It was a surreal, comic moment. I opened the P.I. last Thursday to see a front-page article: Bill Gates speaks to a conference of latte-sipping software millionaires about the "digital divide." According to adherents of the digital divide theory, bringing computers and Internet access to every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth will eventually end poverty and inequality as we know it. The conference attendees were shocked when Bill Gates sat before them and stated the obvious: "Let's be serious. Let's be serious. Do people have a clear view of what it means to live on $1 a day? ... There are things those people need at that level other than technology ... About 99% of the benefits of having (a PC) come when you've provided reasonable health and literacy to the person who's going to sit down and use it." A questioner asked belatedly whether we should provide "technology for economic development and watch health improve as a follow-on to that, as occurred here" (the philosophy of the World Bank and the WTO). Instead of giving the obvious answer ("what health improvements and for whom?"), Gates replied: "One million people a year (in the U.S.) were not dying of measles when the microprocessor was invented. People with elephantiasis aren't going to be using their PCs ... It's almost criminal more money isn't spent on curing malaria, which kills one million children a year." Evidently, someone was listening to the World Bank, IMF, and WTO protesters. Unfortunately, Gates still calls the murderous policies of these bodies "almost criminal"--a vast understatement. And, naturally, he hasn't made the connection that the same system that brought him obscene wealth has driven so many into extreme poverty. Take Eastern Europe, for example. Since the fall of Socialism, poverty in Eastern Europe has increased ten-fold. Over 40% of the population lives in poverty, including 50 million children. But that's okay, as long as someone can buy a copy of Windows in Moscow.--Maria Tomchick

Wen Ho Lee has filed a civil law suit against the Justice Department. Last week Janet Reno told the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association that there would be an internal investigation into the arrest and persecution of Wen Ho Lee. Nevertheless, her position and the position of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson is that Justice did nothing wrong. That's crap. Robert Vrooman, the former counterintelligence chief at Los Alamos, where Lee worked, maintains that Lee was singled out because he is Asian American. "Every time Lee's motive was discussed, it came down to his ethnicity," Vrooman told a Senate panel. Meanwhile, Pentagon investigators have been looking into high-level security breaches involving ex-CIA Director John Deutch. Deutch, who has worked for both the CIA and the Pentagon, did exactly what Lee did: he carried classified information around on his personal floppy disks. While Lee has offered to return missing computer disks, Deutch has refused to talk to Pentagon investigators about where his floppy disks are or what he did with them. In addition, Deutch worked on classified material at home on his computer and then donated his old computers to schools without erasing the hard drives.

When Pentagon experts located those computers, they were able to retrieve a lot of Pentagon information from them. Deutch has never been charged with a crime, much less fired, arrested, and thrown into solitary confinement (as Wen Ho Lee was). Deutch is higher up the hierarchy than Lee (which means the security breaches were worse in Deutch's case), but he's also a white guy with all the privileges that a wealthy, powerful, white guy can expect.

Even if you're a white woman, like Madeline Albright, shit won't stick to you: recent lapses in security at the State Department--the loss of a laptop computer with highly classified information on arms proliferation, and the fact that six foreign service officers nominated for ambassadorships were found to have committed a total of 62 security infractions--have passed by without comment or punishment.--M.T.