The RIAA attacked the Peer-To-Peer networks as supposed havens for Kiddie Porn, including a slickly-produced video showing how easy it is to find naked Britney Spears and Pokemon characters on Kazaa.

Clearly they’re increasingly nervous about the state of the playing field with regard to their own case against music pirates, and are attempting to delevel the playing field by making a full-court press against all of the illicit sins of Peer-To-Peer technology.

Kiddie Porn is the greatest thing ever invented for politicians — it’s an issue that no rational person can side against, and therefore allows blowhard politicians to stand atop the mount and pound desks and tables and get all red in the face without fear of retribution. Let’s see one of those lazy pricks take such a strong stand against Tobacco, Poor Education, or Child Poverty.

The reality is that there are a lot more starving, nicotine-addicted kids with no education out there than there are victims of grainy secret photo sessions.

-Ian.

PS – The RIAA is REALLY pissing me off.

November 28, 2002 Postcards From Planet Google By JENNIFER 8. LEE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.

AT Google’s squat headquarters off Route 101, visitors sit in the lobby, transfixed by the words scrolling by on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk: animación japonese Harry Potter pensées et poèmes associação brasileira de normas técnicas.

The projected display, called Live Query, shows updated samples of what people around the world are typing into Google’s search engine. The terms scroll by in English, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, French, Dutch, Italian – any of the 86 languages that Google tracks.

people who shouldn’t marry “she smoked a cigar” mr. potatoheads in long island pickup lines to get women auto theft fraud how to.

Stare at Live Query long enough, and you feel that you are watching the collective consciousness of the world stream by.

Each line represents a thought from someone, somewhere with an Internet connection. Google collects these queries – 150 million a day from more than 100 countries – in its databases, updating and storing the computer logs millisecond by millisecond.

Google is taking snapshots of its users’ minds and aggregating them. Like a flipbook that emerges when successive images are strung together, the logged data tell a story.

So what is the world thinking about?

Sex, for one thing.

“You can learn to say ‘sex’ in a lot of different languages by looking at the logs,” said Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google. (To keep Live Query G-rated, Google filters out sex-related searches, though less successfully with foreign languages.)

Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the world is spending much of its time thinking about the same things. Country to country, region to region, day to day and even minute to minute, the same topic areas bubble to the top: celebrities, current events, products and computer downloads.

“It’s amazing how similar people are all over the world based on what they are searching for,” said Greg Rae, one of three members of Google’s logs team, which is responsible for building, storing and protecting the data record.

Google’s following – it is the most widely used search engine — has given Mr. Rae a worldview from his cubicle. Since October 2001, he has been able to reel off “anthrax” in several languages: milzbrand (German), carbonchio (Italian), miltvuur (Dutch), antrax (Spanish). He says he can also tell which countries took their recent elections seriously (Brazil and Germany), because of the frenzy of searches. He notes that the globalization of consumer culture means that the most popular brands are far-flung in origin: Nokia, Sony, BMW, Ferrari, Ikea and Microsoft.

Judging from Google’s data, some sports events stir interest almost everywhere: the Tour de France, Wimbledon, the Melbourne Cup horse race and the World Series were all among the top 10 sports-related searches last year. It also becomes obvious just how familiar American movies, music and celebrities are to searchers across the globe. Two years ago, a Google engineer named Lucas Pereira noticed that searches for Britney Spears had declined, indicating what he thought must be a decline in her popularity. From that observation grew Google Zeitgeist, a listing of the top gaining and declining queries of each week and month.

Glancing over Google Zeitgeist is like taking a trivia test in cultural literacy: Ulrika Jonsson (a Swedish-born British television host), made the list recently, as did Irish Travelers (a nomadic ethnic group, one of whose members was videotaped beating her young daughter in Indiana) and fentanyl (the narcotic gas used in the Moscow raid to rescue hostages taken by Chechen rebels in late October).

The long-lasting volume of searches involving her name has made Ms. Spears something of a benchmark for the logs team. It has helped them understand how news can cause spikes in searches, as it did when she broke up with Justin Timberlake.

Google can feel the reverberations of such events, and others of a more serious nature, immediately.

On Feb. 28, 2001, for example, an earthquake began near Seattle at 10:54 a.m. local time. Within two minutes, earthquake-related searches jumped to 250 a minute from almost none, with a concentration in the Pacific Northwest. On Sept. 11, searches for the World Trade Center, Pentagon and CNN shot up immediately after the attacks. Over the next few days, Nostradamus became the top search query, fueled by a rumor that Nostradamus had predicted the trade center’s destruction.

But the most trivial events may also register on Google’s sensitive cultural seismic meter.

The logs team came to work one morning to find that “carol brady maiden name” had surged to the top of the charts.

Curious, they mapped the searches by time of day and found that they were neatly grouped in five spikes: biggest, small, small, big and finally, after a long wait, another small blip. Each spike started at 48 minutes after the hour.

As the logs were passed through the office, employees were perplexed. Why would there be a surge in interest in a character from the 1970’s sitcom “The Brady Bunch”? But the data could only reflect patterns, not explain them.

That is a paradox of a Google log: it does not capture social phenomena per se, but merely the shadows they cast across the Internet.

“The most interesting part is why,” said Amit Patel, who has been a member of the logs team. “You can’t interpret it unless you know what else is going on in the world.”

So what had gone on on April 22, 2001?

That night the million-dollar question on the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” had been, “What was Carol Brady’s maiden name?” Seconds after the show’s host, Regis Philbin, posed the question, thousands flocked to Google to search for the answer (Tyler), producing four spikes as the show was broadcast successively in each time zone.

And that last little blip?

“Hawaii,” Mr. Patel said.

The precision of the Carol Brady data was eye-opening for some.

“It was like trying an electron microscope for the first time,” said Sergey Brin, who as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford helped found Google in 1998 and is now its president for technology. “It was like a moment-by-moment barometer.”

Predictably, Google’s query data respond to television, movies and radio. But the mass media also feed off the demands of their audiences. One of Google’s strengths is its predictive power, flagging trends before they hit the radar of other media.

As such it could be of tremendous value to entertainment companies or retailers. Google is quiet about what if any plans it has for commercializing its vast store of query information. “There is tremendous opportunity with this data,” Mr. Silverstein said. “The challenge is defining what we want to do.”

The search engine Lycos, which produces a top 50 list of its most popular searches, is already exploring potential commercial opportunities. “There is a lot of interest from marketing people,” said Aaron Schatz, who writes a daily column on trends for Lycos. “They want to see if their product is appearing. What is the next big thing?”

Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly – Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasiion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.

So, does Google ever get subpoenas for its information?

“Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google,” Mr. Brin responded.

In aggregate form, Google’s data can make a stunning presentation. Next to Mr. Rae’s cubicle is the GeoDisplay, a 40-inch screen that gives a three-dimensional geographical representation of where Google is being used around the globe. The searches are represented by colored dots shooting into the atmosphere. The colors – red, yellow, orange – convey the impression of a globe whose major cities are on fire. The tallest flames are in New York, Tokyo and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Pinned up next to the GeoDisplay are two charts depicting Google usage in the United States throughout the day. For searches as a whole, there is a single peak at 5 p.m. For sex-related searches, there is a second peak at 11 p.m.

Each country has a distinctive usage pattern. Spain, France and Italy have a midday lull in Google searches, presumably reflecting leisurely lunches and relaxation. In Japan, the peak usage is after midnight – an indication that phone rates for dial-up modems drop at that time.

Google’s worldwide scope means that the company can track ideas and phenomena as they hop from country to country.

Take Las Ketchup, a trio of singing sisters who became a sensation in Spain last spring with a gibberish song and accompanying knee-knocking dance similar to the Macarena.

Like a series of waves, Google searches for Las Ketchup undulated through Europe over the summer and fall, first peaking in Spain, then Italy, then Germany and France.

“The Ketchup Song (Hey Hah)” has already topped the charts in 18 countries. A ring tone is available for mobile phones. A parody of the song that mocks Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for raising taxes has raced to the top of the charts in Germany.

In late summer, Google’s logs show, Las Ketchup searches began a strong upward climb in the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.

Haven’t heard of Las Ketchup?

If you haven’t, Google predicts you soon will.

———–

Ten years ago grunge musicians and college-age Cassandras who had never held a day job preached that corporate America would crush their generation’s soul and leave them without a pension plan. Films like Singles and Reality Bites chronicled their transition from college graduate to Gap salesclerk.

A few years later the core of Generation X–the 40 million Americans born between 1966 and 1975–found themselves riding the wildest economic bull ever. Salesclerks became programmers; coffee slingers morphed into experts in Java (computerese, that is)–all flush with stock options and eye-popping salaries. Now that the thrill ride is over, Gen X’s plight seems particularly bruising. No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this. Everything the dot-com boom delivered has been taken away–and then some. Real wages are falling, wealth continues to shift from younger to older, and education costs are surging. Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won’t be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.

FORTUNE recently encountered the bitter and (now) experienced voice of Generation X in a chain restaurant in suburban Dallas. Age 32 and piercing-free, Karen Doss has found out that the alternative rockers were right. To pay for college she worked full-time as a secretary at Pillsbury world headquarters. After graduation in 1993, she accepted her sole job offer as an advertising copywriter, even though she despised the industry. She finally quit last year to get her real estate license so that she could better support her husband while he fulfills his dream of owning a bar.

Halfway to pension age, she has just $5,000 in a 401(k) and $20,000 in home equity. Ideally, someone her age should have at least $100,000 stashed away. “I don’t have a corporate pension, and they aren’t what they were,” she says. “Social Security is obsolete and ineffective. And I already know that I’m going to have to have a private health-care plan. I’m angry that I can’t seem to get a break.”

Yes, yes, yes, we know what you’re thinking. The free-spending slackers have only themselves to blame, since the dot-com boom should have made them rich for life. On the surface that’s true. A 30-year-old today is 50% more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than his counterpart in 1974 and earns $5,000 more a year, adjusted for inflation. But that’s where the good news stops. He also has more in student loans and credit card debt, is less likely to own a home, and is just as likely to be unemployed. His salary probably topped out during the boom, whereas his predecessor’s rose throughout his career. Social Security will start to evaporate as he turns 50–or before, if the lockbox gets raided–so he’ll have to depend almost completely on his own savings for retirement. The comparison with a 30-year-old in 1984 isn’t any rosier.

Gen X “has done worse than their parents have done according to a number of dimensions, like net worth and home ownership,” says Edward Wolff, a New York University economist who studies trends in income and wealth. In a recent paper Wolff notes that young households lay claim to a smaller percentage of total U.S. wealth than they did in 1989.

Additionally, the inflation-adjusted median net worth of a Gen X household ($9,000) is lower than that of a comparable household in 1989, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.

Silicon Valley and Manhattan aren’t the only stomping grounds for disgruntled young professionals. FORTUNE interviewed more than 50 Gen Xers in Dallas, Louisville, and Seattle, with jobs ranging from construction manager to software engineer (see table). Battered by the economy and the bad luck of being born between Madonna and Britney Spears, they’re Generation Wrecked.

The kids who toted STAR WARS lunchboxes are the most highly educated generation in American history: Almost 60% of Gen Xers have some college education, and 6.6% have graduate school degrees. The Census Bureau calls their pursuit of higher education the “Big Payoff,” since historically a college-educated full-time worker earns 1.8 times more over his lifetime than a high school graduate.

When you can’t find a job or pay your student loans, though, college can seem like the Big Rip-Off. Today, the median student loan debt is at its highest level ever, $17,000, compared with $2,000 when the baby-boomers were in their 20s. According to educational lender Nellie Mae, graduating students average $20,402 in combined student loans and credit card debt. Those who have borrowed to pay for professional school, especially doctors and lawyers, are increasingly likely to have immense debt that is not reflected in proportionately higher salaries. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed by Nellie Mae had combined undergraduate and graduate student debt of more than $30,000, and for 22%, their loan payments ate up more than one-fifth of their monthly income.

After midnight at a young professionals party in Louisville, Steve Flores, 31, and his wife, Jessica, 32, mingle, while the rest of the revelers line up for last call. Steve is a communications specialist for the party’s sponsor, Brown-Forman, the big distiller. While working full-time, he is also pursuing an MBA. Although Steve worked to help pay for college, five years after graduation he has $40,000 of undergraduate debt to pay off; Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans. “I haven’t started paying back my student loans for undergrad because they’re deferred. I’m not taking any student loans for grad school,” Steve says. He isn’t so jovial when he thinks about the total tab. “We’re dreading the day we actually have to start paying.”

Those Big Payoff estimates rely on what 50-year-old college graduates make today to guess what 50-year-olds will make 20 years from now. That’s not all that useful. “Whereas their parents experienced rising wages over their lifetime, Generation X may not. So college may have been a bad investment,” says Wolff, the NYU economist. Adds Bruce Tulgan, a Gen Xer and founder of RainmakerThinking, a consultancy that studies labor trends: “I had a college president say to me, ‘I don’t know how much longer I can pull this off because people will start to ask, Is it worth this much money to be that much smarter?’ ”

A common misconception is that Gen Xers left college to find work in the dot-com go-go years. Not so. In fact, the climate in which they began working–the late ’80s and early ’90s–was pretty similar to today’s: an economic downturn followed by a jobless recovery. Gen Xers managed to survive in that environment by denouncing long-held workplace tenets like corporate loyalty.

It would take a skilled cartographer to map 28-year-old David Li’s convoluted dash through org charts at both big and small companies. After college in 1996, Li started out as an analyst for Accenture, worked as a health-care IT consultant for two other firms, and then became CTO of Claimshop.com, a medical claims processor.

Now, unemployed for a year and living in Dallas, Li says, “I’m not really looking for an entry-level position. But I need to realize that the job market now is a lot tighter than it had been when I first graduated from school.” He’s looking at jobs that pay around $50,000, 40% below the salary he was collecting at Claimshop. “I’m just hoping for something more along the lines of what you would normally expect to see from someone who has been out of school for four to five years.”

Li will probably find a job–at 6%, the unemployment rate among Gen Xers is around the national average–but he and others are discovering that previous experience means next to nothing. Jenifer Garcia is temping as a bartender in Seattle after having worked as a hardware tester for Intel, a programmer for MSN, and a manager for Barnes & Noble’s online division. Now the 29-year-old is applying for a full-time file clerk position again. “I feel like I’m 18 again, and not in a good way. I’ve gone through all of my savings and moved back in with my mom.”

Even some of Seattle’s dot-com winners have been humbled. Across town in a tonier part of Seattle, Rachel Best-Campbell and Alex Campbell bought their $700,000 house with proceeds from Alex’s stock options. They sold most of their shares of Cache Flow, now known as Blue Coat Systems, at $96. (The company’s stock now trades at $3, after a recent reverse split.) The Campbells’ luck dried up in April, when Alex was laid off, rehired as a contractor without benefits, then rehired yet again as a full-time employee but at a lower level.

After months of wondering whether Alex would have a job, Rachel feels no guilt about getting rich during the boom. “Clearly someone out there had $96 to pay for that share of stock, and they wanted it, and they bought it. My dad likes to say, ‘My 25-year-old daughter–she’s retired now.'”

Those who didn’t fulfill their early-retirement dreams in the late ’90s are beginning to realize that they may be in the workforce longer than their parents. “You don’t find many 65-year-olds working in advertising, so at some point the money must get good enough for people to retire. I don’t know,” says Luke Blackburn, a 32-year-old senior manager at a Louisville advertising firm. Luke has a house–he used money he received as a gift for a down payment–but little in the way of retirement savings. (Total: $0. He should have $50,000. Although he and Doss are the same age, his savings estimate is less since his living expenses are lower.) “I don’t see much future return for investments, either stock or even Social Security benefits. I plan for the kids, but there’s not much room for extra.” Luke doesn’t have a financial planner either. “The brokers only call you if they think you have money,” he says. “They started calling me when they saw my job promotion announced in the newspaper.”

At least the brokers’ attempts aren’t laughable. At a recent Department of Labor summit, a group of the country’s top economists, politicians, and marketers decided that the best way to get Generation X to plan for retirement was through targeted advertising campaigns. Slogans included “It’s your money, it’s your choice, and it’s your future,” “Save for independence day,” and “Wazzup.” Whatever.

Instead of creating catch phrases, the government should focus on creating retirement options that give Gen Xers –and baby-boomers too, for that matter–the flexibility to withdraw money from their accounts if they’re temporarily unemployed, starting a business, or just taking time out, say financial planners. Most important, the retirement accounts need to be portable to match the winding job paths of Gen Xers.

A New York Life Investment Management survey of high-net-worth Gen Xers found that the respondents thought they needed $2 million to retire. Not even close, says Beverly Moore, who conducted the study. A Gen Xer who makes $100,000 and wants to retire at 59 needs $7.3 million net of taxes to sustain that lifestyle. (That means saving $2,600 a month and assumes an 8% return.) The truth of the matter is that very few Gen Xers are saving enough to reach even the $2 million benchmark.

And a return to economic good times doesn’t guarantee that most Gen Xers will reach that level. Remember that many of the problems that existed in the early ’90s including falling real wages and the slow disappearance of the middle class, weren’t erased by the boom. In the case of wages, they only inched up during the dot-com years. (Economists are still trying to figure out why they didn’t rise more. One possibility: the influx of skilled foreign labor.) And of the wealth the boom created, the richest households gobbled up a disproportionate amount.

Back in Dallas, Karen Doss says she’s angry that she hasn’t been able to rely on family, an employer, or the government to help with her future. “The biggest problem with Social Security is that we have no control,” she says. “Sure, you can put your money away, but Enron will not go away, and there is going to be another WorldCom. [Corporate America] will still lie and steal our money.”

So is Karen prepared? On this subject, she does her best slacker impression. “I can’t even tell you how much I have in my 401(k), and I have two of them floating out there with companies. I’m just going to hope it works out at this point. I just wanna die young so I don’t have to deal with it.”

———–

Inside the Rolling Stones Inc. The Rolling Stones are an astounding moneymaking machine. Here’s how Mick Jagger & Co. have perfected the business model behind the most successful act in rock & roll today. FORTUNE Monday, September 30, 2002 By Andy Serwer

Mick Jagger is wearing a cool pink shirt, slim black trousers, and bright red socks. His hair is–well, there’s a lot of it. But don’t let the look fool you. Mick is all business. That’s business with a capital “B,” as in the stuff we write about all the time in the pages of FORTUNE.

I’m up in Jagger’s suite in Boston’s Four Seasons hotel just before the Stones kick off their worldwide Licks tour. Mick turns down the volume on a boom box, packs off two of his young kids with their nannies, and then holds forth on product pricing, economics, and business models. Jagger is eloquent and informed, but he has a disclaimer: “I don’t really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson,” he says as he leans back on the couch. “I’m a creative artist. All I know from business I’ve picked up along the way. I never really studied business in school. I kind of wish I had, kind of, but how boring is that?” he says with a grin.

Like the protagonist in one of his most devilish songs, Mick has been around for many a long year. He had plenty of smarts to begin with, and now he has 40 years of music industry experience under his belt. Jagger may be getting a trifle old to rock & roll–he’ll turn 60 next July–but from a business perspective he’s at the top of his game. Which makes sense in a way. After all, that’s a typical age for a CEO of a large, multinational organization. (Okay, so most of the CEOs we follow don’t have to swivel-hip their way through “Midnight Rambler,” but you get the point.)

There are, of course, plenty of detractors who say the Rolling Stones should pack in their guitars and drumsticks. “Way old,” they sniff, “and way irrelevant.” I have two responses, one subjective and one objective. Subjectively, the Rolling Stones sound pretty damn good, even after all these years. And objectively, if they’re such has-beens, then how do you explain the band’s phenomenal commercial success over the past decade? No, they aren’t writing groundbreaking songs anymore–in fact they haven’t really recorded any new material of note in 20 years–but we sure are listening to their old stuff. A lot. And buying concert tickets. Millions and millions of them. And that’s the wrinkle here. Even though the Stones have been in what you might call a creatively fallow period, we want to hear them more than ever. Couple that with the fact that they have perfected their business model, and it’s easy to understand why they are such an astounding moneymaking machine.

The bottom line is this: “The only rock & roll band that matters,” or “the greatest rock & roll band in the world,” or whatever you want to call Mick, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood, they are far and away the most successful act in rock today. Since 1989 alone–the beginning of the modern age of the Rolling Stones (more on that later)–the band has generated more than $1.5 billion in gross revenues. That total includes sales of records, song rights, merchandising, sponsorship money, and touring (see charts: Hot Licks and Packing Them In). The Stones have made more money than U2, or Springsteen, or Michael Jackson, or Britney Spears, or the Who–or whoever.

Next: The Rolling Stones Inc. runs on a combustible mix of talent and labor…

Unlike some other groups, the Stones carry no Woodstock-esque, antibusiness baggage. The group has tendrils deep in American business, cutting sponsorship and rights deals with stalwarts like Anheuser-Busch, Microsoft, and Sprint. Remember the old Boston Consulting Group matrix of the four types of businesses? Well, if the Stones were a traditional company, they would be the cash cow.

As with most thriving enterprises, the Rolling Stones Inc. runs on a combustible mix of talent and intense labor–the product of four decades of trial and error. The band downplays the effectiveness of the organization: “I’m sure that if you looked at it and analyzed it, you could say, ‘Well, that’s fucked up,'” says Jagger. “That shouldn’t be like that. No, of course it isn’t run well. No show business organization is run well. There’s always too much money paid out.” Keith, for his part, just shakes his head: “It’s a mom-and-pop operation,” he laughs. “Mick is the mom, and I’m the pop, and then we have these offspring that need feeding.” Well, kind of.

The Stones, or at least some members of the band, can still come across as wiggy rock stars. (“You’re talking to the business right now,” Richards tells me, holding up his two hands ceremoniously. “These are the business.”) But in many respects the Rolling Stones are like any other large business. They are global, they pay taxes (grudgingly), and they litigate. The band has a P&L and budgets, and accountants, and lawyers, and bankers, and investments, and software, and hardware. “They know what they’re doing,” says Barry Diller, a Jagger confidant. “That’s what separates them from any other band.”

Spend time with their senior entourage and you quickly realize how the Stones got so market-wise. Sure, Mick attended the London School of Economics (“I mostly studied economic history”), but his greatest talent, besides strutting and singing, is his ability to surround himself and the rest of the band with a group of very able (they probably hate to be called this) executives.

The Rolling Stones are a private and secretive organization. Most of the team, like Joe Rascoff, the band’s business manager, and tour director Michael Cohl, stay out of the public eye. So, too, does Prince Rupert Zu Loewenstein, a London-based banker who carries an old Bavarian title and who’s been the band’s chief business advisor for some 30 years–“and I hope for another 30 too,” he says. (Keith calls Loewenstein “the mastermind of our setup.”) But just because the Stones’ financials aren’t public doesn’t mean there isn’t rigorous benchmarking. “Mick likes to run a pretty tight ship,” Keith says to me with a twinkle in his eye.

The business side of the Stones has several facets. As for any executive running a conglomerate, understanding and managing these diverse businesses are the key, says Jagger. “They all have income streams like any other company,” he says. “They have different business models; they have different delegated people that look after them. And they have to interlock. That’s my biggest problem.” And as we will see, his biggest opportunity.

The touring side of the business produces a torrent of revenue when the band is on the road, and then of course absolutely zilch when the tour is done. The record business also blows hot and cold–depending on if a new album is released or if old ones are promoted–though it’s not as erratic as touring. Music rights, on the other hand–money paid to a band when its songs are played on, say, the radio–are predictable enough that some artists (most famously David Bowie) have been able to securitize these rights and sell bonds backed by their revenue streams.

To harness these businesses, to make them “interlock,” the Stones and Prince Rupert have set up a unique business structure, which looks roughly like this: At the top, not unlike at a blue-chip law firm, is a partnership consisting of the four core members of the group: Jagger, Richards, Watts, and Wood. Do all four get equal shares of touring and new-record sales? No one in the Stones party will touch that one. “In the old days they all got equal splits,” says the Stones’ former manager, Allen Klein, “but I doubt it now.”

Connected to the Stones partnership and Prince Rupert is a group of companies that include Promotour, Promopub, Promotone, and Musidor, each dedicated to a particular aspect of the business. This family of companies is based in the Netherlands, which has tax advantages for foreign bands. When the group isn’t touring, these companies employ only a few dozen employees. At the high-water mark of a tour, on the night the band is playing, say, Giants Stadium, the Stones may employ more than 350. Backstage the enterprise resembles a flourishing startup, with dozens of fast-moving junior employees in black T-shirts running around to make sure the IPO, er, the show, gets off without a hitch. It looks crazy, but it works. Perhaps Keith sums it up best: “With our business, who really knows what’s what. You go and look at Lake Superior, and you say, ‘Look at all that water, and that’s just the top!’ ”

Next: Touring is the biggest moneymaking part of the Stones’ operation….

Today touring is professionalized, complete with immigration lawyers, traveling accountants, and real-time budgets. It is also the biggest moneymaking part of the Stones’ operation. Since the 1989 Steel Wheels tour, the Stones have grossed over $1 billion on the road. Though exact profit margins are hard to come by, it’s safe to say that tens of millions of that total flowed to each of the band members. It wasn’t always this way. “When we first started out, there wasn’t really any money in rock & roll,” says Jagger. “There wasn’t a touring industry; it didn’t even exist. Obviously there was somebody maybe who made money, but it certainly wasn’t the act. Basically, even if you were very successful, you got paid nothing.”

Jagger recalls that in the beginning, “you’d just jump from gig to gig. There’d be no sound or lights or anything.” Gradually, beginning with the Stones’ 1969 American tour–which ended with the debacle at Altamont–the touring business would become modernized, with traveling lights, sound, and stage. Jagger himself had a major hand in this, sometimes negotiating directly with promoters in various regions and countries. But it wasn’t until the 1989 Steel Wheels tour, when Canadian rock promoter Michael Cohl took over managing the band’s shows, that the Stones would begin to fully exploit the economic potential of this business.

Generally speaking, prior to Steel Wheels, the band would hire a tour director–the late Bill Graham of Fillmore West fame once filled this role–who would call local promoters in each city to set up shows. Individual deals would have to be cut with each promoter, who took, say, 10% to 15% of ticket sales after the cost of the show. The tour director would then have to collect $250,000 here, $400,000 there, from promoters all over.

Cohl, who started out as a self-described “drugged-out, late-teens strip-club owner from Ottawa,” had been one of those local promoters. After a run-in with the volatile Graham in 1988, Cohl came up with an idea that he thought would tantalize the Stones, who at the time weren’t on speaking terms with each other, never mind touring. “I knew the guys from Pink Floyd, who knew Prince Rupert, and I asked them if they would call Rupert for me,” he tells me as the sounds of the Stones rehearsing “Street Fighting Man” echo backstage. “Ten minutes later Rupert was on my phone saying, ‘Excuse me, young man’– he talks in this very nice, formal British accent–‘excuse me, I understand you have something to say to me.’ And I said $40 million for 40 shows. He said, ‘Very interesting.’ ”

The way Cohl’s plan worked is that he would book the entire tour himself, dealing with the venues directly and cutting out the local promoters. He would also produce new streams of revenue by selling skyboxes, bus tours, and TV deals, and by taking merchandising to a new level. He would bring in corporate sponsors like Volkswagen and Tommy Hilfiger. And most important, he would help stitch these operations together, through cross-promotion and the like, to maximize their earning power.

After months of negotiations and a desperate, failed bid by Graham to retain the Stones, the band accepted Cohl’s offer. Cohl even ended up signing on as the band’s tour director. There was one small problem: “I didn’t have $40 million,” recalls Cohl with a grin. “I had sold half of my company to Labatts [the Canadian beer company], and the truth of the matter is when I offered Rupert the $40 million, I didn’t have their permission to offer it either.” Ultimately Cohl was able to come up with the money, and he and the Stones put together the tour. (Another wrinkle: Steel Wheels had to be insured–Lloyd’s covered Stones tours–and before the insurer would issue a policy, the band had to take physicals. Keith passed, legend has it, to his own astonishment.)

“First and foremost, the show itself was the seminal, watershed point,” says Cohl. “When you look at what a stadium show was pre-Steel Wheels, it was a bit of a scrim, and a big, wide, flat piece of lumber, and that was it. The band turned a stadium into a theater. It all started with Mick. He simply said, ‘We have to fill the end space.’ It was complicated to the third power and expensive to the fifth. But it worked.”

It was also incredibly hairy. “I think Michael would admit that it was a huge learning curve for him doing Steel Wheels,” says Jagger. “Michael had never done it before really, so it was a bit of a gamble.” The tour began in August, and by October Cohl looked at the numbers and realized they were losing money. Gobs of it. The band and the organization had to cut costs quickly. “It was a deal where I said they could make a whole lot of money, and I would guarantee it ‘subject to,’ and the ‘subject to’s’ made us partners at the end of the day. So we all had to learn how to do it,” says Cohl. And they did.

Next: Ticket prices have been the subject of much grousing….

In the end, the Steel Wheels tour–tickets, merchandising, sponsorship money from Anheuser-Busch–made over $260 million worldwide, then a record for a rock tour. The venues, Cohl, the band, and Labatts all made out bigtime. Steel Wheels became the template, and Cohl has been doing Stones tours ever since, refining the operation each time around.

On the new, E*Trade-sponsored Licks tour, the band, which includes keyboard whiz Chuck Leavell and bassist Darryl Jones, is playing three types of venues: stadiums, arenas, and small clubs, each with a unique set of songs (the band has rehearsed more than 130 for this tour), staging, and lights. “It is an amazing challenge,” says Patrick Woodroffe, the lighting designer on the tour, who’s jumped in a cab with me after the Boston show, “but it’s great for the audiences and it keeps the band fresh.” The props and set are downplayed a bit. The giant, multimillion-dollar videoscreen, the staging, and the lights that change for every song don’t overwhelm but complement.

Because they are doing smaller venues, the Stones and Cohl know revenue from Licks won’t approach the monster Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994-95, which brought in close to $370 million worldwide. Nor will it eclipse 1997-99’s Bridges to Babylon/No Security tour, which did over $390 million. But merchandising (Jagger’s and Charlie Watts’s domain) will be more sophisticated than ever. Jagger tells me that there will be some 50 products–such as underwear by Britain’s Agent Provocateur and new, expensive items like shirts, jackets, and, yes, dresses. And it will be “our most efficient tour ever,” promises Rascoff, though he refuses to divulge any of the band’s financials. “Doing fewer stadiums this time cuts costs because in previous tours we had to have three stages and three crews. This tour we have one stadium stage with one crew.” In other words, when sales in your core business aren’t maximized, you look to cut costs and boost tertiary revenues.

As usual, ticket prices ($50 to $350) have been the subject of much grousing in the press. But Jagger is happy to delve into the topic. “This is one element of the business thing that I try to really control as much as I can,” he says. “Pricing a concert ticket is very different from pricing a Lexus or toothpaste. It’s more like a sports event. And you are prepared to pay the market price. So if U2 or Madonna costs $100 (I’m making these up), you don’t want to be charging $200. I try to keep ticket prices within the market price range. It’s America. We’re not living in a socialist society where we’re all paid so low and no one can afford it.”

The ticket-pricing controversy burns Cohl up. Athletes like Derek Jeter and Marshall Faulk are free to make whatever they can, “but people complain that Mick and Keith can’t. I think that is the biggest load of crap. We are only charging $50 a night for club shows, which we lose money on. I read on eBay one of the tickets to Roseland Ballroom [in New York] went for $10,000. That makes us schmucks! When we charge $300 for some seats, somebody’s out there selling them for $500. If we were to charge $500, somebody would sell them for more. Come on, what are they complaining about?” It’s true that ticket prices to Stones shows have outpaced inflation (along with health care and college tuition), but you kind of get the feeling that the same people who are complaining about high ticket prices also rue the fact that Blind Boy Fuller died poor.

The Stones are famously tax-averse. I broach the subject with Keith in Camp X-Ray, as he calls his backstage lair. There is incense in the air and Ronnie Wood drifts in and out–it is, in other words, a perfect venue for such a discussion. “The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws,” says Keith, Marlboro in one hand, vodka and juice in the other. “It’s why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws, where to go, where not to put it. Whether to sit on it or not. We left England because we’d be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all. I don’t want to screw anybody out of anything, least of all the governments that I work with. We put 30% in holding until we sort it out.” No wonder Keith chooses to live not in London, or even New York City, but in Weston, Conn.

Of course, it wasn’t just the taxman’s pinch that forced the Rolling Stones to focus on the bottom line. They also got screwed by record labels. “In the early days you got paid absolutely nothing,” recalls Jagger. “The only people who earned money were the Beatles because they sold so many records.”

By the mid-’60s the Stones had reportedly sold ten million singles, including “Satisfaction,” and five million albums, but the band was still living hand to mouth. “I’ll never forget the deals I did in the ’60s, which were just terrible,” says Jagger. “You say, ‘Oh, I’m a creative person, I won’t worry about this.’ But that just doesn’t work. Because everyone would just steal every penny you’ve got.”

In 1965 the band began to work with Allen Klein, a New York manager, who would help it negotiate a new contract. Klein, now 70, recalls his big day with the band some 37 years later: “I told the guys, ‘I want you to come down with me to Decca. Wear dark sunglasses and look angry but don’t say anything. Leave the talking to me.'” By intimidating the British record execs, Klein helped land the Stones their first million-dollar payday. Klein (whose company, ABKCO, still owns rights to the Stones’ songs from the earliest days through 1971) and the band would have a falling-out and part ways in the early 1970s. With vintage photographs of the Stones covering his office walls, Klein leafs through the old contracts in his office and shakes his head: “The others didn’t look at them that much, but I remember Mick would read every single page.”

Interestingly, the Stones have never had a blockbuster album, like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours or Michael Jackson’s Thriller. But what they have done is make 42 albums. And they’ve sold tens of millions of those records and CDs, and singles and EPs too. Since 1989 alone, for instance, the band has sold more than 38 million albums at roughly $12 each, for gross proceeds of over $460 million.

The new Stones albums haven’t been as hot as the oldies, obviously, but the band has high hopes for the Forty Licks album, due out this fall. The album has 36 of the band’s biggest hits, plus four new songs. Also, Allen Klein’s ABKCO has just re-released 22 of the band’s earlier albums on SACD hybrid, a new CD format (compatible with traditional CD players), including all of the band’s great records from the 1960s. In a way, the Stones’ older music is like Coke Classic. The band tries to introduce new varieties, some of which do okay, but it’s the original stuff we still love the best.

Next: So what keeps the Stones going?…

Serwer: Your income must vary all over the place, year by year, because the tours give you this huge bump and then there’s nothing.

Richards: But there’s always an awful lot of PRS coming in.

Serwer: What the hell is that?

Richards: Performing rights. Every time it’s played on the radio. I go to sleep and make money–let’s put it that way.

Now this is the Microsoft part of the Stones’ business empire. Profitable. Steady. And stretching out to the horizon. “Music publishing is more profitable to the artist than recording. It’s just tradition,” says Jagger. “There’s no rhyme or reason. The people who wrote songs were probably better businesspeople than the people who sang them were. You go back to George Gershwin and his contemporaries–they probably negotiated better deals, and they became the norm of the business. So if you wrote a song, you got half of it, and the other half went to your publisher. That’s the model for writing.”

And Jagger/Richards have written more than 200 songs. The pair has had a few monster hits like “Honky Tonk Woman,” but more significantly they have dozens of songs that are played on FM radio, which is still a vibrant category. And it’s not just the radio. Every time “Shattered” or “Jumping Jack Flash” is played anywhere around the globe when commerce is involved–at an ice-skating rink, on a jukebox, or at a club–the Jagger/Richards cash register goes ka-ching.

Again, Jagger is intimately involved in this business. Perhaps the most famous product rollout of all time used a Stones song–Windows 95 and “Start Me Up.” Microsoft reportedly paid $4 million for those rights. (“Yeah, we met Bill Gates,” says Jagger. “And [Paul] Allen is always around.”) Not to be outdone, Apple used “She’s a Rainbow” to launch the colored iMacs. But, says Jagger, “we don’t really do a lot of commercials. I mean, I’m not against them per se, but we don’t do them that much. We do a lot of film licensing. We get lots of requests, and I usually say yes. It’s a great business. You have a sort of price that you like to keep to, unless it’s a low-budget film and it’s a really interesting film–then you can make a deal maybe.” Though the cost of buying rights to use a Stones song in a film varies, on average it runs a filmmaker in the low six figures.

Over the past decade Fortune estimates that the songwriting team of Jagger/Richards has garnered $56 million from songs being played on radio and in public venues, as well as being used in advertising and movies. A significant chunk of change. “The thing that we all had to learn is what to do when the passion starts to generate money,” says Richards. “You don’t start to play your guitar thinking you’re going to be running an organization that will maybe generate millions.”

The tours, the records, the rights: They’ve all made the Stones the wealthiest rock & roll band on the planet. None more so than Jagger and Richards, who unlike the others enjoy the full fruits of all that licensing. Their portfolios are mostly in the hands of the trusty and tight-lipped Prince Rupert. Though Jagger follows the financial news in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, he isn’t doing much with stocks these days. “I used to play the market, but I’m not that interested at the moment because I don’t think it’s a very interesting time,” he says.

Keith is more philosophical: “I watch the [Dow] go up and down and wonder. It’s like watching the horses really. How much is that an indication of anything? Oh, the Dow’s up…. And you go, okay, who’s running in the 3:30 at Belmont? I have a small portfolio. I find things I love, like houses–bricks and mortar. Nothing wrong with a bit of land. I’ve invested in my friends’ projects. And there’s Rupert. He is a great financial mind for the market. He plays that like I play guitar. He does things like a little oilwell. And currency–you know, Swiss francs in the morning, switch to marks in the afternoon, move to the yen, and by the end of the day, how many dollars? That’s his financial genius, his wisdom. Little pieces of paper. As long as there’s a smile on Rupert’s face, I’m cool.”

So what keeps the Stones going? Money, yes. But the band could make big bucks simply by doing commercials instead of touring. Going on the road is about ego gratification. “This whole thing runs on passion,” says Richards. “Even though we don’t talk about it much ourselves, it’s almost a sort of quest or mission.”

The Stones and their estates will continue licensing songs and selling records for years. But sooner rather than later, the touring will cease. Jagger’s stage antics are remarkable when you consider his age. But how much longer? Charlie Watts, the oldest Stone, is already 61. The band hasn’t said this is the last tour, though it could be–and of course that kind of speculation is great for ticket sales, particularly in second-tier cities, where this really could be the Stones’ last show.

“How long can we go on?” asks Keith. “Forever. We’ll let you know when we keel over.” And when that day comes, it will mean not only the end of the world’s greatest rock band but also a winding-down of one of the most successful enterprises this crazy business has ever known.

———–

Hit Charade The music industry’s self-inflicted wounds. By Mark Jenkins Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 8:19 AM PT

2001 may not be the year the music died, but the pop biz did develop a nagging headache, and it’s not going away. The recorded-music industry’s first slump in more than two decades continues this year; the number of discs sold is slipping and so is the appeal of last year’s stars. Britney Spears’ latest album has moved 4 million copies—a big number, but less than half what its predecessor did.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five major labels that dominate CD retailing, would like to blame much of the slide on Internet music-file swapping. Yet there are many other causes, including the fact that the big five are all units of troubled multinationals—AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony—that are focused on short-term gain and have no particular interest in the music biz. There’s also been a recession, of course, and resistance to CD prices that have grown much faster than the inflation rate. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the major labels’ very success in dominating the market, which has squelched musical innovation.

In 2001, U.S. CD sales declined 6.4 percent. Sales have continued downward this year, and a Forrester Research study released last week projects a 6 percent decline in 2003 as well. Yet the report disputes the RIAA’s assertion that the now-bankrupt Napster and its successors are responsible for the downturn. More than two-thirds of CDs bought in the United States sell to consumers who rarely or never download music files from the Web, Forrester concludes. Another market research company, Ipsos-Reid, reported in June that 81 percent of music downloaders buy as many or more CDs than they did before they started getting tunes from the Internet.

The RIAA, of course, has studies that say otherwise. But anyone who rewinds to the last major music-biz slump will find some interesting parallels. In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes. The international industry even had an outraged official slogan: “Home taping is killing music.” The idea was that music fans—ingrates that they are—would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising). Cassettes were so anathema to the biz that Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren could think of no more provocative way to launch his new band, Bow Wow Wow, than with a ode to home taping, “C30, C60, C90, Go!”

By the time Bow Wow Wow bowed in 1980, however, the crisis was almost over. It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-pop—lively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin. They called it disco back then, and the name has never recovered from the era’s backlash. Although usually termed teen-pop, the music of ‘N Sync and Britney Spears is not unlike disco: Both are intellectually underachieving, cookie-cutter styles that have made stars of performers not known primarily for their skills as singers, songwriters, or musicians.

In addition to cassettes, late-’70s industry apologists blamed video games for undercutting record sales. There may have been something to that, and the biz faces even more multimedia rivals today: cable TV, the Internet, and DVDs, as well as much more sophisticated video games. Perhaps more important, younger consumers live in a world where popular music is ubiquitous (and therefore less precious) than in the ’60s and ’70s, when rock was rationed, semi-subterranean, and generation-specific. Some older music fans may hate hip-hop, nu-metal, or techno, yet in general rock today defines parents as much as (or more than) their kids.

The major labels have snubbed older music fans in recent years, yet over-40s now constitute 44 percent of the CD market, up from 19.6 percent in 1992, according to the RIAA’s 2001 annual consumer profile. Unfortunately for the majors, the tastes of graying Beatles and Stones fans have fragmented, making them difficult to reach via mass-marketing. These consumers help support the many smaller labels that market alt-rock, world music, new age, reissues, jazz, folk, bluegrass, post-minimalism, and other niche genres.

Meanwhile, younger fans lose interest quickly and often don’t develop strong loyalties. They’re less likely to investigate a breakthrough act’s previous albums or buy its next one. The genres that appeal to under-25 music fans continue to sell, but individual performers fade quickly.

This is a huge problem for the big labels, who still base their marketing on long-term stars who release multimillion-copy blockbusters. One album that sells 10 million copies is more lucrative than 10 that sell 1 million, because once a CD takes off, the only fixed costs are manufacturing and shipping, which are trivial compared to production and marketing. And long-term careers make each album less of a risk, since the most loyal fans will buy everything an artist releases and profits are high on back catalogs that keep selling.

Yet maintaining superstars is hard and getting harder. They require large advances, high royalty rates, and massive production and marketing money. And they keep demanding such things even when their careers tank (notable recent examples: Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). The risk that a contemporary superstar’s latest album will bomb is high, since attempts to reach the widest possible audience can easily lead to banality and overexposure.

In 1980, when the same sort of listener burnout bedeviled the biz and its superstars, salvation came from an unexpected source: MTV, an upstart cable channel that began broadcasting clips by a new generation of British bands simply because the established U.S. performers weren’t yet making video clips. Groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran, and the Clash—whose label didn’t even release the original version of its first album in the United States till 2000—broke through to a novelty-starved audience. Suddenly, home taping wasn’t an issue anymore.

This is just the sort of shock that the music industry needs—and labors so hard to prevent. Since 1980, the mainstream music industry has only consolidated: Five companies control CD sales, MTV owns a multi-channel music-TV franchise, and a single company, Clear Channel, dominates both the concert business and Top 40 and rock radio. Ironically, if unsurprisingly, the biz has suffered from its near-monopolistic control. Short-sighted labels and tightly programmed radio have bolstered the success of certain styles and performers but prevented anything fresh from breaking through.

In the past, there were many ways to crack the biz: local radio stations, strong indie labels, regional clubs and promoters. Today, there are only a variety of separate-but-unequal circuits (alt-rock being the biggest) whose performers rarely break into the big time. (Of course, many of them don’t want to, and some are major-label refugees with no intention of going back.) In erecting bulwarks around their domains, the major music businesses have left no entrance for the serendipity that kept the pop industry lively (and profitable) for decades. Yet the barbarians at those padlocked gates are the only people who can save the major labels’ dwindling empires.

Mark Jenkins reviews music and film for the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, NPR’s All Things Considered, and others.

———–

Internet Scam Artist Fined $1.9M Fri May 24, 2:45 PM ET

By D. IAN HOPPER, AP Technology Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – An elusive Internet scam artist has been ordered to pay almost $1.9 million back to victims and stop a scheme that used thousands of misspelled Web addresses to trick Internet users into seeing adult advertisements, federal regulators announced Friday.

Federal Trade Commission lawyers sued John Zuccarini of Andalusia, Pa., last October to stop the scheme. Zuccarini set up Web sites that contained misspellings of popular names like the Backstreet Boys (news – web sites), Victoria’s Secret, Bank of America and The Wall Street Journal.

Visitors that inadvertently misspelled a site’s name, like victoreasecret.com instead of the lingerie retailer, went to Zuccarini’s site and were barraged with a hailstorm of pop-up ads for Internet gambling and pornography. The new windows returned to the screen even after they were closed, the FTC said.

“After one FTC staff member closed out of 32 separate windows, leaving just two windows on the task bar, he selected the ‘back’ button, only to watch the same seven windows that initiate the blitz erupt on his screen,” FTC lawyers said in the complaint.

FTC investigators said Zuccarini makes from $800,000 to $1 million per year by charging advertisers whose ads appear on the browser windows.

Companies targeted by Zuccarini’s scam have filed scores of complaints with regulators and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an oversight body that handles Internet addresses. The FTC said Zuccarini has lost 53 state and federal lawsuits and has had about 200 Web addresses taken from him and transferred to copyright holders.

Many of the Web sites target kids, including 15 variations on the Cartoon Network’s Web site, and 41 variations on the name of pop singer Britney Spears.

It is unclear whether the FTC will be able to collect the money, which is earmarked for consumer redress.

Zuccarini never appeared on his own or through a lawyer in the Pennsylvania federal court handling the case, even though witnesses testified that he was notified of the suit.

He did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Florida lawyer Howard Neu, who once represented Zuccarini, said he had “not the foggiest” idea where Zuccarini is.

Zuccarini does business under many company names, including 22 names using the word “Cupcake.” Victims of the scam should contact the commission at 1-877-382-4357 and use the FTC’s case name, “Cupcake Party.”

———–

It is rare to see such a disturbing piece of isolationist fluff these days, mostly because I don’t usually take the time to read deeply conservative, revisionist rags like the “National Review”. It occurs to me that if I searched thru the archives of the American press in 1939 I might see similar rhetoric to this article.

One advantage of living in Canada (granted it’s not Victor Hanson’s hobby farm) is the exposure to a number of different media and a plethora of opinions and “facts”, rather than the CNN/CNBC/ABC/CBS unfiltered Bush/Cheney viewpoint. It’s clear, having watched the limited spectrum of information being spoon-fed to right-wing bastards like Hanson, that he wouldn’t have the foggiest clue what is really happening in the middle east, thus exonerating his banal inquiries.

Now granted, it’s 3:30 AM and these are simply my views, based upon an education in this field, an open mind, and no substantial bias in any direction, but they might help Hanson in his quest for answers. Someone had better forward them to him. I know he’ll be willing to listen to my arguments and reflect objectively on the issues.

>”Why does Mr. Mubarak lecture us to become intimately engaged in the
>Middle East Peace process, when Mr. Clinton, who was very recently
>intimately engaged, got the intifada for his efforts?”

Well, Sharon made the intifada by marginalizing the PLO by committing brutal, violent attacks on innocent Palestinians while Arafat was suing for peace. As a result the Palestinians lost faith in Arafat’s ability to win through peace what intifada promised to win through war. Mr. Clinton was a marginal player at best. The same ruthless, greedy bastards that supported Sharon’s campaign financially in the US voted for Bush. So Clinton doesn’t have much to do with it at all.

>”And why does Mr. Mubarak seek to advise us about our proper diplomatic
>role, rather than explain to us why an Egyptian masterminded the deaths
>of 3,000 of our citizens and others of his countrymen are top lieutenants
>of Mr. Bin Laden and are now killing Americans in Afghanistan?”

Because Mr. Mubarak can no longer appeal to the UN because it is a benign bureaucracy, usurped by the US. The fact that several culprits were Egyptian is simply not relevant. Several were also British and American (Walker), so does that mean we should blame those countries because of the fact that 1 person out of tens of millions decided to fly a fucking 767 into the World Trade Center?

>”And why, instead of warning about rising anti-Americanism in his
>country ‹ itself the dividend of the virulent propaganda of his own
>state-run presses ‹ does he not ponder another recent poll, one showing
>that 76 percent of Americans themselves have an unfavorable view of the
>Arab world?”

First of all, show me that there’s any difference between the State-Run media in Egypt and the free press in the US right now (in terms of their unrepentant affirmation of government policy) and I will buy you a beer. Second, those people living in the third world have every reason to be hateful of the US, given their exploitation by US multinationals, the pervasiveness (particularly in Egypt) of rude US tourists, and the cultural imperialism which imprints a Leo DiCaprio/Britney Spears/Backstreet Boys aura upon every society in the world. Thirdly, American isolationism is not a new concept. That 76% of Americans don’t trust the Arab world is surprisingly low, given historical statistics.

>”Why do Middle Easterners become excited and haughty as they gloat to
>you that Americans are unpopular in their countries, but suddenly grow
>shocked, silent, and hurt when you politely and calmly explain why the
>feeling is becoming ‹ and perhaps should be ‹ mutual?”

The fact is that America, as a first world nation and our world’s only true superpower, can and must be held to a higher standard. As PLATO once said, the best form of government is a Benevolent Despot. As the governor of the planet earth in this decade, America must display convicted benevolence. Americans (and anyone) have an innate distrust of that which is unknown to them. The US media have done almost nothing to bridge that gap in helping Americans to understand that which opposes them.

>”Why do so many from the Middle East come here to find freedom, security,
>and safety ‹ and then criticize the country that they would never lea
>as they praise the country that they would never return to?”

As a Canadian who lived in the US for three years only to return home to Vancouver I must wonder aloud what could possibly be wrong with trying to amend a society’s behaviour to include that which you think is morally correct. That is how American Democracy was founded in the first place, and that is a fundamental tenet of a democratic society. America offers opportunities which are obvious however one need not ascribe to the entire ideology to benefit from its stronger points.

>”Why did we incur only anger from Eastern Europeans and Orthodox Christians
>for saving the Muslims of the former Yugoslavia from Milosevic, but no
>praise at all from the Islamic world itself?”

You incurred anger from those few who were displaced from their homes in Bosnia — their anger had little to do with religion. And the Islamic world, I certainly shouldn’t need to point our, is as fractious as Christianty and so one shouldn’t expect tacit support for every small deed. Frankly, I wasn’t aware that America’s participation in such events was strategically designed to win praise.

>”If the West Bank is the linchpin of the current Middle East crisis,
>what were wars #1, #2, and #3 there about, when it was entirely in Arab
>hands?”

The Middle East hasn’t been “entirely in Arab hands” for more than two centuries. In fact, in World Wars #1 and #2, the Arabs and Palestinians as well as other Muslims were promised self-rule and the withdrawal of imperialism in exchange for helping us with our war efforts in Europe. Go rent “Lawrence of Arabia”, dumbass.

>”Is there a difference between Palestinians preferring to kill
>Israeli civilians rather than soldiers, and Israelis preferring to
>kill Palestinian fighters rather than civilians?”

I know that I will get an emotional reaction to this statement in the wake of 9/11 but Terrorism is a tool of war for those who cannot fight wars. Israel must be held to a higher standard because they are clearly an army of occupation. Despite that, Isreali forces have shown no qualms, especially under Sharon’s leadership throughout the years, regarding the targeting of civilians. In the 1950s, then General Sharon burned entire villages and towns to rubble to make a highway safe for the passage of Israeli tanks, thus leading to his current legal troubles battling a Belgian war crimes tribunal.

>”Would the world be angry if a Jewish terrorist forced a captured
>Muslim to admit to his race and faith as he executed and beheaded
>him on film?”

Sadly this is the type of incident that has frequently occurred on both sides of the 50 years war. No one’s hands are clean here. I remind you that war is a brutal, savage thing and atrocities are committed on both sides. The correct question is: if an American special forces colonel captured an Al Quaeda soldier and tortured him, would we even hear about it on CNN?

>”Why do not Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, who overtly and
>stealthily war along side the Palestinians, simply all join with
>the former to gang up and declare war openly on Israel and then
>settle the issue on the battlefield?”

Because they themselves cannot get along with each other. Just like in Catholicism there are many sects within the Islamic faith, differing widely on cultural and political issues. The US has had a policy over the last 50 years of maintaining a delicate balance between the Sunnis, Shi’ites, and other more moderate groups in order to prevent Pan-Arabism from threatening not only Israel, but also the worldwide oil supply.

>”If we remove the fascist regime in Iraq and help institute
>consensual government there, why would we need troops any
>longer next door in Saudi Arabia? What and from whom would we
>then be there to protect?”

Since Saddam Hussein represents the Sunni minority in Iraq, if you removed him and held an election you would install a Shi’ite government which, when it aligned with the Iranian Shi’ites, would threaten the region in ways never before conceived of. The result would be a permanent and massively mechanized US presence in Saudi Arabia.

>”Has any American in any live broadcast on television ever
>asked a Saudi prince, the king of Jordan, the President of
>Egypt, or the royalty of Kuwait, whether they plan on allowing
>a free press or democratic government? If not, why not?”

American foreign policy is not focused on the global acceptance of democracy. American foreign policy seeks to support those governments which are favourable to US interests, and that will maintain a free-flowing supply of oil.

>”If 19 Americans incinerated 3,000 Muslims in Mecca or Medina,
>and blew up 20 acres in either of those cities with a two-kiloton
>explosion, would the Saudis or the Egyptians a few weeks later
>politely listen to admonitions from the American government about
>their incorrect Islamic policies in the Middle East?”

In 1991, American B-52s carpet bombed and killed somewhere between 125,000 – 200,000 Shi’ite conscripts who were herded out into the Kuwaiti desert by the Iraqi Republican Guard and were essentially starving to death and running out of ammunition and who were effectively waiting to surrender. At issue here is the fact that the incident was the most under-reported atrocity of the war, estimates of the numbers of dead varying so widely because not a single Western journalist chased down the story.

>”If the Eiffel Tower had been wrecked by an al Qaeda hijacked
>airliner, would the French have gone into Afghanistan after the
>terrorists? And if so, how and why? And would they have asked our
>help? And would we have given it?”

Since the French cannot effectively project power into the region, they would have sought the support of NATO. America would have used this as an excuse to do exactly what they’re doing today. If you think that the US is in the region solely to fight a war on terrorism then I have a bridge to sell you. It would have been much more difficult of course to sell the war to the American public, which traditionally turns a blind eye to deaths in foreign countries. Most Americans, including Joe Kennedy, thought that Hitler was a progressive leader while he was slaughtering jews by the tens of thousands in 1939.

>”Why in the last decade have we seen a succession of Israeli prime
>ministers and opposition figures but only Mr. Arafat alone?”

Last time I checked, Palestine isn’t even a country and the PLO isn’t a government. How can one have a democracy without borders?

>”Why do Middle Easterners become far more enraged at Israelis for
>shooting hundreds of Muslims than at Iranians, Iraqis, Jordanians,
>Syrians, Indians, Algerians, Russians, Somalis, and Serbians for
>liquidating tens of thousands?”

Israeli jeeps regularly pull up to taunt the inhabitants of Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, where Muslims live in poverty without running water, plagued by disease, and walled in by the lack of education. Understandably, the occupants of the camps (young boys mostly) vent their frustration by throwing rocks at these jeeps. The Isrealis return fire with rockets. Does that not deserve criticism? All murder is worthy of examination and analysis — for instance, how many times more people have the US killed in Afghanistan than were killed at the WTC?

>”Will Palestinians cheer when Saddam Hussein launches chemical-laden
>missiles against Israel when we invade his country?”

Yes. Why shouldn’t they? I keep getting this feeling they’re at war… Oh yes, that’s right! THEY ARE.

>”If someone blew up another 3,000 Americans, would the EU do anything?”

Did America declare a war on Terrorism after the hostage disaster at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where the Isreali athletes were held hostage and subsequently killed by Palestinian terrorists? Did they declare a war on Terrorism when the US-supported IRA bombed a hotel during a wedding at Enneskillen in 1981?

>”Has anyone made an inventory of the all the goods, services, and
>equipment that France has sold to Iraq since 1991?”

Has anyone inventoried the military hardware sold by the US over the last 30 years to Iran, one of the most prominent members of Bush’s “Axis of Evil”?

The point of my selective responses to this profoundly disturbing article is to illustrate that hypocrisy is everywhere and that America, as imperialists, are necessarily held to a higher standard than third world countries. America is plagued by the difficulty of being “reluctant imperialists”, wherein American foreign policy requires the projection of power and influence worldwide to keep the economy moving but the citizens of the US are largely isolationists.

-Ian.

On 3/16/02 7:20 PM, “John Hall” wrote:

> http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson031502.shtml
>
>
>
> Some of the better ones:
>
>
>
> If the West Bank is the linchpin of the current Middle East crisis, what were
> wars #1, #2, and #3 there about, when it was entirely in Arab hands?
>
>
>
> Is there a difference between Palestinians preferring to kill Israeli
> civilians rather than soldiers, and Israelis preferring to kill Palestinian
> fighters rather than civilians?
>
>
>
> If the Eiffel Tower had been wrecked by an al Qaeda hijacked airliner, would
> the French have gone into Afghanistan after the terrorists? And if so, how and
> why? And would they have asked our help? And would we have given it?
>
>
>
> What would the world think if Mr. Sharon displayed a revolver and then
> attempted to strike one of his ministers at a Cabinet meeting?
>
>
>
> Why do Palestinians shoot machine-guns up into the air at funerals and
> Israelis do not?
>
>
>
> If nearly two-thirds of the Arabic world believe that Arabs were not involved
> in September 11, why should any American believe anything that two out of
> three people from that region say?
>
>
>
> Has anyone heard a Muslim in the United States condemn September 11 without
> employing the word “but?”
>
>
>
>
>

Thursday January 17 3:18 PM ET

KaZaA Suspends Downloads Pending Dutch Court Ruling

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Internet company KaZaA BV on Thursday said it suspended downloads of its popular software that lets users trade songs online pending a decision in a copyright lawsuit filed against it in a Dutch court.

“Download of the KaZaA Media desktop software is temporarily and voluntarily suspended pending Dutch court decision on January 31,” the Amsterdam-based company said in a message on its Web site at (http://www.kazaa.com).

In late November, a Dutch judge ruled in a court case, which has upped the ante for copyright abuse online, that KaZaA must stop its users sharing copyrighted music files.

KaZaA has built its service with software from Netherlands-based FastTrack. Both companies are founded and run by the same person: 35-year-old Swedish-born Niklas Zennstrom.

FastTrack also licenses its technology to other popular file-swapping services known as Grokster and Morpheus.

KaZaA, Grokster and Music City have all been named in a separate suit filed last fall by the Recording Industry Association of America (news – web sites) (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The trade groups claim the services permit users to download and trade copyrighted material without permission. The RIAA grounded Napster (news – web sites) in July with a similar suit.

Napster recently launched a test version of a new secure service that prohibits unauthorized trading of songs.

But in the meantime, FastTrack has picked up where the original Napster left off by enabling tens of millions of users to trade tracks of The Beatles and Britney Spears for free as well as movie files.

KaZaA in November said it could not comply with the judge’s order because unlike Napster, it is designed to work without a central computer server and does not know who its customers are.