net127

Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed

According to the U.S. Army, one Iraqi prisoner was told to stand on a box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. (Photo: CBS)

CBS reports:

(CBS) Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners.

But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now.

It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report.

Now, an Army general and her command staff may face the end of long military careers. And six soldiers are facing court martial in Iraq -- and possible prison time.

Correspondent Dan Rather talks to one of those soldiers. And, for the first time, 60 Minutes II will show some of the pictures that led to the Army investigation.

According to the U.S. Army, one Iraqi prisoner was told to stand on a box with his head covered, wires attached to his hands. He was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted.

It was this picture, and dozens of others, that prompted an investigation by the U.S. Army. On Tuesday, 60 Minutes II asked Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, what went wrong.

“Frankly, I think all of us are disappointed by the actions of the few,” says Kimmitt. “Every day, we love our soldiers, but frankly, some days we're not always proud of our soldiers."

For decades under Saddam Hussein, many prisoners who were taken to the Abu Ghraib prison never came out. It was the centerpiece of Saddam’s empire of fear, and those prisoners who did make it out told nightmarish tales of torture beyond imagining – and executions without reason.

60 Minutes II talked about the prison and shared pictures of what Americans did there with two men who have extensive interrogation experience: Former Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan and former CIA Bureau Chief Bob Baer.

"I visited Abu Ghraib a couple of days after it was liberated. It was the most awful sight I've ever seen. I said, ‘If there's ever a reason to get rid of Saddam Hussein, it's because of Abu Ghraib,'” says Baer. “There were bodies that were eaten by dogs, torture. You know, electrodes coming out of the walls. It was an awful place."

"We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage,” says Cowan. It was American soldiers serving as military police at Abu Ghraib who took these pictures. The investigation started when one soldier got them from a friend, and gave them to his commanders. 60 Minutes II has a dozen of these pictures, and there are many more – pictures that show Americans, men and women in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners.

There are shots of the prisoners stacked in a pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.

In some, the male prisoners are positioned to simulate sex with each other. And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing, or giving the camera a thumbs-up.

60 Minutes II was only able to contact one of the soldiers facing charges. But the Army says they are all in Iraq, awaiting court martial.

"What can the Army say specifically to Iraqis and others who are going to see this and take it personally," Rather asked Kimmitt, in an interview conducted by satellite from Baghdad.

"The first thing I’d say is we’re appalled as well. These are our fellow soldiers. These are the people we work with every day, and they represent us. They wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down,” says Kimmitt.

“Our soldiers could be taken prisoner as well. And we expect our soldiers to be treated well by the adversary, by the enemy. And if we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect … We can't ask that other nations to that to our soldiers as well."

“So what would I tell the people of Iraq This is wrong. This is reprehensible. But this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here,” adds Kimmitt. “I'd say the same thing to the American people... Don't judge your army based on the actions of a few." One of the soldiers facing court martial is Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick.

Frederick is charged with maltreatment for allegedly participating in and setting up a photo, and for posing in a photograph by sitting on top of a detainee. He is charged with an indecent act for observing one scene. He is also charged with assault for allegedly striking detainees – and ordering detainees to strike each other.

60 Minutes II talked with him by phone from Baghdad, where he is awaiting court martial.

Frederick told us he will plead not guilty, claiming the way the Army was running the prison led to the abuse of prisoners.

“We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things...like rules and regulations,” says Frederick. “And it just wasn't happening."

Six months before he faced a court martial, Frederick sent home a video diary of his trip across the country. Frederick, a reservist, said he was proud to serve in Iraq. He seemed particularly well-suited for the job at Abu Ghraib. He’s a corrections officer at a Virginia prison, whose warden described Frederick to us as “one of the best.”

Frederick says Americans came into the prison: “We had military intelligence, we had all kinds of other government agencies, FBI, CIA ... All those that I didn't even know or recognize."

Frederick's letters and email messages home also offer clues to problems at the prison. He wrote that he was helping the interrogators:

"Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.' "

"They usually don't allow others to watch them interrogate. But since they like the way I run the prison, they have made an exception."

"We help getting them to talk with the way we handle them. ... We've had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours." According to the Army’s own investigation, that’s what was happening. The Army found that interrogators asked reservists working in the prison to prepare the Iraqi detainees, physically and mentally, for questioning.

What, if any actions, are being taken against the interrogators

"I hope the investigation is including not only the people who committed the crimes, but some of the people that might have encouraged these crimes as well,” says Kimmitt. “Because they certainly share some level of responsibility as well."

But so far, none of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib are facing criminal charges. In fact, a number of them are civilians, and military law doesn’t apply to them.

One of the civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib was questioned by the Army, and he told investigators he had "broken several tables during interrogations, unintentionally," while trying to "fear up" prisoners. He denied hurting anyone.

In our phone conversation, 60 Minutes II asked Frederick whether he had seen any prisoners beaten.

“I saw things. We had to use force sometimes to get the inmates to cooperate, just like our rules of engagement said,” says Frederick. “We learned a little bit of Arabic, basic commands. And they didn't want to listen, so sometimes, you would just give them a little nudge or something like that just to get them to cooperate so we could get the mission accomplished."

Attorney Gary Myers and a judge advocate in Iraq are defending Frederick. They say he should never have been charged, because of the failure of his commanders to provide proper training and standards.

"The elixir of power, the elixir of believing that you're helping the CIA, for God's sake, when you're from a small town in Virginia, that's intoxicating,” says Myers. “And so, good guys sometimes do things believing that they are being of assistance and helping a just cause. ... And helping people they view as important."

Frederick says he didn't see a copy of the Geneva Convention rules for handling prisoners of war until after he was charged.

The Army investigation confirms that soldiers at Abu Ghraib were not trained at all in Geneva Convention rules. And most were reservists, part-time soldiers who didn't get the kind of specialized prisoner of war training given to regular Army members.

Frederick also says there were far too few soldiers there for the number of prisoners: “There was, when I left, there was over 900. And there was only five soldiers, plus two non-commissioned officers, in charge for those 900 -- over 900 inmates."

Rather asked Kimmitt about understaffing. "That doesn't condone individual acts of criminal behavior no matter how tired we are. No matter how stretched we are, that doesn't give us license and it doesn't give us the authority to break the law,” says Kimmitt.

“That may have been a contributing factor, but at the end of the day, this is probably more about leadership, supervision, setting standards, abiding by the Army values and understanding what's right, and having the guts to say what's right.” Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinsky ran Abu Ghraib for the Army. She was also in charge of three other Army prison facilities that housed thousands of Iraqi inmates.

The Army investigation determined that her lack of leadership and clear standards led to problems system wide. Karpinski talked with 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft last October at Abu Ghraib, before any of this came out.

"This is international standards,” said Karpinski. “It's the best care available in a prison facility."

But the Army investigation found serious problems behind the scenes. The Army has photographs that show a detainee with wires attached to his genitals. Another shows a dog attacking an Iraqi prisoner. Frederick said that dogs were “used for intimidation factors.”

Part of the Army's own investigation is a statement from an Iraqi detainee who charges a translator - hired to work at the prison - with raping a male juvenile prisoner: "They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming. ...and the female soldier was taking pictures."

There is also a picture of an Iraqi man who appears to be dead -- and badly beaten.

"It's reprehensible that anybody would be taking a picture of that situation,” says Kimmitt.

But what about the situation itself

“I don't know the facts surrounding what caused the bruising and the bleeding,” says Kimmitt. “If that is also one of the charges being brought against the soldiers, that too is absolutely unacceptable and completely outside of what we expect of our soldiers and our guards at the prisons."

Is there any indication that similar actions may have happened at other prisons “I'd like to sit here and say that these are the only prisoner abuse cases that we're aware of, but we know that there have been some other ones since we've been here in Iraq,” says Kimmitt. When Saddam ran Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqis were too afraid to come ask for information on their family members.

When 60 Minutes II was there last month, hundreds had gathered outside the gates, worried about what is going on inside.

"We will be paid back for this. These people at some point will be let out,” says Cowan. “Their families are gonna know. Their friends are gonna know."

This is a hard story to have to tell when Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq. And for Cowan, it’s a personal issue. His son is an infantry soldier serving in Iraq for the last four months.

Rather asked Cowan what he would say to "that person who is sitting in their living room and saying, ‘I wish they wouldn't do this. It's undermining our troops and they shouldn't do it.’"

"If we don't tell this story, these kinds of things will continue. And we'll end up getting paid back 100 or 1,000 times over,” says Cowan. “Americans want to be proud of each and everything that our servicemen and women do in Iraq. We wanna be proud. We know they're working hard. None of us, now, later, before or during this conflict, should wanna let incidents like this just pass."

Kimmitt says the Army will not let what happened at Abu Ghraib just pass. What does he think is the most important thing for Americans to know about what has happened

"I think two things. No. 1, this is a small minority of the military, and No. 2, they need to understand that is not the Army,” says Kimmitt. “The Army is a values-based organization. We live by our values. Some of our soldiers every day die by our values, and these acts that you see in these pictures may reflect the actions of individuals, but by God, it doesn't reflect my army."

Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes II received an appeal from the Defense Department, and eventually from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to delay this broadcast -- given the danger and tension on the ground in Iraq.

60 Minutes II decided to honor that request, while pressing for the Defense Department to add its perspective to the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison. This week, with the photos beginning to circulate elsewhere, and with other journalists about to publish their versions of the story, the Defense Department agreed to cooperate in our report.

© MMIV, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.

April 29, 2004

BASIC Computer Language Turns 40

J.M. HIRSCH, AP, reports:

10 PRINT "In 1963 two Dartmouth College math professors had a radical"
20 PRINT "idea - create a computer language muscular enough to harness"
30 PRINT "the power of the period's computers, yet simple enough that even"
40 PRINT "the school's janitors could use it."
50 END

(via Slashdot)

A year later on May 1, 1964, the BASIC computer programing language (as demonstrated above) was born and for the first time computers were taken out of the lab and brought into the community.

Forty years later pure BASIC - Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code - has all but disappeared, but its legacy lives on.

"This is the birth of personal computing," said Arthur Luehrmann, a former Dartmouth physics professor who is writing a book about BASIC's development at the university. "It was personal computing before people knew what personal computing was."

Paul Vick, a senior developer at Microsoft, said his company owes much to BASIC, the software giant's first product. Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office suite still use a descendent called Visual Basic.

BASIC was born in an age when computers were large, expensive and the exclusive province of scientists, many of whom were forced to buy research time on the nation's handful of machines.

Dartmouth math professors Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny envisioned something better, an unprecedented system that would give their entire school - from the faculty to the food service staff - simultaneous access to a computer.

Using existing technology called time sharing, the pair created a primitive network to allow multiple users to share a single computer through terminals scattered around campus.

With the help of students, Kurtz and Kemeny developed a commonsense language to run the system, relying on basic equations and commands, such as PRINT, LIST and SAVE.

John McGeachie, then a student, was there at 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, when BASIC came to life in the basement of Dartmouth's College Hall. Two terminals hooked up to a single computer ran two different programs.

"I don't think anybody knew how it would end up catching on," said McGeachie, now 61 and a software designer. "It was just enormously exciting for us as students to be working on something so many people said couldn't be done."

Within a short time nearly everyone at Dartmouth - a humanities-based college - had some BASIC experience. And it wasn't long before the business community took notice.

Kurtz said that by 1970 nearly 100 companies used BASIC systems to share and sell time on computers. And when computers eventually entered the consumer market, most used BASIC.

The popularity of BASIC waned as computers got more sophisticated, and newer languages were developed to take advantage of the power. Many of those languages, including the Internet's Java, have their roots in BASIC.

Harry McCracken, editor-in-chief of PC World magazine, laments BASIC's demise.

"On some level I think it's sad that it went away," he said. "People went from being creators of software to consumers."

Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Warflying Los Angeles

Mike Outmesguine, in thewirelessweblog, writes:

We all know what wardriving is - discovering wireless networks while driving some sort of ground-based vehicle. Warflying is kind of like that, except you are travelling at about 120 miles per hour and flying about 1500 above ground.

I went warflying over Los Angeles yesterday with a group of other Wi-Fi nuts and a representative from CNN. We had two planes flying in formation with Netstumbler, Kismet, and Airmagnet running. Plus we performed a video conference during the flight.

We think this is the first time anyone has done a plane-to-plane videoconference! And it worked great!

China Ups Pressure on Tibetan Monks Over Panchen Lama

KATHMANDU, April 9, 2004--Chinese authorities in Tibet are conducting a systematic indoctrination campaign in a major monastery aimed at forcing Tibetan monks to accept a Panchen Lama chosen by Beijing, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.

Officials from the religious affairs department and other sections of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) government have been paying twice-weekly visits to the Tashi Lhunpo monastery--the monastery of the teenaged Panchen Lama they hope to suppress--to conduct "study sessions," Tibetan sources told RFA's Tibetan service.

Chinese officials in the TAR, contacted by telephone, said they were unaware of any such efforts in the Tashi Lhunpo monastery.

"The monks are under so much pressure to recognize the Chinese Panchen Lama," one source said. "The Chinese government started its re-education program for monks to recognize the Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama by holding education sessions. The first session began in 1998 and lasted for four and a half months."

"Since then, the study sessions have continued twice a week," the source said, adding that government officials ran the sessions in person from 3-5 p.m. at the monastery. "The Chinese government is asking the monks to recognize their candidate as the real reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, and it is trying to convince the monks they followed all of the proper procedures [for selecting their Panchen Lama]," he said.

The Chinese-selected Panchen Lama, Gyaincain Norbu, is rarely seen in public and is closely guarded by the Chinese government. Beijing claims to have followed the proper procedures for selecting its Panchen Lama--by putting the candidates' names into a golden urn.

The Dalai Lama-appointed Panchen Lama, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, who has been under virtual house arrest since 1995 when he was six years old, recently was reported by the Chinese Foreign Ministry to be leading a "happy, normal" life in China.

The Tibetan government-in-exile says it found the boy following a search of several years, using a variety of divination procedures, and that his reincarnation as Gendun Choekyi Nyima was confirmed by several oracles.

According to the government-in-exile's Web site, when the boy was first able to speak he said, "I am the Panchen, my monastery is Tashi Lhunpo. I sit on a high throne. My monasteries are in Tsang, in Lhasa, and in China."

The appointment of the Panchen Lama is of great significance to Tibetan Buddhists because he typically leads the search for the reincarnated Dalai Lama.

The Panchen Lama is Tibetan Buddhism's second most prominent figure, after the Dalai Lama. The Chinese government insists insist that Gyaltsen Norbu, the boy it selected in 1995, is the Panchen Lama's 11th reincarnation.

Gyaltsen Norbu made his second highly orchestrated visit to Tibetan areas in August last year, and his public appearances were marked by a heavy security. Most Tibetan Buddhists recognize Gendun Choekyi Nyima as the Panchen Lama instead.

According to the 2003 State Department report on human rights around the world, Chinese officials last year "acknowledged that monks and nuns continued to undergo mandatory political education or 'patriotic education' on a regular basis at their religious sites. Training sessions were aimed at enforcing compliance with government regulations, and either cowing or weeding out monks and nuns who refused to follow Party directives and who remained sympathetic to the Dalai Lama."

This article provided by:
Radio Free Asia www.rfa.org
via Snow Lion Publications
http://www.snowlionpub.com/pages/news4.php

Everyone is an editor

Sam Williams, Salon, writes:

April 27, 2004 | Like most frontier sheriffs, Wikipedia Arbitration Committee member Martin Harper wears his badge with a mixture of pride and caution.

A 24-year-old software engineer from Worcester, England, Harper knows what it's like to be new. It was only two years ago, after all, that Harper, an immigrant fresh in from the Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" online encyclopedia project, H2G2, encountered the scary freedom of wiki publishing -- where pretty much anyone can add his or her own thoughts to a Web site, even if that means overwriting or "correcting" what someone has already written.

"I think, like most people, I came across the idea and thought, 'This is madness,'" says Harper, looking back. "On [H2G2] you could have maybe five people editing an article. On Wikipedia you could have 50 people editing at once with no one person in control."

Today, Harper is one of a select few working to impose a civilized order on what has become one of the Internet's fastest growing boomtowns. Launched in January 2001 with barely a dozen articles, Wikipedia crossed the 500,000 articles mark in February, with posters contributing content in more than 30 languages and, by last measure, at a rate of 300,000 articles per year.

Needless to say, so much activity generates plenty of controversy and plenty of work for Harper and the nine other members of the Arbitration Committee. Whether that means throwing cold water on recurring editorial battles over Israel and Iraq or deciding whether a ban on offensive user names such as "Mr. Throbbing Monster Cock," the disputes can vary from the mundane to the humorous to the truly informative all within the space of a single day.

"The hardest problems are always at the lowest level," he says. "People being rude, people refusing to compromise. We have a guy whose skill is copy editing. However, unlike most copy editors, he's quite stubborn and adamant about what's proper for articles. He won't budge and people have been complaining. After far too much discussion amongst the community, it was referred to us the second time. We're trying to ease it. We can't get rid of it."

Such problems, Harper notes, are common to any site that embraces the wiki model. First coined in the mid-1990s by Portland, Ore., programmer Ward Cunningham, "wiki" is the technical name for a site that lets readers edit the published content in real time. Borrowed from a Hawaiian term for "very fast" (wiki wiki), the term dates back to Cunningham's Wiki Wiki Web, an experimental offshoot of the Portland Pattern Repository that first offered readers an "edit this page" link in 1995.

"It was something that needed to exist," says Cunningham, recalling his decision to invite a few dozen fellow programmers to test out the wiki feedback model. "I thought if [WikiWikiWeb] lasted six months, it would still be worth it.

Nine years later, the wiki model is flourishing, mostly in venues where publishers put a value on feedback and informational utility. The Apache Ant Project, for example, uses wikis to make sure readers can correct or improve user guides related to the open-source Apache Web server. Even Microsoft, a company for which Cunningham now works, has gotten in on the act, embedding a wiki page within its recently unveiled Channel 9 external weblog.

Of all the variants out there, however, few have attracted as much attention as Wikipedia. Originally a free-range alternative to Nupedia, a commercial online encyclopedia project of the late 1990s, the project has since become the world's largest wiki with more than 1,200 regular contributors posting and revising content in more than 30 languages.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of both Nupedia and the Wikipedia project, credits "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," Eric Raymond's online essay on the merits of decentralized software design, for prompting the experiment. Like Cunningham before him, Wales says he saw his venture into wiki as a temporary thing, an experiment that needed to be tried if only to satisfy his own "what if" curiosity.

"Nupedia was very top down," says Wales. "We recruited academics to write the articles. We had a peer review board. After nearly two years of work and an enormous amount of money, I think we had 12 articles to show for it. Wikipedia was totally different. With the wiki software, bam, things just took off. It very quickly became the project."

Inviting the community to participate in such a project has its risks, of course. Thanks to developments outside the Wikipedia community, the project has seen its media profile surge in recent weeks. The episode started when anti-Semitic Internet users pulled off the agitprop technique known as "Google-bombing" -- repeatedly linking the word "Jew" on Web pages to the Web site JewWatch.com, a site that bills itself as "Keeping a Close Watch on Jewish Communities & Organizations Worldwide." When the tactic propelled JewWatch to the top of Google search rankings, outraged bloggers, led by the site Remove JewWatch.com, responded by linking the word "Jew" to the Wikipedia entry.

The resulting flood of visitors has been both a positive and a negative. Izak, a pseudonymous Wikipedia contributor on topics related to Jewish history, has more than once seen 5,000 words of his editorial work replaced by a single one-paragraph anti-Semitic screed.

"Every few days somebody comes in and vandalizes the site," he says. "So many people are watching the page, though, that it doesn't take long before some admin comes in to fix the page."

As one of those admins, Harper describes Wikipedia's vandalism policy as fairly easy to enforce. Most vandals get a two-strikes allowance. On the third offense, administrators block the offending poster's I.P. address, preventing them from accessing the site. Though some find a new way back in, taunting the admins as they do so, most casual vandals get bored and find other places to ply their hatred.

Wales, who inaugurated this "three strikes" policy during the days when his role as Wikipedia's co-creator put him in the self-described role of "god king," sees it as a cornerstone of the site's overall "soft security" policy. The policy is, in many ways, a Darwinian response to the pressures that undermine most open Internet communities. Instead of courting controversy, Wikipedia's culture has evolved an almost religious aversion to it.

"We talk about 'wiki love,'" says Wales. "We say, hey, if you think this is Usenet and you're supposed to flame people you're really out of line. We really don't approve of that as a community."

A key tenet of "wiki love" is a devotion to NPOV, Wikipedian for "neutral point of view." Articles don't have to be perfect, but they should be free of bias. As an example, Wales cites the 2000 U.S. presidential election. "Two people who disagree vehemently about whether or not it was a fair outcome can at least agree with the description that there was a controversy."

All wikis run the risk of vandalism. Not all wikis have been bold enough to adapt a neutral content policy. Such distinctions, notes Sunir Shah, a University of Toronto computer scientist who contributes to both Wikipedia and his own wiki project, MeatballWiki, make Wikipedia something of a rogue variant in the wiki world.

"They're not interested in having discussions and learning in a dialectic kind of way," argues Shah. "Their goal is to build an encyclopedia, and that changes everything. They don't want to have opinions and they want everything to look appropriate, which means they have to spend a lot of extra time going after vandalism and trolling."

Offering MeatballWiki as a counterexample, Shah says most traditional wikis evolve along the lines of a dialectic or Talmudic discussion. Readers respond to but rarely overwrite previous' authors comments, leaving room for future readers to follow the conversational evolution. In such a scenario, opinion is more than valued: It's practically necessary to keep the conversation moving.

"At MeatballWiki we are kind of happy dealing with the social problems," Shah says. "We have this saying that Meatball will be around in 50 years, so why worry. We can come to a better answer over time."

Harper, who also contributes to MeatballWiki, shares the rogue variant view. Because of its encyclopedic ambitions, Wikipedia has had to adopt new levels of management and security -- log-in names, I.P. address blocks, arbitration and deletion committees -- that most wikis never have to worry about.

"If anything I would say the wiki is more suited to those smaller-scale projects, he says. "As wikis get larger you run into the problem of troublesome users. You can't manage it like the small group where you say, 'We're not going to invite you down to the pub anymore.'"

Wales, on the other hand, sees that level of familiarity operating at the editorial level, where most people who groom the site and have taken on voluntary management tasks have been around long enough to know the major players. Like other scalable open development projects, Linux most notably, Wikipedia has succeeded in passing on its internal cultural values to newcomers encouraged by the project's overall ambitions. To further fuel that ambition and underwrite costs, Wales says he is already talking with some of the larger search engine players about licensing specific portions of the Wikipedia knowledge base and is talking with a publisher about putting out an official 1.0 version.

A few kinks have to be worked out between now and then, of course. With no formal Q-and-A mechanism, Wikipedia would have to ship its 1.0 version free of guarantees. Readers hoping to catch up on the history of World War I might stumble onto a porn star biography or vice versa. Supposing project leaders did take the time to download and vet Wikipedia content, releasing it on a static format such as CD-ROM, a new question emerges: Is a static version of Wikipedia still Wikipedia In the Schrodinger's cat paradox of wiki publishing -- where the only way to verify an article's quality is to keep checking it -- never knowing what you're going to find is half the fun.

Despite such complicating factors, Wales is optimistic. A fundraising campaign on the project's third anniversary drew $50,000, more than double the $20,000 target, and Wales says he is currently saving the reserve funds for servers and other future project needs.

"From the beginning, we've never known how it was going to scale," he says, acknowledging the doubts. "There was always that concern as to, if things got too much bigger, would it all just degenerate into garbage"

Three years later, the concerns are still there. The only difference, of course, is that 1,200 people instead of a dozen people now have a stake in seeing Wikipedia succeed. Reflecting on the project's continued growth, Wales laughs.

"I can't believe that it works, but it works," he says.

[Couple] Sacked for photo Americans weren't meant to see

Caroline Overington, The Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in New York writes:

Last Sunday a newspaper in Seattle, Washington, published a rare photograph of soldiers' coffins, each of them containing the body of an American who had died in Iraq.

The coffins, each draped with the Stars and Stripes, had been loaded into the back of a cargo aircraft for a final journey to the US, where they would be buried. There were at least 18 of them in the picture, which was taken by a 50-year-old civilian contractor, Tami Silicio.

On Wednesday Ms Silicio was sacked from her job, for taking the photograph and sharing it with news organisations.

Ms Silicio worked for Maytag Aircraft Corporation, which has a $US18 million ($25 million) contract to handle cargo for the US Government at Kuwait airport.

As part of that job she would often see soldiers' coffins in the back of aircraft, on their way from Iraq to burial in the US.

Earlier this month - which has been one of the deadliest for coalition soldiers - Ms Silicio decided to photograph the coffins. She asked a friend, Amy Katz, to forward the image to her local newspaper, The Seattle Times.

Ms Katz said she was "amazed" when she saw the photo. "I immediately picked up the telephone and because [Ms Silicio] is from Washington state, I called The Seattle Times," she said. "Tami wanted to share the image with the American people."

The US military generally bans photographs of soldiers' coffins, and few have been published in US newspapers during the war in Iraq. On Wednesday Ms Silicio engaged an agent, who offered her photograph to newspaper outlets for $1400 for one-time, non-exclusive use.

The editor of the Times, Mike Fancher, said in a column this week that he decided to publish the photograph on the front page because it was "undeniably newsworthy". Readers would have "differing reactions to the photo, depending on their views of the war", he said.

The managing editor of The Seattle Times, David Boardman, told the magazine Editor & Publisher this week that "we weren't attempting to convey any sort of political message".

He disagreed with the military ban on photographs of coffins, saying: "The Administration cannot tell us what we can and cannot publish."

Ms Katz said that after the picture was published Ms Silicio was "called into her supervisor's office and severely reprimanded. She explained why she did it, but they sacked her and her husband [David Landry] too". She said Ms Silicio "really wanted mothers of the soldiers to know how the coffins were handled".

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Ms Silicio said the coffins were prayed over and saluted before being shipped.

"Everyone salutes with such emotion and respect," she said. "The families would be proud to see their sons and daughters saluted like that."

She said she had seen a coffin accompanied by the wife and, in another case, by the father of the fallen soldier.

William Silva, the president of Maytag Aircraft, was quoted by The Seattle Times as saying the sackings had been for violating US government and company regulations.

Copyright  © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.

Women's Rally Draws Vast Crowd

Marchers react to one of many luminaries who spoke during the rally on the Mall in this view looking west toward the Washington Monument from the Third Street stage. (Photograph by: Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post )

Cameron W. Barr and Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post Staff Writers, report:

Hundreds of thousands of people filled the Mall and marched along Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday to show their support for abortion rights, loudly identifying President Bush as the leading enemy of "reproductive freedom."

Organizers of the March for Women's Lives said they had drawn 1.15 million people, which would make it the largest abortion rights gathering in history. "This has been the largest march for reproductive rights, the largest march for women's rights and the largest march of any kind in this country," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.

Police would not issue an official estimate, but some veteran commanders said the crowd was at least the biggest since the 1995 Million Man March, which independent researchers put at 870,000 people. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey would say only that he thought the march had met and perhaps exceeded its organizers' expectations. Their march permit was for as many as 750,000.

Celebrities, from entertainers to politicians to activists, lent their shine to the event. Actors Cybill Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg attended, as did singers Ani DiFranco and Moby. Feminist icons Patricia Ireland and Gloria Steinem were there, and so were former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Billionaire Ted Turner was there. So was NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.

"If all we do is march today," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) told the crowd, "that will not change the direction this country is headed under this administration."

Several blocks away, on Pennsylvania Avenue, Jay Rhodes of Alexandria held a sign equating abortion with the Holocaust. He shouted sarcastically, "Keep murder legal" when marchers challenged his views. "It's very hostile," said Rhodes, 52, who said he came on his own to join counter-protesters who lined part of the march route. "There's a lot of anger on both sides."

As the marchers thronged 14th Street yesterday afternoon, Guilford College sophomore Parks Marion, 19, recalled his mother dragging him through the same streets during a 1992 abortion-rights rally. Then, he complained about the walk. Yesterday, in the midst of a take-two-steps-and-stop pedestrian crush, he marveled at "just the sheer number" of people. "It's overwhelming and it's wonderful," he said.

Organizers sought to transcend the polarizing issue of abortion, portraying the event as the work of a coalition of groups that want to improve women's access to reproductive education health care worldwide. But the dominant themes of the day were two. Again and again, march participants vowed that abortion was here to stay. And that Bush had to go.

Bush stayed at Camp David in the Maryland mountains until late afternoon, when he returned to the capital. The White House issued a statement that began on a conciliatory note and then turned to administration policies that are popular with conservatives. "The president believes we should work to build a culture of life in America and regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, we can all work together to reduce the number of abortions through promotion of abstinence-education programs, support for parental-notification laws and continued support for banning partial-birth abortion," the statement said.

Earlier, Jeanne Clark, spokesperson for the Feminist Majority, one of the organizations behind the march, said that while President Bill Clinton was in office, women felt that his veto could protect them. Now, she said, growing concern about Bush administration initiatives has prompted women to march anew to show their concerns. The last major abortion rights rally on the Mall took place in April 1992, seven months before Clinton was elected.

In 2001, shortly after taking office, Bush barred the government from funding international organizations that use money from other sources to provide abortions or information about terminating a pregnancy. On April 1, he signed a bill that made it a federal crime to harm or kill a fetus during the commission of another federal crime.

That law defined an "unborn child" as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb," alarming abortion rights advocates, who challenged the bill in three federal courts even before Bush signed it.

The Bush administration also has not made it possible to obtain the so-called morning after pill, also known as emergency contraception, without a prescription.

Concerned about what they saw as an erosion of rights, the Feminist Majority joined NARAL Pro-Choice America, the American Civil Liberties Union, Black Women's Health Imperative, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, NOW and Planned Parenthood Federation of America to fight it.

Holding a red fly swatter that said "Stop Bush," Carmen Barroso, a New York-based regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, called the day a "mobilization against the war against reproductive rights and reproductive health."

A few feet away, sitting in a folding chair under one of the Mall's shade trees, retired IBM employee Franz Hespenheide of Gaithersburg seemed almost reassured by what he was witnessing. "To see all these people," he said, "just reinforces our belief that this government has to go."

Sandra Kauffman, crouched in the grass next to her three-wheel bike, watched with tears in her eyes as four lawyers approached the stage -- they had argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of abortion rights. "It's been a long fight. It's incredible to see," Kauffman said.

In the last presidential election, Steve Baker, 40, voted for Bush. But Baker said he told his wife, Cindy Maloney, 34, that if he felt women's rights were being compromised in a Bush administration, he would be the first to march with her at an event such as yesterday's. "I really didn't think this was going to happen," he said.

Many people wore or carried signs that displayed their political views. One popular placard featured a portrait of Bush and the phrase "one-term president."

Bob Kunst of Miami had flown in Saturday night to sell 40,000 anti-Bush bumper stickers. On the Mall yesterday, one hand held the stickers and the other a thick wad of cash. "We're doing incredibly well," he said.

The signs in the bus windows at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium's Parking Lot 3 -- one of several staging areas -- read like an atlas of Northeast and Great Lakes states. Big cities and small towns were listed on the placards, including Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Millersville, Lancaster and Durham.

Kay Kennard had marched for civil rights in the '60s and had been to Washington many times chaperoning students on field trips. But yesterday, the retired teacher emerged from a nine-hour bus ride that began in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood to help teach a lesson to her 15-year-old niece, Brytney Saulters. "We want the right of women to make their own choices," Kennard said.

Buses lined several blocks along 22nd and East Capitol streets, while about 800 filled four parking lots outside the stadium. At 10:30 a.m., people filled the sidewalk for a block and a half waiting to get into the Stadium-Armory Metro station.

Katie Panella, 19, slapped a pink sticker on her right thigh and clutched a "Stop Violence Against Women" poster in front of her Brown University women's rugby jacket as she strode towards the station.

Though a little bleary-eyed from the trip from Providence, R.I., she looked forward to showing the importance of mobilizing voters against Bush's policies. "He's a threat to women's rights," she said. "It's just exciting to have so many young people out marching."

Charlotte Hummel, 47, chairs the Landsdowne, Pa., Democratic Party, and came yesterday to show her 9-year-old daughter, Zoe Farquhar, "a major national event." Hummel said that women have long been at the wrong end of government intrusion into their bodies. "If you control women's bodies, you control their lives."

There were several hundred antiabortion activists lining the route of the march, exchanging shouts with the marchers. Police reported no physical clashes, however.

As the march surged down Pennsylvania Avenue, Bertram Lee, 14, of Northwest pulled a cell phone from his pocket and left a message for his girlfriend, who couldn't attend. "I'm wearing a pink shirt and a yellow sash, and I'm proud of it," he said, his voice filled with emotion. "I just wanted to tell her I love her," he explained after the call. "This is amazing."

About 20 feet back from the front line, a tall, slender man in a linen jacket towered above the women around him, walking with a meditative air. It was NAACP leader Julian Bond. "Crowds have a calming influence on me," he said, craning his neck from side to side. " I've been through a lot of these but never on a pro-choice march. We've supported the pro-choice movement since 1968 but never endorsed something like this."

Dinah Finkelstein, a 16-year-old student, came to the Mall by Metro from her home in Northwest. She said she was "amazed" by the scene, and she looked it, gazing in all directions at the crowds around her. "This is really a defensive measure," she observed, "against everyone out there who doesn't think that we deserve a choice."

While it was clear that the march was organized to oppose any infringement of a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, as enshrined in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, some of the other goals were harder to divine.

The official march posters and banners cited eight words -- choice, justice, access, health, abortion, global, family planning -- offering several objectives.

Many people defined their own agendas. "I want 'Pro-choice, Pro-child,' " Roberta Blumberg, 53, told volunteers handing out signs yesterday morning. She already juggled two yellow and purple "Who decides" signs attached to hollow cardboard tubes, but she wanted to modify one with a pro-child statement.

"It's important to look past focusing on abortion rights," said Adia Harvey, 27, a Johns Hopkins University instructor who lives in Lanham. "You have to put abortion in the context of women's reproductive freedom," which she defined as full access to contraceptive technology and sex education.

She said organizers had done a better job than in the past of broadening the agenda, but she and some of her co-marchers agreed that the bottom line was defending the right to an abortion. "It seems a pity that it comes down to this," said Tahi Reynolds, who works for an nonprofit education organization in the District.

Organizers announced yesterday afternoon that they had surpassed a million marchers, reaching that conclusion after they said they had passed out more than a million stickers. Alice Cohan, the march director, said 2,500 trained volunteers were given stickers -- reading "count me in" -- that they pasted on people as they got off buses or entered the march area.

Police would not make a formal estimate. Veteran officers who had been on hand for marches and demonstrations in years past said it was the biggest such gathering since the Million Man March in 1995, a gathering whose size was hotly disputed and that led to the discontinuation of crowd estimates by U.S. Park Police. After that march, a team of researchers recounted the crowd from photos and set the number at 870,000, with a margin of error that offered a range for the turnout from 655,000 to 1.1 million.

Officers disagreed about whether the march matched or surpassed the number at the Million Man March, but many veterans of such gatherings put the figure at at least 500,000. Acting Park Police Chief Dwight Pettiford flew above the crowd in his agency's helicopter and said the "entire Mall was covered with people." "I don't know if they achieved their numbers or not, but there were lots and lots of people," Pettiford said.

Metro reported large numbers of riders. Spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that as of 5 p.m., 320,138 riders had entered the system, more than double last Sunday's ridership but far below weekday average of 670,000, she said. And homebound demonstrators were delayed after a bus became stuck in an underpass near RFK Stadium. By nighttime, the bus was dislodged and traffic was moving.

U.S. Park Police arrested 16 protesters from the Christian Defense Coalition about 3 p.m. for demonstrating without a permit.

Sgt. Scott Fear said the group had permission to demonstrate along Pennsylvania Avenue but moved into an area designated for the March for Women's Lives.

"We gave them three warnings," he said. "They decided that 16 of them were going to stay, so [those] 16 were arrested and charged."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A01

Ex-N.F.L. Player Is Killed in Combat

BILL PENNINGTON, The New York Times. reports:

Pat Tillman, whose decision to give up a lucrative N.F.L. career to join the Army Rangers made him one of the most public examples of patriotism in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was killed Thursday "when his patrol vehicle came under attack," the Pentagon said in a statement released last night.

Tillman, 27, was a specialist assigned to the Army's Second Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. It was the first American casualty in Afghanistan since March 18.

Military officials in Kabul said yesterday that his unit was patrolling one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border, in a valley where Al Qaeda and Taliban forces are known to cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan. American forces have been on special alert in recent weeks, watching for Al Qaeda and other fighters escaping an operation by Pakistani forces on their side of the border.

Tillman joined the Army in June 2002, spurning a three-year, $3.6 million contract offer from the Arizona Cardinals. Tillman, a safety and one of the team's most popular players, had told friends and teammates that the events of Sept. 11 inspired him to try to contribute directly to the antiterrorism effort. Tillman, who enlisted with his brother, Kevin, shunned all interviews throughout his time in the Army, even late last year, after he returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.

"He and Kevin were very proud to be Rangers," Dave McGinnis, who was his coach when he played with Arizona, said yesterday. "But he was adamant that he did not want to be singled out from all of his brothers and sisters in the armed forces. He did not think he was doing anything different than they were doing."

McGinnis said he last saw Tillman in December, when Pat and Kevin attended a Cardinals game in Seattle. The Tillmans, who were stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington State, met privately with the team and spoke for hours with McGinnis the night before the game. They avoided reporters after the game by leaving the locker room through a side door.

"He seemed very happy to be around the team again, and Pat had every intention of coming back into the N.F.L when his time with the Army was complete," McGinnis said. "As he left that day, he thanked me for letting him come by and I said, `No, Pat, thank you.' That's the last thing I said to him."

Tillman becomes the most high-profile casualty of the American war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was not clear when Tillman went to Afghanistan. He and his wife, Marie, would have celebrated their second anniversary next month.

After completing Ranger training, he served in Iraq with the elite 75th Ranger Regiment. In an interview earlier this year, the Tillmans' father, Patrick Tillman Sr., said his sons would not tell him much about their time in Iraq.

The Tillmans' desire to avoid publicity when it came to their service in the Army was evident early: they drove to Denver from Phoenix to enlist, believing that Army officials in Colorado would be less likely to recognize the Tillman name than those in Arizona. Pat Tillman had been a star at Arizona State before joining the Cardinals in 1998. Kevin Tillman was also a professional athlete, playing in the minor leagues of the Cleveland Indians' organization.

Pat Tillman had long ago established a reputation as a hard-hitting overachiever who longed to do more with his life than play football. "Forrest Gump with smarts," a college teammate called him. "He has to do everything — the right thing and the extraordinary thing."

An undersized linebacker at Arizona State, Tillman was an avid rock climber, and he was known to sneak into the university's football stadium after hours so he could scale the 200-foot light towers. Tillman said the perch at the top of the towers was a good place to meditate.

Though named the Pacific-10 Conference Defensive Player of the Year as a senior at Arizona State, Tillman was not deemed a top pro prospect because he was only 5 feet 11 inches and 200 pounds. McGinnis scouted Tillman and thought he had a chance to make the transition from linebacker to safety.

"I remember we went to work him out for 15 minutes," said McGinnis, who was fired by the Cardinals at the end of last season and is now an assistant coach with the Tennessee Titans. "The workout ended up taking 45 minutes, because Pat wouldn't let us stop the drills until he did every one perfectly."

The Cardinals selected Tillman in the seventh round of the 1998 draft (the 226th pick over all) and he became an immediate success as a special teams player. Popular with his teammates, he also stood out for other reasons. He did not own a car, choosing instead to ride a bicycle to the Cardinals' training complex each day. He had shoulder-length hair that flowed out of the back of his helmet when he ran. In the locker room, he was noted for his diligence in the weight room and for engaging his teammates in lengthy philosophical discussions on a variety of cultural topics.

He became a starter midway through his rookie season and by 2000, when he set a team record with 224 tackles, Tillman was respected enough in the league that the Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams offered him a $9 million, five-year contract. Tillman rejected the offer, saying that he wanted to be loyal to the Cardinals because they had given him a chance out of college. He played that season for $512,000.

Arizona players and coaches said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had affected Tillman deeply. McGinnis said he had not been entirely surprised when Tillman came to him in May 2002 and informed him of his plan to enlist in the Army. Tillman had just returned from his honeymoon.

"But I wasn't shocked," McGinnis said. "The essence of the man was to help somewhere else if he felt he was needed to help."

The United States military in Kabul said that the death occurred about 7:30 p.m. Afghan time Thursday; two other Americans were also wounded and an Afghan soldier was killed in the clash.

Part of a coalition combat patrol, the soldiers were near the village of Spera, southwest of their base in the town of Khost. When attacked, the coalition patrol returned fire, according to a United States military statement released in Kabul. The enemy forces broke contact, and it is not known if any enemy soldiers were killed or wounded in the clash.

One of his closest friends from Arizona State, Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer, said: "Today is a very sad day. My condolences go out to Pat's family and wife. We lost a unique individual that touched the lives of many with his love for life, his toughness, his intellect and the many unique qualities he possessed. Pat Tillman lived life to the fullest and will be remembered forever in my heart and mind."

The White House issued a statement of sympathy, praising Tillman as "an inspiration on and off the field."

Jets cornerback David Barrett played with Tillman at Arizona for two years. "It is a tragedy that it had to happen to one of the finer guys in life," he said. "What other person do you know would give up a life in the N.F.L. to defend what he believes in with his own life"

Randy Zimmer, who coached Tillman in high school, said he saw Tillman at a wedding last summer. "He was feeling everyone was making a big deal of it, and he hadn't seen a lot of action," Zimmer said, adding that Tillman had told him, " `I haven't even fired my weapon yet.' "

Last year, the Tillman brothers won the Arthur Ashe Courage award at the ESPY Awards. They declined to attend the ceremony.

Carlotta Gall in Afghanistan and Carol Pogash in San Francisco contributed reporting for this article.

Night, Dawn, Day

A woman wishes the world would go away. One day, it does.
Is it the end of the world, or the beginning

A DV short film by Marc Pilvinsky.
It's about how the things we own eventually come to own us.

NIGHT/DAWN/DAY
(c) 1999 by Marc Pilvinsky
FADE IN. A beautiful sky. PAN DOWN to:
EXT. POOL -- DAY
A pool party behind a nice suburban home. It's summer.
A few people cook hamburgers and hot dogs while others lounge in the shade. A game of water-basketball is in full swing in the shallow end. ALAINA, 29, stands at the edge of the pool, soaking it all in.
ALAINA (V.O.)
For a long time, I haven't been happy.
Alaina looks around the party. In SLOW-MOTION, we see each little moment -- the grill, the lounging, the laughing, kids playing, the basketball teetering on the edge of the basket, a woman floating on a raft.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I don't know when it started -- maybe it's always been there and the white-noise of my everyday kept it from coming in clearly. It's a deep, whispering voice from inside, telling me I should know better, I should be better, that this isn't the life for me.
Alaina steps off the edge and is submerged in the pool.
EXT. POOL. UNDERWATER -- DAY
Alaina sinks to the bottom and curls up in the fetal position. Her eyes are closed.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I'd been harboring a secret desire for the world to go away.
In the far background, we can see legs of the people playing water-basketball. We move into a closer shot of Alaina, and the background people move out of frame. Alaina can't hold her breath any longer, so she releases from the fetal position and goes back to the surface.
EXT. POOL -- DAY
Alaina's head breaks the surface of the water. We're in a tight CU of her face. We pull back to reveal the entire pool and patio. Everyone is gone.
ALAINA (V.O.)
One day, it did.
There is no one around. Everything looks the same, but the party guests have vanished.
Alaina looks around, taking in the scene from the middle of the pool. She swims to the shallow end, where she sees the basketball roll to a stop. She leaves the pool.
ALAINA
Hello Anybody there Helloooo
She grabs a towel and wraps it around herself. The grill is still on, and hamburgers and hot dogs are sizzling. Alaina flips over the burgers and turns off the grill. She enters the house.
ALAINA
Anybody in here
INT. NICE HOME. LIVINGROOM -- DAY
Alaina enters the room. The TV blares static. She goes over and turns it off. There are potato chips and dip on the couch. A half-eaten burger is there too. Alaina picks up the plate with the burger and looks at it.
INT. NICE HOME. HALLWAY -- DAY
Alaina wanders the halls of the same house. She looks in each room and moves on.
EXT. NICE HOME. FRONT DOOR -- DAY
Alaina opens the front door and steps outside. The neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are no cars moving; no people. She screams at the silence.
ALAINA
Heyyyyyyyy!
EXT. SUBURBAN STREET -- DAY
She walks down the street. There is a car stopped in the middle of a lane. It's still running.
ALAINA (V.O.)
It was no use. It had happened. I wanted to be alone, and sometimes, even the most fucked-up wishes come true.
EXT. HOUSE #2 -- DAY
Alaina approaches another house. She knocks, then turns the doorknob.
INT. HOUSE #2 -- DAY
Alaina enters cautiously.
ALAINA
Hello If there's anyone here, please don't shoot me.
She walks through the house.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I have no idea who lived here. I've never been here before.
EXT. RESTAURANT -- DAY
Alaina walks down a stip mall sidewalk, peering in the windows. She opens the door to a sandwich shop.
INT. RESTAURANT -- DAY
Alaina enters. There is food on several of the tables. On one, a cigarette has burned itself all the way down -- the ashes are two inches long. Alaina smells something. He goes to the kitchen.
INT. RESTAURANT. KITCHEN -- DAY
Alaina covers her nose from an awful smell, and turns off the skillet, which has burned some kind of food into a charcoal-like state. Alaina fans away some smoke, and grabs a plastic cup from a rack. She goes to the soda fountain and gets herself a drink.
INT. RESTAURANT -- DAY
Alaina sits alone at a table. She's eating. She stares out the window. In a WS, she looks small and isolated.
ALAINA (V.O.)
So the world is mine. Everybody dreams about that, but ya know, I thought it would make me happier. So much of life is about accumulating things to make our lives easier and more comfortable. I wonder how often we end up drowning in the things we own -- rather than being saved by them.
She looks down at the plastic cup. It's one of those cheap "free" cups with a movie logo emblazoned on it. She smirks at the cup and what it symbollizes.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I mean, I probably waste more time fixing computer bugs than I save by using a computer. I guess everything material is a moot point now. Unless there's someone else out there like me.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. UPSTAIRS BOOTH -- DAY
Alaina walks through the booth. She pauses at each projector and reads the movie title. She finally sees one she likes, and tries to thread the film through the projector.
She hears a noise at the far end of the booth. Cautiously, she goes toward the noise. For the first time since the world changed, Alaina is afraid. She doesn't know what's in here. She doesn't know the rules of this new place.
Slowly, ever slowly, she checks out the booth. There's no sign of anybody else. Relieved, she goes back to the projector she was looking at. She fiddles with it for a while, threading the film through where it looks like it should go, then throws a switch to turn it on.
The film starts moving, then begins bunching up in one of the mechanisms. Alaina tries to pull the film out, but it's getting worse, and fast. She turns off the machine and begins un-bunching the celluloid, shaking her head.
She finally has it fixed, and starts it up again. She's smiling.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. AUDITORIUM
Onscreen, the film starts, sputters, burns, and melts.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. UPSTAIRS BOOTH
Alaina loses her smile.
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. AUDITORIUM -- LATER
Alaina munches popcorn in the completely empty theater. A movie flickers on her face and in her eyes. She looks happy. Suddenly, she senses movement behind her and jerks her head around. She stands up. There's no one there.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I'm having to start over. There's just static on the television, no radio, no movies, and no one to run anything. Every physical thing I see is my property now, but whatever I want -- whether it's a steak or a new computer system or a trip to somewhere I've never been -- there's no one to show me how it's done. I've gotta figure it out on my own.
EXT. ROAD -- DAY
Alaina drives along a road. Smoke starts pouring out of the engine, and she struggles to keep the car going. She can't. She pulls over, gets out, and opens the hood.
She fans away the smoke and looks at the engine. She doesn't know what she's doing, so she closes the hood, grabs her backpack, and walks thirty feet to another car, which is parked haphazardly in the road. She gets in the new car, starts the engine, and drives off, a little proud of herself.
INT. OFFICE. LOBBY -- DAY
Alaina wanders through a nice-looking office.
ALAINA (V.O.)
This is where I used to work. When someone would ask me who I am, describing this place was the first thing I would do. It's so important, apparently, the thing you do -- the thing that pays the gas bill. But what if -- at the core of it -- your job doesn't make you happy I mean, I know jobs aren't supposed to make you happy, but now that things have changed, I'm never gonna fill out paperwork, or call a vendor, or kiss some client's ass again. Now that the world has gone away, there's no point. Come to think of it, what was the point when things were normal We're adding numbers together, or selling soap, or entertaining them while their time just slips away. Half the jobs out there aren't even doing anything. I mean, what purpose did a caveman have for a systems integration manager None. It's not like we were curing cancer here. We're wasting our lives, and wasting the lives of everybody else by not rejecting what humanity has become.
INT. SUPERMARKET. FREEZER AISLE -- DAY
Alaina pushes a grocery cart down an aisle. The lights are still on and the freezers are still cold.
ALAINA (V.O.)
Cancer. Man, wouldn't that be hilarious. The world disappears, leaving only me, and I develop a disease that couldn't have been cured even if there was a doctor here to treat me.
INT. SUPERMARKET. VITAMIN AISLE -- DAY
Alaina looks at the vitamins.
ALAINA (V.O.)
So now I'm faced with some new dilemmas. Do I need vitamins Should I eat low-fat meals Do I even need clothes What's the point Okay, so maybe I'll wear clothes no matter what. But what is really going on here Do the normal laws of physics still apply Do I still have seventy years to live
EXT. ROOFTOP OF HOUSE -- DAY
Alaina walks along the high rooftop of a suburban home. She looks out across the horizon, watching the city in the distance.
ALAINA (V.O.)
What the hell am I gonna do for seventy years without talking to another human being What if my eyes go bad, and I'm the last person alive, but I starve to death because I can't find the fucking store Oh man, how long will the power stay on I mean, I can't run a power plant. It's got to burn itself out sometime, right
INT. CAR -- DAY
Alaina drives, drinking in the world around her. Over the course of her monologue, her face changes from despair to great happiness.
ALAINA (V.O.)
Okay, okay, I've gotta think positive. I'm gonna give myself an ulcer if I think about bad stuff all the time. Then I'd have to drink milk to coat it, and there can't be any unspoiled milk left now, so I'd have to learn how to milk a cow, and...that's just too much for me to worry about. Okay, think positive. The world is mine. So why am I driving this piece of crap car
EXT. SPORTSCAR -- DAY
Alaina takes off in a beautiful new sportscar.
INT. SPORTSCAR -- DAY
ALAINA (V.O.)
And where is God in all this I've been a devout believer, but I've also had long periods as a skeptic. But I want there to be a God. I want to know Him and have Him know me. I want to share that amazing, unknowable thing. So please answer me, God. Please help me make sense of all this. I'm stupid and weak and -- ooh! A shopping mall.
INT. SHOPPING MALL -- DAY
Alaina wanders through an empty shopping mall, window-shopping.
ALAINA (V.O.)
So what else I can do whatever I want. I can go shopping naked and take everything I need. I've got the time I always wanted to read every book I wish I had before.
EXT. SOCCER FIELD -- DAY
Alaina slowly walks through a recreational park. She absent-mindedly dribbles a soccer ball with her feet.
ALAINA (V.O.)
I never have to hear another politician's lies again. I don't have to fear nuclear war. I don't have to be afraid in the city at night. I don't need to worry about bills or taxes or money ever again. I've got nothing to worry about, right
Alaina sets the ball in front of a soccer goal, as if she were in a shootout with the goalie. She runs up the the ball, arching her leg back to kick and --
CUT TO BLACK.
ALAINA (V.O.)
The future is mine.
EXT. POOL -- DAY
Close up on JULIE, 25.
JULIE
Oh my God, she's not coming up!
PULL BACK TO REVEAL: The pool party from the first scene. Everyone is where they were when we last saw them. They all drop what they're doing and race towards Alaina, who is still underwater at the bottom of the pool.
VOICES
Alaina! Somebody get her up!
Several people dive into the water, scrambling to bring Alaina back to the surface.
VOICES
Call 911! Oh God! Oh God!
PAN UP to the sky. We hear the faint sound of sirens approaching.
VOICES (O.S.)
She's not breathing. Does anyone know CPR Help! Help us! Alaina!
FADE TO BLACK.
ALAINA (V.O.)
The future is mine.
The sirens are getting closer.

Swimming the Mississippi

John Irons writes:

Swim Lessons - Ten Lessons for Making Any Dream Come True - by Nick Irons

Swim the Mississippi Why would anyone do that Nick Irons did. He swam six hours a day, six days a week, for four months. Good thing. What he discovered along the way is the rock-solid plan the rest of us can use to make our biggest dreams come true.

Irons’ dream was to raise awareness and money to find a cure for multiple sclerosis, the disease his father and hundreds of thousands of other people live with every day. And he did. His historic 1,550-mile swim down the mighty Mississippi from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana—makes him the second person in seventy years to swim the length of North America’s longest waterway and the first to do it with the locks and dams of its “modern” form.

According to Irons, we all have at least one idea that just won’t let go. What’s your Mississippi Have you always wanted to write that novel or take time off to travel with your kids How would you like to live on a sail boat for a year, climb a mountain, or learn to ride a horse Maybe you want to change careers. Whatever your dream, Swim Lessons is the ultimate guide to making it happen.

This is not your typical self-help book that takes an inspiring message and uses “success” stories to illustrate its various points. This is the real deal, someone who got out there, did what the rest of us dream of doing, then came back to show us the way. Irons is a first-rate storyteller, so Swim Lessons is loaded with irresistible details and drama that make the swim itself read like any good adventure. Each chapter then boils down a critical lesson, providing dozens of strategic ideas, activities, checklists, questions, and more to help readers launch their own adventure.

Far more than inspiration, Swim Lessons shows you how to take any idea no matter how deeply personal, quirky, or outrageous and make it happen. From getting started to hanging in there, you get fun, easy, step-by-step strategies and tips that will work for anybody. Perfect for dreamers of all ages.

Nick Irons and his story have been featured on CNN, Good Morning America, The Montel Williams Show as well as in magazines and newspapers nationwide, from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, People, and many others. According to CNN National News Correspondent Gene Randall, “Nick Irons is a true American hero.”

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book is being donated to MS research.

Open system might plug up holes in the e-voting process

Mike Himowitz, The Baltimore Sun, writes:

WHILE ELECTION officials, lawmakers and critics in Maryland and other states squabble over the reliability of electronic voting systems, a small group of computer scientists and engineers has been developing one that might actually work.

The Open Voting Consortium is scheduled to demonstrate a prototype today in San Jose, Calif. You can try a version yourself on the Web at www.open votingconsortium.org.

Although it's far from a finished product, the system retains what's good about current electronic voting systems. It's voter-friendly, easier than older systems to administer, and accessible to blind voters without assistance.

It also addresses the concerns of today's critics. First, it uses open-source software that's available for public inspection - eliminating the secrecy that outrages critics of today's proprietary "black box" systems.

Second, the software is free and can run on a variety of computer platforms, which makes the system cheaper to acquire and maintain. Third, it creates a paper trail of printed ballots that can be counted by hand or machine in case of disputed elections - without compromising privacy for the blind.

Unfortunately, the system may come too late to prevent disasters in the next round of elections. To understand why, it takes a bit of history.

In response to the Florida fiasco of 2000, which left the presidential election in limbo and millions of voters disgusted with the system, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002. It provides $3.9 billion to help states replace lever-based voting machines and discredited punch-card ballots with electronic systems.

Although HAVA doesn't forbid scanned paper-ballot systems, which have worked reliably for years, it does require states to equip each poll with a voting terminal accessible to the blind without assistance. As a result, most states have chosen Direct Recording Electronic systems, or DREs, that use touch-screen computers to record votes and provide add-on audio equipment to guide blind voters.

Early on, election officials ignored critics - including many computer scientists - who warned that electronic systems were open to sabotage, tampering and vote-fixing - particularly without the safety of a paper record of each ballot.

Critics also complained that these systems use proprietary software from their vendors to tabulate and store votes - code that's not available to the public. In essence, the most critical part of the election - counting the votes - had been snatched from public view and stashed away in a "black box."

The response from election administrators and voting system vendors: "Trust us."

After a series of embarrassing glitches and exposures of security defects, some states, including California and Ohio, are considering requiring that electronic systems print voter-verified "receipts" that can be stored and used in recounts of disputed elections.

Legislators in Maryland, which bought a $56 million Diebold touch-screen system that two security consultants separately have criticized, are considering similar legislation, although it's unlikely to pass this year.

Advocates for the blind threaten lawsuits over the paper trail proposals, arguing that any system relying on paper verification discriminates against the visually impaired.

While these debates raged over the summer and fall, a group of computer scientists and civic activists who had been working on designs for electronic voting systems for years - mostly in California - formed the Open Voting Consortium to develop a system that's electronic, secure and blind-accessible.

Instead of printing a "receipt" that confirms a ballot cast electronically, it's based on the quaint notion that the best ballot is still a paper ballot. "We didn't see any reason to reinvent the wheel," said Fred McLain, the project's lead software developer.

In the consortium's system, the voting terminal can be a touch screen like today's electronic touch-screens, with the same type of audio accessories for blind voters. But the terminal's main job, once the voter is finished, is to print a paper ballot that identifies the voter's choices - along with a bar code that records the information in computer-readable form.

Once the voter is satisfied, he puts the ballot into a locked box. To verify their ballots, blind voters can hide their printed choices in a security folder and run the bar code under a verifying scanner, which reads back their votes through headphones - eliminating the paper ballot's privacy concerns.

When the polls close, the ballots are scanned on a separate tabulating system. Election judges can compare the scanned totals with those stored in the voting terminals to see if there are any discrepancies. The original ballots are still available to settle disputes - and unlike scanned paper ballots in older systems, the voter's choices are always clearly marked.

"That is a profound difference," said Alan Dechert, the consortium's president. "With a DRE, when you say 'Cast my ballot,' the vote exists in a database. In this system, it says, 'Print my ballot' - the authentic vote is on paper."

Like the "receipt" system, the Open Voting Consortium's plan would add a printer to the mix -- a clunky piece of equipment most election administrators would like to avoid. It also adds an optical scanner, yet another potential source of problems. But the setup adds a measure of security, too - hackers would have to compromise two separate computer systems without being detected to rig an election.

The other major difference in the Open Voting system is the nature of the software that counts the votes. Open-source software is developed by a group of programmers who publish their code and invite others to attack it or offer suggestions for improvements.

Traditional software companies hate open-source software because no one owns it or collects royalties for it. But the process works. The Linux operating system, now used on millions of servers around the world, is a premier example of open source software. Computer experts say Linux is far more secure than Microsoft Windows - largely because friendly hackers have examined it closely and suggested improvements that help keep intruders out.

Dechert said the Open Voting Consortium will spend the coming months demonstrating its system to election administrators around the country.

It's an uphill battle, because so many - like those in Maryland - have committed millions to proprietary systems and have little inclination to admit a mistake. Likewise, vendors of electronic systems have invested heavily in lobbyists, marketing teams and political contributions to keep their share of the e-voting billions.

But all would do well to take a look. It just might work.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

Eight bodies pulled from rubble of tavern

Don Babwin, Associated Press, reports:

Searchers with shovels and buckets pulled eight bodies Wednesday from the rubble of a tavern where residents had gathered to seek shelter from a twister that flattened the century-old building.

Mayor Fred Esmond said several people from a nearby trailer park had congregated in the basement of the Milestone Tap. Nine people were removed alive from the ruins of the country-western-themed watering hole.

"They heard it on the radio. Some of them went to the tavern for safety, and it just so happened ... ," Esmond said, his voice trailing off.

LaSalle County Coroner Jody Bernard said the dead, who were found in various locations of the bar, ranged in age from 18 to 81 and were all from the Utica area. The two-story building's crumbling sandstone foundation slowed rescuers' efforts as they gingerly dug through the sandy rubble. Rescue workers used listening devices to comb through the building's remains.

Authorities were not aware of anyone else missing.

Bernard identified the dead as Larry Ventrice, 49; Wayne Ball, 63; Marian Ventrice, 50; Beverly "Bev" Wood, 67; Helen Menke, 81; Carol Shultheis, 40; Mike Miller, 18; and Jay Vezain, 47.

The tornado that devastated Utica -- turning homes into piles of brick and splintered wood -- was part of a storm system that smashed through north-central Illinois Tuesday night.

More than 10 people were taken to hospitals and at least six remained there Wednesday afternoon, authorities in Utica said.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who toured Utica Wednesday, declared LaSalle, Putnam, Kankakee and Will counties state disaster areas before leaving for trips to Joliet and Granville, two other towns hit by the storm. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials planned to visit Thursday to see if the areas met the criteria for federal disaster relief.

"Our prayers are with everyone in this community, particularly those who lost their lives," Blagojevich said. He praised the rescuers, saying Illinoisans should "take inspiration from the heroes who are here."

In Joliet, a city southwest of Chicago, the storm damaged a dozen homes in a historic district and collapsed a drug store roof. The storm also damaged about 60 homes and a bank in Granville, officials said.

But Utica was hardest hit. The tornado swept through the center of the small town, a popular stop for people on their way to nearby Starved Rock State Park. The town is located about 90 miles southwest of Chicago.

Mayor Fred Esmond knew many of the people who died in the Milestone. The Ventrices ran the tavern and lived above it, while Vezain worked for the grain elevator across the street from the tavern. Ball was a retired railroad worker and Shultheis, his daughter, worked at another restaurant in town. He said Ball, Wood and Menke, who was retired, all lived in a trailer park near the tavern.

In Utica, other buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged. Bill Burke, director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, had no estimate of the damage but expected it to be in the millions of dollars.

A metal silo at the grain elevator was toppled, and a chunk of it was wrapped around a stop sign. A wall of bricks from a downtown bar rained down on the car parked next to the building, and a string of Christmas lights flapped in the breeze after the huge picture window they were shining in was blown out.

On houses that officials had checked for injuries, marks of "OK" were spray painted in orange and pink. One home, with its back wall torn off, resembled a child's dollhouse -- the china cabinet was still standing with dishes inside, and magnets remained on the refrigerator.

Utica residents said the tornado arrived within seconds. John Devore, 44, rushed his family into the basement and looked outside about 15 seconds later.

"It was like my brain wasn't comprehending what my eyes were seeing. I said, 'Well, it looks like the car's OK,' and then a split second later, 'Wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be able to see my car. Where the hell's my garage"'

Jeri Alonzo, 60, said just as she heard the town's sirens sound, her hearing diminished and her nose blocked up because of the barometric pressure drop.

"I knew when my hearing went and I started to get a little dizzy (I had to get to the basement)" she said. "I heard a cracking blowout sound. That was all my windows."

Alonzo said the tornado jumped across town "like checkers." A 50-foot tree in her front yard was toppled, but across the street a sign reading "Support Our Troops" remained upright.

Associated Press writer Maura Kelly contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

EPA Approved ICBMs

James Dunnigan writes:

In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about $5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with new ones. These rockets will emit less toxic chemicals when used. But the new, environmentally correct rockets will be heavier than the old ones, and will thus  have a shorter range than the original motors. The actual range of the  Minuteman III  has been classified, but is thought to be nearly 10,000 kilometers, based on where the missiles are stationed and where the original Russian targets were.  Thus, if the Minuteman III ICBMs have to be used in some future nuclear war, their rocket motors will not pollute the atmosphere. EPA regulations do not apply in foreign countries, so no changes are being made to reduce the harmful environmental effects of the nuclear warheads.

The air force has been replacing the decades old solid fuel rockets of its Minuteman III missiles for several years. Actually, a test of a 33 year old Minuteman I rocket motor showed that the motor (actually, a long tube full of slow burning explosives) still performed according to specification. But the rocket motors do degrade with age. The last of the Minuteman III missiles will receive their new motors by 2008.  The Minuteman III guidance systems and control electronics, in the silo and launch center, are also being upgraded. The Minuteman III entered service in 1968, the Minuteman I did so in 1962, as the first solid fueled ICBM. 

Finally, to comply with disarmament agreements, the Minuteman third stage, that contains three 440 pound nuclear weapons, will be replaced with a warhead containing one 600 pound nuclear weapon. The Minuteman III is 70 feet long, 5.5 feet in diameter and weighs 32 tons.

To help pay for the Minuteman III upgrade program, the more recent Peacekeeper (which  entered service in 1986, as the ultimate Cold War era ICBM) will be retired. Only 23 Peacekeepers are still in service. The Peacekeeper is a four stage missile that carries ten warheads. The Peacekeeper is  71 feet long, 7.7 feet in diameter and weighs 88 tons. It had the same range as the Minuteman III, but greater accuracy. The refurbished Minuteman IIIs will have the same accuracy as the Peacekeeper. Because the Peacekeeper came into use just as the Cold War unexpectedly ended, only fifty were ever put into service. The upgraded Minuteman III is expected to remain in service until 2020, at which point it will be replaced by a new missile design. Current disarmament treaties have the United States reducing nuclear warheads getting below 2,200 in the next few years.

April 18, 2004

Cop wins doughnut-eating contest

New York Daily News reports:

ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. - A patrolman from Wisconsin left his opponents in a cloud of powdered sugar dust by downing 9-1/2 doughnuts in three minutes to win a doughnut-eating contest for police officers in suburban Chicago.

Terry O'Brien of the Town of Geneva Police Department in Lake Geneva, Wis., said he was destined to win Wednesday's contest because law enforcement runs in his family.

"Actually, it was my father, who's deceased," O'Brien said. "He was a Chicago cop, a lifer. Today is his birthday."

For the second year in a row, the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association held the contest at its annual conference. The Dunkin' Donuts World Cop Donut Eating Championship attracted 40 contestants from the U.S. and Canada.

Master of Ceremonies Ed Nowicki said he was amazed by what it took to win this year.

"I thought they'd do seven (doughnuts), maybe they'd do eight," Nowicki said. "I couldn't believe 10!"

HIV Scare Shuts Down Porn Studios

Dr. Koop reports:

A number of studios that produce pornographic movies have suspended filming for at least 60 days after revelations that two stars tested positive for the AIDS-causing HIV virus, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Actor Darren James and actress Lara Roxx, who worked together in at least one movie, both tested positive this week, the Times said. Several studios -- including the largest one, Vivid -- announced the shutdown, saying actors who worked with either of the pair needed time to get tested.

Since the positive tests, the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, an industry-sponsored health center, has identified 45 actors and actresses who have worked with either actor, and is urging them to be tested, the newspaper reported.

Copyright © 2004 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

Attogram Mass Detection

A small gold dot rests on a silicon cantilever. The dot is a test mass for studying how the cantilever can be used to measure the masses of tiny particles, including viruses, with attogram precision. (Image credit: Physics News Update 673 #2) (via BoingBoing)

Phil Schewe, James Riordon, and Ben Stein, Physics News Update 673 #2, write:

Attogram mass detection has been achieved by Harold Craighead and his colleagues at Cornell, with prospects of exquisite detection of very tiny chemical and biological species, possibly with arrays of detectors. With their lithographically fabricated nanoelectromechanical (NEMS) device, the Cornell researchers can measure the mass of a particle with a sensitivity of 10-18 grams, far exceeding the precision of a comparable device with femtogram (10-15 g) sensitivity reported last year (Update 634-2). To get any better measurement of mass you would have to vaporize the particle and shoot its constituent molecules through a mass spectrometer.

At Cornell, mass measurement works this way: when the minuscule particle is absorbed onto a tiny sliver of silicon it alters the sliver's resonant oscillation (see figure). The oscillation in turn is monitored by reflecting laser light off the cantilever. It's as if a particle with a mass of a billionth of a billionth of a gram stepped onto a diving board whose springiness was observed by reflected light.

So far Craighead's group has weighed small gold dots and tiny coatings of molecules on the dots, but the goal is to detect and identify viruses. (Previously the same group detected the immunospecific binding of a single bacterium using the oscillating-cantilever method. They did this by coating their with a specific antibody and therefore could bind and detect the added mass only of the corresponding antigen.)

The mass sensitivity with the present cantilever (4 microns long, 500 nm wide, and at room temperature) is expected to be 0.39 attogram and will only get better as the size of the cantilever is reduced further, extending the sensitivity well into the zeptogram (10-21 g) range. (Ilic et al., Journal of Applied Physics, upcoming article; also, see lab website. For an analysis of the ultimate limits of cantilever sensing of mass, see Ekinci et al., Journal of Applied Physics, 1 March 2004.)

5-Year-Old Girl Survives 10 Days Alone, After Her Mother's Fatal Crash

Darrell Smith, Jennifer Larson and Lois Gormley, The Desert Sun, report:

MORENO VALLEY (CA) -- She survived on sport drinks, dried noodles and a resilience that family, friends and even doctors are struggling to believe.

"All I know is that it was a miracle for my little niece to survive down there by herself," Ruby Bustamante’s uncle Johnny Marin said Wednesday.

"It felt pretty good knowing that God was looking over her, that he was over her, protecting her."

Little 5-year-old Ruby Bustamante lingered for 10 days in the wreckage of a crash that killed her mother.

Caltrans road crews who saw something moving in the bottom of the ravine where the wreckage lay, found her tired, hungry, dehydrated, but alive. She continued to recover Wednesday at a Moreno Valley hospital.

"Ruby is doing extraordinarily well," said Webster Wong, chief of pediatrics at Riverside County Regional Medical Center. "It’s a devastating loss, but a joyous recovery."

Outraged family members, wrestling with joy and tragedy, said more should have been done to save the life of Ruby’s mother.

They laid the death of Norma Bustamante, 26, of Indio at the feet of the Indio Police Department in an emotional news conference outside the medical center.

Relatives accused Indio police of foot-dragging and dismissing the family’s pleas to search roadways for the missing pair.

Those delays cost Bustamante her life, they said.

"This is an outrage," said Rose Lopez, Bustamante’s aunt and family spokesman.

"There’s no excuse for a mother to be left out to die and a daughter to have to go through such a horrific ordeal."

Minutes later, the news conference was abruptly and angrily halted by Bustamante’s grandfather Bill Cooley, who later scuffled with and shouted at news camera crews who attempted to follow the family back into the hospital.

Later, Indio police officials said they understood the family’s grief, but said the department took the reports of the missing pair seriously.

"I understand the family is outraged and lashing out," said Indio Police Cmdr. Mark Miller. "They’re grieving and that’s understandable. The department holds no animosity toward them.

"We did consider it a serious matter and we were looking for them," he continued. "Unfortunately, we had no specific location to search."

Miller said the department followed up on every lead and followed all standard procedures in investigating the Bustamantes’ disappearance.

"It’s a terrible tragedy," Miller said. "It’s not the way we wanted this to end."

Miller said the first reports from family members came April 5, information that was put into a national missing persons database. Indio, Coachella Valley and Riverside County authorities were also advised.

Indio officials said they later learned the Banning CHP office had received a call April 4 at 8:32 a.m. of a possible wreck involving a similar green vehicle that was seen going over the side of an embankment.

Couldn’t find it

CHP officers and Riverside County fire crews responded but were unable to locate the green Ford Taurus.

Bustamante was reported missing the following afternoon.

"Had we been aware of that at the time, we certainly would have searched in that area," Miller said.

No firm leads steered authorities to the car and the missing pair.

"There is nothing we could have done differently," said Indio Police Chief Brad Ramos.

According to Johnny Marin, Bustamante had been driving to visit her boyfriend in prison in Norwalk on the day she disappeared.

‘What happened to her’

"But she never made it there. Her boyfriend was calling my mom, crying, ‘What happened to her’ " he said. "And everybody already knew something had to have happened to her."

Richard Ortiz, a longtime friend and neighbor first met Bustamante when she was a shy little girl in his third-grade class in Desert Hot Springs.

Ortiz remembered calling Bustamante on her cell phone the day she was reported missing.

She told him to call her back in three hours.

"I called her back and it was the machine, the machine, the machine," he said.

He never received another phone call from her.

Results of an autopsy released Wednesday just hours after the chaotic scene outside the hospital, however, showed little could have been done to save Norma Bustamante.

She suffered multiple blunt force trauma, Riverside County medical examiners said. Her battered body sustained multiple lacerations of the liver and rib fractures in the wreck.

"The autopsy… revealed that Ms. Bustamante’s death likely occurred within minutes of the accident," read a Riverside County Sheriff’s statement.

Initial reports Tuesday said Bustamante had died two days before Ruby’s discovery.

The fact her mother died so quickly after the crash makes it even more remarkable that little Ruby survived.

For every bit of 10 days, she stayed and waited.

"It’s really quite amazing," said Dr. Harry Weil, director of the Palm Springs-based Institute of Critical Care Medicine.

"There was some indication that there was some food and drink available, but it’s quite extraordinary she could survive at the age of five without substantial nourishment."

Obscured by trees

Caltrans road crews found Ruby by her mother’s 1996 Ford Taurus on Tuesday. The car was obscured by trees at the bottom of a ravine in the canyon-marked mountainous terrain of the Badlands -- the desolate stretch along winding Highway 60 from Beaumont to Moreno Valley.

Investigators on Wednesday met with Bustamante family members at the spot where the car plunged off the roadway sometime April 4.

Later, California Highway Patrol officials said investigating the wreck would take two to three weeks.

Hit center divider

They were able to surmise this much on Wednesday: Norma Bustamante’s car crashed into the center divider on westbound 60 just east of Gilman Springs Road on the road out of Beaumont.

The car careened across the roadway, then plunged more than 150 feet down the ravine and overturned before coming to rest under a tree.

The hilly, winding roadway is a dangerous one.

In the past five years, the California Highway Patrol has logged 472 traffic accidents. Six of those were fatal and happened on the stretch of Highway 60 bounded by Interstate 10 and Gilman Springs Road, said officer Chris Blondon. He is a CHP spokesman from the patrol’s Beaumont office.

As a crowd of reporters gathered in front of the medical center Wednesday afternoon -- its entrance blocked by long strings of yellow tape -- Wong spoke of a young girl in "miraculous shape."

Ruby has very minor injuries, cuts, scrapes, bruises, he said.

She was sitting up in bed. And she wanted her ice cream.

"That’s good news in pediatrics," Wong said.

Ruby was smiling, watching TV and was happy to be surrounded by family, he said.

But, Wong added, "It’s difficult to know the long-term ramifications."

Ruby is OK, at least, physically.

But so far, most of Norma Bustamante’s other five children and their cousins don’t really know about or understand that Bustamante is gone.

Only Ruby really knows what happened, Marin said.

On Wednesday, 4-year-old Ashley, Ruby’s younger sister, was happily hugging her uncle, Martin Recio, before hopping down to scramble up the dusty trunk of a shady tree in the front yard at her house in Indio.

As she clung to her uncle, Recio said that he and the rest of the family were doing OK, but everyone is very sad about Norma’s death.

Ashley piped up, in the high bright voice of a child who doesn’t quite realize what she’s saying, "She’s dead."

Recio hugged her to him, rubbing her small back with his palm, and kissed her.

"She was a good person," he said.

Darrell Smith's column appears Sundays. Reach him at or by e-mail ().

April 15th, 2004

Freeze-dried and then turned to powder: the new way to be buried

Michael Day, Health Correspondent, (UK) Telegraph, reports:

An icy alternative to cremation, in which the dead are reduced to powder by freeze-drying, is to be available in Britain within two years.

The ecologically friendly method, which has been invented in Sweden, involves bodies being frozen very quickly then dipped in liquid nitrogen to cool them to minus 196C.

A simple vibration is then used to shatter the extremely brittle body into powder. This is then placed first in a vacuum chamber, which removes the water, then in a metal separator, which removes toxic metal fillings and surgical parts.

The dry, odourless organic remains can then be placed in a small degradable box made of corn starch and buried in a shallow grave. Unlike cremation, the process gives off no damaging fumes.

By

The inventors of the technique hope that it will help solve the problems of Britain's overcrowded graveyards and pollution from crematoria.

Some 600,000 people die in Britain every year and cemeteries and graveyards have reached bursting point. In 10 to 15 years many will have to close to new burials, unless graves are reused or turned into "double-decker" sites.

Cremation - the choice of 70 per cent of Britons - creates pollution. The incineration of bodies with mercury-based tooth fillings has been blamed for creating mercury poisoning, which can attack the nervous system and cause brain damage.

Britain's 242 crematoria are having to install extra filters at a cost of around £187 million, which is likely add £60 to the funeral bill of around £1,200.

The firm behind the freeze-dried alternative, Promessa Organics, based in Gothenburg, expects to get approval to start next year in Sweden and then bring it to Britain and other European countries.

Susanne Wiigh-Masak, a soil scientist and the firm's head of operations, said it already had several hundred orders from people in Sweden and around the world who wanted to be freeze-dried.

She said that the cost of the process would be "comparable to that of standard cremation", around £400. The company hopes that it will particularly appeal to those people seeking an environmentally friendly despatch.

"In less than a year, the boxes and powder would become compost," Mrs Wiigh-Masak said. "Many people will opt to have a bush or tree planted on their grave."

"Green" burials are an increasingly popular choice. There are now more than 160 burial sites across Britain where bodies can be buried, unembalmed, in a coffin with a sapling or wooden marker as a memorial.

Mike Jarvis, a spokesman for the Natural Death Centre, said: "We approve of the Swedish idea. It is eco-friendly and it improves people's choice of what happens to them after they die. Ordinary cremation releases toxic mercury fumes into the environment."

Among those keen on using the new technique is Patricia Yates, a 69-year-old from Dartmouth, Kent. She would like to have an azalea bush planted on her grave.

"This will turn death into something less forbidding and there'll even be a positive outcome if I'm helping one of my favourite flowers grow," she said.

"It's a much nicer thing than what we have now. Cremation and ordinary burials seem so horrible and depressing. And let's face it: we're running out of space. These little coffins would take up a lot less room than normal coffins."

Dominic Maguire, a spokesman for the National Association of Funeral Directors, said: "Funeral directors will carry out the wishes of the deceased or families whatever they are, as long as they are legal and decent, so I don't think there would be a problem with this."

A spokesman for the Home Office said: "We can see no problem with this in terms of burial law."

The Church of England also welcomed the new technique. "We definitely support environmentally friendly funerals and there's no reason why they shouldn't be available to people who want them," a spokesman said. "When firm proposals for such burials arrive, we will of course, study them closely."

Mrs Wiigh-Masak, 48, is ready to practice what she preaches: one day she hopes to become a white rhododendron. "There's a special variety that I love with white flowers, which sometimes turn a little pink," she said. "That would make me happy."

(Filed: 11/04/2004)

Human Rights Watch: Probe Needed Into US Action in Falluja

A young Iraqi girl lies in a hospital after being injured after clashes in Falluja, April 10, 2004. The U.S. military offensive in Falluja last week in which 600 Iraqis may have died has raised concerns about excessive use of force and needs immediate investigation, a leading human rights group said April 13. (Reuters TV) (via foudroyant)

Luke Baker writes:'

BAGHDAD - A U.S. military offensive in Falluja last week in which 600 Iraqis may have died has raised concerns about excessive use of force and needs immediate investigation, a leading human rights group said Tuesday.

Civilians who fled the fighting described the streets of Falluja as being littered with bodies, including women and children, and Iraqi politicians have accused U.S. forces of meting out collective punishment on the city's residents.

"The questions being asked are very legitimate. When you cordon off a town and hear many stories that are very worrisome about civilians being killed it needs to be examined," said Hania Mufti, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based rights group.

"There is enough from the footage we've seen and from what has been said about what went on in Falluja to warrant a very serious investigation. We are deeply concerned about the consistent reports we are getting about women, children and unarmed civilians being killed," Mufti told Reuters.

She stressed that most of the information received so far was anecdotal and said no conclusions could be drawn until a full investigation could be conducted.

"I can't say whether any crimes have been committed ... but we'll certainly be looking into whether there was excessive use of force and whether the methods used by the military were acceptable," she said. "We would call on the U.S. military to be as cooperative as possible with our investigation."

U.S. Marines launched an offensive against Falluja, a city of about 300,000 people 30 miles west of Baghdad, eight days ago to crack down on guerrillas and find those responsible for killing and burning four U.S. security guards March 31.

The fighting was some of the fiercest Iraq has seen since U.S.-led forces launched the war that overthrew Saddam Hussein a year ago. For the past three days, Falluja has been under a tenuous truce.

The director of Falluja's general hospital has said more than 600 Iraqis were killed and some 1,200 were wounded in the battle. U.S. forces also suffered a heavy toll, with at least 70 soldiers killed in the past 12 days, many in Falluja.

The U.S. military has rejected allegations that its soldiers fired indiscriminately or used excessive force.

"I could see many bodies in the streets. Hundreds were lying in the street. Relatives were too scared to get them," said Samir Rabee, who escaped with relatives and eight other families in the back of a refrigeration truck.

Mufti said it would probably be another few days before investigators could travel to the city, and then only if the U.S. offensive had not resumed.

© Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd

Published on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 by Reuters

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com reports:

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.

In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army.

Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a “soldier’s general,” Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.’s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11.

Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden.

Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including:

President Bush: “As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he’s not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he’s very, very bright. And I suspect that he’ll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we’ll think of him in years to come as an American hero.”

On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president’s decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.

“I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent.

“If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country”

The Pentagon’s deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, “it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, ‘Aha, this will be the ace of spades.’”

Capturing Saddam: Franks said he was not surprised that Saddam has not been captured or killed. But he says he will eventually be found, perhaps sooner than Osama bin laden.

“The capture or killing of Saddam Hussein will be a near term thing. And I won’t say that’ll be within 19 or 43 days. ... I believe it is inevitable.”

Franks ended his interview with a less-than-optimistic note. “It’s not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we’ll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace.”

Friday, Nov. 21, 2003

Man who concealed razor blades sentenced

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS reports:

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A man who arrived at the Dallas airport on a flight from Europe with 32 razor blades in his carry-on luggage has been sentenced to more than five years in prison.

Prosecutors said Fazal Karim, a Canadian citizen originally from Pakistan, was testing airport security for potential terrorist aims when he carried the double-edged blades into the airport.

He was convicted last year of carrying and attempting to carry concealed dangerous weapons onto air transportation and of making false statements about his immigration status.

Karim, 37, denied he had any terrorist ties.

At Monday's sentencing, U.S. District Judge Terry Means ordered Karim to be turned over to immigration officials for deportation after completing his term, and fined him $20,000.

The prosecution said Karim arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on an American Airlines flight from Paris on March 5, 2003, and told federal agents he was coming to the United States to visit friends.

Transportation Security Administration screeners discovered the razors when Karim attempted to enter a secure area of the airport to board a flight to Houston.

FBI agents said Karim was not a tourist but an immigrant without authorization to live in the United States.

Tuesday, April 13, 2004 · Last updated 8:30 a.m. PT

Report from Fallujah (IRAQ) – Destroying a Town in Order to Save it

Rahul Mahajan writes:

Al-Nazzal told us about ambulances being hit by snipers, women and children being shot. Describing the horror that the siege of Fallujah had become, he said, "I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilization."

Published on Monday, April 12.

Report from Fallujah – Destroying a Town in Order to Save it

Fallujah, Iraq -- On the edge of Iraq's western desert, Fallujah is extremely arid but has been rendered into an agricultural area by extensive irrigation. A town of wide streets and squat, sand-colored buildings, its population is primarily farmers.

We were in Fallujah during the "ceasefire." This is what we saw and heard.

When the assault on Fallujah started, the power plant was bombed. Electricity is provided by generators and usually reserved for places with important functions. There are four hospitals currently running in Fallujah. This includes the one where we were, which was actually just a minor emergency clinic; another one of them is a car repair garage. Things were very frantic at the hopsital where we were, so we couldn't get too much translation. We depended for much of our information on Makki al-Nazzal, a lifelong Fallujah resident who works for the humanitarian NGO Intersos, and had been pressed into service as the manager of the clinic, since all doctors were busy, working around the clock with minimal sleep.

A gentle, urbane man who spoke fluent English, Al-Nazzal was beside himself with fury at the Americans' actions (when I asked him if it was all right to use his full name, he said, "It's ok. It's all ok now. Let the bastards do what they want.") With the "ceasefire," large-scale bombing was rare. With a halt in major bombing, the Americans were attacking with heavy artillery but primarily with snipers.

Al-Nazzal told us about ambulances being hit by snipers, women and children being shot. Describing the horror that the siege of Fallujah had become, he said, "I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilization."

I had heard these claims at third-hand before coming into Fallujah, but was skeptical. It's very difficult to find the real story here. But this I saw for myself. An ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have hit the driver's chest (the snipers were on rooftops, and are trained to aim for the chest). Another ambulance again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield. There's no way this was due to panicked spraying of fire. These were deliberate shots designed to kill the drivers.

The ambulances go around with red, blue, or green lights flashing and sirens blaring; in the pitch-dark of blacked-out city streets there is no way they can be missed or mistaken for something else). An ambulance that some of our compatriots were going around in, trading on their whiteness to get the snipers to let them through to pick up the wounded was also shot at while we were there.

During the course of the roughly four hours we were at that small clinic, we saw perhaps a dozen wounded brought in. Among them was a young woman, 18 years old, shot in the head. She was seizing and foaming at the mouth when they brought her in; doctors did not expect her to survive the night. Another likely terminal case was a young boy with massive internal bleeding. I also saw a man with extensive burns on his upper body and shredded thighs, with wounds that could have been from a cluster bomb; there was no way to verify in the madhouse scene of wailing relatives, shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), and anger at the Americans.

Among the more laughable assertions of the Bush administration is that the mujaheddin are a small group of isolated "extremists" repudiated by the majority of Fallujah's population. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, the mujaheddin don't include women or very young children (we saw an 11-year-old boy with a Kalashnikov), old men, and are not necessarily even a majority of fighting-age men. But they are of the community and fully supported by it. Many of the wounded were brought in by the muj and they stood around openly conversing with doctors and others. They conferred together about logistical questions; not once did I see the muj threatening people with the ubiquitous Kalashnikovs.

One of the muj was wearing an Iraqi police flak jacket; on questioning others who knew im, we learned that he was in fact a member of the Iraqi police.

One of our translators, Rana al-Aiouby told me, "these are simple people." Although patronizing, the statement has a strong element of truth. Agricultural tribesmen with very strong religious beliefs, the people of Fallujah are insular and don't easily trust strangers. We were safe because of the friends we had with us and because we came to help them. They are much like the Pashtun of Afghanistan -- good friends and terrible enemies.

The muj are of the people in the same way that the stone-throwing shabab in the first Palestinian intifada were – and the term, which means “youth,” is used for them as well. I spoke to a young man, Ali, who was among the wounded we transported to Baghdad. He said he was not a muj but, when asked his opinion of them, he smiled and stuck his thumb up. Any young man who is not one of the muj today may the next day wind his aqal around his face and pick up a Kalashnikov.

Al-Nazzal told me that the people of Fallujah refused to resist the Americans just because Saddam told them to; indeed, the fighting for Fallujah last year was not particularly fierce. He said, "If Saddam said work, we would want to take off three days. But the Americans had to cast us as Saddam supporters. When he was captured, they said the resistance would die down, but even as it has increased, they still call us that."

Nothing could have been easier than gaining the good-will of the people of Fallujah had the Americans not been so brutal in their dealings. Tribal peoples like these have been the most easily duped by imperialists for centuries now. But now a tipping point has been reached. To Americans, “Fallujah” may still mean four mercenaries killed, with their corpses then mutilated and abused; to Iraqis, “Fallujah” means the savage collective punishment for that attack, in which over 600 Iraqis have been killed, with an estimated 200 women and over 100 children (women do not fight among the muj, so all of these are noncombatants, as are many of the men killed).

A Special Forces colonel in the Vietnam War said of the town, Ben Tre, “We had to destroy the town in order to save it.” That statement encapsulated the Vietnam War. The same is true in Iraq today -- Fallujah cannot be “saved” from its mujaheddin unless it is destroyed.

is publisher of Empire Notes. He was in Fallujah recently and is currently writing and blogging from Baghdad.

Air Marshal Leaves Gun in Airport Restroom

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal air marshal accidentally left her gun in a restroom beyond the security checkpoints at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, officials say.

The weapon was discovered by a passenger who alerted an airline employee.

The marshal remained on the job after Thursday's incident when she visited an airport restroom and inadvertently left her gun behind, Dave Adams, spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service in Washington, said Saturday.

The restroom was beyond security checkpoints, airport spokeswoman Pat Smith said. So the risk was that someone could have discovered the gun and taken it on a flight.

"Right now we're still doing the investigation," Adams said. "It will determine what disciplinary action will be appropriate."

He declined to identify the marshal for security reasons, but said her work in the past had been "outstanding."

The United States deploys armed air marshals disguised as passengers on thousands of flights each week as part of security measures implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks that killed about 3,000 people.

Smith said the incident occurred about 4 p.m. on Thursday when the air marshal went to the restroom. While washing her hands, she placed her gun on a shelf, but forgot to take it with her when she left the room.

Soon afterward, a passenger found the gun and informed an airline employee, who removed it and told police. The gun later was returned to the marshal.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

Mon Apr 12, 2004 10:35 AM ET

Occupation codename: Democracy

Yesterday's Pravda Editorial:

Don"t be fooled by Washington catch phrases like "Democracy", "War on Terror", "Liberation of Iraq" or "Peace".

They"re only codenames for nothing more than a mass murder and a vicious assault on a sovereign country. What Washington calls "peace and stability" - that it boasts it has brought to the region - in reality means that the war is yet to begin. Exactly what Washington has feared the most has happened: the Shi"ite majority has joined the resistance against the occupying forces. The quickly spreading uprising has triggered the worst casualty crises and heaviest losses on both sides to date.

When today Washington and their media labels the escalating disaster as "civil war", they, of course, mean a full-blown international war in which the occupied Iraq has risen against the American invaders.

What Washington calls the Iraqi "independent government" is neither independent nor a government. It"s nothing more than an US orchestrated charade of feigning the end of the war by setting up a bogus government body by June 30th. (Even the Washington deadline was selected to coincide with George W. Bush"s re-election efforts rather than with the apt rebuilding of the war-torn country.)

The puppet government"s "independence" will stretch only as far as the US legislative cells called regulators will allow, and it will remain completely impotent over facets that all democratic governments would normally control.

The government will have no say in military control. All armed forces in Iraq will remain completely under a separate US command as well as all control regarding Iraq national security.

It will be powerless over Iraq commerce and selection of foreign contractors. The US has instigated laws that protect all commerce agreements and contracts made today by the US from any possible change by the new government.

It will have no control over Iraqi media. Licenses that empower American propaganda machines to operate within Iraq will remain in effect after the June 30th hand off and will remain beyond the Iraqi government control.

When Washington says "liberation of Iraq" it really means occupation of Iraq. Iraq will have, without any end in sight, foreign troops on their soil. The US will keep over 110,000 strong military personnel in Iraq.

What Washington calls the "liberating forces" is routinely referred to around the world today as the occupiers. Even British press, the biggest American partner in crime, routinely refers to the US military as the occupying forces. Iraqis and even their children flat out call Americans murderers.

When George W. Bush asked the world and the US Congress for "financial aid to rebuild Iraq" he really meant money for his own pockets. The US has so far used close to 19 billion dollars of the aid money to build and furnish their own residences. The US has 14 military bases in Iraq so far.

"Democracy" must be Washington"s codeword for suppression of information and censorship since the US military has come down on Iraqi media, shutting down Baghdad newspaper al-Hawza and enforcing strict controls that allow western view only.

It"s somewhat unclear what Washington means when it says that the US is "recreating Iraqi economy". Is it a code for cutting 400,000 Iraqi jobs and revoking their pensions or are they referring to the new US-run Coca-Cola factory that will begin pumping the all-American favorite drink two whole months before the planned government hand-off Perhaps it refers to the US giving up the responsibility and control over Iraqi medical system and washing their hands over the catastrophic hospital ruins the assault has caused. It could also mean the rewritten textbooks that Washington has forced upon Iraqi schools in which they teach the same lies that they feed their own children (like that Ben Franklin is the inventor of electricity; that Americans did not genocide the native Indians and that the US did not fuel Hitler"s Blitzkrieg machine).

Washington says the occupation was a "right and worthwhile" cause. What this codeword mean is that over 10,000 non-Americans murdered and well over 30,000 maimed is a small price tag for what the US is poised to gain from the invasion. After all, Washington cronies all get millions in the reconstruction scams. The Pentagon gets a brand new large-scale military residence - something they have been itching for since the fall of the Iron Curtain. And, of course, the Americans get the oil wells.

Pater Havlasa,
Editor

Operation Candy Box: Over 130 Arrested in American-Canadian Crackdown on Ecstasy and Marijuana Drug Ring

Seized Pill Stamps that were used to impress designs and logos onto Ecstasy tablets marketed in cities across the U.S.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports:

March 31 - More than 130 people were arrested today in a two-nation crackdown on a huge drug trafficking ring that manufactured large quantities of Ecstasy and marijuana in Canada and then shipped them to cities around the United States.

One outcome of this three-year investigation, called Operation Candy Box, was the discovery that Ecstasy trafficking, which had largely been controlled by Russian and Israeli gangs, had now spread to groups with ties to Southeast Asia. The two principal targets of this investigation were Ze Wai Wong, a Chinese national, and Mai Phuong Le, a Vietnamese national.

A second outcome of the operation was the disruption of a sizable money laundering business and the discovery of significant weaknesses in the U.S. financial system that make money laundering possible. The Drug Enforcement Administration, under its Administrator, Karen Tandy, has made financial investigations a priority of the agency.

Operation Candy Box, which started with some intelligence passed on to American authorities, was initiated in the U.S. in May 2001 by DEA and FBI agents in New York City. It eventually became an operation which encompassed 16 cities in the U.S. and three in Canada.

The large number of arrests was only part of the story of Operation Candy Box. The investigation also resulted in the seizure of large quantities of drugs and organizational assets, including manufacturing labs.

Putting 40,000 Readers, One by One, on a Cover

DAVID CARR, The New York Times, (via BoingBoing) reports:

When the 40,000 subscribers to Reason, the monthly libertarian magazine, receive a copy of the June issue, they will see on the cover a satellite photo of a neighborhood - their own neighborhood. And their house will be graphically circled.

On one level, the project, sort of the ultimate in customized publishing, is unsurprising: of course a magazine knows where its subscribers live. But it is still a remarkable demonstration of the growing number of ways databases can be harnessed. Apart from the cover image, several advertisements are customized to reflect the recipient's particulars.

Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason, said the magazine, with an editorial mission of "Free Minds, Free Markets,'' used the stunt to illustrate the cover article about the power and importance of databases.

"Our story is man bites dog," Mr. Gillespie said. "Everybody, including our magazine, has been harping on the erosion of privacy and the fears of a database nation. It is a totally legit fear. But they make our lives unbelievably easier as well, in terms of commercial transactions, credit, you name it."

Rodger Cosgrove, president of Entremedia, a direct marketing firm and a member of Reason's board, assisted in coming up with a program that allows the subscriber list to be integrated with satellite photographs. He also worked with Xeikon, the manufacturer of the printer that made the endless customization possible.

"They were interested in showing what this technology could do," he said, "and we were interested in demonstrating the power of databases to customize information."

The cover article, written by Declan McCullagh, suggests that while databases can lead to breaches in privacy, it allows Dell to provide instant credit to computer buyers, grocery stores to stock goods that their customers want, and mortgage lenders to keep their rates down.

"It's obvious that databases provide enormous benefits to modern life," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "We could no more operate without computer databases than we could without electricity."

"That doesn't mean that there aren't still some serious debates to have about government databases," he added, "including the monitoring of the general American public under John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program and the passenger profiling that has gone on."

In some respects, Reason's cover stunt is less Big Brother than one more demonstration that micromarketing is here to stay. "My son gets sports catalogs where his name is imprinted on the jerseys that are on the cover," Mr. Rotenberg said. "He thinks that's very cool."

In his editor's note describing the magazine's database package, Mr. Gillispie left open three spots - commuting time, educational attainment and percentage of children living with grandparents - so he could adapt his message to individual readers. Mr. Gillespie said that the parlor trick could have profound implications as database and printing capabilities grow.

"What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you" he asked. "That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read." DAVID CARR

Published: April 5, 2004

Tibetan Monk Arrested for Dalai Lama Picture, Flag

Radio Free Asia (via Snow Lion Publications) reports:

KATHMANDU, March 31, 2004--Chinese police in a county near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, have arrested a young monk for keeping in his quarters a photograph of the Dalai Lama and a Tibetan national flag, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.

"A team of Public Security Bureau officials of Taktse County, Lhasa City, secretly raided the room of Choeden Rinzen, a monk at Gaden Monastery located in the vicinity of Lhasa city, on Feb. 12, 2004," a Tibetan source who recently arrived in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, told RFA's Tibetan service.

Sources inside Tibet who asked not to be named confirmed the refugee's report. Phone calls during business hours to the Lhasa City Public Security Bureau and the Taktse County Public Security Bureau went unanswered March 30-31.

"In this raid, they first found a photo of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a Tibetan national flag. He was arrested immediately and taken away," the source said, adding that Choeden Rinzen was probably being detained in the Gutsa detention center outside Lhasa. "Nobody knows for sure his whereabouts, including his family members and monks of Gaden Monastery."

Police detained two of Choeden Rinzen's friends, identified only by their family names Tsuchung and Thargyal, at the same time but later released them and allowed them to return to Gaden Monastery, the source said.

Five days after the arrest, six Chinese police officers called a meeting of some 500 monks at Gaden, telling them that Choeden Rinzen had been arrested for "possessing anti-government materials," the source said. "They also informed the congregation of monks that he was involved in criminal activities and warned that if any other members of the monastery possessed a photo of Dalai Lama, they would face the same consequences."

Choeden Rinzen, who is in his early 20s, has been enrolled as a monk at Gaden since 1991. His father is a local government official in Medo Gongkar County, where Choeden Rinzen's birthplace, Thaya Township, is located.

The arrest preceded a crackdown at a local television station, Tibet Television 3, after it inadvertently showed footage of a man in Kathmandu with a Tibetan national flag behind him. The head of the station, a Tibetan, was questioned and forced to acknowledge his "mistake." Staff at the station were forced to undergo re-education and to write self-criticisms acknowledging their error.

Beijing has also recently outlawed a book, written by a Tibetan writer in Chinese, touching on sensitive religious issues, including how the exiled Dalai Lama is still revered by Tibetans inside Tibet. Author Oser (Eds: one name) found her "Notes on Tibet" essay collection banned after she tried to publish it in the freewheeling southern province of Guangdong.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's religious and political leader, fled Lhasa in 1959 after an unsuccessful revolt against Chinese rule. He leads the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in Dharamsala, India.

According to the State Department's 2003 report on human rights around the world, released in February, Chinese officials maintained last year that "possessing or displaying pictures of the Dalai Lama is not illegal." But it added that "pictures [of the Dalai Lama] could not be purchased openly in the [Tibetan Autonomous Region, or] TAR, and possession of such pictures has triggered arrests in the past; therefore, Tibetans in the TAR were extremely cautious about displaying them. Diplomatic observers saw pictures of a number of Tibetan religious figures, including the Dalai Lama, openly displayed in Tibetan areas outside the TAR." After an August 2003 incident in which presumed activists hung the banned Tibetan national flag from a radio tower, "private displays of Dalai Lama pictures were confiscated in urban areas of two Sichuan counties," the report said. Also in August 2003, five monks and an unidentified lay artist received sentences of 1 to 12 years' imprisonment for alleged separatist activities, including painting a Tibetan national flag, possessing pictures of the Dalai Lama, and distributing materials calling for Tibetan independence.

This article provided by:

Radio Free Asia
www.rfa.org

RFA broadcasts news and information to Asian listeners who lack regular access to full and balanced reporting in their domestic media. Through its broadcasts and call-in programs, RFA aims to fill a critical gap in the lives of people across Asia. Created by Congress in 1994 and incorporated in 1996, RFA currently broadcasts in Burmese, Cantonese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, the Wu dialect, Vietnamese, Tibetan (Uke, Amdo, and Kham), and Uyghur. It adheres to the highest standards of journalism and aims to exemplify accuracy, balance and fairness in its editorial content.

The Most Powerful Diesel Engine in the World!

The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan's Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken.

It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. (The photo above is a 10 cylinder version.) These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.

Even at it's most efficient power setting, the big 14 consumes 1,660 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour.

The cylinder bore is just under 38" and the stroke is just over 98". Each cylinder displaces 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and produces 7780 horsepower. Total displacement comes out to 1,556,002 cubic inches (25,480 liters) for the fourteen cylinder version.

     Some facts on the 14 cylinder version:

        Total engine weight:    2300 tons  (The crankshaft alone weighs 300 tons.)

        Length:         89 feet

        Height:         44 feet

        Maximum power:  108,920 hp at 102 rpm 

        Maximum torque:         5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm 

Fuel consumption at maximum power is 0.278 lbs per hp per hour (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption). Fuel consumption at maximum economy is 0.260 lbs/hp/hour. At maximum economy the engine exceeds 50% thermal efficiency. That is, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel in converted to motion.

For comparison, most automotive and small aircraft engines have BSFC figures in the 0.40-0.60 lbs/hp/hr range and 25-30% thermal efficiency range.