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Weekly Newspaper and Tourism Guide for Ward County Trans Pecos, Big Bend of West Texas

Monahan's Well


By Jerry Curry

St. Padraic's Day is Tuesday, March 17

On this day, all of us of Irish descent across the planet
get a little weird and there are many of us. It truly can be
said there are more Irish outside of Ireland than there are
in Ireland these days.

And it probably also is true that we are a contentious
people. We also think, sometimes, too much of ourselves; all
Irish are not this way - me, for example.

The British say any organization of 10 Irishers will fast
break down into 10 splinter groups. That is the reason the
British used to extend their benevolent hand over the Irish
until we kicked them out of the 26 counties in 1922. On that
we agreed. Some of us are still working on getting them out
of six counties in the Northeast and we will prevail - Erin
Go Bragh! (That's Irish for Ireland Forever)

Time for a few lines from an outlaw tune - Listen to the
pipes wail across the street out of the public house, past
the British armored cars into the green hills and dales and
echo back out of Donegal into the Bogside and across the sea
and the mountain to Monahans in the desert.

There's a green-eyed girl in Belfast
She's playing in the street
Her brother plays a different game
And he's turning up the heat

He's killing British soldiers
They're dieing one by one
And we won't stop till Ireland's free
We won't give up the gun

One of our modern Irish bards, perhaps it was Shaw, said God
made the men and women of Ireland mad. So we Irish are a bit
contentious, a little mad and a lot egocentric.And we glory
in it.
We also know how to have fun. True, we are a tolerant
people. We'll even eat corned beef and cabbage because some
Americans think corned beef and cabbage is the Irish
national dish. It isn't you know. We much prefer prime rib.
But we are not tolerant in some areas. Despite all the green
beer that flows on St. Padraic's Day, no true Irisher will
drink green beer - not on St. Padraic's Day, not on
Christmas, not even to prove we are tolerant some of the
time - unless, of course, the green beer is free.

Tool of democracy strikes


In less than 24 hours of the Primary Election polls closing,
in less than 24 hours after Ward County learned there would
be three run off elections on April 14 to choose the
Democratic nominees for County Clerk and commissioners from
Precinct 2 and Precinct 4, in less than 24 hours after about
45 percent of the electorate trooped into the Democratic
polling places and cast their ballots, another tool of
democracy struck the Ward County Courthouse.

That tool was the petition, apparently signed by way more
than the required 700 registered voters (10 percent of the
electorate which in this county is 7,000 this year).

And that petition once more pushed the primary issue of Ward
County on to center stage. That issue is Ward Memorial
Hospital and how it is to be operated in the future.

The petition calls for a vote of the people on the issue.

The petition effectively stops any lease or sale of the
hospital pending that vote.

Ward Memorial Hospital has been divisive. If nothing else, a
referendum may establish a sense of what the citizens
believe should be done - at least on the day the ballots are
cast.

Water on the moon

It's official.


There's water on Earth's moon - trillions of frozen
droplets of ice that could be called Lunar Sleet. This water
can be distilled from the talcum-like sand of Luna and
provide water for future Moon colonists to drink, oxygen to
breathe and hydrogen for fuel.

There is water on the moon which could sustain a limited
colony forever if the water thieves in New Mexico don't find
out about it, if the water thieves in New Mexico don't start
building dams like they did on the Pecos, if the water
thieves in New Mexico don't destroy the Moon colony before
it even begins.

Christie Kittley

An Israeli hacker going by the name of 'Analyzer' broke into
the Pentagon computers last week. To date, he claims to have
broken into somewhere between 400 and 1,000 important
agencies...including the government homepage of Israel, many
'.gov' and '.mil' (U.S. government and military) sites and
Universities including Harvard and Yale.

At first I thought he was being malicious, but after reading
several interviews that he conducted, one with an online
newspaper called Anti-Online, and one face to face with an
Israeli paper, I can see he's just a very smart teen-ager
with too little to do.

Unfortunately, in his home country, if he gets caught he
could be killed...and in this country if he gets caught, he
could be imprisoned.

As long as there have been computers there have been people
obsessed with finding out just how good they were at
manipulating them. Hackers are people that like to find the
'chinks' in the most complicated computer programs and the
highest security homepages - just to prove they can. Some,
like Analyzer, clean up the program before they leave,
making sure there are no more back doors that other hackers
can break into. It's almost like someone breaking into your
car, vacuuming it out, detailing it, and then leaving you a
note on the front window saying 'Kilroy was here'. While
it's strange, is it a crime?

I can understand the feeling of helplessness and
embarrassment that the government and all the other hacked
agencies have.

It's hard to admit an 18 year old can break all the
security that you paid top dollar for.(Or should I say We
paid for..?)

Just maybe instead of trying to prosecute Analyzer, they
should put him on the payroll.)

Net Tip of the Week
www.antionline.com

Go visit Anti-Online for yourself, and read about Analyzer
and the two other American kids that the FBI investigated;
'Makaveli' and 'TooShort'.

E-mail
silvervendetta@hotmail.com



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Copyright 1998 by Ward Newspapers, Inc.
Mac McKinnon, Publisher
107 W. Second St., Monahans TX 79756
Phone 915-943-4313, FAX 915-943-4314
e-mail monnews@ultravision.net

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Copyright 1998 by Ward Newspapers Inc.