are no stories of him turning into a raging tyrant behind-the-scenes. By all accounts, he was the same soft-spoken person on the air and off.

"It's been a privilege to pass on the good stuff that was given to me, and television has really been a fine vehicle for that," Mr. Rogers said before recording his last episode of the "Neighborhood" in fall 2000. He pointed to a frame on the wall of his office: "Life Is for Service."
http://www.post-gazette.com/breaking/20030227misterrogersweb3p3.asp

Black Facts Online
Black Facts Online is the world's largest FREE online database of Black History information. Use Black Facts Online for research, education and fun 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Black Facts Online is a public service of Inner-City Software.

At Black Facts Online, visitors can find out numerous facts dealing with African American history, along with searching for facts by date and keywords. …Each fact also contains a graphic that informs readers whether additional material is also available, such as a link to a Web site, an audio clip, or a picture. Visitors to the site are also offered the opportunity to become a research associate for the site and make contributions to the existing database of facts. Visitors to the site have the opportunity to make a goodwill donation to keep the database up to date and current.

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2002. http://www.scout.wisc.edu/
http://www.blackfacts.com/

Animated Engines
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