Supremely Blocked: Libraries and Filters When the Supreme Court ruled last month that public libraries must install anti-pornography filtering software on their computers as a condition of federal funding, child safety advocates called it a landmark decision for the rights of children. The decision also applies to public schools although that portion of the law wasn't challenged. For Congress, it was a breakthrough decision after two previous attempts to protect children from online smut were rejected by the courts as unconstitutional. For free speech advocates, it was a historic decision of another sort: the Supreme Court has never previously upheld an effort to regulate content on the Internet. Even worse, according to the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the decision was based on the faulty premise that filters work. The Supreme Court ruling overturned a federal appeals decision that rejected the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)as a violation of the First Amendment. The lower court ruled that the use of filtering software in public libraries blocked access to Web sites that contained substantial amounts of protected speech. In other words, filters don't always work. Although CIPA specifically stipulates adults can request a librarian to turn off the anti-porn filters, the lower court said library patrons might be too embarrassed or lose their right to be anonymous. The Supreme Court, though, ultimately ruled the government's interest in protecting children from exposure to sexually inappropriate material outweighed the rights of adult library patrons. The Court did agree with the lower court that filtering software, at best, is problematic. "Findings of fact clearly show that filtering companies are not following legal definitions of 'harmful to minors' and 'obscenity,'" the ALA said in statement following the Supreme Court ruling. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "the immense size and variablity of the Internet raises concerns as to whether it is possible to limit Internet blocking only to Web pages containing legally 'blockable' content." A recent study by the EFF and the Online Policy Group examined the effects of N2H2 and SurfControl's filtering software, two of the popular products on the market. The study involved Internet searches of text taken directly from the state-mandated curriculums of California, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Testing nearly a million Web pages, the study found that for every page blocked as advertised, the software blocked one or more pages inappropriately either because the pages were miscategorized or because the pages, while correctly categorized, did not merit blocking. In case of block codes used in compliance with CIPA, the blocking software miscategorized 78-85 percent of the sample. The study concluded that blocking software either overblocks or underblocks. The software either blocks access to many pages protected by the First Amendment or does not block pages likely to be prohibited under CIPA. A Kaiser Family Foundation study conducted last year said that Internet filters most frequently used by schools and libraries can effectively block pornography without significantly impeding access to online health information, but only if the filters are set at the lowest, least restrictive levels. As filters are set at higher levels they block access to a substantial amount of health information, with only a minimal increase in blocked pornographic content, the report stated. The ALA is dealing with the filtering issue by calling for full disclosure of what sites filtering companies are blocking, who is deciding what is filtered and what criteria are being used. The group hopes to obtain this information and then evaluate and share the data with the libraries now being forced to forego funds or choose faulty filters. The ALA believes library users must be able to see what sites are being blocked and, if needed, be able to request the filter be disabled with the least intrusion into their privacy and the least burden on library service. http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2234181

Blacks Lose Better Jobs Faster as Middle-Class Work Drops Unemployment among blacks is rising at a faster pace than in any similar period since the mid-1970's, and the jobs lost have been mostly in manufacturing, where the pay for blacks has historically been higher than in many other fields. Nearly 2.6 million jobs have disappeared over all during the last 28 months, which began with a brief recession that has faded into a weak recovery. Nearly 90 percent of those lost jobs were in manufacturing, according to government data, with blacks hit disproportionately harder than whites. At the same time, jobless black Americans have been unusually persistent about staying in the labor force. Having landed millions of jobs in the booming 1990's, they have continued to look for new ones in the soft economy, and so are counted now as unemployed; if they gave up trying to find work, they would not be counted. These two phenomena help to explain why the black unemployment rate, though still not high by historic standards, is rising twice as fast as that of whites, and faster than in any downturn since the mid-1970's recession. Low-wage workers and women who went from welfare to work in the 1990's have largely kept their jobs; factory breadwinners have borne the pain, men and women alike. "The number of jobs and the types of jobs that have been lost have severely diminished the standing of many blacks in the middle class," said William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. In Indianapolis, for example, Autoliv, a Swedish manufacturer of seat belts, is closing a plant and laying off 350 workers, more than 75 percent of them black. Many are young adults who were hired in the late 1990's when the unemployment rate in Indianapolis was only 2 percent and Autoliv, to recruit enough workers to expand production, hired young men without high school diplomas. "They were taken from the street into decent-paying jobs; they were making $12 to $13 an hour," said Michael Barnes, director of an A.F.L.-C.I.O. training program that helps laid-off workers in Indiana search for new jobs. "These young men started families, dug in, took apartments, purchased vehicles. It was an up-from-the-street experience for them, and now they are being returned to their old environment." It is not only the recently hired who are losing jobs. So are tens of thousands of textile workers in the South, many with long tenure, as production in the industry shifts to China and India. Bruce Raynor, president of Unite, the union that represents textile workers, ticked off a few of the more recent losses: 1,000 jobs lost in the last two years as mills closed in Roanoke Rapids, N.C.; another 1,000 in mill closings in Columbus, Ga.; 1,500 lost in the closing of a sweatshirt factory in Martinsville, Va. These workers are mostly black men and women who were earning $11 an hour plus benefits in small towns where other jobs, if there are any, do not pay as well. "This is not like the cyclical downturns in the old days, when you got furloughed for a few weeks and then recalled," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "These jobs are gone, and that represents a potentially significant slide in living standards." Black employment in manufacturing, once concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast, is now spread across every state as companies have migrated to lower-wage towns and cities. With an increasing number of these companies migrating again, this time overseas in search of yet lower labor costs, the job loss in manufacturing has intensified. Every state has lost manufacturing jobs over the last three years, according to a study by the National Association of Manufacturers. In 2000, there were 2 million black Americans working in factory jobs, or 10.1 percent of the nation's total of 20 million manufacturing workers. Blacks were represented in the overall work force in roughly the same proportion. Then came the recession that began in March 2001; since then, 300,000 factory jobs held by blacks, or 15 percent, have disappeared. White workers lost many factory jobs, too � 1.7 million in all. But because they were much more numerous to begin with, proportionally the damage was less, just 10 percent. These job losses figure significantly in the rise in the unemployment rate among blacks 20 years of age or older. It has gone up 3.5 percentage points since the onset of the recession, while the rate among whites has risen less than half as much, 1.7 percentage points. Most damaging, blacks' share of the remaining manufacturing jobs has slipped to 9.6 percent. "Half a percentage point may not sound like much," Mr. Bernstein said, "but to lose that much in such an important sector over a relatively short period, that is going to be hard to recover." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/business/12RACE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy �intelligence organizations and military forces, once forbidden from attempts to assassinate foreign leaders by the executive orders of two recent presidents, have now embarked on an open, all-out effort to find and kill Saddam Hussein in a campaign with no precedents in American history. Despite three strikes aimed at Mr. Hussein since the opening night of the American war on Iraq, intelligence officials have conceded that a recent broadcast of Mr. Hussein's voice is probably genuine. A concession that the Iraqi leader remains alive is also implicit in Washington's offer of a $25 million reward for his capture or proof of his death. Since President Bush announced the end of major military operations on May 1, it has become increasingly clear that the Iraq war is not over, that there is a concerted campaign of resistance and that Mr. Hussein remains a formidable foe. Over the last 10 days the chief American official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has frequently stressed the importance of capturing or killing Mr. Hussein. The campaign to kill him, frankly admitted and discussed by high officials in the White House, Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, has committed the United States for the first time to public, personalized, open-ended warfare in the classic mode of Middle Eastern violence � an eye for an eye, a life for a life. American officials in the White House and Iraq have argued that Mr. Hussein's survival encourages resistance, and killing him is therefore a legitimate act of war. But the United States has never before openly marked foreign leaders for killing. Treating it as routine could level the moral playing field and invite retaliation in kind, and makes every American official both here and in the Middle East a target of opportunity. Realists may scoff that war is war and that things have always been this way, but in fact personalized killing has a way of deepening the bitterness of war without bringing conflict closer to resolution. In April 1986 President Reagan authorized an air raid on the home of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya that spared him but killed his daughter. The Reagan administration never acknowledged that Colonel Qaddafi, personally, was the target, nor did it publicly speculate two years later that Libya's bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, was Colonel Qaddafi's revenge for the death of his daughter. But the administration got the message: after Lockerbie, Washington relied on legal action to settle the score. It is impossible to know how, or if, Mr. Hussein's supporters will find a way to retaliate for the American campaign to kill the deposed Iraqi leader, but that effort inevitably reopens a long-simmering American argument over assassination, never embraced openly in so many words but never repudiated once and for all. Despite much tough talk of killing enemies since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration still shrinks from using the word assassination, and much of the public continues to oppose it as both dangerous and wrong � dangerous because it commits the United States to a campaign of murder and countermurder, and wrong because hunting people down, however it plays in the movies, excuses murder by calling it something else.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/weekinreview/13POWE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=

Court Affirms Bush's Power to Detain Citizen as Enemy A sharply divided federal appeals court today upheld President Bush's authority to detain indefinitely as an enemy combatant a United States citizen captured on the battlefield and to deny him access to a lawyer. The full roster of active judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., voted 8 to 4 to affirm a ruling in January that first found such a right, the administration's most important legal victory to date concerning expansion of its authority since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/national/10DETA.html

Palestinians Say the Truce Is in Jeopardy By GREG MYRE Palestinians expressed growing frustration today over the pace of talks with Israel, and what they see as Israel's unwillingness to grant concessions, and warned that the current truce could be in jeopardy if progress was not achieved soon on crucial issues like Palestinian prisoner releases and Israeli troop withdrawals. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/international/middleeast/10MIDE.html

Net Radio Group Threatens to Sue RIAA Small Internet radio stations, angered over what they say is the recording industry's effort to wield royalty rates as a weapon to drive them out of business, say they are preparing to file an antitrust suit against the Recording Industry Association of America. The Las Vegas-based Webcaster Alliance will send a letter today to the RIAA, threatening to sue the group for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act unless the RIAA agrees to reopen negotiations over the royalty rates webcasters must fork over to artists and record labels, Webcaster Alliance attorney Perry Narancic said. "We're trying to negotiate with these people, but with a big stick," Narancic said. The existing royalty rates structure would force as many as 90 percent of small commercial Internet radio stations to close if left unchanged, Narancic said. The Webcaster Alliance has more than 300 members ranging from tiny hobbyists to small broadcast stations with accompanying Internet sites. The group's members include stations specializing in trance, bluegrass, classical and other genres.� http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31245-2003Jul9.html

Water and Electricity in Baghdad Are Still Below Prewar Levels, Officials Say Two officials overseeing the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq said today that the electricity and drinking water available in Baghdad and some other parts of the country remained below prewar levels. The assessment appeared to run counter to earlier assurances by the Pentagon that the goal levels for improving those services had been or were close to being met in many parts of the country. It also reflects the damage done by looters and saboteurs since the end of major combat two months ago. As the occupation officials in Baghdad warned of tough times ahead, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who led allied forces through the war, stepped down today as head of the United States Central Command. He was replaced by his deputy, Gen. John P. Abizaid, who must now secure the victory in an Iraq where American troops face almost daily attack. In a video conference with reporters at the Pentagon, the two occupation officials in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Carl Strock of the Army and Andrew Bearpark, the occupation's director of regional services, said that electricity in Baghdad was being redirected to other parts of the country even though the lack of power in the capital had been cited as one reason for the continuing violence. Drinking water in Baghdad could be restored to prewar levels by the end of July, the officials said, but they conceded that efforts to treat raw sewage now pouring into the Tigris River were still months away. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/international/worldspecial/08POST.html?pagewanted=print&position=

TRUSTe issues privacy ultimatum to Batteries.com. Maier says that the investigation into Batteries.com concluded with the following six findings, all of which constituted violations of TRUSTe's policies. Batteries.com provided personal data to a third party called sungifts.com, an organization that had a relationship with Men's Journal and it did this for marketing purposes. Batteries.com did not obtain approval from TRUSTe. It needs to do that because that sharing of information constitutes a material change to the privacy practice under which the license was granted. Batteries.com did not notify customers that practices were changing in terms of sharing with third party. Such notification is required of all TRUSTe licensees. In transferring its customers' personal identity information (names, email addresses, physical address, etc.) Batteries.com did not honor the preferences of the customers that opted out from receiving marketing communications from batteries.com. (The marketing communication in question is an email that was sent Batteries.com customers that informed them they would begin receiving the publication unless they opted-out again.) Related to item number 4, the opt-out page requires a link to a privacy statement which it did not have. Batteries.com already transferred the personal data outside of its organization to sungifts.com before the opportunity to opt-out was presented. It needs to go the other way around. Maier said she believes, after conducting the investigation, that the violations were unintentional. But, Maier added, it doesn't matter whether the transgression was intentional or not. "Either way, the outcome would have been the same," said Maier. "We issued a notice to Batteries.com that their license would be terminated unless certain action was taken within 20 days." The required remedies in that notice were as follows: Batteries.com must identify those customers whose opt-outs were not honored, send them an apology explaining TRUSTe's role and the requirement that TRUSTe has put on them as a result of the policy violations. Batteries.com must update its list management and other practices to ensure that opt-outs are respected. Batteries.com must update its privacy statement and other disclosures within its user interface (shopping cart, opt-outs opportunities, etc) to reflect its information practices and TRUSTe's program requirements. Once the privacy statement and disclosure step is completed, Batteries.com must announce to all customers the change in its privacy statement and its practices and the role that TRUSTe has played in those changes and announcements. Batteries.com must allow for TRUSTe to conduct an in-house audit and review of their Batteries.com's privacy and information practices. Batteries.com must, at its own expense, have its executives, marketing and customer service staffs attend TRUSTe-taught privacy training sessions. According to Maier, while TRUSTe demands a fee for the training, those fees don't come close to the total expense so far borne by TRUSTe in investigating the matter and in sending its trainers to Batteries.com for on-site training. "Batteries.com has 20 days to do those things that can be done within a 20-day period and to commit to doing those things that will take longer," said Maier. "The company has agreed to satisfy the remedies. But, if for some reason, they don't, then they're out [of the TRUSTe program]." http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2914180,00.html

U.S. Military Trials Displease British Britain has ``strong reservations'' about U.S. plans to try two Britons held at Guantanamo Bay before a military commission, the Foreign Office said Monday. ``We have make clear to the U.S. that we expect the process to meet internationally accepted standards of a fair trial, and we will follow the process very carefully,'' Foreign Office Minister Chris Mullin said, answering a question in the House of Commons. The United States announced last week that two British al-Qaida suspects held at Guantanamo Bay -- Moazzam Begg, 35, and Feroz Abbasi, 23 -- were on the initial list of six suspects who could face U.S. military trial. Relatives of the two British detainees said they feared the trials would be unfair. The government is ``fundamentally opposed'' to the death penalty and would raise the ``strongest possible objections'' if there were any chance of it being applied in these cases, Mullin said. ``We have strong reservations about the military commission,'' he added. ``We have raised and will continue to raise these reservations energetically with the U.S.'' Neither of the British detainees has been charged so far. Opposition Conservative legislator Douglas Hogg, who sought the government statement in the Commons, said the U.S. plans were ``wrong, potentially unjust and gravely damaging to the Americans' reputation.'' Hogg said he was concerned about the plight of the two men, asking if it was correct there was no appeal outside the military process and that the defense team would be chosen by the military. ``What steps have been taken to protect their civil rights?'' Hogg asked. Mullin said ministers shared the concerns of Hogg and others. The two suspects could be charged and prosecuted, but this was not automatic, Mullin said, adding that ministers were still seeking details about how a trial would be conducted and expressing ``very strong views.'' Defense lawyers will be nominated by the Americans ``in some way and we are seeking further information about that too,'' Mullin said. ``Many of these aspects are a cause of concern to us and we intend to pursue all of them.'' http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-US-Guantanamo.html

What I Didn't Find in Africa By JOSEPH C. WILSON 4th Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charg� d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and S�o Tom� and Pr�ncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council. It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me. In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake � a form of lightly processed ore � by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office. After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.� I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place. Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired. (As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors � they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government � and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.) Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.� I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case. Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Libraries Planning a Meeting on Filters fficials of the American Library Assocation will call a meeting with the makers of Internet filtering software next month to voice concern over a federal law that requires libraries and schools to use Internet filters or risk losing federal money. The law, the Children's Internet Protection Act, was upheld last week by the Supreme Court after the librarians challenged the law on constitutional grounds. Judith Krug, director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association, said that in the meeting, tentatively scheduled for Aug. 14, librarians will ask the companies to ensure that their software can easily be turned off and on again by librarians. The group will also demand that the companies reveal their database of blocked sites to libraries so they can determine which programs best suit the libraries' needs, or they may work with third parties to develop new filtering software. "If we can't get what we want from the filtering companies, I say let's make our own," Mr. Krug said. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/national/03LIBR.html

U.S. Troops in Iraq Detain 180, Reporter Wounded U.S. forces in Iraq detained 180 people in raids to stamp out resistance to their occupation as a reporter attached to an army unit became the latest casualty of the violence, the military said on Monday. Assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade on Sunday night at an army patrol in the restive town of Falluja, around 50 km west of Baghdad, wounding the journalist who is now in stable condition in hospital, a statement said.� Three people were killed soon afterwards when their pickup truck drove into a military vehicle helping to evacuate the reporter from the area, the U.S. Central Command said. It did not identify the journalist or the dead people. The U.S. military, which has around 156,000 soldiers in Iraq, has launched several operations to stamp out the attacks. The latest, Operation Desert Sidewinder, began on Sunday with infantry soldiers backed by aircraft and armored vehicles. Troops from the U.S. Army's high-tech Fourth Infantry Division detained 32 people and seized weapons including 10 AK- 47 rifles and a mortar in the mission targeting areas north and east of Baghdad, once a bedrock of support for Saddam. The arms haul appeared meager in a country where most homes have at least one weapon. The area was quiet on Monday afternoon. Meanwhile, troops from the First Armored Division detained 148 people in Baghdad as part of Operation Desert Scorpion, which is aimed at stopping guerrilla attacks. Central Command also said troops had conducted 374 joint patrols with Iraqi police, resulting in 319 arrests for criminal offences.� News of the arrests came as Amnesty International expressed concern at the treatment of detainees in Iraq and called for an end to a ban on them receiving visitors and consulting lawyers.� It also called for investigations into consistent testimony from former detainees that troops had used excessive force during arrest or detention. U.S. officers say they have issued strict orders that all Iraqis must be treated humanely.� http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html

Before the Berlin Wall came down the former East Germany was known to be an industrial powerhouse. Every intelligence agency reported this, just as almost every agency reported Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. AI

Agency Disputes C.I.A. View of Trailers as Iraqi Weapons Labs The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, United States government officials said today. In a classified June 2 memorandum, the officials said, the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, as President Bush has done. The disclosure of the memorandum is the clearest sign yet of disagreement between intelligence agencies over the assertion, which was produced jointly by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency and made public on May 28 on the C.I.A. Web site. Officials said the C.I.A. and D.I.A. did not consult with other intelligence agencies before issuing the report. The report on the trailers was initially prepared for the White House, and Mr. Bush has cited it as proof that Iraq indeed had a biological weapons program, as the United States has repeatedly alleged, although it has yet to produce any other conclusive evidence. In an interview with Polish television on May 30, Mr. Bush cited the trailers as evidence that the United States had "found the weapons of mass destruction" it was looking for. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell echoed that assessment in a public statement the next day, saying that the accuracy of prewar assessments linking Iraqi trailers to a biological weapons program had been borne out by the discovery. Some intelligence analysts had previously disputed the C.I.A. report, but it had not been known that the C.I.A. report did not reflect an interagency consensus or that any intelligence agency had later objected to its finding. The State Department bureau raised its objections in a memorandum to Mr. Powell, according to Congressional officials. They said the memorandum was cast as a dissent to the C.I.A. report, and that it said that the evidence found to date did not justify the conclusion that the trailers could have had no other purpose than for use as mobile weapons laboratories.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/international/worldspecial/26WEAP.html

The Road to Oceania by WILLIAM GIBSON Walking along Henrietta Street recently, by London's Covent Garden, looking for a restaurant, I found myself thinking of George Orwell. Victor Gollancz Ltd., publisher of Orwell's early work, had its offices there in 1984, when the company published my first novel, a novel of an imagined future. At the time, I felt I had lived most of my life under the looming shadow of that mythic year � Orwell having found his title by inverting the final digits of the year of his book's completion. It seemed very strange to actually be alive in 1984. In retrospect, I think it has seemed stranger even than living in the 21st century. I had a valuable secret in 1984, though, one I owed in large part to Orwell, who would have turned 100 today: I knew that the novel I had written wasn't really about the future, just as "1984" hadn't been about the future, but about 1948. I had relatively little anxiety about eventually finding myself in a society of the sort Orwell imagined. I had other fish to fry, in terms of history and anxiety, and indeed I still do. Today, on Henrietta Street, one sees the rectangular housings of closed-circuit television cameras, angled watchfully down from shop fronts. Orwell might have seen these as something out of Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, penal theorist and spiritual father of the panoptic project of surveillance. But for me they posed stranger possibilities, the street itself seeming to have evolved sensory apparatus in the service of some metaproject beyond any imagining of the closed-circuit system's designers. Orwell knew the power of the press, our first mass medium, and at the BBC he'd witnessed the first electronic medium (radio) as it was brought to bear on wartime public opinion. He died before broadcast television had fully come into its own, but had he lived I doubt that anything about it would have much surprised him. The media of "1984" are broadcast technology imagined in the service of a totalitarian state, and no different from the media of Saddam Hussein's Iraq or of North Korea today � technologically backward societies in which information is still mostly broadcast. Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society. Elsewhere, driven by the acceleration of computing power and connectivity and the simultaneous development of surveillance systems and tracking technologies, we are approaching a theoretical state of absolute informational transparency, one in which "Orwellian" scrutiny is no longer a strictly hierarchical, top-down activity, but to some extent a democratized one. As individuals steadily lose degrees of privacy, so, too, do corporations and states. Loss of traditional privacies may seem in the short term to be driven by issues of national security, but this may prove in time to have been intrinsic to the nature of ubiquitous information. Certain goals of the American government's Total (now Terrorist) Information Awareness initiative may eventually be realized simply by the evolution of the global information system � but not necessarily or exclusively for the benefit of the United States or any other government. This outcome may be an inevitable result of the migration to cyberspace of everything that we do with information. Had Orwell known that computers were coming (out of Bletchley Park, oddly, a dilapidated English country house, home to the pioneering efforts of Alan Turing and other wartime code-breakers) he might have imagined a Ministry of Truth empowered by punch cards and vacuum tubes to better wring the last vestiges of freedom from the population of Oceania. But I doubt his story would have been very different.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/25/opinion/25GIBS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

"We just build," a cabinet official quoted Mr. Sharon as saying. A cabinet official quoted Mr. Sharon as saying that Israel would continue to build new homes, without fanfare, at existing Jewish settlements. Under the peace plans affirmed earlier this month by Mr. Sharon and Mr. Abbas, Israel must freeze building at formal settlements and tear down small settlement outposts that have gone up without government authorization during the past two years. Israel has taken down 11 of the settlement outposts in the past two weeks, though an almost equal number of new ones have gone up, according to Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements. Despite the stipulation in the peace plan, Mr. Sharon has made clear that he opposes a freeze on building at the nearly 150 formal settlements where more than 200,000 settlers live. Mr. Sharon told cabinet ministers there was no need to advertise every time a building permit was issued. "We just build," a cabinet official quoted Mr. Sharon as saying. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/23/international/middleeast/23MIDE.html?pagewanted=print&position=

The War in Iraq and International Humanitarian Law Frequently Asked Questions on Occupation (FAQ) Last updated on May 16, 2003) The following FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) analyzes international humanitarian law with respect to belligerent occupation. It does not attempt to cover the issue of occupation comprehensively, but focuses on those issues that might arise during the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies. Key Sections Belligerent Occupation Security in Occupied Areas Looting and "Shoot on Sight" Orders Occupation and the Rights of the Local Population Occupied Population's Well-Being and Health Law and Administration in an Occupied Territory Prisoners of War and Detained Civilians Public Officials in an Occupied Territory Property and Resources of the Occupied Territory End of Occupation http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/ihlfaqoccupation.htm

Letter To The Editor -- Both Sides Want Security In his June 9 front-page story about five Israeli soldiers being killed by Palestinian gunmen, Glenn Frankel mentioned that the attacks were the first by militant groups since the peace summit in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4. These also were the first attacks since the spate of suicide bombings on May 17, 18 and 19. However, the Israeli army continues to kill Palestinians. In the 17 days during which no Israelis were killed (May 19 to June 7), Israeli soldiers killed 27 Palestinian civilians. Last month 14 Israelis were killed (12 by bombings), and 61 Palestinians were killed; in April, it was 10 Israelis and 66 Palestinians killed. Until Israel can go 17 days without killing a Palestinian, how can one expect Palestinians to stop killing Israelis?� http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52869-2003Jun12.html

Inmates Released from Guant�namo Tell Tales of Despair Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guant�namo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves. According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months. An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American naval base at Guant�namo, described in April what he called the uncertainty and fear. "Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years," said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan. None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment. But the men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet , in blocks of 10 or 20. The cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements. "We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space," Mr. Shah said. Each man had two blankets and a prayer mat and slept and ate on the ground, he said. The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower. "After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating, so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week," Mr. Shah said. After that, he said, prisoners got to exercise for 10 minutes a week, walking around the inside of a cage 30 feet long. In interviews at their homes, weeks after being released, he and the freed Pakistani detainee talked of what they said was the overwhelming feeling of injustice among the approximately 680 men detained indefinitely at Guant�namo Bay. "I was trying to kill myself," said Shah Muhammad, 20, a Pakistani who was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, handed over to American soldiers and flown to Guant�namo in January 2002. "I tried four times, because I was disgusted with my life. "It is against Islam to commit suicide," he continued, "but it was very difficult to live there. A lot of people did it. They treated me as guilty, but I was innocent." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/international/asia/17PRIS.html?pagewanted=all&position=

In Israeli Gesture, a Tower Is Removed Near a Settlement The rusty tower looked unremarkable. But to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it was technically an "unauthorized outpost," one of 14 erected as adjuncts to nearby Israeli settlements that the army pledged today to destroy as part of Israel's commitment to the current peace plan, called the road map, between Israelis and Palestinians. But to Palestinian leaders and critics of the settlements, the demolition of the tower showed just how little the Sharon government was actually willing to concede, at least now, in the early stages of the peace plan. At the same time, the army tore down two trailers � both, like the watchtower, empty of people � that constituted another outpost, called Neve Erez South, about 15 miles from here. The move against the outposts came after the Israeli Army demolished 13 Palestinian homes early today in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, including one belonging to a militant, Mussa Sakhawil, who helped carry out a shooting on Sunday that left four Israeli soldiers dead. By tonight, the army reported that it had dismantled five of the outposts, none of them inhabited. Of the 14 outposts scheduled for destruction in the next few days, 10 are uninhabited and so, critics argue, their removal is only the most tentative step toward complying with the peace plan. "It's a phony show that has no value," Nabil Abu Rudaneh, an aide to Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said in a telephone interview tonight. Few issues present a greater challenge to the peace plan's success than the question of the roughly 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. The plan now backed by the Bush administration has chosen to grapple first with that question through the phenomenon of outposts, which are difficult to define. For several years, Israeli settlers have been expanding the reach of their communities by erecting what they call outposts, usually on nearby hilltops. They generally consist of a few structures, some with water and electricity, put in place for various overlapping reasons, as a marker for future expansion or as retribution when Palestinians kill Israelis. Critics contend that some were built exactly for moments like this one: when a peace plan would require concessions that would chip away at the settlements. Many of the outposts are uninhabited. The first phase of the peace plan requires that Israelis � led by Mr. Sharon, a longtime supporter of the settler movement � dismantle all the outposts erected in the last two years since he came to power. Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says 62 such outposts have been built since 2001, mostly in the West Bank. But Mr. Sharon's government puts the number closer to 100 and says that it will destroy only those outposts built without government authorization, a qualification not included in the peace plan itself. The dispute over what exactly constitutes an outpost was evident tonight as soldiers tore down the tower on a hill near the settlement of Ofra, which was founded near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the mid-1970's. It also showed the complications for Mr. Sharon as he seeks to comply with the terms of the peace plan without alienating his core political constituents. By tonight, the army reported that it had dismantled five of the outposts, none of them inhabited. Of the 14 outposts scheduled for destruction in the next few days, 10 are uninhabited and so, critics argue, their removal is only the most tentative step toward complying with the peace plan. "It's a phony show that has no value," Nabil Abu Rudaneh, an aide to Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said in a telephone interview tonight. Few issues present a greater challenge to the peace plan's success than the question of the roughly 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. The plan now backed by the Bush administration has chosen to grapple first with that question through the phenomenon of outposts, which are difficult to define. For several years, Israeli settlers have been expanding the reach of their communities by erecting what they call outposts, usually on nearby hilltops. They generally consist of a few structures, some with water and electricity, put in place for various overlapping reasons, as a marker for future expansion or as retribution when Palestinians kill Israelis. Critics contend that some were built exactly for moments like this one: when a peace plan would require concessions that would chip away at the settlements. Many of the outposts are uninhabited. The first phase of the peace plan requires that Israelis � led by Mr. Sharon, a longtime supporter of the settler movement � dismantle all the outposts erected in the last two years since he came to power. Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says 62 such outposts have been built since 2001, mostly in the West Bank. But Mr. Sharon's government puts the number closer to 100 and says that it will destroy only those outposts built without government authorization, a qualification not included in the peace plan itself. The dispute over what exactly constitutes an outpost was evident tonight as soldiers tore down the tower on a hill near the settlement of Ofra, which was founded near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the mid-1970's. It also showed the complications for Mr. Sharon as he seeks to comply with the terms of the peace plan without alienating his core political constituents. On one hilltop is a community called Amona, founded three years ago and holding roughly 25 young Jewish families and their children. On another, until tonight, was the watchtower. Peace Now said it considered the houses and the tower part of the same outpost. The government apparently disagreed, dismantling only the tower and saying it had taken down a separate outpost.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/10/international/middleeast/10SETT.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Iraqi Leader Asks U.S. to Stop Military Sweeps Adnan Pachachi, a respected elder Iraqi statesman encouraged by Bush administration officials to enter postwar politics here, criticized the United States military today for its increasingly aggressive operations in Iraq and said they should be suspended while an interim Iraqi government is formed over the next month. Mr. Pachachi said that military sweeps through civilian areas with mass arrests, interrogations and gun battles, intended to suppress the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and military command, were inflaming sentiments against the American and British occupation. He predicted that if such sweeps continued, they would be "exploited by the Baathists," and he added, "It would be much better if we didn't have these operations." Mr. Pachachi, a former foreign minister who returned to Iraq last month after more than 30 years of exile, emphasized that he supported allied efforts to re-establish security in the country. But he expressed concern about the marked escalation of allied assaults through civilian areas, where guerrilla raids have attacked troop convoys or checkpoints and left 10 American soldiers dead in the last three weeks. "These incidents will not help to pacify the country," he said, referring to the military operations. "For now, the quieter it is, the better" for the postwar political process, he added.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/international/worldspecial/15IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=

U.S. Asks Ex-U.N. Inspector to Advise on Arms Search Apparently in a sign of dissatisfaction with the progress on the search for illegal weapons in Iraq, the Bush administration is turning to a former top United Nations weapons inspector to provide advice on how to more effectively focus the hunt, officials said today. David Kay, who led three arms inspection missions as the United Nations chief nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, has been named a special adviser to the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, providing provide expertise on the best methods for scouring Iraq for illicit arms, the C.I.A. announced today. The surprise appointment of a former United Nations weapons expert follows a period in which the Bush administration frequently criticized the agency's inspection process as insufficient to penetrate Iraq's program of "denial and deception." The decision to have Mr. Kay report directly to Mr. Tenet, while search teams on the ground will be reporting to the Pentagon, will give the C.I.A. a higher profile in a hunt that has been dominated by the Pentagon. Comments by senior officials tonight indicate concern that the move will be viewed as a turf battle between the Pentagon and C.I.A. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/12/international/worldspecial/12WEAP.html

EU ends free Internet tax ride July 1, a new EU directive goes into effect requiring all Internet companies to account for value added tax, or VAT, on "digital sales." The law adds a 15 percent to 25 percent levy on select Internet transactions such as software and music downloads, monthly subscriptions to an Internet service provider and on any product purchased through an online auction anywhere in the 15-member bloc of nations. The VAT is nothing new for some Net companies. European dot-coms have been charging customers VAT since their inception. Their overseas rivals, though, have been exempt, making foreign companies an obvious choice for the bargain-hunting consumer. "It's a massive competitive disadvantage. It's good to see at last it being eroded," said David Melville, general counsel of U.K. ISP Freeserve, a division of French ISP Wanadoo. Freeserve has lobbied furiously for the past two years to get the loophole closed, saying its chief rival, AOL U.K., the Internet unit of AOL Time Warner, saved $249.7 million in tax payments over the years. AOL Europe has relocated its continental headquarters to tiny Luxembourg, one of the EU's cheaper tax regimes. Seattle-based retailer Amazon.com said the new tax regime will affect its auctions, plus marketplace and zShops operations where third-party new and used items are sold. In addition, VAT will now be charged on software downloads and the sale of e-books, Amazon said. "We'll go out shortly to our seller community about how these changes will impact fees we currently charge," Amazon spokeswoman Patricia Smith said. Online auctioneer eBay will swallow the VAT charge on behalf of consumers in a host of its smaller European operations such as France and Italy. But in the United Kingdom and Germany, its largest and most profitable European units, the company has raised fees to reflect the higher VAT charges.� http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1014519.htmlOn

In Israeli Gesture, a Tower Is Removed Near a Settlement As an opening gesture to comply with the new American-led peace initiative, Israeli soldiers drove to a hilltop here in the West Bank and tore down what the Israeli Army described as a watchtower adjacent to a settlement. The rusty tower looked unremarkable. But to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it was technically an "unauthorized outpost," one of 14 erected as adjuncts to nearby Israeli settlements that the army pledged today to destroy as part of Israel's commitment to the current peace plan, called the road map, between Israelis and Palestinians. To the angry Israeli settlers who live nearby, the downed tower was a frightening portent: that Mr. Sharon may be willing to bargain away the right they believe that Jews have to inhabit land in the West Bank and Gaza that was seized from Palestinians after the 1967 war. "This is the first step," warned Yudah Yifrach, 27, one of several hundred settlers who came here to protest the tower's removal. But to Palestinian leaders and critics of the settlements, the demolition of the tower showed just how little the Sharon government was actually willing to concede, at least now, in the early stages of the peace plan. At the same time, the army tore down two trailers � both, like the watchtower, empty of people � that constituted another outpost, called Neve Erez South, about 15 miles from here. The move against the outposts came after the Israeli Army demolished 13 Palestinian homes early today in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, including one belonging to a militant, Mussa Sakhawil, who helped carry out a shooting on Sunday that left four Israeli soldiers dead. By tonight, the army reported that it had dismantled five of the outposts, none of them inhabited. Of the 14 outposts scheduled for destruction in the next few days, 10 are uninhabited and so, critics argue, their removal is only the most tentative step toward complying with the peace plan. "It's a phony show that has no value," Nabil Abu Rudaneh, an aide to Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said in a telephone interview tonight. Few issues present a greater challenge to the peace plan's success than the question of the roughly 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. The plan now backed by the Bush administration has chosen to grapple first with that question through the phenomenon of outposts, which are difficult to define. For several years, Israeli settlers have been expanding the reach of their communities by erecting what they call outposts, usually on nearby hilltops. They generally consist of a few structures, some with water and electricity, put in place for various overlapping reasons, as a marker for future expansion or as retribution when Palestinians kill Israelis. Critics contend that some were built exactly for moments like this one: when a peace plan would require concessions that would chip away at the settlements. Many of the outposts are uninhabited. The first phase of the peace plan requires that Israelis � led by Mr. Sharon, a longtime supporter of the settler movement � dismantle all the outposts erected in the last two years since he came to power. Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says 62 such outposts have been built since 2001, mostly in the West Bank. But Mr. Sharon's government puts the number closer to 100 and says that it will destroy only those outposts built without government authorization, a qualification not included in the peace plan itself. The dispute over what exactly constitutes an outpost was evident tonight as soldiers tore down the tower on a hill near the settlement of Ofra, which was founded near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the mid-1970's. It also showed the complications for Mr. Sharon as he seeks to comply with the terms of the peace plan without alienating his core political constituents. On one hilltop is a community called Amona, founded three years ago and holding roughly 25 young Jewish families and their children. On another, until tonight, was the watchtower. Peace Now said it considered the houses and the tower part of the same outpost. The government apparently disagreed, dismantling only the tower and saying it had taken down a separate outpost. "The whole story is rather tricky," said Dror Etkes, who monitors settlements for Peace Now. "The government obviously has right now the interest to present itself as dismantling settlements. But I think what they are doing now is splitting existing outposts and giving them separate names." Until now, he said, his group considered the tower part of the outpost. "Obviously, they don't want to dismantle Amona, with 25 families very established." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/10/international/middleeast/10SETT.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use �intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment. "Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, "I am very upset with the process." The Bush administration has said the two trailers, which allied forces found in Iraq in April and May, are evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. In a white paper last week, it publicly detailed its case, even while conceding discrepancies in the evidence and a lack of hard proof. Now, intelligence analysts stationed in the Middle East, as well as in the United States and Britain, are disclosing serious doubts about the administration's conclusions in what appears to be a bitter debate within the intelligence community. Skeptics said their initial judgments of a weapon application for the trailers had faltered as new evidence came to light. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/international/worldspecial/07TRAI.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Duped and Betrayed Most media attention has focused on the child tax credit that wasn't. As in 2001, the administration softened the profile of a tax cut mainly aimed at the wealthy by including a credit for families with children. But at the last minute, a change in wording deprived 12 million children of some or all of that tax credit. "There are a lot of things that are more important than that," declared Tom DeLay, the House majority leader. (Maybe he was thinking of the "Hummer deduction," which stayed in the bill: business owners may now deduct up to $100,000 for the cost of a vehicle, as long as it weighs at least 6,000 pounds.) Less attention has been paid to fine print that reveals the supposed rationale for the dividend tax cut as a smoke screen. The problem, we were told, is that profits are taxed twice: once when they are earned, a second time when they are paid out as dividends. But as any tax expert will tell you, the corporate tax law is full of loopholes; many profitable corporations pay little or no taxes. The original Bush plan ensured that dividends from such companies would not get a tax break. But those safeguards vanished from the final bill: dividends will get special treatment regardless of how much tax is paid by the company that issues them. This little change has two big consequences. First, as Glenn Hubbard, the former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers and the author of the original plan, delicately puts it, "It's hard to get a lot of progressivity at the top." Translation: wealthy individuals who get most of their income from dividends and capital gains will often end up paying lower tax rates than ordinary Americans who work for a living.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/opinion/06KRUG.html

>"The president is a very powerful guy," said Ray Close, who spent 26 years in the C.I.A. "When you sense what he wants, it's very difficult not to go out and find it."

Cloaks and Daggers On Day 78 of the Search for Iraqi W.M.D., yesterday, once again nothing turned up. Spooks are spitting mad at the way their work was manipulated to exaggerate the Iraqi threat, and they are thus surprisingly loquacious (delighting those of us in journalism). They emphasize that even if weapons of mass destruction still turn up, there is a fundamental problem �not within the intelligence community itself, but with senior administration officials � particularly in the Pentagon. One has to take the outrage among the spooks with a few grains of salt because the intelligence folks have been on the losing end of a power struggle with the Pentagon. But that's the problem: the Pentagon has become the 800-pound gorilla of the Bush administration, playing a central role in foreign policy and intelligence as well as military matters. "The basic problem here is that O.S.D. [Office of the Secretary of Defense] has become too powerful," noted Patrick Lang, a former senior official in the Defense Intelligence Agency. One step came in the Clinton administration, when the defense secretary gained greater control over the handling of images from spy satellites. Mr. Rumsfeld then started up his own intelligence shop in the Pentagon. The central philosophy of intelligence � that it should be sheltered from policy considerations to keep it honest � was deeply bruised. A commission led by Brent Scowcroft suggested two years ago that intelligence functions be consolidated under the director of central intelligence. It was an excellent idea � killed by, among others, Mr. Rumsfeld. "The president is a very powerful guy," said Ray Close, who spent 26 years in the C.I.A. "When you sense what he wants, it's very difficult not to go out and find it." As best I can reconstruct events, Mr. Rumsfeld genuinely felt that the C.I.A. and D.I.A. were doing a horrendous job on Iraq � after all, he was hearing much more alarming information from those close to Ahmad Chalabi. So the Pentagon set up its own intelligence unit, and it sifted through everyone else's information and goaded other agencies to come up with more alarmist conclusions. "He's an ideologist," one man in the spy world said of Mr. Rumsfeld. "He doesn't start with the facts, even though he's quite brainy. He has a bottom line, and then he gathers facts to support the bottom line." That is not, of course, a capital offense. Pentagon leaders should feel free to disagree strenuously with foolish judgments by the C.I.A. But for the process to work, top C.I.A. officials need to fight back. Instead, George Tenet rolled over. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/opinion/06KRIS.html

Another Attack in Central Iraq Kills Another U.S. Soldier Khalil Muhammad said he heard the explosion just after midnight. Within seconds, the sound of American rifle fire confirmed his fears. Hidden assailants early this morning had launched another attack on American soldiers in this restive Iraqi town 35 miles west of Baghdad, killing one American and wounding five. The dead soldier, whom military officials declined to identify immediately for privacy reasons, was the third American soldier killed in Falluja in the last 10 days. Five other American soldiers have been killed in central Iraq in the same period. Today's fatal attack comes at a crucial time for American commanders and the residents of this tense farming town of 600,000 people on the banks of the Euphrates River. After a series of almost weekly attacks on American forces here, United States commanders are adopting a get-tough approach in Falluja, a town that has emerged as a center of anti-American resistance in Iraq. Beginning this week, 4,000 soldiers from the Army's Third Infantry Division are to replace a 1,200-member armored cavalry squadron in the town. Military commanders hope that the increased American presence will quell the attacks. What occurs in Falluja in the next several weeks could set a precedent. American military might could either crush dissent in the area � or fuel it.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/worldspecial/06FIGH.html

Arafat Belittles Sharon's Offer on Settlements Shut out of a Middle East peace conference in Jordan on Wednesday, Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, dismissed a promised Israeli concession today, as skepticism on both sides and around the region vied with hopes for peace. On Wednesday, after meeting with President Bush in the port city of Aqaba, Mr. Abbas declared that the armed Palestinian uprising against Israel "must end." Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised to begin dismantling "unauthorized outposts," a reference to some of the dozens of clusters of trailers set up by Jewish settlers on West Bank hilltops in recent years to strengthen Israel's hold there. But Mr. Arafat said today of Mr. Sharon, "Unfortunately, he has not yet offered anything tangible." Speaking to reporters at his compound in Ramallah, where Mr. Sharon has effectively imprisoned him for more than a year, Mr. Arafat said, "What's the significance of removing a caravan from one location and then saying, `I have removed a settlement?' " http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/middleeast/06MIDE.html

DeLay Rebuffs Move to Restore Lost Tax Credit Clearly irked at the mounting criticism of Republicans for the last-minute decision not to give the credit to minimum-wage families, Mr. DeLay said those who favored the increased credit had had their chance in the debate over the bill. "There are a lot of other things that are more important than that," Mr. DeLay said in a news conference today. "To me, it's a little difficult to give tax relief to people that don't pay income tax." Mr. DeLay's position puts him at odds with a growing number of Senate Republicans who have signed on to a measure that would extend the $400-per-child increase in the credit to many families making from $10,500 to $26,625. The Senate had approved the increase for those families last month, but it was removed in final negotiations with the House. Six Senate Republicans now support the measure, along with most Democrats. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/04/national/04TAX.html?pagewanted=all&position=

More News, Less Diversity There are, of course, millions of Web sites, and in theory they provide a diverse spectrum of viewpoints, which is one rationale for restrictions against any one company owning too many news outlets. In practice, however, almost all this diversity is ignored. Users may be able to choose from millions of sites, but most go to only a few. This isn't an accident or the result of savvy branding. It's because Internet traffic follows a winner-take-all pattern that is much more ruthless than people realize. Relying on links and search engines, most people are directed to a few very successful sites; the rest remain invisible to the majority of users. The result is that there's an even greater media concentration online than in the offline world. Our research on online political communities � analyzing three million pages on issues like abortion and capital punishment � shows a staggering degree of consolidation. For instance, although there are more than 13,000 Web pages on the subject of gun control, two-thirds of all hyperlinks point to the 10 most popular sites. In the case of capital punishment, the top 10 sites receive 63 percent of the total number of links on the topic. In every category of content we examined, more than half the Web sites have only a single link to them. The number of links to a Web site is correlated with the amount of traffic the site receives, since it determines a site's visibility on the open Internet: popular sites continue to acquire more links, making their predominance even more pronounced. The top 20 online news sites are owned by 16 large media companies. The top five sites get more traffic than the other 15 combined.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/opinion/02HIND.html

The Reverse Robin Hood If you wanted a quintessential example of what the Bush administration and its legislative cronies are about, it was right there on the front page of The Times last Thursday: "Tax Law Omits $400 Child Credit for Millions." The fat cats will get their tax cuts. But in the new American plutocracy, there won't even be crumbs left over for the working folks at the bottom of the pyramid to scramble after. When House and Senate negotiators met to put the finishing touches to President Bush's tax bill, they coldly deleted a provision that would have allowed millions of low-income working families to benefit from the bill's increased child tax credit. It was a mean-spirited and wholly unnecessary act, a clear display of the current regime's outright hostility toward America's poor and working classes. The negotiators eliminated a provision in the Senate version of the tax bill that would have extended benefits from the child tax credit to families with incomes between $10,500 and $26,625. This is not a small group. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the families that would have benefited include about 12 million children � one of every six kids in the U.S. under the age of 17. While the tax bill will lavish hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits on people higher up the income scale, it leaves this group of working families very ignominiously behind. And readers of yesterday's Times learned that another group of some eight million mostly low-income taxpayers � primarily single people without children � will also be left behind, getting no benefit at all from the president's tax cuts. Forget about trickle-down. The goal of this administration is to haul it up. The provision to extend the tax credit to more low-income families was the work of Senator Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat who noted that half of all taxpayers in her state had adjusted gross incomes of less than $20,000. The full Senate approved the provision, but the negotiators knocked it out at the last minute, behind closed doors.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/opinion/02HERB.html

F.C.C. Votes to Relax Rules Limiting Media Ownership Federal regulators relaxed decades-old rules restricting media ownership Monday, permitting companies to buy more television stations and own a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same city. The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 -- along party lines -- to adopt a series of changes favored by media companies. �companies argued that existing ownership rules were outmoded on a media landscape that has been substantially altered by cable TV, satellite broadcasts and the Internet. Critics say the eased restrictions would likely lead to a wave of mergers landing a few giant media companies in control of even more of what the public sees, hears and reads. The decision was a victory for FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who has faced growing criticism from diverse interests opposed to his move toward deregulation. The FCC said a single company can now own TV stations that reach 45 percent of U.S. households instead of 35 percent. The major networks wanted the cap eliminated, while smaller broadcasters said a higher cap would allow the networks to gobble up stations and take away local control of programming. The FCC largely ended a ban on joint ownership of a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city. The provision lifts all "cross-ownership" restrictions in markets with nine or more TV stations. Smaller markets would face some limits and cross-ownership would be banned in markets with three or fewer TV stations. The agency also eased rules governing local TV ownership so one company can own two television stations in more markets and three stations in the largest cities such as New York and Los Angeles. "The more you dig into this order the worse things get," said Michael Copps, one of the commission's Democrats. He said the changes empowers "a new media elite" to control news and entertainment. Fellow Democrat Jonathan Adelstein said the changes are "likely to damage the media landscape for decades to come." The rule changes are expected to face court challenges from media companies wanting more deregulation and consumer groups seeking stricter restrictions.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/business/02WIRE-FCC.html

Armour-piercing shards Unlike the precision-guided bombs and missiles that have also been deployed in Iraq, cluster bombs are designed to cause damage over a wide area. Each bomb separates above a target, releasing numerous small bomblets, covering an area of about 200 by 400 metres. When each of the bomblets near the ground, they explode and fire out armour-piercing shards. They are typically used against enemy vehicle convoys, artillery placements or troops. The US CBU-105 was recently upgraded with an on-board guidance system that can adjust for displacement by wind during the descent to a target, meaning they can be released from a higher safer, altitude. Failure rate "But some bomblets will fail to explode," says Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane's Strategic Weapons Systems. "You can't be absolutely certain that they're all going to fuse properly." A single US CBU-105 cluster bomb contains 40 bomblets and the British RBL-755 bomb contains 150. The military estimate is that about five per cent of bomblets malfunction. These unexploded bomblets not only present an immediate threat, say critics, but can lie like unexploded mines for many years. Amnesty International said in a statement: "If the US is serious about protecting civilians, it must publicly commit to a moratorium on the use of cluster weapons. Using cluster munitions will lead to indiscriminate killing and injuring of civilians." Keeping civilian casualties to an absolute minimum is politically crucial to the US and UK, who began their invasion to disarm Iraq in the face of substantial international opposition. Military spokespeople stress that cluster bombs will not be used in or near civilian areas. http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/iraq/article.jsp?id=99993588&sub=News%20update

Israel Eases Palestinian Travel Limits The Israeli army announced it had lifted the two-week closure at midnight Saturday and would allow 10,000 workers to enter Israel on Sunday. The closure was imposed after a spate of suicide bombings. About 3,500 Palestinians holding valid work permits walked into Israel through the Erez crossing in Gaza on Sunday morning, according to Palestinian officials. Palestinians trying to cross a checkpoint between the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Bir Zeit were forced to leave their cars behind and walk four miles. During the Cabinet meeting Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the military had foiled attempted terror attacks in recent days. Israeli agents stopped three cars packed with explosives trying to enter Israel in the past week, Mofaz said, according to the official who attended the meeting. Palestinian Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib said Sunday the gestures had little impact on the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. ``The continuous Israeli statements seem directed toward public consumption,'' he said. ``In practical terms, there hasn't been any change at all.'' http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

Sharon Laments 'Occupation' and Israeli Settlers Shudder It has been, for Israel's settlers, a most unsettling week. First the Israeli government endorsed the idea of eventually creating a Palestinian state, giving qualified backing to an American-backed peace plan. Then Mr. Sharon criticized what he called Israel's "occupation" in the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, captured in the 1967 war. This is a right-wing Israeli government, and Mr. Sharon is a visionary and engineer of the settlement movement, which since the war has moved more than 200,000 Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza. Yet in a conflict in which every word can be inspected for political freight, in which names for everything from the city streets to the violence itself are contested, Mr. Sharon has adopted a term � "occupation" � that is central to the lexicon of Israeli doves and Palestinians. For settlers, it was almost as though President Bush had described Texas as American-occupied territory.� Sharon Laments 'Occupation' and Israeli Settlers Shudder

The Bioweapons Enigma resident Bush may be convinced that two trailers found in Iraq were used as biological weapons labs, but the evidence is far from definitive. Referring to the two trailers in an interview with Polish television before he departed for Europe last week, Mr. Bush said the United States had found weapons of mass destruction and banned manufacturing devices in Iraq. Reports from the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency support that view, but they are based on inconclusive information. Intelligence analysts told reporters last week that the configuration of equipment in the trailers would not work efficiently as a biological production plant, is not a design used by anyone else and would not lead anyone to link the trailers intuitively with biological weapons. The intelligence officials took all that as a sign that the Iraqis were ingeniously clever in trying to hide the true nature of what they were doing from international inspectors. But the uncertainties leave open the disquieting possibility that the trailers might not be what the intelligence agencies think they are. It seems increasingly imperative, as this page has argued before, to get an authoritative, unbiased assessment from the United Nations or some other independent body. Intelligence officials say they are "highly confident" of their conclusions because of what they deem striking similarities between one of the trailers seized last month and a description provided three years ago by an Iraqi chemical engineer who is said to have managed a mobile weapons plant. Unfortunately, it is impossible for outsiders to judge the reliability of this source, whose information was described as "absolutely critical" to concluding that the trailers were biological warfare units. No traces of biological agents have been detected so far in the trailers, and search teams have yet to find the additional trailers that would be needed to convert the slurry produced by these trailers into usable weapons. The technical analysis simply argues that the trailers could be used to produce a biological slurry and that no other plausible use can be identified that would justify the high cost and effort of mobile production. Officials dismiss Iraqi claims that the units were intended to produce hydrogen as an unlikely cover story but acknowledge that trace amounts of aluminum, a residue of hydrogen production, were detected, in amounts they deem too small to be significant.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/01/opinion/01SUN2.html

The Tax Bill's Final Indignity The tax bill that President Bush triumphantly signed into law on Wednesday is not just unfair, dishonest and economically unsound. It is also cruel to low-income families. In a last-minute revision, Senate and House negotiators dropped a provision that would have extended child tax credits to millions of these families. The stated reason was that the total cost of the bill had to be kept to an agreed-upon limit of $350 billion. This excuse is typical of the shifty argumentation that has accompanied this legislation from the start. Under the new law, which raises the child tax credit to $1,000 from $600, most families with children will receive a $400-per-child check this summer. It was never intended that the wealthiest families � or the very poorest families, making less than the minimum wage � would get the credit. As it turns out, however, millions of families with incomes between $10,500 and $26,625 will not get it either. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, had insisted that the Senate version of the bill extend the enlarged credit to this particular group of working families, who have nearly 12 million children. The provision would have cost $3.5 billion, or exactly 1 percent of the advertised price of the bill. But because it would have helped push the tab above $350 billion, out it went. Set aside for the moment the fact that the official $350 billion figure is a phony. The real cost of the bill over 10 years will more nearly approximate $800 billion if all the provisions that are scheduled to "sunset" in the next few years are eventually made a permanent part of the tax code, as they almost certainly will be. But even if the cost of the bill were actually $350 billion, there were fairer ways to reach that target than by depriving low-income families of the tiny crumbs the bill gives them.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/30/opinion/30FRI1.html

ABCNEWS.com : Justice Dept. Lifts FBI Database Limits The Justice Department lifted a requirement � that the FBI ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information about criminals and crime victims before adding it to the country's most comprehensive law enforcement database. The system, run by the FBI's National Crime Information Center, includes data about terrorists, fugitives, warrants, people missing, gang members and stolen vehicles, guns or boats. Records are queried increasingly by the nation's law enforcement agencies to help decide whether to monitor, detain or arrest someone. The records are inaccessible to the public, and police have been prosecuted in U.S. courts for misusing the system to find, for example, personal information about girlfriends or former spouses. Officials said the change, which immediately drew criticism from civil-liberties advocates, is necessary to ensure investigators have access to information that can't be confirmed but could take on new significance later, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said. The change to the 1974 U.S. Privacy Act was disclosed with an announcement published in the Federal Register. The Privacy Act previously required the FBI to ensure information was "accurate, relevant, timely and complete" before it could be added to the system.� Critics urged Congress to review the change, arguing that information in the computer files was especially important because it can affect many aspects of a person's life. "This is information that has always been stigmatizing, the type of data that can prevent someone from getting a job," said Marc Rotenberg of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. "When you remove the accuracy obligations, you open the door to the use of unreliable information." Critics have noted complaints for years about wrong information in the computer files that disrupted the lives of innocent citizens, and the FBI has acknowledged problems. In one case, a Phoenix resident was arrested for minor traffic violations that had been quashed weeks earlier; in another, a civilian was misidentified as a Navy deserter. The system "is replete with inaccurate, untimely information, but everybody does their best to keep it up to date," said Beryl Howell, former general counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "That's a goal we shouldn't just throw out." In the change, the Justice Department said earlier restrictions on information "would limit the ability of trained investigators and intelligence analysts to exercise their judgment in reporting on investigations and impede the development of criminal intelligence necessary for effective law enforcement." http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030324_2121.html

Counterpane: Crypto-Gram: April 15, 2003 National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Database Accuracy Last month the U.S. Justice Department administratively discharged the FBI of its statutory duty to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. This database is enormous. It contains over 39 million criminal records. It contains information on wanted persons, missing persons, and gang members, as well as information about stolen cars, boats, and other information. Over 80,000 law enforcement agencies have access to this database. On average, there are 2.8 million transactions processed each day. The Privacy Act of 1974 requires the FBI to make reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the records in this database. Last month, the Justice Department exempted the system from the law's accuracy requirements. This isn't just bad social practice, it's bad security. A database with more errors is much less useful than a database with fewer errors, and an error-filled security database is much more likely to target innocents than it is to let the guilty go free. To see this, let's walk through an example. Assume a simple database -- name and a single code indicating "innocent" or "guilty." When a policeman encounters someone, he looks that person up in the database, and then arrests him if the database says "guilty." Example 1: Assume the database is 100% accurate. If that is the case, there won't be any false arrests because of bad data. It works perfectly. Example 2: Assume a 0.0001% error rate: one error in a million. (An error is defined as a person having an "innocent" code when he is guilty, or a "guilty" code when he is innocent.) Furthermore, assume that one in 10,000 people are guilty. In this case, for every 100 guilty people the database correctly identifies it will mistakenly identify one innocent person as guilty (because of an error). And the number of guilty people erroneously listed as innocent is tiny: one in a million. Example 3: Assume a 1% error rate -- one in a hundred -- and the same one in 10,000 ratio of guilty people. The results are very different. For every 100 guilty people the database correctly identifies, it will mistakenly identify 10,000 innocent people as guilty. The number of guilty people erroneously listed as innocent is larger, but still very small: one in 100. The differences between examples 2 and 3 are striking. In example 2, one person is erroneously arrested for every 100 people correctly arrested. In example 3, one person is correctly arrested for every 100 people erroneously arrested. The increase in error rate makes the database all but useless as a system for figuring out how to arrest. And this is despite the fact that, in both cases, almost no guilty people get away because of a database error. The reason for this phenomenon is that the number of guilty people is a very small percentage of the population. If one in ten people were guilty, then a 0.0001% error rate would mistakenly arrest one innocent for every 100,000 guilty, and a 1% error rate would arrest approximately one innocent for every guilty. And if the number of guilty people is even less than one in ten thousand, then the problem of arresting innocents magnifies even more as the database has more errors. Now this is a simple example, and the NCIC database has far more complex data and tries to make more complex correlations. And I am assuming that the error rate for false positives are the same as the error rate for false negatives, and there aren't any data dependencies that complicate the analysis. But even with these complications, the problems are still the same. Because there are so few terrorists (for example) amongst the general population, a error-filled database is far more likely to identify innocent people as terrorists than it is to catch actual terrorists. This kind of thing is already happening. There are 13 million people on the FBI's terrorist watch list. That's ridiculous, it's simply inconceivable that a number of people equal to 4.5% of the population of the United States are terrorists. There are far more innocents on that list than there are guilty people not on that list. And these innocents are regularly harassed by police trying to do their job. And in any case, any watch list with 13 million people is basically useless. How many resources can anyone afford to spend watching about one-twentieth of the population, anyway? That 13-million-person list feels a whole like CYA on the part of the FBI. Adding someone to the list probably has no cost and, in fact, may be one criterion for how your performance is evaluated at the FBI. Removing someone from the list probably takes considerable courage, since someone is going to have to take the fall when "the warnings were ignored" and "they failed to connect the dots." Best to leave that risky stuff to other people, and to keep innocent people on the list forever.� http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0304.html#7

Why the Mullahs Love a Revolution The Bush team's vision for a postwar Iraq was founded on the dreams of exiles and defectors, who promised that Iraqis would shower American troops with flowers. Now, with the crowds shouting, "No to America; no to Saddam," and most Iraqis already referring to the American "occupation," the Bush administration seems puzzled. The truth is that the exiles had been in the West so long that they knew little of the reality inside Iraq; the defectors, in search of a haven from the cruel regime, told the eager Americans anything they wanted to hear. Now that these illusions have been shattered, American policy makers might do better to consider the history of the region. In particular, the dogged nationalism of the Iraqis that forced imperial Britain's departure in 1932; and, more recently, the events in 1979 after the downfall of the secular regime of the shah of Iran. A big argument among American officials had been over the future of the secular Baath Party, with the pragmatists advocating a mere "head transplant" of the top leadership while keeping the body intact, and the ideologues proposing outright destruction. Events, however, ignored the debate in Washington, and the Baath disappeared altogether. So too have the military and most of the police. This vacuum is reminiscent of what happened in Iran in February 1979. The 440,000-strong military of the pro-American shah disintegrated quickly, as did the police force and the Savak, the notorious secret police. Into that vacuum stepped the Islamic Revolutionary Komitehs, run by Shiite clerics operating from the local mosques. The Komitehs took over not only law enforcement but also such essential chores as distributing heating oil to households in wintry Tehran. Many groups took part in toppling the shah; but it was the nationwide religious network and the unified actions of the mullahs that enabled them to to become his successor. A similar pattern has emerged in Iraq, particularly in the Shiite-majority south and the Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad. Over the centuries, as members of a community that was discriminated against and repressed, the Shiites learned to find comfort in religion and piety to a much greater extent than the ruling Sunnis. In recent decades, Shiite clerics devised clandestine networks of communication that even Saddam Hussein's spies failed to infiltrate. Eschewing written messages or telephones, they used personal envoys who spoke in code. In the wake of Iraq's collapse, this messenger system has proved remarkably efficient. The Shiites, however, are not uniform in their outlook. Religious loyalties are divided between Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sestani, an Iranian-born cleric living in Najaf, and the Tehran-based Ayatollah Bakr al-Hakim, leader of Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Yet they are united in their demand, endorsed by predominantly Shiite Iran, that the Americans leave soon. The supreme council has a 10,000-man army, armed by Iran, and controls many Iraqi towns near the Iranian border. By contrast, the Free Iraqi Forces loyal to Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the American-sponsored Iraqi National Congress, has only about 600 men at arms. The Pentagon made a show of airlifting Mr. Chalabi's men into the April 15 assembly of Iraqi politicians convened by the American pro-consul, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner. But the attendance of a mere 80 delegates (the supreme council, previously part of the American-sponsored official Iraqi opposition, boycotted), along with a noisy anti-American protest by 20,000 demonstrators, showed the weakness of Washington's hand.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/opinion/23HIRO.html

Roads Not Taken Richard Gephardt's new proposal � to scrap the 2001 tax cut and use the reclaimed revenue to provide health benefits to the uninsured � has been widely dismissed as unrealistic. And in political terms that's probably true. After all, these days it's considered "moderate" to support an irresponsible tax cut that is merely large, as opposed to gigantic. But today I'd like to take a holiday from political realism, and ask a na�ve question: Why shouldn't the American people favor a proposal like Mr. Gephardt's? Never mind the details; why shouldn't the typical citizen, faced with a choice between Bush-style tax cuts and a plan to provide health insurance to most of the uninsured, choose the latter? Of course, originally tax cuts weren't supposed to require sacrificing something else. In the 2000 campaign, and up through the passage of the 2001 tax cut, George Bush insisted that there was plenty of money for everything. But there wasn't � and now, having returned to an era of deficits, we are told that social programs must be shrunk even as taxes are cut further. Why not choose a different road? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/25/opinion/25KRUG.html