President Bush called on Israel on Wednesday to exercise restraint in Gaza and to respect "innocent life" after Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on protesters in a refugee camp, killing at least 10 Palestinians.

The White House said it has asked the Israeli government to explain its actions, which raised the two-day death toll to 33 in Israel's bloodiest raid in Gaza in years.

"I continue to urge restraint. It is essential that people respect innocent life in order for us to achieve peace," Bush told reporters after meeting with members of his Cabinet.

At least 41 civilians were killed Wednesday in a U.S. air raid on an Iraqi village near the Syrian border, Al Arabiya television reported.

The television, quoting eyewitnesses in the border town of al-Qaim, said U.S. planes had bombarded the village of Makr al-Deeb while families were attending a wedding party. Arabiya had earlier said at least 20 people were killed in the bombing.

An editorial by the Bishop of Newark, John Spong

The Disaster of Iraq - Enough is Enough![/size]

I have reached the point when I can no longer tolerate the Iraqi War. The final straw was the abuse of Iraqis in the prison camp at Abu Ghraib and the deceptive way it was handled by both the Bush Administration and the military leadership.

I had questions as the build-up to this war developed and articulated them in this column. The assurance by my government that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological, chemical and nuclear, was not shared even then by Hans Blix and the United Nations inspectors. If United States intelligence was so sure of the existence of these weapons, why could they not direct the inspection teams to the hidden sites? That seemed an obvious question. The answer that it would destroy our ability to gather intelligence by revealing our sources was never convincing. This administration dealt with this skepticism by attacking the competency of Mr. Blix and the United Nations.

Then the President, still seeking to build his case, announced in the State of the Union speech that Saddam had received material needed to build atomic weapons from Nigeria. That turned out not to be true and the President had been notified of this fact by the Central Intelligence Agency prior to that speech.

Next the members of the Security Council of the United Nations, unconvinced by the rhetoric of the Bush Administration, refused to back the second resolution designed to give moral authority to what they perceived as a unilateral American military adventure. Mr. Bush, in response, withdrew his request to the United Nations, claiming that the first resolution gave him all the authority he needed. After all he was leading what he began to call not a U.N. Coalition but "a coalition of the willing." I watched in embarrassment as Secretary Colin Powell lost much of his credibility in a United Nations speech in which he "demonstrated" that Iraq was hiding frightful weapons and that the only choice the United States had was to invade Iraq and remove this threat to world peace. This Administration wanted this war badly for reasons it was simply unwilling to state. The war was mercifully brief and casualties minimal except among the Iraqi civilian population. Praise for the military planning was extravagant. With a significantly smaller force than the generals thought necessary, the civilian leaders from the Department of Defense carried the day. This victory was to be a great political moment. Mr. Bush in full military regalia landed on an aircraft carrier to announce that the mission had been accomplished. The passage of time has revealed that either he was not telling the truth or that he was significantly uninformed. Neither option is a comforting thought.

We have now learned that the Iraqi army simply removed their uniforms and faded into the civilian population, hiding their weapons to use another day. That fact was apparently not obvious to our military and political establishment, who gloried in a great military victory that was destined to evaporate shortly.

With complete access to the Iraqi countryside, there was nothing now to hinder the search for those hidden weapons. So eager was this Administration to vindicate itself that excessive claims were made for discoveries that turned out to be nothing, including the mobile vehicles to which Secretary Powell had referred in his United Nations speech. The Administration kept assuring the world that it was only a matter of time. But time passed and they were never found. Mr. Bush revealed his insensitivity to the gravity of this situation by showing at the National Press Club a video of himself searching under his desk for those weapons. Relatives of those who were still dying in that war were not amused. If this nation and its people were misinformed, then the leaders of our intelligence gathering agencies should have been held accountable and removed from office. But no one was fired. This has made the worst-case scenario seem infinitely more plausible. The American people were lied to and both the Administration and the intelligence agencies appear to be part of the deception.

Finally Saddam Hussein was captured. No doubt he was a brutal dictator and the world is better off without him. But his removal was not the primary purpose for which we were told this war was necessary. Revisionist history, however, was quickly in play and Saddam became the symbol of our "victory." We had been told that "the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators and a democratic Iraq will positively impact the Palestinian/Israeli conflict." How hope does spring eternal if one believes one's own propaganda! A true democracy in Iraq would result in an Islamic Republic, which the Bush Administration announced was not acceptable. This means democracy was not our goal. Control is.

Slowly but surely the atmosphere became uglier and uglier. The provisional American government headed by Paul Bremer was totally unprepared for the task they faced. We discover now that this provisional government is actually guarded not by the military but by the hired gunmen of the American business establishment working in Iraq. This Administration obviously had no plan for Iraq after the war and no exit strategy. The excuse offered was that much of the infrastructure of the country had been destroyed or allowed to deteriorate by Saddam Hussein. The remarkable thing was that this fact appeared to come as a surprise to the Administration. Surely our intelligence service should have known this. Another surprise was that the hand picked ruling council chosen to lead the nation toward democracy had no credibility with the Iraqi people. How out of touch with reality can an Administration be?

The war obviously did not stop on May 1, 2003 as Mr. Bush announced, it rather grew in intensity. First the battle was engaged through sabotage and guerilla activity. Then it evolved into an organized insurrection led at least in part by disillusioned Shiite religious leaders. Casualties mounted. The death toll since the "Mission Accomplished" speech by Mr. Bush is now far greater than that endured during the war he thought was over. The fighting was so intense in Fallujah recently that the most amazing and even incredible act of the entire war occurred. Marines, who had won their positions with enormous loss of life in the siege of Fallujah, were ordered to fall back and one of Saddam's former Baathist generals was appointed to lead the military campaign against this city. It could hardly get more absurd than this, but it did. Less than forty-eight hours later this general was removed because his Saddam era activities made the resistance to him by the Iraqi people intense. If everyone else in Iraq knew this, one wonders why our leaders did not seem to know. I suspect that this Administration was so desperate to stop the political fallout that went with mounting casualties that they leaped upon this strange and ill-informed solution with little more thought than that which has marked every other part of this war. Such chaotic decision-making enhanced concern in Iraq and in the United States that this Administration does not know what it is doing.

Mr. Bush, facing his growing problems, appealed once more to the United Nations for both troops and money to rebuild Iraq. Since he had listened to none of the world's concerns prior to the war and had generally insulted potential allies during the war, they have not been eager to rescue him from his present disaster.

A CNN/Gallup Poll revealed that over seventy per cent of the Iraqi people see the United States today as occupiers, not as liberators. The Spanish troops are being withdrawn. The Australians have already gone. The negativity against the war rises daily throughout the world. The interim Iraqi government to which authority is to be given on June 30th has not yet been formed. With that politically sensitive date fast approaching and the presidential campaign in America building in intensity, Mr. Bush in yet another head spinning about face has turned this transition over to a United Nations representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, who had been helpful in Afghanistan. Yet this man has such minimal public relations skills that immediately after his appointment, he made inflammatory comments about the Jews rendering his usefulness problematic.

Meanwhile the Jewish-Palestinian conflict that was to have been helped by the war in Iraq shows no sign of lessening. Instead Ariel Sharon announced his unilateral decision not to remove Israeli settlements from the West Bank, offering parts of the Gaza Strip instead. This decision completely obliterated the well-publicized Bush "Road Map" for Middle East peace and when Mr. Bush endorsed Mr. Sharon's position, it caused dismay among the moderate Islamic nations. Our two closest allies in the Middle East, King Abdullah of Jordan canceled a planned White House visit with the President in protest, and President Mubarak of Egypt issued a statement calling America "the most hated nation in the world among the Arab people." Then just to put icing on the cake of this disintegrating tragedy Prime Minister Sharon's own Likud Party rejected his planned pull-out from parts of Gaza by a sixty-forty vote. Sharon, like his mentor in Washington, had failed to consult his own political base sufficiently and he did not have their support.

Could it get any worse? Well it did. Next came the revelation of the grotesque abuse of Iraqi prisoners occurring at one of Saddam's former torture chambers, but this time carried out by American military and intelligence personnel. The first response of Administration officials was to complain that CBS showed the pictures. The second response was to blame a few low level bad apples in the military. The third response was to condemn this action with high sounding rhetoric. The evidence, however, points to systemic abuse over a long period of time. Both the military Chief of Staff and Mr. Rumsfeld have not only pled ignorance, but have admitted that they have not even yet read the full report. That report indicates that this violence was noted in January and a full report was issued in March. "It takes time for it to work up the chain of command," is a pitiful excuse. Congress was never informed, not even by a Pentagon briefing that occurred in the morning of the day that CBS broke the story in its "60 Minutes II" presentation.

A culture of abuse, that may have begun in Guantanamo, seems to have entered our military. The accused reservists did not act alone, as we shall inevitably discover, but with the approval and at least the tacit consent of their superiors. For me the deception in this dreadful episode is the final straw in a pattern of deception.

Iraq 2003-2004 has been an unmitigated disaster for my country. Those who perpetrated it have sacrificed, I believe, their right to govern. I do not think they can now rebuild the friendship, trust and respect necessary to stabilize the Middle East. New leadership is required for that task. No more Americans should be asked to die for this ill planned adventure. I am grateful that we have young men and women willing to serve in the military. It is a noble vocation. I do not believe, however, that it is ever proper to ask anyone to die for the incompetence of politicians who have demonstrated their inability to plan, to lead or to be honest. Enough is enough.

-- John Shelby Spong

Sony's US online music service, Connect, has been slammed as an "embarrassment" by the Washington Post.

The review criticises the online service - which is coming to Europe on 7 June - for its poor catalogue, its format and hardware limitations and its "bloated, bug-ridden" download software.

The WP likes Sony's pricing - 99 cents for most songs; $1.99 for longer ones; $9.99 for albums - and we join it in welcoming the way Connect lets you re-download free of charge songs you've already purchased and downloaded. That's handy if you lose your data at some point. Other services should follow Sony's lead in this respect.

The paper also likes Connect's support for ATRAC data CDs. Creating discs containing encoded digital music tracks is not new, but rather more cheap CD players support Sony's digital music format than Apple's choice, AAC, or DRM-protected WMA files.

But Sony's choice for format restricts consumers to its own hardware - a complaint the paper also makes about Apple, though at least iTunes does permit you to rip CDs to MP3 for transfer to other brands of player. Sony's SonicStage software does not support MP3 and "it defaults to storing music in an invisible, deeply buried sub-directory", the paper warns.

• Trade MP3s online but only with trusted friends via IM clients (AIM, MSN messenger, YIM, et al).
  
• If you must buy the new Britney Spears CD, buy it used.  Used CDs won't be funnelling any more money to those jerks, but you still get the full CD, liner notes, and everything.  Not to mention, instead of paying $12 to $18 per CD, you're paying (in my experience, depending on what you're looking for) as little as $4 or $5 for older stuff, and usually $6 to $10 per CD for more popular titles.
  
  And you can do whatever the hell you want with it.  Rip MP3s out of it, make backup copies of it, whatever.  It's your CD.  Just make sure you don't buy one of those so-called "copy protected" CDs.  There aren't many of them yet, but keep your eye out for them.  That bullshit's gotta stop too.
  
  As far as where to get used CDs, Amazon.com almost always has "used" options available if you find a CD you want on their site (I order used CDs from their affiliated retailers all the time and I have gotten product in excellent condition every time).
  
  Also, used CD shops are all over the place and often have pretty good selections of even newer material (because some people will buy a new CD, listen to it, decide they don't like it, and take it to their local CD Warehouse or equivalent and sell it).
  
• Support the artists you like by seeing them live and buying their merch.  What could be better than seeing your favourite band in person, right in front of you, kicking ass on stage?
  
  99% of the artists you listen to don't make anything worth mentioning from CD sales... pennies on the dollar at MOST, and that's if you're hot shit.  
  
  They DO, however, make most of their money from touring and live appearances, and most artists/bands (most, not all) make quite a bit of money from merchandise sales (t-shirts, keyrings, posters, pins, etc.), so if you want to support your favourite artists and bands, go see them live when they come to your town, and make sure you buy a shirt or something.[/list:u]
  
  </weekly RIAA rant>

-----Original Message-----
From: John Doe [mailto:johndoe@somecompany.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 9:03 AM
To: (developer)
Subject: Question


Developer:
 
I am attempting to fix some screw-ups we had when we first brought the
system up.  I am trying to update the ARYTRN records with the salesman
that is on the ARCUST record.  Here are a few of my attempts that did
not work.  
 
update arytrn88 set arytrn88.salesmn = arcust88.salesmn;
where arytrn88.custno = (select custno from arcust88;
where arytrn88.custno = custno)
 
This one updated all records with the same salesman. :-(
 
update arytrn88 ;
set arytrn88.salesmn = select salesmn from arcust88 where ;
arytrn88.custno = arcust88.custno
 
This one says "Contains unrecognizable keyword/phrase" :-(
 
update arytrn88 ;
set arytrn88.salesmn = (select salesmn from arcust88 where ;
arytrn88.custno = arcust88.custno)
 
This one says function name is missing ).  :-(
 
update arytrn88;
set arytrn88.salesmn = arcust88.salesmn;
where arytrn88.custno = arcust88.custno
 
This one updates about 60 records which is bad because there are 24000
or so. :-(
 
 
Can you help me on this.  Please give me a SQL statement or Foxpro code
that will work or lead me in the right direction.  This should be a
simple task and I can't figure it out.  I'm quite fustrated.
 
Thanks,
John Doe
I.T. Manager
Some Company, Inc.
johndoe@somecompany.com