Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks
By Andrew Buncombe for the Independent U.K.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America's condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made "strictly" in principle.

The criticism in no way changed Washington's wish to support Iraq in its war against Iran and "to improve bi-lateral relations ... at a pace of Iraq's choosing".

Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam's willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world.

Senior officials presented the attacks against the Kurds - particularly the notorious attack in Halabja in 1988 - as a justification for the invasion and the ousting of Saddam.

But the newly declassified documents reveal that 20 years ago America's position was different and that the administration of President Ronald Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite evidence of Saddam's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.

In March 1984, under international pressure, America condemned Iraq's use of such chemical weapons. But realising that Baghdad had been upset, Secretary of State George Schultz asked Mr Rumsfeld to travel to Iraq as a special envoy to meet Saddam's Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, and smooth matters over.

In a briefing memo to Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Shultz wrote that he had met Iraqi officials in Washington to stress that America's interests remained "in (1) preventing an Iranian victory and (2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq".

The memo adds: "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

Exactly what Mr Rumsfeld, who at the time did not hold government office, told Mr Aziz on 26 March 1984, remains unclear and minutes from the meeting remain classified. No one from Mr Rumsfeld's office was available to comment yesterday.

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

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=475931

Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

24 December 2003

Fresh controversy about Donald Rumsfeld's personal dealings with Saddam Hussein was provoked yesterday by new documents that reveal he went to Iraq to show America's support for the regime despite its use of chemical weapons.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America's condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made "strictly" in principle.

The criticism in no way changed Washington's wish to support Iraq in its war against Iran and "to improve bi-lateral relations ... at a pace of Iraq's choosing".

Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam's willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world.

Senior officials presented the attacks against the Kurds - particularly the notorious attack in Halabja in 1988 - as a justification for the invasion and the ousting of Saddam.

But the newly declassified documents reveal that 20 years ago America's position was different and that the administration of President Ronald Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite evidence of Saddam's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.

In March 1984, under international pressure, America condemned Iraq's use of such chemical weapons. But realising that Baghdad had been upset, Secretary of State George Schultz asked Mr Rumsfeld to travel to Iraq as a special envoy to meet Saddam's Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, and smooth matters over.

In a briefing memo to Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Shultz wrote that he had met Iraqi officials in Washington to stress that America's interests remained "in (1) preventing an Iranian victory and (2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq".

The memo adds: "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

Exactly what Mr Rumsfeld, who at the time did not hold government office, told Mr Aziz on 26 March 1984, remains unclear and minutes from the meeting remain classified. No one from Mr Rumsfeld's office was available to comment yesterday.

It was not Mr Rumsfeld's first visit to Iraq. Four months earlier, in December 1983, he had visited Saddam and was photographed shaking hands with the dictator. When news of this visit was revealed last year, Mr Rumsfeld claimed he had "cautioned" Saddam to stop using chemical weapons.

When documents about the meeting disclosed he had said no such thing, a spokesman for Mr Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue with Mr Aziz.

America's relationship with Iraq at a time when Saddam was using chemical weapons is well-documented but rarely reported.

During the war with Iran, America provided combat assistance to Iraq that included intelligence on Iranian deployments and bomb-damage assessments. In 1987-88 American warships destroyed Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf and broke the blockade of Iraqi shipping lanes.

Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a non-profit group that obtained the documents, told The New York Times: "Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980s and it didn't make any difference to US policy. The embrace of Saddam and what it emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky alliances."

Last night, Danny Muller, a spokesman for the anti-war group Voices in the Wilderness, said the documents revealed America's "blatant hypocrisy". He added: "This is not an isolated event. Continuing administrations have said 'we will do business'. I am surprised that Donald Rumsfeld does not resign right now."

Against the war, for the soldiers
By Derrick Z. Jackson for the Boston Globe.

On this eve of the Christian celebration of a baby, I celebrate you. In June, I wrote a column that said our soldiers must be dying for oil, since we found no weapons of mass destruction. I wrote, "Nearly another 50 soldiers have died in nebulous situations that range from justifiable self-defense to dubious overreactions more reminiscent of the shootings of American students and rioters by National Guardsmen in the 1960s."

That column sparked a letter from the father of a 20-year-old soldier who died a month after President Bush declared major combat operations to be over. The father wrote: "The use of the word `nebulous' is insulting to all who do their duty every day and especially to those who lose their lives. My son died doing what he volunteered for, doing something he loved and was exceptional at.

"You insult his intelligence by intimating that he was some sort of dupe in this grand power play for the world's oil. If you have a point, then make it, but do not invoke the memory of my son to justify your political point of view. . . . My son willingly followed the orders of his commander in chief to accomplish a mission.

"During his time in Iraq, he grew to like and respect the people there. On missions (prior to his death) he earned the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Meritorious Service Medal. All this from a 20-year-old Airborne infantryman. Do not dare to insult his memory by equating him with a barrel of oil."

I wrote the father back: "I am very sorry that your son was killed serving this country. . . . I certainly and sincerely understand how reading my column during this time could inflame your feelings.

"What I want you to know is that while you and I have strong, differing feelings about the political purpose of the war itself and the decisions and actions of world leaders that led to it, I have no doubt that at the individual level, young men and women went off genuinely believing they were furthering the cause of peace and democracy and helping to create a better world.

"If it is of any solace to you, despite the anger my column caused you, I salute your son as he died in the service of freedom, with one of those freedoms being freedom of speech and the freedom to dissent without fear of retribution."

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

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/24/against_the_war_for_the_soldiers/

Against the war, for the soldiers

By Derrick Z. Jackson, 12/24/2003

DEAR AMERICAN SOLDIERS:

I wish you a safe holiday. Congratulations on being named Time magazine's Person of the Year.
ADVERTISEMENT

You might find this strange coming from the journalistic equivalent of Scrooge. I was against the war. I wrote last week that despite the capture of Saddam Hussein, the war is still a lie. I believe history will be less kind than today's triumphant headlines. I believe that thousands of Iraqi babies, mothers, and fathers are dead because our political leaders created a panic over weapons of mass destruction that have not yet been found. I fear America will one day pay for our panic.

I also recognize and salute your personal courage. You are mothers and fathers, too. Many of you are also babies. Of the 460 American soldiers who have died in Iraq, 36 were 18 or 19 years old. My oldest son is 18. My best friend's son recently turned 21. My friend was also against the war. His son is in the military and may very well go to Iraq. My friend cried: "They're babies. Just babies."

On this eve of the Christian celebration of a baby, I celebrate you. In June, I wrote a column that said our soldiers must be dying for oil, since we found no weapons of mass destruction. I wrote, "Nearly another 50 soldiers have died in nebulous situations that range from justifiable self-defense to dubious overreactions more reminiscent of the shootings of American students and rioters by National Guardsmen in the 1960s."

That column sparked a letter from the father of a 20-year-old soldier who died a month after President Bush declared major combat operations to be over. The father wrote: "The use of the word `nebulous' is insulting to all who do their duty every day and especially to those who lose their lives. My son died doing what he volunteered for, doing something he loved and was exceptional at.

"You insult his intelligence by intimating that he was some sort of dupe in this grand power play for the world's oil. If you have a point, then make it, but do not invoke the memory of my son to justify your political point of view. . . . My son willingly followed the orders of his commander in chief to accomplish a mission.

"During his time in Iraq, he grew to like and respect the people there. On missions (prior to his death) he earned the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Meritorious Service Medal. All this from a 20-year-old Airborne infantryman. Do not dare to insult his memory by equating him with a barrel of oil."

I wrote the father back: "I am very sorry that your son was killed serving this country. . . . I certainly and sincerely understand how reading my column during this time could inflame your feelings.

"What I want you to know is that while you and I have strong, differing feelings about the political purpose of the war itself and the decisions and actions of world leaders that led to it, I have no doubt that at the individual level, young men and women went off genuinely believing they were furthering the cause of peace and democracy and helping to create a better world.

"If it is of any solace to you, despite the anger my column caused you, I salute your son as he died in the service of freedom, with one of those freedoms being freedom of speech and the freedom to dissent without fear of retribution."

The father wrote back: "I have always believed the true fundamental strength of our country is the vast diversity of people and their thoughts. We will never have just one mind-set. . . . Thanks for responding and hope to keep in contact. On a lighter note, my slightly premature but inevitable condolences for another also-ran season for the beloved Red Sox -- born and raised in the Bronx."

Dear American soldiers, perhaps there will come a day where the true fundamental strength of our country will be measured more by our diversity than by our ability to wage war. I trust we share that common dream even as we disagree about how to get there. I believe that in your hearts, you are trying to make the world a safer place, where diversity of political thought becomes a global value.

If it is of any solace to you, despite my opposition to the war, I salute the fact that you are ready to give your lives for an ideal. Be careful as you patrol the streets. Defend yourselves if you must.

When you can, take a hard look at the Iraqi man, woman, or child your gun is pointed at. You are in Iraq under the orders of the commander in chief. I cannot do anything about that. What I can wish for is that even as many Christians prepare to sing "Peace on earth, goodwill to men," that you find a way, one soldier at a time, to bring it to Iraq. I pray that babies stop killing babies.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.

Weaker Clean Air Rules Blocked
By the Associate Press for Wired.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked new Bush administration changes to the Clean Air Act from going into effect, in a challenge from state attorneys general and cities that argued the changes would harm the environment and public health.

The Environmental Protection Agency rule would have made it easier for utilities, refineries and other industrial facilities to make repairs in the name of routine maintenance without installing additional pollution controls.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued an order that blocks the rules from going into effect until the legal challenge from the states and cities is heard, a process likely to last months.

The court's decision stops, at least temporarily, one of the Bush administration's major environmental decisions. The court's justices said the challengers "demonstrated the irreparable harm and likelihood of success" of their case, which are required to stop the rule from taking effect.

The EPA proposed the rule a year ago December, the then-acting administrator signed it in August, and it was made final in October. It was due to have gone into effect this week.

Bringing suit were attorneys general for 12 states -- Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin -- and legal officers for New York City, Washington, San Francisco, New Haven and a host of other cities in Connecticut.

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

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61744,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html

Associated Press Page 1 of 1

11:48 AM Dec. 24, 2003 PT

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked new Bush administration changes to the Clean Air Act from going into effect, in a challenge from state attorneys general and cities that argued the changes would harm the environment and public health.

The Environmental Protection Agency rule would have made it easier for utilities, refineries and other industrial facilities to make repairs in the name of routine maintenance without installing additional pollution controls.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued an order that blocks the rules from going into effect until the legal challenge from the states and cities is heard, a process likely to last months.

The court's decision stops, at least temporarily, one of the Bush administration's major environmental decisions. The court's justices said the challengers "demonstrated the irreparable harm and likelihood of success" of their case, which are required to stop the rule from taking effect.

The EPA proposed the rule a year ago December, the then-acting administrator signed it in August, and it was made final in October. It was due to have gone into effect this week.

Bringing suit were attorneys general for 12 states -- Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin -- and legal officers for New York City, Washington, San Francisco, New Haven and a host of other cities in Connecticut.

Cynthia Bergman, a spokeswoman for the EPA, declined to provide any initial comment, saying the agency had not yet had a chance to review the ruling.

The EPA has maintained that it does not believe the rule will result in significant changes in emissions, and that it will preserve the public health protections required under law.

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a group of power companies, called the ruling "a setback for energy efficiency and environmental protection," but expressed confidence the rule would eventually be upheld.

"The rule was based upon a substantial agency record with analysis, public hearings and thousands of rule-making comments," he said. "We expect the rule will soon be back on course."

Environmental and health groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the American Lung Association, also challenged the rule in the appeals court.

They argued the EPA's maintenance rule violates the Clean Air Act by letting power plants and other industries increase pollution significantly without adopting control measures, and public harm would result.

"This is a great gift to the American people and a lump of coal to the Bush administration and its polluter friends," John Walke, NRDC's clean air director. "The court agreed this rule would cause great harm to the public that could not be undone, and it's likely the rule will be struck down for running afoul of the Clean Air Act."

Tom Reilly, the Massachusetts attorney general, also spoke in terms of holiday gifts, saying the court had "forced EPA to take back its early Christmas present to the coal-fired power plants in the Midwest."

Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney general, called it "a major decision."

"When it comes to environmental policy, this court decision is as big a success as we've had in stopping the Bush administration from undercutting the Clean Air Act," he said.

But the judges also said they found no reason to revisit an earlier decision not to block other of the EPA's changes to the Clean Air Act that were made final in December 2002.

Those new rules had already begun to go into effect in some states earlier this year, giving coal-fired power plants and other industrial facilities more flexibility in calculating their pollution levels.

Hack the Vote
By Paul Krugman for the NY Times.

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell -- who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations -- happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

For example, Georgia -- where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections -- relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail...

What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html?th

Hack the Vote

New York Times

By PAUL KRUGMAN
OP-ED COLUMNIST
December 2, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html?th

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed
to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No
surprise there. But Walden O'Dell -- who says that he wasn't talking about
his business operations -- happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc.,
whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across
the United States.

For example, Georgia -- where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories
in the 2002 midterm elections -- relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To
be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no
evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that
the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper
trail.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring
that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be
available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking
these safeguards haven't caused problems. "How do you know?" he asks.

What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are
technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very
least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up
product defects.

Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found
Diebold software -- which the company refuses to make available for public
inspection, on the grounds that it's proprietary -- on an unprotected server,
where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled
"rob-Georgia.zip.") The server was used by employees of Diebold Election
Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible
breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines
both the information and the opportunity to do so.

An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice
Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. A later report
commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar
conclusions. (It's hard to be sure because the state released only a heavily
redacted version.)

Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that corporate officials
knew their system was flawed, and circumvented tests that would have
revealed these problems. The company hasn't contested the authenticity of
these documents; instead, it has engaged in legal actions to prevent their
dissemination.

Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The
Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen
voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold
affair has been treated as a technology or business story -- not as a
potential political scandal.

This diffidence recalls the treatment of other voting issues, like the
Florida "felon purge" that inappropriately prevented many citizens from
voting in the 2000 presidential election. The attitude seems to be that
questions about the integrity of vote counts are divisive at best, paranoid
at worst. Even reform advocates like Mr. Holt make a point of dissociating
themselves from "conspiracy theories." Instead, they focus on legislation to
prevent future abuses.

But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives,
given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks. Indeed, given the
intensity of partisanship these days, one suspects that small dirty tricks
are common. For example, Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, recently announced that one of his aides had improperly accessed
sensitive Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.

This admission -- contradicting an earlier declaration by Senator Hatch that
his staff had been cleared of culpability -- came on the same day that the
Senate police announced that they were hiring a counterespionage expert to
investigate the theft. Republican members of the committee have demanded
that the expert investigate only how those specific documents were leaked,
not whether any other breaches took place. I wonder why.

The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry
that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting
system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?

I'll discuss what to do in a future column. But let's be clear: the
credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.

FCC Approves Murdoch Purchase of DirecTV
By Frank Ahrens for the Washington Post.

The Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department today approved News Corporation Inc.'s purchase of Hughes Electronics Corp.'s DirecTV home satellite system, giving Rupert Murdoch the crucial missing piece of his global satellite empire.

By a vote of 3-2, the FCC commissioners allowed the $6.5 billion cash-and-stock purchase to go ahead with a number of conditions meant to keep News Corp. from using DirecTV as a lever to raise programming prices to rival cable and satellite companies. The merger gives News Corp. a controlling 34 percent interest in Hughes.

News Corp. is the parent company of the Fox television network, Fox News Channel, FX and Fox Sports regional cable channels. Opponents of the merger feared that News Corp. would raise its programming prices to cable rivals, such as Comcast Corp., or threaten to pull Fox programming in order to drive customers away from cable and to DirecTV.

The FCC ruled that the merger would improve service to DirecTV customers -- News Corp. has a history of adding channels and features, such as interactivity, to its other satellite systems -- would create a more muscular competitor to the cable industry, which has monopolies in most markets, and promote the agency's goal of localism, by requiring News Corp. to add local channels to the DirecTV system.

FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell joined fellow Republican commissioners Kevin J. Martin and Kathleen Q. Abernathy in approving the deal.

Dissenting were Democratic FCC commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein. The commission has been split along party lines on media issues since the rancorous June vote adopting new media ownership rules.

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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16148-2003Dec19.html

FCC Approves Murdoch Purchase of DirecTV

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; 9:11 PM

The Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department today approved News Corporation Inc.'s purchase of Hughes Electronics Corp.'s DirecTV home satellite system, giving Rupert Murdoch the crucial missing piece of his global satellite empire.

By a vote of 3-2, the FCC commissioners allowed the $6.5 billion cash-and-stock purchase to go ahead with a number of conditions meant to keep News Corp. from using DirecTV as a lever to raise programming prices to rival cable and satellite companies. The merger gives News Corp. a controlling 34 percent interest in Hughes.

News Corp. is the parent company of the Fox television network, Fox News Channel, FX and Fox Sports regional cable channels. Opponents of the merger feared that News Corp. would raise its programming prices to cable rivals, such as Comcast Corp., or threaten to pull Fox programming in order to drive customers away from cable and to DirecTV.

The FCC ruled that the merger would improve service to DirecTV customers -- News Corp. has a history of adding channels and features, such as interactivity, to its other satellite systems -- would create a more muscular competitor to the cable industry, which has monopolies in most markets, and promote the agency's goal of localism, by requiring News Corp. to add local channels to the DirecTV system.

FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell joined fellow Republican commissioners Kevin J. Martin and Kathleen Q. Abernathy in approving the deal.

Dissenting were Democratic FCC commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein. The commission has been split along party lines on media issues since the rancorous June vote adopting new media ownership rules.

As a condition of approving the merger, the FCC requires News Corp. to beam local channels into 130 of the nation's markets by the end of next year.

However, Adelstein said News Corp. is not required to provide local channels to all markets by satellite -- the company can do so by attaching an antenna to its satellite dish, which, in the nation's most rural areas, will not receive local channels, he said.

"One of biggest public interest benefits of this merger turned out to be a sham," Adelstein said in an interview yesterday.

News Corp., however, pointed out that it said as early as September in an FCC filing that it may not be able to provide local channels to all markets via satellite. If residents live in very rural areas outside the boundaries of the top 210 markets and are not able to get local channels over the air, they will not get them via satellite, either, News Corp. said, because the high cost required to do so would raise DirecTV bills to all its customers.

News Corp. pledged to provide local channels to the top 210 markets "by whatever means make the most sense," said a company spokesperson. "From a business perspective, a technology perspective and the consumers' perspective."

Another condition imposes a baseball-style arbitration system if News Corp. cannot agree on programming prices with its rivals. If, for instance, News Corp. and Comcast cannot agree on how much Comcast should pay for a Fox channel, a cooling-off period is engaged during which parties can continue to haggle. If no deal is reached, each party submits their final offer to an arbiter, who chooses one of the two. News Corp. can appeal the decision to the FCC.

The system is designed to prevent News Corp. from threatening to pull its popular Fox network and Fox Sports regional programming from rival cable systems to extract higher payments. FCC studies show that pulling local channels and regional sports channels from cable systems drives customers to satellite services faster than any other factor.

The FCC had considered imposing a "benchmark pricing" condition on News Corp., but found the contracts regarding regional sports programming too complex and feared that hard benchmarks could eventually be maneuvered around.

"We support arbitration to limit NewsCorp.'s excess power in these transactions, but that doesn't prevent sweetheart deals between DirecTV and cable, where the end result is higher prices to satellite and cable customers," said Gene Kimmelman, senior policy director for Consumers Union. "While the commission imposed some helpful conditions on this merger, it offered no more than a Silly Putty patch on the crumbling structural pillars that ensure open democratic debate in our society."

Murdoch owns pay-satellite television services that serve Europe, Asia and his home country of Australia. DirecTV, the top satellite service in the United States with 12 million customers, gives him North and South America, as the company has a Latin American arm, which has been a money-loser.

Hughes is owned by General Motors, which has been trying to offload the satellite company, including a failed attempt last year to sell it to EchoStar Communications Corp., parent of Dish Network, the industry's No. 2 service with 8 million subscribers. That merger attempt was killed by FCC and Justice Department regulators, which said it would harm the public interest and violate anti-trust laws.

GM had hoped to get the purchase approved by the end of the year in order to book the sale's $4 billion in cash to this year's balance sheets and apply it to auto giant's pension fund.

The RIAA has hired the Nation's top hired gun to fight music piracy.

Apparently, the recording industry doesn't realize yet that it's fighting a losing battle. Looks like we're in for another ridiculous fight this coming year.

ATF Director to Head Music Industry's Anti-Piracy Efforts
By the Associated Press for Fox News.

The director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (search) is leaving his post next month to lead the recording
industry's efforts to stop music piracy.

Bradley A. Buckles, who served ATF for 30 years and was named director in
1999, will come head of the Anti-Piracy Unit of the Recording Industry
Association of America (search), the trade group announced Tuesday.

"Brad's appointment should signal to everyone that we continue to take
piracy (search), here and throughout the world, very seriously," said Mitch Bainwol, RIAA's chairman and chief executive officer.

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

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105282,00.html

ATF Director to Head Music Industry's Anti-Piracy Efforts

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

WASHINGTON — The director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (search) is leaving his post next month to lead the recording
industry's efforts to stop music piracy.

Bradley A. Buckles, who served ATF for 30 years and was named director in
1999, will come head of the Anti-Piracy Unit of the Recording Industry
Association of America (search), the trade group announced Tuesday.

"Brad's appointment should signal to everyone that we continue to take
piracy (search), here and throughout the world, very seriously," said Mitch
Bainwol, RIAA's chairman and chief executive officer.

Over the past six months, RIAA has filed more than 380 copyright lawsuits
(search) against computer users its says are illegally distributing songs
over the Internet. The RIAA also says music copyrights are increasingly
threatened by easy-to-produce counterfeit compact disks.

Attorney General John Ashcroft praised Buckles for "the seamless transfer"
of ATF from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department, which was
part of the law creating the Homeland Security Department.

Buckles' retirement is effective Jan. 3. No replacement was immediately
named.

The Shrub is trying to cover his tracks by deleting hundreds of damning documents from the Internet. Nice try shrubby, but the built-in redundancy of the Web will hopefully save the day on this one.

White House Covers Tracks by Removing Information

In a high-tech cover-up, the Washington Post this morning reports the White House is actively scrubbing government websites clean of any of its own previous statements that have now proven to be untrue.1 Specifically, on April 23, 2003, the president sent his top international aid official on national television to reassure the public that the cost of war and reconstruction in Iraq would be modest. USAID Director Andrew Natsios, echoing other Administration officials, told Nightline that, "In terms of the American taxpayers contribution, [$1.7 billion] is it for the US. The American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

The president has requested more than $166 billion in funding for the war and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. But instead of admitting that he misled the nation about the cost of war, the president has allowed the State Department "to purge the comments by Natsios from the State Department's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished." (The link where the transcript existed until it caused embarrassment was http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/nightline_042403_t.html).

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

http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df12182003.html

December 18, 2003 | Print Now

White House Covers Tracks by Removing Information

In a high-tech cover-up, the Washington Post this morning reports the White House is actively scrubbing government websites clean of any of its own previous statements that have now proven to be untrue.1 Specifically, on April 23, 2003, the president sent his top international aid official on national television to reassure the public that the cost of war and reconstruction in Iraq would be modest. USAID Director Andrew Natsios, echoing other Administration officials, told Nightline that, "In terms of the American taxpayers contribution, [$1.7 billion] is it for the US. The American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

The president has requested more than $166 billion in funding for the war and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. But instead of admitting that he misled the nation about the cost of war, the president has allowed the State Department "to purge the comments by Natsios from the State Department's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished." (The link where the transcript existed until it caused embarrassment was http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/nightline_042403_t.html).

When confronted with the dishonest whitewash, the administration decided to lie. A Bush spokesman said the administration was forced to remove the statements because, "there was going to be a cost" charged by ABC for keeping the transcript on the government's site. But as the Post notes, "other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments, routinely post interview transcripts, even from 'Nightline,'" and according to ABC News, "there is no cost."

This story is not the first time the President has tried to hide critical information from the American public. For instance, the president opposed the creation of the independent 9/11 investigative commission2, and has refused to provide the commission with critical information4, even under threat of subpoena5. Similarly, after making substantial budget cuts, the president ordered the government to stop publishing its regular report detailing those cuts to states6. And when confronted with a continuing unemployment crisis, the president ordered the Department of Labor to stop publishing its regular mass layoff report.

It is also not the first time the administration has sought to revise history and public records when those records become incriminating. As the Post reports "After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word 'Major' before combat." And the "Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site."

Sources:

1. "
White House Web Scrubbing", Washington Post, 12/18/2003
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9821-2003Dec17.html).
2. "
Rice opposes public panel to probe 9/11", CNN, 05/22/2002
(http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/19/911probe.rice/).
3. "
9/11 Families Criticize Slow Response to Commission Requests", FindLaw, 10/14/2003
(http://news.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20031014/14oct2003125830.html).
4. "
9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files", New York Times, 10/26/2003
(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1026-02.htm).
5. "Seek and Ye Shall Not Find", Washington Post, 03/11/2003.
6. "
Shooting the messenger: Report on layoffs killed", Freedom of Information Center,
01/03/2003 (http://foi.missouri.edu/bushinfopolicies/lazarusatlg.html).

White House Web Scrubbing
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
By Dana Milbank for the Washington Post.

White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.

Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.

This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.

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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9821-2003Dec17.html

White House Web Scrubbing
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A05

It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.

White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.

Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.

This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Natsios case is particularly pernicious. "This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than usual," he said. "If they simply said, 'We made an error; we underestimated,' people could understand it and deal with it."

For months after the April 23 Natsios interview on ABC's "Nightline," USAID.gov displayed the transcript. "You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?" an incredulous Ted Koppel asked Natsios.

"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do," Natsios said. "This is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iraqi oil revenues. . . . But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

A White House spokesman, asked later about these remarks, responded vaguely that he had not seen the statement in question. Then, sometime this fall, USAID made it easier for the administration to maintain its veil of ignorance on the subject by taking the transcript off its Web site.

For a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the Google "cached" copies of the original page.

USAID spokeswoman Lejaune Hall, asked about this curious situation, searched the Web site herself for the missing document. "That is strange," she said. After a brief investigation, she reported back: "They were taken down off the Web site. There was going to be a cost. That's why they're not there."

But other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments, routinely post interview transcripts, even from "Nightline." And, it turns out, there is no cost. "We would not charge for that," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "We would have no trouble with a government agency linking to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making any request that anything be removed."

So obviously, I'm back to blogging again. I'm actually not done completely with all of my school projects, but I feel good enough about completing them shortly that I've decided to treat myself to blogging again.

I can't tell you how good it feels to be back on the case. I really missed blogging and being part of our little community. Thanks for being patient and hanging around 'till I came back. I can tell you've been hanging around because my numbers didn't go down any the whole time I was gone. (Go figure:)

The first thing I'm going to do is catch up on some old stuff. I'm kinda hanging around with relatives doing the holiday thing, so I should have plenty of time to catch up. I didn't think I'd have any connectivity over the holidays, but I was wrong!

So anyway, there's my long winded way of saying that I'm glad to be back, and I love you guys!

Peace!

John Perry Barlow has started a blog.

'Bout time! Thanks John Perry!

I've been wary of blogs. Starting a blog looks a little like signing up for treadmill duty. Unless you like to write better than I do - and, personally, I'd rather pump septic tanks - consigning yourself to writing something every day looks like voluntary servitude. Furthermore, when I read some of the discussions on blogs, it looked a little like what you'd get if you invited all of your most socially dysfunctional friends into your living room and gave them plenty of beer.

But then - duh - it dawned on me that I'm under no obligation to post every day. I can continue to write BarlowSpams with my usual infrequency and post them to the blog in addition to sending them directly to you. And there we can discuss them together.

As to the civility of those discussions, there is no reason to think you are as inclined to flame at one another as other blog-posters appear to be. You're a sweet and relatively civilized lot. I've never had to break up a fight at a BarlowFrenzy. Why should I worry about it here? (Actually, there was that party in New York years ago where the anarchists from the Lower East Side went to war with the Italian soccer contingent and they all started throwing hummus at one another, but that seemed unusual....)

Having settled these concerns in my mind, I still didn't start blogging. There remained the simple matter of inertia and technological surface tension. I knew it couldn't be that hard to put up a blog. Over a million others have already done it. But I had a hard time getting myself to believe it when I'd tell myself, "This afternoon you should get your blog going, Barlow."

This is one of the things friends are for. Then, a few days ago, I fell into the too-rare company of my dear pal, Joi Ito, who is like the Blogdom equivalent of Zeus. (Check him out at http://joi.ito.com/.) He sat me down in the lobby of San Francisco's snotty W Hotel - where there is at least free WiFi coverage - and within a few minutes I had a blog.

SPAM CALLED ON ACCOUNT OF DARKNESS

A funny thing happened to this spam on its way to you. I wrote it Friday afternoon, shortly after setting up my first blog. As usual, I dispatched it to my list-server at EFF, from which it was to be flung around the planet in swarms of magnetic jitter. But very near the time it arrived there, a fire broke out in the P.P.& L. substation in San Francisco's Mission District, near the Network Operations Center, wherein resides the server that normally flings my spam.

My mail host is also there and I didn't get any for a few hours - it's amazing how brief the delay was considering the mess in San Francisco - when it resumed I could see that the following message hadn't gone out.

I tried a test spam to see if the list-serve was up. No joy. The mail host was still working, albeit through a soda-straw connection, but the list-serve had crashed. And, so doing, it had apparently blasted this message into electronic nothingness.

Or maybe not. I kept thinking the server might come up coughing and spitting, and burp up for the old BarlowSpam just as I was re-sending it in this form. This kept me from resend it until now.

Timing was important though because I was announcing with it the arrival of my new blog, which, as you will read, is intended to be a place for you as much as for me. I posted the following Barlowspam on the blog at the same time I e-mailed it to you. But its subjects, the new BarlowFriendz blog, and my invitations to join me at Tribe.Net and LinkedIn.Com, are already a reality. So, it's lumpy, but it's happening...

------------------------------------>>>>-------------------------------------------!!!--------------------->>>>>>

HTTP://BLOG.BARLOWFRIENDZ.NET

After skidding through much of last two years on bald tires of unconditional hope, I am starting to feel traction again. The polarity may be about to reverse. New light is perceptible.

Still, things might get worse before they get better, and if I haven't learned anything else during this dreary passage, I've learned that we need each other. I've learned that community, in which I've always placed great rhetorical value, really does count.

Ironically, I've learned this even as I thinned my own belonging in the communities that once sustained me. I have not set foot in the little Wyoming town I still call "home" during calender year. I've bounced around the planet, solitary as an ion, as though in Brownian Motion. Though too alone in other ways, I suspect I'm not alone in this.

So I'd like to do more to increase the density of connection with this little community, the BarlowFriendz. Aside from being bound by the one thing you know you have in common, knowing me, you've been provided with little opportunity to learn about the many other things you have in common.

Of course, many of you knew each other to begin with, and many, many more have come to know each other through BarlowFrenzies over the years, but you've so far had no means of getting generally connected in Cyberspace. My method of communication with you has been generally about as interactive as Rush Limbaugh's. I broadcast and then take a few calls (or e-mails, as the case may be) which I have not shared.

I've often thought about passing them on, because they are usually as wonderful, thoughtful, witty, and intelligent as you are. But I didn't want to burden you with even more e-mail than you're already gagging on. It felt selfish not to share such an embarrassment of riches, but I know that if you start getting too much mail from me, you filter it into another mailbox which you never get around to opening. (Maybe this message is sitting just such a black hole now.)

The solution has been obvious for some time: put up a blog. Then, instead of sending your responses to me alone, you can send them to everyone who reads the blog. Of course, personal responses can still be directed to me. (Though please be careful not to include barlowfriendz@eff.org among the recipients. A couple of months ago, I responded to such a message without checking the To: line and dispatched my reply to the entire list. Just in case you were wondering what that was...)

I've been wary of blogs. Starting a blog looks a little like signing up for treadmill duty. Unless you like to write better than I do - and, personally, I'd rather pump septic tanks - consigning yourself to writing something every day looks like voluntary servitude. Furthermore, when I read some of the discussions on blogs, it looked a little like what you'd get if you invited all of your most socially dysfunctional friends into your living room and gave them plenty of beer.

But then - duh - it dawned on me that I'm under no obligation to post every day. I can continue to write BarlowSpams with my usual infrequency and post them to the blog in addition to sending them directly to you. And there we can discuss them together.

As to the civility of those discussions, there is no reason to think you are as inclined to flame at one another as other blog-posters appear to be. You're a sweet and relatively civilized lot. I've never had to break up a fight at a BarlowFrenzy. Why should I worry about it here? (Actually, there was that party in New York years ago where the anarchists from the Lower East Side went to war with the Italian soccer contingent and they all started throwing hummus at one another, but that seemed unusual....)

Having settled these concerns in my mind, I still didn't start blogging. There remained the simple matter of inertia and technological surface tension. I knew it couldn't be that hard to put up a blog. Over a million others have already done it. But I had a hard time getting myself to believe it when I'd tell myself, "This afternoon you should get your blog going, Barlow."

This is one of the things friends are for. Then, a few days ago, I fell into the too-rare company of my dear pal, Joi Ito, who is like the Blogdom equivalent of Zeus. (Check him out at http://joi.ito.com/.) He sat me down in the lobby of San Francisco's snotty W Hotel - where there is at least free WiFi coverage - and within a few minutes I had a blog.

Of course, it's still a larval thing. I don't have a great designer's eye, nor am I fully on top of the tools yet. Worse, I don't have an instinct for the natural protocols of the medium. Good blog posts are, in my observation, brief and telegraphic. I am orotund and discursive. I do go on. Perhaps I'll adapt. Perhaps you will.

The main thing is that now we have a place where we can get together between BarlowFrenzies, as well as a place where those of you too far-flung to bring your bodies to a party in Meatspace can get to know each other. We have a place where we can start building a community of ourselves, which, though virtual now, might eventually lead to the real thing. (And, believe me, I do know the difference. Virtual community remains one of my favorite oxymorons.) Still, this feels like it might be a kind of home for us. A home in nowhere, but a home.

Finally, I would like to be better connected with those of you who are already in the Blogosphere. If you'll send me your own blog URL's, I'll link them on my blog. And I hope you will link me on yours. By cross-linking one another, we can generate a more audible collective voice. We can make of ourselves a rich and growing ecosystem of opinion.

----------------------------...----------------------->>>>>>>---------------------------@-------------------------->>

NO DEGREES OF SEPARATION

An ecosystem is an information sorting engine. Whether photons entering a rain forest or heat gradients entering the deep ocean, biological systems pass these differences back and forth among themselves, creating increasingly complex matrices of structure. Hence, Life.

And yet, the most complex information sorting system yet devised by humans, the Internet, remains relatively simple and flat, rather as life was before the Cambrian explosion. Every IP address is like a single celled animal, with larger critters yet to emerge.

I've been expecting to see more new forms of order in Cyberspace than I have so far and am always watchful for the substrates of connection that might support it as it emerges. Lately, I've been watching sites that seek to narrow and map the famous 6 degrees of separation, like Friendster, Tribes.Net, and LinkedIn.Com.

I'm not entirely sure these things are going anywhere truly interesting, but they are certainly diverting to observe from a sociological standpoint. The former two are like gigantic singles bars for Burning Man refugees, while the latter seems to function largely as a means to reduce professional surface tension between aspiring business types.

It occurs to me, however, that since I am eager to increase the personal connectivity among you BarlowFriendz and give you better opportunities to know one another without passing through me, these sites might be useful to us. (There is already a so-far fairly quiescent BarlowFriendz "tribe" on Tribes.Net.) At least, it feels worthy of an experiment.

So I hope you won't mind that I'm dumping your addresses into the hopper at all three of these sites just to see what emerges. I don't think you have worry about your privacy. All of them seem to be scrupulous about not revealing e-mail addresses, personal information, or, in the case, of the first two, actual identities.

You will not be bombarded with e-mail, as you were during the infamous PeopleLink experiment back in 1997. In fairness, that attempt turned out to be headed in an interesting direction, at least. Though flawed in execution, PeopleLink was a forerunner of various instant messaging systems like AIM and Messenger.

(By the way, if you feel like trying real-time chat again, my AIM/iChat handle is barlow1. I don't have a video camera set up, but I am using iChat AV on a fast line, so we can use voices if you're similarly enabled. This may prove too distracting, but I will log in for a while and see.)

As I say, this is an experiment. We may find that none of these "social environments" are particularly helpful in bringing us closer together, though, at minimum, we are likely to find ourselves back in touch with people we thought we'd lost (as I already have). Also, since most of you are highly social people, I think if we join together, we can, as a group, find ourselves only a couple of degrees removed from a very large and interesting subset of humanity.

Meanwhile, may your generic holidays be as free of familial dysfunction as possible. May your days be merry and bright, and may Uncle Fred not get too hammered over dinner.

Peace and Light,

Barlow
--
**************************************************************
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School

Home(stead) Page: http://www.eff.org/~barlow

Blog: http://blog.barlowfriendz.net

AIM/iChat AV handle: barlow1

Current Cell Phone: 917/863-2037

Current Land Line: 801/582-5035

**************************************************************

Barlow in Meatspace Now: Salt Lake City (Until 12/20) 801/582-5035

(Provisional) Trajectory from Here: Pinedale, Wyoming (12/20-29) -> San Francisco (12/30-1/8) -> Las Vegas (1/8-9) -> New York, New York...

**************************************************************

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
--
**************************************************************
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School

Home(stead) Page: http://www.eff.org/~barlow

Blog: http://blog.barlowfriendz.net

AIM/iChat AV handle: barlow1

A nice little piece that tells us a lot of what we already know about Howard Dean's Internet-savvy campaign. I'll never get tired of reading about it :-)

How the Internet Invented Howard Dean
Forget fundraising (though his opponents sure can't). The real reason the Doctor is in: He listens to the technology - and the people who use it.
By Gary Wolf for Wired.

Neither policy nor pragmatism alone drove MoveOn to Dean; his key advantage was that his bloggers were already deeply interlinked with bloggers friendly to MoveOn. Dean's network made it easy for his supporters to vote in the MoveOn poll, while offering MoveOn members an opportunity to influence the Democratic race, even if their own state's primary was irrelevant. Participation, not policy, was key.

Joi Ito, founder of Neoteny, a venture firm, and former chair of Infoseek Japan, has joined a group of technologists advising Dean (others include Ross Mayfield, Clay Shirky, and Lawrence Lessig, also a regular contributor to Wired). After looking at a paper Ito and some of his colleagues have been working on called "Emergent Democracy," I contact him to ask if he thinks there's a difference between an emergent leader and an old-fashioned political opportunist. What does it take to lead a smart mob? Ito emails back an odd metaphor: "You're not a leader, you're a place. You're like a park or a garden. If it's comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not really about Dean. It's about us."

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

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/dean.html

page 1

How the Internet Invented Howard Dean

Forget fundraising (though his opponents sure can't). The real reason the Doctor is in: He listens to the technology - and the people who use it.

By Gary Wolf

It is 83 days before the Iowa caucuses, and I'm sitting at a small table on a private jet above Colorado getting a pure dose of Internet religion from Howard Dean. "The Internet community is wondering what its place in the world of politics is," Dean says. "Along comes this campaign to take back the country for ordinary human beings, and the best way you can do that is through the Net. We listen. We pay attention. If I give a speech and the blog people don't like it, next time I change the speech."

The biggest news of the political season has been the tale of this small-state governor who, with the help of Meetup.com and hundreds of bloggers, has elbowed his way into serious contention for his party's presidential nomination. As every alert citizen knows, Dean has used the Net to raise more money than any other Democratic candidate. He's also used it to organize thousands of volunteers who go door-to-door, write personal letters to likely voters, host meetings, and distribute flyers.

Naturally, bloggers everywhere are thrilled. Even those who hate the candidate love the way the campaign is being managed. "I'd vote for SpongeBob SquarePants over Howard Dean," writes Derek James in his political blog, Thinking as a Hobby. But Dean's organization, James admits, is being run "in a very smart, very democratic way." Bloggers are fascinated by Dean for philosophical and also parochial reasons. They feel they have a right to be proud. Dean has become the front-runner by applying their most cherished rules for attracting attention and building a social network on the Internet.

"We fell into this by accident," Dean admits. "I wish I could tell you we were smart enough to figure this out. But the community taught us. They seized the initiative through Meetup. They built our organization for us before we had an organization."

Meetup is a Web tool for forming social groups. In early 2003, Dean himself was lured to an early New York City meetup where he found more than 300 enthusiastic supporters waiting to greet him. Meetup quickly became the engine of Dean's Internet campaign. Back then, the leading group on the site was a club for witches. Zephyr Teachout, Dean's director of Internet outreach, describes sitting across from campaign manager Joe Trippi in the early weeks and hitting Refresh again and again on her Web browser. "I was obsessed with beating Witches," she says. "Witches had 15,000 members, and we had 3,000. I wanted first place."

Three thousand is a small number. But all campaigns depend on a feedback loop, and 3,000 passionate supporters who are connected via the Internet are influential in a way that an equivalent crowd would never be if you had to gather it via direct mail or a telephone survey. Dean's Meetup members quickly recruited others, and by late March Dean had beaten Witches. Growth followed an exponential curve; Dean's new supporters contributed money, his piles of money won respect from the media, and media attention pushed Meetup numbers higher. Most of the Democratic candidates who polled in the low single digits a year ago still poll in the low single digits. They never gained momentum. Dean's early use of Meetup lowered the feedback threshold, just as a good supply of kindling makes it easier to light a fire. In the third quarter of 2003, Dean raised nearly $15 million - most of it in small donations - setting a one-quarter record for a Democratic candidate in a presidential race.

By mid-November, the Howard Dean group on Meetup would have more than 140,000 members, though Meetup would matter less. After demonstrating his fundraising prowess, Dean bagged endorsements from two of the country's most powerful labor groups, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

But for today, the Internet remains the key engine of Dean's election bid and he has yet to merge his grassroots movement with the traditional Democratic power structure. I'm here to learn more about what makes his Net campaign work.

I like Dean's pugnacity, his antiwar stance, and the way he is challenging the timorous leaders of his party. A couple of months ago, before I took this assignment for Wired, I sent him a hundred bucks over the Web. But the Contribute button on Dean's Web page hardly accounts for his dominance. One key to his online popularity is the harmony between his message and the self-image of the Internet community. "A lot of the people on the Net have given up on traditional politics precisely because it was about television and the ballot box, and they had no way to shout back," he says. "What we've given people is a way to shout back, and we listen - they don't even have to shout anymore."

Dean has been reluctant to take a position on core Net issues like copyright law and peer-to-peer file-sharing. But that didn't matter. The power of Dean's campaign does not come from his appeal to Net users as an interest group but from a fateful concurrence of other forces: a strong antiwar message; a vivid, individualist candidate; a lucky head start with Meetup; an Internet-savvy campaign manager in Joe Trippi; and, most important, a willingness to let a decentralized network of supporters play a tactical role. With these assets, Dean gained a potent lead. The very structure of the networks his campaign has built - a structure that enhances the power of feedback - creates obstacles even for a rival flexible enough to challenge Dean on his own ground.

The intersection of political analysis and Internet theory is a busy crossroad of cliché, where familiar rhetorical vehicles - decentralized authority, emergent leadership, empowered grass roots - create a ceaseless buzz. But the Dean organization has embraced this language of Web politics passionately. Below, I've used five popular Internet axioms to give a snapshot of his campaign during the heady days when it first pulled into the lead.

page 2

Make the network stupid.

The Dean campaign is a network rather than an army, and that is one of its strengths. But it's a stupid network, and that's also a strength. Stupid is meant in the technical sense, defined by David Isenberg in his classic telephony paper, "The Rise of the Stupid Network." Isenberg advanced the principle that under conditions of uncertainty, a network should not be optimized for any set of uses presumed to be definitive. Instead, the network should be as simple as possible, with advanced functionality and intelligence moved out to its edges. For the Dean campaign, this means that hundreds of independent groups are organizing with very little direction from headquarters.

In February 2003, there were 11 Dean meetings around the country organized through Meetup.com. By late fall, there were more than 800 monthly meetings on the calendar. At first, meetups were loosely tracked through intermittent emails to a list of known organizers. But as long as responsibility for tracking organizers fell to Dean's paid staff in Burlington, Vermont, there was a problem. "We were inadvertently allowing bottlenecks in the network through some power-hungry coordinators who thought they were the only ones who could have contact with the campaign," says Michael Silberman, Dean's national Meetup coordinator. "We added or removed coordinators only through email or phone, and there's a limit to our human ability to manage the growth of such a large network."

In October, the campaign switched to an automated, Web-based system that keeps the selection and management of meetup coordinators out of the hands of the campaign. Supporters can nominate themselves to coordinate a meetup. Responsibility for success of the meetup rests with the individual organizers. Many regions have more than one meetup, so there is the possibility of competition and splitting, but this tension brings advantages. The Dean network relies on the good sense of the users to select a meetup that is working well. Organizers have a monthly conference call with Trippi and receive sample agendas and organizing materials. Ultimately, what happens is up to them.

"In the old telephone company, central planning was needed before the network could grow," says Isenberg, when I call to talk to him about the campaign. "If you are willing to let things happen from the bottom up, you can scale without doing all that planning."

Let the ants do the work.

In the past, early enthusiasm in western states was meaningless to a primary candidate except as a source of donations. The first contests were on the other side of the country, where face-to-face politics and idiosyncratic issues (such as the value of ethanol as a gasoline additive) played an absurdly outsize role. No campaign dedicated to winning Iowa could waste time building an organization elsewhere. But today, Dean supporters build their own nodes.

"We consider it our job to deliver Marin County for Dean," says Katy Butler, a volunteer I talk with at a Seniors for Dean meeting in San Francisco. Under normal circumstances, this would be a worthless contribution. Small, rich, liberal Marin County could hardly matter less. But because the entire Dean system is densely linked, the distant work of all the local groups feeds back into the campaign. Local letters to the editor are copied and sent around by email, graphics and videos are shared among groups, and technical assistance is distributed. A local and national volunteer infrastructure arises with almost no help or supervision.

"It's the swarm that drives the story, not the queen ant," says Steven Johnson, author of Emergence. For months, local meetups, including the regular Dean meetups in Marin, have been composing handwritten letters to Iowa Democrats, asking them to support Dean.

This past summer, polls showed Dean behind Dick Gephardt in Iowa. After 30,000 handwritten letters went out from the July 2 meetups, Dean surged, and by August the polls had him tied with Gephardt or pulling into the lead. In New Hampshire in midsummer, Dean was behind Kerry. At the August 6 meetups, tens of thousands of letters were mailed to New Hampshire. By the end of the month, Dean was in first place with a double-digit lead he has maintained ever since. By taking a set of widely dispersed supporters and converting them into a swarm of personal advocates, Dean's campaign almost instantly changed the dynamics of the race in the earliest states.

Leaders are places.

The first political swarm of Democratic politics was not the Dean campaign but MoveOn.org, whose 2 million members donate money to run advertisements against the Bush administration and engage in massive telephone and petition campaigns. Last summer, MoveOn held an online vote to determine which Democratic candidate, if any, the organization would support. About 317,000 votes were cast. Because no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote, MoveOn did not make an endorsement. But Dean was the big winner, taking about 44 percent, nearly twice as much as the runner-up, Dennis Kucinich.

The high number for Kucinich, who barely registered in national polls, confirmed what any observer of MoveOn already knew - its supporters were well to the left of the party's mainstream. Nonetheless, Dean - who is pro-gun, pro-death penalty, far more economically conservative than Kucinich, and argues for keeping US troops in Iraq - beat him by 2 to 1. Was this because Dean was believed to be more electable? Unlikely. The Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group, was loudly proclaiming that Dean's nomination would lead to a debacle.

Neither policy nor pragmatism alone drove MoveOn to Dean; his key advantage was that his bloggers were already deeply interlinked with bloggers friendly to MoveOn. Dean's network made it easy for his supporters to vote in the MoveOn poll, while offering MoveOn members an opportunity to influence the Democratic race, even if their own state's primary was irrelevant. Participation, not policy, was key.

Joi Ito, founder of Neoteny, a venture firm, and former chair of Infoseek Japan, has joined a group of technologists advising Dean (others include Ross Mayfield, Clay Shirky, and Lawrence Lessig, also a regular contributor to Wired). After looking at a paper Ito and some of his colleagues have been working on called "Emergent Democracy," I contact him to ask if he thinks there's a difference between an emergent leader and an old-fashioned political opportunist. What does it take to lead a smart mob? Ito emails back an odd metaphor: "You're not a leader, you're a place. You're like a park or a garden. If it's comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not really about Dean. It's about us."

page 3

Links attract links.

Throughout the fall, the number of people signed up for Dean meetups has been more than three times as large as the number of people signed up for Clark meetups. The Wesley Clark list is almost three times as large as the Kerry list. The Kerry list is almost 30 times as large as the Gephardt list. In Linked: The New Science of Networks, the physicist Albert-László Barabási describes the factors that influence the size of competing nodes in a network. His research shows why Dean's Internet lead has been so hard to overcome.

Barabási gives a formal model for what everybody already knows: Popularity breeds more popularity; links are made most quickly to Web sites that have the most links. One of the major factors determining who will win in a race for links, therefore, is time. The first sites gain an early lead, and the lead tends to grow. But, of course, late arrivals sometimes take command. This is because time is not the only factor. The other factor is what Barabási calls "fitness."

Defining fitness is an abstract exercise in Barabási's work, because he is a physicist attempting to give a general description of network behavior in all its forms. In the earliest stage of the Democratic primary runup, however, fitness can be specified more concretely. Fitness at the beginning of this campaign was closely linked to a candidate's antiwar stance. Dean was first to the Web, while sharing the best fitness position with a number of candidates from the party's left wing.

The most important thing to notice about Barabási's model is that the advantage of arriving early and offering adequate or superior fitness increases exponentially over time. This means we would not expect to find lots of competing sites clustering closely around the leader. Instead, the graph has a steep curve. This is exactly what we see when we look at the relative size of the online campaigns, whether measured by links, traffic, or Meetup numbers.

Allow the ends to connect.

Local Dean groups are not obsessed with passing their messages to the candidate. They are busy talking among themselves. "The goal is not necessarily to have messages flowing up and down," says David Weinberger, a consultant for the campaign and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. "Democracy is supposed to be about people talking with each other about what matters to them."

In terms of real political power, the end-to-end architecture has complex implications. Tactically, the local Dean groups are very powerful. "Ideas from the grass roots don't have to go back up to headquarters to be adopted," says Weinberger. "The Dean campaign instead gives you the tools to instantiate your ideas without involving headquarters." But since none of the grassroots groups are officially tied to the campaign, there is no guarantee of influence over policy. Dean is free to ignore the political wishes of any of these groups, and he often does. In many conversations with Dean supporters, I find them arguing against his positions on guns, on the death penalty, on trade. But other, more important factors bind them strongly. They admire Dean personally, they despise the current administration, and they love the structure of the campaign, which brings them together, gives them an opportunity for political conversation, and offers them the pleasure of collaborative work.

On Halloween, I attend a series of Dean meetings with Zephyr Teachout and Ryan Davis, another young Dean staffer, who have just embarked on a cross-country trip in a rickety Airstream they picked up somewhere in Los Angeles. (The Airstream, puking green fluid, will die two days later in Nevada, and the two of them will continue by rental car.) Their goal is to observe local groups and exchange ideas.

I meet them at their first stop, a café near UC Davis. The students are planning to set up a Dean table at the local farmers market, among other outreach events. The goal is not merely to win votes, but to "sign people up." They are building a database. They're recruiting volunteers. And they will be back for money. Teachout urges the students to consider coming to Iowa for the last weeks before the caucuses. In 1988, Gephardt set a record by bringing 500 volunteers to Iowa, according to Trippi, who managed Gephardt's campaign that year. The Dean campaign wants to bring 5,000.

The day turns into an endless series of encounters with Dean enthusiasts, and what interests me most is to see at meeting after meeting the speech-making function of the candidate distributed among the participants. The speakers are often diffuse and sometimes sentimental; nonetheless, these are hot political speeches, not support group-style confessions or narrowly personal tales. Accustomed as a I am to the low style of television and talk radio, to the mumbling of recalled California governor Gray Davis and the swaggering of recently installed governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, I am stunned to hear such high-quality mini-rants in the living rooms and restaurants where random Dean supporters have gathered for mutual encouragement and tactical coordination. These are the Dean blogs come to life.

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that the decline of civic participation is related to the general collapse of group activities. Instead of going out with friends, people are isolated in their homes. One of the readers of Bowling Alone was Scott Heiferman, who in response to reading the book founded Meetup.com. Out of Meetup came Deanspace. Out of Deanspace, a political movement that eerily recalls the cracker-barrel debates and the torchlight parades that characterized presidential campaigns of the distant past. Before television, politics was a type of active recreation. On the foundation of a new technology, Dean has revived an outdated form.

page 4

The Howard Dean Reading List
How a bunch of books about social networking rebooted the Democratic system.

Out Of Control by Kevin Kelly
KEY POINT: The most powerful information systems of the future will be grown, not made.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Turn every supporter into a potential organizer. "Grow" the grass roots.

The Cluetrain Manifesto by Chris Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger
KEY POINT: The Net undermines respect for authority.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Participate: Blog daily, link to indie blogs, and allow open comments; reflect the tone of the community.

Emergence by Steven Johnson
KEY POINT: Our media and political movements will be shaped by bottom-up forces, not top-down ones.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Let the ants do the work, not the queen; allow local groups to function independently.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger
KEY POINT: The loose structure of the Web encourages social experimentation and is a balm for alienation.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Encourage face-to-face contact.

Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold
KEY POINT: Mobile mobs linked by electronic devices could change history by intervening in politics spontaneously.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Hold events, such as Dean Visibility Days, where the mass of supporters suddenly come together.

Linked by Albert-László Barabási
KEY POINT: Essential aspects of networks - e.g., the advantage gained by pioneers - are the product of general laws.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Be first to adopt and invent community tools. The risk is worth the chance of grabbing an early lead.

Managing The Swarm
Joe Trippi keeps the Dean machine in sync with the networked world.
By Gary Wolf

What does a campaign manager matter? Howard Dean fans found each other through Meetup.com and raised his banner on round-the-clock blogs - and the network did the rest. But in fact, Joe Trippi's management of the Web campaign has been obsessive and brilliant. He has hired a staff of seemingly sleepless bloggers whose engaging voices on Dean's Web site set the tone for a larger network that includes independent bloggers, Meetup members, and supporters who comment regularly on the campaign site. He participates in a series of conference calls with all the Meetup organizers, he controls the timing and goals of the major fundraising pushes, and he uses his blogs' Comments feature to provide instant, focus group-style feedback. Most important, Trippi makes sure the structure and the rhetoric of the Dean campaign are aligned with the self-image of the most active segments of the Internet community. When Dean talks about a decentralized, networked, bottom-up democracy, he is aiming these words directly at an Internet constituency Trippi knows very well.

Trippi isn't a political outsider. He worked for Edward Kennedy in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984, and Gary Hart, then Dick Gephardt in the 1988 campaign. His Washington, DC-based political consultancy, Trippi, McMahon & Squier, is well-known in party circles and handled the media for several of Dean's Vermont gubernatorial campaigns. But Trippi spent his college years as an aeronautics student at San Jose State, and he never completely left Silicon Valley behind. During the boom years, he worked as a consultant for Prodigy Linux Systems. He remains on the board of advisers of Smartpaper, a startup that owns a string of cheesy patents for an odd, pamphlet-shaped media controller, and he is the CTO of Catapult Strategies, a PR and lobbying firm that represents a number of Valley clients.

Also during the boom, Trippi was active on Raging Bull, a rowdy message board for small-time speculators, where his nickname was random1. Trippi's favorite stock of that era: Wave Systems. He says he learned a lot about the "stickiness" of an online community from the Wave enthusiasts. Wave's share price ran all the way up to $50 before bottoming out at 75 cents after the crash. (It now floats between $2 and $3.) Many of the small-time Wave investors stuck with their stock all the way down.

I'm in a hurry so I'll just have to give you the links:

Saddam was captured by Kurds, not US

We got him: Kurds say they caught Saddam

US Saddam claims being challenged

They've got a good reason for not telling the truth (right on schedule!) -- they feared an Arab-Kurd conflict...

There are also more details about his ex-wife turning him in, and how he was captured (his cook spiked his food).

Enjoy!

Happy Holidays everyone!

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13341763

Saddam was captured by Kurds, not US
Sunday, 21 December , 2003, 19:23

Saddam: Caught Napping
. Rebuilding Iraq: Full Coverage
. Capture of Saddam: In Pics
. Timeline: Saddam's Iraq
. Discuss: New beginning?
In Pictures:
. The lost world
. In various disguises
. His daughters
. Saddam: A life
London: Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by Kurdish forces, then drugged and handed over to the American forces as a revenge against the rape of a tribal chief's daughter by the tyrant's psychopathic eldest son Uday, a media report said today.

The full story of the fallen dictator's capture last Saturday in a "spider hole" near his birthplace of Tikrit exposes the version peddled by Americans as incomplete.

According to the report in The Sunday Express, Saddam had already been handed over to Kurdish forces, who then brokered a deal with US commanders.

He was drugged and abandoned, ready for the American troops to recover him.

Saddam was betrayed to the Kurds by a member of the al-Jabour tribe whose daughter was "defiled" by Uday, the report quoting a senior British military intelligence officer said.

The tribe threatened to take revenge. As soon as he heard the news, Saddam visited the family of the dead man and paid them 7 million pounds in blood money with the chilling warning: "If you try to take revenge you will force me to wipe out the al-Jabour tribe."

The news that Saddam was a prisoner and not in hiding would explain his dishevelled state when he was found by Kurdish special forces from the patriotic front and US soldiers.

He was unable to climb out of the hole on his own because the lid that covered it was also sealed down with a carpet and some rubble. A former Iraqi intelligence officer now living in Qatar said he believed Saddam was betrayed shortly after his last audio message was released to the world via Arab television on November 16.

"He was dumped in that hole in Ad Dawr after being handed over to the patriotic front by his own tribesmen and held prisoner until Jalal Talabani made his own negotiations," said the Iraqi.

Talabani is a leader of the Patriotic Front, one of two main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq who fought alongside US forces during the war.

One report said Saddam's cook spiked his food before he was delivered to the front.

According to the report, a western intelligence source stationed in the Middle East said: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

"There was no question of the tribe claiming the 16 million pounds reward from the US. Apparently it was a question of honour."

"The Kurdish Patriotic Front held him while they thrashed out their own deal. It didn't just involve the reward but it involved gaining some sort of political advantage in the region."

There had been bad blood between the dictator and the al-Jabour tribe since the raped woman's husband tried to take revenge and was shot by Uday's bodyguard.

"The net really began to close when his family fled to Jordan and Uday and Qusay were killed in Mosul. A 20-million pounds reward went to the informant who gave information on their hiding place. However, I doubt if the reward for Saddam will be paid to those directly responsible for his capture."

"They will consider the family honour has been avenged... in Iraqi tribal society it would be frowned upon to accept money."

Immediately after the raid in which Saddam was captured, jubilant Kurdish officials leaked the news to an Iranian news agency hours before the US had a chance to make an official announcement to the assembled media in Baghdad.1

The report also said secret talks are under way to fix a deal in which Saddam will be detained for life in a Qatari prison after his showcase trial.

Intense behind-the-scene negotiations, brokered by Britain, will see the former dictator jailed in the tiny Gulf state, which is host to several US military bases, if the Iraqi court does not push for his execution.

*****
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/21/1071941612613.html

We got him: Kurds say they caught Saddam

By Paul McGeough, Herald Correspondent in Baghdad
December 22, 2003

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Washington's claims that brilliant US intelligence work led to the capture of Saddam Hussein are being challenged by reports sourced in Iraq's Kurdish media claiming that its militia set the circumstances in which the US merely had to go to a farm identified by the Kurds to bag the fugitive former president.

The first media account of the December 13 arrest was aired by a Tehran-based news agency.

American forces took Saddam into custody around 8.30pm local time, but sat on the news until 3pm the next day.

However, in the early hours of Sunday, a Kurdish language wire service reported explicitly: "Saddam Hussein was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace.

"Qusrat's team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!"

The head of the PUK, Jalal Talabani, was in the Iranian capital en route to Europe.

The Western media in Baghdad were electrified by the Iranian agency's revelation, but as reports of the arrest built, they relied almost exclusively on accounts from US military and intelligence organisations, starting with the words of the US-appointed administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer: "Ladies and gentlemen: we got 'im".

US officials said that they had extracted the vital piece of information on Saddam's whereabouts from one of the 20 suspects around 5.30pm on December 13 and had immediately assembled a 600-strong force to surround the farm on which he was captured at al-Dwar, south of Tikrit.

Little attention was paid to a line in Pentagon briefings that some of the Kurdish militia might have been in on what was described as a "joint operation"; or to a statement by Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraq National Congress, which said that Qusrat and his PUK forces had provided vital information and more.

A Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Herald, quoted from an interview aired on the PUK's al-Hurriyah radio station last Wednesday, in which Adil Murad, a member of the PUK's political bureau,

said that the day before Saddam's capture he was tipped off by a PUK general - Thamir al-Sultan - that Saddam would be arrested within the next 72 hours.

An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East was quoted in the British Sunday Express yesterday: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

There has been no American response to the Kurdish claims.

An intriguing question is why Kurdish forces were allowed to join what the US desperately needed to present as an American intelligence success - unless the Kurds had something vital to contribute to the operation so far south of their usual area of activity.

A report from the PUK's northern stronghold, Suliymaniah, early last week claimed a vital intelligence breakthrough after a telephone conversation between Qusrat and Saddam's second wife, Samirah.

***

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/21/1071941609659.html

US Saddam claims being challenged

By Paul McGeough
Baghdad
December 22, 2003

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Claims that US troops captured Saddam Hussein have been challenged by reports that he was discovered only after Kurdish forces had taken him prisoner.

The deposed president was drugged and abandoned ready for the American soldiers to recover him, a British tabloid newspaper reported yesterday.

Saddam came into the hands of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) after being betrayed by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, quoting an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

Washington's claims that brilliant US intelligence work led to the capture of Saddam are also being challenged by reports sourced in Iraq's Kurdish language media that say its militia set up the circumstances in which the US merely had to go to a farm identified by the Kurds to bag the fugitive former president.

American forces took Saddam into custody about 8.30pm local time on the Saturday, but sat on the dramatic news until 3pm the next day. But early on Sunday, a Kurdish language wire service reported explicitly: "Saddam Hussein was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace. Qusrat's team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Details of the capture will emerge but the global Kurdish party is about to begin."

The Western media in Baghdad were electrified by the revelation, but as reports of the arrest built, they relied almost exclusively on accounts from within US military and intelligence organisations, starting with the words of the US-appointed administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer: "Ladies and gentlemen, we got 'im."

A report from the PUK's northern stronghold, Suliymaniah, last week claimed a vital intelligence breakthrough after a telephone conversation between Qusrat Rasul Ali and Saddam's second wife, Samira, which had prompted the Kurds to move units of their Peshmerga fighters to where Saddam was hiding.

The report, from the MENA agency, as monitored by the BBC, said the Americans had insisted that it be an American arrest because they worried that such a coup for the Kurds might provoke an Arab-Kurd civil war.

A Kurdish member of the Iraq Governing Council, Mahmud Othman, also suggested a critical role for Kurds in the arrest when he said on the Sunday: "Before 4am (more than 12 hours ahead of the US announcement) today, Qusrat Rasul Ali called me to inform me that his men, with the Americans, had managed to capture Saddam Hussein."

US intelligence officers have concluded that Saddam was directing the postwar insurgency inside Iraq, playing a far more active role than thought.

Despite his bewildered appearance when he was hauled from his hiding hole last weekend, he is believed to have been issuing regular instructions on targets and tactics through five trusted lieutenants.

Documents found in Saddam's briefcase indicated that he had been kept informed of the progress of the insurgency, but did not suggest he had overall control of operations by former Baath Party loyalists. But since the arrest and interrogation of guerilla leaders named in the paperwork, US investigators now believe Saddam headed an elaborate network of rebel cells.

The investigators have put together a picture of Saddam's support structure, enabling him to issue commands without using satellite phones, which monitoring devices can hear.

- with agencies

This is footage of Craig Newmark playing with Lawrence Lessig's son, Willem, while in the arms of Justin Hall. (As filmed by me.)

Hey these aren't prepared to stream over the Internet - you'll have to download them to your hard drive!

The "complete" version also has some shots of the party.

This footage was pretty dark so I had to lighten it in Premiere to make it watchable.

Highlights include Craig flapping his arms like a chicken (part 1)!!

Craig and Willem 1 of 2 (Small - 9 MB)

Craig and Willem 2 of 2 (Small - 9 MB)

Craig and Willem and Party - Complete Clip (Small - 32 MB)

Slightly higher res version of same clip (Small - 44 MB)

Here are links -- sorry no pictures!

Announcement from Adobe (Small - 4 MB)

Lessig 1 of 4 (Small - 16 MB)

Lessig 2 of 4 (Small - 11 MB)

Lessig 3 of 4 (Small - 12 MB)

Lessig 4 of 4 (Small - 13 MB)

Lessig - All (Small - 51 MB)

Neeru's Speech (Small - 7 MB)
Neeru's speech has a lot of great statistics in it explaining ' progress over the last year!

Knitwitology has just posted a great page with all the information on it I was just about to take the time to create links for:

Of Spiderholes and Spiderwebs

Thanks, Morgan for letting me off the hook!

Remember to not let any of this stuff get you down people! Things just keep getting stranger and stranger. But we're all in this together, and we're gonna get out of it together!

Happy Holidays and Remember to Be Careful About Driving Tired, Wasted or in Bad Weather. When in doubt - chill out and wait till later.

Peace and Love Ya'll!

(I'm probably out for the next few days...connectivity uncertain.)

Saddam 'captured weeks ago'

An intelligence website has reported that former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, might have been a prisoner at the time of his arrest.

According to Debkafiles there is a possibility that Saddam was held for up to three weeks in the underground pit by a Kurdish splinter group while they negotiated a handover to the Americans in return for the US$25m reward.

The website, edited by former Israeli intelligence agents reports that this is the only answer to questions on why Saddam looked dishevelled and disorientated when captured.

The website reported that it was clear Saddam had not shaved for weeks nor had he washed his hair. He was also starved and looked neglected.

The opening of the underground pit was camouflaged with rocks and mud and it was accessible for above ground only. As a result it was impossible for Saddam to leave his underground cell.

No information has been released on the two men captured at the site except for the fact that they tried to escape during the American operation.

The other question asked is where did the US$750 000 found at the scene come from. It is possible that the new notes were a down payment of a ransom.

The possibility that Saddam was drugged has also emerged. This could have been why he appeared so disorientated, read the report. This would also explain why Saddam did not use the firearm found in the pit.

Kurds claim Saddam capture

SADDAM Hussein was found by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British newspaper reported yesterday.

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".

A former Iraqi intelligence officer, whom the Express did not name, told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the Iraq war, until the leader negotiated a deal.

The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.

An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East told the Express: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence".

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1460345,00.html

Saddam 'captured weeks ago'
17/12/2003 07:19 - (SA)
Erika Gibson

Pretoria - An intelligence website has reported that former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, might have been a prisoner at the time of his arrest.

According to Debkafiles there is a possibility that Saddam was held for up to three weeks in the underground pit by a Kurdish splinter group while they negotiated a handover to the Americans in return for the US$25m reward.

The website, edited by former Israeli intelligence agents reports that this is the only answer to questions on why Saddam looked dishevelled and disorientated when captured.

The website reported that it was clear Saddam had not shaved for weeks nor had he washed his hair. He was also starved and looked neglected.

The opening of the underground pit was camouflaged with rocks and mud and it was accessible for above ground only. As a result it was impossible for Saddam to leave his underground cell.

No information has been released on the two men captured at the site except for the fact that they tried to escape during the American operation.

The other question asked is where did the US$750 000 found at the scene come from. It is possible that the new notes were a down payment of a ransom.

The possibility that Saddam was drugged has also emerged. This could have been why he appeared so disorientated, read the report. This would also explain why Saddam did not use the firearm found in the pit.

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

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8233746%255E2,00.html

Kurds claim Saddam capture
December 22, 2003

SADDAM Hussein was found by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British newspaper reported yesterday.

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".

A former Iraqi intelligence officer, whom the Express did not name, told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the Iraq war, until the leader negotiated a deal.

The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.

An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East told the Express: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence".

"We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

However US military intelligence said in Baghdad yesterday the man who led US troops to Saddam was one of his top aides.

"He was someone I would call his right arm," said Major Stan Murphy, head of intelligence for the 4th Infantry Division's First Brigade in Tikrit.

Meanwhile, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar yesterday paid an unannounced visit to Iraq.

Aznar flew by helicopter from Kuwait and spent about five hours at a base in Diwaniya, south of the capital, where he had lunch with the mostly Spanish troops stationed there.

"The visit had to be a surprise for security reasons. Very few people knew about it," said Major Carlos Herradon, spokesman for the Spanish troops based in Iraq.

Mr Aznar said he wanted to support the Spanish soldiers and their allies in "their struggle for a just cause, one of liberty, democracy and respect for international law".

Later, a senior US officer said four Iraqis died and an unspecified number of US troops were wounded during a Baghdad demonstration in support of Saddam five days ago. Three more Iraqi policemen were gunned down by mistake by American soldiers about 90km south of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, local police said, adding that they were mistaken for rebels.

The Courier-Mail

Can't the Shrub Administration tell the truth about anything?

Would it have really been so bad to just tell the truth on this one? We still have him in custody and all. The Kurds could have gotten their proper credit -- we could have bonded with a persecuted people, and then we all could have held hands and hated Saddam together. (These are the Kurds, remember? The ones that were gassed ten years ago that the Administration likes to bring up all the time as justification for the Shrub War's unfound WMD!)

But no.

Instead we have to find out a week later that we were lied to yet again.

I hope this is getting as old for you as it is for me. I want a President that can tell the truth at least part of the time. How about once. I'd like to go a day or two, or maybe a week even, without hearing a lie from my President. I don't think it's too much to ask.

Well, at least now we know what the new terror alert level is all about. It's all about diversion: "Pay no attention to the information coming in from the rest of the world. Just be afraid and keep watching the box for further instructions."

Saddam was held by Kurdish forces, drugged and left for US troops

Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq (news - web sites), "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".

A former Iraqi intelligence officer, whom the Express did not name, told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the Iraq war, until he negotiated a deal.

The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.

An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East told the Express: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031221/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_saddam_britain&cid=1514&ncid=1480

Saddam was held by Kurdish forces, drugged and left for US troops

Sat Dec 20,11:00 PM ET

LONDON, (AFP) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq (news - web sites), "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".

A former Iraqi intelligence officer, whom the Express did not name, told the paper that Saddam was held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the Iraq war, until he negotiated a deal.

The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.

An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East told the Express: "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

So they won't say exactly why, and they won't say exactly what they're doing as a result of it, but the terror alert level has been raised to "high."

Tom Ridge, chief Dept of Homeland Security dude, was on the tube saying absolutely nothing, over and over again.

It was all very surreal. Like a chapter in a book... (called 1984).'

Peace everybody!

I'll be posting some stuff today...(even though technically I don't have time to.)

Some of this stuff is just too important...(Ugh...that's how I got behind in my school work to begin with!)

Letters the Troops Have Sent Me

As we approach the holidays, I've been thinking a lot about our kids who are in the armed forces serving in Iraq. I've received hundreds of letters from our troops in Iraq -- and they are telling me something very different from what we are seeing on the evening news.

What they are saying to me, often eloquently and in heart-wrenching words, is that they were lied to -- and this war has nothing to do with the security of the United States of America.

I've written back and spoken on the phone to many of them and I've asked a few of them if it would be OK if I posted their letters on my website and they've said yes. They do so at great personal risk (as they may face disciplinary measures for exercising their right to free speech). I thank them for their bravery.

Lance Corporal George Batton of the United States Marine Corps, who returned from Iraq in September (after serving in MP company Alpha), writes the following:

"You'd be surprised at how many of the guys I talked to in my company and others believed that the president's scare about Saddam's WMD was a bunch of bullshit and that the real motivation for this war was only about money. There was also a lot of crap that many companies, not just marine companies, had to go through with not getting enough equipment to fulfill their missions when they crossed the border. It was a miracle that our company did what it did the two months it was staying in Iraq during the war…. We were promised to go home on June 8th, and found out that it was a lie and we got stuck doing missions for an extra three months. Even some of the most radical conservatives in our company including our company gunnery sergeant got a real bad taste in their mouth about the Marine corps, and maybe even president Bush."

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

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/122103A.shtml

Letters the Troops Have Sent Me
By Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com

Friday 19 December 2003

Dear Friends,

As we approach the holidays, I've been thinking a lot about our kids who are in the armed forces serving in Iraq. I've received hundreds of letters from our troops in Iraq -- and they are telling me something very different from what we are seeing on the evening news.

What they are saying to me, often eloquently and in heart-wrenching words, is that they were lied to -- and this war has nothing to do with the security of the United States of America.

I've written back and spoken on the phone to many of them and I've asked a few of them if it would be OK if I posted their letters on my website and they've said yes. They do so at great personal risk (as they may face disciplinary measures for exercising their right to free speech). I thank them for their bravery.

Lance Corporal George Batton of the United States Marine Corps, who returned from Iraq in September (after serving in MP company Alpha), writes the following:

"You'd be surprised at how many of the guys I talked to in my company and others believed that the president's scare about Saddam's WMD was a bunch of bullshit and that the real motivation for this war was only about money. There was also a lot of crap that many companies, not just marine companies, had to go through with not getting enough equipment to fulfill their missions when they crossed the border. It was a miracle that our company did what it did the two months it was staying in Iraq during the war…. We were promised to go home on June 8th, and found out that it was a lie and we got stuck doing missions for an extra three months. Even some of the most radical conservatives in our company including our company gunnery sergeant got a real bad taste in their mouth about the Marine corps, and maybe even president Bush."

Here's what Specialist Mike Prysner of the U.S. Army wrote to me:

"Dear Mike -- I’m writing this without knowing if it’ll ever get to you... I’m writing it from the trenches of a war (that’s still going on,) not knowing why I’m here or when I’m leaving. I’ve toppled statues and vandalized portraits, while wearing an American flag on my sleeve, and struggling to learn how to understand... I joined the army as soon as I was eligible – turned down a writing scholarship to a state university, eager to serve my country, ready to die for the ideals I fell in love with. Two years later I found myself moments away from a landing onto a pitch black airstrip, ready to charge into a country I didn't believe I belonged in, with your words (from the Oscars) repeating in my head. My time in Iraq has always involved finding things to convince myself that I can be proud of my actions; that I was a part of something just. But no matter what pro-war argument I came up with, I pictured my smirking commander-in-chief, thinking he was fooling a nation..."

An Army private, still in Iraq and wishing to remain anonymous, writes:

"I would like to tell you how difficult it is to serve under a man who was never elected. Because he is the president and my boss, I have to be very careful as to who and what i say about him. This also concerns me a great deal... to limit the military's voice is to limit exactly what America stands for... and the greater percentage of us feel completely underpowered. He continually sets my friends, my family, and several others in a kind of danger that frightens me beyond belief. I know several other soldiers who feel the same way and discuss the situation with me on a regular basis."

Jerry Oliver of the U.S. Army, who has just returned from Baghdad, writes:

"I have just returned home from "Operation Iraqi Freedom". I spent 5 months in Baghdad, and a total of 3 years in the U.S. Army. I was recently discharged with Honorable valor and returned to the States only to be horrified by what I've seen my country turn into. I'm now 22 years old and have discovered America is such a complicated place to live, and moreover, Americans are almost oblivious to what's been happening to their country. America has become "1984." Homeland security is teaching us to spy on one another and forcing us to become anti-social. Americans are willingly sacrificing our freedoms in the name of security, the same Freedoms I was willing to put my life on the line for. The constitution is in jeopardy. As Gen. Tommy Franks said, (broken down of course) One more terrorist attack and the constitution will hold no meaning."

And a Specialist in the U.S. Army wrote to me this week about the capture of Saddam Hussein:

"Wow, 130,000 troops on the ground, nearly 500 deaths and over a billion dollars a day, but they caught a guy living in a hole. Am I supposed to be dazzled?"

There are lots more of these, straight from the soldiers who have been on the front lines and have seen first hand what this war is really about.

I have also heard from their friends and relatives, and from other veterans. A mother writing on behalf of her son (whose name we have withheld) wrote:

"My son said that this is the worst it's been since the "end" of the war. He said the troops have been given new rules of engagement, and that they are to "take out" any persons who aggress on the Americans, even if it results in "collateral" damage. Unfortunately, he did have to kill someone in self defense and was told by his commanding officer ‘Good kill.’

"My son replied ‘You just don't get it, do you?’

"Here we are...Vietnam all over again."

From a 56 year old Navy veteran, relating a conversation he had with a young man who was leaving for Iraq the next morning:

"What disturbed me most was when I asked him what weapons he carried as a truck driver. He told me the new M-16, model blah blah blah, stuff never made sense to me even when I was in. I asked him what kind of side arm they gave him and his fellow drivers. He explained, "Sir, Reservists are not issued side arms or flack vests as there was not enough money to outfit all the Reservists, only Active Personnel". I was appalled to say the least.

"Bush is a jerk agreed, but I can't believe he is this big an Asshole not providing protection and arms for our troops to fight HIS WAR!"

From a 40-year old veteran of the Marine Corps:

"Why is it that we are forever waving the flag of sovereignty, EXCEPT when it concerns our financial interests in other sovereign states? What gives us the right to tell anyone else how they should govern themselves, and live their lives? Why can't we just lead the world by example? I mean no wonder the world hates us, who do they get to see? Young assholes in uniforms with guns, and rich, old, white tourists! Christ, could we put up a worse first impression?"

(To read more from my Iraq mailbag -- and to read these above letters in full -- go to my website: http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/dudewheresmycountry/soldierletters/index.php)

Remember back in March, once the war had started, how risky it was to make any anti-war comments to people you knew at work or school or, um, at awards ceremonies? One thing was for sure -- if you said anything against the war, you had BETTER follow it up immediately with this line: "BUT I SUPPORT THE TROOPS!" Failing to do that meant that you were not only unpatriotic and un-American, your dissent meant that YOU were putting our kids in danger, that YOU might be the reason they lose their lives. Dissent was only marginally tolerated IF you pledged your "support" for our soldiers.

Of course, you needed to do no such thing. Why? Because people like you have ALWAYS supported "the troops." Who are these troops? They are our poor, our working class. Most of them enlisted because it was about the only place to get a job or receive the guarantee of a college education. You, my good friends, have ALWAYS, through your good works, your contributions, your activism, your votes, SUPPORTED these very kids who come from the other side of the tracks. You NEVER need to be defensive when it comes to your "support" for the "troops" -- you are the only ones who have ALWAYS been there for them.

It is Mr. Bush and his filthy rich cronies -- whose sons and daughters will NEVER see a day in a uniform -- they are the ones who do NOT support our troops. Our soldiers joined the military and, in doing so, offered to give THEIR LIVES for US if need be. What a tremendous gift that is -- to be willing to die so that you and I don't have to! To be willing to shed their blood so that we may be free. To serve in our place, so that WE don't have to serve. What a tremendous act of selflessness and generosity! Here they are, these 18, 19, and 20-year olds, most of whom have had to suffer under an unjust economic system that is set up NOT to benefit THEM -- these kids who have lived their first 18 years in the worst parts of town, going to the most miserable schools, living in danger and learning often to go without, watching their parents struggle to get by and then be humiliated by a system that is always looking to make life harder for them by cutting their benefits, their education, their libraries, their fire and police, their future.

And then, after this miserable treatment, these young men and women, instead of coming after US to demand a more just society, they go and join the army to DEFEND us and our way of life! It boggles the mind, doesn't it? They not only deserve our thanks, they deserve a big piece of the pie that we dine on, those of us who never have to worry about taking a bullet while we fret over which Palm Pilot to buy the nephew for Christmas.

In fact, all that these kids in the army ask for in return from us is our promise that we never send them into harm's way unless it is for the DEFENSE of our nation, to protect us from being killed by "the enemy."

And that promise, my friends, has been broken. It has been broken in the worst way imaginable. We have sent them into war NOT to defend us, not to protect us, not to spare the slaughter of innocents or allies. We have sent them to war so Bush and Company can control the second largest supply of oil in the world. We have sent them into war so that the Vice President's company can bilk the government for billions of dollars. We have sent them into war based on a lie of weapons of mass destruction and the lie that Saddam helped plan 9-11 with Osama bin Laden.

By doing all of this, Mr. Bush has proven that it is HE who does not support our troops. It is HE who has put their lives in danger, and it is HE who is responsible for the nearly 500 American kids who have now died for NO honest, decent reason whatsoever.

The letters I've received from the friends and relatives of our kids over there make it clear that they are sick of this war and they are scared to death that they may never see their loved ones again. It breaks my heart to read these letters. I wish there was something I could do. I wish there was something we all could do.

Maybe there is. As Christmas approaches (and Hanukkah begins tonight), I would like to suggest a few things each of us could do to make the holidays a bit brighter -- if not safer -- for our troops and their families back home.

1. Many families of soldiers are hurting financially, especially those families of reservists and National Guard who are gone from the full-time jobs ("just one weekend a month and we'll pay for your college education!"). You can help them by contacting the Armed Forces Emergency Relief Funds at http://www.afrtrust.org/ (ignore the rah-rah military stuff and remember that this is money that will help out these families who are living in near-poverty). Each branch has their own relief fund, and the money goes to help the soldiers and families with paying for food and rent, medical and dental expenses, personal needs when pay is delayed, and funeral expenses. You can find more ways to support the troops, from buying groceries for their families to donating your airline miles so they can get home for a visit, by going here.
2. Thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by our bombs and indiscriminate shooting. We must help protect them and their survivors. You can do so by supporting the Quakers' drive to provide infant care kits to Iraqi hospitals-find out more here: http://www.afsc.org/iraq/relief/default.shtm. You can also help the people of Iraq by supporting the Iraqi Red Crescent Society-here’s how to contact them: http://www.ifrc.org/address/iq.asp, or you can make an online donation through the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies by going here: http://www.ifrc.org/HELPNOW/donate/donate_iraq.asp.
3. With 130,000 American men and women currently in Iraq, every community in this country has either sent someone to fight in this war or is home to family members of someone fighting in this war. Organize care packages through your local community groups, activist groups, and churches and send them to these young men and women. The military no longer accepts packages addressed to "Any Soldier," so you’ll have to get their names first. Figure out who you can help from your area, and send them books, CDs, games, footballs, gloves, blankets-anything that may make their extended (and extended and extended...) stay in Iraq a little brighter and more comfortable. You can also sponsor care packages to American troops through the USO: http://www.usocares.org/.
4. Want to send a soldier a free book or movie? I’ll start by making mine available for free to any soldier serving in Iraq. Just send me their name and address in Iraq (or, if they have already left Iraq, where they are now) and the first thousand emails I get at soldiers@michaelmoore.com will receive a free copy of "Dude..." or a free "Bowling..." DVD.
5. Finally, we all have to redouble our efforts to end this war and bring the troops home. That's the best gift we could give them -- get them out of harm's way ASAP and insist that the U.S. go back to the UN and have them take over the rebuilding of Iraq (with the US and Britain funding it, because, well, we have to pay for our mess). Get involved with your local peace group-you can find one near where you live by visiting United for Peace, at: http://www.unitedforpeace.org and the Vietnam Veterans Against War: http://www.vvaw.org/contact/. A large demonstration is being planned for March 20, check here for more details: http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2136. To get a "Bring Them Home Now" bumper sticker or a poster for your yard, go here: http://bringthemhomenow.org/yellowribbon_graphics/index.html. Also, back only anti-war candidates for Congress and President (Kucinich, Dean, Clark, Sharpton).

I know it feels hopeless. That's how they want us to feel. Don't give up. We owe it to these kids, the troops WE SUPPORT, to get them the hell outta there and back home so they can help organize the drive to remove the war profiteers from office next November.

To all who serve in our armed forces, to their parents and spouses and loved ones, we offer to you the regrets of millions and the promise that we will right this wrong and do whatever we can to thank you for offering to risk your lives for us. That your life was put at risk for Bush's greed is a disgrace and a travesty, the likes of which I have not seen in my lifetime.

Please be safe, come home soon, and know that our thoughts and prayers are with you during this season when many of us celebrate the birth of the prince of "peace."

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

My buddy Kevin Burton is having a hard time finding just the right programmer for his NewsMonster company.

I know you're out there, just waiting to hear about such a position, so I thought I would take a minute out from my blogging moratorium to let you know that your new job awaits!

Email Kevin at burton@newsmonster.org if you're interested.

Here's the conversation I just had with Kevin:

Kevin: We're still hiring. We're still trying to hire people.

Lisa: Who are you trying to hire?

Kevin: Well, we're trying to hire people with Linux and Java experience. Hopefully people that have *really* strong skills -- like PhD quality stuff. Knowledge of search experience, and knowledge of reputation systems. But they're just impossible to find. Even in this job market. If you're a smart person, you still get sucked up. So it's just impossible to find anyone. It's not impossible, but you just have to spend a lot of time looking.

So I'm still very much in the throws of finals hell in school, but I wanted to start throwing stuff up from the show last Saturday night, which was a huge success!

There were about 100 people there over the course of the night. I collected $460 in donations and gave the EFF its $230 on Monday.

Here is a live track of my new anti-war song, In The Spirit. I'll include the lyrics below. It's got Alex Walsh sitting in with us on guitar - "us" being Ron Taylor (guitar), Jeff Norwood (bass) and Simon Grant (drums).

I've made two versions - one with the little introduction explaining what the song is about, one without the intro so you don't have to listen to the intro over and over again when you're listening to the song on your ipod :-)

Lemme know what cha think!

In The Spirit - w/intro (MP3 - 9 MB)

In The Spirit - Radio Edit (MP3 - 8 MB)

In The Spirit - Video (Small - 14 MB)

So this is the last song. Thanks a lot for coming out. I really appreciate it.

So this song is my first anti-war song. This song is basically about the war and how it sucks and all that kind of stuff, but it's also about keeping a good attitude about how we have to change things and basically, kind of, rebuild our entire country from the ground up. From square one. And trying to keep a good attitude about it, 'cause there's a lot of work to do. But if we stay in a good mood and have a good time doing it then we have a better chance of pulling it off.

In The Spirit - Lyrics
Words and Music by Lisa Rein

Sticks and stones won't make them go away
problems rearranging every day
30,000600,000 faces disappear
history repeats itself in fear

how far will you run
how far have we come
won't be any fun
without you in the spirit

sticks and stones can't build a better way
hear their story changing every day
in the distance you can see their lies
targeting you right between the eyes

how far will you run
how far have we come
won't be any fun
without you in the spirit

how far can we go
time to hit the road
such a heavy load
unless you're in the spirit

solo 1

sticks and stones can't build a better way
hear their story changing every day
in the distance you can see their lies
targeting you right between the eyes

how far will you run
how far have we come
won't be any fun
without you in the spirit

how far can we go
time to hit the road
such a heavy load
unless you're in the spirit

solo 2

See you there!

Lisa Rein's Music Showcase

Parking's tough! Better to take public transit!

Map and Transit Info

Remember San Franciscans to get out there and vote this Tuesday!

Don't let scheduling or accessibility deter you from voting:

I just received a phone call from the Matt Gonzalez for SF Mayor campaign. They wanted me to let as many people know as I could about a couple of things.

Whoever you're voting for, this information might be useful to you:

1. If Tuesday is not a convenient day for you, you can also vote Sunday from 10-4pm, or Monday from 8-5 am at City Hall.

2. If you need any assitance to the polling place, or have basic questions about your polling place, etc., you can call 415-734-9340 ext 325, and they will assist you in getting to the polls or with basic information.

Every vote counts people!

This is a great opportunity to put San Francisco on a more progressive track.

Please do your best to get to the polls this Tuesday and Vote For Matt Gonzalez.

Here's a 30 second movie submitted to the Bush in 30 seconds contest.

Bush Sucks And We Can Prove It

(Thanks, Peter!)

I'm in the midst of "school hell" right about now :-)

A few little items going up today. Hoping to catch up on Daily Show clips over the weekend.

Just a heads up -- in case you were wondering what the deal was :-)

Thanks!

lisa