[Peace-discuss] Techies against war

[Peter Miller]

The Organizer's Collaborative is a grassroots organization that puts 
technology-savvy people to work for progressive causes. Here, they're 
working on repeating a widely-publicized campaign, exposing lies from the 
Whitehouse.  Contact Rich if you want to help out...

-Peter

>X-Sender: rich at mail.organizenow.net
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>Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 16:38:29 -0500
>To: (peace contacts)
>From: Rich Cowan <rich at organizenow.net>
>Subject: 13 Myths to Justify War in Iraq
>
>                                   Feb. 11, 2003
>
>
>Dear OC Members, Supporters, and Friends:
>
>   I wanted to let you all know about an exciting experiment
>Organizers' Collaborative is doing this week, using the Internet.
>
>   As most of you know, OC got its start by looking into how
>technology could enable activists to collaborate.  In our first
>year, we made a big splash when the 2000 election ended in a
>deadlock.  In just four days, we used the Internet to organize
>two dozen researcher/activists nationally in exposing the Bush
>team's disinformation campaign to try to convince the public
>that they had not stolen the election.  The fact sheet that
>resulted, "13 myths about the results of the 2000 election",
>ended up reaching at least TWO MILLION people.  Even today
>there are still almost 200 references to it on the web.
>
>   A few months ago, when the clouds of war were looming, our
>board held a meeting and decided that we would go one step
>beyond what we did in 2000.  We would develop a fact sheet on
>the "13 myths" used to justify war.  But this time, instead of
>writing the flyer the old fashioned way, in a text editor, we
>would use a specialized web site to enable 100 or more people to
>work together on it simultaneously.
>
>   The first version of this new web site, http://13myths.org,
>went live yesterday.  Already, there are about 30 people working
>on documenting some of the most extreme examples of disinformation
>we have seen so far.  Including the shocking revelation last
>Thursday that the many of the reports and evidence referred
>to in Colin Powell's address to the UN were actually lifted
>from a graduate student paper almost a year old, claims which
>in many cases had already been proven false by the current
>round of weapons inspections.
>
>   I am hoping to recruit another 25 people to each devote 1-3
>hours of work to this research project.  If that can happen,
>we can produce a polished, footnoted end product within 48
>hours.  Your help at this critical stage can help us empower
>thousands to make a strong case against a unilateral war that
>may further destabilize the planet.
>
>   So please take a look at http://13myths.org: within each
>of the "Iraq Myth" pages you may use the link labeled "Click
>here to suggest changes" in order to provide editing suggestions
>that would improve the fact sheet.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Rich Cowan
>for Organizers' Collaborative
>
>
>p.s. We can devote a small amount of funding we received from a grant
>to this work, but this will not cover the entire cost.  So if it
>is possible for you to support this work financially, please do so
>by supporting our "Social Change Networking Project" at:
>http://organizenow.net/donate-d.html
>
>
>
>
>Organizers' Collaborative  *  Box 400897, Cambridge, MA  02140
>oc(at)organizenow.net      *      Web:  http://organizenow.net
>
>-- developing web and software tools to allow social change --
>--  groups to more effectively communicate and collaborate  --