SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
by
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School

I remember a time years ago when I was as convinced that Dick Cheney was obscenely wrong about something I am now. Subsequent events raised the possibility that he might not have been so wrong after all.

With this in mind, I've given some thought lately to how all this
might look to the Vice President (who is, I remain convinced, as much the real architect of American policy as he was while Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff or George the First's Secretary of Defense).

Sympathy for the Devil by John Perry Barlow

] LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Pioneer 10, the first
] spacecraft to venture out of the solar system, has fallen
] silent after traveling billions of miles from Earth on a
] mission that has lasted nearly 31 years, NASA said
] Tuesday.
]
] What was apparently the spacecraft's last signal was
] received January 22 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's
] Deep Space Network. At the time, Pioneer 10 was 7.6
] billion miles from Earth; the signal, traveling at the
] speed of light, took 11 hours and 20 minutes to arrive.

CNN.com - Pioneer 10 falls silent after nearly 31 years - Feb. 25, 2003

This looks fantastic. Christopher Guest is a genius.

A MIGHTY WIND

] LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico -- There are no armed guards to
] knock out. No sensors to deactivate. No surveillance
] cameras to cripple. To sneak into Los Alamos National
] Laboratory, the world's most important nuclear research
] facility, all you do is step over a few strands of
] rusted, calf-high barbed wire.

Very scary.

Wired News: Nuke Lab Can't Keep Snoops Out

] Witness to centuries of bloodshed, the ancient walls of
] Jerusalem's Old City saw only white Tuesday as
] Palestinians and Israelis traded snowballs instead of
] stones and bullets.

Yahoo! News - Snowballs Replace Bullets as Snow Hits Holy Land

For "Net-genners," Microsoft learned that using the Internet for socializing is a way of life.

Microsoft aims to tap 'Net generation' | CNET News.com

] NEW YORK (AP) -- Two police officers suffered minor
] injuries and three people were arrested Monday when an
] MTV contest in Times Square got out of hand.
]
] People began shoving and pushing as a crowd of several
] thousand gathered in the morning outside MTV's studios at
] the corner of 44th Street and Broadway, police said. The
] crowd had gathered for an "American Idol"-style
] competition to find new rap stars, with the winner
] receiving a Def Jam recording contract.

CNN.com - Minor melee outside MTV - Feb. 24, 2003

] Thousands of Nike basketball shoes are drifting through
] the Pacific Ocean toward Alaska after spilling from a
] container ship off Northern California.

How sad!!! All that child labor, gone to waste. Now Nike's going to have to implement pay cuts in their factories to make up the loss.

Soggy shoes head for Alaska

] The US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a
] nuclear-powered version of an unmanned aircraft. The USAF
] hopes that such a vehicle will be able to "loiter" in the
] air for months without refuelling, striking at will when
] a target comes into its sights.
]
]
] With a nuclear drive a Global Hawk could fly for months
] without landing (Image: GETTY NEWSERVICE)]
] But the idea is bound to raise serious concerns about the
] wisdom of flying radioactive material in a combat
] aircraft. If shot down, for instance, would an
] anti-aircraft gunner in effect be detonating a dirty bomb

New Scientist

quoted:
===
The 1988 birth of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization is carefully chronicled in a cache of remarkable documents seized last year during a raid on the Bosnian offices of an Illinois-based charity that covertly raised funds for the terrorist group. A description of the seized material is contained in a 106-page proffer unsealed this month by federal prosecutors in Chicago. The government filing was prepared in connection with the criminal case brought against Enaam Arnaout, the 41-year-old Syrian who headed Benevolence International Foundation, the alleged charitable front group (Arnaout pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge on February 10). Included in the seized material, the proffer discloses, were minutes from a three-day meeting in August 1988--held at bin Laden's home--during which al-Qaeda was hatched. The minutes note that future group members were required to be "listening and obedient" and had to possess "good manners." An excerpt from the government proffer follows. (4 pages)

The Smoking Gun: Al Qeada