lucy24 - 10:21 pm on Nov 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

RewriteBase /index.php - looks incorrect too.

It is, but fortunately it has no effect. After very close poring over the documentation, it turns out that the RewriteBase is stuck onto the front of a Rewrite (capitalized) target when-and-only-when the target does not begin with protocol-plus-domain and does not have a leading slash. In other words, never ;)