Bin Laden Family Strives to Re-establish Its Reputation
Despite the family's public disavowal of the terrorist mastermind suspect, federal agents swooped in to question family members' neighbors and friends. Reporters piled up outside their doors. More critically, companies that did business with the $5 billion family construction empire in Saudi Arabia were starting to get jittery about dealing with the family.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/international/middleeast/28BINL.html

Nature Pre-publication
Recent events have confirmed that bioterrorism is no longer a threat but a reality. To provide wide-ranging access to the latest scientific information about anthrax and other potential bioweapons, Nature has put together a special online focus on this issue. This focus includes the pre-publication* of two research papers on anthrax toxin, as well as a collection of research, news and feature articles from our electronic archive. Because of the heightened interest in this area, among both the scientific community and the general public, all material in this feature has been made freely available.
http://www.nature.com/nature/anthrax/

All Suicide Bombers Are Not Alike
Whoever kills himself with an iron weapon, then the iron weapon will remain in his hand, and he will continuously stab himself in his belly with it in the Fire of Hell eternally, forever and ever."

A few days after Sept. 11, that quotation from a sacred Muslim commentary turned up on an English-language Web site calledwww.fatwa-online.com. There it was brandished by a Muslim scholar who argued that Islam could never, under any circumstances, justify the practice known in the West as ''suicide bombing.'' Suicide bombers, he seemed to be warning, would blow themselves up through eternity. It was, in its way, a comforting thought, but there was no assurance that this learned discussion on the Internet was being followed in Arab centers where the bombers were found and recruited. In the days after Sept. 11, it also became clear that there was no Arab leadership with the inclination or stature to call a jihad against suicide bombings and the latter-day cult of martyrdom that may date from the Iran-Iraq war, in which Iranian teenagers, sent out by the thousands to be human minefield sweepers, were given keys to wear around their necks. Those keys, they were promised, would open the doors of paradise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/28/magazine/28TERRORIST.html?pagewanted=all

Videoconferencing May Get Much-Needed Critical Mass
\But people have been forecasting the takeoff of videoconferencing for
decades. In the early 1970's AT (news/quote
)
offered Picturephone service in Chicago for $86.50 a month. Jeff Rohlfs,
a Bell Labs economist who was involved with the project, describes the
history of this technology in his new book, "Bandwagon Effects in
High-Technology Industries" (MIT Press).
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/04/business/04SCEN.html?pagewanted=all

LinkVoyager: Terrorism
This directory exists to educate web users about Terrorism, a subject much on people's minds in the wake of the tragic events of September 11th. Feel free to submit sites.
http://www.linkvoyager.com/cgi-bin/serve.fcgi/terrorism/

ResearchBuzz 911 Coverage
http://www.researchbuzz.com/911.html

SearchDay - Attack on America: Coping with Information Overload - 17 September 2001
Attack on America: Coping with Information Overload

Trying to make sense of the events of the past week has been an enormous challenge, not only because of their complexity, but because of the massive amounts of misinformation that's been generated. Here are a few authoritative sources that are providing comprehensive background, analysis and news and links to trusted sources to help us cope with the information overload we're all experiencing.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/01/sd0917-news.html

Finding Disaster Coverage At Search Engines
Following the unprecedented terrorist attacks on the United States today, web users turned en masse to search engines for information. It took those services some time to adjust to the demand, but as the day progressed, many came up to speed.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/09-wtc.html

Public Agenda Special Edition: Terrorism
http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/terrorism/terror_sources.htm

In Europe, Some Say the Attacks Stemmed From American Failings
There was no rejoicing or support in Europe for the killing of so many Americans. Many Europeans wept and the continent fell silent for a moment last week in remembrance of the dead.

But it has also become clear that some Europeans feel that ordinary Americans have largely floated on a tide of prosperity, triumphalism and indifference to the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their view is that the United States has now been confronted with a sobering reality, and that it must try to understand. For those critics, Americans are now facing unsurprising retaliation from an important part of the Islamic world that considers America to have declared war on its faith.

The arguments are sometimes simple — America should expect war in return for bombing Iraq regularly. Some Europeans also contend that many Americans have a blinding confidence in their own goodness and so do not see that the acts of the United States are regarded in many quarters as driven by the domineering pursuit of national self-interest.

European writers and intellectuals have pointed to a catalog of actions that include the bombing — in reprisal for the terrorist bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa in 1998 — of one of Sudan's two pharmaceutical factories on the challenged grounds that it was linked to Osama bin Laden, aid to Israel to buy weapons used against Palestinians, or even the American refusal to intervene to stop the mass killings in Rwanda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/22/international/europe/22DEBA.html

The Strategy: Leaders Face Challenges Far Different From Those of Last Conflict
"I condemn it morally, and I do think it was cowardly," Mr. Kerrey said. "But physically, it was the opposite of cowardly, and if you don't understand that, then you don't understand the intensity of the cause and then you're papering over one of the most important things. There is hatred out there against the United States, and yes, we have to deal with terrorism in a zero-tolerance fashion. But there is anger, too, and they ought to have a place for a hearing on that anger, in the International Court or wherever we give them a hearing."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/15/national/15PREX.html

A dream denied

curdles

like sour milk

as awful

as a stranglers cord

made of the

finest silk

Israeli Kids at School Amid Chaos Arab communities countrywide initiated a three-day school strike, leaving 400,000 Arab students at home and 600 schools closed. Many expressed anger and frustration with the Israeli government, accusing it of neglecting the Arab minority for years.

In Gilo, built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War, parents delivering their children to their first day at school were apprehensive. The neighborhood came under heavy fire last week, prompting Israel's army to move into Beit Jalla for two days. before pulling out Thursday.

``You have to try to live normally,'' said Hezi Cohen, as he led his daughter Shelli, smartly clad in a white shirt and pleated dress, into her first class, past TV cameramen, photographers and journalists. Moments later the country's premier walked in.

``You have stood up to a hard battle, as if it was no battle at all,'' Sharon told students assembled in the school's gymnasium, under a sign that read ``a year of peace and security for Gilo students.''

``I promise you that I will take the issue of security upon myself, and I won't allow more shooting on Gilo,'' he told the elementary school students.

As the Jewish schools opened on schedule, Raji Mansour, head of a group that is monitoring Arab education, said Israel provides Arab students with only a quarter of the funding it allots to Jewish students.

``The whole country knows there is a wide social division, discrimination and scandal,'' he said. ``There has to be a change of policy -- at least equality (with Jewish schools).''

Schools in the Arab sector need an additional 1,600 classrooms, and the group is demanding a budget increase of $12.5 million, said Atef Moaddi, a member of the monitoring group, called the Follow-up Committee of Arab Education.

In meetings held late last month with the Ministry of Education, the group raised a number of issues, requesting the budget be doubled in order to allow for extra schooling hours, and an expansion of the existing academic system to match standards at Jewish schools.

If the strike does not achieve its demands, educational institutions in the Arab sector will resume their strike Nov. 1, until their demands are met, Moaddi said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Back-to-School.html

How Not to Win the Battle but Lose the War Unintended consequences have long dogged Israel. Until its army stormed into Lebanon in the early 1980's to root out Mr. Arafat and the P.L.O., it had no real issue with Hezbollah, or the Party of God. Now, Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a constant menace on their northern border.

Also in the 1980's, searching for a political counterweight to the P.L.O., Israel nurtured a new group called the Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic shorthand, Hamas. Guess which group became the bigger threat for Israelis.

Then in December 1992, in retaliation for the murder of several Israelis, the army rounded up some 400 Hamas members and dumped them in a barren stretch of southern Lebanon. There they stayed for many months. And there they learned bomb-making techniques from Hezbollah guerrillas, returning to Gaza and the West Bank bigger and badder than ever as far as Israel was concerned.

Unintended consequences have also tarnished attempts at peace, notably the Israeli-Palestinian agreements reached in Oslo in 1993. "Rock-solid assumptions made in 1993 produced radically different results," said Joseph Alpher, an independent strategic analyst in Israel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/weekinreview/02HABE.html

And There Was Light, and It Was Good?
There hardly seems a place on earth untouched by social and political hierarchies linked to skin color, which rank the world's rainbow of skin tones according to two shades, light and dark. That distinction is the foundation of the current notion of race.

As how to define racism, much less what to do about it, roils the delegates to the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, it might be wise to remember that the importance of skin color is largely a modern invention.

Certainly, slavery and many other oppressive forms of hierarchy have existed throughout human history, as have differences in skin color. But the idea that the two have a cause-and-effect relationship is relatively new, with its genesis, many academics say, in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonialism that emerged with it.

ANOTHER way of thinking about skin color is to ask: When did Europeans start thinking of themselves as white?

"There was no whiteness prior to the 17th century," said Manning Marable, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. "Whiteness is the negation of something else. The something else are Africans who are described by Europeans not by their religion or nationality but by the color of their skin. And nowhere in Africa did Africans call themselves `black.' "

The word race was used for the first time in a modern sense, it is widely believed, in a 17th-century French travelogue, Dr. Brace said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/weekinreview/02SAUL.html

Report Shows Americans Have More 'Labor Days'
American workers have increased their substantial lead over Japan and all other industrial nations in the number of hours worked each year.

The report, issued by the International Labor Organization, found that Americans added nearly a full week to their work year during the 1990's, climbing to 1,979 hours on average last year, up 36 hours from 1990. That means Americans who are employed are putting in nearly 49 1/2 weeks a year on the job.

Americans work 137 hours, or about three and one-half weeks, more a year than Japanese workers, 260 hours (about six and one-half weeks) more a year than British workers and 499 hours (about 12 1/2 weeks) more a year than German workers, the report said. The Japanese had long been at the top for the number of hours worked, but in the mid-1990's the United States surpassed Japan, and since then it has pulled farther ahead.

"It's unique to Americans that they continue to increase their working hours, while hours are declining in other industrialized nations," said Lawrence Jeff Johnson, the economist who oversaw the labor organization's report. "It has a lot to do with the American psyche, with American culture. American workers are eager to make the best impression, to put in the most hours."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/01/national/01HOUR.html?pagewanted=all

South Africa's Mbeki Has Bleak Message on Race
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his opening speech to the conference, said Israel could not use ``the ultimate abomination'' of the Holocaust as an excuse to never examine its own behavior.

``We cannot expect Palestinians to accept this (the Holocaust) as a reason why the wrongs done to them -- displacement, occupation, blockade, and now extra-judicial killings -- should be ignored, whatever label one uses to describe them,'' he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-race.html

Rancor and Powell's Absence Cloud Racism Parley
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who arrived this morning, warned that the debate over the Middle East threatened to eclipse the conference, which is intended to highlight discrimination in all forms — from concerns about racism in the criminal justice system in the United States, to the plight of women in Afghanistan, to modern-day slavery in Sudan.

Mr. Jackson and other civil rights leaders here including Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, and Wade J. Henderson, director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said it was a mistake not to send Secretary Powell. The delegation will be led instead by E. Michael Southwick, the deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations.

But Mr. Jackson said he and others agreed that the language of the proposed declaration against racism seemed to target Israel unnecessarily, particularly given the dismal human rights records of many countries participating in the conference.

"The issue of racism is too big to reduce it to the controversy about the Middle East," Mr. Jackson said in an interview. "One can be against the settlements, against the assassination of leaders and not have to label Israel as a racist state. If one goes into labeling, there are a lot of labels to go around."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/31/international/31RACE.html?pagewanted=all

More Women Are Losing Insurance Than Men
In the past, because of women's higher rate of poverty and historically greater eligibility for Medicaid, women have been less likely than men to go without health insurance. In 1994, for example, there were 15.7 million uninsured men and 13.1 million uninsured women. But the gap has been closing rapidly. In 1998, there were 16.7 million uninsured men and 15.3 million uninsured women, according to the fund.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/31/national/31INSU.html?pagewanted=all

Under the Nuremberg Code of 1947 and the World Medical Associations Declaration of Helsinki, those seeking to conduct medical tests on human subjects must explain the purpose, risks and methods of the study and obtain each subject's voluntary consent to participate.

Families Sue Pfizer on Test of Antibiotic
During a meningitis epidemic in 1996, Pfizer treated 100 Nigerian children with the antibiotic Trovan as part of its effort to determine whether the drug, which had never been tested in children, would be an effective treatment for the disease. Pfizer treated 100 other children with ceftriaxone, the gold standard for meningitis treatment, but, the suit says, at a lower-than- recommended dose. Eleven children in the trial died, and others suffered brain damage, were partly paralyzed or became deaf.

Vanessa McGowan, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, said yesterday that the company had not yet seen the suit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, and could not comment on the allegations. In the past, Pfizer has said that the number of deaths in the Nigerian Trovan trial was lower than the overall fatality rate for the meningitis epidemic and that the trial had been a philanthropic effort that benefited most of the sick children, not a self-serving effort to obtain quick clinical data, as the suit contends.

In early 1996, within weeks of learning about the meningitis epidemic from an Internet site, Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, sent a six-member research team to the Infectious Disease Hospital in Kano, Nigeria, a strife- torn city suffering concurrent epidemics of bacterial meningitis, measles and cholera. The Pfizer team selected children for its test from the long lines of ailing people seeking care at the hospital.
"Pfizer took the opportunity presented by the chaos caused by the civil and medical crises in Kano to accomplish what the company could not do elsewhere — to quickly conduct on young children a test of the potentially dangerous antibiotic Trovan," said the suit, which was filed yesterday by Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, a New York law firm that specializes in representing groups of plaintiffs against large corporations.

Pfizer conducted the trial at the same hospital where Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel Prize-winning relief organization, was already providing free treatment with chloramphenicol, the cheaper antibiotic that is internationally recommended for treating bacterial meningitis.

"Rather than provide the children with a safe, effective and proven therapy for bacterial meningitis," the suit said, "Pfizer chose to select children to participate in a medical experiment of a new, untested and unproven drug without first obtaining their informed consent, or explaining to the children or their parents that the proposed treatment was experimental and that they were free to refuse it and instead choose the safe, effective treatment for bacterial meningitis offered at the same site, free of charge, by a charitable medical group."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/30/business/30DRUG.html?pagewanted=all