] "Since 1997, 352 journalists have been killed at the rate
] of nearly five per month, many of them in the most
] appalling of circumstances."
 . . .
] Between January 1, 1997 and April 19, 2003, 43
] journalists were killed in Africa, 109 in the Americas,
] 76 in Asia, 85 in Europe and 39 in the Middle East and
] North Africa, the IPI said.

Which doesn't mean that it's open season on journalists, since a lot of them do routinely put themselves in harm's way, so a lot of other people were dying around them when many of those journalists were caught in the crossfire.

I found these numbers interesting though, as I continue surfing and looking for more information on the deaths of the journalists in Baghdad a few weeks ago. It's a story that I don't want to let fade, and I do want to find out the truth of just what happened that day.

Statistics on Journalist deaths

Detroit Free Press database of coalition war casualties, including POWs. You can search by name, home state (or country, since the British casualties are included as well), branch of service, or cause/location of death, and get a picture and paragraph bio of each individual lost.

War Casualties

] The new anti-spam statute (SB 1139/HB 2290) now gives
] law enforcement the ability to bring felony-level
] prosecutions against spammers who use AOL's
] Virginia-based email servers to send spam to AOL members
] in violation of Virginia's Computer Crimes Act. Other
] companies whose email servers are located or based in
] Virginia - such as Verizon, RoadRunner, and UUnet - will
] be able to benefit from the tough anti-spam provisions of
] the new law and also refer cases for criminal
] prosecution.

AOL's lawyers prove themselves useful every so often.

Virginia Law Makes Spamming a Felony

For those who use AOL Instant Messenger a great deal, this is an interesting utility. Aside from getting rid of the annoying ads on the normal AIM client, this one has some other nice features such as auto-logging, plus you can logon multiple ScreenNames at one time. And for people who routinely have multiple IM windows open simultaneously, you can use this to set up "tabbed" windows to keep different conversations more organized.

It still has the problem of being AIM-only, so for those people who use multiple services such as Yahoo and MSN, Trillian is probably still going to be a better choice. But just in terms of AIM clients, this one looks like it's one of the best around.

DeadAIM Instant Message Client

] An American citizen detained for more than a month as a
] material witness in a terrorism case in Oregon was
] charged today with plotting to fight against American
] soldiers in Afghanistan.
]
] The American, Maher Hawash, a 38-year-old software
] designer in Portland, was accused of conspiring with a
] group of six others who had already been charged with
] trying to provide material support to Al Qaeda and the
] Taliban.

I'm glad he's no longer in "material witness" limbo!

Having read the 41-page affidavit (http://www.freemikehawash.org/hawashaff.pdf) that was issued by the FBI on Monday (4/28/2003), the "material witness" charge does make more sense now. The case against him isn't completely solid, but there's definitely enough information to plant more than a reasonable doubt in my own mind as to what he was doing. Aside from his association with this "Portland 6" group (traveling with them on their way to fight in Afghanistan, and being occasionally mentioned in their conversations and correspondence), the main points that stick out to me are:

- The "Portland 6" group does indeed have a ton of solid evidence against it including being caught with guns, making anti-American statements, having lots of Islamic fundamentalist texts, and there are plenty of documented sources who said they heard members of the group talking about how they wanted to fight or kill Americans.

- The Portland 6 were trying to get into Afghanistan to fight against the U.S., and had heard that there was a way in to Afghanistan via Bangladesh. There's lots of documentation in the affidavit that they traveled from the U.S. to Hong Kong to China, but then couldn't all get travel permits to enter Bangladesh, and eventually most of them gave up and came back to the U.S.

- Hawash followed the same travel route from the U.S. to Hong Kong to China, staying in the same hotels as the Portland 6 (sometimes the same room).

- Hawash, who had been laid off from his job as a software engineer at Intel in August 2001, told his wife that he was traveling to China to look for software business. Then while in China, he called and told her he was looking into the possibility of importing light bulbs to Jordan from China.

- Hawash told his mother-in-law that he went to China to establish an import/export business making handheld microphones.

- There were no records of any types of business transactions in China. No phone calls, no Emails, no contacts with business authorities in China (that the FBI could find).

- One of the leaders of the "Portland Six" group, Battle, described Hawash pretty clearly as being a member of the group: A Palestinian man, married to an American, traveling with the "third wave" of fighters from their home location in Oregon. The dates, itinerary, and description all match up.

One key factor in all this, in my opinion, would be Hawash's level of cooperation with the FBI. Since the FBI had documented proof of Hawash's travels and associations, and especially because Hawash had been literally staying in the same hotel room with someone who was on their way to fight in Afghanistan, did Hawash cooperate when the FBI asked him questions about the trip? Or did he try to deny that he was there, and deny that he talked to any of the "Portland 6" individuals? What it's sounding like, is that he tried to play innocent, and got caught in a lie, which is why he was finally picked up on the material witness charge. But that's just a guess on my part.

Anyway, I look forward to learning more about the case!

Hawash Charged With Plotting to Fight U.S. in Afghanistan

Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs and Steel" (and he's also coincidentally my cousin), Jared has an essay here on the failures of group decision making:

] . . . a sequence of four somewhat fuzzily
] delineated categories. First of all, a group may fail to
] anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives.
] Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to
] perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the
] problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem.
] Finally, they may try to solve it but may fail in their
] attempts to do so. While all this talking about reasons
] for failure and collapses of society may seem
] pessimistic, the flip side is optimistic: namely,
] successful decision-making. Perhaps if we understand the
] reasons why groups make bad decisions, we can use that
] knowledge as a check list to help groups make good
] decisions.

This essay also made Slashdot today. That discussion is here:
 http://science.slashdot.org/science/03/04/28/1415211.shtml?tid=134

Jared Diamond: Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?

] There are an estimated 105.5 million television
] households in the USA. A single ratings point represents
] 1%, or 1,055,000 households for the 2001-02 season

Weekly listing of the top 20 TV shows, by title, network, timeshot, and rating share. For this particular week, that meant a range of ratings from 7.9 to 12.4, or between roughly 8.5 and 13 million viewing households per show.

Nielsen TV Ratings

] Nielsen//NetRatings, the global standard in Internet
] audience measurement and analysis, reports that the
] active Internet population at work grew 17 percent in
] August as compared to a year ago. Nearly 46 million
] American office workers logged onto the Web, the highest
] peak since Nielsen//NetRatings began measuring the
] at-work audience in January 2000.

This is the website for the Nielsen Net Ratings. Several times a month, they post statistics on different aspects of internet usage.

Nielsen//NetRatings

This is a great collection of spoofed pictures and quotes from "Baghdad Bob." My favorites are the Matrix movie poster, and the picture of Sahaf having been hired by Toronto as their "No SARS" spokesman: "Toronto has no SARS virus, none at all, we did have one or two mild cases of hay fever, but they have been completely overcome..." Heh.

New Careers for the Iraqi (Mis)Information Minister

] Leading technology, consumer electronics and
] entertainment companies -- including Amazon.com,
] Microsoft and Walt Disney -- have joined together to
] lobby the Federal Communications Commission to adopt
] rules preserving the free-flowing nature of the Internet.
]
] The group, known as the Coalition of Broadband Users and
] Innovators, is raising fears that the FCC could
] fundamentally alter the Internet by adopting rules that
] could allow providers of broadband services to favor
] certain services and Internet sites.

I've been looking for any website by the "Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators," but have yet to find one. If it's out there, could someone meme it?

More information about the FCC ruling here:
 http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/broadband/legaltimes121602.html

CNET: Amazon, Microsoft, and Disney call for open high-speed Net