From Collected Conversations
with Ngunda Elija Aran
Headline News Oct. 25, 6:00 p.m.
Today the Senate voted 57 to 44 against withdrawing from the United Nations. The withdrawal bill was not expected to pass, but the vote was expected to be closer. This was the largest Republican crossover vote during the Metzger administration.
The House Rules Committee declined to pass on to the full House an America Party proposal to establish a guiding principle for all legislation. This would be: “God’s injunction to man to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
Rules Committee Chairman Bill Staszik, Centrist from Ohio, commented afterward that while Hebrew folklore contained much valuable wisdom and inspiration, twenty-first-century Americans needed to evaluate it in the light of twenty-first-century conditions. He also pointed out that the proposal was wildly unconstitutional.
In a particularly bizarre incident, another executive of a major corporation was targeted by terrorist assassins today. Roy C. Wallace, the leading star of mergerdom, was attacked moments after leaving his midtown Manhattan offices. Wallace is the founder and CEO of Carley Jane Management Enterprises. Explosives and firebombs were thrown at his armored limousine, stopping it and engulfing it in flame. At the same time, automatic weapons fire was directed at it from windows. Despite wearing flak jackets, Wallace’s chauffeur and both his bodyguards died at the scene. Eight bystanders were killed. Seventeen others were injured and taken to hospitals, eleven in serious or critical condition. Wallace was rushed by helicopter to the Cornell University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
He had been released from Merlyndale Hospital less than two weeks ago, after recuperating from bullet wounds received in August.
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A CNN News Feature Summary, November 1
Five years ago this month, the Newcastle Four were convicted of felony computer sabotage. That they were uncovered and a compelling case made must have shocked crackers. While the severity of their sentences, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to review the case, were sobering on the one hand, they were assuring on the other.
That and technological innovations in computer security shrank computer sabotage virtually out of existence. The almost invariable requirement of reparations can, in severe instances, strip the computer criminal of everything he owns, while appropriate amends to society can require productive servitude for years, even life.
Computer security specialists, however, have insisted all along that it was only a respite. Yesterday’s so-called “Black Plague” virus proved them right. The virus crashed ICL, the International Computerized Library, whose opening, early last year, was heralded as the greatest single advance in the communication of knowledge since invention of the transistor. The ICL stored and gave access to virtually every existing public document except the most confidential. It was heavily used by researchers and students of every kind, as well as the simply curious.
So far the FBI is saying nothing about the investigation. However, library personnel believe the virus was written and inserted by someone with intimate knowledge, presumably inside knowledge, of the ICL programs. Because the backup cubes made were also infected, during the last months, the amount of retrieveable data is expected to be a small fraction of the total.
The direct damages are expected to be in the hundreds of millions. Indirect costs, due to postponed and cancelled library services, the increased costs of doing research, and the development and installation of new security measures, will be much greater. And more seriously, to reenter the billions of documents will take years.
21
Breuer: You’ve said that hypersensitivity is a major weakness in society, but it seems to me that lack of sensitivity is a much greater weakness.
Aran: [laughing] Lack of sensitivity is a weakness. But consider how many people are afraid of learning, of doing, of expressing their opinions, because they’re afraid of criticism, and especially of scorn. This is particularly true of children. And how much criticism results from hypersensitivity to imperfections—and perceived imperfections—in other people! And in public and private agencies! I’m talking about intolerance now—often chronic intolerance—of modest flaws. That’s a major weakness in society all by itself.