The critic and historian Leonard Feather explained Mr. Jones's significance this way: "His main achievement was the creation of what might be called a circle of sound, a continuum in which no beat of the bar was necessarily indicated by any specific accent, yet the overall feeling became a tremendously dynamic and rhythmically important part of the whole group."

Elvin really brought the "polyrhythmic" style of drumming into the light. Instead of having all of the limbs locked in together in the time (with occasional accents by the snare and bass drum), this style has all of the limbs interacting and constantly shifting to create a swirl of movement. Less formulaic, and much more interactive. Elvin's major contribution in this respect is his constant triplet based snare comping that fills in and around his ride cymbal beat.

And of course, Elvin is responsible for that rolling thunder around the drums, and soloing on the drums based on the melody of the tune, and not purely on drum rudiments (Max Roach got this started, but Elvin added a looseness and "flow" to it that endures today) . . . Ron Carter explained Elvin's impact on drumming like this: Listen to a pre-Elvin Jones drummer, then listen to Elvin Jones, then listen to a post-Elvin Jones drummer.

[A]fter declaring "mission accomplished" and pushing through a big tax cut — and after several months when administration officials played down the need for more funds — Mr. Bush told Congress that he needed an additional $87 billion. Assured that the situation in Iraq was steadily improving, and warned that American soldiers would suffer if the money wasn't forthcoming, Congress gave Mr. Bush another blank check.

Now Mr. Bush is back for more. Given this history, one might have expected him to show some contrition — to promise to change his ways and to offer at least a pretense that Congress would henceforth have some say in how money was spent.

But the tone of the cover letter Mr. Bush sent with last week's budget request can best be described as contemptuous: it's up to Congress to "ensure that our men and women in uniform continue to have the resources they need when they need them." This from an administration that, by rejecting warnings from military professionals, ensured that our men and women in uniform didn't have remotely enough resources to do the job.

The budget request itself was almost a caricature of the administration's "just trust us" approach to governing.

It ran to less than a page, with no supporting information. Of the $25 billion, $5 billion is purely a slush fund, to be used at the secretary of defense's discretion. The rest is allocated to specific branches of the military, but with the proviso that the administration can reallocate the money at will as long as it notifies the appropriate committees.

Senators are balking for the moment, but everyone knows that they'll give in, after demanding, at most, cosmetic changes. Once again, Mr. Bush has put Congress in a bind: it was his decision to put American forces in harm's way, but if members of Congress fail to give him the money he demands, he'll blame them for letting down the troops.

A record plunge in Indian stock markets on Monday left investors stunned and sent brokers to the streets to protest against Sonia Gandhi's Congress party, which is set to form a new government with communist support.

"There is blood on the street. People are just queueing up to sell," said Arun Kejriwal, director at research firm KRIS. "There is absolutely no volume to justify this kind of fall. It is a scam now. We will start hearing of bankruptcies soon."

India's key share index plummeted as much as 15 percent as foreign funds stampeded for the exit, adding to last week's heavy losses and leaving investors shell-shocked.

While the market's plunge triggered a few trading suspensions in the morning, a few hundred brokers and investors gathered for an impromptu protest on Bombay's Wall Street, Dalal Street, shouting "Sonia Gandhi, hai, hai (Down with Sonia Gandhi)." Dozens of armed policemen surrounded the towering Bombay Stock Exchange building, which was shuttered and cordoned off during the trading suspension.

"This is the worst day in our lives -- we've lost everything, we're dead," said Sandeep Sirsalewalla, a broker. "We want the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) back."

The leftist parties, which have more than 60 seats in the 545-member lower house, were essential for the government to secure a majority in Parliament. Gandhi's Congress party and its allies won 216 seats in the elections, short of the 272 needed for a majority in the 545-member lower house of parliament. For that, she needs the 62 seats held by leftist parties.

The communists differ sharply with Congress over such key economic and foreign policy issues as privatization of state-run companies and support for greater ties with the United States.

Even with the support of the socialist Samajwadi Party, which announced Monday it would join the alliance and bring in its 36 seats, the Congress would still be short with only 257 seats.

Political analyst Pran Chopra said the communists' decision will make Gandhi's government unstable. ``Their decision not to join, leaves the left parties free to raise objections against policies that they don't agree with,'' said political analyst Pran Chopra. ``At the same time, the left parties can escape blame for whatever may go wrong.''

ME: Oh, I'm sure there are perfectly happy people in the world with no money.

HIM: Oh, yes, that's probably true, but . . .

ME & HIM TOGETHER: Not in this country.

ME: But somewhere.

HIM: In my country [Sri Lanka], there are many such people.

ME: A friend of mine spent some time there a long time ago - he still wants to go back. He says it's just amazing.

HIM: It is a beautiful island. I will go back when I retire.

ME: Oh, yeah?

HIM: Yes. When I am eligible for my Social Security, my children will be grown, so I will leave them here, and I will go back there. My whole family is there, and with the Social Security I will have after working for twenty years or so, I will live like a king. [Laughs.] Like a bloody king!

In Huge Upset, Gandhi's Party Wins Election in India
NEW DELHI, May 13 — Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will resign this evening after his ruling coalition suffered a resounding defeat in parliamentary elections, party officials said today.

The Indian National Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, emerged as the single largest party in the poll results announced today. It appeared poised to form the country's next government with the likely support of its electoral allies and the country's Communist parties.

It is not yet certain — although it seems likely — that Mrs. Gandhi herself will stake claim to be prime minister, since even some of the party's allies have questioned whether a woman of non-Indian origin should lead this nation of more than 1 billion people.

Still, the verdict represents a totally unexpected resurrection for the Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, which ruled India for 45 of the 57 years since independence but had floundered so badly in recent years that it was being written off as an historical relic.

But even more, voters — particularly, but not exclusively, in rural areas — rebelled against the idea of "India Shining" that had been pedaled by the incumbent government in a glossy, costly public relations campaign.

The resentment of the BJP and its efforts to pedal the "feel-good factor" was almost palpable today among a small knot of working-class men gathered to watch the results on a news ticker in New Delhi. Many expressed dismay, common among Indians nostalgic for the quasi-socialist economy of India's first 40 years, at the economic reforms with which the BJP had proudly identified itself.

"Basically it is the anger of the working class," said Sawali Rai, 34, who works in a public sector bank. "Privatization, no government jobs, prices rising. On the pressure of the World Bank they are pressuring the common man."

While it is known that Zarqawi ran a poison-training camp in Afghanistan where one of his legs was injured by allied bombing his network's relationship with al Qaeda is not clear.

European officials believe that money changed hands between the two networks, but they are not sure Zarqawi took orders from al Qaeda leaders. They say he is closely linked with the Chechen rebel movement, which tends to operate independently within the world of Islamist terror.

Zarqawi also appears to have close links with Iran. When he fled Afghanistan, he crossed overland to Iran. He received medical treatment there for his wounded leg, though he was later deported.

A suspect who provided extensive information about Zarqawi to German officials last year reportedly said the Jordanian was aligned with Iran and opposed to al Qaeda. Zarqawi had "links with all [terrorist] groups with the exception of al Qaeda.? He is against al Qaeda," the suspect was quoted as saying by The Chicago Tribune this week.

JUST TO PASS on some added information, about which we'll be saying more. There is chatter in Pakistani intelligence circles that the US has let the Pakistanis know that the optimal time for bagging 'high value' al Qaida suspects in the untamed Afghan-Pakistani border lands is the last ten days of July, 2004.

Folks, these torture pictures with the women torturers, I mean Marv Albert looking at those pictures would say, "Hey, that doesn't look so bad." You know, if you really look at these pictures, I mean I don't know if it's just me but it looks like anything you'd see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe you can get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean this is something you can see at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City: the Movie.

HERSH: No, look, I don't want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations. One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it's very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.

[C]ertainly this doesn't mean that everyone in Iraq literally got the Gitmo treatment. But I can't think of a more tangible example of the corrosive effect our embrace of lawlessness at Guantanamo has had on our conduct. First we devise these outlandish rules to deal with the worst bad guys behind 9/11 and the next thing you know we're applying those brave new rules to miscellaneous bad actors who fall into our net in Iraq. What are we looking at here but the fraudulent connection between Iraq and 9/11 suddenly become flesh, as we look into our own faces and see a paler shade of our enemies looking back at us?

The White House today announced it will be spending another $18 million of taxpayer money on television ads promoting its new Medicare bill. Not only was the last round of ads criticized by government regulators as misleading, but the White House is on track to spend more Medicare money on television ads ($80 million) than its own FDA commissioner says is necessary to create a safe system to import cheaper, FDA-approved prescription medicines from abroad ($58 million).

Can this possibly matter? Perhaps as a fine point of law this would be relevant in court-martial proceeding. And the tolerance or intolerance of these soldiers' commanding officers for this behavior is relevant. But surely no formal training in the Geneva Convention guidelines should be needed to warn people off these sorts of outrages.