to the video triggered a series of events that resulted in the defeat of the incumbent senator. James Webb had, in fact, been the subject of a successful netroots draft, which resulted in his entry into the Virginia senate race. Netroots activists also supported Ned Lamont in his 2006 primary victory over Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, wrote Ari Melber in The Nation magazine. Blog writers have contributed to more than a few controversies and early netroots attention. Amongst these were the remarks made by then-Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott at a birthday celebration for then-Senator Strom Thurmond, the Dubai Ports controversy, the Mark Foley congressional page controversy, and the recent US Attorney controversy. In addition, the recent controversy regarding a Democratic presidential debate sponsored by Fox News, which the left-leaning netroots attempted to stop, ended with the debate being canceled. In a December 2005 interview with Newsweek magazine, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of Daily Kos, described the netroots as "the crazy political junkies that hang out in blogs." He is also the co-author (with Jerome Armstrong) of the book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics (). William Safire explained the term's origin in The New York Times Magazine on November 19, 2006: Similar activities elsewhere So-called netroots activity also takes place in Iran, which has a disproportionately high number of bloggers, and in the United Kingdom, where there is strong support for e-democracy in the form of local issues forums have become an approved form of feedback on government performance. Netroots UK is a project started in 2011 in partnership with the US Netroots Nation organisers to strengthen the UK's netroots through training and networking. In Australia, the netroots "progressive" lobbying group GetUp has more members than all Australian political parties combined. Netroots activity has also begun to spring up in student politics where online social networking programs such as Facebook have been used in student elections. In Sweden Social Democratic Party have initiated a network open to all "progressive" bloggers in Sweden. The network meets on a regular basis and holds a yearly gathering, Nätrot (Netroot in Swedish)Netroots.se. The first Nätrot gathering was held in the Swedish parliament 2006 with Joe Trippi as guest speaker. The second one, 2008 also in the Swedish parliament, and the third, Nätrot '09 was in Visby, Almedalen featuring John Aravosis from Americablog and Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake. In