-Caveat Lector- Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Today's Lesson from I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch We understood each other less and less. If it were not for the cigar he had brought me, in spite of his annoyance, I shouldn't have spoken to my counsel at all any more, and it would have been better, I think. I tried in vain to explain to him that I didn't know the whole and complete truth myself, and on the other hand was not disposed to let swans or town councillors prove to me who I really was, and that I should tear up on the spot any further albums he brought into my cell. It was no use. My counsel would not get it out of his head that I must be Stiller, simply so that he could defend me, and he called it silly make-believe, when I contradicted him and swore I was no one but myself. Once more it ended in our bawling one another out. "I'm not Stiller," I shouted. "Who are you then?" he shouted. "Who are you?" ===== The Break-Up of Indonesia East Timor Gains Independence Indonesian lawmakers settle the issue. DILI, East Timor (AP) -- Indonesia's endorsement of independence for East Timor drew a muted reaction today in the territory's ravaged capital, where aid workers ministered to sick and hungry refugees and an international peacekeeping force kept constant watch. The vote by Indonesian lawmakers was a key milestone on East Timor's road to independence, paving the way for the territory to be handed over to a United Nations transition team by year's end. But there were no wild celebrations in East Timor. In Dili, most people were asleep in makeshift shelters or the remains of their burned-out homes when the vote took place before dawn in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. Today, word spread slowly, because almost no one has a TV or a radio. At the central market, vendor Joao Araujo dos Reis looked up from his meager heaps of red beans and dried corn to talk about the prospect of freedom from Indonesian rule after nearly a quarter-century. ``I didn't hear about it, this vote,'' said dos Reis, bone-thin after what he said were weeks of hiding in the mountains from anti-independence militiamen. ``But we will have our independence, absolutely. That is certain now.'' Carlos Dos Reis Santos, tending one of the dozens of trash fires smoldering all along the wrecked Dili waterfront, raised his voice above the rumble of a passing Australian tank. ``We don't have to worry so much now about what Indonesia does,'' he said, nodding in the tank's direction. The 16-nation multinational force arrived a month ago to restore order after paramilitary forces allied with the Jakarta government went on a spree of burning, looting and intimidation throughout the territory. East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence in an Aug. 30 referendum, the same vote that was ratified early today by Indonesia's 700-member People's Consultative Assembly. Most people here, though, said the first real symbol of their coming nationhood would be the pullout of Indonesian troops. The red-and-white Indonesian flag still flies at Indonesia's seafront military headquarters in Dili. Only a few hundred Indonesian troops remain, barricaded behind sandbags and watched over by peacekeepers. Two Indonesian ships sailed overnight for home, and the last of the troops will likely leave in the next few days, the peacekeepers said. "There have been indications of their preparations for a final withdrawal,'' said Col. Mark Kelly, chief of staff of the peacekeeping force. ``We will look to assist them to achieve it in an orderly manner.'' Also eagerly awaited by East Timorese is the return of Jose Alexandre ``Xanana'' Gusmao, the charismatic guerrilla leader who is expected to become the new country's leader. He has been in exile since his release from prison last month. No date has been set for Gusmao's arrival, but sources from his Falintil rebel group say it is expected to be soon. That is likely to set off wild rejoicing. "All the time he was in prison, we never saw his face -- we will be so happy when he comes," said 22-year-old Gaspar Quintao. East Timor's capital and countryside alike are being inundated by refugees who fled last month's outbreak of violence. During that violence, more than 250,000 people escaped or were driven to neighboring West Timor, which is under Indonesian control. Now they are streaming back across the border at a rate of about a thousand a day, relief officials said. Others are coming down from the rugged mountains of the interior, where they hid out from militiamen. Jacques Franquin, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said about 1,250 refugees crossed over Tuesday near the border town of Maliana. They reported they were harassed along the way by militiamen and had no food and water for their journey, he said. "We've seen them coming back in quite bad shape, extremely dirty, children mostly suffering from malnutrition, and also with a lot of skin disease,'' he said. Aid agencies are distributing food, water, medicines and plastic sheeting. Five hundred refugees were to return by air today. Daily flights from West Timor's capital of Kupang have brought in over 3,000 people in the past week. UNHCR was also planning to bring back 2,500 people by ship on Friday, Franquin said. At Dili's port today, a crowd of people pressed against a wire fence, watching aid parcels being unloaded. "We hope the United Nations will help us to build a good country,'' said 56-year-old Duarte Araujo. The Associated Press, October 20, 1999 Russian Follies Russia to Host G8 Crime Conference Many of the top criminals will attend. MOSCOW, Oct 19, 1999 -- (Reuters) Russia hosts a meeting of the Group of Eight main industrialized nations this week on fighting organized crime under the shadow of corruption allegations swirling around its own backyard. The organizer of the two-day conference, which begins on Tuesday, is the office of the Prosecutor General - a post left empty for months due to a fierce battle between the Kremlin on one side and Russia's parliament and the courts on the other. President Boris Yeltsin suspended the last prosecutor general, Yuri Skuratov, in March over a sex scandal. Skuratov says he was removed from office because he was uncovering high-level corruption. The upper house Federation Council backs him and has refused Yeltsin's request to sack him. Acting Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov is scheduled to open the meeting of the G8 law enforcement officials, who include U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. The meeting of the G8 officials, planned some time ago, also coincides with an investigation by U.S. and British prosecutors into claims of money laundering totaling billions of dollars by Russian officials and businessmen. In a separate probe, Swiss prosecutors are investigating the Swiss construction company Mabetex, which won lucrative renovation contracts in the Kremlin. Mabetex and the Kremlin have both denied any wrongdoing. Russian officials say the accusations of bribery are aimed at blackening Moscow's image and preventing it from winning sorely needed international loans. G8 EYES INCREASED COOPERATION ON FIGHTING CRIME On Monday a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Moscow played down any suggestion of irony in the venue for the G8 talks, which follow similar conferences on crime fighting in the United States and Britain. "No, I don't think it is ironic," the spokesman told Reuters. "It is not inappropriate." "The primary focus will be transnational issues, including high-tech and financial crimes," he said, adding that the agenda would also include fighting terrorism and drug trafficking. "What the U.S. hopes to get out of the talks is increased cooperation because crime is a transnational issue rather than just an issue for a particular country or geographical region." The spokesman could not say whether the G8 officials would touch on specific allegations of money laundering among senior Russian officials. The G8 groups Russia and the world's seven biggest industrialized economies, the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, due to attend Tuesday's opening ceremony, could seek G8 help in tackling international terrorism. Russian troops and warplanes are currently battling Islamic guerrillas in the breakaway region of Chechnya, blamed by Moscow for a series of bomb blasts in Russian cities last month which killed nearly 300 people. Putin has already signaled that Russia, relatively inexperienced in fighting urban terrorism, wants to draw on the experience of countries like Britain and Ireland. On Monday U.S. Attorney General Reno signed a joint memorandum with Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's FSB domestic security agency, strengthening bilateral cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking. Russia Today, October 19, 1999 Digital Society Encyclopedia Britannica Goes On-Line for Free www.britannica.com LOS ANGELES - For more than two centuries, Encyclopedia Britannica was the standard collection of knowledge in the English-speaking world, sold only through its own sales force at a premium price. But now, in a sense, the bound paper version is on the verge of becoming the equivalent of the buggy whip in the Information Age. A shell of its former self, Britannica on Tuesday took the risky step of posting the entire contents of its 32-volume set on the Internet - free of charge. It hopes to make money by selling ads on its Web site - www.britannica.com - a well-worn but still unproved business model. ''There are so many sites competing for your attention that to try to rise above the noise and cacophony is going to be extremely hard,'' said David Sanderson, head of the electronic commerce practice at Bain & Co., a consulting business. It is a risk that Britannica executives say that they feel they must take. At its peak in 1989, Encyclopedia Britannica, which is based in Chicago, had revenue of $650 million and a sales force of 2,300. The privately held concern no longer releases financial results, but company executives acknowledge that sales have dropped precipitously since then, and the work force today numbers just 350. The 231-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica is hoping it can transfer its unimpeachable reputation as a trusted source of information from the paper world, where its product in book form sells for $1,250, to the on-line one. While the Internet contains more information than could ever fit into an encyclopedia, digital or otherwise, the quality of that information is often dubious. And for researchers - an important potential on-line market for Britannica - it is not always clear that the information available on the Internet is complete. ''For extensive analysis of information, I'm more likely to check print sources first and then supplement that with the Web,'' said Harriet Henderson, president of the Public Library Association, an 8,500-member group based in Chicago and a division of the American Library Association. ''It's a mistake to depend solely on the Internet, because you can't always find what's out there.'' That is exactly what Britannica, which plans a $37 million advertising campaign for its on-line edition, is banking on. ''We want to become the most trusted source of information, learning and knowledge in the on-line environment,'' said Jorge Cauz, senior vice president of marketing at Britannica.com Inc., the company's Internet arm. The company will continue to sell both its 32-volume encyclopedia set and a CD-ROM version. It remains to be seen whether putting the entire encyclopedia on-line for free will be enough to reverse the company's sagging fortunes. But Britannica's struggle is one encountered by many traditional companies - from Toys 'R' Us to Tower Records - as they try to move onto the Internet, where a myriad of young ''dot com'' companies have established themselves. ''Traditional businesses are clearly sitting on the best assets to succeed - brand names, customer relationships, supplier relationships, knowledge of the industry and merchandising,'' Mr. Sanderson said. Into the early 1990s, Britannica was perhaps the most trusted name when it came to providing quality general information. Industry experts believe the company could have exploited that reputation in the on-line world to become a powerhouse in an era that prizes information above all else. But like many other companies that are learning similar lessons, Britannica failed to fully understand and appreciate the technology. In the 1980s, Microsoft Corp., developer of the Windows operating system that runs the vast majority of personal computers, decided that an encyclopedia on CD-ROM would help entice parents to buy a PC for the home. The company approached Britannica about licensing its name and material from the encyclopedia but the parties could not reach a deal. ''The feeling was that we had an existing revenue stream from direct selling, and putting our content on a CD-ROM threatened to cannibalize that,'' said a Britannica spokesman, Tom Panelas. So Microsoft turned to Funk & Wagnalls, an encyclopedia aimed at the discount market and sold in places such as grocery stores, and developed Encarta, a splashy multimedia encyclopedia. When Encarta was first released in 1993, Microsoft virtually gave it away, arranging with PC manufacturers to have Encarta pre-installed on millions of computers. Microsoft could afford to do that because each computer sold meant increased sales of Windows, the company's bread-and-butter product. Britannica, on the other hand, was selling its encyclopedias the way it always did, its U.S. sales force using the old door-to-door approach. Britannica finally relented in 1994 and published a CD-ROM version. Critics praised its depth and detail, but panned its lack of visual effects and use of technology, particularly as compared to Encarta. The CD-ROMs were sold in computer stores. People who bought the printed volumes of the encyclopedia received the CD-ROM for free. Sales of the 32-volume book sets, already in free fall, continued to decline. But it was not until 1996 that Britannica salesmen stopped making house calls. In just five years, Microsoft had all but locked up the encyclopedia market on CD-ROM, as reviewers raved about Encarta's ease-of-use and improvements in multimedia. And just as Britannica was losing the battle in the CD-ROM market, along came another opportunity to seize leadership in the Information Age. In the early 1990s, the Internet was giving birth to the World Wide Web. In 1994, Britannica became the first encyclopedia available on the Web. But the company charged a subscription fee of $85 a year, which swam against the tide of free content on the Internet. Also, Britannica's relatively dry appearance, with almost no video or audio and few graphics, made little impact in an increasingly multimedia area. Britannica continues to post significant sales of both print and digital products to schools and libraries. International Herald Tribune, October 20, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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