Summary statistics comparing November 2002 and November 2003

Department	November 2002 users	November 2003 users	% change	November 2002 pages taken	November 2003 pages taken	% change
Chinese	849	2083	+145%	2308	5393	+134%
French	612	1297	+112%	1284	2988	+133%
Russian	92	236	+157%	626	776	+24%
Spanish	1046	1328	+27%	1007	1371	+36%
Prisons agitation only	138	2421	+1654%	700	5137	+634%

This month the good news in our report is that we at MIM set out to put U.$. prison oppression on the map globally and the Internet statistics show that is what we have made great strides toward this past year. All over the world the State Department propaganda boasts that the United $tates is a "free country" bringing freedom to Iraq, Afghanistan etc. Yet the united $tates imprisons more people per capita than any other country and censors MIM for trying to spread the word.

We also see that the completion of the FAQ in French and Chinese continues to bear dividends in Internet readership long after the work went up on the web page. The statistics for readers versus pages taken show that the Russians are the most serious readers per reader, followed by the Chinese. The figures also show that Chinese is now by far the second-most important language on the MIM web pages.

With regard to some statistics showing negative percent changes--the one sad spot is the art page set back in traffic. The problem with the megabytes per day is that we no longer offer the large file we once did. We are moving toward DVD use.

Finally, another bright spot is that MIM Notes circulation set a record in November. This has come in a process of changing how we do MIM Notes distribution. We have shifted increasingly away from trusting people with distributing papers unless they are contributing with large sums of money or providing other indications of dedication. Resources are going to the proven successful distributors who distribute the most papers at the lowest per paper cost. It is not a case that newspapers and transport are free and we only need occasional and whimsical amateur distributors. For some people lacking any money or other distribution-relevant skills or resources, we can suggest fighting on the Internet instead, something that many people in the imperialist countries consider "free." Others may want to learn about taking out credit cards or other debts that allow them to contribute to MIM Notes in one yearly sum. Still others may need to learn how to type before they go onto the Internet. It comes down to skills and resources, so before saying "I can't," one should take a materialist approach and focus on what is in reach. Learning how to type may be an important contribution, the most important one one can make at a given stage of political development. For each persyn, the situation is different, but we must all improve our skills and make it a point of figuring out how to obtain resources. There is always something we can do to improve and that means there is always something we can do for the proletarian movement.