U.S. Airstrike Kills Three Men in Iraq
About 250 people gathered at the village cemetery to bury the three men.
``May God's curse fall upon the Americans, for they have no fear of God. Are these American human rights?'' asked Mohsen Herish, a cousin of Mohammed.
Mohammed's 48-year-old brother, Mohammed Khalaf Mohammed, who shared the house, said an American officer came to the house of his dead brother about 9 a.m. Tuesday and inspected the damage.
Mohammed said the officer, speaking through an interpreter, apologized and said, ``We are here to protect you.''
``I replied, 'If this is your protection we don't need it.' The Americans think we are protecting Saddam's people, but in our village we never even liked Saddam,'' the brother said. He said he did not have the name of the U.S. officer.
Villagers said they heard U.S. jet fighters as well as helicopters.…
A U.S. aircraft fired six missiles into a farm north of Fallujah on Tuesday, killing three men and wounding three others, police and villagers said. The U.S. military said its forces were pursuing guerrillas who attacked soldiers and that it knew of only one person killed.
Two young boys were among the wounded in the attack, and their father and two neighbors were killed, witnesses and neighbors said.
U.S. Spec. Nicole Thompson said soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were attacked and the assailants ran into a building in the village of al-Sajr, 9 miles north of Fallujah. American ground troops called in air support and one guerrilla fighter was killed, she said.
Fallujah is one of the most dangerous cities in the so-called ``Sunni Triangle,'' the region north and west of Baghdad where support for Saddam Hussein runs strongest and where U.S. troops have met stiffest resistance.
At the Fallujah hospital, Abed Rasheed, 50, one of the wounded, said he was sleeping with his family on the roof of his house when he heard small arms fire. He ran downstairs just as the American aircraft raced overhead, firing what he believed were rockets. He was hospitalized with wounds in the chest and left foot.
``There never was any trouble in our village and the Americans have never been inside it,'' said Rasheed, a retired non-commissioned army officer, from his hospital bed. ``This is genocide. This is not about overthrowing a government or regime change,'' he said.
After the strike, there were five craters -- the biggest about three yards wide -- in the courtyard of the farmhouse of Ali Khalaf Mohammed. A sixth missile crashed through the roof of one of the rooms in the house, creating a two-yard square hole.
Mohammed, 45, was killed. The other dead men were identified by villagers as Saadi Fayad and Salem Ismail, both of them neighbors said to be in their mid-30s.
The injured included two of Mohammed's sons -- Hussein, 11, and his brother Tahseen, 9. At Fallujah hospital, Hussein lay in his hospital bed wearing a blood-soaked gown. His brother was a few yards away, his face swollen from facial cuts. His right thigh bore shrapnel wounds.…
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
U.S. Fighter Jets Bomb House in Falluja
American fighter jets bombed a house belonging to a family of 15 in a village just north of here overnight, killing three and injuring three others, members of the family said today.
They said they had been asleep in the house and on its roof when an American patrol began firing on them just before 2 a.m. The residents put up no resistance, they said, and after about 15 minutes the patrol began to withdraw. Several minutes later, a pair of American jet fighters unleashed almost a dozen bombs on the house without warning, the residents said.
An American military spokeswoman confirmed that soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division killed at least one Iraqi this morning after they had come under attack just north of Falluja, which lies within the so-called Sunni Triangle, a region north and west of Baghdad where loyalty to Saddam Hussein runs deep and most of the attacks against American soldiers have taken place.
"Folks from the 82nd Airborne were attacked, the attackers fled into a building and were pursued by coalition forces," said the military spokeswoman, Specialist Nicole Thompson. The Americans established a security perimeter around the building and called in "air support," she said. "One enemy K.I.A. resulted," she said, using the military abbreviation for "killed in action."
There were no American casualties in the incident, she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/international/middleeast/23CND-IRAQ.html
American fighter jets bombed a house belonging to a family of 15 in a village just north of here overnight, killing three and injuring three others, members of the family said today.
They said they had been asleep in the house and on its roof when an American patrol began firing on them just before 2 a.m. The residents put up no resistance, they said, and after about 15 minutes the patrol began to withdraw. Several minutes later, a pair of American jet fighters unleashed almost a dozen bombs on the house without warning, the residents said.
An American military spokeswoman confirmed that soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division killed at least one Iraqi this morning after they had come under attack just north of Falluja, which lies within the so-called Sunni Triangle, a region north and west of Baghdad where loyalty to Saddam Hussein runs deep and most of the attacks against American soldiers have taken place.
"Folks from the 82nd Airborne were attacked, the attackers fled into a building and were pursued by coalition forces," said the military spokeswoman, Specialist Nicole Thompson. The Americans established a security perimeter around the building and called in "air support," she said. "One enemy K.I.A. resulted," she said, using the military abbreviation for "killed in action."
There were no American casualties in the incident, she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/international/middleeast/23CND-IRAQ.html
Saturday, September 20, 2003
RIAA Subpoena Deluge Sparks Safety Concerns
The music industry's subpoena deluge raining down on Internet service providers has sparked concerns about the wisdom of handing user identities and addresses to parties other than law enforcement. ISPs are growing worried that special subpoena powers could be abused, and providers could be caught in the position of revealing personal information to copyright holders with ill intent.
Under unique subpoena powers granted in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, copyright owners do not have to file a lawsuit and receive a judge's approval to obtain a subpoena. Instead they can certify that they believe a copyright infringement has occurred and obtain approval from a court clerk.
The Recording Industry Association of America's heavy use its power this summer to pursue alleged illegal file-swappers raises new questions about the Act and how it is being interpreted. RIAA has issued an estimated 2000 subpoenas since July and filed 200 lawsuits since Sept. 8.…
Lawmakers generally do not want to begin mandating new digital protection rules, but the crusade launched this summer by the music industry puts them under growing pressure from constituents. The controversy is shaping up to pit consumers against industry, and, reminiscent of the debate over unsolicited commercial email, it leaves Congress squarely in the middle.
"It's spam days all over again," Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said at a hearing of the Senate commerce committee Wednesday morning.
ISPs also are caught in the middle, agreeing that copyright owners are entitled to protect their work, and at the same time arguing that Internet users have rights to privacy and due process under law. Unless safeguards are added to the process, it could result in personal harm to users, some say.
James Ellis, senior executive vice president and general counsel of SBC Communications Inc., told lawmakers Wednesday that he is worried about the implications for subscribers' personal security, asserting that Internet stalkers, child molesters, domestic abusers "or some other wacko" could use subpoenas to track down victims.
The recording industry should have to file lawsuits to obtain subpoenas subject to judicial review, like anyone else, Ellis said. "That's how it's done—has been for generations," he said. "In this country there's a presumption of innocence until you have the evidence."
In response, Sherman said that RIAA collects evidence before going to a court clerk. "We issue the subpoena to see who the evidence is identifying," he said.
According to Sherman, shipments of recorded music have dropped precipitously in recent years and the root cause is Internet piracy. Litigation is just one piece of a series of strategies to force a "paradigm shift" in the way people obtain music, he said. He would not say how many lawsuit he expects RIAA to file.
The industry contends that privacy rights are not violated by the use of subpoenas because copyright holders are entitled only to the identity of alleged infringers. Further, Sherman told lawmakers, ISPs routinely share such information with marketing partners.
ISPs and privacy advocates take issue with the comparison, arguing that it is the correlation of identity with Internet use that violates privacy rights. The Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington has proposed a set of privacy safeguards, including requiring notice to alleged copyright infringers.…
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1272583,00.asp
The music industry's subpoena deluge raining down on Internet service providers has sparked concerns about the wisdom of handing user identities and addresses to parties other than law enforcement. ISPs are growing worried that special subpoena powers could be abused, and providers could be caught in the position of revealing personal information to copyright holders with ill intent.
Under unique subpoena powers granted in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, copyright owners do not have to file a lawsuit and receive a judge's approval to obtain a subpoena. Instead they can certify that they believe a copyright infringement has occurred and obtain approval from a court clerk.
The Recording Industry Association of America's heavy use its power this summer to pursue alleged illegal file-swappers raises new questions about the Act and how it is being interpreted. RIAA has issued an estimated 2000 subpoenas since July and filed 200 lawsuits since Sept. 8.…
Lawmakers generally do not want to begin mandating new digital protection rules, but the crusade launched this summer by the music industry puts them under growing pressure from constituents. The controversy is shaping up to pit consumers against industry, and, reminiscent of the debate over unsolicited commercial email, it leaves Congress squarely in the middle.
"It's spam days all over again," Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said at a hearing of the Senate commerce committee Wednesday morning.
ISPs also are caught in the middle, agreeing that copyright owners are entitled to protect their work, and at the same time arguing that Internet users have rights to privacy and due process under law. Unless safeguards are added to the process, it could result in personal harm to users, some say.
James Ellis, senior executive vice president and general counsel of SBC Communications Inc., told lawmakers Wednesday that he is worried about the implications for subscribers' personal security, asserting that Internet stalkers, child molesters, domestic abusers "or some other wacko" could use subpoenas to track down victims.
The recording industry should have to file lawsuits to obtain subpoenas subject to judicial review, like anyone else, Ellis said. "That's how it's done—has been for generations," he said. "In this country there's a presumption of innocence until you have the evidence."
In response, Sherman said that RIAA collects evidence before going to a court clerk. "We issue the subpoena to see who the evidence is identifying," he said.
According to Sherman, shipments of recorded music have dropped precipitously in recent years and the root cause is Internet piracy. Litigation is just one piece of a series of strategies to force a "paradigm shift" in the way people obtain music, he said. He would not say how many lawsuit he expects RIAA to file.
The industry contends that privacy rights are not violated by the use of subpoenas because copyright holders are entitled only to the identity of alleged infringers. Further, Sherman told lawmakers, ISPs routinely share such information with marketing partners.
ISPs and privacy advocates take issue with the comparison, arguing that it is the correlation of identity with Internet use that violates privacy rights. The Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington has proposed a set of privacy safeguards, including requiring notice to alleged copyright infringers.…
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1272583,00.asp
Friday, September 19, 2003
Low-Calorie-Diet Study Takes Scientists Aback
cientists know that very strict low-calorie diets can prolong life. But now they report that it does not matter when you start that diet — at least if you are a fruit fly. The life-prolonging effect kicks in immediately, continues as long as the diet, and is lost as soon as the dieting stops.
"We were very surprised, completely taken aback," said Dr. Linda Partridge, a professor at University College London, whose laboratory made the discovery.
For now, no one has a clue about what the crucial changes are in a fly's body when it goes on or off a diet. "It's been assumed that the reason things live longer when they diet is that there is a slowing down of age-related damage," Dr. Partridge said. But, she added, it now appears that cannot be true. "The system has no memory."
In a detailed demographic analysis of life and death among 7,492 fruit flies, published today in Science magazine, Dr. Partridge and her colleagues discovered that the protective effect of dieting snaps into place within 48 hours, whether the diet starts early in life or late. Flies that dieted for the first time in middle age were the same as flies that had been dieting their whole lives. But the effect can be lost just as quickly. Flies that dieted their entire lives and then switched, as adults, to eating their fill were the same two days later as flies that had never dieted.
Dr. Huber Warner, who directs the biology of aging program at the National Institute on Aging, said that it was as if dieting flies "put on a suit of armor."
"It seems like the dietary restriction puts the flies into a different kind of state where they are temporarily able to resist damaging events so that they survive rather than die," Dr. Warner said.
Dr. James W. Vaupel, a demographer at the Max Planck Institute for Demography in Rostock, Germany, said the findings put decades of research on the effects of calorie restriction in a new light. "We've known for a long time that dietary restriction increases survival," Dr. Vaupel said. "What we haven't known is that it's never too late."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/19/science/19DIET.html
cientists know that very strict low-calorie diets can prolong life. But now they report that it does not matter when you start that diet — at least if you are a fruit fly. The life-prolonging effect kicks in immediately, continues as long as the diet, and is lost as soon as the dieting stops.
"We were very surprised, completely taken aback," said Dr. Linda Partridge, a professor at University College London, whose laboratory made the discovery.
For now, no one has a clue about what the crucial changes are in a fly's body when it goes on or off a diet. "It's been assumed that the reason things live longer when they diet is that there is a slowing down of age-related damage," Dr. Partridge said. But, she added, it now appears that cannot be true. "The system has no memory."
In a detailed demographic analysis of life and death among 7,492 fruit flies, published today in Science magazine, Dr. Partridge and her colleagues discovered that the protective effect of dieting snaps into place within 48 hours, whether the diet starts early in life or late. Flies that dieted for the first time in middle age were the same as flies that had been dieting their whole lives. But the effect can be lost just as quickly. Flies that dieted their entire lives and then switched, as adults, to eating their fill were the same two days later as flies that had never dieted.
Dr. Huber Warner, who directs the biology of aging program at the National Institute on Aging, said that it was as if dieting flies "put on a suit of armor."
"It seems like the dietary restriction puts the flies into a different kind of state where they are temporarily able to resist damaging events so that they survive rather than die," Dr. Warner said.
Dr. James W. Vaupel, a demographer at the Max Planck Institute for Demography in Rostock, Germany, said the findings put decades of research on the effects of calorie restriction in a new light. "We've known for a long time that dietary restriction increases survival," Dr. Vaupel said. "What we haven't known is that it's never too late."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/19/science/19DIET.html
Last month, a U.S. soldier shot dead award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana on the outskirts of Baghdad. The U.S. Army said the soldier mistook Dana's camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
U.S. troops opened fire on a car carrying an Italian diplomat who holds a senior position in Iraq's U.S.-led administration, killing his Iraqi interpreter, American military sources said Friday.
Pietro Cordone, senior adviser on culture for the U.S.-led authority, was unhurt, Italian Foreign Ministry sources said. Cordone has been leading efforts to recover priceless antiquities looted from museums and archeological sites since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Many Iraqis accuse U.S. troops of being too quick to open fire and failing to follow rules of engagement.
Human rights groups say many innocent Iraqis have been killed. The United States says it keeps no figures on civilian casualties.
Last week, the U.S. Army apologized after soldiers in the tense town of Falluja killed 10 Iraqi security guards and a Jordanian in a gun battle that was later described as an accident.
Locals in Falluja say U.S. troops there also killed a teen-ager Wednesday night when they opened fire after hearing celebratory gunshots from a wedding, mistakenly believing they were under attack.
U.S. Troops Fire at Italian Diplomat's Car in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-italy-shooting.html
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/reuters/world/
U.S. troops opened fire on a car carrying an Italian diplomat who holds a senior position in Iraq's U.S.-led administration, killing his Iraqi interpreter, American military sources said Friday.
Pietro Cordone, senior adviser on culture for the U.S.-led authority, was unhurt, Italian Foreign Ministry sources said. Cordone has been leading efforts to recover priceless antiquities looted from museums and archeological sites since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Many Iraqis accuse U.S. troops of being too quick to open fire and failing to follow rules of engagement.
Human rights groups say many innocent Iraqis have been killed. The United States says it keeps no figures on civilian casualties.
Last week, the U.S. Army apologized after soldiers in the tense town of Falluja killed 10 Iraqi security guards and a Jordanian in a gun battle that was later described as an accident.
Locals in Falluja say U.S. troops there also killed a teen-ager Wednesday night when they opened fire after hearing celebratory gunshots from a wedding, mistakenly believing they were under attack.
U.S. Troops Fire at Italian Diplomat's Car in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-italy-shooting.html
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/reuters/world/
Reflections on Sept. 11
Two years after the worst terrorist attack in the history
of the United States, the nation again reflected on this
terrible tragedy. The Times offers complete coverage of the
day, as well as a series of in-depth articles, multimedia
presentations and archived materials that attempt to
understand Sept. 11, 2001, and its aftermath.
Look back at Sept. 11.:
http://www.nytimes.com/sept11?rd=hcmcp?p=046Kzy046L2347pLS012000mggM_ggLY
Two years after the worst terrorist attack in the history
of the United States, the nation again reflected on this
terrible tragedy. The Times offers complete coverage of the
day, as well as a series of in-depth articles, multimedia
presentations and archived materials that attempt to
understand Sept. 11, 2001, and its aftermath.
Look back at Sept. 11.:
http://www.nytimes.com/sept11?rd=hcmcp?p=046Kzy046L2347pLS012000mggM_ggLY
Green GIs Eyed in Shooting of Iraqi Cops
American soldiers who mistakenly killed eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian guard this month had been in this turbulent city for only one day and were in the midst of a handover from one military unit to another, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
According to these officials, confusion and inexperience may have contributed to the Sept. 12 killings, the worst "friendly fire" incident since major hostilities were declared over May 1.
The 82nd Airborne has had a checkered history in Fallujah, one of the cities in the "Sunni Triangle" where hostility toward the United States is most intense.
In April, soldiers from the division fired on protesters on two successive days, killing 18 and injuring 78. U.S. troops had withdrawn to a base outside the city in July and had been turning over security duties to local police. The U.S. military at the time said the troops were fired at first in the April incident, but Iraqi witnesses denied this.
On Wednesday night in Fallujah, an American patrol opened fire at a wedding, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding six other people after mistaking celebratory gunfire for an attack, witnesses said.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said the military was investigating and could not confirm that a boy was killed.
After the April shooting, the military agreed to pay $2,500 to the families of the dead and $500 to those of the wounded. Bedawi, however, said only $1,500 of the $2,500 promised for each of the families of those killed had so far been paid. He suggested that $2,500 per family may not be enough for families of the eight policemen killed this month.
"The compensation must be appropriate. These families have nothing and $2,500 is not an acceptable sum," he said.
The U.S.-led coalition has apologized for the Sept. 12 incident and appointed a senior officer, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser of the 101st Airborne Division, to investigate it. The 101st is based in the northern city of Mosul.
The 82nd Airborne troops involved in the latest friendly fire incident were not the same as those who took part in the April shooting, a Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said that the men had only recently arrived in Iraq.…
The latest incident, which took place just outside Fallujah, happened during a three-day handover period between the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 82nd Airborne, a U.S. military spokesman told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 82nd airborne was first deployed in the Gulf region in February and fought its way north from Kuwait along with other U.S. units. The 82nd units that served in Fallujah in April and May came from the division's 2nd Brigade. Those serving in Fallujah now are from the 2nd Brigade as well as the 3rd Brigade. The latter arrived in Iraq this month.…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-iraq-fallujah-killings,1,3140466.story
American soldiers who mistakenly killed eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian guard this month had been in this turbulent city for only one day and were in the midst of a handover from one military unit to another, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
According to these officials, confusion and inexperience may have contributed to the Sept. 12 killings, the worst "friendly fire" incident since major hostilities were declared over May 1.
The 82nd Airborne has had a checkered history in Fallujah, one of the cities in the "Sunni Triangle" where hostility toward the United States is most intense.
In April, soldiers from the division fired on protesters on two successive days, killing 18 and injuring 78. U.S. troops had withdrawn to a base outside the city in July and had been turning over security duties to local police. The U.S. military at the time said the troops were fired at first in the April incident, but Iraqi witnesses denied this.
On Wednesday night in Fallujah, an American patrol opened fire at a wedding, killing a 14-year-old boy and wounding six other people after mistaking celebratory gunfire for an attack, witnesses said.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said the military was investigating and could not confirm that a boy was killed.
After the April shooting, the military agreed to pay $2,500 to the families of the dead and $500 to those of the wounded. Bedawi, however, said only $1,500 of the $2,500 promised for each of the families of those killed had so far been paid. He suggested that $2,500 per family may not be enough for families of the eight policemen killed this month.
"The compensation must be appropriate. These families have nothing and $2,500 is not an acceptable sum," he said.
The U.S.-led coalition has apologized for the Sept. 12 incident and appointed a senior officer, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser of the 101st Airborne Division, to investigate it. The 101st is based in the northern city of Mosul.
The 82nd Airborne troops involved in the latest friendly fire incident were not the same as those who took part in the April shooting, a Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said that the men had only recently arrived in Iraq.…
The latest incident, which took place just outside Fallujah, happened during a three-day handover period between the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 82nd Airborne, a U.S. military spokesman told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 82nd airborne was first deployed in the Gulf region in February and fought its way north from Kuwait along with other U.S. units. The 82nd units that served in Fallujah in April and May came from the division's 2nd Brigade. Those serving in Fallujah now are from the 2nd Brigade as well as the 3rd Brigade. The latter arrived in Iraq this month.…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-iraq-fallujah-killings,1,3140466.story
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Figures Don't Lie but, Liars Figure
A Dissent on the Digital Divide
CONTRARY to the federal government's current thinking about the digital divide, the gap may not be closing so quickly after all, according to a new statistical analysis of data from household surveys.
Steven P. Martin, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who conducted the new analysis, argues that the government's most recent report on Americans' Internet use, which used the same data, was flawed.
In that report, released in February 2002, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the Commerce Department, painted a positive picture of the spread of Internet use among low-income families.
Dr. Martin, an assistant professor, contends that the data actually show the opposite of what the report highlighted.
"Computer ownership and Internet use may actually be spreading less quickly among poorer households than among richer households," he wrote in an article published this month in IT & Society, an academic journal focusing on the impact of the Internet (www.ITandsociety.org). He predicts that it may take two decades for the lowest-income groups to catch up to wealthier households.
The debate has been simmering for years. Is the disparity between rich and poor when it comes to computers and the Internet troubling enough to warrant a change in government policy or concerted help from nonprofit organizations and corporations? Or is it something that will quickly heal itself through market pressures?
The 2002 report pointed out in its executive summary that Internet use had increased faster for poor families than rich ones.
Yet earlier reports published during the Clinton administration had been less positive. The last of these, issued in 2000, said that although the have-nots had made striking gains, the disparity among groups of different income levels remained and had widened slightly in some cases.
Soon after the publication of the 2002 report, the Bush administration moved to end financing for government programs that supported community computing centers and local organizations that needed technological improvements. The cuts were opposed by technology advocates and rights groups. In the end, the programs did maintain some financing last year.
Advocates for community programs have argued that the gap between the haves and have-nots was more troubling than the administration made it out to be. "The digital divide is not abating," wrote Norris Dickard, a senior associate at the Benton Foundation, a technology advocacy group, in a report released last year. "Reduced national attention to this problem will dampen economic productivity and opportunity in low-income and rural communities."
Dr. Martin does not contend that the government was working with bad data in its 2002 report; the numbers came from Current Population Surveys, data that is collected by the Census Bureau and regularly used by social scientists. He argues rather that the authors focused on statistics that can tell two stories at once, and then chose to emphasize the positive.
As an example, he cites the government's use of annual rates of increase in Internet use. It is true, he writes, that Internet use among the poorest families - those with annual incomes of less than $15,000 - grew by an average of 25 percent from December 1998 to September 2001, while the rate among the most affluent families, with annual incomes of more than $75,000, increased 11 percent annually. But he argues that is because so few of the poorest families were using the Internet in 1998 to begin with. (Only 14 percent of the poorest families used the Internet from any location in 1998; 25 percent used it in 2001.)
The percentage of wealthiest families using the Internet in 1998 was already high, at 59 percent. By 2001, that number had risen to 79 percent. Because the number was relatively high to begin with, the growth rate inevitably slowed down.
Dr. Martin re-analyzed the data using what statisticians call odds ratios, a method that can avoid the pitfalls of looking simply at growth rates. By his measure, the odds that a family in the poorest bracket would use the Internet increased by a factor of 2.1 over those three years, while the odds for a family in the most affluent group increased by a slightly higher factor of 2.6.
Using those tools, Dr. Martin said in an interview that it could be 2013 before 90 percent of the poorest families use the Internet, be it from home or a community center or a library. Based on the numbers for computer ownership, he conjectures that it could be 2020 before 90 percent of the poorest families own PC's. (In this case, the poorest families are defined as the bottom 25 percent and the richest, the top 25 percent.) By contrast, in 2001, 88 percent of the richest families owned computers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/technology/circuits/18divi.html
When REMFs Dance Around the Truth It Usually Turns Out To Be a Charlie Foxtrot
Sept. 17 — President Bush said today that he had seen no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as the White House tried to correct an assertion that Vice President Dick Cheney left extremely murky on Sunday.
Mr. Cheney, on "Meet the Press" on NBC-TV, was asked about polls that showed that a majority of Americans believed that Mr. Hussein had been involved in the attacks.
"I think it's not surprising that people make that connection," said Mr. Cheney, who leads the hawkish wing of the Bush administration. Asked whether the connection existed, Mr. Cheney said, "We don't know."
He described Mr. Hussein's reported connections to Al Qaeda, connections that American intelligence analysts say were not very deep.
Mr. Bush, asked by a reporter today about that statement, said, "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," a far more definitive statement than the vice president's.
Bush Reports No Evidence of Hussein Tie to 9/11
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/national/18BUSH.html
Rocky Path for Bush: Effort to Remake Iraq Hits Roadblocks
Everywhere he turns — from the United Nations and Congress to allied capitals and the warrens of Baghdad and Tikrit — President Bush is finding major obstacles to his effort to secure and rebuild Iraq.
The problems, ranging from money to troops to moral support, are complicating White House efforts to assure the American public that the situation in Iraq will actually improve with time.
On the ground, there has been a pause in the sort of major bombing attacks that shook the administration's confidence and forced troops to dig more trenches and put up more barricades, isolating themselves from the country they are occupying.
But now some defense officials are saying the occupation force's state of siege, combined with continuing difficulties in restoring services in Baghdad, is making Iraqis increasingly hostile toward those who are supposed to be their liberators. And today, the eighth tape purporting to be from the deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein, surfaced, urging yet more attacks.
In addition, administration officials are acknowledging there may be an embarrassing lack of foreign donations to rebuild Iraq. European diplomats said today that the United States would be lucky to get $1 billion in pledges at a donors' conference in Madrid next month — about 10 percent of what the United States wanted, according to these officials.
The donor disappointment is, in turn, stirring resentment in Congress over Mr. Bush's request for $87 billion in military and economic assistance to Iraq in 2004. Some lawmakers are saying one big chunk of the huge package, the $15 billion earmarked for non-military activities, may be especially scrutinized, especially if donations from other countries are only a fraction of that sum.
Finally, the United States is having difficulties negotiating a new United Nations Security Council resolution to give the United Nations broader authority over Iraq. Such a resolution would make it easier to entice foreign donations and foreign peacekeepers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/international/middleeast/18DIPL.html
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE
Iraqis wonder how U.S. can be so inept
On Aug. 19, when the United Nations building in Baghdad was blown up, a little-known Franco-Egyptian UN worker, Jean-Selim Kanaan, was killed. He had volunteered for Iraq duty to help people, and was counting on the protection of the world's mightiest power.
Two weeks after his arrival in June, he wrote letters to friends around the world. "Americans understand only what is American. . . . [They] made this war for their interests and surely not to liberate the Iraqi people . . . the revolt is growing," he said in the letters.
There are some a series of questions on the streets of Iraq.
How is it possible for the U.S. to make so many mistakes? Does the U.S. want to destroy Iraq or have it plunge into civil war and disintegrate? Is all of this an American conspiracy?
People cannot believe that the U.S., with all its might and capabilities, could not provide basic security after the fall of the Baath regime in April or restore essential services such as electricity and water.
The lawlessness that prevailed after the fall of Baghdad, the looting and destruction of hospitals, museums, public offices and private businesses, while American troops watched, will remain in the minds of many people.
They see what happened as a purposeful dereliction of the occupying power's duty to protect the population. The protection is required of occupying armies by the Geneva Conventions.
To have disbanded the entire Iraqi army and police, leaving the cities and streets undefended, sending home several hundred thousand trained persons without income, is insanity. These and other failures to provide for the people's elementary needs raise questions about U.S. motives.
Many Iraqis see this as a conspiracy to bring about a civil war between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, leading to the breakdown of their country so that the U.S. can take over its oil--the world's second-largest oil reserve.
And as is de rigueur in Middle East matters, Israel is added to the mix, though it has nothing to do with that "made in the U.S." mess.
None of this is the American intention, but there is no way to explain these many mistakes.
The economy
Another astonishing decision recently announced by Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, is the privatization of Iraq's economy. Because there is no private capital in Iraq and the banking system has collapsed, it means that outside capital will own Iraq's future.
Who is to benefit?
The Ahmad Chalabi crowd supported by Deputy Defense Secretaries Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz? Add a layer to the conspiracy.
Last, but not least, is the U.S. failure to bring the worst Baathist criminals to justice--one of the avowed U.S. purposes in going to war in Iraq. None of the Baath leaders held in U.S. custody, some for months, has been brought to trial, and there are no known plans to prosecute them before a legitimate international or national judicial body.
The U.S. even rejects having a United Nations commission gather the evidence, just as one did in Yugoslavia, whose success led to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which is now prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic.
Meanwhile in Iraq, mass graves are dug out and bodies removed, documents pilfered from public officials, and on the whole, the evidence is being lost. In Baghdad, the word is that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized U.S. intelligence to make deals with the infamous deck of cards of most wanted criminals in exchange for information, particularly about the hitherto undiscovered weapons of mass destruction.
In the U.S., the administration's Iraq occupation policies are mostly questioned from narrow perspectives addressing smaller pieces of the puzzle. The administration avoids those parts of the puzzle that do not fit the image it wants to convey. It also makes it possible to blame security problems in Iraq on "outside terrorists." It does not report the hundreds of Iraqi civilians accidentally killed by American troops. Nor does it account for thousands of civilian detainees.
There is one added allegation not reported extensively in the U.S.
That is the claim of kidnapping and presumed rape of more than 400 women, according to an Arab news agency.
For Iraqi families, there is nothing worse that can befall them. These crimes are committed by Iraqis, but the people blame U.S. forces for the situation. Moreover, when they try to go to the U.S. authorities for help, they are turned away, like the families of the 5,000 detainees who seek news about their loved ones.
The naive impression we are conveying is that our leaders were surprised by Iraqi nationalistic reactions because Iraqis were expected to greet invading American troops as Parisian troops did in 1945. That they didn't see Iraqi opposition coming when common people in the streets of every Arab country could have told them so strains credibility.
These are, after all, brilliant people. If they purposely concealed it and misled the American people, they should be held accountable. And if they were imbued with their own arrogance to such a degree or deceived by their self-selected agents of change in Iraq, such as Chalabi, they should be removed from office for incompetence.
Yet they still impose Chalabi, even when it is now well-established that he has little or no credibility in Iraq.
Not unpredictable
Nothing of what is happening in Iraq was unpredictable. Yet, despite consistent evidence of misguided policies and practices during the occupation, there is no indication of a significant change. We hear of cosmetic changes, such as having a Security Council resolution establish a multinational force under the command and control of the U.S. But that will not delude nor deflect Iraqi resistance, and it will not bring security for the Iraqi people.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0309140031sep14,1,5066949.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-hed
Iraqis wonder how U.S. can be so inept
On Aug. 19, when the United Nations building in Baghdad was blown up, a little-known Franco-Egyptian UN worker, Jean-Selim Kanaan, was killed. He had volunteered for Iraq duty to help people, and was counting on the protection of the world's mightiest power.
Two weeks after his arrival in June, he wrote letters to friends around the world. "Americans understand only what is American. . . . [They] made this war for their interests and surely not to liberate the Iraqi people . . . the revolt is growing," he said in the letters.
There are some a series of questions on the streets of Iraq.
How is it possible for the U.S. to make so many mistakes? Does the U.S. want to destroy Iraq or have it plunge into civil war and disintegrate? Is all of this an American conspiracy?
People cannot believe that the U.S., with all its might and capabilities, could not provide basic security after the fall of the Baath regime in April or restore essential services such as electricity and water.
The lawlessness that prevailed after the fall of Baghdad, the looting and destruction of hospitals, museums, public offices and private businesses, while American troops watched, will remain in the minds of many people.
They see what happened as a purposeful dereliction of the occupying power's duty to protect the population. The protection is required of occupying armies by the Geneva Conventions.
To have disbanded the entire Iraqi army and police, leaving the cities and streets undefended, sending home several hundred thousand trained persons without income, is insanity. These and other failures to provide for the people's elementary needs raise questions about U.S. motives.
Many Iraqis see this as a conspiracy to bring about a civil war between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, leading to the breakdown of their country so that the U.S. can take over its oil--the world's second-largest oil reserve.
And as is de rigueur in Middle East matters, Israel is added to the mix, though it has nothing to do with that "made in the U.S." mess.
None of this is the American intention, but there is no way to explain these many mistakes.
The economy
Another astonishing decision recently announced by Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, is the privatization of Iraq's economy. Because there is no private capital in Iraq and the banking system has collapsed, it means that outside capital will own Iraq's future.
Who is to benefit?
The Ahmad Chalabi crowd supported by Deputy Defense Secretaries Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz? Add a layer to the conspiracy.
Last, but not least, is the U.S. failure to bring the worst Baathist criminals to justice--one of the avowed U.S. purposes in going to war in Iraq. None of the Baath leaders held in U.S. custody, some for months, has been brought to trial, and there are no known plans to prosecute them before a legitimate international or national judicial body.
The U.S. even rejects having a United Nations commission gather the evidence, just as one did in Yugoslavia, whose success led to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which is now prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic.
Meanwhile in Iraq, mass graves are dug out and bodies removed, documents pilfered from public officials, and on the whole, the evidence is being lost. In Baghdad, the word is that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized U.S. intelligence to make deals with the infamous deck of cards of most wanted criminals in exchange for information, particularly about the hitherto undiscovered weapons of mass destruction.
In the U.S., the administration's Iraq occupation policies are mostly questioned from narrow perspectives addressing smaller pieces of the puzzle. The administration avoids those parts of the puzzle that do not fit the image it wants to convey. It also makes it possible to blame security problems in Iraq on "outside terrorists." It does not report the hundreds of Iraqi civilians accidentally killed by American troops. Nor does it account for thousands of civilian detainees.
There is one added allegation not reported extensively in the U.S.
That is the claim of kidnapping and presumed rape of more than 400 women, according to an Arab news agency.
For Iraqi families, there is nothing worse that can befall them. These crimes are committed by Iraqis, but the people blame U.S. forces for the situation. Moreover, when they try to go to the U.S. authorities for help, they are turned away, like the families of the 5,000 detainees who seek news about their loved ones.
The naive impression we are conveying is that our leaders were surprised by Iraqi nationalistic reactions because Iraqis were expected to greet invading American troops as Parisian troops did in 1945. That they didn't see Iraqi opposition coming when common people in the streets of every Arab country could have told them so strains credibility.
These are, after all, brilliant people. If they purposely concealed it and misled the American people, they should be held accountable. And if they were imbued with their own arrogance to such a degree or deceived by their self-selected agents of change in Iraq, such as Chalabi, they should be removed from office for incompetence.
Yet they still impose Chalabi, even when it is now well-established that he has little or no credibility in Iraq.
Not unpredictable
Nothing of what is happening in Iraq was unpredictable. Yet, despite consistent evidence of misguided policies and practices during the occupation, there is no indication of a significant change. We hear of cosmetic changes, such as having a Security Council resolution establish a multinational force under the command and control of the U.S. But that will not delude nor deflect Iraqi resistance, and it will not bring security for the Iraqi people.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0309140031sep14,1,5066949.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-hed
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Clinton Assails Bush at Gathering for Hopefuls
Former President Bill Clinton seized the Democratic stage tonight, offering one of his strongest denunciations of President Bush since leaving office as he tried to rally Democrats here around candidates who have yet to stir the excitement he did in 1992.
Speaking without notes or a prepared text, Mr. Clinton invoked the circumstances of the 2000 presidential election as he argued that the Bush administration had squandered the domestic and foreign policy gains he had made in his eight years in office.
"That election was not a mandate for radical change, but that is what we got," Mr. Clinton said, adding, "We went from surplus to deficit, from job gain to job loss, from a reduction in poverty to an increase in poverty, from a reduction in people without health insurance to an increase of people without health insurance."
The former president said that Mr. Bush had wasted an opportunity to unite the country and enhance its international standing in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Instead of uniting the world, we alienated it," he said. "And instead of uniting America, we divided it by trying to push it too far to the right."
Mr. Clinton used his own economic situation to mock Mr. Bush's tax cut. Mr. Clinton said he might, as a very wealthy former president living in Chappaqua, N.Y., be paying more taxes than just about anyone else in America. "I get my tax cut, and they are going to take 300,000 poor children and kick them out of after-school programs," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/politics/14DEMS.html
Former President Bill Clinton seized the Democratic stage tonight, offering one of his strongest denunciations of President Bush since leaving office as he tried to rally Democrats here around candidates who have yet to stir the excitement he did in 1992.
Speaking without notes or a prepared text, Mr. Clinton invoked the circumstances of the 2000 presidential election as he argued that the Bush administration had squandered the domestic and foreign policy gains he had made in his eight years in office.
"That election was not a mandate for radical change, but that is what we got," Mr. Clinton said, adding, "We went from surplus to deficit, from job gain to job loss, from a reduction in poverty to an increase in poverty, from a reduction in people without health insurance to an increase of people without health insurance."
The former president said that Mr. Bush had wasted an opportunity to unite the country and enhance its international standing in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Instead of uniting the world, we alienated it," he said. "And instead of uniting America, we divided it by trying to push it too far to the right."
Mr. Clinton used his own economic situation to mock Mr. Bush's tax cut. Mr. Clinton said he might, as a very wealthy former president living in Chappaqua, N.Y., be paying more taxes than just about anyone else in America. "I get my tax cut, and they are going to take 300,000 poor children and kick them out of after-school programs," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/politics/14DEMS.html
Bush Seeks to Expand Access to Private Data
For months, President Bush's advisers have assured a skittish public that law-abiding Americans have no reason to fear the long reach of the antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act because its most intrusive measures would require a judge's sign-off.
But in a plan announced this week to expand counterterrorism powers, President Bush adopted a very different tack. In a three-point presidential plan that critics are already dubbing Patriot Act II, Mr. Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents — without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor — to demand private records and compel testimony.
Mr. Bush also wants to expand the use of the death penalty in crimes like terrorist financing, and he wants to make it tougher for defendants in such cases to be freed on bail before trial. These proposals are also sure to prompt sharp debate, even among Republicans.
Opponents say that the proposal to allow federal agents to issue subpoenas without the approval of a judge or grand jury will significantly expand the law enforcement powers granted by Congress after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And they say it will also allow the Justice Department — after months of growing friction with some judges — to limit the role of the judiciary still further in terrorism cases.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/national/14PATR.html?pagewanted=all&position=
For months, President Bush's advisers have assured a skittish public that law-abiding Americans have no reason to fear the long reach of the antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act because its most intrusive measures would require a judge's sign-off.
But in a plan announced this week to expand counterterrorism powers, President Bush adopted a very different tack. In a three-point presidential plan that critics are already dubbing Patriot Act II, Mr. Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents — without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor — to demand private records and compel testimony.
Mr. Bush also wants to expand the use of the death penalty in crimes like terrorist financing, and he wants to make it tougher for defendants in such cases to be freed on bail before trial. These proposals are also sure to prompt sharp debate, even among Republicans.
Opponents say that the proposal to allow federal agents to issue subpoenas without the approval of a judge or grand jury will significantly expand the law enforcement powers granted by Congress after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And they say it will also allow the Justice Department — after months of growing friction with some judges — to limit the role of the judiciary still further in terrorism cases.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/national/14PATR.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Arafat Says Israelis Are Trying to End Palestinian Self-Rule
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, accused Israel today of seeking to destroy Palestinian self-rule with its intention, declared on Thursday, to "remove" him, but Israeli officials defended the policy as legitimate self-defense.
The Israeli decision, which followed two Hamas suicide bombings that killed 15 people, brought a range of criticism from around the world, including from the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and the European Union. The Bush administration said deporting Mr. Arafat might be counterproductive.…
Israel accuses Mr. Arafat of direct involvement in terrorism, which he denies. Some Israeli officials argued that Israel was doing what the United States had done in Iraq, though, one noted acidly, Saddam Hussein, unlike Mr. Arafat, "wasn't 7 miles, 10 miles away from their major population centers."
Palestinians argue that it is they who are under attack, and that they have a right under international law to resist the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Further, they note, Mr. Arafat was popularly elected as president of the governing Palestinian Authority in internationally supervised elections.
Mr. Arafat told diplomats visiting him today at his compound in Ramallah, in the West Bank, "The danger here concerns Israel's determination to cancel the Palestinian partner and the Palestinian Authority." Israel denied that that was its intention.
The onetime peace partners were trading accusations on the 10th anniversary of the White House signing ceremony for the Oslo accords, which were intended to produce a lasting peace between them.
At the request of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, teachers brought thousands of schoolchildren to Mr. Arafat's compound today in the latest show of support for the longtime Palestinian leader.
Violence continued today. Overnight in the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli troops shot and killed an elderly bystander during a clash with gunmen, Palestinian authorities said.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/international/middleeast/14ISRA.html
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, accused Israel today of seeking to destroy Palestinian self-rule with its intention, declared on Thursday, to "remove" him, but Israeli officials defended the policy as legitimate self-defense.
The Israeli decision, which followed two Hamas suicide bombings that killed 15 people, brought a range of criticism from around the world, including from the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and the European Union. The Bush administration said deporting Mr. Arafat might be counterproductive.…
Israel accuses Mr. Arafat of direct involvement in terrorism, which he denies. Some Israeli officials argued that Israel was doing what the United States had done in Iraq, though, one noted acidly, Saddam Hussein, unlike Mr. Arafat, "wasn't 7 miles, 10 miles away from their major population centers."
Palestinians argue that it is they who are under attack, and that they have a right under international law to resist the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Further, they note, Mr. Arafat was popularly elected as president of the governing Palestinian Authority in internationally supervised elections.
Mr. Arafat told diplomats visiting him today at his compound in Ramallah, in the West Bank, "The danger here concerns Israel's determination to cancel the Palestinian partner and the Palestinian Authority." Israel denied that that was its intention.
The onetime peace partners were trading accusations on the 10th anniversary of the White House signing ceremony for the Oslo accords, which were intended to produce a lasting peace between them.
At the request of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, teachers brought thousands of schoolchildren to Mr. Arafat's compound today in the latest show of support for the longtime Palestinian leader.
Violence continued today. Overnight in the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli troops shot and killed an elderly bystander during a clash with gunmen, Palestinian authorities said.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/international/middleeast/14ISRA.html
The Martyr Complex
Who is a martyr? In the West, "martyr" is mainly reserved for Christian victims of Roman lions, or used facetiously for those who let others know of their self-sacrificing ways. But in the Muslim Middle East, where religious terminology permeates the culture, it seems as if almost everyone is a martyr. Realizing this is a small but crucial step in understanding a major cultural gap between the West and the Muslim Middle East, a gap that becomes more obvious with every audiotape supposedly from Osama bin Laden.
In editing the rough translation of the memoir of an opponent of Saddam Hussein, for instance, we kept running into martyrs. Originally, both "martyr" and the Arab equivalent, "shahid," connoted someone who witnessed for the faith, but the words have taken on different meanings in their respective languages.
Iraqi opposition groups viewed Saddam Hussein as not a particularly good Muslim. Still, the memoirist's use of "martyr" for anyone who died at his hands indirectly or directly — but not because of religion — seems inappropriate to Western ears.
After all, the war memorials in Europe and North America don't list martyrs, but those "killed in battle." In the Middle East, however, whether in Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Pashto Muslim society, shahid is today used for any man who falls in battle.
Does this mean that in the Muslim world, wars must be justified in religious terms? Yes. In popular perception, shaped by state-financed school textbooks and proclamations by religious leaders, all wars are against infidels. That's easy when war is waged against non-Muslims. But even when the enemy is Muslim, he must be painted as infidel, something both sides did in the Iran-Iraq war.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/opinion/14FRYE.html
Who is a martyr? In the West, "martyr" is mainly reserved for Christian victims of Roman lions, or used facetiously for those who let others know of their self-sacrificing ways. But in the Muslim Middle East, where religious terminology permeates the culture, it seems as if almost everyone is a martyr. Realizing this is a small but crucial step in understanding a major cultural gap between the West and the Muslim Middle East, a gap that becomes more obvious with every audiotape supposedly from Osama bin Laden.
In editing the rough translation of the memoir of an opponent of Saddam Hussein, for instance, we kept running into martyrs. Originally, both "martyr" and the Arab equivalent, "shahid," connoted someone who witnessed for the faith, but the words have taken on different meanings in their respective languages.
Iraqi opposition groups viewed Saddam Hussein as not a particularly good Muslim. Still, the memoirist's use of "martyr" for anyone who died at his hands indirectly or directly — but not because of religion — seems inappropriate to Western ears.
After all, the war memorials in Europe and North America don't list martyrs, but those "killed in battle." In the Middle East, however, whether in Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Pashto Muslim society, shahid is today used for any man who falls in battle.
Does this mean that in the Muslim world, wars must be justified in religious terms? Yes. In popular perception, shaped by state-financed school textbooks and proclamations by religious leaders, all wars are against infidels. That's easy when war is waged against non-Muslims. But even when the enemy is Muslim, he must be painted as infidel, something both sides did in the Iran-Iraq war.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/opinion/14FRYE.html
Saturday, September 13, 2003
High Alerts for Terror Get Harder to Impose
The Bush administration's color-coded terrorism alert system, which has been strongly criticized by counterterrorism specialists and much of the public, is being revamped to make it far more difficult for the government to justify raising the threat level, senior administration officials said.
Under revisions made in recent weeks, they said, the Department of Homeland Security has set tougher internal guidelines for raising the threat levels.
They said the alert level — which is now at yellow, representing an "elevated" threat and the midpoint in the five-color palette of alerts — would now be raised only if there is credible, detailed evidence of an imminent terrorist attack on American soil.
The officials cited the new guidelines in explaining why the administration decided not to raise the alert level this week despite a pair of events that could have easily justified a heightened alert in the past: Thursday's anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the broadcast of a new videotape suggesting that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant were alive and plotting catastrophic attacks.
Last September, on the eve of the Sept. 11 anniversary, the level was raised from yellow to orange, representing a "high risk" of terrorism, after intelligence analysts warned that Al Qaeda would use the anniversary to strike domestic targets. The anniversary passed without incident.
The color-coded system, which was introduced by the administration in March 2002 and is known formally as the Homeland Security Advisory System, has been criticized as having unnecessarily confused and alarmed the public. It has been a popular target for the administration's Democratic critics on Capitol Hill, as well as for late-night television comedians.
A nonpartisan Congressional report warned last month that the system was so vague in detailing terrorist threats that the public "may begin to question the authenticity" of the threats and take no action when the alert level was raised.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/13/national/13ALER.html
The Bush administration's color-coded terrorism alert system, which has been strongly criticized by counterterrorism specialists and much of the public, is being revamped to make it far more difficult for the government to justify raising the threat level, senior administration officials said.
Under revisions made in recent weeks, they said, the Department of Homeland Security has set tougher internal guidelines for raising the threat levels.
They said the alert level — which is now at yellow, representing an "elevated" threat and the midpoint in the five-color palette of alerts — would now be raised only if there is credible, detailed evidence of an imminent terrorist attack on American soil.
The officials cited the new guidelines in explaining why the administration decided not to raise the alert level this week despite a pair of events that could have easily justified a heightened alert in the past: Thursday's anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the broadcast of a new videotape suggesting that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant were alive and plotting catastrophic attacks.
Last September, on the eve of the Sept. 11 anniversary, the level was raised from yellow to orange, representing a "high risk" of terrorism, after intelligence analysts warned that Al Qaeda would use the anniversary to strike domestic targets. The anniversary passed without incident.
The color-coded system, which was introduced by the administration in March 2002 and is known formally as the Homeland Security Advisory System, has been criticized as having unnecessarily confused and alarmed the public. It has been a popular target for the administration's Democratic critics on Capitol Hill, as well as for late-night television comedians.
A nonpartisan Congressional report warned last month that the system was so vague in detailing terrorist threats that the public "may begin to question the authenticity" of the threats and take no action when the alert level was raised.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/13/national/13ALER.html
Angry Iraqi Town Buries Dead, U.S. Says Sorry
Hundreds of Iraqis chanting ``America is the enemy of God'' and shooting in the air on Saturday buried eight of 10 guards apparently shot by U.S. troops who mistook them for anti-American rebels.
More than 36 hours after the deaths, the U.S. military apologized for what it called an ``unfortunate incident'' in the rebellious town of Falluja, west of Baghdad.
``We wish to express our deepest regrets to the families who have lost loved ones,'' military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo said in Baghdad, promising a high-level investigation.
With Falluja seething, mourners crammed its main mosque where the corpses were kept and local police had to fire warning shots in the air to disperse demonstrators when the first coffin was carried to a cemetery.
Sunni Muslim clerics issued a ``Declaration by the people of Falluja'' condemning the deaths, announcing three days of mourning, and calling for a general strike on Sunday.
Witnesses said a joint patrol of local police and a U.S.-trained security force were chasing thieves shortly after midnight on Friday when U.S. soldiers opened fire on them.
The U.S. statement said its soldiers were responding to an initial attack from a truck when the guards were caught in confused fighting that lasted for three hours.
A Jordanian guard at a local field hospital was also killed in the shooting in Falluja, part of the so-called ``Sunni Triangle'' where support for deposed dictator Saddam Hussein remains strongest.
Jordanian newspapers said Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned his Jordanian counterpart, Marwan al-Muasher, to ``express regret'' over the hospital guard's death. Powell will travel to Kuwait and Iraq after Saturday's talks in Geneva on Iraq's future.
In Falluja, two other Iraqi security personnel injured in Friday's shooting died of their wounds overnight. Eight died immediately.
Locals were also mourning the death of a three-year-old girl who witnesses said had been shot in the head by American soldiers during street fighting late on Friday.
The town has been a cauldron of hostility to U.S. forces, particularly since troops shot dead at least 13 Iraqis -- said by locals to have been unarmed -- during a late April march.
There were chaotic scenes on Saturday at Falluja's main mosque, where several hundred people carrying an Iraqi flag gathered to pray over the coffins and protest.…
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-funerals.html
Hundreds of Iraqis chanting ``America is the enemy of God'' and shooting in the air on Saturday buried eight of 10 guards apparently shot by U.S. troops who mistook them for anti-American rebels.
More than 36 hours after the deaths, the U.S. military apologized for what it called an ``unfortunate incident'' in the rebellious town of Falluja, west of Baghdad.
``We wish to express our deepest regrets to the families who have lost loved ones,'' military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo said in Baghdad, promising a high-level investigation.
With Falluja seething, mourners crammed its main mosque where the corpses were kept and local police had to fire warning shots in the air to disperse demonstrators when the first coffin was carried to a cemetery.
Sunni Muslim clerics issued a ``Declaration by the people of Falluja'' condemning the deaths, announcing three days of mourning, and calling for a general strike on Sunday.
Witnesses said a joint patrol of local police and a U.S.-trained security force were chasing thieves shortly after midnight on Friday when U.S. soldiers opened fire on them.
The U.S. statement said its soldiers were responding to an initial attack from a truck when the guards were caught in confused fighting that lasted for three hours.
A Jordanian guard at a local field hospital was also killed in the shooting in Falluja, part of the so-called ``Sunni Triangle'' where support for deposed dictator Saddam Hussein remains strongest.
Jordanian newspapers said Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned his Jordanian counterpart, Marwan al-Muasher, to ``express regret'' over the hospital guard's death. Powell will travel to Kuwait and Iraq after Saturday's talks in Geneva on Iraq's future.
In Falluja, two other Iraqi security personnel injured in Friday's shooting died of their wounds overnight. Eight died immediately.
Locals were also mourning the death of a three-year-old girl who witnesses said had been shot in the head by American soldiers during street fighting late on Friday.
The town has been a cauldron of hostility to U.S. forces, particularly since troops shot dead at least 13 Iraqis -- said by locals to have been unarmed -- during a late April march.
There were chaotic scenes on Saturday at Falluja's main mosque, where several hundred people carrying an Iraqi flag gathered to pray over the coffins and protest.…
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-funerals.html
FBI: Under the Gun over Security
The FBI's efforts to overhaul the way it shares data on potential terrorists have fallen short. Will the G-Men ever get it right?
Darwin John had established himself as a bit of a miracle worker before being asked to lead an information- systems renaissance at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But John, former director of information and communications systems for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, needed divine intervention to help him navigate the politics, pressure and organizational malaise that he found upon his arrival in Washington. In May, John resigned as the FBI's chief information officer after less than a year on the job.
"One of the biggest lessons I learned was that finding terrorists and preventing attacks is not a science," John says. "It's an art. And you can't just throw technology at an art and hope it will solve the problem. It doesn't work that way."
John's primary task was to oversee a technology infrastructure overhaul that would enable agents to swap data and intelligence within the bureau and with other law enforcement agencies to help prevent future terrorist attacks. The project, dubbed Trilogy, began in 2001 with a budget of $380 million and was supposed to be finished by the end of 2004.
The project is now expected to cost between $450 million and $500 million to complete and is running more than six months behind schedule, according to analysts familiar with the Trilogy initiative.
John says the FBI has made some important strides, but admits the agency is only slightly better prepared to gather and share information on terrorists and possible terrorist activity than it was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The Justice Department's inspector general was more blunt, telling Congress that the FBI's technology implementation was a case of "mismanagement."
The slow start comes despite the fact that no law enforcement agency took as much heat in the wake of the Sept. 11 events. The FBI had learned in late August 2001 that Nawaf Alhazmi, a Saudi Arabian citizen with direct ties to Osama bin Laden, was somewhere in the United States. Worse, FBI assistant directors assigned the case a low priority. By the time the FBI did finally ask agents to track down Alhazmi and other individuals with terrorist ties, it was too late.
Alhazmi was one of five terrorists who boarded American Airlines Flight 77 at Washington's Dulles International Airport the very morning FBI headquarters sent out a request to Los Angeles special agents to find and detain Alhazmi. The flight, destined for Los Angeles, ultimately crashed into the Pentagon, killing all 59 passengers and crew as well as 125 service members and civilians in the Pentagon building.
This type of intelligence failure compelled President Bush to create the Department of Homeland Security and revamp the way federal security organizations communicate among themselves and with international, state and local agencies.
Could the FBI better track someone like Alhazmi now? "Today, as we speak, the FBI still is using multiple networks for its day-to-day operations," John says. "Let's just say it's less than five networks but more than two."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1265224,00.asp
The FBI's efforts to overhaul the way it shares data on potential terrorists have fallen short. Will the G-Men ever get it right?
Darwin John had established himself as a bit of a miracle worker before being asked to lead an information- systems renaissance at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But John, former director of information and communications systems for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, needed divine intervention to help him navigate the politics, pressure and organizational malaise that he found upon his arrival in Washington. In May, John resigned as the FBI's chief information officer after less than a year on the job.
"One of the biggest lessons I learned was that finding terrorists and preventing attacks is not a science," John says. "It's an art. And you can't just throw technology at an art and hope it will solve the problem. It doesn't work that way."
John's primary task was to oversee a technology infrastructure overhaul that would enable agents to swap data and intelligence within the bureau and with other law enforcement agencies to help prevent future terrorist attacks. The project, dubbed Trilogy, began in 2001 with a budget of $380 million and was supposed to be finished by the end of 2004.
The project is now expected to cost between $450 million and $500 million to complete and is running more than six months behind schedule, according to analysts familiar with the Trilogy initiative.
John says the FBI has made some important strides, but admits the agency is only slightly better prepared to gather and share information on terrorists and possible terrorist activity than it was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The Justice Department's inspector general was more blunt, telling Congress that the FBI's technology implementation was a case of "mismanagement."
The slow start comes despite the fact that no law enforcement agency took as much heat in the wake of the Sept. 11 events. The FBI had learned in late August 2001 that Nawaf Alhazmi, a Saudi Arabian citizen with direct ties to Osama bin Laden, was somewhere in the United States. Worse, FBI assistant directors assigned the case a low priority. By the time the FBI did finally ask agents to track down Alhazmi and other individuals with terrorist ties, it was too late.
Alhazmi was one of five terrorists who boarded American Airlines Flight 77 at Washington's Dulles International Airport the very morning FBI headquarters sent out a request to Los Angeles special agents to find and detain Alhazmi. The flight, destined for Los Angeles, ultimately crashed into the Pentagon, killing all 59 passengers and crew as well as 125 service members and civilians in the Pentagon building.
This type of intelligence failure compelled President Bush to create the Department of Homeland Security and revamp the way federal security organizations communicate among themselves and with international, state and local agencies.
Could the FBI better track someone like Alhazmi now? "Today, as we speak, the FBI still is using multiple networks for its day-to-day operations," John says. "Let's just say it's less than five networks but more than two."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1265224,00.asp
Friday, September 12, 2003
Americans are often shocked to learn that black Indians exist at all
— and that Native Americans actually held slaves. Like the white slave owners they emulated, Native Americans often fathered children by enslaved women and occasionally — as in Milley Franklin's case — treated those children as family. As a result, millions of black Americans are descended from black people who were either members of the tribes during slavery or adopted into them just after Emancipation.
White families have begun to acknowledge mixed-race connections after centuries of denial. But the attitudes of some Native Americans have not evolved in the same way. Both the Seminole and the Cherokee tribes have employed discriminatory policies to prevent black members from receiving tribal benefits — and to strip them of the right to vote in tribal elections.
The Interior Department, which oversees the tribal governments through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has historically regarded this kind of racial discrimination as a violation of 19th-century treaties that required the Indian nations to treat black members as full citizens. But the Bush administration could conceivably change course and actually validate these discriminatory policies.
The relationship between the federal government and the five tribes that were removed from the East to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears is governed by several laws and treaties. The most important are the treaties of 1866, which required the Seminole, the Creek and the Cherokee to adopt their former slaves as members of the tribes in return for being recognized as sovereign nations. At the time, Washington was grappling with its own former slaves, and the federal government did not want the added burden of those from the Indian nations. The tribes fought black membership from the very beginning, but the federal courts have upheld the treaties again and again.
The federal government has not, however, been consistent when it comes to racial fairness. When it set out to create an authoritative membership roll of all the Native American tribes in the 1890's, the Dawes Commission took the poisonous step of creating segregated rolls, with so-called Blood Indians on one list and black Indians — called "Freedmen" — on another. The Freedmen sometimes had clearer Native American blood lines than nonblack brethren on the Blood Rolls.
The Dawes segregation has been toxic to race relations within the tribes, which have used the rolls time and again to argue that black Native Americans are not tribal members at all. The argument that blacks are not really Indians is ludicrous in the case of the Seminole, which was a multiracial tribe from its inception. The Seminoles did not exist when Europeans colonized this country but coalesced in the mid-1700's when runaway slaves came together with refugees from other tribes in the Florida wilderness.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the support of the federal district court in Washington, refused to recognize a Seminole government that came to office while black Seminoles were barred from the polls. But Washington may yet buckle in the face of similar discrimination by the Cherokees — who are more politically connected than the Seminoles. The federal government insists that it has not taken a "final position." But court documents suggest that the Bureau of Indian Affairs might formally endorse elections in which black Cherokees are barred from voting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/12/opinion/12FRI3.html?pagewanted=print&position=
— and that Native Americans actually held slaves. Like the white slave owners they emulated, Native Americans often fathered children by enslaved women and occasionally — as in Milley Franklin's case — treated those children as family. As a result, millions of black Americans are descended from black people who were either members of the tribes during slavery or adopted into them just after Emancipation.
White families have begun to acknowledge mixed-race connections after centuries of denial. But the attitudes of some Native Americans have not evolved in the same way. Both the Seminole and the Cherokee tribes have employed discriminatory policies to prevent black members from receiving tribal benefits — and to strip them of the right to vote in tribal elections.
The Interior Department, which oversees the tribal governments through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has historically regarded this kind of racial discrimination as a violation of 19th-century treaties that required the Indian nations to treat black members as full citizens. But the Bush administration could conceivably change course and actually validate these discriminatory policies.
The relationship between the federal government and the five tribes that were removed from the East to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears is governed by several laws and treaties. The most important are the treaties of 1866, which required the Seminole, the Creek and the Cherokee to adopt their former slaves as members of the tribes in return for being recognized as sovereign nations. At the time, Washington was grappling with its own former slaves, and the federal government did not want the added burden of those from the Indian nations. The tribes fought black membership from the very beginning, but the federal courts have upheld the treaties again and again.
The federal government has not, however, been consistent when it comes to racial fairness. When it set out to create an authoritative membership roll of all the Native American tribes in the 1890's, the Dawes Commission took the poisonous step of creating segregated rolls, with so-called Blood Indians on one list and black Indians — called "Freedmen" — on another. The Freedmen sometimes had clearer Native American blood lines than nonblack brethren on the Blood Rolls.
The Dawes segregation has been toxic to race relations within the tribes, which have used the rolls time and again to argue that black Native Americans are not tribal members at all. The argument that blacks are not really Indians is ludicrous in the case of the Seminole, which was a multiracial tribe from its inception. The Seminoles did not exist when Europeans colonized this country but coalesced in the mid-1700's when runaway slaves came together with refugees from other tribes in the Florida wilderness.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the support of the federal district court in Washington, refused to recognize a Seminole government that came to office while black Seminoles were barred from the polls. But Washington may yet buckle in the face of similar discrimination by the Cherokees — who are more politically connected than the Seminoles. The federal government insists that it has not taken a "final position." But court documents suggest that the Bureau of Indian Affairs might formally endorse elections in which black Cherokees are barred from voting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/12/opinion/12FRI3.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Vint Cerf hears VoIP calling
If consumers begin adopting VoIP, who's going to use a phone company, whether it's a Bell or a long-distance company?
It depends a lot on what traditional services you have to offer. These things become very commodity in nature. Long distance has gone that way, but it's less so for local service because there's only a modest amount of competition. The way you eventually have to make money is by adding value to the traffic, which means adding new services. That will be how you survive in this game, by adding value. If you want to be a purely commodity business and can survive, more power to you. My reaction is I want to do something better.
Too much has happened in the last several years and too many crystal balls have proved wanting. But when it comes to forecasting the adoption of voice over IP, the veteran computer scientist has no such reluctance to qualify this as one of the next big things to affect the technology firmament.
Cerf, nowadays the senior vice president of Internet Architecture and Technology for MCI, says that traditional telecommunications carriers are finally taking VoIP seriously. Indeed, Cerf, who created the TCP/IP protocol that defines online communication now spends a good part of his time focused on VoIP, the cheaper form of telephony, expecting it to permanently alter the telephone industry.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5073025.html
If consumers begin adopting VoIP, who's going to use a phone company, whether it's a Bell or a long-distance company?
It depends a lot on what traditional services you have to offer. These things become very commodity in nature. Long distance has gone that way, but it's less so for local service because there's only a modest amount of competition. The way you eventually have to make money is by adding value to the traffic, which means adding new services. That will be how you survive in this game, by adding value. If you want to be a purely commodity business and can survive, more power to you. My reaction is I want to do something better.
Too much has happened in the last several years and too many crystal balls have proved wanting. But when it comes to forecasting the adoption of voice over IP, the veteran computer scientist has no such reluctance to qualify this as one of the next big things to affect the technology firmament.
Cerf, nowadays the senior vice president of Internet Architecture and Technology for MCI, says that traditional telecommunications carriers are finally taking VoIP seriously. Indeed, Cerf, who created the TCP/IP protocol that defines online communication now spends a good part of his time focused on VoIP, the cheaper form of telephony, expecting it to permanently alter the telephone industry.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5073025.html
Public Opinion: Surveys Continue to Show Doubts, Concerns on Iraq
Public opinion surveys continue to return conflicting results on the U.S. presence in Iraq. Majorities continue to say they support the war, but the number who say casualty levels are unacceptable has increased 28 points since the spring. Most agree with President Bush that the Iraq war is part of the war on terrorism, but are increasingly divided on whether it will make the U.S. safer from new attacks. A bare majority says the rebuilding effort is going well, but only four in 10 say the U.S. is in control of the situation.
These are all classic warning signs that public attitudes are unsettled. It would be difficult to predict where this reconsideration could lead. If setbacks breed doubts, there's also evidence that success in the rebuilding could promote confidence. Whether the public perceives the Iraqi people as for or against the U.S. presence could make a difference. Saddam Hussein himself may be the key: the number of people who say it's essential to capture or kill him has increased since the end of "major combat." The public's confidence that the U.S. will get him also jumped sharply after the deaths of Hussein's sons, as did confidence that the U.S. will be able to establish a democratic Iraqi government.…
In the wake of a series of bloody car bombings, much of the debate in Washington has focused on whether the U.S. has committed enough troops and money to Iraq. Only 42 percent told CBS News that the U.S. was in control of the situation in an Aug. 26-28 survey, while 47 percent said the situation was out of U.S control.
Yet at the same time, the ABC News poll conducted Sept. 7 found 53 percent who rated the U.S. effort to restore order "excellent" or "good." And the public also seems divided about what should be done in response. Only 22 percent told CBS that the U.S. should send more troops to Iraq, while 41 percent thought troop levels should be kept the same and 31 percent thought the number of troops should be decreased. The Newsweek poll conducted July 24-25 found an even split: 46 percent said the U.S. should withdraw, while 49 percent said it should stay.
The very same Newsweek poll found sentiment for getting tougher, with 53 percent who said the U.S. should take more aggressive action against the insurgents "even if it means greater risk of civilian casualties." At the same time, 55 percent rejected the idea of sending more troops to Iraq.
The public would be more than happy, however, if other countries would join in. ABC found 85 percent who would support adding international troops to U.S. forces in Iraq, and 55 percent would support an international force even if it meant American troops would be placed under U.N. command. In general, while surveys found dissatisfaction with how the U.N. handled itself prior to the war, most Americans have always been willing to cede the lead role in setting up an Iraqi government to the U.N. (69 percent were willing to give the U.N. that responsibility in the August CBS poll, compared to 61 percent in April).
So far, a majority of the public still says the war was worth fighting -- but the numbers have bounced up and down, depending on events and on how the question is phrased. The Sept. 7 ABC/Post poll found 54 percent who said the war was worth it, down from 70 percent April 30. Gallup found the number changing from 76 percent in April to 56 percent in late June, then bouncing back up to 63 percent by July 25-27.
http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/terrorism/terror_pubopinion6.htm
Public opinion surveys continue to return conflicting results on the U.S. presence in Iraq. Majorities continue to say they support the war, but the number who say casualty levels are unacceptable has increased 28 points since the spring. Most agree with President Bush that the Iraq war is part of the war on terrorism, but are increasingly divided on whether it will make the U.S. safer from new attacks. A bare majority says the rebuilding effort is going well, but only four in 10 say the U.S. is in control of the situation.
These are all classic warning signs that public attitudes are unsettled. It would be difficult to predict where this reconsideration could lead. If setbacks breed doubts, there's also evidence that success in the rebuilding could promote confidence. Whether the public perceives the Iraqi people as for or against the U.S. presence could make a difference. Saddam Hussein himself may be the key: the number of people who say it's essential to capture or kill him has increased since the end of "major combat." The public's confidence that the U.S. will get him also jumped sharply after the deaths of Hussein's sons, as did confidence that the U.S. will be able to establish a democratic Iraqi government.…
In the wake of a series of bloody car bombings, much of the debate in Washington has focused on whether the U.S. has committed enough troops and money to Iraq. Only 42 percent told CBS News that the U.S. was in control of the situation in an Aug. 26-28 survey, while 47 percent said the situation was out of U.S control.
Yet at the same time, the ABC News poll conducted Sept. 7 found 53 percent who rated the U.S. effort to restore order "excellent" or "good." And the public also seems divided about what should be done in response. Only 22 percent told CBS that the U.S. should send more troops to Iraq, while 41 percent thought troop levels should be kept the same and 31 percent thought the number of troops should be decreased. The Newsweek poll conducted July 24-25 found an even split: 46 percent said the U.S. should withdraw, while 49 percent said it should stay.
The very same Newsweek poll found sentiment for getting tougher, with 53 percent who said the U.S. should take more aggressive action against the insurgents "even if it means greater risk of civilian casualties." At the same time, 55 percent rejected the idea of sending more troops to Iraq.
The public would be more than happy, however, if other countries would join in. ABC found 85 percent who would support adding international troops to U.S. forces in Iraq, and 55 percent would support an international force even if it meant American troops would be placed under U.N. command. In general, while surveys found dissatisfaction with how the U.N. handled itself prior to the war, most Americans have always been willing to cede the lead role in setting up an Iraqi government to the U.N. (69 percent were willing to give the U.N. that responsibility in the August CBS poll, compared to 61 percent in April).
So far, a majority of the public still says the war was worth fighting -- but the numbers have bounced up and down, depending on events and on how the question is phrased. The Sept. 7 ABC/Post poll found 54 percent who said the war was worth it, down from 70 percent April 30. Gallup found the number changing from 76 percent in April to 56 percent in late June, then bouncing back up to 63 percent by July 25-27.
http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/terrorism/terror_pubopinion6.htm
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Foreign Views of U.S. Darken Since Sept. 11
"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."
In interviews by Times correspondents from Africa to Europe to Southeast Asia, one point emerged clearly: The war in Iraq has had a major impact on public opinion, which has moved generally from post-9/11 sympathy to post-Iraq antipathy, or at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively, without either persuasive reasons or United Nations approval.
To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President Bush, who is seen by many of those interviewed, at best, as an ineffective spokesman for American interests and, at worst, as a gunslinging cowboy knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the world's oil, if not the entire world.
Foreign policy experts point to slowly developing fissures, born at the end of the cold war, that exploded into view in the debate leading up to the Iraq war. "I think the turnaround was last summer, when American policy moved ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," said Josef Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. "That's what triggered the counteralliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of hatred against the United States."
The subject of America in the world is of course complicated, and the nation's battered international image could improve quickly in response to events. The Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq may represent such an event.
Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.
Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's role: The governments and, to a lesser extent, the public in former Soviet-bloc countries are much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and the public in Western Europe, notably France and Germany.
In Japan, a strong American ally that feels insecure in the face of a hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea, there may be doubts about the wisdom of the American war on Iraq. But there seem to be far fewer doubts about the importance of American power generally to global stability.
In China, while many ordinary people express doubts about the war in Iraq, anti-American feeling has diminished since Sept. 11, 2001, and there seems to be greater understanding and less instinctive criticism of the United States by government officials and intellectuals. The Chinese leadership has largely embraced America's "war on terror."
Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.
That mood has been expressed in different ways by different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who boo the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who do not want to go to the United States as exchange students because America is not "in." Even among young people, it is not difficult to hear strong denunciations of American policy and sharp questioning of American motives.
"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary crtic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."
A Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer technician, said: "Everyone agrees on the principles of democracy and freedom, but the problem is that we don't agree with the means to achieve those ends. The United States can't see beyond the axiom that force can solve everything, but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of blood."
Lydia Adhiamba, a 20-year-old student at the Institute of Advanced Technology in Nairobi, Kenya, said the United States "wants to rule the whole world, and that's why there's so much animosity to the U.S."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/international/11OPIN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."
In interviews by Times correspondents from Africa to Europe to Southeast Asia, one point emerged clearly: The war in Iraq has had a major impact on public opinion, which has moved generally from post-9/11 sympathy to post-Iraq antipathy, or at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively, without either persuasive reasons or United Nations approval.
To some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President Bush, who is seen by many of those interviewed, at best, as an ineffective spokesman for American interests and, at worst, as a gunslinging cowboy knocking over international treaties and bent on controlling the world's oil, if not the entire world.
Foreign policy experts point to slowly developing fissures, born at the end of the cold war, that exploded into view in the debate leading up to the Iraq war. "I think the turnaround was last summer, when American policy moved ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," said Josef Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. "That's what triggered the counteralliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of hatred against the United States."
The subject of America in the world is of course complicated, and the nation's battered international image could improve quickly in response to events. The Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq may represent such an event.
Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.
Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's role: The governments and, to a lesser extent, the public in former Soviet-bloc countries are much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and the public in Western Europe, notably France and Germany.
In Japan, a strong American ally that feels insecure in the face of a hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea, there may be doubts about the wisdom of the American war on Iraq. But there seem to be far fewer doubts about the importance of American power generally to global stability.
In China, while many ordinary people express doubts about the war in Iraq, anti-American feeling has diminished since Sept. 11, 2001, and there seems to be greater understanding and less instinctive criticism of the United States by government officials and intellectuals. The Chinese leadership has largely embraced America's "war on terror."
Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.
That mood has been expressed in different ways by different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who boo the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who do not want to go to the United States as exchange students because America is not "in." Even among young people, it is not difficult to hear strong denunciations of American policy and sharp questioning of American motives.
"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary crtic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."
A Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer technician, said: "Everyone agrees on the principles of democracy and freedom, but the problem is that we don't agree with the means to achieve those ends. The United States can't see beyond the axiom that force can solve everything, but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of blood."
Lydia Adhiamba, a 20-year-old student at the Institute of Advanced Technology in Nairobi, Kenya, said the United States "wants to rule the whole world, and that's why there's so much animosity to the U.S."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/international/11OPIN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The Other Sept. 11
Death came from the skies. A building — a symbol of the nation — collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11.
But the year was 1973, the building Chile's White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Now, after decades of silence, Chileans are protesting in the streets for the reversal of amnesty laws that block prosecutions for the killings after the coup. The face of Salvador Allende, the overthrown Socialist president, is everywhere, and now behind La Moneda is a new statue of him wrapped in the Chilean flag. Chile's president, Ricardo Lagos, is proposing a truth commission to look into reports of torture, special judges to find the disappeared, new pensions for victims' families and an amnesty program for former soldiers who tell where the bodies are buried.
Chile is not the only country in South America focused today on the crimes of decades ago. In Peru, the truth commission investigating the guerrilla wars of the 1980's and 1990's just released a report concluding that more than 69,000 people were killed or made to disappear. In Argentina, a new president has just annulled two amnesty laws that the military forced through Congress after the "dirty war" ended in 1983.
In the United States, Sept. 11 will forever be a day to remember our victims of terrorism. Yet our nation's hands have not always been clean, and it is important to recall Chile's Sept. 11, too. "The Pinochet File," a new book by Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at the nonprofit National Security Archive, presents declassified documents showing that the Nixon administration, which had tried to block Mr. Allende's inauguration, began plotting to bring him down just 72 hours after he took office.
Mr. Allende, a Socialist but a democrat, had done nothing to Washington. President Nixon took his election as an affront — "it's too much the fashion to kick us around," he said — and he worried most that a successful Socialist would inspire others.
The United States did not directly participate in the coup, but it laid the groundwork for it and supported the plotters. Afterward, even as mass murder ensued, the Nixon administration secretly embraced Mr. Pinochet's regime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/opinion/11THU2.html
Death came from the skies. A building — a symbol of the nation — collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11.
But the year was 1973, the building Chile's White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Now, after decades of silence, Chileans are protesting in the streets for the reversal of amnesty laws that block prosecutions for the killings after the coup. The face of Salvador Allende, the overthrown Socialist president, is everywhere, and now behind La Moneda is a new statue of him wrapped in the Chilean flag. Chile's president, Ricardo Lagos, is proposing a truth commission to look into reports of torture, special judges to find the disappeared, new pensions for victims' families and an amnesty program for former soldiers who tell where the bodies are buried.
Chile is not the only country in South America focused today on the crimes of decades ago. In Peru, the truth commission investigating the guerrilla wars of the 1980's and 1990's just released a report concluding that more than 69,000 people were killed or made to disappear. In Argentina, a new president has just annulled two amnesty laws that the military forced through Congress after the "dirty war" ended in 1983.
In the United States, Sept. 11 will forever be a day to remember our victims of terrorism. Yet our nation's hands have not always been clean, and it is important to recall Chile's Sept. 11, too. "The Pinochet File," a new book by Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at the nonprofit National Security Archive, presents declassified documents showing that the Nixon administration, which had tried to block Mr. Allende's inauguration, began plotting to bring him down just 72 hours after he took office.
Mr. Allende, a Socialist but a democrat, had done nothing to Washington. President Nixon took his election as an affront — "it's too much the fashion to kick us around," he said — and he worried most that a successful Socialist would inspire others.
The United States did not directly participate in the coup, but it laid the groundwork for it and supported the plotters. Afterward, even as mass murder ensued, the Nixon administration secretly embraced Mr. Pinochet's regime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/opinion/11THU2.html
Breaking Death's Grip
Israelis' ability to adapt to, and defy, these bombings demonstrates the amazing strength of this society. When bus bombings first started, for a week after an explosion few people would ride the buses. Now they're right back on them after an hour. The radios used to stop playing upbeat music after a bombing; now they don't hesitate. I have an Israeli friend who constantly worries about suicide bombers. But when I asked her to ask her teenage daughter, Tali Weiss, whether she felt angry about them, her daughter snapped back at her mom, "I'm angry that you don't let me go out" after a bombing.
I was in a trendy Tel Aviv sandwich shop the other day and my young Israeli waitress had a fun little tattoo on her shoulder. Jews with tattoos — you don't see that every day. Message to Hamas: You may think these suicide bombers will drive Israelis to leave. But they're just digging in, and clinging to normality. The Jews are getting tattoos.
But message to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: Palestinians are not leaving either, and your iron fist will not make them accept Israeli settlements or a truncated Palestinian state. If you think Oslo was a failure, look at your alternative. In three years, some 850 Israelis have been killed under your strategy. Yours and Hamas's are two failed strategies that add up to a human meat grinder. You want Israelis to believe they have no other choice, but they do. It is to use Israel's amazing inner strength to take a different set of Israeli actions, like really uprooting settlements, to stimulate a different set of Palestinian reactions, like controlling suicide bombers.
And some of the smartest people here know it. Efraim Halevy, Israel's former Mossad chief who just quit as a Sharon adviser, said to me: "For there to be a chance for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, the Palestinians will have to get their act together. For them to get their act together, Israel will have to invest heavily in them — without any guarantee of success." Once Palestinians get their act together, he added, they will have to do the same, vis-Ã -vis Israel.
A Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki, puts it this way: "Sharon wants Palestinians to take the ultimate risk — a civil war — without promise of the ultimate reward": removal of settlements and concrete steps toward statehood. It won't happen.
Israel is in such a strong position now. The people have gotten tougher, America has destroyed Saddam Hussein, and Israel-U.S. ties have never been tighter. What better time for Israel to try something new? But instead of wanting America to solve the problem, Mr. Sharon seems to want America to do nothing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/opinion/11FRIE.html
Israelis' ability to adapt to, and defy, these bombings demonstrates the amazing strength of this society. When bus bombings first started, for a week after an explosion few people would ride the buses. Now they're right back on them after an hour. The radios used to stop playing upbeat music after a bombing; now they don't hesitate. I have an Israeli friend who constantly worries about suicide bombers. But when I asked her to ask her teenage daughter, Tali Weiss, whether she felt angry about them, her daughter snapped back at her mom, "I'm angry that you don't let me go out" after a bombing.
I was in a trendy Tel Aviv sandwich shop the other day and my young Israeli waitress had a fun little tattoo on her shoulder. Jews with tattoos — you don't see that every day. Message to Hamas: You may think these suicide bombers will drive Israelis to leave. But they're just digging in, and clinging to normality. The Jews are getting tattoos.
But message to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: Palestinians are not leaving either, and your iron fist will not make them accept Israeli settlements or a truncated Palestinian state. If you think Oslo was a failure, look at your alternative. In three years, some 850 Israelis have been killed under your strategy. Yours and Hamas's are two failed strategies that add up to a human meat grinder. You want Israelis to believe they have no other choice, but they do. It is to use Israel's amazing inner strength to take a different set of Israeli actions, like really uprooting settlements, to stimulate a different set of Palestinian reactions, like controlling suicide bombers.
And some of the smartest people here know it. Efraim Halevy, Israel's former Mossad chief who just quit as a Sharon adviser, said to me: "For there to be a chance for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, the Palestinians will have to get their act together. For them to get their act together, Israel will have to invest heavily in them — without any guarantee of success." Once Palestinians get their act together, he added, they will have to do the same, vis-Ã -vis Israel.
A Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki, puts it this way: "Sharon wants Palestinians to take the ultimate risk — a civil war — without promise of the ultimate reward": removal of settlements and concrete steps toward statehood. It won't happen.
Israel is in such a strong position now. The people have gotten tougher, America has destroyed Saddam Hussein, and Israel-U.S. ties have never been tighter. What better time for Israel to try something new? But instead of wanting America to solve the problem, Mr. Sharon seems to want America to do nothing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/opinion/11FRIE.html
Monday, September 08, 2003
Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qureia, tapped as the new prime minister, said Monday he will only accept the job if Washington guarantees Israeli compliance with a U.S.-backed peace plan, including a halt to military strikes.
Qureia told The Associated Press he does not want to set himself up for failure, an apparent reference to outgoing Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned over the weekend after just four months in office that were marred by wrangling with veteran leader Yasser Arafat.
However, sources close to Qureia said he has agreed in principle to take the job, and that his formal acceptance is expected in coming days. Qureia met with U.S., Russian and Egyptian diplomats Monday, discussing his requests and the possible composition of a new government.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Qureia told The Associated Press he does not want to set himself up for failure, an apparent reference to outgoing Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned over the weekend after just four months in office that were marred by wrangling with veteran leader Yasser Arafat.
However, sources close to Qureia said he has agreed in principle to take the job, and that his formal acceptance is expected in coming days. Qureia met with U.S., Russian and Egyptian diplomats Monday, discussing his requests and the possible composition of a new government.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Sunday, September 07, 2003
The Wailing Wall?
A fence that would make the West Bank safe for Israel to leave, argues David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a fence that would be built roughly along the outline President Clinton offered Palestinians and Israelis — which called upon Israel to turn over 95 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in return for peace with the Palestinians. Since 75 percent of the settlers live on 5 percent of the West Bank — just across the Green Line from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — the majority could be included inside the fence, said Mr. Makovsky in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, and the Palestinians could still have a contiguous state in almost the entire West Bank.
"It's time we started putting facts on the ground that disentangle this spaghetti and counter the facts on the ground designed to entangle and prevent any solution," argues Mr. Makovsky.
If the wall were along the lines of the Clinton plan, it would signal Palestinians that a deal is there for the taking — and could be further adjusted in peace talks — while providing Israelis security and signaling the settlers beyond the wall that they have no future.
If the wall heads way off the Green Line, deep into the West Bank, as Mr. Sharon hinted it might, we are headed for a disaster.
Good fences make good neighbors, but only if your fence runs along a logical, fair, consensual boundary — not through the middle of your neighbor's backyard. If this wall is used to unilaterally bite off chunks of the West Bank to absorb far-flung Israeli settlements, then "it will just become a new and longer Wailing Wall," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "But unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, this wall will have people wailing on both sides. Jews will be mourning the collapse of their dream of a Jewish democratic state, and Palestinians will be mourning their own lost opportunity to translate all their sacrifices into a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/opinion/07FRIE.html
A fence that would make the West Bank safe for Israel to leave, argues David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a fence that would be built roughly along the outline President Clinton offered Palestinians and Israelis — which called upon Israel to turn over 95 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in return for peace with the Palestinians. Since 75 percent of the settlers live on 5 percent of the West Bank — just across the Green Line from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — the majority could be included inside the fence, said Mr. Makovsky in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, and the Palestinians could still have a contiguous state in almost the entire West Bank.
"It's time we started putting facts on the ground that disentangle this spaghetti and counter the facts on the ground designed to entangle and prevent any solution," argues Mr. Makovsky.
If the wall were along the lines of the Clinton plan, it would signal Palestinians that a deal is there for the taking — and could be further adjusted in peace talks — while providing Israelis security and signaling the settlers beyond the wall that they have no future.
If the wall heads way off the Green Line, deep into the West Bank, as Mr. Sharon hinted it might, we are headed for a disaster.
Good fences make good neighbors, but only if your fence runs along a logical, fair, consensual boundary — not through the middle of your neighbor's backyard. If this wall is used to unilaterally bite off chunks of the West Bank to absorb far-flung Israeli settlements, then "it will just become a new and longer Wailing Wall," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "But unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, this wall will have people wailing on both sides. Jews will be mourning the collapse of their dream of a Jewish democratic state, and Palestinians will be mourning their own lost opportunity to translate all their sacrifices into a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/opinion/07FRIE.html
Saturday, September 06, 2003
MIT Everyware
When MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, it hoped the program - dubbed OpenCourseWare - would spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve teaching methods. No institution of higher learning had ever proposed anything as revolutionary, or as daunting. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. The academic world was shocked by MIT's audacity - and skeptical of the experiment. At a time when most enterprises were racing to profit from the Internet and universities were peddling every conceivable variant of distance learning, here was the pinnacle of technology and science education ready to give it away. Not the degrees, which now cost about $41,000 a year, but the content. No registration required.
"It's a profoundly simple idea that was not intuitive," recalls Anne Margulies, the former Harvard assistant provost and executive director of information systems who was hired to be OpenCourseWare's executive director. "At the time, the world was clamping down on information, limiting it to those who could pay for it." Soon foundation money was gushing in to support the initiative. MIT earned the distinction as the only university forward-thinking enough to open-source itself. To test the concept, the university posted 50 courses last year.
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/mit_pr.html
When MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, it hoped the program - dubbed OpenCourseWare - would spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve teaching methods. No institution of higher learning had ever proposed anything as revolutionary, or as daunting. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. The academic world was shocked by MIT's audacity - and skeptical of the experiment. At a time when most enterprises were racing to profit from the Internet and universities were peddling every conceivable variant of distance learning, here was the pinnacle of technology and science education ready to give it away. Not the degrees, which now cost about $41,000 a year, but the content. No registration required.
"It's a profoundly simple idea that was not intuitive," recalls Anne Margulies, the former Harvard assistant provost and executive director of information systems who was hired to be OpenCourseWare's executive director. "At the time, the world was clamping down on information, limiting it to those who could pay for it." Soon foundation money was gushing in to support the initiative. MIT earned the distinction as the only university forward-thinking enough to open-source itself. To test the concept, the university posted 50 courses last year.
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/mit_pr.html
Going the Extra Mile
California's Financial Information Privacy Act, known as SB1, is about to send shock waves through IT shops everywhere. The bill was overwhelmingly passed in the California state legislature Aug. 19 and was signed by Gov. Gray Davis last week. With the coming of the new law, IT departments need to get to work closing off applications and databases to ensure customer privacy.
In short, SB1 requires "opt-in." Financial institutions must get customers' authorization to share or sell personal and financial data with third-party companies with whom the customers have no prior agreement. Customers can also "opt-out," meaning that institutions will be required to offer customers a chance to prohibit the sharing or selling of personal and financial information with their affiliates or other financial institutions with whom they have agreements.
The bill also requires consent verification, which means financial institutions will have to take steps to ensure that those from whom they obtain personal and financial information about customers have followed similar notice and consent rules.
Meeting the tough requirements to prevent data sharing isn't the hardest work that IT will face as a result of the new measure. They must make company executives understand that unless they go beyond the law's measures, a confusing patchwork of state and federal laws is likely to come on the books.
How did we get into this mess? The 1998 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated the separation of banks, brokerage houses and insurance companies, has fomented a frenzy of consumer financial information sharing. With the advent of affiliated-yet-separately-regulated financial services companies, consumer data now gets passed around so these different entities can cross-sell to one another's customers.
Just one thing's wrong. Companies haven't asked consumers for permission.
Sure, we've all been inundated with little slips of paper in our credit card bills, mortgage statements and brokerage reports telling us, as FleetBoston recently told me, "Protecting your privacy is important to us. We want you to understand what information we may gather and how we may share it."
These privacy notices provide, in practice, a license to circumvent customers' desire for privacy, thereby letting integrated companies sell them everything from insurance to retirement plans. Rather than taking a "Pirates of the Caribbean" approach to consumer privacy, companies should instead use technology to allow consumers to make decisions about how their private information is used.
SB1 is likely to become a model for future state and federal legislation. It doesn't preclude affiliated companies from sharing information; it simply requires consumer permission to share. Companies should jump on this opportunity, offering maximum control over their financial information as a competitive advantage. An example: Companies could put a link on their bill presentment screen called "privacy controls" that opens a page where consumers can indicate interest in sharing information to gain special deals on insurance. Since consumers review and pay bills monthly, financial institutions will have at least 12 guaranteed page views per year to appeal to consumers to share information in an informed way.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1238730,00.asp
California's Financial Information Privacy Act, known as SB1, is about to send shock waves through IT shops everywhere. The bill was overwhelmingly passed in the California state legislature Aug. 19 and was signed by Gov. Gray Davis last week. With the coming of the new law, IT departments need to get to work closing off applications and databases to ensure customer privacy.
In short, SB1 requires "opt-in." Financial institutions must get customers' authorization to share or sell personal and financial data with third-party companies with whom the customers have no prior agreement. Customers can also "opt-out," meaning that institutions will be required to offer customers a chance to prohibit the sharing or selling of personal and financial information with their affiliates or other financial institutions with whom they have agreements.
The bill also requires consent verification, which means financial institutions will have to take steps to ensure that those from whom they obtain personal and financial information about customers have followed similar notice and consent rules.
Meeting the tough requirements to prevent data sharing isn't the hardest work that IT will face as a result of the new measure. They must make company executives understand that unless they go beyond the law's measures, a confusing patchwork of state and federal laws is likely to come on the books.
How did we get into this mess? The 1998 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated the separation of banks, brokerage houses and insurance companies, has fomented a frenzy of consumer financial information sharing. With the advent of affiliated-yet-separately-regulated financial services companies, consumer data now gets passed around so these different entities can cross-sell to one another's customers.
Just one thing's wrong. Companies haven't asked consumers for permission.
Sure, we've all been inundated with little slips of paper in our credit card bills, mortgage statements and brokerage reports telling us, as FleetBoston recently told me, "Protecting your privacy is important to us. We want you to understand what information we may gather and how we may share it."
These privacy notices provide, in practice, a license to circumvent customers' desire for privacy, thereby letting integrated companies sell them everything from insurance to retirement plans. Rather than taking a "Pirates of the Caribbean" approach to consumer privacy, companies should instead use technology to allow consumers to make decisions about how their private information is used.
SB1 is likely to become a model for future state and federal legislation. It doesn't preclude affiliated companies from sharing information; it simply requires consumer permission to share. Companies should jump on this opportunity, offering maximum control over their financial information as a competitive advantage. An example: Companies could put a link on their bill presentment screen called "privacy controls" that opens a page where consumers can indicate interest in sharing information to gain special deals on insurance. Since consumers review and pay bills monthly, financial institutions will have at least 12 guaranteed page views per year to appeal to consumers to share information in an informed way.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1238730,00.asp
An exploration of predatory behaviour in cyberspace: Towards a typology of cyberstalkers by Leroy McFarlane and Paul Bocij
Over the last few years governments, law enforcement agencies, and the media have noted increases of online harassment. Although there has been a great deal of research into 'offline stalking', at this moment in time there has been no formal research that attempts to classify cyberstalkers. This study aimed to identify a classification of cyberstalkers by interviewing victims. Twenty-four participants were interviewed and their responses logged on a 76-item Cyberstalking Incident Checklist. A typology of cyberstalkers was developed.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_9/mcfarlane/index.html
Over the last few years governments, law enforcement agencies, and the media have noted increases of online harassment. Although there has been a great deal of research into 'offline stalking', at this moment in time there has been no formal research that attempts to classify cyberstalkers. This study aimed to identify a classification of cyberstalkers by interviewing victims. Twenty-four participants were interviewed and their responses logged on a 76-item Cyberstalking Incident Checklist. A typology of cyberstalkers was developed.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_9/mcfarlane/index.html
On the evening of Aug. 19, Kurdish militiamen captured Col. Muhammad Rashid Dawdi, the man believed to be responsible for organizing hide-outs and getaways for a former vice president of Iraq.
Colonel Dawdi had been hiding in Mosul, in northern Iraq, not far from the spot where Mr. Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, were found, shot and killed less than a month before.
Two hours into his interrogation, Kurdish officials here said in interviews, Colonel Dawdi said he could take them to his boss, the former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Two hours later he did just that, leading Kurdish fighters right through Mr. Ramadan's front door, where they found the man in his pajamas.
Mr. Ramadan was one of the biggest catches so far in the hunt for Mr. Hussein's top henchmen. But during the same interrogation, Kurdish officials said, Colonel Dawdi made an even more tantalizing offer. Each week, he told the Kurdish officials, he traveled to Baghdad to meet the man in charge of keeping Mr. Hussein safe.
Colonel Dawdi told Kurdish officials that the next meeting, in a Baghdad safe house, had already been scheduled. The Kurds jumped at the idea, insisting that the arrest of both Mr. Ramadan and Colonel Dawdi remain a closely held secret.
"He told us they met every week in Baghdad," said Kosrat Rasool, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who guided the operation.
Then, Kurdish and American officials agree, everything went wrong. But they agree on little else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/middleeast/06SADD.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Colonel Dawdi had been hiding in Mosul, in northern Iraq, not far from the spot where Mr. Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, were found, shot and killed less than a month before.
Two hours into his interrogation, Kurdish officials here said in interviews, Colonel Dawdi said he could take them to his boss, the former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Two hours later he did just that, leading Kurdish fighters right through Mr. Ramadan's front door, where they found the man in his pajamas.
Mr. Ramadan was one of the biggest catches so far in the hunt for Mr. Hussein's top henchmen. But during the same interrogation, Kurdish officials said, Colonel Dawdi made an even more tantalizing offer. Each week, he told the Kurdish officials, he traveled to Baghdad to meet the man in charge of keeping Mr. Hussein safe.
Colonel Dawdi told Kurdish officials that the next meeting, in a Baghdad safe house, had already been scheduled. The Kurds jumped at the idea, insisting that the arrest of both Mr. Ramadan and Colonel Dawdi remain a closely held secret.
"He told us they met every week in Baghdad," said Kosrat Rasool, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who guided the operation.
Then, Kurdish and American officials agree, everything went wrong. But they agree on little else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/middleeast/06SADD.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Friday, September 05, 2003
Study: Millions hit by ID fraud
Identity fraud is a bigger problem than generally acknowledged, with an estimated 10 million Americans becoming victims in the last year, according to a new Federal Trade Commission survey.
But identity fraudsters appear to be traditionalists. The survey, released Wednesday, found that only a small percentage of identity fraud appeared to involve personal information gleaned from the Internet.
Instead, the details were typically obtained from lost wallets or from acquaintances and family members who knew Social Security numbers and account numbers, according to those respondents who had experienced identity fraud and who knew how their information had leaked out.…
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5071060.html
Identity fraud is a bigger problem than generally acknowledged, with an estimated 10 million Americans becoming victims in the last year, according to a new Federal Trade Commission survey.
But identity fraudsters appear to be traditionalists. The survey, released Wednesday, found that only a small percentage of identity fraud appeared to involve personal information gleaned from the Internet.
Instead, the details were typically obtained from lost wallets or from acquaintances and family members who knew Social Security numbers and account numbers, according to those respondents who had experienced identity fraud and who knew how their information had leaked out.…
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5071060.html
Court clamps down on e-mail searches
In a decision that buttresses electronic privacy rights, a federal appeals court has ruled that attorneys violate the law when they try to subpoena e-mail messages to which they are not entitled.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said last week that a lawyer was acting unreasonably when sending a subpoena to an Internet service provider, NetGate, that sought "all copies of e-mails sent or received by anyone" at a company called Integrated Capital Associates--the opposing party in the litigation.
"The subpoena power is a substantial delegation of authority to private parties, and those who invoke it have a grave responsibility to ensure it is not abused," Judge Alex Kozinski wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. The panel ruled that the attorney had violated two federal laws: the Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
http://techrepublic.com.com/2001-1-0.html
In a decision that buttresses electronic privacy rights, a federal appeals court has ruled that attorneys violate the law when they try to subpoena e-mail messages to which they are not entitled.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said last week that a lawyer was acting unreasonably when sending a subpoena to an Internet service provider, NetGate, that sought "all copies of e-mails sent or received by anyone" at a company called Integrated Capital Associates--the opposing party in the litigation.
"The subpoena power is a substantial delegation of authority to private parties, and those who invoke it have a grave responsibility to ensure it is not abused," Judge Alex Kozinski wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. The panel ruled that the attorney had violated two federal laws: the Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
http://techrepublic.com.com/2001-1-0.html
Sunday, August 31, 2003
The Shifting Internet Population Recasts the Digital Divide Debate
20% of non-Internet users live in a house with an Internet connection
WASHINGTON – There is far more fluidity in the Internet population than most analysts imagine.
About a quarter of Americans live lives that are quite distant from the Internet – they have never been online, and don’t know many others who use the Internet. At the same time, many Americans who do not use the Internet now were either users in the past or they live in homes with Internet connections.
Three new insights regarding patterns of Internet use and non-use emerge from a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
“The Internet population shows much greater churn than most realize – a lot of people are moving in and out of the online world pretty regularly,” said Amanda Lenhart, the Research Specialist at the Project who authored the new report “The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A new look at Internet use and the digital divide.”
She continued: “It is too simple to talk about a digital divide based exclusively on problems with access when it is now clear that access issues change from month to month for lots of Americans. A surprisingly large number don’t want to be connected even though they have tasted what online life is like or live with the Internet literally in the next room.”
Lenhart’s report finds that 24% of Americans remain truly unconnected to the online world. They have never tried going online and are often quite removed from the connected population.
Moreover, there are still pronounced gaps in Internet use along several demographic lines: Older Americans are much less wired than younger Americans; minorities are less connected than whites, those with modest amounts of income and education are less wired than those with college educations and household incomes over $75,000, and rural Americans lag behind suburban and urban Americans in the online population.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey also found that there are social and psychological explanations why some Americans do not use the Internet. For instance, a person’s sense of personal empowerment can make a difference in her decision to go online or not. Those who feel less in control of their lives are less likely to go online.
Disabilities also keep some Americans from using the Internet. Almost three quarters of disabled Americans do not go online, and 28% of them said their disability or impairment made it difficult or impossible to go online.
A portion of non-Internet users are socially disconnected from the Internet, with more than a quarter (27%) saying that they know almost no one who goes online. A similar group of non-users (22%) say they do not know of public Internet access points in their community. At the same time, it is also the case that more than half of non-users know people in their social networks who go online and most of them say it is not hard for them to get to public access points in their neighborhoods.
“The truly unconnected are the Americans that those who worry about the digital divide should understand,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “The reasons non-users stay away from the Internet are varied and complex. Many lack the resources to go online. Others don’t live in a social world where Internet use matters and still others have no notion that the communication and information functions of the Internet can help them improve their lives.”
http://www.pewinternet.org/releases/release.asp?id=62
20% of non-Internet users live in a house with an Internet connection
WASHINGTON – There is far more fluidity in the Internet population than most analysts imagine.
About a quarter of Americans live lives that are quite distant from the Internet – they have never been online, and don’t know many others who use the Internet. At the same time, many Americans who do not use the Internet now were either users in the past or they live in homes with Internet connections.
Three new insights regarding patterns of Internet use and non-use emerge from a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
“The Internet population shows much greater churn than most realize – a lot of people are moving in and out of the online world pretty regularly,” said Amanda Lenhart, the Research Specialist at the Project who authored the new report “The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A new look at Internet use and the digital divide.”
She continued: “It is too simple to talk about a digital divide based exclusively on problems with access when it is now clear that access issues change from month to month for lots of Americans. A surprisingly large number don’t want to be connected even though they have tasted what online life is like or live with the Internet literally in the next room.”
Lenhart’s report finds that 24% of Americans remain truly unconnected to the online world. They have never tried going online and are often quite removed from the connected population.
Moreover, there are still pronounced gaps in Internet use along several demographic lines: Older Americans are much less wired than younger Americans; minorities are less connected than whites, those with modest amounts of income and education are less wired than those with college educations and household incomes over $75,000, and rural Americans lag behind suburban and urban Americans in the online population.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey also found that there are social and psychological explanations why some Americans do not use the Internet. For instance, a person’s sense of personal empowerment can make a difference in her decision to go online or not. Those who feel less in control of their lives are less likely to go online.
Disabilities also keep some Americans from using the Internet. Almost three quarters of disabled Americans do not go online, and 28% of them said their disability or impairment made it difficult or impossible to go online.
A portion of non-Internet users are socially disconnected from the Internet, with more than a quarter (27%) saying that they know almost no one who goes online. A similar group of non-users (22%) say they do not know of public Internet access points in their community. At the same time, it is also the case that more than half of non-users know people in their social networks who go online and most of them say it is not hard for them to get to public access points in their neighborhoods.
“The truly unconnected are the Americans that those who worry about the digital divide should understand,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “The reasons non-users stay away from the Internet are varied and complex. Many lack the resources to go online. Others don’t live in a social world where Internet use matters and still others have no notion that the communication and information functions of the Internet can help them improve their lives.”
http://www.pewinternet.org/releases/release.asp?id=62
A Way to Break the Cycle of Servitude
…Twenty percent of the work force — 26 million people — earn $8.23 an hour or less. Most of them are not teenagers snagging pocket money, but adults supporting families. With so little income, too many Americans are pushed into poverty, and getting out of this trap is increasingly difficult.
As many studies have shown, rising income inequality has driven people apart. And low-wage workers, occupying the bottom rung in this ruptured society, have descended into what amounts to a servant class. It is not their work that makes them servants. We need factory assemblers, store clerks, child care workers and the telephone operators who field calls to "800" numbers, processing much of the nation's commerce.
What makes them servants is the miserable pay. Measuring status by wage, as many Americans do, no one — the employers of low-wage worker, the public or the low-wage workers themselves — seems to value this class of work. Promotion, or higher pay, would be a way out. Unfortunately, neither solution kicks in very often. More than in the past, low-wage workers are stuck in place.
"There is not any kind of sinister approach by companies or individuals to make this happen," said Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive of Manpower Inc., the temporary-help agency, which places many low-wage workers. "But it is the path that we are on."
That path has become self-perpetuating. Employers are under constant pressure to cut costs. Hospitals, for example, have to bid for good medical staffs, so they offset this cost by squeezing the wages of unskilled kitchen workers. Or they outsource food preparation to contractors who pay even less. In either case, the result is a constant, dispiriting turnover. But it is tolerated. The low wage more than offsets the cost of one or two days of training for each new hire.
So wages barely rise. Adjusted for inflation, the $8.23 an hour today is only 9 percent higher than the $7.55 that the workers in the 20th percentile earned 30 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of that improvement came in the very tight labor markets of the late 1990's, when even low-wage workers could command higher pay.…
FAR from lifting these workers, the unfettered American marketplace holds them down. They need help, ideally from employers, if only those employers could find their way back to the pre-1970's system of long-term employment in low-skilled jobs that included training, promotions and raises. In some places, unions still force this to happen — at New York City hospitals, for example — and no hospital is at a disadvantage because each is bound by the same wage scale. But in this era of disappearing unions, that is not likely to work.
Raising the minimum wage would be a quicker route, if only Congress and the administration would make that a priority. The minimum wage once went up regularly, peaking in 1968 at the equivalent of $7.08 an hour today, adjusted for inflation. That's nearly $2 above today's actual minimum of $5.15 an hour. Just restoring the minimum to its old value of $7.08 would also push up wages that are just above the minimum.
Suddenly, the bottom 20 percent of the work force would be making up to $10 an hour, instead of $8.23. That might be a large enough raise to justify training and job security, and new respect for the men and women in these jobs — respect as workers, not servants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/business/yourmoney/31VIEW.html
…Twenty percent of the work force — 26 million people — earn $8.23 an hour or less. Most of them are not teenagers snagging pocket money, but adults supporting families. With so little income, too many Americans are pushed into poverty, and getting out of this trap is increasingly difficult.
As many studies have shown, rising income inequality has driven people apart. And low-wage workers, occupying the bottom rung in this ruptured society, have descended into what amounts to a servant class. It is not their work that makes them servants. We need factory assemblers, store clerks, child care workers and the telephone operators who field calls to "800" numbers, processing much of the nation's commerce.
What makes them servants is the miserable pay. Measuring status by wage, as many Americans do, no one — the employers of low-wage worker, the public or the low-wage workers themselves — seems to value this class of work. Promotion, or higher pay, would be a way out. Unfortunately, neither solution kicks in very often. More than in the past, low-wage workers are stuck in place.
"There is not any kind of sinister approach by companies or individuals to make this happen," said Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive of Manpower Inc., the temporary-help agency, which places many low-wage workers. "But it is the path that we are on."
That path has become self-perpetuating. Employers are under constant pressure to cut costs. Hospitals, for example, have to bid for good medical staffs, so they offset this cost by squeezing the wages of unskilled kitchen workers. Or they outsource food preparation to contractors who pay even less. In either case, the result is a constant, dispiriting turnover. But it is tolerated. The low wage more than offsets the cost of one or two days of training for each new hire.
So wages barely rise. Adjusted for inflation, the $8.23 an hour today is only 9 percent higher than the $7.55 that the workers in the 20th percentile earned 30 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of that improvement came in the very tight labor markets of the late 1990's, when even low-wage workers could command higher pay.…
FAR from lifting these workers, the unfettered American marketplace holds them down. They need help, ideally from employers, if only those employers could find their way back to the pre-1970's system of long-term employment in low-skilled jobs that included training, promotions and raises. In some places, unions still force this to happen — at New York City hospitals, for example — and no hospital is at a disadvantage because each is bound by the same wage scale. But in this era of disappearing unions, that is not likely to work.
Raising the minimum wage would be a quicker route, if only Congress and the administration would make that a priority. The minimum wage once went up regularly, peaking in 1968 at the equivalent of $7.08 an hour today, adjusted for inflation. That's nearly $2 above today's actual minimum of $5.15 an hour. Just restoring the minimum to its old value of $7.08 would also push up wages that are just above the minimum.
Suddenly, the bottom 20 percent of the work force would be making up to $10 an hour, instead of $8.23. That might be a large enough raise to justify training and job security, and new respect for the men and women in these jobs — respect as workers, not servants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/business/yourmoney/31VIEW.html
Saturday, August 30, 2003
Thursday, August 28, 2003
This Is The Part of the Speech That's Never Quoted
…When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.…
http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html
…When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.…
http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
The Chicago Public Library
has been hit hard by Sobig.F, and possibly by Blaster (LoveSan). From where I sit there was no reason forit at all. I have my suspicions about the demographics of the outage. Sulzer regional on the North (whiter) Side has at least some internet access. Woodson regional On the South (blacker) Side has been out for almost a week.
Since it takes about ten to fifteen minutes per machine to remove the virus, the worm, remove the registry keys, patch the DCOM vulnerability, and update the antivirus program. I wonder how the techs could spend hours at Woodson without bringing one of the ten access terminals online.
has been hit hard by Sobig.F, and possibly by Blaster (LoveSan). From where I sit there was no reason forit at all. I have my suspicions about the demographics of the outage. Sulzer regional on the North (whiter) Side has at least some internet access. Woodson regional On the South (blacker) Side has been out for almost a week.
Since it takes about ten to fifteen minutes per machine to remove the virus, the worm, remove the registry keys, patch the DCOM vulnerability, and update the antivirus program. I wonder how the techs could spend hours at Woodson without bringing one of the ten access terminals online.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
e-Calculus
e-Calculus is a Calculus I tutorial written in TeX and converted to the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Features include verbose discussion of topics, typeset quality mathematics, user interactivity in the form of multiple choice quizzes, in-line examples and exercises with complete solutions, and pop-up graphics.
http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/e-calculus.html
e-Calculus is a Calculus I tutorial written in TeX and converted to the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Features include verbose discussion of topics, typeset quality mathematics, user interactivity in the form of multiple choice quizzes, in-line examples and exercises with complete solutions, and pop-up graphics.
http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/e-calculus.html
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Monday, August 18, 2003
Factories Move Abroad, as Does U.S. Power
…America will still be a manufacturing power in our grandchildren's lifetime, but that status is gradually eroding.
Why does this matter? Well, the essence of a great world power is its edge in producing not services but manufactured products that other people want — Boeing's airliners, for example, Intel's semiconductors and Caterpillar's earth-moving equipment. To the extent this output passes to foreign manufacturers, or even to Americans operating abroad, we lose the means to buy what we, in turn, want from others.
More than half of the manufactured goods that Americans buy are made abroad, up from 31 percent in 1987. If we continue on our path of ceasing to make merchandise that others want to buy from us, the danger is that these imports will be unaffordable for our descendants.
For that to happen, "you have to assume that manufacturing will continue to disappear," said David Heuther, chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers. He does not make that assumption himself. He contends that America's high-tech advantage and its ingenuity will sustain the nation's manufacturing base.
Maybe. Right now, however, the exodus continues, at a stepped-up pace, government data show. The proportion of the work force employed in manufacturing has fallen to 11 percent from 30 percent in the mid-1960's. Two of the 19 percentage points disappeared in just the last 28 months. On another level, manufacturing's share of real gross domestic product — representing all the goods and services produced in the United States — has edged down, even including in the count the output of foreign manufacturers operating here. The share of real G.D.P. has dropped to between 16 and 17 percent, from 18 to 19 percent in the 1950's.
Given manufacturing's importance in maintaining our status as a world power, the downward trends are alarming. The public, nevertheless, focuses only occasionally on the dismantling. It does so when lots of people are suddenly hurt, as they were in the early 1980's, when an onslaught of high-quality foreign imports coincided with a severe recession. The combination forced plant closings and layoffs on a scale not experienced since the Depression.
"Rust belt" and "deindustrialization" were coined in the bitter debate that surrounded that frightening national experience. Those were the years when wage inequality became too persistent to ignore. Blame fell partly on the destruction of factory jobs, and the relatively high wages earned by those workers.
Two decades later, the shrinking manufacturing sector is again a source of public agitation, this time because so many American manufacturers are decamping to China and India, where they employ increasingly skilled but inexpensive workers to make merchandise that is then shipped back to the United States, swelling imports and subtracting jobs at home.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/business/yourmoney/17VIEW.html
…America will still be a manufacturing power in our grandchildren's lifetime, but that status is gradually eroding.
Why does this matter? Well, the essence of a great world power is its edge in producing not services but manufactured products that other people want — Boeing's airliners, for example, Intel's semiconductors and Caterpillar's earth-moving equipment. To the extent this output passes to foreign manufacturers, or even to Americans operating abroad, we lose the means to buy what we, in turn, want from others.
More than half of the manufactured goods that Americans buy are made abroad, up from 31 percent in 1987. If we continue on our path of ceasing to make merchandise that others want to buy from us, the danger is that these imports will be unaffordable for our descendants.
For that to happen, "you have to assume that manufacturing will continue to disappear," said David Heuther, chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers. He does not make that assumption himself. He contends that America's high-tech advantage and its ingenuity will sustain the nation's manufacturing base.
Maybe. Right now, however, the exodus continues, at a stepped-up pace, government data show. The proportion of the work force employed in manufacturing has fallen to 11 percent from 30 percent in the mid-1960's. Two of the 19 percentage points disappeared in just the last 28 months. On another level, manufacturing's share of real gross domestic product — representing all the goods and services produced in the United States — has edged down, even including in the count the output of foreign manufacturers operating here. The share of real G.D.P. has dropped to between 16 and 17 percent, from 18 to 19 percent in the 1950's.
Given manufacturing's importance in maintaining our status as a world power, the downward trends are alarming. The public, nevertheless, focuses only occasionally on the dismantling. It does so when lots of people are suddenly hurt, as they were in the early 1980's, when an onslaught of high-quality foreign imports coincided with a severe recession. The combination forced plant closings and layoffs on a scale not experienced since the Depression.
"Rust belt" and "deindustrialization" were coined in the bitter debate that surrounded that frightening national experience. Those were the years when wage inequality became too persistent to ignore. Blame fell partly on the destruction of factory jobs, and the relatively high wages earned by those workers.
Two decades later, the shrinking manufacturing sector is again a source of public agitation, this time because so many American manufacturers are decamping to China and India, where they employ increasingly skilled but inexpensive workers to make merchandise that is then shipped back to the United States, swelling imports and subtracting jobs at home.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/business/yourmoney/17VIEW.html
Saturday, August 16, 2003
typoGRAPHIC
typoGRAPHIC, an interactive experience informed by type and typography. It aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online.
http://www.rsub.com/typographic/
typoGRAPHIC, an interactive experience informed by type and typography. It aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online.
http://www.rsub.com/typographic/
New interactive narratives site
Online design guru Andrew DeVigal has launched a site packed with links to some great interactive narrative journalism, InteractiveNarratives.org.
http://www.interactivenarratives.org/
Online design guru Andrew DeVigal has launched a site packed with links to some great interactive narrative journalism, InteractiveNarratives.org.
http://www.interactivenarratives.org/
An Industry Trapped by a Theory
In the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities.
Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.
Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/16KUTT.html
In the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities.
Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.
Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/16KUTT.html
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Sunday, June 08, 2003
Truth Is the First Casualty. Is Credibility the Second?
There is a saying here that wars tend to be fought three times. First comes the battle over whether to go to war. Second is the war itself. Third is the battle over the war's meaning once it is over.
Two months after the fall of Baghdad, the third fight is well underway, now that the principal rationale cited by President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell for war with Iraq — that Saddam Hussein's possession of chemical and biological weapons posed an imminent threat — remains clouded by doubt. No chemical and biological weapons have been found, and some experts say they will never be found.
Advertisement
Before the war, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, ranking Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the administration was exaggerating its case for war — a war he supported. He cited administration statements that Iraq was "on the verge" of getting nuclear weapons, when in fact it was not close. Also overstated, he said, were the existence of actual chemical and biological weapons and Iraq's links to terrorism.…
Truth Is the First Casualty. Is Credibility the Second?
There is a saying here that wars tend to be fought three times. First comes the battle over whether to go to war. Second is the war itself. Third is the battle over the war's meaning once it is over.
Two months after the fall of Baghdad, the third fight is well underway, now that the principal rationale cited by President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell for war with Iraq — that Saddam Hussein's possession of chemical and biological weapons posed an imminent threat — remains clouded by doubt. No chemical and biological weapons have been found, and some experts say they will never be found.
Advertisement
Before the war, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, ranking Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the administration was exaggerating its case for war — a war he supported. He cited administration statements that Iraq was "on the verge" of getting nuclear weapons, when in fact it was not close. Also overstated, he said, were the existence of actual chemical and biological weapons and Iraq's links to terrorism.…
Truth Is the First Casualty. Is Credibility the Second?
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