UNDERNEWS

UNDERNEWS
SEP 6, 2005
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source

E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com

1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779

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WORD
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I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. -
Douglas Adams

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KATRINA
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LOVE CANAL II?

SOLID WASTE MAGAZINE - Overlooked in many news reports about the
unfolding storm disaster in the southern United States, especially in
the City of New Orleans, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, is a
potentially dramatic pollution issue related to a toxic landfill that
sits under the flood waters right in the city's downtown, according to
map overlays of the flooded area. The situation could exacerbate the
already dire threat to human health and the environment from the flood
waters. The Agriculture Street Landfill is situated on a 95-acre site in
New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The ASL is a federally
registered Superfund site, and is on the National Priorities List of
highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment. A few years
ago the site, which sits underneath and beside houses and a school, was
fenced and covered with clean soil. However, three feet or more of flood
waters could potentially cause the landfill's toxic contents - the
result of decades of municipal and industrial waste dumping - to leach
out.

http://www.solidwastemag.com/article.asp?id=47051&issue=09012005

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BARBARA BUSH THINKS EVACUATION WORKS WELL FOR POOR

EDITOR & PUBLISHER - In a segment at the top of [NPR Marketplace] on the
surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone
I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston."

Then she added: "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all
want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were
underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working
very well for them."

ndpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054719
ELNK-AV: 0

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HOW THE POOR GOT TRAPPED

WILL BUNCH, ATTYTOOD - In the months leading up to Hurricane Katrina, it
became increasingly clear to local officials that in the event of a
killer storm, the No. 1 problem in a city with a 30-percent poverty rate
was some 134,000 residents who did not have a car. They knew these
people had no way to get out of town -- and that a Category 3 hurricane
or stronger would likely bring a flood of Biblical proportions. And so
the plan was. . . to do nothing.

Well, almost nothing. This summer, as local officials were streamlining
the counter-flow interstate traffic plan so that better-off New Orleans
residents could leave more quickly, they also prepared a DVD for local
churches and civil groups urging the poor to find a ride out of town.

They didn't say who from. They only said who it wouldn't be: The
government. Even more amazing, the mayor of New Orleans took the city's
buses -- the most viable means for getting poor residents out of town --
and used them to bring people to the Superdome, even as he was
acknowledging that conditions there were bound to deteriorate.

This is from a story I filed last week for Philadelphia's Daily News:

. . .

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for
the person next to you," local Red Cross executive director Kay Wilkins
explained to the Times-Picayune just six weeks ago. "If you have some
room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for
that person outside the area. We can help you. But we don't have the
transportation."

. . .

Indeed, as Katrina bore down on New Orleans last weekend, Mayor Ray
Nagin marshalled a fleet of city buses -- not to take the city's poor
out of town but to the large shelter at the Superdome, where civil order
would fall apart as the week progressed. . .

"It's almost as if the planning stopped at the flooding," said Craig E.
Colton, a geography professor at Louisiana State University, wondering
as many have at the lack of foresight.

By the way, here is more of the Times-Picayune story from July 24 this
year about the city's DVD warning. The story begins: "City, state and
federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New
Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major
hurricane, you're on your own." It says lower down:

. . .

Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city.
The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all audiences, but it
is especially targeted to scores of churches and other groups heavily
concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income
neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community
Action. "The primary message is that each person is primarily
responsible for themselves, for their own family and friends," Truehill
said.

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002339.html

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MARC KAUFMAN WASHINGTON POST - The vastness of the displacement created
by Hurricane Katrina became more clear yesterday as officials struggled
to respond to the needs of more than 1 million people who will be out of
their Gulf Coast homes for months to come. So many homeless people
flocked to Texas in the past few days that Gov. Rick Perry (R) declared
that his state was full and could take no more. Electronic highway signs
in Houston directed bus drivers with evacuees to Fort Chaffee, Ark., but
that facility quickly filled up as 9,000 people arrived within 16 hours
Saturday. Arkansas officials asked for the signs to be removed. With
shelter space in the deep South filling up, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency yesterday began to airlift storm survivors to states
as far away as Michigan, Utah and California.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501629.html


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WONKETTE: "He's Doing What He Can Do" In this White House Pool report,
we hear about "what the White House called an 'unscheduled' stop at the
Bethany World Prayer Center," and some surprising news about the
President: "Also in the room was Secretary of Transportation Norman
Minetta, who accompanied Bush to Louisiana aboard Air Force One, as well
as Dan Bartlett, the presidential counselor, and Mike Gerson. Also
working the room with the president was Bethany's pastor, Larry
Stockstill plus Mayor Holden. Stockstill is Caucasian; Holden is African
American, fyi. Bush is Caucasian too, we should note. Also, the soft
bigotry of low expectations: "Landres is not critical of Bush or the
federal, state or local response. 'I think he's doing what he can do,'
says Landres of Bush."

http://wonkette.com/

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BILL MAHER - It only took [Bish] four days to make a plan, but finally
today he said he had a plan. Unfortunately it's a faith-based plan that
involves getting two of every animal onto a big boat.

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DONALD R. WINSLOW, NEWS PHOTOGRAPHER MAGAZINE - As photojournalists
continue to document the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's violent
assault on the Gulf Coast, today they also found themselves documenting
new violence and death among the survivors, the refugees, and the
looters and police and rescuers in New Orleans, while some
photojournalists even fell victim to the violence themselves. And a
reporter for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans is still missing and has
not been heard from since last weekend when he was sent to Mississippi
cover the storm.

Two veteran photojournalists - NPPA member Rick Wilking of Reuters and
Getty's Mark Wilson - were robbed of cameras and computer equipment
today while on assignment in a neighborhood in New Orleans, and a
photojournalist and a reporter were confronted at gunpoint and slammed
against a wall by police following a shoot-out between looters and cops
that left at least one person dead.

Another photojournalist - Lucas Oleniuk of the Toronto Star - was
knocked to the ground by police, his gear taken from him initially, when
he photographed them shooting at looters and then beating one. In
response to the growing violence and an increasing sense of despair
among the stranded survivors, some television networks have hired armed
private security firms to protect their journalists as they work to
cover the story.

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2005/09/hurricane2.html

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WATCHFUL INVESTOR - So the argument goes like this: "Sure, many people
died and there was a lot of destruction. . . But this can be good.
Since there is a huge need for reconstruction and recovery, this will
generate economic growth and employment". In Economics, this is referred
to the "Broken Windows fallacy". The fallacy states that destruction
creates real growth. . .

Suppose I don't like you, and then I completely destroy your car. You
need to buy a new one, so you buy a new car (that someone has to
produce). Is this new car considered "growth"? You had a car, now you
have a car. The growth is zero. And worse, the person that produced your
car could have produced something else, or maybe a car to another person
that didn't have a car in the first place - your money could be used to
buy a fancy telescope to watch the stars, for instance, and then you'd
have both a car and a telescope.

What I want to say is: there is absolutely nothing good coming from
Hurricante Katrina. Nothing. Destruction, suffering, death. . . This is
what hurricane Katrina brought. . .

Katrina may cause some stocks to go up. Construction-related stocks of
companies that operate in the area (but haven't been hit by the
hurricane itself) will of course go up. As companies that are involved
some way or the other in the reconstruction that is to come. But
overall, there was no net gain. The economy will be worse off because of
Katrina - resources that would be used elsewhere will not be used to
rebuild something that already existed in the first place.

http://watchfulinvestor.blogspot.com/2005/09/katrinas-silver-lining.html

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HOUSTON TAKES IN THE HURRICANE PROFITS

SIMON ROMERO, NEW YORK TIMES - No one would accuse [Houston] of being
timid in the scramble to profit from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Oil services companies based here are already racing to carry out
repairs to damaged offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and the
promise of plenty of work to do sent shares in two large companies,
Halliburton and Baker Hughes, soaring to record levels last week. The
Port of Houston is preparing for an increase in traffic as shippers
divert cargo away from the damaged ports of New Orleans and Pascagoula,
Mississippi.

With brio that might make an ambulance-chaser proud, one company,
National Realty Investments is offering special financing deals "for
hurricane survivors only," with no down payments and discounted closing
costs. . .

Perhaps no city in the United States is in a better spot to turn
Katrina's tragedy into opportunity. Long known for its commercial
fervor, Houston, the largest city in the South with a metropolitan
population of more than four million, has one of the busiest ports in
the United States and remains unrivaled as a center for the energy
industry. Halliburton moved its headquarters to Houston from Dallas in
2003, joining dozens of companies based here that provide services for
oil and natural gas producers.

Halliburton differs from many oil services companies in that it also
does significant business with the federal government. Halliburton has a
contract with the U.S. Navy, similar to its contracts in Iraq, that has
already kept it busy after Hurricane Katrina. The company's Kellogg,
Brown & Root unit was doing repairs and cleanup at three naval
facilities in Mississippi last week. . .

"I always hate to talk about positives in a situation like this, but
this is certainly a growth business over the next 6 to 12 months," said
Geoffrey Hertel, the chief executive of Tetra. By Friday, Tetra had been
able to send an 800-ton derrick barge it owns, the Arapaho, to the gulf
to be used for platform repairs, Hertel said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/05/business/goldrush.php


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LATIN AMERICA
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VISITING VENEZUELA: A PROFESSOR CHECKS OUT THE CHAVEZ ISSUE

SERGIO PAREJA IN ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL - I have traveled to Venezuela to
visit family all my life. During my most recent trip, I could not avoid
hearing about the "evils" of Chavez from the well-off, many of whom are
convinced that he will turn Venezuela into a socialist dictatorship.
Although this group recognizes that Chavez has done some good things for
Venezuela, they think the bad greatly outweighs the good. The huge lower
class, on the other hand, adores Chavez and can point to countless
positive developments during his presidency.

While in Venezuela this past June and July, I made it my personal quest
to determine why Venezuela's upper classes hate Chavez. "He's a
socialist," was a common response. Another common response was that he
provokes the United States with his anti-imperialist rhetoric.

Other responses I received had more to do with guilt by association:
Chavez hangs out with Fidel Castro and even visited Saddam Hussein at
least once. Finally, I was commonly told that he is usurping patriotism
for his political advantage and that he is trying to pack the courts
with judges who think like he does. Sound familiar?

"But what is Chavez doing that you hate so much?" I asked. "What,
specifically, are his governing policies?" The answers I received, while
purely anecdotal, were telling. In general, the wealthy criticize his
taxes and social programs, many of which are remarkably similar to U.S.
social programs.

I discovered that, for the first time in Venezuela's history, the
government is truly enforcing its tax laws. What does this mean from a
leader who claims to be a "21st century socialist"? I asked my cousin, a
successful orthopedic surgeon, what he now must pay in income taxes
under Chavez. "10 percent to 15 percent of my income," was the
response-- not quite the wealth redistribution I'd envisioned.

I also learned that one of the biggest complaints about Chavez is that
he has raised the national minimum wage from about $25 a week to about
$40 a week. For live-in household servants, the rate increased from
about $15 a week to about $25 a week.

To put this in context, this is what it costs to have somebody work for
you from before sunrise until after dinner. Servants cook, clean, do
laundry, watch your children, and basically do anything you ask them to
do. . .

The feeling I got in Venezuela last month is that people with money
still have money. I saw an abundance of new expensive cars on the road.
One of my uncles continues to build and run high- rise apartments and
hotels at a healthy profit.

I saw a complete freedom to speak out against the government, with daily
newspaper articles and songs on the radio calling for Chavez's ouster.
It made me question our freedom here in the United States. With so many
people here opposed to the war in Iraq, and with some brilliant anti-war
songs being written, why haven't I heard even one of those songs on the
radio?

I am painfully aware that Chavez may ultimately turn out to be a cruel
and corrupt dictator. That has been the history of Venezuela, and it
certainly could happen again. However, by giving a voice to the poor,
Chavez also may have prevented a bloody class war. I have seen that
Venezuelan war coming for years.

[Sergio Pareja teaches at the University of New Mexico School of Law]

http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/386659opinion09-03-05.htm


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EUROPE
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GERMANY NOW TOP EXPORTER

AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD, TELEGRAPH, UK - Barely noticed, Germany has
overtaken America to become the world's biggest single exporter,
shipping the hardware that powers the rising economies of Asia and
eastern Europe. Its trade surplus is now greater than that of China,
Japan and India combined, reaching a staggering 16.8 billion euros in
June alone. The profits made by German companies are running at over 33
per cent of national income, the highest in 40 years.

http://snipurl.com/hgkb

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AMERICAN NOTES
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PROOF THAT BEING GAY IS OLD HAT

ASSOCIATED PRESS - An exclusive Santa Rosa neighborhood may soon be home
to a retirement community exclusively for gays and lesbians. The Oaks at
Fountaingrove would offer couples and singles over 65 a "gracious,
accepting and secure environment" to live out their senior years with
varying levels of medical support, according to Bill Mabry, a partner in
the $75 million project by Aegis Senior Living of Santa Rosa.

http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/09/090505retire.htm

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HARTFORD ADVOCATE - 58% of Americans support allowing gays and lesbians
to serve openly in the U.S. military, up from 52% in 1994, according to
a poll released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew
Research Center. The percentage of those who strongly opposed allowing
open service fell from 26% in 1994 to 15% in 2005. The poll was reported
recently in the New York Times. According to the study, "[s]olid
majorities of seculars (72%), white Catholics (72%) and mainline
Protestants (63%) believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve
openly in the nation's military."

http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:123410

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CRIME BEAT
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HOW KPMG PARTNERS AVOIDED INDICTMENT

ALLAN SLOAN, WASHINGTON POST - There's one group of people who should be
giving thanks daily for the Enron scandal: the partners of KPMG, one of
the Final Four accounting firms. That's because the fallout from Enron
is what allowed KPMG to extract a favorable settlement from the Justice
Department last week. The firm agreed to fork over less than a year's
profit in return for not being indicted on a zillion counts of cheating
the government by peddling sleazy, dishonest tax shelters for six years.

The government didn't dare file criminal charges against KPMG because an
indictment alone would have driven it out of business, leaving us with
too few big accounting firms to go around. KPMG was in this strong
bargaining position because of the collapse of Enron's accounting firm,
Arthur Andersen, which the government foolishly indicted on criminal
charges three years ago.

Arthur Andersen employees protested the indictment of the company, which
essentially put it out of business. Even though the indictment was on
narrow grounds and the government ultimately lost the case, a criminal
indictment is guaranteed to send any major accounting firm to the big
ledger in the sky. Partners and clients flee when there's an indictment,
and some states yank licenses. The Securities and Exchange Commission's
rules of practice ban convicted firms, which means that almost no board
of directors is going to ask shareholders to approve hiring an indicted
firm. The right approach would have been to wipe out the partners'
capital and pursue criminal charges against individual miscreants, while
letting Andersen reorganize its auditing practice. Indicting the firm
was the wrong approach, because it set off an uncontrolled collapse.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501333.html


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LABOR
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BEYOND UNIONS: A NEW APPROACH TO LABOR

[This is along the lines of something that the Review has advocated for
a number of years: a labor organization modeled on the AARP to fill the
gaps that unions can't]

STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES - Having failed to unionize any Wal-Marts,
American labor unions have helped form a new and unusual type of
workers' association to press Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to improve its wages
and working conditions. With its first beachhead in Central Florida, the
two-month-old group is already battling Wal-Mart, the nation's largest
corporation, over what it says is the company's practice of reducing the
hours that many employees work, often from 40 a week to 34, 30 or even
fewer, jeopardizing some workers' health benefits.

Belva Whitt, a cashier who earns $7.40 an hour, said she had joined the
new group, the Wal-Mart Workers Association, largely because she was
unhappy with her wages and because her hours were reduced to part time
from full time many weeks. . . The association says it has nearly 200
current and former Wal-Mart workers and is growing by 30 workers a week.
Members pay dues of $5 a month. In Florida, its membership includes
workers from 30 stores in the Tampa, Orlando and St. Petersburg areas,
and it is also seeking to enlist Wal-Mart employees in Texas.

The group's sponsors include the United Food and Commercial Workers
Union, the Service Employees International Union, and Acorn, an advocacy
group for low-income people. It has also received support from the
Marguerite Casey Foundation, which helps low-income families, and the
Nathan Cummings Foundation, which promotes social justice.

"We are building something that's never been seen; it's neither fish nor
fowl," said Wade Rathke, a top Acorn official who is the chief organizer
for the association. "We're focusing on Wal-Mart because it is the
largest employer in the area - and in the whole nation - and is setting
standards that affect communities and employment relations across the
nation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/national/03walmart.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print


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HEALTH & SCIENCE
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NEWLY PATENTED VERSIONS OF OLD DRUGS DRIVING PRICE INCREASES

BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL - Newly patented versions of old drugs are
driving the rapid growth in expenditure on prescription drugs in most
developed countries, without offering substantial improvements over
existing products, finds a study published online by the BMJ. The rising
cost of using these me-too drugs at prices far exceeding those of
time-tested competitors deserves careful scrutiny, say the authors,
based at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where spending on
drugs doubled between 1996 and 2003. . . Vintage brand and vintage
generic drugs combined accounted for 75% of total use in 1996 and 54% in
2003, but only 53% and 27% of total annual expenditure. In contrast,
me-too drugs accounted for 44% of use and 63% of expenditure by 2003.
Their average cost per day of treatment was twice that of vintage brand
drugs and four times that of vintage generic drugs. Given that the list
of top 20 drugs in global sales includes newly patented versions of
older drugs, me-too drugs probably dominate spending trends in most
developed countries, conclude the authors.

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidpdf/bmj.38582.703866.AE


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SUSTAIN YOURSELF
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STRAW BALE HOUSE

GLENN ADAMS, AP - Miles off the paved highway and at the end of a long,
bumpy driveway that cuts deep into the woods, Mick Womersley puts the
finishing touches on his solar panel-topped home. It's not your ordinary
rural dwelling, even one designed to be ecologically sound. Womersley, a
human ecology professor, and his wife Aimee Phillippi live comfortably
in a house built of roughly 200 straw bales. Their home bears no
resemblance to the one blown down by the wolf in the children's story.
Strong and solid, the walls have insulating capacity several times that
of conventional homes, offering more than ample protection from winter
temperatures than can persist in the single numbers for days.

Coming from a source that renews itself annually, straw is cheap, and
it's not an attractive food source for insects. And its proponents note
that once the tightly packed straw is covered with stucco, it catches
fire at a higher temperature than wood.

All of which leave Womersley, who's in his 40s, and his wife, who's just
shy of 30, cozy in the winter and cool in the summer. They have no
mortgage and only about $6,000 in credit card debts from building the
home they share with two dogs. They have no children.

Separated from the woods road by vegetable gardens and a pen for their
pigs, their home is off the power grid and completely self-contained.

Womersley takes special pride in the fact that it's built entirely from
recycled or renewable materials. The construction cost came to less than
$20,000.

BUILDING STRAWBALE HOUSES
http://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook/strawbale.html

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RELIGION & ITS ALTERNATIVES
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HOW TO HANDLE CREATIONISM IN SCHOOL

ASSOCIATED PRESS, IN - When some residents in Columbus petitioned the
School Board three years ago to give the Bible's creation account equal
time with evolution, school officials came up with a novel response.
They created a new class - under the heading of social studies - that
examines all the theories on human origins. Not only did the class cover
evolution and creationism, it also surveyed Navajo beliefs, the Hindu
creation story and a host of other perspectives.

Greg Lewis, the social studies chairman at Columbus East High School,
figured a skeptical public would put his Human Origins class under the
microscope. "Teaching the course was like walking a tightrope," he said.
In the end, the dissection Lewis expected never came. The course's
treatment of the issues seemed to soothe the population to the point
that, after two semesters, so few kids were interested in the subject
there weren't enough to fill a course section.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=15736

WHY DOES THE WEST HATE ISLAM SO MUCH?

SOUMAYYA GHANNOUSHI, ALJAZEERA - I have spent much of the last four
years scavenging for medieval manuscripts, in an attempt to study
medieval European representations of Islam. I am generally averse to
sweeping statements, but I will say this: I am yet to encounter a
tradition and historical experience as profoundly distorted as Islam's
has been and continues to be to the present day. . .

Why are negative images of Islam more prevalent than any others? Why is
it still acceptable to say things about Muslims that would simply be
deemed unacceptable of Jews, Christians, or Buddhists?

That years of inter-faith dialogue have done little to advance a better
understanding of the Islamic faith in the western world is an indication
of how profoundly entrenched in the Western psyche crude
misrepresentations and vulgar stereotypes of Islam are. Indeed, much of
what is said of Islam today is in reality medieval in origin. The terms
might have a modern ring to them, but the content remains very much
medieval in essence. The roots stretch as far back as the 7th century,
to Christianity's earliest encounter with Islam.

Confronted with the massive military, political and religious challenge
of Islam, Christian authors elaborated an extensive body of polemics,
apologetics and refutations to combat the growing danger of apostasy
among their flock, where legend mingled with fact; myth with reality. .
.

Islam was to be fitted into the existing categories of Jew, pagan and
heretic, and elements that did not fit comfortably within the
pre-established schema were to be ignored. To medieval Christianity,
Islam was the point of intersection of all these categories, the Other
par excellence: a corrupted Judaism, perverted Christianity, and wild
natural paganism all at once, both the enemy within and without. . .

Christianity's early understanding of Islam was governed by the
theoretical and theological models, which regulated the image and
position of the other within Christian theology.

The Reformation, which may be regarded as the catalyst for the emergence
of what we know as modern Europe, was also the bridge via which medieval
notions of Islam have been transmitted to us today.

The medieval Christian view of Islam as a deviant, violent, licentious
and heretical creed was secularised, stripped of its transcendental
character and rearticulated within a modern essentialist philosophy that
continues to define the terms of western discourse on Islam, in its
mainstream at least.

The correspondence between what is said and written today and the
medieval texts we have inherited on the subject of Islam is so striking
that I often have to remind myself that it is not the words of a
medieval author I am reading, but those of a contemporary writer. True,
the language is modern, but its content is largely medieval. . .

To assert its uniqueness and cultural superiority in relation to a world
it was invading, Europe expelled outside of itself all that it perceived
as undesirable and deviant.

Islam and Muslim societies were essentialized into a permanent, unitary
and coherent object, understood through a series of contrasts, or
dichotomies. Islam became the West's antithesis, a chaotic realm of
raving instincts, emotionalism, irrationality, and despotism that
embodied all that the West is not.

Equally astounding is the similarity of views of Islam these
contemporary writers express, liberals and conservatives, religious and
atheists alike. . .

I am yet to encounter a tradition and historical experience as
profoundly distorted as Islam's has been and continues to be to the
present day

[Soumayya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the
School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CA6B3D95-164F-401A-A7C7-786402E273CE.htm


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CIVIL LIBERTIES
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CRIME EXPERT SAYS ID FETISHISM DOESN'T STOP CRIME

JONATHAN AMOS BBC - The UK government's proposed ID scheme will do
little to stop identity theft and may actually exacerbate fraudulent
behavior in its early years. That is the view of researcher Dr Emily
Finch who interviews career criminals about their activities. She has
detailed how they adapt their strategies to get around new anti-crime
technologies such as chip and pin.

Dr Finch will tell a Dublin conference that these criminals will be
undaunted by the prospect of identity cards. The University of East
Anglia researcher, who is speaking this week at the British
Association's Festival of Science, says people have the mistaken belief
that newer and better technologies are somehow infallible.

"What fraudsters know about is human nature. They know about people,
they know how we operate, and they know how relationships of trust in
which information is disclosed develop," she told the BBC News website.

She cites the recent substitution of personal identification numbers
(pin) for signatures in the use of credit and debits cards as a classic
example. She claims this chip and pin technology, as it is called, has
not reduced the problem of fraud. Instead of using stolen cards,
criminals are now taking over people's identities and applying for cards
in their name

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4213848.stm

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OTHER NEWS
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HOW NOT TO LEARN ENGLISH

CRAIG GANZER'S - [A] 1883 book is without question the worst phrasebook
ever written. The writer, Pedro Carolino, who was Portuguese, did not
particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English
dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English
phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary. The results, I'm sure
you'll agree, are staggering.

This text is that of a book of excerpts compiled a few years after the
book was first published. Anything that looks like an error is, in fact,
the way it actually appears in the book. . .

Cuttler, a very rich man too many avaricious, commonly he was travel at
a horse, and single for to avoid all expenses. In the evening at to
arrive at the inn did feign to be indispose, to the end that one bring
him the supper. He did ordered the stable knave to bring in their room
some straw, for to put in their boots he made to warm her bed and was go
lo sleep. . .

A blind did hide five hundred crowns in a corner of their garden; but a
neighbour, which was perceive it, did dig up and took its. . .

A man one's was presented at a magistrate which had a considerable
library. "What you make?" beg him the magistrate. "I do some books," he
was answered. "But any of your books I did not seen its.--I believe it
so, was answered the author; I mak nothign for Paris. From a of my works
is imprinted, I send the edition for America; I don't compose what to
colonies."

http://crossroads.net/honyaku/easis/anecdotes.html I love deadlines.

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WORDS
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GW BUSH - Americans should be prudent in their use of energy during the
course of the next few weeks. Don't buy gas if you don't need it.

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