-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 75 - October, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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Contents:
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--Girls swap diapers for rebel life [Columbia]
--Roboprotest
--Prague update: 11 prisoners released
--Privacy Becomes Issue For UPS, FedEx As Drug Seizures Surge
--Space surveillance complex changes hands
Linked stories:
*Workplace toxins can kill at home
*Big Radio Bites Back!
*U.S. Murder Rate Declines to 1966 Levels
*Foiled again [Nader]
*Police Treaty a Global Invasion?
*Fingering the DVD Pirates
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Begin stories:
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Girls swap diapers for rebel life
<http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/10/06/p6s1.htm>
Colombia's main leftist group, notorious for drugs and kidnapping, gives
women equality, freedom
By Martin Hodgson
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, COLOMBIA
Eliana Gonzalez was married at 14 and gave birth to her daughter a year
later. Her husband, a landless peasant, would disappear on drunken binges
for days at time, she says, "But he was the kind of man who believed a
woman should always stay at home. I had to get his permission just to visit
my parents.
"I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted things to change," says
Ms. Gonzalez, explaining why 26 years ago she left her family, chose a new
name, and became a guerrilla fighter in what is now Colombia's largest -
and most feared - rebel army.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are best known in the
wider world for their reliance on kidnapping and extortion, close ties with
the illegal narcotics trade, and casual use of extreme violence.
So why are increasing numbers of Colombian women choosing to join them?
When Gonzalez became a guerrilla in 1974, the FARC had fewer than 900
members, of whom only a handful were women. Now the group fields some
15,000 fighters, including more than 5,000 women.
The figures alone illustrate the escalation of Colombia's bloody 34-year
conflict, which pits leftist rebels against state security forces and their
de facto allies, illegal right-wing paramilitaries.
And as the US prepares to send nearly $1 billion worth of aid to Colombia's
military, the fighting is likely to get worse, observers say. According to
military analyst Alfredo Rangel, the FARC are stepping up their recruiting
drives throughout the country. "A growing army needs whoever it can get,
and women are an important source of new recruits," he says.
But while the numbers indicate the scale of the violence, they also reflect
the social conditions that helped trigger Colombia's war.
"Young people in rural areas have no alternatives. Their families don't
have money for education and there are no jobs," says Mariluz Rubio, human
rights ombudsman in San Vicente del Caguan, the largest town in a southern
region ceded to the rebels to enable peace talks that began in January, 1999.
In much of rural Colombia, there has never been a consistent state
presence, or investment in any
kind of infrastructure or legal economy. A nationwide recession has pushed
urban unemployment
above 20 percent, so rural youngsters have little hope of escape to the
cities. "And this is still a very
macho country. For women, the possibilities are even fewer," says Ms.
Rubio, adding that many
families still see educating daughters as a waste of time. In rural
communities, girls are married and
start childbearing when they are as young as 12 years old. For many, the
only job opportunities are in the drug trade, or with the armed factions.
East of San Vicente, a two-hour drive down a rutted track leads to a rebel
camp deep in the jungle.
At the sound of a whistle blast, 24 guerrillas in drab green uniforms line
up on a makeshift parade
ground. Each one bears an assault rifle, a harness with spare ammunition,
and a stubby machete.
None is older than 25, and almost half are women.
The drill commander is Sandra. The guerrilla in her 20s, who didn't want to
give a last name, takes
roll call in a school composition book, then assigns cookhouse and sentry
details. "We all have the
same duties and responsibilities, man or woman," she says later, sitting on
her rough wooden cotwhile she and two friends paint their fingernails with
red and pink nail polish.
Like Gonzalez, Sandra grew up in a remote farming town, where she scraped
through one year of
primary school before the money ran out. She started working when she was
10, keeping house and
looking after her five younger brothers and sisters.
"Lots of women are here because their parents beat them, or just to get
away from the poverty. I got on well with my parents, but I had to work
harder at home than I do here."
"It's tough, but at least you don't have to worry about where you'll get
food and clothes from," agrees Ana Maria, also in her early 20s. Now Sandra
has three sets of clothes - identical camouflage uniforms - and a pair of
rubber boots, as well as an AK-47 that rests against her bed while her
fingernails dry.
"In Colombia, money and weapons are the only things that confer power. In a
country where women are usually ignored, [women guerrillas] are surrounded
by symbols that give them an identity," says anthropologist Maria Eugenia
Vasquez, who is writing a book on female rebels.
"The first time you pick up a weapon you feel proud, you feel more
important. When you're a civilian, you don't belong anywhere, but when
you're a guerrilla, people treat you better," says 16-year-old Lusia, who
also declined to give her last name. She worked as a maid in the capital,
Bogota, before joining the rebels.
The guerrilla bands offer women equality and freedom from the expectations
of a macho culture, they say, but charge a high price in return. "Once
you're a soldier, you're always a soldier," says Gonzalez. In her mid-40s,
she is one of the oldest and longest-serving women in the FARC. "But if
you're a mother, you're always a mother," she adds in a soft tone. After
she joined the rebels, she didn't see her daughter for nine years. "I got
used to this life very quickly, but you can never adapt to leaving your
child," she remembers. Guerrillas are not allowed to keep their children
with them, explains Commandante Mariana Paez, a member of the FARC's
negotiation team. "You can't be a guerrilla and a mother. You either
neglect one or the other - and usually it's the children," she says.
Female fighters are given obligatory birth-control advice. If they become
pregnant, they are told to leave the babies with their families.
In the camp, Sandra admits that she sometimes finds the rule a little
harsh. "Most of us would like to have children, but you can't. Well ... you
shouldn't," she says.
Lusia disagrees. "If you have a husband, it's worse. They just cheat and
fill you up with children. It's much better here," she says, remembering
her best friend, who became a mother at 14. "We used to play hide and seek
together, but I haven't seen her for years now," Lusia says. "I chose a
different path. I think it was the right one."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roboprotest
Artists and engineers make subversive allies
September/October 2000
Technology Review
By Nick Montfort
With body-armored riot police poised like Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles in front of a corporate city called Niketown,
the uprising late last year against the World Trade
Organization meeting in Seattle seemed science-fictional
at times. If the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) has
its way, the future of civil disobedience will be even
stranger. This team of artists has already engineered a
new form of resistance: robot protesters.
Three disruptive automatons have now been manufactured by
the IAA, an anonymous group of artists founded in 1998.
The group's Web site declares that it develops technologies
for the "emerging market of cultural insurrection." While
other researchers fashion robots to work in environments
that are physically hazardous to humans, the IAA is
building robots to speak out in areas where free speech
has been regulated out of existence. The IAA takes
technologies that have been developed to serve corporate,
institutional and military interests and uses them to
challenge and subvert those interests.
IAA has so far built three civilly disobedient machines.
The first, an anthropomorphic mobile robot known variously
as Pamphleteer, Little Brother or Petit Frère, proffers
subversive literature to passersby. Its partner in protest,
GraffitiWriter, functions much like a remote-control
dot-matrix printer—one that uses an array of spray paint
cans as its print head and the sidewalk as its blank page.
GraffitiWriter has now been used more than 200 times in
seven cities by, among others, a Girl Scout troop, a
homeless man and a policeman. A larger-scale version of
this robot, called StreetWriter, is now in the final stages
of development. Mounted to a car bumper, it paints huge
messages on the street in letters that are legible from
tall buildings and low-flying aircraft. Though painting
the sidewalk or streets may strike some onlookers as
anti-social, these robots are in some sense only imitating
certain forms of corporate activity: Reebok recently
commissioned a New York City artist to spray-paint
advertising onto sidewalks and streets without city
permission.
Pamphleteer was constructed to give activists an appealing
metal face. IAA's Web site declares that the robot is
intended to "bypass the social conditioning that inhibits
activists' ability to distribute propaganda by capitalizing
on the aesthetics of cuteness." The designers even gave the
robot a childlike voice. A tongue-in-cheek research paper
by the IAA documents how Pamphleteer outperformed a human
activist, distributing more literature as it worked
uninterrupted for longer periods of time. The John Henry-
style trial was conducted on street corners, but the IAA
says Pamphleteer is now ready for deployment in malls,
government buildings and business offices—places that
ordinarily prohibit humans from distributing pamphlets.
The IAA wants to use this robot's technological allure to
critique the institutions that usually sell themselves
with the same high-tech glitz.
The IAA is sticking its neck out when it deploys its
protesting robots, since their actions leave their
expensive electronics at risk of seizure. For some
protesters, such as those who smashed Seattle storefronts
and claimed that their destruction of property was
nonviolent, deployment of robotic allies that are subject
to similar smashing appears to complicate their position.
Other contexts invite additional complications. For
instance, Pamphleteer would be a strange sight handing out
fliers at picket lines where human workers are protesting
increasing automation. Moreover, a technology that distances
human protesters from the repercussions of illegally marking
up the public pavement has some troublesome implications.
Many means of civil disobedience have emphasized personal
responsibility for one's reasonable but illegal actions; the
IAA robots work against this trend.
The IAA robots do, however, represent an attempt to reclaim
public space and open up new means of communication. They
also raise interesting questions about the use of technology
for control and disruption and point out how the appeal of
new technologies can allow people to act without
responsibility. Both the protested and the protesters should
come away with new perspectives after a hands-on experience
with the IAA's technologies of resistance.
Gutenberg's printing press powered the Protestant Reformation
and the American Revolution. Fax machines helped topple the
Berlin Wall, and e-mail is undermining dictatorships around
the world. Robots are thus stepping into a grand tradition of
applying cutting-edge technology to foster political dissent.
----
Nick Montfort is an electronic novelist whose latest interactive
epic appears at <http://www.edreport.com>
Institute for Applied Autonomy:
<http://www.appliedautonomy.com/>
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Prague update: 11 prisoners released
There has been a flurry of activity in Prague over the last few days,
including interaction between international protesters and a conference that
included President Havel and the Dalai Lama, as well as a full-page
interview in which Havel disputed the Czech Interior Ministry's
criminalization of protest (bear in mind that the Czech presidency is
largely a ceremonial position; Havel has little practical power, but a good
amount of moral authority).
As a result, 11 prisoners have been released, as detailed in the following
report:
"Today, the person who is responsible for amnesties in the castle spent the
whole morning with Havel. The 7 Hungarians, the 2 Spanish, the German and
one of the two Danish are out now. Apparently all of them still face
charges, but they are not anymore behind bars. The case of the 7 Hungarians
is especially remarkable, since they were held incommunicado until now (accused
of assault to police), not even some of the most mainstream NGOs had been
able to visit them, and the prosecutor was saying until 2 days ago that it
would take still quite some time until they could be visited. It is not
completely clear to what extent all this is related to political pressure
(meaning
both actions all over Europe and political pressure here, which is already
starting to change public perception), but it certainly seems to be the
case."
That means there are still, apparently, up to nine people being held in
prison -- one or two Czechs, one Dane, one Briton, one Austrian, two
Romanians, and two Poles.
The activists in Prague working on the situation pledge not to stop their
struggle until all are released and the criminalization of protest -- which
is not just a matter of imprisoning protesters, but also of enforcing a
negative portrayal of the very act of protest -- is reversed.
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Privacy Becomes Issue For UPS, FedEx As Drug Seizures Surge
<http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1533/a06.html?999>
Do Delivery Firms Have Police Responsibilities?
October 11 - When the "Detroit Boys" absolutely, positively had to get drug
money to their suppliers, they sent it via "X-Daddy" - code for FedEx
Corp., king of the overnight-delivery industry and the preferred service of
the cocaine ring that ran at least 12 crack houses in Minneapolis.
To pay drug suppliers, the dealers regularly bundled piles of cash into
FedEx packages in 1995 and 1996 and let the express carrier take it from
there. For less-urgent shipments, the Detroit Boys used "Pri-Daddy," the
U.S. Postal Service's slower-moving Priority Mail. Until the gang was
busted four years ago, it was known not only for its shipping savvy, but
also for wrapping enemies it thought had cheated the group in duct tape and
beating them.
In recent years, drug traffickers across the country have leapt
enthusiastically onto the New Economy bandwagon of supply-chain efficiency,
motivated by the speed and dependability of express-delivery services and
increased law-enforcement pressure on airlines and other forms of
transport. "I wasn't going to put it on the plane with me," says Maurice
Clark, a Knoxville, Tenn., drug dealer who nevertheless was arrested and
sentenced last year to 87 months in federal prison after sending roughly
four pounds of cocaine in two shipments through United Parcel Service Inc.
Divided Loyalties
The trend has fueled a conflict, reaching as high as the office of
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, between law-enforcement agencies around
the country and big express-delivery services over just how much the
companies and the Postal Service should help police. After a string of
run-ins with police over access to its clients' packages, UPS began
requiring warrants before allowing police to search packages. And the
Postal Service still won't let outside law-enforcement officials inspect
outbound international mail.
The tension between police and delivery services highlights a broader
debate about privacy and law enforcement as telecommunications companies,
Internet service providers, banks and other institutions amass huge
electronic databases about their customers' activities. Among the
prominent examples: "Carnivore," the Federal Bureau of Investigation's new
software system for performing court-ordered wiretaps at ISPs, which has
prompted strong criticism from privacy advocates. For their part, the big
parcel carriers, particularly FedEx and UPS, operate elaborate digital
information systems that compile troves of data about all the packages they
carry - in all, about 8% of the country's economic output at any moment.
Express-delivery services are "the best way to smuggle dope," says San
Diego police detective Steve Sloan, who uses an eight-year-old Labrador
retriever named Alvin to sniff out drugs at package-handling facilities in
southern California. "Pick any night at random, and we can seize anywhere
from 50 to 200 pounds ... and sometimes higher."
U.S. Customs Service drug seizures from express-delivery parcels ballooned
to 970 in 1999, from 69 in 1996, and the amount of drugs seized from the
U.S. mail by postal inspectors jumped 22% last year alone, reaching 15,436
pounds. The seizures involve dozens of different criminal
organizations. And despite those big numbers, law-enforcement officials
say, most of the drugs and drug money flowing through the system still goes
undetected.
The Postal Service and private carriers such as FedEx and UPS insist that
this is a business they don't want. The carriers also say that the use of
their delivery networks by drug dealers is tiny compared with the amount of
drugs hauled by trucks, cars, boats and human couriers, and that the spike
in drug seizures at least partly reflects the companies' vigilance in
helping police spot suspicious packages.
Taking Umbrage
The four giants of the U.S. express-delivery industry - UPS, FedEx,
Airborne Freight Corp. and DHL Airways Inc. - and the Postal Service
won't talk in detail about their security procedures, citing concerns that
doing so might reveal drug-detection secrets. Privately, though, industry
officials bristle at the suggestion that they have become major players in
the drug business or aren't cooperative enough with drug-law enforcers.
UPS trains its 68,000 brown-uniformed drivers to look for suspicious
packages. FedEx, based in Memphis, Tenn., has mustered a global army of
more than 500 security personnel whose duties include scouring its fleet of
air freighters and trucks for drugs, while DHL, the U.S. affiliate of
Brussels-based DHL International Ltd., relies on more than 100 security
officers. Postal officials point out that they seized $12.8 million in
drug money during the past two years.
Drug dealers like the express-delivery services for many of the same
reasons that law-abiding customers do - delivery is fast and reliable, and
customers can track their packages. A drug-courier ring busted in New York
earlier this year entered its tracking numbers at the Web sites of
Airborne, DHL, FedEx, UPS and the post office to determine when the
deliveries would arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Under
current postal rules, drug dealers also can mail a foreign-bound letter
holding roughly $200,000 in cash without much worry that it will be
intercepted.
Law-enforcement experts say the increase in use of high-speed deliveries by
drug dealers started in the mid-1990s. A string of stepped-up
investigations and new police techniques had rattled many dealers and their
human drug couriers. Some were particularly spooked by the new
antiterrorism practice, prompted by the 1996 crash of Trans World Airlines
Flight 800, of quizzing airline passengers about their carry-on luggage,
police say.
As police noticed more drug shipments entering delivery systems, federal
Drug Enforcement Administration offices around the country began
negotiating local guidelines with private carriers over how the companies
would handle suspicious packages. FedEx in 1993 reached one of the first
agreements, promising to notify the DEA anytime the overnight-delivery
giant intercepted a shipment of at least 500 pounds of marijuana or 500
grams of cocaine. FedEx says the aim of the agreement, which was in
essence copied later in other areas of the country, "was to try to bring
some clarity and discipline to the process."
Sluggish In Richmond
Still, tensions flared as drug agents around the country began more
aggressively scrutinizing shipping companies. In 1997, the U.S. Attorney
in Alexandria, Va., accused UPS of slowing down an investigation into a
cocaine-dealing gang in Richmond by refusing access to suspicious packages
at a critical point in the investigation. "UPS was not as cooperative with
the interdiction efforts of the law-enforcement community as it could be,"
says James B. Comey, lead prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Richmond
office, which eventually prosecuted more than a dozen dealers in the
case. UPS declines to comment on the matter.
Several months later, state and local police showed up unexpectedly at a
UPS package-handling facility in Cincinnati to look for drugs, angering UPS
officials. In response to incidents like that one, Atlanta-based UPS
issued new guidelines in May 1998 that sharply restricted police access to
its parcel-handling facilities, according to an internal company memo. The
rules required police to get a search warrant or subpoena to search any
suspicious item, to make appointments to search for drug packages and to
stay out of the way of UPS employees.
UPS refuses to lend uniforms or delivery trucks to undercover agents, as
does FedEx except in rare circumstances, making it harder for police to
arrest dealers after they receive a drug shipment. Seattle-based Airborne,
on the other hand, often provides uniforms and trucks to law-enforcement
officials, while DHL, based in Redwood City, Calif., occasionally lends
uniforms but not delivery vehicles.
"There is no consistent policy, or there is no policy at all, so guys don't
know what to expect day to day," says Clayton Searle, a former Los Angeles
police detective who now leads a nonprofit police-training organization
called the International Narcotics Interdiction Association. Customs
officials became so frustrated that they started to air their complaints
publicly. In a presentation at an air-cargo conference near Washington in
1998, Phil Metzger, a high-ranking Customs Service official, described an
ominous surge in drug seizures from private carriers and suggested that
express-delivery companies appeared to have become a top choice for drug
dealers.
'Copious Efforts'
The Air Courier Conference of America, an industry trade group with a board
of directors that includes UPS and FedEx executives, fired back. James
A. Rogers, chairman of the group's international committee, sent a letter
to Customs that said any "assertion that the increased drug seizures are
evidence that the express industry is now the preferred conduit for drug
traffickers is a huge jump to a very wrong conclusion." The drug-seizure
increase, he said, was the result of "copious efforts" by carriers to work
with law enforcement. "At the very least, we believe a public apology is
in order," Mr. Rogers demanded in the letter.
He didn't get one. Instead, top Justice Department officials suggested to
Attorney General Reno in early 1998 that she convene a working group from
officials at the DEA, the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service, FedEx, UPS,
Airborne, DHL, the Emery Worldwide Airlines unit of CNF Inc. and state and
federal prosecutors to discuss a coordinated, nationwide approach to
interdicting drug movements. A key element promoted by some of the
law-enforcement officials, according to a top postal-inspection official,
was to give law enforcement access to the private databases of the big
shippers.
That was a particularly thorny proposition for FedEx and UPS, which have
spent fortunes to build the information systems needed to orchestrate their
clockwork deliveries. Each package moving through their systems - about 18
million a day combined - is hit by electronic scanners at least a
half-dozen times during even a short journey within the U.S. As a result,
at any instant, the companies' computers can zero in on the exact locations
of items in transit and the history of other shipments by the same sender
or to the same recipient.
The private-sector delivery companies - but not the Postal Service - are
required to supply Customs agents with an electronic record of
delivery-manifest information on all international shipments destined for
the U.S. Customs officials then use their own computers to check for clues
of drug smuggling hidden in the addresses, descriptions of contents and
other data about each package. A box speeding via FedEx, for example,
toward the same address as a previous package nabbed by a drug-sniffing dog
usually will be flagged by the computer. And agents may inspect any
international package on a private carrier without a search warrant.
But the private carriers aren't required to provide the same data to
law-enforcement agencies about packages being shipped within the U.S., and
all foreign-bound Postal Service shipments are exempt from scrutiny without
a warrant. Postal officials say the law is clear: Mail is just as
protected from warrantless searches as someone's house. "There is a
delicate balance between defending the borders and protecting the privacy
rights of our citizens," says Kenneth Newman, deputy chief in the Postal
Inspection Service's criminal-investigations unit. The Postal Service
currently is fighting draft federal legislation that it claims would allow
Customs to freely search mail leaving the U.S.
In the meetings of the Justice Department task force last year and early
this year, which weren't attended by Ms. Reno, officials from the
express-delivery companies insisted that they must walk a similarly fine
line, even though the constitutional protections of the mail don't apply to
them, according to people who attended the sessions.
A Legitimate Crush
FedEx, UPS and other package-delivery companies acknowledge that it's
largely up to them whether parcels in their systems are searched, but the
companies insist that there is a limit to how much they can cooperate with
police while still delivering the crush of legitimate parcels that flood
their systems every day. UPS requires warrants but won't comment on
whether other parts of the policy it issued in 1998 remain in force. DHL
says it usually requires a warrant from local or state police but not from
federal agencies.
In the end, the Justice Department backed away from the proposal to tap
private databases, concluding that any such effort might further complicate
relations with the companies. "We didn't want to turn an army of FedEx
people into policemen," a senior Justice Department official said.
For their part, the companies promised to be as cooperative as possible
without violating the privacy of their customers. After the talks, Justice
Department staffers recommended to Ms. Reno that no national interdiction
agreements be pursued, and she agreed, according to Justice Department
officials. The task force hasn't met since then.
In May, federal law-enforcement officials at a House criminal-justice
subcommittee hearing said relations with the big package carriers had
improved. Only the Postal Service was sharply criticized because of its
continuing refusal to let overseas mail be opened without a warrant. FedEx
was praised for tipping off police in 1998 to a huge marijuana-trafficking
organization that allegedly included more than 20 FedEx drivers and other
employees, including a security officer at a FedEx facility at Pier 40 in
Manhattan. The resulting investigation led to more than 100 arrests and
the April breakup of a drug ring that smuggled about 120 tons of marijuana.
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Space surveillance complex changes hands
Telescope becomes operational
10/05/00
MAUI, Hawaii (AFPN) -- The Defense Department's most sophisticated telescope
complex, the Maui Space Surveillance Complex here, changed hands Oct. 1,
from Air Force Space Command to Air Force Materiel Command. In conjunction
with the changeover, Air Force officials announced that the complex's
3.67-meter telescope -- the world's largest for taking pictures of passing
satellites -- was now fully operational.
The complex, located atop Mt. Haleakala, is used primarily to track and
"photograph" satellites, and for research into technologies and techniques
for improving the quality of the images that are taken.
The change reflects a greater emphasis on the site's research activities, on
closer collaborations with academic researchers, and on developing and
implementing techniques that will further improve the quality of images
collected.
A majority of the operations have now transferred from Det. 3, 18th Space
Surveillance Squadron, to Det. 15, Air Force Research Laboratory Directed
Energy Directorate.
Construction of the telescope was completed in 1998. But for the past two
years, scientists have been adding instrumentation and deformable optics (a
mirror that can change its shape) that will permit the telescope to
compensate for the distorting effects of the atmosphere and get clear images
of objects in space.
The telescope, known as the Advanced Electro-Optical System, is available to
visiting experimenters. Last year, the Air Force Office of Scientific
Research and the National Science Foundation announced they were making more
than $2 million available over two years for civilian researchers to use the
telescope. The two organizations are also contributing an additional
$500,000 for civilian groups to use the telescope for upper atmospheric
research.
Multiple groups or institutions can use the telescope, because images
captured by the telescope can be routed through mirrors to seven independent
experimental labs located beneath the telescope.
"By allowing civilian researchers to use this telescope, the academic
community benefits and their involvement can lead to improvements that we
can use in our space surveillance work," said Maj. J. Raley Marek, chief of
the directorate's Space Surveillance Systems Branch.
The telescope, along with a 1.6-meter telescope, 1.2-meter twin telescopes,
a 0.8-meter beam director-tracker and a 0.6-meter beam director are part of
a space surveillance network for identifying and pinpointing objects in
space for U.S. Space Command.
Earlier this year, the telescope complex received $15 million to continue
operations and research and development, and for performance enhancements,
in addition to supporting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NASA often uses the 1.2-meter telescope to track asteroids passing near
earth.
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Linked stories:
********************
Workplace toxins can kill at home
<http://www.usatoday.com/money/bighits/toxin1.htm>
Workers in dozens of industries are not only being exposed to
dangerous substances on the job, but are also transporting those
toxins home on their clothes, skin, tools, and briefcases,
unwittingly exposing family members to dangerous contamination,
according to an investigation by USA Today.
********************
Big Radio Bites Back!
<http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2000/10/16/lpfm/index.html>
Major broadcasting companies and NPR are ganging up on low-power FM radio.
This is the story of how big broadcasting is trying to kill the low-power
radio star.
********************
U.S. Murder Rate Declines to 1966 Levels
<http://www.jointogether.org/jtodirect.jtml?U=83952&O=264773>
A new report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation found
that murder rates in the United States have dropped for the
eighth year in a row.
********************
Foiled again
<http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/10/18/nader/index.html?CP=SAL&DN=664>
Ralph Nader is turned away from yet another presidential debate,
but he's hoping for a post-debate bounce nonetheless.
********************
Police Treaty a Global Invasion?
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39519,00.html?tw=wn20001018>
Civil liberties groups say a proposed treaty that will grant more
surveillance powers to U.S. and European police agencies runs roughshod
over Internet freedom.
********************
Fingering the DVD Pirates
<http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39351,00.html?tw=wn20001018>
A new fingerprinting technology, created by a company specializing in
forensic analysis of bullets, could make it easier for manufacturers
and retailers of CDs and DVDs to identify bogus copies.
********************
======================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
-Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
======================================================
"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."
-J. Krishnamurti
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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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