-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 67 - October, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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Contents:
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--West Nile: It's Not Just Local. It's Global
--Inside the Death House
--Radiation alert under ozone hole in southern Chile
--Colombia gets U.S.-backed loan for helicopters
--U.S. Companies Tangled in Web of Drug Dollars
Linked stories:
*Cow Will Give Birth to Rare Ox
*Million Moon March
*Hardware firewall runs on NSA technology
*Report: word 'British' is racist
*FBI: Expand access to fingerprints
*Anthrax shots cause military exodus
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Begin stories:
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West Nile: It's Not Just Local. It's Global
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29378-2000Oct7.html>
By Paul R. Epstein
Sunday, October 8, 2000; Page B05
Just as the buzz about West Nile virus has begun to recede in the
Northeast, infected birds are being reported in Maryland and the District,
and there is news of an Israeli outbreak that has claimed at least 19
lives. Beyond the obvious lessons to be drawn from these scares, there is
a link that has not been recognized: The conditions underlying outbreaks of
this sometimes deadly virus can be traced to global environmental change.
This is not the kind of distant, seemingly abstract effect most people
associate with the threat of global warming, melting glaciers, eroding
coastlines, endangered species. It is something we can see in our own
backyards.
Named for the district in Uganda where it was first identified in 1937, the
West Nile virus entered the Western Hemisphere in 1999--most likely,
scientists believe, via migratory birds from Europe. While the precise
means of introduction is not known, we do know the conditions that "rev up"
the disease's life cycle: mild winters coupled with prolonged droughts and
heat waves, the long-term and extreme weather phenomena associated with
climate change.
Since mosquitoes lay their eggs in water, the fact that drought can amplify
transmission of diseases they carry may seem counterintuitive. But this is
the case for the West Nile virus. Here is how it can happen:
West Nile virus is transmitted by mosquitoes to birds and other animals,
with occasional "spillover" to humans. What makes it different from many
other mosquito-borne illnesses is that its primary carrier is an
urban-dwelling mosquito, Culex pipiens.
Culex typically breeds underground in the foul water standing in city
drains and catch basins. During a drought, those pools are even richer in
the rotting organic material that Culex needs to thrive; more rainfall
would flush the drains and dilute the pools. (Another group of mosquitoes,
Aedes, breeds in open ponds and puddles; some species of Aedes carry the
West Nile virus, though not as efficiently as Culex.)
Drought can also lead to a decline in the number of mosquito predators,
such as frogs and dragonflies. And it encourages birds to congregate around
shrinking water sites, where the virus can circulate more easily.
Meanwhile, high temperatures speed up the development of viruses within the
mosquito carriers (who only live about two weeks). The faster a virus
develops, the greater the chance that it will reach a dangerous mature
stage while the mosquito is alive and capable of biting.
All these factors enhance the possibility that infectious virus levels will
build up in birds and mosquitoes living in close proximity to human beings.
And in the spring and summer of 1999, all these factors were present in the
Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states. The prolonged drought and intense
heat (in particular the three-week heat wave that enveloped the Northeast
that July) lasted until the pendulum swung ferociously in the opposite
direction, bringing torrential end-of-August rains. Culex thrived in the
drought months; Aedes bred in the late summer floodwaters.
And, as is well known, a serious outbreak occurred: Seven New Yorkers died
from the West Nile virus in 1999. Sixty-two people were infected and
survived; many have reported chronic disabilities, such as extreme muscle
weakness and fatigue.
In contrast, the unusually cool and wet weather this past spring and summer
may have reduced the threat of West Nile virus for humans. Indeed, only one
death has been recorded to date, that of an 82-year-old man in New
Jersey. Public health measures, including targeted spraying of pesticides
and the application of chemicals and bacteria that kill mosquito larvae in
storm drains, were also apparently helpful.
Meanwhile, however, Israel experienced a prolonged drought and intense heat
this summer, conditions that may have helped create the serious outbreak
that occurred there.
Certainly there are factors other than weather and climate that contribute
to outbreaks of disease. Just as forestry practices fueled the fires
sparked by lightning during this past summer's prolonged western drought,
local environmental problems can increase the potential for mosquito
breeding in urban settings. Antiquated urban drainage systems leave more
fetid pools in which mosquitoes breed, and stagnant rivers and streams do
not adequately support healthy fish populations that consume mosquito larvae.
But it was extreme weather events that allowed the West Nile virus to be
launched with a vengeance in this hemisphere in 1999. Now, with the virus
well established on America's eastern seaboard, wide swings in weather, the
projected hallmark of global climate change, threaten to encourage mosquito
breeding and spawn new outbreaks in the future.
Weather extremes have played a significant role in the emergence and
resurgence of dangerous diseases in the past. St. Louis encephalitis, a
disease also involving Culex mosquitoes, birds and humans, made its
appearance in St. Louis in 1933 during the "dust bowl." A large outbreak
occurred in California in 1984 following an extended dry spell.
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, caused by a previously unknown virus related
to one that killed U.S. and U.N. soldiers during the Korean War, appeared
suddenly in the Southwestern United States in 1993. The disease is carried
by rodents, and populations of the Peromyscus maniculatus mouse had been
boosted tenfold by a sequence of extreme weather conditions, years of
drought that helped reduce its predators, followed by heavy winter rains
that encouraged the growth of the mouse's food sources. Ninety-four people
were infected during the first year; 45 of them died.
Since the mid-1970s, more than 30 diseases new to medicine have emerged.
Old infectious diseases are resurging, or reappearing where they had been
eliminated or, like West Nile, appearing where they have never been seen
before. Factors contributing to this are deepening poverty in some areas,
population movements and medical and agricultural misuse of antibiotics.
But the damage is compounded by local and global environmental change.
The appearance of a mosquito-borne illness in Northeastern cities
underscores just how global environmental change can directly affect our
lives. Diseases generated continents away can travel and spread, and no
nation is immune. Public and personal health is inextricably tied to a
stable climate, and to economic development and healthy ecosystems on
continents far away, as well as at home.
We have embarked upon a precarious and uncertain global course. Just as we
have underestimated the rate at which climate change is occurring, we have
underestimated the sensitivity of biological systems to small changes in
average temperatures and the accompanying weather instability. We cannot
delay any longer: Restabilizing the climate system must be a chief priority
to protect our health and our well-being.
Global warming is driven by the use of fossil fuels and the emission of
other heat-trapping gases into the Earth's atmosphere. This latest
manifestation of global environmental change in our backyards underscores
the urgency of altering the way our economies develop and the way we power
that development.
-----
Paul Epstein is assistant director of the Center for Health and the Global
Environment at Harvard Medical School.
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Inside the Death House
<http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/09/opinion/09HERB.html>
by BOB HERBERT
10/09/2000
I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered
in me,
and I started shaking. And then I walked back into the house and my wife
asked, 'What's the matter?' And I said, 'I don't feel good.' And tears,
uncontrollable tears, was coming out of my eyes and she says, 'What's the
matter?' And I told her. I said, 'I just thought about that execution that
I did two days ago, and everybody else's that I was involved in.' And what
it was, something triggered within, and it just, everybody all of these
executions all sprung forward."
Fred Allen couldn't take it anymore. He was part of the so-called "tie-down
team" in the unit that contains the "death house" in Huntsville, Tex.,
where all of the state's executions are carried out. The five members of
the tie-down team are each assigned a different part of the condemned
prisoner's body, and are responsible for strapping that body part arm, leg,
head, etc. to the gurney on which the prisoner will die.
Mr. Allen was a 35-year-old captain of corrections who had participated in
130 executions when he finally suffered a breakdown in 1998. The relentless
killing had become too much for him. He couldn't bear to strap one more
live body to a gurney for the sole purpose of turning that body into a
corpse. He now works as a carpenter.
Fred Allen is one of several ordinary people who are part of an
extraordinary and powerful radio documentary, "Witness to an Execution," to
be broadcast Thursday on the National Public Radio program "All Things
Considered."
Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1977, one-third of
all executions have taken place in Texas. In "Witness to an Execution," men
and women who have participated in or witnessed a significant number of
those executions tell what it's like.
Jim Brazzil, a chaplain with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
said: "I usually put my hand on their leg, right below the knee, you
know. And I usually give them a squeeze, let 'em know I'm there. You can
feel the trembling, the fear that's there. The anxiety that's there. You
can feel the heart surging, you know."
Michael Graczyk, an A.P. reporter who has witnessed about 170 executions,
said: "When they're on the gurney, they're stretched out, his arms
extended. I've often compared it to almost a crucifixion-like
activity. Only as opposed to having the person upright, he is lying down."
Another reporter, John Moritz of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, said:
"The warden will remove his glasses, which is the signal to the executioner
behind a mirrored glass window. And when the glasses come off, the lethal
injection begins to flow."
The documentary is narrated by the warden, Jim Willett, who has presided
over 75 executions. "Sometimes I wonder whether people really understand
what goes on down here and the effect it has on us," he said.
Killing people, even people you know are heinous criminals, is a gruesome
business, and it takes a harsh toll. "The executions seem to affect all of
us differently," said Warden Willett. "Some are quiet and reflective after,
others less so. But I have no doubt that it's disturbing for all of us. You
don't ever get used to it."
"Some people, they might like to drink and, you know, forget about it,"
said Kenneth Dean, a major in the Huntsville corrections unit. "I can take
my mind off things when I go fishing. I like the outdoors, and that's just
how I cope with it."
The documentary is the work of Stacy Abramson and Dave Isay of Sound
Portraits, a nonprofit, independent radio production outfit in New York. It
gives us a sense of the increasing emotional distress that has accompanied
the accelerated pace of executions in Texas.
The Rev. Carroll Pickett, a chaplain who was present for 95 executions
before he retired in 1995, said: "You do three a year is one thing. You do
35 a year, that's a lot. It's hard to watch that. . . . Lots of guards
quit. Even those tough guards you're talking about, a lot of those quit."
Said Warden Willett: "I'll be retiring next year and to tell you the truth,
this is something I won't miss a bit. You know, there are times when I'm
standing there, watching those fluids start to flow and wonder whether what
we're doing here is right. It's something I'll think about for the rest of
my life."
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Radiation alert under ozone hole in southern Chile
<http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8499>
October 10, 2000
Story by Chris Aspin (REUTERS)
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile - A wide swath of southern Chile was on alert yesterday
as dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation hit peaks because of the
depletion of the protective ozone layer over the Antarctic.
Health authorities warned the 120,000 residents of this wool and fishing
city - one of the few populated areas beneath the ozone hole in the
southern hemisphere - not to go out in the sun during the day.
The ozone hole over the Antarctic this year has reached its deepest since
scientists began measuring it 15 years ago, with more than 50 percent
depletion being recorded throughout most of the hole, United Nations
experts said on Friday.
That has left this windy city 1,400 miles (2,240 km) south of Chile's
capital, Santiago, - and also the Argentine city of Ushuaia on the nearby
island Tierra del Fuego - open to harmful ultraviolet radiation which can
cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants in the food chain.
The tip of the Americas, south of the Patagonia wilds where Britain's
Prince William is on a chararcter-building expedition, is the only landmass
outside the Antarctic exposed to ultraviolet radiation from the ozone hole.
WARNING NOT TO GO OUT INTO THE SUN
"We are warning people throughout the region not to go out in the sun
between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.," said Lidia Amarales, the health minister in
Chile's most southerly Magallanes and Antarctic Region, where Punta Arenas
is the provincial capital.
Health authorities called an orange alert - the second most dangerous level
in a scale of four - in which ultraviolet (UV) exposure can cause skin
burns in 7 minutes. A red alert can provoke burning in 5 minutes.
"If people have to leave their homes they should wear high factor sun
creams, UV protective sunglasses, wide brimmed hats and clothing with long
sleeves," said Amarales.
Dr. Claudio Casiccia, head of the ozone department at the University of
Magallanes, said ultraviolet radiation levels hit an all-time peak
Saturday. "We are slightly below that level now but still on alert," he said.
Despite the alert, many local residents walked the streets unprotected
yesterday. "I have to go to buy bread and scarcely have money for that, so
forget the sunglasses and suncream," said Adriana Cerpa, a 28-year-old
housewife.
Experts from the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)
said on Friday the ozone hole is at its deepest level on record and that
"near total destruction" of the ozone in some layers of the stratosphere
had been observed since the middle of September, much earlier than in
previous years.
CHEMICALS CAUSING OZONE DEPLETION
Chemicals - including chlorine compounds used in refrigerants, aerosol
sprays and solvents and bromine compounds used in firefighting halogens -
are blamed for causing depletion.
Extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere during the southern
hemisphere's winter spark off the chemical ozone depletion, a process that
accelerates as the region enters spring-time.
For more than a decade, the hole has appeared in late August or early
September, with the phenomenon peaking in the first week or two of October,
a clear sign that greenhouse gases are eating away the earth's protective
layer.
All 12 monitoring stations around the rim of the Antarctic have reported
measurements of ozone this spring that are 50-70 percent below the norms in
the years 1964-1976, before the ozone hole was detected, the Geneva-based
WMO said.
An image released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) on Sept. 8 showed a hole appearing as a giant blue blob, totally
covering Antarctica and stretching to the southern tip of South America.
NASA said the hole spread over 11 million square miles (28.3 million square
km), an area three times larger than the land mass of the United States.
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Colombia gets U.S.-backed loan for helicopters
Reuters
10/06/00
BOGOTA - The embattled Colombia government announced a U.S.-backed loan deal
Friday, totalling up to $138.8 million, to bolster its fleet of military
attack and troop transport helicopters.
The announcement, in a decree from the presidential palace, said Finance
Minister Juan Manuel Santos had been authorised to contract the loan, which
has been guaranteed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
A contingent of 60 attack helicopters, including 18 sophisticated Black
Hawks, is already headed for Colombia as part of a $1.3 billion U.S. aid
package approved earlier this year to fight drug trafficking and,
indirectly, Marxist rebels accused of protecting and profiting from the
narcotics trade.
But U.S. officials cautioned late last month that the first Black Hawks,
viewed as a crucial component of the aid package because of their mobility
and air firepower, may not arrive until as late as October 2002.
The officials, led by Brian Sheridan, a U.S. assistant defence secretary,
blamed the delay on delivery and configuration problems involving the U.S.
manufacturer, United Technology Corp.'s Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.
Perhaps more importantly, however, U.S. officials have insisted that
helicopters donated as part of the aid package will only be used on
counternarcotics missions, and not for the Colombian military's overall
fight against Latin America's largest and oldest guerrilla groups.
HELICOPTERS WITHOUT CONDITIONS
Their primary mission will be to provide air mobility for three U.S.-trained
counternarcotics battalions, equipped to protect and support police on
missions aimed at destroying illicit drug crop plantations and laboratories
in rebel-dominated areas of southern Colombia.
Defence Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez complained last week that the
Colombian military was sorely in need of more of its own helicopters, with
no conditions attached to them, to step up offensive operations across the
country.
The Colombian military's ageing fleet of helicopters currently comprises a
total of about 100 choppers, which include Russian-made Mi-17 troop
transports and many Vietnam-era Hueys.
The army and air force already have 14 Black Hawks, and eighteen smaller
UH-1H helicopters. But military experts say Colombia needs far more air
mobility, and gunship firepower, if it is going to seize the momentum in an
escalating conflict that has taken more than 35,000 lives since 1990.
The U.S. Ex-Im bank is prohibited from financing military items, but the
government decree said it was only acting as a guarantor in the $138.8
million loan for Colombia.
The credit itself was being put together by a group of commercial banks led
by the New York office of France's Societe Generale and Standard Chartered
Bank of Britain.
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U.S. Companies Tangled in Web of Drug Dollars
<http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/national/10PESO.html>
October 10, 2000
By LOWELL BERGMAN
On a rainy day last June, a group of corporate executives gathered in
a conference room at the Justice Department for a meeting with
Attorney General Janet Reno and other top government officials.
The executives represented some of the pillars of corporate
America Hewlett-Packard, Ford Motor Company, Whirlpool. The
session was not publicized because those at the meeting shared an
unlikely and potentially embarrassing problem: their companies,
they feared, were being singled out in the nation's war on drugs,
and neither they nor the government was quite sure what to do.
With the intensifying federal crackdown on money laundering,
agents had been tracking drug money into the accounts of American
corporations and their distributors and dealers. In fact, federal
officials said, about $5 billion a year in Colombian drug money is
used to buy goods and services from cigarettes to computer chips
from American companies.
What makes that possible is a system known as the black-market
peso exchange, a complex money trade that law enforcement officials
say has become increasingly important to the Colombian narcotics
trade.
The system really a network of currency brokers with offices in
New York, Miami, the Caribbean and South America is essentially
an underground money market that lets the traffickers exchange
American dollars for Colombian pesos. Those dollars, which stay in
the United States, are then bought by Colombian companies that use
them to buy American goods for sale back home.
But the government's efforts to seize that money have put it on a
collision course with corporations, which say they are victims with
no way of knowing that they and their distributors are being paid
with drug money.
As they met on June 6, those executives, lawyers and law
enforcement officials found themselves grappling with a conundrum:
when does drug money stop being drug money? How far does a
company's responsibility go?
The questions have been confronting law enforcement officials for
years.
"What are we going to do?" asked Greg Passic, a former drug
enforcement agent who now advises the government on the economics
of the narcotics industry. "We've got the Fortune 500 involved in
our drug- money laundering process."
For a long time, because of lax enforcement of United States
currency laws, the drug traffickers were able to launder billions
of dollars through American financial institutions. A crackdown in
the 1980's pushed traffickers to what they saw as a virtually
fail-safe system for getting back their profits the black-market
peso exchange.
Their growing reliance on that system shows how deeply the drug
trade has become entwined in the legitimate economies of the United
States, Colombia and other nations.
Colombian officials said that as much as 45 percent of their
country's imported consumer goods are bought with money laundered
through the peso exchange.
On the American side, law enforcement officials said the exchange
has largely eliminated the trade deficit with Colombia. The market,
said the customs commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, "is the ultimate
nexus between crime and commerce, using global trade to mask global
money laundering."
So far, no large American company has faced criminal charges. And
companies have almost always been able to prevent federal officials
from keeping money that has been seized.
But in the last few years, as frustration has risen, the
government has taken a tougher line. There have been Congressional
hearings intended to put companies on notice by name. Prosecutors
have issued warnings and stepped up efforts to seize laundered
money.
At the same time, the government has encouraged companies to
institute "know your customer" policies similar to those used in
the financial industry. The policies gave dealers and distributors
techniques for recognizing money laundering. Thus educated, the
government thought, the companies would be less able to argue that
they simply could not have known.
In drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate profits,
the government must not only prove that the money came from drug
deals; it must show that the recipient "knew or should have known"
its source.
In the war on drugs, that line has proved very fuzzy.
Trading Dollars for Pesos
Congress passed the first money- laundering laws in the early
1970's requiring, among other things, that banks report any cash
transaction over $10,000 but the laws were loosely enforced. By
1979, the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami had more cash than the
other federal reserve banks combined.
It took the uproar over the cocaine epidemic in the early 80's for
banks to comply with the law. And with the resulting crackdown,
traffickers resorted to the black market, which for decades had
provided Colombian businesses with dollars at less than the
official exchange rate of 2,000 pesos to the dollar. The rate in
Colombia is fixed by the government.
One peso broker recently agreed to describe how the system works.
The process begins when the broker receives a call from a
Colombian drug trafficker or his American representative. The two
negotiate an exchange rate for pesos, usually 30 percent to 40
percent below the fixed rate. So $10,000 might be worth 12 million
pesos instead of 20 million at the official rate.
The dollars are then delivered to the broker, who promises to
deliver pesos to the trafficker's bank account after the dollars
are sold to Colombian businesses. The dealer's insurance is the
broker's knowledge that to do otherwise would almost surely mean
death.
The broker maintains several runners, "smurfs," in law
enforcement lingo who deposit the cash into hundreds of United
States bank accounts in amounts of less than $10,000, to avoid
scrutiny.
At the same time, the broker's office in Colombia negotiates with
business people there who want cheap dollars to buy everything from
consumer goods to helicopters.
Usually, that exchange rate is 20 percent below market, so a
business owner in Colombia might pay 16 million pesos, instead of
20 million pesos at the fixed rate, for $10,000.
The pesos are then transferred in this example, 12 million pesos
to the traffickers' accounts. The broker keeps the difference, 4
million pesos in this instance. Then at the businessman's
direction, the dollars in the American banks are used to pay for
American goods.
The peso brokerage is one part of the process that supplies
Colombia with inexpensive goods from the United States and around
the world. Colombian authorities said the goods were often smuggled
into the country, costing Colombia more than $300 million a year in
tax revenue.
Colombia has made collecting that lost revenue a priority. But the
black market has considerable appeal because it puts a lot of
inexpensive foreign goods on the Colombian market.
The exchange has also increased American exports to Colombia.
"This is positive for U.S. business, there is no doubt about it,"
said Mike Wald, who runs a consortium of law enforcement agencies
in Florida focusing on the peso exchange. "The Colombian, if he
pays less for his dollars, can buy more goods. That's a pretty
obvious economic fact. But we have to realize where this money
originates. It's drug money."
Tangled With Drug Money
Two companies that have turned up in the American government's
anti-laundering efforts are Phillip Morris and Bell Helicopter
Textron.
Phillip Morris products in particular have been a major presence
in Colombia. Marlboro cigarettes are readily available at prices
investigators said indicated that they were bought with black
market dollars and smuggled into the country.
Earlier this year, Phillip Morris was sued in the Eastern District
of New York by the Colombian tax collectors. The federal lawsuit
accused the company of being involved in cigarette smuggling and in
the laundering of drug proceeds.
Phillip Morris has denied the allegations, saying that it did not
know its products were being exploited for money laundering. In
addition, without admitting wrongdoing, it recently signed an
agreement with Colombia, pledging to stop its products from
entering the black market or being used to launder money.
In 1995, in Federal District Court in San Juan, Puerto Rico,
Phillip Morris's former distributors in northern South America were
indicted for laundering $40 million in black market pesos.
A member of the defense lawyers said the money was used to buy
Phillip Morris cigarettes, liquor and other products for the
Colombian market. But the defense team member said the defendants
did not know that the money came from drug sales.
Phillip Morris severed its relationship with the defendants in
1998 and said it did not know that its products were being smuggled
or that black market money was used to buy them.
In another case, Bell Helicopter is challenging the seizure of
$300,000 from its accounts, money, according to court documents,
that was generated by drug smuggling.
It was part of more than $1 million that the United States
believed was supplied a peso-exchange broker to buy a Bell
aircraft. The helicopter was seized in Panama at the request of the
United States.
The case has become a sore point for American law enforcement in
part because the helicopter was sold to a Colombian businessman
linked to the country's right-wing paramilitaries.
Seeking Cooperation
The deepening struggle between prosecutors
and business executives is what led to the meeting with Attorney
General Reno and other government officials, including Deputy
Attorney General Eric H. Holder and Deputy Treasury Secretary
Stuart E. Eizenstat. The companies invited were Hewlett-Packard,
Ford, General Motors, Sony, Westinghouse, Whirlpool and General
Electric Company, Treasury officials said.
None of the companies returned phone calls seeking comment, except
General Electric and Sony. Sony said it would have no comment. But
General Electric's counsel, Scott Gilbert, said his company
instituted a strict compliance program five years ago, after
reports that its refrigerators were being used in money-laundering
operations.
As part of its policy, Mr. Gilbert said General Electric warns
dealers to be aware of "red flags" a customer's lack of interest
in discounts, an unwillingness to give information about the
company, or unusual forms of payment like large amounts of cash or
checks written on the account of a third party.
The new policy has cut sales of appliances to Latin America by
23,000 units, or over 20 percent, said an executive at General
Electric.
Alan Dooty, a customs official, said the companies had been
selected for the June meeting because their products had shown up
in the black market in Colombia. The exception was General
Electric, which he singled out as a "good citizen."
Before the meeting, some of the companies expressed concern that
they would be punished. But once they arrived, Mr. Dooty said, they
were assured that the government was seeking cooperation.
A follow-up session in July bogged down in legal murk.
An industry representative familiar with the meeting said: "The
Justice and Treasury Departments realized that they were trying to
identify drug money that had morphed, been transformed, in layers
of transactions involving distributors, authorized dealers,
financing arrangements with unregulated money lenders called
`factors' and the other realities of commercial life."
More meetings are scheduled for this fall.
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Linked stories:
********************
Cow Will Give Birth to Rare Ox
<http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39340,00.html?tw=wn20001009>
A cow in Sioux City, Iowa, is expected to give birth next month to a
cloned Asian guar that scientists implanted in her. It will be the
first successful cloning of an endangered animal and possibly a way to
repopulate lost species.
********************
Million Moon March
<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/10/09/march/index.html?CP=SAL&DN=665>
Rev. Sun Myung Moon is the surprise backer of Louis Farrakhan's big event
in Washington next week -- and it may be his biggest remarriage shindig
ever. By Frederick Clarkson
********************
Hardware firewall runs on NSA technology
<http://www.electronicstimes.com/story/OEG20001009S0056>
A relationship with the National Security Agency has netted
Marconi Communications the technology to produce a firewall that is
said to run at OC-12 speeds (622 Mbits/second) and to be undetectable to
potential intruders.
********************
Report: word 'British' is racist
<http://itn.co.uk/news/20001011/britain/11racism.shtml>
A new report which claims that the term "British" has racial connotations has
caused a storm of controversy in political circles. The report, which demands
Britain should rename itself as a multi-cultural society, has been branded
"totally offensive".
********************
FBI: Expand access to fingerprints
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39382,00.html>
The FBI has found a new use for federal fingerprint files; it wants
to give social workers full access for screening adults who deal
with children.
********************
Anthrax shots cause military exodus
<http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46534-2000Oct10.html>
Concerns over the side effects of a controversial anthrax vaccine
mandated by the Department of Defense has triggered a flood of
pilots resigning from the Air National Guard and Air Force
Reserve.
********************
======================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
-Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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-J. Krishnamurti
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