The violent arena of domestic abuse litigation has grown a bit more volatile here, now that a judge has decided to hold two women in contempt of court for returning to men who had been ordered to stay away from them. "You can't have it both ways," said Judge Megan Lake Thornton of Fayette County District Court in recently fining two women $100 and $200 respectively for obtaining protective orders forbidding their partners from contacting them, then relenting and contacting the men. Ruling that the order was mutually binding, Judge Thornton also cited the men for contempt. "It drives me nuts when people just decide to do whatever they want," said Judge Thornton, who is experienced in the state's thick domestic abuse docket, which produces close to 30,000 emergency protective orders a year. Kentucky officials say there is a virtual epidemic of abusive relationships in the state. Judge Thornton's ruling has alarmed advocates for battered women, who plan to appeal it. The advocates say the finding goes beyond existing law and is unrealistic because some renewed contacts often prove unavoidable in domestic abuse cases, which involve economic and family dependency and other complications of daily living. The state office on domestic violence has pointedly agreed, warning that the ruling could cause abused women to hesitate in bringing their plight before the courts for fear of being chastised for their trouble. "The reality is it's easy to say they should never have contact," said Sherry Currens, executive director of the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association, an advocacy and legal protection group. "But we're talking about people in long-term relationships. They may have children in common. It's pretty hard to say, 'Never speak again.' People have financial difficulties. They may love the partner. It's not an easy thing." But Judge Thornton declared in court, "When these orders are entered, you don't just do whatever you damn well please and ignore them." The ruling stunned Cindra Walker, the lawyer for the two women, who is with Central Kentucky Legal Services, which represents many of the thousands of indigent women caught in abusive relationships. "For over five years, I've been in court practically every day on these abuse cases," Ms. Walker said, "and I've never before had a victim threatened with contempt."

Question: "What are two of the reasons Sherry Currens gives for people violating protective orders?"

Answer: "Children in common"

Response: yes

Even though electronic espionage may cost U.S. firms billions of dollars a year, most aren't yet taking precautions, the experts said. By contrast, European firms will spend $150 million this year on electronic security, and are expected to spend $1 billion by 1992. Already many foreign firms, especially banks, have their own cryptographers, conference speakers reported. Still, encrypting corporate communications is only a partial remedy. One expert, whose job is so politically sensitive that he spoke on condition that he wouldn't be named or quoted, said the expected influx of East European refugees over the next few years will greatly increase the chances of computer-maintenance workers, for example, doubling as foreign spies. Moreover, he said, technology now exists for stealing corporate secrets after they've been "erased" from a computer's memory. He said that Oliver North of Iran-Contra notoriety thought he had erased his computer but that the information was later retrieved for congressional committees to read. No personal computer, not even the one on a chief executive's desk, is safe, this speaker noted. W. Mark Goode, president of Micronyx Inc., a Richardson, Texas, firm that makes computer-security products, provided a new definition for Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign for greater openness, known commonly as glasnost. Under Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Goode said, the Soviets are openly stealing Western corporate communications. He cited the case of a Swiss oil trader who recently put out bids via telex for an oil tanker to pick up a cargo of crude in the Middle East. Among the responses the Swiss trader got was one from the Soviet national shipping company, which hadn't been invited to submit a bid. The Soviets' eavesdropping paid off, however, because they got the contract.

Question: "Is the step that foreign banks have begun to apply likely to solve the problem completely?"

Answer: "Impossible"

Response: no

He repeatedly calls on his followers to embrace martyrdom since "The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets." For those yearning for a lost sense of order in an older, more tranquil world, he offers his "Caliphate" as an imagined alternative to today's uncertainty. For others, he offers simplistic conspiracies to explain their world. Bin Laden also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood executed in 1966 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic scholarship with a very superficial acquaintance with Western history and thought. Sent by the Egyptian government to study in the United States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an enormous loathing of Western society and history. He dismissed Western achievements as entirely material, arguing that Western society possesses "nothing that will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence." Three basic themes emerge from Qutb's writings. First, he claimed that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya, the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims-as he defined them-therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction. Bin Laden shares Qutb's stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith. Many Americans have wondered, "Why do 'they' hate us?" Some also ask, "What can we do to stop these attacks?" Bin Laden and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions.

Question: "Who warned that jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam?"

Answer: "Sayyid Qutb"

Response:
yes