John Poindexter is leaving the Defense Department.

Poindexter to Quit Pentagon Post Amid Controversy
By Reuters.

John Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who spearheaded two sharply criticized Pentagon projects, intends to resign from his Defense Department post within weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.

"It's my understanding that he ... expects to, within a few weeks, offer his resignation," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3198102

Poindexter to Quit Pentagon Post Amid Controversy
Thu July 31, 2003 01:59 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who spearheaded two sharply criticized Pentagon projects, intends to resign from his Defense Department post within weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.

"It's my understanding that he ... expects to, within a few weeks, offer his resignation," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters.

Poindexter was involved with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's abandoned futures-trading market for predicting assassinations, terrorism and other events in the Middle East, and earlier with the so-called Total Information Awareness program that drew fire from civil rights groups.

Reaction #1: This is so sad.

Reaction #2: Ouch! Bad timing guys. I thought Israel was supposed to be in the process of building goodwill towards the Palestinian people. This can't be a step in the right direction.

New Law for Israeli-Palestinian Couples
By Gavin Rabinowitz for the Associated Press.

Israel's parliament on Thursday passed a new law that would force Palestinians who marry Israelis to live separate lives or move out of Israel despite charges from human rights groups and Israeli Arabs that the law is racist.

The law would prevent Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who marry Israeli Arabs from obtaining residency permits in Israel...

"This is a racist law that decides who can live here according to racist criteria," said Yael Stein from the Israeli rights group B'tselem.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have sent letters to the parliament protesting the law and urging lawmakers not to pass it, a statement from Human Rights Watch said.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2974045,00.html

New Law for Israeli-Palestinian Couples

Thursday July 31, 2003 4:39 PM

By GAVIN RABINOWITZ

Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's parliament on Thursday passed a new law that would force Palestinians who marry Israelis to live separate lives or move out of Israel despite charges from human rights groups and Israeli Arabs that the law is racist.

The law would prevent Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who marry Israeli Arabs from obtaining residency permits in Israel.

The vote was 53 in favor, 25 against and one abstention, a spokeswoman for the parliament said.

``We see this law as the implementation of the transfer policy by the state of Israel,'' said Jafar Savah from Mossawa, an advocacy center for Israeli Arabs, referring to a plan by far right groups to transfer Israeli Arabs to other Arab countries.

Savah said the law was an attempt to legalize unofficial policy that has been in effect since September 2000 when violence broke out and warned that the law would damage relations between Israel and its Arab minority.

Both local and international human rights groups have condemned the law as racist.

``This is a racist law that decides who can live here according to racist criteria,'' said Yael Stein from the Israeli rights group B'tselem.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have sent letters to the parliament protesting the law and urging lawmakers not to pass it, a statement from Human Rights Watch said.

Israel's government contends that such a law is necessary for security reasons, citing instances where Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza have exploited their residency permits, granting them freedom of movement in Israel, to carry out terror attacks.

``This law comes to address a security issue,'' Cabinet Minister Gideon Ezra told Israel Radio. ``Since September 2000 we have seen a significant connection, in terror attacks, between Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli Arabs,'' Ezra said.

Israel and the Palestinians have been locked in a bloody conflict for 33 months, though a cease-fire declared by the Palestinians on June 29 has significantly reduced violence.

The law, which passed its first reading on June 18, would force newly married couples to choose between living in the Palestinian areas or living separately and would be in effect for a year when the parliament must renew it.

It is not uncommon for members of Israel's 1 million strong Arab community to marry residents of the Palestinian areas, and this was one of the only ways a Palestinian could be eligible for an Israeli residency permit.

Ezra told the radio that since 1993 over 100,000 Palestinians have obtained Israeli permits in this manner. ``It has grown out of control,'' he said.

Stein from B'tselem said there have been only 20 cases from these 100,000 people who have been involved in terror.

``I am not taking these attacks lightly but this is an extreme solution to a marginal phenomenon,'' Stein said.

Ezra turned aside charges that the law was racist, saying ``I agree that anyone who kills Jews just because they are Jewish is a racist.''

Rights groups accused Israel of trying to rush the bill through parliament before it goes into recess on August 3.

This is from the July 28, 2003 Daily Show.

This is actually a two parter -- the first part being Jon's newscast and the second part being Stephen Colbert's abstract take on the missing pages.

Daily Show On The Missing Pages from 911 Report - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 5 MB)
Daily Show On The Missing Pages from 911 Report - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 9 MB)
Daily Show On The Missing Pages from 911 Report - Complete (Small - 14 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

I'm making a film about the Illegal Art Exhibit that just finished up here in San Francisco this month.

I'll posting much a lot of my footage from the movie in bits and pieces over the next few weeks.

It is my hope that the finished products (1. a 22 minute television program and 2. a longer, feature-length film) might actually get some television airplay and maybe accepted in some film festivals and things.

To start things off, here's an interview with Laura Splan, who's a local artist here in San Francisco that just got picked up for the San Francisco leg of the show (and will be staying with the show as it moves on to Philadelphia in September.)

Laura created pillows of prescription pills. She's one of the local artists that got picked up by the tour here in San Francisco and her work will be included in the exhibit Here's Laura explaining why she feels she should be able to create art however she wants to.

Laura Splan About Her Illegal Art (Small - 3 MB)

Laura Splan About Her Illegal Art (Hi-res - 47 MB)

This is from the July 24, 2003 program.

Daily Show On The Shrub's Latest WMD Stragegy (Small - 5 MB)

Actual grab from presidential website (below):

Not an actual grab from the presidential website (below):

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Here's an interview with Ambassador Joseph Wilson -- the guy that's been touring the circuit explaining how he discovered the Niger Uranium WMD situation couldn't have happened as originally reported.

This is from the July 24, 2003 show.

This is a long interview, so I've made it available in its entirety and in two parts.

Joseph Wilson On Daily Show - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 12 MB)
Joseph Wilson On Daily Show - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 10 MB)
Joseph Wilson On Daily Show (Complete) (Small - 21 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This is from the July 24, 2003 program.

California Gov. Recall Update - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 7 MB)

California Gov. Recall Update - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 7 MB)

California Gov. Recall Update - ALL (Small - 13 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This is from the show that aired Monday, July 28, 2003.

The Daily Show On RIAA's Funny Commercials and Suing It's Own Customers (Small - 7 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

In this presentation, Terry Fisher compares the traditional internet distribution models and explains some of the most important case law surrounding it all including the Sony Betamax case and the Napster case.

Terry Fisher On Music Models - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 39 MB)

Terry Fisher On Music Models - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 39 MB)

Terry Fisher On Music Models - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 50 MB)

Terry Fisher On Music Models - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 50 MB)

Day 3 - Tape 3

9:00 - comparing old and new CD models

12:00 2/3 of the costs disappear

14:27 Semiotic democracy

18:00 Moral Rights

32:00 Good slide on music

35:00 my question about retailers and shelf space

todo: ask about "character provision" of compulsory for covering songs -- note: I never followed up on this - but mean to -- lisa rein

42:40 - movies

45:47 - Fair use and Factors

53:03 - non-infringing uses

Day 3 Tape 4

13:34 - CARP

18:15 - Napster

20:00 CD Burning

New Rules, Old Rhetoric
By Michael K. Powell for The NY Times.

Some say the problem is media concentration, and point out that only five companies control 80 percent of what we see and hear. In reality, those five companies own only 25 percent of more than 300 broadcast, satellite and cable channels, but because of their popularity, 80 percent of the viewing audience chooses to watch them. Popularity is not synonymous with monopoly. A competitive media marketplace must be our fundamental goal, but do we really want government to regulate what is popular?

Here is the entire text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/opinion/28POWE.html

July 28, 2003
New Rules, Old Rhetoric
By MICHAEL K. POWELL

WASHINGTON

As the debate about media ownership has moved to Congress during the last two months, the tone of the rhetoric has grown increasingly shrill. One member of Congress said the Federal Communications Commission's June 2 decision to modernize media ownership rules would produce "an orgy of mergers and acquisitions," while another said the new rules could create a new generation of Citizen Kanes.

A key portion of the F.C.C.'s decision would allow one company to own broadcast stations reaching up to 45 percent of the national market, an increase from the current cap of 35 percent. Last week the House approved a $37 billion measure to finance several federal agencies, which also included a provision to restore the 35 percent limit. Yet there is a distressing lack of consensus, and even some basic misunderstandings, over exactly what problem Congress is trying to solve.

There is no doubt that this debate about the role of the media in America is important. It involves not only the core values of the First Amendment, but also issues like how much we value diversity of viewpoints and to what extent the government should promote competition and encourage local control of television.

Whether changing the ownership cap will address these concerns is another question. If the problem is lack of diversity among the media, then the fact is that the United States has the most diverse media marketplace in the world. There are more media outlets, owners, variety and diversity now than at any point in our nation's history. Moreover, our nation's media landscape will not become significantly more concentrated as a result of changes to the F.C.C. rules.

Some say the problem is media concentration, and point out that only five companies control 80 percent of what we see and hear. In reality, those five companies own only 25 percent of more than 300 broadcast, satellite and cable channels, but because of their popularity, 80 percent of the viewing audience chooses to watch them. Popularity is not synonymous with monopoly. A competitive media marketplace must be our fundamental goal, but do we really want government to regulate what is popular?

Others claim that ownership limits are necessary because TV has too much sex or too much violence, is too bland or too provocative. Is television news coverage too liberal, as the National Rifle Association maintains, or too conservative, as critics of networks like Fox say?

The importance of this debate requires accurate facts about the marketplace and clarity from the government about what it is doing. Such an approach helps distinguish legitimate concerns about media concentration from more worrisome efforts to use the government hammer to shape future viewpoints or punish viewpoints expressed in the past.

Much of the pressure to restrict ownership, I fear, is motivated not by worries about concentration, but by a desire to affect content. And some proposals to reduce concentration risk having government promote or suppress particular viewpoints.

The solution proposed by some in Congress is to rescind the ownership cap and restore the status quo. These are the same ownership rules that governed during the time of widespread public discontent with television. It is hard to see how the status quo will produce the results some in Congress say they want.

Keeping the national ownership cap on television stations at 35 percent is also a rule previously struck down by the courts. Moreover, many cable channels - with whom broadcast stations compete for viewers - often reach more than 80 percent of the viewing audience.

Some argue that the cap is necessary to limit concentration. Yet not one of the four major networks (CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) owns more than 3 percent of the nation's television stations. The national cap is not what is preventing greater concentration.

More critically, the national cap does not limit the number of stations one can own in a local market. Fortunately, the F.C.C. maintains strong local ownership restrictions that limit the number of stations one can own in a single market. It is important to consider the rules comprehensively, as the F.C.C. has done, and not piecemeal.

In any case, the national cap does not limit the number of stations one can own; it limits only the number of people one can reach. If a company owns a handful of stations in populous markets like New York or Los Angeles, it will bump into the cap quickly. But if the stations are in smaller markets, it can own many more.

This oddity is why so-called local affiliate groups own many more stations nationally than the networks. Fox Network, for example, is over the 35 percent cap with 35 stations, but Sinclair Broadcasting is well under the cap (at 14 percent) with 56 stations. One can see why many local broadcast groups support the national cap - it allows them to own more stations than the networks. It does not prevent a company with headquarters in Atlanta from owning stations in Muncie, Ind., no matter what numerical limit is drawn. Such has been the case for decades.

At the same time, the current debate has ignored a disturbing trend the new rules will do much to abate: the movement of high-quality content from free over-the-air broadcast television to cable and satellite.

It is difficult to see exactly how setting a lower cap will improve television. Already, most top sports programming has fled to cable and satellite. Quality prime-time viewing, long the strong suit of free television, has begun to erode, as demonstrated by HBO's 109 Emmy nominations this year. Indeed, for the first time ever, cable surpassed free TV in prime-time viewing share last year. If they can reach more of the market, broadcasters will be able to better compete with cable and satellite.

All of this demonstrates that media ownership is no easy issue. When striving to promote the public interest, we must also honor the values of the First Amendment. That's why, following the 1996 mandate of Congress, the F.C.C. armed itself with the facts and spent an exhaustive amount of time and resources to strike this constitutionally important balance. Let's have a national debate, but let's keep it in focus.

Michael K. Powell is chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Today is a sad day. It's the day I felt compelled to start a "Revisionist History" category to keep track of articles in major news publications whose words have ben modified from their original printing to alter the meaning substantially -- and without any word about the alterations.

The first time I took note of this was when MSNBC changed their story several times over a five day period regarding the attack on protesters at the West Oakland Docks in April.

Today's posting is from the Washington Post. I'm totally bummed out about this one, because I like the Post and would like to be able to consider it a noteworthy "newspaper of record," as they say. I do respect this newspaper, and I hope that someone over there will step up to the plate to explain to us how this could have happened, and hopefully assure us that it will not happen again.

Here's the "before" story: White House Wants Baker to Head Iraq Reconstruction.

Here's the completely overhauled "after" story: Bush Considers New Overhaul of Postwar Iraq Administration.

Notice that "Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report" in the original, yet "Staff writers Vernon Loeb and Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report" of the current version. Perhaps Chandrasekaran did the rewrite?

Here's where the two versions have been compared side by side. (There's a lot of other goodies on that page too.)

So there you have it. I've got a ton of other stuff going up today I've been working on all weekend...but this seemed pretty important.

(Thanks, Kevin)

Here is the full text of the original article (as republished by Truthout Friday morning:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/072603E.shtml

White House Wants Baker to Head Iraq Reconstruction
Unresolved Whether Baker or Bremer Would Have Final Word
By Mike Allen and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post

Friday 25 July 2003

The White House hopes to persuade former secretary of state James A. Baker III to take charge of the physical and economic reconstruction of Iraq as part of a broad restructuring of post-war efforts, administration sources said today.

Under the plan, L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, would focus on rebuilding the country's political system. The new structure is still in the discussion stages, and a source close to Baker said he has not accepted the job.

The sources said one hurdle is determining whether Baker or Bremer would have the final word, and they said that question is unresolved. The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University referred questions to Baker's law firm, Baker Botts LLP in Houston. Baker did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

The negotiations reflect a growing realization within the administration that the post-war plan was inadequate and that simple patience, the White House's initial prescription, will not do. Bremer said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that progress has been made in restoring services and creating a government, but he said the effort could last for years.

The assignment also would be the latest of a series of high-profile missions that Baker, 73, has undertaken for President Bush and his father. Baker headed Bush's Florida recount effort after the disputed election of 2000. Against his wishes, he agreed to manage President George H.W. Bush's reelection campaign in 1992. Baker was secretary of state in the first Bush administration, and treasury secretary and White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan.

Baker is well-known in the Middle East from his travels as secretary of state. Administration officials said he would add stability to a process that has been much more chaotic than the administration had hoped, with U.S. troops continuing to suffer casualties from guerrilla attacks. Baker's stature with foreign governments also could help the administration enlist more help in paying for the reconstruction.

Bremer was part of an earlier overhaul that dismayed some native Iraqi leaders. Bremer, who appeared with Bush on Wednesday as part of a Washington visit, arrived in Baghdad on May 12 to take over for retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner.

In another augmentation of the post-war structure, the administration plans to name Reuben Jeffrey III as Washington-based coordinator for the Iraq reconstruction effort.

Jeffrey, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who now is coordinating the federal aid aimed to help reconstruct lower Manhattan, would become the administration's public face for Bremer's operation in Baghdad, including dealing with lawmakers and managing the interagency process. Officials said the White House concluded that, given the distance between Baghdad and Washington, Bremer needed someone senior in Washington who could navigate the bureaucracy and deal with Capitol Hill.

Bush named Jeffrey special adviser for lower Manhattan development in March 2002. Jeffery had worked at Goldman for 18 years, living and working in Paris, London and New York and specializing in the financial services sector. He previously practiced corporate law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York.

Here is the new and improved article, not living at the same URL where the above story lived until around 7pm eastern time on friday:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45589-2003Jul25.html/

Bush Considers New Overhaul of Postwar Iraq Administration
White House Aims to Address Concerns as Cost, Casualties Mount

Subscribe to The Post
By Mike Allen and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 25, 2003; 7:05 PM

President Bush is contemplating the second overhaul in three months of his post-war administration of Iraq, as the White House faces up to the enormity of the task and the need to demonstrate progress to maintain political support for the effort, administration officials said today.

A series of polls has show U.S. voters becoming increasingly impatient at the prospects of large number of troops remaining in Iraq indefinitely, as the cost rises and guerrilla attacks continue inflicting military casualties long past the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.

"We're confident of long-term success," a Bush aide said. "We need to show short-term success."

L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, lobbied the Pentagon and Congress for more funds and personnel during a visit to Washington this week, officials said.

As part of an effort to beef up the reconstruction, the White House is considering asking several major figures, including former secretary of state James A. Baker III, to help with specific tasks like seeking funds from other countries or helping restructure Iraq's debt.

"A lot of different things are being discussed," a senior administration official said. "Nothing has happened yet."

A senior official said Bush was very pleased with Bremer and that changes in the post-war administration, known as the coalition provisional authority, would be made only with his support. "This is a Bremer-driven process," the official said.

An aide said Baker is on vacation, and he did not immediately return messages left at his law firm, Baker Botts LLP in Houston. Several administration officials predicted that Baker would not become involved, but said the White House might still seek "a Baker-like figure" to share duties with Bremer.

The discussions reflect a growing realization within the administration that the post-war plan was inadequate and that simple patience, the White House's initial prescription, is not the answer. Bremer, who was saluted by Bush in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that progress has been made in restoring services and creating a government. But he said the effort could last for years.

Bremer said privately during his meetings in Washington that the administration might need to appoint a high-level official to focus solely on restructuring Iraq's debt, a senior official said.

In another augmentation of the post-war structure, the administration plans to name Reuben Jeffrey III, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who is now coordinating the federal aid aimed to help reconstruct lower Manhattan, as Washington-based coordinator for the Iraq reconstruction effort.

One administration official said a division of duties for the administration of Iraq had been contemplated as far back as the contingency planning phases of the war. "We knew it would be difficult, but ground truth has given us a lot more to think about," the official said.

If Bush called on Baker, 73, the assignment also would be the latest of a series of high-profile missions he has undertaken for the Bush family. Baker headed the Republican team during the Florida recount litigation after the disputed election of 2000. Against Baker's wishes, he agreed to manage President George H.W. Bush's reelection campaign in 1992. Baker was secretary of state in the first Bush administration, and treasury secretary and White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan.

Baker is well-known in the Middle East from his travels as secretary of state. Administration officials said he would add stability to a process that has been much more chaotic than the administration had hoped. Baker's stature with foreign governments also could help the administration enlist more help in paying for the reconstruction.

Bremer, although he was a career diplomat before becoming a private business consultant, lacks experience in the Arab world. Some administration officials said another figure might be better suited to selling neighboring countries on the U.S. approach to rebuilding Iraq.

Bremer took charge as part of an abrupt overhaul in May that dismayed some native Iraqi leaders. Just a month after U.S. troops ended three decades of Baath Party rule, Bremer was sent to Baghdad to take over for Jay M. Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general who has been in charge of the reconstruction effort.

Jeffrey, who is to become the Washington-based coordinator of the reconstruction effort, will become the administration's public face for the operation in Baghdad, including dealing with lawmakers and managing dealings with other party of the government. Officials said the White House concluded that, given the distance between Baghdad and Washington, Bremer needed someone senior in Washington who could navigate the bureaucracy and deal with Capitol Hill.

Bush named Jeffrey special adviser for lower Manhattan development in March 2002. Jeffery had worked at Goldman for 18 years, living and working in Paris, London and New York and specializing in the financial services sector. He previously practiced corporate law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York.

Staff writers Vernon Loeb and Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report.

Garamendi On Emergency Measure (Small - 6 MB)

Here are "small" and Hi-res versions of Zack Rosen explaining the Americans For Dean website. This is taken from the blogging panel that took place on Monday, June 30, 2003 in Stanford, CA.

Zack Rosen At ILaw (Small - 12 MB)
Zack Rosen At ILaw (Hi-res - 167 MB)

This is the show that aired July 25, 2003 at 10:00 pm PST.

Bill Moyers NOW did a great story Friday night (July 25, 2003) about what's been going on over on Capitol Hill the last two weeks regarding the FCC's New Media Ownership Rules. Rep. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Rep Zack Wamp (R-TN) are three of the many Republicans that have decided to go against the wishes of the White House and voted 400 to 21 in favor of reversing the new rules. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) was the Congressman who created the Bill that was passed last week by the House.

Bill Moyers NOW - Changing Channels - ALL (Small - 25 MB)
Bill Moyers NOW - Changing Channels - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 13 MB)
Bill Moyers NOW - Changing Channels - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 13 MB)

Credits:
Senior Washington Correspondent: Roberta Baskin.
Producer: Katie Pitra
Editor: Alison Amron

I transcribed this from the video:

The forces in favor of big media were gathering. Just hours before the vote on Obey's Amendment, seventy General Managers from television stations owned by the four networks met for breakfast on Capitol Hill. They had been recruited by their parent companies to come to Washington and lobby congress to support the FCC. Curiously, with all these TV executives in one room, only our camera was there to record it.

And down in the halls, the Republican Congressman were being pressured to support the new FCC rule change. Especially from their own leadership.

"I was heading for an elevator that Chairman Billy Tauzin was getting on. I sneaked around the corner and went down three flights of stairs to avoid the elevator ride with Chairman Tauzin, because he would've had me boxed in that elevator and I was able to stand my ground and vote my conscience without, face to face, having the kind of pressure that he would have exerted." -- Rep Zack Wamp (R-TN).

"I didn't get elected here so I can be a potted plant and I don't really care what the White House thinks about some of these issues. My conscience is what I will report to when I reach the end of my days. Not to anybody downtown." -- Frank Wolf.

Here's the official scoop on this episode:

NOW with Bill Moyers
PBS Airdate: Friday 25 July at 9 p.m./10 p.m. on PBS
(check local listings at www.PBS.org)

NOW with Bill Moyers | Reversing The FCC

As you already know, on Monday, June 2, 2003 the FCC relaxed decades-old rules restricting media ownership, permitting companies to purchase more television stations and own a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same city. More than a year before the FCC decision, NOW with Bill Moyers reported on the dangerous results of media deregulation on the radio industry, and since then, armed with its journalistic mission to shed light on issues confronting our democracy, NOW has remained among the only voices on American television covering media deregulation. While the series may have helped to bring wider public attention to the issue, it was organizations like yours that organized a massive public response by mail, telephone, and e-mail to the FCC.

This week, NOW will once more focus attention on the FCC's decision and on the machinations on the Hill, which could result in a the reversal of the FCC's new rule that allows the nation's largest TV networks to grow even bigger. It's a stunning political development that has made strange bedfellows of some Democrats and Republicans. I hope that you will be able to alert your members to Friday's edition of NOW (see program alert below).

This week Congress is moving towards reversing the FCC's new rule that allows the nation's largest TV networks to grow even bigger. The FCC's June 2 decision to further deregulate big media has made strange bedfellows of some Democrats and Republicans who fear that loosening media restrictions threatens Democracy. "I think we ought to err on the side of looking out for the American people, and not necessarily for the corporations who have the most to gain," says Representative Richard Burr (R-NC). With growing criticism of media consolidation from both liberal and conservative groups, will Congress roll back the new media ownership rules adopted by the FCC? On Friday, July 25, 2003 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), NOW continues its ongoing coverage of media consolidation by taking viewers inside the debate on Capitol Hill.

Someone sent me this thinking it would do nicely in my Dean archive.

NBC News Transcripts
SHOW: Meet the Press (10:00 AM ET) - NBC
June 22, 2003 Sunday
LENGTH: 9614 words

DR. DEAN: Well, I wasn't aware that Senator Kerry said it. I knew Senator Graham had said it in Iowa. But I believe that. I think we were misled. Now, the question is did the president do that on purpose? Was he misled by his own intelligence people? Was he misled by the people around us? Or did he, in fact, know what the truth was and tell us something different. I've called for an independent investigation headed by Republicans and Democrats who are well respected in the country to find out what the president did know and when he knew it. We essentially went to war, supported by Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt, Senator Lieberman and Senator Edwards, based on facts that turned out not to be accurate. I think that's pretty serious and I think the American people are entitled to know why that was.

NBC News Transcripts
SHOW: Meet the Press (10:00 AM ET) - NBC
June 22, 2003 Sunday
LENGTH: 9614 words

HEADLINE: Dr. Howard Dean, Democrat, former governor of Vermont, discusses his 2004 presidential candidacy and his stand on such issues as the economy, foreign policy and Iraq

BODY:
MR. RUSSERT: And tomorrow, Dr. Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, plans to formally announce for president. He is here first this morning on MEET THE PRESS.

Governor, welcome.

DR. DEAN: Good morning.

MR. RUSSERT: Tomorrow, you will formally announce for president of the United States in Burlington at noon. Will you be joined by your family?

DR. DEAN: I will. My son Paul, who's gotten a little scrap over the weekend, is not going to be there, but he wasn't planning on that in the first place. We have four very independent-minded people in my family. My wife is a physician. She's going to continue to practice medicine. She'll do interviews and so forth but won't campaign. My daughter's actually working in the campaign, so she's in a different place. And then my son is very guarded about his privacy and so forth. And so he's chosen not to come and I said that's fine.

MR. RUSSERT: You said that your son got in a scrap. He was arrested for driving a car in which some of his friends broke into a beer cooler and stole some beer...

DR. DEAN: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...and was indicted. How are you...

DR. DEAN: He hasn't been indicted, but he...

MR. RUSSERT: Cited.

DR. DEAN: He's been cited, right.

MR. RUSSERT: But how are you as a father dealing with that?

DR. DEAN: Well, I'm not very happy about it. I think that 17-year-olds sometimes do extraordinarily foolish things and this is an example of that. We had a very difficult weekend at home, and I think it was a good thing for me to go back and try to get this straighten out and he's going to have to pay the price. If you do things and make mistakes like that, you have to pay a price.

MR. RUSSERT: He's grounded?

DR. DEAN: He's more than grounded; he's going to have to go through the judicial system and they're going to figure out what to do about him and his four friends.

MR. RUSSERT: Let's turn to the campaign. This is what you said last month about the Bush tax cut and I'll show you and our viewers. "It has become clear what this president is attempting to do and why we must repeal the entire package of tax cuts." The Department of Treasury, we consulted and asked them: What effect would that have across America? And this is what they said. A married couple with two children making $40,000 a year, under the Bush plan, would pay $45 in taxes. Repealing them, under the Dean plan, if you will, would pay $1,978, a tax increase of over 4,000 percent. A married couple over 65 making $40,000 and claiming their Social Security, under Bush would pay $675 in taxes. You're suggesting close to $1,400, a 107 percent tax increase. Can you honestly go across the country and say, "I'm going to raise your taxes 4,000 percent or 107 percent," and be elected?

DR. DEAN: Well, first of all, were those figures from the Treasury Department, did you say, or CBO?

MR. RUSSERT: Treasury Department.

DR. DEAN: I don't believe them. This administration has not been candid about the impacts of this tax cut. A few months ago they had the deficit coming in at $290 billion. It's at $400 billion. The administration simply has not been forthcoming and factual about the impact of their tax cuts.

Setting aside whatever the real numbers might be, the accurate numbers, let's look at what the tax cuts have done. Property taxes are going up in places in New Hampshire because the president has cut services, because he has not given the right amount of money to the states for special education, for No Child Left Behind, for all these unfunded mandates that he's passed.

The real effect of the Bush tax cuts has actually been to raise taxes on most middle-class people and to cut their services. Their public schools are suffering. Health care is suffering for middle-class kids. And that's because of these tax cuts. These tax cuts are incredibly bad for the economy. I believe their purpose is essentially to defund the federal government so that Medicare and Social Security, the icons of the New Deal, will be undone.

Karl Rove and others have talked about going back to the McKinley era before there was any kind of social safety net in this country. Really that's what the campaign's about. It's to undo what I consider radical Republicanism.

MR. RUSSERT: But in the middle of an economic downturn, Howard Dean wants to raise taxes on the average of $1,200 per family.

DR. DEAN: So says the Republican Treasury Department which I think has very little credibility in this matter. Let's look at the record.

MR. RUSSERT: But you would raise taxes?

DR. DEAN: I would go back to the Clinton era of taxes because I think most Americans would gladly pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president if they could only have the same economy that they had when Bill Clinton was president.

MR. RUSSERT: Ted Kennedy says that we should have a prescription drug plan. It's the first step, a compromise. Democratic leader Tom Daschle says he's right. Are you with Ted Kennedy?

DR. DEAN: Well, this is a tough one. I've actually talked to Ted Kennedy about this, and also talked to Tom Harkin, and Jay Rock--well, I haven't talked to Jay Rockefeller, but who I deeply respect, who are on different sides of this issue, and let me speak about the dilemma. First, this is an opportunity to set up an entitlement program for people who need a prescription drug benefit. We need to do that. Secondly, the bill won't work. And it won't work because it uses the private insurance companies to deliver the health-care benefits. They actually signed a bill like this in Nevada. Kenny Guinn signed a bill like this two years ago, Republican governor, and nobody got health insurance or got prescription benefits out of it because no insurance company would sign up to insure a product that's going up at five times the rate of inflation.

So the bill won't work. It's clearly an election-year sop, but what Senator Kennedy says, and he has probably the most extraordinary record on health care of any United States senator, what he says is this is the opportunity to get this in the door. We know it may not work. But let's do the best we can. And we'll try to fix it later once the entitlement is established. So I think the bill is not a particularly good bill but I--out of respect for Senator Kennedy, it's hard to really completely trash his position.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you vote for the Kennedy proposal?

DR. DEAN: I'd want to see what is in the bill, the amendment. There are more amendments. And one of the critical amendments is what's going to happen to Iowa and New Hampshire and Vermont and so forth, Medicare assessments. I was the 50th in the country, Vermont is 49th in the county--there's talk about Senator Grassley putting some money in Senator Harkin for Iowa and to fix Medicare reimbursement. That makes it more attractive. So I don't know how I'd vote on this bill right now, and I'd want to see the last amendments before it goes out the door.

Here's the other problem. This is a political trap for the Democrats. What will happen I'd flatly predict now is that it will pass the Senate, it will go to the House, the right-wing majority in the House will pass some unacceptable piece of nonsense that's clearly nothing but election year goodies, it'll go to a conference committee that the Democrats will have no say in, and then the Democrats in the Senate will be forced to vote up or down on unacceptable bill and it will be positioned by the Bush administration to say they killed drug benefits for seniors even though it won't be true. So it's a political Washington type of trap and it's a terrible, terrible dilemma for the Democratic senators to be in.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you still in favor of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget?

DR. DEAN: You know, I go back and forth on that. It's not very good public policy but I'd love to see the Republicans hem and haw about what they would do about a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. The constitutional amendments to balance--we don't have one in Vermont. We're the only state that doesn't require a balanced budget, and we actually have the best fiscal record, or one of the best, of any state. But a constitutional amendment might--has forced Republicans who are really the party of fiscal irresponsibility, borrowing and spending, and borrowing and spending, and borrowing and spending, has forced them to balance the budgets when they otherwise wouldn't. So what I--I really don't like the idea of a federal balanced budget amendment, but I am very tempted.

MR. RUSSERT: But through your entire career you have been for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

DR. DEAN: Yes, because I just--I have, and it's because I think that there's so little fiscal discipline in the Congress that you might just have to do it. I hate to do it because we didn't have to do it in Vermont, but, God, the guys in Washington just never get it about money.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, in 1995, when you were advocating that position, you were asked how would you balance the budget if we had a constitutional amendment...

DR. DEAN: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: ...calling for that, and this is what Howard Dean said. "The way to balance the budget, [Gov. Howard] Dean said, is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut almost everything else. 'It would be tough but we could do it,' he said."

DR. DEAN: Well, we fortunately don't have to do that now.

MR. RUSSERT: We have a $500 billion deficit.

DR. DEAN: But you don't have to cut Social Security to do that.

MR. RUSSERT: But why did you have to do it back then?

DR. DEAN: Well, because that was the middle of--I mean, I don't recall saying that, but I'm sure I did, if you have it on your show, because I know your researchers are very good.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, Miles Benson is a very good reporter for the Newhouse News.

DR. DEAN: Yes, he is. No, no, no. I'm sure I did. I'm not denying I said that. I have...

MR. RUSSERT: But you would no longer cut Social Security?

DR. DEAN: But you don't--no. I'm not ever going to cut Social Security benefits.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you raise retirement age to 70?

DR. DEAN: No. No.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you cut defense?

DR. DEAN: You don't have to do that either. Here's what you have to do. You got to get rid of the tax cuts, all of them, and then you have got to restrict spending. You've got to control--well, here's what we did in Vermont. We had some mild tax cuts in the '90s, not the huge ones that most other states did. Secondly, we put a lot of money into a rainy day fund, and I never let the Legislature spend more than the rate of growth of the economy, so the biggest increase I think we had in the almost 12 years I was governor was I think 5.2 percent or something like that. And then we paid off a quarter of our debt, which is what Bill Clinton did when he was president.

Now, we're not cutting higher education, we're not cutting K through 12, we're not cutting Medicaid for kids, and we have a balanced budget. So if you restrain spending, which is long-term spending, that's the key to balancing the budget. But you've got to get rid of the tax cuts because the hole is so very, very deep. And Social Security, I--the best way to balance Social Security budget right now, other than stop taking the money out for the tax cuts, is to expand the amount of money that Social Security payroll taxes apply to. It's limited now to something like $80,000. You let that rise. I also would entertain taking the retirement age to 68. It's at 67 now. I would entertain that.

MR. RUSSERT: But the deficit's $500 billion. Half the budget goes to Social Security, Medicare and Defense. They asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks? He said, "That's where the money is." You could close down the entire United States government, other than Social Security, Medicare and Defense and interest on the public debt, and you still wouldn't balance the budget.

DR. DEAN: But the problem for Social Security is that it is actually in fine shape until, I don't know, 2040 or something like that.

MR. RUSSERT: No, no, no, no, no, no.

DR. DEAN: Well, it's in fine shape--it's actuarially fine until 2025 or '23 and then the trust fund doesn't run out...

MR. RUSSERT: Receipts and outlays begin...

DR. DEAN: That's right. Around--in the middle of the 2020s.

MR. RUSSERT: When the baby boomers retire, we have a real impending crisis.

DR. DEAN: That's right. But, in some ways, that's unrelated from the budget problem because what the people in Washington have been doing is taking money out of Social Security to balance the budget and then spend enormous amounts and run huge deficits. So there's two separate problems. First of all, you've got to fix Social Security and you've got to fix the budget. Fixing Social Security is an independent problem from the budget. And that's what I talked about.

You've got to look at expanding the amount of money that gets taxed for Social Security. You know, if you make $100,000 a year, the last $15,000 doesn't have to pay Social Security tax for it.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Governor, if you don't go to near Social Security or Medicare or Defense and you have a $500 billion deficit, if you're not going to raise taxes $500 billion to balance the budget, where are you going to find the money? Which programs are you going to cut? What do you cut? Education? Health care? Where?

DR. DEAN: Here's what you do. As a veteran of having to do this, because this is what I did in Vermont, Social Security, you fix actuarially. It's just like an insurance policy. Right now there's--eventually, in the middle of the 2020s you're going to see more money going out than coming in. You've got to fix that. We've talked a little bit about how to do that. Maybe you look at the retirement age going to 68. Maybe you increase the amount that gets--payroll tax--I'm not in favor of cutting benefits. I think that's a big problem.

MR. RUSSERT: But you would consider increasing the payroll tax?

DR. DEAN: Absolutely. You don't have to increase the amount of the payroll tax, you increase the salary that it's applied to. You see what I mean?

MR. RUSSERT: Yes.

DR. DEAN: $85,000, maybe you raise it to $100,000 or whatever the numbers are. We've got to look at the numbers to figure out what you do. You get the Social Security problem off the table first by fixing it and then not allowing the Congress to keep taking money out of the trust fund. The president's financing his tax cuts by taking money out of the Social Security trust fund. That's ridiculous--first. Secondly, what do you do about the budget? You restrain spending. You do not have to actually make cuts in things like Medicare or in things like Medicaid or even in Defense. What you have to do is restrain the increases in spending.

MR. RUSSERT: When the Republicans tried to limit the growth, the Democrats said that was an actual cut.

DR. DEAN: Well, they're going to say what they're going to say. All I...

MR. RUSSERT: You would be willing to limit the growth...

DR. DEAN: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: ...in Defense, in Medicare and Social Security?

DR. DEAN: You have to do that. If you don't go where the money is--Social Security, we're going to fix differently. We're not talking about Social Security. We're talking about Medicare. We're talking about Defense and we're talking about all the other things the federal government does. But I want to put the tax cut back into that budget. They need it to balance the budget.

MR. RUSSERT: That's raising taxes, though. Let's be honest.

DR. DEAN: Here's what I say to people. You have a choice. Do you want to have the president's tax cut or would you like a health-care program that nobody can ever take away? Do you want to have the president's tax cut or would you like to fully fund special education, which is an obligation to the states, which is raising your property taxes? Do you want the president's tax cut or would you like to go back towards a balanced budget so we can actually create jobs and have a healthy economy again? Because a balanced budget, I believe, is the key to turning the economy around, as Bill Clinton showed.

So, if you ask that to most Americans, they're going to say, "I would much rather pay the taxes that I was paying when Bill Clinton was president if I could have health care and my property taxes would go down and we could have jobs again." Because they never got the president's tax cut. The vast majority of people in this country either got no tax cut or got a small few hundred dollars.

I had a guy in New Hampshire one time who stood up and said, "Governor, you may make some sense here." This is New Hampshire. "I got a $600 check from the president, but my 401(k) went down $60,000. I think I was better off before the president's tax cut." Most people got hurt by the president's tax cut and they're paying more property taxes because of what the president's tax cut has done to their state and local government.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to an issue that you've been very identified with and that's gay rights. Here you are on the cover of Advocate magazine, put out by the National Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine. Canada--and this was the way the papers reported it this week: "The Canadian cabinet approved a new national policy today to open marriage to gay couples, paving the way for Canada to become the third country to allow same-sex unions. ...The policy opens the way for same-sex couples from the United States and around the world to travel here to marry, since Canada has no marriage residency requirements. Canadian marriage licenses have always been accepted in the United States."

And hundreds of American gay couples are now going to Canada to be married. When they return to the United States, married in Canada legally, should that marriage be recognized?

DR. DEAN: You know what we do in this country? We focus so much on gay marriage that I think we've missed the real point of what this debate is about, which is equal rights. As you know, in our state we have a civil unions statute which says that gay couples, while they can't get married, have the same rights as everybody else, exactly the same rights--inheritance rights, insurance rights, hospital rights--that's what this is all about. So the answer is, "Will I recognize the equal rights of people who get united in Canada, whether it's married or anything else?" Yes. I think that it...

MR. RUSSERT: Yeah, but will you recognize them as a married couple, as President Dean? A couple is married in Canada, comes in the United States, legally married in Canada, are they legally married in the United States?

DR. DEAN: I can't answer that question because it's a legal question, but I can tell you what I will definitely do. I will definitely make sure they have exactly the same rights as married people, which is what we've done in Vermont. I can't tell you about the marriage question. I think the answer probably is they are legally entitled to be recognized, but I don't without--I'm not a lawyer and I don't know the answer to that.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you--do you think they should be?

DR. DEAN: Well, that's a very difficult issue. The position I've always taken is that it's the church's business to decide who they can marry and who they can't marry.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, there's civil marriage. A judge marries people in the United States.

DR. DEAN: We have civil unions in Vermont. I will recognize the legal--it's the federal government's and the states' business to recognize the fact that everybody has the same legal rights as everybody else. That's why we did civil unions. Marriage is also a way of getting those exact same legal rights, so the question is, "Is a marriage in another country recognized in this country here?" My guess is the answer is yes. I don't know the answer, but I can tell you what I stand for. I stand for equal rights for every single American.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you seek...

DR. DEAN: And so the legal parts I would definitely support, then I've got to get some opinions about, you know, what we're doing to the Catholic Church and other churches that oppose this kind of stuff. But I definitely believe that you have to recognize equal rights. So if a couple goes to Canada and gets married, when they come back, they should have exactly the same legal rights as every other American.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you, as president, seek the same kind of legislation that now has passed in Canada, allowing formally gays to marry?

DR. DEAN: No, because I don't think that is the right of the federal government. I was very much opposed, unlike some of the folks I'm running against, to the Defense of Marriage Act. I did not support the Defense of Marriage Act, because I do not think it's the federal government's business to get involved in what has traditionally been the matter for the states to deal with. But by the same token, I would not tell other states that they had to have a civil union statute or that they had to have a marriage statute. That is the not the province of the federal government. What I will go as president of the United States is insist that every state find a way to recognize the same legal rights for gay couples as they do for everybody else. Equal rights under the law is a fundamental tenet of America, and that's where we need to be.

MR. RUSSERT: Another debatable and controversial issue is the death penalty. This was the headline in your home state paper the other day: "Dean Aligns With Bush On Death Penalty. Former Governor Howard Dean appears to be shedding some of the liberal tendencies that have won him national attention as he now expands his support for the death penalty...His shift on the death penalty...has some questioning his motives."

"'This doesn't surprise me. I think Dean's willing to do what he has to do to win,'" said Frank Bryan, a political science professor at the University of Vermont and longtime observer of Dean. 'I really believe he's very ambitious and he wants to win badly. He has to get to the final plateau, and I think he will take risks with his inconsistencies being discovered in order to get to the next step.'...

"Eric Davis, a Middlebury College political science professor," also from Vermont, "summed up Dean's change in two words: South Carolina. ...'I think what's going on here is Dean is trying to appeal to electorates in more conservative states...'" South Carolina being the third primary after Iowa and New Hampshire.

DR. DEAN: It's a very interesting article, and turned out to be wrong, which was kind of embarrassing. In fact, I figured I was going to get asked this. In 1964--excuse me, in 1994, in the very paper that this was printed in, they ran a series of articles saying I was rethinking the death penalty. This has nothing to do with running for president. It happened while Bill Clinton--before Bill Clinton had even run for his second term. I began to rethink the death penalty in 1994 because of the Polly Klaas case. The Polly Klaas case was the case of a young girl who was kidnapped from her house, abducted and raped, and murdered by a felon who never should have been let out of jail. We had a very similar horrible case in Vermont a few years earlier, and I began to rethink my position on the death penalty as a result of that, and the article was just plain wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: But in terms of rethinking--let me show you what you did say in '92 and think about...

DR. DEAN: That's right. You don't have to show me. I know what I said in '92.

MR. RUSSERT: But I want to talk about it...

DR. DEAN: OK.

MR. RUSSERT: ...because I want the country to see it because it's important. "I don't support the death penalty for two reasons. One, you might have the wrong guy, and two, the state is like a parent. Parents who smoke cigarettes can't really tell their children not to smoke and be taken seriously. If a state tells you not to murder people, a state shouldn't be in the business of taking people's lives." The Catholic bishop up in Vermont has said this, and I'll show you and our viewers. "I am sorry that Governor Dean has expressed second thoughts on his support for the physicians' pledge to 'do no harm.' ...as Governor Dean himself said: 'I truly don't believe it's a deterrent.' What then would be the motive for the death penalty except vengeance?" Do you believe there's still a possibility, as you said, the wrong guy could be executed?

DR. DEAN: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: And number two, as you said, if a state is like a parent saying don't kill, why is the state killing?

DR. DEAN: It's a deeply, deeply troubling issue. Let me explain to you why I changed my position and why I've began that process in 1994. These were two horrible murders of young children and I oppose the death penalty in most instances. Here's the areas I've changed and here's why, and I'm very supportive for exam--we don't have a death penalty in Vermont just so most of your viewers know that we're one of the states that doesn't and we don't need a death penalty.

But here's the problem, Tim, the state executes people improperly if they're improperly convicted--Illinois was the classic case. There were a number of people that were death row that turned out to be innocent. Deeply trouble. I came to realize because of the Polly Klaas case and because of similar other cases that sometimes the state inadvertently has a hand in killing innocent people because they let people out who ought never to have been let out. And so the judicial system's imperfection hurts us in two ways. It executes innocent people because they were convicted and put to death, which is a terrible thing which is why I support Pat Leahy's innocents protection bill, but they also allow people to get out of jail when they're supposed to be in there for life and then those people go and repeat their crimes, oftentimes sex offenders.

So I came to the conclusion that a person who murders a child shows a depraved indifference to life which will never be--incapable of being rehabilitated. Secondly, that a mass murderer, such as a terrorist, is someone who can't be rehabilitated and to let these people out is too dangerous and it's too high likelihood that they'll repeat their crime. And thirdly, I don't believe the death penalty is a deterrent, but I think there may be one instance where just possibly it could be and that's the shooting of a police officer. If you're about to pull a trigger on a guy who's in uniform and you know that you're going to get the death penalty and if you don't pull the trigger something different will happen, maybe that might save the police officer's life.

The only three instances that I support the death penalty are, one, murder of a child, two, a mass murder like a terrorist and, three, the shooting of a police officer, and that's how I came to the position that I came and I began that process in '94 which is...

MR. RUSSERT: What's wrong with life imprisonment without parole--it's $2 million per inmate cheaper than the death penalty when you consider and factor the cost of all of the appeals?

DR. DEAN: You know, I had said this before and I'll say it again: I don't think what's cheap and what's not cheap has a bearing on whether you use the death penalty or not. Other people have said it's cheaper to do the death penalty because you get rid of them. You don't have to give them room and board for life. Those kinds of arguments are irrelevant here.

So I just--life without parole, which we have which I actually got passed when I was lieutenant governor--the problem with life without parole is that people get out for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. We had a case where a guy who was a rapist, a serial sex offender, was convicted, then was let out on what I would think and believe was a technicality, a new trial was ordered and the victim wouldn't come back and go through the second trial. And so the guy basically got time served, and he was the man who murdered a 15-year-old girl and raped her and then left her for dead and she was dead.

So life without parole doesn't work either. If life without parole worked 100 percent of the time, there'd be no need for the death penalty because I agree with the bishop. Vengeance should never be a piece of this. As human beings, we all want to get revenge. That should never part of public policy, to get revenge, but the trouble is that life without parole is not perfect either and the victims in that case are 15- and 12-year-old girls. That is every bit as heinous as putting to death someone who didn't commit the crime.

MR. RUSSERT: We're going to take a quick break and come back. More of our conversation with Howard Dean about defense issues; Iraq. A whole lot more right after this.

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MR. RUSSERT: More with one of the Democrats who wants to take on George Bush in the fall, Governor Howard Dean, after this brief station break.

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MR. RUSSERT: And we are back, talking to Governor Howard Dean. Texas Democrat Martin Frost said the other day, "We need a candidate who is credible on national security. I think Howard Dean has the appearance of being another McGovern." Worried about your national security experience and views. The headlines: "Foes Warn Of Dean Debacle; Will Dean '04 Be A Disaster For Hill Democrats?" And they talked--they point to comments like this, Governor, and I'll show you and our viewers, from April. "We have to take a different approach [to diplomacy]. We won't always have the strongest military." Do you, as a potential commander in chief, really believe that the United States will not always have the strongest military?

DR. DEAN: What I said was, if we don't begin to use diplomacy as part of our foreign policy, we won't always have the strongest military. And that's absolutely true. And there have been many other people who know a great deal about national security, including President Clinton, who have said that's true. We have got to take on a different posture in the world where we don't simply push everybody aside who disagrees with us without trying to actually accomplish some things through diplomatic means.

MR. RUSSERT: But we will always have the strongest military under President Dean.

DR. DEAN: Oh, under President Dean, we certainly will always have the strongest military, because this is a long-term phenomenon, not a short-term phenomenon. In foreign affairs, there's a phenomenon called encirclement, where--and it's a historical phenomenon. A single, very great power with no obvious rivals in the world who exercises that power unilaterally and in contempt of other countries will result in the formation of an alliance of other second-tier powers to contain the power of that great military power. That's exactly what I was talking about in that quote, and that's absolutely true. It will happen over a period of years. Should I become president...

MR. RUSSERT: It will happen? We will have a secondary military power?

DR. DEAN: If we continue following George Bush's military policy and defense policy, will become a secondary military power. Under President Dean, that won't happen for two reasons. First of all, it's a long-term phenomenon. And secondly I will begin to set us on a path where cooperation as part of our foreign relations and our diplomatic policy. This president has essentially pushed aside people who disagree with him, using our military might, and using threats and intimidation. In the long run, that does not work.

MR. RUSSERT: Let's talk about the military budget. How many men and women would you have on active duty?

DR. DEAN: I can't answer that question. And I don't know what the answer is. I can tell you one thing, though. We need more troops in Afghanistan. We need more troops in Iraq now. I supported the president's invasion of Afghanistan for the obvious reasons, what had gone on and the murder of people. But I do not support what the president's doing there now. We need more people there. We cannot be making alliances with warlords in the hope that we're one day going to have the democracy in Afghanistan. And what I would do in Iraq now is bring in NATO and bring in the United Nations, because our troops on the ground deserve better support than they're getting.

MR. RUSSERT: But how many troops--how many men and women do we now have on active duty?

DR. DEAN: I can't tell you the answer to that either. It's...

MR. RUSSERT: But as commander in chief, you should now that.

DR. DEAN: As someone who's running in the Democratic Party primary, I know that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two million people, but I don't know the exact number, and I don't think I need to know that to run in the Democratic Party primary.

MR. RUSSERT: How many troops would have in Iraq?

DR. DEAN: More than we have now. My understanding is we have in the neighborhood of 135,000 troops. I can't tell you exactly how many it takes. General Shinseki thought that we were undermanned by roughly 100,000. Maybe that's the right attitude.

Tim, you have to understand, and I know you do understand, that as you run a campaign and as you acquire the nomination and as you go on to be president, you acquire military advisers who will tell you these things. And, no, I don't have a military background. Neither did Bill Clinton. George Bush had a National Guard background. Ronald Reagan did not have a military background. I will have the kinds of people around me who can tell me these things. For me to have to know right now, participating in the Democratic Party, how many troops are actively on duty in the United States military when that is actually a number that's composed both of people on duty today and people who are National Guard people who are on duty today, it's silly. That's like asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is.

MR. RUSSERT: Oh, no, no, no. Not at all. Not if you want to be commander in chief. But we now have 9,000 troops...

DR. DEAN: So your perception--your position is that I need to know exactly how many people are on duty today in the active military forces...

MR. RUSSERT: Well, have a sense...

DR. DEAN: ...six months away from the first primary?

MR. RUSSERT: If somebody wants to be president of the United States, have a sense of the military.

DR. DEAN: I do have a sense of the military.

MR. RUSSERT: ...of how many people roughly...

DR. DEAN: I know there are roughly between a million and two million people active duty. I know that we don't have enough people in Iraq. I know that General Shinseki said that we need 300,000 troops to go into Iraq, not 200,000 troops, and I'm prepared to assume the burden and have the proper people around me advising me on what needs to be done.

MR. RUSSERT: All right, Afghanistan, we have 9,000. You would bring it up to what level?

DR. DEAN: Well, I believe that we need a very substantial increase in troops. They don't all have to be American troops. My guess would be that we would need at least 30,000 and 40,000 additional troops. They don't all have to be American because we have got to start taking over the security functions from the warlords in order to prepare the way for a unified Afghan police force that's a national police force.

MR. RUSSERT: There is concern about your awareness and positions on national security. You must acknowledge that.

DR. DEAN: Sure there are. Because just like President Reagan, President Clinton, and President Bush, I do not have extensive experience in national security.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to a Boston Globe article about the military service during the Vietnam War as it applies to you and I'll put it on the screen. "Dean did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War because he received a medical deferment for an unfused vertebra in his back. Several articles in the last year have noted that after his deferment, Dean spent 80 days skiing in Aspen, Colorado."

And then The Aspen Times wrote this profile. "In Howard Dean, we could have a president who spent the winter of 1971-72...pounding bumps on Aspen Mountain. 'I paid $250 for a ski pass and skied 80 days on Ajax. It was the greatest mountain. ... I went to work pouring concrete for a small company.'"

Why were you able to ski on Ajax Mountain, pounding your back, and pouring concrete, and not serve in the military?

DR. DEAN: First of all, let me say that there's only one person who's contending for the Democratic nominee for president who did serve in the military, nomination for president, and then let me explain the circumstances of my draft classification. I went to my physical in Ft. Hamilton in Brooklyn, which was a great deal like the scene out of Alice's Restaurant in terms of the different sizes, shapes, colors, and all kinds of people were there. I was given an examination. I had a previous back problem, which is evidently congenital, which prevented me from doing any sustained running, a problem that I've had since then, since that time, which requires that when I get out of the car I often have some pains up and down my leg and back and so forth.

But I have been able to exercise at--ry vigorous athletic life except for some things. One of those is long-distance running, which is how the problem came to my attention in the first place. I noticed the pain when I was in high school running track. In any case, the--after the physical, I received a one Y deferment. That's how the United States government decided that they would use me. One Y deferment means you can only be called in times of national emergency. I didn't have anything to do with choosing any draft deferment. I didn't try to get out of the draft. I had a physical. The United States government said this is your classification. I'm not responsible for that. I didn't have anything to do with the decision. That was their choice.

MR. RUSSERT: A military physical.

DR. DEAN: Yeah. I had a military physical. I had a draft induction physical in Ft. Hamilton. I think it was, perhaps, during my senior year. I don't remember the exact date.

MR. RUSSERT: If called, you would have served?

DR. DEAN: Of course.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq, and this is what you said in April. "We've gotten rid of [Saddam Hussein], and I suppose that's a good thing."

"Suppose"?

DR. DEAN: Here's the problem. We don't know whether in the long run the Iraqi people are better off, and the most important thing is we don't know whether we're better off. This president told us that we were going to go into Iraq because they might have--they had atomic weapons. That turned out not to be so. The secretary of Defense told us that he knew where there were weapons of mass destruction around Tikrit and around Baghdad. We've been in control of Iraq for 50 days. We haven't been able to find any such thing.

MR. RUSSERT: But you also said...

DR. DEAN: So...

MR. RUSSERT: ...and I'll show it to you. You said in January, Governor, "I would be surprised if [Saddam Hussein] didn't have chemicals and biological weapons."

DR. DEAN: Oh, well, I tend to believe the president. I think most Americans tends to believe the president. It turns out that what the president was saying and what his administration's saying wasn't so. We don't know why that is. So...

MR. RUSSERT: But the Iraqi people are not better off without Saddam Hussein?

DR. DEAN: I think right now they are. Here's the problem. If we can't get our act together in Iraq, and if we can't build Iraq into a democracy, then the alternative is chaos or a fundamentalist regime. That is certainly not a safer situation for the United States of America. And we don't know for sure if it is or not. Saddam Hussein is a dreadful human being. He's a mass murderer. I think it's terrific that he's gone. But the fact is, that in the long term, we went into Iraq for reasons the president of the United States still has not made clear. And because of that, we really don't know what the outcome is going to be.

MR. RUSSERT: What did you think of Senator John Kerry's comments that President Bush misled the country.

DR. DEAN: Well, I thought it was Senator Bob Graham that said that and I agree with that. And Bob Graham is in a position to know. He's a senior senator on the Intelligence Committee and...

MR. RUSSERT: No, John Kerry said the president misled us and...

DR. DEAN: Well, I wasn't aware that Senator Kerry said it. I knew Senator Graham had said it in Iowa. But I believe that. I think we were misled. Now, the question is did the president do that on purpose? Was he misled by his own intelligence people? Was he misled by the people around us? Or did he, in fact, know what the truth was and tell us something different. I've called for an independent investigation headed by Republicans and Democrats who are well respected in the country to find out what the president did know and when he knew it. We essentially went to war, supported by Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt, Senator Lieberman and Senator Edwards, based on facts that turned out not to be accurate. I think that's pretty serious and I think the American people are entitled to know why that was.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you something in April you had to say about your competitors. "I think we're going to beat the living daylights out of these other candidates because they need a backbone transplant."

Who?

DR. DEAN: Oh, you know I never would say on this show.

MR. RUSSERT: But you believe some of your Democratic contenders, opponents need a backbone transplant?

DR. DEAN: At that time what was going on was that a number of people had voted for the war and were going to Iowa saying "Well, I only"--some of them are still doing it. I...

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

DR. DEAN: I'm not going to mention them by name. There's no need to do that.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Governor, if you're a straight-talking, blunt-speaking candidate and you're saying some of your opponents need a backbone transplant, who needs a backbone transplant?

DR. DEAN: There are a number of people, Tim, who have gone out on the campaign trail, one as recently as last week, and said "I only voted for the resolution to go to war with Iraq because I knew that the resolution would force the president to send the matter to the United Nations." That is false.

MR. RUSSERT: Who said that?

DR. DEAN: I'm not going to tell you who said that.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, why--if you're going to make a...

DR. DEAN: Because I'm doing my best to try to keep some semblance of unity in this party. We are all going to need each other by the end of the day. I'm the non-Washington candidate. I'm going to run very hard against all the candidates who are inside the Beltway from Washington because I think they're going to have a hard time convincing the American people that somebody from Washington ought to beat this president. But to s...

MR. RUSSERT: Well, you--do your best. Let me show you...

DR. DEAN: I know. I haven't always done my best.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, let me show you exactly--here's the headline from today's Washington Post and I'll show everybody: "Misfires From The Hip Creates Problems Dean Discovers. ...[Dean ] is finding that his outspokenness can get him in trouble. Last week, Dean issued what was his third apology to a rival presidential candidate. After telling the Associated Press that he did not consider Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) a 'top tier candidate,' Dean recanted, telling the news served that he regretted the remark. Earlier this year, he apologized to Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) for tagging his broad health care initiative a 'pie in the sky' plan. Beefier that, Dean apologized to Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) after accusing him, during a Democratic gathering in California, of muddling his position on the war in Iraq."

This is what an aide to John Kerry had to say about all of this. "What we haven't figured out yet is whether these harsh, personal attacks are part of a long shot's strategy to get noticed, or whether this unpleasantness is just intrinsic to his personality. Or both." A very serious question. Do you have the temperament to be president?

DR. DEAN: Not only do I have the temperament to be president but I have the honesty to be president. When I make a mistake, I'm very pleased to apologize for it. The fact is that a lot of this stuff is about what goes on spinning, and I'm surprised the reporters take the bait all the time. I've issued one apology, and it was an apology I ought to have issued. I mischaracterized John Edwards' position in March at the California convention because I didn't know what he had said.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, you apologized to Bob Graham.

DR. DEAN: No, I didn't.

MR. RUSSERT: You called the AP and recanted the statement.

DR. DEAN: I called the AP and said, "I'm sorry I said that."

MR. RUSSERT: Well, that's an apology.

DR. DEAN: No, it's not.

MR. RUSSERT: "I'm sorry I said it" is not an apology?

DR. DEAN: I didn't actually say I'm sorry. I said, "I shouldn't have said it because it's not my business to handicap the races." Look, Tim, if I make a mistake, I'm happy to say so, and I'm happy to say why I made a mistake. But to say that I don't have the temperament to be president, I actually think maybe I have a better temperament to be president because wouldn't it be nice to have a president who's actually admitted he was wrong when he made a mistake. If I insult somebody by mistake and it's my fault, I'm very happy to say so. I'm not afraid of that. I will not be the scripted candidate who is going to do all the things that their handlers tell them to do. I suppose my own handlers have a nightmare over that fact.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there...

DR. DEAN: But the fact is: Wouldn't it be nice to have a president who wasn't on the one hand or on the other hand who said, "Well, I voted for the war, but I only did it to send the thing to the U.N.," when, in fact, the resolution didn't require the president to go to the U.N.? I'm tired of hearing politicians that make--that do those things deliberately. I'm going to say what I think. Sometimes I'm going to be wrong, and when I'm wrong, I'm going to say so.

MR. RUSSERT: Is there a risk, though, that you'll be seen as described in Time magazine today as a bomb thrower and not have the statesmanlike qualities necessary to be a president?

DR. DEAN: I think that's up to the American people to decide. What they're going to decide is that I'm going to say what I think. I have a long record in Vermont of running the budget better than any of these other folks could because they haven't run a budget with the exception of Bob Graham. I have a long record in Vermont of delivering program that they all talk about at election time that we've all actually done like health insurance stuff for all kids in our state. And I think the American people get to decide. That's what the primary's about: Do you want somebody who inside the Beltway people consider a statesman because they hedge on every issue and they are scripted and they never say anything that the focus groups don't approve of or do you want somebody who's going to lay it on the line?

This whole campaign really has been about it's time for Democrats to be proud of being Democrats again. Stop voting with the president and then try to justify your actions, stop supporting stuff that makes no sense and stand up for what you believe in. That's the basis of this campaign, and I think that's the basis of a reformation of this country. We need to take this country back. This country's in a lot of trouble. It's in trouble because we have a radical right administration that are dismantling the New Deal and it is not telling the truth about a lot of things that they say.

The Clear Skies Initiative which basically allows you to put more pollution into the air, No Child Left Behind, a slogan cribbed from a liberal activist group and then the tax cuts are funded and health care's cut for kids. That's what this campaign is about. It's not about arguing with some inside the Beltway person about whether I did or did not apologize to Bob Graham or not. Bob Graham is a terrific guy. If I wronged him, I'm happy to apologize to him. The real issue is what is this country going to stand for and what is this party going to stand for.

MR. RUSSERT: In terms of who you are, I want to refer you to your comments at the National Abortion Rights Action League in January. And I'll read it to you and our viewers. "One time a young lady came to office who was 12 years old, and she thought she might be pregnant. And we did the test and we did the exam and she was pregnant. ...And after I had talked to her for awhile, I came to the conclusion that the likely father of her child was her own father. You explain that to the American people who think that parental notification is a good idea. I will veto parental notification." And then this in USA Today. "Dean told a powerful story but left out a key fact. ...What Dean didn't say was that he knew the father was not responsible, someone else was convicted." That's a pretty big omission.

DR. DEAN: What do you mean?

MR. RUSSERT: To say to people at NARAL, "Leave us a suggestion"...

DR. DEAN: I don't think it's--omission. A pretty big omission, you mean? Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: Yeah. That's a pretty--to say that...

DR. DEAN: I don't think it is at all.

MR. RUSSERT: To suggest her father may have been...

DR. DEAN: I thought it was. At the time, I thought it was.

MR. RUSSERT: But when you told that story, you knew otherwise.

DR. DEAN: That's right.

MR. RUSSERT: Why didn't you say that?

DR. DEAN: Because it didn't make any difference. Because the fact that I thought that at the time, that that girl had been made pregnant with her father, under a parental notification law, I would have then been required to report that to her family.

MR. RUSSERT: But parental notification for a 12-year-old--this woman wants an abortion. According to Vermont law and all the laws I've checked across the country, a minor needs parental consent to get a driver's license, a tattoo, see an R-rated movie. When we talked about the death penalty, you talked about the 12- and 15-year-old young girls.

DR. DEAN: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: And you said we need a death penalty as a way of dealing with those kinds of situations. Why not tell a parent, notify a parent that their 12-year-old girl is going to have an abortion, or if it's an abusive situation, go to a judge. Why not?

DR. DEAN: Here's what you do, and here's what we do. You know, I, as an internist, saw a number of--I took care of all kinds of ranges of people. I saw a number of girls like this, none of whom I suspected what I suspected about this girl. I always tried to get the parents involved. Usually I knew the parents, and I would--the way I would do it is I would bring them in my office and I would say, "Look, the smartest thing to do is call your parents." "My parents are going to kill me." I said, "They're not going to kill you. I know them. They're going to be very upset. We need to get them involved." I would never pick up the phone against their will and call them. Sometimes they'd say, "I can't deal with it. You call them." Once in a while, when a child says "My parents are going to kill me," they're not kidding.

MR. RUSSERT: But you go to a judge in that situation.

DR. DEAN: But judicial bypass has been shown not to work. There's been a lot of studies about it in Massachusetts. It just doesn't work. You have to rely--look, nobody's going to take a 12-year-old child and give her an abortion without being--I hope without being sensible, thoughtful and trying to get an adult involved. But to have rigid parental notification laws make it more difficult to practice medicine. This young girl that I talked about turned out--of course, we reported the whole situation--turned out the person who had sexually abused her was convicted. Fine. That's the right thing to have happened. But suppose we'd had a parental notification law, and suppose under the law I was then obliged to call up her parents and say, "I have this young girl here who, you know, is pregnant" and so forth and so on. What would have been the fate of that girl when she went home?

MR. RUSSERT: If you, in fact, thought it was an abusive situation, you can go to a judge. That's the point of notification laws.

DR. DEAN: Yeah, but you know what?

MR. RUSSERT: And if you have one for tattoos and driver's license and movies, why not for something as serious as abortion?

DR. DEAN: Every doctor knows that you should get a responsible adult involved, and I hope that every doctor fulfills that mission. I'll give you an example. There have been judges that say, "Under no circumstances will I provide certification that this girl should have an abortion, because I'm against abortion." Now, there are bad judges in the system, and some of them rule on these cases. Why can't this be a matter between the doctor, the family and the patient? Why can't it be like that? Why do we have to have politicians always wanting to practice medicine? Whether a woman can have an abortion, what has to happen...

MR. RUSSERT: But some 12-year-olds don't want to tell their mom and dad, and you are supporting that.

DR. DEAN: No, I'm not. What I'm saying is if the 12-year-old doesn't want to tell their mom and dad because they're afraid of their mom and dad is going to hurt them, then you have an obligation to make sure that you talk with that 12-year-old and work--first of all, 12-year-olds don't get pregnant, usually speaking, unless there's a real problem. But if the 12-year-old has a legitimate reason, then there has to be a different way to do this.

MR. RUSSERT: Talking about politics and saying what you believe in, you said in July of last year that Al Gore should have taken the gun issue off the table. It cost him three states and he lost the presidency. Why would you be afraid to take--stand up for any issue? Why take issues off the table if you really want to...

DR. DEAN: Because I don't think it should be on the table.

MR. RUSSERT: Why not?

DR. DEAN: We have no gun control in Vermont.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, you're for the Brady Bill...

DR. DEAN: Yep.

MR. RUSSERT: ...which means there's a waiting period before you buy a gun. You're against...

DR. DEAN: Well, I'm for--it's backgrounds.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, OK.

DR. DEAN: The Brady Bill's InstaCheck. It's not a waiting period.

MR. RUSSERT: But you...

DR. DEAN: Well, there's a small waiting period, that's true.

MR. RUSSERT: Well--and loopholes at gun shows, there is a waiting period if you have it on a weekend.

DR. DEAN: Background check, right.

MR. RUSSERT: And you're for a ban on assault weapons, so you are for gun control.

DR. DEAN: Look, what I've said is we should keep the federal laws and support them, and we should apply background checks, InstaCheck, to gun shows, right?

MR. RUSSERT: But why take the issue off the table? Debate it.

DR. DEAN: Because--well, you can debate it all you want.

MR. RUSSERT: Because it may hurt Democrats politically?

DR. DEAN: No. Different states are different. My state, we have no gun control. We also have one of the lowest homicide rates in the country. We're a rural state with a lot of hunters in it. Right? In New York and New Jersey and California, they ought to have as much gun control as they want. My position is this is a state issue. Keep the federal laws. Enforce them vigorously. And then let every state decide what they want. Because when you say gun control in my state, people are going to think you're taking the squirrel rifle their parents gave them away. When you say gun control in New Jersey and California and New York, they say "Great. Let's get the machine guns and the handguns off the streets." They're both right. So why can't each state decide for themselves over and above the federal law what they want or don't want? What the result will be, you won't get more gun control than what you've already got in Wyoming or Montana and Vermont, and you'll get a lot more in California and New Jersey. Fine.

MR. RUSSERT: We got 15 seconds. How's this race going to play out?

DR. DEAN: Who knows? That's up to the voters. I'm going to work. My message is be strong for the Democratic Party. The only way to beat this president is to be proud of who you are and stand up for what you are and who you are, and that's how we can beat George Bush. And I don't think the other guys from Washington are going to be able to do that.

MR. RUSSERT: Governor Howard Dean, we thank you for joining us this morning, sharing your views. And be safe on the campaign trail.

DR. DEAN: Thank you.

Group: Cheney Task Force Eyed on Iraq Oil
By H. Josef Hebert for the Associated Press.

Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.

Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."

The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.

The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda.

Judicial Watch obtained the papers as part of a lawsuit by it and the Sierra Club to open to the public information used by the task force in developing President Bush's energy plan.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-iraq-cheney-energy,0,7562329.story

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.

Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."

The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.

The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda.

Judicial Watch obtained the papers as part of a lawsuit by it and the Sierra Club to open to the public information used by the task force in developing President Bush's energy plan.

Tom Fitton, the group's president, said he had no way to guess what interest the task force had in the information, but "it shows why it is important that we learn what was going on in the task force."

"Opponents of the war are going to point to the documents as evidence that oil was on the minds of the Bush administration in the run-up to the war in Iraq," said Fitton. "Supporters will say they were only evaluating oil reserves in the Mideast, and the likelihood of future oil production."

The task force report was released in May 2001. In it, a chapter titled "Strengthening Global Alliances" calls the Middle East "central to world oil security" and urges support for initiatives by the region's oil producers to open their energy sectors to foreign investment. The chapter does not mention Iraq, which has the world's second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Commerce Department spokesman Trevor Francis said: "It is the responsibility of the Commerce Department to serve as a commercial liaison for U.S. companies doing business around the world, including those that develop and utilize energy resources. The Energy Task Force evaluated regions of the world that are vital to global energy supply. The final report, released in May of 2001, contains maps of key energy-producing regions in the world, including Russia, North America, the Middle East and the Caspian region."

A spokeswoman for the vice president did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Friday.

A two-page document obtained with the map and released by Judicial Watch lists, as of March 2001, companies in 30 countries that had an interest in contracts to help then-President Saddam Hussein develop Iraq's oil wealth.

The involvement of Russia and France has been documented. Also on the list were companies from Canada, Australia, China, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, India and Mexico. Even Vietnam had interest in a service contract and, according to the paper, was close to signing an agreement in October 1999.

So far nearly 40,000 pages of internal documents from various departments and agencies have been made public related to the Cheney task force's work under the Judicial Watch-Sierra Club lawsuit. The task force itself has refused to turn over any of its own papers.

Dems to Launch Ad Campaign on Bush, Iraq
By Will Lester for the Associated Press.

Democrats said Sunday they will launch a new television ad in Wisconsin accusing President Bush of misleading Americans on the threat from Iraq.

Republicans warned broadcasters not to air the ad, scheduled to start Monday, calling it ``deliberately false and misleading.''

The Democratic National Committee has been raising money through an e-mail campaign that started July 10 to help pay for an ad that sharply questions President Bush's veracity on Iraq's weapons.

The ad says: ``In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush told us of an imminent threat. ... America took him at his word.''

The video shows Bush saying, ``Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

The ad continues: ``But now we find out it wasn't true.

``A year earlier, that claim was proven false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it.

``But he told us anyway.''

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2929554,00.html

Dems to Launch Ad Campaign on Bush, Iraq

Sunday July 20, 2003 8:09 PM

By WILL LESTER

Associated Press Writer

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - Democrats said Sunday they will launch a new television ad in Wisconsin accusing President Bush of misleading Americans on the threat from Iraq.

Republicans warned broadcasters not to air the ad, scheduled to start Monday, calling it ``deliberately false and misleading.''

The Democratic National Committee has been raising money through an e-mail campaign that started July 10 to help pay for an ad that sharply questions President Bush's veracity on Iraq's weapons.

The ad says: ``In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush told us of an imminent threat. ... America took him at his word.''

The video shows Bush saying, ``Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

The ad continues: ``But now we find out it wasn't true.

``A year earlier, that claim was proven false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it.

``But he told us anyway.''

Republicans claim the ad improperly quotes Bush because his entire statement was: ``The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

Democratic spokesman Tony Welch said: ``With the British in there, the president's information is still false and misleading. It is exactly what the president said.''

Some Republicans have argued Bush's statement was technically accurate because it attributed the findings about uranium to the British.

``You can say whatever you want in a fund-raiser,'' Republican spokesman Jim Dyke said, ``but it steps over the line when you knowingly mislead people in your advertising.''

Welch said the ad would be aired in Madison, Wis., starting Monday for about a week and the amount spent would be almost $20,000. The ad would be paid for, at least partially, by the Democrats' e-mail campaign, he said.

Efforts to get comment from TV stations in Madison were not successful Sunday.

The ad squabble comes at a time when public trust in the president has been eroding, according to results released Sunday from a CNN-Time poll.

The poll found that 47 percent view Bush as a leader they can trust, while 51 percent said they have doubts and reservations. That's down from 56 percent who saw him as a leader they could trust in late March, with 41 percent having doubts.

The poll of 1,004 people taken Wednesday and Thursday had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes -- Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes
President Bush said twice in September that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes.
By Dana Milbank for the Washington Post. (Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.)

The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.

The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given."

The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public "dossier" on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and against the wishes of British intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable.

The White House embraced the claim, from a British dossier on Iraq, at the same time it began to promote the dossier's disputed claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa...

Virtually all of the focus on whether Bush exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons ambitions has been on the credibility of a claim he made in the Jan. 28 State of the Union address about efforts to buy uranium in Africa. But an examination of other presidential remarks, which received little if any scrutiny by intelligence agencies, indicates Bush made more broad accusations on other intelligence matters related to Iraq.

For example, the same Rose Garden speech and Sept. 28 radio address that mentioned the 45-minute accusation also included blunt assertions by Bush that "there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." This claim was highly disputed among intelligence experts; a group called Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who could have been in Iraq, were both believed to have al Qaeda contacts but were not themselves part of al Qaeda.

Bush was more qualified in his major Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati, mentioning al Qaeda members who got training and medical treatment from Iraq. The State of the Union address was also more hedged about whether al Qaeda members were in Iraq, saying "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda..."

The 45-minute accusation is particularly noteworthy because of the furor it has caused in Britain, where the charge originated. A parliamentary inquiry determined earlier this month that the claim "did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source." The inquiry also concluded that "allegations of politically inspired meddling cannot credibly be established."

As it turns out, the 45-minute charge was not true; though forbidden weapons may yet be found in Iraq, an adviser to the Bush administration on arms issues said last week that such weapons were not ready to be used on short notice...

The White House use of the 45-minute charge is another indication of its determination to build a case against Hussein even without the participation of U.S. intelligence services. The controversy over the administration's use of intelligence has largely focused on claims made about the Iraqi nuclear program, particularly attempts to buy uranium in Africa. But the accusation that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack on a moment's notice was significant because it added urgency to the administration's argument that Hussein had to be dealt with quickly.

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17424-2003Jul19.html

White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes
Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes

President Bush said twice in September that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes. (Larry Downing -- Reuters)

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page A01

The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.

The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given."

The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public "dossier" on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and against the wishes of British intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable.

The White House embraced the claim, from a British dossier on Iraq, at the same time it began to promote the dossier's disputed claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa.

Bush administration officials last week said the CIA was not consulted about the claim. A senior White House official did not dispute that account, saying presidential remarks such as radio addresses are typically "circulated at the staff level" within the White House only.

Virtually all of the focus on whether Bush exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons ambitions has been on the credibility of a claim he made in the Jan. 28 State of the Union address about efforts to buy uranium in Africa. But an examination of other presidential remarks, which received little if any scrutiny by intelligence agencies, indicates Bush made more broad accusations on other intelligence matters related to Iraq.

For example, the same Rose Garden speech and Sept. 28 radio address that mentioned the 45-minute accusation also included blunt assertions by Bush that "there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." This claim was highly disputed among intelligence experts; a group called Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who could have been in Iraq, were both believed to have al Qaeda contacts but were not themselves part of al Qaeda.

Bush was more qualified in his major Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati, mentioning al Qaeda members who got training and medical treatment from Iraq. The State of the Union address was also more hedged about whether al Qaeda members were in Iraq, saying "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."

Bush did not mention Iraq in his radio address yesterday. Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), delivering the Democratic radio address, suggested that the dispute over the uranium claim in the State of the Union "is about whether administration officials made a conscious and very troubling decision to create a false impression about the gravity and imminence of the threat that Iraq posed to America." Levin said there is evidence the uranium claim "was just one of many questionable statements and exaggerations by the intelligence community and administration officials in the buildup to the war."

The 45-minute accusation is particularly noteworthy because of the furor it has caused in Britain, where the charge originated. A parliamentary inquiry determined earlier this month that the claim "did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source." The inquiry also concluded that "allegations of politically inspired meddling cannot credibly be established."

As it turns out, the 45-minute charge was not true; though forbidden weapons may yet be found in Iraq, an adviser to the Bush administration on arms issues said last week that such weapons were not ready to be used on short notice.

The 45-minute allegation did not appear in the major speeches Bush made about Iraq in Cincinnati in October or in his State of the Union address, both of which were made after consultation with the CIA. But the White House considered the 45-minute claim significant and drew attention to it the day the British dossier was released. Asked if there was a "smoking gun" in the British report, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on Sept. 24 highlighted that charge and the charge that Iraq sought uranium in Africa.

"I think there was new information in there, particularly about the 45-minute threshold by which Saddam Hussein has got his biological and chemical weapons triggered to be launched," Fleischer said. "There was new information in there about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain uranium from African nations. That was new information."

The White House use of the 45-minute charge is another indication of its determination to build a case against Hussein even without the participation of U.S. intelligence services. The controversy over the administration's use of intelligence has largely focused on claims made about the Iraqi nuclear program, particularly attempts to buy uranium in Africa. But the accusation that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack on a moment's notice was significant because it added urgency to the administration's argument that Hussein had to be dealt with quickly.

Using the single-source British accusation appears to have violated the administration's own standard. In a briefing for reporters on Friday, a senior administration official, discussing the decision to remove from the Cincinnati speech an allegation that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger, said CIA Director George J. Tenet told the White House that "for a presidential speech, the standard ought to be higher than just relying upon one source. Oftentimes, a lot of these things that are embodied in this document are based on multiple sources. And in this case, that was a single source being cited, and he felt that that was not appropriate."

The British parliamentary inquiry reported this month that the claim came from one source, and "it appears that no evidence was found which corroborated the information supplied by the source, although it was consistent with a pattern of evidence of Iraq's military capability over time. Neither are we aware that there was any corroborating evidence from allies through the intelligence-sharing machinery. It is also significant that the US did not refer to the claim publicly." The report said the investigators "have not seen a satisfactory answer" to why the government gave the claim such visibility.

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

Maybe if you're in the bay area, you'll
check it out.

See you there!

This panel also includes a lot of illegal art so I've included it in the appropriate category.

This is a panel featuring Google's Alex Macgillivray, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Wendy Seltzer and Glenn Otis Brown of the Creative Commons.

Introduction from Larry:

Yesterday, we focused on the physical layer and the logical layer.

Today, we focus on the content layer. The content layer has two radically different types of content built into it:

1) Content of MP3s and film

2) Content of programs and applications

Today we will walk through the scope of technology affecting *this* type of content and the law affecting on *this* type of content and the market on *this* type of content.

Charlie Nesson was the host for the panel.

Charlie's Content Panel - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 43 MB)

Charlie's Content Panel - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 39 MB)

Charlie's Content Panel - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 44 MB)

Charlie's Content Panel - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 36 MB)

Just a few notes and lots of pictures for this one. This includes excerpts from the Illegal Art film festival and lots of great media clips from all three guests.

Day 3 Tape 1

8:49 - What is P2P with Alex

9:51 - "Democratization of the space"

11:00 - Napster

13:30 - Charlie Nesson as a supernode

20:14 - Fred

***

Day 3 Tape 2

Cut out part around 13:20 - tech diff

21:45 - Lynne Cheney

25:00 Mention of Howard Dean meetup

A reader sent me this lovely response to my earlier question about the significance of this latest planet being decidedly "farther out" than any other.

Thanks Joseph!

The main reason for having Hubble in space is that it is really hard to see through the atmosphere at certain wavelengths. As well, the farther away something is, the dimmer it appears to our telescopes... that's why we build bigger and bigger telescopes... to see farther and farther away.

How far away from Earth we place our telescopes will make little difference as to how far away our discoveries are... the space between stars is huge... not so with galaxies (relatively)... for example, if you could reduce our sun to the size of a basketball, the next closest star (also about the size of a basketball) would be in Hawaii (if the "Sun" is in the East Bay like me)... if you reduce our entire galaxy to the size of a basketball, the next closest galaxy would be in the next room! (this is also why galaxies seem to collide frequently (they're not too far apart)... but when they collide their stars don't hit each other... it's like two swarms of bees colliding)

David Miller has piped up again over on his blog, and it's pretty interesting:

In Washington, The Recession Is Over

DC is booming because this year the federal government is pumping 9% more money into the local economy than it did last year. Welcome to wartime. I suspect most of the money is in the form of consulting contracts for homeland defense and DOD (what exactly does the Department of Defense defend now that we have a separate homeland defense agency?). As a result of this money Washington-area housing prices are up by 20% in a year, making all the middle-aged types euphoric and rich; a townhouse in Arlington worth $200,000 at the beginning of the Bush administration is worth $350-$400,000 now. Traffic is reaching LA levels but the place is, considering how the rest of the country is doing, almost indecently prosperous.

The strange part is that no one in DC seems to know that the national economy is stagnant; they assume the recession is ending because it is over in DC. My professional economist friends assumed, until we checked the bls.gov website, that the U.S. and DC unemployment rates were roughly the same. The local paper, the Washington Post, has almost no coverage on the national economy that would change their minds; all the coverage is about local real estate, housing prices, and new defense contracts.

And that leads to a curious disconnect between the capitol and the hinterland. Everyone in DC assumes Bush will win the 2004 election in a walk because the economy is better.

Create a new category:

TITLE: In Washington, The Recession Is Over

CATEGORY: (U.S. domestic?)

Our nation's capitol is undergoing a boom while the rest of the economy languishes. That fills the city with a strangely distorted view of the nation's economy, the nation's mood, and the prospects for the next election (more).

I lived in the Washington area for 19 years and still visit often. Today I'm just back from a week there. Almost everyone in Washington, including two professional economists I know, thinks the economy is "picking up", and that the unemployment rate in DC is roughly at the national average. That was true 18 months ago, but is emphatically not true now.

Today the Washington-area unemployment rate is 3.4 %, roughly full employment, while the rest of the country struggles by with a 6% unemployment rate which stubbornly refuses to fall. Of the more than 300 metropolitan areas in the U.S., DC has the 32nd lowest unemployment rate, and all the places doing better are small towns. The next best showing by a big city is Atlanta, which has an unemployment rate almost 50% higher than DC.

DC is booming because this year the federal government is pumping 9% more money into the local economy than it did last year. Welcome to wartime. I suspect most of the money is in the form of consulting contracts for homeland defense and DOD (what exactly does the Department of Defense defend now that we have a separate homeland defense agency?). As a result of this money Washington-area housing prices are up by 20% in a year, making all the middle-aged types euphoric and rich; a townhouse in Arlington worth $200,000 at the beginning of the Bush administration is worth $350-$400,000 now. Traffic is reaching LA levels but the place is, considering how the rest of the country is doing,almost indecently prosperous.

The strange part is that no one in DC seems to know that the national economy is stagnant; they assume the recession is ending because it is over in DC. My professional economist friends assumed, until we checked the bls.gov website, that the U.S. and DC unemployment rates were roughly the same. The local paper, the Washington Post, has almost no coverage on the national economy that would change their minds; all the coverage is about local real estate, housing prices, and new defense contracts.

And that leads to a curious disconnect between the capitol and the hinterland. Everyone in DC assumes Bush will win the 2004 election in a walk because the economy is better. The local Democrats are in a panic. Maybe that's why Dean is doing so well; he lives in a place with no jobs and a recession.

Last week the government unveiled the national "do not call"list; just go to donotcall.gov, sign up, and most of those annoying dinner-time calls trying to sell you a condo will stop. More than 500,000 people tried to sign up the first day. Everyone in DC was shocked; this was more than four times what they had expected. The government hurriedly quadrupled the number of computers handling the requests. Why were they so surprised? Well, I have a hint for you. My friends in the rich inner suburbs of Washington don't seem to get these calls. The cold-callers aren't fools; annoy the rest of the country at dinner, but not the people who make the decisions. In Washington cold-calls at dinner simply weren't much of a problem.

Come election time the press and the permanent, prosperous governing class in Washington might just be in for a big surprise if the economy doesn't pick up in places where the voters live and begin to match the rosy world where the opinion-makers live.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.inourworld.com/archives/001552.html

Our nation's capitol is undergoing a boom while the rest of the economy languishes. That fills the city with a strangely distorted view of the nation's economy, the nation's mood, and the prospects for the next election.

I lived in the Washington area for 19 years and still visit often. Today I'm just back from a week there. Almost everyone in Washington, including two professional economists I know, thinks the economy is "picking up", and that the unemployment rate in DC is roughly at the national average. That was true 18 months ago, but is emphatically not true now.

Today the Washington-area unemployment rate is 3.4 %, roughly full employment, while the rest of the country struggles by with a 6% unemployment rate which stubbornly refuses to fall. Of the more than 300 metropolitan areas in the U.S., DC has the 32nd lowest unemployment rate, and all the places doing better are small towns. The next best showing by a big city is Atlanta, which has an unemployment rate almost 50% higher than DC.

DC is booming because this year the federal government is pumping 9% more money into the local economy than it did last year. Welcome to wartime. I suspect most of the money is in the form of consulting contracts for homeland defense and DOD (what exactly does the Department of Defense defend now that we have a separate homeland defense agency?). As a result of this money Washington-area housing prices are up by 20% in a year, making all the middle-aged types euphoric and rich; a townhouse in Arlington worth $200,000 at the beginning of the Bush administration is worth $350-$400,000 now. Traffic is reaching LA levels but the place is, considering how the rest of the country is doing, almost indecently prosperous.

The strange part is that no one in DC seems to know that the national economy is stagnant; they assume the recession is ending because it is over in DC. My professional economist friends assumed, until we checked the bls.gov website, that the U.S. and DC unemployment rates were roughly the same. The local paper, the Washington Post, has almost no coverage on the national economy that would change their minds; all the coverage is about local real estate, housing prices, and new defense contracts.

And that leads to a curious disconnect between the capitol and the hinterland. Everyone in DC assumes Bush will win the 2004 election in a walk because the economy is better. The local Democrats are in a panic. Maybe that's why Dean is doing so well; he lives in a place with no jobs and a recession.

Last week the government unveiled the national "do not call"list; just go to donotcall.gov, sign up, and most of those annoying dinner-time calls trying to sell you a condo will stop. More than 500,000 people tried to sign up the first day. Everyone in DC was shocked; this was more than four times what they had expected. The government hurriedly quadrupled the number of computers handling the requests. Why were they so surprised? Well, I have a hint for you. My friends in the rich inner suburbs of Washington don't seem to get these calls. The cold-callers aren't fools; annoy the rest of the country at dinner, but not the people who make the decisions. In Washington cold-calls at dinner simply weren't much of a problem.

Come election time the press and the permanent, prosperous governing class in Washington might just be in for a big surprise if the economy doesn't pick up in places where the voters live and begin to match the rosy world where the opinion-makers live.

Here are all the details from my earlier post, for all of the film titles and such.

I'll be there from 2pm on. There's a new movie/collection of movies being shown every two hours, and they're all cool. So just come down whenever you can make it.

Today's guest speakers include:

Lawrence Lessig introducing "Willfull Infringement" at 6pm, and answering questions afterwards.

Rick Prelinger, Members of Paul Harvey Oswald, and Brian Boyce will be introducing a bunch of shorts at 2pm.

Craig Baldwin and Don Joyce will introduce "Gimmie the Mermaid" and "Sonic Outlaws" films at 4pm.

Price: $5 sliding scale. Whatever you can contribute is great -- the money goes to the artists.

Directions and Important Parking Info:
The Roxie is at 3117 16th St., at the corner of Valencia St.

The 16th Street Bart Station is a block from the Theatre. (A very short block.)

All the meters are only an hour in that neighborhood, and in the evening parking's next to impossible on the street, so you'll want to just hit the parking lot inbetween Mission and Valencia and 16th and 17th Street, (in a little alley). It's right next to the theatre, and not too overpriced.

Pentagon may punish GIs who spoke out on TV
By Robert Collier for SF Gate.

But going public isn't always easy, as soldiers of the Army's Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division found out after "Good Morning America" aired their complaints.

The brigade's soldiers received word this week from the Pentagon that it was extending their stay, with a vague promise to send them home by September if the security situation allows. They've been away from home since September, and this week's announcement was the third time their mission has been extended.

It was bad news for the division's 12,000 homesick soldiers, who were at the forefront of the force that overthrew Saddam Hussein's government and moved into Baghdad in early April.

On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he'd been "kicked in the guts, slapped in the face." Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit.

The retaliation from Washington was swift.

CAREERS OVER FOR SOME

"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."...

"Our morale is not high or even low," the letter said. "Our morale is nonexistent. We have been told twice that we were going home, and twice we have received a 'stop' movement to stay in Iraq."...

Yet several U.S. officers said privately that troop morale is indeed low. "The problem is not the heat," said one high-ranking officer. "Soldiers get used to that. The problem is getting orders to go home, so your wife gets all psyched about it, then getting them reversed, and then having the same process two more times."

In Baghdad, average soldiers from other Army brigades are eager to spill similar complaints.

"I'm not sure people in Washington really know what it's like here," said Corp. Todd Burchard as he stood on a street corner, sweating profusely and looking bored. "We'll keep doing our jobs as best as anyone can, but we shouldn't have to still be here in the first place."

Nearby, Pfc. Jason Ring stood next to his Humvee. "We liberated Iraq. Now the people here don't want us here, and guess what? We don't want to be here either," he said. "So why are we still here? Why don't they bring us home?"

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/18/MN248299.DTL

Pentagon may punish GIs who spoke out on TV

Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, July 18, 2003

Fallujah, Iraq -- Morale is dipping pretty low among U.S. soldiers as they stew in Iraq's broiling heat, get shot at by an increasingly hostile population and get repeated orders to extend their tours of duty.

Ask any grunt standing guard on a 115-degree day what he or she thinks of the open-ended Iraq occupation, and you'll get an earful of colorful complaints.

But going public isn't always easy, as soldiers of the Army's Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division found out after "Good Morning America" aired their complaints.

The brigade's soldiers received word this week from the Pentagon that it was extending their stay, with a vague promise to send them home by September if the security situation allows. They've been away from home since September, and this week's announcement was the third time their mission has been extended.

It was bad news for the division's 12,000 homesick soldiers, who were at the forefront of the force that overthrew Saddam Hussein's government and moved into Baghdad in early April.

On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he'd been "kicked in the guts, slapped in the face." Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit.

The retaliation from Washington was swift.

CAREERS OVER FOR SOME

"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."

First lesson for the troops, it seemed: Don't ever talk to the media "on the record" -- that is, with your name attached -- unless you're giving the sort of chin-forward, everything's-great message the Pentagon loves to hear.

Only two days before the ABC show, similarly bitter sentiments -- with no names attached -- were voiced in an anonymous e-mail circulating around the Internet, allegedly from "the soldiers of the Second Brigade, Third ID."

"Our morale is not high or even low," the letter said. "Our morale is nonexistent. We have been told twice that we were going home, and twice we have received a 'stop' movement to stay in Iraq."

The message, whose authenticity could not be confirmed, concluded: "Our men and women deserve to be treated like the heroes they are, not like farm animals. Our men and women deserve to see their loved ones again and deserve to come home."

After this one-two punch, it was perhaps natural that on Thursday, the same troops and officers who had been garrulous and outspoken in previous visits were quiet, and most declined to speak on the record. During a visit to Fallujah, a small city about 30 miles west of Baghdad, military officials expressed intense chagrin about the bad publicity. And they slammed the ABC reporters for focusing on the soldiers' criticism of Rumsfeld, Bush and other officials and implying that they are unwilling to carry out their mission.

COMPLAINTS CALLED ROUTINE

"Soldiers have bitched since the beginning of time," said Capt. James Brownlee, the public affairs officer for the Second Brigade. "That's part of being a soldier. They bitch. But what does 'bad morale' really mean? That they're not combat-ready or loyal? Nobody here fits that definition."

The nervousness of the brass has a venerable history. It has long been a practice in American democracy that the military do not criticize the nation's civilian leaders, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur found out in 1951, when he criticized President Harry Truman's Korean War strategy -- and was promptly fired.

Yet several U.S. officers said privately that troop morale is indeed low. "The problem is not the heat," said one high-ranking officer. "Soldiers get used to that. The problem is getting orders to go home, so your wife gets all psyched about it, then getting them reversed, and then having the same process two more times."

In Baghdad, average soldiers from other Army brigades are eager to spill similar complaints.

"I'm not sure people in Washington really know what it's like here," said Corp. Todd Burchard as he stood on a street corner, sweating profusely and looking bored. "We'll keep doing our jobs as best as anyone can, but we shouldn't have to still be here in the first place."

Nearby, Pfc. Jason Ring stood next to his Humvee. "We liberated Iraq. Now the people here don't want us here, and guess what? We don't want to be here either," he said. "So why are we still here? Why don't they bring us home?"

E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.

Blair Won't Resign Over Adviser's Suicide
By Beth Gardiner for the Associated Press.

After Kelly, a quiet, bearded microbiologist with a sterling international reputation, told his Ministry of Defense bosses he'd spoken to Gilligan, the ministry identified him as a possible source for the report.

Kelly was questioned by a parliamentary committee, and just days later, on Friday, police found his body in the woods near his Oxfordshire home. They said bled to death from a slashed left wrist.

"We can confirm that Dr. Kelly was the principal source" for Gilligan's story, the BBC said in a statement Sunday. "The BBC believes we accurately interpreted and reported the factual information obtained by us during interviews with Dr. Kelly."

The statement said Kelly had also been the source for a piece by reporter Susan Watts on its "Newsnight" analysis program...

"Over the past few weeks we have been at pains to protect Dr. Kelly being identified as the source of these reports," the BBC statement said. "We clearly owed him a duty of confidentiality. Following his death, we now believe, in order to end the continuing speculation, it is important to release this information as swiftly as possible."

The statement said the BBC had waited until Sunday to make the announcement at the Kelly family's request.

The BBC, one of the world's most respected news organizations, would not comment on its reason for making a rare exception to journalists' normal practice of refusing to name anonymous sources.

The network's statement said it would cooperate fully with the inquiry into Kelly's suicide, providing details of its reporters' contacts with the scientist including their notes.

"We continue to believe we were right to place Dr. Kelly's views in the public domain," the BBC statement said. "However, the BBC is profoundly sorry that his involvement as our source has ended so tragically."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_WEAPONS_ADVISER?SITE=OHDAY&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Blair Won't Resign Over Adviser's Suicide
By Beth Gardiner
Associated Press Writer

Sunday 20 July 2003

LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair said he would take full responsibility if an inquiry finds the government contributed to the suicide of scientist David Kelly - identified Sunday by the British Broadcasting Corp. as its main source in accusing the government of hyping weapons evidence to justify war in Iraq.

Blair, dogged on his trip through east Asia by angry charges about the Ministry of Defense adviser's death, said he has no intention of resigning over the dispute, as some critics at home have demanded.

He welcomed the BBC's announcement, which temporarily shifted the angriest public criticism from his administration to the broadcaster, whose credibility came under attack.

"In the end, the government is my responsibility and I can assure you the judge (heading the inquiry) will be able to get to what facts, what people, what papers he wants," Blair told Sky News.

The prime minister also said at a joint news conference with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Seoul that he would testify in the investigation.

Kelly's suicide has visibly shaken Blair, who learned of it at the start of an exhausting Asian trip after flying first across the Atlantic to give a speech to the U.S. Congress.

He appeared tense and preoccupied during appearances Saturday in Japan, and his characteristic wide grins were replaced by a withering glare when a reporter shouted: "Have you got blood on your hands, prime minister?"

Blair's government and the state-funded BBC have been embroiled in a bitter, drawn-out battle over a May 29 radio report by journalist Andrew Gilligan.

The report quoted an anonymous source as saying officials had "sexed up" evidence about Iraqi weapons to justify war and insisted on publishing a claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy some chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes - despite intelligence experts' doubts.

After Kelly, a quiet, bearded microbiologist with a sterling international reputation, told his Ministry of Defense bosses he'd spoken to Gilligan, the ministry identified him as a possible source for the report.

Kelly was questioned by a parliamentary committee, and just days later, on Friday, police found his body in the woods near his Oxfordshire home. They said bled to death from a slashed left wrist.

"We can confirm that Dr. Kelly was the principal source" for Gilligan's story, the BBC said in a statement Sunday. "The BBC believes we accurately interpreted and reported the factual information obtained by us during interviews with Dr. Kelly."

The statement said Kelly had also been the source for a piece by reporter Susan Watts on its "Newsnight" analysis program.

Politicians across the ideological spectrum accused the BBC of inaccurately reporting Kelly's comments, citing his parliamentary testimony that while he spoke privately to Gilligan, he did not recognize the journalist's most damaging claims as his own.

"I believe I am not the main source," Kelly told the committee. "From the conversation I had, I don't see how (Gilligan) could make the authoritative statement he was making."

Assuming the BBC had no secondary source who made the report's central claims, the critics accused Gilligan of twisting Kelly's words.

Gilligan denied that Sunday evening.

"I want to make it clear that I did not misquote or misrepresent Dr. David Kelly," Gilligan said in a statement pointing out that Kelly also had been a source for the "Newsnight" report.

"Entirely separately from my meeting with him, Dr. Kelly expressed very similar concerns about Downing Street interpretation of intelligence in the dossier and the unreliability of the 45-minute point to 'Newsnight,'" his statement said.

Conservative Party lawmaker Robert Jackson, who represents Kelly's home district, told the BBC earlier in the day that he believed Gilligan "dressed up what was said to him by Dr. Kelly."

"I believe that the BBC has knowingly, for some weeks, been standing by a story that it knew was wrong," he said.

Tory legislator Michael Fabricant defended the broadcaster, saying it had been right not to reveal Kelly's name until now. He said there was no evidence to suggest the BBC had misrepresented the scientist's comments.

Throughout the dispute, the BBC had refused to say whether Kelly, who was a top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s, had been its source.

"Over the past few weeks we have been at pains to protect Dr. Kelly being identified as the source of these reports," the BBC statement said. "We clearly owed him a duty of confidentiality. Following his death, we now believe, in order to end the continuing speculation, it is important to release this information as swiftly as possible."

The statement said the BBC had waited until Sunday to make the announcement at the Kelly family's request.

The BBC, one of the world's most respected news organizations, would not comment on its reason for making a rare exception to journalists' normal practice of refusing to name anonymous sources.

The network's statement said it would cooperate fully with the inquiry into Kelly's suicide, providing details of its reporters' contacts with the scientist including their notes.

"We continue to believe we were right to place Dr. Kelly's views in the public domain," the BBC statement said. "However, the BBC is profoundly sorry that his involvement as our source has ended so tragically."

Gilligan's report helped prompt two parliamentary probes into the government's weapons claims, and Blair aides for weeks been demanding a retraction and an apology.

In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat
By James Risen, David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker for the NY Times.
(William J. Broad and Don Van Natta Jr. also contributed to this article.)

"Once the inspectors were gone, it was like losing your G.P.S. guidance," added a Pentagon official, invoking as a metaphor the initials of the military's navigational satellites. "We were reduced to dead reckoning. We had to go back to our last fixed position, what we knew in '98, and plot a course from there. With dead reckoning, you're heading generally in the right direction, but you can swing way off to one side or the other."

Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said today that the question of new evidence versus old was beside the point. "The question of what is new after 1998 is not an interesting question," she said. "There is a body of evidence since 1991. You have to look at that body of evidence and say what does this require the United States to do? Then you are compelled to act.

"To my mind, the most telling and eye-catching point in the judgment of five of the six intelligence agencies was that if left unchecked, Iraq would most likely have a nuclear weapon in this decade. The president of the United States could not afford to trust Saddam's motives or give him the benefit of the doubt," she said.

In a series of recent interviews, intelligence and other officials described the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House as essentially blinded after the United Nations inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998. They were left grasping for whatever slivers they could obtain, like unconfirmed reports of attempts to buy uranium, or fragmentary reports about the movements of suspected terrorists.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/worldspecial/20WEAP.html

In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

his article was reported and written by James Risen, David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker.

WASHINGTON, July 19 — Beginning last summer, Bush administration officials insisted that they had compelling new evidence about Iraq's prohibited weapons programs, and only occasionally acknowledged in public how little they actually knew about the current status of Baghdad's chemical, biological or nuclear arms.

Some officials belittled the on-again, off-again United Nations inspections after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, suggesting that the inspectors had missed important evidence. "Even as they were conducting the most intrusive system of arms control in history, the inspectors missed a great deal," Vice President Dick Cheney said last August, before the inspections resumed.

In the fall, as the debate intensified over whether to have inspectors return to Iraq, senior government officials continued to suggest that the United States had new or better intelligence that Iraq's weapons programs were accelerating — information that the United Nations lacked.

"After 11 years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more," President Bush declared in a speech in Cincinnati last October. "And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."

"Clearly, to actually work, any new inspections, sanctions, or enforcement mechanisms will have to be very different," he added.

Now, with the failure so far to find prohibited weapons in Iraq, American intelligence officials and senior members of the administration have acknowledged that there was little new evidence flowing into American intelligence agencies in the five years since United Nations inspectors left Iraq, creating an intelligence vacuum.

"Once the inspectors were gone, it was like losing your G.P.S. guidance," added a Pentagon official, invoking as a metaphor the initials of the military's navigational satellites. "We were reduced to dead reckoning. We had to go back to our last fixed position, what we knew in '98, and plot a course from there. With dead reckoning, you're heading generally in the right direction, but you can swing way off to one side or the other."

Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said today that the question of new evidence versus old was beside the point. "The question of what is new after 1998 is not an interesting question," she said. "There is a body of evidence since 1991. You have to look at that body of evidence and say what does this require the United States to do? Then you are compelled to act.

"To my mind, the most telling and eye-catching point in the judgment of five of the six intelligence agencies was that if left unchecked, Iraq would most likely have a nuclear weapon in this decade. The president of the United States could not afford to trust Saddam's motives or give him the benefit of the doubt," she said.

In a series of recent interviews, intelligence and other officials described the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House as essentially blinded after the United Nations inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998. They were left grasping for whatever slivers they could obtain, like unconfirmed reports of attempts to buy uranium, or fragmentary reports about the movements of suspected terrorists.

President Bush has continued to express confidence that evidence of weapons programs will be found in Iraq, and the administration has recently restructured the weapons hunt after the teams dispatched by the Pentagon immediately after the war confronted an array of problems on the ground and came up mostly empty-handed.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered a nuanced analysis to Congress last week about the role that American intelligence played as the administration built its case against Mr. Hussein.

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Reuters
"He is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."
President Bush

ARTICLE TOOLS

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
"It is a case grounded in current intelligence."
Paul D. Wolfowitz

Agence France-Presse
Intelligence "comes to us from credible and reliable sources."
George J. Tenet

WHAT THEY KNEW | THE HUNT FOR EVIDENCE
In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat

(Page 2 of 4)

"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder," he said. "We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11."

Richard Kerr, who headed a four-member team of retired C.I.A. officials that reviewed prewar intelligence about Iraq, said analysts at the C.I.A. and other agencies were forced to rely heavily on evidence that was five years old at least.

Intelligence analysts drew heavily "on a base of hard evidence growing out of the lead-up to the first war, the first war itself and then the inspections process," Mr. Kerr said. "We had a rich base of information," he said, and, after the inspectors left, "we drew on that earlier base."

"There were pieces of new information, but not a lot of hard information, and so the products that dealt with W.M.D. were based heavily on analysis drawn out of that earlier period," Mr. Kerr said, using the shorthand for weapons of mass destruction.

Even so, just days before President Bush's State of the Union address in January, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, described the intelligence as not only convincing but up-to-date.

"It is a case grounded in current intelligence," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, "current intelligence that comes not only from sophisticated overhead satellites and our ability to intercept communications, but from brave people who told us the truth at the risk of their lives. We have that; it is very convincing."

George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in February expressed confidence in much of the intelligence about Iraq, saying it "comes to us from credible and reliable sources."

It was Mr. Cheney who, last September, was clearest about the fact that the United States had only incomplete information. But he said that should not deter the country from taking action.

It is in the American character, he said, "to say, `Well, we'll sit down and we'll evaluate the evidence; we'll draw a conclusion.' " He added, "But we always think in terms that we've got all the evidence. Here, we don't have all the evidence. We have 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent. We don't know how much. We know we have a part of the picture. And that part of the picture tells us that he is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons."

But within the White House, the intelligence agencies, the Defense Department and the State Department, the shortage of fresh evidence touched off a struggle. Officials in the National Security Council and the vice president's office wanted to present every shred of evidence against Mr. Hussein. Those working for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and some analysts in the intelligence agencies, insisted that that all the dots must be connected before the United States endorsed the evidence as the predicate for war.

That struggle, several officials said, explains the confusion about how the administration assembled its case, and how some evidence could be interpreted differently in public presentations before the war.

New Evidence Grows Scarce

An internal C.I.A. review of prewar intelligence on Iraq, recently submitted to the agency's director, Mr. Tenet, has found that the evidence collected by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies after 1998 was mostly fragmentary and often inconclusive.

In a series of interviews, officials said both the Bush administration and Congressional committees were aware of the decline in hard evidence collected on Iraq's weapons programs after 1998.

In part, the officials said, that was a result of the embarrassment of 1991, when it turned out that the C.I.A. had greatly underestimated the progress Mr. Hussein had made in the nuclear arena. Mr. Cheney often cited that experience as he pressed for firmer conclusions. So has President Bush, who recalled that intelligence failing again on Thursday, as, in a news conference with Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, he defended his decision to go to war.

Analysts say the cost of overestimating the threat posed by Mr. Hussein was minimal, while the cost of underestimating it could have been incalculable.

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In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat

(Page 3 of 4)

The arguments over evidence spilled into public view during the debate about whether the United Nations inspectors should be sent back to Iraq at all. Mr. Cheney had declared in August that returning them to Iraq would be dangerous, that it would create a false sense of security. When the inspectors returned in November, senior administration officials were dismissive of their abilities.

They insisted that American intelligence agencies had better information on Iraq's weapons programs than the United Nations, and would use that data to find Baghdad's weapons after Mr. Hussein's government was toppled. In hindsight, it is now clear just how dependent American intelligence agencies were on the United Nations weapons inspections process.

The inspections aided intelligence agencies directly, by providing witnesses' accounts from ground level and, indirectly, by prodding the Iraqis and forcing them to try to move and hide people and equipment, activities that American spy satellites and listening stations could monitor.

Several current and former intelligence officials said the United States did not have any high-level spies in Mr. Hussein's inner circle who could provide current information about his weapons programs. That weakness could not be fixed quickly.

According to Mr. Kerr, the former C.I.A. analyst, "It would have been very hard for any group of analysts, looking at the situation between 1991 through 1995, to conclude that the W.M.D. programs were not under way." Once the inspectors left, he added, "it was also hard to prove they weren't under way."

Powell's Caution

By the time Mr. Powell arrived in the conference room at the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday, Jan. 31, three days after the State of the Union address, the presentation he was scheduled to make at the United Nations in just five days was in tatters.

Mr. Powell's chief of staff had called his boss the day before to warn that "we can't connect all the dots" in the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Powell's staff had discovered that statements in intelligence assessments did not always match up with the exhibits Mr. Powell had insisted on including in his presentation.

Apart from some satellite photographs of facilities rebuilt after they were bombed during the Clinton administration in 1998, the only new pieces of evidence indicating that Mr. Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear program focused on what he was trying to buy.

While the National Intelligence Estimate, which was published in October and declassified on Friday, clearly stated that Mr. Hussein "probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade," Mr. Powell's own intelligence unit, in a dissenting view, said "the activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case" that Iraq was pursuing what it called "an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons."

So Mr. Powell wended a careful path, focusing on Iraq's acquisition efforts for centrifuge parts, needed to turn the dross of uranium into the gold of nuclear fuel. But when discussing, for example, the aluminum tubes Iraq had ordered in violation of United Nations penalties, he did not go as far as Ms. Rice, who said in September that the equipment was "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." (She was more cautious in later statements.)

Mr. Powell, at the United Nations, acknowledged that the findings about the tubes were disputed. But he did not quote his own intelligence unit, which in that same dissent in the National Intelligence Estimate wrote that it "considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets."

Curiously, as he prepared for his presentation, Mr. Powell rejected advice that he hold up such a tube during his speech. Asked about that decision in a recent interview, he joked that the tube would block his face, and then said, "Why hold up the most controversial thing in the pitch?"

page four

(Page 4 of 4)

Similarly, Mr. Powell was more cautious than Mr. Bush was in describing Mr. Hussein's meetings with what the president, in his Cincinnati speech, had called Iraq's "nuclear mujahedeen." Mr. Powell was urged by some in the administration to cite those meetings, and to illustrate it with a picture of one of the sessions.

"Now tell me who these guys are," he asked a few nights before his presentation, when the C.I.A. showed him the picture, a participant in the conversation recalled.

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"Oh, we're quite sure this is his nuclear crowd," came the response.

"How do you know?" Mr. Powell pressed. "Prove it. Who are they?" No one could answer the question.

"There were a lot of cigars lit," Mr. Powell recalled, referring to the evidence. "I didn't want any going off in my face or the president's face."

The C.I.A. also had scant new evidence about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but specialists began working on the issue under the direction of Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. Those analysts did not develop any new intelligence data, but looked at existing intelligence reports for possible links between Iraq and terrorists that they felt might have been overlooked or undervalued.

An aide to Mr. Rumsfeld suggested that the defense secretary look at the work of the analysts on Mr. Feith's staff. At a Pentagon news conference last year, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "I was so interested in it, I said, `Gee, why don't you go over and brief George Tenet?' So they did. They went over and briefed the C.I.A.. So there's no — there's no mystery about all this."

At the C.I.A., analysts listened to the Pentagon team, nodded politely, and said, "Thank you very much," said one government official. That official said the briefing did not change the agency's reporting or analysis in any substantial way.

Several current and former intelligence officials have said analysts at the C.I.A. felt pressure to tailor reports to conform to the administration's views, particularly the theories Mr. Feith's group developed.

Once the war began, some suspected that Iraq might use chemical weapons, but again the intelligence was sketchy. Just days before American-led forces captured the Iraqi capital, military commanders were warned that Mr. Hussein might have drawn "red lines" around the approach to Baghdad that, when crossed, would prompt Iraqi forces to launch artillery or missiles tipped with chemical or germ weapons.

Senior administration and intelligence officials now confirm that they had a single informant on what was not so much a circle but a series of landmarks — literally, dots that could be connected to outline a potential danger zone.

In their public statements on the red lines, both Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Powell said the intelligence was unclear. "We knew how little we knew," said one official who was briefed on the intelligence report.

"Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news briefing after major combat ended in Iraq. "You know, it's your best estimate of the situation. It doesn't mean it's a fact. I mean, that's not what intelligence is."

William J. Broad and Don Van Natta Jr. contributed to this article.

Squandering Capital
By Madeleine K. Albright for the Washington Post.
(Madeleine K. Albright was secretary of state from 1997 to 2001.)

Three years ago, America had vast diplomatic capital based on the goodwill we enjoyed around the world, and vast financial capital based on our international economic leadership and a record budget surplus. Now our capital of all kinds has been dissipated and we are left with more intractable dilemmas than resources or friends.

As someone who has served in positions of responsibility, I know it is much harder to devise practical solutions from the inside than to offer theoretical solutions from the outside. The nature of today's world, not the Bush administration, is responsible for the majority of problems we face. I would be less concerned, however, if I thought the administration was learning as it went along -- learning how to attract broader international support for its policies, make better use of neglected diplomatic tools, share responsibility, be more careful with the truth, finish what it starts and devise economic policies consonant with America's global role.

The quickest way to a more effective national security policy is to acknowledge the need for improvement; until that happens, we will continue to slide backward toward ever more dangerous ground.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14021-2003Jul18.html

Squandering Capital

By Madeleine K. Albright
Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page B07

Now would not be a bad time to start worrying. Tens of thousands of American troops will be in Iraq, perhaps for years, surrounded by Iraqis with guns. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says this is not a quagmire; I pray he is right. But the practical problems faced by the talented American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, and by U.S. soldiers trying to maintain order without a clear way of separating enemies from friends are daunting.

It would help greatly if we had more assistance from the international community, but in fairness, the war was an Anglo-American production; it's unlikely we will get substantial help without yielding significant authority, something the administration is loath to do. Meanwhile, U.S. credibility has been undermined by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and by the inclusion of dubious information in the president's State of the Union address.

Among other things, the war in Iraq was supposed to reduce the dangers posed by al Qaeda terrorists and prompt resumed progress toward peace in the Middle East.

Time will tell whether the former was achieved, but reports of a rush of new al Qaeda recruits are not encouraging. As for the latter, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has indeed made progress in negotiations -- with Chairman Yasser Arafat. Despite a welcome cooling in rhetoric and upcoming visits to Washington by Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the Middle East road map has yet to be unfolded.

In the Far East, the North Koreans may be building nuclear weapons or may not; we don't know. They could have a half-dozen by the end of the year. If the administration has a strategy for responding, it is not telling, but it seems to be relying on China to pressure North Korea effectively. Relying simply on China? As I say, it is a worrisome time.

Overall, the outlook for preventing the spread of potentially destabilizing weapons systems is bleak. The administration, openly allergic to treaties and arms control, has made no effort to promote restraint in developing arms as a normative ethic to which all nations have an interest in adhering. Instead, it has decided to fight proliferation primarily through military means and threats. Is this adequate?

Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified recently that "new alliances" are pooling resources "to deter or offset U.S. military superiority." Globalization has made the technology and resources necessary to develop sophisticated weapons more widely available. "Some 25 countries," Jacoby warns, "possess or are actively pursuing WMD or missile programs. The threat to U.S. and allied interests will grow during the next decade."

While in Africa this month, the president raised expectations that the United States will help stabilize Liberia, a noble mission that would help repair the administration's thoroughly battered image overseas. At the same time, there is a risk that the Pentagon -- already stretched thin -- will try to get by in Liberia on the cheap, investing American prestige but insufficient clout. We have seen this movie before -- in Somalia. If we do go into Liberia, we must be prepared to do the job right.

I am an optimist with immense faith in the ability of U.S. leadership to mobilize world opinion on behalf of democracy, justice and peace.

Leadership is not possible, however, without resources. It takes money to secure borders, defeat terrorists, safeguard nuclear materials, build democratic institutions, create educational systems in which tolerance is valued, and help nations recover from conflict. So when I see that the combined federal budget deficit this year and next will approach $1 trillion, I have to wonder. The president has made a lot of promises about "draining the swamp" in which terrorists thrive, combating AIDS, promoting development and meeting commitments to nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia. Will the White House and Congress be able to meet those commitments when police, firefighters and schoolteachers must be laid off at home on account of budget cutbacks? If we do renege on the president's promises, what further damage to U.S. credibility will result?

Three years ago, America had vast diplomatic capital based on the goodwill we enjoyed around the world, and vast financial capital based on our international economic leadership and a record budget surplus. Now our capital of all kinds has been dissipated and we are left with more intractable dilemmas than resources or friends.

As someone who has served in positions of responsibility, I know it is much harder to devise practical solutions from the inside than to offer theoretical solutions from the outside. The nature of today's world, not the Bush administration, is responsible for the majority of problems we face. I would be less concerned, however, if I thought the administration was learning as it went along -- learning how to attract broader international support for its policies, make better use of neglected diplomatic tools, share responsibility, be more careful with the truth, finish what it starts and devise economic policies consonant with America's global role.

The quickest way to a more effective national security policy is to acknowledge the need for improvement; until that happens, we will continue to slide backward toward ever more dangerous ground.

The writer was secretary of state from 1997 to 2001.

U.K. Lawmakers Want Adviser Suicide Probe
By Michael McDonough for the Associated Press.

A judge investigating the suicide of a Defense Ministry weapons adviser should also examine the British government's use of intelligence to justify war with Iraq, critics in Parliament said Monday.

Microbiologist David Kelly was the source for a disputed British Broadcasting Corp. report citing claims that Prime Minister Tony Blair's office doctored an intelligence dossier on Iraqi weapons to bolster the case for war. On Friday, Kelly's body was found near his home in central England. One of his wrists had been slashed.

Lord Hutton, one of the Law Lords who form Britain's highest court of appeal, on Monday said his inquiry into the suicide would investigate the "circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. Kelly."...

Kelly's body was found three days after he testified to a parliamentary committee about his unauthorized encounter with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who on May 29 quoted an anonymous source as saying officials had "sexed up" evidence about Iraqi weapons to justify war.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_WEAPONS_ADVISER?SITE=OHDAY&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

U.K. Lawmakers Want Adviser Suicide Probe

By MICHAEL McDONOUGH
Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) -- A judge investigating the suicide of a Defense Ministry weapons adviser should also examine the British government's use of intelligence to justify war with Iraq, critics in Parliament said Monday.

Microbiologist David Kelly was the source for a disputed British Broadcasting Corp. report citing claims that Prime Minister Tony Blair's office doctored an intelligence dossier on Iraqi weapons to bolster the case for war. On Friday, Kelly's body was found near his home in central England. One of his wrists had been slashed.

Lord Hutton, one of the Law Lords who form Britain's highest court of appeal, on Monday said his inquiry into the suicide would investigate the "circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. Kelly."

"It will be for me to decide, as I think right within my terms of reference, the matters which should be the subject of my investigation," Hutton said, without elaborating.

It was unclear whether Hutton intended to meet demands for a broader inquiry into the government's handling of intelligence on Iraqi weapons.

Blair comments on arms expert's death

Blair has said he is prepared to testify before Hutton's investigation, but on Monday he suggested the scope would be limited to Kelly's death.

"This is a very exceptional situation which is why we decided to hold a judicial inquiry, because of the concern that there was," he said during a trip to China. "Of course, there will be continuing debate as to whether the war was justified or not. I happen to believe it was."

Opposition Conservative Party lawmaker Oliver Letwin called for the inquiry to examine whether Blair's office exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi weapons.

"While there certainly does need to be an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Dr. Kelly's death, there are a very large numbers of questions which all center on the issue of whether the public can trust what the government tells it and which relate to the information given to parliament and the public during the lead-up to war in Iraq," Letwin told BBC radio.

Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary, said it would be impossible for Hutton to get to the bottom of Kelly's death without wading into the wider question of the government's case for war.

Cook, a Labor lawmaker who quit the Cabinet in protest to the war, said the government should "accept the inevitable" and authorize the broader probe.

"The pity is that it did not do so a couple of months ago when it first became evident that it could not find any real weapons of mass destruction," Cook wrote in The Independent newspaper.

Hutton did not give a date for the start of his investigation, which he said he would largely conduct in public. He added that the government had pledged full cooperation.

Kelly's body was found three days after he testified to a parliamentary committee about his unauthorized encounter with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who on May 29 quoted an anonymous source as saying officials had "sexed up" evidence about Iraqi weapons to justify war.

Gilligan said the officials had insisted on publishing a claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy some chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, despite intelligence experts' doubts. The journalist later pointed to Alastair Campbell, Blair's communications director, as the key figure in rewriting the dossier. Campbell vehemently denied it.

Politicians across the ideological spectrum have accused the BBC of inaccurately reporting Kelly's comments, citing his testimony that he did not recognize the journalist's most damaging claims as his own. But Gilligan has said he did not misquote or misrepresent Kelly's remarks.

Another Labor rebel, former International Development Secretary Clare Short, accused the government of attacking the BBC to divert attention from questions about why it went to war.

"It's all part of a distraction from the real issues, how did we get to war in Iraq?" Short told BBC radio. "How come there was an imminent threat and yet there were no weapons of mass destruction?"

CBS News has created a nice little round up of news information about the various horrible situations going on in Iraq and abroad.

Makes me wonder what CBS news has been like on TV lately. Looks like I'll have to start checking out "Face The Nation."

More Death In Baghdad
By the staff of CBS News.

Documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force include a map of Iraq's oilfields and a list of international oil companies labeled "foreign suitors for Iraqi oilfield contracts." The panel also had similar maps and lists for other oil-producing states. Their purpose to the task force was unclear. The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group suing to force the release of task force documents.

Saddam is believed to be alive and probably hiding in Iraq, but is not orchestrating the daily attacks on American troops, says L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in the occupied country.

Bremer said Americans should prepare for a long stay in Iraq.

"It's clear that, given the size of the task, we're going to be there for a while," he said Sunday on NBC. "I don't know how many years."

A Pentagon advisory panel suggested last week that coalition troops will need to remain in Iraq for at least two to five years to back up fledgling, postwar Iraqi police and military organizations.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/iraq/main541815.shtml

More Death In Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 21, 2003

Sgt. Luis R. Pinto, left, breaks down at a memorial service for Spc. Joel Bertoldie, at the U.S. Army base in Habbaniya, Iraq. On the right is Spc. Jeremy Brannon. (Photo: AP)

"The sooner we can either kill him or capture him, the better … "
L. Paul Bremer, U.S. civil administrator, on Saddam Hussein

U.S. Marines of the 1st Brigade, 7th Regiment, block protesters Sunday, July 20, 2003, marching on the U.S. headquarters in the Muslim holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq. (Photo: AP)

(CBS/AP) Violence claimed new victims in Iraq Monday as further questions surfaced about what prewar intelligence said about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

A U.S. soldier and his Iraqi interpreter were killed in a grenade and gun attack in north Baghdad, bringing to 152 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since the March 20 start of war — five more than during the 1991 Gulf War.

Two American soldiers and an Iraqi employee of a U.N.-affiliated relief agency were killed Sunday. The soldiers died in an ambush by attackers using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms near Tal Afar, a town west of the northern city of Mosul.

Meanwhile, the new chief of American and allied forces in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, announced plans to create a nearly 7,000-strong force of Iraqis to work with U.S. soldiers. Trained by U.S. forces, they are expected to be ready to begin operating within 45 days, he said.

In other developments:

# Portions of an October intelligence report released by the White House on Friday suggests analysts felt that Saddam would consider an alliance with al Qaeda or terrorist attacks on the United States only if his power were threatened.

# The British weapons adviser who killed himself last week was the source for a report claiming Prime minister Tony Blair's office had overhyped intelligence on Iraq, says the BBC. Now the news network faces question over the accuracy of its story, as Blair faces blame for his government "outing" the dead man.

# Forensic teams are en route to a new mass grave, discovered by the
The 101st Airborne near the village of Al Hatra last week that may contain 4,000-5,000 bodies. Many are women and children who appear to have been shot in their heads.

# Documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force include a map of Iraq's oilfields and a list of international oil companies labeled "foreign suitors for Iraqi oilfield contracts." The panel also had similar maps and lists for other oil-producing states. Their purpose to the task force was unclear. The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group suing to force the release of task force documents.

# Military officials say if international forces are ready to take over their areas of responsibility as expected, all 18,000 Marines in Iraq could be out of the country by September 1st.

# Saddam is believed to be alive and probably hiding in Iraq, but is not orchestrating the daily attacks on American troops, says L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in the occupied country.

Bremer said Americans should prepare for a long stay in Iraq.

"It's clear that, given the size of the task, we're going to be there for a while," he said Sunday on NBC. "I don't know how many years."

A Pentagon advisory panel suggested last week that coalition troops will need to remain in Iraq for at least two to five years to back up fledgling, postwar Iraqi police and military organizations.

While acknowledging an ongoing security problem, Bremer told CBS News Face the Nation it is limited to a small part of Iraq. "Most of the country is quiet," he said.

Bremer said there's no evidence of any central control in the hit-and-run attacks. Instead, the former diplomat blamed a small group of well-trained killers, "who are basically trying to hold back the tide of history in Iraq."

Still, he said, running Saddam into the ground would ease the situation.

"The sooner we can either kill him or capture him, the better, because the fact that his fate is unknown certainly gives his supporters the chance to go around and try to rally support for him," said Bremer.

But a top Democratic lawmaker said Saddam's reach may be much wider than U.S. officials have indicated.

"He's still alive and he controls that country," Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Fox.

"Not through popularity, but through fear of retribution. I mean, I just came back from the place and people won't talk to you.…He's a big factor there," said Rockefeller.

The area of Sunday's convoy attack near Tal Afar, 240 miles northwest of Baghdad, had been relatively peaceful in recent weeks, and the ambush was a worrying development for American forces trying to bring stability to Iraq.

Most recent violence has occurred in an area north and west of Baghdad called the Sunni triangle, where some support for Saddam remains. Tal Afar lies outside that region.

In other violence Sunday, a two-car convoy carrying members of the International Organization for Migration was ambushed near the southern city of Hilla when a pickup truck drove alongside one car and opened fire. The car collided with a bus, and an Iraqi driver died.

To the south, in the holy city of Najaf, thousands of followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr marched six miles from the Imam Ali shrine to U.S. headquarters in the region, shouting slogans against the Governing Council and the Americans.

"Long live al-Sadr. America and the Council are infidels," chanted the crowds.

U.S. troops prevented the demonstrators from entering the headquarters and soldiers barricaded the building with Humvees. The crowd, some throwing rocks, dispersed after clerics read out an appeal by al-Sadr to go home.

Earlier, al-Sadr said in a statement read inside the shrine that he wanted coalition forces to leave Najaf. In his Friday sermon, the cleric said he was recruiting a private army but fell short of calling for armed struggle against the U.S. occupation.

This is from the week of July 13, 2003 from KPIX Channel 5 News. (No, I'm not sure exactly when actually...sorry.)

KPIX On Developments In The Shrub's WMD Lie Situation

Um. Aren't the planets we find going to be further and further away as equipment such as the Hubble Telescope travels further and further into space?

Anyway, here's a little clip on it from last week from KPIX Channel 5 in San Francisco:

KPIX On The New Distant Planet

The saga continues. This clip doesn't contain any of the developments that happened over the weekend (which will explain the onslaught of articles to follow...)

This aired on KTVU Channel 2 on July 13, 2003 at 10pm in San Francisco.

KTVU On The Latest Developments In The Shrub's WMD Saga

The Copyright Cage
Bars can't have TVs bigger than 55 inches. Teddy bears can't include tape decks. Girl Scouts who sing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" owe royalties. Copyright law needs to change.
By Jonathan Zittrain for Legal Affairs.

Jonathan Zittrain is the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Assistant Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and a director of its Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

YES, I HATE THE EFFECTS OF COPYRIGHT ON A DIGITAL REVOLUTION that heralds so much more than the banal ripping off of CD tracks. I hate that creativity is metered and parceled to its last ounce of profit. I hate that our technology is hobbled beyond its paper and other analog counterparts so that it permits us to view but not print, listen but not share, read once but not lend, consume but not create. But I can hate this situation without believing that the idea of copyright is fundamentally flawed. The framers' vision of intellectual property (then known as "monopolies") called for built-in limits to a creator's exclusive rights. A copyright term, for example, would expire even if a work still held commercial value...

It's time for us to wise up and to redraw copyright's boundaries so that the law and reasonable public expectations fall into better alignment with one another...

Scholars like William Fisher of Harvard Law School have floated ideas as sensible as they are radical-not to mention offensive to almost every interest in the copyright debates, from publisher to middleman to anarchist. He suggests in an upcoming book that ISPs remit to publishers a fee loosely based on the amount of copyrighted digital content that they are roughly calculated to be carrying, at which point people can trade music to their hearts' content.

Overhauling copyright will have costs to some. In the absence of tough copyright controls, investors may decide not to underwrite a $200 million blockbuster film because copying of the final product may unduly reduce their expected profit. But the cost of making no change at all must also be soberly assessed because the Internet offers such a staggering potential for the rapid transformation and evolution of ideas-a veritable Jazz Age of creation enabled by technology.

I pay my taxes. I have no idea how to calculate them, but I do what Turbotax tells me to. I'll pay a copyright tax, too, and willingly support artists whose work I appreciate, because it's the right thing to do and because it guarantees that more work will be made available to me. I'm not alone.

http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/July-August-2003/feature_zittrain_julaug03.html
Legal Affairs: May | June 2003
The Copyright Cage
Bars can't have TVs bigger than 55 inches. Teddy bears can't include tape decks. Girl Scouts who sing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" owe royalties. Copyright law needs to change.
By Jonathan Zittrain

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I WAS TALKING WITH A LAW SCHOOL COLLEAGUE about cyberlaw and the people who study it. "I've always wondered," he said, "why all the cyberprofs hate copyright."

I don't actually hate copyright, and yet I knew just what he meant. Almost all of us who study and write about the law of cyberspace agree that copyright law is a big mess. As far as I can tell, federal courts experts don't reject our system of federal courts, and criminal law experts split every which way on the overall virtue of the criminal justice system. So what's with our uniform discontent about copyright?

I think an answer can be gleaned from tax scholars. Without decrying the concept of taxation, every tax professor I've met regards the U.S. tax code with a kind of benign contempt, explaining it more often as a product of diverse interests shaped from the bottom up than as an elegant set of rules crafted by legal artisans to align with high-level principles.

Copyright is like that, too. While I hate its Platonic form no more than the typical tax maven hates Tax, I find myself struggling to maintain the benign part of my contempt for its ever-expanding 21st-century American incarnation. A gerrymandered tax code primarily costs the public money-measured by overall inefficiency or extra taxes unfairly levied on those without political capital. But copyright's cost is measured by the more important if inchoate currency of thoughts and ideas.

We live today under two copyright regimes: the law on the one hand and reality as experienced by the public on the other. The law-Title 17 of the federal code-proscribes such acts as the public performance of music without payment to the composer or the copying of books without permission of the author (or more likely the company to whom the author long ago assigned rights).

The limits on behavior enumerated in Title 17 have gone far beyond the wholesale copying of books, maps, and charts covered by the first copyright act of 1790. They extend to computer software, dances, boat hulls (delineated in a 1998 amendment as "the frame or body of a vessel including the deck of a vessel, exclusive of masts, sails, yards, and rigging"), and music-Congress covered performances in 1909 and copies of sound recordings in 1971. What the public can and can't do is described at a level of detail worthy of the most byzantine tax code.

For example, bars and restaurants that measure no more than 3,750 square feet (not including the parking lot, as long as the parking lot is used exclusively for parking purposes) can contain no more than four TVs (of no more than 55 inches diagonally) for their patrons to watch, as long as there is only one TV per room. The radio can be played through no more than six loudspeakers, with a limit of four per room, unless the restaurant in question is run by "a governmental body or a nonprofit agricultural or horticultural organization, in the course of an annual agricultural or horticultural fair or exhibition conducted by such body or organization." Then it's OK to use more speakers.

This astonishingly intricate copyright regime isn't created only by statutes, of course. The notion of "contributory" copyright infringement-aiding and abetting copycats-was devised by judges. In conjunction with a statutory limit on creating "derivative" works of a copyrighted original, a theory of contributory infringement led a couple of courts to outlaw the production by third parties of cassette programs designed to be inserted into the belly of Teddy Ruxpin talking stuffed animals. The idea was that by pushing "Play" when a non-Teddy Ruxpin story tape was inside the creature, children would be creating a derivative, contraband "audiovisual work comprising animated plush toy bear with unique voice." Since toddlers are largely unsusceptible to cease-and-desist letters, it fell to the cassette makers to stop abetting the kids' illegal behavior.

Still, Title 17 remains stubbornly vague, recalling Woody Allen's indictment of a bad restaurant: "The food at this place is really terrible . . . and such small portions." Including Allen's quotation here is probably fair use-but I'd have to risk a lawsuit to be sure. (He might have a similar worry, since he didn't come up with the joke in the first place.) No wonder most publishers proceed as if fair use doesn't exist, asking permission to use every quote or, failing that, doing without.

Title 17's copious detail used to trouble only professional (re)publishers and their lawyers. The title's reach has tended, as a practical matter, to leave individuals unaffected. The examples above might make for cocktail party curiosities, but whatever their indirect public effects-a craned neck as a result of trying to watch the sole television in a large barroom, or a child deprived of the full range of Teddy Ruxpin stories-they don't directly constrain individual behavior, which has been de facto governed by the second regime of reasonable practice.

The public has instinctively controlled its potentially copyright-infringing urges not through knowledge of the law but thanks to the combined weight of conscience and convenience. It's a hassle to photocopy a book cover to cover, so most of us don't bother to do it, and those who do are possibly such cheapskates that they wouldn't buy the original to begin with. (Kinko's-which lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a 1991 lawsuit brought by publishers over a dozen course packs that included copies of book chapters-won't copy a whole book on someone else's behalf.) Still others might actually think it wrong to make wholesale copies. They might choose to copy only a few pages or to buy the complete work.

As Title 17 has expanded, the corporate and individual regimes have diverged further and further, at odds but not in friction. The former is subject to increasing numbers of exceptions, counterexceptions, contractual agreements, and licenses among lawyers. The latter bumps along simplistically, limited by the amount of copying anyone could or would do as a practical matter.

When points of friction have threatened, the publishers have taken quick action, ferociously fighting against any perceived encroachment on copyright's rights and its associated cash flows. Recall the reaction of the Motion Picture Association of America to the prospect of a VCR. "The VCR is to the American film producer . . . as the Boston Strangler was to the woman alone," warned Jack Valenti, the president of the powerful group. In the now-famed Sony case of 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that the VCR was not an illegal instrument of contributory copyright infringement. Valenti to this day rues the loss despite the staggering revenues gleaned from video rentals ever since.

When digital audio tape recorders (DATs) threatened to enable individuals to make perfect copies of CDs, and copies of those copies, the music publishers prodded Congress into passing the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which required producers of DATs to incorporate the "Serial Copy Management System" in its products. The SCMS is defined nowhere in a statute that goes to the trouble of defining such words as "children" and "parking lots." But it prevents a DAT from making a copy of a copy if the copy is digitally labeled "do not copy me."

Taking a lesson from the loss in the VCR case, MPAA lobbyists won provisions for a tax on the producers of digital recorders and blank digital tapes. The tax revenues do not go to the government; they are remitted to publishers according to a scheme that demonstrates just how many parties wanted a slice of the pie. Title 17 now contains such gems as "2 5/8 percent of the royalty payments allocated to the Sound Recordings Fund shall be placed in an escrow account managed by an independent administrator jointly appointed by the interested copyright parties described in section 1001(7)(A) and the American Federation of Musicians (or any successor entity) to be distributed to nonfeatured musicians (whether or not members of the American Federation of Musicians or any successor entity) who have performed on sound recordings distributed in the United States." As a result of the law, DAT players were stillborn, so there were few spoils to split-no doubt a perfectly acceptable outcome to the publishers.

With the advent of the DVD player, manufacturers and publishers came together to create a nonprofit association that would control a "secret recipe" for decoding DVDs. Anyone who wanted to make a DVD player had to obtain the recipe. It was given only in exchange for a promise that the DVD player would have certain copy protections in place-such as conveying a signal that would jam a VCR trying to record a DVD-and that the player would incorporate "regional coding," which meant that DVDs from one continent wouldn't function in the players from another. This enabled DVDs to be released in different regions at different times and ensured that those licensed to sell DVDs in one region wouldn't have to worry about having their prices undercut by sellers exclusively licensed to sell in other regions.

THEN CAME FILE SWAPPING ON THE NET and the all-purpose computers attached to it. With the right software, individuals could copy digital content perfectly, quickly, and cheaply-and the presence of a © symbol did little to deter them from doing so.

In theory, of course, Title 17 applies to everyone. Even the Sony case of 1984 included a token individual defendant, a VCR owner who was the alleged direct infringer. But no one demanded that he pay damages or change his behavior. More recently the Recording Industry Association of America has sought the identities of individuals who use Internet file-trading services and has brought (and settled) suits against college students alleged to be organizing file-swapping circles within their university intranets.

The recording industry is not going to sue the tens of thousands of Americans who engage in these practices. But it hopes to make an example of a few users to add teeth to the infringement warnings that file-swapping services send to their customers-and to pressure those services to pressure their customers to stop copying files.

The RIAA shut down Napster for providing services to Netizens to facilitate the sharing of copyrighted and public domain files alike without taking steps to filter out the former. (And Universal Music Group and a unit of the EMI group are now suing a venture capital firm for daring to finance Napster, under what seems to be a novel Russian-doll theory of contributory contributory copyright infringement.) The fact is that the Internet was built to copy things. Microsoft Windows's "Network Neighborhood" feature, for example, is simply a way to swap files. Almost every software application that capitalizes on this central functionality is therefore a Kinko's of sorts, and decreeing all search-and-copy software to be illegal is simply too sweeping a move for a court to make.

Publishers have successfully lobbied for widely reviled legislation to respond to this problem. The proposed legislation would require software and hardware makers to incorporate copy controls similar to those demanded of DAT manufacturers into PCs and other digital devices capable of displaying content.

But publishers are also taking the battle to other fronts, to Internet Service Providers, or ISPs. ISPs have little interest in becoming the Net police. They exist to move data around or to host it. A group with a decent amount of political power-whose members include Verizon, Comcast, AOL, MCI, and, of course, Microsoft-ISPs obtained a federal exemption in 1996 from nearly any liability under state common law for hosting defamatory or other harmful content. If someone posts a message on AOL calling another company's CEO a cheat and a fraud, depressing that company's stock price, AOL is under no obligation to take down the posting, even if the company has pointed out its manifest falsity.

ISPs have no such blanket exemption from liability for hosting or carrying unauthorized copyrighted material. No statute clearly sets out what is legally required of ISPs-and courts have interpreted the obligations of ISPs in different and conflicting ways. CEOs or university administrators providing Internet access to their employees or students don't know what their legal responsibilities are. When they receive letters insisting that they stop allegedly illegal activity on their networks, they gravitate towards a statutory "safe harbor" and take down challenged material-or deny network access to anyone accused of bad copyright behavior.

How is it that IT and ISP industries easily 10 times the size of their publishing counterparts are being harnessed to the needs of their little siblings? Because it's the status quo, some people see the current allocation of rights and duties under copyright as fair, and the happenstance of technical innovation that might displace it as unfair. A meatier argument is that copyright provides incentives for innovation, and if copyright is rendered ineffective, the creators create less or cease altogether.

What's obscured in that analysis is due credit for the longstanding status quo of individual practice in spite of (and previously alongside) Title 17. The Net forces us to confront the contradictions between what the law requires and what individuals do. Initial attempts to reconcile the two have been disappointing. Take, for example, the new phenomenon of music "webcasting," a digital transmission of audio that appears to the user like a traditional broadcast-except that it's available over a computer network. Under the 1909 copyright law and its progeny, a song's composers collect royalties for a "public performance" like the radio broadcast of a CD. No money is owed to the record company, since the CD isn't copied. Actually copying the CD is a right typically reserved to the recording artist (which means the producing record company) under the 1971 law and its progeny, and if permission is granted (usually in exchange for money), no money is owed to the composer of the song for the creation of the copy.

So, a question perfect for a copyright exam circa 1997: Who should collect when a song is webcast, since it acts like a broadcast (remember the 1909 law) but, technically speaking, a temporary copy is made of the song in the computer's memory (the 1971 law)? Should it be the composers or the record companies?

In 1998, Congress answered "Yes." A webcaster owes both. How much is owed to the record companies? Whatever they want to charge, if they want to allow the webcast at all. Unless, of course, a webcaster qualifies for a compulsory license by-and this is in the law-transmitting during any given three-hour period no more than any of (1) three different selections of sound recordings from any one CD, if no more than two such selections are transmitted consecutively, and (2) four different selections of sound recordings by the same featured recording artist or from any set or compilation of CDs distributed together, if no more than three such selections are transmitted consecutively. Got that? Oh, and the webcaster must take care not to preannounce what songs are about to be played. Hew to all these rules, and you still pay-it's just that the rate, rather than being set by the record company, is set under the law by a three-judge arbitration panel after taking weeks of testimony, as long as the panel is not overruled (as really happened) by a subsequent act of Congress setting entirely different rates.

The Internet links people together point to point, enabling individuals to broadcast as well as to consume audio streams. But they won't broadcast if they can't figure out how to do so lawfully, or if they can't afford to do so after being charged twice. Cheap software lets individuals prepare new works from the old, mixing and matching in the finest traditions of jazz improvisation. But people won't do it if they receive a notification of termination of their Internet service.

YES, I HATE THE EFFECTS OF COPYRIGHT ON A DIGITAL REVOLUTION that heralds so much more than the banal ripping off of CD tracks. I hate that creativity is metered and parceled to its last ounce of profit. I hate that our technology is hobbled beyond its paper and other analog counterparts so that it permits us to view but not print, listen but not share, read once but not lend, consume but not create. But I can hate this situation without believing that the idea of copyright is fundamentally flawed. The framers' vision of intellectual property (then known as "monopolies") called for built-in limits to a creator's exclusive rights. A copyright term, for example, would expire even if a work still held commercial value.

So why should we care who gets the merchandising deal from a movie or the song tie-in on a variety show? One reason is that the publishers' sights are set on the public. It is, for example, technically against the law for Girl Scouts to sing "This Land Is Your Land" and "Puff, the Magic Dragon" around a campfire without paying royalties. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers tried to collect such royalties. It backed off only after it faced public outrage-which was fanned by restaurateurs wanting to play the radio without having to pay fees. It now charges the Scouts $1 a year, foregoing real profits while making it clear that the girls sing only by ASCAP's belatedly good graces.

Attempts to reconcile the colliding regimes of statute and practicality, law and life, have been hamfisted at best. A formal report by a commission chartered by the British Patent and Trademark Office suggests, without a trace of self-consciousness, that we encourage schoolchildren to include the © symbol on all their homework. The Business Software Alliance, a commercial software industry group, just unveiled playitcybersafe.com, a website for kids to inculcate the values of Title 17 over those of consumer praxis. There a kid can play Piracy Deepfreeze, becoming a crusading . . . ferret. "Stop the pirates from freezing the city! Throw your ball into the pirates and their stolen software before they hit the ground."

It's time for us to wise up and to redraw copyright's boundaries so that the law and reasonable public expectations fall into better alignment with one another. To be sure, this may require more, rather than less, subtlety. We should treat protections for computer software in a different way than music, for example, and lengthy copyright terms should be available only to those who bother to check in with the Copyright Office every few years. But we do ourselves a disservice by fixating on current income structures and not thinking about future possibilities premised on amazing technological advances, especially when the rights at issue concern the flows of ideas, something fundamental to free societies.

Scholars like William Fisher of Harvard Law School have floated ideas as sensible as they are radical-not to mention offensive to almost every interest in the copyright debates, from publisher to middleman to anarchist. He suggests in an upcoming book that ISPs remit to publishers a fee loosely based on the amount of copyrighted digital content that they are roughly calculated to be carrying, at which point people can trade music to their hearts' content.

Overhauling copyright will have costs to some. In the absence of tough copyright controls, investors may decide not to underwrite a $200 million blockbuster film because copying of the final product may unduly reduce their expected profit. But the cost of making no change at all must also be soberly assessed because the Internet offers such a staggering potential for the rapid transformation and evolution of ideas-a veritable Jazz Age of creation enabled by technology.

I pay my taxes. I have no idea how to calculate them, but I do what Turbotax tells me to. I'll pay a copyright tax, too, and willingly support artists whose work I appreciate, because it's the right thing to do and because it guarantees that more work will be made available to me. I'm not alone. So: Let's imagine a world in which Teddy Ruxpin can say whatever he wants, where kids can play with computers that are not digitally locked down, where bars and restaurants can stop measuring their TVs and their parking lots, and where amateur webcasters can create thousands of radio stations featuring songs we like, perhaps ones that sound familiar but that have new elements to them. We'll still buy concert tickets, books, and CDs and their digital descendants. They'll be competing with a lot more, though-created for fun, even if it happens to turn a profit.

Jonathan Zittrain is the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Assistant Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and a director of its Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

This aired on KTVU Channel 2 on July 13, 2003 at 10pm in San Francisco.

Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Rally (Small - 2 MB)

The FCC Under Fire
By Viveca Novak (With reporting by Eric Roston) for Time.

Populist outrage is threatening to undo a controversial effort by the FCC to loosen restraints on media megaliths. In the Senate last week, seven Republicans joined 28 Democrats to schedule a rare "resolution of disapproval" to overturn new FCC rules that would let companies like News Corp. and Viacom expand their media holdings in local markets. Then in the House, defecting Republicans fueled a 40-to-25 committee vote to reverse part of the FCC's action. Now it appears that the chief architect of those rules, FCC chairman Michael Powell, may not stick around for the fight. According to industry sources, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell has told confidants he'd like to leave by fall, and three of his four top staff members are putting out job feelers. (Powell has denied he's leaving soon.) His most likely replacement, sources say, is either Rebecca Klein, who is head of the Texas public-utility commission and was on the staff of Governor George W. Bush, or FCC commissioner Kevin Martin, who helped the Bush team count votes in Florida in 2000.

Powell rammed through the new rules allowing a single company to own TV stations that reach up to 45% of the national market, an increase from the old 35% cap, and lifting the ban on a company's owning both a newspaper and a TV station in the same market on a party-line vote in June. But groups as disparate as the National Organization for Women and the National Rifle Association are decrying the move. In a new Pew Research poll, respondents most familiar with the FCC's action opposed it by roughly 10 to 1. Still, it has the support of key g.o.p. leaders, and President Bush has threatened to veto any bill overturning it.

Republicans who are breaking ranks on the issue face growing party pressure. On the morning of the vote, Congressman Zach Wamp, a Republican from Tennessee who voted to kill the FCC plan, spotted House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Billy Tauzin, who backs it. "I kind of ducked to the left," he said, "went around a column and down three flights of stairs."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,465798,00.html

The FCC Under Fire
The commission's controversial loosening of media ownership rules meets steadily rising opposition
By VIVECA NOVAK

Populist outrage is threatening to undo a controversial effort by the FCC to loosen restraints on media megaliths. In the Senate last week, seven Republicans joined 28 Democrats to schedule a rare "resolution of disapproval" to overturn new FCC rules that would let companies like News Corp. and Viacom expand their media holdings in local markets. Then in the House, defecting Republicans fueled a 40-to-25 committee vote to reverse part of the FCC's action. Now it appears that the chief architect of those rules, FCC chairman Michael Powell, may not stick around for the fight. According to industry sources, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell has told confidants he'd like to leave by fall, and three of his four top staff members are putting out job feelers. (Powell has denied he's leaving soon.) His most likely replacement, sources say, is either Rebecca Klein, who is head of the Texas public-utility commission and was on the staff of Governor George W. Bush, or FCC commissioner Kevin Martin, who helped the Bush team count votes in Florida in 2000.

Powell rammed through the new rules allowing a single company to own TV stations that reach up to 45% of the national market, an increase from the old 35% cap, and lifting the ban on a company's owning both a newspaper and a TV station in the same market on a party-line vote in June. But groups as disparate as the National Organization for Women and the National Rifle Association are decrying the move. In a new Pew Research poll, respondents most familiar with the FCC's action opposed it by roughly 10 to 1. Still, it has the support of key g.o.p. leaders, and President Bush has threatened to veto any bill overturning it.

Republicans who are breaking ranks on the issue face growing party pressure. On the morning of the vote, Congressman Zach Wamp, a Republican from Tennessee who voted to kill the FCC plan, spotted House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Billy Tauzin, who backs it. "I kind of ducked to the left," he said, "went around a column and down three flights of stairs."

With reporting by Eric Roston

Another Successful Bookmobile Voyage!

Day 12

We left Egypt today, boarding a flight which turned out to be a complete nightmare. As I put it: hell on wings, British Airways flight.

The plane sitting on the ground (without air or ventilation) was so hot that Tessa passed out. Very bad. We also got rerouted: instead of flying Cairo->London->SFO we were informed at the airport that we would be going Cairo->Marseiles->London->LA->SFO, which, after losing cabin pressure midair became Cairo->Rome->London(overnite in London)->Chicago (change airlines)->SFO. And, yes, they lost our baggage.

But we're still alive!

This is why I keep archives guys.

Here's the original link: "Rescued POW put up fierce fight" -- as blogged previously.

Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.

LYNCH, A 19-YEAR-OLD supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said.

Actor/writer/activist Peter Coyote MC'd the Howard Dean kick off event that took place on June 23, 2003 at the San Francisco Hyatt.

If there are three parts to taking our country back:
1) exposing shrub corruption
2) getting a good candidate to run against him
3) fixing our screwed up election procedures

I'd say we've got 1 and 2 pretty well under control.

Time to get started on number 3 in a big way!

After Penelope Houston performed, Peter came back to say a few words to the audience about the dangers of using proprietary software within voting machines.

I spoke to him briefly afterwards to let him know that the word he was searching for is "Open Source."

I realized after last year's election that in order for our Electronic Voting Machine software to be trustworthy, it has to be open sourced -- or at least made available for scrutiny. Otherwise, by definition, it can't really be a part of the democratic process.

Making the source and technology available for public scrutiny is the only way to ensure that the proper technological checks and balances can be built into the system (and be double checked afterwards).

I'm about to post an article (and several of the resources referenced by the article) that explains in detail just how badly onen of the current software systems doesn't measure up to even the most basic of security and accountability requirements. Although the only reason we know this is because the software was made available online. (Which is a good thing!)

Peter Coyote On The Dangers Of Proprietary Voting Machines (Small - 3 MB)

Transcript: One last thing on the Georgia Voting Fraud. It can't be proven because the software is proprietary. There's a dress rehearsal. There's a website called Votescam.com, and you need to look at it. And everyone of us needs to write our legislators and say: "We want paper ballots." "We want transparent software." "We want the government supervising the elections."

Otherwise, what will happen is, at the end of the day, the Police will take the voting machines, they will give them to the corporation, and the corporation will tell you who won.

There's a long history of documented voter fraud in this country, and the dress rehearsal was the last presidential election. I narrated a film for a reporter called Greg Palast. 91,000 votes stolen in Florida. 91,000! Go to Greg Palast.com and look it up. Go to Votescam.com. If we don't stop voter fraud, we're not gonna win this election. Thank you all very much for coming.

This is right before Ben Hammersley's Talk At Etech 2003.
Movie of this.

I didn't realize I hadn't posted this yet. Sorry about that!

(Everyone else's stuff seems so much more interesting than my own :-)

This is just me talking about how I got involved with Brewster and the Internet Bookmobile on its maiden voyage to the Eldred Argument in Washington DC.

Lisa Rein At Etech 2003 (Small - 5 MB)

Darned Good Intelligence (Small - 3 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

I don't know what to make of any of this yet. At first glance, it looks like we're looking for an excuse to set up a base in Africa -- but like I said -- I don't know nuthin' about African politics or the history behind the current conflicts over there.

I just know I want to track the situation, and that I don't want to mix this stuff in with the domestic policy issues going on at my Shrub Watch category.

Daily Show On The Shrub In Africa (Small - 9 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Day 11

After our final goodbyes at the Library we hopped on our train for Cairo to leave the next morning. The train ride was again very beautiful and Cairo was, again, very hot, noisy and smoggy. After some dinner near the American University in Cairo we made our way through one of the crazy Cairo bazaars and headed back to the Mayfair hotel to get some rest.

Photo Below: Ashley (middle) Saying Goodby to Khalid (to his left) and Youssef (on his right).

(Print Resolution)

(Print Resolution)

a.k.a - Domain names - How the mess came about

or

"How the Nerds Were Having A Perfectly Good Time Until The Businesspeople And Lawyers Showed Up And Ruined Everything"

This is a tag team lecture by Jonathan Zittrain and Terry Fisher which covers the entire history of domain names from the beginning of the Internet to the present day.

Jonathan and Terry - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 60 MB)

Jonathan and Terry - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 54 MB)

Jonathan and Terry - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 50 MB)

Jonathan and Terry - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 52 MB)

I don't have any notes for this section, but I do have a ton of pictures.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

Howard Lovy's NanoBot
(Thanks, David.)

This from last April's O'Reilly Etech 2003 Conference.

Speaker: Ben Hammersley
Title: Mailing Lits Bots, Kinda

Ben Hammersley - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 40 MB)
Ben Hammersley - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 35 MB)

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

Day 10

We met a bit later today (10am) since it is still the weekend and wanted to let the IT Team (Khalid, Youssef, and Mohammed to get some rest over their break.

We expected a relatively slow day--which it turned out to be-- of printing books and ironing out bugs. We found out a bit later the almost-mythical Director of the Library-- Dr. Seregaldine would be coming to take a look at the station. The Director was a former higher-up in the World Bank, speaks more languages than there are days of the week, and has earned Ph.D.s in more than one field, in addition to the honorary Ph.D.'s that universities around the world have given him.

We kept hearing that he was on his way down (the library's office space is a conceptual pyramid of heirarchy, with the most important and most modern departments (eg Information & Computing Technology on the 3rd of 4 floors) on the top, working down to the most traditional departments (eg rare manuscripts in one of the 'basements').

After about 4 hours of waiting the Director swept into the room with a couple assistants, the head librarian, and the director of ICT in tow. He was really thrilled with the setup and promised to find money for the mobile unit's vehicle. He described the setup as "fabulous" and commented that "the dream [of printing books from digital copies which Brewster had spoken about at the Library in October] has become a reality".

Day 9

Today, being the beginning of the Egyptian weekend, we all took the day off.

The filmmakers arrived back in Alex last nite and we warbled around the city getting some great footage of people in the streets shopping, eating, smoking shisha and getting married (the poorer people in the city throw great wedding parties in the street, everyone dancing and singing and no one getting blindly drunk -- which is really refreshing to see).

We were all feeling a little ill so we ended up sitting on the Corniche (the seafront) eating sandwiches at one of the fancy hotels called the Windsor Hotel.

Photo Below: One Final Shot Of Library Exterior


(Print Resolution)

Day 8

Today was relatviely uneventful. I worked with the library's Graphics department to design the signage for the printing station in the library.

Given the station's assembly line which goes from the huge printer on the left side (when facing the setup) to the smaller equipment to the right, I designed a signage layout that includes a large portrait-oriented poster on the very right of the setup (behind it in front of the plate windows) followed by 3 smaller square posters to the left with a picture of a girl doing each of the bookmaking steps.

We got the library's professional photographer to take photographs of the girl (a student who was reading in the Children's Library (...sorry for the interuption) printing, cutting, and binding an imaginary book.

Day 7

I returned on my own to Alexandria today. We finally got clearance from the Library's security department who had concerns that the color printing equipment could be used to counterfeit money, if it were to fall into the wrong hands (always wanted to use that phrase).

The library's extensive security team is a nearly-autonomous entity in the library and works fulltime to keep the library premises safe. Before I left, I spoke with the security chief, General Sharif, who assured me that there wouldn't be trouble with the equipment.

Today I found out that the security team oversaw a test printing of a scanned Egyptian bill and found out, unsurprisingly, that the quality of the printing was not nearly good enough to be used to actually counterfeit money. (In fact the Chief Science Officer at HP informed me that this consideration is taken into account when designing the print equipment, since it's not only the Egyptian authorities, but also American ones, who have concerns about counterfeiting through high-end print equipment.)

Photo Below: Of course in Cairo we had to see the pyramids (which are basically in the middle of the city and visible from the highway) and had to do the quintessential pyramid activity--camel riding.

(Print Resolution)

Photo Below: Filmmaker Mark in one of the Pyramids. The 30 degree incline leads to a chamber that's empty except for a cracked, empty tomb. The sense of history inside this chamber is immense.

(Print Resolution)

Photo Below: Here the Mark, Jenny, and Tess setup their equipment in front of the pyramids and Sphynx for a day of shooting.

(Print Resolution)

This is a placeholder for the brief panel with former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and Leslie L. Vadasz, Director Emeritus, Intel Corporation that took place during the first part of Tuesday afternoon at ILAW 2003.

I had only recorded a portion of their presentations and the Q and A afterwards, because I hadn't brought enough tape for the entire day and I didn't want to miss the governance tag team with Jonathan Zittrain and Terry Fisher that was scheduled afterwards.

As it turns out, Reed Hundt asked that I not publish his presentation (which was quite a surprise considering that it didn't seem like he had said anything that could be construed as even remotely controversial).

So this entry is just a placeholder for what would have gone here.

Note: Except for Jonathan Zittrain's introductory presentation (Day 1-AM 1) and this presentation (Day 2 - PM 1), my ILAW 2003 video archive will contain the conference in its entirety.

This story, which features Emerald Yeh, aired sometime last week on San Francisco's KRON Channel 4.

The stills below provide most of the important information.

KRON On The Do Not Call Registry (Small - 6 MB)

I met a guy from the Capacitor Dance Company in the coffee shop the other day. It sounded kind of cool so I went to check out the website, and it turns out that they have a number of pretty cool videos of their different shows.

They travel around the country, so if you happen to see them performing somewhere in your area, and you're into such things, you might want to check them out (and bring the kids!).

Shows in Oakland, CA August 7-10, 2003
Alice Fine Arts Theatre
14th and Alice
Take the 12st exit off of 980 and head east on 14th to Alice.
Show starts at 8pm
$15

And they're all being introduced by a collection of all star guests:

This is the:
Illegal Art Film & Video Schedule
at Roxie Cinema (3117 16th St., at the corner of Valencia St.)
Tickets available at the door: general, $8; seniors and children, $4.

More info and movies for online viewing or downloading: http://www.illegal-art.org

PROGRAM A
Wednesday, July 23 * 2 pm, 10 pm
Thursday, July 24 10pm

With Introductions by Rick Prelinger, Members of Paul Harvey Oswald, and Brian Boyce (on wed)
and Rick Prelinger, and possibly Jino Choi or Dan Spalding (who did Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade) on Thursday

Paul Harvey Oswald, Fair Use
Eric Fensler, GI Joe PSAs
Brian Boyce, State of the Union
Phil Patiris, Iraq Campaign 1991
Brian Springer, Spin

In Spin, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon-all presuming they're off camera. Iraq Campaign 1991 transforms network news footage, clips from Star Trek, and sports coverage (all used without permission) into a devastating critique of the media/industrial complex.

PROGRAM B
Wednesday, July 23 * 4 pm
Thursday, July 24 * 6 pm

With introductions by Craig Baldwin and Don Joyce

Tim Maloney with Negativland, Gimme the Mermaid
Craig Baldwin, Sonic Outlaws

Sonic Outlaws is a gleefully anarchic documentary focused on the band Negativland and its travails with copyright and trademark infringment. The film also probes the world of recontexualizing corporate advertising through culture-jamming. Director Craig Baldwin and Don Joyce (of Negativland) will be on hand to introduce the films and answer your questions.

PROGRAM C
Wednesday, July 23 * 6 pm

With an Introduction and Q and A with Lawrence Lessig

Greg Hittelman and Jed Horovitz, Willful Infringement

A new documentary about copyright law featuring a Rolling Stones cover band, Public Enemy, copyright guru Lawrence Lessig, and a couple of clowns. Lessig will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions afterward.

PROGRAM D
Wednesday, July 23 * 8 pm
Thursday, July 24 * 8 pm

With an introduction by Jean Hester on Thursday

Keith Sanborn, The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility
D. Jean Hester, Buy Me
Paul Harvey Oswald, Natural Thing
Eileen Maxson, Untitled
Brian Spinks, Bill Wasik, Eugene Mirman, Black Thunder
Michal Levy, Giant Steps
Jem Cohen, excerpt from Chain
Naomi Uman, Removed
Michael Colton, Puppy Love
Todd Haynes, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
(shown without permission)

A series of shorts that appropriate copyrighted works in one way or another: through the use of found footage (Black Thunder, Natural Thing, Removed), unauthorized music (Giant Steps), or corporate imagery (Chain). Plus Todd Haynes' cult classic Superstar. With Barbie dolls as the principal actors, Superstar portrays the life of Karen Carpenter and her battle with anorexia. Haynes never secured the rights to the Carpenters' music he used in the movie, and Richard Carpenter filed an injunction that kept Superstar from public release.

PROGRAM E
Thursday, July 24 * 10 pm

Brian Spinks, Bill Wasik, Eugene Mirman, Black Thunder
Brian Boyce, Special Report
Michael Colton, Puppy Love
Joe Gibbons, Barbie's Audition
Jino Choi and Dan Spalding, Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade
Greg Hittelman and Jed Horovitz, Willful Infringement

Another set of stellar shorts, headlined by Willful Infringement, a new documentary about copyright law featuring a Rolling Stones cover band, Public Enemy, copyright guru Lawrence Lessig, and a couple of clowns.

Most films and videos can also be downloaded for free at http://www.illegal-art.org.

And don't miss the Illegal Art Exhibit, through July 25, at SF MOMA Artists Gallery (Fort Mason, Building A). Illegal Art is sponsored by Stay Free! Magazine.

The most important point:

End to end character of the web.

How this was a design choice.

Intelligence is at the edges. Network is simple.

Dominant monopoly can't control/discriminate.
Can't see who people are.
Can't forbid certain uses.

This was a fundamental architectural choice.

Larry On End-to-End - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 69 MB)

Larry On End-to-End - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 59 MB)

Larry On End-to-End - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 81 MB)

Larry On End-to-End - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 74 MB)

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

day 2 tape 3

Larry On End to End Architecture

The end to end character of the logical layer

2:26 - Difference Between AM and FM Radio

4:15 - How Sarnoff Tried to...

AM/FM Radio Backrounder

David Sarnoff vs. Armstrong and RCA

Packet Switching

How AT & T discriminated against any ideas that wouldn't benefit their monopoly.

How competition can be crushed by the dominant network provider.

Excite/AT&T - Dominant cable provider
"Blood sucked from our veins"

9:30 - Innovations that gave birth to the internet

10:50 - All by kids and non-americans

11:52 - Policies and Consequences of Architecture

12:08 - End to end character of the web. How this was a design choice.

Intelligence is at the edges. Network is simple.

Dominant monopoly can't control/discriminate.
Can't see who people are.
Can't forbid certain uses.
This was a fundamental architectural choice.

23:14 - Hourglass model
Note to transcribe some of this...

26:20 - voice over IP

32:15 - Commons - What is a commons

33:30 - Tragedy of the commons

34:30 - rivalrous and non-rivalrous resources

39:40 - Innovation Commons

41:40 - Why the property model makes no sense on the Internet.

How it just doesn't make sense to propertize all resources.

44:35 - Strategic behavior

Competitors do things that benefits them but harms the network

45:40 - Microsoft case - defensive manipulation - note to highlight this

MS stops around 52:00

54:20 - consumer-financial innovation

57:20 - unlicensed spectrum

Day 2 Tape 4

8:00 Media Consolidation

11:00 How the Internet needs to run like the electric network

he mentions my weblog around 12:00

16:20 - Neutral Networks (Note: not "neural" but "neutral"

22:00 - Q and A - why complexity is bad

note: after this point, the numbers are iffy...

27:13 - when property rights aren't appropriate

28:29 - Eldred economists amicus brief - "no brainer."

32:00 - maybe "commons" isn't the right word

not either or but a balance between property and FREE

Eldred wanted to publish his annotated Robert Frost poems.

Note from lisa: people are always asking me what the work was that Eric Eldred was waiting to fall into the public domain that originally brought about the court case. The answer is "Robert Frost poems."

Ashley's back in town, but some of his posts never made it to me, so I'm posting them in order:

Day 6.

Tess, Jenny, Mark (the filmmakers) and I hopped on an afternoon train headed for Cairo from Alexandria in order to meet with an Egyptian-American who runs a human rights internet group called Virtual Activism (see www.virtualactivism.org). The train ride from Alex to Cairo is surprisingly beautiful: along the Nile and Nile tributaries the rough sand of the Egyptian desert becomes lush farmland and greenery.

The meeting with the human rights activist (I'll leave her name out of this) went great--she was thrilled with the Bookmobile concept and thinks that it's an important way to solve the crisis of the digital divide in Egypt. It turns out that the Egyptian government has built the infrastructure for country-wide internet access--for FREE-- but the hardware is "prohibitively expensive" for Egpytians, in addition to the daunting knowledge gap that exists amongst the literate/semi-literate and illiterate Egyptian population. However, she also commented that showing people how computers and the internet--which is an opaque concept for some people in Egypt-- can produce a physical, tangible and familiar thing like a book, would help to drive investment in information technologies.

This is from the first session on the second day of ILAW at Stanford, July 1, 2003.

My notes are located beneath the photographs.

Yochai Benkler was as amazing as ever (I've been a big fan since the Spectrum Conference -- note that there's no link there because I still haven't uploaded it...argh...)

Yochai On Architecture - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 62 MB)

Yochai On Architecture - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 62 MB)

Yochai On Architecture - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 50 MB)

Yochai On Architecture - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 16 MB)

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

Lotsa notes on this one:

Day 2 - Tape 1

7:15 - slide of a communications channel

9:57 - one of the things at stake is democracy

What Terry Fisher explained yesterday as "political democracy"

12:00 QOS Dangers

14:10 - innovation

19:00 architecture for non-techs

28:10 - "Monopoly and a half"

31:25 - Thing that changed from the last 100 years

35:50 - Verizon's competitor division makes more money than the entire recording industry

39:35- FCC notice of inquiry

42:00 intra-modal "competition within the mode of transmission"

"Maybe competition between these modes is all we need?" - Yochai

Duopoly...

44:30 - Do two pipelines a competitive market make?

50:00 - Where "the internet" fits into the cable and telecom

51:20 - where wireless fits in

53:50 - Personal Area Networks

Day 2 - Tape 2 (Yochai continued)

:47 - No owner of the network

-No license required

5:01 - old vs. new world

7:50 - "Mary had a little lamb" - example

Smart receivers and how they work.

10:50 - Processing gain

The use of intelligent receivers

12:20 - cooperation gain

14:30 - repeater networks

How they will work like cellphones.

15:10 - multi-user information theory

multi-user detections

16:20 - Does adding users cost nothing because each user adds their own capacity to the network?

We don't know for sure, yet. But it's definitely possible. (paraphrase)

21:00 - "efficient" use of spectrum can't be defined

23:00 - duopoly

25:28 - Trusted systems

27:25 - could be open or closed

How one can control it all if they control one layer.

35:36 - Version putting wifi in its phone booths in NY

My notes for this session are included underneath the links to the video files below.

I'll be putting up highlight clips for Terry Fisher's description of the three different kinds of democracy, Zack Rosen's presentation on Americans For Dean, and probably a few other exciting moments.

Charlie Nesson put together an ad hoc panel on Blogging and Democracy. Aaron Swartz, Zack Rosen, yours truly, David Hornik, Colin Mutchler, and Frank Field all participated.

Charlie's Panel - Part 1 of 5 (Small - 44 MB)

Charlie's Panel - Part 2 of 5 (Small - 43 MB)

Charlie's Panel - Part 3 of 5 (Small - 38 MB)

Charlie's Panel - Part 4 of 5 (Small - 44 MB)

Charlie's Panel - Part 5 of 5 (Small - 30 MB)

Notes: Day 1 - Charlie's Panel On Blogging As A Tool Of Democracy

Terry Fisher explaining the different types of democracy.

Three primary meanings:

1) Political Democracy - A political system in which we are governed by laws we ourselves make.

Several parts to this:

1) Elected Officials
2) Frequent and Fair Elections
3) Anyone Can Run
4) Freedom Of Expression
5) Information From Alternative Sources
6) Freedom Of Association

2) Economic Democracy

Three parts to this:

1) Workplace Participation
2) Shape Character Of Products
3) Meaningful Work

3) Semiotic Democracy - Widespreade popular participation in the process of making cultural meanings.

From left to right: Colin Mutchler, Zack Rosen, David Hornik,
Aaron Swartz, Lisa Rein, Frank Field and Charlie Nesson.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

When the term is referring to a venue where an upcoming Illegal Art gathering is taking place, of course.

What: Digital Mix: A Special BayFF Celebrating Illegal Art
When: July 25th, 8pm - 2am
Where: Black Box, 1928 Telegraph Avenue Near 19th Street BART
Directions: available here
Cost: $5 Suggested Donation (That means they'll take a dollar if that's all you have and don't not come just because you're broke! Tell them I sent you and I'll work it out later with them -- it's all good ;-)

For more information please contact: katina@eff.org

Performers:
~ Kat5
~ Meanest Man Contest
~ Uprock
~ Mochipet
~ Freshblend

Speakers:
~ Fred von Lohmann (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
~ Glenn Otis Brown (Creative Commons)
~ Ray Beldner (Illegal Art)

Sponsored By:
~ XLR8R Magazine

Details:

On July 25th the Electronic Frontier Foundation will host a night of music, art, and conversation to celebrate digital culture. Hosted at the Black Box in downtown Oakland, this special BayFF will bring up-and-coming artists of electronica, digital film, and illegal art together with leaders from the cyber-rights movement.

Lawsuits and legislation have become the weapons of choice for dealing with file-sharing and cultural recycling ("sampling"); come out and discover what all the hype is about. Between laptop music, hip hop, and industrial performances, you will hear from people who are fighting to protect new forms of expression and cultural distribution from the attacks of the entertainment industry. This is an all-ages event.

I have some stuff to do this afternoon, so I can't put this up proper until tonight (or even tomorrow morning maybe).

But I did want to make it available for everyone immediately, so the clips from today are loading up to this directory right now.

The directory will contain the interview with Donald Rumsfeld in two parts and a bunch of stills from the program. (uploding now)

I've also got stuff from the July 6, 2003 Meet The Press in this directory.
(These are arranged in 7 clips by category.)

Enjoy!

So either Cheney knew and he and the Shrub communicate so poorly that this information was never conveyed from dick to shrub -- or -- the Shrub did know that the Nigerian Uranium information was incorrect. Either way, it stinks.

The Uranium Fiction
A NY Times Editorial.

We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the State of the Union address last January, but the matter will not end there. George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, stepped up to the issue yesterday when he said the C.I.A. had approved Mr. Bush's speech and failed to advise him to drop the mistaken charge that Iraq had recently tried to import significant quantities of uranium from an African nation, later identified as Niger. Now the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do...

We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the State of the Union address last January, but the matter will not end there. George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, stepped up to the issue yesterday when he said the C.I.A. had approved Mr. Bush's speech and failed to advise him to drop the mistaken charge that Iraq had recently tried to import significant quantities of uranium from an African nation, later identified as Niger. Now the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/opinion/12SAT1.html

The Uranium Fiction

We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the State of the Union address last January, but the matter will not end there. George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, stepped up to the issue yesterday when he said the C.I.A. had approved Mr. Bush's speech and failed to advise him to drop the mistaken charge that Iraq had recently tried to import significant quantities of uranium from an African nation, later identified as Niger. Now the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do.

So far, the administration's handling of this important — and politically explosive — issue has mostly involved a great deal of finger-pointing instead of an exacting reconstruction of events and an acceptance of blame by all those responsible. Mr. Bush himself engaged in the free-for-all yesterday while traveling in Africa when he said his speech had been "cleared by the intelligence services." That led within a few hours to Mr. Tenet's mea culpa.

It is clear, however, that much more went into this affair than the failure of the C.I.A. to pounce on the offending 16 words in Mr. Bush's speech. A good deal of information already points to a willful effort by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of Representatives last January. Doubts about the accusation were raised in March 2002 by Joseph Wilson 4th, a former American diplomat, after he was dispatched to Niger by the C.I.A. to look into the issue.

Mr. Wilson has said he is confident that his concerns were circulated not only within the agency but also at the State Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Tenet, in his statement yesterday, confirmed that the Wilson findings had been given wide distribution, although he reported that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other high officials had not been directly informed about them by the C.I.A. The uranium charge should never have found its way into Mr. Bush's speech. Determining how it got there is essential to understanding whether the administration engaged in a deliberate effort to mislead the nation about the Iraqi threat.

You all must know how completely thrilled I am about this newest development in the Presidential campaign.

I'll let Larry tell you about it himself.

A new guest blogger: Howard Dean

Yesterday, I completed a draft of a new book. Tomorrow, Bettina and I leave for our first vacation in a very long time (and, as we expect, the last vacation the two of us will take alone in a very long time).

So it is time for me to take a break from this space too. But I’ve arranged for a much more interesting guest blogger while I’m gone: former governor, and presidential candidate, Howard Dean.

This is, I believe, the first time a presidential candidate has been a guest blogger. But it is an obvious extension of blogs and the process of becoming President. Campaigns are all about meeting different groups and talking about ideas. Where better than a blog?

I have great respect for Governor Dean, and especially the clarity of his voice. I have even greater respect now that I see the doctor makes house calls. So Governor, welcome to this tiny server at Stanford: You’ll find perfect acoustics provided by MovableType, and an interesting mix of views provided by the readers.

And to everyone else, enjoy the week of something totally different. Dean is on starting Monday. I should be back the week following.

One ground rule: I’ve had a policy of not editing comments of others, regardless of abusiveness. That is not my policy for my guests. You may disagree with the views you read here. But if you are reading them here, then you at least should respect the fact that they are being expressed here. It is important to me that blog-space everywhere become a place where more of this kind of conversation can occur. So trolls, please save your abuse for my return.

This piece provides a brilliant wrap up of this last week's events - From the Shrub's "Bring them on" episode, to Tommy Franks' resignation and the Shrub's skirting the issue of inaccuracies in his State Of The Union Address (in his own words).

This is from last night's show - July 10, 2003.

Daily Show On Shrub's WMD Self-Defense (Small - 10 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This is from the JIm Lehrer News Hour July 8, 2003.

Shrub Administration Withdraws Claims Regarding WMD Nigerian Uranium Evidence (Small - 1 MB)

This is from the July 6, 2003.

KRON On The White House Admission Of Shrub Inaccuracies (Small - 2 MB)

If anyone knows for sure when on what channel this is airing, will you shoot me an email please at lisarein@finetuning.com?

I'd like to tape it and make it available for everyone online.

NOW Hosts Presidential Candidate Forum on Women's Rights

What: Presidential Candidates Forum on Women's Rights

Who: Confirmed candidates include Gov. Howard Dean, Ambassador Carol Moseley-Braun, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton

When: Friday, July 11
5:15 PM to 7:00 PM

Where: DoubleTree Crystal City - Crystal Ballroom
300 Army Navy Drive
Arlington, Virginia

"NOW's Presidential Candidates Forum will bring women's rights activists from across the country - the backbone of many a campaign - face to face with the candidates challenging Bush in 2004," Gandy said. "Going on the record as a strong supporter of these critical issues is a sure-fire way to mobilize women to get to the polls next year."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/071103J.shtml

NOW Hosts Presidential Candidate Forum on Women's Rights
Press Release

Thursday 10 July 2003

"At this critical time in politics, voters need and want to know where the candidates stand on the issues women care about," said National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy. "Because women's votes will make or break this election, our concerns and our rights need to be addressed." On Friday, July 11 the nation's largest group of feminist activists is hosting the first forum of 2004 presidential candidates to address the full spectrum of women's rights. The forum is part of the 2003 National NOW Conference, and will precede the Saturday kickoff of NOW's Drive for Equality, a 5-year campaign to register, educate and mobilize women to vote on issues that affect their lives and their families.

Participating in the NOW forum are Governor Howard Dean, Ambassador Carol Moseley-Braun, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich and Reverend Al Sharpton. Gandy will moderate the event with political comedian and activist Elayne Boosler. Unable to attend the forum due to scheduling conflicts, John Kerry will send a videotaped message and John Edwards will send a representative. Gandy, audience members and journalists-include legendary questioner of Presidents, Helen Thomas-will ask the candidates hard-hitting questions on a broad range of women's rights issues.

What: Presidential Candidates Forum on Women's Rights

Who: Confirmed candidates include Gov. Howard Dean, Ambassador Carol Moseley-Braun, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton

When: Friday, July 11
5:15 PM to 7:00 PM

Where: DoubleTree Crystal City - Crystal Ballroom
300 Army Navy Drive
Arlington, Virginia

"NOW's Presidential Candidates Forum will bring women's rights activists from across the country - the backbone of many a campaign - face to face with the candidates challenging Bush in 2004," Gandy said. "Going on the record as a strong supporter of these critical issues is a sure-fire way to mobilize women to get to the polls next year."

U.S. Envoy Says Bush 'Twisted' Iraq Intelligence
By Reuters.

A former U.S. ambassador who investigated a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger accused the Bush administration on Sunday of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Joseph Wilson, Washington's envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, said in an article in the New York Times that he went to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the CIA to assess the intelligence report -- which the International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed as being based on forged documents.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3042220

U.S. Envoy Says Bush 'Twisted' Iraq Intelligence
Sat July 5, 2003 10:23 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former U.S. ambassador who investigated a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger accused the Bush administration on Sunday of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Joseph Wilson, Washington's envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, said in an article in the New York Times that he went to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the CIA to assess the intelligence report -- which the International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed as being based on forged documents.

Before the IAEA gave its verdict, the report was cited by President Bush and Britain to support their charges that Saddam was trying to obtain nuclear weapons and to justify their invasion of Iraq in March.

"Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," Wilson wrote.

Controversy is raging in both Britain and the United States over charges that the governments of the two countries manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. No evidence of such weapons has been found by the occupying forces in Iraq.

Wilson said he spent eight days in Niger meeting current and former government officials and people associated with the uranium business to check if there had been an Iraq-Niger deal.

"It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place," he said.

Wilson, who helped to direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton, said the CIA would have passed on his findings to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Wilson noted that in January 2003 Bush "repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa."

"If the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them," he said.

Wilson said that if the administration had ignored his information "because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."

According to news reports, the allegations of an Iraq-Niger deal were based on forged letters obtained by Italian intelligence from an African diplomat. The allegations were apparently passed to British intelligence and then to the CIA.

Bush Recantation Of Iraq Claim Stirs Calls for Probes
By Walter Pincus for the Washington Post.

Democrats called for investigations yesterday after the White House acknowledged Monday that President Bush should not have said in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.

The White House acknowledgment followed a British parliamentary report casting doubt on intelligence about the alleged uranium sale, which Bush had attributed to the British.

"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," the White House statement said. In the speech, Bush was trying to make the case that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program...

The senior Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), said the administration's admission was not a revelation. "The whole world knew it was a fraud," Rockefeller said, adding that the current intelligence committee inquiry should determine how it got into the Bush speech. "Who decided this was something they could work with?" Rockefeller asked.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, yesterday questioned why, as late as the president's Jan. 28 speech, "policymakers were still using information which the intelligence community knew was almost certainly false."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29766-2003Jul8.html?nav=hptop_ts

Bush Recantation Of Iraq Claim Stirs Calls for Probes

Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) wants "careful scrutiny" of White House admission. (Charles Dharapak -- AP)

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2003; Page A20

Democrats called for investigations yesterday after the White House acknowledged Monday that President Bush should not have said in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.

The White House acknowledgment followed a British parliamentary report casting doubt on intelligence about the alleged uranium sale, which Bush had attributed to the British.

"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," the White House statement said. In the speech, Bush was trying to make the case that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) called it a "very important admission," adding, "This ought to be reviewed very carefully. It ought to be the subject of careful scrutiny as well as some hearings."

The senior Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), said the administration's admission was not a revelation. "The whole world knew it was a fraud," Rockefeller said, adding that the current intelligence committee inquiry should determine how it got into the Bush speech. "Who decided this was something they could work with?" Rockefeller asked.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, yesterday questioned why, as late as the president's Jan. 28 speech, "policymakers were still using information which the intelligence community knew was almost certainly false."

Levin said he hoped the intelligence committee inquiry and one he is conducting with the Democratic staff of the armed services panel will explore why the CIA had kept what it knew buried "in the bowels of the agency," repeating a phrase used recently by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to explain why she did not know the information was incorrect.

Republicans saw things differently.

Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), chairman of the Republican Conference, praised the administration for being forthright. "I think they had the best information that they thought, and it was reliable at the time that the president said it," Santorum told reporters. "It has since turned out to be, at least according to the reports that have been just released, not true," he said. "The president stepped forward and said so," he continued. "I think that's all you can expect."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) also defended Bush's approach, telling reporters that it is "very easy to pick one little flaw here and one little flaw there." He defended the U.S.-led war against Iraq as "morally sound, and it is not just because somebody forged or made a mistake. . . . The Democrats can try all they want to undermine that, but the American people understand it and they support it."

At the White House yesterday, officials stressed that Bush's assertions in the State of the Union address did not depend entirely on discredited documents about Niger but also referred to intelligence contained in a still-classified September 2002 national intelligence estimate that listed two other countries, identified yesterday by a senior intelligence official as Congo and Somalia, where Iraq allegedly had sought uranium. That information, however, has been described as "sketchy" by intelligence officials, and the British parliamentary commission said it had not been proved.

Several candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination spoke out yesterday. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said Bush's "factual lapse" cannot be easily dismissed "as an intelligence failure." He said the president "has a pattern of using excessive language in his speeches and off-the-cuff remarks" which "represents a failure of presidential leadership."

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said the administration "doesn't get honesty points for belatedly admitting what has been apparent to the world for some time -- that emphatic statements made on Iraq were inaccurate."

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), former chairman of the intelligence panel, said, "George Bush's credibility is increasingly in doubt."

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) expanded the credibility problem to the administration: "The White House's admission that it cited false information to set this country on the path toward war erodes the credibility of the administration."

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean said, "The credibility of the U.S. is a precious commodity. We should all be deeply dismayed that our nation was taken to war and our reputation in the world forever tainted by what appears to be the deliberate effort of this administration to mislead the American people, Congress and the United Nations."

Aw come on -- we just went through all this trouble to take over Iraq, and now we find out we can make oil out of... anything?

Anything into
Oil Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste
into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year
By Brad Lemley for Discover Magazine.

In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil.

Really.

...Because depolymerization takes apart materials at the molecular level, Appel says, it is "the perfect process for destroying pathogens." On a wet afternoon in Carthage, he smiles at the new plant—an artless assemblage of gray and dun-colored buildings—as if it were his favorite child. "This plant will make 10 tons of gas per day, which will go back into the system to make heat to power the system," he says. "It will make 21,000 gallons of water, which will be clean enough to discharge into a municipal sewage system. Pathological vectors will be completely gone. It will make 11 tons of minerals and 600 barrels of oil, high-quality stuff, the same specs as a number two heating oil." He shakes his head almost as if he can't believe it. "It's amazing. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't even consider us waste handlers. We are actually manufacturers—that's what our permit says. This process changes the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit."

...Chemistry, not alchemy, turns (A) turkey offal—guts, skin, bones, fat, blood, and feathers—into a variety of useful products. After the first-stage heat-and-pressure reaction, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates break down into (B) carboxylic oil, which is composed of fatty acids, carbohydrates, and amino acids. The second-stage reaction strips off the fatty acids' carboxyl group (a carbon atom, two oxygen atoms, and a hydrogen atom) and breaks the remaining hydrocarbon chains into smaller fragments, yielding (C) a light oil. This oil can be used as is, or further distilled (using a larger version of the bench-top distiller in the background) into lighter fuels such as (D) naphtha, (E) gasoline, and (F) kerosene. The process also yields (G) fertilizer-grade minerals derived mostly from bones and (H) industrially useful carbon black...

Feedstock is funneled into a grinder and mixed with water to create a slurry that is pumped into the first-stage reactor, where heat and pressure partially break apart long molecular chains. The resulting organic soup flows into a flash vessel where pressure drops dramatically, liberating some of the water, which returns back upstream to preheat the flow into the first-stage reactor. In the second-stage reactor, the remaining organic material is subjected to more intense heat, continuing the breakup of molecular chains. The resulting hot vapor then goes into vertical distillation tanks, which separate it into gases, light oils, heavy oils, water, and solid carbon. The gases are burned on-site to make heat to power the process, and the water, which is pathogen free, goes to a municipal waste plant. The oils and carbon are deposited in storage tanks, ready for sale.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.discover.com/may_03/gthere.html?article=featoil.html

Anything into Oil Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year

By Brad Lemley Photography by Tony Law

Gory refuse, from a Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage, Missouri, will no longer go to waste. Each day 200 tons of turkey offal will be carted to the first industrial-scale thermal depolymerization plant, recently completed in an adjacent lot, and be transformed into various useful products, including 600 barrels of light oil.

In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil. Really. "This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming." Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true. "Everybody says that," says Appel. He is a tall, affable entrepreneur who has assembled a team of scientists, former government leaders, and deep-pocketed investors to develop and sell what he calls the thermal depolymerization process, or TDP. The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing. Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that. "The potential is unbelievable," says Michael Roberts, a senior chemical engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research group. "You're not only cleaning up waste; you're talking about distributed generation of oil all over the world." "This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," agrees Alf Andreassen, a venture capitalist with the Paladin Capital Group and a former Bell Laboratories director. The offal-derived oil, is chemically almost identical to a number two fuel oil used to heat homes.

Andreassen and others anticipate that a large chunk of the world's agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste may someday go into thermal depolymerization machines scattered all over the globe. If the process works as well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems become history, so would imported oil. Just converting all the U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil. Referring to U.S. dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East, R. James Woolsey, former CIA director and an adviser to Changing World Technologies, says, "This technology offers a beginning of a way away from this." But first things first. Today, here at the plant at Philadelphia's Naval Business Center, the experimental feedstock is turkey processing-plant waste: feathers, bones, skin, blood, fat, guts. A forklift dumps 1,400 pounds of the nasty stuff into the machine's first stage, a 350-horsepower grinder that masticates it into gray brown slurry. From there it flows into a series of tanks and pipes, which hum and hiss as they heat, digest, and break down the mixture. Two hours later, a white-jacketed technician turns a spigot. Out pours a honey-colored fluid, steaming a bit in the cold warehouse as it fills a glass beaker. It really is a lovely oil. "The longest carbon chains are C-18 or so," says Appel, admiring the liquid. "That's a very light oil. It is essentially the same as a mix of half fuel oil, half gasoline." Private investors, who have chipped in $40 million to develop the process, aren't the only ones who are impressed. The federal government has granted more than $12 million to push the work along. "We will be able to make oil for $8 to $12 a barrel," says Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process. "We are going to be able to switch to a carbohydrate economy."

Making oil and gas from hydrocarbon-based waste is a trick that Earth mastered long ago. Most crude oil comes from one-celled plants and animals that die, settle to ocean floors, decompose, and are mashed by sliding tectonic plates, a process geologists call subduction. Under pressure and heat, the dead creatures' long chains of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon-bearing molecules, known as polymers, decompose into short-chain petroleum hydrocarbons. However, Earth takes its own sweet time doing this—generally thousands or millions of years—because subterranean heat and pressure changes are chaotic. Thermal depolymerization machines turbocharge the process by precisely raising heat and pressure to levels that break the feedstock's long molecular bonds. Many scientists have tried to convert organic solids to liquid fuel using waste products before, but their efforts have been notoriously inefficient. "The problem with most of these methods was that they tried to do the transformation in one step—superheat the material to drive off the water and simultaneously break down the molecules," says Appel. That leads to profligate energy use and makes it possible for hazardous substances to pollute the finished product. Very wet waste—and much of the world's waste is wet—is particularly difficult to process efficiently because driving off the water requires so much energy. Usually, the Btu content in the resulting oil or gas barely exceeds the amount needed to make the stuff. That's the challenge that Baskis, a microbiologist and inventor who lives in Rantoul, Illinois, confronted in the late 1980s. He says he "had a flash" of insight about how to improve the basic ideas behind another inventor's waste-reforming process. "The prototype I saw produced a heavy, burned oil," recalls Baskis. "I drew up an improvement and filed the first patents." He spent the early 1990s wooing investors and, in 1996, met Appel, a former commodities trader. "I saw what this could be and took over the patents," says Appel, who formed a partnership with the Gas Technology Institute and had a demonstration plant up and running by 1999. Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics. So how does it work? In the cold Philadelphia warehouse, Appel waves a long arm at the apparatus, which looks surprisingly low tech: a tangle of pressure vessels, pipes, valves, and heat exchangers terminating in storage tanks. It resembles the oil refineries that stretch to the horizon on either side of the New Jersey Turnpike, and in part, that's exactly what it is. Appel strides to a silver gray pressure tank that is 20 feet long, three feet wide, heavily insulated, and wrapped with electric heating coils. He raps on its side. "The chief difference in our process is that we make water a friend rather than an enemy," he says. "The other processes all tried to drive out water. We drive it in, inside this tank, with heat and pressure. We super-hydrate the material." Thus temperatures and pressures need only be modest, because water helps to convey heat into the feedstock. "We're talking about temperatures of 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of about 600 pounds for most organic material—not at all extreme or energy intensive. And the cooking times are pretty short, usually about 15 minutes." Once the organic soup is heated and partially depolymerized in the reactor vessel, phase two begins. "We quickly drop the slurry to a lower pressure," says Appel, pointing at a branching series of pipes. The rapid depressurization releases about 90 percent of the slurry's free water. Dehydration via depressurization is far cheaper in terms of energy consumed than is heating and boiling off the water, particularly because no heat is wasted. "We send the flashed-off water back up there," Appel says, pointing to a pipe that leads to the beginning of the process, "to heat the incoming stream." At this stage, the minerals—in turkey waste, they come mostly from bones—settle out and are shunted to storage tanks. Rich in calcium and magnesium, the dried brown powder "is a perfect balanced fertilizer," Appel says. The remaining concentrated organic soup gushes into a second-stage reactor similar to the coke ovens used to refine oil into gasoline. "This technology is as old as the hills," says Appel, grinning broadly. The reactor heats the soup to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit to further break apart long molecular chains. Next, in vertical distillation columns, hot vapor flows up, condenses, and flows out from different levels: gases from the top of the column, light oils from the upper middle, heavier oils from the middle, water from the lower middle, and powdered carbon—used to manufacture tires, filters, and printer toners—from the bottom. "Gas is expensive to transport, so we use it on-site in the plant to heat the process," Appel says. The oil, minerals, and carbon are sold to the highest bidders. Depending on the feedstock and the cooking and coking times, the process can be tweaked to make other specialty chemicals that may be even more profitable than oil. Turkey offal, for example, can be used to produce fatty acids for soap, tires, paints, and lubricants. Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC—the stuff of house siding, wallpapers, and plastic pipes—yields hydrochloric acid, a relatively benign and industrially valuable chemical used to make cleaners and solvents. "That's what's so great about making water a friend," says Appel. "The hydrogen in water combines with the chlorine in PVC to make it safe. If you burn PVC [in a municipal-waste incinerator], you get dioxin—very toxic." Brian Appel, CEO of
Changing World Technologies, strolls through a thermal depolymerization plant in Philadelphia. Experiments at the pilot facility revealed that the process is scalable—plants can sprawl over acres and handle 4,000 tons of waste a day or be "small enough to go on the back of a flatbed truck" and handle just one ton daily, says Appel.

The technicians here have spent three years feeding different kinds of waste into their machinery to formulate recipes. In a little trailer next to the plant, Appel picks up a handful of one-gallon plastic bags sent by a potential customer in Japan. The first is full of ground-up appliances, each piece no larger than a pea. "Put a computer and a refrigerator into a grinder, and that's what you get," he says, shaking the bag. "It's PVC, wood, fiberglass, metal, just a mess of different things. This process handles mixed waste beautifully." Next to the ground-up appliances is a plastic bucket of municipal sewage. Appel pops the lid and instantly regrets it. "Whew," he says. "That is nasty." Experimentation revealed that different waste streams require different cooking and coking times and yield different finished products. "It's a two-step process, and you do more in step one or step two depending on what you are processing," Terry Adams says. "With the turkey guts, you do the lion's share in the first stage. With mixed plastics, most of the breakdown happens in the second stage." The oil-to-mineral ratios vary too. Plastic bottles, for example, yield copious amounts of oil, while tires yield more minerals and other solids. So far, says Adams, "nothing hazardous comes out from any feedstock we try." "The only thing this process can't handle is nuclear waste," Appel says. "If it contains carbon, we can do it." à This Philadelphia pilot plant can handle only seven tons of waste a day, but 1,054 miles to the west, in Carthage, Missouri, about 100 yards from one of ConAgra Foods' massive Butterball Turkey plants, sits the company's first commercial-scale thermal depolymerization plant. The $20 million facility, scheduled to go online any day, is expected to digest more than 200 tons of turkey-processing waste every 24 hours.

The north side of Carthage smells like Thanksgiving all the time. At the Butterball plant, workers slaughter, pluck, parcook, and package 30,000 turkeys each workday, filling the air with the distinctive tang of boiling bird. A factory tour reveals the grisly realities of large-scale poultry processing. Inside, an endless chain of hanging carcasses clanks past knife-wielding laborers who slash away. Outside, a tanker truck idles, full to the top with fresh turkey blood. For many years, ConAgra Foods has trucked the plant's waste—feathers, organs, and other nonusable parts—to a rendering facility where it was ground and dried to make animal feed, fertilizer, and other chemical products. But bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, can spread among cattle from recycled feed, and although no similar disease has been found in poultry, regulators are becoming skittish about feeding animals to animals. In Europe the practice is illegal for all livestock. Since 1997, the United States has prohibited the feeding of most recycled animal waste to cattle. Ultimately, the specter of European-style mad-cow regulations may kick-start the acceptance of thermal depolymerization. "In Europe, there are mountains of bones piling up," says Alf Andreassen. "When recycling waste into feed stops in this country, it will change everything." Because depolymerization takes apart materials at the molecular level, Appel says, it is "the perfect process for destroying pathogens." On a wet afternoon in Carthage, he smiles at the new plant—an artless assemblage of gray and dun-colored buildings—as if it were his favorite child. "This plant will make 10 tons of gas per day, which will go back into the system to make heat to power the system," he says. "It will make 21,000 gallons of water, which will be clean enough to discharge into a municipal sewage system. Pathological vectors will be completely gone. It will make 11 tons of minerals and 600 barrels of oil, high-quality stuff, the same specs as a number two heating oil." He shakes his head almost as if he can't believe it. "It's amazing. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't even consider us waste handlers. We are actually manufacturers—that's what our permit says. This process changes the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit." He watches as burly men in coveralls weld and grind the complex loops of piping. A group of 15 investors and corporate advisers, including Howard Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, stroll among the sparks and hissing torches, listening to a tour led by plant manager Don Sanders. A veteran of the refinery business, Sanders emphasizes that once the pressurized water is flashed off, "the process is similar to oil refining. The equipment, the procedures, the safety factors, the maintenance—it's all proven technology." And it will be profitable, promises Appel. "We've done so much testing in Philadelphia, we already know the costs," he says. "This is our first-out plant, and we estimate we'll make oil at $15 a barrel. In three to five years, we'll drop that to $10, the same as a medium-size oil exploration and production company. And it will get cheaper from there." "We've got a lot of confidence in this," Buffett says. "I represent ConAgra's investment. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't anticipate success." Buffett isn't alone. Appel has lined up federal grant money to help build demonstration plants to process chicken offal and manure in Alabama and crop residuals and grease in Nevada. Also in the works are plants to process turkey waste and manure in Colorado and pork and cheese waste in Italy. He says the first generation of depolymerization centers will be up and running in 2005. By then it should be clear whether the technology is as miraculous as its backers claim.

EUREKA:

Chemistry, not alchemy, turns (A) turkey offal—guts, skin, bones, fat, blood, and feathers—into a variety of useful products. After the first-stage heat-and-pressure reaction, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates break down into (B) carboxylic oil, which is composed of fatty acids, carbohydrates, and amino acids. The second-stage reaction strips off the fatty acids' carboxyl group (a carbon atom, two oxygen atoms, and a hydrogen atom) and breaks the remaining hydrocarbon chains into smaller fragments, yielding (C) a light oil. This oil can be used as is, or further distilled (using a larger version of the bench-top distiller in the background) into lighter fuels such as (D) naphtha, (E) gasoline, and (F) kerosene. The process also yields (G) fertilizer-grade minerals derived mostly from bones and (H) industrially useful carbon black.

Garbage In, Oil Out

Feedstock is funneled into a grinder and mixed with water to create a slurry that is pumped into the first-stage reactor, where heat and pressure partially break apart long molecular chains. The resulting organic soup flows into a flash vessel where pressure drops dramatically, liberating some of the water, which returns back upstream to preheat the flow into the first-stage reactor. In the second-stage reactor, the remaining organic material is subjected to more intense heat, continuing the breakup of molecular chains. The resulting hot vapor then goes into vertical distillation tanks, which separate it into gases, light oils, heavy oils, water, and solid carbon. The gases are burned on-site to make heat to power the process, and the water, which is pathogen free, goes to a municipal waste plant. The oils and carbon are deposited in storage tanks, ready for sale. — Brad Lemley

...along with everyone else being held at Guantanamo Bay.

What kind of precedent are we setting for the rest of the world? This is truly frightening.

Confess or die, US tells jailed Britons
Outrage over plight of Guantanamo detainees
By Martin Bright, Kamal Ahmed and Peter Beaumont for The Observer.

The two British terrorist suspects facing a secret US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay will be given a choice: plead guilty and accept a 20-year prison sentence, or be executed if found guilty.

American legal sources close to the process said that the prisoners' dilemma was intended to encourage maximum 'co-operation'.

The news comes as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, prepares to urge US Secretary of State Colin Powell to repatriate the two Britons. He will say that they should face a fair trial here under English law. Backed by Home Secretary David Blunkett, Straw will make it clear that the Government opposes the death penalty and wants to see both men tried 'under normal judicial process'.

Lawyers acting for Moazzam Begg, 35, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, and Feroz Abassi, 23, from Croydon, said that any confessions gathered while the men were kept without charge or access to lawyers in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and Camp Delta in Cuba would have no status in international law and would be inadmissible in British courts.

Gareth Peirce, who acts for Moazzam Begg, said: 'Anything that any human being says or admits under threat of brutality is regarded internationally and nationally as worthless. It makes the process an abuse. Moazzam Begg had a year in Bagram airbase and then six months in Guantanamo Bay. If this treatment happened for an hour in a British police station, no evidence gathered would be admissible,' she said...

'The trial system in Guantanamo Bay allows a whole series of serious breaches of defendant rights that would mean that they could never come to trial in the US.

'First, it allows the wiretapping of attorney-client meetings, although those wiretaps cannot actually be used in evidence. Then there is the fact that the Pentagon "Appointing Authority" - probably US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - has the ability to remove a judge at any time without giving any reason.'

Among other concerns about the 50-page Final Rule, which was published by the Department of Defence last week for governing the trials, are:

· that rules of evidence are so broad that it is left at the discretion of the trial's presiding officer whether to allow any evidence he believes would be convincing to a 'reasonable person' and that that would appear to allow the admission of hearsay evidence; · that evidence can be admitted by telephone and by pseudonym; · that it is insisted that only security-screened civil attorneys be allowed to appear before the court and they can also be removed at any time.

The concerns follow allegations by Amnesty and other human rights groups that US detainees in Guantanamo Bay have suffered severe abuse, including beatings that may have led to the death of two men held at the US detention facility at Bagram.

In March, Amnesty wrote to President Bush to complain about the treatment of detainees after US military officials reportedly confirmed that post-mortem reports in the cases of the two men who died at Bagram gave cause of death as 'homicide' and 'blunt force injuries'.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,992467,00.html

Confess or die, US tells jailed Britons

Outrage over plight of Guantanamo detainees

Martin Bright, Kamal Ahmed and Peter Beaumont
Sunday July 6, 2003
The Observer

The two British terrorist suspects facing a secret US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay will be given a choice: plead guilty and accept a 20-year prison sentence, or be executed if found guilty.

American legal sources close to the process said that the prisoners' dilemma was intended to encourage maximum 'co-operation'.

The news comes as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, prepares to urge US Secretary of State Colin Powell to repatriate the two Britons. He will say that they should face a fair trial here under English law. Backed by Home Secretary David Blunkett, Straw will make it clear that the Government opposes the death penalty and wants to see both men tried 'under normal judicial process'.

Lawyers acting for Moazzam Begg, 35, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, and Feroz Abassi, 23, from Croydon, said that any confessions gathered while the men were kept without charge or access to lawyers in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and Camp Delta in Cuba would have no status in international law and would be inadmissible in British courts.

Gareth Peirce, who acts for Moazzam Begg, said: 'Anything that any human being says or admits under threat of brutality is regarded internationally and nationally as worthless. It makes the process an abuse. Moazzam Begg had a year in Bagram airbase and then six months in Guantanamo Bay. If this treatment happened for an hour in a British police station, no evidence gathered would be admissible,' she said.

Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad, which is leading the campaign for the two men, said: 'Our concern is that there will be no meaningful way of testing the evidence against these people. The US Defence Department has set itself up as prosecution, judge and defence counsel and has created the rules of trial. This is patently a kangaroo court.'

Begg's family believe he was kidnapped in Pakistan by US authorities. He was taken to Bagram on suspicion of passing funds to al-Qaeda and later transferred to Camp Delta. He has not seen a lawyer since he was seized.

In a clear signal of the high lev els of concern within the Government, the acting British ambassador in Washington, Tony Brenton, will raise 'official concern' with the White House.

According to US legal and constitutional experts, the Final Rule, the regulations that will govern the military commissions, has rendered a fair trial almost impossible.

Among those representing the two British men in the United States is Michael Ratner, of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who believes the tribunals are weighted in favour of securing guilt verdicts.

'The trial system in Guantanamo Bay allows a whole series of serious breaches of defendant rights that would mean that they could never come to trial in the US.

'First, it allows the wiretapping of attorney-client meetings, although those wiretaps cannot actually be used in evidence. Then there is the fact that the Pentagon "Appointing Authority" - probably US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - has the ability to remove a judge at any time without giving any reason.'

Among other concerns about the 50-page Final Rule, which was published by the Department of Defence last week for governing the trials, are:

· that rules of evidence are so broad that it is left at the discretion of the trial's presiding officer whether to allow any evidence he believes would be convincing to a 'reasonable person' and that that would appear to allow the admission of hearsay evidence; · that evidence can be admitted by telephone and by pseudonym; · that it is insisted that only security-screened civil attorneys be allowed to appear before the court and they can also be removed at any time.

The concerns follow allegations by Amnesty and other human rights groups that US detainees in Guantanamo Bay have suffered severe abuse, including beatings that may have led to the death of two men held at the US detention facility at Bagram.

In March, Amnesty wrote to President Bush to complain about the treatment of detainees after US military officials reportedly confirmed that post-mortem reports in the cases of the two men who died at Bagram gave cause of death as 'homicide' and 'blunt force injuries'.

Here's an O'Reilly weblog I wrote a while back with some background on this situation.

New DVD 'ripper' pre-empts DMCA ruling
By Munir Kotadia for ZD Net.

DVD software developer Studio 321 is preparing to launch six new applications, including an enhanced version of DVD copying software that is the subject of a US court case brought under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Studio 321 is awaiting a ruling over its DVD X Copy software, which includes a facility that allows users to rip backups of movie DVDs. If the ruling goes against Studio 321, the company says this new version of the copying software will ship without the "ripper" module, which decrypts movie DVDs and allows them to be copied...

Studio 321 landed in court after taking the unusual pre-emptive step of asking a court to declare DVD Copy Plus legal. Company executives decided to file the brief last April, after reading newspaper reports in which movie-studio representatives said they planned to sue DVD-copying software makers and which mentioned 321.

The case holds important consequences not only for software developers and for the motion picture industry, but also for consumers, who face increasingly complex rules governing the uses of entertainment products.

Semaan is adamant that his company's software does not advocate piracy, saying that it helps users to protect their property. He argues that if it is legal to make back-up copies of tapes and CDs, then it should not be any different to copy DVDs. "The DMCA says that it is supposedly illegal to circumvent encryption, and while DVDs come encrypted, those other forms of media do not," said Semaan...

In May, the judge in charge of this case said she would come back with a ruling "shortly", but two months later, there is still no word. However, no news is good news for Semaan: "For us, the longer she takes the better."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

New DVD 'ripper' pre-empts DMCA ruling 10:17 Wednesday 9th July 2003 Munir Kotadia

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2137242,00.html

DVD software developer Studio 321 is preparing to launch six new applications, including an enhanced version of DVD copying software that is the subject of a US court case brought under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Studio 321 is awaiting a ruling over its DVD X Copy software, which includes a facility that allows users to rip backups of movie DVDs. If the ruling goes against Studio 321, the company says this new version of the copying software will ship without the "ripper" module, which decrypts movie DVDs and allows them to be copied.

Other products in the new line-up include a DVD editing and authoring application that allows conversions to and from standard DV video, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 formats. The company is also creating an add-in that converts Microsoft PowerPoint, as well as a CD/CDRW/DVD utility that enables data to be recovered from damaged or defective discs.

The expansion of the product range is effectively an insurance policy in case the ruling goes against the company; if the ruling does go against Studio 321, the company's main business will sustain "a hit" because it will have to make fundamental changes to its DVD X Copy and DVD Copy Plus software, said chief executive Rob Semaan.

Studio 321 landed in court after taking the unusual pre-emptive step of asking a court to declare DVD Copy Plus legal. Company executives decided to file the brief last April, after reading newspaper reports in which movie-studio representatives said they planned to sue DVD-copying software makers and which mentioned 321.

The case holds important consequences not only for software developers and for the motion picture industry, but also for consumers, who face increasingly complex rules governing the uses of entertainment products.

Semaan is adamant that his company's software does not advocate piracy, saying that it helps users to protect their property. He argues that if it is legal to make back-up copies of tapes and CDs, then it should not be any different to copy DVDs. "The DMCA says that it is supposedly illegal to circumvent encryption, and while DVDs come encrypted, those other forms of media do not," said Semaan.

Semaan explained that Studio 321's DVD X Copy software contains four anti-piracy measures that are explicitly designed to stop people using it for producing pirate movies.

Before the copy process begins, users are asked if the source DVD is a rental or borrowed copy. If the user answers yes, the software will shut down. Although this is easily bypassed -- by lying -- the second anti-piracy measure ensures that all copies produced with the software contain a disclaimer -- similar to the FBI warning at the beginning of DVDs -- that inform the viewer that they are watching a back-up copy. The disclaimer lasts for eight seconds and cannot be fast forwarded or deleted, according to Semaan.

Another deterrent is that DVD X Copy will not allow a copy to be made from a copy. Only original DVDs can be copied. But Semaan believes the most interesting deterrent is the unique 'watermark' that is embedded into each copied disk. The watermark, or fingerprint, is created from encrypting user information such as IP address and email address (both are required to activate the software and acquire the fingerprint), which means that all copied disks can be traced back to their original owner.

In general, said Semaan, he approves of the DMCA, but he has a problem with the way the law is being interpreted by the Hollywood movie makers. "We understand the need for the DMCA and we want to prevent online privacy as well. But [the Hollywood studios] have a complete stranglehold -- Congress never intended this for the law," said Semaan, who has a law degree.

If Studio 321 is forced to change its software, its users would have to download a third-party 'ripper' module from the Internet and run it before using his software to make a copy: "Customers would need to find one of the dozen or so rippers off the Internet. It would add an additional step, and would affect sales," he admitted.

In May, the judge in charge of this case said she would come back with a ruling "shortly", but two months later, there is still no word. However, no news is good news for Semaan: "For us, the longer she takes the better."

Here's a piece from the July 6, 2003 episode of NBC Nightly News. I'll be putting up the Meet the Press episode the story mentions over the weekend.

NBC Nightly News On The Missing WMD

I was able to capture a "before" clip on NBC news and an "after" clip from the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS.

The clips show an interview with the girls and explain the nature of the surgery involved (and what went wrong).

I've edited them together into a single news reel:

NBC and PBS On The Conjoined Twins. (Small - 6 MB)

So they died from blood loss -- most likely when the makeshift grafted brain arteries didn't hold. Perhaps they should have waited another couple of years. (When we will be growing arteries whole :)

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, there appears to be a real problem going on at Guantanamo Bay right now with regard to the treatment of prisoners, the treatment of under age youths, and the recent floating of plans to convert the facility into a Death Camp.

I took the liberty of interviewing Amnesty International's Matthew Van Saun about this issue a few weeks ago while attending the Friday 13, 2003 INS Mass Deportation Protest in San Francisco. Matthew emphasized that now is the time to be proactive in letting our representatives know that these people deserve trials and executing them without due process is unacceptable.

The wind was blowing really hard, so I've transcribed the entire interview, in case portions of it are too hard to hear over the wind.

Video: Matthew Van Saun On Guantanamo Bay (Small - 9 MB)

Van Saun: I'm out here today regarding the deportation of 13,000 Arab and Muslim men -- giving a statement for Amnesty International.

Question: Can you confirm some of the reports that we've been hearing about the government sort of floating plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp?

Van Saun: Well, I can tell you that Amnesty International, if these reports turn out to be true, would be very opposed to that plan. Because, what they would be doing is basically executing people without a trial and without due process. Amnesty International has a very strong platform against the death penalty in the United States.

We would be very concerned if they were building a purported "camp" to actually put people to death in Guantanamo. It's something that Amnesty International has sent out issue briefs on and press statements, and if it turns out to be true, I'm sure that Amnesty International would like to send a delegation down to Guantanamo to inspect this camp or this proposed idea of setting up some sort of death camp. If it's legitimate.

Question: If it's legitimate? There have been people from the Administration saying they're thinking about it, basically?

Van Saun: Yes. Well, if we have information that says that they are actually going to follow through with their proposal of turning it into a quasi-death camp. If that's what they're planning on. Then we would be very much opposed to such a thing.

Question: But it's hard to really oppose it until they've announced that they're implementing something?

Van Saun: Well, we can still oppose it by pressuring members of Congress and the government. Especially the Justice Department and the Department of Defense. We can still shoot it down as well because we would really want to make sure that they know that it would not be acceptable, even for an idea, to put people to death at Guantanamo.

Question: Do you think these days that maybe Congress is a better bet than the Department of Justice as far as telling people that care what we think?

Van Saun: I think so. I think if we put a lot of pressure on our Congressman and our Senators, in San Francisco and all over the country, to make sure they're aware of these issues. Some congressman sometimes aren't even aware of what's going on. And it's best to be proactive in stopping the government before they act in such an instance, if they were going to do something.

Question: So maybe we'd write a letter to bring it to their attention, or something, before it even gets their desks?

Van Saun: Letters, phone calls, emails, faxes -- whatever it takes to get people to realize that this is an unacceptable form of punishment.

Question: Does Amnesty International have a position you can talk about in terms of Guantanamo Bay and the conditions that the prisoners are being kept in? Did you guys have an inspection team there or anything?

Van Saun: I don't think Amnesty actually ever had an inspection team allowed into Guantanamo Bay.

Question: So there hasn't been one?

Van Saun: As far as I know, there has never been an inspection team from Amnesty International allowed into Guantanamo Bay.

A Safer System for Home PC's Feels Like Jail to Some Critics
By John Markoff for the NY Times.

In an effort to retain the original open PC environment, the Microsoft plan offers the computer user two separate computing partitions in a future version of Windows. Beyond changing the appearance and control of Windows, the system will also require a new generation of computer hardware, not only replacing the computer logic board but also peripherals like mice, keyboards and video cards...

"This will kill innovation," said Ross Anderson, a computer security expert at Cambridge University, who is organizing opposition to the industry plans. "They're doing this to increase customer lock-in. It will mean that fewer software businesses succeed and those who do succeed will be large companies."

Critics complain that the mainstream computer hardware and software designers, under pressure from Hollywood, are turning the PC into something that would resemble video game players, cable TV and cellphones, with manufacturers or service providers in control of which applications run on their systems.

In the new encrypted computing world, even the most mundane word-processing document or e-mail message would be accompanied by a software security guard controlling who can view it, where it can be sent and even when it will be erased. Also, the secure PC is specifically intended to protect digital movies and music from online piracy.

But while beneficial to the entertainment industry and corporate operations, the new systems will not necessarily be immune to computer viruses or unwanted spam e-mail messages, the two most severe irritants to PC users.

"Microsoft's use of the term `trusted computing' is a great piece of doublespeak," said Dan Sokol, a computer engineer based in San Jose, Calif., who was one of the original members of the Homebrew Computing Club, the pioneering PC group. "What they're really saying is, `We don't trust you, the user of this computer.' "

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/technology/30SECU.html

June 30, 2003 A Safer System for Home PC's Feels Like Jail to Some Critics

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, June 29 - Your next personal computer may well come with its own digital chaperon.

As PC makers prepare a new generation of desktop computers with built-in hardware controls to protect data and digital entertainment from illegal copying, the industry is also promising to keep information safe from tampering and help users avoid troublemakers in cyberspace.

Silicon Valley - led by Microsoft and Intel - calls the concept "trusted computing." The companies, joined by I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices and others, argue that the new systems are necessary to protect entertainment content as well as safeguard corporate data and personal privacy against identity theft. Without such built-in controls, they say, Hollywood and the music business will refuse to make their products available online.

But by entwining PC software and data in an impenetrable layer of encryption, critics argue, the companies may be destroying the very openness that has been at the heart of computing in the three decades since the PC was introduced. There are simpler, less intrusive ways to prevent illicit file swapping over the Internet, they say, than girding software in so much armor that new types of programs from upstart companies may have trouble working with it.

"This will kill innovation," said Ross Anderson, a computer security expert at Cambridge University, who is organizing opposition to the industry plans. "They're doing this to increase customer lock-in. It will mean that fewer software businesses succeed and those who do succeed will be large companies."

Critics complain that the mainstream computer hardware and software designers, under pressure from Hollywood, are turning the PC into something that would resemble video game players, cable TV and cellphones, with manufacturers or service providers in control of which applications run on their systems.

In the new encrypted computing world, even the most mundane word-processing document or e-mail message would be accompanied by a software security guard controlling who can view it, where it can be sent and even when it will be erased. Also, the secure PC is specifically intended to protect digital movies and music from online piracy.

But while beneficial to the entertainment industry and corporate operations, the new systems will not necessarily be immune to computer viruses or unwanted spam e-mail messages, the two most severe irritants to PC users.

"Microsoft's use of the term `trusted computing' is a great piece of doublespeak," said Dan Sokol, a computer engineer based in San Jose, Calif., who was one of the original members of the Homebrew Computing Club, the pioneering PC group. "What they're really saying is, `We don't trust you, the user of this computer.' "

The advocates of trusted computing argue that the new technology is absolutely necessary to protect the privacy of users and to prevent the theft of valuable intellectual property, a reaction to the fact that making a perfect digital copy is almost as easy as clicking a mouse button.

"It's like having a little safe inside your computer," said Bob Meinschein, an Intel security architect. "On the corporate side the value is much clearer," he added, "but over time the consumer value of this technology will become clear as well" as more people shop and do other business transactions online.

Industry leaders also contend that none of this will stifle innovation. Instead, they say, it will help preserve and expand general-purpose computing in the Internet age.

"We think this is a huge innovation story," said Mario Juarez, Microsoft's group product manager for the company's security business unit. "This is just an extension of the way the current version of Windows has provided innovation for players up and down the broad landscape of computing."

The initiative is based on a new specification for personal computer hardware, first introduced in 2000 and backed by a group of companies called the Trusted Computing Group. It also revolves around a separate Microsoft plan, now called the Next Generation Secure Computing Base, that specifies a tamper-proof portion of the Windows operating system.

The hardware system is contained in a set of separate electronics that are linked to the personal computer's microprocessor chip, known as the Trusted Platform Module, or T.P.M. The device includes secret digital keys - large binary numbers - that cannot easily be altered. The Trusted Computing Group is attempting to persuade other industries, like the mobile phone industry and the makers of personal digital assistants, to standardize on the technology as well.

The plans reflect a shift by key elements of the personal computer industry, which in the past had resisted going along with the entertainment industry and what some said they feared would be draconian controls that would greatly curtail the power of digital consumer products.

Industry executives now argue that by embedding the digital keys directly in the hardware of the PC, tampering will be much more difficult. But they acknowledge that no security system is perfect.

The hardware standard is actually the second effort by Intel to build security directly into the circuitry of the PC. The first effort ended in a public relations disaster for Intel in 1999 when consumers and civil liberties groups revolted against the idea. The groups coined the slogan "Big Brother Inside," and charged that the technology could be used to violate user privacy.

"We don't like to make the connection," said Mr. Meinschein. "But we did learn from it."

He said the new T.P.M. design requires the computer owner to switch on the new technology voluntarily and that it contains elaborate safeguards for protecting individual identity.

The first computers based on the hardware design have just begun to appear from I.B.M. and Hewlett-Packard for corporate customers. Consumer-oriented computer makers like Dell Computer and Gateway are being urged to go along but have not yet endorsed the new approach.

How consumers will react to the new technology is a thorny question for PC makers because the new industry design stands in striking contrast to the approach being taken by Apple Computer.

Apple has developed the popular iTunes digital music store relying exclusively on software to restrict the sharing of digital songs over the Internet. Apple's system, which has drawn the support of the recording industry, permits consumers to share songs freely among up to three Macintoshes and an iPod portable music player.

Apple only has a tiny share of the personal computer market. But it continues to tweak the industry leaders with its innovations; last week, Apple's chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, demonstrated a feature of the company's newest version of its OS X operating system called FileVault, designed to protect a user's documents without the need for modifying computer hardware.

Mr. Jobs argued that elaborate hardware-software schemes like the one being pursued by the Trusted Computing Group will not achieve their purpose.

"It's a falsehood," he said. "You can prove to yourself that that hardware doesn't make it more secure."

That is not Microsoft's view. The company has begun showing a test copy of a variation of its Windows operating system that was originally named Palladium. The name was changed last year after a trademark dispute.

In an effort to retain the original open PC environment, the Microsoft plan offers the computer user two separate computing partitions in a future version of Windows. Beyond changing the appearance and control of Windows, the system will also require a new generation of computer hardware, not only replacing the computer logic board but also peripherals like mice, keyboards and video cards.

Executives at Microsoft say they tentatively plan to include the technology in the next version of Windows - code-named Longhorn - now due in 2005.

The company is dealing with both technical and marketing challenges presented by the new software security system. For example, Mr. Juarez, the Microsoft executive, said that if the company created a more secure side to its operating system software, customers might draw the conclusion that its current software is not as safe to use.

Software developers and computer security experts, however, said they were not confident that Microsoft would retain its commitment to the open half of what is planned to be a two-sided operating system.

"My hackles went up when I read Microsoft describing the trusted part of the operating system as an option," said Mitchell D. Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, and a longtime Microsoft competitor. "I don't think that's a trustworthy statement."

One possibility, Mr. Kapor argued, is that Microsoft could release versions of applications like its Office suite of programs that would only run on the secure part of the operating system, forcing users to do their work in the more restricted environment.

Microsoft denies that it is hatching an elaborate scheme to deploy an ultra-secret hardware system simply to protect its software and Hollywood's digital content. The company also says the new system can help counter global cybercrime without creating the repressive "Big Brother" society imagined by George Orwell in "1984."

Microsoft is committed to "working with the government and the entire industry to build a more secure computing infrastructure here and around the world," Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, told a technology conference in Washington on Wednesday. "This technology can make our country more secure and prevent the nightmare vision of George Orwell at the same time."

The critics are worried, however, that the rush to create more secure PC's may have unintended consequences. Paradoxically, they say, the efforts to lock up data safely against piracy could serve to make it easier for pirates to operate covertly.

Indeed, the effectiveness of the effort to protect intellectual property like music and movies has been challenged in two independent research papers. One was distributed last year by a group of Microsoft computer security researchers; a second paper was released last month by Harvard researchers.

The research papers state that computer users who share files might use the new hardware-based security systems to create a "Darknet," a secure, but illegal network for sharing digital movies and music or other illicit information that could be exceptionally hard for security experts to crack.

"This is a Pandora's box and I don't think there has been much thought about what can go wrong," said Stuart Schechter, a Harvard researcher who is an author of one of the papers. "This is one of those rare times we can prevent something that will do more harm than good."

Thought I'd give you a heads up on this one early enough to actually plan for it.

When: This coming Wednesday evening at 8PM Who: Wetgate, Wobbly, Steev Hise and Mr. Meridies.

Where: The A LOFT, 25A McLea Court (off 9th Street), San Francisco. Cost: Sliding scale donation of $5-$10 at the door.

Stay Free! Magazine

Illegal-Art.org

Okay, lemme see here...looks like I've got quite the back log of goodies here, but I'm ready to tackle them.

I've got the rest of ILAW, the whole Spectrum conference from March, Spam Tech Cybersalon, more SXSW 2003, more Etech 2003, lots of great "Where the f&*^% are the WMD" clips from reputable-type news sources, more Bill Moyers, more of the Democratic Candidates, more Daily Show...

More, more, more!

And I just got a new hard drive! So that will speed things up a bit!

In this session, Larry and Jonathan tag team in order to play devil's advocate across an array of Jurisdictional issues, using the situation of accessing porn over the internet and all of the case law surrounding it as the basis for discussion.

Ack! These links were bad this am - should be fixed now!
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 1 of 5 (Small - 53 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 2 of 5 (Small - 51 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 3 of 5 (Small - 51 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 4 of 5 (Small - 50 MB)
Lessig and Zittrain - Day 1 - Part 5 of 5 (Small - 53 MB)

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

You'll see more from
Americans For Dean's Zack Rosen, one of the subjects of this article, in the next ILAW session I post about Blogging and Democracy.

Netizens Rally for Dean Team
By Katie Dean for Wired News.

"It's an autonomous, self-organizing, grass-roots campaign network," said Zack Rosen, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign computer science student who cooked up the idea. "We're giving people a Web tool to organize the campaign network. We want to help get this man elected."

Instead of taking directions from the top down, small groups of Dean supporters can organize their own "campaign node." Each local node, like Milwaukee for Dean or Quilters for Dean, for example, will be able to host forums and post its own news, blogs and calendar using open-source tools assembled by the developers.

Those nodes then will plug into larger nodes, like statewide Dean groups, higher in the network's hierarchy. The larger nodes will keep track of the local nodes and house a repository of Rich Summary Site feeds, enabling the groups to share relevant articles and news.

A collection of campaign-related pictures, videos and audio also will be hosted on the local nodes. All of the media will be licensed under the Creative Commons, and people are encouraged to sample and modify the media, like setting photos to music or creating snazzy new fliers to distribute.

"All the content that will be put up on these nodes will be contributed by users," Rosen said.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59497,00.html

A new site has popped up on the Net to help elect Howard Dean president, using a network of independent "nodes" of supporters to collaborate, share news and even design multimedia campaign materials.

A group of software developers has formed Americans for Dean, a site designed to help organize those who support the former Vermont governor's bid for president.

"It's an autonomous, self-organizing, grass-roots campaign network," said Zack Rosen, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign computer science student who cooked up the idea. "We're giving people a Web tool to organize the campaign network. We want to help get this man elected."

Instead of taking directions from the top down, small groups of Dean supporters can organize their own "campaign node." Each local node, like Milwaukee for Dean or Quilters for Dean, for example, will be able to host forums and post its own news, blogs and calendar using open-source tools assembled by the developers.

Those nodes then will plug into larger nodes, like statewide Dean groups, higher in the network's hierarchy. The larger nodes will keep track of the local nodes and house a repository of Rich Summary Site feeds, enabling the groups to share relevant articles and news.

A collection of campaign-related pictures, videos and audio also will be hosted on the local nodes. All of the media will be licensed under the Creative Commons, and people are encouraged to sample and modify the media, like setting photos to music or creating snazzy new fliers to distribute.

"All the content that will be put up on these nodes will be contributed by users," Rosen said.

Zephyr Teachout, who leads Internet organizing and outreach for the Dean campaign, credits this kind of grass-roots organizing for the candidate's success so far and said the new project will only help spread the message.

"It gives people who would normally be lonely in the political process a way of finding each other -- and a way of being political that suits their interests and their skills," she said.

Rosen said about 15 developers are working to get the tools up and running in the next few weeks, but anyone is welcome to contribute. They're building on Drupal, an open-source content-management system, for the project.

"We're going to leave the system open for anyone to innovate on this network," Rosen said. "Different groups might want different functionalities."

Americans for Dean will set up the hosting service and provide technology support for any of the nodes that need it. One need not be a software engineer to participate, either. Rosen said administering one of the nodes will be as easy as running a community site like a Yahoo Group.

It's a step beyond Meetup, which coordinates local gatherings for people with similar interests. More than 55,000 people have joined the Dean Meetup group.

Rosen has attended two of the Dean Meetup meetings -- including one at Stanford University this week -- and said the groups were fairly disorganized. He hopes the open-source project will help supporters coordinate more easily.

Jerome Armstrong, an Internet activist and political consultant, also says the project could help alleviate the bottleneck of Dean supporters calling the campaign headquarters. It could give those people a new venue for getting involved with the campaign, he said.

"That's the way grass roots works best, when it grows on its own," he said.

Americans for Dean is not run by the Dean campaign. It's designed to be self-governed and self-organized, and both the campaign and the developers like it that way.

"There's so much hunger in this country for people to effect (change) in their local communities," Teachout said. "We are not about censoring you. You don't have to ask permission to be a political actor."

With no direct control over these groups, are Dean campaign organizers worried about people promoting something other than the Dean message?

"There's a tension that's always going to be there, but so far we haven't had any real problems with that," Teachout said. "Everything (Dean) is saying is 'you guys have the power.'"

Support for Dean continues to snowball on the Net. He collected 44 percent of the vote in the recent online primary at MoveOn.org. More than 300,000 people voted on the site.

The candidate raised nearly $3 million online last week alone.

Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, predicted that the Internet will be as influential in this year's campaign as television was in 1960. The Nixon-Kennedy debate revolutionized how television was used in political campaigns.

"The new medium is radically changing the way American politics is happening," Trippi said. "I think it's totally turned the history of American politics on its head."

"This is a really interesting experiment in civic participation," Rosen said. "This is extremely exciting and it's viral, and I think it's our only hope in winning this election."

Katie Dean is not related to Howard Dean.

Here's the scoop. (Looks like you'll want to get off at 19th street Bart and walk a few blocks over to 23rd St.)

I L L E G A L A R T L I V E M U S I C

Music performance I: Michael Gendreu (from Crawling with Tarts), RAJAR (David Kwan, Xopher Davidson, Patty Liu, Micheal Gendreau, Bob Boster), and Matt Davignon -- Wednesday, July 9, 8 p.m. 21 Grand, 449B 23rd Street (between Broadway and Telegraph), Oakland. Sliding scale donation of $5-$10 at the door.

The SF Weekly, SF Bay Guardian, Wired News, and
the Alameda Times-Star are all talkin' 'bout the exhibit.

Or as I like to call it, the "Let's blow another 30 million the state doesn't have drawing attention away from the energy scandal, instead of focusing on getting our 7 Billion back from the real crooks" campaign.

These are both from the June 17, 2003 Daily Show.

Jon Stewart On The CA Recall (Small - 6 MB)

Lewis Black On The CA Recall (Small - 9 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

The famed Illegal Art Exhibit that's been touring all across the country is in San Francisco for a good part of July.

Here's a clip from ABC news on the exhibit that will give you a taste of the treasures that await you.

There's also a great film festival where the artists and subjects of the films will be around on hand to answer questions.

Keep an eye out here for information on all of this stuff all month long.

Illegal Art On ABC News (Small - 5 MB)
Illegal Art On ABC News (Hi-res 100% - 92 MB)

About these notes and videos -- how the files are named, etc.

Here's Lessig's own description of the Monday morning sessions:

"The point (of Jonathan's session) is to layout some framework for the technology. And the objective of this second part of the morning is to lay out the framework about how to think through these questions of regulation in the context of cyberspace by thinking through a little bit about the question of regulation in real space."

Larry June 30 - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 81 MB)
Larry June 30 - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 81 MB)
Larry June 30 - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 41 MB)
Larry June 30 - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 45 MB)

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

I don't have any notes for these opening sessions because I was getting aquainted with following Larry around with the camera.

(Jumpy bunch those ILAW folks! -- Larry, Jonathan, Yochai, Terry, Charlie -- the whole lot of them!)

In the afternoon, I actually got to be on a panel so I had to just get a long shot for most of it (although I did end up going back and forth between being on the panel and getting some close ups when the subject matter was to precious and I knew a long shot wouldn't do.

A bit later, after I was able to get used to things, I was able to take notes while filming. You'll know when this takes place because 1) you'll have the notes and 2) you'll start to notice me missing a shot every now and then when my subject bounces out of view momentarily.

So there are trade-offs, but this whole thing's just a big experiment anyway. So it would appear that no harms done.

I would really appreciate your feedback on this footage. Does it work OK? Can you hear everything? Suggestions for next time? All that kind of stuff is duly appreciated.

Oh yeah -- Every clip is numbered in order, by day (1-day1-larry-1of4-sm.mov, 2-day1-larry-1of4-sm.mov, etc.), so you can just watch them all in order if you like.

See more about this in the "How these files are named and organized" section I'll be putting up soon.

This first half of the Monday morning's session is the only session of the conference that I wasn't able to capture on video.

(I hadn't asked if it was OK yet and I felt kind of funny just showing up with a camera.)

Below are my notes...

Notes from the ILaw Conference - June 30, 2003

So I've brought my camera, but I'm sort of waiting for the right time to bust it out.

(Note: since I first wrote this, Larry has given me the OK to tape. So the rest of the sessions will be recorded.)

Until then, you probably want to read Donna's notes, but I'm also going to offer some of my own.

Jonathan Zittrain

Internet Technologies and Why They Matter

I'm prefacing Zittrain's slide language or quotes from his mouth with a "-" to separate them from my notes.

-Code is a powerful form of regulation
-it's subtle
-can't tell when it's regulating you

Example:
The cops were actually directing traffic at the new Crispy Creams opening in Mass.
(Shows where their priorities are.)

-brooks little resistance from the herd

-plastic

-Some current questions:
-Why is it hard to trace people on the Net?
-Why is video streaming such a pain?
-Why are we so vulnerable to viruses and hacks?

-IETF
-IETF "Hourglass" Architecture (CTSB, NRC, "The Internet's Coming of Age" (2001)

-"any task" - "email WWW phone...", SMTP HTTP RTP, TCP, UDP
-IP (in the middle)
-"any medium" -ethernet PPP, CSMA async sonet..., copper fiber radio

Kept the physical infrastructure out of the loop on purpose. The people that do wires can do that. Medium independent for a wide range of media.

At the top of the hourglass are the "applications." Network-aware applications. The point was to allow any kind of application to come about without having to know anything special about the network.

The IETF hums for rough consensus. We did a hum in the room on whether or not we understood what he was saying so far so we could see such a strategy in action.

So no force of law, but an agreement among technologists.

-W3C - how HTML was born.

-The birth of Gnutella
-"Network Neighborhood On Steroids"

-The lesson of the Internet is that efficiency is not the primary consideration. Ability to grow and adapt to changing requirements is the primary consideration.
-This makes simplicity and uniformity ....(ack! he switched slides....you get the message)

Jon Postel - IANA - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

-Amish barnraising theory of packet transport
-your packet goes to an ISP
-ISP might have an ISP
-this goes on with the russian dolls
-routing packets is just the neighborly thing to do
-you pass on mail with your router even if it isn't for you
-no one to complain to when mail doesn't make it
-persistent problem today

-video streaming model

Lisa Reminds you guys to always download my movies and not try to stream them. Even on a T1 :-)

routers know where to send everything...
-not like fed ex, where everything goes through atlanta.
-this is why the IP addresses are in blocks

different ranges are in different parts of the world so the routers don't have to know exactly where everthing is

-this is why IP addresses are "non-portable"

Now Jonathan is trying to check an email to trace where it came from

So he's starting out with one of those fake AOL emails that tell you to enter your credit card information.

He's looking up the IP address (after getting it from the email header using "traceroute" at the command line)

MAPS is a list of "bad" email IP distributors -- so email administrators can use to "blackhole" certain blocks.

He doesn't get that far. Manages to figure out it was sent from Bulgaria.

Question: How do you get connected to the MAPS?

Answer: If you are an ISP, MAPS for a small fee, will provide you with this service.
You can't just get there whole list. You have to ask an address at a time.

-"You cannot build a corporate network out of TCP/IP." - IBM 1992

-What's Missing?
-quality of service
-accounting and traffic management
-encryption and security

-accounting and traffic management

who pays for what? should it be like the telephone where "caller pays?" very difficult to get a business model.
who's benefiting who more?

-encryption and security

This was something that either relies on the good graces of others...
Routers had to learn to deal with misconfigured computers.

One solution is "end to end." Presume the network will be open. That way you don't have to trust everybody along with way.

-authentication

Knowing that the bucket contents you got came from the place you think it came from
a way to let you know when tampering has taken place (can't prevent it ahead of time)

Question: what does this system cost? How much does the internet cost?

Answer: I have no earthly idea.

Question: How bout equipment costs?

Answer: Well, routers aren't cheap... This is a tough question because it's such a decentralized network.

Graham Freeman - My van can connect to the internet when I flick a switch for about $1500...(paraphrased)

Terry Fisher: Could you say a little bit more about what happens in the Cloud?
(paraphrase - we started out with the Amish and ended up talking about "tier 1 providers." how'd we get there (in the discussion)?

Answer: You're right that there's only a handful of Tier 1 internet providers...

Question: How does the bucket brigade work?

Answer: Roughly speakin the network topology maps on to the geography.
(paraphrase) AOL is the Fed Ex of the internet in that, on dialup, everything goes through a central connection.

Question: is there "smart routing"? - routing that takes in to account when a server is busy(paraphrased)
Barbara Roseman ICANN -
Before I was with ICANN I was with "Global Crossing", one of those T1s that didn't disappear.
(paraphrased) Yes there are paths (on the same network) that they know to take for certain geo areas.

So not over the internet, but within a network you might configure your routers in this way.

Questions: I was hoping you could talk more about the physical lines...

Answers: I'm sorry, security considerations stop me from doing that....(chuckles)
(para) the hourglass makes that transparent (basically)

Caida.org - has "skitter" graphs.

My question: Does Sealand (link) function as a Mae West of sorts?

Answer (para) - no not at all. It's just a data store.

question: so it could actually put more strain on the network?

answer (para) - yes they have to buy their connectiving from someone else...

Encryption in 3 easy steps:

1. "Hello" (is the message) - convert the letters to numbers

2. share password ahead of time with the person receiving the message

H 8 I 9 17
E 5 L12 17
L 12 A 1 13
L 12 W 23 35
0 15 Z 26 41

this is uncrackable.

-old style way of encrypting stuff.
-key has to be same length as original data.
we had to get together secretly and share the key first.

Enter "Pubic Key Encryption"

-Task is to find a one-way function (computationally speaking - function where it is really easy to start one thing and get to another), but for which (computationally speaking) it is hard to do the reverse.
-multiply like lightning, but factor only slowly

-find a one way function
-generate two related keys of one person's use
-declare one key "public key" and the other one "private"

-data + public key = garbage no one can read by no one except someone who has your private key too.

Might want to use your dig signature and PGP key to encrypt and vouch for a message.

-Digital Signature - personal to the very thing being encrypted
-To digitally sign something - to vouch for it "could have only been generated by someone who has access to my private key"

Last question: why viruses so hard?

PC ready to run software.

Most viruses just want to replicate, not erase your hard drive. These are like missles without payloads. The damage to the network is from being clogged up.

Primary reason is that "general purpose computing devices" are meant to run anything, so, they do.

(para nutshell) Because software is coming from so many sources. Sometimes the software can't work with each other.

End of notes for this session -- and end of all notes for me because Larry said I can video the rest of it!

(I actually do take notes later...)

Yikes! Tragedy strikes! Multiple disk failure!

And then the backup kicks in! (YES!)

So things are back up!

Thanks to Kelly, Shaun, Brad and Brak at the Internet Archive!

But we need to do some more maintenance before I can upload more stuff.

So hold tight!

Political Veteran
By Peter Carlson for The Washington Post.

Last fall, Cleland voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq, but now he feels he was bamboozled.

"I voted for it because I was told by the secretary of defense and by the CIA that there were weapons of mass destruction there," he says. "The president said it, Colin Powell said it, they all said it. And now they can't find them! Our general over there, who has no dog in this fight, he said he sent troops all over the place and they found two trailers and not much of anything else. So we went to war for two trailers?"

The war in Iraq is beginning to look awfully familiar to Max Cleland.

"Now wait a minute," he says. "Let me run this back: We have a war. A bunch of Americans die. After the war, we try to figure out why we were there. There's a commitment of 240,000 ground troops with no exit strategy. You know what that's called? Vietnam! Hey, I've been there, done that, got a few holes in my T-shirt."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1464-2003Jul2.html

Political Veteran
By Peter Carlson
The Washington Post

Thursday 03 July 2003

Max Cleland Survived His Vietnam War Wounds. But He Has Yet to Recover From His Last Campaign Battle.

In his new job, Max Cleland is supposed to get young people all fired up with idealistic zeal for politics, but that won't be easy. These days, Cleland, a Georgia Democrat defeated in his bid for reelection to the Senate last fall, is angry, bitter and disgusted with politics.

"The state of American politics is sickening," he says.

Cleland has come full circle. In 1963, he arrived at American University's Washington Semester Program as a naive student and left dreaming of a career in the Senate. Now, after six years in the Senate, he's back at the Washington Semester Program, this time as a "distinguished adjunct professor.''

But he lost a few things along the way. In 1968, he lost his right arm and both legs in Vietnam. Last fall, he lost his Senate seat in a campaign that became a symbol of nasty politics.

Cleland, 60, is still livid over a now-infamous TV commercial that Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss ran against him. It opened with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, then attacked Cleland for voting against President Bush's Homeland Security bill. It didn't mention that Cleland supported a Democratic bill that wasn't radically different.

"That was the biggest lie in America -- to put me up there with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and say I voted against homeland security!" he says, his voice rising in anger.

"I volunteered 35 years ago to go to Vietnam and the guy I was running against got out of going to Vietnam with a trick knee! I was an author of the homeland security bill, for goodness' sake! But I wasn't a rubber stamp for the White House. That right there is the epitome of what's wrong with American politics today!"

He's sitting in a booth in the Ruby Tuesday restaurant near his office at American University, his wheelchair leaning against a wall nearby. A salad and a glass of water sit on the table but he ignores them as he continues to vent. He's mad about the campaign but he's even madder about the war in Iraq.

Last fall, Cleland voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq, but now he feels he was bamboozled.

"I voted for it because I was told by the secretary of defense and by the CIA that there were weapons of mass destruction there," he says. "The president said it, Colin Powell said it, they all said it. And now they can't find them! Our general over there, who has no dog in this fight, he said he sent troops all over the place and they found two trailers and not much of anything else. So we went to war for two trailers?"

The war in Iraq is beginning to look awfully familiar to Max Cleland.

"Now wait a minute," he says. "Let me run this back: We have a war. A bunch of Americans die. After the war, we try to figure out why we were there. There's a commitment of 240,000 ground troops with no exit strategy. You know what that's called? Vietnam! Hey, I've been there, done that, got a few holes in my T-shirt."

Washington, 1963

When the subject changes to his days in the Washington Semester Program back in 1963, Cleland's voice softens and his eyes light up.

"I was tall, tan and tantalizing," he says, smiling. "I was 21 years old and the world was my oyster."

He was a kid from Livonia, Ga., a mediocre student at Stetson University in Florida, a tennis and basketball jock who'd changed majors twice -- going from physics to English to history. He was drifting through life, he says, until he was accepted into AU's Washington Semester Program, which promised an opportunity to see "government in action."

"I was more interested in action than in government," he says with a lascivious laugh.

He remembers the exact day he arrived -- Sept. 10, 1963. John F. Kennedy was president and Washington seemed like the most exciting place on the planet. Cleland stood on Pennsylvania Avenue to see JFK drive past with Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie. He sat in the Senate gallery and watched debates on civil rights. He saw radical students arrested at a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee. And on Nov. 19, 1963, he and some other WSP students were permitted to visit the Oval Office when JFK wasn't around.

Three days later, the president was assassinated. When Cleland heard the news, he hustled to the White House and saw Lyndon Johnson arrive by helicopter. A few days later, he stood on a tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery to see Kennedy buried.

Moved, he decided he'd go into politics, to help continue Kennedy's work.

"I was deeply motivated, really feeling that the torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans," he says. "I was 21, full of vim and vigor and idealism, and I was ready to make my impact on the world."

He graduated from Stetson with a history degree, earned a master's in history at Emory University, then returned to Washington in 1965 as a congressional intern. By then, war was raging in Vietnam, and Cleland, still fired with idealism, joined the Army.

On April 8, 1968, during the siege of Khe Sanh, he stepped off a helicopter and saw a grenade at his feet. He thought he'd dropped it. He was wrong. When he reached down to pick it up, it exploded, ripping off both legs and his right hand. He was 25.

He spent eight months recuperating at Walter Reed Army Hospital. On one of his first trips out of the hospital, an old girlfriend pushed him around Washington in his wheelchair. Outside the White House, the chair hit a curb and Cleland pitched forward and fell out. He remembers flopping around helplessly in the dirt and cigarette butts in the gutter.

He returned home to Georgia in December 1969. "I had no job, no girlfriend, no car, no hope," he says. "I figured this is a good time to run for the state Senate. And politics became my therapy, forcing me to get out of the house and be seen."

In 1970, at 28, he became the youngest person ever elected to the Georgia Senate. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed him to head the Veterans Administration. In 1982 he was elected as Georgia's secretary of state. In 1996 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating businessman Guy Millner in a very close race.

In the Senate, he was a moderate -- liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal matters. He was a reliable vote for increased military spending, but wary of committing U.S. troops overseas. He criticized President Bill Clinton's bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999, saying that was starting to "look like Vietnam." In 2001, he broke with Democrats to vote for Bush's tax cuts.

As the 2002 reelection campaign began, Cleland knew it would be a close race, but he had no idea how nasty it would get.

The Infamous Ad

The Senate was evenly split, with Democrats and Republicans fighting for control. Georgia was a close race, and both parties poured money into the campaign. Bush came to the state five times to campaign for Chambliss, a conservative congressman who'd been elected in the "Contract With America" class of 1994. Both sides ran attack ads, but none was as controversial as Chambliss's homeland security spot.

It opened with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators," said a narrator, "Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead. He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times!"

Immediately the ad was denounced, not just by Democrats but also by two Republican senators -- John McCain and Chuck Hagel, both of them Vietnam veterans.

"I've never seen anything like that ad," says McCain. "Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to a picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful, it's reprehensible."

Irate, Hagel told Republican officials that if they didn't pull the ad, he would make an ad denouncing them. After that, Chambliss's campaign removed the pictures of Hussein and bin Laden from the ad.

"Max Cleland has given as much to this country as any living human being," Hagel says. "To say he is in some way connected to people like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein was beyond offensive to me. It made me recoil, quite honestly."

Asked recently for comment, Chambliss responded through a spokesman that he did not want to discuss the ad or Cleland.

On the eve of the election, polls showed Cleland leading. But they failed to predict a huge turnout by rural white males angered that Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes had removed the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. Both Barnes and Cleland were trounced.

Surprised and angry, Cleland was devastated by his defeat.

"It was the second big grenade in my life,'' he says. "It blew me up. It happened very quickly and very intensely, and I was left with virtually nothing but my life."

To him, the campaign seemed to symbolize everything wrong with American politics. "When I came to the Senate, I wanted to do the best job I could, but now I found out it doesn't matter what kind of job you do," he says. "It's all about the goal of driving your opponent's negatives up. It's all about trashing the other side."

The day after the election, he flew to the Virgin Islands with his longtime girlfriend, Nancy Ross, and asked her to marry him.

Ross accepted. They have not yet set a date for the wedding. Cleland says he and Ross, a Postal Service executive, have agreed not to discuss their private lives in public. But he did announce the engagement in his farewell speech to the Senate last November.

"I will be married to my fiancee, Miss Nancy Ross, after I retire," he said as she sat in the balcony and blew him a kiss. "There is life after the Senate, and it will be a wonderful life."

That sounded upbeat, but Cleland's friends still worried about him. The usually ebullient Cleland was depressed. The man who'd inspired crowds as a motivational speaker remained morose and despondent for months.

"He was down, just down," says Steve Leeds, an Atlanta attorney and longtime Cleland fundraiser. "I knew how much he hurt and I was concerned for him."

"We could see that he was depressed," says Hagel, "and we tried to rally around him."

In December, Cleland and Ross went to a Washington restaurant for dinner and left Cleland's 1994 Cadillac -- equipped with controls for a handicapped driver -- with a parking attendant. Confused by the controls, the attendant smashed the car into a truck, three other cars and a telephone pole. The Cadillac was totaled.

"It was awful," Cleland says. "It just took me out."

Not long after that, Cleland's old friend T. Wayne Bailey, a Stetson professor, called David Brown, who heads AU's Washington Semester Program. Max is really down, Bailey said, but maybe he'd perk up if he got involved in the Semester Program.

Brown thought that was a great idea. He'd seen Cleland speak to WSP students and he was impressed. So he called Cleland in for a job interview.

Cleland "closed the door and said, 'I'd really like this to be a therapeutic session,' and we talked for an hour and half," Brown recalls. "He really was down. He'd had everything -- a car, a staff and people who took care of him. Now he didn't even have an office. He told me he was using an office in the basement of his apartment building and he said, 'They're gonna take that away to use for a Super Bowl party.' "

Brown offered him a teaching job and Cleland accepted. In the spring semester, he guest-lectured in other professors' classes. This summer, he got a class of his own -- 24 students from around the country who have come here to work as interns at congressional offices and political organizations.

As the first class approached, Cleland was nervous.

"I'm trying to put my life back together," he said, "and one of the ways I'm trying to do it is to get encouragement from young people who come here wanting to be lifted up. Hopefully, we'll lift each other up."

Max's Class

"Let me introduce myself," Cleland said after rolling into class in his wheelchair. "I'm Max."

He wore a white shirt, a blue tie and blue blazer whose right sleeve hung limp and empty. The students wore jeans, shorts, T-shirts. One young woman, working a wad of gum, blew a big pink bubble.

The new teacher explained his pedagogical style: "I don't do lectures," he said. "I just talk a lot."

He announced that he'd provide cookies and coffee for the class, which meets Wednesday afternoons, and recommended frequent snacking.

"Keep your energy up because this is an energy-draining town," he said. "Just being here is draining. Being a target is draining. So keep your energy up."

Things happen fast in Washington, he said, launching into a story about Sept. 11, 2001. He had been sitting in his Senate office with Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were, by pure coincidence, discussing terrorism when the planes hit the World Trade Center and the general was summoned back to the Pentagon, which had not been hit yet.

"You never know what will happen in Washington," he told the class. "In so many ways, it's combat. Sometimes it's low-level combat, sometimes it's high-level. Sometimes you're the target, sometimes you're targeting somebody else. It's a target-rich environment, as they say in the military."

He told stories about his days in the Semester Program in 1963. Some of the stories involved Congress or the White House. Others involved Maggie's, a bar near AU in those bygone days.

"When you said 'Meet me at Maggie's,' " he said, "It was 'Hello, baby! This might be the night!' "

The students cracked up.

Socializing is important, Cleland told them, and he promised the class a social event every week. He appointed Dustin Odham, a Southern Methodist student with a mischievous gleam in his eye, to lead a "recon squad" to find appropriate watering holes.

"You gotta make sure it's safe for the troops," he told Odham, "so you gotta go there first."

Cleland was rolling now. He told stories about Vietnam and the Clinton impeachment trial. He revealed the secret of what goes on in the Senate cloakroom: "They're watching the Braves game." And he offered sage advice for young interns in Washington:

"Make yourself known. Assert yourself a little bit. Everybody else in this town does."

"You'll have rejection. Everybody won't love you. Believe me, I know. It's nothing personal. It's just the way Washington works."

"To build your credibility, you come in early and you stay late. You do a good job and you volunteer for more work. What you want to do is become indispensable."

He'd been talking for well over an hour when he asked the students to answer the question "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to be in Washington," said one.

"I wanted to be where the action is," said another.

"I wanted to learn how interest groups influence government," said Jolana Mungengova, a PhD candidate from Boston University.

"Money," Cleland told her. "That's it. It's all about money, and it's out of control."

The next student was Kasey Jones from Reed College. "I'm sort of an idealist," she said. "I want to change the world and everything, and this is supposed to help me figure out how to do that."

Idealism -- it was the topic he'd been hoping for and dreading since he took this job. He'd thought about it constantly and he knew what he wanted to say. It was the same thing he'd been telling himself since Election Day.

"Let me give you a quote from President Kennedy," Cleland told Jones. "He said, 'I'm an idealist with no illusions.' You'll begin to lose your illusions about things, but that doesn't mean you'll lose your ideals. That's part of life, but it doesn't mean you have to lose your ideals."

The class was scheduled to last from 1 to 3, but at 3:20 Cleland was still going strong and nobody showed any sign of wanting to leave.

"This is gonna be fun," he said, smiling broadly. He'd stripped off his blazer and he sat in shirt sleeves, his eyes bright, his face flushed with enthusiasm. "It's really a joy to see a group of people like you. I need you. We're gonna have a real good time."

Sorry for not letting you guys know about this sooner.

It's basically another lunch time activity from 12-2pm at the intersection of Polk and Golden Gate in San Francisco. One block from the Civic Center Bart Station.

There will be a press conference and rally where you can learn more about what's going on and show your support. These events are also excellent opportunities to speak to one of several legal experts personally if you have specific questions.

We've got to fight back swiftly against the travesty of justice that is the Domestic Enhancement Security Act (Patriot II). The very future of our nation, and I believe, the rest of the world, depends on it.

There will be a ton of great speakers there from the ACLU, Refuse and Resist, Amnesty International and many other groups.

Hope to see you there!

Here's the whole message I received:

MEDIA ADVISORY
Sunday, July 6, 2003
CONTACT: Stella Richardson
ACLU
415-621-2493 or Colleen at 510-288-7432

Civil Rights and Community Groups Launch Week of Action to Stop **Patriot Act II**

What: Rally to Reclaim Patriotism and Stop **Patriot Act II**

When: Monday July 7th from noon to 2 pm

Where: San Francisco Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Avenue

Who: Bob Kearney, Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union; Matthew Von Saun, Amnesty International; Dave Meserve, Arcada City Council person; Allan Solomonow, American Friends Service Committee; Shahram Agahamir, fired Oakland City worker; Henry Norr, fired SF Chronicle reporter; Ladan Sobhani, Global Exchange; Samena Faheem, American Muslim Voice; Cecilia Chang, Justice for New Americans; Riva Enteen, National Lawyers Guild; Maryjane, Oakland High School student; Rev Michael Yoshi (Buena Vista Methodist Church of Alameda); Colleen Akai, Refuse & Resist!

SAN FRANCISCO ** Following Independence Day celebrations over the July 4th weekend, community organizations will launch a week of action designed to reclaim patriotism and to stop the passage of draft legislation dubbed **Patriot Act II.**

At a July 7th rally, community leaders will call on northern Californians to urge their Members of Congress to prevent the introduction and passage of the proposed **Domestic Security Enhancement Act** (Patriot Act II). They will also urge Congress to fix provisions within the original USA Patriot Act of November 2001 that needlessly erode civil liberties and rights.
Less than two years after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, giving new, sweeping powers to the federal government to compile information on ordinary Americans, Attorney General John Ashcroft is seeking to introduce legislation that would further erode constitutional checks and balances.
The Domestic Security Enhancement Act would further enhance government powers, eliminating or weakening remaining limits on government surveillance, wiretapping, detention and prosecution.

Endorsements:ACLU, Amnesty International; American Muslims Voice; Blue Triangle Network; Global Exchange; SF Gray Panthers; Justice for New Americans; National Lawyers Guild; Tri City CAREs, Tri City Action, Refuse & Resist!; Not In Our Name; Pakistani American...

"Bring 'Em On?"
A Former Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis to Attack US Troops
By By Stan Goff for Counterpunch.

Yesterday, when I read that US Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, in a moment of blustering arm-chair machismo, sent a message to the 'non-existent' Iraqi guerrillas to "bring 'em on," the first image in my mind was a 20-year-old soldier in an ever-more-fragile marriage, who'd been away from home for 8 months. He participated in the initial invasion, and was told he'd be home for the 4th of July. He has a newfound familiarity with corpses, and everything he thought he knew last year is now under revision. He is sent out into the streets of Fallujah (or some other city), where he has already been shot at once or twice with automatic weapons or an RPG, and his nerves are raw. He is wearing Kevlar and ceramic body armor, a Kevlar helmet, a load carrying harness with ammunition, grenades, flex-cuffs, first-aid gear, water, and assorted other paraphernalia. His weapon weighs seven pounds, ten with a double magazine. His boots are bloused, and his long-sleeve shirt is buttoned at the wrist. It is between 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit at midday. He's been eating MRE's three times a day, when he has an appetite in this heat, and even his urine is beginning to smell like preservatives. Mosquitoes and sand flies plague him in the evenings, and he probably pulls a guard shift every night, never sleeping straight through. He and his comrades are beginning to get on each others' nerves. The rumors of 'going-home, not-going-home' are keeping him on an emotional roller coaster. Directives from on high are contradictory, confusing, and often stupid. The whole population seems hostile to him and he is developing a deep animosity for Iraq and all its people--as well as for official narratives.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.counterpunch.org/goff07032003.html

"Bring 'Em On?"
By Stan Goff
Counterpunch

Thursday 03 July 2003

A Former Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis to Attack US Troops

In 1970, when I arrived at my unit, Company A, 4th Battalion/503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, in what was then the Republic of Vietnam, I was charged up for a fight. I believed that if we didn't stop the communists in Vietnam, we'd eventually be fighting this global conspiracy in the streets of Hot Springs, Arkansas. I'd been toughened by Basic Training, Infantry Training and Parachute Training, taught how to use my weapons and equipment, and I was confident in my ability to vanquish the skinny unter-menschen. So I was dismayed when one of my new colleagues--a veteran who'd been there ten months--told me, "We are losing this war."

Not only that, he said, if I wanted to survive for my one year there, I had to understand one very basic thing. All Vietnamese were the enemy, and for us, the grunts on the ground, this was a race war. Within one month, it was apparent that everything he told me was true, and that every reason that was being given to the American public for the war was not true.

We had a battalion commander whom I never saw. He would fly over in a Loach helicopter and give cavalier instructions to do things like "take your unit 13 kilometers to the north." In the Central Highlands, 13 kilometers is something we had to hack out with machetes, in 98-degree heat, carrying sometimes 90 pounds over our body weights, over steep, slippery terrain. The battalion commander never picked up a machete as far as we knew, and after these directives he'd fly back to an air-conditioned headquarters in LZ English near Bong-son. We often fantasized together about shooting his helicopter down as a way of relieving our deep resentment against this faceless, starched and spit-shined despot.

Yesterday, when I read that US Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, in a moment of blustering arm-chair machismo, sent a message to the 'non-existent' Iraqi guerrillas to "bring 'em on," the first image in my mind was a 20-year-old soldier in an ever-more-fragile marriage, who'd been away from home for 8 months. He participated in the initial invasion, and was told he'd be home for the 4th of July. He has a newfound familiarity with corpses, and everything he thought he knew last year is now under revision. He is sent out into the streets of Fallujah (or some other city), where he has already been shot at once or twice with automatic weapons or an RPG, and his nerves are raw. He is wearing Kevlar and ceramic body armor, a Kevlar helmet, a load carrying harness with ammunition, grenades, flex-cuffs, first-aid gear, water, and assorted other paraphernalia. His weapon weighs seven pounds, ten with a double magazine. His boots are bloused, and his long-sleeve shirt is buttoned at the wrist. It is between 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit at midday. He's been eating MRE's three times a day, when he has an appetite in this heat, and even his urine is beginning to smell like preservatives. Mosquitoes and sand flies plague him in the evenings, and he probably pulls a guard shift every night, never sleeping straight through. He and his comrades are beginning to get on each others' nerves. The rumors of 'going-home, not-going-home' are keeping him on an emotional roller coaster. Directives from on high are contradictory, confusing, and often stupid. The whole population seems hostile to him and he is developing a deep animosity for Iraq and all its people--as well as for official narratives.

This is the lad who will hear from someone that George W. Bush, dressed in a suit with a belly full of rich food, just hurled a manly taunt from a 72-degree studio at the 'non-existent' Iraqi resistance.

This de facto president is finally seeing his poll numbers fall. Even chauvinist paranoia has a half-life, it seems. His legitimacy is being eroded as even the mainstream press has discovered now that the pretext for the war was a lie. It may have been control over the oil, after all. Anti-war forces are regrouping as an anti-occupation movement. Now, exercising his one true talent--blundering--George W. Bush has begun the improbable process of alienating the very troops upon whom he depends to carry out the neo-con ambition of restructuring the world by arms.

Somewhere in Balad, or Fallujah, or Baghdad, there is a soldier telling a new replacement, "We are losing this war."

-------

Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He retired in 1996 from the US Army, from 3rd Special Forces. He lives in Raleigh. He can be reached at: stan@ncwarn.org.

Did the Shrub actually dare the Iraqi Militants "To Come And Get Our Troops?"

No, not quite. He only said "Bring them on."

But it's still pretty tasteless and inappropriate if you ask me. (Not that anyone did.)

It's bad enough that we rushed over there without properly training our troops in how do deal with post-battle civil matters in urban areas.

It's even worse that, two months after we tell them the hard part's over and promise to send them home to their families, it turns out that we're actually going to send even more of our boys and girls over there (and without telling us why it's necessary exactly - or who we're even fighting).

But that's not all folks! On top of everything else, our "President" and Commander in Chief has pridefully encouraged this latest nameless, faceless enemy to give us the best they got.

Is this the new Rambo movie? Nope. This is reality, folks. This is the United States of American in the year 2003.

Let's make this next year the last for the Shrub Regime. For GW, Jeb, or any other relatives of theirs we haven't heard about yet that they might be saving for future elections.

Bush Taking Heat for 'Bring Them On' Remark
By Steve Holland for Reuters.

President Bush has used colorful language before to great effect, but he is taking some heat for his "Bring them on" challenge to Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces, who he said were tough enough to take it.

Even some aides winced at Bush's words, which Democrats pounced on as an invitation to Iraqi militants to fire on U.S. troops already the subject of hit-and-run attacks by Saddam Hussein loyalists and others.

"These men and women are risking their lives every day, and the president who sent them on this mission showed tremendous insensitivity to the dangers they face," said Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean.

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, said condemned the comment, saying, "The deteriorating situation in Iraq requires less swagger and more thoughtfulness and statesmanship."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad (Hmmm. It already has.):

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030703/pl_nm/iraq_bush_dc

Bush Taking Heat for 'Bring Them On' Remark
By Steve Holland
Reuters

Thursday 03 July 2003

President Bush has used colorful language before to great effect, but he is taking some heat for his "Bring them on" challenge to Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces, who he said were tough enough to take it.

Even some aides winced at Bush's words, which Democrats pounced on as an invitation to Iraqi militants to fire on U.S. troops already the subject of hit-and-run attacks by Saddam Hussein loyalists and others.

"These men and women are risking their lives every day, and the president who sent them on this mission showed tremendous insensitivity to the dangers they face," said Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean.

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, said condemned the comment, saying, "The deteriorating situation in Iraq requires less swagger and more thoughtfulness and statesmanship."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed the criticism and said Bush viewed his comment as a way to express confidence in U.S. troops.

"I think the men and women of the military are appreciative of the fact that they know they have a president who supports them as strongly as he does, and who has as much faith in their ability to complete the mission, despite some of the second-guessing that this president has," Fleischer said.

Bush, a proud Texan with a penchant for plain talk, told reporters on Wednesday: "There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."

'Dead or Alive'

In the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks he said the United States wanted al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" and vowed to "smoke" them out of their holes.

University of Texas political scientist Bruce Buchanan, a longtime Bush watcher, said Bush uses such language when under strain, and that he is likely feeling the heat of criticism about the lagging post-war effort in Iraq.

He called the remark an unfortunate choice of words because it sounded belligerent.

"I think that when he feels up against it, as he did at the time of the 9/11 attacks, or when he does when coming under criticism now, he has a tendency to strike back verbally, and I think that's what you're seeing there. He's not choosing his words diplomatically at those moments because he's not feeling particularly diplomatic," Buchanan said.

At least 25 U.S. and six British troops have been killed by hostile fire since Bush declared major combat in Iraq to be over on May 1.

Brookings Institution presidential scholar Stephen Hess said many Americans like what they hear from the president, calling his words reminiscent of his defiant stance against the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center towers and vowed to fight back.

"My observation is he's saying exactly what the American people want him to say, and saying it even in a way that they would want him to say it," Hess said.

He added: "Obviously we're going into a presidential election era and one expects the opposition to oppose. That's their job. But the sort of response that somehow he was inviting the enemy to attack us I think is more than a stretch."

Bush 'indicted' over war crimes
In the Japan Times.

A group of Japanese lawyers unveiled documents Monday "indicting" U.S. President George W. Bush for
war crimes allegedly committed against the Afghan people since the United States-led coalition
began its antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001.

"This is an act that breaks international rules, such as the idea of (honoring) human rights, that
have been formed over so many years," said Koken Tsuchiya, former president of the Japan Federation
of Bar Associations and head of the 11-member prosecutors' team in the tribunal. "We decided this
case has sufficient reason to be brought to court."

A civic tribunal will be held in Tokyo, with the first hearing scheduled for July 21.

The charges against Bush, according to the indictment, include aggression, attacks against
civilians and nonmilitary facilities and the torturing and execution of prisoners.

They said the indictment will be handed to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo next week.

The tribunal is being organized by Tokyo Zokei University professor Akira Maeda and others.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030701b3.htm

Bush 'indicted' over war crimes

A group of Japanese lawyers unveiled documents Monday "indicting" U.S. President George W. Bush for war crimes allegedly committed against the Afghan people since the United States-led coalition began its antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001.

"This is an act that breaks international rules, such as the idea of (honoring) human rights, that have been formed over so many years," said Koken Tsuchiya, former president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and head of the 11-member prosecutors' team in the tribunal. "We decided this case has sufficient reason to be brought to court."

A civic tribunal will be held in Tokyo, with the first hearing scheduled for July 21.

The charges against Bush, according to the indictment, include aggression, attacks against civilians and nonmilitary facilities and the torturing and execution of prisoners.

They said the indictment will be handed to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo next week.

The tribunal is being organized by Tokyo Zokei University professor Akira Maeda and others.

Picking Workers' Pockets
By Bob Herbert for the NY Times.

The Bush administration, which has the very bad habit of smiling at working people while siphoning money from their pockets, is trying to change the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in a way that could cause millions of workers to lose their right to overtime pay.

The act, one of the last major domestic reform measures of the New Deal, gave Americans the 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage (which began at 25 cents an hour in the late 1930's). It wiped out grueling 12-hour days for many workers and prohibited the use of child labor in interstate commerce.

The act's overtime regulations have not been updated since 1975, and part of what the administration is proposing makes sense. Under existing rules only workers earning less than $8,060 a year automatically qualify for overtime. That would be raised to $22,100 a year.

But then comes the bad news. Nearly 80 percent of all workers are in jobs that qualify them for overtime pay, which is time-and-a-half for each hour that is worked beyond the normal 40-hour week. The administration wants to make it easier for employers to exempt many of those workers from overtime protection by classifying them as administrative, professional or executive personnel.

The quickest way to determine who is getting the better of this deal is to note that business groups are applauding the proposed changes while the A.F.L.-C.I.O. held a protest rally outside the Labor Department on Monday.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/opinion/03HERB.html

Picking Workers' Pockets
By BOB HERBERT

hen I started in the newspaper business I made so little money I had to work part time in my father's upholstery shop to make ends meet. So I'd spend the days chasing stories and struggling with deadlines, and the nights wrestling with beat-up sofas and chairs.

Then the editors at The Star-Ledger in Newark began asking me to work overtime on the copy desk, dreaming up headlines and doing some editing. The extra time-and-a-half pay was just enough to keep me solvent and out of the upholstery shop. And the copy desk experience was invaluable.

Now suppose the editors had been able to tell me to work the extra hours on the copy desk without paying me overtime. I couldn't have afforded to do it, and might have left the paper.

The Bush administration, which has the very bad habit of smiling at working people while siphoning money from their pockets, is trying to change the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in a way that could cause millions of workers to lose their right to overtime pay.

The act, one of the last major domestic reform measures of the New Deal, gave Americans the 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage (which began at 25 cents an hour in the late 1930's). It wiped out grueling 12-hour days for many workers and prohibited the use of child labor in interstate commerce.

The act's overtime regulations have not been updated since 1975, and part of what the administration is proposing makes sense. Under existing rules only workers earning less than $8,060 a year automatically qualify for overtime. That would be raised to $22,100 a year.

But then comes the bad news. Nearly 80 percent of all workers are in jobs that qualify them for overtime pay, which is time-and-a-half for each hour that is worked beyond the normal 40-hour week. The administration wants to make it easier for employers to exempt many of those workers from overtime protection by classifying them as administrative, professional or executive personnel.

The quickest way to determine who is getting the better of this deal is to note that business groups are applauding the proposed changes while the A.F.L.-C.I.O. held a protest rally outside the Labor Department on Monday.

But this is an administration that could figure out a way to sell sunblock to a night crawler. So the rules changes are being spun as a boon to working people.

"By recognizing the professional status of skilled employees, the proposed regulation will provide them a guaranteed salary and flexible hours," said Tammy McCutchen, the Labor Department's wage and hour administrator.

All spinning aside, I wonder how many Americans really think that working longer hours for less money is a good thing.

A more helpful approach to the issue was offered by the Economic Policy Institute, which found that the proposed changes could ultimately eliminate the right to overtime for eight million people. That represents an awful lot of cash that would be drawn away from working families.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing the Bush administration is committed to — undermining a hard-won initiative of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's that has helped many millions of working Americans for more than six decades. It ain't broke, but George Bush is busy fixin' it.

You would think that an administration that has presided over the loss of millions of jobs might want to strengthen the protections of workers fortunate enough to still be employed. But that's not what this administration is about.

Jared Bernstein, a co-author of the study by the Economic Policy Institute, said, "The new rules are structured in such a way as to create a very strong incentive for employers to exempt workers from overtime protection, primarily by converting hourly workers to salaried workers."

One of the workers who joined Monday's protest at the Labor Department was Bob Adams, a bakery manager at a supermarket chain in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

When I asked him why he had traveled to Washington for the demonstration, he said: "Because I think we have to put a stop to this. There seems to be a systematic assault on the rights of workers by this administration, and this is a perfect example of it. They tried to push this through as quietly as they could."

In case you're ever in a conversation with some bozo that tries to tell you that the fact of whether or not global warming is a reality is still in dispute, you can show them this.

Now. Will someone please give a heads up to the Shrub Administration?
Reaping the Whirlwind
Extreme weather prompts unprecedented global warming alert
In The Independent.

In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.

In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change.

The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).

The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately.

The extreme weather it documents, such as record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record storms in different parts of the world, is consistent with predictions of global warming. Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere warms, the climate not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples...

"New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years."

While the trend towards warmer temperatures has been uneven over the past century, the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period...

It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001.

The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=421166

Reaping the Whirlwind
The Independent

Thursday 03 July 2003

Extreme weather prompts unprecedented global warming alert

In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.

In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change.

The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).

The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately.

The extreme weather it documents, such as record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record storms in different parts of the world, is consistent with predictions of global warming. Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere warms, the climate not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples.

In southern France, record temperatures were recorded in June, rising above 40C in places - temperatures of 5C to 7C above the average.

In Switzerland, it was the hottest June in at least 250 years, environmental historians said. In Geneva, since 29 May, daytime temperatures have not fallen below 25C, making it the hottest June recorded.

In the United States, there were 562 May tornadoes, which caused 41 deaths. This set a record for any month. The previous record was 399 in June 1992.

In India, this year's pre-monsoon heatwave brought peak temperatures of 45C - 2C to 5C above the norm. At least 1,400 people died in India due to the hot weather. In Sri Lanka, heavy rainfall from Tropical Cyclone 01B exacerbated wet conditions, resulting in flooding and landslides and killing at least 300 people. The infrastructure and economy of south-west Sri Lanka was heavily damaged. A reduction of 20-30 per cent is expected in the output of low-grown tea in the next three months.

Last month was also the hottest in England and Wales since 1976, with average temperatures of 16C. The WMO said: "These record extreme events (high temperatures, low temperatures and high rainfall amounts and droughts) all go into calculating the monthly and annual averages, which, for temperatures, have been gradually increasing over the past 100 years.

"New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing.

"According to recent climate-change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/United Nations Environmental Programme Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global average surface temperature has increased since 1861. Over the 20th century the increase has been around 0.6C.

"New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years."

While the trend towards warmer temperatures has been uneven over the past century, the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period.

Global average land and sea surface temperatures in May 2003 were the second highest since records began in 1880. Considering land temperatures only, last May was the warmest on record.

It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001.

The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.

No ILAW or any other goodies until it's back up.

I'll be crunching away until then -- so there will be lots to upload when I am able!

(Already have the first session with Larry in the kitty...)

I've got some ideas about what might make some nice reading for the July 4th weekend, but I'll have to expand upon such ideas after the final morning ILAW sessions...

I did want to say, however, that I am feeling a little better about the future of my country this Fourth Of July. People are really starting to realize that taking care of each other and looking out for each other, not just ourselves, is really the way to go.

Hopefully, by this time next year, we'll be well on our way to taking our country back and becoming world citizens again.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

That's right! Not only is nobody going home, but were actually going to send more troops over there.

At least they're admitting now that these guys might be a formidable enemy after all, calling them "well-trained militants that have been killing and injuring US forces."

Unfortunately, that just means that more of our soldiers will die.
Bush foresees long, 'massive' role in Iraq
By Dana Milbank for The Boston Globe.

President Bush acknowledged yesterday that the United States faces a ''massive and long-term undertaking'' in Iraq but said US troops would prevail over what his administration described as well-trained militants that have been killing and injuring US forces.

Bush delivered his statement of resolve, some of his most extensive remarks about Iraq in the two months since he declared heavy fighting was over, as Americans are expressing concern about the unrest in US-occupied Iraq and as some legislators are accusing the administration of understating the task ahead...

Bush cast the struggle in Iraq as part of the ongoing war against terrorism in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. He said that some of those attacking US forces in Iraq were from the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam and that the US government suspects fighters tied to Abu Musab Zarqawi, whom Bush called an Al Qaeda ''associate,'' are preparing to attack. ''Less than two years ago, determined enemies of America entered our country, committed acts of murder against our people, and made clear their intentions to strike again'' he said. ''As long as terrorists and their allies plot to harm America, America is at war.''

As part of the justification for the war in Iraq, Bush and his lieutenants described ongoing ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But a still-classified national intelligence report from that time raised doubts about those ties, intelligence officials have said.

According to a poll released yesterday by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, 71 percent said they believed the Bush administration implied that Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, while 25 percent believed Iraq was directly involved in the attacks...

Of the 195 US military personnel killed in combat and accidents since the Iraq war started on March 20 (42 British soldiers have been killed), nearly a third have died after May 1, when Bush, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, declared major combat operations were over.

The messiness of postwar Iraq had provoked criticism that the administration did not adequately prepare for the difficult task of rebuilding. Before the war, Bush spoke optimistically about a clean transformation of Iraq, saying US troops would not remain in the region ''for one day longer than is necessary.''

Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week that the US presence in Iraq would be necessary for ''at least five years'' and criticized Bush's rhetoric. ''This idea that we will be in just as long as we need to and not a day more - we've got to get over that rhetoric,'' he said. ''It is rubbish. We're going to be there a long time. We must reorganize our military to be there a long time.''

The administration, which declines to forecast the duration of the US presence in Iraq, is due to decide later this month whether it needs more troops there. Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, yesterday played down the attacks on US soldiers as ''pockets of violence,'' adding the media are ''ignoring the tremendous number of success stories'' in Iraq.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/183/nation/Bush_forsees_long_massive_role_in_Iraq+.shtml

President Bush acknowledged yesterday that the United States faces a ''massive and long-term undertaking'' in Iraq but said US troops would prevail over what his administration described as well-trained militants that have been killing and injuring US forces.

Bush delivered his statement of resolve, some of his most extensive remarks about Iraq in the two months since he declared heavy fighting was over, as Americans are expressing concern about the unrest in US-occupied Iraq and as some legislators are accusing the administration of understating the task ahead.

At least 31 US and British military personnel have been killed and 178 wounded in fighting in Iraq in the nine weeks since Bush announced that major combat operations had ended. The US administrator in Iraq said yesterday that ''professional operations'' with ties to the government of former President Saddam Hussein are responsible for the regular attacks on US forces. At least six US soldiers were injured yesterday in two separate attacks.

Bush, in a Rose Garden speech marking the 30th anniversary of the end of the military draft, spoke of ''terrorists, extremists, and Saddam loyalists'' who have attacked US forces, intimidated Iraqis, and destroyed infrastructure. He warned of foreign fighters entering Iraq, Al Qaeda-linked groups waiting to strike, and former Iraqi officials ''who will stop at nothing'' to recover power.

''These groups believe they have found an opportunity to harm America, to shake our resolve in the war on terror, and to cause us to leave Iraq before freedom is fully established,'' Bush said. ''They are wrong and they will not succeed.''

Amid reports of lawlessness and anti-US violence in Iraq, Americans have begun to show ambivalence about the mission. In a Gallup poll done for USA Today and CNN, respondents were divided about the prospects for success in Iraq. Only slim majorities of 56 percent thought the postwar situation was going well and the war was worthwhile, while Americans were split on whether the United States would be able to kill or capture Hussein, find weapons of mass destruction, establish a stable democracy, and stop attacks on US soldiers.

L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator of Iraq, said the attacks on troops were the work of Hussein's former military and intelligence agents. ''These are professional operations,'' Bremer said of the five- to- seven-man teams. ''These are not spontaneous attacks by angry laid-off workers.'' Bremer said there is no sign yet the attacks are centrally coordinated, but that they seemed to have been organized before Hussein's authority collapsed in early April.

Bush, like Bremer and other administration officials, expressed confidence the attacks would not succeed in weakening American resolve. ''There will be no return to tyranny in Iraq, and those who threaten the order and stability of that country will face ruin just as surely as the regime they once served,'' the president said.

Bush cast the struggle in Iraq as part of the ongoing war against terrorism in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. He said that some of those attacking US forces in Iraq were from the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam and that the US government suspects fighters tied to Abu Musab Zarqawi, whom Bush called an Al Qaeda ''associate,'' are preparing to attack. ''Less than two years ago, determined enemies of America entered our country, committed acts of murder against our people, and made clear their intentions to strike again'' he said. ''As long as terrorists and their allies plot to harm America, America is at war.''

As part of the justification for the war in Iraq, Bush and his lieutenants described ongoing ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But a still-classified national intelligence report from that time raised doubts about those ties, intelligence officials have said.

According to a poll released yesterday by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, 71 percent said they believed the Bush administration implied that Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, while 25 percent believed Iraq was directly involved in the attacks.

Bush, while allowing no doubt that he believed Iraq will be swiftly converted to a stable democracy, spoke of the menace to the 230,000 US troops in and near Iraq. ''Our whole nation, especially their families, recognizes that our people in uniform face continuing danger,'' he said. ''As commander in chief, I assure them we will stay on the offensive against the enemy and all who attack our troops will be met with direct and decisive force.''

Of the 195 US military personnel killed in combat and accidents since the Iraq war started on March 20 (42 British soldiers have been killed), nearly a third have died after May 1, when Bush, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, declared major combat operations were over.

The messiness of postwar Iraq had provoked criticism that the administration did not adequately prepare for the difficult task of rebuilding. Before the war, Bush spoke optimistically about a clean transformation of Iraq, saying US troops would not remain in the region ''for one day longer than is necessary.''

Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week that the US presence in Iraq would be necessary for ''at least five years'' and criticized Bush's rhetoric. ''This idea that we will be in just as long as we need to and not a day more - we've got to get over that rhetoric,'' he said. ''It is rubbish. We're going to be there a long time. We must reorganize our military to be there a long time.''

The administration, which declines to forecast the duration of the US presence in Iraq, is due to decide later this month whether it needs more troops there. Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, yesterday played down the attacks on US soldiers as ''pockets of violence,'' adding the media are ''ignoring the tremendous number of success stories'' in Iraq.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 7/2/2003.

I'll try to post more explanations about these in the future. But for now, I'm just going to try to republish them in a timely manner.

The deadline for filing cable and satellite royalty claims coming up July 31st.

The Sound Exchange regulations kick in on July 18th.

U.S. Copyright Office NewsNet July 3, 2003 Issue 204

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The Copyright Office is announcing final regulations under the section 112(e) and section 114 licenses of the Copyright Act. The regulations adjust the royalty rates and terms under the Copyright Act for the statutory license for the use of sound recordings by preexisting subscription services for the period of January 1, 2002, through December 31, 2007. The rates and terms are being adopted in accordance with section 251.63(b) of the CARP regulations based upon a settlement agreement between copyright owners and performers on the one hand and the preexisting subscription services on the other.

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These are pretty self-explanatory.

Bush Administration Repeals Requirement That Employers Report Strain Injuries
By Leigh Strope for the Associated Press.

Democrats Protest Changes to Overtime Rules
By Steven Greenhouse for the NY Times.

Forty-two Democratic senators and more than 100 Democratic House members urged the Bush administration yesterday to withdraw proposed regulations that they said would eliminate overtime pay for millions of workers.

The lawmakers made their plea on the final day of a 90-day comment period in which the administration received tens of thousands of criticisms of its proposals, which are the first effort to update overtime regulations since 1975.

"Our citizens are working longer hours than ever before — longer than in any other industrial nation," the senators wrote to Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao. "At least one in five employees now has a workweek that exceeds 50 hours. Protecting the 40-hour workweek is vital to balancing work responsibilities and family needs."

...The Democratic lawmakers joined labor unions in opposing the rule changes, asserting that they would reduce take-home pay and free time for many workers.

"Millions of workers who receive time and a half for their overtime work today will be required to work longer hours for less money under the proposal," the House members wrote to Ms. Chao. "Millions more who have long depended upon overtime work to help make ends meet will face effective pay cuts."

Richard Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s secretary-treasurer, who led a protest rally yesterday at the Labor Department, said: "It's outrageous that their proposals would deny overtime pay to 8 million more workers. It's particularly outrageous for them to do this when they haven't even held a single public hearing."

Critics of the proposals have relied heavily on a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, that concluded that the proposals would exempt an additional 8 million executive, administrative and professional workers from qualifying for overtime when they worked more than 40 hours a week. The institute faulted the administration's estimate that 640,000 more workers would be exempt.

The proposals would alter the criteria for determining which white-collar employees cannot receive overtime.

Under the new rules, anyone earning less than $22,100 a year would automatically qualify for overtime, while under existing rules only workers earning less than $8,060 a year automatically qualify. As a result, under existing regulations, assistant managers of fast-food restaurants who earn $18,000 a year often do not qualify for overtime because they are considered managers.

This page contains both complete articles. The one on top in the entry is actually second on this page.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/01/politics/01OVER.html

Forty-two Democratic senators and more than 100 Democratic House members urged the Bush administration yesterday to withdraw proposed regulations that they said would eliminate overtime pay for millions of workers.

The lawmakers made their plea on the final day of a 90-day comment period in which the administration received tens of thousands of criticisms of its proposals, which are the first effort to update overtime regulations since 1975.

"Our citizens are working longer hours than ever before — longer than in any other industrial nation," the senators wrote to Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao. "At least one in five employees now has a workweek that exceeds 50 hours. Protecting the 40-hour workweek is vital to balancing work responsibilities and family needs."

When the administration proposed the rule changes in March, it called them an evenhanded effort that would exempt an additional 640,000 white-collar workers from overtime coverage while adding 1.3 million low-paid workers to the group that automatically qualifies for overtime pay.

Many business groups praised the proposals, calling them a needed effort to modernize what they said was a thicket of confusing, obsolete rules.

"On balance, the proposed regulations do a very good job bringing our workplace regulations into the 21st century," Katherine Lugar, vice president for legislative affairs at the National Retail Federation, said yesterday at a news conference.

The Democratic lawmakers joined labor unions in opposing the rule changes, asserting that they would reduce take-home pay and free time for many workers.

"Millions of workers who receive time and a half for their overtime work today will be required to work longer hours for less money under the proposal," the House members wrote to Ms. Chao. "Millions more who have long depended upon overtime work to help make ends meet will face effective pay cuts."

Richard Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s secretary-treasurer, who led a protest rally yesterday at the Labor Department, said: "It's outrageous that their proposals would deny overtime pay to 8 million more workers. It's particularly outrageous for them to do this when they haven't even held a single public hearing."

Critics of the proposals have relied heavily on a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, that concluded that the proposals would exempt an additional 8 million executive, administrative and professional workers from qualifying for overtime when they worked more than 40 hours a week. The institute faulted the administration's estimate that 640,000 more workers would be exempt.

The proposals would alter the criteria for determining which white-collar employees cannot receive overtime.

Under the new rules, anyone earning less than $22,100 a year would automatically qualify for overtime, while under existing rules only workers earning less than $8,060 a year automatically qualify. As a result, under existing regulations, assistant managers of fast-food restaurants who earn $18,000 a year often do not qualify for overtime because they are considered managers.

Tammy D. McCutchen, the administrator of the wage and hour division at the Labor Department, said the lawmakers should not rely on the Economic Policy Institute study, asserting that it was flawed and misinterpreted current rules.

"A lot of the 8 million figure that the senators and congressmen are citing relies on misinformation," Ms. McCutchen said. "If you compare how executive employees become exempt today and how they will become exempt under our proposals, it will become harder for employers to exempt those employees."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/181/wash/Bush_administration_repeals_re:.shtml

Bush Administration Repeals Requirement That Employers Report Strain Injuries By Leigh Strope The Associated Press

Monday 30 June 2003

The Bush administration on Monday repealed a requirement that employers report repetitive stress injuries.

The measure had not yet taken effect, and Labor Department officials said such data would be useless in identifying causes and preventing such injuries.

Labor unions had fought for the requirement, claiming that tracking repetitive strain injuries, also known as ergonomic injuries, would help identify potentially hazardous jobs and provide a better understanding of injury rates and trends.

The move ''continues the Bush administration's head-in-the-sand approach to ergonomic injuries,'' said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

''Just because the government is not going to require employers to track these injuries and just because the government is not going to enforce a safety standard doesn't mean that workers will stop becoming ill or permanently disabled on the job,'' he said.

Employers would have been required to record ergonomic-related injuries, which include disorders of the muscles, nerves, tendons, ligaments, joints, cartilage and spinal discs, except those caused by slips, trips, falls, motor vehicle accidents or other similar accidents.

That requirement would have taken effect in 2001, but was delayed that year after the GOP-controlled Congress repealed regulations issued by the Clinton administration that would have required businesses to make changes to work stations and pay employees with such injuries.

Instead of legal requirements, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is issuing voluntary guidelines for certain injury-prone businesses. The reporting requirement was to take effect this year.

"OSHA concluded that an additional record keeping column would not substantially improve the national injury statistics, nor would it be of benefit to employers and workers because the column would not provide additional information useful to identifying possible causes or methods to prevent injury,'' an OSHA statement said.

Okay so there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that Larry is letting me film ILAW!

The bad news is that, with me recovering from a cold, an hour commute each way for five days straight, and my having to stand up for most of the sessions (because they get kind of exciting and I have to move the camera around alot between the audience and speakers to get the best coverage of everything), I won't be pulling any late nighters trying to get any of this footage to you before the weekend.

So for now, you should read Donna Wentworth's Coverage and know that it will all be online in due time.

(Yes all five days' worth.)

Cheers!

This just in from Ashley:

Date: 6/30
Time: 7:22 pm

We made a book! It's an Arabic book entitled "Wonderful Water" (water being very wonderful when it's 110 degrees out). So, the stationary unit is now functional and will be operational tomorrow once the security team is satisfied that it can't print counterfeit bills. (And it definitely cannot.)

We checked out some vans today and saw these little Suzuki vehicles that would work really well for an Egypt Bookie. They're pretty cheap too-- abuot $8,000 new. All we need now is a willing, benevolent, wealthy person to put up the cash. We also snuck in a little sightseeing since our driver, Mohammed, who's actually a higher-up in the admin. department wanted us to eat Egyptian ice cream (*really* good) at the Citadel-- the Western-most point of the city). Fun.

Tomorrow's off to Cairo for a meeting with the director of an NGO and some pyramidal sightseeing (I hope). Then back to Alex to make some more books and hopefully get rolling with the mobile unit.

Sorry for no pics today, I've got to run to a dinner appt.

Ashley in Egypt