I think the time has come for me to start mirroring my archive.

A few of you have emailed me in the past with offers to store some or all of my video footage on various servers you have available, but I didn't save the emails.

Please, please, email me again so we can start the ball rolling :-)
(lisarein@finetuning.com)

Thanks!

Here are some pictures Simon Perry posted of the event.

200,000 March Against Bush in London
By Naveed Raja for The Mirror.

A massive demonstration against George Bush drew up to 200,000 marchers on the streets of London today.

Organisers of the march, ending in a rally at Trafalgar Square, said the number was a record for any weekday protest in Britain.

With a huge police presence the Met reported no incidents of violence and the march passed off peacefully.

"This phenomenal response shows the depth of feeling of the British public towards this visit," said a spokesman for the Stop The War Coalition.

The march started near Euston Station and went past the House of Commons and Whitehall before finishing at Trafalgar Square.

When the march passed Downing Street anti-war protesters booed and jeered at Bush and Blair inside number 10.

A huge papier mache statue of Bush was hauled down by protestors in Trafalgar Square in protest at the Iraq war.

Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, on whose life the film Born on the Fourth of July was based, was the guest of honour.

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

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13645118_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-200-000-MARCH-AGAINST-BUSH-IN-LONDON-name_page.html

200,000 March Against Bush in London
By Naveed Raja
The Mirror

Thursday 20 November 2003

A massive demonstration against George Bush drew up to 200,000 marchers on the streets of London today.

Organisers of the march, ending in a rally at Trafalgar Square, said the number was a record for any weekday protest in Britain.

With a huge police presence the Met reported no incidents of violence and the march passed off peacefully.

"This phenomenal response shows the depth of feeling of the British public towards this visit," said a spokesman for the Stop The War Coalition.

The march started near Euston Station and went past the House of Commons and Whitehall before finishing at Trafalgar Square.

When the march passed Downing Street anti-war protesters booed and jeered at Bush and Blair inside number 10.

A huge papier mache statue of Bush was hauled down by protestors in Trafalgar Square in protest at the Iraq war.

Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, on whose life the film Born on the Fourth of July was based, was the guest of honour.

Other speakers at the rally included former leader of the SNP Alex Salmon and Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Alice Mahon.

Former Labour MP George Galloway spoke to the crowd and described the march as "unbelievable".

He said: "This is the largest march on a midweek day that this country has ever seen - it is absolutely overwhelming.

"We're speaking for the majority of people in the world who want Bush out and who want Blair out."

"Tony Blair added insult to injury by bringing this ignorant, foolish and dangerous man to these shores and I think we are speaking for the majority of the country."

Caroline Lucas, of the Green Party told the crowd: "The eyes of the world are on Trafalgar Square today. We are making history."

Why is this "Shrub Watch?" Because Tommy Franks works for the Shrub and embodies many Shrub Administration ideals. With that in mind, the contents of his interview for Cigar Aficionado are quite disturbing indeed.

Hey predicts that, after a WMD attack on us or one of our allies, our Constitution will be discarded.

Ha! As if our Constitution has even survived 911 to begin with...

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack
By John O. Edwards for NewsMax.com.

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.

In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

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

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com
Friday, Nov. 21, 2003

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.

In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army.

Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a “soldier’s general,” Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.’s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11.

Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden.

Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including:

President Bush: “As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he’s not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he’s very, very bright. And I suspect that he’ll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we’ll think of him in years to come as an American hero.”

On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president’s decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.

“I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent.

“If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country?”

The Pentagon’s deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, “it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, ‘Aha, this will be the ace of spades.’”

Capturing Saddam: Franks said he was not surprised that Saddam has not been captured or killed. But he says he will eventually be found, perhaps sooner than Osama bin laden.

“The capture or killing of Saddam Hussein will be a near term thing. And I won’t say that’ll be within 19 or 43 days. ... I believe it is inevitable.”

Franks ended his interview with a less-than-optimistic note. “It’s not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we’ll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace.”

Is illegal. Not was illegal. The damn thing isn't over yet!

War Critics Astonished as U.S. Hawk Admits Invasion Was Illegal
By Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger for The Guardian UK.

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable...

The Pentagon adviser's views, he added, underlined "a divergence of view between the British government and some senior voices in American public life [who] have expressed the view that, well, if it's the case that international law doesn't permit unilateral pre-emptive action without the authority of the UN, then the defect is in international law".

Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad...

"I think Perle's statement has the virtue of honesty," said Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University who opposed the war, arguing that it was illegal.

"And, interestingly, I suspect a majority of the American public would have supported the invasion almost exactly to the same degree that they in fact did, had the administration said that all along."

The controversy-prone Mr Perle resigned his chairmanship of the defence policy board earlier this year but remained a member of the advisory board.

Meanwhile, there was a hint that the US was trying to find a way to release the Britons held at Guantanamo Bay.

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said Mr Bush was "very sensitive" to British sentiment. "We also expect to be resolving this in the near future," he told the BBC.

That provides no comfort for Jennings’ parents. “My inner strength is gone,” says Harriet Johnson. “I’m getting strength from the Lord now. Just His strength is carrying me because mine was gone when I heard about my son’s death.”

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html

War Critics Astonished as U.S. Hawk Admits Invasion Was Illegal
By Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger
The Guardian UK

Thursday 20 November 2003

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".

Mr Perle, who was speaking at an event organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, had argued loudly for the toppling of the Iraqi dictator since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.

"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."

Mr Perle's remarks bear little resemblance to official justifications for war, according to Rabinder Singh QC, who represented CND and also participated in Tuesday's event.

Certainly the British government, he said, "has never advanced the suggestion that it is entitled to act, or right to act, contrary to international law in relation to Iraq".

The Pentagon adviser's views, he added, underlined "a divergence of view between the British government and some senior voices in American public life [who] have expressed the view that, well, if it's the case that international law doesn't permit unilateral pre-emptive action without the authority of the UN, then the defect is in international law".

Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has questioned that justification, arguing that the security council would have to rule on whether the US and its allies were under imminent threat.

Coalition officials countered that the security council had already approved the use of force in resolution 1441, passed a year ago, warning of "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to give a complete ac counting of its weapons programmes.

Other council members disagreed, but American and British lawyers argued that the threat of force had been implicit since the first Gulf war, which was ended only by a ceasefire.

"I think Perle's statement has the virtue of honesty," said Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University who opposed the war, arguing that it was illegal.

"And, interestingly, I suspect a majority of the American public would have supported the invasion almost exactly to the same degree that they in fact did, had the administration said that all along."

The controversy-prone Mr Perle resigned his chairmanship of the defence policy board earlier this year but remained a member of the advisory board.

Meanwhile, there was a hint that the US was trying to find a way to release the Britons held at Guantanamo Bay.

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said Mr Bush was "very sensitive" to British sentiment. "We also expect to be resolving this in the near future," he told the BBC.
That provides no comfort for Jennings’ parents. “My inner strength is gone,” says Harriet Johnson. “I’m getting strength from the Lord now. Just His strength is carrying me because mine was gone when I heard about my son’s death.”

Grieving Mother's Advice To Bush: 'Bring Our Boys Home'
By Hazel Trice Edney for The Wilmington Journal.

“If I could talk to the president myself, right now, I would tell him, ‘Find a plan to bring our boys home,’” says Harriet Elaine Johnson of Cope, S. C., the mother of U. S. Army Specialist Darius T. Jennings. “They’re telling us, ‘We’re going to kill your American soldiers,’ and it doesn’t seem like the American leaders are listening…Let us not use our babies at the expense of the country to try to prove some kind of power struggle.”

Jennings was one of 16 U. S. Army soldiers killed when the helicopter was shot down Nov. 2 by a missile near Fallujah. His death came less than two weeks before his 23rd birthday...

Not only has neither Bush nor many Congressional leaders not walked in Johnson’s shoes, they didn’t take the risk her deceased son took, either.

Rather than serve on active duty, Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1968.

And he has denied widespread reports that he didn’t report for drill duty from May 1972 to April 1973 while he lived in Alabama and worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of of former postmaster general Winton M. Blount. Bush says he fulfilled his guard service locally on weekends.

Vice President Dick Cheney used student and marriage deferments to avoid military service. None of the top Republican elected leaders served in the military. Neither Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, nor House Majority Whip Roy Blunt served in the Armed Forces.

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

http://wilmingtonjournal.blackpressusa.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=35202&sID=33

Grieving Mother's Advice To Bush: 'Bring Our Boys Home'
By Hazel Trice Edney
The Wilmington Journal

Thursday 20 November 2003

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – The mother of an American soldier killed in a recent missile attack on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter in Iraq has a message that she says President Bush needs to hear.

“If I could talk to the president myself, right now, I would tell him, ‘Find a plan to bring our boys home,’” says Harriet Elaine Johnson of Cope, S. C., the mother of U. S. Army Specialist Darius T. Jennings. “They’re telling us, ‘We’re going to kill your American soldiers,’ and it doesn’t seem like the American leaders are listening…Let us not use our babies at the expense of the country to try to prove some kind of power struggle.”

Jennings was one of 16 U. S. Army soldiers killed when the helicopter was shot down Nov. 2 by a missile near Fallujah. His death came less than two weeks before his 23rd birthday.

Ironically, last Saturday, the day of Jennings’ funeral, two American Black Hawk helicopters collided in midair and crashed near Mosul, killing at least 17 American soldiers who were aboard.

“I feel quite sure if they had some kids over there, they would have already come up with a plan.” Johnson says. “From my understanding, I think all of [Bush’s] kids are living. So, he cannot feel what I’m feeling...He’ll never be able to feel my sympathy until he walks in my shoes.”

Pentagon Spokesman Maj. Steve Stover says the military understands the suffering of families of loved ones killed in the war.

“I know a lot of people ask us, ‘Well, what do you think about being there?’ Well, you know what? In those respects, we don’t,” he says. “We’re soldiers. We go where we’re told. If the president tells us to go, we go. We trust our elected leaders, not only the president, but our Congress, who makes those decisions. We don’t second-guess them.”

Not only has neither Bush nor many Congressional leaders not walked in Johnson’s shoes, they didn’t take the risk her deceased son took, either.

Rather than serve on active duty, Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1968.

And he has denied widespread reports that he didn’t report for drill duty from May 1972 to April 1973 while he lived in Alabama and worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of of former postmaster general Winton M. Blount. Bush says he fulfilled his guard service locally on weekends.

Vice President Dick Cheney used student and marriage deferments to avoid military service. None of the top Republican elected leaders served in the military. Neither Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, nor House Majority Whip Roy Blunt served in the Armed Forces.

On the Democratic side, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle served three years as an intelligence officer in the U. S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, but neither House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi nor House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer served in the military.

Of the nine Democratic presidential candidates, only retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry served on active duty. Clark rose from an infantry officer in the army to company commander in Vietnam to four-star general and supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe.

Kerry was the skipper of a Navy swift boat in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. Both Kerry and Clark received the Purple Heart after being wounded in combat and both were awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action.

Spec. Jennings’ mother says she had spoken to him by phone only five days beforehis death. “My son was tired of being over there,” she says. “First of all, I didn’t raise my son in violence.

He joined the Army. He knew that maybe there would have been war, [but] my son, the things he was seeing over there, he was not accustomed to. And it was really getting to him and he asked me for guidance.

“I said, ‘Son, go to your chaplain.’ So, he went to the chaplain and he came back and said, ‘Well Mommy, I’m just ready to come home. And every time we spoke and when he e-mailed me, it was the same thing, ‘Mommy, I’m ready to come home. You don’t know what I’m going through over here. You don’t see the things I see Mommy.’”

Jennings and his wife, Ari, 20, an airman in the U. S. Air Force, observed their first wedding anniversary on Oct. 29. Now, there will not be a second. “She’s taking it day to day,” says her father, Howard Young of Colorado Springs. “You know, it’s a numbing experience.”

The couple met while Jennings was stationed near Colorado Springs at Fort Carson, assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

“In the short time I’ve known him, he was a great individual, someone who was considerate as well as conscientious about servicing his country,” recalls Young. “He was a very energetic and very respectful young man. And I was proud to have him as a son-in-law.”

Jennings joined the Army three years after graduating from Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School. He had planned to enter college and become a photographer. Instead, he is among more than 400 Americans who have died in Iraq since the war began in March.

Johnson says she asked Sharpton to speak because of “personal reasons,” but did not elaborate. Sharpton, who says he started preaching when he was four and was ordained five years later, temporarily set partisan politics aside Saturday to eulogize Johnson in Cordova, S.C., near Orangeburg.

President Bush has sent letters to the families of those killed, but, unlike Sharpton, has yet to attend any funeral of U. S. service men and women killed in Iraq.

“It’s important that the president mourn every loss of life. And to do so, is to talk about all the loss of life, and not to specifically look at one over the other,” says White House Spokesman Dan Bartlett.

Talk about a surprising turn of events. The remains still have to undergo extensive testing, but he evidence recovered so far appears to be authentic.

Remains of Dean's Long-Missing Brother Found
By Jodi Wilgoren and Michael Slackman for the New York Times.

The Pentagon will not try to make an official identification until after the remains are flown to a forensic laboratory in Hawaii next week, but personal items found with the bodies — shoes, a sock and a P.O.W.-M.I.A. bracelet with the name of a Texan, all similar to those worn by the 23-year-old Charles Dean — strongly suggest the crude grave was his. Remains believed to belong to his traveling companion, Neil Sharman of Australia, were also recovered at the site.

Charles Dean is one of 1,875 Americans, including 35 civilians, still missing in connection with the Vietnam War...

Charlie, 16 months his junior, slept above Dr. Dean in bunk beds, and often led the four Dean brothers in building forts outside their East Hampton country house. Dr. Dean has said that if he were alive, Charlie would be running for president, with him as campaign manager.

Some have suspected that Charlie was working as a spy, but others believe he was simply a wayward tourist.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Charlie Dean set off for a yearlong adventure around the world, spending months in Australia and Japan before heading to Laos with Mr. Sharman. Colonel O'Hara said the two young men left Vientiane, the Laotian capital, in September 1974, and planned to take a ferry across the river to Thailand, but "never showed up where they were going to."

On the plane on Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Dean recounted how he learned that his brother had been captured by Communist rebels, the Pathet Lao. The call came in October 1974, as he was heading for a test at Columbia University, where he was taking classes to prepare for medical school.

Dr. Dean said the family later learned that Charlie had spent time in a prison camp, even growing some food in a garden, before being taken off in a truck on Dec. 14.

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/politics/19DEAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Remains of Dean's Long-Missing Brother Found
By Jodi Wilgoren and Michael Slackman
New York Times

Wednesday 19 November 2003

BEDFORD, N.H., Nov. 18 — Every day on the campaign trail, Howard Dean wears an unfashionable black belt that belonged to his younger brother Charlie, a silent memorial to the man who vanished while traveling the Mekong River 29 years ago.

On Tuesday, Dr. Dean, who rarely mentions his family on the stump, interrupted his schedule to announce that a search team had found his brother's remains buried in a rice paddy in central Laos.

"This has been a long and very difficult journey for my mother and for my brothers Jim, Bill and myself," Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said after a Democratic presidential candidates' forum at a hotel here. "We greet this news with mixed emotions, but we're gratified and grateful that we're now approaching closure on this very difficult episode in our lives."

The Pentagon will not try to make an official identification until after the remains are flown to a forensic laboratory in Hawaii next week, but personal items found with the bodies — shoes, a sock and a P.O.W.-M.I.A. bracelet with the name of a Texan, all similar to those worn by the 23-year-old Charles Dean — strongly suggest the crude grave was his. Remains believed to belong to his traveling companion, Neil Sharman of Australia, were also recovered at the site.

Charles Dean is one of 1,875 Americans, including 35 civilians, still missing in connection with the Vietnam War.

Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command of the Defense Department, said the remains were found on Nov. 8, and that James Dean, a brother of the candidate, was told on Thursday.

Dr. Dean said he and his two brothers shared the news with their mother on Monday night at a fund-raiser in Washington marking his 55th birthday. The brief, stoic announcement on Tuesday was scheduled only after wire services picked up on Australian news reports about the recovery.

Last year, Dr. Dean, who sought grief counseling in the 1980's after suffering anxiety attacks, made a pilgrimage to Southeast Asia to look into his brother's mysterious 1974 disappearance and witness the military's recovery operations.

Dr. Dean has worn the black leather belt with the large, silver-rimmed holes for at least 20 years, and counts his brother's death as a watershed that made him more serious about his own future.

"When you go through something like this, you have a tremendous sense of survivor guilt and anger at the person who disappears and then guilt over the anger —it's very complicated," Dr. Dean said aboard his campaign plane as he flew with reporters from here to Houston for a speech and fund-raiser. "It didn't interfere with my life or my work, but it was disquieting. I went into therapy and we sort of peeled back the onion."

Dr. Dean said his 2002 trip, which included a meeting with the Laotian defense minister, a helicopter tour of the area and visits to five sites where archaeologists searched for remains, was a cathartic experience.

"I've been on the lines, I've helped sift the dirt — teeth would show up every once in a while," he said in an interview before the discovery. "I know what the government did to try to get evidence of what happened to these folks, and believe me, I don't think they left any stone unturned."

Charlie, 16 months his junior, slept above Dr. Dean in bunk beds, and often led the four Dean brothers in building forts outside their East Hampton country house. Dr. Dean has said that if he were alive, Charlie would be running for president, with him as campaign manager.

Some have suspected that Charlie was working as a spy, but others believe he was simply a wayward tourist.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Charlie Dean set off for a yearlong adventure around the world, spending months in Australia and Japan before heading to Laos with Mr. Sharman. Colonel O'Hara said the two young men left Vientiane, the Laotian capital, in September 1974, and planned to take a ferry across the river to Thailand, but "never showed up where they were going to."

On the plane on Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Dean recounted how he learned that his brother had been captured by Communist rebels, the Pathet Lao. The call came in October 1974, as he was heading for a test at Columbia University, where he was taking classes to prepare for medical school.

Dr. Dean said the family later learned that Charlie had spent time in a prison camp, even growing some food in a garden, before being taken off in a truck on Dec. 14.

Both of Dr. Dean's parents went to Laos to search, but found nothing. An unsigned letter informed the family of Charlie's death in 1975, Dr. Dean said.

"I met the witness who saw my brother's body and Neil's," Dr. Dean said on Tuesday, recalling his visit in 2002 to the 150-yard plot in Bolikhamxai (pronounced BOH-lee-kum-sigh) province, where the remains were found. "I got him away from his minder. He said the North Vietnamese killed him, but of course you don't know."

The campaign does not plan to alter Dr. Dean's schedule, though he said he will probably travel to Hawaii for a repatriation ceremony on Wednesday, which had been intended as a day off. But the discovery of the remains overshadowed what the campaign had pumped up as a major speech on Tuesday in Houston.

"We know what happened to Enron," Dr. Dean said, speaking to a crowd of 1,200 about a mile from the headquarters of the scandal-plagued corporation. "Moral bankruptcy led to fiscal bankruptcy. And the ethos of Enron is where this president's politics and policies have led us in America."

"When the people take back their government from the powerful few who control it," Dr. Dean said, "we will be able to make real change for the future of our country."

Dr. Dean's brother James and mother, Andree M. Dean, declined to discuss the discovery.

Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's P.O.W./M.I.A. operation, said the excavation where Dr. Dean's brother was apparently found was one of three being conducted as part of a monthlong Laotian mission, and was the result of seven investigations into the disappearance of the two young men. He said such recoveries are fairly typical of the 600-person, $103 million annual operation, and noted that 708 sets of positively identified remains have been found in Southeast Asia since the search began in 1985

In addition to the 1,875 people still believed buried in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and China, Mr. Greer said, the Pentagon continues to search for 78,000 Americans missing from World War II, 8,100 from the Korean War, 126 from the cold war, and three from the Persian Gulf war.

"We send our teams into a country 30 days at a time," Mr. Greer explained, "armed with very detailed information on specific cases — they don't just go digging randomly."

"It's very routine," he said of the recovery. "We bring these folks back every month, month after month after month, for a long time."

Colonel O'Hara said physical evidence connected to Charles Dean was first discovered on Oct. 28, after a search in another spot in August.

Unlike Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam became a major theme of his 2000 presidential campaign, Dr. Dean never discusses Charlie's disappearance in public forums. But on Tuesday, he said his own loss helps him empathize with military families.

"I've seen a lot of families come up to me and say my son is in Iraq, can you bring him home," he said. "I know what they feel like."

From the "what the hell are you talking about?" file, this news is just in from the Shrub Administration: Bin Laden's No Longer Enemy #1.

That means that this "War On Terror" now officially has nothing to do with 911 (as if it ever was).

All you have to do is "take yourself out of the picture," and our Army will stop chasing you!
What a great deal!

U.S. General Says Bin Laden 'Out of the Picture'
By Yousuf Azimy for Reuters.

A senior U.S. general said on Friday that al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror."

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at U.S. military headquarters just north of Kabul that the 11,500-strong U.S.-led force hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants was not focusing on individuals.

"He (bin Laden) has taken himself out of the picture," Pace told reporters after visiting U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

"It is not an individual that is as important as is the ongoing campaign of the coalition against terrorists," he said.

America's new ambassador to Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad said earlier this week that the U.S. military would "redouble" its efforts to find bin Laden and other al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

While appearing to contradict this, Pace, added: "That is not to say that we would not be glad to capture Osama bin Laden today or tomorrow."

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

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=564&u=/nm/20031121/ts_nm/afghan_laden_dc_1&printer=1

U.S. General Says Bin Laden 'Out of the Picture'

By Yousuf Azimy

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A senior U.S. general said on Friday that al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror."

General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at U.S. military headquarters just north of Kabul that the 11,500-strong U.S.-led force hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants was not focusing on individuals.

"He (bin Laden) has taken himself out of the picture," Pace told reporters after visiting U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

"It is not an individual that is as important as is the ongoing campaign of the coalition against terrorists," he said.

America's new ambassador to Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad said earlier this week that the U.S. military would "redouble" its efforts to find bin Laden and other al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

While appearing to contradict this, Pace, added: "That is not to say that we would not be glad to capture Osama bin Laden today or tomorrow."

He said U.S.-led forces were winning their war against "terrorists" in Afghanistan, despite nearly 400 people being killed in just over three months in the bloodiest period since the Taliban's ouster two years ago.

"The fact that the enemy is not pooling up in waves that can be attacked in large numbers to me means that in fact the coalition is being effective," Pace said.

There have been very few major clashes between U.S. forces and Islamic militants in the past two years.

In the most recent case, hundreds of Taliban were hunted down by U.S. forces and Afghan troops in the troubled provinces of Uruzgan and Zabul in August and early September, leading to the death of over a hundred rebels.

But generally U.S. operations, including the latest launched in the northeast earlier this month, kill few militants due to their apparent ability to blend into local populations or flee into the hills, often crossing into neighboring Pakistan.

"We will continue to pursue them to make sure that they don't re-establish any kind of a stronghold," said Pace.

He added that civilian-military teams already in some cities were the ideal way for the international community to contribute to Afghan stability, and that Pakistan and Afghanistan should work together to fight militants active on their common frontier.

Afghanistan suspects Pakistan is turning a blind eye to Taliban and al Qaeda remnants, but Islamabad says it is doing all it can to support the U.S. "war on terror."

Also believed to be at large in Afghanistan or Pakistan are Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

Meanwhile 4,000 Miles Away in Guantanamo Bay, 660 Prisoners Have No Idea When They Will be Freed
By Andrew Buncombe for the Independnet Uk.

The Guantanamo Bay prison camp - established after the terror attacks of 11 September and the war in Afghanistan - was meant to be a temporary detention centre, somewhere to hold the "worst of the worst".

Almost two years later, the camp has been transformed into a de facto permanent facility where 660 adults and three children are kept in a legal black hole, cut off from the outside world and with no idea whether they will ever be charged with a crime or released. Critics claim the prison, which operates with hardly any independent scrutiny, has become a live experiment in long-term interrogation where experts constantly seek to hone and improve their techniques.

"It's like it has become a cold storage facility," said Richard Bourke, a lawyer in Louisiana representing two Australian citizens who are among the prisoners. "You hear comments from the camp commander about how they are constantly improving their interrogation techniques. They are just experimenting in areas that interest them."

Guantanamo Bay and the nine Britons held there have become the focus of increasing tension between Britain and the US and will be a subject of talks between George Bush and Tony Blair this week...

Few critics claim that prisoners at Camp Delta, as the incarceration unit is known, suffer physical torture, though in the first six months of its operation interrogators used techniques known as "stress and duress" to intimidate and soften up their subjects. Such techniques include sleep deprivation, exposing prisoners to hot or cold conditions and making them sit or stand in uncomfortable positions.

But lawyers and activists say the prisoners - to whom the Bush administration refuses to grant the protection of the Geneva Conventions - face a form of psychological torture by being refused information about their future or access to legal advice. There are regular reports of suicide attempts among the prisoners and recently Commander Louis Louk, the officer in charge of the prison's hospital, revealed that one in five of the prisoners received medication for what he termed "clinical depression".

Against this backdrop the Bush administration received unprecedented criticism last month from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only non-state organisation permitted to visit the camp, which said its refusal to inform prisoners about their future was causing an intolerable situation. "The main concern for us is that the US authorities have effectively placed them beyond the law," said Amanda Williamson, an ICRC spokes-woman. "After more than 18 months of captivity, the internees have no idea about their fate, no means of recourse through any legal mechanism. They have been placed in a legal vacuum, a legal black hole. This, for the ICRC, is unacceptable."...

Campaigners received a boost last week when the Supreme Court announced that it would examine whether Guantanamo Bay fell within the jurisdiction of the US courts. Lower courts had supported the claim of the Bush administration that Guantanamo Bay, technically leased from Cuba, was outside the jurisdiction and prisoners were not eligible for the protection of the US constitution. If the Supreme Court places Guantanamo Bay within US legal jurisdiction there is likely to be a flood of lawsuits demanding the US to charge the prisoners or release them. Ms Patten said: "The question is can the government carve out a place in the world beyond the law, beyond the reach of the courts that review the legality of such actions."

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

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=465110

Meanwhile 4,000 Miles Away in Guantanamo Bay,
660 Prisoners Have No Idea When They Will be Freed
By Andrew Buncombe
Independnet Uk

Wednesday 19 November 2003

The Guantanamo Bay prison camp - established after the terror attacks of 11 September and the war in Afghanistan - was meant to be a temporary detention centre, somewhere to hold the "worst of the worst".

Almost two years later, the camp has been transformed into a de facto permanent facility where 660 adults and three children are kept in a legal black hole, cut off from the outside world and with no idea whether they will ever be charged with a crime or released. Critics claim the prison, which operates with hardly any independent scrutiny, has become a live experiment in long-term interrogation where experts constantly seek to hone and improve their techniques.

"It's like it has become a cold storage facility," said Richard Bourke, a lawyer in Louisiana representing two Australian citizens who are among the prisoners. "You hear comments from the camp commander about how they are constantly improving their interrogation techniques. They are just experimenting in areas that interest them."

Guantanamo Bay and the nine Britons held there have become the focus of increasing tension between Britain and the US and will be a subject of talks between George Bush and Tony Blair this week.

It was announced in the summer that two of the Britons, Moazzam Begg, 35, and Feroz Abbasi, 23, were among six prisoners selected to be tried by military tribunals, a process outside the normal judicial process and without the protection usually offered to defendants. In this process Mr Bush would act in effect as the ultimate arbiter on what would happen to the prisoners if convicted.

Belatedly and with little apparent enthusiasm, the British Government has sought to obtain some safeguards for Mr Abbasi and Mr Begg. Until it was announced that they were to be placed before a tribunal, Britain did very little to help the nine, a position that was in stark contrast to the governments of other prisoners at Guantanamo, such as Sweden.

Although the prosecution has been officially put on hold, the prisoners' lawyers remain extremely worried. Louise Christian, a solicitor representing the family of Mr Abbasi, said last night: "I am very concerned that he has made some sort of confession. The military tribunal process is technically on hold - just this morning I received another letter from the [UK] Attorney General that repeated the US denial that there has been some sort of a deal. But I am concerned that a confession has obtained under conditions that amount to coercion. They have been interrogated for nearly two years without a lawyer being present."

Few critics claim that prisoners at Camp Delta, as the incarceration unit is known, suffer physical torture, though in the first six months of its operation interrogators used techniques known as "stress and duress" to intimidate and soften up their subjects. Such techniques include sleep deprivation, exposing prisoners to hot or cold conditions and making them sit or stand in uncomfortable positions.

But lawyers and activists say the prisoners - to whom the Bush administration refuses to grant the protection of the Geneva Conventions - face a form of psychological torture by being refused information about their future or access to legal advice. There are regular reports of suicide attempts among the prisoners and recently Commander Louis Louk, the officer in charge of the prison's hospital, revealed that one in five of the prisoners received medication for what he termed "clinical depression".

Against this backdrop the Bush administration received unprecedented criticism last month from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only non-state organisation permitted to visit the camp, which said its refusal to inform prisoners about their future was causing an intolerable situation. "The main concern for us is that the US authorities have effectively placed them beyond the law," said Amanda Williamson, an ICRC spokes-woman. "After more than 18 months of captivity, the internees have no idea about their fate, no means of recourse through any legal mechanism. They have been placed in a legal vacuum, a legal black hole. This, for the ICRC, is unacceptable."

Despite such criticism, the attitude of the US appears clear. While it has not yet charged a single prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay, there are no plans to release the majority of them soon. Although a handful of the oldest and most sick have been repatriated the US authorities are putting up long-term buildings at the base and replacing the razor wire and fencing with solid walls.

Campaigners say that rather than building permanent prison facilities, the US should grant the prisoners legal access and allow them "due process". Wendy Patten, US advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said it was essential that the US observed the Geneva Conventions, which would give the prisoners free and unfettered access to lawyers.

"Here are a set of rules that governments abide by during times of war," she said. "The signal that the US sends out by refusing to observe them is that it is all right to pick and choose from the rules of war."

Campaigners received a boost last week when the Supreme Court announced that it would examine whether Guantanamo Bay fell within the jurisdiction of the US courts. Lower courts had supported the claim of the Bush administration that Guantanamo Bay, technically leased from Cuba, was outside the jurisdiction and prisoners were not eligible for the protection of the US constitution. If the Supreme Court places Guantanamo Bay within US legal jurisdiction there is likely to be a flood of lawsuits demanding the US to charge the prisoners or release them. Ms Patten said: "The question is can the government carve out a place in the world beyond the law, beyond the reach of the courts that review the legality of such actions."

I've registered olrr.net to provide a shorter URL to point people to when they want to check out my blog.

Hope you find it useful!

Spread the word!

(Thanks for the great idea, Kevin!)

SJC: Gay Marriage Legal in Mass.
By Kathleen Burge for The Boston Globe.

The Supreme Judicial Court today became the nation's first state supreme court to rule that same-sex couples have the legal right to marry.

"We declare that barring an individual from the protections, benefits and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts constitution," Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote in the 4-3 decision.

The ruling won't take effect for 180 days in order to allow the Legislature "to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion," the court ruled in its 50-page decision. Since the SJC is the ultimate authority on the state constitution, however, the Legislature cannot overturn today's decision -- nor would the US Supreme Court agree to interpret a state's constitution.

Opponents could fight for a constitutional amendment, but the soonest that could be placed on the ballot is 2006. The Legislature has already been considering several bills, including one that would allow gay marriage, that would grant benefits to same-sex couples.

The SJC ruling held that the Massachusetts constitution "forbids the creation of second-class citizens." The state Attorney General's office, which argued to the court that state law doesn't allow gay couples to marry, "has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marraige to same-sex couples," Marshall wrote.

The court rejected the claim of a lower court judge that the primary purpose of marriage was procreation.

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

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/11/18/sjc_gay_marriage_legal_in_mass/

SJC: Gay Marriage Legal in Mass.
By Kathleen Burge
The Boston Globe

Tuesday 18 November 2003

The Supreme Judicial Court today became the nation's first state supreme court to rule that same-sex couples have the legal right to marry.

"We declare that barring an individual from the protections, benefits and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts constitution," Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote in the 4-3 decision.

The ruling won't take effect for 180 days in order to allow the Legislature "to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion," the court ruled in its 50-page decision. Since the SJC is the ultimate authority on the state constitution, however, the Legislature cannot overturn today's decision -- nor would the US Supreme Court agree to interpret a state's constitution.

Opponents could fight for a constitutional amendment, but the soonest that could be placed on the ballot is 2006. The Legislature has already been considering several bills, including one that would allow gay marriage, that would grant benefits to same-sex couples.

The SJC ruling held that the Massachusetts constitution "forbids the creation of second-class citizens." The state Attorney General's office, which argued to the court that state law doesn't allow gay couples to marry, "has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marraige to same-sex couples," Marshall wrote.

The court rejected the claim of a lower court judge that the primary purpose of marriage was procreation.

Marshall was joined in the majority opinion by Justices John Greaney, Roderick Ireland, and Judith Cowin. Justices Francis Spina, Martha Sosman, and Robert Cordy opposed the decision.

In the dissent, Cordy wrote that the state's marriage statute historically described the union of one man and one woman. The law did not violate the Massachusetts constitution because "the Legislature could rationally conclude that it furthers the legitimate state purpose of ensuring, promoting and supporting an optimal social structure for the bearing and raising of children," Cordy wrote.

The SJC case began in 2001 after seven same-sex couples from Boston to Northampton to Orleans went to their local city or town offices and applied for marriage licenses. When their requests were rejected, they filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court.

The couples sued the state Department of Public Health, which administers marriage laws and requires blood tests. In May 2002, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Thomas E. Connolly threw out the case before it went to trial.

Connolly ruled that the state constitution does not give same-sex couples the right to marry. Children have long been considered central to marriage, he wrote, and same-sex couples cannot bear children. The seven couples appealed to the SJC, and the justices agreed to hear the case.

The court battle drew national attention as the latest battleground for gay marriage. Hundreds of groups from Dorchester to Australia weighed in on the case, filing more than two dozen friend-of-the-court briefs.

State attorney generals in Utah, Nebraska, and South Dakota opposed the seven couples. So did religious groups from Catholics to fundamental Protestants to Orthodox Jews. Dozens of groups, including state and local bar associations, also supported the seven couples.

Since the SJC heard the case in early March, there have been significant legal developments in gay rights. In June, Canada voted to allow same-sex marraige after the Ontario Court of Appeals declared prohibitions against homosexual marriage unconstitutional.

"The restriction against same-sex marriage is an offense to the dignity of lesbians and gays, because it limits the range of relationship options open," the Canadian court wrote.

At the end of June, the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law in a 6-3 decision, ruling that gays have the constitutional right to make fundamental choices about "intimate conduct."

The Supreme Court decision was sweeping in its endorsement of gay rights. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the dissenters, argued that the majority decision would likely pave the way for gay marriage.

Today's decision capped months of anticipation that recalled a similar drama in Vermont, the first state in the country to establish civil unions for gay couples. Three gay couples sued that state in the late 1990s after being denied the right to marry.

Five days before Christmas in 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the Vermont constitution mandated equal treatment of heterosexual and homosexual couples. The court left it to the legislature to decide whether to allow gay marriage or to create a parallel institution for gay couples.

Then-Gov. Howard Dean immediately announced he would support the latter, declaring himself uncomfortable with explicit gay marriage. The debate split the state's normally liberal electorate in a bitter debate, but the legistlature acted quickly. Four months after the court ruled, Dean signed civil unions legislation in a private ceremony that did not defuse opponents' anger.

That fall, campaigning for re-election in a state famed for its small-town civility, the governor donned a bullet-proof vest. Dean, who had won four previous landslides, barely got 50 percent of the vote, the level needed under Vermont law to avoid a run-off in the legislature.

Effects from Vermont's law rippled around the country. Gay couples forbidden to codify their partnerships in any other state flocked to the Green Mountains for civil unions. The debate has prompted some American newspapers to include civil union announcements in their wedding pages. And Dean touts his signing the law as part of his presidential campaign platform.

Simon Perry was nice enough to provide us with some

Photos.

Incredible animation which presents some frightening, perhaps enlightening statistics about this senseless war:

Their Blood Is On Bush's Hands

I interviewed Craig Newmark for a project in one of my graduate classes.

Here's an excerpt (complete transcription below):

A: Craigslist, as I think about it more and more. What I've done, not consciously, but just implemented what I could of the philosophy that I guess I've adopted, not consciously, and that seems to be happening by many people on the Net. The deal is that, in the early 90's, a lot of people, including myself, somehow figured that eventually the Net would change the way we do everything. That includes business, it includes socializing -- the way we connect to people, plus online and in real life, and it might also change the world in terms of the way we govern ourselves, the way we get help when a country's in trouble. I even felt that a little bit when I saw the ArpaNet in the early 70's when I was at CASE tech. And this was pretty good.

And nowadays, after the bubble is over, we now see that the Net has started to change everything. It's changing the way we do business in a number of areas. It's changing the way we socialize in a number of ways, particularly dating and so on. The ubiquity of digital cameras has also accelerated online dating, and we're now seeing, or beginning to see, the Internet changing the way we govern ourselves, at least in the U.S. The Net has strongly influenced the way the Dean people are doing their thing... another way to look at it is, in the early 90's we had this technology we think is going to change the world. We had this bubble, which distracted a lot of people with a lot of money and, on the down side, the bursting of that bubble lost a lot of people jobs and lost a lot of people their retirement money. On the positive side, this world-changing, democratizing technology got developed a lot faster than otherwise. It got deployed a lot faster than otherwise. A lot of people go trained in that technology throughout the world who are, in my fantasy at least, now going around the world changing it. That's not bad.

Q: Do you purposefully use technology to change the world?

A: That wasn't my vision originally. I just wanted to connect better with people. To let them know what's going on. To hear about what's going on, and that worked pretty well. Doing this has helped me realize that we don't save the world with big deal social activism normally. We change the world through many, many little acts of good will, and I just provided a platform where people can in fact implement many thousands or millions acts of good will. We're not the only ones, but, you know, we do a good job of it, and we're growing.

Here's the complete interview:

Q: How did Craigslist first get started? It was an event list, right?

Craig: 1994. I was at Charles Schwab. Evangelizing the Net and saying that the brokerage business would work that way someday. I saw a lot of people helping each other out, particularly on the Well and Usenet news groups, and figured "well, I should do some of that." So, early '95, I decided that I would start sending people notices about cool events, usually ones that involved arts and technology. And from there, via word of mouth, the news of the list spread. People wanted to be added. People wanted more stuff like jobs or stuff to sell posted there. And then I said "how 'bout apartments?" and it just grew like that. People wanted more, had suggestions. We did it. And that's the pattern to this day.

Q: What technology did you originally use for Craigslist?

A: Originally, it was borrowed kind of stuff. Simple cc: lists for email. That broke in the middle of '95. Started using majordomo by virtue of a friend's donation. Then I realized I could write code to turn the email logs into web pages. Used Perl for that. Ran on friend's machines. Linux servers usually. At one point we actually got a cheap Sun/Solaris machine, but that lasted less than a year. And from there just went on to Linux systems. Now using all sorts of open source. Apache, MySql, Squidcache, Qmail, and lots of Perl.

Q: That was what you used then? Or what you use now? Don't you have more sophisticated filtering and things?

A: Nowadays, we use all open source stuff. Everything we do is custom made beyond that. But we only switched over to a real database in late '99. Prior to that, I actually used a simple old email tool called "Pine" to manage the contents of those log files. They were effectively our database then, which is crude but effective in a very deep sense. Pine as a mail tool is really good. It's a text kind of tool, but it operates for me better than anything point and click.

Q: What made you decide to go to a real database from the Pine system you were using?

A: We figured that using Pine to manage email logs was going to break down fairly quickly as volume grew. It's just not a very efficient tool for anything but a very tiny database. And it was still kind of tiny in '99. Now we have going on about 1.5 million postings every month.

Q: And how many did you have in '99 before you made the switch? Like at what number did you decide "we can't do this anymore?"

A: I'm honestly not sure, but it would be I think in the thousands -- something like that. That was just one city back then, and now we have 23 cities with an expansion scheduled very soon, and that may add, depending on, well our guess of what we can take, we might add anywhere from 4 to 20 new cities.

Q: In the United States?

A: United States and maybe a few beyond. Maybe Canada. Maybe a little Europe. We're in London now, which has stabilized at about 800,000 page views a month.

Q: And what database do you use?

A: MySql.

Q: How do you feel in general about implementing new technologies?

A: Some of the new software technologies, particularly Java-based, are exciting. Some of the possibilities intrinsic in social software, reputation management, are pretty exciting, but first we got to do basics, and we got to do basics right. We have to do what people need from us, and we have to keep it really fast. That's more important.

Q: Than implementing a new technology just cause it's neat?

A: Right. We're not interested in technology just because it's cool.

Q: Can you think of a situation in the past where you implemented a new technology and thought it was going to help, and then it ended up creating more obstacles, and you ended up going back to whatever you were originally using?

A: Well, since we have introduced new function, new technology, carefully and gingerly, we've only had one setback. In the middle of 2000, we anonymized all postings. That is that we implemented an email relay system and applied it to everything where it said "anon-number@craigslist.org," like "anon-6073@craigslist.org." Again, that helped preserve people's anonymity in personals, plus, if a spammer gets a hold of that, well, it will expire soon.

So as a mechanism for minimizing spamming, that worked pretty well. But, a lot of people liked seeing other email addresses there, so we backed out of implementing that for everything. And now, that's an option. I think that's the closest we've ever come to backing out of something....Oh, also, at one point, I did use some Java servlets for some things, like subscription management, but the big problem back then was that the Linux libraries for Java, specifically involving networking, were flaky. But this was in 1997, when servlets were just in alpha mode.

Q: So you ended up...?

A: Everything's in Perl now. In fact, most of it's migrating to be ModPerl.

Q: So when you did that Java servlet thing, you just went back to Perl, because of the Linux libraries?

A: Yes.

Q: Can you think of a specific situation, again, where things kind of forked? I'm looking for a situation where there were a number of different options, and you ended up choosing one of the others and why?

A: Very little of that actually happened. The only such choice that comes to me is when I decided on a directory structure where postings would go after I generated them, even for different parts of the bay area, now doing parts of New York City. And I made a decision then, which, well, looks wrong now, though we're still not sure, but we're sticking with it just because it's not worth changing.

Q: Could you elaborate?

A: It just has to do with using separate directories for each sub area, rather than just relying on posting identifiers to differentiate postings in much bigger directories. And this gets into the arcana of Unix and Linux systems, and it's just a detail which no one else, you know, no one sees, but I've agonized over in the past.

Q: What have you been agonizing over?

A: Well, it's just the use of an extra level of subdirectory in path names for postings in the Bay Area or New York now, and it just goes down a level deeper than I might have chosen otherwise.

Q: So what are the pros and the cons of doing the subdirectory thing?

A: In the subdirectory case, I thought it might be faster since Linux systems, Unix systems are to be better at more directories with smaller numbers of files, as I recall. I could be wrong about that, and the tech people talk about it, but I haven't thought about the issue for a long time.

Q: So that's the pro. What would be the con of doing that?

A: Don't know offhand. I've forgotten most of the issues.

Q: How involved are other people in your decisions at Craigslist? And again, we've been talking about the technology, but include the social aspects too in your answer.

A: For the most part, day-to-day decisions are made by the people who have to implement them, which is to say the tech people, the billing people, and the customer service people. So we've driven decision-making power down to the line workers. Jim and I will still make overall directional decisions, but often only after soliciting feedback from the team and from the community.

Q: How many people do you have working for you now?

A: There are a total of 13 of us right now, and I'm pretty much positive that we'll have one more tech person rejoining us in a couple weeks.

Q: Now is that less than you used to have?

A: Yes. I think we've had 18, maybe 19 at most.

Q: So you had to scale down from before?

A: We did scale down, especially as we entered the recession after the bubble burst.

Q: Do you have any kind of overall philosophy? We touched on it a little bit before when we talked about new technologies and how it's better to keep things going and maintained well than to implement new stuff kind of for the sake of itself...

A: Do you mean the philosophy of Craig's list? What would you like?

Q: I guess social philosophy...

A: I just realized that I have a number of books that pertain...Like, there's a number of books on networking theory, like there's 6 degrees there, "Linked" by Barobasi..there's Smart Mobs...a book called Sync...

Q: I'm more interested in your philosophy...

A: Those have influenced me though.

Q: Oh okay.

A: Craigslist, as I think about it more and more. What I've done, not consciously, but just implemented what I could of the philosophy that I guess I've adopted, not consciously, and that seems to be happening by many people on the Net. The deal is that, in the early 90's, a lot of people, including myself, somehow figured that eventually the Net would change the way we do everything. That includes business, it includes socializing -- the way we connect to people, plus online and in real life, and it might also change the world in terms of the way we govern ourselves, the way we get help when a country's in trouble. I even felt that a little bit when I saw the ArpaNet in the early 70's when I was at CASE tech. And this was pretty good.

And nowadays, after the bubble is over, we now see that the Net has started to change everything. It's changing the way we do business in a number of areas. It's changing the way we socialize in a number of ways, particularly dating and so on. The ubiquity of digital cameras has also accelerated online dating, and we're now seeing, or beginning to see, the Internet changing the way we govern ourselves, at least in the U.S. The Net has strongly influenced the way the Dean people are doing their thing. Possibly Clark and Kerry. In addition, it's started to influence the passage of law. For example, the Financial Privacy Law passed in California was influenced this way. Same is true of in California of the anti-spam law. And I may end up working more with Consumer's Union on this because they're starting to put a lot of energy into this. Maybe I'll have to give AARP a call too, since I'm a card-carrying member. AARP being the American Association of Retired People.

Q: You're not going to retire anytime soon, are you?

A: You can join as early as 50. And I wanted to be a card-carrying senior citizen.

Philosophy -- another way to look at it is, in the early 90's we had this technology we think is going to change the world. We had this bubble, which distracted a lot of people with a lot of money and, on the down side, the bursting of that bubble lost a lot of people jobs and lost a lot of people their retirement money. On the positive side, this world-changing, democratizing technology got developed a lot faster than otherwise. It got deployed a lot faster than otherwise. A lot of people go trained in that technology throughout the world who are, in my fantasy at least, now going around the world changing it. That's not bad.

Q: Do you purposefully use technology to change the world?

A: That wasn't my vision originally. I just wanted to connect better with people. To let them know what's going on. To hear about what's going on, and that worked pretty well. Doing this has helped me realize that we don't save the world with big deal social activism normally. We change the world through many, many little acts of good will, and I just provided a platform where people can in fact implement many thousands or millions acts of good will. We're not the only ones, but, you know, we do a good job of it, and we're growing.

Info about today's Special Registration Protest

My Husband Died in Vain
By Severin Carrell and Andrew Buncombe for the Independent UK.

President George Bush will be accused this week of lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in a face-to-face meeting with the families of British soldiers killed in the war, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Mr Bush announced last week he was prepared to meet a small group of families of the British war dead. The names have not been officially revealed but two of the invited families have come forward to talk exclusively to the IoS, saying they will challenge the US President to explain why he went to war without a United Nations mandate and why no chemical and biological weapons have been found.

Lianne Seymour, whose husband, Commando Ian Seymour, was killed in a helicopter crash at the outbreak of the war, welcomed the chance to meet Mr Bush. But she dismissed his claim that the 53 Britons killed so far in Iraq had died in a good cause. She said: "Bush has been suggesting that he's going to put our minds at rest. He suggests our husbands' lives weren't lost in vain. However, I'm going to challenge him on it.

"They misled the guys going out there. You can't just do something wrong and hope you find a good reason for it later. That's why we have all the UN guidelines in the first place."...

Quite how his meeting the families of British servicemen killed in Iraq will be perceived at home is unclear: the President has not attended the funerals of any of the American troops killed. Nor has he visited any of the thousands of injured troops who have returned to the US.

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

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=464210

My Husband Died in Vain
By Severin Carrell and Andrew Buncombe
Independent UK

Sunday 16 November 2003

What one British widow will tell Mr Bush this week.

President George Bush will be accused this week of lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in a face-to-face meeting with the families of British soldiers killed in the war, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Mr Bush announced last week he was prepared to meet a small group of families of the British war dead. The names have not been officially revealed but two of the invited families have come forward to talk exclusively to the IoS, saying they will challenge the US President to explain why he went to war without a United Nations mandate and why no chemical and biological weapons have been found.

Lianne Seymour, whose husband, Commando Ian Seymour, was killed in a helicopter crash at the outbreak of the war, welcomed the chance to meet Mr Bush. But she dismissed his claim that the 53 Britons killed so far in Iraq had died in a good cause. She said: "Bush has been suggesting that he's going to put our minds at rest. He suggests our husbands' lives weren't lost in vain. However, I'm going to challenge him on it.

"They misled the guys going out there. You can't just do something wrong and hope you find a good reason for it later. That's why we have all the UN guidelines in the first place."

Another relative, Tony Maddison, whose stepson Marine Christopher Maddison was killed, allegedly by friendly fire, during a battle near Basra, said: "I'm beginning to feel Mr Blair has been a puppet, so I'm looking forward to meeting Bush, to ask: 'What are you doing to our Prime Minister? Look what he's doing to our country.'"

Mr Maddison and his wife, Julie, suspect that the spectre of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was raised to "frighten" the country into war, although they think it was right to topple Saddam. "We've gone to war for the wrong reasons," he said. "I'm still hoping that weapons of mass destruction will be discovered, but I'm beginning to think we were being lied to."

Details of Mr Bush's meeting with the families are being kept secret for security reasons, but it is expected to take place at the end of the week at an undisclosed location in London.

The three-day state visit this week will be met by an unprecedented security operation. About 5,000 police officers and 250 US secret service agents will guard the President and cover a series of protests being planned. The scale of the antipathy many Britons feel towards Mr Bush was revealed last night by a YouGov poll in which 60 per cent of those questioned branded him a threat to world peace.

In a significant about-turn, the police are expected to allow the largest march, on Thursday, to go past Downing Street and Parliament in a bid to avert violent clashes with hardline demonstrators.

Among the marchers will be the sister of Lieutenant Philip Green, a Royal Navy helicopter pilot killed in a crash in the Gulf. Juliet McGrory, whose father, Richard Green, has fiercely attacked the war, said: "Bush says my brother died for a 'noble cause', which, after the pain of recent months, I find an incredible statement. I don't understand how killing innocent civilians can possibly be described as a 'noble cause'. The trip is nothing more than a masquerade and a PR opportunity."

The state visit can hardly have come at a worse time for Mr Bush, with polls in the US showing that public confidence over his ability to deal with the problems in Iraq is falling. For the first time, more than 50 per cent have said they "disapprove" of the way he is handling the situation.

The trip threatens to be a PR disaster for the President and his officials have tried - apparently in vain - to ensure that is he kept as far away from demonstrators as possible.

Asked this week about the protesters he will encounter in the capital, Mr Bush said: "I don't expect everybody in the world to agree with the positions I've taken. I'm so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their minds. That's fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing."

Quite how his meeting the families of British servicemen killed in Iraq will be perceived at home is unclear: the President has not attended the funerals of any of the American troops killed. Nor has he visited any of the thousands of injured troops who have returned to the US.

Fox Nearly Sued Itself Over 'Simpsons' Parody
By Agence France Presse.

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel threatened to sue the makers of "The Simpsons" over a parody of the channel's right-wing political stance, the creator of the hit US television show has claimed.

In an interview this week with National Public Radio, Matt Groening recalled how the news channel had considered legal action, despite the fact that "The Simpsons" is broadcast on sister network, Fox Entertainment.

According to Groening, Fox took exception took a Simpsons' version of the Fox News rolling news ticker which parodied the channel's anti-Democrat stance, with headlines like "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?"

"Fox fought against it and said they would sue the show," Groening said.

"We called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. So, we got away with it."

Other satirical Fox news bulletins featured in the show included: "Study: 92 per cent of Democrats are gay... JFK posthumously joins Republican Party... Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple..."

While the lawsuit never materialized, Groening said some action was taken.

"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," he said.

"The Simpsons," featuring the dysfunctional family of patriarch Homer Simpson and his rowdy brood, is now in its 14th year and is expected to become the longest-running situation comedy in US history in 2005.

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

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/110103J.shtml

Fox Nearly Sued Itself Over 'Simpsons' Parody
Agence France Presse

Wednesday 29 October 2003

NEW YORK (AFP) - Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel threatened to sue the makers of "The Simpsons" over a parody of the channel's right-wing political stance, the creator of the hit US television show has claimed.

In an interview this week with National Public Radio, Matt Groening recalled how the news channel had considered legal action, despite the fact that "The Simpsons" is broadcast on sister network, Fox Entertainment.

According to Groening, Fox took exception took a Simpsons' version of the Fox News rolling news ticker which parodied the channel's anti-Democrat stance, with headlines like "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?"

"Fox fought against it and said they would sue the show," Groening said.

"We called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. So, we got away with it."

Other satirical Fox news bulletins featured in the show included: "Study: 92 per cent of Democrats are gay... JFK posthumously joins Republican Party... Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple..."

While the lawsuit never materialized, Groening said some action was taken.

"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," he said.

"The Simpsons," featuring the dysfunctional family of patriarch Homer Simpson and his rowdy brood, is now in its 14th year and is expected to become the longest-running situation comedy in US history in 2005.

This one's a little late getting up, but better late than never.

Recall Lessons for the President
By Howard Fineman for Newsweek.

It would be nice to think that the ending of Election Day here will bring peace to the politics of California, and to the country. It would be nice, but wrong. Don't expect an end to partisan rancor, voter anger and alienation, here or elsewhere. This state's political warfare will resume long before Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger actually takes office. And the same forces that are shaking Sacramento could materialize on the doorstep of the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave...

But in an odd but important way, the Arnold victory could be an ominous message for President Bush. There is a straight line of voter protest running from Ross Perot through John McCain and on to the Internet-based campaigns of Wesley Clark and even Howard Dean. To some extent, all were or are powered by a sense of voter alienation from the centers of authority in government politics-whether those center are in Sacramento or Washington, D.C. The bigger and more remote the government, the more ignored and misunderstood the voters feel.

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

http://www.msnbc.com/news/977064.asp

Recall Lessons for the President
By Howard Fineman Newsweek

Tuesday 07 October 2003

Voter alienation will not stop at voting booths in California

It would be nice to think that the ending of Election Day here will bring peace to the politics of California, and to the country. It would be nice, but wrong. Don't expect an end to partisan rancor, voter anger and alienation, here or elsewhere. This state's political warfare will resume long before Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger actually takes office. And the same forces that are shaking Sacramento could materialize on the doorstep of the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

There are a lot of reasons. Starting with the winning candidate, here are some:

Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Grope-a-Dope" strategy-the modern version of what they used to call in the Nixon days a "modified limited hangout"-will cause him nothing but problems. Swamped by allegations of sexual misconduct, his fateful answer was to promise a full accounting after Election Day. Now that he's won, his first task won't be to put together his administration but to spell out of the rest of his story. I assumed that he was winging it when he told Tom Brokaw on NBC that he would do that. Turns out, this was a deliberate and considered response. His team, its leaders say, simply did not have the time and resources to go into the details during the campaign. He'll have to do so in Sacramento. This at the same time he will have to put together a new administration with none of the usual "transition" time.

The Budget California's economy is a mess, and the state's budget is, on an annual basis, at least $10 billion in the red. No matter who takes charge in Sacramento, the same gridlock will remain: The Republicans in the legislature are dead-set against raising taxes; the Democrats, who control the place, won't vote for any. If Arnold won, I was told before the vote, the Democrats would gladly accept Schwarzenegger's likely offer to enter into sweeping negotiations. Why? Because they hope to lure Gov. Terminator into agreeing to a tax hike - thus busting up the highly fragile GOP coalition that got him elected.

Recalls Forever Once having started down the recall road, this state can't turn back. The Democratic recall campaign against Schwarzenegger could begin immediately. Choose your excuse. If he fails to give the full accounting he promised of his sexual conduct, that could be one reason. If he fails to craft a budget deal, or he advocates massive cuts in social programs (which he would have to do if there is no tax increase) would be another. "The rules of politics and government here have changed, probably forever," Democratic strategist Bill Carrick told me. "This is the way it's going to be."'

California GOP Division One of Schwarzenegger's toughest tasks will be to make peace with is own party. Social conservatives, in California and elsewhere, were disgusted by the litany of stories about Schwarzenegger's personal behavior. If he moves his lips on taxes, they will be his mortal enemy.

Democratic Second-Guessing The anger of Democrats at Davis is real. They are furious with him for having underestimated voter dismay at the state of the local economy; at the severity of the energy crisis; at the potency of the recall movement. Schwarzenegger's win means the bloodletting will be ugly. "If we lose, there will be three reasons," one prominent Democratic contributor told me here before the vote. "Davis, Davis and Davis." Beyond that, Democrats were expressing their anger at Davis and his allies (notably Sen. Dianne Feinstein and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown). In their view, they should have engineered another, stronger, Democratic alternative on the ballot to Davis and Bustamante. Their view (and it may be wishful thinking) is that someone like Feinstein could have saved the day.

National Republican Division The big parlor game here before Election Day was arguing about whether George Bush's GOP would welcome a victorious Schwarzenegger into the heart of the party. The quick-response answer is yes: The Republicans haven't controlled (if that's the word) the governorship of the largest state since 1998. But depending on what Arnold has to say- in detail-about his past, the Bible Belt conservatives who form the heart of the modern GOP might balk at embracing the Terminator at the New York convention.

Protest Politics The Schwarzenegger win would seem to be a blessing to the GOP, and to Bush. If nothing else, it would spread the Democratic defense in the Electoral College, forcing them next year to spend time and money defending a state-California-that they have come to take for granted in recent presidential elections.

But in an odd but important way, the Arnold victory could be an ominous message for President Bush. There is a straight line of voter protest running from Ross Perot through John McCain and on to the Internet-based campaigns of Wesley Clark and even Howard Dean. To some extent, all were or are powered by a sense of voter alienation from the centers of authority in government politics-whether those center are in Sacramento or Washington, D.C. The bigger and more remote the government, the more ignored and misunderstood the voters feel.

Davis was under assault because he seemed oblivious to the concerns of Californians. Given his poll ratings on the economy and, now Iraq, Bush runs the increasing risk of being viewed by the American people as just another deaf politico. Until recently, the president's greatest asset was the sense that he was a decent guy, with good values, who wanted to do the right thing. But the questions that have been raised about the rationale for going to war in Iraq have had a corrosive effect on the sense of trust he evoked in most voters.

I know Bush (and Davis). Bush is no Davis. He is as personable as Davis is colorless. But the same rule applies: If voters think you aren't listening to them, they have a way of getting your attention at the next available election.

Bush Aides Will Review Leak Notes
By David Jackson for the The Dallas Morning News.

White House lawyers will review phone logs and other records supplied by presidential aides before turning the documents over to the Justice Department officials conducting the investigation into who leaked a CIA undercover operative's identity, officials said Monday.

The disclosure inspired new Democratic calls for an independent inquiry.

"To allow the White House counsel to review records before the prosecutors would see them is just about unheard of in the way cases are always prosecuted," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking on NBC's Today show. "And the possibility of mischief, or worse than mischief, is very, very large."

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

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/washington/topstory/stories/100703dnnatcialeak.11b0f.html

Bush Aides Will Review Leak Notes
By David Jackson The Dallas Morning News

Tuesday 07 October 2003

White House's decision to give first look to its lawyers riles Democrats

White House lawyers will review phone logs and other records supplied by presidential aides before turning the documents over to the Justice Department officials conducting the investigation into who leaked a CIA undercover operative's identity, officials said Monday.

The disclosure inspired new Democratic calls for an independent inquiry.

"To allow the White House counsel to review records before the prosecutors would see them is just about unheard of in the way cases are always prosecuted," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking on NBC's Today show. "And the possibility of mischief, or worse than mischief, is very, very large."

Administration officials said the White House counsel's office may need up to two weeks to organize documents that some 2,000 employees are required to submit by 5 p.m. Tuesday.

The documents must also be reviewed for national security or executive privilege concerns and to ensure the filings are responsive to Justice Department requests for information, White House aides said. The department is investigating whether Bush administration officials exposed a CIA operative's identity to reporters and a columnist, Robert Novak.

Bush: 'Criminal action' President Bush underscored his concern about the leak Monday, telling reporters: "We're talking about a criminal action."

The president said information would be submitted to the Justice Department "on a timely basis," calling the investigation "a very serious matter, and our administration takes it seriously."

"I'd like to know who leaked," Mr. Bush added. "And if anybody has got any information, inside our government or outside our government, who leaked, they ought to take it to the Justice Department so we can find out the leaker."

White House officials are required to turn in any documents they may have related to the principals in the matter, including former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, his wife, Valerie Plame, and any reporters who were contacted about the couple.

White House spokeswoman Ashley Snee said she could not put a timeline on when the documents might be turned over to the Justice Department but said the review would be expeditious.

"It's going to be done with the intent of getting to the bottom of this," Ms. Snee said. "This is almost 2,000 people."

Mr. Schumer and other Democrats have called for an outside special counsel, questioning whether Attorney General John Ashcroft can fairly investigate his patrons at the White House.

Mr. Bush defended his Justice Department, saying, "These are ... professional prosecutors who are leading this investigation."

Mark Rozell, a Catholic University politics professor who specializes in executive privilege, said it was reasonable for White House lawyers to take time to review the materials before sharing them with investigators. The length, he said, is up to the White House and its opponents.

"There can be an argument over whether two weeks is the appropriate amount of time," he said.

Charges of revenge Investigators want to find out who told reporters about Ms. Plame's identity. Mr. Wilson, who disputed the White House assertion that Iraq sought enriched uranium from Niger, says administration officials sought revenge by exposing his wife.

Mr. Bush cited the uranium allegation during his 2003 State of the Union address, using it to argue that Saddam Hussein was trying to restart a nuclear program.

Mr. Wilson, who believed his report from a 2002 trip to Niger had been ignored, went public with his skepticism in a July 6 op-ed piece for The New York Times. The next day, the White House retracted the uranium claim, saying Mr. Bush should not have used it in his speech.

A week later, Mr. Novak wrote a column questioning why Mr. Wilson drew the assignment to check out the Niger allegations that began with intelligence officials in Italy.

"Wilson never worked for the CIA," Mr. Novak wrote, "but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

Mr. Wilson, who previously was posted in Niger, denied his wife played a role in his assignment to check out the uranium claim. Publication of her name has ruined her career as an undercover operative, he said. Exposure of a company she was associated with, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, also may have jeopardized a CIA front.

Appearing Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Mr. Wilson said: "I believe it was done to discourage others from coming forward."

Mr. Wilson has specifically accused White House political adviser Karl Rove of some involvement, though aides to Mr. Rove said he had nothing to do with the exposure of Ms. Plame.

The Justice Department opened the leak investigation at the behest of the CIA. White House Counsel Al Gonzales responded with memos to some 2,000 administration officials, ordering them to retain any Wilson-related records from Feb. 1, 2002, through Sept. 30, 2003. Those include computer files, telephone records, notes and memoranda.

I'm writing a term paper for my Ethics class on whether Michael Powell followed all the correct procedures when he pushed through the New Media Ownership rules last June. I'm guessing that he followed everything to the letter of the law, but writing the paper will help me learn about what "the process" actually is and know for sure.

Please email me at lisarein@finetuning.com with any links or relevant articles you know of about this subject that you think would be useful to my research. I'll be publishing the finished product here when I'm done.

Thanks!

Time constraints prohibit me from elaborating on this. Read for yourselves :-)
(Thanks, Kevin.)

Help Free The Berkeley 3!

11-17-03- Drop All Charges Against The Berkeley 3!

Free speech at Berkeley is under attack. Anti-war student organizers need your immediate help.

Call, email or write to: Asst. Chancellor John Cummins Office of the Chancellor 200 California Hall #1500 Berkeley, CA 94720-1500 jcummins@uclink4.berkeley.edu 510-642-7464

**Please CC your emails to the administration to: DefendBerkeley3@aol.com

Dean of Students Karen Kenney turned the clock back decades by approving sanctions against three Berkeley students for their part in a peaceful on campus sit-in on March 20 (for more details go to www.antiwarnetwork.org). The protest was organized by the Berkeley Stop the War coalition and involved 4,000 students at a rally with 400 participating in the sit-in. Rachel Odes and Snehal Shingavi face 20 hours of community service and a letter of reprimand permanently placed on their academic record. Michael Smith faces 30 hours of community service, plus a stayed suspension for one semester. Outrageously, Smith will be forced to submit to "anger management" at the university's infirmary. If he completes that "successfully," his suspension might be commuted to a letter of reprimand. This use of psychological treatment as punishment for a political activity recalls the classification of dissent as a "psychiatric disorder" in Stalinist Russia. Dean Kenney's actions mock Berkeley's reputation as a haven for freedom of speech and progressive political action.

Besides the obvious chilling effect on student's exercising their civil liberties on campus, the university continued its disregard for due process procedure in sentencing the students. For example:

*Chair of the Disciplinary Hearing Board Prof. Robert Jacobsen arbitrarily ruled that only 25 members of the Berkeley campus community could attend the hearing, despite repeated requests on the students' part that the hearing be open. At least 15 university police and private security guards barricaded the entrance to the hearing site to enforce this decision.

*Jacobsen missed the university-mandated deadline for issuing the disciplinary report.

*The university provides only unpaid undergraduates "advocates" to help with the defense. When the three students obtained legal representation on their own initiative, Jacobsen announced that he would allow the lawyer to participate only marginally in the hearings at his discretion as chair.

Following the hearing, the university announced that it would eliminate students' right to legal counsel so as to make the process more "educational." The Berkeley Daily Cal student newspaper editorial board correctly noted that: "To suggest students have something to learn from defending themselves already assumes their guilt." (http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13525)

Perhaps the most shocking component of the administration's prosecution stemmed from its conception of "progressive discipline." Under this theory, students who take part in more than one political protest face harsher and harsher punishments. So, for instance, the university based its argument to prosecute Shingavi, at least in part, on the fact that he was the "point person" for a previous protest conducted by the Students for Justice in Palestine. Although he was not arrested or charged in connection with that protest, his association with that organization and protest helped single him out for "progressive discipline." This legal theory of "guilt by association" led the Daily Cal to editorialize that "by picking out only three, the message sent from the university seems to be that free speech includes the right to participate in a protest, but not the right to organize one." (http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13176)

As the Bush administration carries out unprecedented attacks on hard won civil liberties, the Berkeley administration is shamefully jumping on the band wagon. Now that Dean Kenney has rubber-stamped Jacobsen's verdict, the last appeal goes to Asst. Chancellor John Cummins. He will issue his final decision within 15 days.

Ironically, on November 20, Amy Goodman from Pacifa Radio's "Democracy Now!" will receive the Mario Savio prize for free speech at a mass meeting on campus. The Berkeley Stop the War coalition plans to work with her to make sure that Asst. Chancellor Cummins hears the support for the Berkeley 3 loud and clear. We urge everyone who cares about free speech, the right to protest and academic freedom to take immediate action, by calling, emailing or writing to Cummins this week to demand that he drop all charges against the Berkeley 3. Especially, the frightening and irresponsible use of psychological "treatment" as a punishment for political activity.

We thank you in advance for you solidarity,

Todd Chretien Committee to Defend Student Civil Liberties

PS Many of you generously sent contributions towards the printing of a full page ad in the Daily Cal defending the Berkeley 3. That ad ran on October 27 and we believe it played an important part in forcing the university to back down from even harsher punishments for the students. (It can be viewed at www.antiwarnetwork.org) Some of you may have had your checks returned to you. That is because after the university found out that the Berkeley Stop the War coalition was soliciting defense donations, they took the unprecedented action of freezing all mail to that on-campus address. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you. If you'd like to re-send your contributions (or send one for the first time), you can send them to: BSTW PO Box 4001 Berkeley, CA 94704-0001

Civil rights group fears effect of e-voting company's threats
By Rachel Konrad for the Associated Press.

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argued in federal court Monday that North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc. should be barred from sending cease-and-desist letters to activists, who are publishing links to leaked documents about alleged security blunders at one of the nation's biggest e-voting companies.

Judge Jeremy Fogel is expected to issue a ruling as early as this week.

Free speech advocates at San Francisco-based EFF compare the case to the groundbreaking Pentagon Papers lawsuit. The secret government study of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was leaked to The New York Times, sparking a 1971 Supreme Court battle pitting the government against the media.

"I'm not making a judgment about which is more important, Vietnam policy or the future of voting in a democracy," Cohn said after the hearing in federal court in San Jose. "But this is important to the public debate ... and you can't squelch it."

Computer programmers, ISPs and students at least 20 universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received cease-and-desist letters. Many removed links to Diebold documents, but some - including San Francisco-based ISP Online Policy Group - refused, and sued Diebold.

They say the leaked documents raise serious security questions about Diebold, which controls 50,000 touch-screen voting terminals nationwide. They argue they have a right to publish the data under the "fair use" exception of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

OPG, which hosts at least 1,000 Web sites of nonprofit groups and individuals on 120 computer servers, also argues that the volunteer organization cannot be responsible for every link of every client.

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

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/7286033.htm

Civil rights group fears effect of e-voting company's threats

RACHEL KONRAD
Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A civil rights group fears that legal threats from an electronic voting company are having a "chilling effect" among Internet service providers, students and voting rights advocates.

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argued in federal court Monday that North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc. should be barred from sending cease-and-desist letters to activists, who are publishing links to leaked documents about alleged security blunders at one of the nation's biggest e-voting companies.

Judge Jeremy Fogel is expected to issue a ruling as early as this week.

Free speech advocates at San Francisco-based EFF compare the case to the groundbreaking Pentagon Papers lawsuit. The secret government study of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was leaked to The New York Times, sparking a 1971 Supreme Court battle pitting the government against the media.

"I'm not making a judgment about which is more important, Vietnam policy or the future of voting in a democracy," Cohn said after the hearing in federal court in San Jose. "But this is important to the public debate ... and you can't squelch it."

Computer programmers, ISPs and students at least 20 universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received cease-and-desist letters. Many removed links to Diebold documents, but some - including San Francisco-based ISP Online Policy Group - refused, and sued Diebold.

They say the leaked documents raise serious security questions about Diebold, which controls 50,000 touch-screen voting terminals nationwide. They argue they have a right to publish the data under the "fair use" exception of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

OPG, which hosts at least 1,000 Web sites of nonprofit groups and individuals on 120 computer servers, also argues that the volunteer organization cannot be responsible for every link of every client.

Robert A. Mittelstaedt, who represents Diebold, said the company didn't intend to stymie free speech or place onerous burdens on ISPs. He emphasized that Diebold objected to the activists and student groups' "wholesale reproduction" of 13,000 pages of internal documents.

Mittelstaedt said the file - still available on dozens of Web sites, including several overseas - gives rivals an inside look at proprietary data. He suggested voting advocates were ideologically opposed to Diebold, which refuses to publish source code.

"The plaintiffs advocate an open-source code system for elections code," Mittelstaedt said. "These materials were intended to be secret and private and proprietary."

Diebold's battle began in March, when a hacker broke into the company's servers using an employee's ID number, and copied company announcements, software bulletins and internal e-mails dating back to January 1999.

The majority of the 1.8-gigabyte file contains banal employee e-mails, software manuals and old voter record files. But several items raise security concerns that Silicon Valley programmers and voting rights advocates have been trying to publicize for more than a year.

In one series of e-mails, a senior engineer dismisses concern from a lower-level programmer who questions why Diebold lacked certification for the operating system in touch-screen voting machines. The Federal Election Commission requires such software to be certified by independent researchers.

In another e-mail, an executive scolded programmers for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.

"This potentially gives the software away to whomever wants it," the manager wrote.

In August, the hacker e-mailed data to voting activists, who published information on their Web logs. Wired News published an online story. The documents have been widely circulated.

Ka-Ping Yee, 27, a computer science graduate student at Berkeley who attended the hearing, said the documents make him skeptical about the U.S. elections process.

"These documents get people talking about the legitimacy of voting in America," said Yee, whose personal sites link to the data. "If a company can silence speech about a topic of extremely great importance, it could have a huge effect on all of our futures."

ON THE NET

EFF: http://eff.org/

Diebold: http://www.diebold.com

	Interview with LimeWire COO Greg Bildson By Lisa Rein for OpenP2P.com

Lisa Rein: So, you guys paid Brianna's RIAA fine?

Greg Bildson: Yes, we cut the check to her mother to reimburse her. We felt that suing a 12-year old in the Bronx wasn't the answer.

LR: Tell me more about P2P United.

GB: P2P United is basically trying to make sure that Congress doesn't do anything stupid, which they're apt to do in the technology world. We're trying to make sure to protect our rights to innovate and write software, and to address all of the bad mouthing the RIAA is constantly doing to P2P.

P2P was proven to be legal in that California decision. If there's anything we can do with respect to the overreach of the DMCA and invasion of privacy and, basically, due process -- we feel that there should be due process, and there should be an actual lawsuit before they are able to get information about users.

Congress is writing bills targeting P2P, and the RIAA is talking about pornography and homeland security and identity theft and all of these things that are really minor concerns, with regard to P2P. For the most part, Congress is either overreacting or doing the bidding of the RIAA.
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

For instance, there was a hearing regarding P2P and porn a few weeks ago. There are already laws that exist to punish people for being pedophiles; P2P's got nothing to do with it. In these cases, the content itself is illegal. P2P is not the concern when it comes to child endangerment, but they are constantly targeting P2P. They should go look at AOL and Yahoo chat rooms rather than P2P networks. Orin Hatch's presentation of child pornography began with a movie sponsored by the RIAA. The record industry is probably the last group of people to be protecting children, when their lyrics and videos are so explicit.

So the RIAA is basically using the high $150,000 per infringement to extort a settlement out of people who wouldn't even consider fighting it. People view this more like a speeding ticket instead of something where one act of infringement can cost you $150,000. We're in favor of people being able to protect their copyrights, but in a way that is fair. If the government is going to regulate, they need to know what they're doing. They shouldn't be getting their information only from the RIAA.

LR: So are you trying to educate Congress?

GB: Yes. P2P United is trying to educate Congress. However, their staffers need to be willing to be educated. So far, they've been willfully blind or ignorant.

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

http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/11/14/limewire.html

Interview with LimeWire COO Greg Bildson
by Lisa Rein
11/14/2003

Greg Bildson is the COO of LimeWire and president of P2P United, a consortium of P2P software companies created to help educate Congress and the public about peer-to-peer software, technology, and culture. P2P United is the organization that paid 12-year-old Brianna LaHara's $2,000 RIAA settlement after the RIAA served her with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoena.

Advertisement
P2P United is also trying to educate the RIAA about the many ways in which P2P technologies could be beneficial to its member companies. LimeWire's MagnetMix web site provides one example of the numerous ways that traditional web-based programming can be combined with P2P technologies to provide new kinds of experiences for music lovers.

In this interview, Lisa Rein catches up with Greg Bildson to hear his views on the state of P2P, the RIAA, and the challenge of educating lawmakers.
Yes, We Cut the Check

Lisa Rein: So, you guys paid Brianna's RIAA fine?

Greg Bildson: Yes, we cut the check to her mother to reimburse her. We felt that suing a 12-year old in the Bronx wasn't the answer.

LR: Tell me more about P2P United.

GB: P2P United is basically trying to make sure that Congress doesn't do anything stupid, which they're apt to do in the technology world. We're trying to make sure to protect our rights to innovate and write software, and to address all of the bad mouthing the RIAA is constantly doing to P2P.

P2P was proven to be legal in that California decision. If there's anything we can do with respect to the overreach of the DMCA and invasion of privacy and, basically, due process -- we feel that there should be due process, and there should be an actual lawsuit before they are able to get information about users.

Congress is writing bills targeting P2P, and the RIAA is talking about pornography and homeland security and identity theft and all of these things that are really minor concerns, with regard to P2P. For the most part, Congress is either overreacting or doing the bidding of the RIAA.
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

For instance, there was a hearing regarding P2P and porn a few weeks ago. There are already laws that exist to punish people for being pedophiles; P2P's got nothing to do with it. In these cases, the content itself is illegal. P2P is not the concern when it comes to child endangerment, but they are constantly targeting P2P. They should go look at AOL and Yahoo chat rooms rather than P2P networks. Orin Hatch's presentation of child pornography began with a movie sponsored by the RIAA. The record industry is probably the last group of people to be protecting children, when their lyrics and videos are so explicit.

So the RIAA is basically using the high $150,000 per infringement to extort a settlement out of people who wouldn't even consider fighting it. People view this more like a speeding ticket instead of something where one act of infringement can cost you $150,000. We're in favor of people being able to protect their copyrights, but in a way that is fair. If the government is going to regulate, they need to know what they're doing. They shouldn't be getting their information only from the RIAA.

LR: So are you trying to educate Congress?

GB: Yes. P2P United is trying to educate Congress. However, their staffers need to be willing to be educated. So far, they've been willfully blind or ignorant.

LR: Do you think that the RIAA might eventually see the various ways that P2P could be beneficial to their business model?

GB: We hope so. We're seen as a threat to the record industry, but there's definitely potential for a win-win solution. The discussion needs to move beyond sound bites for soccer moms. Congress is making sound bites rather than thinking seriously about technology or innovation.

LR: What do you think of compulsories for file sharing?

GB: The big media companies -- the "Big 5" -- have had a lock on both distribution and licensing in the past. If the RIAA had let people license their music in the 90s, they wouldn't have the piracy problem they have today. There was a natural demand. There's a benefit to the current world of having music currently available.

LR: What about iTunes and Buymusic.com? What do you think of them?

GB: They're steps in the right direction, but they're still radically overpriced. In the digital age, there's no reason for a song to cost 99 cents; it should be five cents. Another issue is that the Microsoft DRM looks to be too restrictive. Judging by the trend of recent PC pay-per-download sites that all use Microsoft DRM, handing another monopoly to Microsoft doesn't seem like a smart move.

ETech 2004 Conference

Session by Robert Kay
Building Next Generation File Sharing With Social Software

This talk will present social network models, detection avoidance strategies, attack strategies and a real world safety evaluation of such systems.

O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference
February 9-12, 2004
San Diego, CA

LR: So what's Magnetmix?

GB: We've been putting the technology in place for this for a while. It's an example of integrating P2P networks and the Web. We think that's what the future is going to be. The Web can present things nicer and give you nice images, while the existing P2P networks just act as sort of a raw Google search. "Magnet links" can work into P2P networks for a richer experience by packaging the content into a single download. We think that it's going to appeal to content creators in the future. The portals will highlight high-quality, legitimate content for high-quality independent artists of all kinds.

So rather than running their own web servers, artists will create their content and then bundle it into a package media file that's just a .zip file with an index.html file inside to launch from. This file is placed on a P2P network. The entire experience is serialized, if you will, in these packages.

LR: So a user would see the web page, and then click on the link to get the music via a P2P network, rather than eating up bandwidth.

GB: Right, with videos and pictures and things.

LR: ...that would be expensive to serve on the web?

GB: Right. It's expensive to serve, but it's easy to use P2P to share. We think there are going to be a lot of creative independents in the future. And you can build the advertising vehicles right into the packages, if you want.

LR: So how can artists implement this technology now?

GB: Anybody can put magnet links up. We're also accepting submissions and hosting content ourselves. It doesn't cost anything, and we don't see money being involved in the future.

LR: How would this work, actually?

GB: Right now people don't know what magnet links are, but in the near future, people will be using the LimeWire "Library." The LimeWire Library is a type of file browser. Within the Library tab of the LimeWire application, you will be able to view and create magnet links to files that you share, and be able to email links to these files. There will be options to view the magnet link or email the magnet link to others, so that they can click a link in their email to launch the magnet link "packages." The links will launch their LimeWire P2P client right from their email client.

LR: Is LimeWire cross-platform?

GB: Yes. It's cross-platform. It's in Java.

LR How many LimeWire users are there?

GB: We lost ability to track our users a while ago. But we've had at least 300,000 users a day for a while. We're pretty close to 50/50 on the Mac and PC platforms.

Lisa Rein is a co-founder of Creative Commons, a video blogger at On Lisa Rein's Radar, and a singer-songwriter-musican at lisarein.com.

The schmuks running this country are about to do it all over again. They are requiring a second round of immigrant special registrations.

Incredible.

Wish I had more time to elaborate. But I'll just see you at noon on Wednesday.

Refuse & Resist has endorsed the opposition to the special INS registrations - has part of taking on the whole reactionary agenda! Please get your friends and co workers to come out on Wed Nov 19th - Support our Arab, Muslims and South Asian brothers and sisters!

Remember what happened in World War 2 to the Japanese Americans - what would you have done then, what will you do now?

TAKING A STAND AGAINST SPECIAL RE-REGISTRATION

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003 BICE (INS) BUILDING, WASHINGTON AND SANSOME, San Francisco 11 AM TO 1 PM (Press conference at 12 noon).

The Dept. of "Homeland Security" Special Re-registrations of men and boys from 24 mainly Muslim countries has already begun again this month. Last year special registration meant humiliation, detentions and brutality for many of the nearly 90,000 who came in to register. This program has created fear, anxiety, frustration and despair in the Arab and Muslim communities, causing great distress to wives, children and relatives as reported by the American Muslim Voice nationwide hotline. Last year, registerees were fingerprinted, photographed, and had to turn over bankcards, social security cards, driver's licenses, credit cards and other information. Every time they left the country they were required to get an exit stamp and re-register upon return. And in the end, about 13,000 men are facing deportation proceedings! The pettiest of visa violations, even those caused by INS incompetence are now tearing families apart.

Now the same people who registered last year are being registered again.

Last year the protest of Iranians in Los Angeles in December and opposition in the streets in January across the country, brought the reality of this ugly program to light. These actions drew attention to the fact that the 1940s Alien Registration Act foreshadowed the round up and detention of 120,000 Japanese Americans. Registration also preceded the round up of Jews in Europe. This year, as the ACLU has pointed out, the secrecy surrounding registration has all the markings of a TRAP, by which those who do not realize they have to register or miss a deadline will be subject to deportation. The Blue Triangle Network in close association with American Muslim Voice and many other organizations is calling for a rally and press conference Wednesday, Nov. 19 to denounce special re-registration, demand an end to it, and stand in solidarity with people subjected to it. Please join this effort and PASS THE WORD.

Bill Moyers and friends have been outdoing themselves lately on NOW With Bill Moyers.

The last two programs on November 7 and November 14, 2003 have been so shocking and relevant that I find myself saying "damn" out loud over and over again with my mouth hanging open.

I really am going to have to ease up on my blogging over the next few weeks so I can concentrate on my graduate work (which, ironically, I will also be blogging about shortly). However, before I take that plunge, I decided I had to get this stuff up first so the ball could get rolling on properly exposing this stuff. (Stuff = Mistreatment of Shrub War Vets and The Connecton Between Certain Shrub Administration Officials and "Gold Rush" Iraqi reconstruction contracts.)

I don't know what exactly can be done about these situations, and I'm certainly in no position to do anything personally about them anytime soon. But I have to believe that somehow, some way, there's someone out there that has the power to help fix things, if only they knew about them.

Maybe now they will know.

Have a great day everybody!

Specifically, between Douglas Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense and several companies (many related to his "former" business associate Marc Zell), including: Zell, Goldberg and Company, Diligence, New Bridge Strategies, Barber, Griffith and Rogers, SAIC (courtesy of current Shrub Administration Official and former SAIC Senior Vice President Ryan Henry), and The Iraqi International Law Group.




This story aired on NOW With Bill Moyers on November 14, 2003.

This story, "Cash and Carry," was Produced by Katie Pitra, features correspondent Roberta Baskin, and was Edited by Alison Amron.

This incredible segment documents the direct connections between the Shrub Administration and the main two or three companies that are profiting directly from the Iraqi reconstruction.

Join them as they connect the dots and talk to several of these people first hand. (Many would not return their phone calls, but others were very up front and matter-of-fact about it.)

I've taken screen grabs of many of the diagrams and things and transcribed information straight from the program for your convenience.

Here's some technical information about getting quicktime going to watch these movies.

Bill Moyers - Cash and Carry - Complete (Small - 36 MB)
Bill Moyers - Cash and Carry - Part 1 of 3 (Small - 12 MB)
Bill Moyers - Cash and Carry - Part 2 of 3 (Small - 14 MB)
Bill Moyers - Cash and Carry - Part 3 of 3 (Small - 11 MB)

Below: Roberta Baskin

Here's Bill Moyers' Introduction:

"Welcome to NOW. The news from Iraq just keeps coming. A secret CIA report this week warns that 'more and more Iraqis believe the U.S. could actually lose the war.' American troops have started using Vietnam-like tactics, hitting back at suspected enclaves without proof that they're harboring insurgents. And American authorities are now limiting press access to both troops and independent contractors in Iraq...

As you know, there's a big debate over those billion dollar contracts being handed out to rebuild Iraq. Some Democratic Presidential candidates say the government is playing favorites. Defenders of the process, however, say "nonsense."...

..it's not easy to sort out the facts because the whole process in shrouded in buracracy and secrecy. One thing is certain, a lot of people in Washington and Baghdad look upon what's happening as a modern equivalent of a gold rush. They're not shy about promoting their political connections to get to the front of the line."

Here's Roberta Baskin's opening:

"Here beneath Iraq's landscape lies a vast ocean of oil. The second largest oil reserve in the world with over 100 billion barrels of crude ready to be tapped. When America invaded Iraq last March, troops raced first to secure the rich fields of Kier Cook (sp). So with vast reserves just waiting, why is the U.S. Government paying the Halliburton Corporation $2.65 per gallon to ship gasoline into Iraq from Kuwait, when one investigation discovered it could be done for less than a dollar a gallon.

The price difference alone is costing tax payers as much as a 100 million dollars. When we asked Halliburton about this discrepancy, they wouldn't tell us. And even a United States Congressman (Henry Waxman D-CA) can't find out why.

'Why are we paying $1.65 a gallon more? Is it because Halliburton is gouging the public? Is it because the Kuwaitis are overcharging Halliburton? Is it because there's a culture where they don't care what they pay because the tax payers are going to pay the bill so there's no reason for them to want to hold down the costs?' (Waxman) ...

'If the evidence of what Halliburton has been charging for gasoline to be brought into Iraq is emblematic of anything, it's emblematic of no oversight, no transparency, and fleecing of the tax payers.' (Waxman)...

Just as the war started, Halliburton was awarded a no bid 7 billion dollar contract to repair Iraq's oil industry...Halliburton proved itself after the first Gulf war, putting out the fires in the oil fields. The Pentagon has said it didn't want to waste time finding someone new if Saddam burned the oil fields again, but Waxman says it's a prime example of what's wrong with the secrecy surrounding the government's contracts, because in the initial 87 billion dollar Iraq aid package there was another 2 billion dollars for Halliburton. And when Waxman started asking, he says neither the goverment nor the company seemed to know whay the 2 billion dollars was there or what it was for.

'We've got billions here, billions there. As one senator once said "A billion here, a billion there, it starts adding up into real money." ' (Waxman)...

Who is Mark Zell?

Mark Zell is the principal of "Zell, Goldberg and Company," which assists American companies in connection with Iraqi reconstruction projects.

From Roberta Baskin:

"And just who at the firm can connect you to the American Government? None other than Marc Zell. A former law partner of Douglas Feith. Who's Douglas Feith? Undersecretary of Defense. One of the handful of advisors who, long before September 11, championed the campaign to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Now Douglas Feith is the man in charge of the Pentagon's reconstruction of Iraq.

To sum up, Marc Zell is one well connected middleman standing right between the people to give the contracts and the people who want them. We asked to interview him about all this, but our calls were not returned."

More from Roberta Baskin:

"But even at the war's front lines, middlemen are busy making their deals. Marc Zell also works with a different firm called "The Iraqi International Law Group," which very much wants to be "your professional gateway to the new Iraq." Who's in charge of that gateway? A man named Salem Chalabi.

He has a famous uncle, Ahmed Chalabi. You see him there in Iraq, but before the war, this exile was hand picked by the planners in the Pentagon to shape the new government. When the war started, they air lifted Chalabi into the country with his own 700 man militia. At the center of all that planning, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Whose old law partner, Marc Zell, now works with Ahmed Chalabi's nephew, providing that gateway to the new Iraq."

More from Roberta Baskin:

"And Chalabi isn't the only member of the Iraqi leadership with close relatives lining up for those rebuilding contracts. The son of one Chalabi aid runs a phone company that is part of the group that won the contract to provide cell service to southern Iraq. Chalabi's aid told the Los Angeles Times that he doesn't understand what all the fuss over his son's inside connections. Comparing his son to the Americans, he said "It didn't stop Cheney from becoming the Vice President."

More from Roberta Baskin:

"But these aren't the only friends of government promoting their inside influence in what's being called The Iraq Gold Rush. One firm was established just for that purpose: New Bridge Strategies...If you can't find your way around Baghdad, Mike Baker will lend you a hand. He's a former CIA officer and part of the management team [its CEO] for New Bridge Strategies Strategies and its sister company Diligence, a security firm. Both are staffed by old Washington hands and both are headquartered in the offices of Barber, Griffith and Rogers. The "Barber" in that title is Haley Barber, a former chairman of the Republican party and one of the highest paid lobbyists in Washington. He's now the Governer-elect of Missippi."

'Newbridge Strategies is staffed by people that have a great deal of experience in Washington. Everyone from Joe Albot to Ed Rogers. They understand how the administration thinks.' (Mark Baker)

"They should understand how the administration thinks. They used to be in it. Joe Albot ran George W. Bush's campaign for President, and was then put in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Mike Baker's other collegue is this man, Ed Rogers. He served as a deputy assistant to the first President Bush. Here he is in Iraq with Mike Baker, posing in front of a tank outfitted in flak jackets and sporting a semi-automatic rifle."

The Center For The Public Integrity has been trying to find out information about the nature of the work specified in some of these contracts, and is getting a lot of resistance.

More from Roberta Baskin:

"No one has tried harder to get at those details [of the deals] than the watchdog group the Center For The Public Integrity. In a six month investigation, the Center found that cozy insider relationships have become an accepted way of doing business in the fight against terrorism."...

But skeptics might be more easily persuaded if the government didn't shroud all this in so much secrecy. That secrecy makes it practically impossible to find out if those close to the administration are profiting off their inside information. And it makes it equally hard to find out if tax payers are getting their money's worth...

For example, in the name of secrecy, the Pentagon redacted almost every page of this contract. They have made it impossible to answer questions about fees being charged, or the work being done, or even the total cost of the job. Just look at the blacked out sections of this deal with the defense contractor SAIC...

All we know for certain about the contractor SAIC is that the top people of this privately held Fortune 500 company are wired into the Pentagon. On the board are a retired general and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. And then there's Ryan Henry, he was SAIC's Senior Vice President. Until, that is, he went through that revolving door into the Pentagon. Into the very office that now supervises his former company's contract."

Below: The blacked out numbers of the SAIC contract.

Below: Some Members Of Congress Are Trying To Get To The Bottom Of This

Below: Some Iraqi Native Businessmen Are Complaining They Can't Compete With American Companies

This story aired on NOW With Bill Moyers on November 7, 2003.

This clip is exerpted from the complete feature, "Coming Home," which was Produced by Dan Klein, features correspondent David Brancaccio, and was Edited by Amanda Zindman.

Jason Stiffler was manning a watch tower in Afghanistan when it fell out from under him. It's still unclear whether it was an engineering failure, an attack, or friendly fire. Whatever the cause, he fell 25 feet and suffered seizures at the scene and eventually went into a coma. He suffered serious spinal cord injuries and other injuries. He was quadraplegic for some time after the accident, eventually regained limited use of his legs after months of physical therapy, although it still causes him great pain to move.

A year ago October, he was released from the hospital and placed on the Army's temporary duty list, which meant he was now eligible for medical care and payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Stifflers say they waited for promised phone call from the VA that never came. With his physical and mental condition deteriorating, Jason visited the regional VA hospital in Ft. Wayne, which had no record of him and was only able to offer limited assistance and care.

As David Brancaccio puts it: "Jason Stiffler, badly wounded veteran of America's War On Terror, was on his own."

Background on the complete video of the segment:
This story focuses on several families whose fathers put their lives on the line to go fight in Iraq, and were injured in combat. Upon returning home, they were given little or no medical or financial support whatsoever, and were told to seek handouts to get by.

Excerpt from David Brancaccio's introduction:

..another young vet from the 101st airborne came home to a different kind of reception, one that was to leave him and his family nearly destitute.

Jason Stiffler followed a boyhood dream into the army at the age of 18. He was eager to defend his country. In return, he assumed it would take care of him.

"It was part of the agreement that we made on March 23, 01, when I signed up. I specifically remember that day because it was the first thing I asked. 'If anything happens to me, will I be taken care of?' Oh yeah, yeah, just sign right here."...

"There was a timeframe when I wasn't getting paid nothing." (Stiffler)

"How did you make ends meet during that time?" (Brancaccio)

"You know what they told us? 'Churches,' 'family,' 'friends,' 'welfare.'" (Stiffler)

Here's some technical information about getting quicktime going to watch these movies.

The Story Of The Stiffler Family (Small - 10 MB)

This story aired on NOW With Bill Moyers on November 7, 2003.

This story, "Coming Home," was Produced by Dan Klein and features correspondent David Brancaccio. It was Edited by Amanda Zindman.

This story focuses on several families whose fathers put their lives on the line to go fight in Iraq, and were injured in combat. Upon returning home, they were given little or no medical or financial support whatsoever, and were told to seek handouts to get by.

This is available in one big 38 MB clip and in three smaller clips for easier downloading off small connections. I've also transcribed portions and am including some info with the pictures.

I've also put up some clips of one of the families, the Stifflers, that was featured in this segment.

Here's some technical information about getting quicktime going to watch these movies.

Bill Moyers On Mistreated Vets - Complete (Small - 38 MB)
Bill Moyers On Mistreated Vets - Part 1 of 3 (Small - 12 MB)
Bill Moyers On Mistreated Vets - Part 2 of 3 (Small - 16 MB)
Bill Moyers On Mistreated Vets - Part 3 of 3 (Small - 11 MB)

Excerpt from Bill Moyers' introduction:

"In Iraq, for every soldier killed, 7 are wounded. 1,300 since May 1st. That's twice as many as were wounded during the war itself. The New Republic reports that nearly every night, under the cover of darkness, ambulences meet C-17 and C-141 transport planes flying into Andrews airforce base to ferry the wounded to military facilities. The government hasn't wanted us to see them, but that's beginning to change as the numbers mount and as journalists keep insisting on knowing who are these wounded and what's happening to them."

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: More On Why Nobody Knows How Many Troops We'll Need (Small - 5 MB)

Donald Rumsfeld:
"The total number of security forces is made up of three categories: U.S. forces, coalition forces, and Iraqi security forces. Now, the answer as to how many U.S. forces will be there a year from now depends entirely on what happens in the security situation on the ground, first and foremost. Second, it depends on how fast we're able to build up the Iraqi forces. What's happening is the total number of security forces in that country have been going up steadily. We've come down from 150,- to 130,000 troops. The coalition troops of about 30,000 have stayed about level. And what's changed is the Iraqi troops have come up from zero to 100,000, heading towards over 200,000 next year.

Now, I can't -- I have trouble believing that the security situation in that country will require additional U.S. troops. We'll have to rotate our forces, and take the ones who've been there awhile out, and put additional troops in. But the total number of troops are going up, because the Iraqis are going up. And then, someone says, well, how many will we have? And the answer is I don't know. Nobody knows. And that's a fair answer."

Tim Russert:
"It could go down?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Oh, of course. It's come down. It's come down from 150,- to 130,000. And I suspect it will continue going down. That depends on if the security situation in the country permits it. The president's said he's going to stay there as long as it takes, and not one day longer, and he has said repeatedly we will put in as many U.S. troops as are necessary and no more. And instead of putting additional U.S. troops in, we've been able to build up the Iraqi forces, pass responsibility for security in that country to the Iraqi people, who in the last analysis had the responsibility and the obligation to provide for their own security."

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: No Way To Know How Many Troops It Will Take ("It Is Unknowable") (Small - 5 MB)

Tim Russert:
"Time magazine reports this today, that this question was asked in the closed briefing with senators, "'What troop levels do we expect to have in Iraq a year from now?,' asked Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader. And with that, the Pentagon chief began to tap dance." Do you believe that you have an obligation to tell our leaders in Congress what your best estimate is for troop levels in Iraq a year from now?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"You know, since -- any war, when it starts, the questions are obvious. The questions are: How long is it going to last? How many casualties will there be? And, How many troops will it take?

Now, those questions can't be answered. Every time someone has answered those questions, they've been wrong. They have been embarrassingly wrong. I'll use another word: They have "misinformed." By believing they knew the answers to those questions, they've misinformed and misled the American people.

I made a conscious decision at the outset of these conflicts to not pretend I knew something I didn't know. And what I have said is just that. I have said it is not knowable.

Now, if you think about Bosnia, we were told by the administration back then that the American forces would be out by Christmas. That was six and a half years ago. They're not out yet. That was -- that -- the effect of that was not consciously misleading -- I'm sure they believed it. They were that wrong -- six and a half years wrong. I don't intend to be wrong six and a half years. I intend to have people understand the truth, and the truth is no one knows. But why is that question not answerable?

And Bill Frist knows this. He asked it because others were interested in that question. He's been very supportive and very complimentary of what we're doing, and it was not a critical question at all. It was a question that should have been raised. And I said was this: The security situation on the ground is going to determine the total number of security forces that are needed in Iraq."

This clip includes some harsh criticism from prominent Repubs such as Frank Wolf and Chuck Hagel.

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: On The Shrub Administration's Refusal To Cooperate With Congress (Small - 5 MB)

Tim Russert:
"Let me turn to some of the concerns expressed by Republicans in the Congress. This was Frank Wolf: Republican allies complain of administration arrogance towards Congress: 'Pride goeth before the fall.'

And this, a prominent Republican Hill staffer: Rumsfeld and Secretary Wolfowitz, your top deputy, 'just give off the sense that they know better than thou, and they don't have to answer our questions.'

And this from Chuck Hagel on the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees, Republican: 'The Bush administration did miscalculate the difficulty of the war in Iraq. I think they did a miserable job of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq. They treated many in the Congress, most of the Congress, like a nuisance. When we asked questions, we wanted to be helpful, we wanted to participate. And now they are finding out that reality is dominating.'

'Arrogance?' 'Nuisance?' Not a full appreciation of your fellow Republicans in the Congress?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Well, you know, there's 535 members of the House and Senate, and you are going to find every viewpoint across the spectrum. It's always been so. You've served there -- I served in Congress. And there's always going to be someone who has a different view, and we accept that. We have spent enormous numbers of hours up there -- I do. Secretary Powell does. Others in the administration, briefing Senators, briefing House members, briefing staff members. And overwhelmingly they've been appreciative of those briefings and felt that they were helpful. We've sent up intelligence briefing people on a regularly weekly basis. I think probably there's been more information back and forth in this conflict during Iraq and Afghanistan than in any conflict in the history of the country.

Now, when people are having their constituents killed, and they see things happening that worry them, understandably they're going to be worried and concerned about it, and I accept that. And these are tough issues. These are not easy issues. And the fact that there are a variety of views in Congress simply reflects the country. There are a variety of views in the country. And that's understandable."

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: Did He Underestimate The Intensity Of The Resistance? (Small - 2 MB)

Tim Russert:
"Did you underestimate the intensity of the resistance?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"I don't know. You know, I don't know that we -- you don't sit down and make a calibration that the resistance will lead to X numbers of Iraqis being killed per week, or that so many coalition people being wounded per week. That isn't the kind of calibration you make. What you do is you say, here's what you have to do to prevail. You have got to get the sovereignty transferred over to the Iraqi people, you have got to get the essential services going, and the economy on a path upward. And you've got to get the security responsibility transferred to the Iraqi people. That's -- because it's their country. We're not going to provide security in their country over a sustained period of time.

So we've gone from zero to 100,000 Iraqis providing security in that country, and our plan calls for us to go over 200,000 by next year."

The question mark's there because Rummy actually yes "no" and then later "yes."

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: Saddam No Longer A Threat? (Small - 4 MB)

Tim Russert:
"The New York Times reports that senior administration officials say that Saddam is playing a significant role in coordinating and directing attacks, and that he is the catalyst for what is going on now."

Donald Rumsfeld:
"I don't know what -- how to take the word "catalyst." I don't doubt for a minute that his being alive gives encouragement to the Baathists and the regime murderers that you see in those tapes killing people."

Tim Russert:
"He may be directing the resistance?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"If he's -- I think he's alive. I think he's probably in Iraq. He's probably in northern Iraq, and he undoubtedly has ways to communicate, imperfect ways, but probably by couriers, with some other people. Is he masterminding some major activity? Difficult to know, but unlikely. Is he involved? Possibly."

Tim Russert:
"He's still a threat?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Personally, no. No. I mean, is it a threat to have released 100,000 criminals in a country with 23 million people? You bet. Is it a threat to have foreign terrorists coming across the borders? You bet. Is it a threat to have the leftovers of the Feyadeen Saddam and the murderers of Saddam Hussein's regime the Baathists who benefited from his regime? Sure, it's a threat. And there's a lot of them, and there's a lot of weapons in that country. There are weapons caches all over the country. So is that a danger for people in Iraq? Yes."

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: What He Meant By His Memo (Small - 7 MB)

Tim Russert:
"Let me turn to your memo of October 16th, which has been leaked, and share it with our viewers and ask you to talk about it."

(Russert reading from memo) " 'With respect to global terrorism, the record since September 11th seems to be: "We care having mixed results with Al Qaida..." Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas' the schools 'and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?... It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.' "

" 'Don't know if we are winning or losing' ??"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Let me explain that. It's not that we don't know if we're winning or losing in Iraq or Afghanistan. We know what's happening there. The point I was making is this. If there are 90 nations engaged in the global war on terrorism, and if they're out arresting, capturing, killing terrorists. If they're out there putting pressure on their bank accounts, making it harder for them to raise money, making it harder for them to transfer money, making it harder for terrorists to move across borders. All of which is true. Good progress is being made.

The question is, that I posed, and I don't know the answer, is how many new terrorists are being made. How many of these schools are being led by radical clerics and are teaching people that the thing they should do with their lives is to go out and kill innocent men, women and children to stop progress, to torture people, to prevent women from being involved in their country's activities. How many schools are doing that and how many people are being produced by that? And the question I posed was: you can't know in this battle of ideas how it's coming out unless you have some metric to judge that and there isn't such a metric. It doesn't exist. Therefore, my point was in the memo, that I think we need, the world needs, to think about other things we can do to reduce the number of schools that teach terrorism. Not just continue (stops) we certainly have to continue doing what we're doing in going after terrorists wherever the are, and capturing them and killing them. But I think we also have to think about how we, the world, not just the United States -- this is something well beyond our country or the Department of Defense -- how we reduce the number of people who are becoming terrorists in the world."

Tim Russert:
"Win the hearts and minds."

Donald Rumsfeld: (Nods)

Rummy's answer: "You know, in my lifetime, I've said that many times..." (See complete answer below.)

Russert also asks Rummy about Saddam's current role, if any, in the latest wave of attacks on the troops.

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.
Complete Video and Photos

Russert to Rumsfeld: Do you ever say to yourself, or wonder 'My god, the intelligence information was wrong and what have we gotten ourselves into?' (Small - 6 MB)

Tim Russert:
"Do you ever say to yourself, or wonder 'My god, the intelligence information was wrong and what have we gotten ourselves into?' "

Donald Rumsfeld:
"You know, in my lifetime, I've said that many times, because intelligence is never really 'right' or 'wrong.' What it is is a best effort by wonderful, hard working intelligence people, overtly and covertly trying to gather in the best information they can and then present it to policy makers. It's never perfect. These countries are closed societies. They make a point of denying and deceiving so that you can't know what they're doing. So it's a best effort, and it's pretty good. Is it perfect? No. Has it ever been perfect? No. It will never be perfect, our intelligence information. But we've got wonderful people doing a fine job and it seems to me that it's adequate for policy makers to then look at it and draw conclusions and make judgements."

Tim Russert:
"Do you think that Saddam Hussein intentionally rolled over in March, and let the United States roar into Baghdad, planning that he would come back six months later with an armed resistance of the nature we're seeing now?

Donald Rumsfeld:
"I don't. I think they fought hard south. When the movement was so fast. And then, when some forces came in from north, a great many of his forces decided that they couldn't handle it, and they disappeared. They disband themselves, if you will, left their weapons in some instances and unformed their formations, and went home. The idea that his plan was to do that I think is far fetched. What role he's playing today, I don't know. We don't know. Very likely, Saddam Hussein is alive. Very likely, he's in the country. His sons are killed. 42 of his top lieutenants, out of 55, have been captured or killed. So it's a skinny-downed organization, what's left. And, uh, is he interested in retaking his country? Sure. Is he going to? No. Not a chance."

Tim Russert asks a great question and Rummy manages to drop in a little disinformation about the non-existent connection between Al Queda and Iraq.

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.
Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld On Whether We're Less Safe Since The Shrub War Started
(Small - 8 MB)

Tim Russert:
"Go back prior to the war in march, where the argument was being made that there was no need to go to war with Saddam Hussein. He's in a box. He's confined. We have sanctions. We have inspections. And then the Administration decided to go to war and opened up that box. And that America is now less safe -- less secure, than we were prior to the invasion."

Donald Rumsfeld:
"I think that that's not correct. I would say America is more safe today. If you believe the intelligence, which successive administrations of both political parties did, and other governments in the world, that he was progressing with these programs and that this is a country who's used the weapons before. That's used them on its neighbors -- used them on his own people. I don't know if you've seen any of the tapes more recently of what they do to their own people. Of cutting off people's heads and cutting off their fingers and their hands, and pulling out their tongues and cutting them off -- throwing them off three story buildings. This is a particularly vicious regime, Saddam's regime.

It is true, we have terrific young men and women being killed and wounded today, as we did yesterday, and your heart goes out to their families and to their loved ones. But what they're doing is important. What they're doing is taking the battle to the terrorists. There are foreign terrorists coming in to Iraq. That's true. We know that. We've captured two or three hundered of them from various countries."

Tim Russert:
"Stop there. Would that have happened -- would they have gone to Iraq but for the fact that we went in there?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Why sure. The Ansur al islam (sp) was already in Iraq. There were Al Quaeda already in Iraq. The Iraqis were engaged in terrorism themselves. They were giving $25,000 to suicide bombers' families who would go in and kill innocent men, women and children. They are a part of that. And certainly, the work in Iraq is difficult. It's tough. And it is gonna to take some time, but good progress is being made in many parts of the country..."

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.
Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: One Way Or The Other (Small - 3 MB)

Tim Russert:
"You also reference to 'the coalition can win Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or the other.' What did you mean by that?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Oh, that it is (stops) We're on a track, and we hope the track works, and I believe it is working. You take Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai and Loya Jirga have produced a bonn plan -- a way ahead. It's underway. Uh, will it stay on track exactly? I don't know. I hope so. I think they're doing a good job and we're doing everything we can to help them and so are a lot of other countries, including NATO now. Um, but, but however that sorts out one way or another, that country is not gonna go back and become a terrorist training ground for the Al Queda."

Tim Russert:
"That appears to be a much more pessimistic assessment than you have made publicly."

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Not at all. I believe we're doing well in Afghanistan, and said so."

Tim Russert:
"And Iraq?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Well, I was gonna come to Iraq. Iraq is what it is. It is a tough, difficult situation. When you're having people killed in the coalition, and we are, and our Iraqi allies being killed that are providing security, and Iraqi people being killed by these terrorists, it isn't a pretty picture. It's a tough picture."

I just started reading this myself, but I'm about to go to dinner and I didn't want to risk forgetting to get this up tonight. So here it is.

Update 10/14/03 - recordings of this speech are now available. I've also re-archived them here.
(Thanks, Mark!)

Bill Moyers' Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform

that the very concept of media is insulting to some of us within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a loud voice were all one and the same. …David Broder is not Matt Drudge. “Meet the Press” is not “Temptation Island.” And I am not Jerry Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet ‘the media” speaks for us all.

That’s how I felt when I saw Oliver North reporting on Fox from Iraq, pressing our embattled troops to respond to his repetitive and belittling question, “Does Fox Rock? Does Fox Rock?” Oliver North and I may be in the same “media” but we are not part of the same message. Nonetheless, I accept that I work and all of us live in “medialand,” and God knows we need some “media reform.” I’m sure you know those two words are really an incomplete description of the job ahead. Taken alone, they suggest that you’ve assembled a convention of efficiency experts, tightening the bolts and boosting the output of the machinery of public enlightenment, or else a conclave of high-minded do-gooders applauding each other’s sermons. But we need to be – and we will be – much more than that. Because what we’re talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized.

Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just can’t exist without an informed public...

We have to fight to keep the gates to the Internet open to all. The web has enabled many new voices in our democracy – and globally – to be heard: advocacy groups, artists, individuals, non-profit organizations. Just about anyone can speak online, and often with an impact greater than in the days when orators had to climb on soap box in a park. The media industry lobbyists point to the Internet and say it’s why concerns about media concentration are ill founded in an environment where anyone can speak and where there are literally hundreds of competing channels. What those lobbyists for big media don’t tell you is that the traffic patterns of the online world are beginning to resemble those of television and radio. In one study, for example, AOL Time Warner (as it was then known) accounted for nearly a third of all user time spent online. And two others companies – Yahoo and Microsoft – bring that figure to fully 50%. As for the growing number of channels available on today’s cable systems, most are owned by a small handful of companies. Of the ninety-one major networks that appear on most cable systems, 79 are part of such multiple network groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, Liberty Media, NBC, and Disney. In order to program a channel on cable today, you must either be owned by or affiliated with one of the giants. If we’re not vigilant the wide-open spaces of the Internet could be transformed into a system in which a handful of companies use their control over high-speed access to ensure they remain at the top of the digital heap in the broadband era at the expense of the democratic potential of this amazing technology. So we must fight to make sure the Internet remains open to all as the present-day analogue of that many-tongued world of small newspapers so admired by de Tocqueville.

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

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/111403E.shtml

'Our Democracy is in Danger of Being Paralyzed'
Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform
By Bill Moyers
t r u t h o u t | Address

Saturday 08 November 2003

Thank you for inviting me tonight. I’m flattered to be speaking to a gathering as high-powered as this one that’s come together with an objective as compelling as “media reform.” I must confess, however, to a certain discomfort, shared with other journalists, about the very term “media.” Ted Gup, who teaches journalism at Case Western Reserve, articulated my concerns better than I could when he wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 23, 2001)

that the very concept of media is insulting to some of us within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a loud voice were all one and the same. …David Broder is not Matt Drudge. “Meet the Press” is not “Temptation Island.” And I am not Jerry Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet ‘the media” speaks for us all.

That’s how I felt when I saw Oliver North reporting on Fox from Iraq, pressing our embattled troops to respond to his repetitive and belittling question, “Does Fox Rock? Does Fox Rock?” Oliver North and I may be in the same “media” but we are not part of the same message. Nonetheless, I accept that I work and all of us live in “medialand,” and God knows we need some “media reform.” I’m sure you know those two words are really an incomplete description of the job ahead. Taken alone, they suggest that you’ve assembled a convention of efficiency experts, tightening the bolts and boosting the output of the machinery of public enlightenment, or else a conclave of high-minded do-gooders applauding each other’s sermons. But we need to be – and we will be – much more than that. Because what we’re talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized.

Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just can’t exist without an informed public. That’s a cliché, I know, but I agree with the presidential candidate who once said that truisms are true and clichés mean what they say (an observation that no doubt helped to lose him the election.) It’s a reality: democracy can’t exist without an informed public. Here’s an example: Only 13% of eligible young people cast ballots in the last presidential election. A recent National Youth Survey revealed that only half of the fifteen hundred young people polled believe that voting is important, and only 46% think they can make a difference in solving community problems. We’re talking here about one quarter of the electorate. The Carnegie Corporation conducted a youth challenge quiz of l5-24 year-olds and asked them, “Why don’t more young people vote or get involved?” Of the nearly two thousand respondents, the main answer was that they did not have enough information about issues and candidates. Let me rewind and say it again: democracy can’t exist without an informed public. So I say without qualification that it’s not simply the cause of journalism that’s at stake today, but the cause of American liberty itself. As Tom Paine put it, “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.” He was talking about the cause of a revolutionary America in 1776. But that revolution ran in good part on the energies of a rambunctious, though tiny press. Freedom and freedom of communications were birth-twins in the future United States. They grew up together, and neither has fared very well in the other’s absence. Boom times for the one have been boom times for the other.

Yet today, despite plenty of lip service on every ritual occasion to freedom of the press radio and TV, three powerful forces are undermining that very freedom, damming the streams of significant public interest news that irrigate and nourish the flowering of self-determination. The first of these is the centuries-old reluctance of governments – even elected governments – to operate in the sunshine of disclosure and criticism. The second is more subtle and more recent. It’s the tendency of media giants, operating on big-business principles, to exalt commercial values at the expense of democratic value. That is, to run what Edward R. Murrow forty-five years ago called broadcasting’s “money-making machine” at full throttle. In so doing they are squeezing out the journalism that tries to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth; they are isolating serious coverage of public affairs into ever-dwindling “news holes” or far from prime- time; and they are gobbling up small and independent publications competing for the attention of the American people.

It’s hardly a new or surprising story. But there are fresh and disturbing chapters.

In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law – padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the Constitution struck those weapons out of their hands. But they’ve found new ones now, in the name of “national security.” The classifier’s Top Secret stamp, used indiscriminately, is as potent a silencer as a writ of arrest. And beyond what is officially labeled “secret” there hovers a culture of sealed official lips, opened only to favored media insiders: of government by leak and innuendo and spin, of misnamed “public information” offices that churn out blizzards of releases filled with self-justifying exaggerations and, occasionally, just plain damned lies. Censorship without officially appointed censors.

Add to that the censorship-by-omission of consolidated media empires digesting the bones of swallowed independents, and you’ve got a major shrinkage of the crucial information that thinking citizens can act upon. People saw that coming as long as a century ago when the rise of chain newspaper ownerships, and then of concentration in the young radio industry, became apparent. And so in the zesty progressivism of early New Deal days, the Federal Communications Act of 1934 was passed (more on this later.) The aim of that cornerstone of broadcast policy, mentioned over 100 times in its pages, was to promote the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” The clear intent was to prevent a monopoly of commercial values from overwhelming democratic values – to assure that the official view of reality – corporate or government – was not the only view of reality that reached the people. Regulators and regulated, media and government were to keep a wary eye on each other, preserving those checks and balances that is the bulwark of our Constitutional order.

What would happen, however, if the contending giants of big government and big publishing and broadcasting ever joined hands? Ever saw eye to eye in putting the public’s need for news second to free-market economics? That’s exactly what’s happening now under the ideological banner of “deregulation.” Giant megamedia conglomerates that our founders could not possibly have envisioned are finding common cause with an imperial state in a betrothal certain to produce not the sons and daughters of liberty but the very kind of bastards that issued from the old arranged marriage of church and state.

Consider where we are today.

Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and – in defiance of the Constitution – from their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media oligopoly – the word is Barry Diller’s, not mine – been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to know. When the journalist-historian Richard Reeves was once asked by a college student to define “real news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.” When journalism throws in with power that’s the first news marched by censors to the guillotine. The greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it.

Which brings me to the third powerful force – beyond governmental secrecy and megamedia conglomerates – that is shaping what Americans see, read, and hear. I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right wing conspiracy to think this more collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to the nattering nabobs of no-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates – the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents. Authoritarianism. With no strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony, it is left to journalism to be democracy’s best friend. That is why so many journalists joined with you in questioning Michael Powell’s bid – blessed by the White House – to permit further concentration of media ownership. If free and independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy. And there is a surer way to intimidate and then silence mainstream journalism than to be the boss.

If you doubt me, read Jane Kramer’s chilling account in the current New Yorker of Silvio Berlusconi. The Prime Minister of Italy is its richest citizen. He is also its first media mogul. The list of media that he or his relatives or his proxies own, or directly or indirectly control, includes the state television networks and radio stations, three of Italy’s four commercial television networks, two big publishing houses, two national newspapers, fifty magazines, the country’s largest movie production-and-distribution company, and a chunk of its Internet services. Even now he is pressing upon parliament a law that would enable him to purchase more media properties, including the most influential paper in the country. Kramer quotes one critic who says that half the reporters in Italy work for Berlusconi, and the other half think they might have to. Small wonder he has managed to put the Italian State to work to guarantee his fortune – or that his name is commonly attached to such unpleasant things as contempt for the law, conflict of interest, bribery, and money laundering. Nonetheless, “his power over what other Italians see, read, buy, and, above all, think, is overwhelming.” The editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott, was asked recently why a British magazine was devoting so much space to an Italian Prime Minister. He replied that Berlusconi had betrayed the two things the magazine stood for: capitalism and democracy. Can it happen here? It can happen here. By the way, Berlusconi’s close friend is Rupert Murdoch. On July 3lst this year, writes Jane Kramer, programming on nearly all the satellite hookups in Italy was switched automatically to Murdoch’s Sky Italia

So the issues bringing us here tonight are bigger and far more critical than simply “media reform.” That’s why, before I go on, I want to ask you to look around you. I’m serious: Look to your left and now to your right. You are looking at your allies in one of the great ongoing struggles of the American experience – the struggle for the soul of democracy, for government “of, by, and for the people.”

It’s a battle we can win only if we work together. We’ve seen that this year. Just a few months ago the FCC, heavily influenced by lobbyists for the newspaper, broadcasting and cable interests, prepared a relaxation of the rules governing ownership of media outlets that would allow still more diversity-killing mergers among media giants. The proceedings were conducted in virtual secrecy, and generally ignored by all the major media, who were of course interested parties. In June Chairman Powell and his two Republican colleagues on the FCC announced the revised regulations as a done deal.

But they didn’t count on the voice of independent journalists and citizens like you. Because of coverage in independent outlets – including PBS, which was the only broadcasting system that encouraged its journalists to report what was really happening – and because citizens like you took quick action, this largely invisible issue burst out as a major political cause and ignited a crackling public debate. You exposed Powell’s failure to conduct an open discussion of the rule changes save for a single hearing in Richmond, Virginia. Your efforts led to a real participatory discussion, with open meetings in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Atlanta. Then the organizing that followed generated millions of letters and “filings”at the FCC opposing the change. Finally, the outcry mobilized unexpected support for bi-partisan legislation to reverse the new rules that cleared the Senate – although House Majority Leader Tom De Lay still holds it prisoner in the House. But who would have thought six months ago that the cause would win support from such allies as Senator Trent Lott or Kay Bailey Hutchinson, from my own Texas. You have moved “media reform” to center-stage, where it may even now become a catalyst for a new era of democratic renewal.

We working journalists have something special to bring to this work. This weekend at your conference there will be plenty of good talk about the mechanics of reform. What laws are needed? What advocacy programs and strategies? How can we protect and extend the reach of those tools that give us some countervailing power against media monopoly – instruments like the Internet, cable TV, community-based radio and public broadcasting systems, alternative journals of news and opinion.

But without passion, without a message that has a beating heart, these won’t be enough. There’s where journalism comes in. It isn’t the only agent of freedom, obviously; in fact, journalism is a deeply human and therefore deeply flawed craft – yours truly being a conspicuous example. But at times it has risen to great occasions, and at times it has made other freedoms possible. That’s what the draftsmen of the First Amendment knew and it’s what we can’t afford to forget. So to remind us of what our free press has been at its best and can be again, I will call on the help of unseen presences, men and women of journalism’s often checkered but sometimes courageous past.

Think with me for a moment on the reasons behind the establishment of press freedom. It wasn’t ordained to protect hucksters, and it didn’t drop like the gentle rain from heaven. It was fought and sacrificed for by unpretentious but feisty craftsmen who got their hands inky at their own hand presses and called themselves simply “printers.” The very first American newspaper was a little three-page affair put out in Boston in September of 1690. Its name was Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick and its editor was Benjamin Harris, who said he simply wanted “to give an account of such considerable things as have come to my attention.” The government shut it down after one issue – just one issue! – for the official reason that printer Ben Harris hadn’t applied for the required government license to publish. But I wonder if some Massachusetts pooh-bah didn’t take personally one of Harris’s proclaimed motives for starting the paper – “to cure the spirit of Lying much among us”?

No one seems to have objected when Harris and his paper disappeared – that was the way things were. But some forty-odd years later when printer John Peter Zenger was jailed in New York for criticizing its royal governor, things were different. The colony brought Zenger to trial on a charge of “seditious libel,” and since it didn’t matter whether the libel was true or not, the case seemed open and shut. But the jury ignored the judge’s charge and freed Zenger, not only because the governor was widely disliked, but because of the closing appeal of Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton. Just hear him! His client’s case was:

Not the cause of the poor Printer, nor of New York alone, [but] the cause of Liberty, and. . . every Man who prefers Freedom to a Life of Slavery will bless and honour You, as Men who. . .by an impartial and uncorrupt Verdict, [will] have laid a Noble Foundation for securing to ourselves, our Posterity and our Neighbors, That, to which Nature and the Laws of our Country have given us a Right, -- the Liberty – both of exposing and opposing arbitrary Power…by speaking and writing – Truth.

Still a pretty good mission statement!

During the War for Independence itself most of the three dozen little weekly newspapers in the colonies took the Patriot side and mobilized resistance by giving space to anti-British letters, news of Parliament’s latest outrages, and calls to action. But the clarion journalistic voice of the Revolution was the onetime editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, Tom Paine, a penniless recent immigrant from England where he left a trail of failure as a businessman and husband. In 1776 – just before enlisting in Washington’s army – he published Common Sense, a hard-hitting pamphlet that slashed through legalisms and doubts to make an uncompromising case for an independent and republican America. It’s been called the first best seller, with as many as 100,000 copies bought by a small literate population. Paine followed it up with another convincing collection of essays written in the field and given another punchy title, The Crisis. Passed from hand to hand and reprinted in other papers, they spread the gospel of freedom to thousands of doubters. And why I bring Paine up here is because he had something we need to restore – an unwavering concentration to reach ordinary people with the message that they mattered and could stand up for themselves. He couched his gospel of human rights and equality in a popular style that any working writer can envy. “As it is my design,” he said, “to make those that can scarcely read understand, I shall therefore avoid every literary ornament and put it in language as plain as the alphabet.”

That plain language spun off memorable one-liners that we’re still quoting. “These are the times that try men’s souls.” “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.” “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” “Virtue is not hereditary.” And this: “Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.” I don’t know what Paine would have thought of political debate by bumper sticker and sound bite but he could have held his own in any modern campaign.

There were also editors who felt responsible to audiences that would dive deep. In 1787 and ‘88 the little New-York Independent Advertiser ran all eighty-five numbers of The Federalist , those serious essays in favor of ratifying the Constitution. They still shine as clear arguments, but they are, and they were, unforgiving in their demand for concentrated attention. Nonetheless, The Advertiser felt that it owed the best to its readers, and the readers knew that the issues of self-government deserved their best attention. I pray your goal of “media reform” includes a press as conscientious as the New-York Advertiser, as pungent as Common Sense, and as public-spirited as both. Because it takes those qualities to fight against the relentless pressure of authority and avarice. Remember, back in l79l, when the First Amendment was ratified, the idea of a free press seemed safely sheltered in law. It wasn’t. Only seven years later, in the midst of a war scare with France, Congress passed and John Adams signed the infamous Sedition Act. The act made it a crime – just listen to how broad a brush the government could swing – to circulate opinions “tending to induce a belief” that lawmakers might have unconstitutional or repressive motives, or “directly or indirectly tending” to justify France or to “criminate,” whatever that meant, the President or other Federal officials. No wonder that opponents called it a scheme to “excite a fervor against foreign aggression only to establish tyranny at home.” John Ashcroft would have loved it.

But here’s what happened. At least a dozen editors refused to be frightened and went defiantly to prison, some under state prosecutions. One of them, Matthew Lyon, who also held a seat in the House of Representatives, languished for four months in an unheated cell during a Vermont winter. But such was the spirit of liberty abroad in the land that admirers chipped in to pay his thousand-dollar fine, and when he emerged his district re-elected him by a landslide. Luckily, the Sedition Act had a built-in expiration date of 1801, at which time President Jefferson – who hated it from the first – pardoned those remaining under indictment. So the story has an upbeat ending, and so can ours, but it will take the kind of courage that those early printers and their readers showed.

Courage is a timeless quality and surfaces when the government is tempted to hit the bottle of censorship again during national emergencies, real or manufactured. As so many of you will recall, in 1971, during the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration resurrected the doctrine of “prior restraint” from the crypt and tried to ban the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times and the Washington Post – even though the documents themselves were a classified history of events during four earlier Presidencies. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, and Katherine Graham of the Post were both warned by their lawyers that they and their top managers could face criminal prosecution under espionage laws if they printed the material that Daniel Ellsberg had leaked – and, by the way, offered without success to the three major television networks. Or at the least, punitive lawsuits or whatever political reprisals a furious Nixon team could devise. But after internal debates – and the threats of some of their best-known editors to resign rather than fold under pressure – both owners gave the green light – and were vindicated by the Supreme Court. Score a round for democracy.

Bi-partisan fairness requires me to note that the Carter administration, in 1979, tried to prevent the Progressive magazine, published right here in Madison, from running an article called “How to Make an H-Bomb.” The grounds were a supposed threat to “national security.” But Howard Morland had compiled the piece entirely from sources open to the public, mainly to show that much of the classification system was Wizard of Oz smoke and mirrors. The courts again rejected the government’s claim, but it’s noteworthy that the journalism of defiance by that time had retreated to a small left-wing publication like the Progressive.

In all three of those cases, confronted with a clear and present danger of punishment, none of the owners flinched. Can we think of a single executive of today’s big media conglomerates showing the kind of resistance that Sulzberger, Graham, and Erwin Knoll did? Certainly not Michael Eisner. He said he didn’t even want ABC News reporting on its parent company, Disney. Certainly not General Electric/NBC’s Robert Wright. He took Phil Donahue off MNBC because the network didn’t want to offend conservatives with a liberal sensibility during the invasion of Iraq. Instead, NBC brought to its cable channel one Michael Savage whose diatribes on radio had described non-white countries as “turd-world nations” and who characterized gay men and women as part of “the grand plan to cut down on the white race.” I am not sure what it says that the GE/NBC executives calculated that while Donahue was offensive to conservatives, Savage was not.

And then there’s Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. In the very week that the once-Tiffany Network was celebrating its 75th anniversary – and taking kudos for its glory days when it was unafraid to broadcast “The Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the Pentagon” – the network’s famous eye blinked. Pressured by a vociferous and relentless right wing campaign and bullied by the Republican National Committee – and at a time when its parent company has billions resting on whether the White House, Congress, and the FCC will allow it to own even more stations than currently permissible – CBS caved in and pulled the miniseries about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently worshipful. The chief honcho at CBS, Les Moonves, says taste, not politics, dictated his decision. But earlier this year, explaining why CBS intended to air a series about Adolf Hitler, Moonves sang a different tune: “If you want to play it safe and put on milquetoast then you get criticized…There are times when as a broadcaster when you take chances.” This obviously wasn’t one of those times. Granted, made-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as the wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s – and even less authentic – granted that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn’t even seen the film before they set to howling; granted, on the surface it’s a silly tempest in a teapot; still, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the ground at the feet of a partisan mob over a cheesy mini-series that practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have to wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment could be the harbinger of greater earthquakes to come, when the stakes are really high. And you have to wonder what concessions the media tycoons-cum-supplicants are making when no one is looking.

So what must we devise to make the media safe for individuals stubborn about protecting freedom and serving the truth? And what do we all – educators, administrators, legislators and agitators – need to do to restore the disappearing diversity of media opinions? America had plenty of that in the early days when the republic and the press were growing up together. It took no great amount of capital and credit – just a few hundred dollars – to start a paper, especially with a little political sponsorship and help. There were well over a thousand of them by 1840, mostly small-town weeklies. And they weren’t objective by any stretch. Here’s William Cobbett, another Anglo-American hell-raiser like Paine, shouting his creed in the opening number of his 1790s paper, Porcupine’s Gazette. “Peter Porcupine,” Cobbett’s self-bestowed nickname, declared:

Professions of impartiality I shall make none. They are always useless, and are besides perfect nonsense, when used by a newsmonger; for, he that does not relate news as he finds it, is something worse than partial; and . . . he that does not exercise his own judgment, either in admitting or rejecting what is sent him, is a poor passive tool, and not an editor.

In Cobbett’s day you could flaunt your partisan banners as you cut and thrust, and not inflict serious damage on open public discussion because there were plenty of competitors. It didn’t matter if the local gazette presented the day’s events entirely through a Democratic lens. There was always an alternate Whig or Republican choice handy – there were, in other words, choices. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, these many blooming journals kept even rural Americans amazingly well informed. They also made it possible for Americans to exercise one of their most democratic habits – that of forming associations to carry out civic enterprises. And they operated against the dreaded tyranny of the majority by letting lonely thinkers know that they had allies elsewhere. Here’s how de Tocqueville put it in his own words:

It often happens in democratic countries that many men who have the desire or directed toward that light, and those wandering spirits who had long sought each other the need to associate cannot do it, because all being very small and lost in the crowd, they do not see each other and do not know where to find each other. Up comes a newspaper that exposes to their view the sentiment or the idea that had been presented to each of them simultaneously but separately. All are immediately in the shadows finally meet each other and unite.

No wandering spirit could fail to find a voice in print. And so in that pre-Civil War explosion of humanitarian reform movements, it was a diverse press that put the yeast in freedom’s ferment. Of course there were plenty of papers that spoke for Indian-haters, immigrant-bashers, bigots, jingoes and land-grabbers proclaiming America’s Manifest Destiny to dominate North America. But one way or another, journalism mattered, and had purpose and direction.

Past and present are never as separate as we think. Horace Greeley, the reform-loving editor of the New York Tribune, not only kept his pages “ever open to the plaints of the wronged and suffering,” but said that whoever sat in an editor’s chair and didn’t work to promote human progress hadn’t tasted “the luxury” of journalism. I liken that to the words of a kindred spirit closer to our own time, I.F. Stone. In his four-page little I.F. Stone’s Weekly, “Izzy” loved to catch the government’s lies and contradictions in the government’s own official documents. And amid the thunder of battle with the reactionaries, he said: “I have so much fun I ought to be arrested.” Think about that. Two newsmen, a century apart, believing that being in a position to fight the good fight isn’t a burden but a lucky break. How can our work here bring that attitude back into the newsrooms?

That era of a wide-open and crowded newspaper playing field began to fade as the old hand-presses gave way to giant machines with press runs and readerships in the hundreds of thousands and costs in the millions. But that didn’t necessarily or immediately kill public spirited journalism. Not so long as the new owners were still strong-minded individuals with big professional egos to match their thick pocketbooks. When Joseph Pulitzer, a one-time immigrant reporter for a German-language paper in St. Louis, took over the New York World in 1883 he was already a millionaire in the making. But here’s his recommended short platform for politicians:

1.Tax luxuries

2. Tax Inheritances

3. Tax Large Incomes

4. Tax monopolies

5. Tax the Privileged Corporation

6. A Tariff for Revenue

7. Reform the Civil Service

8. Punish Corrupt Officers

9. Punish Vote Buying.

10. Punish Employers who Coerce their Employees in Elections

Also not a bad mission statement. Can you imagine one of today’s huge newspaper chains taking that on as an agenda?

Don’t get me wrong. The World certainly offered people plenty of the spice that they wanted – entertainment, sensation, earthy advice on living – but not at the expense of news that let them know who was on their side against the boodlers and bosses.

Nor did big-time, big-town, big bucks journalism extinguish the possibility of a reform-minded investigative journalism that took the name of muckraking during the Progressive Era. Those days of early last century saw a second great awakening of the democratic impulse. What brought it into being was a reaction against the Social Darwinism and unrestrained capitalistic exploitation that is back in full force today. Certain popular magazines made space for – and profited by – the work of such journalists – to name only a few – as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Samuel Hopkins Adams and David Graham Phillips. They ripped the veils from – among other things – the shame of the cities, the crimes of the trusts, the treason of the Senate and the villainies of those who sold tainted meat and poisonous medicines. And why were they given those opportunities? Because, in the words of Samuel S. McClure, owner of McClure’s Magazine, when special interests defied the law and flouted the general welfare, there was a social debt incurred. And, as he put it: “We have to pay in the end, every one of us. And in the end, the sum total of the debt will be our liberty.”

Muckraking lingers on today, but alas, a good deal of it consists of raking personal and sexual scandal in high and celebrated places. Surely, if democracy is to be served, we have to get back to putting the rake where the important dirt lies, in the fleecing of the public and the abuse of its faith in good government.

When that landmark Communications Act of 1934 was under consideration a vigorous public movement of educators, labor officials, and religious and institutional leaders emerged to argue for a broadcast system that would serve the interests of citizens and communities. A movement like that is coming to life again and we now have to build on this momentum.

It won’t be easy, because the tide’s been flowing the other way for a long time. The deregulation pressure began during the Reagan era, when then-FCC chairman Mark Fowler, who said that TV didn’t need much regulation because it was just a “toaster with pictures,” eliminated many public-interest rules. That opened the door for networks to cut their news staffs, scuttle their documentary units (goodbye to “The Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the Pentagon”), and exile investigative producers and reporters to the under-funded hinterlands of independent production. It was like turning out searchlights on dark and dangerous corners. A crowning achievement of that drive was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the largest corporate welfare program ever for the most powerful media and entertainment conglomerates in the world – passed, I must add, with support from both parties.

And the beat of “convergence” between once-distinct forms of media goes on at increased tempo, with the communications conglomerates and the advertisers calling the tune. As safeguards to competition fall, an octopus like GE-NBC-Vivendi-Universal will be able to secure cable channels that can deliver interactive multimedia content – text, sound and images – to digital TVs, home computers, personal video recorders and portable wireless devices like cell phones. The goal? To corner the market on new ways of selling more things to more people for more hours in the day. And in the long run, to fill the airwaves with customized pitches to you and your children. That will melt down the surviving boundaries between editorial and marketing divisions and create a hybrid known to the new-media hucksters as “branded entertainment.”

Let’s consider what’s happening to newspapers. A study by Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America reports that two-thirds of today’s newspaper markets are monopolies. And now most of the country’s powerful newspaper chains are lobbying for co-ownership of newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same market, increasing their grip on community after community. And are they up-front about it? Hear this: Last December 3 such media giants as The New York Times, Gannett, Cox, and Tribune, along with the trade group representing almost all the country’s broadcasting stations, filed a petition to the FCC making the case for that cross ownership the owners so desperately seek. They actually told the FCC that lifting the regulation on cross ownership would strengthen local journalism. But did those same news organizations tell their readers what they were doing? Not all. None of them on that day believed they had an obligation to report in their own news pages what their parent companies were asking of the FCC. As these huge media conglomerates increase their control over what we see, read, and hear, they rarely report on how they are themselves are using their power to further their own interests and power as big business, including their influence over the political process.

Take a look at a new book called Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering published as part of the Project on the State of the American Newspaper under the auspices of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The people who produced the book all love newspapers – Gene Roberts, former managing editor of The New York Times; Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism; Charles Layton, a veteran wire service reporter and news and feature editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as contributors such as Ken Auletta, Geneva Overholser, and Roy Reed. Their conclusion: the newspaper industry is in the middle of the most momentous change in its three hundred year history – a change that is diminishing the amount of real news available to the consumer. A generation of relentless corporatization is now culminating in a furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling and consolidating of newspapers, from the mightiest dailies to the humblest weeklies. It is a world where “small hometown dailies in particular are being bought and sold like hog futures. Where chains, once content to grow one property at a time, now devour other chains whole. Where they are effectively ceding whole regions of the country to one another, further minimizing competition. Where money is pouring into the business from interests with little knowledge and even less concern about the special obligations newspapers have to democracy.” They go on to describe the toll that the never-ending drive for profits is taking on the news. In Cumberland, Maryland, for example, the police reporter had so many duties piled upon him he no longer had time to go to the police station for the daily reports. But newspaper management had a cost-saving solution: put a fax machine in the police station and let the cops send over the news they thought the paper should have. In New Jersey, the Gannett chain bought the Asbury Park Press, then sent in a publisher who slashed fifty five people from the staff and cut the space for news, and was rewarded by being named Gannett’s Manager of the Year. In New Jersey, by the way, the Newhouse and Gannett chains between them now own thirteen of the state’s nineteen dailies, or seventy three percent of all the circulation of New Jersey-based papers. Then there is The Northwestern in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with a circulation of 23,500. Here, the authors report, is a paper that prided itself on being in hometown hands since the Johnson administration – the Andrew Johnson administration. But in 1998 it was sold not once but twice, within the space of two months. Two years later it was sold again: four owners in less than three years.

You’d better get used to it, concluded Leaving Readers Behind, because the real momentum of consolidation is just beginning – it won’t be long now before America is reduced to half a dozen major print conglomerates.

You can see the results even now in the waning of robust journalism. In the dearth of in-depth reporting as news organizations try to do more with fewer resources. In the failure of the major news organizations to cover their own corporate deals and lobbying as well as other forms of “crime in the suites” such as Enron story. And in helping people understand what their government is up to. The report by the Roberts team includes a survey in l999 that showed a wholesale retreat in coverage of nineteen key departments and agencies in Washington. Regular reporting of the Supreme Court and State Department dropped off considerably through the decade. At the Social Security Administration, whose activities literally affect every American, only the New York Times was maintaining a full-time reporter and, incredibly, at the Interior Department, which controls five to six hundred million acres of public land and looks after everything from the National Park Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, there were no full-time reporters around.

That’s in Washington, our nation’s capital. Out across the country there is simultaneously a near blackout of local politics by broadcasters. The public interest group Alliance for Better Campaigns studied forty-five stations in six cities in one week in October. Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, only 13 were devoted to local public affairs – less than one-half of 1% of local programming nationwide. Mayors, town councils, school boards, civic leaders get no time from broadcasters who have filled their coffers by looting the public airwaves over which they were placed as stewards. Last year, when a movement sprang up in the House of Representatives to require these broadcasters to obey the law that says they must sell campaign advertising to candidates for office at the lowest commercial rate, the powerful broadcast lobby brought the Congress to heel. So much for the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.”

So what do we do? What is our strategy for taking on what seems a hopeless fight for a media system that serves as effectively as it sells – one that holds all the institutions of society, itself included, accountable?

There’s plenty we can do. Here’s one journalist’s list of some of the overlapping and connected goals that a vital media reform movement might pursue.

First, we have to take Tom Paine’s example – and Danny Schecter’s advice – and reach out to regular citizens. We have to raise an even bigger tent than you have here. Those of us in this place speak a common language about the “media.” We must reach the audience that’s not here – carry the fight to radio talk shows, local television, and the letters columns of our newspapers. As Danny says, we must engage the mainstream, not retreat from it. We have to get our fellow citizens to understand that what they see, hear, and read is not only the taste of programmers and producers but also a set of policy decisions made by the people we vote for.

We have to fight to keep the gates to the Internet open to all. The web has enabled many new voices in our democracy – and globally – to be heard: advocacy groups, artists, individuals, non-profit organizations. Just about anyone can speak online, and often with an impact greater than in the days when orators had to climb on soap box in a park. The media industry lobbyists point to the Internet and say it’s why concerns about media concentration are ill founded in an environment where anyone can speak and where there are literally hundreds of competing channels. What those lobbyists for big media don’t tell you is that the traffic patterns of the online world are beginning to resemble those of television and radio. In one study, for example, AOL Time Warner (as it was then known) accounted for nearly a third of all user time spent online. And two others companies – Yahoo and Microsoft – bring that figure to fully 50%. As for the growing number of channels available on today’s cable systems, most are owned by a small handful of companies. Of the ninety-one major networks that appear on most cable systems, 79 are part of such multiple network groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, Liberty Media, NBC, and Disney. In order to program a channel on cable today, you must either be owned by or affiliated with one of the giants. If we’re not vigilant the wide-open spaces of the Internet could be transformed into a system in which a handful of companies use their control over high-speed access to ensure they remain at the top of the digital heap in the broadband era at the expense of the democratic potential of this amazing technology. So we must fight to make sure the Internet remains open to all as the present-day analogue of that many-tongued world of small newspapers so admired by de Tocqueville.

We must fight for a regulatory, market and public opinion environment that lets local and community-based content be heard rather than drowned out by nationwide commercial programming.

We must fight to limit conglomerate swallowing of media outlets by sensible limits on multiple and cross-ownership of TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies and other information sources. Let the message go forth: No Berlusconis in America!

We must fight to expand a noncommercial media system – something made possible in part by new digital spectrum awarded to PBS stations – and fight off attempts to privatize what’s left of public broadcasting. Commercial speech must not be the only free speech in America!

We must fight to create new opportunities, through public policies and private agreements, to let historically marginalized media players into more ownership of channels and control of content.

Let us encourage traditional mainstream journalism to get tougher about keeping a critical eye on those in public and private power and keeping us all informed of what’s important – not necessarily simple or entertaining or good for the bottom line. Not all news is “Entertainment Tonight.” And news departments are trustees of the public, not the corporate media’s stockholders

In that last job, schools of journalism and professional news associations have their work cut out. We need journalism graduates who are not only better informed in a whole spectrum of special fields – and the schools do a competent job there – but who take from their training a strong sense of public service. And also graduates who are perhaps a little more hard-boiled and street-smart than the present crop, though that’s hard to teach. Thanks to the high cost of education, we get very few recruits from the ranks of those who do the world’s unglamorous and low-paid work. But as a onetime “cub” in a very different kind of setting, I cherish H.L. Mencken’s description of what being a young Baltimore reporter a hundred years ago meant to him. “I was at large,” he wrote,

in a wicked seaport of half a million people with a front seat at every public . . [B]y all orthodox cultural standards I probably reached my all-time low, for the heavy reading of my teens had been abandoned in favor of life itself. . .But it would be an exaggeration to say I was ignorant, for if I neglected the humanities I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer or a midwife.

We need some of that worldly wisdom in our newsrooms. Let’s figure out how to attract youngsters who have acquired it.

And as for those professional associations of editors they might remember that in union there is strength. One journalist alone can’t extract from an employer a commitment to let editors and not accountants choose the appropriate subject matter for coverage. But what if news councils blew the whistle on shoddy or cowardly managements? What if foundations gave magazines such as the Columbia Journalism Review sufficient resources to spread their stories of journalistic bias, failure or incompetence? What if entire editorial departments simply refused any longer to quote anonymous sources – or give Kobe Bryant’s trial more than the minimal space it rates by any reasonable standard – or to run stories planted by the Defense Department and impossible, for alleged security reasons, to verify? What if a professional association backed them to the hilt? Or required the same stance from all its members? It would take courage to confront powerful ownerships that way. But not as much courage as is asked of those brave journalists in some countries who face the dungeon, the executioner or the secret assassin for speaking out.

All this may be in the domain of fantasy. And then again, maybe not. What I know to be real is that we are in for the fight of our lives. I am not a romantic about democracy or journalism; the writer Andre Gide may have been right when he said that all things human, given time, go badly. But I know journalism and democracy are deeply linked in whatever chance we human beings have to redress our grievances, renew our politics, and reclaim our revolutionary ideals. Those are difficult tasks at any time, and they are even more difficult in a cynical age as this, when a deep and pervasive corruption has settled upon the republic. But too much is at stake for our spirits to flag. Earlier this week the Library of Congress gave the first Kluge Lifetime Award in the Humanities to the Polish philosopher Leslie Kolakowski. In an interview Kolakowski said: “There is one freedom on which all other liberties depend – and that is freedom of expression, freedom of speech, of print. If this is taken away, no other freedom can exist, or at least it would be soon suppressed.”

That’s the flame of truth your movement must carry forward. I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the duration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70 next year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who faced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It’s your fight now. Look around. You are not alone.

Secret 9/11 Case Before High Court
By Warren Richey for The Christian Science Monitor.

It's the case that doesn't exist. Even though two different federal courts have conducted hearings and issued rulings, there has been no public record of any action. No documents are available. No files. No lawyer is allowed to speak about it. Period.

Yet this seemingly phantom case does exist - and is now headed to the US Supreme Court in what could produce a significant test of a question as old as the Star Chamber, abolished in 17th-century England: How far should a policy of total secrecy extend into a system of justice?

Secrecy has been a key Bush administration weapon in the war on terrorism. Attorney General John Ashcroft warns that mere tidbits of information that seem innocuous about the massive Sept. 11 investigation could help Al Qaeda carry out new attacks.

Yet this highly unusual petition to the high court arising from a Miami case brings into sharp focus the tension between America's long tradition of open courts and the need for security in times of national peril. At issue is whether certain cases may be conducted entirely behind closed doors under a secret arrangement among prosecutors, judges, and docket clerks.

While secret trial tactics have reportedly been used by federal prosecutors to shield cooperating drug dealers, it's unclear whether the high court has ever directly confronted the issue. But that may change if they take up MKB v. Warden (No. 03-6747).

This is among the first of the post-Sept. 11 terrorism cases to wend its way to the nation's highest tribunal. There was no public record of its existence, however, until the appeal was filed with the clerk of the US Supreme Court.

A federal judge and a three-judge federal appeals-court panel have conducted hearings and issued rulings. Yet lawyers and court personnel have been ordered to remain silent.

"The entire dockets for this case and appeal, every entry on them, are maintained privately, under seal, unavailable to the public," says a partially censored 27-page petition asking the high court to hear the case. "In the court of appeals, not just the filed documents and docket sheet are sealed from public view, but also hidden is the essential fact that a legal proceeding exists."...

The case is significant because it could force a close examination of secret tactics that are apparently becoming increasingly common under Attorney General Ashcroft. In September 2001, he ordered that all deportation hearings with links to the Sept. 11 investigation be conducted secretly. In addition, the Justice Department has acknowledged that at least nine criminal cases related to the Sept. 11 investigation were being cloaked in total secrecy.

MKB v. Warden is the first indication that the Justice Department is extending its total secrecy policy to proceedings in federal courts dealing with habeas corpus - that is, an individual's right to force the government to justify his or her detention.

The case offers the Supreme Court an opportunity for the first time to spell out whether such secret judicial proceedings violate constitutional protections. It may also offer the first insight into how much deference a majority of justices is willing to grant the government in areas where the war on terrorism may tread upon fundamental American freedoms...

Federal judges have the authority to order sensitive documents or even entire hearings sealed from public view when disclosure might harm national security. Such rulings are usually issued after the judge has explained the need for secrecy in a decision available to the public.

In addition, judges can order that an individual be identified in public court filings only by a pseudonym or by initials, as happened when the MKB case arrived at the US Supreme Court.

What is highly unusual in MKB v. Warden is that lower court judges ordered the entire case sealed from the start - preventing any mention of it to the public.

In her petition to the court, Miami federal public defender Kathleen Williams says the judges' actions authorizing the secrecy without any public notice, public hearings, or public findings amount to "an abuse of discretion" that requires corrective action by the justices.

"This habeas corpus case has been heard, appealed, and decided in complete secrecy," Ms. Williams says in her petition.

A government response to the petition is due Nov. 5. It will mark the first time the Justice Department has publicly acknowledged the existence of the habeas corpus action. The justices are set to consider the case during their Nov. 7 conference.

Justice Department officials have defended the blanket secrecy policy, saying that public hearings and public dockets would undermine efforts to recruit detainees as undercover operatives to infiltrate Al Qaeda cells in the US. According to press reports, similar secret trial tactics have been used by federal prosecutors to shield cooperating drug dealers from mention in public court documents that might blow their cover and end their use as operatives in ongoing undercover narcotics sting operations.

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

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1030/p01s02-usju.html

Secret 9/11 Case Before High Court
By Warren Richey
The Christian Science Monitor

Thursday 30 October 2003

MIAMI - It's the case that doesn't exist. Even though two different federal courts have conducted hearings and issued rulings, there has been no public record of any action. No documents are available. No files. No lawyer is allowed to speak about it. Period.

Yet this seemingly phantom case does exist - and is now headed to the US Supreme Court in what could produce a significant test of a question as old as the Star Chamber, abolished in 17th-century England: How far should a policy of total secrecy extend into a system of justice?

Secrecy has been a key Bush administration weapon in the war on terrorism. Attorney General John Ashcroft warns that mere tidbits of information that seem innocuous about the massive Sept. 11 investigation could help Al Qaeda carry out new attacks.

Yet this highly unusual petition to the high court arising from a Miami case brings into sharp focus the tension between America's long tradition of open courts and the need for security in times of national peril. At issue is whether certain cases may be conducted entirely behind closed doors under a secret arrangement among prosecutors, judges, and docket clerks.

While secret trial tactics have reportedly been used by federal prosecutors to shield cooperating drug dealers, it's unclear whether the high court has ever directly confronted the issue. But that may change if they take up MKB v. Warden (No. 03-6747).

What's known about the case

This is among the first of the post-Sept. 11 terrorism cases to wend its way to the nation's highest tribunal. There was no public record of its existence, however, until the appeal was filed with the clerk of the US Supreme Court.

A federal judge and a three-judge federal appeals-court panel have conducted hearings and issued rulings. Yet lawyers and court personnel have been ordered to remain silent.

"The entire dockets for this case and appeal, every entry on them, are maintained privately, under seal, unavailable to the public," says a partially censored 27-page petition asking the high court to hear the case. "In the court of appeals, not just the filed documents and docket sheet are sealed from public view, but also hidden is the essential fact that a legal proceeding exists."

Despite the heavy secrecy, a brief docketing error led to a newspaper report identifying MKB by name in March. The report said MKB is an Algerian waiter in south Florida who was detained by immigration authorities and questioned by the FBI.

MKB's legal status remains unclear, but it appears unlikely from court documents that he is connected in any way to terrorism. He has been free since March 2002 on a $10,000 bond.

The case is significant because it could force a close examination of secret tactics that are apparently becoming increasingly common under Attorney General Ashcroft. In September 2001, he ordered that all deportation hearings with links to the Sept. 11 investigation be conducted secretly. In addition, the Justice Department has acknowledged that at least nine criminal cases related to the Sept. 11 investigation were being cloaked in total secrecy.

MKB v. Warden is the first indication that the Justice Department is extending its total secrecy policy to proceedings in federal courts dealing with habeas corpus - that is, an individual's right to force the government to justify his or her detention.

The case offers the Supreme Court an opportunity for the first time to spell out whether such secret judicial proceedings violate constitutional protections. It may also offer the first insight into how much deference a majority of justices is willing to grant the government in areas where the war on terrorism may tread upon fundamental American freedoms.

From the perspective of news reporters and government watchdogs, the case marks a potential turning point away from a long-held presumption that judicial proceedings in the US are open to public scrutiny.

The case is one of several currently on petition to the high court dealing with some aspect of the war on terror. Two cases relate to detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and one challenges Yasser Hamdi's open-ended detention as an enemy combatant. A fourth case seeks to force the Justice Department to disclose the names of detainees caught up in antiterror investigations - an issue closely related to the Miami habeas case.

Federal judges have the authority to order sensitive documents or even entire hearings sealed from public view when disclosure might harm national security. Such rulings are usually issued after the judge has explained the need for secrecy in a decision available to the public.

In addition, judges can order that an individual be identified in public court filings only by a pseudonym or by initials, as happened when the MKB case arrived at the US Supreme Court.

What is highly unusual in MKB v. Warden is that lower court judges ordered the entire case sealed from the start - preventing any mention of it to the public.

'Abuse of discretion'?

In her petition to the court, Miami federal public defender Kathleen Williams says the judges' actions authorizing the secrecy without any public notice, public hearings, or public findings amount to "an abuse of discretion" that requires corrective action by the justices.

"This habeas corpus case has been heard, appealed, and decided in complete secrecy," Ms. Williams says in her petition.

A government response to the petition is due Nov. 5. It will mark the first time the Justice Department has publicly acknowledged the existence of the habeas corpus action. The justices are set to consider the case during their Nov. 7 conference.

Justice Department officials have defended the blanket secrecy policy, saying that public hearings and public dockets would undermine efforts to recruit detainees as undercover operatives to infiltrate Al Qaeda cells in the US. According to press reports, similar secret trial tactics have been used by federal prosecutors to shield cooperating drug dealers from mention in public court documents that might blow their cover and end their use as operatives in ongoing undercover narcotics sting operations.

U.S. Soldiers Seal Saddam's Home Village
By Slobodan Lekic for the Associated Press.

American soldiers on Friday sealed off the village where Saddam Hussein was born and ordered adults to register for identity cards, while insurgents mounted a series of harassing attacks on U.S. military and Iraqi government targets in the northern city of Mosul.

Starting around midnight Thursday, U.S. soldiers, Iraqi police and civil defense forces moved into Uja, a small dusty village about 10 miles southeast of Tikrit.

Soldiers stretched concertina wire around the perimeter of the village and established checkpoints. Residents over the age of 18 will be required to have registration cards to move in and out of the village, U.S. officers said.

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3331773,00.html

U.S. Soldiers Seal Saddam's Home Village
By SLOBODAN LEKIC
The Associated Press

Friday 31 October 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - American soldiers on Friday sealed off the village where Saddam Hussein was born and ordered adults to register for identity cards, while insurgents mounted a series of harassing attacks on U.S. military and Iraqi government targets in the northern city of Mosul.

Starting around midnight Thursday, U.S. soldiers, Iraqi police and civil defense forces moved into Uja, a small dusty village about 10 miles southeast of Tikrit.

Soldiers stretched concertina wire around the perimeter of the village and established checkpoints. Residents over the age of 18 will be required to have registration cards to move in and out of the village, U.S. officers said.

The New York Times reported Friday that senior U.S. officials believe the former Iraqi leader, who is believed to have been on the run since U.S. forces took over Baghdad in April, is playing a major role in coordinating and directing attacks against American troops.

``This is an effort to protect the majority of the population, the people who want to get on with their lives,'' said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, commander of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division.

Russell said he did not know whether Saddam was directing parts of the insurgency, but the village is the family home of many former Baathist regime members.

``There are ties leading to this village, to the funding and planning of attacks against U.S. soldiers,'' Russell said.

The U.S.-led coalition has been fighting a guerilla-style insurgency for months. So far, 117 soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat was over.

A total of 114 soldiers were killed in the active combat phase that began March 20.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. foot patrol on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul and unidentified gunmen sprayed the city hall with automatic fire, officers said Friday. Nobody was injured in the attacks.

The violence in the north came after a bomb late Thursday rocked a row of shops in Baghdad's Old City, killing two people, and another exploded near a military police convoy north of the capital, slightly wounding two Americans.

In Baghdad's neighborhood of Salhiya, Iraqi police and U.S. troops on Thursday blocked a major street after residents informed authorities about a car parked under a pedestrian bridge fearing it is booby trapped. Bomb experts checked a white Mitsubishi parked a few hundred yards from the U.S. occupation authorities headquarters in Baghdad.

``At dawn, some people from the area came and told us there is a car that had been left in the street. We called the Americans and until now we don't know if it is booby trapped or not,'' police Sgt. Mohammed Tariq said.

In Washington, the House of Representatives approved a massive aid package requested by the Bush administration for nearly $65 billion for military personnel and operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an additional $18.6 billion for reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

The Senate was expected to follow suit quickly.

The U.S. administration has been less successful in persuading international organizations - including the United Nations and the international Red Cross - to remain in Iraq. Prompted by Monday's attacks on three police stations and Baghdad office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the organizations announced they would reduce staff and review their presence in Iraq.

Separately, the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council said it was moving forward with setting up a war crimes tribunal to prosecute those accused of atrocities during Saddam Hussein's regime.

The decision to form the court was taken several weeks ago, council member Mouwafak al-Rabii said ``but now we are taking practical steps to implement this decision and to create those war-crimes tribunal.'' He did not elaborate.

Human rights groups estimate several hundred thousand people were killed during Saddam's three decades in power. Multiple mass graves have been found throughout the country since the U.S.-led coalition deposed the dictator in April.

The U.S. administration repeatedly has stated that it wants past abuses to be prosecuted under an Iraqi-led legal system instead of an international tribunal akin to those for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.

The United States currently has in custody dozens of high-ranking officials from their list of most-wanted Iraqi figures - many of them being held at the high security prison at the Baghdad International Airport.

My friend Chris Ritter has created this lovely flyer for my upcoming showcase at Noe Valley Ministry on December 13, 2003.

Map to Noe Valley Ministry

Thanks, Critter!

An interesting Newsweek feature explaining how Dick Cheney bought into the Shrub War and then proceeded to sell it to everyone else.

Of particular interest is the quote below where Cheney says that "we believe that he [Saddam Hussein] has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons" and then Newsweek clarifies that "Cheney later said that he meant "program," not "weapons."

However, in Donald Rumsfeld's Meet The Press Interview, Rumsfeld claims that "they [Iraq] had programs relating to nuclear weapons that they were reconstituting. Not that they had nuclear weapons. No one said that.

So it looks like somebody did say that Saddam had nuclear weapons, and it was Dick Cheney.

Cheney's Long Path to War
By Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas (With Tamara Lipper, Richard Wolffe and Roy Gutman) for Newsweek.

Of all the president's advisers, Cheney has consistently taken the most dire view of the terrorist threat. On Iraq, Bush was the decision maker. But more than any adviser, Cheney was the one to make the case to the president that war against Iraq was an urgent necessity. Beginning in the late summer of 2002, he persistently warned that Saddam was stocking up on chemical and biological weapons, and last March, on the eve of the invasion, he declared that "we believe that he [Saddam Hussein] has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons." (Cheney later said that he meant "program," not "weapons." He also said, a bit optimistically, "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.") After seven months, investigators are still looking for that arsenal of WMD.

Cheney has repeatedly suggested that Baghdad has ties to Al Qaeda. He has pointedly refused to rule out suggestions that Iraq was somehow to blame for the 9/11 attacks and may even have played a role in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The CIA and FBI, as well as a congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks, have dismissed this conspiracy theory. Still, as recently as Sept. 14, Cheney continued to leave the door open to Iraqi complicity. He brought up a report--widely discredited by U.S. intelligence officials--that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. And he described Iraq as "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." A few days later, a somewhat sheepish President Bush publicly corrected the vice president. There was no evidence, Bush admitted, to suggest that the Iraqis were behind 9/11.

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

http://www.msnbc.com/news/991209.asp?0cv=KA01&cp1=1

page 1 of 3

Cheney's Long Path to War

By Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek

Every Thursday, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have lunch together in a small dining room off the Oval Office. They eat alone; no aides are present. They have no fixed agenda, but it's a safe assumption that they often talk about intelligence--about what the United States knows, or doesn't know, about the terrorist threat.

THE PRESIDENT RESPECTS Cheney's judgment, say White House aides, and values the veep's long experience in the intelligence community (as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee in the 1980s and as secretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush administration). As vice president, Cheney is free to roam about the various agencies, quizzing analysts and top spooks about terrorists and their global connections. "This is a very important area. It's the one the president asked me to work on ... I ask a lot of hard questions," Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert last September. "That's my job."

Of all the president's advisers, Cheney has consistently taken the most dire view of the terrorist threat. On Iraq, Bush was the decision maker. But more than any adviser, Cheney was the one to make the case to the president that war against Iraq was an urgent necessity. Beginning in the late summer of 2002, he persistently warned that Saddam was stocking up on chemical and biological weapons, and last March, on the eve of the invasion, he declared that "we believe that he [Saddam Hussein] has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons." (Cheney later said that he meant "program," not "weapons." He also said, a bit optimistically, "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.") After seven months, investigators are still looking for that arsenal of WMD.

Cheney has repeatedly suggested that Baghdad has ties to Al Qaeda. He has pointedly refused to rule out suggestions that Iraq was somehow to blame for the 9/11 attacks and may even have played a role in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The CIA and FBI, as well as a congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks, have dismissed this conspiracy theory. Still, as recently as Sept. 14, Cheney continued to leave the door open to Iraqi complicity. He brought up a report--widely discredited by U.S. intelligence officials--that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. And he described Iraq as "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." A few days later, a somewhat sheepish President Bush publicly corrected the vice president. There was no evidence, Bush admitted, to suggest that the Iraqis were behind 9/11.

Cheney has long been regarded as a Washington wise man. He has a dry, deliberate manner; a penetrating, if somewhat wintry, wit, and a historian's long-view sensibility. He is far to the right politically, but in no way wild-eyed; in private conversation he seems moderate, thoughtful, cautious. Yet when it comes to terrorist plots, he seems to have given credence to the views of some fairly flaky ideologues and charlatans. Writing recently in The New Yorker, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh alleged that Cheney had, in effect, become the dupe of a cabal of neoconservative full-mooners, the Pentagon's mysteriously named Office of Special Plans and the patsy of an alleged bank swindler and would-be ruler of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi.

A Cheney aide took strong exception to the notion that the vice president was at the receiving end of some kind of private pipeline for half-baked or fraudulent intelligence, or that he was somehow carrying water for the neocons or anyone else's self-serving agendas. "That's an urban myth," said this aide, who declined to be identified. Cheney has cited as his "gold standard" the National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus report put out by the entire intelligence community. And, indeed, an examination of the declassified version of the NIE reveals some pretty alarming warnings. "Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program," the October 2002 NIE states.

Nonetheless, it appears that Cheney has been susceptible to "cherry-picking," embracing those snippets of intelligence that support his dark prognosis while discarding others that don't. He is widely regarded in the intelligence community as an outlier, as a man who always goes for the worst-case --scenario and sometimes overlooks less alarming or at least ambiguous signs. Top intelligence officials reject the suggestion that Cheney has somehow bullied lower-level CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency analysts into telling him what he wants to hear. But they do describe the Office of the Vice President, with its large and assertive staff, as a kind of free-floating power base that at times brushes aside the normal policymaking machinery under national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice. On the road to war, Cheney in effect created a parallel government that became the real power center.

Cheney, say those who know him, is in no way cynically manipulative. By all accounts, he is genuinely convinced that the threat is imminent and menacing. Professional intelligence analysts can offer measured, nuanced opinions, but policymakers, Cheney likes to say, have to decide. As he put it last July in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, "How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?" And yet Cheney seems to have rung the warning bell a little too loudly and urgently. If nothing else, his apparently exaggerated alarms over Iraq, WMD and the terror connection may make Americans slow to respond the next time he sees a wolf at the door.

page 2 of 3

What is it about Cheney’s character and background that makes him such a Cassandra? And did his powerful dirge drown out more-modulated voices in the councils of power in Washington and in effect launch America on the path to war? Cheney declined an interview request from NEWSWEEK, but interviews with his aides and a wide variety of sources in the intelligence and national-security community paint the portrait of a vice president who may be too powerful for his own good.

Cheney, say those who know him, has always had a Hobbesian view of life. The world is a dangerous place; war is the natural state of mankind; enemies lurk. The national-security state must be strong, vigilant and wary. Cheney believes that America’s military and intelligence establishments were weakened by defeat in Vietnam and the wave of scandals that followed in Watergate in the ’70s and Iran-contra in the ’80s. He did not regard as progress the rise of congressional investigating committees, special prosecutors and an increasingly adversarial, aggressive press. Cheney is a strong believer in the necessity of government secrecy as well as more broadly the need to preserve and protect the power of the executive branch.

He never delivers these views in a rant. Rather, Cheney talks in a low, arid voice, if at all. He usually waits until the end of a meeting to speak up, and then speaks so softly and cryptically, out of one side of his mouth, so that people have to lean forward to hear. (In a babble of attention-seekers, this can be a powerful way of getting heard.) Cheney rarely shows anger or alarm, but on occasion his exasperation emerges.

One such moment came at the end of the first gulf war in 1991. Cheney was secretary of Defense, and arms inspectors visiting defeated Iraq had discovered that Saddam Hussein was much closer to building a nuclear weapon than anyone had realized. Why, Cheney wondered aloud to his aides, had a steady stream of U.S. intelligence experts beaten a path to his door before the war to say that the Iraqis were at least five to 10 years away from building a bomb? Years later, in meetings of the second President Bush’s war cabinet, Cheney would return again and again to the question of how Saddam could create an entire hidden nuclear program without the CIA’s knowing much, if anything, about it.

Cheney’s suspicions—about both the strength of Iraq and the weakness of U.S. intelligence agencies—were fed after he left government. Cheney spent a considerable amount of time with the scholars and backers of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that has served as a conservative government-in-waiting. Cheney was on the board of directors and his wife, Lynne, a conservative activist on social issues, still keeps an office there as a resident “fellow.” At various lunches and dinners around Washington, sponsored by AEI and other conservative organizations, Cheney came in contact with other foreign-policy hard-liners or “neoconservatives” like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. It was an article of faith in the AEI crowd that the United States had missed a chance to knock off Saddam in 1991; that Saddam was rebuilding his stockpile of WMD, and that sooner or later the Iraqi strongman would have to go. When some dissidents in northern Iraq tried to mount an insurrection with CIA backing in the mid-’90s and failed, the conservatives blamed the Clinton administration for showing weakness. Clinton’s national-security adviser, Tony Lake, had, it was alleged, “pulled the plug.”

In the late ’90s, Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of one of the resistance groups, the Iraqi National Congress, began cultivating and lobbying intellectuals, journalists and political leaders in Washington. Chalabi —had a shadowy past; his family, exiled from Iraq in the late ’50s, had set up a banking empire through the Middle East that collapsed in charges of fraud in 1989. (Chalabi, who has always denied wrongdoing, has been convicted and sentenced, in absentia, by a Jordanian military court to 22 years of hard labor.) But operating out of London, the smoothly persuasive Chalabi presented himself as a democratic answer to Saddam Hussein. With a little American backing, he promised, he could rally the Iraqi people to overthrow the Butcher of Baghdad.

Chalabi was hailed in some circles, especially among the neocons at AEI, as the “George Washington of Iraq.” But the professionals at the State Department and at the CIA took a more skeptical view. In 1999, after Congress had passed and President Bill Clinton had signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, providing funds to support Iraqi exile groups, the U.S. government convened a conference with the INC and other opposition groups in London to discuss “regime change.” The American officials proposed bringing INC activists to America for training. Chalabi’s aides objected. Most of the likely candidates were Iraqi refugees living in various European countries. By coming to the United States, they could lose their refugee status. Some Pentagon officials shook their heads in disbelief. “You had to wonder,” said one who attended the conference, “how serious were these people. They kept telling us they wanted to risk their lives for their country. But they were afraid to risk their refugee status in Sweden?”

After the Republicans regained the White House in 2001, many of the neocons took top national-security jobs. Perle, the man closest to Chalabi, chose to stay on the outside (where he kept a lucrative lobbying practice). But Wolfowitz and Feith became, respectively, the No. 2 and No. 3 man at the Defense Department, and a former Wolfowitz aide, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, became the vice president’s chief of staff. Once the newcomers took over, the word went out that any disparaging observations about Chalabi or the INC were no longer appreciated. “The view was, ‘If you weren’t a total INC guy, then you’re on the wrong side’,” said a Pentagon official. “It was, ‘We’re not going to trash the INC anymore and Ahmad Chalabi is an Iraqi patriot who risked his life for his country’. ”

page 3 of 3

Some neocons began agitating inside the Bush administration to support some kind of insurrection, led by Chalabi, that would overthrow Saddam. In the summer of 2001, the neocons circulated a plan to support an INC-backed invasion. A senior Pentagon analyst questioned whether Iraqis would rise up to back it. “You’re thinking like the Clinton people,” a Feith aide shot back. “They planned for failure. We plan for success.” It is important to note that at this early stage, the neocons did not have the enthusiastic backing of Vice President Cheney. Just because Cheney had spent a lot of time around the Get Saddam neocons does not mean that he had become one, says an administration aide. “It’s a mistake to add up two and two and get 18,” he says. Cheney’s cautious side kept him from leaping into any potential Bay of Pigs covert actions.

What changed Cheney was not Chalabi or his friends from AEI, but the 9/11 attacks. For years Cheney had feared—and warned against—a terrorist attack on an American city. The hijacked planes that plowed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon confirmed his suspicions of American vulnerability—though by no means his worst fears—that the terrorists would use a biological or nuclear weapon. “9/11 changed everything,” Cheney began saying to anyone who would listen. It was no longer enough to treat terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, Cheney believed. The United States had to find ways to act against the terrorists before they struck.

Cheney began collecting intelligence on the threat anywhere he could find it. Along with Libby, his chief of staff, the vice president began showing up at the CIA and DIA for briefings. Cheney would ask probing questions from different analysts in various agencies and then, later with his staff, connect the dots. Such an aggressive national-security role by a vice president was unusual. So was the sheer size of Cheney’s staff—about 60 people, much larger than the size of Al Gore’s. The threat from germ warfare was a particular concern of Cheney’s. After 9/11, Libby kept calling over to the Defense Department, asking what the military was doing to guard against a bio attack from crop-dusters. In July 2002, Cheney made a surprise, unpublicized visit to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. He wanted to question directly the public-health experts about their efforts to combat bioterrorism. If not for the traffic snarls caused by his motorcade, his visit might have remained a secret.

Nov. 17, 2003 Cover Package: Dick Cheney and the War in Iraq

There was, within the administration, another office parsing through intelligence on the Iraqi and terror threat. The Office of Special Plans was so secretive at first that the director, William Luti, did not even want to mention its existence. “Don’t ever talk about this,” Luti told his staff, according to a source who attended early meetings. “If anybody asks, just say no comment.” (Luti does not recall this, but he does regret choosing such a spooky name for the office.) The Office of Special Plans has sometimes been described as an intelligence cell, along the lines of “Team B,” set up by the Ford administration in the 1970s to second-guess the CIA when conservatives believed that the intelligence community was underestimating the Soviet threat. But OSP is more properly described as a planning group—planning for war in Iraq. Some of the OSP staffers were true believers. Abe Shulsky, a defense intellectual who ran the office under Luti, was a Straussian, a student of a philosopher named Leo Strauss, who believed that ancient texts had hidden meanings that only an elite could divine. Strauss taught that philosophers needed to tell —”noble lies” to the politicians and the people.

The OSP gathered up bits and pieces of intelligence that pointed to Saddam’s WMD programs and his ties to terror groups. The OSP would prepare briefing papers for administration officials to use. The OSP also drew on reports of defectors who alleged that Saddam was hiding bio and chem weapons under hospitals and schools. Some of these defectors were provided to the intelligence community by Chalabi, who also fed them to large news organizations, like The New York Times. Vanity Fair published a few of the more lurid reports, deemed to be bogus by U.S. intelligence agencies (like one alleging that Saddam was running a terrorist-training camp, complete with a plane fuselage in which to practice hijackings). The CIA was skeptical about the motivation and credibility of these defectors, but their stories gained wide circulation.

Cheney’s staffers were in more than occasional contact with the OSP. Luti, an intense and brilliant former naval aviator who flew combat missions in the gulf war, worked in Cheney’s office before he took over OSP, and was well liked by Cheney’s staff. Luti’s office had absorbed a small, secretive intelligence-analysis shop in the Pentagon known as Team B (after the original Team B) whose research linked 9/11 to both Al Qaeda and the Iranian terror group Hizbullah. The team was particularly fascinated by the allegation that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent. One of Team B’s creators—David Wurmser—now works on Cheney’s staff. Libby went to at least one briefing with Team B staffers at which they discussed Saddam’s terror connections. It would be a mistake, however, to overstate the influence of OSP on Cheney or his staff. Cheney collected information from many sources, but principally from the main intelligence agencies, the CIA and DIA. Likewise, Cheney’s aides say that they talked to Chalabi and his people about “opposition politics”—not about WMD or terrorism. (“The whole idea that we were mainlining dubious INC reports into the intelligence community is simply nonsense,” Paul Wolfowitz told NEWSWEEK.)

There has been much speculation in the press and in the intelligence community about the impact of the conspiracy theories of Laurie Mylroie on the Bush administration. A somewhat eccentric Harvard-trained political scientist, Mylroie argued (from guesswork and sketchy evidence) that the 1993 World Trade Center attack was an Iraqi intelligence operation. When AEI published an updated version of her book “Study of Revenge” two years ago, her acknowledgments cited the help of, among others, Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of State John Bolton and Libby. But Cheney aides say that the vice president has never even discussed Mylroie’s book. (“I take satisfaction in the fact that we went to war with Iraq and got rid of Saddam Hussein,” said Mylroie. “The rest is details.”)

Cheney is hardly the only intelligence adviser to the president. CIA Director George Tenet briefs the president every morning. But Tenet was often caught up defending his agency. Cheney feels free to criticize, and he does. “Cheney was very distrustful and remains very distrustful of the traditional intelligence establishment,” says a former White House official. “He thinks they are too cautious or too invested in their own policy concerns.” Cheney is not as “passionate” in his dissents as Wolfowitz, the leading intellectual neocon in the administration. But he carries more clout.

Cheney often teams up with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to roll over national-security adviser Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell. “OVP [Cheney’s office] and OSD [Rumsfeld’s office] turned into their own axis of evil,” grouses a former White House official, who added that Cheney and Rumsfeld shared the same strategic vision: pessimistic and dark. Some observers see a basic breakdown in the government. Rice has chosen to play more of an advisory role to the president and failed to coordinate the often warring agencies like State and Defense. “Cheney was acting as national-security adviser because of Rice’s failure to do so,” says Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

State Department staffers say that Cheney’s office pushed hard to include dubious evidence of Iraq’s terror ties in Powell’s speech to the United Nations last February. Libby fought for an inclusion of the alleged meeting between Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague. Powell resisted, but Powell’s aides were impressed with Libby’s persistence. In the end, the reference to Atta was dropped, but Powell did include other examples linking Baghdad to Al Qaeda. When the State Department wanted to cut off funds to Chalabi for alleged accounting failures, Cheney backed shifting the money from the State Department to the Defense Department. It is significant, however, that Cheney ultimately did not support setting up Chalabi as a government in exile, a ploy that the State Department and CIA strongly opposed. They feared that Chalabi would proclaim himself ruler-by-fiat after an American invasion. Though Chalabi’s people often talked to Cheney’s staff, the vice president has no particular brief for the INC chief over any other democratically elected leader, says an administration official.

Accused of overstating the Iraqi threat by politicians and pundits, Cheney is publicly and privately unrepentant. He believes that Al Qaeda is determined to obtain weapons of mass destruction and use them against American civilians in their cities and homes. To ignore those warnings would be “irresponsible in the extreme,” he says in his speeches. His staffers are not unmindful of the risk of crying wolf, however, and acknowledge that if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq, the public will be much less likely to back pre-emptive wars in the future. Cheney still believes the WMD will turn up somewhere in Iraq—if they aren’t first used against us by terrorists.

With Tamara Lipper, Richard Wolffe and Roy Gutman

Note that the FDA thinks cloned animals won't be used much for meat because of their high price tag. Of course, now we know that, since this story was released, the price is starting to go down already (and sales are way up).

FDA Says Meat, Milk from Cloned Animals Safe
By Randy Fabi for Reuters.

Milk and meat products from cloned cattle, pigs and goats are safe for consumers to eat, according to a Food and Drug Administration document obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The FDA findings bring the agency one step closer to determining whether to allow the commercialization of food from cloned animals. A final policy decision is expected next year.

Cloned animals -- which are genetically identical -- are attractive to the industry because ranchers are able to keep their favorite livestock, providing better tasting meat and more milk and eggs.

"Edible products from normal, healthy clones or their progeny do not appear to pose increased food consumption risk," said the 12-page executive summary of an FDA report. A copy of the report was provided to Reuters by an industry source.

The FDA is expected to release the executive summary of the new report on Friday. The entire report will be released at a later date...

Some consumer groups have urged the FDA to address the moral and ethical concerns of animal cloning before approving its commercialization.

If the FDA does allow it, consumers are most likely to purchase meat and milk from the offspring of cloned animals, the agency said. Their parents will probably not be slaughtered for food because of their high price tag.

A cloned calf can sell for as much as $82,000. An average calf sells for less than $1,000.

Food from the offspring of cloned animals were the most likely to enter the U.S. food supply, the FDA said.

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

http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3727810

FDA Says Meat, Milk from Cloned Animals Safe
Thu October 30, 2003 06:00 PM ET

By Randy Fabi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Milk and meat products from cloned cattle, pigs and goats are safe for consumers to eat, according to a Food and Drug Administration document obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The FDA findings bring the agency one step closer to determining whether to allow the commercialization of food from cloned animals. A final policy decision is expected next year.

Cloned animals -- which are genetically identical -- are attractive to the industry because ranchers are able to keep their favorite livestock, providing better tasting meat and more milk and eggs.

"Edible products from normal, healthy clones or their progeny do not appear to pose increased food consumption risk," said the 12-page executive summary of an FDA report. A copy of the report was provided to Reuters by an industry source.

The FDA is expected to release the executive summary of the new report on Friday. The entire report will be released at a later date.

The nascent food cloning industry, which includes companies such as ViaGen Inc., owned by Exeter Life Sciences, and Cyagra, is eagerly awaiting the FDA's decision on commercialization. Smithfield Foods, the top U.S. pork producer, has a technology development contract with ViaGen.

Industry officials hope the FDA will make a decision on commercialization quickly as some companies have had difficulty raising funds from investors because of the uncertainty surrounding the issue.

An FDA spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Biotech companies clone animals by taking the nuclei of cells from adults and fusing them into other egg cells from which the nuclei have been extracted. Livestock have already been cloned for sale to producers.

Some consumer groups have urged the FDA to address the moral and ethical concerns of animal cloning before approving its commercialization.

If the FDA does allow it, consumers are most likely to purchase meat and milk from the offspring of cloned animals, the agency said. Their parents will probably not be slaughtered for food because of their high price tag.

A cloned calf can sell for as much as $82,000. An average calf sells for less than $1,000.

Food from the offspring of cloned animals were the most likely to enter the U.S. food supply, the FDA said.

Organic Valley Blasts F.D.A. Support for Animal Cloning; Warns People are not Guinea Pigs

In Yahoo News.

Today's statement of support for animal cloning by the F.D.A. was swiftly condemned by Organic Valley, one of the nation's foremost organic brands and the only one to be 100 percent farmer owned.

"By allowing foods from cloned animals into the food system without proof of their long-term effects on human, animal and environmental health, the F.D.A. is not protecting the consumer. The F.D.A. is furthering their support of the abhorrent attempt by corporate interests to control the genes of our citizenry," warned George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley.

"American families should not be guinea pigs for corporate greed! Contrary to what the F.D.A. says, there is no level of 'acceptable risk' when it comes to putting unproven science on the table for dinner," said Siemon, in reference to the F.D.A.'s pro-cloning rationale.

Siemon noted that once man-made species are introduced into the environment there is no "calling them back." He explained: "Whether it's genetically engineered crops cross pollinating with wild weeds, genetically modified salmon breeding with wild fish, or future concerns with clone mammals, the risks to the balance in ecosystems worldwide are great."

Consumers Need Animal Cloning Warning Labels

According to the F.D.A., products from cloned animals, like products that have been genetically engineered, do not need to carry a warning label on the package.

"Citizens deserve the right to know what is in their food and how it has been produced," said Siemon. "At least if the product is labeled as being from cloned animals, consumers can have a choice."

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

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031031/nyf029_1.html

Organic Valley Blasts F.D.A. Support for Animal Cloning; Warns People are not Guinea Pigs
Friday October 31, 7:46 am ET

LAFARGE, Wisc., Oct. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Today's statement of support for animal cloning by the F.D.A. was swiftly condemned by Organic Valley, one of the nation's foremost organic brands and the only one to be 100 percent farmer owned.

"By allowing foods from cloned animals into the food system without proof of their long-term effects on human, animal and environmental health, the F.D.A. is not protecting the consumer. The F.D.A. is furthering their support of the abhorrent attempt by corporate interests to control the genes of our citizenry," warned George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley.

"American families should not be guinea pigs for corporate greed! Contrary to what the F.D.A. says, there is no level of 'acceptable risk' when it comes to putting unproven science on the table for dinner," said Siemon, in reference to the F.D.A.'s pro-cloning rationale.

Siemon noted that once man-made species are introduced into the environment there is no "calling them back." He explained: "Whether it's genetically engineered crops cross pollinating with wild weeds, genetically modified salmon breeding with wild fish, or future concerns with clone mammals, the risks to the balance in ecosystems worldwide are great."

Consumers Need Animal Cloning Warning Labels

According to the F.D.A., products from cloned animals, like products that have been genetically engineered, do not need to carry a warning label on the package.

"Citizens deserve the right to know what is in their food and how it has been produced," said Siemon. "At least if the product is labeled as being from cloned animals, consumers can have a choice."

The only way consumers will be able to be sure that the foods they purchase have been made without genetically modified ingredients or cloned animals is by buying organic. The stringent standards for organic forbid such practices.

"The U.S. needs to use the precautionary principle followed in Europe where prevention is the goal. We need to work with Nature, not try to fool her," said Siemon.

Siemon urged consumers to contact their Congressional representatives to ask them to demand that the F.D.A. rescind its support for animal cloning. The F.D.A. is scheduled to hold a public meeting on animal cloning during the first week in November.

About the Organic Valley Cooperative

Founded in 1988, Organic Valley today is made up of 577 farms in 17 states. Enjoying record success, the cooperative in the last year added 15,000 acres, 3,810 cows and more than 121 farmers into the organic system. Its farmer pay price was nearly double that paid to conventional farmers and the co-op realized its best sales ever, $125 million.

Stewards of the earth who use nature as their teachers, Organic Valley farmers produce more than 130 delicious organic foods, including milk, cheese, butter, spreads, creams, eggs, produce, juice, and meat. They're available in supermarkets, natural foods stores and food-co-ops nationwide. For further information contact Organic Valley, 507 West Main Street, LaFarge WI 54639, tel. (608) 625-2602, or visit www.organicvalley.com.

Sales of cloned cattle multiply
For the Associated Press (as published in the Houston Chronicle).

Cattle are quietly being cloned and sold for high prices as the livestock industry anticipates government approval for letting their offspring into the food chain, industry officials said.

Meat or milk derived from healthy cloned farm animals appears safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday in its first attempt at assessing questions about the emerging technology.

The FDA is still trying to decide if cloned farm animals will require government approval before being sold as food. That decision is expected to take another year.

The cattle industry has voluntarily agreed to keep products from cloned animals out of the food supply. But in the meantime, there already are as many as 300 cloned bulls in existence, said Lisa Dryer of Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington lobbying group.

And an Austin-based biotech firm, ViaGen, said Friday that a cow cloned from a prodigious producing animal was auctioned for $170,000 in Iberia, Mo...

ViaGen President Scott Davis said "thousands and thousands" of units of frozen semen from hundreds of cloned bulls are being stockpiled around the country, ready for sale to cattle breeders when the FDA issues its new guidelines.

He said ViaGen is working with Smithfield Foods, the world's largest hog processor and producer, to use cloning to create more productive and faster-growing pigs. Even if the company saves just a dollar or less per pig, "multiply that by 10 million," he said.

And Scott Davis, not related to Ernie Davis, said cloning likely will become even more accessible and profitable in the future as the cost to clone an animal falls.

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

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/business/2198080

Nov. 3, 2003, 6:26AM
Sales of cloned cattle multiply
Associated Press

FORT WORTH -- Cattle are quietly being cloned and sold for high prices as the livestock industry anticipates government approval for letting their offspring into the food chain, industry officials said.

Meat or milk derived from healthy cloned farm animals appears safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday in its first attempt at assessing questions about the emerging technology.

The FDA is still trying to decide if cloned farm animals will require government approval before being sold as food. That decision is expected to take another year.

The cattle industry has voluntarily agreed to keep products from cloned animals out of the food supply. But in the meantime, there already are as many as 300 cloned bulls in existence, said Lisa Dryer of Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington lobbying group.

And an Austin-based biotech firm, ViaGen, said Friday that a cow cloned from a prodigious producing animal was auctioned for $170,000 in Iberia, Mo.

Some members of Texas' cattle circles have reservations about whether cloning is commercially practical. The cost of a cloned calf currently is estimated at $19,000. And some cloned animals develop health problems.

"A lot of those cloned animals have not been as high performance as the animals they've been cloned from," Ernie Davis, professor of livestock marketing at Texas A&M University, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I think the jury is still out on cloning."

But others said they are ready to consider the technology to enhance their breeding stock.

"Look at it this way. It's like duplicating Michael Jordan until you have five Michael Jordans on a team," said Donald Brown, who runs the cattle-breeding program at his family's Throckmorton ranch. "Cloning takes breeding to a whole new level."

ViaGen President Scott Davis said "thousands and thousands" of units of frozen semen from hundreds of cloned bulls are being stockpiled around the country, ready for sale to cattle breeders when the FDA issues its new guidelines.

He said ViaGen is working with Smithfield Foods, the world's largest hog processor and producer, to use cloning to create more productive and faster-growing pigs. Even if the company saves just a dollar or less per pig, "multiply that by 10 million," he said.

And Scott Davis, not related to Ernie Davis, said cloning likely will become even more accessible and profitable in the future as the cost to clone an animal falls.

"All cloning is a way to accelerate the rate of genetic progress," he said. "It's basically just another breeding tool in the animal breeder's tool kit."

A fellow grad student buddy of mine, Whitney, has asked me to ask my international readers to participate in one of her assignments for her International Broadcasting class.

She needs you to cut and paste this questionnaire into an email, enter in your answers, and email it back to her at : Whitneykennett@aol.com. .

Thanks in advance to those of you choose to participate!

Hello!

My name is Whitney Kennett and I am conducting an interview for a class
project in the BECA program at San Francisco State University about reactions and
comments on War coverage among students from other part of the world.

Please be assured that your answers will be kept confidential with no
name recorded.

First, a few basic questions:

Which country are you from?_________

Please select you age group:
a. under 18 b. 18-25 c. 26-30 d. 30-40
e. 40+

1.What's your major source of news?

Radio

TV

NP

Internet

Other

2.How often do you watch news?

Everyday

6 times a week

3 times

none

3.The news coverage during the war by US is authoritative

Strongly agree

Agree

B=neutral

Disagree

Strongly disagree

4.Do you think mainstream western media shape the public opinion during

this war

yes

no

neutral

no opinion

Why?

5.Which of the following media, do you think did a better job in

providing reliable war coverage?

CNN

BBC

Network of your country

Other

6. Do you recall seeing Iraqi war coverage in television and in newspapers
(abroad only)? ( If yes please continue)

7. Do you recall seeing the take down of the Saddam Hussein Statue in the
center of Baghdad?

8. What reactions did this bring about for you?

9. Do you recall the American soldiers putting up a US flag after the
falling of the statue?

10.How did this make you view America and Americans?

11. Overall, what perspectives did you gain on American from the war coverage?

12. Please add any other thoughts.

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.
Complete Video and Photos

Rumsfeld: The War On Iraq And The War On Terror Are The Same (Small - 3 MB)

Tim Russert:
"How do you respond to those who suggest that the War On Terror should have been focused on Al Queda and that the resources that are now applied to Iraq are misapplied. That Saddam was not the threat that he was presented as by the Administration, and that the war should have focused on Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda."

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Tim, we said from the outset that there are several terrorist networks that have global reach and that there were several countries that were harboring terrorists that have global reach. We weren't going into Iraq when we were hit on September 11th, and the question is 'well, what do you do about that?' If you know there are terrorists and you know there's terrorist states. Iraq's been a terrorist state for decades. And you know there are countries harboring terrorists. We believe, correctly I think, that the only way to deal with it is (stops) You can't just hunker down and hope they won't hit you again. You simply have to take the battle to them. And we have been consistently working on the Al Queda network. We've captured a large number of those folks. Captured or killed. Just like we've now captured or killed a large number of the top 55 Saddam Hussein loyalists."

Move along. Nothing to see here. (That you haven't seen and heard before.)

This clip is just Rummy saying what he's been saying about the WMD. That it's unlikely he destroyed them, etc.

So if they can't find them and Saddam didn't destroy them. It makes all that much more sense that they never existed to begin with...

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press. (
Complete Video and Photos)

Rumsfeld On The WMD (Or Lack Thereof) (Small - 3 MB)

Tim Russert:
"Could it be that the inspections in fact, did work. That the enforcement of the no-fly zone did work. And that Sadaam in fact no longer had a weapons of mass destruction capability?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"The theory that he took his weapons, destroyed them, or moved them to some other country. That argument. Is that possible? I suppose it's possible that he could of hidden them, buried them, or moved them to another country or destroyed them. The "destroyed them" part of it's the weakest argument. Why would he do that if by not allowing inspectors to see what he was doing and making an accurate instead of a fraudalent declaration? It makes no sense because he was forgoing billions and billions and billions of dollars that he could of had, had he acquiesced and allowed the inspectors into the country in an orderly way such that they could see really what was going on. Other countries have allowed inspectors in. South Africa did. Ukraine did. But he didn't. He fought it and deceived them consistently. Why would he do that if in fact he was an innocent? Unlikely."

Private Jessica says President is misusing her 'heroism'
By Edward Helmore for the Guardian Unlimited.

Beneath the gloss of the US media and the machinations of an administration eager to show a 'good news' angle of the Iraq conflict against the reality of a rising body count, Lynch has become a metaphor not for the heroism of pretty young Americans captured by a devilish foreign enemy, but for the confusion that has marked Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom from the start.

Misgivings characterising Lynch's story are coming to a head: last week she accused the administration of manipulating her story for propaganda, saying she was not a heroine at all; accusations that she'd been raped were disputed by appalled Iraqi doctors who first treated her, and the army was accused of insensitivity and racism for awarding Lynch a full disability pension while others from her ambushed maintenance company, including Shoshana Johnson, the black cook wounded and captured by Iraqis, will receive barely a third of Lynch's discharge package.

While Johnson is living on $500 a month, Lynch stands to make millions from her book, I Am a Soldier, Too. She has been romanced as the media target of the moment, photographed by Annie Liebowitz for Vanity Fair, and stands to make millions more from a movie deal.

'There is a double standard,' said Johnson's father, Claude. 'I don't know for sure that it was the Pentagon. All I know for sure is the media paid a lot of attention to Jessica.'...

Lynch says the circumstances of her rescue was dramatised and manipulated by the Pentagon. She was not rescued in a 'blaze of gunfire' as reported by Defence Department officials last April, but picked up from compliant Iraq doctors who had saved her life.

She was not raped, as the department said, and the Iraqi, Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief, who was given US citizenship for his efforts, has written a book about how he risked his own life to win her freedom. Now he is described by his wife as overly influenced by John Wayne movies.

'Lynch is basically saying the whole thing was made up, a fraud,' said media critic Michael Wolff. 'At the same time, the media is going on with this elaborate production effort to make her into a hero. It's as if the size of the attention itself makes her a hero. Everyone is committed to making her the face of the war whereas the other story that this all a kind of scandal.'...

Lynch now questions why her rescue was filmed: 'They used me to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say these things.'

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1081207,00.html

, New York
Sunday November 9, 2003
The Observer

When American Private Jessica Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital last April, President George Bush's administration and much of the US media was gripped by a dramatic tale of blonde, all-American heroism.

The story reaches fever pitch this week with the publication of Lynch's autobiography, a dramatised TV documentary, interviews and a Vanity Fair cover story.

Beneath the gloss of the US media and the machinations of an administration eager to show a 'good news' angle of the Iraq conflict against the reality of a rising body count, Lynch has become a metaphor not for the heroism of pretty young Americans captured by a devilish foreign enemy, but for the confusion that has marked Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom from the start.

Misgivings characterising Lynch's story are coming to a head: last week she accused the administration of manipulating her story for propaganda, saying she was not a heroine at all; accusations that she'd been raped were disputed by appalled Iraqi doctors who first treated her, and the army was accused of insensitivity and racism for awarding Lynch a full disability pension while others from her ambushed maintenance company, including Shoshana Johnson, the black cook wounded and captured by Iraqis, will receive barely a third of Lynch's discharge package.

While Johnson is living on $500 a month, Lynch stands to make millions from her book, I Am a Soldier, Too. She has been romanced as the media target of the moment, photographed by Annie Liebowitz for Vanity Fair, and stands to make millions more from a movie deal.

'There is a double standard,' said Johnson's father, Claude. 'I don't know for sure that it was the Pentagon. All I know for sure is the media paid a lot of attention to Jessica.'

And America is deter mined that Lynch will be a heroine, despite the fact that she never fired a shot, and instead got down on her knees to pray as her unit was surrounded by enemy forces. As she pointed out herself, it was her dead colleague Lori Piestewa, a Native American mother of two, who went down fighting.

Lynch says the circumstances of her rescue was dramatised and manipulated by the Pentagon. She was not rescued in a 'blaze of gunfire' as reported by Defence Department officials last April, but picked up from compliant Iraq doctors who had saved her life.

She was not raped, as the department said, and the Iraqi, Mohammed Odeh Al-Rehaief, who was given US citizenship for his efforts, has written a book about how he risked his own life to win her freedom. Now he is described by his wife as overly influenced by John Wayne movies.

'Lynch is basically saying the whole thing was made up, a fraud,' said media critic Michael Wolff. 'At the same time, the media is going on with this elaborate production effort to make her into a hero. It's as if the size of the attention itself makes her a hero. Everyone is committed to making her the face of the war whereas the other story that this all a kind of scandal.'

But the story may be too far along to reverse. 'She can't take back being a star. The fact that she says it's all made up doesn't make a difference. It's been decided she's a star, and that's the only indisputable fact,' said Wolff.

The New York Times has pointed out how Lynch has become the Mona Lisa of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Americans have been able to read into her unrevealing snapshot whatever story they chose. Her story becoming 'a Rorschach test for homefront mood swings'.

Now, with the US forces having lost 32 soldiers in the last week alone, the mood may be turning and she stands to be come symbolic of US confusion and press credulity. The inconsistencies have not been missed by veterans' groups who don't wish to besmirch her individual valour but are uneasy over the administration's efforts to present 'good news' while ignoring the reality.

'The White House sent a message that they were going to tell the good news stories so now we have a situation where we are not allowed to witness the coffins coming home and there are no images of young soldiers coming home missing arms and legs,' said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Centre.

'We're just seeing one side of the story, and you've got to tell the other side, the one about the wounded, maimed and the dead.' There is growing doubt Lynch's uplifting story will help to sweeten the nation's mood about the dim prospect that the US will be able extricate itself from Iraq before hundreds, and possibly thousands, more servicemen died.

Lynch, who joined the army hoping to see the world after failing to land a job at a supermarket, is preparing to go on a media tour that will include appearances with TV anchors such as David Letterman. Yet she is unable to fulfil the role of the patriot.

The administration's game plan, enabled by a supplicant media, is showing signs of distress. The singer Cher recently visited the hospital where Lynch recovered from her ordeal and talked on TV of meeting a teenage soldier who had lost both his arms.

She wanted to know why Bush and his team weren't there having their photographs taken with the injured troops. 'I don't understand why these guys [the wounded] are so hidden and there aren't pictures of them,' Cher said.

Lynch now questions why her rescue was filmed: 'They used me to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say these things.'

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Rumsfeld: We Never Said Iraq Had Nuclear Weapons and We'll Just Keep Interrogating People Until We Find The WMD (Small - 6 Mb)

Tim Russert:
"Syria. Iran. North Korea. All harbor terrorists. We were told that Iraq was unique because they possessed Weapons Of Mass Destruction. What if that has proven not to be true?"

Donald Rumsfeld:
"It hasn't proven not to be true. We've seen an interim report by David Kay, and uh it was a thoughtful report. There are some 1,300 Americans there working on the Weapons of Mass Destruction effort. He came back with an interim report that reported on the things he found thus far. It did not prove that there were (he stops) He did not come in a say "here are the weapons of mass destruction" nor did he come in and disprove the intelligence that we had had and that other countries had had before the war. Seems to me that the sensible thing to do is to let them continue their work and produce their final report and when they do, we'll know."

Tim Russert:
"But Mr. Secretary, you will acknowledge that there was an argument made by the Administration that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and could have been well on his way to reconstituting his nuclear program."

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Um. Hmmm."

Tim Russert:
"There doesn't appear to be significant amounts of evidence to document that presentation that was made by the administration."

Donald Rumsfeld:
"This administration and the last administration and several other countries all agreed that they had chemical and biological weapons and that they had programs relating to nuclear weapons that they were reconstituting. Not that they had nuclear weapons. No one said that. It was believed then (stops) We know they did have them because they used chemical weapons against their own people. So it's not like it was a surprise that those programs existed."

"Furthermore, the debate in the United Nations wasn't about whether or not Sadaam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. The debate in the United Nations was about whether or not he was willing to declare what he had and everyone agreed that that declaration was a fraudalent declaration. Even those that voted against the resolution agreed with that. So it seems to me that the thing to do is to wait, let the Iraq survey group, David Kay and his team, continue their work. You're not going to find things by accident in a country the size of California. The only way you're going to find them is by capturing people who know about them and interrogate them and find out what they think they know as to where these weapons are and what the programs were."

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Rumsfeld: The Casualties Are Worth Winning This War (Small - 3 Mb)

Tim Russert:
"So far, we have lost 377 Americans in Iraq. 2,130 have been wounded or injured.
How would you explain to the American people this morning that it is worth that price for the war in Iraq."

Donald Rumsfeld:
"Tim, the uh, battle we're engaged in. The global war on terrorism. Is an important one. It is a different one than we've been in previously. Although terrorism's not new. But the nature of terrorism is that its purpose is to terrorize. Its purpose is to alter people's behavior. And to the extent free people end up behaving in a way that is different from the way free people behave, they've lost. And therefore, the only thing to do is do what the President has announced he's doing, and that is to take the battle, the war on terrorism to the terrorists. Where they are. And that's what we're doing. We can win this war. We will win this war. And the President has every intention of staying after the terrorists and the countries that harbor terrorists until we have won this war."

Nice one from DaSchop on the only way any kind of nuclear scenario could ever play out:

The End Of The World (Flash Animation)

Note: 5/3/04 - new url swapped in http://www.ebaumsworld.com/endofworld.html

I'd never even heard of "factory farming" until a few months ago, when a friend of mine who I meet for lunch a lot insisted on only eating at certain restaurants that serve organically-grown meat. It was horrific thinking about the stuff he was telling me, and I wanted to know more.

Over the last few weeks, I've been reading a lot of scary stories about the FDA approving cloned animals for public consumption. It seems to me that there's no way for the FDA to be sure of anything with regard to even the short term effects of humans eating cloned animals, much less the long term effects that, theoretically, would have to be explored in depth before such meat was allowed in to the open market.

So anyway, that's why I'm starting a "Farming and Health" category. This shit's getting pretty frightening, and enough is enough. I don't know what we can really do about it yet, but I do feel that I have to help get the word out somehow.

Then, this morning, another friend sent me this wonderful animation that explains the factory farming situation in great detail. It's funny as hell too.

The Meatrix

There's a bunch of good information at the end about what you can do to help fight this stuff. More articles on this soon (and the relationship between factory farming and the cloning stuff).

This is from the November 2, 2003 program of Meet the Press.

Highlights separated by subject on the way.

Somehow I had managed to forget to start a "Bye Bye Rummy" category. I'll still have to go back and recategorize things properly for it.

Rummy On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 3 (Small - 23 MB)

Rummy On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 3 (Small - 23 MB)

Rummy On Meet The Press - Part 3 of 3 (Small - 23 MB)

Rummy On Meet The Press - Complete (Small - 68 MB)

This is from the November 2, 2003 program.

I'll be blogging this proper-like later in the day, but I gotta go to tai chi and band practice so it's gotta wait till later.

However, for those of you that have been waiting for this, and don't need my charming commentary to get what you need out of it, here's the directory where everything's already uploaded:

Rummy On Meet The Press

See you later today. Lots of goodies in the kitty...

Borders employees are going on strike.

You can help by signing this petition.

Estimated Time Factor: 15 seconds.

Good luck guys!

I'm just finalizing the line-up for my show at Noe Valley Ministry on Saturday, December 13!

Map to Noe Valley Ministry

I've decided to fly down my drummer/producer (Simon Grant) and bass player (Jeff Norwood) from Seattle so I'll have a full band for the show.

I'm also going to have Paul de Benedictis playing some original piano music and Singer/Songwriter Alex Walsh playing a set.

Hope to see you there!

Andrew Leonard makes some relevant statements about what's wrong with all the different "legal" music services developing, and how, by not embracing the universal MP3 format that made Napster so damn great, they all kind of suck.

Musical snares
Is Apple's iTunes service nirvana for music fans -- or just the start of a file-format nightmare that will drive us all nuts?
By Andrew Leonard for Salon.

The quality of my life has improved. But iTunes for Windows is not perfect, and my music consumer utopia is still an unrealized dream. Despite its vaunted half a million songs, I want plenty of albums and acts that are not yet available. I am greedy. I want everything. Let me buy it now. I'm also not crazy about the iTunes library organizing software. But what alarms me the most is the flip side of Apple's success -- a looming battle over file formats that, at least in the short term, is going to force consumers to make hard choices.

Because iTunes won't play my Windows Media music files. And the Windows Media Player won't play songs purchased from the iTunes store.

That's not the future I want to pay for. In the 21st century era of late capitalism, the consumer is supposed to be king -- my every desire is supposed to be reflected by marketplace offerings. Instead, the market is ordering me to get Steve Jobs' smirking grin tattooed on my butt, and while that may be an improvement on being branded with a Microsoft iron, I'd still rather keep my skin as it started, unblemished.

Right now, there are several options for compressing music files into sizes where it becomes feasible to download them online. Tunes purchased from the iTunes Music Store come in the AAC format. Tunes bought from most other commercial services have aligned themselves with Microsoft's WMA format. Then there's the original MP3 standard, which is aligned with no single company, and there's even a free software alternative called Ogg Vorbis.

This is not the place to engage in a detailed discussion of the relative merits of the different formats. Suffice it to say that about a year ago I committed an egregious error. When I finally purchased my first computer with a CD burner, I was so excited about being able to make my own CD mixes that I unthinkingly went ahead and used the Windows Media Player to rip all my favorite CDs to my hard drive. The Windows Media Player allows users to encode their songs only in the WMA format, which (like iTunes' AAC format) comes with various digital rights management capabilities built in.

Now I have all this music that iTunes won't play, and a bunch of songs purchased from iTunes that the Media Player won't play. So, at the moment, I am prevented from burning a CD that has songs from both libraries. There are converters available that will transform WMA files into AACs and eventually there will no doubt be converters that perform the reverse service, but the process is a hassle that may end up downgrading the overall sound quality. I would have been far better off if I had ripped all my CDs to MP3s to begin with, because iTunes and the iPod will play MP3s. (And even, better, the iTunes software will allow me to rip my CDs into MP3s.)

I should have known better, because now I'm sitting exactly where Microsoft wants me, facing a significant "switching cost" if I want to adopt iTunes as my music-management software of choice. It takes time to rip CDs -- and I have a lot of 'em...

I have a friend who has about 30,000 songs on a hard drive. There's nothing to stop me from hooking his computer to mine with a USB cable and slurping all that music at once. Sure it's illegal, and I'm not going to do it, but the RIAA would never know if I did, unless I did something stupid and put that server online for everybody on the Net to grab.

All over the world, even as Hollywood tries to push copy-protection legislation and sue individual file traders, music lovers are accumulating larger and larger collections of songs on their hard drives. Eventually, we'll be able to go to our local flea market, and the guy who right now is selling freshly burned copies of Eminem is going to be selling us DVDs with 4.8 gigabytes of music, also for a few bucks. Even worse, the swap meets will soon be featuring swappable drives that will contain everything the Beatles ever recorded, or all the pop music from the '60s, or the entire Warner Bros. catalog. Cheap.

I don't know how the record companies are going to stop it. I do know that if one day I'm staring at hundreds of gigabytes of music files on my own computer that I paid for that aren't playable on the newest piece of hardware or best available piece of music software, I'm going to be sorely tempted to head down to the flea market. And even if I refrain, that doesn't mean everybody else will.

Wouldn't it just be better to give me what I want, right now? Please don't make the consumer angry! Or he'll bite.

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

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/leon/2003/10/28/itunes/index.html

Musical snares
Is Apple's iTunes service nirvana for music fans -- or just the start of a file-format nightmare that will drive us all nuts?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew Leonard

Oct. 28, 2003 | I downloaded my first MP3 file in February 1998. The process was convoluted to the point of absurdity. I used one program to rip a song from a CD I owned, another program to convert that into a compressed MP3 file, and a third program to upload it to an FTP site that required visitors to donate their own MP3s first before any downloading would be permitted. To complicate matters further, just finding that FTP site required lurking in seedy chat rooms where file traders exchanged passwords to sites that might be open only for a few hours in the dead of night.

And yet, there was something so obvious and right about playing music on my computer, on simply desiring a particular track and then going and getting it, that I knew that something fundamental had changed about my relationship to recorded music. When my Rage Against the Machine track blasted out of my computer speakers, I was transfixed by a vision of music-consuming utopia: Some day, everything ever recorded would be one or two clicks away. Every bootleg, every B side, every studio outtake. This is what the Internet was good at: connecting me with the objects of my desire. I want; therefore I get to have.

Questions of cost were not meaningful to me. I am no fan of record companies or overpriced CDs, but I am also not one who believes that all intellectual property should be free. I was, and am, plenty willing to pay a fee for a desired service. Indeed, when Napster ushered in the era of instant music gratification in 1999, I always felt a little uneasy with the justifications that file traders made for the morality of their copyright violations. To me, the success of Napster and then Kazaa demonstrated that there was a gaping market opportunity, and the longer the record companies took to get their act together, the longer they would stoke the flames of piracy.

So while waiting for an online music service that was right for me, I contented myself with ripping my own CDs to my hard drive and burning compilation mixes for my own amusement and as gifts for friends. And then came iTunes.

Like millions of other Windows users, I was excited when iTunes was finally made available to the non-Macintosh world two weeks ago. At the original debut of iTunes' online music store, it seemed clear that this was best legally sanctified option so far -- and not just because I lusted after an iPod. Steve Jobs and Apple ("Rip. Mix. Burn.") understood that instead of resisting music consumers, it was time to aid and abet them. I downloaded the software within hours of its being made available and bought my first songs within minutes of installation.

The quality of my life has improved. But iTunes for Windows is not perfect, and my music consumer utopia is still an unrealized dream. Despite its vaunted half a million songs, I want plenty of albums and acts that are not yet available. I am greedy. I want everything. Let me buy it now. I'm also not crazy about the iTunes library organizing software. But what alarms me the most is the flip side of Apple's success -- a looming battle over file formats that, at least in the short term, is going to force consumers to make hard choices.

Because iTunes won't play my Windows Media music files. And the Windows Media Player won't play songs purchased from the iTunes store.

That's not the future I want to pay for. In the 21st century era of late capitalism, the consumer is supposed to be king -- my every desire is supposed to be reflected by marketplace offerings. Instead, the market is ordering me to get Steve Jobs' smirking grin tattooed on my butt, and while that may be an improvement on being branded with a Microsoft iron, I'd still rather keep my skin as it started, unblemished.

Right now, there are several options for compressing music files into sizes where it becomes feasible to download them online. Tunes purchased from the iTunes Music Store come in the AAC format. Tunes bought from most other commercial services have aligned themselves with Microsoft's WMA format. Then there's the original MP3 standard, which is aligned with no single company, and there's even a free software alternative called Ogg Vorbis.

This is not the place to engage in a detailed discussion of the relative merits of the different formats. Suffice it to say that about a year ago I committed an egregious error. When I finally purchased my first computer with a CD burner, I was so excited about being able to make my own CD mixes that I unthinkingly went ahead and used the Windows Media Player to rip all my favorite CDs to my hard drive. The Windows Media Player allows users to encode their songs only in the WMA format, which (like iTunes' AAC format) comes with various digital rights management capabilities built in.

Now I have all this music that iTunes won't play, and a bunch of songs purchased from iTunes that the Media Player won't play. So, at the moment, I am prevented from burning a CD that has songs from both libraries. There are converters available that will transform WMA files into AACs and eventually there will no doubt be converters that perform the reverse service, but the process is a hassle that may end up downgrading the overall sound quality. I would have been far better off if I had ripped all my CDs to MP3s to begin with, because iTunes and the iPod will play MP3s. (And even, better, the iTunes software will allow me to rip my CDs into MP3s.)

I should have known better, because now I'm sitting exactly where Microsoft wants me, facing a significant "switching cost" if I want to adopt iTunes as my music-management software of choice. It takes time to rip CDs -- and I have a lot of 'em.

Sometime soon, I will start the laborious process of re-ripping all my CDs into MP3 files so they will play nice with iTunes. But the more I think about it, the more antsy I get about my decision to back the iTunes camp. What if, after I spend thousands of dollars on iTunes, Rhapsody or Buymusic.com or the new Napster rolls out a new version of a service that offers access to 5 million songs instead of just five hundred thousand? What if some new programming genius comes up with a compression format that uses even fewer bits but delivers better sound? Then won't I have achieved little more than exchanging one digital music tyrant for another?

I am confident that the marketplace is going to steadily deliver a progression of options that benefit me in some way: a wider selection of songs, lower prices, easier-to-use software. But I'm not confident that I won't be endlessly posed with a series of ever more onerous switching costs. Perhaps, once hard drives and bandwidth get big enough, we'll be able to do away with compression formats altogether, but companies like Microsoft and Apple are still going to strive to lock users in to their software/hardware platforms as long as they can. And that is decidedly not an example of the marketplace serving my consumer desires.

Then again, the music industry had its hands forced once, when widespread piracy made it clear that the studios faced the prospect of losing their customers entirely if they didn't offer customers a way to get what they wanted. The whole dynamic could easily repeat itself, should consumers ever get too frustrated with the available offerings.

I have a friend who has about 30,000 songs on a hard drive. There's nothing to stop me from hooking his computer to mine with a USB cable and slurping all that music at once. Sure it's illegal, and I'm not going to do it, but the RIAA would never know if I did, unless I did something stupid and put that server online for everybody on the Net to grab.

All over the world, even as Hollywood tries to push copy-protection legislation and sue individual file traders, music lovers are accumulating larger and larger collections of songs on their hard drives. Eventually, we'll be able to go to our local flea market, and the guy who right now is selling freshly burned copies of Eminem is going to be selling us DVDs with 4.8 gigabytes of music, also for a few bucks. Even worse, the swap meets will soon be featuring swappable drives that will contain everything the Beatles ever recorded, or all the pop music from the '60s, or the entire Warner Bros. catalog. Cheap.

I don't know how the record companies are going to stop it. I do know that if one day I'm staring at hundreds of gigabytes of music files on my own computer that I paid for that aren't playable on the newest piece of hardware or best available piece of music software, I'm going to be sorely tempted to head down to the flea market. And even if I refrain, that doesn't mean everybody else will.

Wouldn't it just be better to give me what I want, right now? Please don't make the consumer angry! Or he'll bite.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Andrew Leonard is the editor of Salon's Technology & Business department.

This from the October 28, 2003 program.

Here's Part 1 of 2

Daily Show On The Black Caucus Debate - Part 2
(Small - 9 MB)





The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This from the October 28, 2003 program.

Daily Show On The Black Caucus Debate Part 1
(Small - 13 MB)
Here's Part Two







The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Walmart is accused of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, mainly from eastern europe, to work the overnight clean up shifts. (The government claims to have taped evidence of Walmart executives agreeing to such terms.)

Ed Helms helps out with a full investigation into the situation.

This from the October 27, 2003 program.

Daily Show On The Walmart Illegal Immigrant Situation (Small - 11 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Ed Helms hosts this special Daily Show Presentation. Steve Carrel makes a guest appearance.

This from the October 22, 2003 program.

Ad Nauseum's All Star Salute To Getting Hit In The Nuts (Small - 8 MB)
(update 11/9/03 - really fixed the bad link this time!)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Yes I do feel a little childish for getting excited about this.

That being said, I'm quite excited about this :-)

Jon has made a witty blogging joke!

(Jon says) "There's a lot I could say about this whole situation, and for my full thoughts, please visit my blog."

This from the October 22, 2003 program.

Jon Stewart On Liza's Divorce Case (Small - 4 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Nat Heatwole is the college student who stashed boxcutters and other "terrorist" supplies on six different southwest jets to prove a point a few weeks back.

It took Federal Investigators five weeks to find Heathwole, even though, the day he did it, he sent an email to the FBI confessing to the crime and including his phone number.

This from the October 22, 2003 program.

Daily Show - Nat Heatwole Security Scare (Small - 5 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Brian Eno will be giving a lecture for the Long Now Foundation next Friday night.

He's actually on the Board of Directors there.

Here's what was emailed to me:

Musician/producer/artist BRIAN ENO

http://www.longnow.org/about/board/eno.htm
will be giving a rare free public lecture next week at
Fort Mason in San
Francisco on Friday, Nov. 14, in the Herbst Pavillion.
Coffee bar opens at
7pm, lecture at 8pm. Directions to Herbst Pavillion are
here

http://www.fortmason.org/directions/index.html.

This is not a concert. Brian Eno will be speaking about
"The Long Now." His
talk will be the first of a monthly series of Seminars
About Long-term
Thinking, sponsored by The Long Now Foundation
(http://www.longnow.org). His
talks are usually as amazing as his music.

The on-going lectures in this new series will be every
second Friday at Fort
Mason. Future speakers include Peter Schwartz, George
Dyson, Laurie
Anderson, Rusty Schweickart, Paul Hawken, Daniel
Janzen, and Danny Hillis.

Admission to the lectures is free (a $10 donation is
welcome but NOT
required). The hall holds about 700 people. For
unticketed lectures like
this it's a good idea to come early for a good seat.

Please feel free post and forward this invitation.

But is there ever really enough?

This was worth hosting for sure. It's footage like this that makes a library grand.

Unofficial Michael Moore Media

Walter Isaacson is a former chairman and CEO of CNN, the President of the Aspen Institute, and the author of A Benjamin Franklin Reader.

Franklin worshippers such as myself will get a lot of mileage out of this interview. There are some lovely descriptions of my man Ben hanging out and doing cool things up until the day he died.

It made me want to read the book.

This is from the October 22, 2003 program.

Interview with Walter Isaacson (Small - 15 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This clip is about "the lighter side" of the trial of John Allen Mohammad, one of the two suspects on trial for the DC Sniper shootings.

Mohammad was granted permission to serve as his own lawyer before he 'fired himself' and went back to his court appointed attorneys.

This is from the October 22, 2003 program.

Daily Show - Witless For The Prosecution (Small - 3 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

A nice accomplishment indeed, courtesy of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Federal judge blocks late-term abortion ban
By the Associated Press.

A federal judge blocked implementation of a federal ban on certain late-term abortions Wednesday, less than an hour after President Bush signed the measure into law.

"Congress and the president ignored the Supreme Court and women's health in enacting this law," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit to block the law.

"The Nebraska court's order will protect doctors from facing prison for providing their patients with the best medical care."

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf issued a temporary restraining order, citing concerns that the law did not contain an exception to the ban for preserving the health of a woman seeking the abortion.

"While ... Congress found that a health exception is not needed, it is, at the very least, problematic whether I should defer to such a conclusion when the Supreme Court has found otherwise," Kopf said.

The judge stopped short of prohibiting the new law from being enforced nationwide...

Kopf did not immediately schedule the next hearing in the case, at which time he could decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction against implementation of the law.

The judge's ruling followed a three-hour hearing in a lawsuit brought by abortion supporters trying to block the ban. The four doctors sought to block the ban of the procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion.

In making his ruling, Kopf referred to a legal challenge from Carhart that led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban in 2000. The high court said the Nebraska law and others like it were an "undue burden" on women's rights.

"The Supreme Court, citing factual findings of eight different trial judges, appointed by four different presidents, and the considered opinion of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, has found a very similar law unconstitutional because it banned `partial-birth abortions' with the requisite exception from the preservation of the health of the woman," Kopf said...

Judge Kopf voiced his concerns at the start of the hearing. "It seems to me the law is highly suspect, if not a per se violation of the Constitution," he said...

Kopf said he could find no record of a doctor who performs abortions in the second and third trimesters testifying before Congress on late-term abortions. "Isn't that important if Congress was really interested in knowing about this procedure?" Kopf said.

The law also appears to have a "serious vagueness problem," Kopf said.

Priscilla Smith, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that if the law is allowed to take effect "physicians across the country will risk imprisonment for providing abortion care in accordance with their best medical judgment."

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

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2003/11/06/news/national_world/e73bbeca8c05196f86256dd6001965f6.txt

Thursday, November 06, 2003
Sioux City, Iowa

Federal judge blocks late-term abortion ban

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A federal judge blocked implementation of a federal ban on certain late-term abortions Wednesday, less than an hour after President Bush signed the measure into law.

"Congress and the president ignored the Supreme Court and women's health in enacting this law," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit to block the law.

"The Nebraska court's order will protect doctors from facing prison for providing their patients with the best medical care."

U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf issued a temporary restraining order, citing concerns that the law did not contain an exception to the ban for preserving the health of a woman seeking the abortion.

"While ... Congress found that a health exception is not needed, it is, at the very least, problematic whether I should defer to such a conclusion when the Supreme Court has found otherwise," Kopf said.

The judge stopped short of prohibiting the new law from being enforced nationwide.

He said his order would apply only to the four doctors who filed the lawsuit in Nebraska and their "colleagues, employees and entities ... with whom plaintiffs work, teach, supervise or refer" patients.

The four are: Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who practices in Bellevue, Neb. and is also licensed in Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin; Dr. William Fitzhugh, who is licensed to practice in Virginia; Dr. William Knorr, medical director and co-owner of the Savannah Women's Medical Clinic in Savannah, Ga., and also licensed in Alabama, South Carolina and New York; and Dr. Jill Vibhakar, who practices medicine at Emma Goldman Clinic for Women and at the University of Iowa College of Medicine Hospital in Iowa City, Iowa.

"This will prevent the (U.S.) Attorney General and his staff from using this act against me, my patients, all physicians that I refer to and all physicians that refer to me," Carhart said.

Kopf did not immediately schedule the next hearing in the case, at which time he could decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction against implementation of the law.

The judge's ruling followed a three-hour hearing in a lawsuit brought by abortion supporters trying to block the ban. The four doctors sought to block the ban of the procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion.

In making his ruling, Kopf referred to a legal challenge from Carhart that led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban in 2000. The high court said the Nebraska law and others like it were an "undue burden" on women's rights.

"The Supreme Court, citing factual findings of eight different trial judges, appointed by four different presidents, and the considered opinion of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, has found a very similar law unconstitutional because it banned `partial-birth abortions' with the requisite exception from the preservation of the health of the woman," Kopf said.

Meanwhile, federal judges in New York and San Francisco are scheduled to soon hear arguments in similar challenges to the ban by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union.

At the White House, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the president believes the new law will be upheld.

"We believe it is constitutional and you could expect that we would vigorously defend this law in the courts," McClellan said.

Judge Kopf voiced his concerns at the start of the hearing. "It seems to me the law is highly suspect, if not a per se violation of the Constitution," he said.

U.S. Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino told Kopf that he should show deference to Congress' findings that the abortion procedure has not been studied enough to prove it's necessary.

"We ask that you give consideration to the deep concerns that were expressed by Congress," Coppolino said. "It is an abhorrent and useless procedure."

Kopf said he could find no record of a doctor who performs abortions in the second and third trimesters testifying before Congress on late-term abortions. "Isn't that important if Congress was really interested in knowing about this procedure?" Kopf said.

The law also appears to have a "serious vagueness problem," Kopf said.

Priscilla Smith, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that if the law is allowed to take effect "physicians across the country will risk imprisonment for providing abortion care in accordance with their best medical judgment."

The ban defines so-called partial-birth abortion as delivery of a fetus "until, in the case of a headfirst presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of the breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus."

Carhart said the method is one of the safest abortion procedures because it reduces the risk of leaving parts of the fetus inside the woman.

The procedure is used most often in cases where the woman has developed heart disease, diabetes or other life-threatening ailments.

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

http://www.crlp.org/pr_03_1105pba.html

Federal Abortion Ban Blocked by Nebraska Judge Minutes After President Bush Signs it into Law

Judge Issue Restraining Order Protecting Plaintiffs in Nebraska

November 5, 2003 |Lincoln, NE | Learn More

Today, a Nebraska federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing the first-ever federal abortion ban from being enforced against the plaintiffs in the Nebraska lawsuit challenging the ban. Judge Richard G. Kopf’s order allows the plaintiffs and the people with whom they "work, teach, supervise, or refer" to continue to perform safe abortion procedures without fear of prosecution. The order was issued minutes after President Bush signed the ban into law.

"Congress and the President ignored the Supreme Court and women’s health in enacting this law. The Nebraska court’s order will protect doctors from facing prison for providing their patients with the best medical care," said Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed the case in Nebraska federal court last Friday in order to prevent the law from taking effect. The challenge was filed on behalf of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case striking down Nebraska’s ban, and three other doctors in Iowa, New York and Virginia. The ban, which contains no health exception and outlaws the safest abortion procedures used as early as 12 weeks, is almost identical to a Nebraska ban struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court just three years ago in Stenberg v. Carhart – a case argued by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed its case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska. Lawyers on the case include Priscilla J. Smith of the Center for Reproductive Rights and Nebraska attorneys Jerry M. Hug and Alan G. Stoler.

This includes footage of Australian Green Party member Bob Brown heckling the Shrub during his speech to the Australian senate (to which the Shrub replied "I love free speech") and the First Lady waiting obediently for her Manchurian Candidate trigger word.

This is from the October 23, 2003 program.

Daily Show - More On The Shrub's Trip To Asia (Small - 11 MB)
(Below) A lovely parade float of the Australian Prime Minister nosing up to the Shrub.









The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This is from the October 20, 2003 program.

This is about the U.N. Security Council resolution that was passed unanimously a few weeks ago.
(I won't try to pretend to know what the resolution actually accomplished. If somebody has a link to the damn thing, please email it to me, and I'll post it here. The U.N. Security Council website is a little behind schedule apparently, and I can get its documents to manifest themselves in my browser anyway. Thanks.)

Daily Show On The U.N. Security Council Resolution (Small - 6 MB)









The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

From Jon:

"This week, a harsh report of America's policy has surfaced, accusing our defense department of failing to adapt fast enough to emerging threats and questioning if America's armed forces are even up to the task. In response, an angry Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responded by saying, 'I wrote what?!' "

This is from the October 23, 2003 program.

Daily Show On Rummy's Memo (Small - 5 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Sorry to be asleep at my post for the most part this week (except for my San Francisco pre-election coverage - which I'm guessing doesn't mean Jack to most of you, considering you're scattered out all over the world).

This week, my over-impacted schedule kind of bubbled over and burned me a bit -- I'm still about a week behind on everything, but at least I might actually be caught up in a week. (Which would be nice.)

While doing inventory, I realized that I'm about two weeks behind on my Daily Show clips -- yikes! There's some timely stuff in there too!

So I've decided to block out the rest of the afternoon to catch up on those.

I'm going to wait to capture tonight's Daily Show, and then I swear I'm going to send off my camera to be serviced. What does this matter to you? Well it means no new Daily Show clips for two weeks. (gasp!)

I can live through it if you can...

Alright, enough yappin and time to do some linkin...

I'll be teaching XML part-time at the University of San Francisco next semester.

Here's the scoop on the class.

If you're interested in taking the course, sitting in on a class or two, or coming in to speak to my class as a guest speaker, please let me know!

So I haven't even found out how much of the election turned out yet, but, for me, this election was really all about the experience of it all. I had a great time voting yesterday. I had some great conversations with the poll workers in my precinct, and decided to go home and get the camera and interview the lot of them.

So Matt Gonzales it is then.

The music video shoot went well last night. I got to wear all black and shiny boots and an eye patch and a funny agent hat. It was great hanging out with Gregory from widehive records and I interviewed Azeem, who is an independent artist in his own right, as well as the lead singer for the band Variable Unit on Under Surveillance (and the star of the video).

Steve Rhodes asked me to ask Tom Ammiano the following question:

"Ask him what he thought of Bruce Brugmann's endorsement of Angela and if it
was a bit hypocritical for a paper that has decried the influence of money
in politics gave one reason for supporting her that she is rich and can
spend her own money in the runoff."

Steve
http://ari.typepad.com

So I did. Here's
Tom's Response (Small - 3 MB)

I don't have time to transcribe this one. But here's Tom on why you should vote for him today.

Tom Ammiano - Why Vote For Me As Mayor (2 MB)

I don't have time to transcribe this one. But here's Tom on voting "Yes" on Prop B.

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop B (1 MB)

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop d (2 MB)

Lisa: "What about D? Something about a small business commission?"

Tom: "Eh. You know, it takes the commission that now exists and makes it a charter commission, and people who are involved in small business feel that it would give them more status and a little more juice. I think the jury is out about whether or not that could happen, because a lot of times things are just very decorous. But perhaps it could work, and I'm not against small businesses so, ya know, fine."

This is another great example of why I think Tom Ammiano would be a great Mayor.

He has great reasons for not wanting N to pass, and an excellent alternative to it: providing health benefits and disability benefits for all taxi drivers (not just disability for only drivers with medallions - as N proposes).
More details below.

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop N (5 MB)

Lisa: "What about N? For taxi permits..."

Tom: "You know, my father was a cab driver in the 50's and 60's before he died. There were no benefits. There were no health benefits. When he died, we had to practice an Italian-American custom called La Boost (sp?) where people actually come to the funeral, which you don't pay for yet, and they make a donation. And I thought 'ya know, nobody has to go through this.' Particularly Taxi drivers.

However, this is a very self-serving avaricious measure that I think is very dishonest. In the world of taxi drivers there are people with permits and then there are people without permits, and this is a way to get the people with permits only some kind of disability benefits. It really shuts the door on anyone else, and I don't like that. And I tried to get something on the ballot that would encompass not just the permit (medallion) holders, but the other drivers too. To me, there was a way that we could have done it for everyone.

So I'm not supporting N because I think it is dishonest. I don't want to deny disability to people, particularly with my personal background, but there is another way to do it. And by the way, my office worked with the waring parties, and their very very very angry with each other and don't talk to each other a lot. Within the taxi industry there are three or four factions and we are moving towards providing health benefits for all taxi drivers. And if it ever passes, and we get the cooperation of everyone, I'd like to call it the "Joe Ammiano Law," because that was my dad.

Lisa: "So that one you're stronger about. You think it's a big NO on that one."

Tom: "Oh yes. It's going to be very harmful. And we'll just leave it at that."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop C (3 MB)

Lisa: "So what about C? About having the City Controller monitor city services?"

Tom: "You know, Jake Mc Goldrick is going to kill me for this. I'm not real happy with this one. They cleaned it up quite a bit and, ya know, I'm OK with it. But personally, if it didn't pass, I wouldn't kill myself. It's one of those things where a conservative group, called S.O.S., wanted to, in their words "have more open government and honest government," but it really is a little more self-serving than that. I think Jake Mc Goldrick did a really good job of cleaning it up and making it palatable. It will give the Controller of our city the ability to audit independently, and I think that's a fine idea. However, I think there are better ways to do it. We could have a General Manager that's elected. The Controller is appointed by the Mayor for 10 years. We have a very good controller. However, I still think there'd be a better way to do what this measure is supposed to accomplish. But I will vote for it."

Lisa: "You will vote for it?"

Tom: "Yeah. But it's not one of my favorites."

So I've let Tom talk a lot about how he feels about the various issues, and I suppose my strategy was that doing so would speak for itself with regard to why I'm supporting him for Mayor.

However, as I was wrapping up my archive of his interview, I came across this clip (5 MB) of him explaining in more detail about the six million dollar renewable federal grant he was able to obtain from the Shrub Administration.

This achievement demonstrates several of the reasons why I think Tom would be a great mayor:

1. His ability to work within the system to accomplish results, even if the people running "the system" are questionable, to say the least.

2. His ability to create "real" solutions to "real" problems, such as homelessness, as opposed to taking the easy way out, like blaming the victims. (Such as I believe to be the case with "Care Not Cash" and its new bastard brother Proposition M.)

3. His ingenuity in coming up with something like a renewable grant that can continue to bring money into the city to help the less fortunate, rather than come up with strategies that will actually cost the city over $900,000 and give police unprecedented power to arrest people for literally doing nothing.

But I'll let Tom explain the details to you in his own words:

Tom Ammiano On The 6 Million Dollar Renewable HUD Grant (Small - 5 MB)

The words below came after our discussion of Prop M (2 MB).

Tom: "...like my ability to get six million bucks from the Bush government two weeks ago, so we could have supportive housing and services for the mentally ill and homeless. Now that's real, and that's happening as we speak."

Lisa: "Right. I actually wanted to ask you more about that, because you brought that up in the debate. (6 MB) After a Judge sort of threw out "Care Not Cash" that you were able to get some money to actually build some housing? Could you talk some more about that?"

Tom: "Yeah. It's not for "building housing," actually, but I understand why people think that. I mean it could eventually. But it's six million bucks of support from HUD, which is Bush, and I actually worked with Mayor Willy Brown.
See, because, what Gavin has not been able to do is take the partisanship out of the issue. And I'm willing to sit down with whomever and even compromise, so that we come up with real solutions. So it's six million bucks from HUD for supportive housing and direct services."

"So you take a hotel that's there already and you rehab it. And we've done this, but only for a very tiny amount of people. You rehab it and provide the room, which is housing, particularly for the mentally ill and people who have been ill and homeless on our streets for over a year. That's about 2,000 of them -- even if "Care Not Cash" was something that could work, it wouldn't affect these people, because they're mostly under SSI and Federal programs -- and then provides all the services right there in that facility. And we've already started in the Bay View little Ramada Inn there, has been rehabed. A woman named "Mother Brown" is actually the recipient of some of this money. And the rooms are full already with the services being provided and we're going to expand that so we can meet the needs of 1,000 or more people that are on our streets. And this is a renewable grant. That's the beauty of it. So, with our success that we're proving this year, we have a really great shot at getting that six million next year as well. So that, again, that's real."

I'm almost finished with my pre-election info coverage. Just a few more clips to go and the rest will be up to you.

Thanks for paying attention. I had 1,600+ people on my site yesterday, and that's a good day for me, so I guess somebody saw this stuff. Hope it was helpful.

I'm going to finish up the Ammiano interview -- just because I'm trying to finish what I start these days. Then I can get to those other clips I promised (Dean on 60 Minutes and on BET and in SF last week, Rummy spouting off the usual rubbish on Meet The Press about his memo), and I also have a special message of faith from the South Park kids about filesharing I can't wait to get up.

Someone sent me a really important article about scary shit like the reinstatement of the draft that you can bet will get more of my attention in the near future. (Once the dust clears from all this election stuff.)

Soon I'll need to get my "Agent" attire together for the music video that Ryan Junell is shooting tonight for the Mayhem Mysitcs. As far as I know, he is still looking for other people to be Agents (and Agents w/video cameras), so if you're interested, shoot me an email and I'll give you the details. He's shooting tonight and tomorrow on location here in San Francisco. (lisarein@finetuning.com)

Well I'd better get to work!

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop E (6 MB)

Lisa: "E. It just says "ethics reform."

Tom: "Oh. This is good. I sponsored this with the Ethics Commission. Basically, it's about conflict of interest. A lot of times, people will be in city government such as a department head, or a commissioner, or the mayor, or a supervisor, and then they no longer do that. But, because their faces are recognizable. Because the juice is still there, even though they're gone, they have undue influence on decision making, and they also get more access, and they can also bring people in. So this really tightens that and says if you were a mayor or supervisor or commissioner or department head or have been involved in any way on that level, you can not come back and lobby for issues. In otherwords, giving you an insider's advantage. If we're really gonna have honesty in government, we need a lot of campaign reform and we need a lot of ethics reform. And Prop E addresses that, and I think it's great. We should be very proud of it."

Lisa: "Can you give an example of when that kind of thing happens?"

Tom: "Well let's say Mayor Willie Brown will, after 8 years, no longer be the Mayor, but he certainly will have juice with certain commissioners because he appointed them, and their term goes beyond his. And so it wouldn't be (can't make out exact word) of him currently to give them a call and say 'I want to introduce you to this developer' etc. and so forth. There's been a number of supervisors, Michael Yahi comes to mind, who, after they were not voted back in office, you start to see them in the halls, using some of the connections they had with the different departments to lobby for certain issues."

Lisa: "So it would make that illegal?"

Tom: "Yes."

Lisa: "Isn't that just going to drive it 'behind close doors' so to speak?"

Tom: "No, actually, it's going to flush it out. This comes on the heels of the disclosure and the Sunshine that we also sponsored. So, some people would say 'alright, I will disclose that I, as a previous supervisor, went and talked to so and so. So what?' So alright fine, now you disclose it, and now we say because of the position that you held before, it's a conflict of interest defined by the State, and particularly by San Francisco, in a very stringent manner. You can't do it. But the average citizen should be able to come in and have the same kind of access that you're trying to say you have because you used to be a super or mayor. So it really does level that playing field."

I just added some brief descriptions from a flyer I picked up from the Youth Vote Coalition.

Every one of their recommendations matches up with what Ammiano recommends, so I thought it would help flesh out the issues a bit to include what they say about the propositions in the explanations in my
easy voting table and
detailed explanation page.

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop I (4 MB)

Lisa: "How about 'I'? Child care for low income families."

Tom: "I think it's a very good concept, but I also think this was put on the ballot as an opportunistic measure. It doesn't really talk about how it's gonna be done or where all the money is gonna come from. It's like, you know, alright, I'm gonna put something on the ballot like "be nice to old people," "don't beat up the disabled," "let's have childcare." Well, who's gonna vote against that? But the real proof in the pudding is how are you gonna make it happen, and what was your background? Now everyone has religion lately about public schools, because it's the mayor's race. Alright fine, we don't need purism and motivation. I'm the person in terms of public education with my background in education as a Board of Education member. My own kid went to public schools. My late lover taught for fifteen years. I don't feel proprietary, but I certainly feel prepared. And what we have proposed is a 60 million dollar set aside from the city government rewriting its mission for universal preschool, for arts and music for libraries in health, and for PE and sports, and that's going to be a charter amendment I hope to see on the ballot in March. And I think the buzz out there is that this is really a good thing for our public schools in San Franciso. So in terms of Prop I, I think it's a nice gesture. Again, pass or fail it's not going to make that much of a difference."

Lisa: "So you would say No? To vote No on it?"

Tom: "No! I would say "fine."

Lisa: "To go ahead and vote for it?"

Tom: "Yes. But understand that it's not always going to meet with the promises, and that it's a Mayoral election device too."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop L (6 MB)

Lisa: "How 'bout Prop L. The minimum wage."

Tom: "Very very good. I championed "living wage" as a supervisor. It took me two years and I got it done, along with providing health benefits for people who do contracting work for the city. I think that Prop L is a very logical next step. It's the brainchild actually of Barry Hermanson, whose a small business man who understands the market in a way that doesn't rip people off. And he knows that if you pay people more than the minimum wage, which is a ridiculous amount of $6.50, that they'll have a few extra nickels in their pocket, and that they'll tend to spend that in the neighborhoods they live with. And I will say this about Gonzales, he sponsored it with Barry. And they both make a very very good point which is "hey, when there's a downturn in the economy, it's not just Chevron that hurts." It's the janitors and the people who are waiters and waitresses and the people doing physical labor, and "hello?" what are we going to do about them?"

So this is a very very reasonable minimal step to at least improving the quality of life issues for working people so they don't always have to choose "should I get some medicine? or should I put food on my table." And yes it gets that dramatic for some people.

Lisa: "And just to play devil's advocate. What about the argument that it would somehow put business out of business and blah blah blah."

Tom: "It's an old saw. And if you were paying what you should be paying in the beginning, you wouldn't even be thinking that way. You get better worker morale. You get more productivity if people are making a more decent wage. And we... give exemptions to smaller businesses. The deal is that when people have more money to spend that actually revitalizes the economy. So the argument that it would hurt business is really only coming from a very small sector who's really not interested in sharing any kind of profits. That's mostly the restaurant association and some of the businesses who back Newsom, and it's a phony argument."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why YES On Prop G (3 MB)

Lisa: What about "G," the "Rainy Day Fund?"

Tom: "Yeah, I think that's really good. Of course, it's mine. But the interesting thing is that you have broad support for it from the business community, from health advocates, from progressives. It's just a matter of fiscal prudency that doesn't hurt anybody. When you're in good times, you take some of that money and put it away, so when you're in bad times, the "boom bust cycle" or "spend and purge" as we call it, doesn't mean laying off people, doesn't mean cutting services, doesn't mean, gee what about this Sophie's Choice that we usually have to face with our social services. You take that money that you put away during good times and you withdraw it for the bad times and it's just a great equalizer. It's a great budget device. I mean there's a lot more to having a effective budget for all people, but this is a very significant way to do it. We should have done it years ago. So I'm hoping that it will pass quite handily."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why NO On Prop M (2 MB)

Tom Ammiano Says:

"M is bad. M is bad medicine. M is the same one trick pony that Newsom has propelled himself into the public eye with. It's criminalizing poverty without any solutions to poverty. It just simply sweeps. It's mean spirited. It's shallow. There are already laws on the books. And I find that this one note Johnny (Newsom) is getting very very tired. I mean, that should really indicate why he's unfit to be Mayor of San Francisco."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why Yes On Prop K (1 MB)

Tom Ammiano Says:

"Let's see, Prop K. That's a little bump in your sales tax that you've been paying for the past 20 years. If you've been around long enough. And it really has been helpful to the Muni, to ladder(?) crosswalks, more traffic signs, traffic calming, bicycle paths. You name it. If it deals with transportation, Prop K will take care of it. So I would really urge a strong vote for Prop K."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why Yes On Prop J (3 MB)

Tom Ammiano Says:

"Prop J, you know. I really think it's unnecessary. I think, for Angela, it was a way to attach herself to a ballot measure so she could get some mileage out of it. It's an old trick. We all do it from time to time. If it fails, I don't really see any great consequences for San Francisco, because we already have that political will in and around the homeless -- and again, (the bill is) just trying to capitalize on that without really trying to come up with solutions that are verifyable. Like my ability to get six million bucks from the Bush government two weeks ago, so we could have supportive housing and services for the mentally ill and homeless. Now that's real, and that's happening as we speak.

(from later in the interview)

Lisa: So getting back to J. Would you say "No"? Or would you say go ahead and pass J?

Tom:

I'd say go ahead and pass J. It's not going to hurt anything. I just think that you don't want to make any empty promises.

Lisa: But it's not crucial?

Tom: Yeah.

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why Yes On Prop H (1 MB)

Tom Ammiano Says:

"Prop H is very important. Not just cause I wrote it. But it is about police reform. People are hungry for that across the class spectrum and across the political spectrum. People want police reform. It's being spun as being anti-cop. It's being spun as a political power grab. That's nonsense. We really need Prop H."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow's elections.

Video clip - Why Yes On Prop A (2 MB)

Tom Ammiano Says:

"I think one of the most import ones to me is Prop A, which is the School Bonds. The new Superindendent, like her or not, has really cleaned up the act of the school district. The clearance of the state in terms of honest finances. So Prop A would really help our schools a lot. In San Francisco, we like public schools. So I would say hooray for Prop A."

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

Here's
Tom Ammiano explaining why he's a better choice for Mayor than Angela Alioto. (Small - 3 MB)

Lisa:

The other person I wanted to ask you about was Angela Alioto.

Tom:

Well, you know, Angela is a very interesting person. She has a lot of personality, but I don't think she has a lot of substance. I worked with her on the Board many years ago, and she can certainly put her heart behind an issue. But when it really came to taking on business, and when it really came to taking on established practices, she's more a woman of Pacific Heights.

I think people need to remember that this is also a "money" person. Now a money person doesn't have to be necessarily an "evil" person. However, I think there is a disconnect with a lot of the working class people and culture in San Francisco. I think she's been somewhat removed, and she certainly has interrupted her political career for the past 12 years, and I don't think she's in the loop in the same way. She didn't support District Elections, and now she says she does.

So there's a lot of reinvention on her part, and I think it would be a big mistake to have her as Mayor of San Francisco. I think, we'd, if anything, have some chaos. If you look at her contributors, they're a lot of the same developers that have been around for a long time, and lobbyists, and we've really gotten away from that. We certainly don't want a mayor that encourages that. And definitely Newsom could do the same thing.

No, I don't have it up yet, but I did get it, and after I finish with the election stuff (things must happen in order, or they, like, don't happen) I promise I'll get the Rummy stuff up next.

I just want you to be sure it was in the kitty. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm assuming he is responding to "the memo."...

Okay, so, I'm obviously back and about to go on a video rampage. I'll have to get the Dean on 60 minutes up soon too. And, jeez, what else, just a stack of stuff...Last Saturday's protest (Oct 25, 2003) still hasn't gone up yet (it's captured though...). There's Dean in SF Wednesday (October 29, 2003) (also captured). There's Laura Splan's recent blood painting opening (just in time for halloween...doh!)...and I don't know what else....but if it's uploaded to the archive, it's a-gettin-a-linked.

I've fallen into that stupid trap of not taking enough time to blog clips I've already crunched and uploaded -- and that's just plain stupid. So allow me to catch up a bit over the next day or two...

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

Here's
Tom Ammiano explaining why he's a better choice for Mayor than Gavin Newsom. (Small - 4 MB)

Lisa:

What separates you from Gavin?

Tom:

Well, I think there's a class background that can't be discounted. And, as with Matt, the number of years of legislative history. He's pretty skimpy. He's been on about as long as Gonzales, but he hasn't really accomplished very much.

Also, he doesn't get along with any of the Board members. He's at war with most of them. It's one thing to fight with people. We all do that. You want that in a democracy. It's not "the Stepford Supervisors" by any means. But then there's a time to put it aside and work in a common way. And I don't see that with Newsome in any way. So, he gets elected Mayor and we're going to have that wide gap again between Supervisors, elected by neighborhoods by the way, and a Mayor who does not like District Elections and wants to go backwards.

He's supported by Feinstein. Feinstein wants to end District Elections. She's not supportive of comperable work. She's not supportive of police reform. So he, really, for a younger person, really does not represent the future. He represents the past and going backwards, and I think that's a big difference.

How I'm voting this Tuesday

This footage is from October 31, 2003.

Here's
Tom Ammiano explaining why he's a better choice for Mayor than Matt Gonzales. (Small - 5 MB)

Lisa:

What separates you from Matt Gonzales? A lot of people are on the fence about who they're going to vote for, and I thought we could clear that up.

Tom:

Well, a lot more years of experience. And legislative history. I know that sometimes people think "gee, legislative history" is a little boring. However, I come from this activist background. And then, when I was about 49, I took all the social justice issues I knew about and all the populist issues I knew about and put them together and got elected, and I've been enacting those for years.
Living Wage, District Elections, Environmental Issues, and I think that that's a big difference.

Also, I taught school for 25 years, and I think that taught be a lot about not only the economy, but about the diversity in San Francisco, and the job market in San Francisco, and I'm very very supportive of public schools, and I have that hands on experience. And I have a kid, and my kid went to public schools.

So, you know, I think someone like Gonzales is going to find out that there ain't no free lunch for anybody, and you just can't coast on rhetoric and verbage or personality. You're really going to have to prove that you've produced something other than a different voice...

I think my legislative history -- the length of it, the social justice ground, the comprehensive and very wide wide number of issues I've dealt with over the years -- I think that's what people would like to see in a Mayor.