Witchin' the Boreal Lights, the Clear Cold Nights and Horizon Forever

Seeker Cass

2011-04-10T18:47:00.000-07:00

and that was the story of cassia mertyree
the man for whom a pipe a song and a cheer
was little enough thanks, you can see
for this fine silken woman dipped daubs
of white gooseberry face paint
o'er the crown of the light bringers
recievers! men, women and children
wore its supple heft
you could see it all coming, if you were deft
freedom! the sweet breath of fortune
the lovely laugh, the apple tree
the dance over the frozen, vivid snow
the careful track in the night
forever followed, tracked, hunted
smelled and scented
its hot note coloured on the dusky air
tantalizing

2011-03-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

These descriptions, of two sweet beaches to visit in Queensland, Australia, seem like lovely places to visit.

Broken River, Queensland

The locals reckon Broken River in Eungella National Park is the best place ''on the planet'' to see platypus in the wild. Pronounced yun-gulla and meaning Land of the Clouds, it's a 90-kilometre drive west of Mackay and its perennially mist-shrouded and forest-clad mountains contain Australia's longest and oldest stretch of subtropical rainforest. But the main reason most people come to Eungella is to see the platypus at Broken River.

Several viewing platforms are strung along the river near the picnic area, or you can, as we did, simply find a comfortable rock and perch for as long as you like. In 30 minutes we chalked up an amazing 16 sightings of the elusive monotreme and while some may have been making a repeat appearance, I wasn't about to quibble. It really is one of the best places in Australia to go if you want to see wild platypus.

Where to stay: Broken River Mountain Resort, Eungella Dam Road, Eungella, (07) 4958 4000, brokenrivermr.com.au.

Chillagoe Caves, Queensland

The glitzy show caves of the southern states may get all the publicity and draw the crowds but there are more than 600 limestone caves in the Chillagoe area, three hours' drive west of Cairns. There are five caves open for viewing, each one unique. The Royal Arch is the biggest, a series of 13 chambers spread along a 1.5-kilometre passage, with roots from trees and patches of light reaching into the caves and lots of bending and squeezing through tight passages. The smaller Donna Cave, accessed by a long steep stairway, is the prettiest, with dozens of magnificent limestone formations.

Trezkinn Cave is short - basically a steel catwalk encircling a central mass of limestone - but it also has lots of decorations, including the massive ''chandelier'', a spectacular formation that looks like a mountain of melted wax. There are also two self-guided caves; bring your own torch.

Where to stay: Chillagoe Observatory and Eco Lodge, (07) 4094 7155, www.coel.com.au

2011-03-07T21:47:00.000-08:00

To have an obstretic fistula is like living a nightmare in many cases. Hiow wonderful that there are people out there looking to eradicate this difficult situation.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day we asked readers to nominate the Australian woman who inspires them the most.

When Catherine Hamlin saw Ethiopian women living as outcasts because of a medical condition largely eradicated in the developed world, she knew she had to act.

The Sydney-born obstetrician and her husband, Reginald, opened the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in 1974. Since then, it has treated more than 35,000 women for obstetric fistula, a shocking childbirth injury caused by a long, obstructed labour that can leave a woman incontinent and shunned by her husband, family and community.

Dr Hamlin's dedication to restoring the women's dignity and health has inspired many around the world - including our readers. She is one of more than 100 achievers you nominated as Australia's most inspiring women in a tribute we launched last week to mark the centenary of International Women's Day, which is being celebrated today.
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Dr Catherine Hamlin with an Ethiopian woman at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.

Dr Catherine Hamlin with an Ethiopian woman at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Achievements great and small were acknowledged by the nominations, from Edith Cowan, the first woman elected to an Australian parliament (Western Australia in 1921), to Hazel Hawke, the wife of a former prime minister, to Aboriginal elder Aunty Lorraine Peeters. And, of course, many readers paid tribute to their mothers for their very hands-on role in shaping lives.

Dr Hamlin, 87, says she is thankful to have influenced others as it means her work will carry on.

"Medicine has made such strides, but still mothers in childbirth are being neglected in huge areas of the world, with tragic results," she says.

"We hope those inspired to address and banish this affront to humanity will succeed in their lifetime, ensuring that every mother is assured of a safe delivery and live baby."

A reader paid this tribute to Dr Hamlin in her nomination: "She has shown me that an individual can make a real difference to people's lives."

Inspiring women to aim for the top

While no single woman received an overwhelming majority of reader nominations, those whose names appeared with some frequency included Governor-General Quentin Bryce, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and feminist and author of The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer.

Bryce became Australia's first female head of state in 2008 after a distinguished career as a lawyer, academic and human rights advocate. She is no stranger to the demands and challenges of being a working mother, having raised five children with her husband Michael Bryce.

Of the Governor-General, one reader wrote: "I once her heard speak about the difficulties coping with five small children, and working as a lawyer; then I looked at my two small children and my job as a lawyer, and what she has gone on to achieve, and thought 'If she can so it, so can I.' Thanks Quentin, you are an inspiration and my Australian hero."

Gold medal winning Olympian Cathy Freeman, Dr Hamlin, gay and lesbian rights campaigner Shelley Argent, Nobel prize winning scientist Elizabeth Blackburn and burns specialist Dr Fiona Wood also received a number of nominations.

Shelley Argent has been campaigning for gay and lesbian rights since 1998, after her son told her he was gay. Determined he should have the same rights as her other son, she has worked with bodies such as the Queensland AIDS Council and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to promote acceptance and understanding.

When told she was seen as an inspiration for others, she was stunned.

"What drives me is the love of my son," she says.

Minister for the Status of Women Kate Ellis says it is wonderful to see the diversity of women shaping Australia, as reflected in these nominations.

"It is because of strong and courageous women like them that young women across [the country] can aspire to hold the highest of offices and achieve the greatest of feats," she says.

International Women's Day events are being held throughout Australia this week. For details, see: internationalwomensday.org.au.

2011-03-03T23:04:00.001-08:00

"I don't think the mission there has been very well articulated. And I think it would help to kind of reframe the way we're thinking about being there and why we're there."
-Matt Damon, on the war in Afghanistan.

2011-03-03T22:08:00.000-08:00

‘‘When these disasters occur, they affect our friends, family, people we know, people we don’t know,’’
-David Pocock, Australian
on Cyclone Yasi in Queensland
to Fairfax media.

Tragedy

2011-02-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

This was very sad news.

Fifteen Canterbury TV (CTV) staff are believed to have died when their central Christchurch building collapsed after yesterday's magnitude 6.3 quake, CTV chairman Nick Smith says.

Police were "100 per cent sure" there were no survivors in the earthquake-damaged CTV building, today calling off the search for bodies there, shifting their efforts to sites where it was believed people were trapped alive.

More than 80 people were believed to be in still in the building, which housed the regional television station, a nursing school and a language school.

CTV chairman Nick Smith told NZPA the television channel had 24-25 fulltime staff.

"We're working on the assumption that everyone we haven't managed to contact was in the building, and that would number probably 15," he said.

"We haven't had anything confirmed, we haven't been given any names, we're just going off our own tally."

Mr Smith, business manager and director of Allied Press of Dunedin, which owns the Otago Daily Times, said he had travelled to Christchurch today to support staff.

"We're just having a staff get-together with those who have survived. That's the most important thing at the moment," he said.

"(They've) lost a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues, a lot of talent and a lot of life-long relationships...

"They're not happy. It's very sorrowful."

Many of the staff there were in the building when the quake struck and broke down when they told him what had happened. What staff had described to him was "like out of a horror movie", Mr Smith said.

"It's just too horrific to think that they got out and...people who were a few yards behind didn't. They didn't know which way to run."

Mr Smith's brother, Allied Press of Dunedin chairman and managing director Julian Smith, said the building had withstood the first quake well.

"So it seems strange that this whole building should fall down like that," he told NZPA.

"Our sympathy goes out to all staff - everybody in Christchurch, for that matter but particularly for the staff of CTV and their families."

2011-02-21T09:15:00.000-08:00

Der Spiegel has an interesting piece on the war in Afghanistan, by Jurgen Todenhofer. Recommended.

Richard Atkinson and Jamie Larcombe

2011-02-19T21:12:00.000-08:00

The following note is for both Richard and Jamie.

for Danielle Kitchen
and for Ross and Kate Atkinson,
and James Atkinson and
all of Tasmania.

*******************************************************************
for Rhiannon Penhall,
and for
Steven and Tricia Larcombe and
Ann-Marie, Emily and April Larcombe and
all of Kangaroo Island.

the heart wells over, and there is sadness and sorrow and the most heartfelt of sympathy.

i'm sad your son and brother died alone, in those heart scraped, rugged, fresh blooded mountains, and that never again will he bless your presence with his easy laugh and his infectious potential for kindness. i wish with all my heart that this had never happened to you, and that your Jamie had had a different kind of destiny, and that he had not been swallowed whole into this vast and unremitting shadow. as you cry today, know that people who have never met you have comprehended your sacrifice, and have given themselves, body and soul, so that this moment in time should never take place.

2011-02-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader,

I must say that it is heartening to hear that the Canadian government is actually labeling artificial colours individually in its new guidelines. Now the government must go one step further and eliminate artificial colours altogether, as has been done with a number of the colours in the UK. The latest step on behalf of the government has at least, brought Canada in line with the United Kingdom- but surely the bellwether ought to be Europe, which has eliminated the Southhampton Six colours about two years ago. In Australia, the lobby group Fed Up With Food Additives has been pushing for similar changes to Australian law. Grassroots, populist initiatives to protect and inform the public seem to be crying for inception, and would be a welcome relief to celebrity gossip- indeed, celebrities could more meaningfully become the story by throwing their welcome weight behind such initiatives.

If you are interested in labeling GMOs in the United States, please be aware that you can inhabit support behind the Fresh (the movie) team's tireless lobbying on this topic, and that there is also a non-governmental group known as the Campaign, which is behind this project also. It is a story that has the potential to capture the public's imagination in a widespread way, and just think of how much better off your children and their friends will be if it succeeds! It is for them that one hopes individuals will strive for a more wholesome reality.

Sincerely yours,
NW

DNAism

2011-02-15T13:59:00.001-08:00

I read a book once where this was the Free World- and people said the writers were paranoid. If you're worried- go back and read Alvin Toffler's Future Shock.

More than 140 Prince George taxi drivers have been grilled by the RCMP as part of a murder investigation.

Most have also given blood samples.

P.G. Taxi Manager, Sam Kuuluvainen, said he was contacted several months ago by police officers investigating the killings of Cynthia Maas and Jill Sturchenko.

One woman's body was discovered in a Prince George park, the other in a gravel pit.

Kuuluvainen told CBC News he complied with an RCMP request to hand over the names and phone numbers of all his cab drivers.

"They told me they just wanted to question some of the drivers, see if they knew anything. They ended up calling up every single driver, not only questioning them, but asking them for a DNA sample. I got the idea it wasn't so much questioning as trying to eliminate suspects," he said.

Kuuluvainen said all but two complied.

"If they didn't immediately give them one [an interview], they were told they'd remain a suspect and a person of interest. A number of our drivers were upset that they were singling out our industry," he said.

Kuuluvainen believes all the drivers have been cleared.

The RCMP hasn't responded to an interview request from CBC News.

This was not the first time homicide investigators have questioned northern B.C. cabbies.

Several years ago, after the body of 14-year-old Aielah Saric Auger was found dumped along Highway 16, police seized taxi logbooks and interrogated six drivers.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/02/15/bc-pg-cabbies.html#socialcomments#ixzz1E4EisoUB

Benediction of Sorrow

2011-02-13T17:46:00.000-08:00

aafia
dew jewels the edge
of a mist morning
sleep

birds
wheel about
in the gentle dawn
the sand rises
inviolate
shimmering

where is
aafia?

in the distance
the far distance
the hawkers display
little bells
articles of faith

ringing
oh aafia!

2011-02-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

jezebel
the power wild
flowed within
a spirit child

Netimatique

2011-02-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

gamblefox gamblepuss
gamblepeyote
give me the keys
so you'll have a story

the great halls of green
and bright halls of blue
laugh watch and sigh
as i give my life for you

type it and stripe it
and enter it in
use the netwerks
and surely you'll win

internet hinternet
forevernetred
flashing and crashing
with privacy dead

Story of the Day

2011-02-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

According to an article published by Granma newspaper on Saturday, two agents involved in the death of Afghan prisoner Gul Rahman in November 2002 were promoted to important posts within the CIA in the Middle East.

Likewise, others who were reprimanded for their participation in the simulation of executions in a secret Polish prison and in the death of an Iraqi prisoner have been readmitted as private contactors.

The radio and television community network Democracy Now affirmed that others involved in similar actions received small sentences or were not punished at all.

In one of the most shocking cases, an analyst who contributed to the kidnapping of German citizen Khaled el-Masri was promoted to a high-ranking post in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center.

Project Medical

2011-02-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

doublecyclic acid
ichor of arachnid
injectible thoracic
people people see
the mice are turnin' green
white medicojuice
don't let that pig get loose
runnin' runnin' falling
electrode must be stalling
people people see
a ruptured monkey spleen
joe and aron wait
signs at the gate
that say this lab's obscene
why are they so mean?

At the Greek

2011-02-10T17:21:00.000-08:00

In the Greek tonight
The torturers come
And pay their money
One by one

In the Greek tonight
Their wives sob out loud
For great screen love
That is not allowed

Over the Greek tonight
God surrounds
Remembers deaths of babes
And their sound.

2011-02-09T20:00:00.001-08:00

I swear I thought this band was lost to history. Its vinyl, and its unique.

The Bees of Paul Revere

2011-02-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

Can you believe how much I love God right now? And the bees!

freedom bees livin in honey trees
snow sugarin' down and all around
fly a kite in afghanistan for peace
bright cord blood on sacred ground

yeah, yellow bees in honey trees
so good to be free

drink the syrup taste the gold
blessed be god for a new found soul
yellow bees with honey please
brother, sho' good to be free

yeah, yeah, yeah
my baby bruddah
its sure good to be free.

R.E.M. – Mine Smell Like Honey Lyrics

I would dare you, but I know I don’t need to
You’re going to do just what you want to
You’re going to take the leavings here at the fairground
You’re going to sing the praises of your fruit

Mine smell like honey, uh!
Mine smell like honey, uh!
Mine smell like hu, hu, hu, hu, honey, uh!

Dig a hole, dig it deeper, deeper!
Climb a mountain, climb it steeper, steeper!
Dig a hole, dig it deeper, deeper!
Track a trail of honey through it all

If the end comes faster than we had expected
And predictions lead us to the final fall
If the flowers crack the grave (grain?) and leave the patterns of the pavement
I can hear you shouting over it all

Mine smell like honey, uh!
Mine smell like honey, uh!
Mine smell like hu, hu, hu, hu, honey, uh!

Dig a hole, dig it deeper, deeper!
Climb a mountain, climb it steeper, steeper!
Dig a hole, dig it deeper, deeper!
Track a trail of honey through it all

Dig a hole, dig it deeper, deeper!
Climb a mountain, climb it steeper, steeper!
Dig a hole, dig it deeper, deeper!
Track a trail of honey through it all

You track a trail of honey through it all
You track a trail of honey

R.E.M. – Mine Smell Like Honey Lyrics

2011-01-29T16:22:00.001-08:00

Parents push for foreign language in elementary schools

Written by Jake Kara
Monday, 17 January 2011 15:00

School officials tout the district as a deciding factor for home buyers, but for some parents who "shopped around," the district might fall short of expectations.

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For Karen Christiansen, a Darien mother leading the charge to get foreign language incorporated into the elementary curriculum for four years, being bilingual is a must in today's global economy.

"I've had every job I've had because I speak Italian," Christiansen, who taught at an international school in Italy and worked as director of international divisions for Tommy Hilfiger, Liz Claiborne and Donna Karan, said.

She taught first grade at an international school in Italy, where she said on average her students spoke three languages.

When she moved to Darien four years ago, her kids were in pre-school and she was surprised to find Holmes School, where her daughter was soon to enroll, didn't have a foreign language program.

She and a few other Darien parents set to work, talking to officials and other parents trying to get a program added three years ago.

When elementary foreign language education came up at a school board meeting and one board member questioned whether there was enough support for such a program in town, Christiansen said she knew otherwise.

"I know from working in town for years on this that there is a strong interest," she said.

She helped to start a petition and within two weeks had about 35 volunteers mobilized, collecting more than 1,700 signatures in favor a foreign language program.

"Everywhere I was, the clipboard was," she said. "I loved that document," she said of the battle-torn, rain-smudged pages she carried around collecting signatures. The group collected 1,700 names. "I felt the board got the message at that point."

Most people Christiansen met assumed Darien had foreign language, she said.

Of the 500 or so names Christiansen collected, she said she only a handful of parents gave reasons against signing the petition.

"A couple said it was the budget," she said. Others said they were already working on foreign language studies with their kids outside of school — like Christiansen. Her husband and children speak fluent Danish and she practices Italian with them.

The elementary schools started hosting a foreign language program before and after school, but it's paid for by participants, $180 per semester and not a school program.

Schools Superintendent Dr. Stephen Falcone, whose children go to school in New Canaan, which has elementary foreign language education, has been receptive, Christiansen said. In November, he presented a plan to the Board of Education to change elementary schedules to a six-day rotation. He even included it in his first budget proposal, presented Tuesday.

Whether the program, which calls for five new teachers at $306,645 will survive this budget season is yet to be seen, but Christiansen hopes it does because, she said with a laugh, "I can't do this another year."

More info: DarienLanguage.Wordpress.com

jkara@darientimes.com

Bully Shazam

2011-01-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

There really is magic out there, team on those cold prairie nights. All the farming communities out in the midwest are holding anti-bullying initiatives, many of which are being covered in the media every single day now. I loved the fact that Chris Johnson got his message across using actual magic tricks! Its such a wonderful idea, and I'm super juiced to share this article on my blog. It really hilighted how massively lucky kids really are to live in Wisconsin. (Unfortunate that its not a larger geography so that even more people would get to dwell there. :) We need the Abracadabra-Make-Your-Own-Racine gold dust, please. Or wuz that Madison? Or even .... Woodstock.) There are, of course, many other communities working on new anti-bullying initiatives across North America and Australia and New Zealand, too.

I really think though that working these messages into something fun and interactive is faily sweet for young children. I'm reminded of the Afghan children's circus that was teaching Afghan kids hygiene. It was super exciting to see things like humungous children's toothbrushes and see all of the shy kids giggle in surprise. Plus, some of the kids actually became performers! Now there's a dream come true.

Skatengruven

2011-01-26T12:50:00.000-08:00

I sort of hesitated to throw down this link into the blog but finally did so because its not new news. I've heard about Skateistan episodically since Oliver Percovich first started it a couple years ago. Its just that now there's a film- Skateistan: four wheels and a board, that is premiering in January at the Santa Barbara Film festival. If I hear more about where to score a copy, I'll let people know- I feel like a lot of skateboarding aficianados would likely be interested in seeing it, especially if they work with youth in skate parks. Ollie down, crew.

Vacillations and Vaccinations

2011-01-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

Heavens, it looks like the world is fair exploding with strange news. Our estimable population of Afghanistan, having barely gotten off its knees in modern times, is now being pulled around by its ears in ever more absurdities.

The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi has pledged a hundred million dollars to vaccinate Afghan children. It would be great if there was actually some cash to BUILD something in Afghanistan- Abu Dhabi, is after all, a nation rich in oil and much other material wealth, and all these years people have languished herding goats. People can be forgiven for not actually having thought very much about this region of the world before- its buried in the mountains, covered with snow and ethereal cold, and just generally benighted when it comes to outside access. One positive thing about a war fought by forty-two countries on its terrain is that there could quite possibly be a global reawakening as to this region of the world, the beauty of its people, and its potential. Its overrun by foreign armies and mercenaries, and if anyone is learning about its culture, it is them- and yet many of the soldiers are actually not being listened to when they themselves speak out about civilian casualities and torture within the nation, carried out by their confreres and quite often their masters. Its a sad time to be soldiering in Afghanistan, and its time the world helped them out by giving rise to the voices of those that desperately want to see a sea change in a policies that they have had to give their lifeblood for. It shouldn't be difficult to do- does the world really want to hear the trivial gossip that dominates the news stream today? As one Maritime writer put it- all such and such newspaper reports is that one old woman put a shawl on her head and crossed the road to talk to another old woman. Not to disparage the elderly, or movie stars, but there are REAL stories in Afghanistan. There are men, women and children, who are actually a lot like us. A lot of them are dying, or have died. There are people, who in the words of one traveller have "rights that are a bit of a joke". There is a perserverance that is a testament to the strength of the human spirit. And there is sadness, too, that life has handed them a future that they have had virtually no input in shaping, a destiny that was not theirs to command. And there are some wonderful people who are helping. There are foreign aid workers, there is a foreign press corps, and there are people from all over the world that are regarding this particular region of the world with shock and horror.

Things are not always going to be this bad in Afghanistan, of course. But they never should have gotten this way in the first place. And as we focus on how terrible the Afghans are, how "other" they are, how they don't deserve to be heard or to survive, remember this: it could easily have been you. And then do what I do- go out and be a voice that demands that people around you share their good fortune.

2011-01-24T22:26:00.000-08:00

A lot of people are talking about social media language.

I have always told the truth about every single thing that I have said online.

Why would anyone not? The truth is crazy enough.

2011-01-19T22:51:00.000-08:00

The Afghan war continues. Luckily, there is support for withdrawal in Europe- the Dutch are pulling out this year. America, however, needs a nudge. I think we'll see people start to try- this war is totally unjust and beyond horrific. Hang in there, Affy- the momentum is gathering to end this terrible tragedy. This article, by the way, was published today.

KABUL (Reuters) – Twenty Afghan civilians, including 13 children, were killed by a roadside bomb in southeastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, a senior official said, in the country's deadliest insurgent attack in nearly six months.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst level since the overthrow of the Taliban by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001 with record casualties on all sides of the conflict and a raging insurgency that has shown little sign of abating.

Ordinary Afghans have taken the brunt of the fighting as they become increasingly caught up in the crossfire.

Brigadier General Josef Blotz, senior spokesman for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said 13 children and six women were among the dead in Wednesday's attack in Khoshamand district of Paktika, a volatile province south of Kabul, that borders Pakistan.

"It is another spike in this brutal Taliban arsenal and tactics and techniques. It is unjustifiable, it is brutal," Blotz said in an interview with Reuters.

Earlier reports from Afghan officials said 13 civilians had been killed as they traveled in a motorized rickshaw to the district center for medical treatment. Casualty tolls from such attacks can often increase hours after the incident.

The bombing was the bloodiest insurgent attack since July 28 when at least 25 civilians were killed after their bus was hit by a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan.
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In the first six months of last year, the deaths of children rose by more than half from the same period of 2009, according to the United Nations. Deaths of women also increased.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack calling it "inhumane and un-Islamic."

Roadside bombs are by far the deadliest weapon deployed by insurgents and are responsible for most of the casualties among international, Afghan troops as well as civilians.

Ordinary Afghans, however, have been hit the hardest. The United Nations said 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 others wounded in the first ten months of last year, a 20 percent increase compared to 2009.

Dozens of civilians have been killed this month alone.

Earlier this month, a suicide bomber killed 17 people, including 16 civilians, inside a public bathhouse in southern Kandahar province.

The increased violence around the country has helped to dispel expectations of a winter lull in fighting and military commanders acknowledge militant attacks are up on a year ago.

In Gormach district in northern Faryab province, 12insurgents were killed and another six wounded when the homemade bomb they were making, exploded inside a compound overnight, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

Four Afghan policemen on patrol were killed when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Zabul province on Tuesday, said Abdul Razziq a senior police official.

(Additional reporting by Elyas Wahdat in KHOST and Deborah Lutterbeck in WASHINGTON)

(Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Jonathon Burch and Sanjeev Miglani)

2011-01-19T22:44:00.000-08:00

This article appeared in Agence France Press today. France has a large number of people that are against the war, according to recent polls. Hopefully, the countries of Europe can come together and enact some pressure to remove troops from this part of the world.

U.S. may stay in Afghanistan after 2014, Biden says

By Katherine Haddon, Agence France-Presse January 12, 2011

The United States is not in Afghanistan to "govern," but will offer support beyond a 2014 security handover if Afghans wanted, visiting U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden told President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday.

Speaking after talks with the president in Kabul, Biden said: "We're not leaving if you (Afghans) don't want us to leave."

However, he also emphasized that the planned handover of responsibility for security from international troops to Afghan forces in four years, agreed at a NATO summit in November, was on track.

"It's not our intention to govern or to nation-build. As President Karzai often points out, this is the responsibility of the Afghan people," Biden told reporters at a news conference.

"We stand ready to help you in that effort and we'll continue to stand ready to help you in that effort after 2014."

A senior White House official said Biden was not announcing a change in policy.

"The vice-president was simply restating for the public what he had said to the president (Karzai), which was that the United States wants an enduring partnership with Afghanistan," the official said.

There are about 97,000 United States troops serving in Afghanistan as part of an international force of some 140,000. Limited, conditions-based withdrawals are due to start in July ahead of the scheduled 2014 transition.

Biden said Afghanistan was in a "new phase" and insisted that Taliban momentum had been "largely arrested" in key areas such as the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. His comments came despite several recent attacks in the south, seen as the focus of the war, including a suicide bombing at a bath house in Kandahar province last week which killed 17 people.

A U.S. official travelling with Biden said the vice-president's trip came at a "pivot point" for the U.S. in Afghanistan, adding it would allow Biden to review progress toward handing responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

Biden's trip comes four days after the U.S. announced it was sending an extra 1,400 Marines to southern Afghanistan, seen as the heart of the Taliban insurgency, in a bid to preempt an expected spring offensive in April or May.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/stay+Afghanistan+after+2014+Biden+says/4095916/story.html#ixzz1BYUqTLJg

2011-01-19T13:38:00.000-08:00

Social media addiction may lead to a lack of social awareness and a dearth of empathy, leading to a much poorer quality of life. People forgo meaningful contact and connections in the real world, in favour of hours spent staring at soulless screens. Overall, they are less fit and healthy and have less "social capital"- meaningful face to face interactions with one another. Using social media is also an appalling waste of time, likely leading to a massive decrease in human productivity for societies who engage in it. In most societies around the world, including Australia and Canada, one would suspect that the average gross domestic product (GDP) is negatively affected because social networking eats up so much time. As well, the negative consequences for people's health mean that the healthcare burden is significantly higher. Think about it: people can't exercise, don't have as much time to look after the household, etc. Some of the negative consequences of social media addiction have been active day to day neglect of children such that the children have actually been left in the bathtub and died; viral rape scenes where people have shared underage rapes of a victim's sexual activity without the victim's permission, and complicity in online bullying and harassment, wherein schoolchildren experience severe, traumatic, and significant bullying that is likely to alienate and traumatize- to the point of suicide- or potentially radicalize children.

Asia is Facebook’s fastest-growing region, home to roughly 112 million of its 580 million users worldwide, according to Facebook statistics.

In the last 24 months, the network has seen quadruple-digit growth in Malaysia (1,000 percent), Thailand (4,000 percent) and Taiwan (7,500 percent). As of 2010, the largest Facebook population outside America is no longer the United Kingdom. It’s Indonesia, an archipelago where 80 percent still lack Internet access.

“Facebook has swept across the Asian region in a way no other web property has done. Ever,” said Thomas Crampton, social media analyst and Asia Pacific director of the 360 Digital Influence marketing agency.

Facebook’s eastern sweep is driven in part by development and demographics. As the Asian middle class rises, the price of internet access continues to fall. But the boom is also fueled by an Asian obsession with online games, as well as Facebook’s ease of use on mobile devices, far cheaper in Asia than at-home web connections.

Across the region, Chinese-made web-ready mobile devices sell for $150 with unlimited internet access plans as low as $20. Facebook has become an essential diversion during epic traffic jams in Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila.

“I use Facebook when I first wake up,” said Sahid Priambodo, a student at Paramadina University in Jakarta. “Then I go to school, but I’m still Facebooking in class.”

Priambodo’s Facebook addiction even follows him into bed at night via his smartphone. “Sometimes I can’t sleep because of Facebook,” he said. “It affects my GPA at school.”

Investors are convinced there are plenty more Sahids for Facebook to enlist. A Goldman Sachs investment this month led analysts to peg Facebook’s value at $50 billion and forecast continued heavy growth.

So far, Facebook has chewed through competitors Friendster, Hi5 and MySpace with very little local investment. Unlike Yahoo — which built offices in Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere in a bid for Asian dominance — Facebook only maintains offices in Japan and, as of last year, India and Singapore.

“Until mid-last year, if I wanted to talk to someone at Facebook, I had to call one poor guy in Australia,” Crampton said. “He was the only representative on this side of the Pacific Ocean.” (Facebook did not respond to GlobalPost’s repeated inquiries into plans for opening new offices or its overall Asia strategy.)

Facebook’s adaptability to local tongues has aided its Asian spread. When Facebook detects a non-English script, it asks the user to translate portions of the site for free — a clever means of recruiting an army of free interpreters.

Facebook also partially owes its growth to the Asian obsession with Farmville, a game that invites players to tend digital farms while sharing seeds and tools with fellow users.

The online phenomenon, played by an estimated 10 percent of Facebook users, is exclusively accessed through Facebook. Despite its simple 1980s arcade-era graphics, the game’s rules are complex and it begs near-constant attention from cyber-ranchers.

Farmville led Facebook’s charge into Taiwan, where people scrambled to sign up simply to access the game. “They wanted to play Farmville,” Crampton said, “but had to sign up for this thing called ‘Facebook’ first.”

Thailand, now the fastest-growing Asian Facebook population, is among the latest to fall under Farmville’s spell.

“Games are one of the main reasons Thai people join Facebook,” said Wattana Pattanagul, a 35-year-old biology professor. His hobby site, “Farmville in Thailand,” was created to decipher the game’s English-language instructions for Thai fans.

“I got tired of always translating for everyone,” he said. “Some people barely sleep because of Farmville. They set their alarm clocks early to wake up and harvest their crops.”

This month, Wattana officiated at a “Farmville Competition,” which drew spectators to a Bangkok exhibition hall where judges awarded points to contestants’ farms for beauty and skill. (Sample commentary: “All this empty space? The farm leaves me feeling cold” and “This garden is arranged strangely ... are the crops meant to spell out something in Chinese?”)

Still, despite its rapid ascent in much of Asia, Facebook remains banned in the region’s most crucial market: China.

Asia’s largest social network isn’t Facebook. It’s RenRen, virtually unknown in America despite its 150 million Chinese users. (Facebook claims roughly 145.7 million U.S. users.) Unlike Facebook, RenRen and other Chinese-language networks are Chinese owned and subjected to communist party oversight.

“Facebook isn’t going to break into China anytime soon,” Crampton said. “Historically, the Chinese government is uncomfortable with any social media used in China but owned by foreigners.” Unblocking Facebook, he said, would require conceding to communist party controls under “some model no one has ever used.”

Still, Facebook watchers have noted China’s influence on founder Mark Zuckerberg. The 26-year-old is studying Chinese, according to a cover story in Time Magazine, and recently visited Beijing with his Chinese-American girlfriend of seven years.

His empire has already proven willing to take on another communist, Facebook-banning nation: Vietnam. Even under an official (but poorly enforced) block there, Facebook quietly advertised in late 2010 for a Hanoi position.

According to the job posting, the company seeks an applicant capable of “communicating with policymakers” and “ensuring the site’s accessibility.”

Japan and South Korea, largely loyal to their homegrown social networks, are two more troublesome countries for Facebook. The tech-obsessed countries have only about 4 million Facebook users combined. Korean authorities in particular are suspicious of Facebook collecting data on its citizens.

If officials officials fear Facebook’s power to coalesce political anger, they need only look at Thailand as an example.

Despite cultural taboos against face-to-face confrontation, Thailand has spawned a notable number of Facebook campaigns channeling fury at various newsmakers and political adversaries.

Within the last month, 300,000 Thais backed a group devoted to denigrating an upper-class, 16-year-old driver who crashed into a van and killed eight people. The campaign insisted the girl was not appropriately remorseful for her wrongdoing.

“May you be cursed so that hell forever chews your heart,” read one comment.

“Some of the most popular groups, actually, are formed around disliking something,” said Benjamas Promchaisiri, a 33-year-old information specialist in Bangkok who joined Facebook last year. “People find it satisfying.”

But Benjamas is far too busy for online hate mongering. Tending her Farmville project — a strawberry ranch overlooked by gingerbread homes and a day-glo “party barn” — is akin to a part-time job.

“I’m on Facebook and Farmville about five hours a day,” she said. “At least.”

2011-01-19T12:33:00.001-08:00

The Plight Of Afghanistan’s Child Water Carriers
...the fact that they are missing school to deliver water that should be delivered by public utilities outrages the people of their neighborhood
By Zarif Nazar, Charles Recknagel

KABUL - Early each morning, the schoolchildren of the Aqibi Silo neighborhood emerge from their homes on a hillside near the center of Kabul.

After the canisters have been filled, children use donkeys to carry the water back uphill.But they don't go to class. Instead, they go off to fetch water -- over and over again -- until long after the school day is done.

They begin by tumbling down the narrow footpaths carrying brightly colored plastic canisters as light as balloons. The banging of the empty cans lends the scene a playful air, until they reach a tap at the base of the hill, where water flows two hours every other day.

The kids fill the canisters with water until they are as heavy as grain sacks. Then, loading the canisters on a donkey, or carrying lighter loads on their heads, they climb back up the hill in the first of many trips.

By the time school has let out elsewhere in Kabul, the children will have ferried enough water uphill to compensate for the municipal pipes that don't deliver water to their hillside homes. To find water tomorrow, they will have to go still farther afield, because the tap at the base of their hill will be off.

The water carriers of Aqibi Silo are hardly the only child laborers in Kabul. But the fact that they are missing school to deliver water that should be delivered by public utilities outrages the people of their neighborhood.

But calling on the government for action is easier in Kabul than getting results. As individuals with complaints quickly learn, there are myriad agencies responsible for public services in Kabul. Worse, there is little coordination between them and little public information about which does what.

'We Face Difficulties'

"Liberty Listeners," a gadfly program produced by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, is aimed at getting officials to address citizens' complaints. The show experienced the maze of bureaucracy firsthand when it sought to relay listeners' concerns about the water carriers to city officials. A phone call to the mayor's office revealed the scope of the problem.

Mayor Yunus Nawandish said a new office had recently been created to manage the distribution of water in Kabul. But he said the office was not under the mayor's jurisdiction.

"Unfortunately, some responsibilities such as water distribution and canalization, which should be actually under the jurisdiction of the mayor of Kabul, are not under the jurisdiction of the mayor of Kabul," he said. "Therefore, we face difficulties. But we are hopeful that this issue will be solved in the future."

Even the mayor was uncertain of the new office's name and location. He did promise, however, to try to independently solve the hillside neighborhood's water shortage.

Children Become Lifeline

A lack of coordination is endemic among Afghan government offices, where officials compete to set up new bureaus to enlarge their patronage systems. But the results are particularly noticeable in Kabul because the population and need for services has swollen with hundreds of thousands of returning refugees since 2001.

The hardscrabble slopes around Kabul pose a particular problem. They are attractive to poor people looking for space to build a home but providing water to them requires pipes with sufficient pressure to flow uphill. During the past 10 to 15 years, the pipes that once did that have fallen into disrepair and now work only occasionally or not at all.

For families with children, the children become the lifeline. And as they do, the children of the poorest families also become the water suppliers to those with no children of their own.

One resident, Zauddin, says he is in too frail health to carry water up to his home himself. So, he buys water from children who deliver the heavy canisters to his door. But he says the water is not clean or healthy and has to be boiled before use.

The children of impoverished families who make a business of selling water earn just a pittance for their labors.

One, Mirwais, tells Radio Free Afghanistan that he earns just 10 Afghanis a bucket, about the price of a piece of bread. But he says the money is needed by his family, so he continues working.

"We have nobody at home who earns money. Everything is very expensive -- rice, wood for heating," he says. "Because of that, I left school and I'm working with my donkey."

The cost for Mirwais himself is high. He has already missed so much time at school that he has given up any ideas of returning. And he has already suffered his first serious injury as he begins what is likely to be a lifetime of hard manual labor.

The accident happened as he and his companions ventured far from their neighborhood to bring water from a cistern near Kabul University. As they moved along a crowded road, a passing car sideswiped their heavily burdened donkey, knocking it off its feet and onto Mirwais.

The boy broke his arm and temporarily had to stop working. But he is back leading his donkey up the steep paths to his neighborhood, as unable to take time off to rest as he is to take time off for school.

Radio Free Afghanistan's Sayaed Jan Sabawoon contributed to this report

Read more: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2011/01/18/the-plight-of-afghanistan-s-child-water-carriers.html#ixzz1BW0hQ2bT

Addiction to Facebook

2011-01-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

January 19, 2011

By RASNA WARAH
Posted Sunday, January 9 2011 at 18:18

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old billionaire founder of Facebook, was voted Time Person of the Year in 2010, and this is why:

One out of every 12 people in the world – or more than 500 million people – has an account with his social networking site, whose membership is growing by about 700,000 people a day.

If Facebook were a country, says Time, it would be the third largest, behind only China and India – and perhaps more influential.

Apparently, members of this rapidly expanding community spend more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. But I am not among them, and I have no apologies to make for it.

Call me an old fuddy duddy or a technophobe, but the fact is that the main reason I have not joined Facebook is because I want keep my private life private.

Facebook allows users to connect and “make friends” with dozens, if not hundreds, of people they would not normally interact with in daily life.

It allows users to know things about other people that they would normally not care to know – such as their birthdays, their hobbies, and their likes and dislikes.

Users can also get into the minds of their “friends” by learning about their deepest secrets and darkest fears. This wouldn’t be so scary if the friends were a select group of people you chose to reveal these facts to.

But the way Facebook works (and also, depending on your privacy settings, which I am told, are not as private as people would like to believe) any Facebook user that you have accepted as your friend can know all of the above, and much more.

He could be your boss, your co-worker, an old school friend who you haven’t seen in years, a former lover, a member of your football team, a fellow church-goers, and even people you absolutely loathe, but who have somehow entered your personal space via Facebook.

Zuckerberg believes that by allowing many to share more of their personal lives with each other, he is helping to create a virtual global community where “people stay in touch and maintain empathy for each other.”

In other words, he is creating a more caring world, where transparency and openness are the modus operandi and where there are no secrets. (I am sure Julian Assange of WikiLeaks would agree.)

Perhaps we can blame his youth for this naïve view of the world, because in real life, relationships, and human beings, simply don’t work that way.

As Time writer Lev Grossman so rightly put it, while the Internet allowed people to lead double lives – real and virtual – Facebook “smooshes together your work self and your home self, your past self and your present self, into a single generic extruded product.”

What is worse, “On Facebook, there is only one kind of relationship: friendship, and you have it with everybody. You’re friends with your spouse and you’re friends with your plumber.”

Moreover, writes Grossman, “relationships on Facebook have a seductive, addictive quality that can erode and even replace real-world relationships”.

Apparently, “Facebook addiction” has even entered the vocabulary of psychiatrists. At least one case has been reported of a woman who lost her job due to Facebook addiction.

Lawyers in the United States are also reporting a rise in the number of divorce cases where Facebook is used as the primary source of online evidence.

Facebook also has a narcissistic quality about it. Tom Hodgkinson wrote in The Guardian in 2008 that Facebook appeals to “a kind of vanity and self importance” in people and encourages a “disturbing competitiveness around friendship” where “quality counts for nothing and quantity (i.e. the number of friends you have) is king.”

Critics have argued that instead of connecting people in meaningful ways, Facebook actually isolates people, who spend more time online rather than doing things that strengthen relationships, such as talking or sharing a meal.

2011-01-18T21:09:00.001-08:00

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times

January 18, 2011, 2:52 p.m.
E-mail Print Share Text Size la-fg-afghan-fuel-shortage-20110119
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — Winter in Afghanistan is always a hardscrabble time, but this year the season's bite has been sharpened by a growing shortage of fuel. And because the dwindling supply is due to an Iranian blockade, the dispute is further tangling complicated dealings with a powerful neighbor.

For the last five weeks, a traffic jam of fuel tankers, now swelled to about 2,500 vehicles, has been backed up at the Iranian-Afghan frontier, with only a fraction of the usual number allowed to pass. The resulting shortages were initially felt most keenly in the agricultural south and west. But in recent weeks, the effects have spread to the crowded, car-choked capital, Kabul, with higher pump prices, longer lines and ever-shortening tempers.

"Sometimes people get angry and argue with us about why it has become so expensive, but there is nothing we can do about it," said gas station attendant Abdul Farwad, who was manning the pumps on a recent chilly morning, fending off customers' grumbles as he did so. In the last month, the cost of a gallon of gasoline has risen by about 20%, to $4.35 in the capital, with higher prices in the provinces.

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As often happens, some of the resentment is aimed at a highly visible target: the 150,000-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization force. Iranian officials have blamed the chokehold on "technical reasons" but also have suggested that at least some fuel ends up in the hands of the Western military.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force, which is composed largely of U.S. troops, has stated repeatedly that its supply routes do not run through Iran. But the denials are to little avail; the belief that Americans are indirectly responsible for the fuel shortage has taken hold strongly among many Afghans.

Analysts say a likelier culprit is regional muscle-flexing, with Afghanistan cast in its familiar role as the pawn of great powers. When Iran feels squeezed by the United States, it can in turn put the squeeze on Afghanistan, where few tasks are easier than stoking resentment against the unpopular administration of President Hamid Karzai.

"All this is because we have no real government," said a student who gave his name only as Hamayoon, fuming after a pricey fill-up for his battered Toyota. "They can't look after our basic needs. Or they won't."

A potential break in the crisis came Tuesday, when Karzai's office announced that Tehran was prepared to ease the restrictions in coming days provided that Afghanistan spells out for Iran its fuel requirements. But Afghanistan has previously balked at, in effect, petitioning Iran for permission to import what it needs.

Afghanistan is entirely dependent on the outside world for fuel, and between one-third and half of it passes through Iran. Afghan officials have talked of trying to develop direct supply links with neighbors such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. But in the meantime, Iran has a heavy hand on the spigot.

In this instance, Iran's motivation is murky. Some observers have pointed to continuing U.S. pressure over its nuclear program.

"Above all, for Iran, it's a way of showing power," said Haroon Mir, an independent political analyst in Kabul.

The fuel shortage has been blamed for an overall creeping up of food prices, including for staples such as cooking oil, and hikes in the cost of crucial items such as firewood, which is used to heat most Afghan homes and often needs to be transported long distances. In this impoverished country, where children pick through trash for saleable items and burka-clad widows beg for small change in the street, the winter months mean cold and hunger for many.

Some of the anger against Iran has boiled over into street protests, including rock-throwing demonstrations at the Iranian Consulate in Herat, the nearest large Afghan city to the western frontier. Protesters also have gathered in recent weeks outside the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, galvanized not only by the developing fuel crisis but also by reports that Afghan laborers in Iran have been mistreated.

Iran then fanned the flames by calling on Afghan authorities to crack down on such demonstrations, stirring indignant sentiment over this perceived affront to Afghan sovereignty. Even so, Afghan officials are treading carefully, mindful of the importance of Iranian patronage.

Only this week, after the near-embargo had been in place since mid-December, did Commerce Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady term Iranian actions "unfortunate."

In agricultural areas, some farmers are having difficulty finding and affording diesel to run their irrigation pumps. The insurgency is strongest in the south, and such pressures can tip the balance between villagers supporting the U.S.-backed government or throwing in their lot with the Taliban.

Farmers come under constant threats and blandishments from the insurgents to switch to growing opium poppies, which do not need as much water and can be trafficked by the Taliban to fund its war effort. Noor Agha, a farmer in the bitterly contested Arghandab district of Kandahar province, said that because of a lack of fuel for irrigation pumps, it was all he could do to save his fruit orchards. His wheat fields, and those of his neighbors, were a loss.

"And tomorrow," he said, "the Taliban will come and tell us there is another way."

laura.king@latimes.com

2011-01-17T15:09:00.000-08:00

This law actually did pass in 2008, courtesy of the Conservative government.

A new set of patent rules proposed by the federal government would delay generic versions of Lipitor, Viagra and several other blockbuster drugs by as much as two years, The National Post reports. And generic drugmakers, not surprisingly, are warning the effort will cost consumers and taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually.

The government says the regulations would simply restore fairness and stability to the brand-name industry after two court rulings put unexpected new curbs on the practice of “evergreening,” which involves filing new patents on a drug in an attempt to stave off generic competition. Generic drugmakers say the move is an unjustified sop to the brand-name industry, the paper writes.

“It completely surprised us. We had no inkling it was coming,” Jim Keon, president of the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association, tells the Post. “The provincial drug plans (which pay for many medications) are really going to feel this in a big way.”

The affected drugs have combined sales of more than a $1 billion a year and generic versions are up to 50 percent cheaper than the brands in some provinces. But Deirdra McCracken, a spokeswoman for Industry Minister Jim Prentice, tells the paper the new regs are just an attempt to uphold government policy as it was before the court rulings, and avoid abrupt changes to the pharmaceutical market.

“Canada currently has a reputation as an internationally competitive location for innovation and investment,” she tells the Post. “To ensure that reputation stays intact, we need predictable and stable intellectual property laws.”

In the tangled world of drug patent law, the suggested new regulations have a complex background. In 2006, the government cracked down somewhat on evergreening. Still, brand-name drugmakers are often able to obtain a two-year, court-ordered stay on generic competition while patent disputes are adjudicated.

In October, 2006, amendments included a grandfather clause that allowed new patents filed before June of that year to stay on the books. A month later, though, the Supreme Court of Canada brought down a decision that said many new evergreen patents were improper. The Federal Court later applied the reasoning in a separate decision.

Such court judgments could result in “sudden and unexpected loss of market exclusivity for a number of innovative drugs,” Industry Canada says in a preamble to the new reg. The changes would override the rulings and allow Industry Canada to keep the grandfathered patents on the books.

While the amendments could result in “delayed savings” to consumers and provincial drug plans, they are needed to maintain the industry’s confidence in Canada as a place to invest and introduce new products, the department’s statement says.

“The government never intended this part of the [2006] regulations to apply retroactively, since this would have been inequitable,” Jacques Lefebvre, spokesman for Canada’s Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, tells the Post. “This will in no way prevent the generic drug makers from entering the market after the expiry of patents.”

Lefebvre noted that the prices for generic meds in Canada are among the highest in the industrialized world. Meanwhile, Keon says the changes were likely the result of lobbying by brand-name companies, according to the paper.

Lobbyists for the industry association, according to a federal registry, include two prominent Conservatives. Goldy Hyder is a Tory strategist and was chief of staff to Joe Clark, then opposition leader, in 2001-2002. Geoff Norquay was director of communications in the office of Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, in 2004 and 2005, the Post writes.

Surfing the Century

2011-01-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

Good news!!!!!

"Along with working directly with the elite of NSW surfing, Hamish will be implementing a new National Development Plan, working closely with surfers and mentoring coaching state-wide."

The State Coaching Director will implement the National High Performance Development Program, an initiative of Surfing Australia. The intent is to develop surfers and provide ongoing support, using the world's best practice in all regional coaching, training camps, and competition setting, with the ultimate aim being to maintain Australia's number one ranking in global surfing.

NSW has the largest resident surf population in Australia and with junior surfers dotted all over the most accessible surf coastline in the country, the funding will provide more opportunities for NSW surfers.

www.aspworldtour.com
www.surfingnsw.com.au

Hell or High Water

2011-01-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

...we've got to end the Afghanistan war.

Hey kids,
This excerpt is pretty terrific.

Fake feminism NATO-style
NATO’s attempts to master the dark arts of spin cannot be allowed to conceal the brazen opportunism of the alliance
By David Cronin

Back in 2002, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy brilliantly satirised the official excuses for the invasion of Afghanistan . “It’s being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas,” she said. “We are being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission.”

Afghan women buy jewelery at a roadside in Herat (Photo: EPA/JALIL REZAYEE)The effort to rebrand militarism as compassionate and motherly continues today in NATO’s Brussels headquarters. Stefanie Babst, a senior official in the alliance working on “public diplomacy” (a synonym for propaganda), keeps busy trying to raise the profile of a decade-old United Nations Security Council Resolution on gender, peace and security. It is “extremely encouraging” that NATO is committed to this resolution – number 1325 in case you were wondering – and its call that women and children be shielded from violence during armed conflicts, Babst has declared.

Can it really be the case that NATO is sparing women from the horrors of the war it is waging in Afghanistan? Of course, it can’t.UN data published in December stated that 742 civilians were killed or wounded by NATO or by Afghan forces loyal to Hamid Karzai’s government in the first ten months of last year. Most of these casualties – including 162 deaths – were attributed to air strikes, a NATO speciality.

Documents made public through the heroic work of WikiLeaks have helped give us a glimpse of what Afghans have to endure. On 16 August 2007 Polish troops mortared a wedding party in a village called Nangar Khel. Four women and one man were killed. A pregnant woman in attendance was among those wounded by shrapnel. Though an emergency caesarean was performed, her baby died.

NATO’s attempts to master the dark arts of spin cannot be allowed to conceal the brazen opportunism of the alliance. When the Soviet Union started to collapse, there was much nervousness among NATO staff that their beloved institution would go out of business. After a lengthy period of scrambling around for reasons why the alliance was still relevant now that the Cold War was supposed to be over, it was given a new lease of life with the implosion of Yugoslavia. In 1999, NATO celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by raining down cluster bombs – weapons so dangerous that over 100 governments have subsequently agreed to ban them – on Serbia. No soldier, general or political leader serving the alliance has ever been held to account for that monstrous war crime.

Afghanistan has helped ensure that NATO will remain alive and kicking for the foreseeable future. In August 2003, NATO took charge of the US-led “stabilisation force” occupying Afghanistan. Karl Eikenberry, now US ambassador to Afghanistan and a former deputy commander of NATO’s 28-nation military committee, stated in 2007 that “the policy of turning Afghanistan over to NATO was really about the future of NATO rather than about Afghanistan, one that could ‘make’ the alliance. The long view of the Afghanistan campaign is that it is a means to continue the transformation of the alliance.”

Transforming NATO “means in the first place expanding it into a global military force, one able to wage wars like that in Afghanistan and others modeled after it,” Rick Rozoff has observed on his excellent “Stop NATO” blog.

In his New Year’s message, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance’s secretary general, rejoiced in how there are now nearly 140,000 NATO soldiers deployed around the world: in the Balkans, Iraq, the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean (off the Horn of Africa), as well as in Afghanistan. Rasmussen would like us to think that all these men and women are working tirelessly to bring peace and stability to trouble spots. But closer inspection of NATO’s track record shows that their primary purpose is to ensure that the US and Europe will have access to energy supplies and other resources that our myopic governments regard as essential for our economies.

NATO’s activities in Africa, for example, have received only a fraction of the media coverage given to Iraq or Afghanistan. But the bit of information that we have available to us is illuminating. James Jones, who stepped down in October as the US national security adviser, paid a considerable amount of attention to Africa when he was a high-level NATO commander a few years previously. In 2006, Jones signalled that NATO was thinking about using the fight against piracy as a pretext to launch a mission off the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Guinea.

The aim of this mission would be to avert any perceived threats to the energy supply routes for Western nations, he said. It is about time that journalists grew more sceptical than we have been towards the whole industry of think tanks and self-appointed experts in Brussels and Washington who praise NATO at every available opportunity.

2011-01-16T21:15:00.000-08:00

Chris Cook from Pacific Free Press has this.

16 Jan 2011

Afghanistan: The War is Over, but the Killing Goes On PDF Print E-mail
written by Conn Hallinan
Killing Peace
by Conn Hallinan
In spite of a White House declaration that "progress" is being made in Afghanistan, by virtually any measure the war has deteriorated significantly since the Obama Administration surged troops into Kandahar and Helmand provinces. This past year has been the deadliest on record for U.S. and coalition troops.

Civilian casualties are on the rise, and, according to the Red Cross, security has worsened throughout the country. U.S. allies are falling away, and the central government in Kabul has never been so isolated. Polls in Afghanistan, the U.S. and Europe reflect growing opposition to the nine-year conflict.

So why is the White House pursuing a strategy that is almost certain to accelerate a descent into chaos, and one that runs counter to the Administration's stated goal of a diplomatic solution to the war?

It is not an easy question to answer, in part because the major actors are hardly being straight with the public.

For instance, while U.S. commander Maj. Gen. David Petraeus says his strategy of counterinsurgency is making headway, in fact the military abandoned that approach long ago. Instead it has ramped up the air war and replaced the campaign to win "hearts and minds" with "night raids" aimed at assassinating or capturing Taliban leaders and supporters.

"Night raids" have more than tripled, from an average of 5 a night to 17, and they more and more resemble the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. Phoenix was aimed at decapitating the leadership of the National Liberation Front (NLF) and dismantling the NLF infrastructure in the countryside. It ended up assassinating somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 people.

As in the Phoenix Program, night raids are directed at destroying "shadow governments" the Taliban have established in virtually every province in the country. Over the past three months, U.S. and NATO forces claim they have killed or captured 360 "insurgent leaders," 960 "low-level leaders," and some 2,400 fighters.

The Taliban have responded by assassinating government officials in Kandahar and increasing their cooperation with the two other insurgent groups, the Hizb-i-Islami and the Haqqani Group.

In spite of the raids, United Nation's maps show that the central battlegrounds of Kandahar and Helmand provinces are still considered "very high risk" and the situation has grown considerably worse in the north and east.

The White House argues that the only solution to the long-running war is a diplomatic one, but the administration seems bent on systematically sabotaging that outcome by trying to kill the very people who will be central to any negotiated peace.

"By killing Taliban leaders, the war will not come to an end," former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttwakil told the Nation's Jeremy Scahill, "on the contrary, things get worse." Indeed, according to former Taliban leader Abdul Salam Zaeef, the killings push more radical leaders to the fore. "It will be worse for everyone if the [current] Taliban leadership disappears," Zaeef told Scahill.

The US has also sharpened its criticism of Pakistan to the point that a recent intelligence analysis essentially says the Islamabad is the major problem. There is even talk about sending U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the special 3,000-man Afghan army organized by the CIA into Pakistan to attack insurgent camps near the border, an act that would almost certainly further inflame anti-Americanism in that country.

In reality, there is not a whole lot Pakistan's 600,000-man army can do. It is already fighting a homegrown Taliban, and its tense relations with India require it keep substantial forces on their mutual border. It has also largely taken over the job of dealing with Pakistan's devastating floods last year. But even were it use all its forces, it is doubtful it could control the mountainous, 1553-mile border with Afghanistan.

The Pakistanis argue that current U.S. policy, not the border, is the problem. They point to the fact that the Americans have hitched themselves to the corruption-plagued Karzi government and have little to show for the billions spent to train the Afghan Army and police. "The Americans are looking for a scapegoat," says leading Pakistan politician Mushahid Hussain.

Is the problem that Obama has turned the war over the military?

For all of Petraeus' talk about "hearts and minds," the military's job description is to kill people. That is why Karl von Clausewitz, the great theoretician of modern war, pointed out that war is much too important a matter to be left in the hands of generals.

The Obama Administration seems paralyzed by a combination of those in its ranks who support a muscular foreign policy, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the late Richard Holbrooke, a fear that the Republicans will brand them as "soft" in the 2012 elections, and an unwillingness to confront the generals.

The tragedy here is that many of the pieces for a deal are already in place. The Taliban and its allies are not tightly organized groups with a common ideology other than expelling invaders. They range from dedicated jihadists to local people fighting over turf or for revenge. And while Afghans have a reputation for being fierce, they actually excel at the art of the deal. If they did not, the country would have been depopulated long ago.

Of course, there are substantial roadblocks to overcome. The Taliban insists all foreign troops must leave, and the U.S. and Karzi demand the insurgents accept the Afghan constitution and put down their weapons. None of the above is likely to happen.

But the Taliban said back in 2008 that they would accept a "timetable" for foreign troops to leave. Of course both sides would have to agree to a ceasefire.

The U.S will have to back off from its insistence that the insurgents accept the current constitution. The document establishes a powerful centralized government, a form of organization that flies in the face of the country's history and which few Afghans outside of Kabul support. A constitution based on strong local autonomy would garner more support. In turn, the insurgents would have to guarantee that groups like al-Qaeda could not set up shop.

The Americans insist they will not talk with the Haqqani Group or others they consider "irreconcilables," but you have to negotiate with the people you are fighting. No party has the right to veto the participation of another.

Any agreement will have to take into account regional security issues, including Islamabad's fear that India will make Afghanistan a client state, thus surrounding Pakistan on both sides.

The polls are on the side of those who want to end the war.

A recent survey found that 83 percent of Afghanis want negotiations, (though 55 percent show little sympathy with the insurgency). According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, 60 percent of the American public say the war "is not worth fighting." Opposition to the war is much higher in Europe, reaching 70 percent in Germany.

The U.S. polls suggest that any Republican charge of the administration being "soft" is not likely to make much headway with voters.

Further, the conflict is hemorrhaging money at a time of severe economic crisis. The war is costing $8 billion a month, not counting the tens of billions the U.S. has spent training the Afghan Army and police. So far, the cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars is $1.1 trillion, but, according to economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmer, the long-term costs of both wars will be $3 trillion.

One thing Democrats in Congress can do is to press for a troop drawdown starting this year. Again, the polls show 55 percent support withdrawals starting in summer 2011, with another 27 percent saying it should begin sooner.

According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, delaying the withdrawal date from the end of 2011—the President's original goal—to 2014 will cost an extra $125 billion. As a comparison, the House Republicans pledge to cut $100 billion from the domestic budget—excluding the military, Homeland Security, and veterans—would require a 20 percent across-the-board cut in all programs.

The war is lost. We are broke. Many of the key protagonists are prepared to talk. It is time to silence the guns and seek common ground.

Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net

2011-01-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

Out today.

by Tod Ensign

One of the greatest achievements of the Vietnam antiwar movement was its creation of a GI coffeehouse and counselling network. The first coffehouse was opened outside Ft. Jackson, S.C. in late 1967, two and a half years after America troops invaded Vietnam. Within weeks, hundreds of GIs had visited during their off duty hours. Over the next year, similar projects sprang up outside twenty other major U.S. bases.

These projects embodied the "counter cultural" spirit of the times. Sex, psychedelic drugs and rock and roll coexisted with a strong anti-war message. Civilian activists, mostly recruited from the anti-war movement, worked in tandem with active duty GIs, some of whom had just returned from Vietnam. At some projects, the soldiers played a leading role in setting political goals, providing counselling and putting out the anti war newspaper that was a staple of every coffeehouse project.

Today, antiwar organizers are again discussing how active duty GIs can be recruited to play a more active part in the struggle against the war. A Stars and Stripes newspaper poll of soldiers fighting in Iraq, reported in March 2006, that 72% of them wanted to be withdrawn within a year, while 29% favored immediate withdrawl.

Organizers from Citizen Soldier, a GI/veterans rights advocacy group (www.citizen-soldier.org) recently met with anti-war veterans and GIs in Fayetteville, N.C. , home to Ft. Bragg, where 40,000 combat troops are stationed. They discussed the prospects for establishing a coffeehouse and counselling project near the base--the largest in the eastern U.S. Their hope is that a successful pilot project at Bragg could stimulate the creation of similar efforts at other key posts.

Both the US military and American society have experienced enormous change since the Vietnam era. Foremost here is the transformation of a conscript-driven military to one that is entirely composed of "volunteers." This has made the armed forces much less representative of American society as a whole. One of the primary reasons why advocates of an "all volunteer" military wanted to junk the Draft was their belief that it fueled much of the anti war opposition--especially among young people. When one compares the size and intensity of today's movement against the war in Iraq with that of the Vietnam war, this analysis appears to be accurate.

The transition to a volunteer force has had two other significant consequences. One, women were integrated into most military jobs, except for the infantry and armor. Today, every sixth soldier is female, except in the Marine Corps. Second, the shrinkage of active duty force levels, which became necessary once competitive wages were being paid has meant that reservists and Guard troops must shoulder a much greater combat burden when the military deploys into combat. Today, one out of three GIs serving in Iraq is a reservist. These soldiers are older, have family obligations and are less accustomed to the rigors of military life.

These demographic changes are central to any discussion of how a coffeehouse project could attract the participation of GIs today. During Vietnam, the average low ranking soldier was paid less than $300 a month. They lived in austere barracks and ate their meals in dingy chowhalls. These conditions made an off base coffeehouse seem attractive as an off duty refuge from the tedium of the "green machine" and its grinding routines.

Today, half of all soldiers are married and many have children. Their relatively good pay and benefits allow them to buy expensive cars and vans and many choose Applebee's and Mickey D's over the messhall. To counter serious problems with recruitment and retention, the Pentagon now offers a series of robust bonuses which range from $10,000 to $40,000, payable over the life of an enlistment hitch. Elite "Delta Force" troops can get up to $100,000 if they'll sign for another tour. (A note to those who believe that recruiting shortfalls may force a reinstitution of the Draft: the Pentagon has shown that it will spend whatever it takes to induce (bribe?) low income youth to fill its combat slots.

One of the main attractions of the Vietnam era coffeehouse was that GIs identified them with the "counter cultural" changes that were sweeping America at the time. Psychedelic paraphenalia and drugs fanned the latent anti authoritarianism of soldiers. This,in turn, sparked challenges to all forms of authority--sexual mores, gender roles, social conventions, and the military's vaunted chain of command. One key demand of the American Servicemen's (sic) Union was; "an end to siring and saluting." Explicit anti war organizing, while important, was only one item on the projects' agendas.

Popular culture today is much more diffuse, blending many different strands; rap, punk, heavy metal, goth, hippy, traditional rock and roll, and even country-western. In lifestyle , openly gay couples (not on a military base, however!) co-exist with super straight engaged couples who flaunt their pre-marital chastity.

Organizers concluded that a coffeehouse/counselling project could succeed in attracting significant numbers of soldiers assuming that it provided internet access, good latte, and plenty of free parking. Many young soldiers today quest for intellectual, cultural and political fulfillment today, as they always have. A coffehouse which combines an alternative bookstore with a lively mix of free musical performances, stand up comedy and poetry (with some political speechifying thrown in) could become highly popular with a significant minority of GIs.

A number of important questions remain. Who will finance the cost of one, not to mention a dozen such coffeehouse projects today? Certainly GIs can't be expected to provide more than a small portion of the budget. During Vietnam, the United Servicemen's (sic) Support Fund, raised substantial sums, which it then parcelled out to the local projects to help them pay rent and staff saleries. Nothing like the USSF exists today, but something along these lines will be needed if these projects are to thrive. Important first steps have been taken, but much more needs to be done. Contact Citizen Soldier for additional information.

2011-01-16T21:08:00.000-08:00

War Resisters Support Campaign Launches
'Let Them Stay Week' on Saturday
by Resisters.ca
More than a dozen events will be taking place in communities across Canada until January 22, including in: Grand Forks, BC; Vancouver, BC; Windsor, ON; Victoria, BC; St. John's, NL; Newmarket, ON; Winnipeg, MB; Halifax, NS; Fredericton, NB; Peterborough, ON; Sudbury, ON; and Toronto, ON.

The War Resisters Support Campaign is launching 'Let Them Stay Week' on Saturday, January 15

- Majority of Canadians want Iraq War resisters to stay
- 12+ events across Canada urge Stephen Harper to give resisters status

The Week begins with an information picket at Market Square in Windsor, ON and a film screening and discussion with Rodney Watson, an Iraq War Resister who is marking his 70th week (more than 480 days) living in sanctuary in Vancouver, BC:

Information picket in support of US Iraq War resisters
Saturday, January 15
11:00 am to 12:00 noon ET
Ottawa Street (across from Market Square)
Windsor, ON

Film screening and discussion with Rodney Watson, Iraq War resister in Sanctuary
Saturday, January 15
2:00 to 4:00 p.m. PT
First United Church
320 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC

Iraq War resisters and their supporters in Toronto will also be available for interviews throughout the weekend.

For a full list of Let Them Stay Week events, please see the Resisters.ca website.

"The majority of Canadians have spoken out in support of Iraq War resisters being allowed to stay in Canada," said Michelle Robidoux, spokesperson for the War Resisters Support Campaign. "These young men and women made the difficult decision to cease participation in the illegal and immoral war in Iraq. They have shown tremendous courage, leaving behind their homes, their family and friends."

Yet Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney — both of whom wanted Canada to participate in the Iraq War — are deporting Iraq War resisters.

War resisters Robin Long and Cliff Cornell were sentenced to significant prison terms because the Harper government refused to respect two House of Commons motions (passed June 3, 2008 and March 30, 2009) that directed the government to immediately stop deporting U.S. Iraq War resisters and to facilitate the resisters' requests for permanent resident status from within Canada.

On July 6, 2010, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Jeremy Hinzman. The Court unanimously found that immigration officers must consider war resisters' sincerely-held beliefs and motivations for coming to Canada. The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) and immigration officers have consistently ignored resisters moral, political and religious beliefs, issuing cookie-cutter decisions that conform to the Immigration Minister's prejudicial comments rather than fairly considering each case based on its merits and the individuals' circumstances.

Jeremy Hinzman's case will be sent back for a new humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) grounds decision. Hinzman was the first U.S. Iraq War resister to come to Canada. Along with his wife Nga Nguyen and their son Liam, he arrived in Canada on January 3, 2004. Jeremy and Nga's daughter Meghan was born in Toronto on July 21, 2008.

Later in July, Citizenship and Immigration Canada issued Operational Bulletin 202, flagging US Iraq war resisters as potentially “criminally inadmissible” to Canada.

Peter Showler, former chair of Canada’s IRB, has written to Minister Kenney urging that the prejudicial directive be rescinded: “The bulletin implies that military deserters from the US should be treated differently than deserters from other countries. There is no basis in law for that proposition.”

Amnesty International Canada has also written to Minister Kenney, calling for the withdrawal of Operational Bulletin 202 because it “misstates the law and seeks to intrude on the independence of both IRB members and Immigration Officers.”

-30-

Media Advisory/Photo Opportunity
For Immediate Release
January 14, 2011

2011-01-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

Nine killed by Afghan bomb en route to wedding

Nine killed by Afghan bomb en route to wedding AFP/File – A policeman stands guard at Pul-e Khumri in the Baghlan province of Afghanistan in 2009. Nine civilians

by Enayat Najafizada Enayat Najafizada – Sun Jan 16, 10:40 am ET

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (AFP) – Nine civilians including a child were killed by a roadside bomb in northern Afghanistan as they travelled to a wedding on Sunday, police and local officials said.

Six women, two men and the child died in the blast, which happened as the vehicle they were travelling in headed from Pul-e-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province, to a local village on a road often used by foreign forces.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the blast. The Taliban did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"A mine struck a civilian minibus," provincial governor Abdul Majeed told AFP.

"Nine civilians -- six women, a child and two men -- have been killed. The road is often used by the PRT (provincial reconstruction team) soldiers. All the casualties are civilians."

Hungarian soldiers are stationed in the province as part of the PRT, which aims to help local government work more effectively.

The incident was also confirmed by Major Qudratullah, a spokesman for police in Baghlan province.

The incident came a day after six civilians were killed by a roadside bomb which hit a minibus in the Sangin district of southern Afghanistan's troubled Helmand province.

Helmand provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi said that those killed Saturday dead were all relatives of a local tribal chief, Haji Zainullah, and that three more people were wounded in the incident.

Afghanistan's interior ministry says that last year 2,043 civilians died as a result of Taliban attacks and military operations targeting the militants.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or home-made bombs are the weapon of choice for insurgents and are a frequent cause of death for civilians in Afghanistan.

There are around 140,000 international troops, two-thirds of them from the United States, in the country fighting the Taliban insurgents who were ousted from power in a 2001 US-led invasion.

International troops are due to start a limited, conditions-based withdrawal from Afghanistan from July, and Afghan forces are scheduled to take over responsibility for security in 2014.

Last year saw the highest death toll yet for international troops serving in Afghanistan. According to the independent iCasualties.org website, the toll stood at 711, while a total of 18 have died so far this year.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, warned last week that levels of violence in Afghanistan "will be worse in 2011 than it was in 2010 in many parts".

He added that gains made so far were "tenuous and fragile", echoing comments by President Barack Obama in his review of war strategy last month.

2011-01-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

Australian Women Report Sexual Abuse in Victoria Psychiatric Wards

by Cara on October 4, 2010

in Australia,International,disability,human rights,misogyny,patriarchy,rape and sexual assault,sexual exploitation and harassment,violence against women and girls,women’s health

Trigger Warning for discussions of violence against women with disabilities, and discussions of sexual violence particularly within the context of psychiatric units.

Last week, news broke in the Australian state of Victoria that women who are patients in psychiatric wards are being routinely sexually harassed and assaulted by men who are patients in those same wards. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports:

The Victorian Women and Mental Health Network is calling for more wards to be segregated after reports of patient harassment and sexual assaults.

Victorian wards were de-segregated in the 1960s because of a perception that sharing spaces with women would help male patients.

The network’s chairwoman, Heather Clarke, says the assaults hinder the victim’s ability to cope with and recover from mental illness.

“Threats and intimidation, unwelcome sexual advances, sometimes males entering bedrooms and at times even sexual assault,” she said.

“This is very concerning when it’s recognised that a majority of women, 70 per cent of these women, already have past histories of physical or sexual abuse so these volatile environments are re-traumatising.”

Ms Clarke says while some facilities have female-only spaces, a lack of resources means it is not always enforced.

“Some wards have created women’s corridors, but there a number of issues with those corridors,” she said.

“There may not be enough beds in them for all women to be admitted and when they need extra beds for men they sometimes admit men to those those corridors.”

Well, it would have been nice if, when desegregating wards because of a perceived benefit to male patients, someone had bothered to ask what the impact might be on the women. That said, very few people with even a passing familiarity with these issues will be surprised by such revelations and accusations, and readers of this blog might recall that I’ve written about this very subject before. Unfortunately, a passing familiarity is much more than most people seem to have.

Julie Dempsey, a woman who has been a patient at various psychiatric units in Victoria spoke to the Age about her experience of being assaulted in a ward and witnessing other sexual assaults. Her comments offer invaluable insight:

”You’re told to go to hospital so you will be safe, but people are often put into vulnerable positions,” she says.

”I no longer feel comfortable even visiting someone in hospital, let alone voluntarily putting myself in as an inpatient to a psychiatric facility.

”Something needs to be done to make them safer.”

Like the rest of this story, what Dempsey has to say is not surprising, but it is devastating. It’s no secret that sexual violence almost always has a negative impact on the victim’s mental health, not infrequently going so far as to cause or otherwise trigger a mental illness (such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, to name only a couple of examples), or exacerbate one that’s already present. And, as the ABC articles note, 70% of women who are patients in Victoria psychiatric units already have a history of physical or sexual abuse, due both to the link between victimization and mental illness and women with disabilities’ particular likelihood of being chosen as victims by perpetrators of violence. That sexual violence is not good for women already struggling with mental illness is one hell of an understatement.

But clearly, this violence is not only having a direct negative impact on mental health, it’s also preventing women with mental illness(es) from seeking out treatment and services that they may otherwise feel would be beneficial to them. Inpatient psychiatric treatment is definitely not for everyone. But it certainly should be an option for those to whom it does look appealing. And if a woman feels that such treatment may be appropriate and helpful for her, but she is too afraid for her personal safety to seek it out, that is an enormous violation. I highly doubt that Dempsey is the only woman whose prior experiences with violence inside psychiatric facilities has caused this option to be taken entirely off the table for her.

Further, the fact is that not all patients in psychiatric units have freely chosen to be there. This is an issue that needs addressing outside the scope of this post and my knowledge base. But being forcibly placed in treatment against your will is usually traumatic and can be damaging enough to one’s sense of safety. Forcibly confining people in treatment against their will while placing them in an environment that subjects them to the constant threat of sexual violence is unconscionable on a whole new level.

I can’t claim to have the answers. While sex-segregated wards will strike many as an obvious and easy solution, they’re not without their problems, particularly as it concerns trans* patients. Wherever sex segregation is enforced, trans men and women are much too frequently placed by cis people in the units inappropriate for their genders, not only denying their identities but also placing them at risk of violence. Further, non-binary identifying trans patients are put between a rock and a hard place, and forcibly identified with a gender that does not belong with them as well as placed in an environment that may not be safe. While sex segregation almost certainly would reduce the rates of sexual violence by cis men against cis women, there’s a large possibility that it would come at the price of increased rates of violence (sexual and otherwise) against trans* people of all genders (or non-genders), when they likely face some of the highest rates of violence already. And that is a trade off that should be considered unsettling at the absolute least.

The fact of the matter is that gender integrated wards are also hardly the only cause of the problem here. Indifference and rape culture are also major issues:

Network chairwoman Heather Clarke said several sexual assaults had been reported to the network recently, including the rape of an 18-year-old woman by a male patient in an acute adult psychiatric unit.

”She had previously told staff that he was harassing her but they had dismissed her concerns,” Ms Clarke said.

Segregating by gender won’t ultimately have the full desired impact if abusers are still not being dealt with once they have been identified. Rather, the abusers will just get craftier or pick new victims. Further, in addition to failing to address violence at its roots, this strategy alone lets abuse enablers off the hook. Everyone deserves safety, no matter what their mental health or disability status. But there is an extra responsibility to keep safe those who have been placed in restrictive and vulnerable environments. That staff in many (quite possibly most) units are not up to the task, and indeed are sometimes abusers themselves, is a part of the problem and needs to be addressed if freedom from violence is actually to be accomplished.

2011-01-11T20:16:00.000-08:00

At the races this week in Melbourne. People should have a look at the hats all of the ladies were wearing- quite scrumptious! :)

2011-01-11T20:01:00.001-08:00

The Danforth food festival in Toronto last summer.

2011-01-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

Affy, two weeks ago...

2011-01-11T17:30:00.000-08:00

Joy

“The bumble bee is the teacher who continually teaches the lesson. But how can one understand, unless one is made to understand?”- Sri Guru Granth Sahib

2011-01-11T16:34:00.001-08:00

2011-01-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

Actor Vivek Shauq dies

Submitted by Surbhi Garg
on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 14:12

The film industry lost a very good character artist in the form of Vivek Shauq who breathed his last today. The actor was a prominent face in a lot of Punjabi films but also had done work in a lot of Bollywood films as a support actor.

He has films like 'Gadar Ek Prem Katha', 'Aitraaz' and '36 China Town' where his comic timing earned him a lot of accolades to his credit.

The death was rather untimely as he was just 47 and suffered a heart attack on Jan 3 after which he was taken to Sant Nirankari Mission where he breathed his last today.

He has worked with a lot of top bollywood actors like Sunny Deol, Akshay Kumar, Akshaye Khanna and Shahid Kapoor. His acts with Jaspal Bhatti in Ulta Pulta TV show were very famous in the north region.

He slipped into coma after a minor operation and could never attain conscious again. His sense of humor was amazing and had a lot of fans in the industry; he was also one of the founder members of Nonsense Club.

2011-01-08T14:28:00.001-08:00

Thank you to everyone involved. :)

Judge Dismisses Cases Against Military Veterans and Antiwar Activists Following December 16 Washington, D.C., Arrests
Posted on January 5, 2011 by eb

Washington, D.C., January 4, 2011–Antiwar military veterans and other activists celebrated a breakthrough victory today in DC Superior Court, when charges were dropped, following arrests in front of the White House, on December 16, 2010. Over 130 people were arrested in a major veteran-led protest while participating in non-violent civil resistance in a driving snowstorm. U.S. Park Police charged all 131 protesters with “Failure to Obey a Lawful Order,” when they refused to move from the White House fence. The protesters were demanding an end to the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and further U.S. aggression in the region.

Among those arrested were members of the leadership of the national organization Veterans For Peace, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and, Dr. Margaret Flowers, an advocate for single-payer health care.

Forty-two of those arrested opted to appear in court and go to trial with the first group appearing in DC Superior Court on January 4, 2011. Prosecutors from the DC Attorney General’s office stated that the government “declined to file charges due to missing or incomplete police paperwork.” Presiding Magistrate Judge Richard Ringell confirmed that the cases were dropped and defendants were free to leave.

Those who participated in this action make this statement:

“This is clearly a victory for opposition to undeclared wars, which are illegal under international law, have led to the destruction of societies in Iraq and Afghanistan, bled the U.S. Treasury in a time of recession, and caused human rights violations against civilians and combatants. Many of us will return to Washington, D.C., to support an action on Tuesday, January 11, 2011, to protest the continued use of Guantanamo detention facility, including torture of detainees in violation of international law.”

The defendants were represented by co-counsels Ann Wilcox, Esq., and Mark Goldstone, Esq. Ms. Wilcox stated: “Clearly the government and police felt that these veterans and their supporters acted with the courage of their convictions and did not wish to spend the time and funds necessary for a trial proceeding. This is a major victory for the peace movement.”

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
← Failure to Obey a Lawful Order

2011-01-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

This article was published today, contextualizing the artificial colours debate in America. Its terrific that the media are hilighting this as a significant issue.

Food coloring is the reason glace cherries are red rather than beige and that children's tongues sometimes appear freakishly blue. But man-made dyes may do more than make processed food look vibrant and whimsical. Some blame the additives for triggering behavioral problems in youngsters.

Acting on research published in the Lancet, the European Parliament last year began requiring products containing synthetic food colors to carry warning labels saying that "consumption may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children."

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has scheduled a March hearing on whether food dyes adversely impact children's health. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, or CSPI, is asking the agency for a synthetic food-dye ban and to place warnings on products until the colors are removed.

The dyes are often used to enhance the appearance of sugary cereals, candies, sodas, fruit-flavored snacks, fast food and other products that are aimed at children and have little nutritional value, the CSPI said in a citizen's petition signed by 18 physicians and researchers. Since naturally derived alternatives exist, the continued use is hardly worth any potential risk, it said.

"What's the benefit? To make junk food even more appealing to children than it already is?" asked CSPI Executive Director Michael Jacobson.

Other experts say food dyes, which require pre-market approval, are among the most tightly regulated additives on the market and there's little evidence for the long-suspected link between food colors and hyperactivity.

"The (synthetic food dyes) used in the U.S. are absolutely safe," said Joseph Borzelleca, a professor emeritus of pharmacology and toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. "Food colors are among the most thoroughly studied of the food ingredients."

That hasn't always been the case. Originally, naturally derived ingredients were used to make food look more appealing — saffron, for example, gave rice a yellow tint. In the 1850s, manufacturers began using long-lasting coal-tar dyes to brighten both fabric and food, a practice that sickened countless unsuspecting consumers.

Nearly 200 substances were in use when safety testing was finally required in 1960; only a handful survived the testing process.

Today, the nine synthetic hues approved for use in food — meaning they've been certified by the FDA — are used primarily to help restore the color washed away by industrial processing, even out natural variations and make foods look more appealing or "fun."

Manufacturers also can use dyes made from plant, animal or mineral sources, such as beets, caramel color or grape color extract, but the petroleum-based colors are cheaper and can be more consistent.

"The content of a natural color like grape skin varies, depending on where they're grown, the season, the kind of chemicals used and harvesting," said Borzelleca. "But with approved colors you're getting the same thing every time."

Synthetic food colors have been suspected of triggering behavioral problems in children since the 1970s, when pediatric allergist Ben Feingold began treating allergies by putting children on elimination diets, free of both synthetic food dyes and preservatives. But Feingold's ideas, now touted as a way to treat children with attention-deficit disorder, were never convincingly substantiated.

The issue resurfaced in 2007 after University of Southampton researchers reported in the Lancet that hyperactive behavior increased in two groups of children — age 3 and ages 8 and 9 — when they consumed two different mixtures of artificial colors, plus a preservative.

Unlike previous studies, the Southampton research found the effect in children from the general population, not just those whose parents suspected they were sensitive to food dyes. And the study didn't just rely on parental ratings of their children's behavior, which can be subject to bias; it also used ratings generated by teachers, researchers and computers.

The British Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the trial, subsequently advised concerned parents to reduce or eliminate six colorings from their children's diets. A committee of the European Parliament then voted to ban all synthetic dyes from foods consumed by babies and small children.

The FDA still maintains there's "no evidence" of a link between dyes and hyperactivity. When it reviewed the Southampton study, the agency "found no information to suggest that the behavioral changes noted were adverse, detrimental or maladaptive." One of the study's shortcomings, the FDA said, was that it used a mixture of color additives and the preservative sodium benzoate, making it impossible to know which individual additive was responsible for the effect.

The researchers, who have been invited to the March FDA panel, acknowledged that more studies are needed but disagree with the FDA's view that the effects were insufficient to warrant action.

While many factors can influence hyperactivity in children, including genes and environment, "there is good evidence that artificial food colors can also increase levels of hyperactivity," said Jim Stevenson, the study's lead author and professor emeritus in the school of psychology at the University of Southampton.

Certain food dyes, including FD&C Yellow No. 5, also can trigger allergic-type reactions in some people, but allergists note that many natural foods also can cause such symptoms.

"Some chemicals naturally present in strawberries, pineapples or some insecticides used on fruit also bother some people," said Michael B. Foggs, chief of allergy, asthma and immunology for Advocate Medical Group of Advocate Health Care. "Should children be forced to eat foods devoid of artificial coloring agents because a small percentage of children are bothered by recognizable side effects?"

The uncertainty over the evidence leaves parents with many questions and pediatricians with few answers.

Aaron Donnell, an allergist and pediatrician at Children's Memorial Hospital and Illinois Masonic Hospital, said that if parents have questions about attention-deficit disorder, he tells them that skin- or blood-testing won't help, but they can try removing gluten, sugar, dyes or preservatives from the child's diet. "At least half get some improvement by adjusting their diet," he said.

Soledad Erickson, a Chicago teacher, went to Donnell after she suspected food dyes were affecting two of her children. Daughter Marcella, 8, had severe mood swings, and Sydnie, 5, broke out in severe rashes.

Both girls improved after she removed the chemicals from their diet, she said.

"Marcella became more focused and pays attention," said Erickson, adding that signs of the old problems re-emerge when food dyes sneak back into the girls' diets. "She's so much happier and friendlier since I've taken out the dyes. If you met her last year, you'd never think this was the same child."

In Ari Goldstein's clinic, meanwhile, parents are often counseled on the potential benefits of dietary changes after children are diagnosed with learning difficulties or behavioral problems.

Goldstein, director of Cognitive Solutions Learning Center in Chicago and Highland Park, said he knows more research is needed. Still, he urges parents to "clean up" their children's diets, which included removing as many refined and processed foods as possible and incorporating whole foods.

"I've seen some cases where removal of synthetic dyes has improved behavior patterns tremendously; however, other dietary interventions were also in play," Goldstein said.

Some manufacturers and retailers already are moving to replace synthetic colorings with natural alternatives in their products. Both Whole Foods and Trader Joe's have pledged not to sell products with synthetic food colors. Starbucks doesn't permit dyes in its beverages or pastries, Necco has switched to safer natural colorings for its wafers and Frito-Lay is testing dye-free snack foods, according to CSPI.

Many companies have also reformulated products to adjust to the regulations in Europe. For example, Kellogg's strawberry Nutri-Grain Cereal Bars sold in the U.S. contain Red No. 40, Yellow No. 6 and Blue No. 1. But in the U.K., the cereal bars contain natural alternatives: beet root red, annatto and paprika extra.

"I don't think the dyes are good for anything," said Dr. Alan Greene, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine who signed the CSPI petition. "The only benefit is to trick you into eating the food or to make it look healthier than it is."

Below the Tree

2010-12-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

This is a chill book, Elliot Coleman`s Winter Harvest four season gardening book. Looks like a good Christmas gift! :)

2010-12-19T14:30:00.000-08:00

Maggie Furey is one of my favourite writers. Love her fluid, inventive mastery of the craft :)

2010-12-13T22:57:00.000-08:00

Georgios Panagakis in Greece.

2010-12-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

This just came out yesterday.

Obama 'must talk to Afghan Taliban'

(AFP) – 1 day ago

KABUL — A group of influential international experts on Afghanistan Saturday appealed to US President Barack Obama to radically change his strategy in the war-ravaged nation and negotiate directly with the Taliban.

A huge US troop surge has failed to stem a worsening insurgency in Afghanistan, with 2010 proving to be a year of record violence.

The letter from 23 researchers, journalists and NGO chiefs comes just days before the White House publishes an evaluation of the US strategy.

Researchers Gilles Dorronsoro from France and Italian Antonio Giustozzi, as well as Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, were among those who said the current strategy was failing as the Taliban, ousted from government by a US-led invasion in 2001, grew in strength.

A coalition government that includes the Taliban should be the long-term goal, they said.

"We ask you to sanction and support a direct dialogue and negotiation with the Afghan Taliban leadership residing in Pakistan," the experts said in their open letter.

"It is better to negotiate now rather than later, since the Taliban will likely be stronger next year."

"The situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country," the letter said.

"The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country."

The experts said military operations in Kandahar and Helmand, provinces in the south hard hit by the insurgency, are not going well and had become "a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property.

"Due to the violence of the military operations, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Pashtun countryside, with a direct effect on the sustainability of the war."

"The military campaign is suppressing, locally and temporarily, the symptoms of the disease, but fails to offer a cure," the group said, decrying the "huge" human and financial cost of the war.

The letter also says the 2014 deadline to put the Afghan army in command of security was unrealistic.

"Like it or not, the Taliban are a long-term part of the Afghan political landscape and we need to try and negotiate with them in order to reach a diplomatic settlement. The Taliban?s leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate and it is in our interests to talk to them."

Since taking office, Obama has ordered more than 50,000 extra troops into battle to reverse Taliban momentum and build up Afghan government forces so that combat troops can start leaving in 2011.

There are more than 140,000 US-led NATO troops on the ground -- two-thirds of them American.

But the increased numbers has also seen more troops killed this year than ever before, with more than 680 foreign soldiers dead so far in 2010 and the tally mounting almost daily.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has made overtures to the Taliban and other insurgents to negotiate an end to the war, but that was "not enough", the experts said.

"The United States must take the initiative to start negotiations with the insurgents and frame the discussion in such a way that American security interests are taken into account," they said.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

2010-12-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

Another reprint.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that US forces in Afghanistan are carrying out what he referred to as "battlefield executions" of prisoners.

"One of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan," Hersh said during a discussion at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference last month in Geneva, where he was also the keynote speaker. "They're being executed on the battlefield."

Hersh, who broke the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story in 2004, says that five or six people had told him about the battlefield executions of prisoners. A video of his comments was uploaded to Michael Moore's YouTube Channel on Tuesday.

Here's how Hersh described the executions:

What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban. You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free. What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place. Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now.

During the discussion Hersh also warned that he thought President Obama was in "real trouble" when it came to geopolitics. "The military are dominating him on the important issues of the world: Iraq, Iran, Afghan, and Pakistan," Hersh said.

"He's never going to win in Afghanistan," Hersh said. "He's got the wrong policy in Pakistan."

2010-12-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

I am reprinting a journal piece that I published in 2009. This is writing by Afghans- the people who are dying, the people you don't ever see or hear from.

The following story, and the poem are hosted here, at Our Journey to Smile, an organization started by Afghan college students and volunteers.

First, Zarlasht Hafeez, a female Pashto poet who has published a collection called "Waiting for Peace". Her lines read:

"The sorrow and grief, these black evenings,

Eyes full of tears and times full of sadness,

These burnt hearts, the killing of youths,

These unfulfilled expectations and unmet hopes of brides,

With a hatred for war, I call time and again,

I wait for peace for the grief-stricken Pashtuns"

This story makes me realize afresh that blue is such a beautiful colour- limitless, boundless, the hue of the great everlasting skies and oceans, of stone on the great mountains in the distance, the colour of freedom and the cosmos, to my mind.

But look now for the the tale:

I’m an Afghan girl. And ripe for marriage.

I don’t recall many pleasures in my childhood but I remember the blue skies.

I live near Kandahar. Most of you would have heard of this playground of war. But I don’t wish to describe the perpetual fighting. I wish to describe the perpetual sky.

You see, the pleasures which an Afghan child has, especially an Afghan girl, are few.

So whenever I could, I would sprawl on a secret green spot next to my mud house and stare at the blue beyond. Blue, blue, blue.

Afghan eyes, lakes and stones. That range of blue. Beautiful sky blues.

I’ll follow the clouds, magical pillows of comfort and tears. I’ll track the birds that paint and glide.

My mother used to tell me how the skies were divided into 7 layers and how when the dry lands were parched for help, everyone would look up to the heavens, often.

In the different swings of time, the sky would tease me by changing. Its blue changes. Real change in an unchanging war.

My mother would sometimes sit by my side knitting her shawl and I would sometimes lie on her lap looking up, safe, a true ‘refugee’, at peace.

The simple thing about the confidence of the skies was that it didn’t make claims. It didn’t need to say, “I am here for you.” It was there for me, even when it refused to rain in the harsh drought months.

I could hide under its generous freedom. I could shout complaints at it without being told ‘You are wrong!’, again. I could pour out my questions and hurts without being misconstrued as mad, as if I was talking with Allah, the sky’s keeper.

At least, the sky hears my voice.

It always helped when my mother whispered stories in my ears or better still, when she sang me the stories. She helped to seal the safety of earth below under a heaven above.

I’m lucky to be alive. Many mothers and newborns die early, despite hearts that hope. That’s just the way things are. It seems to be the best that life can do.

I remember the recent autumn when the leaves were turning yellow and the afternoons were beginning to cool a little. I watched the sky as its blue matured before the approach of dusk, as if coaxing me to rest, to cry if need be, but to rest.

The orange glow of our setting suns is wonderful too but that late afternoon, I did not want the blue to go away. I wanted it to stay because it was singing and dancing and twirling.

It made me surprisingly happy. Okay, maybe I was being childish, but I didn’t want to lose those colorful hues. I thought, “I’ll miss this blue sky like I miss my mum when I’m away collecting wood, too soon and too insensibly.”

A gust of wind came gushing by with a trail of dust, suddenly shielding me from the hanging sea view. My eyes shut instinctively, then, in the next second, needing to deliberately embrace the delight of the open skies, I forced them open.

Oh, the blue.

Thinking about such moments makes me smile many inner smiles.

People say that the Afghan smile is enchanting but there is nothing uniquely Afghan about that smile. It’s the smile of the skies. It arises from an ignored but dignified life.

That’s why this great expanse, drawn out like a cut blue ‘chadari’ ( burqa ) that flaps in the limitless winds, is worth the risk of a little dust. Dust may make my eyes smart and tear, but it’s worth it.

News of late hadn’t been good. Unrest. Insurgents. All sorts of shifty characters. And of course, killings. My mother says that Man and Woman have never been able to rid ourselves of what we don’t want, the selfishness and silence of violence.

Funny how both the perpetrators and spectators of this domineering violence are unaware of their own selfishness and silence. I really shouldn’t say funny. It’s not at all funny for the victims.

There are even rumours that strange planes have been spewing out remotely controlled bombs. And no pilots or humans in them! Ha! I usually don’t bother with such nonsense or make believe.

We shouldn’t have to cope with such cold possibilities; it’s just too unforgiving on our chronic grief.

It’s bad enough that people get blown to red pieces. People elsewhere hate us so much they say that even those red pieces are rotten, that we people are dirty.

Nowadays, we have to get permission even to bury those scattered, dirty pieces, just so others can quibble about the number who have been killed. And insist to each other, ‘You are wrong!’

Wrong not on the killing, but on the exact number killed.

As I mentioned, I was ready for marriage. Preparations had been underway and I was hopeful.

And please, don’t rob me of my hope, even if it were false hope. It can work out. I thought of my mum and how she had found and shown love in her family, my family.

The big, blue day had come.

My relatives and friends had gathered for my wedding. This was no make-believe! This was my wedding! My wedding!

That morning, my husband had received me into his village, and our future life. We had had gifts, food, dancing, and drums.

I was excited and nervous. My sisters were with me. The music was bright and homely. I was dressed to the glittering ‘brim’. :)

I was all the time conscious of my mother’s joy and sorrow. All my life, I’ve never let that go.

Through my veil, I could see the rhythmic clapping. It was a noisy merriment to drown all worries. I was compelled to sneak a look at the sky, at which I felt all calm and clouded.

When the carnage began, I was still feeling excited and nervous.

Damn…it must be the Taliban! Things and bodies were spurting everywhere.

I wanted to see my mother.

My sisters and I ran. Illogically, I still thought about preserving that wedding dress while scrambling, about retaining some trace of honour.

Blue, blue. Red and red. More red than blue.

I looked up. The planes, drones? Oh…they’re not rumours… and as the dizzying bombs made their precise way to my heart and everything and everyone I loved, I needed to deliberately embrace the delight of the open skies.

A sucking wind came gushing by with a stench of death, suddenly shielding me from the hanging sea view. My eyes shut instinctively, then, in the next second, I forced them open.

Oh,…the blue. The now misty blue I trusted and enjoyed.

Every Day Is Amazing

2010-12-12T14:40:00.000-08:00

gold is spun
and jewels fall
in sparklement
around us all

bloodmagic stalks
the brightest free
love is faith
for you and me

Cam MacKellar's page in Australia. Just two hours to go in his raise- if I was there, I'd be easily persuaded to meet with Cam and see Sydney. What a bonza opportunity! :) :) :)

2010-12-11T22:15:00.001-08:00

This was a terrific article! Katie is so cute!

2010-12-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

E-books massively increase the potential for censorship. Does anyone out there want to have that conversation? The world awaits you.

By BRAD STONE
Published: July 17, 2009

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”
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On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.

Customers whose books were deleted indicated that MobileReference, a digital publisher, had sold them. An e-mail message to SoundTells, the company that owns MobileReference, was not immediately returned.

Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them vanish.

An authorized digital edition of “1984” from its American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store Friday night, but there was no such version of “Animal Farm.”

People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of “1984” for 99 cents last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.”

Antoine Bruguier, an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he had noticed that his digital copy of “1984” appeared to be a scan of a paper edition of the book. “If this Kindle breaks, I won’t buy a new one, that’s for sure,” he said.

Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.

Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”

Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.

“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said.

2010-12-11T19:34:00.000-08:00

Stockholm, Dec 12 (DPA) An apparent suicide attacker blew himself up in central Stockholm Saturday, local media reported.

The man allegedly sent a threatening e-mail addressed to news agency TT minutes prior to the attack. The message said it was time for the Swedes to die 'like our brothers and sisters' and made reference to the country's involvement in Afghanistan and caricatures of the prophet Mohammed published in Sweden.

Foreign Minister Carl Bildt dubbed the incident an attempted terrorist attack.

'Most worrying attempt at terrorist attack in crowded part of central Stockholm,' he wrote on Twitter. 'Failed - but could have been truly catastrophic.'

Unconfirmed reports said police found multiple explosive charges on the man, who was killed in the explosion. The Aftonbladet newspaper said the man apparently had the explosives in a backpack, but police would not confirm the reports.

It was unclear what connection, the suicide had with a separate car explosion in the central shopping area of the Swedish capital. The car explosion occurred at the intersection of Drottninggatan and Olof Palmes Gata roads and then a second blast went off in the nearby Bryggergatan, where the man's body was discovered.

Two others were injured in the blasts, the BBC reported.

2010-12-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

James Astill, writing in the Economist, five days ago.

Not that there are many optimists out there. But by stressing that any progress will be gradual General Petraeus hopes to buy more time for his mission from a reluctant Barack Obama, who wants to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011. Even if Mr Obama, in the absence of any compelling alternative, is persuaded to stick it out a little longer, General Petraeus will not get the extra reinforcements he would like.

The news is not all bad. In some parts of the south, American troops have brought a bit more security. Sotto voce, American commanders also point to the many Taliban commanders being killed by their special forces—a tactic pushed by General Petraeus’s predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal. Another of Mr McChrystal’s efforts, to ensure NATO’s men inflict fewer civilian casualties, has also had success. Many more Afghans are now being killed by the Taliban’s roadside bombs than by NATO air-strikes.

The NATO-led force will maintain these promising efforts in 2011. But this will not prevent it being another terrible year for ordinary Afghans, nearly 1,300 of whom were killed in the first half of 2010—a 31% increase on the same period in the previous year. Nor will it persuade Afghanistan’s corrupt government or Pakistan, its unhelpful neighbour, to amend their destructive ways.

President Hamid Karzai will remain a largely ineffective leader, distrustful of his allies and apparently unconcerned by Afghanistan’s dreadful corruption.

Pakistan, which in 2010 suffered wretchedly from flooding, will need huge help in 2011 from Western donors to feed over 6m destitute people and more. But this will not be sufficient to persuade Pakistan’s generals to support those same Western allies in Afghanistan, by expelling the Taliban from their north-western border areas. Alas, they consider the insurgents inoffensive—or perhaps useful.

This will embolden the Taliban in 2011. They are unlikely to come to terms with Mr Karzai even if he offers to negotiate. To encourage that, many American and European officials now speak more respectfully of the Taliban, as peeved Pushtun nationalists. In fact, not much is known about them. And if the fighting proceeds at its expected ferocity, little more will be revealed in 2011.

2010-12-10T21:37:00.000-08:00

From the Guardian, one of Britain's most eminent newspapers.

I began to understand this as a young reporter during the American war in Vietnam. During my first assignment, I saw the results of the bombing of two villages and the use of Napalm B, which continues to burn beneath the skin; many of the victims were children; trees were festooned with body parts. The lament that "these unavoidable tragedies happen in wars" did not explain why virtually the entire population of South Vietnam was at grave risk from the forces of their declared "ally", the United States. PR terms like "pacification" and "collateral damage" became our currency. Almost no reporter used the word "invasion". "Involvement" and later "quagmire" became staples of a news vocabulary that recognised the killing of civilians merely as tragic mistakes and seldom questioned the good intentions of the invaders.

On the walls of the Saigon bureaus of major American news organisations were often displayed horrific photographs that were never published and rarely sent because it was said they were would "sensationalise" the war by upsetting readers and viewers and therefore were not "objective". The My Lai massacre in 1968 was not reported from Vietnam, even though a number of reporters knew about it (and other atrocities like it), but by a freelance in the US, Seymour Hersh. The cover of Newsweek magazine called it an "American tragedy", implying that the invaders were the victims: a purging theme enthusiastically taken up by Hollywood in movies such as The Deer Hunter and Platoon. The war was flawed and tragic, but the cause was essentially noble. Moreover, it was "lost" thanks to the irresponsibility of a hostile, uncensored media.

Although the opposite of the truth, such false realties became the "lessons" learned by the makers of present-day wars and by much of the media. Following Vietnam, "embedding" journalists became central to war policy on both sides of the Atlantic. With honourable exceptions, this succeeded, especially in the US. In March 2003, some 700 embedded reporters and camera crews accompanied the invading American forces in Iraq. Watch their excited reports, and it is the liberation of Europe all over again. The Iraqi people are distant, fleeting bit players; John Wayne had risen again.

A statue of Saddam Hussein is pulled down in Baghdad on 9 April 2003. Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP The apogee was the victorious entry into Baghdad, and the TV pictures of crowds cheering the felling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. Behind this façade, an American Psyops team successfully manipulated what an ignored US army report describes as a "media circus [with] almost as many reporters as Iraqis". Rageh Omaar, who was there for the BBC, reported on the main evening news: "People have come out welcoming [the Americans], holding up V-signs. This is an image taking place across the whole of the Iraqi capital." In fact, across most of Iraq, largely unreported, the bloody conquest and destruction of a whole society was well under way.

In The War You Don't See, Omaar speaks with admirable frankness. "I didn't really do my job properly," he says. "I'd hold my hand up and say that one didn't press the most uncomfortable buttons hard enough." He describes how British military propaganda successfully manipulated coverage of the fall of Basra, which BBC News 24 reported as having fallen "17 times". This coverage, he says, was "a giant echo chamber".

The sheer magnitude of Iraqi suffering in the onslaught had little place in the news. Standing outside 10 Downing St, on the night of the invasion, Andrew Marr, then the BBC's political editor, declared, "[Tony Blair] said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right . . ." I asked Marr for an interview, but received no reply. In studies of the television coverage by the University of Wales, Cardiff, and Media Tenor, the BBC's coverage was found to reflect overwhelmingly the government line and that reports of civilian suffering were relegated. Media Tenor places the BBC and America's CBS at the bottom of a league of western broadcasters in the time they allotted to opposition to the invasion. "I am perfectly open to the accusation that we were hoodwinked," said Jeremy Paxman, talking about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction to a group of students last year. "Clearly we were." As a highly paid professional broadcaster, he omitted to say why he was hoodwinked.

Dan Rather, who was the CBS news anchor for 24 years, was less reticent. "There was a fear in every newsroom in America," he told me, "a fear of losing your job . . . the fear of being stuck with some label, unpatriotic or otherwise." Rather says war has made "stenographers out of us" and that had journalists questioned the deceptions that led to the Iraq war, instead of amplifying them, the invasion would not have happened. This is a view now shared by a number of senior journalists I interviewed in the US.

In Britain, David Rose, whose Observer articles played a major part in falsely linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida and 9/11, gave me a courageous interview in which he said, "I can make no excuses . . . What happened [in Iraq] was a crime, a crime on a very large scale . . ."

"Does that make journalists accomplices?" I asked him.

"Yes . . . unwitting perhaps, but yes."

What is the value of journalists speaking like this? The answer is provided by the great reporter James Cameron, whose brave and revealing filmed report, made with Malcolm Aird, of the bombing of civilians in North Vietnam was banned by the BBC. "If we who are meant to find out what the bastards are up to, if we don't report what we find, if we don't speak up," he told me, "who's going to stop the whole bloody business happening again?"

Cameron could not have imagined a modern phenomenon such as WikiLeaks but he would have surely approved. In the current avalanche of official documents, especially those that describe the secret machinations that lead to war – such as the American mania over Iran – the failure of journalism is rarely noted. And perhaps the reason Julian Assange seems to excite such hostility among journalists serving a variety of "lobbies", those whom George Bush's press spokesman once called "complicit enablers", is that WikiLeaks and its truth-telling shames them. Why has the public had to wait for WikiLeaks to find out how great power really operates? As a leaked 2,000-page Ministry of Defence document reveals, the most effective journalists are those who are regarded in places of power not as embedded or clubbable, but as a "threat". This is the threat of real democracy, whose "currency", said Thomas Jefferson, is "free flowing information".

In my film, I asked Assange how WikiLeaks dealt with the draconian secrecy laws for which Britain is famous. "Well," he said, "when we look at the Official Secrets Act labelled documents, we see a statement that it is an offence to retain the information and it is an offence to destroy the information, so the only possible outcome is that we have to publish the information." These are extraordinary times.

www.johnpilger.com

• The War You Don't See is in cinemas and on DVD from 13 December, and is broadcast on ITV on 14 December at 10.35pm

This Week

2010-12-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday British troops may begin withdrawing from Afghanistan as early as next year.

Mr. Cameron made the remarks during an unannounced visit to Afghanistan's Helmand province, where he met with Britain's top military official, General David Richards.

The two men said recent security improvements may allow Britain to start drawing down troops in 2011. Mr. Cameron added the goal is to withdraw all British forces by 2015.

2010-12-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

This image is from 2001, after the war began, when people were killed in a wedding party by American forces.

2010-12-10T15:03:00.000-08:00

Jamie Doran, writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, in 2002.

The sense of urgency was not lost on Amir Jhan, who raced between the opposing sides in an attempt to halt the inevitable. Finally, on November 21, they reached a settlement: the entire Taliban force would surrender to the Northern Alliance in return for a pledge that their lives would be spared. Around 470 men (including many suspected al-Qaida) were taken to Kalai Janghi where they were incarcerated in tunnels below one of its giant compounds.

On 25 November two CIA operatives arrived to interrogate individuals. During this time, there was a breakout as the vanquished Taliban overpowered several guards, seized their weapons and began shooting. Within minutes, the CIA’s Johnny "Mike" Spann was dead, along with 30 Northern Alliance soldiers.

A fire-fight began, magnifying when the Taliban captured the fort’s armoury, stupidly situated inside the compound in which they were imprisoned. US Special Forces on the ground called in air strikes, while the British SAS led counter-attacks. By the third day of fighting, there was not a single Taliban alive above ground at the fort, which is very unusual in a military operation - one always expects to find a few living combatants, albeit badly wounded.

The Western media, present in hundreds at the Kunduz surrender, moved en masse to Kalai Janghi where they filed exciting reports from the relative safety of the adjacent compound and even further away. Kalai Janghi became the centre of focus on the Afghan war, and the discovery some days later of the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, and 85 others who had survived in the tunnels below the fort strengthened its central position. Incredibly, no one was concerned to ask at the time what happened to the others who surrendered at Kunduz.

The fate of those thousands of young men has led to calls for independent, international inquiries after we previewed our film at the European parliament in Strasbourg. Their fate darkly stains the hands of Northern Alliance soldiers, the Western media, the UN, the US government and its military personnel.

What happened to them involves another fort, previously unmentioned by the media, where murder began and led to the death of up to 3,000 prisoners. Amir Jhan, who helped negotiate the surrender, said: "I counted them one by one; there were 8,000. Now there are only 3,015 left. And among these 3,015 are local Pashtun people from Kunduz, Shiberghan, Balkh and Mazar, who were not even among the original prisoners I handed over. Where are the rest?" The answer lies partly in that 50-metre mound of sand in the desert at Dasht Leili.

Over 5,000 are missing. A few may have escaped; others may have bought their freedom while more may have been sold to the security agencies of their countries, to return to a terrible fate. But according to a number of eyewitnesses found during a six-month investigation, most lie in the sand. None of our witnesses received payment and all put themselves in great danger because they took part in our film.

The story begins at the fort of Kalai Zeini, which is on the road from Mazar to Shiberghan. This fort, enormous even by Afghan standards, was used as a holding point for the thousands captured at Kunduz. The official objective was to transfer them to Shiberghan prison where they could be held before interrogation by American experts. Those singled out would then be transferred to the base at Guantanamo in Cuba.
Containers of death

At Kalai Zeini they were forced to sit, side by side, across a vast field within the perimeters. Soon a convoy of trucks arrived with metal cargo containers fastened to their chassis. The prisoners were then ordered to line up before being squeezed into these containers. A Northern Alliance officer, who agreed to speak anonymously, said: "We were responsible for delivering the prisoners and we loaded 25 containers from Zeini to Shiberghan. We put around 200 people into each container."

Compressed into these airless, dark metal boxes in very high temperatures, the Taliban cried for mercy. Another Afghan soldier who lent credence to his testimony by admitting he killed some prisoners, said: "I hit the containers with bullets to make holes for ventilation and some of them were killed." I asked him if he personally shot holes into the containers, and why, and who gave the orders, and he said: "The commanders ordered us."

But his honesty conceals enormous cruelty. We found many of the bullet holes in the containers were in the bottom and middle, rather than at the top. If they had really been intended for ventilation, then bullets fired into the top of the containers would have given the prisoners a better chance of survival.

A taxi driver we met had called in at one of the makeshift gas stations that litter the main roads: "At the time they took prisoners from Kalai Zeini to Shiberghan, I went to fill my car with petrol. I smelt something strange and asked the attendant where it was coming from. He said ’Look behind you’. There were three trucks with containers on them. Blood was pouring from the containers. It was horrible. I wanted to move but couldn’t because one of the trucks had broken down and they had to tow it away, blocking my path."

The following day he stood outside his home in Shiberghan and another horrific sight caught his eye: "I saw another three trucks loaded with containers drive past my house. Blood was pouring from them." Some of the misery within the sealed containers had not been relieved by the at least fast death from bullets. The prisoners were left for four or five days to die of suffocation, hunger and thirst. When the containers were finally opened, a mess of urine, blood, faeces, vomit and rotting flesh was all that remained. The immediate question anyone who has seen Shiberghan prison asks is how such an institution, capable of holding no more than 500 prisoners, could realistically have been expected to cater for 15 times that number? Was it coincidence that many destined for there never arrived?

As the containers were lined up outside the prison, a soldier accompanying the convoy was present when the prison commanders received orders to dispose of the evidence quickly: "Most of the containers had bullet holes. In each container maybe 150-160 had been killed. Some were still breathing, but most were dead. The Americans told the Shiberghan people to get them outside the city before they were filmed by satellite." This accusation about US involvement will be crucial to any inquiry: international, and national, civil and military law relies on establishing the chain of command under which crimes took place. It is a matter of determining who was running the show at Shiberghan.

We found two drivers from different regions who, on separate days, led us to the same spot in the desert. They were both visibly distressed. Their accounts of the journey from Kalai Zeini through Shiberghan to Dasht Leili are harrowing.

Driver number one said: "There were about 25 containers. The conditions were very bad because the prisoners couldn’t breathe, so they shot into the containers. Many of the prisoners lost their lives. At Shiberghan, they offloaded the prisoners who were obviously alive. But there were some injured Taliban and others who were so weak they were unconscious. We brought them to this place, which is called Dasht Leili, and they were shot. I came here three times and each time I brought about 150 prisoners. They shouted and cried when they were shot. There were about 10 or 15 other drivers who made the same journey."

Driver number two said: "They commandeered my truck from Mazar without paying any money. They took my truck and loaded a container on to it and I carried prisoners from Kalai Zeini to Shiberghan and, after that, to Dasht Leili where they were shot by the soldiers. Some of them were alive, injured or unconscious. They brought them here, bound their hands and shot them. I made four trips backwards and forwards with prisoners. I brought 550-600 people here."

Despite many sightings by local villagers, drivers and Northern Alliance soldiers, the Pentagon continues to deny that American soldiers were present at the time in Shiberghan or Dasht Leili. "They weren’t in the vicinity at all," according to Colonel David Lapan of Central Command. He said they had carried out an internal investigation and were satisfied that no US soldiers had been present or witnessed atrocities. All calls for a formal inquiry have been rejected.

Driver number one said: "There were Jumbish [Uzbek] people and American soldiers at Shiberghan jail. I didn’t see any [Americans] here, but I saw them at the prison and they may have been in the trucks."

Driver number two, asked about the presence of US soldiers, said: "Yes, they were with us." At Dasht Leili? "Yes, here." How many? "Lots of them: maybe 30-40. They came the first two times with us but I didn’t see them on the next two trips." Months later the bulldozer tracks were still visible on the final stages of the trail to Dasht Leili: the bodies were pushed into a hollow and then hidden under tons of sand.

Even for those who survived the journey from Kalai Zeini to Shiberghan prison, their fate at the hands of American soldiers was hardly more merciful than death in the desert, according to eyewitnesses. One soldier recounted an incident when a US soldier murdered a Taliban prisoner in order to frighten the others into talking: "When I was a soldier at Shiberghan, I saw an American soldier breaking a prisoner’s neck. Another time, they poured acid or something on them. The Americans did whatever they wanted; we had no power to stop them. Everything was under the control of the American commander."

A general in the Northern Alliance, also stationed at Shiberghan at the time, claimed: "I was a witness. I saw them [US soldiers] stab their legs, cut their tongues, cut their hair and cut their beards. Sometimes it looked as if they were doing it for pleasure. They would take a prisoner outside, beat him up and return him to the jail. But sometimes they were never returned and they disappeared, the prisoner disappeared."

All of the witnesses in our film have agreed to attend any international inquiry or court case that may result from their statements. If given the opportunity, they would be willing to identify the US personnel. While the accusations of torture and murder in Shiberghan prison may be difficult to substantiate so long after the event, a mass grave containing the bodies of thousands of prisoners does lie just four kilometres from that jail. If US servicemen were involved in disposing of these prisoners, if they headed the chain of command as alleged by many witnesses, and stood by as hundreds were summarily executed, then they are guilty of war crimes.

While the US Congress rushes through laws to prevent any American soldier from facing prosecution abroad, the senators and representatives might wish to consider the words of Andrew McEntee, a leading human rights lawyer and former chairman of Amnesty International, who has read the full transcripts of our witness statements and viewed hours of filmed evidence. "I believe it is quite clear from the evidence presented that an independent inquiry is essential. These are not simply crimes against international law, they are offences under the laws of European countries, attracting universal jurisdiction. And they are also offences under US law."

If the US wishes to continue and even expand its role as the world’s policeman, standing firm against terror, it must be seen to be applying the rule of law and not of the gun. The 1968 massacre in the Vietnamese village of My Lai, and the US army court martial of Lieutenant William Calley, seem a long time ago, and the world may have changed since, but the basic tenets of law and justice remain the same. And the innocent have nothing to fear from the truth.

2010-12-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

This was on page A1 of the Toronto Globe and Mail in 2001, when the war was only a few months old. .

Published on Thursday, January 3, 2001 in the Toronto Globe & Mail
Thousands of Afghans Likely Killed in Bombings
by Murray Campbell

The Afghan village of Qalaye Niazi vanished in a rain of bombs, with only craters, remnants of mud walls and scraps of flesh and hair to show that it once existed.

The people who used to live there say as many as 107 civilians died when U.S. warplanes, including a B-52 bomber, swooped down early Sunday.

The Pentagon says the village in eastern Afghanistan was a haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban loyalists and that, in any event, the estimate of casualties is "unfounded."

Such conflicting information has been a staple of the three-month-old Afghan war and, critics say, has served to obscure the toll exacted from civilians.

There is no agreement yet about how many ordinary Afghans have died from the U.S.-led bombardment, but one American academic estimates that the toll stands at 4,050 -- surpassing the number of people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The Pentagon has played down the number of civilian dead, dismissing many early reports as Taliban exaggerations.

The bombing campaign is controversial in Afghanistan, with some members of the interim government suggesting it be stopped. Washington has refuses, and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said this week the bombing must continue, to "finish terrorists completely."

The bombing campaign remains largely uncontroversial in the United States, where President George W. Bush's war on terrorism enjoys strong support.

Marc Herold, a University of New Hampshire economics professor who has monitored the campaign, said yesterday that U.S. officials again have demonstrated their ability to manage the news and mainstream U.S. media have shown their willingness to be managed.

"It's been a concerted effort to keep this kind of news off the front pages," he said. "The record of the Bush administration is pretty clear: This is a non-topic."

Prof. Herold has gathered media reports (many of them unverified) from around the world for his estimate that 4,050 Afghan civilians have been killed in the bombing. Other organizations, whose monitoring has been less rigorous, offer lower figures.

Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based organization, offers an estimate of at least 1,000 civilian deaths, while the Reuters news agency said that perhaps 982 people have died in 14 incidents.

Prof. Herold's estimate, updated to include Qalaye Niazi and four other recent incidents, follows his initial calculation three weeks ago that 3,767 Afghan civilians had died since the first bombs fell on Oct. 7.

He said he decided to study the effects of the bombing because he suspects that modern weaponry is not as precise as advertised, and because he found hardly any mention of civilian casualties in the U.S. media.

He noted there have been news reports that Washington was spending millions of dollars to buy exclusive rights to accurate satellite images of the areas under bombardment. "Preventing the images of human suffering caused by the U.S. bombing from reaching U.S. audiences creates precisely what the Pentagon and Bush seek -- a war without witnesses."

Sidney Jones, Human Rights Watch's Asia director, suggests there are several reasons for the muted reaction to the Afghan civilian toll.

She said other Afghan topics -- the rebuilding of the country and the hunt for Osama bin Laden -- crowd the news agenda.

© 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc

2010-12-06T23:08:00.000-08:00

In Japan, many of the sweets are simply colourless or very pale colours. I don't know what exactly they use, but works for me.

After years of insisting that the artificial food dyes in those technicolor treats are perfectly safe, the FDA has changed course: Maybe Yellow 5, Red 40 and Blue 1 really do cause kids to bounce off the walls.

The agency has announced that it will hold a public hearing in March to discuss the link between food colorings and hyperactivity in kids, the diagnosis of which has been on the upswing for at least the last 13 years.

For food companies, dye removal recommendations or — heaven forbid — warning labels would be a huge headache. In March, FDA Week quoted an attorney saying that the industry’s response to any labeling changes would be to “go ballistic.” That’s because food companies now use some 15 million pounds of synthetic dyes in products ranging from breakfast cereal, mac & cheese, fruit roll ups, fruit drinks and baked goods. They’re much cheaper and easier to work with than natural alternatives.

But the good news is that replacement is eminently doable: with the British government and European Union zeroing in on artificial colors, many companies already sell chemical dye-free version of their products overseas. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has petitioned the FDA to ban artificial food dyes, reports that McDonald’s (MCD) Strawberry Sundaes are colored with Red 40 in the US, but strawberry extract in the UK, and that the British version of Coke’s (KO) Fanta orange soda gets its bright color from pumpkin and carrot extract.

And there’s a bigger picture: The FDA’s change of heart and public hearing, while preliminary, may mark a regulatory and scientific tipping point. The British government has asked food manufacturers to remove artificial colors and in the European Union food products containing dyes now come with a warning label that the food “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” Here in the US, companies like Pepsi’s (PEP) Frito-Lay unit have already started working to swap out synthetic colors for natural ones. Other manufacturers would be wise to follow suit.

The problem with artificial food dyes is that not only do they turn your food — and your child’s mouth — the color of anti-freeze, but they may also be contributing to your son’s inability to sit in a chair for more than 10 seconds and his trouble doing basic math problems. Colorings have been suspected of triggering behavioral problems since the 70’s, but recent research has given the theory more weight. A study done at the University of Southampton in England in 2007 showed that food dyes (and the preservative sodium benzoate) can have a manic effect in as little as an hour.

Some food dyes have also been linked to cancer in lab rats, and one in particular — red 3 — was acknowledged by the FDA back in 1985 to be a carcinogen, but the agency was blocked from taking action by the USDA.

Food manufacturers love using artificial colors. In an article in the industry journal Prepared Foods, Rohit Tibrewala, an executive at Roha USA, one of the leading makers of food colorings, explains why they’re better than the natural, fruit and vegetable-derived alternatives:

Providing intense uniform color, [synthetic colors] typically retain color longer than naturally derived versions, while allowing for a variety of blues and greens not easily available naturally. They are easier to source and less expensive. In order to stabilize natural colors, often additives are needed; even then, they are not as stable. Since natural colors are crop-based, availability can be uncertain. For example, this year (2010), due to a shortage of carmine and turmeric, both costs increased almost 4-5 times over last year. Typically, naturally derived colors are 8-20 times more expensive than synthetic.

Wisconsin's Fallen

2010-12-02T22:47:00.000-08:00

By The Associated Press lacrossetribune.com | Posted: Thursday, December 2, 2010 9:23 pm

MILWAUKEE — Nineteen Wisconsin residents have died as a result of service in Afghanistan. They are:

—Army Pfc. Jacob A. Gassen, 21, of Beaver Dam, Wis., died Nov. 29, 2010

—Army Spc. Scott T. Nagorski, 27, of Greenfield, Wis., died Nov. 14, 2010.

—Marine Cpl. Justin J. Cain, 22, of Manitowoc, died Oct. 13, 2010.

—Senior Airman Daniel Johnson, 23, who went to high school in Monona, Wis., died Oct. 5, 2010.

—Army Staff Sgt.Matthew West, 36, Conover, died Aug. 30, 2010

—Army Pfc. Adam Novak, 20, Prairie du Sac, died Aug. 27, 2010

—Army Lt. Col. Paul R. Bartz, 43, of Waterloo, died May 18, 2010.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Jacob A. Meinert, 20, Fort Atkinson, died Jan. 10, 2010.

—Army Sgt. Nickolas A. Mueller, 26, Little Chute, died Oct. 26, 2009.

—Army Sgt. Ryan C. Adams, 26, Rhinelander, died Oct. 2, 2009.

—Army Pvt. Steven T. Drees, 19, Peshtigo, died June 28, 2009.

—Army Sgt. Daniel James Thompson, 24, of Madison, died Feb. 24, 2009.

—Army 1st Lt. Nick A. Dewhirst, 25, of Onalaska, died July 20, 2008.

—Sgt. 1st Class Merideth Howard, 52, of Waukesha, died Sept. 8, 2006.

—Senior Airman Adam Servais, 23, of Onalaska, died Aug. 19, 2006.

—Army Staff Sgt. Patrick L. Lybert, 28, of Ladysmith, died June 21, 2006.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas Anderson, 21, of Sauk City, died March 13, 2006.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Ryan J. Nass, 21, of Franklin, died Sept. 3, 2005.

—Army Spc. Robert Cook, 24, of Sun Prairie, died Jan. 29, 2004.

—————

Ninety-two members of the military from Wisconsin have died as a result of service in Iraq or associated with duties in Iraq. They are:

—Army Spc. Robert Rieckhoff, 26, of Kenosha, died March 18, 2010.

—Army Sgt. Earl D. Werner, 38, of Mondovi, died Aug. 28, 2009.

—Army Sgt. 1st Class Brian Naseman, 36, of Racine, died May 22, 2009.

—Army Spc. Steven J. Christofferson, 20, of Cudahy, died April 21, 2008.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Dean Opicka, 29, of Waukesha, died April 14, 2008.

—Marine Cpl. Richard Nelson, 23, of Kenosha, died April 14, 2008.

—Air Force Staff Sgt. Christopher S. Frost, 24, of Waukesha, died March 3, 2008.

—Army Pfc. Keith E. Lloyd, 26, of Milwaukee, died Jan. 12, 2008.

—Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Pionk, 30, of Superior, died Jan. 9, 2008.

—Army Pfc. Timothy R. Hanson, 23, of Kenosha, died Jan. 7, 2008.

—Army Pfc. Jason F. Lemke, 30, of West Allis, died Jan. 5, 2008.

—Army 2nd Lt. Tracy Alger, 30, of New Auburn, died Nov. 1, 2007.

—Army Sgt. Louis A. Griese, 30, of Sturgeon Bay, died Oct. 31, 2007.

—Army Reserve Spc. Rachael L. Hugo, 24, of Madison, died Oct. 5, 2007.

—Army Capt. Derek Dobogai, 26, of Fond du Lac, died Aug. 22, 2007.

—Marine Cpl. Matthew Zindars, 21, Watertown, died July 24, 2007.

—Navy Chief Petty Officer Pat Wade, 38, Manawa, died July 17, 2007.

—Army Sgt. Tyler Kritz, 21, Eagle River, died June 3, 2007.

—Army Sgt. Jesse Albrecht, 31, Hager City, died May 18, 2007.

—Army Sgt. Scott Brown, 33, Brookfield, died May 18, 2007.

—Army Pfc. Nicholas E. Riehl, 21, Shiocton, died April 27, 2007.

—Army Staff Sgt. Robert Basham, 22, Kenosha, died April 14, 2007.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Harry H. Timberman, 20, Minong, died March 17, 2007.

—Army Pfc. Jon B. St. John II, 25, town of Vinland, killed Jan. 27, 2007.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Andrew Matus, 19, of Weyerhaeuser, killed Jan. 21, 2007.

—Army Spc. Matthew Tyler Grimm, 21, Wisconsin Rapids, killed Jan. 15, 2007.

—Marine Cpl. Josh Schmitz, 22, of Loyal, died Dec. 26, 2006.

—Army Private Evan A. Bixler, 21, of Racine, died Dec. 24, 2006.

—Marine Capt. Kevin M. Kryst, 27, of West Bend, died Dec. 18, 2006.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Jesse D. Tillery, 19, of Vesper, died Dec. 2, 2006.

—Army Capt. Rhett W. Schiller, 26, of Waterford, died Nov. 16, 2006.

—Marine Sgt. Luke Zimmerman, 24, of Green Bay, died Oct. 27, 2006.

—Army Cpl. Kenneth Cross, 21, of Superior, died Aug. 27, 2006.

—Army Pfc. Shaun Novak, 21, of Two Rivers, died Aug. 27, 2006.

—Army Spc. Ryan Jopek, 20, of Merrill, died Aug. 1, 2006.

—Army Spc. 4 Steve Castner, 27, of Cedarburg, died July 24, 2006.

—Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Jaime S. Jaenke, 29, of Bay City, died June 5, 2006.

—Army Pfc. Grant Allen Dampier, 25, of Merrill, died May 15, 2006.

—Army Pfc. Eric D. Clark, 22, of Pleasant Prairie, died May 11, 2006.

—Army Sgt. Nathan J. Vacho, 29, of Janesville, died May 5, 2006.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Eric A. Palmisano, 27, of Florence, died April 2, 2006.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Adam J. VanAlstine, 21, of Superior, died Feb. 25, 2006.

—Marine Sgt. Andy A. Stevens, 29, of Tomah, died Dec. 1, 2005

—Army Pfc. Anthony Alex Gaunky, 19, of Sparta, died Nov. 18, 2005.

—Army Spc. Benjamin A. Smith, 21, of Hudson, died Nov. 2, 2005.

—Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew R. Kading, 32, of Madison, died Nov. 1, 2005.

—Army Spc. Michael Wendling, 20, of Mayville, died Sept. 26, 2005.

—Army Sgt. Andy Wallace, 25, of Oshkosh, died Sept. 26, 2005.

—Army Sgt. 1st Class Trevor J. Diesing, 30, of Plum City, died Aug. 25, 2005.

—Marine Staff Sgt. Chad J. Simon, 32, of Monona, died Aug. 4, 2005.

—Army Capt. Benjamin D. Jansky, 28, of Oshkosh, died July 27, 2005.

—Army Spc. John O. Tollefson, 22, of Fond du Lac, died July 27, 2005.

—Army Spc. Charles A. Kaufman, 20, of Fairchild, died June 26, 2005.

—Marine Lance Cpl. John J. Mattek Jr., 24, of Stevens Point, died June 13, 2005.

—Army Spc. Eric Poelman, 21, of Racine, died June 5, 2005.

—Chief Warrant Officer Joshua Scott, 28, of Sun Prairie, died May 27, 2005.

—Sgt. Mark Maida, 22, of Madison, died May 26, 2005.

—Sgt. Andrew Bossert, 24, of Fountain City, died March 7, 2005.

—Sgt. 1st Class Donald W. Eacho, 38, of Black Creek, died March 4, 2005.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Travis M. Wichlacz, 22, of West Bend, died Feb. 5, 2005.

—Staff Sgt. Todd Olson, 36, of Loyal, of the Wisconsin National Guard, died Dec. 26, 2004.

—Marine Pfc. Brent Vroman, 21, of Omro, died Dec. 13, 2004.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Richard D. Warner, 22, of Waukesha, died Dec. 13, 2004.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Ryan Cantafio, 22, of Beaver Dam, died Nov. 25, 2004.

—Marine Sgt. Benjamin Edinger, 24, of Green Bay, died Nov. 23, 2004.

—Army Pfc. Isaiah Hunt 20, of Suamico, died Nov. 14, 2004.

—Marine Cpl. Brian P. Prening, 24, of Sheboygan County, died Nov. 12, 2004.

—Army Reserves Staff Sgt. Todd R. Cornell, 38, of West Bend, died Nov. 9, 2004.

—Marine Cpl. Bobby Warns, 23, of Waukesha, died Nov. 8, 2004.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Shane K. O’Donnell, 24, of DeForest, died Nov. 8, 2004.

—Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel R. Wyatt, 22, of Racine, died Oct. 12, 2004.

—Marine Pfc. Andrew Halverson, 19, of Muscoda, died Oct. 9, 2004.

—Marine Cpl. Adrian V. Soltau, 21, of Milwaukee, died Sept. 13, 2004.

—Army Staff Sgt. Stephen G. Martin, 39, of Rhinelander, died July 2, 2004.

—Army Sgt. Charles Kiser, 37, of Cleveland, died June 24, 2004.

—Army Spc. Michael McGlothin, 21, of Milwaukee, died April 17, 2004.

—Army Spc. Michelle Witmer, 20, of New Berlin, died April 9, 2004.

—Marine Pfc. Ryan Jerabek, 18, of Hobart, died April 6, 2004.

—Marine Cpl. Jesse Thiry, 23, of Casco, died April 5, 2004.

—Army Pfc. Sean Schneider, 22, of Janesville, died March 29, 2004.

—Army Capt. John F. Kurth, 31, of Columbus, died March 13, 2004.

—Spc. Bert E. Hoyer, 23, an Army reservist from Ellsworth, died March 10, 2004.

—Spc. Nichole M. Frye, 19, an Army reservist from Lena, died Feb. 16, 2004.

—Maj. Christopher J. Splinter, 43, of Platteville, died Dec. 24, 2003.

—Army Pfc. Rachel Bosveld, 19, of Waupun, died Oct. 26, 2003.

—Army 2nd Lt. Jeremy L. Wolfe, 27, of Menomonie, died Nov. 15, 2003.

—Army Spc. Eugene A. Uhl III, 21, of Amherst, died Nov. 15, 2003.

—Army Sgt. Warren S. Hansen, 36, of Clintonville, died Nov. 15, 2003.

—Army Spc. Paul J. Sturino, 21, of Rice Lake, died Sept. 22, 2003.

—Army Reservist Dan Gabrielson, 40, of Frederic, died July 9, 2003.

—Army Maj. Mathew Schram, 36, of Brookfield, died May 26, 2003.

—Marine Sgt. Kirk Straseskie, 23, of Beaver Dam, died May 19, 2003.

2010-12-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

If you want to learn more about Afghanistan, please try and get Sonali's book for your local library, home or school. :)

The Other Quagmire: An interview with Sonali Kolhatkar
Sonali Kolhatkar remembers Afghanistan, even if the rest of us donâ€™t
By GUSTAVO ARELLANO in the OC Weekly
Thursday, May 17, 2007 – 3:00 pm

http://www.ocweekly.com/culture/
books/that-other-quagmire/27160/

Remember Afghanistan? The Taliban? Hamid Karzai? That weird game Afghans play involving a goat carcass? Of course not. If the Iraq War is our latest Vietnam, then Dubyaâ€™s Afghanistan adventure is our Philippine-American War: a major incursion that became a quagmire no one talks about.

One of the few media figures who bother to pay attention is Sonali Kolhatkar, host of KPFK-FM 90.7â€™s popular Uprising morning show. Sheâ€™s involved with various Afghan charities and is the author, along with her husband, of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. Kolhatkar will talk about the book and show slides from her visits this Saturday at the Centro Cultural de MÃ©xico. But first, she talked to the Weekly.

* * *

Give us a summary of your book in 25 words without using the word â€œimperialism.â€

The book traces the history of U.S. policy in Afghanistan from the 1970s to today, its effects on ordinary people, particularly women, and their resistance and resilience to war and fundamentalism.

You went to Afghanistan in 2005. How was the situation then, and has it changed for better or worse?

When I went in 2005, Afghans had just finished voting in the presidential elections and there was a lot of optimism. However, there was still overwhelming poverty and unemployment, and most people admitted that â€œliberationâ€ was a Bush fantasy. While Afghans were surprisingly candid about what they saw as American double standards in defeating one set of terrorist fundamentalists by bringing back another set of terrorist fundamentalists, they were still hopeful the world community would pay some attention to them. Since then, that optimism has evaporated as the Taliban are stronger, warlords dominate the government and the U.S./NATO forces continue to kill civilians. Itâ€™s a much more dangerous country now.

Are you optimistic about Afghanistanâ€™s future?

Not really. Firstly, the U.S. doesnâ€™t seem to want to change its trajectory of sponsoring fundamentalism and war in Afghanistan; secondly, American people just donâ€™t give enough of a damn about Afghanistan to pressure the U.S. government to change. Ordinary Afghans are, as usual, caught between the twin forces of fundamentalism (U.S.-sponsored and otherwise) and war. Still, whatâ€™s hopeful is how incredible the nonviolent resistance on the ground is. Ordinary people are doing their best to survive and be defiant. They have organized peaceful demonstrations burning effigies of Bush and started schools for girls despite the dangers. If their efforts are supported internationally, perhaps there is a small measure of hope.

Your show Uprising covers an array of topics, yet it seems Afghanistan is the cause closest to your heart. Why?

I was actually involved in Afghanistan solidarity work about two years before I began my work at Pacifica Radio. It all started when I got a chain e-mail about the Taliban oppression of Afghan women. I did a Web search and found RAWAâ€”the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Despite their sectarian sounding name, they are an incredible group of women whose ideals are based on democracy and human rights. I wrote to them and asked if I could help. Myself and a couple of friends started a nonprofit, the Afghan Womenâ€™s Mission, to fund RAWAâ€™s social and political projects in 2000. Six years later, my partner Jim Ingalls and I published the book. Weâ€™re still deeply involved with supporting RAWA as volunteers.

Do you think the United States had the right to invade Afghanistan in 2001?

Not at all. It had just about as much right in 2001 as the Soviet Union had to invade Afghanistan in 1979. If the U.S. was really interested in defeating the Taliban before the tragedy of 9/11, Clinton and Bush wouldâ€™ve pressured their allies and weapons buyersâ€”Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE [United Arab Emirates]â€”to stop supporting the Taliban.

Earlier this year, Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya said the United States â€œpushed us from the frying pan into the fire.â€ Do you agree with that statement?

Yes, I do. The Taliban is stronger today than it was in 2001, even if they donâ€™t control as much territory. The Northern Alliance warlords and druglords have government power and legitimacy, which they didnâ€™t have in 2001. It took barely a month for the U.S. to defeat the Taliban in 2001. Yet today, the Taliban are carrying out suicide attacksâ€”an unheard-of phenomenon before 2005â€”and are gaining popularity because they donâ€™t kill as many civilians as the U.S.

At this point, whatâ€™s the United Statesâ€™ responsibility to the Afghan people?

The U.S. needs to disarm its warlord alliesâ€”these men should be considered proxy U.S. soldiers on the ground who are terrorizing the population. The U.S. should divert far more funds into Afghan-led reconstruction projects than the military effort. And Iâ€™m talking about grants to local groups here, not corporate subsidies or paying foreign aid workers. The U.S should then pressure its allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to stop tacitly supporting the Taliban.

And then, the U.S. should get the hell out of Afghanistan. The U.S. should also support Afghan-led efforts to criminally prosecute the warlords and Taliban for past crimes in the interest of healing and reconciliation. If these things are done, there will theoretically be some space for Afghan civil society to grow, exercise their democratic rights, and reject the armed fundamentalists.

Why do you think the media and American public pays so little attention to Afghanistan?

Theyâ€™re too busy thinking about Iraq, which is understandable. There are more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and only about 20,000 in Afghanistan. Weâ€™ve killed far more Iraqis than Afghans. Also, I think that, sadly, most Americans subconsciously think of Afghanistan as â€œthe good warâ€â€”a myth that Jim and I try to dispel in our book. So there is a tendency among most Americans that we need to get our troops out of Iraq so we can focus them on Afghanistan. But this is very shortsightedâ€”the same military blunders in Iraq have been committed in Afghanistan, and the Afghan war is as unjust as the Iraq war.

What should the United States do about Al-Qaeda?

What hasnâ€™t the U.S. done about Al-Qaeda?! Our actions have only strengthened the group and helped get them more recruits. Weâ€™ve made this organization far more important than it ever was. If the U.S. were to improve its policies in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and other Muslim and Arab countries, Al-Qaeda would have no reason to scream bloody jihad. Thatâ€™s the only long-term permanent solution. Any other solution involves brute force, and that will only lead to more anger, more recruits, more terrorism.

* * *

SONALI KOLHATKAR WILL READ FROM HER BOOK AT THE CENTRO CULTURAL DE MEXICO, 310 W. FIFTH ST., SANTA ANA. SAT., 6 P.M. FREE. LISTEN TO KOLHATKAR ON KPFK-FM 90.7. MON.-FRI., 8 A.M.

2010-12-01T22:28:00.000-08:00

From Australia..

..ng Saharan wind is tempered by the ocean breeze, the remnants of the Saxo Bank team (plus whatever boss Bjarne Riis could muster in the transfer season) gather in the Spanish Canary Island of Fuerteventura.

And for the first time since Riis took ownership of the team a decade ago, there will be no training camp led by B.S. Christiansen, the former soldier from the Danish Ranger Corps who spent 28 years as a top-notch commando.

“It’s all about teaching people that they can achieve their goals by cooperating. They have to perform their very best under the worst possible circumstances, where every action has a consequence,” Christiansen said at their winter 2004 camp, where Australian Scott Sunderland began his career as a sport director.

Denmark’s version of Bear Grylls, B.S. Christiansen’s oddball training camps soon became stuff of legend, where Riis’ men donned army fatigues and went into the wild – sometimes desert, other times jungle, always inhospitable – often without food or water and sometimes for two or three days, all in the name of team building. When they finished the camps looking like malnourished cats, they must’ve wondered exactly whose interests Riis had at heart. The only individual who seemed to revel in these fight-or-flight conditions was Jens Voigt, the irrepressible hard-man who probably throws a few nails in with his Weet-Bix at breakfast time.

“We didn't have any clue of time nor place,” said Sunderland after his first boot camp in 2004.

“We didn’t know where they took us and we had to hand over our mobile and watch. They split us up in groups of 13 people and we were on the go for 48 hours. We got the whole military kit, huge backpack and all. Over the last two days, we didn't get to sleep much more than a couple of hours. [We were] under the open sky and on an island, and that wind cuts through you; it was horrible, really. Our feet are all blistered and we were absolutely knackered after the two day ordeal.”

But when the cammo’s came off and the lycra came on, come race time, the team was formidable. Terrifying, even.

When they gathered their troops up front in an early season race like Paris-Nice, it sent shivers of fear down the peloton’s spine, because their rivals knew there would soon be carnage and by the day’s end, just a handful would be left standing. “If they are this strong, this organised, and this deadly now, what would happen in the Classics or Tour de France?” many riders must’ve been thinking.

Many times, they won well before they crossed the line.

“When a rider is under a lot of pressure,” said Christiansen, “he reacts very selfishly, and that’s where I have to work with them.” Former Riis rider turned sport director (who is now at Team Sky), Bobby Julich, said that, “those days in the bush bonded us much closer and gave us the strategies to work as a team in any racing situation”.

Fuerteventura, which has the epithet “island of the eternal spring” for its near-perfect year-round climate, sounds a far cry from Man vs. Wild.

“Will you miss the survival camp?” I asked Richie Porte, who endured his first and last in the European winter of 2009 before Christiansen took a job at FC Midtjylland, one of the top soccer teams in Denmark’s Super League.

“No, not at all. It wasn’t nice... No, it was bloody horrible, spending a night out in the desert,” he told me. “I guess Bjarne’s always going to do something to put us out of our comfort zone, but me personally, I’m not going to miss that. But it really did bring the team together; it was an incredible idea.”

But then Richie owns up to the real reason why it was so bad: “It was harder on most of the young guys because they had to have a couple of days’ off Facebook, to be honest. You can quote me saying that!”

As funny as it was – and I did laugh out loud – I can’t help thinking whether these Facebook-addicted teens and 20-somethings might be missing out on vital social skills that Christiansen was so determined to instill, which, if one thinks about it, are the essence for survival in the real world.

A recent article in the New York Times, ‘Generation wired to distraction’, said the lure of new technologies is particularly potent on younger people and “the constant stream of stimuli they offer pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning”. The risk, researchers say, is that the brains of our wired youth become so used to switching tasks, over time, they may render themselves unable to see a task to its completion.

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but jumping to the next thing,” Michael Rich told the NYT, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the executive director of the Centre on Media and Child Health in Boston. “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.”

In this year’s Giro d’Italia, Porte showed he not only has the physical ability to ride consistently over three weeks, but the mental capability to handle the stress of such an event (though he did admit to me to being extremely highly strung throughout). However in 2011 as possibly the sole Grand Tour leader on the squad, he’ll also need to demonstrate he has the social skills to gather and motivate the troops at Saxo Bank, if he’s to lead them to victory.

And as B.S. Christiansen would have said, that’s something you can’t do on Facebook.

2010-12-01T22:08:00.001-08:00

WINNIPEG — She's watched her 13-year-old daughter terrorized online by tactics that allegedly included plastering personal information on an adult website. But now, Karry Boti said she's at her wits end after her daughter, Kyra Lynn, was targeted in an extreme case of cyber-bullying that started about seven weeks ago.

Boti and Kyra Lynn's father, Mike Jubenville, who lives in London, Ont., said they've contacted police agencies, technology companies and a local anti-child abuse organization, but they've hit roadblocks in their effort to learn who is publicly maligning their teen daughter.

"How much damage has it done already?" said Boti. "What a smack in the face."

She said the trouble began after someone stole her daughter's Facebook password and hacked into her account this summer.

Problems continued to mount after Boti received an online message in October from a stranger — reportedly a man — saying her daughter's information had been posted on an explicit adult website, along with information how to access the girl's Facebook account.

In the weeks following, the cyber-bullying escalated after classmates of Kyra Lynn told her they'd received hateful messages from her Facebook account, messages the girl hadn't written. The kicker came after the family found out websites had been created saying Kyra Lynn, a Grade 8 student, was a "little skank."

"All of her friends hate her and she wonders why . . . she talks behind people's backs and makes out with their crushes," said one of the websites. Another site, which doesn't identify an author of the content, posted photos of Kyra Lynn taken from her Facebook account.

The family went to police in Winnipeg last month to complain about the harassment. Boti said police told her "there's no laws" against the online harassment.

"It can happen to any kid, and there's nobody out there to help them. Nobody," she said. "It's sad, but in all of the people that we've called, everybody keeps saying 'I don't know what to tell you, I don't know where to turn.'

"They'll give me resources, but the resources are web pages on how to avoid bullies. Well, you can't avoid them."

Jubenville, a computer technician, said he went to police in London, Ont., with his laptop telling them about the problem, but the trip was futile.

"It's been really, really trying through the whole thing . . . I've sat a lot of hours on the computer trying to sort this out, and find out where everything is coming from," said Jubenville. "She's a 13-year-old kid. I find it just horrifying, actually."

Police said Monday general patrol officers were gathering information on a case that will be forwarded to Integrated Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit detectives.

"We're certainly aware of it," said Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen, who said there was a volume of information for police to "sift through."

"These types of investigations are . . . a little bit more complex because obviously we're dealing with the Internet, and we're dealing with social networking, and it's not as cut and dry," he said. "We take (complaints) seriously, bottom line."

The family believes that, based on their own investigation, the creator of the content is a teenage girl in Ontario who sees Kyra Lynn as a rival for a teenage boy's affections.

Boti said the two girls have never actually met.

Boti said police in Winnipeg contacted the family of the girl who is believed to be the tormentor after Boti complained to police for a second time about the harassment last week.

The websites about Kyra Lynn have been shut down, but the family said the web company told them they needed a police subpoena to release information about who was behind the sites.

Paul Gillespie, a former Toronto Police Service officer who is now head of Kids Internet Safety Alliance (KINSA), said cyber-bullying is growing increasingly sophisticated.

"(Bullies) have realized with a little smarts about the technology, they can make life very miserable for their intended victims," he said. "And then there's not much, you know, one can do."
© Copyright (c) Winnipeg Free Press

Read more: http://www.globalwinnipeg.com/world/Parents+case+daughter+cyber+bullying/3870620/story.html#ixzz16vq2vXjZ

Stressheads! Eek! :P

2010-12-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

AAP

Social media is causing people to become increasingly anxious as users feel pressured to be constantly connected, a new survey says.

According to the Cenovis Chill Pill Survey, 63 per cent of respondents feel social media is contributing to stress levels.

About a third (37 per cent) of these people feel under pressure to be in constant contact, and 35 per cent say there is an expectation to respond quickly to messages.

Thirteen per cent of stressed users say they feel pressure to be witty in writing status updates on Facebook.

La Trobe University law student Nikkita Venville says she can relate to the survey's findings.

"There's a bit of pressure to have a unique status that people will laugh at and press the `like' button," the 24-year-old from Melbourne told AAP on Monday.

Ms Venville said she felt "out of loop" if she did not check or respond to messages on Facebook regularly.

"You always have to know what's going on," she said.

"Even when you're out you think, `I wonder what's on Facebook', and it's the first thing I have to check."

The survey also found that women feel more stressed than men, with 69 per cent saying they felt pressure to be interesting in their status updates, as opposed to only 39 per cent of men.

Ms Venville said that she was spending so much time on Facebook that she asked her sister to change her password so she could study for her exams.

"I did feel like a bit of my social life had (gone) because I couldn't keep in contact with the people I usually kept in contact with - and I didn't know what was going on," she said.

"People were saying haven't you got my Facebook message instead of calling me up to invite me (to parties).

Ms Venville finally broke her Facebook sabbatical by hacking into her profile through her mum's account.

"It was my birthday, and I wanted to know what people wrote on my wall," she explained.

The survey was conducted by Galaxy research on behalf of sanofi-aventis Consumer Healthcare, interviewing 420 Australians over 18 years of age.

2010-11-30T20:17:00.000-08:00

Those at the Groton school may have been trying to help the victim of bullying in this case. But here are Barbara Coloroso's thoughts on the school suicide of an alleged bully:

“Expulsion is not the way to go; it’s harmful,’’ said Barbara Coloroso, a specialist on bullying and author of a number of books, including “The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander.’’ “Instead of coming down heavy, they need to come up with a decent plan that holds bullies accountable, holds bystanders accountable, and keeps the targets safe.’’

Coloroso said schools should institute “restorative justice,’’ which supports victims and helps them stay safe while teaching bullies about the impact of their actions and giving them “the opportunity to make right what they’ve done . . . to own what you did and then attempt to fix it.’’

2010-11-29T20:29:00.000-08:00

Inuit throat singing

is called kattajaq and

survived

while the singers on Hokkaido, in Japan have basically had their tradition erased from the historical record

So anyway, Bjork has it on 2004 album, called Medulla, an there's one particular song on there called Vespertine

and I can't wait to check it out.

I haven't watched Atarnajuat, the Fast Runner, and its on my list of things to do before I disappear into the Hills. Hopefully its as good as Rabbit Proof Fence, which is an Australian back bush miracle, a story of love and hope and challenges to triumphal freedom.

2010-11-29T18:09:00.000-08:00

From Mathaba.net, one hour ago:

Western Australia has 26 community gardens and another 14 are under construction but Christina believes we could be doing a lot more to encourage collaborative sustainable agriculture.

“I realised while in the US that the potential for community gardening in Australia is largely untapped,” she said.

“Although many city councils in Australia are beginning to promote community gardening, I think there is so much more potential that could be tapped into. I think it is very important to create strong collaborations between community, government and businesses to provide opportunities for growth and expansion.

“I think it is very important that gardens are accessible and inclusive, so that all members of our community (including marginalised members) can participate in them and be involved in the community in meaningful ways.”

The Child

2010-11-29T17:24:00.000-08:00

what is there to say

about a girl

a wee uan

who is seven years old today?

except three things?

1/ she is sick, and her doctors think she will die before christmas
2/ her fears are that that she will be forgotten?
3/ she looks forward to 'everything'

her name is mikayla francis, and whatever you do, wherever you go, remember that you
once were six, and the world nourished your small soul

she has said to her father
if you have another child,
will you tell her about me?

The Antipodean Lost

2010-11-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

To lose hale young men in the prime of life here is a sad thing. May God bless the poor families of the miners, and keep them in our hearts.

Long wait for miners' families

Brigid Glanville reported this story on Friday, November 26, 2010 12:34:00

SHANE MCLEOD: The board of the Pike River Coal mine in New Zealand has met to discuss the recovery of the bodies of 29 miners from its mine near Greymouth and to discuss the future of the mine.

Equipment brought in from Australia has arrived at the site and will be put to work as soon as possible to dispel toxic gases from the mine so it becomes safe to enter.

Our reporter Brigid Glanville has been at the media conference with the board of the company this morning. She joins us now.

And Brigid now that the equipment has arrived from Queensland is there an update on when the company thinks it will be safe to retrieve the miners bodies?

BRIGID GLANVILLE: Shane the company is still saying it will probably be weeks before the bodies can be retrieved.

Now that this large piece of equipment that's designed basically like a big massive fan that sprays water vapour throughout the mine to inert the toxic gases, that could be up and running within a day. But it may be a few days because of course they are still really assessing how close they can get to go into the mine.

The other thing that did happen during the press conference is, Shane you may remember after the first blast which is actually a week ago this afternoon they sent in a robot and the robot shows picture of a conveyor belt that was about a kilometre into the mine and that was intact.

After the second blast on Wednesday they sent in a third robot. And today those pictures have shown a very violent blast. It was described as devastating. That conveyor belt is completely in pieces, barely recognisable.

So it sort of really brought home to the families just how bad that second blast was and reaffirmed to some of them that there is absolutely no way that anyone could have survived that second blast.

SHANE MCLEOD: And Brigid there are plans I understand for a national memorial service in New Zealand for next week. What can you tell us about that?

BRIGID GLANVILLE: Yes next Thursday at two o'clock in Greymouth there will be a memorial service. Up to 5,000 people are expected to attend.

John Key the prime minister yesterday said they were going to hold that service probably in Christchurch at the cathedral. But after calls from the families and of course the community of Greymouth they wanted it here so it will be held at the racecourse.

This afternoon at exactly 3.44, that is one week since the first blast, Pike River Mine, miners, emergency services will hold a minute's silence up at the actual mine site.

For the first time since the blast many of the families have been able to go up to the mine. Peter Whittle the CEO said today they had about 400 families, many extended families that have flown in were at the mine sites. They are able to get much closer to the gate.

Of course the families would like to get near the portal, right near the whole area to go where the miners would go down but that's not possible as yet.

SHANE MCLEOD: And how are support services, carers, how are they coping in looking after these family members?

BRIGID GLANVILLE: Well the community has definitely been rocked and shaken. It's a very sort of sombre town at the moment. Quite a sort of strange feeling in many ways.

And there are a number of support services here for the families. And as far as from what we have been told that some of the families have taken up those counselling services; others haven't.

I actually went to a Catholic Church mass today where there was probably about 100 people in that and that was very moving. Everyone, there's still many candlelight vigils around the place. So it is of course still very raw.

They've got a yellow ribbon that people are wearing in support and condolence for the miners. And you see a lot of yellow ribbons as you are walking around town.

And of course being a town of 10,000 people, 29 miners, everyone knows someone. So everyone is still greatly affected. But from what they're saying they are appreciative now of the daily updates that Pike River Mine is still giving to the families.

SHANE MCLEOD: Our reporter Brigid Glanville at Greymouth on New Zealand's South Island.

2010-11-28T15:49:00.000-08:00

The case for Russian honey bees. They may actually be more resistant to the Colony Collapse Disorder.

2010-11-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

When people look at Putin they probably don’t think about cows. Putin thinks about cows, at least sometimes. They are in one of the national “priority projects,” aimed at developing the country’s agriculture (the other three are about education, health and housing). It focuses on animal husbandry and tries to get young people into the countryside, much of which is a social disaster area. The social part of it is interesting, but let’s put that aside for now - this is a food blog, and if all that money budgeted for the project does anything it’ll have a serious influence on what Russians eat.

Russians are quite innocent about food. Grocery shopping here was at first a disorienting experience: imagine walking into a library confident in your knowledge of the Dewey decimal system and finding that all the books are simply alphabetized by title: novels, fine art albums, legal texts, bible commentaries… Russian foods don’t come with half the category labels that American ones sport. There’s no organic. No cage-free. No grass-fed. No kosher. No low carb. No stories of how one’s grandma used to make this yogurt from the milk of a brown cow called Daisy. Food choices are about taste and wallets and waistlines - not identity, values, policy.

There is certainly an understanding of what good food is, but the goodness is not on the label. The best food is perhaps one without a label at all - it’s the stuff grown by the family itself, by friends and relatives, by someone’s grandma on a quarter-acre or land an hour out of the city by electric train, and sold out of a canvas sack next to a tram station. The second-best, if one ended up in a store, is Russian. Russians fervently believe that their chickens, vegetables, even sausages and yogurt are better - safer, less processed, “cleaner” of antibiotics, pesticides, artificial flavorings and preservatives, grown in a purer environment.

This food patriotism surprised me - it somehow arose out of profound suspicion of foods Soviet and unquestionable preference for foods imported, and I don’t know when the switch took place. But it’s often justified. Russian chickens get fewer antibiotics. Russian cows eat more grass (although nobody would put it in these terms). Fewer pesticides are applied to Russian fresh fruit and vegetables (and sometimes they look awful because of it) and fewer ingredients are added when preserves are made out of them. A fair amount of Russian agricultural land is effectively organic, although only a tiny percentage is certified as such under European or American regulations. (Whether Russian sausages still contain more cellulose than meat I don’t know - but I’m suspicious and don’t buy them.)

All this goodness is not the result of conscious environmental and agricultural policy. Antibiotics, pesticides, artificial flavors, and industrial feed for cows are expensive to import and Russia doesn’t make a whole lot. The cleanliness of Russian food is dumb luck, a fortunate side effect of unfortunate years of agricultural mismanagement, which also led to deplorable rural poverty. Now that the government is trying to do something about it - as it should - the food quality is also coming under threat. All the more so because it’s simply not an issue. Russian carrots are assumed to be organic, not certified as such. Russian chickens are trusted to be free of antibiotics, but no-one would be responsible if that trust is broken because there are no explicit claims. Some producers used to label their stuff “ecologically clean” (the closest Russian has to “organic”) but instead of regulating what the term must mean the Russian government simply forbade its use.

This stuff can be successfully marketed, and Russians will even pay extra for the quality assurance. The Alexeevsky collective farm outside of Ufa, which now operates several brick-and-mortar stores as well as stalls in all the farmers’ markets is a good example. It does not advertise itself as organic, but earns trust simply by being a no-nonsense local producer who stakes its name and reputation on every carrot it sells. The produce is basic: tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants in summer, cabbages, radishes, and carrots in winter, fresh herbs in little pots all year round, dairy and smoked lard - and the stuff is good. Good enough that I gladly put up with brusque service, waiting in line (they have lines!), and the need to bring my own plastic bag.

If you can sell it at profit to price-conscious Russians, you can certainly sell it abroad, where “organic” premiums are much higher. And there’s growing demand for certified organic at home, and organic stores and restaurants are appearing in Moscow. Ironically, they have to import their goods as Russian products do not carry the requisite certifications.

It would be unrealistic to expect all Russian agriculture to become organic - if nothing else, the government is also trying to develop domestic fertilizers industry and compete with cheap imported meat from Eastern Europe. But Russia should take advantage of its agricultural backwardness, and start labeling things and letting consumers make more informed and conscious choices.

2010-11-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

This is a fascinating article about the organic movement in Russia, from RIA Novosti.

Every weekend I go to my local market. My usual path is like this: First, I’ll go to the Lipetsk farmer for dairy products, then on to the Tambov farmer for meat and poultry; I buy honey from people I know in Volgograd; the fruit and vegetables I like best are those that are in season. Of course all this can be bought much more cheaply at the supermarket, but the taste of a chicken that has been running around a farmyard is completely different from that of a chicken that has spent its short and unhappy life imprisoned in a cage at a factory farm. And organically grown apples smell completely different from those that will keep for half a year.

It turns out that I share these preferences with many of my compatriots. According to a recent survey carried out by the research company Romir, 39 percent of Russians believe that high-quality produce and Russian produce are one and the same. This surge of culinary patriotism is easily explained. In the early 1990s, when the Russian market was flooded with imported produce, their foreign origin alone was seen as a guarantee of quality, but it gradually transpired that this was a simplistic view. After it became known that much foreign produce was genetically modified, enthusiasm for it cooled off completely. This is a good example of Russian backwardness being one of the country’s assets: Thanks to the fact that the progressive feats of Western bio-engineers were never applied to Russian agriculture (due to lack of funds), Russian produce has retained its natural taste.

According to the survey, 37 percent of Russians are willing to pay more for produce free from genetic modification and 41 percent would spend more on organic produce. In the early 2000s, the first organic food shops began to open in Russia. Their proprietors were counting on the Russian public being willing to pay more for quality food, but nearly all of these enterprises folded within a short time. The people who set up these shops approached it from the wrong angle; ninety percent of the produce in these shops was imported from outside Russia, so it was much more expensive to buy food in these organic shops than in the most expensive supermarkets, let alone at local markets. The owners of these organic shops blamed their failure on the ignorance of the Russian public, but in my view, common peasant savvy also played a role. City dwellers from even the biggest Russian towns have not forgotten their peasant roots, and every one of them has either a dacha in the area or relatives who live in the countryside. The result is that Russian city-dwellers still remember the taste of true local, organically grown food. As a result, they could not justify paying the price for imported, certified organic food from special shops when they could get quality food at a better price at the market.

There is no official organic produce in Russia, but this is because organic standards have yet to be developed, and it does not mean at all that organic produce doesn’t exist. In fact, state regulations on food production are already quite strict. Russian health authorities recently banned the import of chicken drumsticks from the United States because they had been treated with chlorine. According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, the United States uses 11 times more mineral fertilizers than Russia, and China uses 23 times more. Pesticides are also used much less frequently. All this is a result of Russia’s relative poverty, which could unexpectedly be turned to its advantage as the market for organic food continues to grow.

And now, major suppliers of organic produce are Russian farmers. A year ago, Alexander Konovalov ran a big web marketing company. Now he owns a farm where he grows vegetables and raises pigs, sheep and chickens. One of his latest plans is to start breeding rabbits. His daughter Nastya, a graduate of Moscow State University, said that at first she was embarrassed to tell her friends that she worked on a farm. But when her friends came to visit, tasted the farm’s products, and began to regularly order food from the farm, her initial concerns disappeared. Although their products are twice as expensive as those from a conventional supermarket, the organic farm already has a regular client base. Their produce cannot be officially verified as organic because there are no standards in place, but Konovalov’s customers trust him and for them, the quality of the food speaks for itself. I also trust the farmers at my local market even though their produce has no “organic” label. The difference is plain to taste.

In communist times there was a very popular anecdote. An Englishman asks a Russian: “When do you start selling strawberries in your country?”
The Russian answers, “In June.”
“And in England,” says the Englishman, “we start selling them at six in the morning.”
Today, strawberries are sold all year round in Russia and that’s a good thing, but you cannot dispute the fact that strawberries in January have a very different taste from strawberries in June. I prefer to wait until June, and for the winter, I have three kilograms of cranberries already prepared that can be turned into a really tasty jam.

Bella Akhmadulina

2010-11-28T14:09:00.000-08:00

I watched the day begin breaking some time past nine;
it was a drop, a black light shining absurdly
onto the window. People dream that they heard
a little toy bell-ringer ringing the bell on the tree.

The day as it downed was week, not much of a sight.
The light was paler than pink, pastel, not harsh,
the way an amethyst shimmers on a young girl's neck.
All looked down, once they had seen the sad, humble cross.

And when they arose, reluctantly opening their eyes,
a trolley flew by through the snowstorm, gold trim inside it.
They crowded the window like children: "Hey, look at that car!
Like a perch that's gotten away, all speckled with fire!"

They sat down for breakfast; they argued, got tired, lay down.
The view from the window was such that Leningrad's secrets
and splendors brought tears to my eyes, filled me with love.
"Isn't there something you want?" "No, there's nothing."

I have long been accused of making frivolous things.
Frivolity maker, I look at those here around me:
O Mother of God, have mercy! And beg your Son, too.
On the day of His birth, pray and weep for us each.

From today's NYT

2010-11-28T13:37:00.000-08:00

“Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs” as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group.

Civilians will be at greater risk, people in Mr. Wallach’s camp argue, because of the challenges in distinguishing between fighters and innocent bystanders. That job is maddeningly difficult for human beings on the ground. It only becomes more difficult when a device is remotely operated.

This problem has already arisen with Predator aircraft, which find their targets with the aid of soldiers on the ground but are operated from the United States. Because civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have died as a result of collateral damage or mistaken identities, Predators have generated international opposition and prompted accusations of war crimes.

*--article by John Markoff

People Are Looking up, up, up..

2010-11-27T12:50:00.000-08:00

Cannot quite believe this... there is war in Afghanistan but climbing in Jordan. Spain helped them with a franchise:) So the questions remain: How can other developing countries work with people to get such fabulous facilities in those places, too? And congratulations to Jordan! Amazing step in maintaining the country as an exciting and dynamic place to be!

Amazing News

2010-11-27T10:11:00.000-08:00

Over here at Northernwitch, we absolutely LOVE the idea of funding for grassroots sport. We hope to see much more of the same in the furure, and also wish that Canada would get on board. According to surfing sources, millions of dollars have been poured into surfing, and especially for programs specifically targeting aboriginal and white youth, and for an international headquarters of surfing sport. A perfect ten.

Sports benefit from new govt funding
Ian McCullough and Laine Clark
November 26, 2010

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AAP

Cricket, AFL, netball and gymnastics are among the big winners in the federal government's announcement of an $11 million increase in funding for sport participation.

Cricket, AFL and tennis will each receive $750,000 - the highest amount given to any individual sport.

And the success of world gymnastics champion Lauren Mitchell, has been reflected in a rise of almost $400,000 in funding with netball also benefitting to the tune of $700,000.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Gymnastics Australia chief executive Catherine Clark said the increased funding would allow a range of participation programs and new initiatives to be rolled out nationally.

"Gymnastics is much more than just the elite end and we have over 500 clubs who are ready to open their doors to increased participation opportunities across our Gymnastics for all program," Clark said.

"And importantly this will include strategies and resources to engage schools and school-aged participants."

Netball Australia CEO Kate Palmer also welcomed the announcement and said it would be a huge injection for a sport that relies so much on the help of volunteers around the country at grassroots level.

"This funding allows us to initiate programs that will pave the way for the continued growth and health of our game," Palmer said.

The funding changes are a result of the Crawford Report released earlier this year.

Federal Sports Minister Mark Arbib said sports participation was critical to the country's future and would help reduce obesity rates.

"Young people have so much to gain from regular exercise and playing in organised sport," Arbib said.

"This option is going to 29 national sporting organisations to assist them to get more parents playing sport, it's also going to improve their coaching, improve administration and supporting volunteers.

"The selection was done on a bid process through the Australian Sports Commission, the national sporting organisations put together some competitive bids."

Football ($700,000), hockey ($500,000), surfing ($500,000) and basketball ($500,000) have also benefitted.

Surfing Australia CEO Andrew Stark said the new significant funding increase would revolutionise the sport nationally.

"This new money is the single biggest opportunity surfing has ever had to really make a difference and progress the sport in the areas of grass roots participation development right through to high performance," Stark said.

"We look forward to now taking our sport to new heights Australia-wide through this new funding initiative."

However, there were some losers in the announcement with athletics handed a negligible increase of just $3,600, while boxing, rowing and canoeing were among a clutch of Olympic sports to receive no funding.

© 2010 AAP

2010-11-27T09:36:00.001-08:00

Everyone should be a part of the golden circle, or have a chance to be.

Traffiqued

2010-11-08T18:09:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: CNN Heroes received more than 10,000 nominations from 100 countries, and a Blue Ribbon Panel selected the Top 10 CNN Heroes for the year. Voting for the CNN Hero of the Year continues through November 18 (6 a.m. ET) at CNNHeroes.com. The winner will be announced at "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute," which airs Thanksgiving night, November 25, at 8 ET.

(CNN) -- Anuradha Koirala is fighting to prevent the trafficking and sexual exploitation of Nepal's women and girls. Since 1993, she and her group, Maiti Nepal, have helped rescue and rehabilitate more than 12,000 victims.

Below are her thoughts on being chosen as a Top 10 CNN Hero.

Q: Where were you when you got the call that you'd been selected as a Top 10 CNN Hero?

Anuradha Koirala: The day I found out that I'd been selected as a Top 10 CNN Hero, I was in Delhi, India. I'd had meetings with Indian and Nepalese government officials, police officers and [nongovernmental organizations] that are partnering with us regarding rescue and repatriation of Nepali girls. I also went to meet Nepali girls at a government remand home in Delhi.

We had four girls rescued last week, so I was talking to all the children. The police officers were very positive, but one lawyer was acting very "smart" [about not wanting the girls to return home to Nepal]. I said to him: "We are all working for the benefit of the children. So legal things are one part, but when there are girls, you have to send the girls back to their own country. That is all I want." So the whole morning and afternoon, I had been fighting.

I was very excited and thankful to get the news. I have a big family, about 2,000 children and girls. This was a moment for us to cry, hug and remember how we started, what we have gained and where we are today.

Q: What does it mean to you to have been selected by the Blue Ribbon Panel?

Koirala: It means they have given priority to this heinous crime against humanity. We have to fight against this crime and protect the children from this.

Q: What do you want people to know most about the importance of your work?

Koirala: I would like to urge all the human beings around the world: Please close your eyes and imagine these girls are your daughters, and you will feel the pain of being trafficked.

2010-11-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

The Art of Recovery art classes, sponsored by Northern Lakes Community mental health. I wish more communities offered programs like this, with less reliance on psychotropic drugs :)

2010-11-08T14:11:00.000-08:00

PETA says Canada is no friend to animals
Spokesperson Alka Chanda points finger at vivisection and lab experiments
By Simona Giacobbi

Alka Chanda with Sally, who was adopted by a colleague at PETA.
What happens in laboratories where animal testing goes on? What are the rules that regulate the treatment of experimental lab animals?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the most outspoken organization in launching heavy accusations against Canada. There is no federal law in our country, according to the well-known animal rights organization, regulating the treatment of animals in labs. The responsibility falls on individual provinces with the exception of British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec which PETA charges with inhumane testing and unspeakable cruelty to animals.
So begins a Corriere Canadese/Tandem inquest on basic animal rights, not so much to raise public awareness – there are numerous animal rights organizations for this, like PETA, the best-known and loudest-spoken organization, founded in 1980 – but to analyze and clarify that fine line between useful animal testing in the field and cruel exploitation and useless suffering inflicted on experimental lab animals.
The PETA philosophy is clear. It appears on the Internet site between an anti-McDonald’s blurb denouncing the manner in which chickens are tortured, killed, and turned into nuggets and chicken sandwiches, and a blurb against IAMS – a company that manufactures animal food after restricting dogs and cats to crammed cages in tropical-like temperatures. The 10-month long investigation was done between 2002 and 2003 at the Sinclair Research Center in the U.S.
PETA’s investigative department is always ready to do battle. Alka Chanda of PETA’s Laboratory Investigation Department in Virginia, U.S., was contacted by phone. She openly discusses the organization’s investigations.
“Volunteers who clean out cages, armed with tiny cameras, or researchers who successfully got onto the medical teams that perform the experiments.”
It was not very difficult for them to discover what happens in the three Canadian provinces lacking controls – the animals are treated cruelly and savagely – whether they are mice, monkeys, cats, or dogs.

“We simply read some documents that are public domain,” explains Chanda, “published by some lab techs from these universities. In particular, in the ‘Methods & Materials’ section, we found details on which species of animals are used and on the nature of testing, such as the type of operation. Then there’s always a note on which institutional commission revised and approved the experiments, the Animal Care Committee, and where they are held. If an animal dies during an operation, that isn’t necessarily reported in these documents, but is registered in veterinarians’ files. Those initial documents however, give us an idea of the experiments that are effectuated in research centres.”
The treatments reserved for some Canadian experimental animals have been defined by PETA as “cruel, useless, and totally superfluous.”
The photos sent to Corriere Canadese/Tandem speak for themselves. Powerful images. Images that show how, in British Columbia, monkey skulls are drilled and in which toxics are injected that damage the brain. Or of injuries caused by electro-convulsive shock. And kittens raised in the dark for eyesight experiments. Chanda then describes what happens in Alberta. Scientists inflict cerebral-spinal damage to cats which are then forced to walk on conveyor belts to study their movements and if they’re able to avoid and sidestep obstacles with their back legs.
“The author of this document,” explains Chanda – who sent Corriere Canadese/Tandem extracts from these publications – had already written another similar piece explaining the same procedures on cats in labs at the University of British Columbia (UBC). We became interested in this university when some of the province’s students and activists contacted us to launch a campaign to stop these atrocities.”
Researchers at McGill University in Quebec have also recently been subject to numerous criticism and condemnation by animalists for tests on mice, which are injected with noxious chemical substances in their abdomens, legs, and paws. They are then placed on hot slabs and operated on without painkillers being administered.

Sikh Fact

2010-11-08T13:08:00.000-08:00

The Amritsar airport in India is being named after Guru Ram Dass :)

2010-10-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Girls only schools.
Do you agree with the concept of single sex education?

Vancouver Media + Modesty

2010-10-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

So Shelley Fralic, Peter Birnie, and Jo Ledingham all have articles out about Grease, this week, which is touring Vancouver right now. Fralic and Birnie, in separate articles in the Vancouver Sun slam it for being raunched up and sleazy, and Jo Ledingham in the Vancouver Courier thinks it is immodest, encourages casual sex, and sends the wrong message about social acceptance.

What do you think? Please discuss it all below, if you like :)

2010-10-30T13:55:00.000-07:00

This article appeared this morning in Modern Mom, by Brooke Burke, about "sexy" Halloween costumes.

My Mistakes...
Obviously her get-up was not purchased by me- mistake #2! Last week, she showed me her “Alice In Wonderland” Halloween costume. The first thing I did was look at the packaging. To no surprise, I noticed it was an adult small, not a children’s large. That was the first red flag! Buy your children’s costumes in the kid's section, not the adult section. To make a long story short, we talked about looking 10-years-old not 20-years-old, even on Halloween. We jazzed up Alice to look much younger and cuter. You can imagine the look on my daughter’s face when I assured her that Alice’s dress was knee length with white knee socks and buckle shoes, NOT a frilly, short, blue mini-skirt with thigh-highs.

More Fairytale, Less Hottie-Tottie
So, I went picking through my own collection of tights and had her wear white tights, (NO FISH NETS) under her sexy socks. I added some young, rosy make-up to make her look more fairytale and less hottie-tottie. In the end, she got it. She was as happy and as appropriate as a 10 year old wanabee Alice could be

Oh Hannah...
At this morning's school costume parade, I saw many homemade creative costumes: funny ones, rented ones, and of course a few tramped out innocent kids. What happened to ghosts, two-headed monsters and pumpkins? The funniest costume was a Hannah Montana who looked more like a blonde street-walker than a pop star. I must confess that yesterday's article featuring slutty Miss Candy Corn had nothing on the THREE pre-tween candy corns I saw at school this morning- one of whom was my own eight-year-old! But, she’s pulled it off in a very sweet way. Sexy never came to mind. It really depends on how your kids wears the costume and what they look like in it.

"Ummm, MOM!"

The funniest thing happened last night when I was trying on my hot pleather Cat Woman suit. My daughter said, “MOM, you’re not going to wear that to my school parade are you? Don’t you think it’s a little hot for school?” I guess she told me, because I showed up with no costume, a t-shirt and a pair of baggy khakis. It was a great day! I volunteered in class and had so much fun making origami pumpkins and spiders.

2010-10-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

Let it be said at the outset: I like boys. I'm used to boys-I spent almost every summer vacation with six boy cousins, almost like brothers, two of them close to my own age, and my constant playmates. While growing up, I gravitated towards boys. My parents had very few friends with kids, and the ones that did, had boys. He Man and GI Joe were my staples, burping on command was something I aspired to, and in pissing contests, I tried very hard to win. Later, as I entered adolescence, I was introduced to the concept of a girl friend, when boys became creatures of Mystery and Wonder, and we giggled about them and tossed our hair yearningly in their direction.

Even now, when my social circle contains more female friends than men, I find myself different around the opposite sex, a little more comfortable, perhaps, and usually, one of the lads. It's not unusual to find me in a group of all men, with me in the middle, all of us holding forth on subjects that most of us don't know very much about. And, to bring us to the point of this: I've lived with men. One as a flatmate and friend, the other as a lover.

Now, while it's all very well to like boys, living with them is another matter entirely. The first boy I cohabited with was a friend with whom I shared a flat in Bandra. We moved in, blissfully unaware of the consequences. As someone who had only lived with other women before, the idea of "modesty" didn't even strike me. I strode around in short-shorts and tank tops, only pausing half way to the television set to realise there was a man in the room. As someone who had never had to explain her relationships, here was I, claiming to be married for the sake of my landlord, all the while trying to figure out the best excuse for why we were sleeping in different bedrooms. As someone not overly domestic, I found the gender roles we were trying to automatically slide into, the most difficult. I cannot cook. I am a sloppy housewife. My flatmate on the other hand was a man who liked a clean house, homecooked meals and dusted bookshelves and who was prepared to go the distance to make sure that happened. Previously, the girls and I stuck to our own bedrooms. Now, with a shared living space, it was clear I would have to suck it up and handle half of the household responsibilities. We were friends, are friends, and in the end, our friendship stood the test of my shoddy household abilities, but I wouldn't be so lucky in the future.

Cue: the boyfriend. Not Indian, and someone who had lived on his own enough to be able to cook and clean and all that jazz. And who, once again, wanted me to help. This is not unreasonable, but as a neo feminist, the child of neo feminists, I hadn't really been raised with any domestic skills (which, yes, I suppose is mostly my fault.) The most I could do was sew, thanks to school, and that's not very useful these days. This created a rather large bone of contention. You see, I discovered, that while girls are a little more live-and-let-live about things like that, most men have this highly developed sense of fairness. "If I'm doing it," they say, "Then you should do it. It's only fair." What can be brushed under the carpet with a male flatmate leads to loud arguments with your boyfriend.

There were other things too: living together, much like a marriage, is a lot less glamorous than it looks and a lot more about compromise. That big 'c' word. You have what movie you're going to watch, what dinner you're going to order and worse: whose friends you're going to see. When everything is such a huge deal, your relationship itself is kind of fragile. The great thing about marriage is the legalities of it all —visas, leases, bank accounts — the world loves you if you're married. There is no such thing as a 'live in partner' visa. I know, because I looked. Also, if you break up (like I did), all you have to do is pack a suitcase and leave. There's nothing holding you there except for the echoes of what once used to be.

So I say: yes. Give the live-in relationship the stamp of legitimacy. Give it legal protection. A broken home is a broken home, whether it's your real husband moving out or your fake one.

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of You Are Here and Confessions Of A Listmaniac.

2010-10-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

First Person: Margaret Evison

As told to Cole Moreton

Published: October 15 2010 23:49 | Last updated: October 15 2010 23:49

Margaret Evison
Margaret Evison’s son was fatally wounded when his patrol was ambushed in 2009
When my son Mark was killed I wanted to know whether his death had achieved anything, and to see for myself the country in which he had died while serving with the Army. So I went to Afghanistan.

Some people were very worried but my daughter said, “Mum, you should do it.” I thought that was brave of her, having just lost her brother. It is a dangerous place – at the time we were there, seven aid workers were murdered. I took leave from the hospital where I work as a psychologist and went in a group of seven led by Sandy Gall, the former war correspondent.

As we were flying into Kabul we came down tight and low over the mountains. Aircraft do sometimes crash there but there are so many mines it’s difficult to rescue survivors. We stayed in a lodge where you have to go past guards and through three big metal doors to get in. All cars are checked for bombs.

Mark was a lieutenant in the Welsh Guards and he loved it. One of my most precious possessions is a journal he kept while he was out there, absolutely beautifully written in longhand pencil, with no crossing out. At one point he writes, “Things are just great at the moment.” I spoke to Mark two days before he died – we had maybe 10 minutes that day and it felt good.

In May 2009 Mark’s patrol was ambushed and he was shot in the shoulder: the bullet severed a major artery. Two soldiers risked their lives to carry him on their backs, under fire, to the base.

They called for help at about 8.45am, but there was a 39-minute delay before the helicopter was authorised to go to them. If Mark had been picked up while he was still conscious he might have stood more of a chance. The Ministry of Defence won’t give a reason for the delay, and the inquest was unsatisfactory. Mark had written about the lack of supplies and support in his journal, just before he died.

I remember it was a particularly beautiful Saturday morning in May when I was told. An officer came to my house to tell me that Mark was being airlifted to a hospital in Birmingham, where a consultant broke the news that he was most likely brain-dead. Mark was lying there very peacefully, as if he was asleep. We were advised to switch off the machines – he was 26 years old.

Mark believed that young people need to take on challenges, to do things that are difficult and strengthening for them. We try to make that happen by giving out grants from a memorial fund, set up in his name. The first award was to fund two 16-year-olds climbing the four highest peaks in the UK. Another paid for some boys to have a day in a recording studio.

Going to Afghanistan was a challenge for me. Only the MoD can provide specific answers now, but it did help me to understand what had happened to my son, in the widest context. I found a very tribal country without a satisfactory legal system. Tribal people have had to use fighting and revenge as their tools to survive. When I was there, I met a young man in a market, who wanted to get on in life. He said that if he found someone from the Taliban he would get a gun and shoot him.

Mark wrote in his journal: “I seem to be the only one here who thinks that war might not be the answer.” I do agree with that. One would like to think that Mark died bringing some sort of relief from the brutality of the Taliban, for the locals and for women, for the sake of some sort of civilisation – but whether that is the case I am just not sure. Did Mark die for a just cause? Even after going there, it’s hard to know.

www.markevisonfoundation.org

The first Anglo-Afghan war was fought in 1839-42 between Britain and Russia in central Asia. There are currently 9,500 British troops deployed in Afghanistan, and more than 300 British military personnel have died since the first military offensive on October 7 2001. British prime minister David Cameron said in July that the withdrawal of British troops could potentially begin next year, with a longer-term aim of no troops in a combat role in Afghanistan by 2015.

2010-10-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

Burka
October 4, 2010

I am the foreign soldier whose guns you hear
There is no need to shake in fear
Uncover your head my Burka dear

Mr. Taliban is dead
His bandits exploded hamburger red
Burka you may unveil your head

Eternal virgins’ pleasure these rats will never paw
After the flash of our artillery – ha ha – ah
My dear Burka

Quick is the crow to feast on delicate fresh eye of awe
Manners unforgotten he invites the family with a calming caw
So peaceful to hear is it not Burka

Your father and uncle are truncated and wholly bled
There is nothing here for you to dread
Burka you may unhood your head

See here lies old decapitated Mullah
Ending his cruel merciless fatwa
Against you and yours my dear Burka

The village Burka you once knew
Is shot and shrapnel through and through
Our howitzer’s aim is precise and true

Burka your brother tied feet and hand
Lies deep inside a rumbling torture van
In long transport to another land

His shoulders sag
A still docile doe not a bucking stag
Blind and half suffocated Burka by a tight head bag

Uncover your head my Burka dear
There is no need to shake in fear
I am the foreign soldier whose guns you hear

By Dave

2010-10-29T09:46:00.001-07:00

Russians entering Canada.

2010-10-29T08:54:00.001-07:00

MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday called on the United States to carry out a detailed investigation into allegations contained in leaked Iraq war documents published by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

"The US authorities bear the responsibility to conduct a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of all the reports that have appeared in the media," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The statement pointed out that Washington regularly ticked off other countries for human rights violations and said it should live up to its own standards by investigating the allegations of abuses by troops in Iraq.

"We are convinced that such a position will demonstrate the United States' adherence to the high standards in the human rights sphere that it constantly calls on other countries to observe," it said.

The ministry called for the results of the investigation to be published and made available to human rights groups.

It expressed the hope that the US handling of the scandal would allow it to pass a "serious test" during an upcoming review by the UN Human Rights Council which evaluates respect for human rights in its member states.

2010-10-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

How to learn the rules of sambo.

Hooching All Hallow's Eve?

2010-10-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

Halloween skin: objectifying or empowering?
First, check out this article at SFGate.

By JILLIAN AUSTIN, Winnipeg Sun

Last Updated: October 25, 2010 8:01am

Naughty nurse, sexy schoolgirl, bad cop, foxy firefighter.

Ladies, what’s it going to be this year?

Year after year, the most popular Halloween costumes for young women are the risqué options, according to retailers.

“Women can come in and they can pick a costume out, something they wouldn’t wear for the rest of the year — something skimpy, low-cut and ... be that person in that costume as opposed to who they are on a day-to-day basis,” said Colleen Mitani, manager of Spirit Halloween Winnipeg.

Why the shift from scary witches and goblins to sexy firefighters and maids? A Winnipeg psychologist says Halloween is a day where people are “free from society’s inhibitions”, so they are given a license to wear things they normally wouldn’t.

“It’s an opportunity to act out our fantasies and fears ... you get a pass here. All bets are off,” Toby Rutner said. “It’s very interesting how things have evolved from death and gore to the projection ... of sexuality.”

While the French maid and harem woman have been around for years, there has been a shift in the last decade to more explicit depictions of sexuality, according to Fiona Green, chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

“I think there’s been a gradual sexing up of young women and girls, which has not happened to boys,” she said. “Pop music icons, like Britney Spears and other young women, to make it in pop music, videos, TV and film, there’s more and more exposure of not only nudity ... but it’s the sexualization of young females.”

The shift in what’s acceptable for every day wear has become more and more revealing, Green said, and that has reflected on to Halloween costumes.

“Everything is sexualized,” Green said. “If you’re a nurse, a doctor, any profession seems to be sexualized.”

But on the other hand, we generally don’t see men dressing up as Chippendales dancers. They tend to go for the frightening, intimidating or humorous costume.

“I think that the expectation that females are going to be attractive sexually, the pressure for that is far greater than for boys,” Green said.

Dressing up in a sexy Halloween costume may be a way for women to feel empowered, but it may also objectify them, Green said.

“What does it mean for the person who’s wearing it?” Green said. “I don’t think it’s unhealthy to express our sexuality ... but I think it may put a limitation on how (women) may see themselves.”

Happy Hallowe'en Week

2010-10-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin Halva
Kaddu ka Halwa

Mamta Gupta

I had this halwa on a recent trip (November 2004) to India, at the well known Morya Sheraton Hotel in Delhi. It tasted so delicious that I thought I will try making it at home. I made it in the same way as I make 'Shakarkandi' or Sweet Potato Halwa, with a few minor changes. It came out quite delicious. It can be made in advance and heated in a microwave just before serving. It freezes well. Serves 6-7.

Ingredients
• 1 kg. pumpkin (800 gm. peeled and deseeded). You can use butternut or other squash instead.
• 8 almonds (can be blanched if you like)
• 12 pistachio (can be blanched if you like)
• 2 tbs. desiccated coconut
• 3-4 tbs. ghee or clarified butter
• 1/2 cup milk
• 100-150 gm. jaggery or muscovado sugar (unrefined cane sugar)
• 1 tsp. cardamom powder
• 50 gm. raisins (optional)
• 2-3 tbs. skimmed milk powder. You can use grated Mawa or khoa

Instructions
1. Place pumpkin on a chopping board and cut into slices, like a melon. Use a sharp knife.
2. Remove seeds and fibre and discard.
3. Peel the thick skin off, removing all of the hard and thick skin.
4. Cut flesh into small, 2 cm. cubes.
5. Heat ghee in a heavy based pan or karahi/kadahi. Add pumpkin and stir fry for a minute.
6. Add 1/2 cup milk and allow to simmer until flesh is soft. 10-15 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, shred/thinly slice almonds and pistachios. These days, I do this with a garlic slicer, which I keep separate for slicing nuts (not for garlic). Thinly shredded nuts look better than chopped ones. Keep aside.
8. Place coconut on a plate and microwave at full for 2+2 minutes, stirring in between. Keep aside. If you do not have a microwave, you can dry fry the coconut in a clean pan, on low heat, until there is a nice aroma of coconut.
9. Returning to cooked, soft pumpkin, turn the heat off. Mash it well, using a potato masher or back of a spoon.
10. Add sugar and cardamom seeds to the pumpkin mash and stir fry on medium heat until liquid dries up, ghee separates and pumpkin looks shiny. It has mashed potato like consistency.
11. Sprinkle powdered milk or add grated mawa/khoa and stir fry for a few more minutes.
12. Add most of the almonds and pistachios, saving a little for garnish, all the coconut and raisins, if used.
13. Transfer to serving dish or individual little bowls and decorate with saved almond and pistachio nuts.
14. Serve Hot.

2010-10-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

Mothers in Afghanistan feed their children drugs.

Dr. Reddy is marketing drugs in Russia.

2010-10-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

Just five weeks after Vicki Hopkins' got married, her husband Matt flew a world away to fight in a war that has gone on longer than the Second World War. Her baby son Alex has only ever had four days where he has ever even been held by his father. Death embraced Matt, and will never let him go.

Vicki, shown above, and at this link, wiping tears from her eyes at her lover's grave, believes that one day, she will explain this story to her child, who will never even remember the sound of his voice. She hopes he will understand this war. I know that I don't, but I do understand Vicki's grief, her hollow bone aching feeling that something is ended, and has disappeared forever, and that only she has known that person's world in the way that she has. And she feels that it was eons too soon, and that life will never really be quite as it was.

I can't feel my love anymore
I can't feel my love anymore
mystery and the splendor
don’t thrill me like before
I can't feel my love anymore

I don’t want to talk to anyone
I don’t want to talk to anyone
all the words that used to work
are melted in the sun
and I don’t want to talk to anyone

Faces look familiar,
but they don’t have names
towns I used to live in
have been rearranged
Highways I once traveled down
don’t look the same
Everything has changed
Everything has changed

I can’t find my joy anywhere
I can’t find my joy anywhere
all the magic vanished into the misty air
and I can’t find my joy anywhere
....
Faces look familiar,
but they don’t have names
towns I used to live in
have been rearranged
Highways I once traveled down
don’t look the same
Everything has changed
Everything has changed

I understand better than you think that people like I do, Vicki. And my heart breaks for your wee lamb, his eyes shut to the shadow of his protector, ripped away from him, leaving the two of you to fend on alone.

I hope that you heal.

This is a prayer for you, in ancient Sanskrit.

"Gyate, gyate harag yate, harasogyate botchi sowaka". Someday, I hope that you will say this to yourself, as you breathe in and out, as you kindle love in your heart, for yourself and your beautiful son.

It is the great prayer of the Heart Sutra, which the ancient yogis used to recite.

2010-10-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

I recommended this book, The Beckoners, by Carrie Mac, to a young woman who was still in high school a couple of days ago, and because she had never heard of it, thought that it deserved house room on this blog. Its about being young, in a world that is cut loose from the adult sphere, and the wild west of kids, groups, school, and bullying. A great tale for just about any teenager- and adults too.

The October Book

2010-10-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

I can't wait to read Shannon Hayes' wondrous new novel, Radical Homemakers.

She's a fluid, luminous writer with glimmering, easy prose. I found her today, and her joy in living well and encapsulating others is a wellspring- a soul balm.

Thank you for writing this book, Shannon.

I hope more people find it- and buy it!

love and hope to all who are reading.

p.s.- here's a sneak look over at a recent entry in Shannon's blog.
The book is published by Left to Right press.

2010-10-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

Scott Burchhill in the Sydney Morning Herald

US should stay out of Afghanistan: K state collegian.

Phil Mercer on the war in Voice of America.

Murray Wardrop and Anita Singh cover this story about an antiwar protestor from the BBC.

Here is another story on the drone attacks in Pakistan.