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EMERGENCY MEETING TO STOP JROTC IN OUR SCHOOLS!
Monday, Nov. 5, 7:00 P.M., 474 Valencia at the Childcare Center.
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CONGRATULATIONS TO OCT. 27 COALITION TO END THE WAR NOW! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
OCT. 27 COALITION EVALUATION MEETING WILL TAKE PLACE:
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 7:00 P.M. - LOCATION TO BE ANNOUNCED
It is incumbent upon us to continue not only our cooperation with one another but to map out future plans for ongoing protests and, especially, community organizing.
I marched with the Noe Valley Community Peace group organized as a contingent to the Oct. 27 action. Around 200 community residents assembled at Castro and 24th Street and marched down 24th Street with signs and banners to Church Street where we all got on the J-Church streetcar headed for the Civic Center. As we marched down 24th Street merchants and shoppers came out of the shops and cheered and clapped. Cars honked in support as they went by. Our reception was overwhelmingly a friendly and supportive one.
This is the kind of organizing that is needed throughout the city. To do this it will take a real coordinated effort on the part of all the antiwar groups and activists--to plan it out; to organize community meetings; to set up tables at the local malls as the holiday shopping season begins. We must give out informational material and fact sheets.
We need a long term goal of a massive protest in March for the anniversary of the war and we need short-term goals of community education, organization and ongoing antiwar activity.
San Francisco's opposition to the war is very widespread and deep yet we see few signs in the windows or public expressions of that opposition. Community organization and expressions of solidarity with one another on this issue that effects every aspect of our lives will give courage to the majority opposed to the war to be more vocal and demonstrative in opposition to it; and in demanding the things families need that we can't afford because of the terrific war spending.
I know neighbors in Noe Vally were inspired by their communal expression of opposition to the war. It was a wonderful message to the community and especially to the children in the community who witnessed this spirited march.
We are approaching the fifth anniversary of this momentous and colossal crime against humanity—a violent assault on the innocent civilians of Iraq who must fight for survival under bloody occupation and torture. We are approaching the fifth anniversary of the meat-grinding machine of war eating up the duped and lied-to cannon fodder of U.S. youth captured for the purposes of the U.S. death march across the world for private profit and gain. And we are living under the threat of an ever-widening war!
Both U.S. troops and private contractors are being trained to commit heinous crimes against innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians who are struggling for life itself. If and when they come back home to resume a normal life, they will never be the same and will bear the burden of their actions for the rest of their lives. Their families will never be the same again either.
We have so much to do. The San Francisco Board of Education is poised to reinstate JROTC even before it has been banished! Military recruiters are running rampant and desperate in our schools and anywhere youth congregate--standing ready to ply them with money and lies and promises of a way out of the poverty, jail and second-tier wages that they do stand ready to inherit--if they are even lucky enough to get a job at all!
Our only power is in our unity, solidarity and independent action in protest of these criminal and grossly unjust acts of violence and deprivation against humanity. We want schools, jobs, housing, healthcare for all and a world without war.
And if we truly want these things, we must put aside our differences and unite to achieve those goals.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, bauaw.org
Check out these great photos of the march taken by Jeff Patterson at:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/27/18456505.php
More photos of Labor Contingent taken by Noe Valley Labor Rep:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12541352@N06/sets/72157602772168801/
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Wed., Nov. 7: The Jena 6 Are Back in Court
Drop All the Charges! Free the Jena 6!
Rally Wed., Nov. 7, 5pm
Federal Courthouse
7th and Mission
"Until the 6 Are Free, Neither Are We"
San Francisco
Contact 415-821-6545 or answer@actionsf.org to get involved or for more information.
Click here for a short eyewitness video from Sept. 20: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dtAZdmcKt5g
Last week, the racist judge that originally presided over Mychal Bell's conviction sent him back to jail for 18 months for "violating probation" from an earlier conviction. The precise violation was his arrest in the Jena 6 incident. While the racist thugs who started this cycle of events continue to walk free, the Jena 6 are still facing long prison sentences.
On Wednesday, Nov. 7, the growing movement to free the Jena 6 will face an important challenge. On that day, four of the Six -- Theodore Shaw, Robert Bailey, Bryan Purvis, and Mychal Bell -- are expected in court for pre-trial hearings. The ANSWER Coalition is calling on all progressive and anti-racist forces to come together for rallies in front of local courthouses across the country with the demand to free the Jena 6, and drop all the charges. Demonstrations are already confirmed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, and New Haven (CT).
The case of the Jena 6 has garnered international attention, and shone a spotlight on the racist nature of this country's criminal "injustice" system. Without activists taking action across the country, however, it is certain that their case -- like so many others -- would never have received the attention that it has. Mychal Bell's original conviction never would have been overturned; instead he would have become just another statistic.
On Sept. 20, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Jena, Louisiana and in other cities around the country to demand the complete freedom of the Jena 6, and the release of Mychal Bell. A week later, after 10 months in prison, he was granted bail and released. But shortly afterwards, the Louisiana judge that originally convicted Bell struck back, ordering him back into custody.
The spirit and determination of Sept. 20 protest in Jena has to be replicated over and over across the country on November 7th. The movement is locked in a tug-of-war with the racist Louisiana justice system. Now we have to dig in our heels and until all charges against the Six are dropped, we have to keep on pulling! All out for November 7th to Free the Jena 6!
For more information email us at info@answercoalition.org.
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Thousands march against the war in S.F., across the country
Jim Doyle,Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writers
Sunday, October 28, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/28/BAJHT0ULT.DTL
PHOTOS:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/10/28/BAJHT0ULT.DTL&o=4
2) Thousands Call for Swift End to Iraq War
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:31 a.m. ET
October 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-War-Protest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
3) W.M.D. in Iran? Q.E.D.
By MAUREEN DOWD
Op-Ed Columnist
October 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp
4) Bush eyes Mexico drug fight funds
Monday, 22 October 2007, 22:35 GMT 23:35 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7057414.stm
5) Study: 2,002 suspects died in police custody over 3 years
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 11, 2007
(10-11) 16:01 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/10/11/national/w130211D97.DTL
6) Mr. Williams Needs Help;
A Stranger to His Family
By ANN ZIMMERMAN
October 30, 2007; Page A1
WALL STREET JOURNAL
7) War protests: Why no coverage?
Newspapers have a duty to inform citizens about such democratic events.
By Jerry Lanson
Boston
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1030/p09s02-coop.html
8) No Emergency Room
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/opinion/30herbert.html?hp
9) Iraq Preparing Law Lifting Protection for Security Contractors
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
October 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html?ref=world
10) Immunity Deals Offered to Blackwater Guards
By DAVID JOHNSTON
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/washington/30blackwater.html?ref=world
11) Looking at Dutch and Swiss Health Systems
By GARDINER HARRIS
“In Switzerland and the Netherlands, all people have to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. Employers are exempt from the mandates, and private insurers and hospitals provide care.”
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/health/policy/30leavitt.html?ref=world
12) Gay Enclaves Face Prospect of Being Passé
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/30gay.html?ref=us
13) Law on Young Offenders Causes Rhode Island Furor
By KATIE ZEZIMA
“It was conceived as a way to save money in the face of a $450 million deficit in Rhode Island’s current budget: making 17-year-olds adults in the eyes of the law, shifting their cases to criminal from juvenile court and putting offenders in the state prison rather than the youth correctional center.”
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/30juvenile.html?ref=us
14) Bearing Witness to Torture
By CLYDE HABERMAN
NYC
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/nyregion/30nyc.html?ref=nyregion
15) Low Buzz May Give Mice Better Bones and Less Fat
By GINA KOLATA
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/health/research/30bone.html?ref=health
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1) Thousands march against the war in S.F., across the country
Jim Doyle,Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writers
Sunday, October 28, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/28/BAJHT0ULT.DTL
PHOTOS:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/10/28/BAJHT0ULT.DTL&o=4
(10-27) 17:17 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- On cue from a bullhorn's blast, thousands of protesters fell to the pavement on Market Street in a symbolic "die-in" Saturday as part of a coordinated protest staged in cities across the country against the war in Iraq.
For three minutes the demonstrators lay on the pavement, representing what organizers said were more than 1 million Iraqis killed since the war began in 2003. The protesters then resumed their march from San Francisco's Civic Center to Dolores Park.
March organizers put their number at 30,000 - old, young, workers, students, religious leaders. Police declined to give a formal estimate, but onlookers said the demonstrators definitely numbered more than 10,000. They filled up Market Street for several blocks, shouting that U.S. troops should be brought home and carrying banners decrying the war.
At the head of the marchers was a band of Native American drummers who pounded a steady beat as protesters chanted, "No more war!"
Before the march began, demonstrators gathered in front of City Hall to hear speakers berate the Bush administration and call on Americans to stand up against the war. Organizers said part of the reason for staging this protest was to mark that it is now five years since Congress voted to authorize the use of U.S. force in Iraq.
"Silence shows compliance," Nicole Davis, a leader of the Campus Anti-War Network group, told the crowd at the San Francisco event, which was organized by the Oct. 27th Coalition of several groups, including ANSWER - Act Now To Stop War and End Racism. "If you disagree with this war," she added, "it is your duty to stand up and let the world know."
Sarah Sloan, an ANSWER spokeswoman, said her group estimated the size of the crowd "based on the number of blocks - about seven - that the march takes up and the density of the crowd."
In New York, thousands demonstrated in the rain, marching to Foley Square. In Chicago, thousands of protesters gathered at Union Park and marched to the Federal Plaza. Organizers said anti-war rallies, sponsored nationally by a coalition of groups headed by United for Peace & Justice, also took place in Seattle, Salt Lake City, Jonesborough, Tenn., Philadelphia, Orlando, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Boston and other cities around the country.
"It would be one thing if it were just San Francisco, but it's not," Jim Haber, a Bay Area chapter representative of United for Peace & Justice, told The Chronicle.
"We've helped organizers mobilize their communities in places like Jonesborough, Tenn., and Salt Lake City, which you don't typically associate with anti-war demonstrations. This underscores the broad opposition to the war in Iraq."
At Dolores Park, hundreds of black boots were placed in rows on a hillside in memory of the U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq. A tag bearing the name of a dead soldier was attached to each pair of boots, and many of the boots had daisies and other flowers placed in them.
At the park, demonstrators listened to an array of speakers, including American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks and anti-war activist and congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan. She asked people to vote for her instead of her opponent, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in 2008.
Banks told his audience: "As I look out over this crowd, I see many young people. That gives me great hope." He recalled that it was the young - many of them students - during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s who took to the streets to pressure the United States to end that war.
Anne Roesler, of the group Military Families Speak Out, said her son was a U.S. soldier who had been deployed to Iraq three times and returned with post-traumatic stress disorder. "This is Congress' war," she said. "They have the blood of this war on their hands - they are building their political careers with the blood of our loved ones and Iraqis."
Clarence Thomas, past secretary-treasurer of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, said, "We have to take a lesson from the civil rights movement. We have to wake up and understand we are all in this together."
In the throng of San Francisco demonstrators was a trio of Code Pink members, including one attired as the Statue of Liberty, who belted out, "I am going to sing until the world is free, down by the riverside." One group, the Raging Grannies, entertained the crowd with protest lyrics sung to classic songs such as "Anchors Away."
Labor groups made a special effort to get their members to turn out, with hundreds of workers showing up - among them sign installers, teachers, roofers, nurses, security guards and communication workers.
Sharon Cornu, secretary-treasurer Central Labor Council of Alameda County, said it would be the first time that seven Bay Area labor councils - San Francisco, Monterey Bay, North Bay, South Bay, San Mateo, Contra Costa and Alameda - worked together to urge members to attend the protest.
Although Bay Area labor groups have been involved in earlier protests against the war, Cornu said, this was the biggest effort yet. "More and more union members are seeing the war's impact on our schools, transportation and health care systems because money is being spent abroad that could be spent at home," Cornu added.
"We are working people - we make things in this country, and we want to be heard," said Oakland roofer Leroy Cisneros, echoing Cornu's words about the pressing need for expenditures on education and health care.
Wendy Bloom, a nurse from Children's Hospital in Oakland, said, "Our priorities are distorted. We are spending billions on an unnecessary war instead of health care."
In the days before the protest, organizers used anti-war videos on the Internet to encourage participation in the rallies across the country. One video was a two-minute short by the Brave New Foundation in Culver City that invited viewers to be part of something "huge and meaningful."
Another two-minute video, "Confront the War President," featured a series of wrenching images of the Iraq war's dead and dying, grieving relatives and the wounded. It included film clips of President Bush in interviews - one in 2006 saying, "To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong," and another in 2004 stating: "I am a war president. I make policy decisions here in the Oval Office on foreign policy matters with war on my mind."
Chronicle news services contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at jdoyle@sfchronicle.com and ssward@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/28/BAJHT0ULT.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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2) Thousands Call for Swift End to Iraq War
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:31 a.m. ET
October 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-War-Protest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Thousands of people called for a swift end to the war in Iraq as they marched through downtown on Saturday, chanting and carrying signs that read: ''Wall Street Gets Rich, Iraqis and GIs Die'' or ''Drop Tuition Not Bombs.''
The streets were filled with thousands as labor union members, anti-war activists, clergy and others rallied near City Hall before marching to Dolores Park.
As part of the demonstration, protesters fell on Market Street as part of a ''die in'' to commemorate the thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens who have died since the conflict began in March 2003.
The protest was the largest in a series of war protests taking place in New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, organizers said.
No official head count was available. Organizers of the event estimated about 30,000 people participated in San Francisco. It appeared that more than 10,000 people attended the march.
''I got the sense that many people were at a demonstration for the first time,'' said Sarah Sloan, one of the event's organizers. ''That's something that's really changed. People have realized the right thing to do is to take to the streets.''
In the shadow of the National Constitution Center and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a few hundred protesters ranging from grade school-aged children to senior citizens called on President Bush to end funding for the war and bring troops home.
Marchers who braved severe wet weather during the walk of more than 30 blocks were met by people lining the sidewalks and clutching a long yellow ribbon over the final blocks before Independence Mall. There, the rally opened with songs and prayers by descendants of Lenape Indians.
''Our signs are limp from the rain and the ground is soggy, but out spirits are high,'' said Bal Pinguel, of the American Friends Service Committee, one of the national sponsors of the event. ''The high price we are paying is the more than 3,800 troops who have been killed in the war in Iraq.''
Vince Robbins, 51, of Mount Holly, N.J., said there needed to be more rallies and more outrage.
''Where's the outcry? Where's the horror that almost 4,000 Americans have died in a foreign country that we invaded?'' Robbins said. ''I'm almost as angry at the American people as I am the president. I think Americans have become apathetic and placid about the whole thing.''
In New York, among the thousands marching down Broadway was a man carrying cardboard peace doves. Some others dressed as prisoners, wearing the bright orange garb of Guantanamo Bay inmates and pushing a person in a cage.
Chicago police said about 5,000 people marched through city streets to protest the war.
Police spokeswoman JoAnn Taylor said three protesters were arrested before the march started. They face charges including resisting arrest, failure to obey a police officer, criminal damage to property and aggravated battery to a police officer.
In Seattle, thousands of marchers were led by a small group of Iraq war veterans.
At Occidental Park, where the protesters rallied after the march, the American Friends Service Committee displayed scores of combat boots, one pair for each U.S. solider killed in Iraq.
Associated Press writer Bob Lentz in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
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3) W.M.D. in Iran? Q.E.D.
By MAUREEN DOWD
Op-Ed Columnist
October 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp
TIM RUSSERT: Mr. Vice President, welcome to “Meet the Press.”
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Good morning, Tim.
RUSSERT: How close are we to war with Iran?
CHENEY: Well, I think we are in the final stages of diplomacy, obviously. We have done virtually everything we can with respect to carrots, if you will. It’s time for squash. Not to mention mushrooms, clouds of them.
RUSSERT: But you squashed Iraq and that didn’t work out so well.
CHENEY: Iraq will be fine, Tim. It just needs a firmer hand. We learned that lesson. We’re not going to get hung up on democracy this time. (Expletive) purple thumbs.
RUSSERT: Isn’t Secretary Rice still pushing carrots for Iran?
CHENEY: The more carrots Condi feeds ’em, the better they’ll be able to see the bombs coming.
RUSSERT: First you threatened to take action if Iran built a nuclear weapon. Now you’re threatening to take action if Iran knows how to build a nuclear weapon. What’s next? You threaten to take action if Ahmadinejad dresses up as a nuclear weapon for Halloween?
CHENEY: Well, the difficulty here is, each time he has rejected what he was called upon to do by the international community. I’m not sure now, no matter what he says, that anyone would believe him. He’s pretending he doesn’t have W.M.D., just like Saddam.
RUSSERT: But Saddam didn’t have W.M.D.
CHENEY: He did, Tim.
RUSSERT: He did?
CHENEY: Ever wonder what happened to them?
RUSSERT: What happened to them?
CHENEY: Think about it, Tim.
RUSSERT: The New York Times reported yesterday that the suspected nuclear reactor in Syria bombed by Israeli jets was well under construction in 2003, the same year we went to war with Syria’s neighbor Iraq. Did we go after the wrong country?
CHENEY: Syria is not a country, Tim. It’s a way station run by an eye doctor.
RUSSERT: Conservatives are tossing around some lock-and-load language. The president is talking about Iran sparking a “nuclear holocaust” and World War III. Giuliani adviser Norman Podhoretz thinks we’re in World War IV. Shouldn’t you at least give the new sanctions against Iran a chance to work?
CHENEY: Oh, we have, Tim. The sanctions were announced Thursday. It’s now Sunday. I think things have gotten so bad inside Iran, from the standpoint of the Iranian people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.
RUSSERT: But what if your analysis is not correct — again? Let’s put up on the screen part of an interview The New York Times’s Thom Shanker did with the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen: “With America at war in two Muslim countries, he said, attacking a third Islamic nation in the region ‘has extraordinary challenges and risks associated with it.’ The military option, he said, should be a last resort.” Your own chairman of the Joint Chiefs does not think the military can handle a third war.
CHENEY: If Admiral Mullen wants to be Admiral Sullen, that’s his business. I’m not going to be a defeatist or question the courage of our fighting men.
RUSSERT: Critics say that if you attack Iran, there will be riots in every Muslim capital, the Iranians will flood Iraq with more explosives and money for the Shiite militias. They say you’ll only end up making more enemies for America, and our troops.
CHENEY: Why don’t we just give the Islamofascists Sudetenland, Tim? Peace in our time.
RUSSERT: The Europeans are upset that you might start another war in their backyard.
CHENEY: (Rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath) Eurappeasers.
RUSSERT: An Iranian spokesman dismissed the new U.S. sanctions as “worthless and ineffective” and said they were “doomed to fail as before.” And Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards — a group you have accused of proliferating weapons of mass destruction — also warned that his forces would respond with an “even more decisive” strike if attacked.
CHENEY: Don’t worry about General Ali Baba, Tim. We gave the Israelis his home address.
RUSSERT: How will you even know where to bomb, given that all the experts say the Iranians have hidden their real nuclear facilities underground?
CHENEY: Can you say magic carpet bombing, Tim? We didn’t build those bunker busters just to stack ’em up in a warehouse in North Dakota.
RUSSERT: It’s so close to the next election, Mr. Vice President, shouldn’t you just keep on the diplomatic track and let the next president make this decision?
CHENEY: You really want Rudy Giuliani playing with the nuclear button, Tim? Now, that’s insane.
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4) Bush eyes Mexico drug fight funds
Monday, 22 October 2007, 22:35 GMT 23:35 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7057414.stm
President George W Bush has asked the US Congress for $500m (£246m) to help Mexico fight against illegal drugs.
A White House spokeswoman said the US would do all it could "to support Mexico's efforts to break the power and impunity of drug organisations".
The request, the first part of a $1.4bn initiative, is due to be discussed by Congress in Washington on Thursday.
Analysts have compared the package to the controversial, and much larger, aid the US gives Colombia to fight drugs.
But the BBC's Lourdes Heredia in Washington says that both the US and Mexico are keen to avoid too close an association with "Plan Colombia" because of the controversy it has generated.
'Positive effect'
If approved by Congress, the $1.4bn programme over two years would help pay for intelligence and training efforts, as well as equipment such as helicopters and boats.
Mr Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon have been working on the details of the plan for several weeks, officials said.
"Already, President Calderon's decisive actions have had a positive effect in the United States," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
"They have disrupted drug trafficker supply lines and have contributed to shortages in cocaine and methamphetamine supply across the nation."
Since taking office last December, Mr Calderon has sent nearly 30,000 troops and federal police across his country to battle the drug gangs and disrupt their activities.
Figures released earlier this month by US drugs tsar John Walters indicated the price of cocaine in 37 cities across the US has risen sharply since March and purity has declined, suggesting dealers' supplies are being stretched.
Ninety percent of cocaine entering the US comes through Mexico.
However, the crackdown has exacted a price in Mexico, where a brutal underworld struggle has left as many as 2,000 people dead, including more than 200 police officers, commanders and soldiers.
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5) Study: 2,002 suspects died in police custody over 3 years
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 11, 2007
(10-11) 16:01 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/10/11/national/w130211D97.DTL
More than 2,000 criminal suspects died in police custody over a three-year period, half of them killed by officers as they scuffled or attempted to flee, the government said Thursday. The highest number of deaths — 310_ occurred in California, the nation's most populous state.
The study by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics is the first nationwide compilation of the reasons behind arrest-related deaths in the wake of high-profile police assaults or killings involving Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo in New York in the late 1990s.
The review found 55 percent of the 2,002 arrest-related deaths from 2003 through 2005 were due to homicide by state and local law enforcement officers. Alcohol and drug intoxication caused 13 percent of the deaths, followed by suicides at 12 percent, accidental injury at 7 percent and illness or natural causes, 6 percent. The causes for the deaths of the remaining 7 percent were unknown.
In California, the 310 deaths included 162 homicides, 62 deaths by intoxication, 17 by suicide and 20 by illness. There were 25 accidental deaths and 24 were caused by other or unknown causes.
After California, Texas and Florida led the pack for both police killings and overall arrest-related deaths. Georgia, Maryland and Montana were not included in the study because they did not submit data.
Most of those who died in custody were men (96 percent) between the ages of 18 and 44 (77 percent). Approximately 44 percent were white; 32 percent black; 20 percent Hispanic; and 4 percent were of other or multiple races.
"Keep in mind we have 2,000 deaths out of almost 40 million arrests over three years, so that tells you by their nature they are very unusual cases," said Christopher J. Mumola, who wrote the study.
"Still, they do need to be looked at to determine whether police training can be better or practices can be better," he said.
State laws and police department policy typically let officers use deadly force to defend themselves or others from the threat of death or serious injury. Deadly force also is allowed to prevent the escape of a suspect in a violent felony who poses an immediate threat to others.
The Justice Department study released Thursday suggests that most of the police killings would be considered justified, although it does not make that final determination. About 80 percent of the cases involved criminal suspects who reportedly brandished a weapon "to threaten or assault" the arresting officers.
Another 17 percent involved suspects who allegedly grabbed, hit or fought with police. More than one-third of the police killings, or about 36 percent, involved a suspect who tried to flee or otherwise escape arrest.
The report was compiled at the request of Congress in 2000 after the 1997 struggle between New York police and Louima, a black security guard who left the precinct house bleeding after officers jammed a broken broomstick into his mouth and rectum. A few years later, two police shootings of unarmed black men followed, including Diallo, who was shot 41 times after he reached into his pocket for a wallet.
Since then, following police sensitivity training, New York has seen a few killings involving suspects and officers, including last year's shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed black bridegroom-to-be whom police say they believed was reaching for a gun.
New York now ranks sixth nationwide in the number of police killings, behind Arizona and Illinois, according to Thursday's report.
Other findings:
--Among law enforcement, 380 officers were killed in the line of duty over the three-year period and 174,760 were reportedly assaulted, according to FBI data. Most of the deaths were accidental (221), while 159 were homicides.
California also led other states in line-of-duty deaths of law enforcement officers during the years of the study, reporting 44. Twenty-seven of those were accidental and 17 were felonious.
--Blacks were disproportionately represented in arrest-related deaths due to alcohol or drug intoxication (41 percent vs. 33 percent for whites); accidental injury (42 percent vs. 37 percent for whites); and unknown causes (46 percent vs. 39 percent for whites).
Mumola said it was unclear why blacks tended to be victims for accidental injuries, which often involve fatalities in the course of a police car chase; or intoxication, which involve overdoses or drunkenness.
--Arrest-related deaths involving Tasers or other conducted-energy devices are rising, although overall numbers are low. From 2003-2005, there were 36 such deaths total, with a jump from 3 cases in 2003 to 24 in 2005.
--About half of arrest-related suicides (51 percent) involved attempted arrests for violent crimes. Whites were disproportionately represented in those deaths (57 percent), six times the percent of blacks (14 percent). Hispanics accounted for 26 percent of the cases, and 3 percent involved other or multiple races.
On the Net:
Bureau of Justice Statistics:
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/10/11/national/w130211D97.DTL
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6) Mr. Williams Needs Help;
A Stranger to His Family
By ANN ZIMMERMAN
October 30, 2007; Page A1
WALL STREET JOURNAL
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Michael Anthony Williams took a road trip through
the Southeast recently, looking for a place that felt like home.
For more than half his 43 years, Mr. Williams had lived in the
infamously tough Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He had been
convicted of raping and beating his school tutor when he was 16 years
old. Only his family believed him when he said he was innocent.
DNA testing finally exonerated him, and he was released in March
2005. But since then, Mr. Williams has lived in a different kind of
prison. After 24 years of estrangement, he says his six brothers and
sisters want nothing to do with him. He has little education, no job
skills and few friends.
"It's been lonely," he says. "Very lonely."
Mr. Williams is one of a growing number of convicts -- more than 200
so far -- who have been freed from prison after DNA testing proved
them innocent. After years of fighting to clear their names, they're
emerging into a changed world, with not much help to find their way.
A 2003 study of 60 exonerees imprisoned an average of 12 years by
Lola Vollen, founder of the Life After Exoneration Program in
Berkeley, Calif., found that nearly half suffer from depression,
anxiety disorder or some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Exonerees are like torture victims or political prisoners, given the
psychological trauma they've suffered," says Vanessa Potkin, a staff
attorney with the Innocence Project, a New York nonprofit
organization that used DNA to help clear Mr. Williams. Ms. Potkin
says, "Michael is one of the harshest cases, because he was so young
and his prison experience so horrendous, but he also represents the
challenges and obstacles shared by many exonerees."
To be sure, some of their problems are common to anyone, guilty or
innocent, confronting the world after serving a long prison sentence.
But experts say the issues are often worse for exonerees, who have
the added emotional and psychological burdens of having been wrongly
locked away, as well as having comparatively fewer services available
to them when they are released.
The Innocence Project and other groups' efforts to help inmates after
they've been freed have been hampered by a shortage of both programs
and funds.
Twenty-two states currently compensate the wrongly convicted. The
funding varies from $20,000 total to $50,000 a year for every year of
incarceration. Advocates argue that much more than money is needed.
Exonerees need help with housing and health care, and access to
education, life skills and job training so that they can become
self-sufficient.
Mr. Williams had to persuade a Louisiana state representative to
write a bill on his behalf to appropriate funds for his compensation.
He was finally paid $150,000 this past summer -- about $6,300 a year
for each year of his imprisonment.
Mr. Williams was just a high-school sophomore when he was tried as an
adult for the rape of his 22-year-old tutor. The woman's head was
covered during the attack, but she testified that she recognized the
teenager by his voice. Despite a lack of physical evidence, Mr.
Williams was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
When he arrived at Angola, he says, a guard shackled him to the cell
door and left it open, exposing him to attacks from other inmates.
As he spoke, his fingers traced a scar on his elbow, left when he
attempted to fend off an inmate who came at him with an ice pick.
Mr. Williams was just another convict claiming innocence until 1995,
when he learned about DNA testing by watching the O.J. Simpson murder
trial on a prison television. Tests conducted by three different labs
determined that the semen collected from the rape victim in Mr.
Williams's case could not have come from him. The man who actually
attacked her has not been found.
When Mr. Williams was freed, he had nowhere to go. Ms. Potkin tracked
down several of his siblings, but after 24 years, they barely knew
him, and refused to take him.
Guilty or Damaged
"When you are in prison for as long as I was, people either think you
must be guilty or at least damaged," says Mr. Williams.
He didn't know how to drive. He had never used a cellphone, or left a
message on an answering machine, or typed on a computer. He says that
what surprised him most was the automatic flush toilets at Wal-Mart.
Even adjusting to the sounds of his new world was difficult.
He says that being locked up all those years had made his hearing
particularly sensitive. "In prison, your ears are your eyes," he
says. "You know everyone's footsteps." Even now, he can't get used to
sleeping in the dark, and has to leave the lights on.
The Innocence Project finally tracked down a younger sister, Kay
Jackson, an Army surgical technician in Virginia.
She felt she owed it to Mr. Williams to let him live with her and her
teenage daughter and fiancé, a retired Marine. But it was tougher
than she had expected. "He was a 43-year-old man trapped in a
17-year-old brain," she says.
The smart, mischievous boy she remembered had become a distrustful,
awkward, self-absorbed man. He was angry, unemployed, and passed his
days shopping and eating fast food. His habit of taking long showers
and sleeping with the TV on ran up her utility bills, she says, but
he resented it when she complained. He says he offered to pay.
Trouble Conforming
Mr. Williams went back to Baton Rouge but returned to Virginia within
a few months. He had a series of jobs -- unloading trucks, stocking
shelves at Target, laying tar on roadways -- but he had trouble
conforming to rules, and none of the jobs lasted long. Mr. Williams
offers different reasons for losing the jobs. While laying road tar,
Mr. Williams, who weighs 300 pounds and has high blood pressure, says
he suffered heat stroke.
Between jobs, Mr. Williams liked to sit in a lounge chair in front of
his sister's house, where he became a magnet for neighborhood kids
who loved to hear his prison stories. The local homeowner's
association sent out a letter forbidding "loitering" in the
neighborhood. He left for good about a year ago.
Mr. Williams still hasn't been able to find steady work here. He used
$27,000 of his state compensation to buy a new car -- a Toyota Camry
with a V6 engine and twin exhaust. He invested some of the remaining
money in an annuity and is living on the rest.
Two weeks ago, he lost most of his possessions when his electric oven
caught fire and ruined his apartment. The next day, Mr. Williams got
hugs and sympathy from fellow parishioners at the nondenominational
Miracle Place Church in nearby Baker, La., which was started by a
former drug dealer. Regulars include several Angola inmates, a former
prison guard and the local police chief.
Community of Exonerees
In a few weeks, Mr. Williams will return to Atlanta to look for a
place to live. There, he hopes to join a small community of other
exonerees he met through the Innocence Project.
Mr. Williams believes that with a little more help, he could make a
better life for himself. "If I could go to school for computers. And
get a place of my own," he says defiantly, sitting in a lawn chair
outside his charred apartment. "If I could see a future...."
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7) War protests: Why no coverage?
Newspapers have a duty to inform citizens about such democratic events.
By Jerry Lanson
Boston
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1030/p09s02-coop.html
Coordinated antiwar protests in at least 11 American cities this weekend
raised anew an interesting question about the nature of news coverage:
Are the media ignoring rallies against the Iraq war because of their low
turnout or is the turnout dampened by the lack of news coverage?
I find it unsettling that I even have to consider the question.
That most Americans oppose the war in Iraq is well established. The
latest CBS News poll, in mid-October, found 26 percent of those polled
approved of the way the president is handling the war and 67 percent
disapproved. It found that 45 percent said they'd only be willing to
keep large numbers of US troops in Iraq "for less than a year." And an
ABC News-Washington Post poll in late September found that 55 percent
felt Democrats in Congress had not gone far enough in opposing the war.
Granted, neither poll asked specifically about what this weekend's
marchers wanted: An end to congressional funding for the war. Still,
poll after poll has found substantial discontent with a war that ranks
as the preeminent issue in the presidential campaign.
Given that context, it seems remarkable to me that in some of the 11
cities in which protests were held – Boston and New York, for example –
major news outlets treated this "National Day of Action" as though it
did not exist. As far as I can tell, neither The New York Times nor The
Boston Globe had so much as a news brief about the march in the days
leading up to it. The day after, The Times, at least in its national
edition, totally ignored the thousands who marched in New York and the
tens of thousands who marched nationwide. The Globe relegated the news
of 10,000 spirited citizens (including me) marching through Boston's
rain-dampened streets to a short piece deep inside its metro section. A
single sentence noted the event's national context.
As a former newspaper editor, I was most taken aback by the silence
beforehand. Surely any march of widespread interest warrants a brief
news item to let people know that the event is taking place and that
they can participate. It's called "advancing the news," and it has a
time-honored place in American newsrooms.
With prescient irony, Frank Rich wrote in his Oct. 14 Times column, "We
can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq.…
But we must also examine our own responsibility." And, he goes on to
suggest, we must examine our own silence.
So why would Mr. Rich's news colleagues deprive people of information
needed to take exactly that responsibility?
I'm not suggesting here that the Times or any news organization should
be in collusion with a movement – pro-war or antiwar, pro-choice or
pro-life, pro-government or pro-privatization.
I am suggesting that news organizations cover the news – that they
inform the public about any widespread effort to give voice to those who
share a widely held view about any major national issue.
If it had been a pro-war group that had organized a series of support
marches this weekend, I'd have felt the same way. Like the National Day
of Action, their efforts would have been news – news of how people can
participate in a democracy overrun with campaign platitudes and
big-plate fundraisers, news that keeps democracy vibrant, news that
keeps it healthy.
Joseph Pulitzer, the editor and publisher for whom the highest honor in
journalism is named, understood this well. In May 1904, he wrote: "Our
Republic and its press rise or fall together. An able, disinterested,
public-spirited press … can preserve that public virtue without which
popular government is a sham and a mockery.… The power to mould the
future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future
generations."
It's time for the current generation of journalists – at times seemingly
obsessed with Martha Stewart, O.J. Simpson, Paris Hilton, Britney
Spears, and the like – to use that power more vigilantly, and more
firmly, with the public interest in mind.
• Jerry Lanson is a professor of journalism at Emerson College in Boston.
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8) No Emergency Room
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/opinion/30herbert.html?hp
Homeless advocates in New York are facing off against the Bloomberg administration in a fight that threatens to bring back the protracted court battles of a couple of decades ago.
There is no gray area in this fight. The advocates will tell you that a mayor with multiple billions of dollars and lavish homes here, there and everywhere has taken on the noxious task of throwing homeless families with small children out into the cold.
They will tell you that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with a bizarre new policy aimed at denying emergency shelter to as many applicants as possible, is forcing these families to spend long, harrowing nights riding subways, or sleeping in parks, or huddled in doorways, or camped out in hospital waiting rooms.
The city will tell you that’s nonsense, that a family might fall through the proverbial crack here and there, but that the mayor is not a Grinch, and that mothers with small children are not being left on their own in circumstances reminiscent of the Great Depression.
Well, some of them are. The question is, how many?
Diane Wilson, who was denied shelter and spent a weekend roaming the streets with her 7-year-old daughter, Jasmine, said she saw other mothers and children “scattered out there in the streets and on the subways in the middle of the night.”
And a number of homeless families have been sleeping on the floor at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in the Bronx.
When I started researching this column, it seemed very much like the mayor had in fact ordered a crackdown that was condemning large numbers of destitute families to the street.
Ms. Wilson and Jasmine were given the alarming news that they could no longer stay in the emergency shelters that had housed them since September. The city’s policy, they were told, had changed.
Until a few weeks ago, the city had offered emergency shelter on a night-by-night basis to families that had been found to be ineligible for longer-term help. This safety net was important because bureaucrats make mistakes.
If you have no place to go and you’re standing in the doorway of a shelter, holding two kids by the hand, and an intake official doesn’t believe that you’re homeless, you’re in big trouble. Which is why emergency placement, until the truth can be sorted out, is essential.
The Bloomberg administration, upset by what it said were people abusing this emergency system for families who might have incorrectly been denied shelter, ended it.
Ms. Wilson and Jasmine were indeed thrown onto the street. Frightened and bleary-eyed, they tried to stay as long and as unobtrusively as possible at a McDonald’s restaurant. They rode the subways. They walked and walked and sometimes wept in frustration.
They thought at one point that they had found shelter — for at least awhile — in the waiting area of a hospital emergency room. But hospital officials, fed up with their presence, told Ms. Wilson that they would report her to the Administration for Children’s Services, which takes away the children of unfit parents.
Ms. Wilson and Jasmine hurried back outside.
So we are talking about an ugly situation here. But it’s not clear that it’s ugly in the same way that some homeless advocates are alleging. If you go on the hunt for homeless families in the street, you’ll have trouble finding any. There just aren’t that many out there.
And Diane Wilson’s initial application for shelter left a great deal to be desired. The kindest way to put it is that she made a few factual errors.
Despite that, the city took another look at her case. After two days, it again gave Ms. Wilson and Jasmine emergency shelter, and will most likely offer them more extended help.
So what’s the problem?
Steven Banks, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society and a longtime advocate for the homeless, is correct in his contention that the new Bloomberg policy is a step backward. There is no doubt that some families, probably a lot of them, have been improperly denied shelter.
There is no evidence, however, that most of them ended up on the street. The worst and most unscrupulous aspects of the homeless crisis are taking place out of public view — families being returned to homes that are inappropriate, and even dangerous; families being sent way out of state — to Florida, or the West Coast, or Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic — by city officials who just don’t want to deal with them.
It may be that the most dramatic examples offered by the advocates — mothers huddled with small children on street corners in the cold — are just the tiniest aspect of a much larger, much more tragic problem.
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9) Iraq Preparing Law Lifting Protection for Security Contractors
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
October 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html?ref=world
The Iraqi Cabinet approved draft legislation today that lifts immunity for foreign private security companies and sent the measure to Parliament for approval, a government spokesman said.
The measure would lift a provision protecting the foreign companies from prosecution in effect since 2004, when the Americans handed sovereignty back to Iraq.
The provision has long rankled Iraqis because the private guards have on many occasions used excessive force, wounding or killing civilians. It became a major point of contention between the American and Iraqi government after a Sept. 16 shooting by guards with Blackwater USA left 17 Iraqi civilians dead and 27 wounded.
The Iraqi government’s decision followed reports that the State Department has promised Blackwater bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s shooting.
State Department officials declined to confirm or deny that immunity had been granted. A spokeswoman for Blackwater, Anne Tyrrell has declined comment about the investigation.
The draft law canceling the private security firms’ immunity was written by the legal adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. It would overturn a measure known as Order 17 issued by L. Paul Bremer , the American viceroy in Iraq, before leaving Iraq.
Under the version approved by the cabinet, foreign security companies would have to meet several criteria including a requirement that all their weapons be licensed by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. Their equipment, including helicopters and armored vehicles, would have to be registered with the appropriate Iraqi agencies and all foreign employees would have to obtain visas from the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.
Currently many contractors in Iraq, including those who work for security firms, enter and leave the country without visas because they have contractor badges that say they work with the Department of Defense. The Iraqi government previously accepted the badges rather than requiring visas. “This decision does not just cover Blackwater, it will cover all the foreign security firms operating in Iraq,” said Thamer Ghadban, the chairman of Mr. Maliki’s council of advisers. “ This law will protect Iraqis and Iraq’s sovereignty.”
The cabinet’s approval, however, is only the first step in the legislative process. Parliament is likely to amend it, but, according to a Shiite member, only to make it tougher and more restrictive.
“The Iraqi Parliament is enthusiastic about controlling these companies and will not allow them to have a free hand especially after the massacre of Nisoor Square,” said the member of Parliament, Jalaluddin Sagheer, who is from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, one of the country’s most influential Shiite parties.
“Order 17 gave complete immunity and we can no longer deal with the security firms in this way,” he said. “The cabinet’s version is just the first step in the discussion of how the law should be written and the Security and Defense Committee of the Parliament will decide which provisions should be added and which ones removed.”
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10) Immunity Deals Offered to Blackwater Guards
By DAVID JOHNSTON
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/washington/30blackwater.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — State Department investigators offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity during an inquiry into last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute the company’s employees involved in the episode, government officials said Monday.
The State Department investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added.
Most of the guards who took part in the Sept. 16 shooting were offered what officials described as limited-use immunity, which means that they were promised that they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in their interviews with the authorities as long as their statements were true. The immunity offers were first reported Monday by The Associated Press.
The officials who spoke of the immunity deals have been briefed on the matter, but agreed to talk about the arrangement only on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss a continuing criminal investigation.
The precise legal status of the immunity offer is unclear. Those who have been offered immunity would seem likely to assert that their statements are legally protected, even as some government officials say that immunity was never officially sanctioned by the Justice Department.
Spokesmen for the State and Justice Departments would not comment on the matter. A State Department official said, “If there’s any truth to this story, then the decision was made without consultation with senior officials in Washington.”
A spokeswoman for Blackwater, Anne E. Tyrrell, said, “It would be inappropriate for me to comment on the investigation.”
The immunity deals were an unwelcome surprise at the Justice Department, which was already grappling with the fundamental legal question of whether any prosecutions could take place involving American civilians in Iraq.
Blackwater employees and other civilian contractors cannot be tried in military courts, and it is unclear what American criminal laws might cover criminal acts committed in a war zone. Americans are immune from Iraqi law under a directive signed by the United States occupation authority in 2003 that has not been repealed by the Iraqi Parliament.
A State Department review panel sent to investigate the shootings concluded that there was no basis for holding non-Defense Department contractors accountable under United States law and urged Congress and the administration to address the problem.
The House overwhelmingly passed a bill this month that would make such contractors liable under a law known as the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. The Senate is considering a similar measure.
Some legal analysts have suggested that the Blackwater case could be prosecuted through the act, which allows the extension of federal law to civilians supporting military operations.
But trying a criminal case in federal court requires guarantees that no one has tampered with the evidence. Because a defendant has the right to cross-examine witnesses, foreign witnesses would have to be transported to the United States.
Several legal experts said evidence gathered by Iraqi investigators and turned over to the Americans, even within days, would probably be suspect.
Another law that may be applicable covers contractors in areas that could be defined as American territory, like a military base or the Green Zone. But the Blackwater security contractors in the Sept. 16 shootings were in neither place.
The government has transferred the investigation from the diplomatic service to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has begun reinterviewing Blackwater employees without any grant of immunity in an effort to assemble independent evidence of possible wrongdoing.
Richard J. Griffin, the chief of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, resigned last week, in a departure that appeared to be related to problems with his supervision of Blackwater contractors.
In addition, the Justice Department reassigned the investigation from prosecutors in the criminal division who had read the statements the State Department had taken under the offer of immunity to prosecutors in the national security division who had no knowledge of the statements.
Such a step is usually taken to preserve the government’s ability to argue later in court that any case it has brought was made independently and did not use information gathered under a promise that it would not be used in a criminal trial.
The episode began as a convoy carrying American diplomats and staffed by Blackwater guards approached Nisour Square in Baghdad at midday on a Sunday. A second Blackwater convoy, positioned on the crowded square in advance to control traffic, opened fire, killing 17 people and wounding 24.
Blackwater’s original statement on the shooting said the company’s guards had “acted lawfully and appropriately in response to a hostile attack,” and initial assertions by the State Department stated that the convoy had come under small-arms fire.
But subsequent accounts from witnesses and Iraqi investigators indicated that the convoy had not been attacked and that the Blackwater guards fired indiscriminately around the square. American soldiers investigating the scene afterward also found no evidence of an attack.
F.B.I. agents have been at the Blackwater compound in the Green Zone interviewing guards involved in the shooting.
Immunity is intended to protect the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while still giving investigators the ability to gather evidence. Usually, people suspected of crimes are not given immunity and such grants are not made until after the probable defendants are identified. Even then, prosecutors often face serious obstacles in bringing a prosecution in cases in which defendants have been immunized.
John M. Broder contributed reporting.
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11) Looking at Dutch and Swiss Health Systems
By GARDINER HARRIS
“In Switzerland and the Netherlands, all people have to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. Employers are exempt from the mandates, and private insurers and hospitals provide care.”
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/health/policy/30leavitt.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 —The Swiss and Dutch health care systems are suddenly all the rage. They have features similar to proposals by at least two presidential hopefuls, and next month the United States’ top health official will visit Switzerland and the Netherlands to kick the tires.
Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt will visit Switzerland on Nov. 7 and then fly to The Hague for two days. His schedule is filled with meetings with ministers and technocrats, hospital officials and insurance executives and patients and their advocates.
His visit arose, health department officials said, because policy experts here have promoted Swiss and Dutch changes as models.
In Switzerland and the Netherlands, all people have to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. Employers are exempt from the mandates, and private insurers and hospitals provide care.
“We have been hearing a lot of people in the health policy community talk about how those two countries had been doing new things in health access, and the secretary wanted to get a closer look at what they’re doing,” a department official said.
The trip is not a sign, however, that the Bush administration is considering major health initiatives, officials said.
“We don’t have anything cooking that we haven’t announced,” the department official said. “We would not endorse a system like the Netherlands or Switzerland’s. But if there’s something we could learn about their system, we should learn about it.”
Other experts, however, are endorsing the two countries’ health systems.
The proposals of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards borrow heavily from changes in the two countries. Mitt Romney’s changes when he was governor of Massachusetts were in part modeled on those in Switzerland. Mr. Romney has not endorsed this approach as a candidate seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
The Healthy Americans Act, introduced by Senators Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah, would largely adopt the Dutch reforms.
Mr. Wyden said Mr. Leavitt’s trip was part of growing Republican support for proposals for universal health care through individual mandates and private providers.
“I think Mr. Leavitt’s trip is a really positive development,” Mr. Wyden said.
A spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, Susan Pisano, said she was struck by Mr. Leavitt’s timing. On Wednesday, Ms. Pisano’s trade group will be the host of a luncheon at which Dutch and Swiss insurance executives will discuss the changes in Europe.
The event is meant to dispel the myth that every nation that provides universal health care does so through government-run systems.
“The only models we seem to focus on here are those in Canada and Great Britain, which both have government-run systems,” Ms. Pisano said. “We thought it made sense to look at two countries that have universal coverage but rely on the private sector to get there.”
W. David Helms, president of AcademyHealth, a health policy research organization here, said he met top Dutch health officials for several days this month in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands is a particularly good model for the United States, Mr. Helms said, because it has solved two basic problems: moving from an employer-based system to one in which individuals buy their own insurance and subsidizing care for the poor.
“I think the Netherlands is hot right now because a number of people are realizing that we need to go to an individual-based system instead of an employer-based one,” he said.
President Bush recently proposed eliminating the different tax treatment for employer- and individually purchased health insurance by letting individuals buy insurance with pre-tax dollars.
Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health, said interest in the Swiss and Dutch models had soared among policy experts because of a growing consensus that the United States would never adopt a single-payer system.
Professor Blendon said that the Massachusetts plan and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal for California demonstrated that such changes were politically feasible, and that the Netherlands and Switzerland showed that they could work.
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12) Gay Enclaves Face Prospect of Being Passé
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/30gay.html?ref=us
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24 — This Halloween, the Glindas, gladiators and harem boys of the Castro — along with untold numbers who plan to dress up as Senator Larry E. Craig, this year’s camp celebrity — will be celebrating behind closed doors. The city’s most popular Halloween party, in America’s largest gay neighborhood, is canceled.
The once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders, and there has been talk of moving it outside the district because of increasing violence. Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration.
For many in the Castro District, the cancellation is a blow that strikes at the heart of neighborhood identity, and it has brought soul-searching that goes beyond concerns about crime.
These are wrenching times for San Francisco’s historic gay village, with population shifts, booming development, and a waning sense of belonging that is also being felt in gay enclaves across the nation, from Key West, Fla., to West Hollywood, as they struggle to maintain cultural relevance in the face of gentrification.
There has been a notable shift of gravity from the Castro, with young gay men and lesbians fanning out into less-expensive neighborhoods like Mission Dolores and the Outer Sunset, and farther away to Marin and Alameda Counties, “mirroring national trends where you are seeing same-sex couples becoming less urban, even as the population become slightly more urban,” said Gary J. Gates, a demographer and senior research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles.
At the same time, cities not widely considered gay meccas have seen a sharp increase in same-sex couples. Among them: Fort Worth; El Paso; Albuquerque; Louisville, Ky.; and Virginia Beach, according to census figures and extrapolations by Dr. Gates for The New York Times. “Twenty years ago, if you were gay and lived in rural Kansas, you went to San Francisco or New York,” he said. “Now you can just go to Kansas City.”
In the Castro, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society held public meetings earlier this year to grapple with such questions as “Are Gay Neighborhoods Worth Saving?”
With nine major developments planned for Market Street, including a splashy 113-unit condominium designed by Arquitectonica, anxiety about the future is swirling. Median home prices hover around $870,000. Local institutions like Cliff’s Variety, a hardware store selling feathered boas (year-round) are not about to vanish from this storied homeland of the gay rights movement. But the prospect of half-million-dollar condos inhabited by many straight people underscores a demographic shift.
“The Castro, and to a lesser extent the West Village, was where you went to express yourself,” said Don F. Reuter, a New York author who is researching a book on the rise and fall of gay neighborhoods, or “gayborhoods.”
“Claiming physical territory was a powerful act,” Mr. Reuter said. “But the gay neighborhood is becoming a past-tense idea.”
In the Castro, the influx of baby strollers — some being pushed by straight parents, some by gay parents — is perhaps the most blatant sign of change. “The Castro has gone from a gay-ghetto mentality to a family mentality,” said Wes Freas, a broker with Zephyr Real Estate. The arrival of a Pottery Barn down the street from the birthplaces of the AIDS quilt and the Rainbow Flag is a nod to change.
Sakura Ferris, a 28-year-old mother of a toddler, moved to the Castro because she liked its new eclecticism. At the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, a parent hot spot rife with Froggie pull-toys, Ms. Ferris’s tot mingles with infants in onesies that read, “I Love My Daddies.”
The Castro remains a top tourist destination for gay and lesbian visitors. But Joe D’Alessandro, president and C.E.O. of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors’ Bureau, and a gay parent who lives in the Castro, predicted that eventually the neighborhood would go the way of North Beach, “still a historic Italian neighborhood though Italians don’t necessarily live there anymore.”
The Castro became a center for gay liberation in the late 1960s and early 1970s in a declining Irish Catholic and Scandinavian neighborhood. At its helm was Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor in San Francisco whose slaying in 1978 by a disgruntled former supervisor, Dan White, galvanized the community and set off riots when White was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder.
Decimated during the AIDS epidemic of 1990-1995, the neighborhood rebounded in the boom economy of the late 1990s. But the social forces that gave rise to the Castro and other gay neighborhoods like the West Village and West Hollywood may be becoming passé.
While the state’s Eighth Congressional District, which includes the Castro, saw an increase of about 20 percent in the number of same-sex couples from 2002 to 2006, surrounding districts had a 38 percent increase in same-sex couples, according to Dr. Gates.
In West Hollywood, another traditional gay haven, the graying of the population and the high cost of real estate have resulted in once-gay watering holes like the Spike and the I Candy Lounge going hetero. A new kind of gentrification is under way in which young gay waiters and school teachers move instead to Hollywood and other surrounding neighborhoods. “We often clamored for equality where gay and straight could coexist,” said Mayor John Duran of West Hollywood, who is gay. “But we weren’t prepared to give up our subculture to negotiate that exchange.”
While the Castro has been the center of a movement, it is also home to “an important political constituency,” said Elizabeth A. Armstrong, an associate sociology professor at Indiana University and the author of “Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco 1950-1994”
“When people were angry about Dan White they were able to assemble quickly, spilling out of the bars,” Professor Armstrong said. “Physical location mattered.”
The Castro still has the city’s largest progressive Democratic organization, the Harvey Milk Club. A survey of registered voters earlier this year by David Binder, a San Francisco political analyst, found that 33 percent of the Eighth District identified themselves as gay or lesbian, compared with 13 percent citywide.
The Castro’s activist legacy continues to exert a strong emotional pull: the corner of 18th and Castro Streets, where Harvey Milk; Diana, Princess of Wales; and Matthew Shepard were mourned and where gay marriage was fleetingly celebrated, is for many a mythic homeland.
Amanda Rankin, a 40-year-old tourist from Hamilton, Ontario, was taking a “Cruisin’ the Castro” walking tour with three lesbian friends the other day.
“In America there still seems to be a lot of sexual repression left over from Puritanism and the pilgrims,” Ms. Rankin said. “Then there’s San Francisco.”
But its legacy has not prevented the neighborhood from harsh urban realities. As San Francisco real estate skyrocketed in the 1990s, the Castro had the city’s highest concentration of evictions, as speculators “flipped” buildings, many of them housing people with disabilities and AIDS, to convert to market-rate apartments, said Brian Basinger, the founder of the AIDS Housing Alliance.
Even before Halloween, the Castro was grappling with violence and crime. Allegations of racial profiling at the Badlands, the neighborhood’s most popular bar, led to a widespread boycott in 2005 and intervention by the city’s Human Rights Commission.
The highly publicized rape of a man in the Castro in September 2006 led to the formation of Castro on Patrol, a whistle-wielding citizens’ street brigade. In that attack, Mark Welch was raped five blocks from a store he managed on Castro Street. He said in that he later learned there had been two previous similar rapes in the neighborhood, but that had not been widely reported.
He said it took months for it to surface on a sex-crimes Web site maintained by the authorities. There are signs that the dispersing of gay people beyond the Castro vortex and the rise of the Internet are also contributing to a declining sense of community. An annual survey by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Community Initiative indicated that in 2007 only 36 percent of men under 29 said there was a gay community in the city with which they could identify.
Doug Sebesta, the group’s executive director and a medical sociologist at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said, “I’ve had therapists who have told me they are asking their clients to go back to bars as a way of social interaction.”
The Internet is not a replacement for a neighborhood where people are involved in issues beyond themselves, said John Newsome, an African-American who co-founded the group And Castro For All after the Badlands incident. “There are a lot of really lonely gay people sitting in front of a computer,” he said.
Which is why the cancellation of the Halloween party by the city has provoked such a sense of loss. Many residents say that their night has been taken away. “It’s proof that whatever sense of safety we have is incredibly tenuous, “ Mr. Newsome said.
The city is shutting down public transportation to the Castro on Halloween and has begun a Web site, homeforhalloween.com, that lists “fun” alternatives, including a Halloween blood drive and a “Monster Bash” — in San Mateo.
On a recent Saturday, Sister Roma, a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an activist coterie of drag queens, sashayed down Castro Street in heavy eye shadow and a gold lamé top. Though she looked well prepared for Halloween, she said she planned to be in hiding that night.
She wasn’t feeling too deprived, however.
“Sweetie,” she said, “every day is Halloween in the Castro.”
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13) Law on Young Offenders Causes Rhode Island Furor
By KATIE ZEZIMA
“It was conceived as a way to save money in the face of a $450 million deficit in Rhode Island’s current budget: making 17-year-olds adults in the eyes of the law, shifting their cases to criminal from juvenile court and putting offenders in the state prison rather than the youth correctional center.”
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/30juvenile.html?ref=us
It was conceived as a way to save money in the face of a $450 million deficit in Rhode Island’s current budget: making 17-year-olds adults in the eyes of the law, shifting their cases to criminal from juvenile court and putting offenders in the state prison rather than the youth correctional center.
The measure, which took effect July 1 and was expected to save $3.6 million a year, has ignited a firestorm, with children’s groups, the state public defender and others calling it bad policy that in any event is not a money-saver.
“It’s a gross failure of responsibility,” said the state’s attorney general, Patrick C. Lynch. “It’s not saving money. It’s creating enormous questions and problems in the system, never mind ruining lives” of young offenders who are left with criminal records.
Responding to the concerns, the legislature plans to take up a measure today that would essentially repeal the law. The bill is expected to pass, though Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, whose administration came up with the proposal to lower the age from 18, has not said whether he will veto it. Jeff Neal, a spokesman for the governor, a second-term Republican, said last night that Mr. Carcieri had not yet seen the legislation.
The proposal to treat 17-year-olds as adults for criminal-justice purposes was the subject of a legislative hearing in March, where Attorney General Lynch, a Democrat whose office is elective, and others came out strongly against it. Opponents took little action after that, as many thought it would be killed in the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature.
But it survived, and before long it became apparent that the new law could well cost money rather than save it.
The State Department of Children, Youth and Families, which had proposed the idea, had assumed that 17-year-olds would be held among the general prison population, where incarceration costs $39,000 an inmate per year, 60 percent less than the $98,000 in the juvenile-offender system.
But A. T. Wall II, director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, decided that for the sake of the young inmates’ protection, they would be held in maximum security, where the annual per-inmate cost is $104,000.
As of last week, 46 17-year-olds had been held at the state prison since July 1, all in maximum security, said Tracey Z. Poole, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.
Mr. Neal, the governor’s spokesman, said the policy might nonetheless still save money, though not as much as expected. The reason, unspoken by Mr. Neal but confirmed by experts, is that relatively insignificant offenses committed by 17-year-olds are bringing dismissal by judges, the effect being savings in the court and corrections systems alike.
“When there are really trivial offenses in the criminal system, they get ignored,” said Patrick Griffin, a senior research associate at the National Center for Juvenile Justice, in Pittsburgh.
Beyond the fiscal issue are those involving public-records law, privacy and even bail. Seventeen-year-olds are not legally authorized to sign a contract in Rhode Island, and as a result cannot sign a bail form or a plea agreement without a parent present.
“How do you plea a kid, or how do you post bail, when you’re not old enough to contract?” said John J. Hardiman, the state’s public defender.
The new law also now makes the records of 17-year-olds public, unlike all juvenile records in the state, which are sealed.
Attorney General Lynch believes the law unnecessary because he could previously elevate juvenile cases to the adult level if the suspect had committed prior offenses or the crime was particularly violent. He said he believed the measure was destroying the lives of young nonviolent offenders, as drug convictions make it harder to find jobs and housing and cause students to be ineligible for federal aid.
“This isn’t about the murderers, rapists, robbers — they could all be waived,” Mr. Lynch said. “This is about if there’s one joint in a car with four kids and it’s not lit. Those charges aren’t what they used to be. The world has changed for 17-year-olds in Rhode Island.”
Ten other states try people under 18 as adults, said Mr. Griffin, the juvenile justice researcher. But in Illinois and Wisconsin, there is a push to raise it back, he said. And Connecticut, which currently tries 16-year-olds as adults, is already set to raise the age to 18 as of 2010.
In Rhode Island, Mr. Hardiman, the public defender, said judges’ concerns about the new law had caused many cases to be resolved before they even reach court.
“They’re exercising discretion,” Mr. Hardiman said of the judges, “and I applaud them in trying to protect young people when the current sanctions are for someone much more mature than a 17-year-old kid.”
Dennys George, 17, of Providence, agrees. He was arrested in early July on drug possession charges and spent three days in the state prison. The offense was his first, and he was sentenced to nothing more than five years’ probation. Still, he now has a record.
“This is not helping young kids,” he said. “It’s going to affect them for the rest of his or her life. It’s affecting me. I haven’t gotten a job. I’m almost 18, and this is just the beginning.”
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14) Bearing Witness to Torture
By CLYDE HABERMAN
NYC
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/nyregion/30nyc.html?ref=nyregion
Dr. Allen S. Keller reached into a stack of folders, a quorum of misery if ever there was one, and pulled out the file of a man from Cameroon. The man had been tortured in his country by police officers who dangled him by his feet. When he screamed, they poured water into his mouth until he felt he was drowning.
Another folder told of a torture victim from Ecuador who had his head submerged in both hot and cold water. There was also a Tibetan who had been immersed in water with a plastic bag over his head. But the sufferer of water torture who stood out most for Dr. Keller was an Ethiopian, a man so traumatized that “when he’d go out in the rain, he’d gasp for air — or even in the shower.”
“He’d just panic,” the doctor said.
Dr. Keller has seen more than his share of trauma since 1995, when he founded the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, at First Avenue and 27th Street. Many survivors carry lasting scars — physical, mental and emotional — from having been beaten, burned or nearly drowned.
Over the years, the program has treated more than 2,000 men, women and children from about 80 countries, stretching from the Middle East to Latin America, from East Asia to broad swaths of Africa. Torture, it seems, is a growth industry. From October 2006 to September 2007, Dr. Keller’s staff treated 581 patients, the most ever in the course of a year. As many as 10 new people come his way every week. “Frankly,” he said, “we’re swamped.”
“Torture” is a word that usually appears in connection to some foreign country. There is torture in China, or in Congo, or in Egypt, or in Venezuela. American torture, we all like to believe, is an oxymoron.
Whether that is true has become part of the presidential campaign. It is also affecting the nomination of a retired federal judge from New York, Michael B. Mukasey, as the next attorney general.
The immediate issue is what constitutes water torture, specifically whether it includes an interrogation technique known as waterboarding.
It sounds almost quaint, waterboarding, as if it might be the name of a new aquatic sport. What typically happens, however, is that a person is stretched out on a board and tilted back. His face is covered with a cloth, and water is poured over it.
To Dr. Keller, it is no different than submerging someone’s head under water. Either way, he feels, it qualifies as torture. “Both mimic drowning,” he said. “Both are mimicking asphyxiation.” If anything, he said, “waterboarding may be even more brutal than being submerged.”
This technique arises as an issue now because many senators who will vote on Mr. Mukasey’s nomination want him to state clearly that he opposes waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods that have been used against suspected terrorists.
Like his friend Mr. Mukasey, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has declined to classify waterboarding as torture as he runs for president on a promise to pursue “aggressive questioning” of suspected terrorists. In Iowa last week, Mr. Giuliani said he was not sure if descriptions of waterboarding in the “liberal media” were to be trusted. He also mocked those who call sleep deprivation a form of torture.
In this regard, Messrs. Mukasey and Giuliani have run afoul of human-rights types. No shock there. But they are also out of step with former Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogators who say that these kinds of harsh methods produce unreliable information from people who will say anything to stop the pain.
Nor are the two New Yorkers in sync with retired military men who warn that failure to adhere to international norms on torture could put American soldiers in jeopardy. They include two retired Marine generals: Charles C. Krulak, a former Marine Corps commandant, and Joseph P. Hoar, a former commander of American forces in the Middle East.
Writing in The Washington Post in May, they described waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and stress positions as euphemisms for torture. Those techniques, the generals said, amount to “conduct we used to call war crimes.”
As for Dr. Keller, who has borne witness to torture’s human toll, the issue is not the relative merits or demerits of one technique or another. “In general, individuals are being subjected to a variety of methods at once,” he said. “The idea that you can contain them is ridiculous. Torture is like a Pandora’s box. Once you go there. ...”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com
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15) Low Buzz May Give Mice Better Bones and Less Fat
By GINA KOLATA
October 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/health/research/30bone.html?ref=health
Clinton T. Rubin knows full well that his recent results are surprising — that no one has been more taken aback than he. And he cautions that it is far too soon to leap to conclusions about humans. But still, he says, what if ... ?
And no wonder, other scientists say. Dr. Rubin, director of the Center for Biotechnology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is reporting that in mice, a simple treatment that does not involve drugs appears to be directing cells to turn into bone instead of fat.
All he does is put mice on a platform that buzzes at such a low frequency that some people cannot even feel it. The mice stand there for 15 minutes a day, five days a week. Afterward, they have 27 percent less fat than mice that did not stand on the platform — and correspondingly more bone.
“I was the biggest skeptic in the world,” Dr. Rubin said. “And I sit here and say, ‘This can’t possibly be happening.’ I feel like the credibility of my scientific career is sitting on a razor’s edge between ‘Wow, this is really cool,’ and ‘These people are nuts.’”
The responses to his work bear out that feeling. While some scientists are enthusiastic, others are skeptical.
The mice may be less fat after standing on the platform, these researchers say, but they are not convinced of the explanation — that fat precursor cells are turning into bone.
Even so, the National Institutes of Health is sufficiently intrigued to investigate the effect in a large clinical trial in elderly people, said Joan A. McGowan, a division director at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.
Dr. McGowan notes that Dr. Rubin is a respected scientist and that her institute has helped pay for his research for the past 20 years, but she does caution against jumping to conclusions.
“I’d call it provocative,” she said of the new result. “It says, ‘Keep looking here; this is exciting.’ But it is crucial that we don’t oversell this.” For now, she added, “it is a fundamental scientific finding.”
The story of the finding, which was published online and will appear in the Nov. 6 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, began in 1981 when Dr. Rubin and his colleagues started asking why bone is lost in aging and inactivity.
“Bone is notorious for ‘use it or lose it,’” Dr. Rubin said. “Astronauts lose 2 percent of their bone a month. People lose 2 percent a decade after age 35. Then you look at the other side of the equation. Professional tennis players have 35 percent more bone in their playing arm. What is it about mechanical signals that makes Roger Federer’s arm so big?”
At first, he assumed that the exercise effect came from a forceful impact — the pounding on the leg bones as a runner’s feet hit the ground or the blow to the bones in a tennis player’s arm with every strike of the ball. But Dr. Rubin was trained as a biomechanical engineer, and that led him to consider other possibilities. Large signals can actually be counterproductive, he said, adding: “If I scream at you over the phone, you don’t hear me better. If I shine a bright light in your eyes, you don’t see better.”
Over the years, he and his colleagues discovered that high-magnitude signals, like the ones created by the impact as foot hits pavement, were not the predominant signals affecting bone. Instead, bone responded to signals that were high in frequency but low in magnitude, more like a buzzing than a pounding.
That makes sense, he went on, because muscles quiver when they contract, and that quivering is the predominant signal to bones. It occurs when people stand still, for example, and their muscles contract to keep them upright. As people age, they lose many of those postural muscles, making them less able to balance, more apt to fall and, perhaps, prone to loss of bone.
“Bone is bombarded with little, teeny signals from muscle contractions,” Dr. Rubin said.
He discovered that in mice, sheep and turkeys, at least, standing on a flat vibrating plate led to bone growth. Small studies in humans — children with cerebral palsy who could not move much on their own and young women with low bone density — indicated that the vibrations might build bone in people, too.
Dr. Rubin and his colleagues got a patent and formed a company to make the vibrating plates. But they and others caution that it is not known if standing on them strengthens bones in humans. Even if it does, no one knows the right dose. It is possible that even if there is an effect, people might overdose and make their bones worse instead of better.
Some answers may come from the federal clinical trial, which will include 200 elderly people in assisted living. It is being directed by Dr. Douglas P. Kiel, an osteoporosis researcher and director of medical research at the Institute for Aging Research at Harvard. The animal work made him hopeful that the buzzing platforms would have an effect on human bones.
“This work is fascinating and very legitimate,” Dr. Kiel said.
But then Dr. Rubin reported that the mice were also less fat, which led to the revised plans to look for changes in body fat as well.
Dr. Rubin says he decided to look at whether vibrations affect fat because he knows what happens with age: bone marrow fills with fat. In osteoporosis, the bones do not merely thin; their texture becomes lacy, and inside the holes is fat. And a few years ago, scientists discovered a stem cell in bone marrow that can turn into either fat or bone, depending on what signal it receives.
No one knows why the fat is in bone marrow — maybe it provides energy for failing bone cells, suggests Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, director of the Maine Center for Osteoporosis Research and Education. And no one knows whether human fat cells ever leave the bone marrow and take up residence elsewhere.
But Dr. Rubin had an idea. “We thought, Wait a second,” he said. “If we are mechanically stimulating cells to form bone, what isn’t happening? We thought maybe these bone progenitor cells are driving down a decision path. Maybe they are not becoming fat cells.”
He paid a visit to Jeffrey E. Pessin, a diabetes expert at Stony Brook, and presented his hypothesis. Dr. Pessin laughed uproariously. He “almost kicked me out of his office,” as Dr. Rubin put it.
But when Dr. Rubin decided to go ahead anyway, Dr. Pessin joined in. Their hope was to see a small effect on body fat after the mice stood on the platforms 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 15 weeks. Dr. Rubin was stunned by the 27 percent reduction.
“Talk about your jaw dropping,” he said.
Some obesity researchers, though, say there may be other reasons that the mice were less fat.
“It is a very intriguing paper,” said Claude Bouchard, an obesity researcher who is director of the Pennington Center for Biomedical Research at Louisiana State University. But he wondered whether the mice on the platform were simply burning more calories.
“It seems to me,” Dr. Bouchard said, “that putting myself in the body of a mouse, if I was on a platform that was vibrating 90 times a minute, I would try to adhere to the surface and not be thrown off. I would probably tense my legs a little bit. That is energy expenditure.”
Stress may be another factor, he added. Standing on the platform may have frightened the mice, and they might have become sick.
Dr. Rudolph L. Leibel, an obesity researcher who is co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University, had similar questions.
A platform that seems to be barely vibrating to a human could feel like an earthquake to a mouse, Dr. Leibel said, adding, “they could be scared to death,” which could affect the study data.
He also questioned the idea that precursor cells from bone marrow could turn into fat cells in the rest of the body, calling it “a contested and, I would say, incorrect notion.”
If the mice that stood on the platform became thinner and if they ate as much as mice that did not stand on the platform (as Dr. Rubin reported), they must be burning more calories, Dr. Leibel said.
Others are more hopeful.
“This is very, very cool,” said Dr. John B. Buse, a diabetes researcher at the University of North Carolina who is president for science and medicine at the American Diabetes Association. If it turned out to hold for people too, “it would be great for diabetes,” he added. He noted that people with Type 2 diabetes were likely not only to be overweight but also to have problems with their bones.
Still, Dr. Buse awaits more definitive studies in humans.
“It is almost too good to be true,” he said.
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Newark: Recalled Meat Found in Store
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Jersey consumer safety officials said yesterday that state inspectors bought recalled frozen hamburgers at a store weeks after the meat was recalled because of fears of E. coli contamination. The 19 boxes were bought in Union City on Wednesday, nearly four weeks after the manufacturer, the Topps Meat Company, issued a nationwide recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen patties. Officials would not name the store yesterday because of the investigation, and investigators have not determined when the store received the meat, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs.
New Jersey
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26mbrfs-meat.html?ref=nyregion
Florida: Sentence for Lionel Tate Is Upheld
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in an American prison. The ruling Wednesday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach sets the stage for Mr. Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term. Mr. Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes. Mr. Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. An appeals court overturned his murder conviction in 2004, and he was released but was on probation. In May 2005, the police said, Mr. Tate robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-lionel.html?ref=us
Submarine’s Commanding Officer Is Relieved of His Duties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine Hampton was relieved of his duty because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said. The officer, Cmdr. Michael B. Portland, was relieved of duty after an investigation found the ship had failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission. Commander Portland will be reassigned, said Lt. Alli Myrick, a public affairs officer. [Aren't you glad they are out there making the world safe for democracy?...bw]
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-sub.html?ref=us
Britain: New Claim for Sovereignty in Antarctica
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Europe
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by 386,000 square miles, the Foreign Office said. Argentina wants some of it, and its foreign minister said his country was working on its own presentation. May 13, 2009, is the deadline for countries to stake their claims in what some experts are describing as the last big carve-up of maritime territory in history.
October 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/europe/18briefs-claim.html?ref=world
California: Veto of 3 Criminal Justice Bills
By SOLOMON MOORE
Bucking a national trend toward stronger safeguards against wrongful convictions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bills that would have explored new eyewitness identification guidelines, required electronic recordings of police interrogations and mandated corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony. Mr. Schwarzenegger cited his concern that the three bills would hamper local law enforcement authorities, a contention shared by several state police and prosecutor associations. The proposals had been recommended by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a bipartisan body of police officials, prosecutors and defense lawyers charged by the State Senate to address the most common causes of wrongful convictions and recommend changes in criminal justice procedures.
October 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16brfs-VETOOF3CRIMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: Chicagoans May Have to Dig Deeper
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicagoans would have to spend 10 cents more on a bottle of water, pay higher property taxes and spend more for liquor under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s proposed budget for next year. Also financing Mr. Daley’s $5.4 billion budget are higher water and sewer fees and more expensive vehicle stickers for people driving large vehicles, $120 a vehicle sticker, up from $90. Mr. Daley announced his budget to aldermen, calling it a last resort to ask taxpayers for more money. His budget closes a $196 million deficit and avoids service cuts and layoffs. Budget hearings will be held, and a city spending plan will require a vote by aldermen.
Midwest
October 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/11brfs-CHICAGO.html?ref=us
Wisconsin Iraq vet returns medals to Rumsfeld
By David Solnit, Courage to Resist / Army of None Project.
"I swore an oath to protect the constitution ... not to become a pawn in your New American Century."
September 26, 2007
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Madison, Wisconsin--Joshua Gaines, who served a year long tour in Iraq in 2004 to 2005 with the Army Reserve, returned his Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and National Defense Service Medal to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today by mail as dozens of supporters look on.
Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Messages
By ADAM LIPTAK
September 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/business/27cnd-verizon.html?ref=us
Manhattan: Slain Soldier to Receive Citizenship
A soldier from Washington Heights who was killed while serving with the Army’s Second Infantry Division in Iraq is to receive citizenship posthumously on Monday, immigration officials said in a statement yesterday. The soldier, Cpl. Juan Alcántara, 22, left, was one of four soldiers killed in an explosion as they searched a house in Baquba on Aug. 6. Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat, will speak at a ceremony at the City University Great Hall in Manhattan and present a certificate to Corporal Alcántara’s family. The corporal was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in Washington Heights, Mr. Rangel’s office said.
September 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/nyregion/14mbrfs-SOLDIER.html?ref=nyregion
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
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THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
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Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
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A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"
CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.
"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."
"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "
Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.
The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.
Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.
Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
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A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/
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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
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END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">
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