Uninstalled: 03/01/2003

Significant Digits

Item One:

Elke Sisco links to this superbly reasonable message to the Shrub from Paul Kerschen of metameat/cactus log:

Subject: The cost of the Iraq war

Dear Mr. President:

Yesterday the media reported that you have made a supplemental budget request to Congress of $74.7 billion to pay for the current war in Iraq. Your budget for fiscal year 2003 assumes total federal receipts of $2,048.1 billion. My personal income tax accounts for .000000040% of that figure. Applying this percentage to the amount of funding you have requested from Congress, I find that I personally have been asked to pay $29.94 for the Iraq war.

The Mercy Corps, a charitable organization with which you may be familiar, has established an Iraq Emergency Fund to help alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe that the war has already caused, and which will only worsen in coming weeks. Lack of food, clean water, power, and medical supplies will place millions of people at risk of hunger and disease, and a refugee crisis of massive proportions is assured. I have made a charitable donation to this fund in the amount of $199.62. As I am in the fifteen-percent tax bracket, this will reduce my federal tax liability for the next year by the precise amount which you have charged me for your war.

I oppose this invasion in the strongest possible terms. Neither my belief that America must be protected from unconventional threats, nor my immense respect for the American men and women who are currently risking their lives on your orders, alter my conviction that you and your advisers have conceived this war recklessly, in bad faith, with insufficient thought given to possible consequences, insufficient support given to diplomatic alternatives, and appallingly little regard for the sanctity of human life. You will not wage it in my name, and you will not wage it with my financial support.

Sincerely yours,

Paul Kerschen

Paul also includes a handy calculator so American taxpayers can figure out their own contribution to the war, and the appropriate charitable donation amount.

Item Two

David Weinberger and Paolo run the numbers over dinner in Venice:

"...while the US is budgeting $75+ billion for the war, Iraq's GDP is $60 billion. We could buy the entire country for less than it'll take to conquer it."

OCCC Announces Aggressive Global Expansion

Consortium focuses on the future: restructures portfolio and opens new international subsidiaries

TORONTO, Canada -- March 30, 2003. As part of its ongoing plan to become the agile market leader in fast-moving B2B Weblog platform enterprises, the O'Connor Clarke Consortium (BSX: OCC) announced today the acceleration of the next phase in the company’s strategic international growth initiative.

In order to fund this escalated momentum, the management of OCCC announced the recent completion of a planned series of tactical equity-based transactions through which the Consortium was able to liquidate certain non-core assets and holdings. In particular, the Consortium disclosed the divestment of its majority position in Bag & Baggage, LLP.

“We were pleased to support the management of Bag & Baggage in their time of need,” commented Michael O’Connor Clarke, OCCC Chairman and CEO. “Our relatively substantial equity position in respect to Ms. Howell’s blog served its purpose for the brief time that it was part of our corporate portfolio. OCCC has, however, no long-term plans or aspirations regarding the Bag & Baggage brand and we have, therefore, gladly released our share holdings to the open market once more.”

Having successfully supported Bag & Baggage in its defense of a recent hostile takeover bid by the infamous MLOD cartel, the Consortium is moving rapidly to leverage its global position with the opening of the first in a planned international network of OCCC Weblog affiliate offices. The first of the Consortium’s new global operations, in New York, Paris and Taipei, will benefit the Consortium’s international clients as well as Canada-based customers and business partners seeking personalized service and deep industry expertise.

“We are excited about the opportunities that these moves give us in Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim, building our international presence and broadening the OCCC offer in line with our stated plans,” said Mr. O’Connor Clarke. “Our existing Canadian capability, these new global outlets, and our recent expansion of the OCCC ‘home team’ combine to give us a powerful platform to develop significant business initiatives and explore cross-border opportunities in this attractive growth market.”

The first OCCC international affiliates to commence operations include a new Enterprise B2B “Blortal” (“Blog-Portal”) solutions provider: Suit & Suitcase in New York, NY, U.S.A. In addition, the Consortium also launched its first European Weblog franchise, Val et Valises in Paris, France; and a new affiliate service custom-built for the Pacific Rim market: Lug & Luggage.

“At the time of the MLOD bid, we committed to our customers, investors, partners and employee that we would, if successful, aggressively move forward with alacrity to deliver synergies quickly and enhance our offer in the global theatre of operations,” said Mr. O’Connor Clarke. “We were, and we have. Did. Er...Will. Are! Yes – are, that’s it. Ahem.”

Poison Pill?

Sunday, March 30, 2003

As the second largest shareholder in Bag & Baggage (as of 2 minutes ago) - I vow to fight this hostile and unsolicited takeover bid with every fibre of my being.

It is my considered opinion that the MLOD bid is a bogus attempt to artificially grow market share by use of the worst kind of Wall Street asset-stripping tactics.

As is immediately clear to anyone watching this story, Mr. Turner has failed to articulate any opportunities for synergy between his organization and B&B. Nor has he spoken to the impact on individual employees and their families should this praetorian takeover bid succeed.

Further, it is my firm belief that Bag & Baggage has inherent future value that is being completely ignored in MLOD's underhanded attempt to take advantage of a soft market to scoop up this valuable property.

Readers, shareholders and other interested parties may want to take note of the fact that, as of this writing, Mr. Turner currently holds 1214 shares (or approximately 24%) of the issued share capital of MLOD, but 39% (1950 shares) of Bag & Baggage.

Clearly there is considerable inherent value in Bag & Baggage; value that is indeed further validated by Mr. Turner's interest. However, as a loyal, concerned and committed shareholder of B&B, it is my firm belief that Ms. Denise Howell and her current management team should be allowed to continue to execute against their stated business plan, without further interruption or distraction from such trivialities as this ill-advised bid.

If If Mr. Turner prefers to remain invested in Ms. Howell's shares rather than in developing his own business, that says something about the real value of MLOD.

If Mr. Turner wants to sell, I remain willing to help him find buyers for his B&B shares.

Michael O'Connor Clarke
Chairman & CEO, I Love Me, vol. I

At the Tupping Point

Saturday, March 29, 2003

And in other news, Samuel Peyps has a blog.

At the Tipping Point

OK, a quick caveat first of all. This post is entirely apolitical. I have no opinion, for or against, former U.S. Senator Gary Hart. I don't live or vote in the U.S.; I don't know anything about Hart's record beyond the little I've read on his blog.

Did you catch that?

I said: "'his BLOG"

A potential democratic presidential candidate in the 2004 U.S. election has a blog.

No way of knowing whether Hart is actually posting the blog entries himself. Candidly, I doubt it - I imagine one of his staffers is probably doing the posting for him (perhaps Kevin Thurman, the blog contact listed as "kevin at garyhartnews dot com").

But whether he's using a ghost-blogger or not is just so not the point anyway. Who cares? The point is - indirectly or by proxy, here's a potential presidential candidate acknowledging the importance of blogging and bravely dipping a toe into this new kind of conversation made possible by the Net. Emergent Democracy, indeed.

Clock this:

Now that America is at war and our economy continues to deteriorate, it's even more important that alternative voices and views are heard. I intend to be one of those voices, and I welcome your responses. To further this undertaking, I am starting a blog here on www.garyhartnews.com. The Internet is clearly the most important new medium to help increase people's involvement in a "primary of ideas." ... I'm committed to using the Internet as a vital tool to engage people on critical policy matters and the future of our country.

Of critical importance, the blog has commenting enabled. Moderated commenting, of course, but with a fairly open editorial approach:

In order to maintain an open online community environment, it is our wish to provide a means for allowing thoughtful comments on the Gary Hart News Blog. This includes both comments in support of the ideas presented in the blog postings, and comments in contradiction to those ideas.

Pause for a moment to extrapolate from this. Ponder a future America in which a democrat President sits actively blogging from the Oval Office.

I tell you, if that ever happens, brothers and sisters, the Cluetrain will surely have arrived at Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gary Hart's blog ANDs the world of political debate in America, and that's why I'm so godalmighty pumped about this.

I couldn't give a stuff about his politics - the fact of his participation is enough for me.

So congratulations, Mr. Hart - and welcome indeed to the blogosphere.

Presidential hopefuls and the guy in the convenience shop. w00t!

WMD

Thursday, March 27, 2003

Taking my cue from the 'morans' shot, below - now seems like an appropriate moment to return to the subject of the Shrub's uniquely flexible use of the English language.

His tongue continues to be one of the most dangerous Weapons of Message Destruction ever encountered.

A few reminders, courtesy DubyaSpeak.com, for your listening pleasure:

"I mentioned early on that I recognize there are hurdles, and we're gonna achieve those hurdles."

"...I'm the person who gets to decide, not you."

"And so, in my State of the -- my State of the Union -- or state -- my speech to the -- nation, whatever you wanna call it..." (this one, amazingly, draws rapturous applause).

And to the critics who might leap in to suggest that criticizing the man's grammar and speech patterns is a cheap shot:- bollocks.

Expecting coherence from the most powerful man on the face of the planet is not asking too much. And here's one bloody good reason why, from a recent piece in the Telegraph, headlined: Blair 'restrained Bush from attacking Iraq after Sept 11'

"...There was tremendous in-fighting in Washington. The drafts of the speech went back and forth. I think there were 28 versions before the final text was agreed. For us the key phrase was Bush's commitment to seeking a new UN resolution to disarm Iraq. We were only sure we had it 24 hours before the speech.

"For some reason this was left out of the text on the teleprompter as Bush was reading it, and he had to improvise.

"He managed to ad-lib a sentence saying 'we will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions'. But instead of saying 'resolution' he said 'resolutions' in the plural. That's how we got stuck with the French idea of two resolutions."

'nuff.

The best headline you'll find in print or online anywhere today

"We are all Iraqis now"

...at the head of an impassioned article from Egyptian journalist Hani Shukrallah, managing editor of the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly.

Strong stuff.

The prosecution rests, m'lud

>

What could I possibly add?

Thanks to Oliver Willis for this.

Monbiot beats me to it (as usual)

I've been doing a little research and brewing up a long post about the hypocrisy of Rumsfeld’s outrage over the TV footage of U.S. PoWs.

Quick aside: the coverage of the captured and killed American soldiers has been shocking, disgusting and disturbing, to say the least. The latest news, that several of the PoWs may have been executed, is even more distressing. And yet...

What’s flipped my bit is the jaw-dropping duplicity of the Bush administration citing the Geneva Conventions here.

I wanted to have the time to scroll through the Convention and catalogue the many, many ways in which Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest have openly flouted this, and so many other international laws. But I'm glad to note that the brilliant George Monbiot, writing in Tuesday’s Guardian, beat me to it.

Pulling together the research and presenting an absolutely compelling argument that nails many of the points I’ve been thinking through in the last few days, Monbiot’s piece is essential reading, IMHO.

Under the heading “One rule for them”, he asks:

"Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries foul. What about Guantanamo Bay?"

A choice excerpt:

"...Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life. His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention."

Stirring stuff.

In particular, Monbiot comments as others have on some of the obvious legal flaws in the Bush Administration's position.

To start with there is the mendacious little sidestep taken by the U.S. in choosing to hold PoWs at Guantanamo Bay - a location outside of U.S. sovereign territory and, therefore, beyond the reach of the constitution.

Add to this the fact that the 641 men held at Guantanamo are classified as "unlawful combatants" not PoWs - keeping them, according to Rumsfeld's argument, neatly outside the boundaries of the Geneva Conventions.

As Monbiot points out: this curious description could just as easily be applied by the Iraqis to the captured illegal invaders of their country.

And while you’re over at the Guardian site, you should also take the time to check out this piece by Burhan al-Chalabi, chairman of the British Iraqi Foundation.

“You should have known we'd fight"

“It is now five days since the British and US governments launched an unprecedented military invasion of my country of birth, its people, land, towns and cities…Commentators and politicians in Britain and America seem taken aback: how come the Iraqis are putting up such a fight? Why do they so passionately resist this attempt to liberate them from the brutal dictator, Saddam? But Iraqis aren't surprised at all.”

I have no way of knowing whether what most of Dr al-Chalabi says is true, but if nothing else, this article could be taken as further evidence that Iraq may be winning the propaganda war.

Taking the Pulse

Friday, March 21, 2003

This might just be the best antidote I've found to the round-the-clock CNN coverage that's making me feel physically sick.

Give Peas A Chance

Sorry

By way of apology for my moment of weakness (the 'shock and awe' post below), I offer this:

With thanks to Tom Matrullo for bringing me to my senses.

War on Law (aka The Long Arm of Dubya)

I was cc'ed on a powerful email this morning from my brother, a barrister in the U.K., to a number of his fellow lawyers. It's worthy of an even wider audience, I think:

Regardless of your views on the war are you not, as lawyers, perturbed by this, from the BBC website, reporting on RAF Fairford, the B 52 base near Gloucester:

"On Wednesday, signs were attached to the perimeter fence which warned: Use of deadly force authorised"

This means: trespassers may be shot dead.

Hello? Did I miss something? Has martial law been declared? Under what circumstances can anyone "authorise" in advance the use of deadly force?

Don't bother to look it up. The answer is: under no circumstances. Nice to see that the game of "let's suspend the Constitution" is now played in the U.K. as well as the U.S.

Lord Atkin, thou should be living at this hour.

Note for non-lawyers: Lord Atkin, Law Lord, famous author of dissenting Judgement in Liversidge v Anderson, famous emergency powers case from WW2, now widely regarded as one of greatest judgments of C20:

"In this country amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed but they speak the same language in war as in peace." (reversing Cicero's observation "inter armes silent leges")

[27/3 updated - corrected typo]

Thursday, March 20, 2003

Groan

Why is it that Bush the Elder and Bush the Shrubya both have such a burning jones for Iraq in particular anyway?

Could it be [no! don't do it] that they [no! I'm begging you!] both suffer from [oh please!] Iraqnophobia?

[*ack* -thud- ]

Make that one order of shock, with a side of awe, please.

So now I’m wondering if the Pentagon perhaps needs to pay a visit to one of those “Men’s Health” specialists you see advertised on the subway.

I should state up front that I’m neither qualified, nor well enough informed, to accurately assess the success of last night’s first strike. But doesn't it come across to you as some kind of curious military premature ejaculation.

Please - don't think I'm saying I feel disappointed, exactly – that’s not the right adjective here. Nor am I relishing the prospect of the “shock and awe” (presumably) still to come.

But, I mean, WTF?! The game is afoot and we have no further opportunity for debate -- so don’t you wish they’d get the hell on with it?

”If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.”

I won't get into the question of whether it will be "done" - over with - once it's done. That's matter for a later post, perhaps.

A headline on the Elevator News Network TV on the ride up this morning described Saddam's “apparently ineffectual” counterstrikes into Kuwait.

But how come Saddam’s first launches in response to this invasion deserve these weak modifiers, when the first U.S. strikes don't?

The Pentagon directs “surgical”, “precision-guided” strikes against “targets of opportunity”. The Republican Guard “lobs a handful of SCUD missiles across the border into Kuwait”.

I sat up till about 2:00am channel-surfing and have been scouring the coverage this morning. There’s little evidence so far that the Shrub’s first strike was terribly “effectual”.

The AP reports of Saddam’s first counterstrike state:

“None of the Iraqi missiles caused injuries or damage, and one was intercepted by a Patriot missile, according to U.S. officers.”

But look at the numbers. Iraq is said to have responded with about four SCUD-alike, or more likely al Samoud, missiles - as far as I can tell.

Shrub’s “decapitation attack” aimed at Saddam and his senior staff is reported to have expended 40 tomahawk cruise missiles and an unspecified number of 2,000-pound bombs dropped from stealth jets.

There has been plenty of coverage of the opening salvos and much discussion of the munitions and methods, but it’s proving extremely hard to learn anything about the damage and casualties on either side. I’d consider this the real heart of the news, yet it appears to be deeply buried.

If you wade through the CNN and AP-dominated stories, you’ll eventually discover a few reports that this sizeable display of American military muscle managed to kill one Jordanian truck driver.

Hang on - 40 tomahawks. One truck driver. That cannot possibly be right, surely?

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf has been quoted as sayoing that the “...U.S. strikes killed one person, hit a customs office and some empty Iraqi TV buildings, among other targets,” but there’s no way of verifying this, of course.

Maybe in the hours and days to come we'll learn more about the real impact of these first attacks, but clearly this is not yet the expected “shock and awe”. It’s not been a successful decapitation either, from what we can discern.

One thing we can begin to estimate, though, is a fraction of the cost so far.

A single tomahawk missile costs about US$600,000.

So that’s US$24,000,000 for just the hard cost of ordnance expended in one element of one attack (of questionable success) in the opening strike alone.

TWENTY FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to do what, exactly?

And yet, disgusting as this number is – I’m still concerned that they’ve so far spent so little.

Now that there's clearly no hope of turning back or holding out for appropriate U.N. authority, I have to agree with The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland in how I feel about this situation. In a must-read article, he writes:

"It is entirely consistent to be against this invasion - yet hope for a speedy victory in the interests of the Iraqis."

He goes on to quote Robin Cook’s resignation speech, saying: "It is false to argue that only those who support war support our troops. It is entirely legitimate to support our troops while seeking an alternative to the conflict that will put those troops at risk.”

And I’m with both Freedland and Cook on this.

Of course I’m against the invasion, and of course I’m backing “our boys” in Iraq. Just do what you have to do; hit as hard and as fast as you can to get it done. There’s no sense in pussying around now the balloon’s gone up.

Get on with it, get it over with, get home.

Ever Punctual

Peter Jennings on ABC mentions that it takes around 90 minutes for a Tomahawk Cruise missile to fly from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad.

The first missile strike in Baghdad was reported by CNN at around 21:30 EST tonight.

I've always considered this obsession with punctuality to be another indication of a man possessed of shallow, trivial virtues. How very like the Shrub to have his showdown at the Iraqi corral tick down the clock with such banal precision.

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

BREAKING NEWS

The Operation Iraqi Freedom site is up - and it's genuinely terrifying. I mean, just look at that retro starscape backdrop, fercrissakes. And you've got to love the tasteful inclusion of a mushroom cloud image.

This thing seems to be the spawn of 'UFOIA' - the "Unofficial Freedom Of Information Agency" - who also have something to do with www.waltermondale.net

Grindingly slow sites, but the Google cache of UFOIA is here.

Entertaining. Certainly had me going for a while there.

Baghdad 90210

Whois Search results for operationiraqifreedom.com

Noble Eagle Ventures
PO BOX
SAN JOSE, CA 90210

Google can't find any pointers to this firm, but I'm betting the CEO is one Stanley Motss.

"You think you're in a tight spot? Try making The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse [when] three of them died two weeks before the end of principal photography. This is nothing. This is nothing."

Operation: Iraqi Freedom

Fellow Torontonian blogger (and PC DOCS alumnus) Ian Stevens is picking up a lot of referrer traffic from people Googling this phrase and landing at his blog.

He casually coined the term in an earlier blog entry, thinking nothing of it. Now it turns out that "Operation: Iraqi Freedom" may indeed be the chosen 'nom de guerre' for Dubya's illegal and unjust pre-emptive military campaign.

As at 11:55am EST, Ian's blog currently scores a perfect Googlewhack as the only hit returned by a Google search for the term. Expect this to change fast fast fast...

Ian's comment on the choice of the 'F' word is absolutely on point:

"I mean, how exactly are these Iraqis being freed? By the 3000 bombs which will hail down from above? At the time, the name seemed absurd. Trust the US government to once again become their own parody."

Which immediately brings this to mind:

A debate I'd love to see

Compare and contrast the slick but vapid spin of Dubya's pompous Monday night allocution, with the cogent, grounded arguments set out by Robin Cook in his impassioned resignation speech in the House of Commons.

I'd pay good money to see these two go head to head in a contest of oratory skill - just for the satisfaction of watching Bush's ductile and inconsistent logic crumble under Cook's simple, focused, and confident assertion of right.

Worth watching again - Cook's 11-minute Commons speech in full (Real Player) or you can read the transcript, here. Genuinely statesmanlike carriage and expression.

Or even if you don't have time or the will to read or listen to Cook's statement, consider this one key point from his speech:

"We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat."

Aching to blog

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Excellent news.

Cruising the inbound links logged by Technorati, I've discovered David Akin has started "the inevitable Weblog". Early days yet, but I hope he keeps it up.

David is without doubt one of the best and most influential reporters on technology and business matters in Canada, with dual gigs at The Globe & Mail and as National Business and Technology Correspondent for CTV News.

All round good bloke and a welcome new entrant to the ever-expanding blogosphere.

Welcome, David.

That's just not cricket, old chap...

Check out this outstanding coverage of the 2003 Cricket World Cup from the Guardian's Scott Murray.

No, really - check it out.

Even if you have absolutely no interest in cricket (and who could blame you?), and don't like the Guardian as a newspaper, or even have some personal grudge against people called 'Scott' - still: I urge you to click the link above and read Scott's latest over-by-over match report before his bosses find it, take it down and fire him.

Trust me. Have I ever steered you wrong?

Rip. Mix. Burn. Continued...

A good rant in the latest Wired magazine, in response to the "Fall of the Music Industry" stories in the February edition. Close ties there and in the reader feedback to the whole World of Ends thing.

This letter, from Dave Haynie in New Jersey, well worthy of note:

Money for Nothing

"...CD shipments went from 1.1 billion units in 2000 to 968.6 million in 2001; income went from $14.3 billion to $13.7 billion. That's a 10.3 percent decrease in units, a 4.1 percent decrease in sales. But if you look at the actual number of releases, there were 12,000 fewer albums put out by the major labels in 2001 than in 1999. So in fact, the industry has dramatically increased its per-album profit. It's pretty clear - labels cut back on new artist investments and raised album prices. You can go through all of the RIAA-posted statistics, and not only don't you find its lost $4 billion, you can't even begin to find any loss not attributable to its own sales and marketing. Piracy isn't a factor."

Sadly, some readers are still clearly finding it hard to let go of the status quo. A letter from Aaron Luis Levinson is particularly troubling:

"As for piracy and file-sharing, labels should simply upload hundreds of low-grade, truncated files of their songs, forcing P2P users to sift through the ersatz files to find one barely worth burning. Once Gnutella and Kazaa are overrun with these files, things will slow down considerably."

Which strikes me as not only frighteningly dumb, but also remarkably close to one of the closing comments in World of Ends:

They might as well just put up banners that say "Hi! We don't understand the Internet. Oh, and, by the way, we hate you."

But then, Mr. Levinson is a Grammy-nominated record producer who clearly points out that he has "a vested interest in seeing the record business survive".

Ink vs. Pixels

Wired Magazine 11.04, April 2003 edition, page 50:

Look under P for Paper

"Its hefty tomes had rolled off presses almost continuously since 1768, but in 1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica abandoned paper and ink for the obvious advantages of CD-ROMs and the Net. Revenues plunged. Oops.

"Hungry for a return to profits, the company resumed publishing in hard-cover in 2002. Now it's having trouble keeping up with orders. 'People just like print,' says Britannica sales director Patti Ginnis. 'They like the feel of the page.' Its competitors are getting the message, too. World Book is printing more reference works again, and so is Encyclopaedia Americana. You can't keep a good technology down."
-- Jonathon Keats.

We can't trust CNN - redux

Monday, March 17, 2003

Since my earlier ranting about sending mobile bloggers into Iraq to give us unvarnished war coverage, it looks like a number of journalists and others have indeed stepped up to the blogplate.

Journalist Christopher Allbritton, who I mentioned here has his Back to Iraq 2.0 project running, and has been raising a fair amount of cash in his quest to get back into Iraq.

Kevin Sites, meanwhile, is apparently already there.

And Salam Pax of the palindromic Dear Raed blog, is actively posting again from within Iraq, including this rant.

A walk in the woods

On a lighter note than that last post, Charlie, Lily, Ruairi and I went out last Saturday for our first walk in ages through the Glen Stewart ravine near our home.

Charlie and Lily set off ahead, Ruairi and I following (with him in the tracker, snuggled in against my chest).

Stunningly beautiful day, with crystal blue skies and the snow melting away all round us.

d

We decided to take the long route, leaving the main path to head off down into the heart of the ravine, along what C&L have christened "the adventure trail".

The stream at the bottom had started flowing again - rushing happily along, swollen with snowmelt; finally free of the icy binds of this long, long winter.

Definitely a good day to be alive.

Run for home

Reading this...

Allies end bid for U.N. war approval

...and this:

U.N. orders staff to leave Iraq

...and feeling more than usually homesick for Ireland today.

I suppose it’s strange to be sitting here feeling homesick for a land that was never really my home (except spiritually). I lived in England pretty much my whole life, before Sausage and I moved to Canada in 1996.

But even with so many family and loved ones there, I wouldn’t want to return to England right now -- not to a country in the blind deathgrip of the hawks' talons.

I’d no sooner move back there than move further south from where I’m sitting, here in Toronto.

On a clear day like today you can sometimes see the edge of New York State on the far side of Lake Ontario. That’s already too close.

And it's not a clear day. The sun's beating down on Toronto, but the war clouds gathering close in on all sides obscure the view. From this side of the lake, America looks to be suffering under a dust storm right now.

I can’t imagine a more depressing or scary time to be living on this continent. To know that the most powerful non-elected man in the World lives just a short way south of here. A man who is about to paint a great big target across the face of North America.

The atmosphere today, even on this very Americanized holiday, is intense.

Bush is clearly on the verge of finally abandoning all reason, allowing the heady cocktail of testosterone and oil to take him clean over the edge tonight - in front of a live TV audience, 8pm prime time. Natch.

I can’t imagine him getting much resistance from the 76 per cent of Americans who reportedly nod in agreement when he conflates the fact of 9/11 and the threat posed by Saddam.

(aside: how can that number possibly be right? All the Americans I know would sit within the 14 per cent -- but that number just seems way too small. Are there really that many Americans taking their foreign policy guidance from Darryl fucking Worley?!)

Wonder how the Worley fans will feel when the dirty bombs start going off in the strip malls and plazas; as white powder starts sifting from the mailboxes; as the suicide bombers start showing up at ball games...

Washington DC is 351 miles from Toronto. That is WAY too close for comfort.

So here's my St. Patrick's Day prayer: can I come home now please?

The Exile's Return
(John Locke, 1847-1889)

T'anam chun Dia! but there it is -
The dawn on the hills of Ireland,
God's angels lifting the night's black veil
From the fair sweet face of my sireland
Oh! Ireland isn't it grand you look,
Like a bride in her fresh adorning,
And with all the pent-up love of my heart
I bid you the top of the morning.

This one brief hour pays lavishly back,
For many a year of mourning,
I'd almost venture another flight,
There is so much joy in returning,
Watching out for the hallowed shore,
All other attraction scorning,
Oh: Ireland don't you hear me shout,
I bid you the top of the morning.

Ho, Ho, upon Glen's shelving strand,
The surges are wildly beating,
And Kerry is pushing her headlands out,
To give us a kindly greeting,
Now to the shore the sea birds fly,
On pinons that know no drooping,
Now out from the shore with welcome gaze,
A million of eaves come trooping.

Oh! Fairly, generous Irish land,
So Loyal, so fair, so loving,
No wonder the wandering Celt should think,
And dream of you in his roving,
The Alien shore may have gems and gold,
And sorrow may ne'er have gloomed it.
But the heart will sigh for its native shore,
Where the love-light first illumed it.

And doesn't old Cobh look charming there,
Watching the wild waves motion,
Resting her back against the hill.
And the tips of her toes to the ocean,
I wonder I don't hear the Shandon bells,
But maybe their chiming is over,
For it's a year since I began,
The life of a western rover.

For thirty years "A chuisle mochroi",
Those hills I now feast my eyes on,
Ne'er met my vision save at night,
In memory's dim horizon,
Even so, 'twas grand and fair they seemed,
In the landscape spread before me,
But dreams are dreams, and I would awake
To find American skies still o'er me.

And often in Texan plain,
When the day and the chase was over,
My heart would fly o'er the weary ways,
And around the coastline hover,
And my prayers would arise that some future date,
All danger, doubting and scorning,
I might help to win for my native land
The light of young liberty's morning

Now fuller and turner the coastline shows
Was there ever a scene more splendid!
I feel the breath of the Munster breeze,
Oh! Thank God my exile is ended,
Old scenes, old songs, old friends again
There's the vale, there's the cot I was born in
Oh! Ireland from my heart of hearts
I bid you the "top o' the morning"

[update: re-reading the above and discussing it with Mum, we were both struck by the number of apparent errors in the text. This was copy pasted in from elsewhere online - from one of the only complete copies of the verse I was able to find. Seems to have been a number of typos, transcription errors and Anglicized spellings in the source. So I've taken the liberty of correcting the most obvious apparent errors in the above - eg. 'Cobh' for 'Cove', etc. I'm going to have to find a print copy of Locke's poems to check the original]

The Fenian Invasions of Canada

What a strange and entertaining thing to stumble into on the web - on this day of all days.

An Irishman, living in Canada, idly Googling for something completely unrelated, and this pops up:

"The British Empire has long been a symbol of oppression to the Irish people. This antagonistic relationship transends (sic) international boundaries even to this day...The Fenians suggested an invasion of Canada (then a British colony) to upsurp (sic) British rule in North America and to hold Canada ransom in exchange for a free Ireland...The most famous of these raids were led across the American border and into the Canadian frontier. Though they had lasting impacts, these raids are nearly forgotten today."

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Both sides now

Gary Turner makes me laugh out loud.

Gary Turner makes me weep like a bairn.

You AND me

Catching up with my blogcrawling, up early with the two boys. My beautiful girls still sleeping peacefully...Charlie, Ruairi and I sharing the silence of this bright feels-like-spring Saturday morning.

I've stumbled through the various discussions weaving in and around the WoE, Cluetrain and SPLJ extended family.

This stuff makes me realise there's more than just a business perspective to the "World of Ands" thought I've been chewing over in the last few posts.

I have to look at the personal side...

The discussion threads rippling out across the Net from the splash created by World of Ends are continuing to highlight the ways in which the Net allows us to celebrate our individual individuality: through our blogs, our post comments, our email threads, our photo galleries - while simultaneously helping us to build communities of shared interest, shared longing, shared thoughtlines.

Individuals and communities. Ends and Ands.

It is a World of Ends.

You, and you, and you, and you, and me. We're all bright ends individually connected into this swirling, thrumming hive mind.

Yet our "every end is connected, each to each and each to all, the ends aren't endpoints at all."

Every end... occasionally our every purpose.

And when your End connects to my End and all the other Ends, we wrap ourselves in the warmth of the community - the support network of our sideways world; firm friends loosely joined end-to-end across the far flung spaces in between.

"We’re falling into email relationships that, stretching themselves over years, imperceptibly deepen, like furrows worn into a stone hallway by the traffic of slippers. We’re falling into groups that sometimes feel like parties and sometimes feel like wars. We’re getting to know many more people in many more associations than the physics of the real world permits, and these molecules, no longer bound by the solid earth, have gained both the randomness and the freedom of the air-borne."

As our Ends join like this, we find ourselves forging faster, closer connections than any offline r/t experience could have prepared us to expect.

We're so comfortable, so fast in our online communities -- our bundles of Ends -- that we can and do talk about anything with and amongst the other Ends we meet online.

Anything. Even that definitive end: our own end and the ends of those we love. We're sharing things online, amongst friends at the ends, we might not share so completely, so candidly, with even close r/t family.

It's the positive flipside of the false authority syndrome that infects the Web and keeps the Snopes guys, and many others, busy debunking "FOAFlore" and hoaxes on the Net.

Sometimes, having one's credulity threshold lowered can be a force for good.

Sometimes: we're falling into online relationships that, in the space of hours or days, bring us as close together as family.

And when our Ends connect like this, AND logic acts as a transitive verb:

You AND me.

(And I love it when you AND me, baby).

The connections between and among our World of Ends add AND value to every node with every community that forms, every blogroll link added.

It's Reed's Law in action. When you link to this post in your own blog, the fact of the act ANDs me - enhancing and reinforcing my ties into the World of Ends, adding value to us both and all.

Our shared World of Ands can become so strong that together we can even face, perhaps even prevent, the End of the World.

Yeah, so I'm a hippy. So AND me.

Friday, March 14, 2003

3.14

How appropriate that I have only a few pages left to go, and will undoubtedly finish reading this tonight:

(Oh, and it's very, very good, btw. In case you were wondering.)

Operation Enduring Propaganda

Direct from General Tommy Franks' own Central Command site - images of the leaflets with which the USAF is currently carpeting Iraq.

Extraordinary stuff.

(N.B. Last I checked, this server appeared to be hurting with traffic. Very slow. You may need to try a few times before you can get in...)

With thanks to Christian et al for the link.

AND there's more...

A quick email interchange with David W. this morning has me leaning back in on the “World of Ands” idea.

I think this may be getting closer to being something...

David characterised my half-thought as:

”Highly appealing but hard to evaluate. It flies in the face of Phil Becker's idea that the Internet reduces everything to a commodity and thus is a threat to the economy rather than a boon.

“The And seems more relevant to companies selling physical goods than digital ones. E.g., I think the Net will Or and then Not the recording industry within the next 5-10 years. And I just read an article about how many BAM music stores have closed already.”

He’s right, of course. The atoms/bits distinction, in particular, is a crucial one.

So.

1. The Internet has the potential to OR and then NOT any business wherein the product is "consumed" or used primarily by our minds.

2. Products that are either ingested or whose purpose and use is a function of their atoms seem better-suited to resist the OR/NOT fate.

Examples in this second set would be cars, clothing, food, electronics, etc.

These are all things that can be sold online, and the market is often enhanced (AND logic) when they are -- but they're not likely to move entirely online any time soon.

Going back to the first category, David’s absolutely right to pick music as the obvious example. I agree with his assessment that the music industry establishment is accelerating towards NOT faster than almost anything else one can think of.

The entertainment business in general is still road blocked by thinking that ties the value to the physical artifact - the CD, DVD, VHS. The fact that music is shipped to you in the form of atoms has zero to do with the value inherent in the product. The purpose of recorded music is not tied into the physical delivery mechanism. Why is this so hard for the RIAA and others to understand?

Hmmm. I'm struggling now to balance this thinking with the future of book stores. My first draft WoA waffle cited Amazon as an AND example that poses no threat to established booksellers. I believe this still holds.

Yet books are another product consumed between the ears. You don't need a physical high-street store to sell books, and yet they survive.

Of course, they're surviving mainly by getting bigger and consolidating - there are lots of small bookshops going out of business. But I don't think the small stores are being killed by the Net: it's the big box retailers delivering the death blow in this case.

Same deal with the friendly high-street hardware store, the local greengrocer, corner bakery. The threat is big box, big brands, all-under-one-roof convenience.

And that's a shame, of course. Just as biodiversity is an absolute good that needs to be protected and encouraged; so with "econodiversity". If all we have left in every city is a dozen all-encompassing brands in out of town big box locations, life will be very dull indeed. Diversity breeds innovation.

Um.

Where was I?

Oh yes - book stores. Maybe BAM book stores can survive longer than BAM music stores simply because the act of purchasing words inscribed on paper is embedded deeper in our culture than the act of acquiring 'entertainment' on shiny plastic discs.

Plus, as Doc has so bluntly put it: “ink shits on atoms”. Technically, consumers in the first world no longer need the traditional physical manifestation of a book - but we're not likely to dump our paperbacks any time soon.

Example: I'm a huge fan of AvantGo on my Palm. As a big user of public transport, I love being able to catch up with Salon, Wired, the Guardian, the WSJ, CBC, etc. on my Palm while strap-hanging on the tube. But it still sucks compared to a nice big crinkly, high-res, scribble in the margins, don't-worry-about-dropping-or-scratching-it, really truly newspaper.

When useable / re-useable digital paper finally arrives, then the book stores will be OR/NOTted out of existence.

So I think my World of Ands message to business gets re-focused into this:

a. If you make your money selling physical stuff, embrace the AND of the Net to your, and your customers' benefit.

b. If you make your money selling digital stuff, grab you ankles and see if the rush of blood to your head shakes loose a clue. OR, if it doesn't, you're still in the best position for what's coming next. (btw, you CAN still make money, but only if you submit to a hearty beating with the cluestick now, before it's too late. A tip: you will probably have to let go of EVERYTHING that currently defines your idea of a business model. And people will lose their jobs. Sorry).

c. If you make your money selling services, I want to see your timesheets.

This is still incomplete, but it's closer. Unfortunately, I'm sure it's also all been said before.

Cue: Richard Bennett

World Of Ends - a corollary

Thursday, March 13, 2003

I’ve a half-formed idea that there is a natural and important corollary to Doc and David’s World of Ends thing. Too tired to do credit to this, but FWIW…

This might be little more than neat word play, or it might be something a little bigger – not too sure.

Maybe one of you can take this idea and stretch it out – see where it snaps.

This: as the Internet is truly a World of Ends, it is also, just as clearly, a World of Ands.

There is a necessary AND logic to the value growing at the Ends of the Net that is completely misunderstood by most of the legislators, regulators, CEOs and other clue-challenged entities at which the WoE piece is evidently directed.

Look at even the most viable Web-based businesses – how many of them have actually succeeded in putting bricks and mortar companies out of business? How many of them even thought, honestly, that they would?

Amazon.

Amazon doesn’t replace book or record stores.

A store that exists only in a browser simply can not replace browsing in a store.

I buy MORE books now that Amazon exists, but I’ll still spend hours mooching in bookstores – and I’m certainly not alone in this view.

AND logic is at work here – not OR. The two things are different, can co-exist, can even complement one another to their mutual benefit.

eBay – no obvious equivalent in the BAM world. A genuine ‘pure play’ company that could not have existed without the Net. So who did they displace?

Better example: Napster. Never likely to supplant HMV. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to.

Show me a set of numbers to support the argument that any online analog of a BAM business ever had a tangible, provable, negative impact on the BAM’s sales.

Look at the Napster example in the most simple terms – terms the BAM CEO should understand: real estate terms.

From the most basic point of view, an online file-trading system presents you with the potential to put your product into every middle-class living room in America (and many, many beyond). You’re getting to project parts of your storefront into every single midmarket home.

The challenge for BAMs is to figure out a simple business model to take this AND logic function and make some reasonable profit from it.

Accommodate it within your hard-product margin calculations. Deal with it by figuring out how to accrue some acceptable, fair benefit from the best distribution and marketing network you could ever possibly wish for.

Make money here AND (small incremental amounts) here. OR kill it. Your choice.

So this is a rough as heck, totally unfinished thought – but it does seem to be an absolutely natural extension to Doc & Dave’s original thesis.

I need help figuring out the rest. Which is what email is for…

*burp*

...Back from the splendiddly toity Academy of Spherical Arts 'blogflocking' with Brent Ashley, Tara Cleveland, Tim Aiello, the Accordion Guy, tu cowsians, and the iniimitable Doc Searls.

Had to bale early to relieve Sausage (she's stricken by the evil lurgi I spent most of the last five days fighting, poor snuffly). But still a good night - many entertaining multiply-overlapping and interwoven games of sixdegrees to be had. FINE beer - that place has an outstanding beer list. Good crab cakes. Smart, smart people.

Thanks for getting this going, Brent. Sorry I had to run.

Why Americans tune in to Canada

"Not that the Canadian media are perfect. We make our mistakes. We have our biases. But here, at least, there's a vigorous and wide-ranging debate on the looming war.

"So who can blame skeptical Americans for resorting to Canadians when their "most trusted" and "most watched'' media are marching in lockstep to the drums of war?"

Excellent roundup of stories killed in the U.S., surfacing in Canadian media...

Best legal letter typo of all time

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

I've just snipped this from the top of a genuine lawyer-to-client communication and blacked out the names to protect the guilty.

If you don't see it immediately: try studying that fourth sentence, second paragraph, a little more closely.

Curious. Isn't that the kind of service attorneys provide to their clients? I guess the junior lawyers have to practice on someone...

Guterblog

Thanks to Elke, I just discovered (way later than just about everyone else on the Net, I imagine) that the remarkable Jimmy Guterman, erstwhile editor of the sadly defunct Media Grok and Media UnSpun newsletters, has been blogging.

Even better, he has created a Ten Commandments of Online Media which should be required reading for online journalists and news bloggers.

Example: "The seventh commandment: Thou shalt provide context, both qualitatively and quantitatively. No industry news story exists in a vacuum. Every item relates to another story, another company, an unruly trend."

Good stuff.

Caption Competition Winner

This month's prize goes to Tom Matrullo for his MOAB photo caption.

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

The Last Crusade

In an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, Jimmy Carter (yes, that Jimmy Carter) appears to be channeling St. Thomas Aquinas; inaccurately and entirely without acknowledgement.

It’s a curious little piece, titled “Just War -- or a Just War?”

In it, Carter states that “As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war.”

He sets out his criteria for determining whether a war can be considered “just” – five maxims by which to evaluate Bush’s will for war.

Perhaps this is intended as a kind of homage, or something.

Encountering a prominent Christian espousing various axioms to determine whether a war can be considered just -- it’s almost impossible not to think of Aquinas’ and his ideas about the justum bellum (himself expanding on ideas first noted 500 years earlier by St. Augustine).

I guess I’m still just about Catholic enough for this coincidence of concepts to resonate and allow me to recall a little of what I learned from the few undergraduate philosophy classes I actually managed to attend. But it’s strange that Carter makes no reference to either extremely well known source.

Of course, it’s not a direct lift from Aquinas. Carter has updated, tweaked and added to the source, mixing in some later additions from Hugo Grotius and other commentators along the way to end up with his own essay on the principles of a just war.

For the record, I agree with Carter’s conclusions in this piece – Bush’s proposed war against Iraq cannot currently be qualified by these criteria as a just war.

All the same, it might be worth running the assessment again, using Aquinas’ original criteria from the Summa Theologicae.

Aquinas set down three conditions for a war to be considered just:

1. Auctoritas (Authority). War can only be declared by rightful authority – by the legitimate ruler of a state.

The reason Aquinas gives for this is that only sovereign rulers have no higher authority to arbitrate their international disputes. He made the clear distinction with people below the rank of sovereign, for whom disputes can always be settled in the courts of law.

So there are two problems here, as I see it. In order to constitute a legitimate authority, Bush would first of all have to be the elected leader of a sovereign government. In the headlong rush to war, the small fact that he was never actually elected by a majority of the popular vote continues to be swept aside.

Having failed to achieve the majority vote of the people of America, it is a stretch to characterize Bush as a “legitimate ruler”.

In addition, Aquinas’s thinking is clearly a product of its time. Sovereign rulers in the 13th Century were the absolute authority in disputes involving other nations. There was no United Nations to step in as arbitrator and no such thing as an actual international court, let alone an international court of opinion.

If Aquinas were writing for the 21st Century, I’m sure his jus ad bellum would be informed and defined by the concept of an international consensual authority.

The appropriate legitimate authority to cite here must be the United Nations, and the UN has emphatically not agreed to this war. So I think the answer to this specific criterion is an unconditional “no”.

2. Causa (Cause). The principle here is that a nation may declare war only if its enemy has given due cause; has done some tangible harm to either the nation itself or its allies.

Aquinas isn’t entirely clear about whether internal harm (i.e. if a nation has done injury to its own people) can be considered just cause to go to war.

Either way, despite Saddam Hussein’s undoubted track record of criminal and violent conduct, it is not clear what tangible harm the U.S. claims to have suffered at the hands of Iraq.

If the “credible threat” Iraq presents to World peace is enough of a justification in Bush’s view, then what’s the deal with North Korea – a nation that continues to flaunt its outlawed nuclear weapons program and shoot missiles into the sea just for kicks?

Indeed, Bush is not even interested in trying to support this criterion – he is entirely forthright about his wish for a pre-emptive war; striking first before Saddam has the chance to do something Americans wouldn’t like.

There is no cause here.

3. Intentio (Right intentions). A war cannot be considered just if motivated primarily by self-interest.

One word on this: oil.

Aquinas argues that the intention of a just war must be the achievement of peace and the settlement of the just cause. The spirit of this condition is to rule out such motives as revenge, the desire for material or territorial gain, or a wish to finish Daddy’s work.

So whichever way you choose to slice it – citing medieval philosophers or contemporary nobel laureates – there is no way to justify this war.

Further: in an open letter to several European papers, a group of academics and international law professors have already argued that the anticipated war would in fact be illegal, there being “no justification under international law for the use of military force against Iraq”.

They go on to point out that: “A decision to undertake military action in Iraq without proper security council authorisation will seriously undermine the international rule of law. Of course, even with that authorisation, serious questions would remain. A lawful war is not necessarily a just, prudent or humanitarian war.”

I’m not even going to try digging into the notion of “humanitarian war”. Instead, here’s another little comparison worth exploring between Bush’s warmongering and the backdrop to Aquinas’ thinking...

At the time Aquinas was writing his essay De Bello, the flower of Europe’s youth were limping back home at the tail end of the devastating Sixth Crusade – the last major Christian incursion in a 250 year history of holy war against the eastern infidel. Aquinas’ views on war were no doubt influenced by this latest failure in the centuries long Christian jihad.

The parallels between the rhetoric of the Crusaders and Bush’s own pulpit-thumping are startling. (Try reading Pope Innocent III’s Summons, for example, with a Texan drawl...you’ll see what I mean: “Aspiring with ardent desire to liberate the Holy Land from the hands of the ungodly, by the counsel of prudent men...”)

Someone should perhaps point out to Mr. Bush that, even after 250 years of appalling, violent conflict: the Crusades failed.

Sunday, March 09, 2003

Skellington

That bit in Jason & The Argonauts when the skeletons come alive always used to scare the crap out of me as a kid.

This is kind of like getting your own back.

Friday, March 07, 2003

Cluetrain Redux

The World of Ends thing has me thinking. Natch. Exactly the point of the exercise.

Comparisons with The Cluetrain Manifesto are, as Doc has just pointed out inevitable.

But the links between Cluetrain and WoE are important not just because of the connection between the two protagonists.

For example, it puts me in mind of something I wrote way back then when the Cluetrain phenomenon first exploded into the minds of Net users everywhere. (I went digging back through the Topica archives to find this).

Way the hell back in December '99, before there was a book, when Cluetrain was just an idea and a website, rattling the shared consciousness of the clueful and the clueless; Craig Peters posted a comment to the Cluetrain Topica list saying:

"To what degree does Cluetrain preach to the converted? Can the Manifesto manifest any *real* impact (I hope so) or will it be viewed by all too many (I fear so) as simply the next flavor of the month after Seth Godin?"

It was a valid question then, and equally valid to ask about WoE now. To what degree does WoE preach to the converted? I just posted a comment in similar vein to the QuickTopic Discussion Board for WoE, saying:

"...will the intended audience ever even get to see the message? What are the chances Ted Turner will ever encounter something like this? Or Michael Eisner? Or Michael Powell? Or Sonny fucking Bono? How do we get these people to sit up and take notice?"

And that's what made me realise I felt like this once before - way back when I was still a corporate HOD in 99, reading the Cluetrain Manifesto online and punching the air like a grinning loon.

Here's part of my response to Craig's post back then:

What I'm worried about is the questionable moral honesty behind many of our gleeful Cluetrain high fives. We've all been leaping enthusiastically onto the Cluetrain - we, the converted - yodelling: "Oh yes, oh sweet Lord yes! At last someone's telling it like it is!"

But honestly, how many of us (at least those of us working from the veal pens of some vast corporate purgatory) have ever done something equivalent to walking up to the boss and saying: "The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what's that got to do with us?" or maybe: "You need to realize our market is often laughing. At us," or how about: "Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy!!", or even: "Actually boss, you're a wanker. You can take this stoopid job and blow it out your mule."?

Be honest. (If you're working for an organization of less than 10 people you're probably exempt from answering, for reasons that should be obvious).

Maybe I'm just outing my own inherent cowardice in the face of wage slavery here (although, in my defense, I can honestly say that I did once quit a dumbass company "so lobotomized that (it couldn't) speak in a recognizably human voice" with words very close to the mule line above. Just wish I'd thought of those exact words at the time, dammit).

Anyway. I think the point I was trying to make, before I came over all subordinate with me clauses back there, was that OF COURSE Cluetrain is preaching to the converted - almost by definition. If you weren't already converted you probably wouldn't have a clue (eep!) what the darn thing was twattering on about in the first place.

The real challenge, is how many of us have it in us to become convertERS? How many of us are cut out for Cluetrain missionary work?

A few thousand delighted, clued-up signatories nodding to each other and chuckling "Oh yeeeessss, VERY good chaps, markets are conversations, mmmm, yeeeesssss, that really is jolly, jolly good" - does not a revolution make.

As the site says: This message wants to MOVE - and it is doing, but mainly from one already "clued" individual to the next badass, net-savvy, already hyperlinked dude.

Wrong!

We need to print this mutha and carpet bomb the boardrooms and bogs of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Finsbury Square, Government Center - strongholds of greydom the world over. If you’re already doing this, or the local equivalent, apologies and dog bless you.

Maybe there is light at the end of this tunnel after all. Way back whenever I signed the manifesto, I remember saying “I’m spamming the URL to everyone I know”. I didn’t, of course – I sent it only to the people I know but also happen to like, respect or admire.

I’m sorry. That was weak of me.

This doesn’t move the message – this only spreads it slightly quicker to smart clueworthy people who would have found it themselves in due course anyway.

So the rest of you on that “everyone I know list” – the ones I don’t like, respect, admire or give a rat’s ass about: grab yer ankles. I’m printing the manifesto, folding it into the pointiest, spikiest shape possible and homing in on your flabby complacent fundaments right now.

Banzai! I’m off to see a man about a mule…

*cough*

Full of piss and vinegar. I was a fair deal younger back then.

But there's a difference. The Cluetrain message did move. The book made the Business Week Bestseller's lists, fercrissakes. It got read and it made a difference.

World of Ends can and should make a difference too. And this time, it can get there even faster. As this time around it has the Blogosphere to propagate the meme way faster than anything that was available when Cluetrain first hit the wires.

I mean, check it out: WoE is #1 on Daypop and Blogdex already. And the darn thing’s only been up since yesterday.

The message is moving, baby.

So maybe, just maybe people like FCC Chairman Powell will get to read it. Maybe Richard Parsons, Bill Gates, C. Michael Armstrong, Sonny goddam Bono and others will get to read it. Maybe the message will get across.

Yeah. And then he woke up...

[Update: Yes, OK....thanks to all the people who've pointed out that, of course, the late Sonny Bono doesn't really get to do too much reading anymore. I was being...er...ironic. Yes - that's it. Ironic. Or forgetful. Something.]

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