Prometheus 6   

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 27, 2003; Page A01

A new White House study concludes that environmental regulations are well worth the costs they impose on industry and consumers, resulting in significant public health improvements and other benefits to society. The findings overturn a previous report that officials now say was defective.

The report, issued this month by the Office of Management and Budget, concludes that the health and social benefits of enforcing tough new clean-air regulations during the past decade were five to seven times greater in economic terms than were the costs of complying with the rules. The value of reductions in hospitalization and emergency room visits, premature deaths and lost workdays resulting from improved air quality were estimated between $120 billion and $193 billion from October 1992 to September 2002.

By comparison, industry, states and municipalities spent an estimated $23 billion to $26 billion to retrofit plants and facilities and make other changes to comply with new clean-air standards, which are designed to sharply reduce sulfur dioxide, fine-particle emissions and other health-threatening pollutants.

…The findings are more startling because a similar OMB report last year concluded that the cost of compliance with a given set of regulations was roughly comparable to the public benefits. OMB now says it had erred last year by vastly understating the benefits of EPA's rules establishing national ambient air quality standards for ozone and for particulate matter -- a major factor in upper respiratory, heart and lung disorders. Also, last year's report covered the previous six years and did not account for the beneficial effects of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act that sharply reduced the problem of acid rain.

September 27, 2003, 10:49 AM CDT

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea called U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld a "psychopath" and a "stupid man" on Saturday, denouncing him for predicting that the country's isolated communist regime will one day fall.

Speaking before a group of U.S. and South Korean businessmen, Rumsfeld said last week that freedom will eventually come and "light up that oppressed land with hope and with promise," casting aside the dictatorship that has ruled the North for more than half a century.

North Korea, whose media regularly churn out anti-American vituperations, is especially thin-skinned when outsiders attack its political leadership.

Although, Latino issues will be the bulk of my content initially, I do not feel they will always (be), my main theme. If we look at DailyKos.com, who is a Latino, we see that he does not touch upon the issues of race but, is rather main stream. I believe that (this), is the goal here for "minorities." It is the next step, or "other place," to use the phrase of Prometheus6.org. To slowly leave the realm of race issues and put more of our energies into mainstream issues.

Let me introduce you to New Bridge Strategies, LLC. New Bridge is 'Helping to Rebuild a New Iraq' as their liner note says

Here's the company's new blurb from their website

A 'unique company'? You could say that. Who's the Chairman and Director of New Bridge? That would be Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's longtime right-hand-man and until about six months ago his head of FEMA. Before that of course he was the president's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas and campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000.

September 26, 2003

The politically connected Duff family used its matriarch and a trusted black associate to pose as fronts for phony women- and minority-owned businesses in a massive, dozen-year fraud that garnered more than $100 million in contracts from the city of Chicago, a federal indictment charged Thursday.

Among those charged were James M. Duff, who concealed his role as the decision-maker in the family business interests; his mother, Patricia Duff, who falsely claimed to run the family janitorial firm, Windy City Maintenance Inc.; and William E. Stratton, a family confidant and African-American who posed as boss of Remedial Environmental Manpower Inc., another Duff-run business that won a lucrative subcontract to operate the city's blue bag recycling program, prosecutors alleged.

Lawyers for the two Duffs and Stratton said their clients would plead not guilty and fight the charges.

The charges follow a four-year investigation launched after a 1999 Tribune story alleged Windy City Maintenance was a fraudulent women's business enterprise and questioned whether Stratton really ran R.E.M., which purported to be a minority-owned business.

The constitution, which would spell out whether Iraq should be governed by a presidential or parliamentary system, would clear the way for elections and the installation of a new leadership next year, Mr. Powell said. Not until then, he added, would the United States transfer authority from the American-led occupation to Iraq itself.

"We would like to put a deadline on them," he said in an interview with editorial writers, editors and reporters for The Times, referring to the Iraqi task of writing a constitution. "They've got six months. It'll be a difficult deadline to meet, but we've got to get them going."

…A majority of members of the European Parliament voted in support of amendments to the bill that would make it harder to register a patent. The amendments tightened up the wording of the bill to make it explicit that no patent, like the one Amazon.com registered for its one-click online shopping method, can be registered in the union. Such patents are known in the industry as business-method patents.

The members of Parliament also expressly outlawed patents for algorithms, the mathematical equations in software programs, and they restricted the definition of the sort of software that should be eligible for a patent.

"We have rewritten this law," said Arlene McCarthy, a Socialist Party member of the European Parliament from Britain, who was instrumental in forging the Parliament's position on the law.

"We are sending a clear message that the Parliament wants strict limits on patentability for software," she said, adding that the version of the bill agreed upon today balanced the need for a unionwide legal regime that allows inventors to protect their inventions, with the need to avert a European move toward the more protective patent laws in the United States.

The lobbying effort behind the bill has been intense. Several members of Parliament, including Ms. McCarthy, accused opponents of software patents of being aggressive in promoting their view.

Open-source and free-software advocates, as well as some economists, have been pushing hard and loud for the bill to be scrapped, arguing that software developers do not need the protection of patents. They argue that software development occurs incrementally, so that by patenting an idea and preventing another engineer from developing that idea further, patent laws put a brake on innovation.

Patents, they contend, pose more of a threat than a help to small companies of software developers. "As a small firm you go unnoticed by the big software makers until you create something really special," said Robert Dewar, president of Ada Core Technologies, a small company that is based in New York.

"Then you start to receive letters from patent lawyers representing big firms that either want to buy a license to your software at a cheap price, or they simply want to drive you out of business so they can pick up your idea for next to nothing in the bankruptcy court after you have been sunk by astronomical legal fees," Mr. Dewar said.

Finally, sense comes to Nigeria -- Amina Lawal is free. The Shari'ah Court of Appeal yesterday overturned the sentence of death by stoning for the 31-year-old mother convicted of adultery in March 2002.

According to the court, the conviction was invalid because Lawal was already pregnant with her daughter at the time an Islamic court sentenced her to die.

The U.S. war on terrorism suffered a huge blow last week — not in Baghdad or Kabul, but on the beaches of Cancun.

Cancun was the site of the latest world trade talks, which fell apart largely because the U.S., the E.U. and Japan refused to give up the lavish subsidies they bestow on their farmers, making the prices of their cotton and agriculture so cheap that developing countries can't compete. This is a disaster because exporting food and textiles is the only way for most developing countries to grow. The Economist quoted a World Bank study that said a Cancun agreement, reducing tariffs and agrisubsidies, could have raised global income by $500 billion a year by 2015 — over 60 percent of which would go to poor countries and pull 144 million people out of poverty.

Sure, poverty doesn't cause terrorism — no one is killing for a raise [p6: obviously Friedman never worked on Wall Street]. But poverty is great for the terrorism business because poverty creates humiliation and stifled aspirations and forces many people to leave their traditional farms to join the alienated urban poor in the cities — all conditions that spawn terrorists.

…And one thing we know about this Bush war on terrorism: sacrifice is only for Army reservists and full-time soldiers. For the rest of us, it's guns and butter. When it comes to the police and military sides of the war on terrorism, the Bushies behave like Viking warriors. But when it comes to the political and economic sacrifices and strategies that are also required to fight this war successfully, they are cowardly wimps. That is why our war on terrorism is so one-dimensional and Pentagon-centric. It's more like a hobby — something we do only until it runs into the Bush re-election agenda.

"If the sons of American janitors can go die in Iraq to keep us safe," says Robert Wright, author of "Nonzero," a book on global interdependence, "then American cotton farmers, whose average net worth is nearly $1 million, can give up their subsidies to keep us safe. Opening our markets to farm products and textiles would be critical to drawing many nations — including Muslim ones — more deeply into the interdependent web of global capitalism and ultimately democracy."

…If only the Bush team connected the dots, it would see what a nutty war on terrorism it is fighting, explains Mr. Prestowitz. Here, he says, is the Bush war on terrorism: Preach free trade, but don't deliver on it, so Pakistani farmers become more impoverished. Then ask Congress to give a tax break for any American who wants to buy a gas-guzzling Humvee for business use and also ask Congress to resist any efforts to make Detroit increase gasoline mileage in new cars. All this means more U.S. oil imports from Saudi Arabia.

So then the Saudis have more dollars to give to their Wahhabi fundamentalist evangelists, who spend it by building religious schools in Pakistan. The Pakistani farmer we've put out of business with our farm subsidies then sends his sons to the Wahhabi school because it is tuition-free and offers a hot lunch. His sons grow up getting only a Koranic education, so they are totally unprepared for modernity, but they are taught one thing: that America is the source of all their troubles. One of the farmer's sons joins Al Qaeda and is killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces, and we think we're winning the war on terrorism.

Microsoft has released the 2003 version of its ubiquitous Office software package, including its e-mail program, Outlook. How good are the results?

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa yesterday defended his government's delay in distributing anti-AIDS drugs until this year, saying that it had been necessary to create a critical mass of public health care workers who knew how to instruct patients on the drugs' use.

"It's incorrect merely to say: `Distribute anti-retroviral drugs, problem solved,' " he said. "It can't be correct. It isn't. You've got to come at it in a more comprehensive way.

"The assumption in a country like the United States," he added, is "of a health infrastructure and system that is as good as here."

President Mbeki has been widely criticized in recent years for his willingness to consult scientists who argue that there is no proof that human immunodeficiency virus causes AIDS. South Africa is one of seven African countries with H.I.V. infection rates of more than 20 percent, according to a new United Nations population report.

The report projects the country's population in the year 2050 at 9 percent below the 2000 level of 44 million, and 44 percent lower than it would have been had there been no epidemic.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — Senate Democrats used the confirmation hearing today on Gov. Michael O. Leavitt of Utah, President Bush's choice for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a forum to sharply criticize the administration's environmental record, all but ignoring the nominee sitting in front of them.

In the packed, three-hour hearing, members of the Environment and Public Works Committee told Mr. Leavitt repeatedly that the job he was seeking was one of the worst in Washington.

In response, Mr. Leavitt said that he viewed himself as a problem solver, that his preferred approach was collaboration and that his main goal was clean air.

"The solutions to these problems are found in the productive middle," he said. "Rarely are they found at the extremes." [p6: where have I heard THAT before??]

Democrats and Republicans expect the committee to confirm Mr. Leavitt when it meets next week and say that the full Senate will vote to confirm him.

But four Democratic senators — Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and three who are running for president: John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina — have said they will bar the nomination from reaching the Senate until President Bush addressed certain issues. These include questions about why the administration removed warnings from agency press releases about the safety of the air at ground zero in New York shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Bush administration's push to deploy a $22 billion missile defense system by this time next year could lead to unforeseen cost increases and technical failures that will have to be fixed before it can hope to stop enemy warheads, Congressional investigators said yesterday.

The General Accounting Office, in a 40-page report, said the Pentagon was combining 10 crucial technologies into a missile defense system without knowing if they can handle the task, often described as trying to hit a bullet with a bullet.

The report especially criticized plans to adapt an early warning radar system in Alaska to the more demanding job of tracking enemy missiles, saying it had not been adequately tested for that role.

The overall uncertainty, the investigators said, has produced "a greater likelihood that critical technologies will not work as intended in planned flight tests." If failures ensue, they added, the Pentagon "may have to spend additional funds in an attempt to identify and correct problems by September 2004 or accept a less capable system."

Dr. Philip E. Coyle III, a former head of weapons testing at the Pentagon, said in an interview that the report showed that if the system was switched on in late 2004, it would be "no more than a scarecrow, not a real defense."

Some critics say the timetable is devised to field a missile defense system before the 2004 election so President Bush can point to it as a fulfilled campaign pledge.

But Pentagon officials say that the timing is prompted by security concerns and that the Sept. 30, 2004, target date came about simply because it is the end of the fiscal year.

The system, initially with six rocket interceptors in Alaska and four in California, will fire "kill vehicles" that would destroy warheads by force of impact.

In its report, the accounting office said the Pentagon expected to spend $21.8 billion on the system between 1997 and 2009.

The ramifications of the recent Web browser patent verdict against Microsoft Corp. could strike at the heart of the Web's common language—HTML.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is investigating whether the claims in the patent infringement lawsuit brought by Eolas Technologies Inc. and the University of California could require changes to both the current and future HyperText Markup Language specifications, W3C officials said on Tuesday.

Eolas in its lawsuit has claimed that Microsoft infringed on its patent of technology which allows for the embedded applications within Web pages such as applets and plug-ins. Microsoft has disputed the claims and has promised to appeal a $521 million jury verdict handed down in August. Eolas' attorney also has said that the patent could apply to a broad range of Web technology

The W3C is forming a patent advisory group that will decide whether to recommend changes to HTML and could also call on the full standards body to conduct a formal legal analysis of the patent.

SAN FRANCISCO—Advanced Micro Devices Inc. later today will lay down the second half of its bet on 64-bit computing.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., company will introduce new chips at an event here. The much-touted Athlon 64 and mobile Athlon 64 chips for PCs and notebooks feature the same capabilities as AMD's Opteron counterpart for servers and workstations, which the company released in April, in particular the ability to run 32-bit and 64-bit applications equally well.

AMD is launching the more mainstream chips, the Athlon 64 3200+ for desktops and the Athlon 64 +3000 for notebooks. Those processors will run at 2GHz, and come with 1MB of Level 2 cache.

In addition, AMD is launching AMD 64 FX-51, a chip running at 2.2GHz that includes a 128-bit dual-channel memory controller for maximum bandwidth and 1MB of Level 2 cache. John Crank, Athlon product manager for AMD, said the company is positioning the chip to compete primarily against Prescott, Intel Corp.'s upcoming next-generation Pentium chip. The AMD 64 FX-51 will target high-end gamers and PC enthusiasts, which he called "prosumers." The processor will sell for $733 in 1,000 quantity shipments.

It means being disenfranchised on the question of race. As a white man, I am not allowed to have an opinion that is at odds with acquiescence to a minority, or I am a bully. By having white skin and a couple of testicles, I am presumed to not be capable of understanding the position of people who lack one of those two qualifications.

It also means being saddled with the sins of people who were gone a long time before I showed up. Because I am presumed to have some sort of advantage (which sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't) I am the focus of anger from other people for things that I have never done.

Chris Rock coined the phrase "Born a Suspect". Being white means being "Born a Bigot".

For one, I recognize that I can get away with things that black people can't. I don't have any illusions about that. I don't think that this is a problem of racism; I think it is a problem of the black culture. I don't think there is any significant number of cops who believe in the genetic superiority of one race over another, but there are plenty who know that a white guy is less likely to be poppin caps for tha bling bling and keepin it real.

It did, though, have a big impact on my childhood. There was always a cloud hanging over any interaction between a white authority figure and me. It was always under a microscope, and any intangible (like being a polite student, or no history of major problems) was discounted for fear that it would be perceived as some sort of race preference.

The series is accompanied by an amazing website, offering additional information and an opportunity to share your thoughts.

I'm looking at the vulgarity of the word 'nigger,' and that in itself is unacceptable, no matter what the context is ... I don't think it's practical for a school to say they're going to provide sensitivity training to teach something so utterly insensitive to students,'' Clark said. "There's no way to dignify the word 'nigger.' Period."

Ok then, Ms. Clark, why don't you start by trying to root out the word nigger from your own popular culture. Maybe you should start by banning rap music from the airwaves.

(This is a great deal harder than I anticipated)

During the first half of the 90's, I spent some time on the "Whither NATO?" circuit. I'd sit in stately European palaces with diplomats, parliamentarians and multilateral men who used the word "modality" a lot, and we'd discuss the post-cold-war international order.

There were disquisitions on multipolarity, subsidiarity and post-nation-state sovereignty. I recall a long debate on whether the post-cold-war United States would face east or west, as if we were phototropic.

The people at these conferences tended to be paranoiaphiliacs. They believed there was a secret conspiracy running the world, but they were in favor of it because they thought they were it.

But even as we were ratiocinating in those palaces, the Russians were tossing out Gorbachev, the Ukrainians were breaking away from Russia and the Serbs were massacring their neighbors.

Far from mastering events, the poor souls who attended summits found history moving in unfathomable directions. Their careful negotiations over a new global architecture often had nothing to do with reality. The economic-reform plans they proposed for Russia had nothing to do with a country that was being taken over by mafioso. I recall the dispiriting moment — at a stately manor in Oxfordshire, I believe — when I realized I didn't really believe in foreign policy. Most problems are domestic policy to the people who matter most.

HOUSTON, Sept. 22 - When Angola recently opened its only consulate outside New York, few people here were surprised that Houston was chosen.

Texas already leads the nation in trade and commerce with Africa. More than 1,000 Houston companies do business there, and 60 have significant subsidiaries on the continent, according to the city of Houston.

The city may have a way to go before it becomes a de facto commercial capital to Africa the way Miami is for much of Latin America, but it is becoming increasingly important to African commerce and diplomacy. And the city is becoming a significant starting point for affluent Africans seeking to do business in the United States.

The reason is oil. This is the energy capital of the United States, and West African countries like Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria are increasingly important suppliers of oil. They already account for about 14 percent of all American oil imports, and are forecast to supply 20 percent soon.

VeriSign's change has substantially interfered with some number of existing services which depend on the accurate, stable, and reliable operation of the domain name system.

• Many email configuration errors or temporary outages which were benign have become fatal now that the wildcards exist.
• Anti-spam services relied on the RCODE 3 response to identify forged email originators.
• In some environments the DNS is one of a sequence of lookup services. If one service fails the lookup application moves to the next service in search of the desired information. With this change the DNS lookup never fails and the desired information is never found.

VeriSign's action has resulted in a wide variety of responses from ISPs, software vendors, and other interested parties, all intended to mitigate the effects of the change. The end result of such a series of changes and counterchanges adds complexity and reduces stability in the overall domain name system and the applications that use it. This sequence leads in exactly the wrong direction. Whenever possible, a system should be kept simple and easy to understand, with its architectural layers cleanly separated.

We note that some networks and applications were performing similar services prior to VeriSign's change. In fact, some user applications and services worked differently depending on the network the user was using. However, VeriSign's change pushes this service to a much lower layer in the protocol stack and a much deeper place in the Internet's global infrastructure, which prevents the user from choosing what services to use and how to proceed when a query is made to a non-existent domain.

As the title suggests, this project is an attempt to catalog the many disasters that have befallen the United States since George Bush's inauguration in January 2001, as well as to give a thorough assessment of his culpability in them. It will also catalog Bush's biography before the 2000 election and assess it in the light of the "character issue" raised throughout Clinton's presidency by Republicans; and it will compile the facts about Bush's behavior during the 2000 campaign, with an emphasis on the Florida debacle.

Unlike the right-wing counterparts devoted to destroying Bill Clinton, this mini-book will be entirely factual, and will eschew any kind of conspiratorial theorizing or vicious attacks on Bush's character -- in no small part because those are precisely the behavior of the right in the 1990s that opened the door for its alliances with extremist elements. To the extent that Bush's critics indulge in same, they run the same risks, and severely damage their credibility.

On the other hand, it will try to thoroughly examine and weigh the evidence regarding Bush's failures, his known actions and actual statements, as well as those of his surrounding team, led by Karl Rove.

Like "Rush," it will be a reader-participation piece in which Orcinus acts as a sort of central information clearing-house.

The situation as of this writing is… I had accrued much respect in the company. Then the person above me fucked up large, and was replaced by a little Italian guy who knows nothing about the business (that assessment isn't bitterness… he admits it by bringing a particular guy who's been around but is so whipped he publically states he'll do anything to hang around for his last six years before retirement to every meeting to explain to him what's going on). The LIG seems to be mandated to cut heads.

I get the feeling he looked at me and immediately decided he has a friend who could do my job better than I can. He took a couple of shots at me personally and found no vulnerabilities. But he chose to made the whipped guy manager of a high profile project that was slated for me, and his first wave of layoffs came from my section exclusively. This included a woman who was a 15 year employee, an officer of the bank and a good friend of mine prior to my taking over her section, but he decided she had to go before she reported to me so that wasn't an attack, just a heartfelt loss. Something I couldn't prevent.

I want to report all the things I felt outrage over, but I won't.

The reaction from the crowd is amusing, actually. But as I sit here writing and thinking, I believe that reaction was driven by mine. I was ANGRY. Angry is too weak a word, in fact. This is an error. It leaks energy, power, from my reserves, and others feed on it. I've been talking about getting my meditation going again for years, cutting out smoking, such as that. My body would certainly apreciate it, but I find myself considering it as a means of gathering my personal force… sucking it in so I can let it out in proper order. And what's interesting about that is that it indicates this worldly thing is more important to me than my health, no matter what I say or philosophize about. Hm. Is that sane?

The guy up one level from him knows what I can do, what I have done, for the company, and is allowing it, it seems. This angers me too. He had said to my previous manager (I can't recall that last time he spoke to a male other than to give a directive in the last year) that I was the easiest AVP nomination he'd ever presented. My successes, and more, my lack of failures don't seem to matter.

Now, this is probably a pretty common story. I can picture a white guy saying all the same things. Saying that makes a difference, truly. If it's racism, I'm dead… but I could be dead for other reasons, too. Don't matter… dead is dead, so I have to move.

I have made brilliant predictions about what would happen in the company and got blindsided in my personal case, basically because I made an erroneous assumption… that the need of the company (which, at this point, is vast) would be a greater factor than… what? Again, this changes in mid-sentance. What I thought was that since I could do exactly what was needed better than anyone else available, I had it like that. Blinded by arrogance because I hadn't any real competition, I stumbled when the game ended and the playing field changed. More, since I was seen as part of my previous manager's staff, I'm absolutely unaligned politically… a rogue state. And my relationship with several folks at the head office made me much like a terrorist state in the eyes of some.

And the game continues to change. At the same time all this started, the president of the company announced he was taking an early retirement at the end of the year. The president's replacement is doing what we thoughtthe present prez would do… shaking the hell out of everyone. The guy above the LIG is moving onto a five-man maganagement comittee, culled from a 13 man committee. There's no way to mention all the players, but suffice to say that the likely successor to the guy two levels up has extended an invitation to join her chain of command in essentially the lowest position. The original invitation was far more flexible, but she was told to change it… and given that she's connected and intends to stay connected she ain't gonna defy them for li'l ol' me. The guy I'll report to is someone everyone would like to be rid of. I suspect New Year's Day will bring a whole new structure to the company…

The chaos is incredible, and I'm under intense scrutiny… and stress.

Frankly, if I'm as good as all the above crap says I think I am, I oughta be able to deal. But I have to watch my sense of self. If I make it work, I suspect I will have lost some sensitivity toward others in the process.This is the point at which one either accepts the rules of the heirarchy and one's position in it (which doesn't rule out moving in the heirarchy) or doesn't. It's what the crew calls 'selling out" and what Black Conservatives call "buying in"… in either case, one's soul is usually the currency.

I'm leaving that there because that's what it feels like. A Buddhist would tell me I'm clinging to forms, that I bind myself by my attachments. A typical Euro would say "What the fuck are you talking about?" The damage I took was to pride, and to an area that simply isn't a concern to more Euros. Pride or shame simply don't apply to the decision of whether or not to adapting to the heirarchy. They apply to one's skill at climbing, and any climbing technique is acceptable.

But I was proud, am proud, of the progress I made as a ronin.

Growing up in the 70s, my working-class neighborhood and my family's social circle were very racially mixed. Yet the multi-racial world around me wasn't reflected in popular culture, which instead was depicted in Black and white. Lacking brown role models and popular figures, my friends and I looked to African-American culture. We weren't white, and we embraced what non-white popular culture was presented to us. Over my lifetime, Latino immigration has become a subject of increasing public discussion, but the distinct issues facing Chicanos still get little public play, and our shared popular culture is still colored in Black and white to a large degree. Even in progressive circles, race relations often are discussed in terms of Black-white-immigrant. Certainly, I have yet to see a nuanced understanding of the multi-dimensional and multi-racial nature of today's US become the common assumption and vision shared by progressives.

CHICAGO — Suicide terrorism has been on the rise around the world for two decades, but there is great confusion as to why. Since many such attacks — including, of course, those of Sept. 11, 2001 — have been perpetrated by Muslim terrorists professing religious motives, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause. This presumption has fueled the belief that future 9/11's can be avoided only by a wholesale transformation of Muslim societies, which in turn was a core reason for broad public support of the invasion of Iraq.

However, this presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is wrongheaded, and it may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies that are likely to worsen America's situation.

I have spent a year compiling a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 to 2001 — 188 in all. It includes any attack in which at least one terrorist killed himself or herself while attempting to kill others, although I excluded attacks authorized by a national government, such as those by North Korea against the South. The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any religion for that matter. In fact, the leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion (they have have committed 75 of the 188 incidents).

Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — President Bush will tell the United Nations on Tuesday that he was right to order the invasion of Iraq even without the organization's explicit approval, and he will urge a new focus on countering nuclear proliferation, arguing that it is the only way to avoid similar confrontations.

Mr. Bush's unyielding presentation, described over the weekend by officials involved in drafting it, will come in a 22-minute speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Mr. Bush will then spend the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday meeting with the leaders of France, Germany, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

According to the officials involved in drafting the speech, for an audience they know will range from the skeptical to the angry, Mr. Bush will acknowledge no mistakes in planning for postwar security and reconstruction in Iraq. Privately, however, many officials are acknowledging that the Pentagon was unprepared for the scope and duration of the continuing guerrilla-style attacks against the American-led alliance and the newly appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Since Mr. Bush declared an end to active military operations on May 1, more than 70 American troops in Iraq have been killed by hostile fire.

In the speech, Mr. Bush will repeat his call for nations — including those that opposed the Iraq action — to contribute to rebuilding the country, but he will offer no concessions to French demands that the major authority for running the country be turned over immediately to Iraqis.

"We'll stay on the same schedule" of drafting a constitution and holding national elections, one senior official said in an interview today. Mr. Bush will not discuss a timetable in the speech, but his aides said in interviews over the weekend that completing the process by spring or summer would be, in the words of one, "very ambitious." That assessment is bound to anger European nations that have demanded a far more accelerated transfer of power.

Mr. Bush made clear in a Fox News interview taped today, to be broadcast Monday, that he would define a larger role for the United Nations very narrowly. Asked if he was willing to give the United Nations more authority in order to obtain a new resolution, he said, "I'm not so sure we have to, for starters," according to excerpts released by Fox tonight.

Even when it was scuffed and worn and barely alive, the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street was a beloved symbol of San Francisco's past.

Now, six months after a stunning $100 million restoration, the revived 1898 landmark is more than just a symbol. It is becoming an integral part of city life for the first time in more than 60 years, once again the most compelling link between downtown and the bay.

Our staid survivor is also -- surprise! -- a subversive architectural triumph. It makes a persuasive case that landmarks can't be frozen in time. They need to evolve with the cities around them -- and if that means taking liberties, so be it.

Viewed from afar, the building is as grandly formal as ever: a three-story- tall, 220-yard long procession of arches and arcades topped by a slender tower modeled on a 12th century Spanish tower. It holds its own both as an icon on the waterfront and as a backdrop to city life, winning us over with dignity rather than flash.

The same subdued tone carries through inside to the ground-floor retail concourse. Here, though, it's an invention.

- Rick Rodriguez, Executive Editor

There are secret lists governing whether you can get on an airplane, secret surveillance of e-mail and the Internet, and new warrants allowing the government to search your home, your bank records and your medical files without your knowing it.

When FBI agents were told last year that terrorist training included scuba diving techniques, the agency asked for -- and got -- the names and addresses of more than 10 million Americans certified as divers.

Immigrants nationwide have been jailed indefinitely over visa violations that in the past would have been ignored, and about 13,000 face deportation.

Others have languished in cells while officials lied to their families about where they were.

And thousands have fled the United States, seeking refuge in Canada.

For countless American citizens and immigrant residents, the echoes of Sept. 11, 2001, continue to resound in what a growing number of critics contend is a loss of basic civil liberties stemming from the federal government's anti-terrorism campaign.

"Believe me," he told the skeptical and sometimes jeering crowd of about 100, "I am as concerned as anyone about the erosion of our civil liberties."

But the very definition of liberty is being challenged in the way some cases are being handled.

Consider these instances:

* Two middle-aged peace activists from San Francisco find themselves singled out by authorities as they try to board a flight to Boston for a family visit. Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon are held and questioned for hours before being released at San Francisco International Airport because their names apparently popped up on a secret government "no fly" list. Both are suing the federal government, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a bid to gain more information about such lists.

* A 40-year-old public defender surfing the Web on a library computer in Santa Fe, N.M., finds himself surrounded by four local police officers, then handcuffed and detained by Secret Service agents after someone apparently overhears a political debate in which he suggests that "Bush is out of control." Andrew O'Connor's experience in February, during which he was questioned about whether he was a threat to the president, led to legislative hearings in New Mexico over the Patriot Act and government secrecy.

* Barry Reingold, a 62-year-old retired phone company worker, gets into an intense debate at his San Francisco gym over the bombing of Afghanistan and his criticism of President Bush, and is awakened at his Oakland apartment a week later by two FBI agents who want to talk to him about his political beliefs.

"It's a new term of art used by the government," said Kevin Johnson, associate dean for academic affairs at the University of California, Davis, law school. "It relies in part on some World War II case precedent.

"But it's really a new term created by the Bush administration. They didn't use that term in World War II. They're using it differently and more expansively and more aggressively."

"He generally has a right to some kind of hearing about his detention that's guaranteed by the Constitution. He has due process rights."

The Justice Department and the courts disagree, and since Sept. 11 authorities have used a variety of methods to hold people suspected of terrorist ties.

Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon sued after being detained at San Francisco International Airport in 2002. They say they believe their names were similar to names on government no-fly lists, although they also wonder whether their prominence as editors of an anti-war newspaper led to their being singled out.

The idea that anyone would be singled out for airport searches because of their political beliefs is "preposterous," said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. "That is not and never will be criteria for any no-fly list."

Yet details of how someone ends up on such a list -- or how many people are on it -- remain secret because of what the government says are security concerns.

When the ACLU sought information on why Adams and Gordon were stopped, the FBI responded to Freedom of Information Act requests by saying it had no such records.

Eventually, however, officials at San Francisco International Airport turned over documents indicating that 339 passengers had been stopped or questioned at the facility in connection with no-fly lists between September 2001 and last March.

It should have become clear to all that Gov. Gray Davis was impervious to any attack last month, when actress Cybill Shepherd revealed her teenage tryst with the future governor of California -- or more pointedly, when it was revealed that Davis had survived his encounter with that doe-eyed succubus who ruins every man in her path.

Elvis Presley, fresh from his triumphantly televised 1968 return, went on a few dates with the then 19-year-old Shepherd, and from then on, only bloated, pill-popping personal miasma awaited The King. The hot young director Peter Bogdanovich emerged from his Shepherd encounter with a broken marriage and a floundering career. Two former Mr. Shepherds have been consigned to cold storage. Even Travis Bickle, "Taxi Driver's" fictional hero, didn't really descend into madness until Shepherd's "Betsy" character appeared in his life.

But Davis, we learned recently, not only smooched the vibrant Shepherd back in the Pleistocene period, but was pronounced a "good kisser," returned from Vietnam in one piece, went on to a successful political career, overcame an ichthyoid lack of personal charm to take command of the nation's most populous state, and squeaked out a narrow re-election despite being one of the most unpopular incumbents in California history.

How could we not have seen the truth? If Cybill Shepherd couldn't undo Gray Davis, what chance did the voters of California ever stand?

9/20/2003

COLLEEN J.G. Clark's thoughtful letter ("Eroding our civil liberties won't lead to security, Page A18, Sept. 16) got it right on all counts but one. Her misguided contention that, "We deserve an administration that will speak to us honestly and openly and forthrightly, and that will treat the American electorate as serious adults."

Quibbling over Florida aside, we do have a democracy. Erstwhile presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson aptly observed, "In a democracy, you get the government you deserve."

It follows that this nation has the government it deserves. Ironically, Stevenson was viewed by some as too brainy to be president. We now have the anti-Stevenson in the White House, surrounded by people who will say and do almost anything to keep him there. Nothing will change until the American electorate gives up its culture of narcissism, educates itself on world affairs, demands to be treated as serious adults, and votes in numbers large enough to back up that demand.

Until that happens, 69 percent of Americans will be doomed to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. But unlike the people of, for example, North Korea, we will be getting exactly what we deserve.

DOUG PIZZI

Marlborough