August 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Declan McCullagh on politics and DMCA
by Nomen Nescio 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

Congratulations to Declan McCullagh for two recent articles which challenge the conventional wisdom of the cyber rights crowd. Last week it was http://news.com.com/2010-1071-949275.html?tag=politech, arguing the futility of political participation in a world where government is dominated by powerful economic interests. Instead he quotes cypherpunks Adam Back and Lance Cottrell to the effect that a better approach is to change the terms of the debate by writing code that creates technology. (Bizarrely, he refers to "the motto of the Cypherpunks" while managing to actually avoid saying "cypherpunks write code". Maybe we can blame the editor for that omission.) Now at http://news.com.com/2010-12-950229.html?tag=fd_lede, Declan steps into the viper's nest by coming out against DMCA sensationalism on the part of the EFF. He refers to "overly aggressive advocacy" by the EFF, and provides quotes describing their efforts as "fear-mongering". He quotes Orin Kerr, law professor at GWU: "Opponents of the DMCA want to dramatize its effects, so they want people to believe that the law is incredibly broad," Kerr says. "If the public believes that the DMCA is stopping Professor Felten and other researchers from conducting legitimate research, then that is a major victory for opponents of the law." All this is anathema to the slashdot crowd, of course. The last thing they want to hear is that DMCA isn't as bad as they've been told. Again, kudos to Declan for taking a stance which is sure to be unpopular and controversial among his supporters. I may have to take back all the nasty things I have said about him over the years. Now let's see what he has to say about Palladium...

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[WLG] Hostile Threats, Wilfred Lee Guerin
by Wilfred L. Guerin 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

Too all recipients: I have been threatened in a hostile manner on numerous occasions over the past recent time period by numerous family members, whos associations are extensive and include various undesirable parties both in New Orleans and throughout the region. There are currently family members

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PGP Corp. Purchases PGP Desktop Encryption and Wireless Product Lines from NET
by R. A. Hettinga 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

--- begin forwarded text

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He's Baaaack!
by R. A. Hettinga 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

Yee-freakin'-hah! Wherein Dr. C., freed from clutches of the WAVEoids, resumes the fight for Truth, Justice, and the PGP Way... Outstanding. Congratulations, Jon. Go get 'em. Cheers, RAH ------ http://www.pgp.com/cto.php CONTACT US | CAREERS PGP Corporation Products Purchase Partners Support International About Us PRODUCTS Letter from CEO Letter from CTO Customer Transition Information Perpetual License Announcing PGP 8 Schedule of PGP Events "The report of my death has been greatly exaggerated." -- Mark Twain It is with great pleasure that I get to write this letter. As you can see from our Media Release and announcement of PGP 8.0, PGP is alive and very well, with substantive plans for the future. There is a FAQ elsewhere on the web site that describes many of the nuts and bolts details about the new PGP Corporation. As the CTO, I know that we have a large, technically savvy user base that cares deeply about our products. This letter is for you. As in Phil's CEO letter, you will see we are focusing on three themes - continuity, relationship, and innovation. First of all continuity - you will be glad to hear that we will publish source code. This is very important to us. It's very important to our investors, too. They understand that one of the main reasons people trust PGP is that its source is available. Our forthcoming source release will be for PGP 8. We also believe in the OpenPGP protocols and standards. We actively support the IETF as well as other organizations that help spread the use of the technology. There will also be a freeware release of PGP 8. As always, you'll be able to use PGP free for non-commercial use. However, if you use PGP for commercial purposes -- which means that you're using it for something that makes you money -- then please buy it. Second, about relationship. Much of the passion in the worldwide crypto community comes from strongly held beliefs that quality crypto such as PGP is necessary and important. For our joint relationship to work, we need a fair exchange of value so that we can continue building products with the quality you've come to expect from PGP. If you think what we are doing -- and how we are doing it -- is important, and you're using our technology for your profit, please pay for it. This is especially important to us because we publish our source code. We have been told that publishing source code and freeware leads to unpaid software licenses. Help us prove the cynics wrong. Third, about innovation. We have a lot of ideas about how we can make PGP better, and we hope you'll find them as exciting as we do. These new technologies will start showing up in less than a year, focused on improving PGP's ease of use. I look forward to discussing these with you and getting your input. Thank you for being interested enough in PGP's ongoing success to read this far. I hope you're looking forward to PGP's future as much as we are. Jon Callas CTO PGP Corporation Copyright ) 2002 PGP Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Moral Cowardice in OZ.
by Matthew X 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

AUSTRALIA'S MORAL COWARDICE The Australian government wants to attack Iraq preemptively because the Iraqis wont allow the UN to inspect their weapons facilities. Meanwhile, the government opposes the UN protocol on torture because it doesnt want the UN to inspect its prison facilities. Neither position has much to do with Australian self-interests. It is doubtful that there is torture being carried out in Australian prisons, and it is impossible to see what threat Saddam, the countries biggest buyer of its wheat, poses to Australian society. These are just examples of a foreign policy increasingly dictated by foreign directives. The cancellation of Iraqi wheat sales and the US ambassadors chilling warning that Australia is now, like America, a likely terrorist target and the famously relaxed Australian people need to stop being so relaxed are examples of the high price that is now being paid for such policies. All the time, the Howard government has characterized its position as standing with the world against terror. When opposition leader Simon Crean questioned foreign minister Alexander Downers bellicose rhetoric on Iraq, the government accused him of taking the Iraqi side. You are either with America, or you are against Australia is the message. The Howard governments dichotomous view of the world is based on one of the most enduring myths of the last fifty years: the idea that America enjoys a position of leadership over some vacuous free world to which Australia proudly belongs. If America is the leader of the free world, then it is increasingly unclear who its followers are. In recent months, the Americans have unilaterally acted against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, Biological Weapons and Toxic Weapons Convention and tried to sabotage the establishment of the International Court. Their actions have drawn condemnation and scorn from the free world. The fallacy of American leadership is best demonstrated in the United Nations. Whenever it has benefited American interest, regardless how questionable, America has aggressively opposed the very same free world it claims to be leading. America is, after all, the only country having the dubious distinction of refusing to vote to ratify the Rights of the Child in December 1987. In the same month, America stood with Israel in voting against 153 other UN-members in opposing any effort to define terrorism and to convene a conference to study its causes and seek solutions. Even the right of nations to develop is something that America took exception to. In 1986, she voted against 146 other countries in opposing such a right. A few years later, US ambassador Morris Abram termed such an idea, little more than an empty vessel into which vague hopes and inchoate expectations can be poured and no less than a dangerous incitement. The fact that this declaration was a subset of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was deemed irrelevant. On December 13, 1985, America again voted alone against 134 countries in opposing the declaration of the indivisibility and interdependence of economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights. Whilst the free world was opposing apartheid in South Africa, America was voting alone against UN efforts to sanction the South African government. Between 1978 and 1987 there were over 10 such instances. In November, 1981, America voted alone against what most of the world considers to be the definition of democracy; America opposed 126 other states in rejecting the right of every society to choose its own economic and social system in accord with the will of its people. In 1979, the United States and Israel voted together to oppose the UN convening a conference on the rights of women. After losing the vote, they would opt for a second-best solution and later vote against the inclusion of Palestinian women at the conference. In 1982 and 1983, the US was alone in voting against a declaration that education, work, health care, proper nourishment and national development are human rights. Thirteen years later in 1996, the US would affirm the same opposition at the UN sponsored World Food Summit. The reason given for the opposition was that recognition of a right to food would enable poor nations to sue the United States for special trade deals. By allying itself so blindly with America on everything from an attack on Iraq through to the abandonment of Australian citizens held without trial in Guantanamo Bay, Australia is ignoring this history. It is also ignoring the current reality of a world that is increasingly opposed to US unilateralism and belligerence. America's history demonstrates the fallacy of the notion that American economic and military might necessitate moral ascendancy. As the American actor Will Rogers noted, "If we ever pass out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone, "America died of the delusion she had moral leadership". It is morally perfidious that a country would refuse to make any distinction between American interests and its own because they want a special relationship with the Americans. A nations pride is intrinsically linked to its independence and its sincerity to its own interests and values. Each time Australia acquiesces to American self-interest in deference to its own, it kills something of itself. Australia is becoming, as Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, the coward who dies a thousand deaths before his death. As the government frog-marches the Australian nation towards becoming a vassal state to the American empire, those that question the transformation will continue to be vilified as somehow unpatriotic or disloyal to the national interest. For a lesson in true patriotism, Australians should look to Andrew Fletcher of Salloun, the 18th century Scottish patriot. He said, "Show me a true patriot, and I will show you a lover not merely of his own country, but of all mankind. Show me a spurious patriot, a bombastic fire-eater, and I will show you a rascal. Show me a man who loves other countries equally with his own, and I will show you a man entirely deficient in a sense of proportion. But show me a man who respects the rights of all nations, while ready to defend the rights of his own against them all, and I will show you a man who is both a nationalist and an internationalist". ---- Amir Butler is executive director of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC) Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee PO Box 180 Pascoe Vale South VIC 3044 email: info(a)muslimaffairs.com.au web: www.muslimaffairs.com.au

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Cracking the hackers' code
by Matthew X 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/20/1029114072039.html By Suelette Dreyfus August 20 2002 Next If your organisation suffered a computer crime in the past few years and reported it to AusCERT, it was probably an attack from outside your walls. Nearly 90 per cent of Australian organisations that reported an incident were attacked externally, according to the 2002 Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey. This is the first time the threat of being attacked from outside surpassed the likelihood of an assault from inside. It might be increasingly difficult to keep out external hackers but there are signs IT managers are finding it easier to win support within companies for improving security. Management consulting firm McKinsey & Co recently studied security best practices at Fortune 500 companies. About 30 of these companies, including AOL Time Warner, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft and Visa International, had appointed a chief security officer or other senior executive to oversee information security. In some cases, this executive had the power to stop the launch of new products or systems, and answered only to the chief executive. The recent AusCERT study stated that 70 per cent of Australian organisations surveyed had increased spending on information security in the past year. All of this is good news for IT managers. Most attempted attacks come via script kiddies, according to Neal Wise, senior security consultant for eSec, a Melbourne-based security technology company. Keeping software up to date should provide a good first-line defence but he also recommends putting pressure on vendors to release security patches in a timely fashion. "You can vote with your wallet," he says. Yet Grant Bayley, organiser of Sydney's 2600 group, a gathering of security enthusiasts, says that while the number of hackers has increased, the percentage of highly skilled hackers has stayed the same, suggesting their total numbers are up as well. "These are the people who are really good at writing exploits - original and very obscure exploits. And people don't write exploits just to have them sit there and look pretty." More sophisticated hackers may be more difficult to defend against, in part because their motivations may be complex. A small subset of these hackers obsess about a problem day after day, ignoring the rest of their lives. If you are running a network or a system, understanding what drives people to break in will help you to defend your organisation. Meeting "Higgs", formerly one of the most skilled illegal hackers of the Australian computer underground, can be a high-stress experience; Higgs fidgets with other people's things until they break. He doesn't mean to break them, he just pulls and prods at them incessantly while he bounces his knee up and down and talks. When the item cracks or snaps, he looks utterly surprised, as though he had no idea the item was in his hand. He sheepishly slips the broken pieces into his pocket, adding to his sins by running off with the evidence. He sometimes has one-way conversations with people, meaning he talks and they try to get a word in edgewise. He is always right, and he is only interested in "the truth", no matter how bare and brutal. This inflexible, seemingly arrogant attitude frequently gets him into trouble, in part because he is usually right. Or because when he's wrong, he's so wildly off the mark, it's funny. He's also anti-social, partly due to shyness, but also because most people bore him. He says they don't feed him information fast enough. "I can't do that chit-chat stuff," he says. Like a number of other technically elite hackers, Higgs shows characteristics similar to those shown by people with Asperger syndrome. This neurobiological disorder, which may resemble mild autism, has often been misdiagnosed in the past. The condition only made it into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1994. Like elite-end hackers, many "aspies" are exceptionally skilled in a specialised area. A 2001 University of Cambridge study into the syndrome showed a higher incidence of AS/High-Functioning Autism, which seem to be related, among scientists and mathematicians. Tests of 840 students showed "that mathematicians scored higher than engineers, physical and computer sciences, who scored higher than medicine and biology". The condition is also more common among males and may have a genetic component. There does not appear to be any in-depth research linking illegal hacking and Asperger syndrome. However, one of the world's leading AS experts, Australian clinical psychologist Tony Attwood, believes some hackers may share characteristics with "Aspies", as they refer to themselves. "The link between AS and computers is well known. Computers were designed by - and for - people with AS," Attwood, based in Queensland, says. "Those with AS seem to know the language of computers better than social or conventional languages. It is quite plausible that people with AS may pursue an interest in cracking." Historically, AS has been linked to at least one area that has become a key part of computer security: cryptography. "The team that cracked the Enigma code appeared to include several individuals who showed characteristics of Asperger's," Attwood says. This included the father of modern computing, Alan Turing. "It's the sheer challenge rather than any (criminal intent). It's the pursuit of knowledge and truth - with different priorities and perceptions ¤ They see it as an intellectual challenge and a prize, (and) they look at the success of what they have done rather than the consequences of the lives of people they have affected." Aspies typically have an almost obsessional approach to solving problems and are often oblivious to their peers' view that a given problem is "unsolvable". Both are often prerequisites to becoming an elite-end hacker. What effect might hacking have on an Aspie? "Hacking is giving them an intellectual orgasm. And they are addicted to the intellectual orgasm," Attwood says. This doesn't mean all illegal hackers have AS, or that these hackers should escape criminal conviction. However, the linking of AS and hacking could have an impact on conviction or sentencing in future. Previously, what experts termed an extreme addiction to hacking played a key role in a landmark British hacking case. Based on the descriptions of the hacker's behaviour, the apparent addiction could well have been a manifestation of AS. In a jury trial, the legal defence team of the British hacker "Wandii" showed the hacker was obsessed with computers and the intellectual challenge of beating them. The jury acquitted him of criminal charges in just 90 minutes, apparently because it decided he lacked mens rea, or awareness of criminal wrongdoing. "You would not use AS to say a person is of unsound mind, because such people are very logical (if) eccentric," Attwood says. "But (a diagnosis) could alter sentencing in two ways. First, in (assessing) the degree of criminal intent. And, second, in deterrence. They may need treatment for a compulsion, which may be irresistible, rather than a prison sentence or a psychiatric institution." In the US, convicted hackers have been banned from using computers for long periods as part of their sentences. Attwood says this approach is likely to be inappropriate for Aspies. Denying them use of computers is very different than for most people. "What we might look at instead is controlled access in a constructive way for convicted offenders," he says. "Res" is a skilled Australian Black Hat hacker. Extremely private, street smart, he holds back, watching you, taking your measure. He slips in a little cynical humour now and again, showing he's cool but not cold. But he's a contrast to the stereotypical Hollywood geek hacker because he has a life. "I haven't spent a Friday or Saturday night at home since I was 17," Res says. While not showing any visible signs of AS, he's clearly capable of obsessional behaviour. "I am obsessive: I collect things. I like having everything, I never delete anything. I am a radical person. I'm all or nothing." He says he doesn't read books but that's not quite true. He buys technical textbooks. Other than specialist mailing lists and the newspaper, the only other thing he reads is the Slashdot website. The Cambridge study suggests a "continuum" of disability, "with AS as the bridge between autism and normality". Res may represent a point on the spectrum between AS and obsessive - a place other top hackers might also occupy. Hacker group 2600's Grant Bayley estimates that, based on his experience, "You probably wouldn't find more than two AS symptoms in any one hacker but you would find more symptoms in 50 to 70 per cent of hackers in the mid to upper-skill level." Higgs recognises he has some AS traits and he believes having AS could definitely contribute to hackers rising in the ranks of the elite underground. "It is not that AS gets you to the top of the pile but it can help. Because there are some things that are broken, you are forced to use other parts of the brain instead. The ability to blinker everything else and not get distracted helps." He views the AS-affected hacker mind as being like the Internet: "That hacker's mind sees group dynamics as damage and routes around it." However, after interacting with a number of top hackers around the globe over several years, he argues there are other contributing factors. "For these people to get where they have, Asperger's isn't enough. They have something else. Clearly (convicted American hacker Kevin) Mitnick's talent doesn't just come from AS; there is something else there. Like his social engineering talent - you just wouldn't associate that with AS," he says. "The 'f***-you' attitude is also a requirement. Every one (of the top hackers) has had the 'f***-you' ingredient ¤ You cannot defy authority and break the law thousands of times a year without the 'f***-you' ingredient." Suelette Dreyfus is the author of Underground and an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne's department of information systems. How to deter the obsessive attacker What is the best way to defend your network against illegal hackers who show Asperger syndrome-like characteristics? A former highly skilled and obsessive hacker, "Higgs" suggests breaking the patterns of usual defensive behaviour. Trip wires in packaged software might be anticipated by a pattern-based hacker. "Set up trip wires that are unique," he says. Also, use your logs in different ways for tell-tale signs of a hacker's trespass. "Backdoor the 'ls' command (in UNIX), which gives you a list of files. Record its arguments and when it is used. A (pattern-based) hacker might not think to look for logs of that. "Backdoor the SSH (secure shell) client to record who is using it and when. Keep secret log files in unusual locations."

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Selling Privacy for ETC
by Duncan Frissell 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

A Faraday Cage for your EZPass: EZShield.com EZPass is an Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system used in the Northeast. A small white box is attached to your windshield and is queried by radios in passing toll booths. Your account is debited for the toll. Your account lists all the booths passed and when so it can be very useful for law enforcement and civil attorneys (including domestic relations lawyers). EZPass has already been featured on an episode of Law and Order. In addition since the system is protected by weak or no encryption, attackers with radios could extract some information by querying your EZPass. Perhaps duplicating it to steal tolls from you. The EZShield is a little box with a drawer to hold your EZPass. According to the photo, it doesn't increase the EZPass form factor by much. What you are supposed to do in open the drawer to expose your EZPass only when you want to use it and keep it enclosed when you don't. The interesting thing is that EZShield's sellers believe that there is enough interest in a technological privacy fix that they are willing to advertise it on mass media. I heard it just before the Rush Limbaugh show on WABC in NYC. -- Posted by Duncan Frissell to The Technoptimist at 8/19/2002 1:52:02 PM Powered by Blogger Pro

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Ambassador to OZ,a sleazebag,sack of shit,shyster lawyer.
by Matthew X 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol17/issue19/pols.bush.html Governor Deadbeat by Robert Bryce illustration by Doug Potter Gov. George W. Bush and the other owners of the Texas Rangers are deadbeats. Rich deadbeats, but deadbeats nevertheless. Last week, Bush and his partners hit what can only be described as a towering home run by selling the Texas Rangers to Thomas Hicks for $250 million. Bush, in particular, made a killing. For his 1.8% share of the club, which initially cost him $605,000, Hicks will pay the governor between $10 million and $14 million. That is a return of up to 23 times Bush's original investment in less than nine years. (His contract included an accelerated equity clause.) But even though Bush and his cohorts are raking in the dough, making nearly three times what they paid for the club in 1989, they still haven't paid the $7.5 million they owe the city of Arlington. The Rangers owners owe the money because of a court judgment against the Arlington Sports Facilities Development Authority (ASFDA), the entity set up by the city to condemn land for, and administer, the Ballpark at Arlington project. In May of 1996, a Tarrant County jury found that the ASFDA had not paid a fair price for 13 acres of land it condemned; the court subsequently awarded the owners of the land, the Mathes family, more than six times what the city had agreed to pay for the land. That $5 million award then sat in escrow with interest accruing at a rate of about $1,800 a day. A year after the jury's decision, the city finally decided not to appeal the verdict and paid the judgment. That's where the Rangers' obligation comes in. When the Rangers and the city signed their deal in 1990, the Rangers agreed to pay any costs on the Ballpark at Arlington project that exceeded $135 million. The city of Arlington's position has been and continues to be, that the $7.5 million judgment should come from Bush and the Rangers. Two days after Hicks' purchase of the Rangers was announced, Arlington city attorney Jay Doegey told the Chronicle, "We have a contract with them that says they will pay anything over $135 million. The costs in the condemnation case are over that amount." But Doegey has not sent a letter to the Rangers demanding payment, and it appears that Arlington city officials are reluctant to irritate the Rangers' ownership. Tom Schieffer, the president and general partner of the Rangers, says of the $7.5 million, "It's not our debt. That's the position we have taken. And that's consistent with what the master agreement says." But now that he and Bush are cashing in their chips with the Rangers, wouldn't it be a nice gesture to make good on the debt? "I'm sure we will work out something," said Schieffer. While Arlington waits for its money, Bush is laughing all the way to the bank. Asked about the Hicks buyout, the governor told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last week, "I think when it is all said and done, I will have made more money than I ever dreamed I would make." He's making millions because the Ballpark at Arlington is a gigantic cash machine. Last year, Financial World magazine named the Ballpark as the most profitable venue in baseball. Hicks didn't buy the Rangers because he wants Juan Gonzalez's autograph; he bought them because he can make a lot of money at the stadium that Bush takes credit for building. In 1993, while walking around the stadium, Bush told a reporter from the Houston Chronicle, "When all those people in Austin say, `He ain't never done anything,' well, this is it." But Bush would have never gotten the stadium deal off the ground had the city of Arlington not agreed to use its power of eminent domain to seize the property that belonged to the Mathes family. And evidence presented in the Mathes lawsuit suggests that the Rangers owners -- and remember that Bush was the managing general partner at the time -- were conspiring to use the city's condemnation powers to obtain the 13-acre tract a full six months before the ASFDA was even created. In an Oct. 26, 1990, memo to Schieffer from Mike Reilly, an Arlington real estate broker and part owner of the Rangers,Reilly says of the Mathes property "in this particular situation our first offer should be our final offer... If this fails, we will probably have to initiate condemnation proceedings after the bond election passes." That memo suggests a sharp contrast between Bush's personal profiteering and his public stance in defense of property rights. While running against Ann Richards, Bush said, "I understand full well the value of private property and its importance not only in our state but in capitalism in general, and I will do everything I can to defend the power of private property and private property rights when I am the governor of this state." Where was that concern when it came to the Mathes family's personal property? But let's forget about Bush's philosophical problems when it comes to property rights and the Ballpark deal. And let's set aside the notion that he may have earned exorbitant amounts of money on his investment. Instead, let's focus on the facts of the deal: Bush and his partners used the city's powers to condemn the land for the stadium. They relied on taxpayers to repay the bonds sold to build the ballpark, thereby getting what amounts to a direct $135 million subsidy. Now, after tripling the amount they paid for the Rangers, Bush et al are refusing to pay the city a measly $7.5 million. Talk about a debt to society. On the very first day of his campaign in 1993, Bush said that "the best way to allocate resources in our society is through the marketplace. Not through a governing elite." By selling the Rangers, Bush and his fellow sports moguls demonstrated the power of the market place. By refusing to pay their debt to Arlington, they are also proving that the governing elite live by a different set of rules than the rest of us.

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85 dead soldiers in copter crash.
by Matthew X 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

What do you call that? http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?artid=19633353 85 Russian soldiers die in Chechnya copter crash AP [ TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2002 8:04:44 AM ] MOSCOW: A Russian transport helicopter jammed with troops crashed in Chechnya on Monday, and Russian news agencies reported that as many as 85 servicemen were killed in the wreck near Moscow's front-line base for its battle with separatist rebels. Russian officials said they did not know whether the Mi-26 helicopter was shot down or how many people were killed. The helicopter went down near the Russian military headquarters at Khankala outside Chechnya's capital Grozny with 132 people aboard, said Col. Boris Podoprigora, deputy commander of Russian troops in Chechnya. Grim-faced, he said 32 were hospitalized and would survive, and that doctors were doing their best to treat others at the crash site, where other military officials said the wreck burned for at least an hour after the crash. The Interfax news agency later reported that 142 people were aboard the helicopter, citing an unidentified source at the headquarters. Podoprigora did not say how many people died. Sergei Fridinsky, a deputy prosecutor general, told the Interfax news agency there were dozens of dead and wounded, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in a written statement issued by the Defense Ministry, offered his condolences to relatives of the servicemen who were killed. He did not provide any numbers. Earlier, Interfax reported that about 80 servicemen were killed, citing a source at the military headquarters. ITAR-Tass, also citing a source there, put the death toll at 85. Fridinsky said investigators were examining two main possible causes of the crash _ that the helicopter was shot down by Chechen rebels or suffered a technical problem. A high-ranking source at the headquarters said authorities believed it was more likely a technical problem, but that nothing was being ruled out. Defense Ministry press office chief Nikolai Deryabin told ORT state television that the pilot had requested permission to make an emergency landing because an engine was on fire. Fridinsky said the helicopter fell onto a minefield. Podoprigora said he could not confirm that, but he said rescuers were working in difficult conditions at the site, which Russian TV networks said was cordoned off. Podoprigora said the Mi-26, described as the biggest helicopter in the world, is designed to carry 82 people. Officials did not say why so many servicemen were on the flight from a military base at Mozdok in neighboring Ingushetia. Authorities said all five crew members survived. President Vladimir Putin ordered a thorough and fair investigation into the crash, which ITAR-Tass said was the biggest in Russian army history, and said he wanted to be kept up to date. The crash came amid a spate of rebel actions against Russian forces in Chechnya, including attacks late last week in southwestern Chechnya that killed nine servicemen and five civilians. Some analysts surmised that rebels had intensified their actions to underline to the Russian government that it should enter peace negotiations. A Chechen rebel representative met last week in Geneva with a former head of Russia's Security Council, to discuss restarting talks that have been stalled since last year. Russia's government maintains that the war it launched in the breakaway Caucasus Mountain republic in fall 1999 is all but over, with just isolated groups of rebels holding out. However, Russian soldiers are killed almost every day in rebel attacks that sap the military's manpower and morale. In September 2001, two generals and 11 other Russian servicemen died when their helicopter was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile shortly after takeoff from Grozny. Another helicopter, an Mi-8 carrying two top Interior Ministry officials and 12 other people, crashed in Chechnya in January. The Kremlin said that crash was an accident, but an official with the Moscow-appointed civilian administration for Chechnya said investigators had found fragments of the helicopter that suggested it was also shot down with a missile. Helicopter crashes are fairly common in Russia, where the aging craft _ sometimes weighed down by passengers and cargo _ are often used to ferry soldiers or civilians to remote areas that are hard to reach by road, rail or plane. Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya following a devastating 1994-1996 war that left separatists in charge, but they returned in 1999 after Chechnya-based militants invaded a neighboring region and the Kremlin blamed rebels for apartment-building bombings killed 300 people in Moscow and other cities.

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The Taking of a reactor the Japanese embassy and Parliament.123.
by Matthew X 20 Aug '02

20 Aug '02

Trio climbs parliament flagpole 20aug02 THREE Greenpeace protesters have climbed the Parliament House flagpole to protest against government policy on climate change. The protesters had reached the halfway point of the flagpole using industrial and rock-climbing climbing equipment, with four support crew at the base of the pole, by 11am (AEST). "It's quite a slow process because as you can imagine they are having to be very careful and it's quite a difficult climb," Greenpeace spokesman Shane Rattenbury said. "So at this stage it might take them a bit longer to actually climb the flagpole." Security staff were nearby, talking to the support crew, but were unable to stop them, with the climbers in an inaccessible position. The protesters planned to unfurl a banner voicing concern about government climate change policy. "The reason Greenpeace is doing this today is to protest against the Howard government's failure on climate change," Mr Rattenbury said. "The rejection by the Howard Government of the Kyoto Protocol is a backward step for Australia; it's ignoring Australia's responsibilities to act on climate change. "Opinion polling has shown that 80 per cent of Australians support ratification of Kyoto." The protest comes just days ahead of the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa, where the Government will face world pressure to ratify the protocol to combat climate change.

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