-Caveat Lector-
[radtimes] # 177
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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Contents:
--Terrorists Taking Up Cyberspace
--U.S. Congressman Censored At WBAI
--Corporate Spooks
--Intel Chief Addresses Longer-Range Threats to U.S.
--CIA patching ECHELON shortcomings
--Ghana's trapped women slaves
===================================================================
Terrorists Taking Up Cyberspace
Web sites have become inexpensive, easily accessible tools for giving
instructions to operatives and raising funds. The service providers for
some of these sites are based in the United States.
By CHARLES PILLER, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times [02/2001]
A car bomb shattered storefronts in Netanya, a seaside resort town in
northern Israel, and wounded 60 diners and shoppers on the evening of Jan.
1. There was one fatality--the bomber himself.
The group behind this blast didn't call a TV station to claim credit.
Instead Hamas, the Palestinian organization that sponsors acts of terror
against Israel, posted a note on its Web site.
It turns out that the Internet--inexpensive, open and accessible at
any time from anywhere--is an ideal tool for terrorists.
Scores of guerrilla armies and political factions locked in holy wars
and liberation struggles flock to the Net to send messages undiluted by the
press and untouched by government censors. Hezbollah and Hamas in the
Middle East, guerrillas with the Maoist group Shining Path of Peru and
revolutionaries across Europe and Asia operate their own Internet sites.
The most popular terrorist sites draw tens of thousands of
visitors each month.
Hamas' Web site presents political cartoons, streaming video clips
and photo montages depicting the violent deaths of Palestinian children.
The Armed Islamic Group, a fundamentalist sect warring with the Algerian
government, posted a detailed bomb-making manual. The online home of the
Tamil Tigers, a liberation army in Sri Lanka best known for the 1991
assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, offers position
papers, daily news and peddles free e-mail services. Other terrorist sites
post electronic bulletin boards, tips on smuggling money to finance their
operations and automated registration for e-mail alerts to foment revolt.
"This is almost a revolutionary change in terrorism," said Bruce
Hoffman, director of the Washington office of Rand Corp., a Santa
Monica-based policy research firm. "In the past, terrorists had to
communicate through an act of violence and hope that the communique would
effectively explain their ideological justification or their fundamental
position," Hoffman said.
Experts still are unclear whether the ability to communicate online
worldwide is prompting an increase or a decrease in terrorist acts. But
they agree that online activities substantially improve the ability of such
terrorist groups to raise funds, lure new faithful and reach a mass audience.
"There is a tendency to think that these people are not computer
savvy, that they run around with [AK-47s] and that's about it," said Ben
Venzke, an intelligence researcher at IDefense, a Fairfax, Va., computer
security company. But the Internet "is the perfect vehicle for them to
generate support."
Yet the federal government has lagged in responding to this surge of
terror groups online. "I give us a 'C-minus' in following these issues,"
said a U.S. counter-terrorism official who requested anonymity. "We're
still trying to get our arms around exactly what we're dealing with."
Terrorists rarely rely on their Web sites to communicate within their
groups. More commonly, they use encrypted--or digitally scrambled--e-mail,
according to the FBI. But even that method is widely distrusted.
"The FBI has developed a system to intercept [and read e-mail]. The
British intelligence [agency] MI-5 and Scotland Yard have developed similar
programs," said Isaac Velazco Fuertes, Web manager for Peru's Tupac Amaru
Revolutionary Movement, in an interview from Germany, where the group's
main Web site is based.
"We believe that to communicate among members using [our Web sites or
e-mail] is to be exposed."
To solve the problem, some terrorists place seemingly innocuous
messages that contain coded instructions on outsiders' Web site bulletin
boards. Others hide messages within digital images. Islamic extremists,
including some connected to Osama bin Laden--the accused mastermind of the
deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998--embed
encrypted messages within pornography, then post such images on public Web
sites. The intended recipients download the images, then extract and
decrypt the messages.
"The value of this technique [is that] much like a classified ad,"
Venzke said, "the sender doesn't even need to know who the recipient is."
Terrorist Web sites have become important enough to become targets.
Since the Palestinian uprising last fall, Israeli hackers have repeatedly
struck the Web sites of Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based Islamic group behind
the 1983 suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy and military barracks in
Beirut.
Hackers replaced Hezbollah's Web logo, a raised fist clenched around
an automatic weapon, with photos of Israelis captured by Hezbollah set
against a field of waving Israeli flags.
"You can see logically why [the Internet is] important to us--the
other side is trying to do everything to stop our efforts," said Malik
Hussein, a Hezbollah member who founded the group's collection of Web sites
five years ago. Speaking by phone from Beirut, Hussein noted that Israeli
hackers knocked his service offline for 16 hours in December and wiped
clean the host computers' storage drives.
For their part, pro-Palestinian hackers temporarily overwhelmed the
Web sites of Israel's army, foreign ministry and parliament with a torrent
of electronic demands. Scores of Israeli and Palestinian Web sites have
been vandalized.
Pakistani and Indian computer hackers have done the same in response
to the bloody conflict between those nations over Kashmir.
"When tensions arise on the ground, you see a parallel rise of
activity in cyberspace," said Venzke, who recently completed a report on
the Web wars for commercial clients.
And no matter how much a group may revile the United States, most
factions translate their sites into English, the Web's lingua franca.
"You can't work on the Internet if you don't know English very well,"
said Hezbollah's Hussein, who was educated in Europe and is fluent in English.
American firms also play a significant role in back-office support
for some terrorist sites, according to Internet-address registration records.
At least a dozen terrorist sites use American Internet providers,
such as Trumbull, Conn.-based OLM (Hamas and the Tamil Tigers); and
LanMinds in Berkeley (Mojahedin-e Khalq, an Iranian leftist group involved
in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy there and which now fights the
nation's clerical regime).
A UC San Diego student group maintains the "Burn!" Web site that
hosts offerings from a wide range of radical-left organizations, including
an English-language version of the Tupac Amaru site. The Peruvian
guerrillas are one of 29 groups officially designated on the U.S. State
Department's foreign terrorist list. Tupac Amaru seized the Japanese
Embassy in Lima in 1996, taking more than 400 hostages. A UCSD spokesperson
said the university neither endorses nor censors the site, which operates
on UC computers.
And until recently Interland Inc., a medium-size Internet service
provider in Atlanta, hosted several Hezbollah Web sites. The company said
it terminated contracts with three Hezbollah sites in December and January
for unspecified violations of its usage agreement. Hezbollah then switched
to a Lebanese provider.
The company also hosts the Web site for the U.N. mission addressing
the Taliban regime, Islamic fundamentalists who rule most of Afghanistan.
The Taliban was severely sanctioned in January by the U.N. for harboring
terrorists, including Bin Laden.
Many terrorist sites seem to preach to the converted, but others
build surprisingly diverse audiences. Hezbollah claims 40,000 visitors per
month to its sites--a paltry showing compared with the 50-million-plus on
Yahoo or America Online. But they have proved influential. In one case,
Hezbollah forced the Israeli military to recant its story about a commando
disaster. After 11 Israeli soldiers were killed by Hezbollah in Lebanon in
1997, Israel negotiated a bodies-for-prisoners swap. Israel only reported
the return of one soldier's body, although the remains of two others also
were returned. The army secretly buried the remains.
"Only after Israel learned that the Hezbollah planned to [and
ultimately did] post the information on its Internet site did [the Israeli
military] decide to pass the information on to the two families," the
Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported. A scandal ensued.
Last summer, Israelis seeking information on the fighting in southern
Lebanon looked to Hezbollah Web sites for news or images of casualties that
may not have appeared in the Israeli press due to military censorship,
Hoffman said.
Given the violence by many national governments against political
opponents, the definition of "terrorist" can be murky. In the United
States, Web sites are protected by the 1st Amendment. The FBI does not
track visitors to the sites or monitor content unless it is investigating a
specific illegal activity, a spokesman said. But U.S. law does prohibit
fund-raising by groups on the State Department list of foreign terrorists.
One organization that apparently fell afoul of that rule recently was
the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Hatikva Jewish Identity Center. That group
operates www.kahane.org, named for the anti-Arab extremist Rabbi Meir
Kahane, who was slain a decade ago. Two organizations Kahane or his
supporters founded, Kach and Kahane Chai, were placed on the State
Department list after a Kach member massacred 48 worshipers at a West Bank
mosque in 1994. Kahane.org calls for the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel
and solicits donations for its work.
On Jan. 4, the FBI raided Hatikva and carried away computers and
documents. Hatikva views the raid as an effort to establish links between
it and Kach and Kahane Chai. "I can tell from the search warrant . . . that
they are clearly trying to frighten anyone from contributing funds," said
Mike Guzovsky, a Hatikva official, in a recording posted on the Web site.
Some terrorist groups rely on supporters to raise funds online.
One such fund-raiser is Azzam Publications in London. Azzam operates
a site dedicated to worldwide jihad and its site steers funds to the
Taliban in Afghanistan and to allied guerrillas fighting the Russians in
Chechnya.
Taliban's assets abroad have been frozen by U.N. mandate. But the
Azzam site states, "An appeal for cash donations is especially urgent" and
advises the personal delivery of U.S. currency to the Taliban
consul-general in Karachi, Pakistan, and suggests a $20,000 minimum donation.
"It is probably advisable to send one or two trustworthy, young,
strong, fit Muslims with the delegation for protection of the money and the
delegation," the instructions caution, suggesting ways to dodge nosy
airport officials. "Under no circumstances should you hand over the money
to anyone at the consulate other than the consul-general."
Possibly the most accomplished Internet fund-raiser is
Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure"), a Taliban ally that maintains a
guerrilla army battling the Indian military for control over the Kashmir
region bordering Pakistan.
Lashkar-e-Taiba's sophisticated Web site offers Arabic, Urdu and
English versions, attractive illustrations and easy pull-down menus that
resemble Microsoft Windows.
The site describes how the Mujahideen-e-Lashkar-e-Taiba is fighting
the "oppressive Hindu Army in the snow covered valleys, mountains and
jungles of Kashmir. These Mujahideen best deserve your [charity]." The site
directs donations to a bank in Pakistan; the bank's phone and the account
number are conveniently provided for wire transfers.
Their effort has been so successful that Lashkar-e-Taiba may soon
become the envy of like-minded groups that have discovered the Internet.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is reportedly planning to open its own bank.
===================================================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
MARCH 5, 2001
Contact: Concerned Friends of WBAI: John Riley (917) 653-7267;
www.wbaiaction.org
Pacifica Campaign, (646) 230-9588
Background: www.savepacifica.net
U.S. CONGRESSMAN CENSORED AT WBAI
Rep. Major Owens (D. New York) to Make Statement on House
Floor; Long-time WBAI Program Cancelled
New York: Congressman Major Owens (Brooklyn, 11th District)
was interrupted without warning and pulled off the air today when
he called in as a guest on Pacifica radio station WBAI (99.5 FM).
Speaking on "Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor
Report," Owens was several minutes into a discussion on recent
changes at the listener-sponsored station when WBAI's interim
general manager Utrice Leid came into the master control studio
and seized the mic.
Leid then told listeners that the information broadcast by co-host
Ken Nash and Congressman Owens was untrue. Later,
Congressman Owens said he was "outraged, and caught without
any explanation or apology." He said he was hoping to talk about
independent media when the interim general manager took control.
"I intend to make the statement I was going to make today on
WBAI, on the floor of the House of Representatives and put it into
the congressional record," Owens stated.
Owens, who has been an outspoken critic of what is now dubbed
the "Christmas Coup" at WBAI, said he was "amazed" by today's
on-air events. "It's like something in a totalitarian country with the
fuhrer intervening," Owens added.
According to Nash, Leid came into the master studio
unexpectedly. "She tried to talk to my guest without warning or
invitation," he said. "I reminded her that the producer is in charge of
the program. I asked her to leave the studio. Leid then permanently
cancelled the program." "Building Bridges" is WBAI's only labor
show.
The 52-year-old listener-sponsored Pacifica radio network has been
embroiled in censorship battles in recent years. The Washington
Post has described Pacifica management's actions as "cowardly
radio" and "Soviet-style journalism," while dozens of journalists
from around the world struck the Pacifica Network News one year
ago to protest rampant censorship.
The late-December, midnight take-over of WBAI by the parent
foundation created a storm of controversy. Locks were changed,
veteran staffers were fired and banned and security guards have
been installed at the station. A gag rule has been imposed, and
access to the station is restricted. Critics say the New York take-
over represents Pacifica management's continuing effort to alter the
political content of the entire network.
===================================================================
Corporate Spooks
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Corporate espionage is the dirty little secret of big business in America
today.
Corporations spy on other corporations. They spy on citizen groups. They
spy on governments.
To protect their reputations, corporations don't admit to spying. But they
do it.
Corporate spies call themselves "competitive intelligence professionals."
There is even a professional association of corporate spies -- the Society
for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).
SCIP denies that "competitive intelligence" is espionage and denies that
"competitive intelligence professionals" are spies.
"Espionage is the use of illegal means to gather information," says the
SCIP web site (www.scip.org).
And SCIP says its members do not practice espionage.
SCIP says that its members gather their information legally from public
sources and are bound by a strict code of ethics, which requires
compliance with all laws and disclosure of "all relevant information,
including one's identity and organization, prior to all interviews."
Marc Barry is out to upend SCIP's apple cart.
Barry is a corporate spy. He's not a member of SCIP, because he says he's
not a hypocrite.
Of course corporations spy, he says.
Of course SCIP's members spy, he says.
In fact, they hire him when they don't want to get caught doing a
company's dirty work.
In the business, he's known as a kite.
"A kite is somebody who is essentially expendable, somebody who is flown
out there, and if it hits the fan, the controller can cut the string, deny
knowledge and let the kite fly off on its own," Barry told us last week.
"I provide my clients with actionable intelligence that they either don't
know how to get themselves, or they don't want to get caught collecting
themselves," Barry said. "I provide plausible deniability to my clients.
In the event that an operation is blown and there is litigation or worse
-- a criminal charge -- they can deny all responsibility by denying
knowledge."
With plausible deniability, Barry's corporate clients "can claim ignorance
by demonstrating in court that I am in fact a consultant, that I signed
documents saying that I would abide by all ethical rules, and that they
had no idea what I was doing," he says.
Barry runs about 40 capers a year.
"I do very well for myself," Barry said. "All of my clients are Fortune
500 companies. I deal at the executive level. I'm either dealing at the
chief executive officer, or the chief operating officer level. The very
lowest would be vice president of marketing."
Recently, a SCIP board member hired Barry to run an operation against
Kraft Foods on behalf of Schwan's Sales Enterprises.
In the winter of 1997, Kraft had developed a new "rising crust" pizza
under the brand name DiGiorno. Schwan's was moving a similar pizza under
the name Tony's.
Kraft, a unit of Phillip Morris, was planning a massive advertising
campaign to position DiGiorno's as the only frozen pizza to taste like
pizza-parlor pizza.
The SCIP member phoned Barry.
He knew Barry could quickly get information on the Kraft operation.
Posing as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, as an environmentalist,
and as a graduate student, Barry collected the information Schwan's wanted
in less than two days. Job completed. Barry wrote about the operation in
a Spooked: Corporate Espionage in America (Perseus, 2000, co-authored by
Adam Penenberg).
Someone at Kraft read the book, ordered an internal investigation, and
tripped across a second espionage operation. Last month, Kraft sued
Schwan's for theft of trade secrets.
Isn't Barry concerned about the ethics of lying?
"To my knowledge, in all 50 states, it is not illegal to lie," he says.
"The only people I listen to are the United States Department of Justice
and state and local law enforcement officials."
What about dumpster diving -- going through someone's garbage?
"Dumpster diving is perfectly legal, providing there is not a sign
posted," Barry says. "The courts have held that if it is left to be
accessed by commercial carters, then it is no longer private property. It
is only private property if there is a 'no trespassing' sign and you had
to trespass to get into the dumpster."
What about using an answering machine pick -- a device used to remotely
grab someone else's message off the target's answering machine?
"That's probably a gray area," Barry says.
"Do you use picks?" we ask.
"Fine, and you?" Barry answers.
Barry wonders whether SCIP members are adhering to the organization's
"code of ethics."
"If you go to one of their functions, it looks like a sixth grade dance --
where you had all the boys on one side and all the girls on the other side
and no one would talk to each other," he says.
"At a SCIP function, on one side you have all the spooks who came out of
Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the
National Security Agency. And they are all backslapping and hanging with
each other."
"And on the other side you have the librarians, the Lexis-Nexis types, the
software people. So, the white hats are on one side, and the black hats
are on the other."
Barry sees a big business in corporate espionage. His Manhattan-based
company -- C3I Analytics -- is in a joint venture with Raytheon that is
dumping $12 million to build a state-of-the art corporate espionage war
room in New York City.
The new company, to be called Intelogix, will sell services to other
corporations "intent on studying the enemy's every move."
Could it be that, as you are reading this, some Fortune 500 company is
picking the telephone messages off your answering machine?
Fine, and you?
-----------------------------------------------
Russell Mokhiber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is editor of the Washington,
D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are
co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999).
===================================================================
Intel Chief Addresses Longer-Range Threats to U.S.
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 6, 2001 -- The United States is the
world's sole remaining super power. America faces
challenges and threats that span the spectrum of warfare,
said Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency.
Wilson, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, said the turbulence the world has experienced
in the past decade would probably continue. "This
turbulence could spawn a spectrum of potential conflict
ranging from larger-scale combat contingencies, through
containment deployments, peace operations and humanitarian
relief operations," he said.
Each threat alone poses no real danger to the United
States, Wilson said, but "collectively, they form a
significant barrier to our goals for the future."
While the United States must be prepared for all
contingencies, the 1991 Gulf War taught potential opponents
to forgo conventional warfare, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld said in January.
The most likely threats, Wilson said, are foes whose
challenges render U.S. military power indecisive or
irrelevant to their operations and objectives.
Foes will pursue asymmetric warfare -- a variety of low-
cost strategies they hope will achieve disproportionate
results. A classic example is Somalia. After the "Day of
the Rangers," when Somali warlords killed 18 U.S. soldiers
and wounded 73 in the capital of Mogadishu in 1992, the
United States changed its policies and eventually withdrew.
"(Foes) seek capabilities that we are either unwilling or
unable to counter, thereby either denying our leadership
the 'military option' or forcing us to 'disengage' before
they are defeated," Wilson said.
Wilson said enemies would likely use asymmetric approaches
that will fit generally into five broad, overlapping
categories: counter will, counter access, counter precision
strike, counter protection and counter information.
Counter will approaches are designed to intimidate the
United States into not deploying or into leaving before the
mission is accomplished.
Counter access strategies are designed to deny U.S. forces
access to seaports or airports. It could include use of sea
mines or forces to close sea lanes or air forces to close
air routes.
Counter precision strike is designed to defeat or degrade
U.S. precision intelligence and attack capabilities.
Counter protection is designed to increase U.S. casualties
and, in some cases, directly threaten the United States.
Counter information is designed to prevent the United
States from attaining information and decision superiority.
The means to attack the United States asymmetrically are
everyone's bad dream. It includes terrorism, cyberwarfare
and information warfare, and attacks using weapons of mass
destruction, and operations directed against U.S. space-
based systems.
Terrorism remains the most likely attack at home and
abroad. "This threat will grow as disgruntled groups and
individuals focus on America as the source of their
troubles," Wilson said. "Most anti-U.S. terrorism will be
regional and based on perceived racial, ethnic or religious
grievances."
He said terrorism would likely occur in urban centers,
often capitals. U.S. service members will be obvious
targets. "Our overseas military presence and our military's
status as a symbol of U.S. power, interests and influence
can make it a target," he said.
Military force protection measures may drive terrorists to
attack softer targets such as private citizens or
commercial interests. "Middle East-based terrorist groups
will remain the most important threat, but our citizens,
facilities and interests will be targeted worldwide,"
Wilson said. "State sponsors -- primarily Iran -- and
individuals with the financial means -- such as Osama bin
Ladin -- will continue to provide much of the economic and
technological support needed by terrorists.
More destructive attacks are likely if terrorist
organizations gain access to more destructive conventional
weapons technologies and weapons of mass destruction, he
said.
The news media call information operations "cyberwar." High
profile hacker attacks such as the Love Bug show how
vulnerable an information society can be. But information
operations are more than just computer warfare. It can
include electronic warfare, psychological operations,
physical attack, denial and deception, computer network
attack and the use of more exotic technologies such as
directed energy weapons or electromagnetic pulse weapons.
"Adversaries recognize our civilian and military reliance
on advanced information technologies and systems and
understand that information superiority provides the United
States with unique capability advantages," Wilson said.
Adversaries also recognize that by using information
operations to attack the U.S. infrastructure they may
change U.S. support for operations.
"Software tools for network intrusion and disruption are
becoming globally available over the Internet, providing
almost any interested U.S. adversary a basic computer
network exploitation or attack capability," Wilson said.
"To date, however, the skills and effort needed for
adversaries to use tools and technology effectively, such
as intensive reconnaissance of U.S. target networks, for
example, remain important limits on foreign cyber attack
capabilities."
Many states see weapons of mass destruction as their only
hope of countering U.S. conventional military prominence.
Former Indian army Chief of Staff Gen. K. Sundarji
allegedly said the principal lesson of the Gulf War is that
if a state intends to fight the United States, it should
avoid doing so until and unless it possesses nuclear
weapons.
"The pressure to acquire weapons of mass destruction and
missiles is high, and, unfortunately, globalization creates
an environment more amenable to proliferation activities,"
Wilson said. Twenty-five countries now possess or are
acquiring and developing weapons of mass destruction or
missiles.
He said Russia, China and North Korea remain the suppliers
of WMD technology. Russia, he said, has shipped ballistic
missile and nuclear technology to Iran. China has provided
missile and other assistance to Iran and Pakistan. North
Korea remains a key source for ballistic missiles and
related components and materials.
Wilson said Iran and Iraq could acquire nuclear weapons
during the next decade. He said India and Pakistan would
undoubtedly increase their nuclear capabilities and
inventories.
The United States relies on satellites for much of its
information dominance. Enemies know this and look for ways
to negate this advantage. Many are attempting to reduce
this advantage by developing capabilities to threaten US
space assets, in particular through denial and deception,
signal jamming, and ground segment attack.
A number of countries are interested in or experimenting
with a variety of technologies that could be used to
develop counter-space capabilities. These efforts could
result in improved systems for space object tracking,
electronic warfare or jamming and directed-energy weapons.
Wilson said that by 2015, future adversaries would be able
to employ a wide variety of means to disrupt, degrade or
defeat portions of the U.S. space support system.
===================================================================
CIA patching ECHELON shortcomings
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/17361.html
Thomas C. Greene in Washington
06/03/2001
A core objection to paranoid rants regarding the US National Security Agency
(NSA) electronic eavesdropping apparatus called ECHELON is the simple
observation that spooks trying to use it are literally buried in an
avalanche of white noise from which it's quite difficult to extract anything
pertinent.
But now the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), no doubt with some
assistance and guidance from NSA, is making strides towards cracking that
little inconvenience.
The CIA's Office of Advanced Information Technology is developing a number
of data-mining enhancements to make life easy for those who would eavesdrop
on electronic communications, Reuters reports.
First up is a computer program called Oasis, which automatically converts
audio signals into conveniently readable, and searchable, text.
And it distinguishes voices, cleverly enough, so that the transcript of an
intercepted 'broadcast' (a conference call via mobile phones?) will show
each speaker automatically identified as Male 1, Female 1; Male 2, Female 2;
and so on.
If the transcript seems implausible at any point, or disappointingly
mundane, the operator can easily listen to relevant parts of the broadcast
to check the machine's accuracy, and determine that "recognize speech"
actually was "wreck a nice beach," and send in the appropriate goon squads
to prevent it.
Oasis also references search terms and keywords automatically. Thus text
containing the phrase "truck bomb" would pop up in a query for "terror*".
The CIA is planning to develop Oasis for spy-useful foreign languages such
as Arabic and Chinese, the wire service says.
Next comes a software tool called FLUENT, which enables an operator to
search stored documents in a language s/he doesn't understand by using his
or her own language for queries.
So, imagine an uneducated, highly-trained Anglophone with a PhD in some
anti-intellectual pseudo-'discipline' like medicine, education, women's
studies, engineering, creative writing, economics or computer science,
naturally poorly acquainted with languages, but charged with grave national
security responsibilities.
Say this person needs to know what the Chinese have been publishing about
nuclear warheads.
Salvation: FLUENT allows them to search on "nuclear warhead" in English, and
still dredge up Chinese (or whatever) documents for people with actual
language skills to translate and evaluate for them. Is that cool or what?
Presently, FLUENT can translate Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian,
Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian, Reuters says.
The omissions are almost as telling as the languages included. What, no
Japanese, no Arabic, no Spanish, no Hebrew, no French? Laotian and Navajo we
can understand, but what have we here? Laziness, discrimination, or
misplaced trust?
You make the call.
===================================================================
Ghana's trapped women slaves
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20010305/cleisure/cleisure3.html
by Cecil Gutzmore
The Daily Gleaner
Commentary
Monday, 5 March,2001
THE WOMAN let her bright green cloth slip down to reveal her breasts. But
she did not care. Hutealor Wede does not know how old she is, nor can she
remember how long she has been in the village of Fato Avendrpedo in eastern
Ghana. All she knows is that she is a slave and likely to die there. "My
grandfather had illegal sex with a women" (sic), she says, expressionless.
"The gods punished our family. I was the virgin daughter, so I was brought
to this village and given to the priest to stop the disasters happening..."
Hutealor Wede is a victim of Trokosi, which literally means slavery to the
gods. It is part of a traditional religion. Three years ago a law was passed
specifically to ban it, with a minimum punishment of three years in jail.
But no woman has been freed because of it and no-one has been arrested. The
village's septuagenarian priest was called Togbe Adzimashi Adukpu. He was
the slave master... "Yes, the girls are my slaves. They are the property of
my shrine. They are brought here as virgins to be married to the gods, so if
a man from the village wants one for himself, I have the power to give her
to him." Trokosi is an eternal penance. When one woman dies, her family has
to bring a new girl.
There are about 3,000 women known to still be in slavery in Ghana. And
there is a strong lobby within the Ghanaian establishment, which says the
campaign against Trokosi is a campaign against African culture. That story
was posted to me via Gleaner. The sender has a colour printer: and so it
included a lovely colour photo of two strong-faced Africans. It is
down-loaded from the BBC HOMEPAGE
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_1158000/1158115.stm>.
Read it in full for yourself.
Scrawled over page 1 was: TRADITIONAL AFRICAN VALUES. BET YOU WON'T
PUBLISH THIS IN BLACK HISTORY MONTH (BHM)! Damn, missed it. Why is it so
widely believed that for anyone to value the African heritage is to be
unable to deal with facts that highlight its negative facets? Some half a
dozen challenges based on this assumption arrived during BHM. The one
above not yet further explored by me outlines one of the oppressions all
progressive Africans oppose. That it involves a religio-cultural dimension
is not supporting evidence.
Sylvia Wynter is the only major progressive Caribbean thinker who would
seriously argue otherwise. Some other such challenges focused on genocides
for which black people are responsible. Another came from a Mr Cole (Jamaica
and the Afro-European legacy, Gleaner Tuesday, 13th February 2001) who
re-raised what Walter Rodney called the very painful fact that there were
Africans who partnered the Europeans in enslaving other Africans. Mr Cole
and others think that if it is true that Africans acted in this manner no
African-Jamaican today is entitled to speak the truth about modern Europe
and Atlantic slavery, nor about the myriad other negative aspects of
Europe's past, present or future.
The simple question is: Did such negative African behaviour occur and,
since it did, what explains it? It has long been possible to be
Pan-Africanist or Afri-centrist without idealising either all Africans or
the African historical experience in its entirety. Rodney's historical work
offers a viable understanding of African collaboration with the slave trade.
What has to be done is to take a cool, hard look through eyes guided by
the combined politics of race, class and gender at the history of the
societies of Western Africa. But only after acknowledging the larger
historical truth that: The Atlantic slave trade was organised and financed
by Europeans, who had reached the capitalist stage of development.
Africans had absolutely no control over the European side or the American
side of the slave trade. Only European capitalists had such world-wide power
and they used Africans for their own purposes. In the process Africa was
catastrophically underdeveloped, while certain African rulers who benefited
were themselves swept away by the forces of colonialism. The Good Nigger is,
after all, forever expendable. The evidence is that the first European
extraction of Africans into Atlantic slavery involved direct raiding and
some trading. Their first local partners in trading Black Africans/Ethiops
were what the English at the time termed Tawny Moors, i.e., fair-skinned
Arabic types, confirming that Muslim slavery in Africa intersected with its
newer European/Christian counterpart on the North-west African littoral.
Later on and further south, that initial pattern of slave-raiding and
trading was repeated, as Sir John Hawkins account of his second voyage to
the Guinea Coast establishes. But who were the African collaborators with
the European in these newer and still largely Islam-free parts of
Africa? Numerous instances of un-free labour did exist in Africa and many
complex factors pre-disposed some Africans to be comfortable with the
saleability, and actual selling, of their fellows. No wonder, as Rodney
says, that: for nearly the whole of the period of the Atlantic slave-trade
there were many Africans who were prepared to sell their fellowmen in
exchange for European manufactures such as cloth, pots and pans, beads and
fire-arms.
Rodney attempted to pick out those Africans who were in partnership with
the European slave-buyers. But he deals first with the effect of tribal and
clan division in Africa, with the wars these produced and how the Europeans
exploited them to obtain captives. Europeans often managed to gain prisoners
of war from both sides because [both] wanted guns and there were several
European nations competing with each other.
The Fon state of Dahomey and, to a lesser extent, the Asante Kingdom, as
well as the Mande and Fulani, are examples of states and peoples that grew
fat on slavery. But when were any of these held up as ideal African
societies? The European slavers themselves acted on the basis of a kind of
class analysis. They treated as their natural allies the great men of West
Africa: they meant the kings, chiefs, sub-chiefs, headmen, nobles, priests,
clan leaders and individuals of that sort. Their traditional role, to rule
in the interest of the people as a whole, was betrayed. African kings and
queens who resisted collaboration were destroyed by the Portuguese and other
Europeans.
Rodney says this African ruling class perverted African law, custom,
religion and even warfare to produce persons for sale, not exempting those
within their own tribes. The neo-colonial rulers of today are the heirs of
the African collaborators with slavery.
-----
Cecil Gutzmore is a research student and lecturer at the University of the
West Indies. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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