Why the Pro-Life movement has thus far failed ...

Each year, on the 22nd of January, I see tiny crosses on lawns and fields. The crosses are placed there by pro-life advocates to mark the anniversary of the controversial Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that ushered in legalized abortion in the United States.

Those crosses are not the reason pro-life advocacy has thus far failed to achieve goals, but it indicates one of the significant reasons why the movement has failed.

The pro-life movement is viewed as a Christian movement. And the absence of any religious symbol other than a cross on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade confirms that perceptions are accurate.

I know Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Pagans and even atheists and agnostics who are pro-life to varying degrees but who have not joined with the Christians because they view pro-life as a movement to integrate Christianity more closely with government policy, to the perceived detriment of non-Christians.

Pro-life advocates have not sought consensus from the general populace. Moreover, fundamentalist Christians have taken the reins of the movement, preaching the only method of birth control acceptable to the movement is abstinence. And, the movement seeks only an end to abortion and appears to turn a blind social eye toward finding a solution to the causes that lead to the abortion decision, chief among them financial and societal, familial and nonsecular ostracism.

When the leaders of the Christian faith realize that life is more important than religion and seek to join with leaders of the other faiths and beliefs, when the leaders of the Christian faith acknowledge that abortion is an issue of humanity, the pro-life movement will begin to find acceptance and success among a greater majority of the populace and, eventually, the judiciary.

Censorship and how new journalism can fight it

The following is a copy of some commentary I've also written on the usenet regarding why the internet -- the 6th estate -- is so important to news gathering and how technology may finally help people destroy the weapons that start the most wars and hurt most:

Anyway, here's the deal as my commentary concerns the practice of journalism and why I posted it within these newsgroups. For reference, because the subject of this online conversation is contained within it, I'll give my news blog another plug:

http://www.NEWS4A2.com/

The commentary in question is:

"Not that there's anything wrong with that ..."

Heretofore, convention and technology has dictated that the story of the NFL censoring names that can be embroidered on NFL licensed jerseys would only be taken within the bounds of accepted decency as the publisher saw fit.

The article in the Times-Picayune was just begging to be stretched further, especially with examples of how impossible it is to censor things. Once you do it, you open up a whole new can of worms.

My commentary continues where the Times-Picayune left off. I have no advertisers to offend and my living does not depend on who I offend or don't offend. The internet gives me the ultimate freedom of self-expression to say: "The emperor has no clothes."

Here's another few examples from that web site. The NFL shopping site won't let you order a jersey embroidered with the words "nigger" or "spic" or "gook" but it will let you order jerseys embroidered with the words "kike," "muzzie," "cracker," "redneck," "polak," "wop," "limey," "slope," "spade," "rag head" and "frog." Are we to take it that "kike" is okay and "nigger" is not? Of course not. But you see one of the points I'm trying to make.

Words hurt only if society deems they are hurtful, and the NFL -- through censorship -- is reinforcing that. Words can be weapons to hurt the innocent only if they are viewed as weapons, treated as weapons, allowed to exist as weapons. Ban one weapon, another is developed to take its place -- "muzzie" as I understand it is what the English/Aussie/Kiwi slang for Muslim. I've never seen it before or heard it, but I can find (it) now all over the usenet and the Yahoo comment boards.

I'm white. If a black or hispanic person called me a "cracker" or "redneck" it doesn't bother me -- rolls right off. It's not a cutdown to me. When I was in high school, I wasn't the 6'4" giant I am now. I was a spindly nerd a foot shorter who would most often turn the other cheek as the bible says. And I didn't have the worldly experience and maturity of long view that I have now. The bullies (male and female) used to harass me terribly by calling me "fag," "queer" and worse. I wasn't and it hurt. The words were the weapons of stupid people who felt they could build themselves up by demeaning me. It was a Catholic high school and the students were never punished or reprimanded or even instructed for their meanness.

Have you ever seen a little kid who has repeated a word he's heard an adult say? The parents are embarassed. The kid doesn't know what the word means but he gets a reaction and that emotional reaction reinforces that words can be weapons. He wants attention from his parents. He wants that reinforcement. So he says it again and again and again. Until you swat him, and then he learns that words can be hurtful and have consequences. So he'll use the word among his friends who won't hurt him and he'll use the word to hurt his friends and others.

It's that old saying your parents told you: Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you. Unless you let them.

The U.S. was finally starting to go down that path of acceptance until the political correctness of the Clinton era came. It was another vestige of a cheap southern governor corrupting this country as much as he corrupted his own state. Then everyone became a hyphenated American and words once again gained strength as weapons against the innocent, weak and society's vulnerable.

Want to get called a dirty name? Make up a name that sounds "naughty," tell your enemy it hurts you, and you'll never hear the end of it.

[True story: My late mother was old school Catholic and didn't want to curse but she did want to have something to say to express her consternation. She was the director of nursing at small community hospital and had her run-ins with physicians. I taught her the word "Fung-gwaar," and she'd get mad at work and say it and get all kind of looks. But she'd get the immediate attention she sought. It sounds horribly "naughty" but all it is is the romanized pronunciation of the Mandarin dialect word for "restaurant."]

---

All truth passes through three stages:

First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

---

The post has been quoted and linked by Double-Toungued Word Wrester blog. Thank you! Just wait until the NFL finds your list Mr. Barrett. They think they've got an open can of worms now? The isht will fit the chan!

And if you think that's funny ...

Look, I've told you before, you've got to get an e-mail subscription to The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal "Best of the Web Today," edited by James Taranto with Carol Muller. They suffer for their art! This is the last time I'm telling you!!! Well, probably not, but read today's issue anyway if you want keen insight and a lot of good chuckles, including the best journalistic retraction/correction I've ever read:

Hmr Nds
Kyrgyzstan is not consonant-deprived, as we said in an item yesterday (since corrected). The word we should have used, of course, is disemvoweled.

Aw, it's gold, Jerry. Gold!!

[Note to elderly relatives: Don't worry. No naughty words in any of the other stuff ... but they do write in that issue about hermaphroditic transgendered amphibian-Americans.]

Not that there's anything wrong with that ...

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans reports that NFL.com won't let anyone order a particular football jersey -- a New England Patriots jersey with the last name of cornerback Randall Gay embroidered on it.

The report says an LSU professor attempted to order the jersey but the sale was denied when she typed in "Gay" as the name to be embroidered. The reason for the web site's computerized rejection? "This field should not contain a naughty word" the web site warns.

According to the article by The T-P (what an appropriate name for a newspaper, eh? T-P and picayune), the NFL is now aware of the problem, intends to fix it, and the shirts will be available soon letting thousands of football fans in New England and elsewhere express their open admiration for a football player named "Gay." (You just know that poor sonovabitch probably started lifting weights just to handle the abuse in high school and elementary school. But it could have been worse.)

NFL.com will soon realize what a can of worms it has opened by wanting to ban certain words it deems "naughty." True capitalists will sell you anything regardless of what it says, means, does, etc.

But it's nice to see The T-P gets involved in helping to solve the urgent problems of at least one of its readers.

No information on whether there's a football scholarship being offered by The Neverland Ranch for anyone with professional talent willing to change their name to "Peter Pedophilia," the jersey for whom which, incidentally, can be ordered:

First read my comments ... then you can start playing with the shopping site at NFL.com. Let's get your priorities straight! Besides, I can save you some experimentation time. As you might have guessed, I've been having "Fun with the First Amendment" on the NFLShop.com site.

For awhile during my experimentation it appeared as if the NFL used the George Carlin core selection of "naughty" words for its base list of banned words, but you can print up a shirt with TWAT, which is a Carlinistic no-no. On the other hand, MOTHERFUCKER won't fit because there are too many letters, but MOTHERFUCK will. However, yep, you guessed, it's banned. Nor will it accept FUCK but it will take FUCKAREWE, which is allegedly -- at least according to my friend Byron -- the name of an ancient lost tribe.

As the NFL spokesman said, you can now order a shirt with GAY. You can even get one with FAG if that's your wish or the English preference, POOF. But you can't order one with QUEER, HOMO, LESBIAN or even LESBO. LEZ is not okay but LES, LEZZIE and its spelling alternative LEZZY are. HOMOPHOBE is definitely okay -- just nine letters. DYKE? No problem whatsoever, but BULL DYKE is a definite no-no. DILDOE is, DILDO is not.

HETERO is very okay. So is STRAIGHT, STUD and STICKMAN. In fact, LADY is all right, as is TART. Not so for TRAMP, WHORE, SLUT, SKANK or PROSTITUTE. COOZ and its spelling alternative COOZE? If you want 'em on a shirt, they're yours!

The NFL people apparently have changed the "naughty word" language to something they deem more professional sounding when they reject your sophomoric request: The personalization entered cannot be accepted. Which means that warning will pop up if you try to order an NFL jersey as a birthday present for your friend DICKHEAD but not for your friend PENISBRAIN. My old friend BONER Jones -- a neighborhood pal who also went Navy -- would not be able to get a shirt with his nickname on it but he never liked that moniker anyway.

HOOTERS is not acceptable but HOOTER is. (Hooters the restaurant has annual fundraisers for the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research but their spokeswoman told me they do not directly contribute specifically to fight breast cancer, so this -- while politically incorrect -- is appropriate.) YABOS is cool, as is TA-TAS and my old friend Bukevetski's favorite term: GOZANGAS. TITS? No way Jose.

You can't get a shirt embroidered with SHIT but you can get one with DOG SHIT on it. DOG'S BOLLOCKS would have way too many letters. Don't try to get a shirt with CUNT printed on it; they won't let you. However, you can get one with CUNT HAIR. I tried to see if I could order a shirt with RED CUNT HAIR, the smallest unit of measurement used in the military ("Nothing's finer than a red cunt hair McBride!" the Navy chiefs told me.), but I couldn't. Again, too many letters. However, where there's a will, there's a way and RCH and even R CUNTHAIR was okay.

So you see. No problems at all. Just stay within the bounds -- 10 letters maxium -- and your freedom of self-expression will not be impinged by the NFL. So what's all the fuss about anyway?

[Now if you don't mind, I've got to run. My aunts and my ex-sister-in-law are going to have apoplexy when they read this latest entry and I've got to warn them again that The 6th Estate is not a blog for normal news and NEWS4A2 is not your standard blood-sucking journalist. I've been kicked off way too many BBSes and comment areas to shut up now. More on that later.]

3/4/2005 -- UPDATE -- I realize this is going to appear like a mutual admiration news society but today's issue of The Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal "Best of the Web Today" contained another nod to The 6th Estate's humble editor for passing them the tip on this story. So, again, another nod of the press pass-festooned fedora to mild-mannered James Taranto and his trusty sidekick Compiler Girl aka Carol Muller for the recognition! I would be remiss for not mentioning the Baton Rouge Business Report's Daily Report and its editor Mukul Verma for the initial head's-up about The T-P article, which I then passed along to TWSJOJBotWT, thereby snagging the credit and fame (But no t-shirt nor coffee mug; no swag to be had.). "Oh what a tangled web is weaved, when we must seek weird news for free ..." Oh, btw, Pssssst! Mukul in Hindi means "Rosebud." You talk about abuse in school because of your name? Just wait until his readers find out about this!)

NCAA debunks "scholar athlete" hype at some top schools

CBS Sportsline.com's Dennis Dodd didn't mince words Monday when the NCAA released its listing of how colleges and university athletic teams faired under academic scrutiny: "NCAA's new scarlet letters are APR" -- APR being "Academic Performance Rate."

It's something that most know about and have closed their eyes to -- a lot of top players at top schools were graced by the creator with prowess on the playing field but not too much in the cranium department. Prior to this point, it wasn't quantified on a national scale.

Now that it has been quantified, some 400 schools face penalties if they don't start getting the academic standards of their players up. The penalties range from loss of scholarships, to post season ban to possible expulsion from the NCAA. The actual penalties would hurt the smaller schools worse I would think but the public humiliation of being named as "Forrest Gump U." might convince the administrators of top sports colleges with a poor academic showing to get on the stick.

In my opinion, there are some people who just shouldn't be in college. But professional football and basketball teams don't recruit athletes from trade schools or community colleges. Only in recent memory has a professional basketball team recruited an athlete directly from high school.

So colleges recruit the players, despite their low intellectual level, and the relationship is symbiotic. The players get national exposure for that very rare chance of being picked for professional fame. They may even pick up a few college credits along the way. And the colleges get strong players, strong teams that draw crowds and lots of money.

The scholar athletes, according to NCAA, aren't legally eligible to be paid. And some may actually end up sustaining an injury that follows them their entire life. So the benefits of the symbiosis is heavily weighted in favor of the colleges. It's a business and business is very, very good.

The administrators of the NCAA deserve a kick in the pants for blindly looking the other way for so many years but deserve at least a pat on the back for finally admitting to the world many of its schools have a problem.

(Thanks to Dave Leather for the head's-up on this story.)

Well, isn't that the pelican's pouch!

Many of 4th and 5th Estaters panned the Oscar night performance of Chris Rock, a black stand-up comedian who tends to perform blue, for his frequent use of the word "ass" and his singular use of the word "damn."

Adam Buckman of the New York Post wrote that "Chris doesn't rock"

The Irish Examiner exclaimed: "Chris' jokes hit rock bottom"

And Eleanor O'Sullivan, movie writer for the Asbury Park Press, called Rock's use of "ass" in his monologue "naughty," but noted she didn't deem the usage offensive.

Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle enjoyed Rock's performance, saying it was good but not great, and speculated the comedian won't be asked back by the AMPAS Awards producers. (Chris Rock was relatively clean, so I'm guessing he hopes to come back. I don't know who Goodman prefers but I'm personally hoping for George Carlin -- he knows the seven dirty words you can't say on tv or radio, so there would no excuses whatsoever for him!)

As previously announced, ABC put the Oscars on a 60 second delay just in case something happened. I had half expected to hear the staccato sounds of the Morse Code of censors' bleeping coming from my set .-... ..., .- ... ..., -.. .- -- -., but heard no such thing. Two-thirds of the way through, the network started posting a viewer warning that the event was rated "M" for mature audiences because of language. It was too late. Any children still awake had already heard the "A" word -- though they'd probably first heard the word in bible study class.

I expect that warning must have been posted because of Rock's use of "ass" and "damn." I say this because no one picked up on the sly reference dropped by award winner Andrea Arnold, who won the award for Best Live Action Short for her film "Wasp." In accepting the award Arnold, at an obvious loss for words, exclaimed something to the effect of "I don't know what to say. Well where I come from we'd say 'Isn't that the dog's bollocks!'" I could find only one internet reference for anyone who was canny enough to have caught this slip, theindependentfilmweblog.

(That's not to say there aren't any more blogs or newspapers that caught it, it's just that with my short attention span, lazy nature and the time constraints imposed upon me as a professional truck driver, this is the only one I've found. It's not like I have Carol Muller helping me out or anything, or that you guys are paying me to write this! I've got a life too, y'know!!!)

Apparently the censors -- as well as most 4th and 5th estaters -- are unfamiliar with this particular Anglicism because they probably would have bleeped Rock if he said it. "Dog's bollocks" is English slang for "dog's balls" or "dog's testicles," if you will. Although I've never travelled to England, I know the phrase is something akin to "Isn't that the bee's knees!" or "Isn't that the cat's pajamas!" Different time, different species, different place, obviously a different part of the anatomy I guess. Well isn't that the pelican's pouch!

Best P.C. label yet created

Ambulatory metabolically challenged Americans

Term used by James Taranto and Carol Muller of The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal "Best of the Web Today" to describe zombies.

(And I'm not saying that just because I got another nod for a newstip in that particular edition either.)

The Poetry of Spam

My friend St. Scott, who also happens to run my domain host, pointed out to me today an article on Silicon.com about how much time is wasted each day dealing with spam, an average 90 minutes a day, 10 hours a week per person. Spam clogs St. Scott's servers so I expect he, Eric, Chuck and the rest of his associates spend more than that as web janitors for the sludge spewed from far and wide. I'm personally concerned because it means it's that much less time you have to read my blog!

As technology evolves to thwart the spammers, the spammers get smarter.

Way back in the early years, 1996, before spam was known as "spam," I was getting spammed something fierce from someone trying to hawk Earl Nightingale books and tapes. I complained about it directly to the person spamming me that he had the wrong address. Spam kept coming. I tried again. Still spammed. I reported his abuse to his domain host. The domain host, who apparently was making a good living from the Earl Nightingale guy, said that my domain had signed up to receive the spam. "I'm the only one on my domain, I didn't sign up for it," I told him. Doesn't matter, he retorted, my domain had signed up for it. Huh? Nonetheless, he then promptly threatened the people running my ISP that he would shut them out -- block every message, IP, etc. coming from and going to my ISP -- if I continued to complain about the spam. My ISP, a local company that was only getting $20 a month from me, said that while they were located in Baton Rouge and he was in Chicago, he could do it because he was some kind of feeder point. They said they couldn't take the chance on being blocked and losing their customer base. And they told me to pack up, take a hike and find another provider. Besides, they said, I had spammed a bunch of Hindus and Muslims with an internet snowball fight. I had. So I walked.

That was old school spammer defense: Try to kill the complainant. Threaten the ISP. Nowadays spam is filtered through advanced heuristics, bits of code that select code words used by spammers to stop them in their tracks. But the spammers have ways past this, and there is near poetry in their anti-anti-anti-missile defense.

The other day I received a piece of porn spam promising near mystical feats with barnyard animals. Sensing it was potential screenplay material that would finally garner Martin Scorsese a "Best Director" nod from the AMPAS Hollyweird leftists, or a tip into the next MTV-produced Superbowl halftime show, I peered into it.

While waiting for the .GIFs of requited bovine love to download from the server in Malaysia or China or where ever the spam was from, I viewed the text contents:

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. The only time you run out of chances is when you stop taking them. I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself. The quality of the moment is more important than the number of our days. I'll moider da bum. Those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberties for a little order, will lose both and deserve neither. Etc.

The spammers had learned to use the most beautiful combinations of words the world has to offer as shielding against the heuristics. You could program the heuristics to glean out messages containing quotes from the great writers and great humorists of the English language, but what kind of world would that leave us? A piece of spam might say we'd be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Perhaps the spammers -- in an effort to thwart the thwarters -- have unconsciously developed a new art form, a poetry of nonsense, like this inclusion in a piece of spam claiming to sell prescription drugs:

cargoes clare conant
bimolecular boom bipartite
brownian decade demit
breakthrough bewitch beograd
aquarius ashamed
busy buckskin

I'm pretty sure the "Poetry Generator" software package I'd once viewed produced something quite similar to this.

The e-mail is similar to some our most annoying citizens. We don't like how they dress, we don't like where they're from: N, E, W, S. We don't like their music. In fact, they're rude, crude and socially unacceptable. And they fight our wars. And they protest the bloodshed. And they die for us when they don't even know us. And they scream bloody murder when the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are trampled. And they speak the politically incorrect truth when it's still the truth. Every rose has its thorn; and sometimes the thorns will bring a rose.

I don't have a solution to the spam problem. I wish I did. I don't really think there is one. We develop a missile; they develop an anti-missile. And so it goes, ad infinitum. I try to learn a lesson from every problem and maybe the lesson here is that there is beauty in the blemish, and if you try to extinguish the blemish, you'll no longer have the beauty either.

Or maybe the lesson here is you can tell your boss/spouse/significant other/readers that the reason you opened the porn spam in the first place is to see if it contains poetry or famous sayings. Because at the very least, porn spam beats the hell out of Earl Nightingale book-hype spam any day of the week, and the poetry justification is a good excuse.

George Costanza the alleged BTK serial killer? Say it ain't so!!

No, it ain't so. But it sure looks like him doesn't it?

Photo on very top is the mugshot of alleged BTK serial killer Dennis L. Rader. Photo by some unnamed police photographer in the booking area, photo credit taken by AP.

Photo below is the very talented actor Jason Alexander who played the character "George Costanza" on the hit tv sitcom "Seinfeld." Photo courtesy of Movieprop.com.

Will be Scorsese be blacklisted again?

During the Academy Awards tonight I'll be most intent on seeing if the Academy voters blacklist Martin Scorsese again tonight. He is one of the nominees for "Best Director" for his work on the Howard Hughes biopic "The Aviator."

Scorsese, who was honored by the American Film Institute in 1997, has produced and directed more than 40 critically acclaimed films including Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York and Cape Fear. Depite the hundreds of millions earned by Scorsese's films, he has yet to garner a "Best Director" nod from the Academy.

Moreover Scorsese has been shutout of recent awards by Hollywood insiders since his support of mentor and friend Elia Kazan when Kazan received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy in 1999. Considering the power of the leftists in Hollywood, one can't help but wonder if Scorsese's support of Kazan is the reason for the shunning. (For full details on why Elia Kazan is hated by Hollywood leftists, select the hyperlink on his name.)

If he doesn't make it again this year, maybe he should kowtow to the leftist cinematic ideal with a film on turn of the century chain-smoking alcoholic drug-addicted suicidal transgendered lesbian socialist Eurotrash artists. With a premise like that, it'd be a surefire winner among the Hollywood elite these days.

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22:35 CST UPDATE: Yep, Scorsese got snubbed. Again. "The Aviator" nabbed five awards but Scorsese still got snubbed. 'Nuff said. Award for Best Director/Achievement in Directing went to Clint Eastwood, who starred in and directed "Million Dollar Baby."

I like Clint Eastwood. "Bronco Billy" gave me the warm fuzzies, "Dirty Harry" made my day, and I felt the pain of age in "Unforgiven." I broke up with an ex-girlfriend/almost fiancee over that movie. When she said she didn't like Eastwood or cowboy movies but that "Unforgiven" was okay, that was the final straw. I knew we'd never make it until "death do us part" unless she shot me or I shot her. We were just too different. Don't think so? She ended up marrying a guy named Zen. Q.E.D.

But Eastwood didn't deserve the Oscar this time. He got it because "Million Dollar Baby" is another man bites dog film loved by the Hollyweird -- the story of a female boxer who dies at the end, euthanized by Eastwood's character. And the title role of that film is played by Hillary Swank, star of cross-dressing lesbian film "Boys Don't Cry." Guess what? Swank won the award for Best Actress for "Boys Don't Cry" and again this year. Surprise? Not!

(BTW, has anyone noticed that actresses refer to themselves as "actors" until it's Academy Award time and they are up for "Actress in Leading Role?" I guess politically correct unisex terms go only so far ...)

Whatever happened to the Airline Put Options story?

A blast from the past. Think the VLWM has your best interests at heart? Why has there been no follow-up on the search for missing Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher or this story?

THE NEW YORK TIMES
September 20, 2001
FBI, SEC on Hunt for Attack - Related Trading
By REUTERS
Filed at 8:07 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's top markets regulator said Thursday that several U.S. agencies, led by the FBI, were investigating whether those behind last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon tried to turn a grisly profit by playing the markets.

``There is a multi-agency effort under way, under the leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but my agency is actively investigating reports of possible terrorist activity,'' said U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

As the focus of the global markets investigation shifted to Washington, regulators in France and elsewhere also said they were on the hunt for suspicious trading.

France's COB stock market watchdog said it opened a formal probe into trading in the days leading up to the September 11 airliner attacks that left more than 6,500 dead or missing.

``We are now opening an inquiry which gives us the legal means to investigate the abnormal movements in some stocks before the attacks,'' said the spokeswoman for the COB, or the Commission des Operations de Bourse.

U.S. and French efforts resemble inquiries in Chicago, Germany and Japan into whether anyone aware of the attack planning tried to profit from that inside knowledge by selling short or buying put options related to stocks that have since lost value, including airline, insurance and banking issues.

Selling short and buying puts are both common, but highly risky ways of making money on falling share prices. Responding to a question from a U.S. senator on steps being taken to examine reports of unusual trading prior to the attacks, SEC Chairman Pitt said the agency was moving quickly.

``The difficulty, of course, is in going through a lot of records and dealing with foreign transactions as well,'' he added. ``But I think our enforcement division along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is proceeding with alacrity to find out whether there are any violations of law.''

An FBI spokeswoman in Chicago Thursday declined to comment on the status of the investigation.

TREASURY'S O'NEILL CALLS PUT TRADING INCONCLUSIVE

Fingered as prime suspect in the attacks by President Bush is Osama bin Laden, wealthy heir to a Saudi construction fortune who is reputed to be worth $100 million or more. Experts on Mideast extremists said bin Laden and associates may be capable of sophisticated securities market maneuvers.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who also testified at the Senate hearing, said his department was working with the SEC. He said it was unclear whether there was unusual trading in airline stock options prior to the attacks.

``While there's no doubt there was a major shift in the ratios between puts to calls, it's not clear to me yet, from the analysis that's being done, that there's a huge amount of money at risk,'' the Treasury chief said.

A put option is a contract to sell an underlying security at a fixed price by a specified date. A call is a contract to buy under similar terms. Both are traded on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the world's largest options market which said it is looking into pre-attack market activity.

Buying put options in a stock that is falling can be profitable. Analysis of put activity and CBOE traders point to unusual buying in September and October puts of United Airlines parent UAL Corp. before the attack. Unusual activity was also seen in AMR Corp.. UAL and AMR own the two airlines whose jets were hijacked and used as missiles in the attacks.

Traders in Amsterdam noted unusually active trading in options of Dutch airline KLM prior to the attack.

Some industry analysts said spikes in put volumes for these and other issues could be explained by causes unrelated to the attacks, such as profit warnings or routine market timing. Japanese traders said a put option strategy to profit from inside knowledge of the attack was unlikely. Rather, they suggested, selling short Japanese index futures would be more attractive to someone looking for a quick, hard-to-trace hit.

Short-selling is another common, but risky way to exploit a falling share price. Short sellers borrow shares and sell them, then repurchase them at a lower price. Then they pocket the difference as profit and return the shares to their owner.

France's COB said it was looking into unusual selling in some shares, including French insurer AXA. German bankers reported unusual activity in reinsurer Munich Re. The trading is being probed by German regulators.

Japanese traders said they saw no unusual stock lending levels ahead of the attack. The Tokyo Stock Exchange said it was looking into improper dealings, but had no more comment.

When asked about reports of international short sales before the attack, Pitt said, ``We have devoted, as has the FBI, substantial resources to tracking down every rumor.''

U.S. SHORT INTEREST DATA EXPECTED ON FRIDAY

Data on U.S. short-selling that could shed light on whether suspicious trading preceded the attacks is due out Friday, a day late, the New York Stock Exchange said Thursday.

Noted U.S. short-sellers said they doubted whether anyone trying to short airline, insurance or banking stocks -- all hit hard since the attack -- would have done so in America, where shorting is closely watched. Less heavily policed European and Asian markets would have been more attractive, they said.

Regulators from several nations held a global conference call Monday and discussed the possibility that those who organized the attacks had placed large bets aimed at profiting from the carnage, German markets watchdog BAWe said.

Bin Laden and his associates may be capable of pulling off such an audacious speculation, said Bruce Hoffman, terrorism specialist at the research group Rand Corp.

``He's absolutely sophisticated enough...if his finances are managed with the same care he puts into setting up his operations,'' Hoffman said.

``He's shown himself to be far more sophisticated than other terrorist adversaries we've faced. He has considerably enhanced logistical capabilities, dwarfing other terrorist groups.''

Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.

The times they are a changin'

If you haven't been following the news from the middle east in the past few weeks, you've been missing history being made. For the big picture, I'll point you to the New York Times op-ed column Feb. 26 by David Brooks, "Why not here?" and the column Feb. 27 by Thomas Friedman, "The Tipping Points." Yep, the New York Times. (Registration is required to read the columns. It's free and I've never been spammed by them.)

On February 27, 1991, fourteen years ago, the current President Bush's father, President George H. W. Bush, announced to the world that "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated." That was to begin the political insurgency for democratic reform in the middle east, but democratic reform never took root. I believe it is because the U.S. and its coalition forces abandoned the Iraqis in their time of need. The dictatorial powers in the middle east saw that what the U.S. said and what the U.S. meant were two different things. President George H. W. Bush had his hands tied by commitments made with coalition members, Saudi Arabia chiefly among them, and the U.S. stood and watched as Saddam Hussein's forces attacked those who tried to rise up against him. His son made no such commitments.

There was a song popular in the 1960s that seems very appropriate right about now in the middle east. I've taken some liberties with the words. There needs to be an Arabic/Farsi version of this:

The Times They Are A-Changin'
Bob Dylan

Come gather 'round liberals
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come WP writers and NYT critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mullahs and imams
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

---

Need I write anything about the recent events in Lebanon? Here's a link to a CBS report. I have no knowledge whether or not Dan Rather choked on the words upon reading the report though I do suspect he and ABC's anti-Bush policy pessimist Peter Jennings -- a Canadian/American and former resident of Lebanon -- are swallowing more than a few words these days.