Interview: Ben Bradlee, Washington Post (Evening Standard)

Legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee says our politicians have become better liars than ever. By David Rowan

IF Ben Bradlee has learned one thing in his distinguished journalistic career, it is that governments invariably lie - and journalists who quote them uncritically perpetuate their lies. So, as the White House and Downing Street prepare for war against Iraq, he has a message for the media and the wider public: don't believe a damn thing they tell you.

"Before you write anything, before you take their word for anything, you ought to carefully study the possibility that they are dissembling. Think about why they might want to put a spin on something in a way that changes the facts."

He should know. As the Washington Post's editor during the Nixon years, it was Bradlee - memorably played by Jason Robards in All the President's Men - who backed his reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and so brought down the president. He may have retired 12 years ago, to become the newspaper's globetrotting "vice-president-at-large", but with a reputation as one of the past century's most influential newspapermen, his retirement is anything but quiet.

This week, for example, he is in London for a board meeting of Independent News & Media and to interview journalists for a summer fellowship at the Washington Post. A genial, elegant man, his lapelpocket handkerchief ironed to perfection, he has, at 81, lost little of his mental agility, nor his expletivefilled hackspeak. Today, he is directing his "goddams" and "f***ers" at the politicians determined to silence the truth in the event of war.

"It's hard to explain the efforts the Bush administration is going to to keep us in the dark," he says. "Can you believe all you're told by the government? Of course not. So you bring to bear your years of being deceived and lied to. And this administration is perhaps a little more zealous than its predecessors about keeping secrets."

Once war starts, he warns, it will be "very dangerous" to trust the official reports. "They almost never turn out to be true," he says. "In a war, we'll be talked to by people who don't know the truth, who know half the truth, or who are simply lying. It's a miracle that the truth does eventually get out."

Still, he considers the international press in good shape to challenge the official line, helped especially by the new generation of cheap, portable videophones that will make censorship impossible. The Post has supported Bush editorially, but, for his own part, Bradlee is "mystified" that the President has pushed for war. "God, I don't seek war over Iraq, and Bush is losing support by going it alone. Today we've got troops all over the goddam place."

HIS main interest in the British press, apart from delighting in our obituaries ("They're just great - an ecclesiastical sculptor, for God's sake!") - is The Independent, on whose editorial advisory board he sits. "Tony O'Reilly has more goddam boards than Jimmy Carter had liver pills," he says. But will any of them help stem the paper's declining circulation? He is diplomatic. "I don't know the answer, but O'Reilly's worked hard to gain control, and it would surprise me if he surrendered that control without such a battle. Yes, a paper should make a profit or be headed that way, but there are lots of papers that are not making money in Britain, I understand."

When not at board meetings, he has been writing about the Battle of Midway, running a small museum in Maryland and lecturing. He has also taught a course on dishonesty at Georgetown University. "I've become very interested in lying," he says, "the kind of lying that melds with spin so the truth gets lost in the swamp. I don't ever believe the first version of anything I'm told.

"Look what happened when we published the Pentagon papers, 30 years ago, and we and The New York Times were taken to the Supreme Court for violating national-security laws. Then, 18 years later, the prosecutor admitted there had never been any national-security violations. That truth took almost 20 years to find."

One of his Georgetown lectures considered the anonymously sourced briefing. "I don't approve of it," he explains. "If we have to hide someone's identity, we should at least help the reader a little - whether they're young or old, military or non-military. In one assignment, I asked students to find two lies on the front page of the Post and the New York Times. They got so good at it that it soon stopped taking any effort."

ASKED to point out the lies in the morning's broadsheets he gladly complies. "Well, I'd like to know more about the Matthew Kelly case for a start," he says glancing at The Daily Telegraph.

"And this headline about Chirac being able to make a conflict difficult. Are we sure about that? You also get a lot of lying in medical stories - this story about 'smart clothes' that stop you smelling doesn't sound right to me."

One of Bradlee's great lessons is that a determined journalist asking the right question might just hit the jackpot. So would he please break 30 years of silence and finally reveal the identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous Watergate source?

"It was nice of you to wait this long before you brought that up," he answers, a tad wearily. "All I'll say is he's male, he's still alive, but beyond that it's not my secret to tell. It's Woodward's secret - and I have every reason to believe he'll reveal it."

(Evening Standard, February 26 2003)

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Telegraph Magazine: Cannabis chocolate

By David Rowan

Once a week, a village postman in Pembrokeshire delivers a parcel of the "magical medicine" that has transformed Elsie Jones's life. For 10 years, as multiple sclerosis (MS) gradually conquered her nervous system, Mrs Jones felt increasingly despondent about the loss of both body and dignity - the humiliating incontinence, the uncontrolled muscle spasms, the searing pain that makes her husband Bill's nights as fitful as her own. The doctors offered little hope to 55-year-old Mrs Jones. Her illness was too advanced for her to try the drug beta-interferon, and her pain could not wait for the cannabis-based medicines currently under trial.

"She was just vegetating away, quite motionless apart from her left hand, and I would have done anything to give her a better quality of life," her 61-year-old husband explains in their specially adapted Fifties terrace house near St David's. "And then, two years ago, someone told me about those wonderful people making the medicinal chocolate. That was when everything changed."

Since then, Mrs Jones has been receiving free weekly gifts of the chocolate from a group of strangers who risk jail to help her and hundreds like her. The ingredients list, set out below the "Keep out of the reach of children" warning, explains why - besides cocoa mass, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, lecithin and vanilla, this confection also contains a two per cent dose of raw cannabis, an active ingredient that, according to Bill Jones, has dramatically eased his wife's symptoms without getting her stoned.

"It didn't work immediately, but over a month there was a vast change," he recalls. "She's more relaxed now, can move her legs without much pain, and is even getting to sleep again."

Mrs Jones - who remains unable to talk - still demands the constant attention that caused their family butcher's business to collapse, but she hints at a smile when, twice a day, her husband of 38 years asks her to open her mouth "for choccy time". "There are a lot of good people out there," he sighs, pointing to a padded envelope with a Cumbrian postmark. "People who'll take a risk to benefit others. I don't know who they are, but I'd like to shake them by the hand - there are an awful lot of grateful people."

The depth of that gratitude is an extraordinary testimony to an underground mail-order network that refuses to wait for cannabis-based medicines to be legalised. For two years, as pharmaceutical companies have prepared to tap a market worth an estimated £250 million, thousands of cannabis-laced chocolate bars have been arriving free of charge in the homes of MS sufferers across Britain.

The 150g "cannachoc" bars, as they are known, are made in volunteers' homes, with raw materials donated by well-wishers, and supplied only to carefully vetted MS patients - 300 at the last count - of whom most, like Elsie Jones, claim their lives have improved immeasurably. Until now, the internet-based network has maintained a necessary secrecy, aware that its members risk jail for growing, possessing and supplying the drug. But faced with threats of exposure by online "vigilantes' ? and aware that the political pendulum is swinging fast towards therapeutic legalisation - it agreed to allow The Telegraph Magazine to follow its work.

The group calls itself Therapeutic Help from Cannabis for Multiple Sclerosis (Thc4MS), and is nothing if not consumer-oriented. Inquirers, who must provide a doctor's note to confirm their illness, may choose milk, dark, vegan or diabetic chocolate, and are recommended to take one piece three times a day to alleviate symptoms without causing a cannabis "high". Potheads these people are not.

Typically the "clients", as they are known, are respectable professionals, mostly in their 50s and 60s, who would have little interest in cannabis had not they, or someone close to them, begun a desperate search for help. No payment is required, but stamps and minor donations are welcomed. And although the chocolate does not work for every sufferer, when it does the effect is deeply moving, as revealed in the letters received at the organisation's north Pennines outpost.

"Dear whoever," writes an elderly woman in Wokingham. "Thank you so much for my first supply of cannachoc. It is wonderful. For the first time in many, many months I do not have 'jerking' legs in the evenings and can sit still and watch TV!" From Essex, the scribble of a woman's unsteady hand testifies, "Since taking cannachoc, I can honestly say that the aching subsides and I can usually get to sleep. I don't feel any high-ness at all. Thank you so much." From Rhyl, "Without it my life would be one long pain, literally. Please can I have another bar? I had six squares of the last one and then I managed to tile the bathroom." And from Gwent, "It has taken me several years to take the plunge. I was reluctant to ask my husband to buy cannabis in a pub or street corner and risk arrest."

None is under any illusion about the crimes they and their unpaid suppliers are committing. But whatever their views about the legality of recreational cannabis, cannachoc's users share a consensus that the current law fails people with MS and other diseases who find it brings significant medical benefits.

Few of those we contacted were surprised that GW Pharmaceuticals, licensed by the Government to test cannabis-based medicines, had recently reported a series of successful trials which the company hopes will allow the NHS to offer its cannabis-based oral spray later this year. "What took them so long?" asked a young mother in Argyll. "It's not as if we haven't been telling the Government that it works." The House of Lords accepted this four years ago, when its Science and Technology Committee stressed "the need to legalise cannabis preparations for therapeutic use", until which time it urged toleration of "genuine" medicinal users. GPs, certainly, seem to share this view, judging by the number privately referring patients to the Thc4MS.org website - as are care home owners and, apparently, some police officers. As Bill Jones says, "I really don't care that it's illegal. It works for Elsie, and I made my mind up not to buy from a dealer, as you don't know what you're getting. I've told the neighbours. They just say, 'Good for you'."

Those bearing the greatest risk are volunteers like Mark and Lezley Gibson, a couple who have been making the chocolate bars from their home in a small Cumbrian town. They ask that the town's name is not specified, but that may be more to discourage desperate wheelchair-bound MS sufferers from arriving at their doorstep, as had been happening. It is not as if they are hard to find after two years making and posting the weekly chocolate packages. Legalise Cannabis Alliance stickers cover the car parked outside their terrace house and the local tourist information office directs inquirers to their front door.

They wrote to the Queen last year to explain what they do, and sought a Jubilee year amnesty for medicinal users. Buckingham Palace replied that their letter had been passed to the Home Office. "And David Blunkett's chosen not to reply," Mark says in mock surprise. "Never mind."

"These people have been through every quack cure," says Lezley as she opens the morning's dozen or so inquiry letters in the Gibsons' kitchen. "Eventually they've found the chocolate. Sometimes it's heartbreaking ? letters saying, 'I have been leading a life of misery, I hope you'll be my light at the end of the tunnel'. Look at this old guy," she says, struggling to read one page of barely controlled scrawl. "He's been on beta-interferon but found it gives him mood swings. Yup, it can really make you evil. Now he's going to try herb as a last resort. They're so straight, some of these people, that you can see how stressed they are when it comes to asking for cannabis. It must be awful - I know, I've been there."

Lezley, 38, had never tried cannabis until Mark, whom she met at a nightclub, suggested it might relieve her symptoms. She had become a hairdresser on leaving school in Carlisle, and was about to open her own shop at 21, when, as she put it, "my body just stopped working".

For eight months she had experienced pins and needles down her right side. One morning, sitting at an interview for a £1,000 new-business grant, she found that she could not stand up again. "I was in hospital for eight weeks, during which time the steroids doubled my weight till I resembled a small bungalow," she recalls, smiling at Mark as he sits unpacking catering-size bars of plain Dutch chocolate. "What was worse than being told I had MS was being a spakker - one minute this fashion-obsessed hairdresser, just turned 21 and full of myself, the next being prodded with needles and tickled with cotton wool. I'd never even heard of MS."

Her hospital consultant explained that within five years she would be incontinent and in a wheelchair. It is not an easy image to reconcile with the giggly, chatty woman who, 17 years later, saunters downstairs to post the latest bundle of parcels, her strawberry-pink dyed hair, diamond nose stud and black fetish-club T-shirt a jarring statement of individuality amid the prim order of this cobbled hill town.

Approaching the post office, where she is greeted warmly by neighbours and the postmaster ("How many will it be today, Lezley?"), she explains that when she smoked one of Mark's joints she would notice her attacks becoming weaker and less frequent. "I read up on the medical research into cannabis, and thought, wow, that's what I'm finding. I'd felt apprehensive about taking a drug, but apparently it was doing me the world of good." She now smokes daily; on those days when she does not - such as when she was arrested three years ago and charged with possession - her symptoms invariably re-present themselves, from the shakiness and fatigue to the twitching eyes and slurred speech.

When Lezley's case came to court, the jury acquitted her, to the judge's evident disappointment. "I explained that I wasn't doing anything wrong as it was a medicinal necessity," she says. "When you're that ill, you'd take paintstripper if you thought it would work."

Mark, a 38-year-old cleaner and former food hygiene manager, is also no stranger to the courts. In 1989 he spent a week on remand in Durham prison after 1lb of cannabis was found in the boot of his car (he says it belonged to someone else). He has also been fined over various minor charges of possession. In 2001 he stood for Parliament as the local Legalise Cannabis candidate. Although Lezley and Mark are both clear about the illegality of the cannachoc network, they argue that, since it is a cashless, altruistic project that is harming nobody, they have a moral duty to respond to pleas of desperation.

"I can't look someone in the eye when they're saying help me," Lezley says, back in the kitchen, its walls plastered with "No victim - no crime" stickers and a poster of Howard Marks. "It's not the right thing to do. I didn't even have a detention at school, but because I use cannabis I'm getting dragged into a world of crime. If someone is sick, you don't put them in jail!" Mark adds, "I can't see how anybody could have an objection to what we do. But if we were charged, we'd plead not guilty on the grounds of necessity - if we don't help these people, their health will degenerate." He holds up 11 thick red files in which each client's preferences are stored ("prefers dark"; "diabetic") alongside their doctor's notes.

"There are plenty of quack remedies out there, with guys charging £59 an hour for something that doesn't work. Not here," Mark says with some passion. "We get nothing out of this. If the chocolate keeps one person off beta-interferon, we're saving the public health £12,000 a year." Lezley appears to have a tear in her eye. "I never wanted to be the Emily Pankhurst of the cannabis world," she says, slowly shaking her head, as their 16-year-old daughter arrives home from school. "What damage am I to anyone? I'm 5ft 1in, I can't run as this leg doesn't work. I can't even spit. If they bust me and Mark, they'd put 200 people out on the streets looking for cannabis. What's worse?"

"All we're doing is removing the monetary value of cannabis so that people who need it aren't ripped off," Mark says pensively, running his hand through his tightly cut hair to rest on his trim beard. "We want to be accepted for what we do and do it from an industrial location. I see this as a social experiment to see how people can reach out to each other."

* * *

In a modern bungalow behind a field of organic cabbages in rural Northamptonshire, Roger Newton is checking that his highly prized crop is kept at a constant 26 degrees. Within two weeks, cuttings from the five mature cannabis plants nestling in his loft will be driven off to provide the active ingredients for another hundred or so bars of chocolate. Newton does not know Mark and Lezley Gibson, nor does he ever use cannabis himself. He just decided, when he learnt about the organisation, that he "wanted to do something useful".

In a sheltered corner of the loft, behind his mother-in-law's fuchsia cuttings, he opens a door into a sauna-like pine cabin, releasing the rich, pungent aroma instantly familiar to anyone who has lately walked down Brixton Road. The five-foot-tall grove of plants, sheltering a smaller group of Newton's "babies", will provide around 400g of raw cannabis that he estimates would cost £1,500 on the streets. "To be honest, I wouldn't really know," says Newton, a 51-year-old retired former engineer and businessman. "I tried it as a youngster, but it's not for me. Ask my kids how firmly anti-drugs I was in their formative years, and they'll tell you - I told them if they ever came home with drugs, I'd have to blow my head off."

A grandfather with two sons in their 20s and a nine-year-old daughter, Newton is no radical activist. In a West Ham T-shirt and jeans, his glasses resting on high, well-nourished jowls, he explains over a pint in the pub how he refocused his priorities when diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma eight years ago. It was, fortunately, a treatable form of cancer, and the removal of a tumour followed by radiotherapy seems to have seen it off. But then illness hit other family members. His 34-year-old niece developed breast cancer; his mother-in-law had a brain haemorrhage. "You're here one day and gone the next," Newton reflects. "It doesn't matter how much money you've got, it's about enjoying what time you have with your family."

When the husband of an old friend with advanced MS asked if he knew where to buy cannabis, he wanted to help. "There was a shop up the road selling seeds, so I said I'd grow some in my conservatory," he says. "As she couldn't smoke it, I looked on the internet for some tips and came across Mark and Lezley's website. So now I supply them, and some of my friends get to benefit. You could say we've got a mutual arrangement."

Of the risks he admits, "You do get a bit paranoid, but it's something I've got to do, my way of giving something back. I wouldn't do it if I felt it was going to the wrong people, but I trust them. I know some who are benefiting. My fear is not that anyone will be arrested but that, until the Government takes this on board, the demand keeps rising and too many sufferers will be disappointed."

* * *

The medical benefits of cannabis have been chronicled for 2,000 years. But not until 1992, when Clare Hodges, an MS patient, wrote in The Spectator about her "very alternative medicine", did the current movement for therapeutic legalisation begin. Her neurologist put her in contact with other users and the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics was born. It recruited Geoffrey Guy, a retired pharmaceutical executive, to join a delegation to the Department of Health in 1997 demanding a licence to research the drug's benefits. The following day, Guy founded GW Pharmaceuticals, which now stands to make a fortune from a medically approved form of the drug.

"Mark and Lezley are absolutely remarkable and I refer people to them every day," Clare Hodges says. "They're completely self-sacrificing and do an enormous amount of work for no obvious reward. But now the drugs companies are running the show. Suddenly everyone accepts that cannabis can help people with MS, but the way things work is that the drugs companies have to make money out of it."

The MS Society, which claims to represent Britain's 85,000 sufferers, argues that only completed clinical trials - such as one backed by the Medical Research Council now starting in Plymouth - will determine whether cannabis is a safe treatment. "We do not encourage people to break the law," the society says, "though we have asked that the prosecuting authorities should treat tolerantly people who are self-medicating."

It is a position the Prime Minister appears to share. Earlier this month, Biz Ivol, the MS sufferer who founded what has become Thc4MS, was due in Kirkwall Sheriff Court, Orkney, on charges of supplying, possessing and growing the drug. When, last July, her MP asked Tony Blair if he believed the war on drugs would be won "by making a criminal of a 54-year-old woman who has led an otherwise blameless life and who is now confined to a wheelchair", he was assured that the law was being urgently reviewed.

"We understand that there is potentially a distinction between those who need cannabis for medicinal purposes and those who do not," the Prime Minister said. "I am sure that people will take a sympathetic view of the position of the honourable gentleman's constituent, although that must remain a matter for the authorities, not the Government."

Back in the "chocolate factory" - borrowed premises near their home - I watch Mark Gibson clean the £400 Auto-Therm ElectroMaster chocolate melter as Lezley breaks up 40 medium-sized bars of Dutch plain Rademaker chocolate by banging them on the table. Four hours later, the melted chocolate flowing smoothly, Mark weighs 80g of finely-ground female tops of cannabis.

"It's the finest you can get, dearer than gold," he says, before slowly sieving it and stirring it in. He lowers the temperature and leaves the mix to stand overnight before giving it another stir and pouring it into confectioners' moulds. "Before chilling it, we agitate it with our secret process," he says, his T-shirt spattered with spills. "That puts in the bubbles, which people seem to like."

As he and Lezley later foil-wrap the first of 60 bars, Mark says, "Cumbrian Police told the local paper they're 'monitoring the situation'. [The police confirm this, adding that they are fully aware of the Gibsons' work.] "It won't do the group any good if they arrest Lezley and me, so we're about to shift production to new premises in the east of England to ensure that the supply continues. But I'll still be involved until there's a viable, legal alternative at the pharmacy, then get a bloody rest. Come on GW Pharmaceuticals, get it right."

He pauses and looks at the pile of prepared chocolate. "Actually, I hate the stuff. I've worked with chocolate for such a long time that you see so much of it you're sickened. But Lezley, now she likes chocolate." Lezley giggles. "Name me a woman who doesn't."

- Some names have been changed.

(Daily Telegraph Magazine, February 22 2003)

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Interview: Neil Blackley, media analyst (Evening Standard)

AN ICY GUST of Schadenfreude blew through Fleet Street earlier this month at the news that Merrill Lynch's star media analyst — a multimillionaire who once unwisely described his annual bonus as "a gigantic financial orgasm" - had resigned. By David Rowan

Neil Blackley, whose pronouncements have moved markets and whose contacts book is a directory of today's media elite, has no job to go to, and at 47 he is hardly at retirement age. So the story could be conveniently written up as Blackley's downfall — if not as a result of his ill-advised backing of Vivendi Universal last year, before the share price plunged, then because of the troubles facing investment banking.

Merrill Lynch's difficulties were compounded by a $100 million (£63 million) settlement with New York's Attorney-General, Eliot Spitzer, over its analysts' alleged conflicts of interest.

Blackley is none too well disposed towards much of the press at the moment. Having once caused Granada shares to fall by 20 per cent with a single pessimistic forecast, he now finds himself facing the "nightmare" of having to write to newspapers to correct their hostile assertions about him. What bothers him most is that, in picking apart Vivendi, no one mentions the forecasts that he got right - the "buy" recommendation last year on Johnston Press, for instance, or the prescient "sell" on Reuters, which this week announced record losses and 3,000 redundancies.

When we meet near his City office, he starts by handing me 515 pages of "global strategic analysis" to prove that he has earned his crown.

Why, then, would Blackley choose to leave a job that has gained him a reputation over seven years for making and breaking corporate media fortunes, and earning himself reported million-pound-plus packages in the process?

"Well, first there's the state of the market, and I don't think there's a quick-fix solution," he explains, describing a "dire" decline among the media sector. “Secondly, the position of analysts has changed because of what's happened in the States under Spitzer (who has fought to clarify the relations between corporate financiers and their research departments). And there is also my personal situation."

Blackley stresses that the decision to go now was his alone, although he knew that his days were numbered at Merrill Lynch: last year he lost four of his team of ten analysts and admits that "if I hadn’t gone of my own volition, I'd have been out by Christmas".

"The media sector's relative decline is easily as bad as the 1971-72 recession," he says. "The only crumb of comfort is that the rates of decline have been moderating in the past two months - but we don't think that marks a turning point. The concern now is that the consumer rolls over and we get a second hit of decline."

Blackley admits he was "spectacularly wrong" to back Vivendi so enthusiastically, even as serious problems with the company were emerging: "Sheer carelessness," he says. He may have caused investors to lose hundreds of millions - so did he get into trouble? "There was an inquest, yeah. But others we got very right."

Tall, unsmiling and prematurely grey, Blackley lacks the personal presence you might expect from a media power-player. Only when talking about his young family does his voice break out of the monotone in which he discusses bubble charts and price-earning ratios.

He is married with healthy twin daughters aged six, but it is his youngest daughter, Arianne, who represents the "personal" aspect of his decision to leave now. "Arianne is almost one and has severe developmental delays," he explains. "She's not even crawling, and we don't know if she can recognise her own name. She has been in hospital for much of the past two months, awaiting a diagnosis - cerebral palsy was suggested, but that proves not to be the case. And we've just been told we're eligible for disability allowance."

He may be a power in the City but, faced with an ill child, the status become less important. "Dealing with the NHS has been unbelievable," he says. "You cancel important meetings for a 10 o'clock appointment and are still waiting at 12.30 - and then you're told the doctor hasn't even been in the hospital. If I had a tenth of that lack of organisation in my own team, I'd be out of work."

Meanwhile, for another few weeks he has the day job to deal with - one that typically starts at 6.55am and goes through to 8.30pm, sometimes 11pm. "I'm not some kind of Bonfire of the Vanities character - this is not a romantic job," he says. But isn't he well rewarded for the sacrifices, with houses in Wandsworth and Barbados? "You’re going to quote something I once said about some years there being 'a gigantic financial orgasm'. Well, this year there definitely isn't one. Am I still well paid compared with other people? Yes. But I need a physical and mental detox."

What, then, is his parting investment advice to Times readers? The music industry, he says, is "in serious trouble", in part because it is over-paying artists, as are book publishers. Stay away from cable and professional financial services, but look favourably on radio, pay TV, directories and professional publishing. ITV is "dysfunctional" and in desperate need of new management, and Five urgently needs a new "tentpole" programme to succeed Home and Away.

As for his own future, that depends on his daughter's hospital tests. "We must see if we need special treatment which means we'll have to stay in this country. Otherwise we might stay in Barbados for two years,” he says. "Personally, I want to be more creative. I got my wife to give me a guitar at Christmas. I need a challenge."

(The Times, February 21 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - War bloggers/picture messaging

By David Rowan

If Operation Desert Storm was CNN's story, then weblogs may prove to be the defining medium in swaying debate on Iraq this time. The internet was a key factor in mobilising protesters to march last weekend - not just mass campaign websites such as www.unitedforpeace.org, but also dozens of influential small-scale weblogs, such as www.nowarblog.org.

The unstoppable rise of cheap-and-easy personal web publishing has made it harder than ever for governments to shape public opinion at a time of conflict - something that has changed for ever the rules of information management. So it is significant that Google, the web's dominant search site, has bought a tiny software company called Pyra, best known for its Blogger personal-publishing software. Blogger allows anyone with an internet connection to keep an online journal: the software and basic web space are free, and you do not need to understand html or web design to share your thoughts with the world. In three years, Blogger has attracted more than a million users, of whom 200,000, the company claims, are publishing weblogs.

You can peruse a selection at www.blogspot.com, including frequently updated war-related opinions from political pundits, peace activists, even an eloquent Iraqi apparently writing from Baghdad. Packed with pithy comments and external links, weblogs have become an influential form of media democracy. To Google, they represent "a global self-publishing phenomenon that connects internet users with dynamic, diverse points of view while enabling comment and participation". It is too soon to know how Google will incorporate Pyra's technology into its services, but the result is bound to bring bloggers' views to a wider audience and, in particular, to weigh standard search results in favour of the web pages' most exciting bloggers. That is good news for those who revel in the web as a wide-ranging source of ideas and opinions. It will be less welcomed by governments more used in wartime to managing the information flow via traditional media channels.

++++

MOBILE phone companies, trying to recoup some of the £22 billion spent on third-generation licences, are getting excited about one particular use of small full-colour screens. Picture messaging has yet to catch on, but mobile porn is almost guaranteed to popularise the technology and to make money. Firms such as Hutchinson's 3 and Virgin Mobile have heads of "adult content" busily working out how to sell video clips to third-generation handsets, and pornographers are testing ways of sending their wares to high-resolution phone screens.

According to one research group, the market for mobile porn could be worth £2.5 billion within three years - and last month the head of the Private Media Group, one of Europe's largest pornography businesses, predicted that four-fifths of 3-G data traffic will initially be of the prurient kind. It is tempting to dismiss such predictions as the desperate hopes of a financially troubled industry, but pornographers do have a track record of turning technological innovations into mainstream consumer successes. From daguerreotypes and silent movies to videotape and photo-litho printing, new technologies have long been boosted by their ability to deliver porn.

When Betamax emerged as a superior technology to VHS, its days were numbered once the porn merchants chose VHS as a cheaper, more convenient distribution format. As for the internet, dozens of innovations - from e-commerce to video - developed from the industry's need to keep subscribers spending. The telecoms companies might not publicise the fact, but the deals they are signing with porn firms are a key part of their business strategies.

(The Times, February 18 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - Advance-fee frauds/Lexmark rip-off

By David Rowan

It is the hottest new online sport - a chance to take revenge on the internet's most persistent con artists and gain a hilarious web page in the process. You have doubtless received those speculative Nigerian e-mails that typically offer 30 per cent of a fraudulently obtained fortune in exchange for your gullible assistance.

They are a scam, of course, intended to separate you from the substantial "advance fee" that you must pay up front. The perpetrators have proved largely immune to the efforts of Western law-enforcement agencies - but now they are facing a tougher challenge from hundreds of ordinary web users. In a trend that has been accelerating in the past few weeks, participants in the "sport" are feigning interest in the unsolicited offers and starting correspondence that convince the scammers that they are about to become rich. The goal is to cause the conmen as much trouble and expense as possible, leading them to buy air tickets for third-country rendezvous or demanding ever-more complex documentation just as they think the cash is being handed over. But the best part is that the rest of us get to watch the scammers getting scammed, as the dialogues then get published online.

It is a competitive sport, with the greatest kudos accorded to those who humiliate the criminals the most. One purportedly keen correspondent convinced Mr Kizombe Kamara, of Senegal, that a £10 million deal was about to happen - before confiding that he would prefer Kamara to cross-dress "and wear silky undergarments for me". Another, invited to help to remove valuable "alluvial gold" from Ghana, even persuaded the conman to send him a few grams as proof that the haul existed.

When Chris Noble, a science teacher in the Wirral, received a Nigerian offer to help launder £12 million, he confected an elaborate plan to lead his correspondent to a hotel in Houston, Texas. Even though Noble signed himself using the name (and fax number) of the Chief Constable of Merseyside, the dialogue continued until Noble had to explain his last-minute absence at the hotel - blaming the unfortunate death of a prostitute in his room, apparently. You can enjoy the full exchange on Noble's website, fattibastardo.com.

Still, he does not believe that the embarrassment will stop this particular conman for long. "Even if he does realise he has been taken for a ride, I don't think he will care," Noble reflects. "The fraud is by now so widely known that those who fall for it in some ways deserve it and are too stupid or greedy to learn a lesson."

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TALKING about scams, one of the greatest consumer rip-offs is the high price of proprietary printer inkjet refills, which can cost £25 for 40g of ink. As the price of printers has fallen, manufacturers have come to rely on refill sales to boost profits. Naturally, some are doing all they can to prevent you from buying ink elsewhere. Later this month a US federal judge is expected to rule on whether Lexmark International can prevent a much smaller company, Static Control, from making Lexmark-compatible cartridges.

The case hinges on a chip that Lexmark puts into its cartridges without which they will not work. By creating its own version of this chip, Static Control, the company claims, has breached Lexmark's rights under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Last month Lexmark announced a 31 per cent increase in profits, driven largely by cartridge sales, which now bring in more money than printers. Let's hope that the notorious DMCA is not once again used to erode consumer rights even further.

(The Times, February 11 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - Elite-speak/E-mail scams

By David Rowan

TECHNOLOGICAL revolutions always leave their mark on the English language from the shorthand informality of text-messaging to colourful slang such as "spam" that finds its way into mainstream use. But if you want to stay a step ahead of the dictionaries and understand what the internet elite is saying today, your only option is to learn their language, "elite speak". I have spent the past week taking lessons from an expert - an experience that has left my eyes glazed over.

You will have encountered elite speak if you have ever seen pirated software advertised as "warez" or a hacked website described as "h4x0r3d". A combination of deliberate misspellings and creative abbreviations, this slang allows insiders to stay ahead of "newbies" and "proles" as they show how cool, or "kewl", they can be. They do so by mixing upper-case and lower-case letters, some of which they replace with numbers in the middle of words - so that "hacker" may be written "H4x0r" and the slang described as "133t5p34k". Think of the number one as a letter "L", the three as an "E", and you get the picture.

It is a confusing discipline for the "n00b" - sorry, newbie - but that is largely the point. All slang is designed to reinforce the identity of a distinct subculture, but this elite (or, if you're following,"31337") has particular technological reasons for developing such an eccentric jargon. One factor is that some e-mail programs filter out messages dealing with hackers, porn or the bootleg software known as wares - but the censors fail to stop them if typed as "hax0r5", "pr0n" and "war3z". The slang also favours a brevity that we have come to know through text-messaging shorthand: when the slang developed on bulletin-boards in the 1980s, the scarcity of bandwidth made "RU" a more practicable means of asking "Are you...?"

Now that bandwidth is no longer an issue, practitioners are turning to more elaborate ways of staying ahead of the crowd. Dollar signs in place of the letter "s" are used to signify corporate greed (as in"Micro$oft"); the letter "z" is put at the end of words to denote an illegal connection (so keep away from naughty "gamez downloadz"); and ever more esoteric keystroke combinations are used to signify letters. So the letter "M" might be rendered as" \/ " and "k" as "/This, my teacher proudly advised, constitutes "advanced elite speak" - or, as he typed it, "4 )V4 \ C3D l3e+$peA The Tim35 ...

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WATCH out: there's another "Nigerian"-style e-mail doing the rounds, seeking "a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential business transaction".

"I am writing to you in absolute confidence primarily to seek your assistance in acquiring oil funds that are presently trapped in the Republic of Iraq," begins the "highly confidential" sales pitch arriving in thousands of in-boxes this week. The writer, whose American father apparently came close to capturing billions in the region before falling out with his Iraqi business partner 12 years ago, now needs $100 billion to $200 billion to complete the deal and remove that former partner from office.

"I would beseech you to transfer a sum equalling 10 to 25 per cent of your yearly income into our account to aid in this important venture," it goes on, promising that "this business transaction is 100 per cent legal: the US Internal Revenue Service will function as our intermediary".

Strangely, the given e-mail reply address is "president@whitehouse.gov", and the letter is signed by one "George Walker Bush". Either it's a very funny parody by anti-war protesters, or the White House has noticed how many suckers get drawn into these scams.

(The Times, February 4 2003)

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The Times: The EverQuest widows

Getting hooked on an internet role-play fantasy: A game said to be as addictive as drugs attracted 120,000 players last week. By David Rowan

IT CAN be the internet's equivalent of a Class A drug: an online game so addictive that it has been cited in marriage break-ups, child-neglect cases and even an obsessive player's suicide.

As internet media businesses struggle to attract paying subscribers, the entertainment giant Sony has quietly persuaded 430,000 people to pay almost £100 a year to join a fantasy role-playing game called EverQuest. Last week, a record 120,000 of them were online simultaneously in the biggest tournament of its kind.

Set in a three-dimensional mystical world populated by dwarves, wizards and ogres, EverQuest lets players invent online personae as they pursue adventures learning spells and building alliances with other players around the world. They explore an enormous virtual world with its own diverse species, economic systems, alliances and politics. There are multiple races, classes and continents to choose from.

Because they can play together with vast numbers of allies and rivals, many fans find themselves unable to log off even after 12 or 16 hours of consecutive involvement.

It is no accident that the game is commonly known among players as "EverCrack", and support groups of "EverQuest widows", have emerged to counsel players' neglected partners.

Now Sony is planning to attract even greater numbers to the game, when it extends EverQuest's reach to the PlayStation 2 games console in 11 days' time. Once players buy the software and a PlayStation 2 network connector, they will need to spend £6.20 a month to be part of the EverQuest community.

It will be the first time that a "massively multiplayer online roleplaying game" (MMORPG), as the phenomenon is known, will be accessible to a games console that, with more than 50 million users, is fast winning the battle against Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube.

Sony attributes the game's huge success - its 430,000 subscribers typically pay £8.10 a month - to its ability to promote "teamwork, social interaction, problem-solving and positive peer communication".

"You can be a gallant knight or a fierce warrior rescuing a princess in an epic battle," Tamara Sanderson, a spokeswoman for Sony Online Entertainment, the company's games division, said. She describes the EverQuest fan base as "crossing all walks of life: we have doctors and lawyers, even a US Naval commander on a battleship in the Indian Ocean playing via satellite link." Interest is so great that the company employs 150 full-time customer-service staff in its San Diego offices, and runs 44 computer servers to cope with demand. The game, launched in March 1999, has a following matched only by the hugely successful South Korean roleplaying game Lineage, which claims more than 5 million subscribers, mostly in Asia. Now Sony is preparing to target that market, too, with plans to open new EverQuest servers in China and Japan, as well as further expansion in Europe.

But the game has its critics. A woman in Wisconsin blamed EverQuest last year when her 21-year-old son killed himself after playing. Shawn Woolley, an obsessive player who had a history of mental-health problems, shot himself while the game was still on his computer screen.

In another case, the game was implicated in the death from neglect of a child in Florda , whose father was allegedly unwilling to stop playing.

Sony responds that EverQuest is "just a game", played in moderation by most subscribers. "As with any form of entertainment, it is the responsibility of each individual player to monitor his or her own playing habits and prioritise his or her time as necessary," the company says. "It is not our place to monitor or limit how individuals spend their free time."

Andrew Johnson, an unemployed 25-year-old living in Guildford, Surrey, who plays EverQuest regularly, accepts that it can ben an addiction for some, but in his case he says he is attracted by the fun. "I might wake up at 10am and play til 4am the next day, admittedly with a 20-minute break for lunch and tea," he said. "It's almost like a party that you don't want to be the first to leave because you don't know what you're missing. It is completely open-ended, and you do what you like, when you like.

"But unfortunately for some it can consume them, so much so they lose themselves in the game, and real life ceases to be important. I've heard stories of people quitting their jobs so they can play more. That's just sad and scary."

[PANEL]
The psychologist's view

Professor Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University who studied EverQuest, credits its success with the "social and physiological rewards" players achieve as they strive to improve their skills.

"It is a totally engrossing, interactive game that has no end to it - you can go on and on, boosting your self-esteem or getting a buzz each time you rise up a level," Professor Griffiths says. Like Scrabble or chess, the game is easy to pick up and takes a lifetime to master.

In an unpublished study, he found that for many, the main attraction is the social contact the game provides. Most people play with friends. These positive findings challenge the conventional view of gamers as introverted loners.

Four fifths of players in his study were male, with an average age of 28, and although half played for between 10 and 30 hours a week, 15 per cent were playing for more than 50 hours and some, more than 80 hours. A small minority sacrifice important activities, he found, such as school, family time or sleep.

Professor Griffiths accepts that some players are addicted. But for "primary addicts", drawn specifically to EverQuest as their drug of choice, its "highs and buzzes" can offer a positive means of escaping daily pressures. It is "secondary addicts", those who play to escape personal problems, who may need attention.

[EXTRA PANEL]
'Victims' meet online to air their grievances
by David Rowan


THERE are more than 3,000 members of the EverQuest Widows support group, an online community "for partners, family, and friends of people who play EverQuest compulsively". These are among the concerns shared by members in recent days.

From Viv: "I'm a paralegal, and one of the last cases I worked on involved three small children who were grossly neglected and living in horrible conditions due to the mother's addiction to EQ . The children are now in the sole custody of their grandparents and are doing very well in a world that doesn't include EQ. The mother gave up all parental rights and is still playing EQ.

"On a more personal note, my husband isn't the only EQA (EverQuest addict) I have to deal with. Here is my EQA list: mother-in-law, who still works and pays the bills but has little else outside of EQ; sister-in-law, who three years ago lost her job, home, and fiancé because of her EQ addiction. She has used the money she gets for child support to pay for the four EQ accounts she has; son-in-law, who had to take an extra year of college to get his degree because he neglected his studies to play EQ; cousin, who lost custody of her one-year-old because she moves every two or three months to be with someone she met online playing EQ."

From Martin: "I abandoned my wife, the woman I loved so dearly. She felt lonely, no intimacy, no talking, no one there for her to support her emotionally. So by chance, without her looking for it, she meets someone who was there for her ... And do I blame EQ? Absolutely, no question in my mind.

"Before EQ I may have had an addictive personality, but we didn't have any of these problems. EQ comes into my life? Now my life is crap.

"I had played as much as 20 hours a day. I would get up in the morning, not even go to the bathroom, light a cigarette, and log on. I wasn't showering, eating or taking care of myself . . . EQ was all I needed."

From Katira: "My husband and I have been married two years, and for one of them my husband has been playing that game almost 24 hours a day.

"We use to do things together. Now all I hear is, ‘I've had a bad day at work, let me relax and play my game'.

"I just can't take it any more. I found out three and a half months ago that I am going to have a baby. I can see myself taking care of the child and him still playing that game. I am so depressed I don't know how to get though to him."

From Patrick: "I can hardly breathe at the moment as I am losing the best person in my life over games. Please help me . . . I can't stop, even now after the final battle with my lovely wife; she left the house, and guess what, I went straight for the game.

"I am truly sick and need help. I don't want to lose her, I don't want to play games at 40 years of age. Why do I need the adrenalin? Give me some direction to make a difference, please."

(The Times, February 1 2003)

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