Exonerations Continue Across the Country -- But Are Innocent Prisoners Ever Truly Free?

By Liliana Segura

On May 21, after nearly 26 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Michigan prisoner Walter Swift was finally released. But is he really free?

What does it take to be freed from a wrongful conviction?

In the case of Walter Swift, who was found guilty in 1982 of a rape and burglary in Michigan, an air-tight alibi, exculpatory forensic evidence, and a clearly clueless defense attorney who would later lose his license weren't compelling enough reasons to spare him from conviction. And for years, they were not enough to get him cleared for a crime he did not commit.

Swift, who is African-American, was convicted based solely on an eyewitness identification by the victim, a pregnant white woman who described the man who attacked her as a black teenager, clean-shaven, with braids and "poofs of hair" on his head. Yet, when presented with a police line-up that included Swift -- well over 18 years old, with a mustache, long sideburns, and short, unbraided hair -- she chose him, telling the police she "believed" he was the man who had assaulted her. The police officer in charge expressed doubts, saying she seemed unsure of her selection, but Swift's fate was as good as sealed. The accuracy of her identification was never questioned in the courtroom.

False identification is one of the leading reasons innocent people are thrown in jail. When it comes to cross-racial identification, the problems are especially pronounced. Decades' worth of research has found evidence of bias when the accused is of one race and the accused is of another. Swift's case is a classic example.

In prison, Swift maintained his innocence for years. When he became eligible for parole in 2000, it was repeatedly denied, due to his refusal to admit to his guilt. After more than 15 years behind bars, Swift contacted the Innocence Project, who decided to take his case.

"Over the course of a decade, each layer we pulled back led to more evidence that Walter Swift is innocent," said Olga Akselrod, a staff attorney, in a news release. "We also began to work with people throughout the criminal justice system, some of whom were directly involved in convicting Mr. Swift, who were becoming increasingly convinced of his innocence. It's highly unusual to have the original prosecutor, the police officer who investigated the case and the lab analyst who handled the case all come forward to support an innocent prisoner -- but that's exactly what happened in this case."

With the team of people who first imprisoned him now behind him, Swift was exonerated and released from prison on Wednesday, May 21st. He spent almost 26 years behind bars.

Incredibly, the prosecutor's office will not go so far as to admit to his innocence. "Our position is not that Mr. Swift is innocent," prosecutor Kym Worthy told reporters yesterday. "Our position is that there were some irregularities and some things that should not have happened during this trial."

Still, leaving Detroit's Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, Swift told reporters he was not bitter. "I might just take a walk," he said. "I've been craving to take a walk."

His 27-year old daughter, Audrey Kelly Mills, however, who has not seen her father since she was a baby, expressed anger at the injustice of his incarceration for a quarter century. "I'm angry that this is supposed to be a justice system, and it's nothing even close to a justice system," she said.

As with so many stories of innocent prisoners who are exonerated after being locked up for years, news reports show images of a joyful Swift, eager to enjoy his second lease on life. But reality can often be cruel wake-up call.

Earlier this week, CNN did a two-part report on life after a wrongful conviction. Concentrating on Dallas County, Texas (the unofficial exoneration capital of the country) and with a focus on prisoners who were cleared thanks to DNA evidence (only a fraction of exonerations), it tells the story of Wiley Fountain, a 51-year old black man who, five years ago, was freed from prison after a decade and a half, only to find himself homeless.

"What happens to these men in the months and years after their release is an often overlooked story," writes CNN reporter Ed Lavandera. "These men find themselves starting life at middle age."

"Some men have married and had children … Others came out of prison so jaded and changed that it ruined marriages and relationships. A few have had repeated troubles with the law. And almost all of them talk about how the ghost of their past follows them wherever they go."

In Fountain's case, according to CNN, "Just as the headlines of his release vanished from the front pages of the newspaper, Fountain, 51, has disappeared."

"And so have his hopes for a fresh start after spending 15 years in prison for an aggravated sexual assault he did not commit."

Swift is 47 years old, just about the same age as Fountain was when he was released. "I know it's a beautiful time right now, but life will start to get back to reality," he told the Detroit Free-Press. "This is a million light-years from where I was … I can't describe the distance and time."

Cusack and Scahill Go After War Profiteers on Amy Goodman Show

By Amy Goodman

A conversation about privatized war with John Cusack, producer of the new film, War, Inc., and Blackwater author Jeremy Scahill.

John Cusack's new filmWar, Inc., takes on issues few in Hollywood today would dare to: war profiteering, mercenaries, political corruption and embedded journalism. A political satire, the film stars Cusack as Hauser, a hit-man for hire who is deployed to the fictional country of Turaqistan to kill a Middle Eastern oil baron. Hauser's employer is Tamerlane, a secretive for-profit military corporation headed by a former U.S. vice president played by Dan Aykroyd. We also speak to Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Any Goodman: John Cusack joins us now from London, where he's shooting a new film. In addition to starring in War, Inc., he also co-wrote and produced the film. His other Iraq War-themed film is Grace is Gone. It came out last year, and it's coming out on DVD next week.

We're also joined by Democracy Now! correspondent, Jeremy Scahill. His book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, is coming out next week in paperback.

John Cusack, welcome. Thank you for taking time from making your new movie. Talk about the genesis of this film, War, Inc.

John Cusack: Well, hello, and thanks for having me on the show. I'm a great admirer of it.

I think, probably like a lot of the great journalists that you've mentioned and the other guest you have on the show, Jeremy Scahill, I think I was probably trying to put the Iraq fiasco into a larger context and maybe put it through a different sort of lens and tell a different narrative than I think the corporate narrative that we've been getting about the Iraq War and explore some of these themes.

When we hear these words like "privatization," you know, what does that mean? In the case of the Iraq War, it meant outsourcing what you would imagine to be the very core functions of government and the very thing that makes you a state, to turn that into a for-profit business. And we've gone so far down the rabbit hole now, where actually torture is being outsourced. So it's strange and savage times. So that was really kind of the genesis of it.

And there's also a climate where people were telling Americans to watch what they say and the hypocrisy and the stench of lies was so intense it would make your eyes water. So, as a filmmaker and citizen, you think, well, how do you contextualize this? And so, that was really why I wanted to make it.

Juan Gonzales: Well, John Cusack, obviously you're dealing with weighty and tragic situations, but you've chosen satire. Why the satire approach?

John Cusack: Well, I think all satire or absurdism does is take current trends to the logical conclusion, you know, if you follow it a couple weeks or a couple years down the road. And some would argue, I think rightfully so, that we're already there. So I think at times you have to put a different lens on it in order to kind of process the information. And, you know, there's a great tradition of satire mocking power elites -- whether they be kings or corporate kings -- and shaming them and naming things and calling things what they are.

Amy Goodman: John Cusack, what about Hollywood in this time of war? Your assessment of your industry?

John Cusack: I don't know. I think that there are individuals out there who are trying to do good work, and so I don't like to lump people into a kind of groupthink -- I don't like to sort of think that way. Obviously, the industry really wants to make money and protect itself, and I think, like the rest of the country, people have been, I think, kind of zonked spectators just going along this conveyor belt and not really wanting to face what this particular administration has done to the Constitution and to the very idea of America and democracy. So I think a lot of people are numb and kind of checked out.

Amy Goodman: Jeremy Scahill, your book Blackwater has had such an important effect, and actually it's as if a part of this film, we're watching the -- sort of what it looks like on film. You wrote a really positive piece about War, Inc. and its importance, especially in the Hollywood commercialized climate we're in today.

Jeremy Scahill: Well, first of all, John Cusack is really to be commended for this. I mean, he and I have had a dialogue ongoing over the years. It's kind of funny. When you talk to a lot of unembedded independent journalists who have been to Iraq, almost all of us started receiving calls from John Cusack shortly after the invasion of Iraq began. And John was calling people not because he was saying, "Hey, I'm going to do a movie," but because he wanted to know what was going on. And so, he was calling me, he was calling Naomi Klein, he was calling other people who had been in and out of Iraq and was trying to gather information.

And, you know, I grew up -- one of my favorite films was John's movie Say Anything, and you remember that famous scene where he's standing outside of the home of the woman that he loves, and he's playing Peter Gabriel's song on a boombox above his head. It's one of those sort of iconic moments of film, and certainly for my generation. And now I sort of see John as standing outside the gates of Hollywood with a sort of cheap TV over his head saying, "Hey, you know, these are political films about the Iraq War. Do something about it."

We have to remember, this is the most radically privatized war in the history of this country. I don't think most people in this country or around the world can name more than three or four countries that have an official deployment in Iraq, and yet there are 630 corporations on the U.S. government payroll. And so, what John has done here is not some over-the-top film; it's actually more true than (non-fiction), in a way.

You know, you have journalists in the movie who are embedded inside of the Emerald City, which is sort of John's version of the Green Zone, and they're watching the war in an IMAX theater. And there's a scene where John's character is actually eating popcorn, you know, sitting next to Marissa Tomei's character, who's a sort of progressive journalist who's come there to muckrake. But it's not over the top. It actually is more true than what you read in the pages of the New York Times.

And I think that John is really to be commended for doing what is actually not a satire; it's a very powerful commentary on the way things actually are in Iraq right now and with the U.S. war machine. It's sort of a combination of A Clockwork Orange, Wizard of Oz, or a sort of political Muppet Show, so to speak, that actually says a lot and has a very stark commentary on the way things are.

Juan Gonzalez: And yet, almost predictably, a lot of the commercial media have been panning the film, right?

Jeremy Scahill: Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is sort of the hubris of power journalism; a New York Times reviewer said something like, you know, that satire has to be in the current moment and that this film was looking backwards and sort of implying that this was a moment in time, when Paul Bremer was there. No, no, no, this is the Cinnabon war. I mean, you can go to war with a cappuccino right now. This wasn't something that happened in 2004 for a year. It's on right now. I mean, there's recent reporting talking about how troops are now becoming obese because of all of the fast food that's being fed to them inside of the Green Zone and these other heavily fortified areas. I mean, this film is a better reportage than a lot of what we see in the corporate media.

Amy Goodman: And, John Cusack, you have some of the biggest stars going in this film: of course, you, yourself, and you've got Marissa Tomei, you've got Hillary Duff, you've got Ben Kingsley, you've got Dan Aykroyd.

John Cusack: Yeah. And all of these artists kind of jumped in and were very gung-ho about doing it. And what's been so kind of pleasing is that many of the people who I deeply respect and admire and who are courageous journalists and writers and thinkers, like Jeremy, whose book has been so influential, and Naomi Klein, whose groundbreaking work is universally recognized, and the list goes on and on, who have knowledge of the situation, have all kind of come to support the film and defend it. And I think it's because -- since they've been there and they know that this is the prime example of this ideological mission to sort of hollow out the government and privatize it and privatize everything in sight.

I think in Jeremy's book, Erik Prince said he wants to do for the military what FedEx did to the post office. And I believe he said it with a straight face, as if running a for-profit occupation in the Green Zone is nothing more than delivering the mail. If private corporations should be able to defy international law and shred the Constitution and blow up the streets to protect a corporation's interests and do it all on our dime, you know, if that's the future that we want, that's the future we've got. So if the reviewers say we're looking backwards, I don't know what they think the current state of the world is right now.

Amy Goodman: Jeremy Scahill?

Jeremy Scahill: Well, you know, John points out this comment that Erik Prince made about FedEx. I mean, Erik Prince recently reemerged from the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina where Blackwater is based to give a speech in Michigan in front of his friends and family and supporters, and it was actually at the Amway Grand Plaza. You know, Amway Corporation -- his sister married the heir to the Amway Corporation fortune.

Amy Goodman: Dick DeVos.

Jeremy Scahill: So he goes there to give a speech -- right, Dick DeVos -- and no tape recorders or cameras were allowed into it, but he said during that speech the exact same thing. He said, "When you want to send a package overseas, do you use the post office, or do you use FedEx?" implying that Blackwater is sort of the Federal Express of the U.S. war machine, that it's the best way to get your product delivered.

But there's actually an irony there. When you send something via FedEx, you can have your package insured against loss or damage, you can track your package. Blackwater has shown itself above any form of tracking or accountability. And when things go lethally wrong, you can't find out. There are no consequences. There's no accountability whatsoever. So even when Erik Prince tries to spin a metaphor about another corporation, it falls flat, because Blackwater is the least accountable corporation operating in Iraq right now, because its product is essentially death and destruction.

One thing I wanted to say, though -- and John won't bring this up, because he's too modest -- John gets these big budget films. He's shooting one right now, where, you know, there's a lot of money at play, there's a lot of commercial value to them. He's been bankrolling these projects in part with his own money, because he can't find big Hollywood production companies willing to pay for it.

Amy Goodman: It's also interesting, John, that when filmmakers do films about war, they can get access to high-tech, taxpayer-funded, otherwise unavailable military gear from the military. In return, of course, the military has the right to alter the script, like with movies like Black Hawk Down. Your comment about that? And also maybe you could just quickly comment on Grace is Gone, which is gone from the movie theaters now but a very powerful film about a woman soldier who is killed and then her family surviving here.

John Cusack: Well, I think, you know, I'm just very grateful that programs like this and a large activist base and some writers and thinkers -- you know, we have a MySpace site where we have a list of people who I deeply respect, who have come out to defend and support the film and help get it out there. So there are avenues to get this out, but the corporate media, yeah, has been predictably soft in looking into the deeper meanings of satire and, you know, that art is about ideas, and ideas have consequences.

And also, it's a fun, funny, entertaining movie, because I think subversion and throwing bricks at the right sort of people is supposed to feel good. So I think it reclaims a spirit of resistance and a spirit of defiance that I think is the first step towards action, because I think a lot of us are sort of depressed about all this. So I think if it does those things -- and we have the support of so many terrific people -- I think the film will find an audience.

But as far as the corporatization, the military corporatization of Hollywood, yeah, if you want to make a movie that glorifies violence in a very predictable way, you can get a whole bunch of backing and a whole bunch of product placement.

Amy Goodman: John Cusack, I want to thank you so much for being with us, joining us from London. His film War, Inc. opens in Los Angeles and New York today. Jeremy Scahill is launching his book on June 3rd at Town Hall in New York, and he'll be back to talk about that book.

John Cusack: Which -- that should be a must-read.

ICE Detainees Lack Medical Care

by Cara

Medical neglect is killing undocumented workers in government custody.

Last week, Miss Sarajevo left a comment with a link to this series of articles in The Washington Post, and I’m just finally getting around to writing about it. The series, “Careless Detention,” is about the terrifying, unethical and downright inhumane medical treatment of immigrants imprisoned by ICE, generally while fighting or awaiting deportation for infractions that are usually non-violent and in fact so mild as to verge on the ridiculous. Since 9/11, Bush and his buddies have really stepped up anti-immigrant measures (which were already largely poor and in place), broadened definitions of who could be deported, increased raids and decided that those seeking asylum must do so while behind bars. Our government is imprisoning both documented and undocumented men and women (and though not mentioned in this series, also children), often without due process, and then, quite simply, killing them with medical neglect, or otherwise abusing/torturing them with inappropriate or an outright lack of medical treatment.

If you think that the medical treatment of some immigrants who are not in trouble with ICE is appalling (and it is), be prepared to learn a new definition of the word.

Part 1: “System of Neglect” focuses on those who have died custody due to profound medical indifference:

The most vulnerable detainees, the physically sick and the mentally ill, are sometimes denied the proper treatment to which they are entitled by law and regulation. They are locked in a world of slow care, poor care and no care, with panic and coverups among employees watching it happen, according to a Post investigation.

The investigation found a hidden world of flawed medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, neglectful guards, ill-trained technicians, sloppy record-keeping, lost medical files and dangerous staff shortages. It is also a world increasingly run by high-priced private contractors. There is evidence that infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and chicken pox, are spreading inside the centers.

Federal officials who oversee immigration detention said last week that they are “committed to ensuring the safety and well-being” of everyone in their custody.

Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms about a system teetering on collapse. Actions taken — or not taken — by medical staff members may have contributed to 30 of those deaths, according to confidential internal reviews and the opinions of medical experts who reviewed some death files for The Post.

According to an analysis by The Post, most of the people who died were young. Thirty-two of the detainees were younger than 40, and only six were 70 or older. The deaths took place at dozens of sites across the country. The most at one location was six at the San Pedro compound near Los Angeles.

[. . .]

Doctors express concerns about violating medical ethics and fear lawsuits. In July, Esther Hui at Otay Mesa sent a memo to DIHS medical director Timothy T. Shack, saying her colleagues were worried that they might be sued because of the substandard care they were giving detainees. The agency’s mission of “keeping the detainee medically ready for deportation” often conflicts with the standards of care in the wider medical community, Hui wrote. “I know in my gut that I am exposing myself to the US legal standard of care argument. … Do we need to get personal liability insurance?”

Nurses who work on the front lines see the problems up close. “Dogs get better care in the dog pound,” said Catherine Rouse, a contract nurse at an Arizona detention center who quit after two months last year because she saw what she regarded as “scary medicine” in the prison: patients taken off medications they needed and nurses doing tasks they were not qualified to do. “You don’t treat people like that. There has to be some kind of moral fiber,” Rouse said.

Part 2: “In Custody, In Pain” focuses on a detainee who is severely ill and waiting desperately for any kind of treatment for her most likely life-threatening condition(s), which probably could have been easily controlled with early intervention:

Whether the gaps in Harvill’s treatment are by accident or by design is difficult to discern. Yet it is clear that the obscure federal agency that oversees detainees’ medical care, the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS), operates with a top priority of limiting care and saving money. Its medical mission is only to keep people healthy enough to be deported.

At Harvill’s jail, and everywhere else immigration detainees are held, doctors and nurses must get permission from the agency’s headquarters before treating patients. Except in emergencies or for the most routine care, they must send written requests to Washington, where, for the entire system of 33,000 detainees across the country, four managed-care nurses in a downtown office building decide what treatments to allow.

These care managers rule on what are known in the bureaucratic lexicon as treatment authorization requests, or TARs. In a recent month, they had to rule on 3,000 requests. They work five days a week, not on weekends, and are unavailable to handle requests that come in later than 4 p.m. Washington time, even though many large detention centers are in other time zones.

The agency touts this as an efficient form of managed care, similar to health plans familiar to patients in the outside world. But a 36-page manual that describes the “detainee covered services package” underscores how unusual it is, with rules designed to prevent people from getting too much help.

Part 3: “Suicides Point to Gaps in Treatment” is about the astonishingly horrid treatment of the mentally ill in detention:

While tens of thousands of detainees inside immigration detention centers endure substandard medical care, people with mental illness are relegated to the darkest and most neglected corners of the system, according to interviews and thousands of internal documents, including e-mails, memos, autopsy reports and other medical records, obtained by The Washington Post.

Doctors and nurses who often have difficulty detecting and treating physical ailments are having even greater problems managing the nuances of mental illness, documents and interviews show. Treating mental illness is a challenge in any context, but inside this closed, overburdened world, some psychiatric patients undergo months and sometimes years of undermedication or overmedication, misdiagnosis or no diagnosis.

The records reveal failures of many kinds. Suicidal detainees can go undetected or unmonitored. Psychological problems are mistaken for physical maladies or a lack of coping skills. In some cases, detainees’ conditions severely deteriorate behind bars. Some get help only when cellmates force guards and medical staff to pay attention. And some are labeled psychotic when they are not; all they need are interpreters so they can explain themselves.

Suicide is the most common cause of death among detained immigrants. It accounts for 15 of 83 deaths since 2003, when the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, took over facilities for foreigners whom the government is trying to deport. Inside these out-of-the-way compounds around the country, suicide attempts seem to be on the rise, according to internal documents: 16 in June, 21 in July, 20 in August.

Part 4: “Some Detainees Drugged for Deportation” is about the improper, dangerous and illegal use of tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs:

In a Chicago holding cell early one evening in February 2006, five guards piled on top of a 49-year-old man who was angry he was going back to Ecuador, according to a nurse’s account in his deportation file. As they pinned him down so the nurse could punch a needle through his coveralls into his right buttock, one officer stood over him menacingly and taunted, “Nighty-night.”

Such episodes are among more than 250 cases The Washington Post has identified in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 — the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security’s new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places.

Federal officials have seldom acknowledged publicly that they sedate people for deportation. The few times officials have spoken of the practice, they have understated it, portraying sedation as rare and “an act of last resort.” Neither is true, records and interviews indicate.

Records show that the government has routinely ignored its own rules, which allow deportees to be sedated only if they have a mental illness requiring the drugs, or if they are so aggressive that they imperil themselves or people around them.

Stung by lawsuits over two sedation cases, the agency changed its policy in June to require a court order before drugging any deportee for behavioral rather than psychiatric reasons. In at least one instance identified by The Post, the agency appears not to have followed those rules.

The NY Times has recently published similar reports of mistreatment.

The Washington Post also published an op-ed by ICE assistant secretary Julie Meyers. Interestingly enough, it doesn’t really seem to deny much of anything, but simply argue that they’re making improvements. The piece also doesn’t seem to mention any disciplinary action that has been taken by ICE against those who are responsible for the acts discussed in the WaPo articles, let alone any action requested of law enforcement. But they’re still doing some frantic damage control.

Yesterday, Congress questioned Julie Meyers and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the allegations made with regards to medical neglect, and also on improper detention of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. You can support the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008, which is hardly a solution but, well, something (h/t).

I don’t really have anything intelligent to add; I think that the stories speak for themselves. And I can’t pretend to be any more knowledgeable on this issue than anyone else here. In many cases, I’m probably a lot less informed. You should seek out the words of those who work on and engage with the U.S. treatment of immigrants and detainees on a daily basis. And more bloggers than I can list have also written about this story.

Why One Queer Person Is Not Celebrating California's Historic Gay Marriage Decision

By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

The gay marriage movement should not be fighting for a 1950s model of white-picket fence "we're just like you" normalcy.

Editor's Note: To read a different take on the California Supreme Court decision, read Greta Christina's story, Why I Fought for the Right to Say 'I Do'.

Though I am a queer person living in San Francisco, I will not be celebrating the California Supreme Court decision overturning the ban on same-sex marriage. Nor will I join those who say, "I would never choose to get married, but I think everyone should have the right." Sorry, honey -- marriage is depressing, period. That means gay marriage, too. And here's why.

Gay marriage does nothing to address fundamental problems of inequality. What is needed is universal access to basic necessities like housing, health care, food, and the benefits now obtained through citizenship (like the right to stay in this country). Legalized gay marriage means only that certain people in a specific type of long-term, monogamous relationship sanctioned by a state contract might be able to access benefits. While marriage could confer inclusion under a spouse's health-care policy, it does nothing to provide such a policy. Marriage might ensure hospital visitation rights, but not for anyone without a spouse. Marriage may allow for inheritance rights between spouses, but what if there is nothing to inherit?

For a long time, queers have married straight friends for citizenship or health care, but this has never been enshrined as "progress." The majority of queers -- single or coupled (but not desiring marriage), monogamous or polyamorous, jobless or marginally employed -- would remain excluded from the much-touted benefits of legalized gay marriage.

And let's not forget the history of marriage as a legal method for keeping property within specific dynasties (property that originally included women and slaves). In fact, marriage still exists as a central venue for spousal and child abuse -- there's a reason divorce is so popular, and suicide attempts among queer teens so prevalent. If social change is on the agenda, then the privileges associated with marriage need to be challenged, not embraced.

In fact, the push for gay marriage has shifted advocacy away from essential services like HIV education, AIDS health care, drug treatment, domestic violence prevention, and homeless care -- all crucial needs for far more queers than marriage could ever be. And this pattern will undoubtedly continue, as millions of dollars will be spent fighting an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment proposed for the November ballot, at a time when social services are being scrapped across the country, and especially in California.

The spectacle around gay marriage draws attention away from critical issues -- like ending U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country, and challenging the never-ending assault on anyone living outside of conventional norms.

While many straight people are reaping the benefits of gay liberation and discovering new ways of loving, lusting for and caring for one another, the gay marriage movement is busy fighting for a 1950s model of white-picket fence "we're just like you" normalcy. And that's no reason to celebrate.

It Could Happen To You...

Smoke a Joint and Your Whole Family Could End Up Homeless

By Tony Newman

For 40 years, we have been waging a "war on drugs." Families are kicked out of housing when many have done nothing wrong.

Drug addiction is bad. But the war on drugs is worse.

Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post wrote a heart-breaking story that exemplifies the wasteful and counterproductive way our society deals with illegal drug use. Mr. Milloy talks about Frances Johnson, a 68-year-old grandmother in Washington, D.C. who faces eviction simply because her grandson was arrested for possessing a small amount of marijuana. The federal government's public housing system has a "one strike and you're out" policy for any drug law violation -- even if that violation occurs miles away from home.

How does our society benefit from making homeless a whole family because of a little bit of marijuana? Why are we punishing Ms. Johnson who herself did nothing wrong? Does anyone really believe such draconian policies will help reduce marijuana use? How will an eviction affect her grandson's chances for recovery? Should any family be kicked out of their home for a loved one's drug use?

Though they contain no racist language, the application of the government's zero-tolerance prohibition policies are overtly racist, classist, ineffective and inhumane. The New York Civil Liberties Union released a report earlier this month that found 83 percent of those charged with marijuana possession over the last 10 years are black or Latino even though federal surveys show that whites are more likely to use pot. If you are poor and live in public housing, your whole family is punished for a drug offense--even for smoking a joint. But if you are middle class and do not rely on public housing or other benefits it is a "personal" issue. Despite our arresting a staggering 800,000 people for marijuana last year, marijuana is as easily available as ever -- to find some, just inquire around your local high-school.

For 40 years, we have been waging a "war on drugs." Just what does our $40 billion-a-year drug war get us? Our prisons are exploding with nonviolent drug offenders; families are kicked out of housing when many have done nothing wrong; thousands die from street violence generated by prohibition's lucrative black market; and drugs remain as plentiful and easy to obtain as ever.

Enough is enough. Ms. Johnson should not be more "collateral damage" from this unwinnable war.

Faith vs. Science: The Consequences of What We Teach Our Children

Is America beginning to reap what it's sewn with faith-based education?

Religious believers do so as a matter of faith. At the same time, many of these same people expect science to provide evidence that far exceeds the standards upon which they accept the words found in the Bible. This contradiction is troubling and merits discussion.

Commentary By: Daniel DiRito

Have you ever asked yourself what America and the world would look like if the abstinence-only advocating…intelligent design demanding…religious right had the power to enact the legislation they preferred? I don’t know about you, but the thought of this group at the helm of humanity is not only frightening; it could well spell the initiation of a period of irrational repression not seen since the Dark Ages. Even worse, I’m not sure they would possess the restraint to resist the application of Biblically mandated punishments.

Two articles in today’s news led me to ponder the possibilities. I think it’s obvious that there is a boundless commitment on the part of the religious right to impose their beliefs on others. That persistence makes them a formidable foe and it requires the rest of us to be vigilant in refuting and rejecting the tortured arguments they construct. Even worse, each time one of their efforts are rebuffed, they immediately move to craft a more refined replacement.

Pardon the ugly analogy, but this steadfast assault has all the makings of an inexpugnable infection…one that requires timely treatment lest it render the unsuspecting host into a state of perpetual decline. As such, one can never assume that a period of remission will be sustained. Like it or not, these inviolable interlopers are constantly searching for a vulnerability that can be exploited.

This analogy provides a seamless segue into the first article. According to a report in The Washington Post, there is concern that the insistence on abstinence-only education…education that frequently attempts to undermine the merits of condoms…is pushing us towards an expansion of teen sex, STD transmissions, and teen pregnancies.

From The Washington Post:

The nation’s campaign to get more teenagers to delay sex and use condoms is faltering, threatening to undermine the highly successful effort to reduce teen pregnancy and protect young people from sexually transmitted diseases, federal officials reported today.

New data from a large government survey shows that by every measure, the decade-long decline in sexual activity among high school students leveled off between 2001 and 2007 and the increase in condom use by teens flattened out in 2003.

Moreover, the survey found disturbing hints that teen sexual activity may actually have begun creeping up and that condom use among high school students might be edging downward, though those trend lines have not yet reached a point where statisticians can be sure, officials said.

“The bottom line is in all these areas we don’t seem to be making the progress we were making before,” said Howell Wechsler, director of the division of adolescent and school health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which conducts the survey. “It’s very troubling.”

“Since we’ve started pushing abstinence, we have seen no change in the numbers on sexual activity,” said John Santelli, chairman of the Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University. “The other piece of it is abstinence education spends a good amount of time bashing condoms. So it’s not surprising, if that’s the message young people are getting, that we’re seeing condom use start to decrease.”

“We may be witnessing the beginning of a trend where we’re reaping the harvest of medically inaccurate and ineffective sex education, which is abstinence-until-marriage sex education,” said Michael D. Resnick, who studies teen sexual behavior at the University of Minnesota. “With a growing proportion of young people exposed to those curricula, I think we can begin to understand why we’re beginning to see a reversal of the positive trends that had been happening.”

The new data comes from the 2007 survey, which involved 14,103 students in grades 9 through 12 at 157 high schools nationwide. The survey found that the proportion of those who reported they had ever had sex, had begun having sex before age 13, had engaged in sex within the last three months and had sex with at least four partners all increased slightly between 2005 and 2007.

None of the increases were sufficient to convince statisticians that there is a real upward trend. But when the agency analyzed the numbers for The Post, statisticians found that every measure of sexual activity passed the statistical test for having leveled off between 2001 and 2007 and the condom use numbers passed the test for leveling off beginning in 2003.

“The longer any trend exists, the more confident we can be in it,” said Laura K. Kann, who heads the project at the CDC.

While the data indicates we’re on the precipice of an alarming trend, it would be inappropriate to call it conclusive. Then again, that is the exact type of opening that abstinence-only proponents are seeking. Those opposed to comprehensive sex education and contraception remain rigidly attached to their religious ideology and every effort is made to interpret the data such that it supports their preferred methods of sex education.

In other words, all data is open to manipulation because they aren’t working towards the verification or nullification of a reasoned hypothesis. On the contrary, they conclude that the science is simply a tool to be massaged so that it matches their unwavering moral imperative.

An example would be helpful. Not long ago, a similar report stated that one in four teenage girls had contracted a sexually transmitted disease. The alarming number garnered ample attention as both sides of the issue sought to draw conclusions. The following excerpts are from those who sought to downplay the data…those who didn’t want the data to be a tool in discrediting abstinence-only education.

From The National Journal:

But how useful or valid is that one-in-four number? Are 25 percent of America’s teenage girls really in imminent danger from HIV/AIDS, gonorrhea, and the human papilloma virus (HPV) that leads to cervical cancer?

A close examination of the CDC’s star statistic reveals several serious shortcomings that undermine its validity, as well as its usefulness to parents, legislators, health officials, and advocacy groups on the left and the right.

[…] The CDC’s study referred to “infections,” but most biological infections never turn into diseases; the body suppresses them before symptoms appear. This conflation of disease and infection was commonplace, in part because the headline on the CDC press release said, “1 in 4 Teenage Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease.”

Other problems were numerous.

• The infections referred to in the study are not the ones that leap to people’s minds when they worry about sexually transmitted diseases. The data excluded the two most-feared diseases, HIV/AIDS and syphilis. The most common infection was from HPV, which can have serious consequences but in the vast majority of cases disappears on its own.

• The focus on “teenagers” covers a broad age range, from those who are 14 (only 13 percent of whom have had sexual intercourse, according to other studies) to women of 18 and 19 (70 percent of whom have had sex before their 19th birthday). CDC officials declined to describe to National Journal the infection rates in each of the two-year age groupings, even though they have the data.

• The one-in-four number was culled from a complex database that included only several hundred women under age 20. The finding carries a large margin of error, and critics won’t be able to review the study until it gets published in a peer-reviewed journal next year, at the earliest. CDC officials initially said that 838 girls and women participated in the survey. The data for the one-in-four number, however, came from a smaller core group of 615.

Perhaps most critical, the CDC’s March 11 news conference, and the materials distributed there, failed to put the numbers into historical context. Other CDC research shows that infection rates for most serious sexual diseases, including syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, are sharply below 1990 levels–syphilis reached a historic low in 2000. The CDC’s tests showed that none of the 18- and 19-year-old women in the study were infected with HIV or syphilis, but officials did not mention this success in the press release. Teenagers’ exposure to STDs has also dropped because their sexual activity declined from 1998 to 2002. The decline was 20 percent among girls, and 40 percent among boys, according to the CDC report, “Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing, 2002,” last updated in March 2006.

Where to begin?! As I understand it, the difference between infection and disease isn’t the colossal oversight cited above. Yes, the body frequently overcomes an active infection such that the symptoms abate…but with HPV…one of the more concerning infections, the abatement of symptoms does not constitute the removal of the viral infection. In fact, a positive test for HPV exposure means that the individual (particularly women) will be vulnerable to cervical cancer at any point in the future. Think of it like a fever blister (cold sore). Once an individual has been exposed to the virus, it may remain dormant for extended periods of time but the exposure is still a threat to future health.

So here’s the thing. Those seeking to undermine this data would have their followers believe that since HPV’s symptoms (warts are typical) are often controlled without treatment, the infection doesn’t rise to the level of concern reserved for other STD’s that usually worsen in the absence of treatment (HIV, syphilis, and gonorrhea).

Their rationale may make sense to the average parent but it is devoid of a proper assessment of the long term implications of HPV. Yes, these other three STD’s frequently require aggressive treatment, and left unattended can have dire and rapid consequences, but the fact that HPV doesn’t function in the same manner isn’t comparatively relevant. HPV may abate without treatment…but it may also kill at some point in the future. Hence the effort to distinguish between infection and disease is intellectually dishonest.

As if that weren’t enough selective reasoning, these same apologists then pivot to suggest that a larger proportion of those infected were 18 and 19 year olds. That is an accurate observation but it is also an incomplete assessment. Logic tells us that the longer an individual is sexually active…and failing to practice safe sex methods…the more likely one is to eventually be infected. Therefore, extrapolating that the frequency of infection in younger girls is no reason for alarm ignores the fact that they are likely engaged in sexual practices that may eventually lead to infection.

To prove the argument they’re making, one would have to assume that 18 and 19 year old girls suddenly abandon abstinence while also beginning to engage in unsafe sexual activity. The likelihood that both actions appear simultaneously and virtually spontaneously simply doesn’t comport with human nature. In other words, making the the correlation of infection with a higher age the lynchpin of an argument that younger girls aren’t at risk necessarily ignore the activities that are required to result in the frequency of eventual infections in older girls. The truth of the matter is that sex must be happening in younger girls and it is likely performed with an inconsistent use of appropriate protection.

The purpose of this example was to illustrate the willingness to adapt the data to fit the ideology. The resistance to abandoning the principle of abstinence is so strong that those in favor of it are willing to distort the interpretation of the data as well engage in sustained self-deceit. As such, the example supports my contention.

Returning to my initial musing, one begins to see the world as it would exist if the ideologues were handed the reigns. Unfortunately, I doubt the deception would stop regardless of the disastrous outcomes that could be expected or predicted if science was properly respected. Instead, in a typical display of religious righteousness, I would expect that disease and death would be met with moral judgments…leaving science to function in a role that is subservient to the pursuit of ideological purity.

That leads me to the second article on the ongoing battle to introduce intelligent design (creationism) into the science curriculum in our schools. Having failed to successfully repackage creationism as intelligent design, the anti-evolutionists have adopted a successor strategy with a newly launched linguistic sleight of hand.

From The New York Times:

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.

” ‘Strengths and weaknesses’ are regular words that have now been drafted into the rhetorical arsenal of creationists,” said Kathy Miller, director of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that promotes religious freedom.

The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase “is subterfuge for bringing in creationism.”

“Why in the world would anybody not want to include weaknesses?” Dr. McLeroy said.

Evolution as a principle is not disputed in the scientific mainstream, where the term “theory” does not mean a hunch, but an explanation backed by abundant observation, and where gaps in knowledge are not seen as grounds for doubt but points for future understanding. Over time, research has strengthened the basic tenets of evolution, especially as advances in molecular genetics have allowed biologists to read the history recorded in the DNA of animals and plants.

Yet playing to the American sense of fairness, lawmakers across the country have tried to require that classrooms be open to all views. The Discovery Institute has provided a template for legislators to file “academic freedom” bills, and they have been popping up with increasing frequency in statehouses across the country.

Again, these efforts demonstrate the diligence that is displayed by those intent on adapting science to support religious speculations. Should these individuals ever achieve the political authority they seek, I not only fear they’re willingness to adapt science; I wouldn’t be surprised to see a concerted effort to ablate large swaths of it…regardless of the degree of substantiation it may hold.

In the end, I find it ironic that these purveyors of unpalatable ideology are as invasive as the infections they seek to ignore. At the same time, they embrace beliefs that emanate from the writings of men that pale in comparison to the scientists they seek to discredit. The mere existence of the Bible…absent a scintilla of the evidence that they insist be provided to support science…is sufficient for them to engage in an unyielding effort to conform the enlightened present to the unproven past.

They demand that the fossil record contain every chronological component in order to acknowledge the validity of the theory of evolution while at the same time accepting on faith the existence of each and every character, concept, and construct contained in the Bible.

I rue the day that these bellicose bloviators ever achieve the authority they envision. While they may believe their actions are in keeping with the instructions of an all knowing creator, I think it only fair to demand they provide the same level of evidence they insist be supplied by science. After all, why should I embrace their holier than thou hypothesis on any lesser terms?

Tracking the trackers

As people increasingly rely on the Internet to deliver downloadable music, movies, and television, content producers are faced with the problem of increasing Internet piracy. To protect their content, copyright holders police the Internet, searching for unauthorized distribution of their work on websites like YouTube or peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. When infringement is (allegedly) discovered, formal complaints are issued to network operators that may result in websites being taken down or home Internet connections being disabled.

Although the implications of being accused of copyright infringement are significant, very little is known about the methods used by enforcement agencies to detect it, particularly in P2P networks. We have conducted the first scientific, experimental study of monitoring and copyright enforcement on P2P networks and have made several discoveries which we find surprising.

• Practically any Internet user can be framed for copyright infringement today.
  By profiling copyright enforcement in the popular BitTorrent file sharing system, we were able to generate hundreds of real DMCA takedown notices for computers at the University of Washington that never downloaded nor shared any content whatsoever.

  Further, we were able to remotely generate complaints for nonsense devices including several printers and a (non-NAT) wireless access point. Our results demonstrate several simple techniques that a malicious user could use to frame arbitrary network endpoints.

• Even without being explicitly framed, innocent users may still receive complaints.
  Because of the inconclusive techniques used to identify infringing BitTorrent users, users may receive DMCA complaints even if they have not been explicitly framed by a malicious user and even if they have never used P2P software!
• Software packages designed to preserve the privacy of P2P users are not completely effective.
  To avoid DMCA complaints today, many privacy conscious users employ IP blacklisting software designed to avoid communication with monitoring and enforcement agencies. We find that this software often fails to identify many likely monitoring agents, but we also discover that these agents exhibit characteristics that make distinguishing them straightforward.

While our experiments focus on BitTorrent only, our findings imply the need for increased transparency in the monitoring and enforcement process for all P2P networks to both address the known deficiencies we have exposed as well as to identify lurking unknown deficiencies.

More details about our findings and our experimental methodology are available in our online FAQ. A more thorough treatment is available in our technical report.

Paper

Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks –or– Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice [ pdf ]

Michael Piatek, Tadayoshi Kohno, Arvind Krishnamurthy
Technical report #08-6-01, University of Washington, Department of Computer Science & Engineering.

Drive 1,000 Miles or Feed a Person for a Year? The Biofuels Dilemma

Can the pumping of ethanol into American fuel tanks really make it harder for parents to feed their families?

With hungry, angry people taking to the streets in countries on every continent -- from Morocco to Mexico and Pakistan to the Philippines, and at least 20 other nations -- the biofuel debate is clearly moving into new territory.

Arguments for and against using crops to make fuel are no longer focusing on energy ratios or "independence from foreign oil" or feel-good environmentalism. The headlines today are about people needing food to eat -- and right now.

Politicians who once supported biofuel expansion are now backpedaling fast in the face of irate grocery shoppers in this country and an increase in hunger across the planet. Representative James McGovern, D-Mass., was one of the first national lawmakers to raise alarms about the impact of grain-based biofuels on food prices, telling the New York Times last month, "If there was a secret vote [in Congress], there is a pretty large number of people who would like to reassess what we are doing." Now 24 Republican members of Congress, citing high food prices, have come out into the open to urge a retreat from the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which mandates rapid increases in biofuel production.

State officials across the country are also looking to bail out of the biofuel rush. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has formally requested that the federal government relax biofuel requirements imposed on his state. Also responding to runaway food costs, the Missouri legislature is considering a rollback of its own recently passed law requiring that gasoline must be mixed with a minimum percentage of ethanol.

Filling gas tanks or plates?

The agriculture lobby has legendary clout in Washington, so current biofuel targets, along with heavy subsidies that keep the industry alive, will stay in place for now. The 2008 farm bill, which has entered the homestretch in Congress, cuts the corn-ethanol subsidy by only 6 cents, to 45 cents per gallon, while the subsidy for the "next generation" of ethanol (to be made from grass, straw, and other cellulosic materials) will rise to more than a dollar a gallon. To soften the rapid food-price inflation that's expected to result, the new law will increase food aid to lower-income Americans.

Perhaps the starkest measure of the car culture's energy appetite is the fact that the state of Iowa, the nation's leading corn producer, will soon be importing corn. If a meteorite were to land randomly in Iowa, there's a 35 percent chance it would land in a cornfield; Iowa's corn harvest last year contained more calories than the state's human population would consume in 85 years of eating; yet Iowa will be hauling corn in from other states. The grain will be fed to a multitude of new fuel-ethanol factories, along with the state's existing corn syrup and livestock industries.

The world is learning fast that when fuel demand competes with food needs for the sun's energy, it's not a fair fight. The energy contained in the gasoline that fills a typical SUV's tank contains approximately the same number of calories as are required in the annual diet of one adult. Or, rather than picking on SUVs, consider the energy burned by a Prius hybrid on a trip from San Francisco to San Diego and back. That would also feed a person for a year.

Measured in energy units like kilocalories, world demand for liquid fuels (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and now biofuels) is currently more than six times the global demand for food. In energy terms, fuel demand will shoot up three times as fast as food demand between now and 2030.

But such comparisons don't prove cause-and-effect. Can the pumping of ethanol into American fuel tanks really make it harder for parents in Yemen or Indonesia to feed their families?

An ethanol industry-funded group called the New Fuels Alliance doesn't think so. In its briefing paper entitled "Fuel vs. Food: No Conflict" (pdf), the group insists (reviving the old Cold War term for less powerful nations) that "Third world food shortages are largely due to political and social issues such as poverty, government corruption, and inefficient distribution ... Corn prices have little impact on food availability in the Third World ... Food availability per capita is at an historic high."

That last claim is simply wrong. A close look shows that it was based on data from the late 1980s and early 1990s. The amount of food available per person has been falling steadily since that time; agriculture is not keeping up with humanity's nutritional needs and is now being asked to fill the tanks of vehicles as well.

Nevertheless, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer told a recent International Food Aid Conference in Kansas City, "Higher [fossil] energy prices are the biggest factor in pushing up food prices." He stressed, "Biofuels are a factor, but not the factor." President Bush reiterated his strong, if grammatically shaky, support for biofuels in a recent speech: "As you know, I'm a ethanol person." He has rejected the Republican lawmakers' call for restraint and blamed food inflation on people in India who, he believes, are eating too much.

Most experts agree that, indeed, several factors have converged to intensify the food crisis. But in a very recent report, the World Bank left no doubt where greatest responsibility for the current food emergency lies. The report's authors dispensed with two commonly cited reasons for high prices, stating, "Droughts in Australia and poor crops in the European Union and Ukraine were largely offset by good crops and increased exports in other countries," and "only a relatively small share of the increase in food production prices (around 15 percent) is due directly to higher energy and fertilizer costs."

The bottom line for the World Bank? "Increased bio-fuel production has contributed to the rise in food prices... Almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to 2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for biofuels production in the U.S."

How price shocks get from here to there

As economists debate the theory of "price transmission" -- for example, the effect of rising corn prices in Iowa on the price of wheat in Egypt -- the real-world data are coming in, and they show that the economic, physical, and biological links between biofuels and food can reach effortlessly across the planet.

In late 2006 to early 2007, the Mexican livestock industry was hit hard by the rising price of imported U.S. yellow corn (which is not eaten by people but goes to produce meat, eggs, corn syrup for soft drinks, and, increasingly, fuel ethanol.) Domestic white corn, a food staple in Mexico used mostly to make tortillas, was cheaper and was being diverted to animal feedlots. The resulting scarcity and high prices led to widespread unrest.

The Chinese government has forbidden the use of traditional cropland for biofuel production. But demand for biofuels is rising in the the world's largest nation, so, according to reports, "China is looking for [biofuel] feedstock production opportunities outside its borders, [in] Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines" -- a development that could hit food production hard in those countries. China reportedly has a keen interest in ethanol from cassava as well. To get enough cassava, a starchy root crop that keeps some of the world's poorest subsistence farmers alive, China would have to import it from countries that are already struggling to produce enough food.

Farmers have been forced off their good cropland in oil-rich Indonesia and Colombia to make way for oil-palm plantations. U.N. investigator Jean Ziegler has documented the coerced or forced eviction of subsistence farmers in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, which is occurring with the encouragement or even collusion of soy agribusiness interests (pdf). Rising demand for biodiesel will put even more pressure on South American farm families who grow food crops, according to forecasts.

Before the recent devastating cyclone hit them, the farmers of Burma were already staggering under a government mandate to grow the shrub Jatropha curcas for biodiesel production, and rice production was taking a hit.

Food activists have long argued that so-called "dumping" by the United States and other nations -- that is, selling surplus grain cheaply on the world market -- drives down prices that farmers receive in poorer countries, pushes them off their land and distorts agricultural production. Now, says the New Fuels Alliance, "as the U.S. ethanol market absorbs grain surpluses that would otherwise be dumped on the international market, small Third World farmers have a better chance of staying in business."

But a recent survey by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington (IFPRI) casts doubt on that happy prediction. Looking at who buys and sells food in the markets of Bolivia, Bangladesh, Zambia and Ethiopia (countries all currently suffering food shocks), IFPRI found that while only 1 percent to 4 percent of food is sold by poor farmers, 10 percent to 22 percent of food is sold to the poor people of those countries (pdf). The conclusion: Many more hungry people stand to lose than to gain from higher prices.

Estimates are that each 1 percent rise in the price of staple foods (in excess of "normal" inflation) will subject 16 million additional people to hunger. IFPRI projects, "If biofuel production undergoes a drastic increase, calorie availability in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to fall by more than 8 percent, and the number of malnourished children in the region is projected to increase by 3 million [by 2020]."

As major world crops are drawn into the energy market (in which prices are twice as volatile as in the food market), it appears that other staple foods are being pulled in with them. Noting that in the world's poorest regions, people can spend 50 percent to 80 percent of their income on food, economists C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota warn, "When one staple becomes more expensive, people try to replace it with a cheaper one, but if the prices of nearly all staples go up, they are left with no alternative."

IFPRI predicts that the sheer quantity of food available will drop by 5 percent to 8 percent in Latin America, South Asia and Africa if biofuels are aggressively pursued. Were food consumption to shrink by a similar percentage in the United States, it might actually be a good thing, but in regions where many millions are already malnourished, it could be a death sentence, says IFPRI.

The cash crop trap

Cash crops -- including sugarcane, coffee, cotton, lumber -- have a long track record of crippling nations' ability to feed themselves. Energy crops grown in the tropics are projected to follow in that cash-crop tradition. Brazil provides a key example. Hailed as a leader in alternative fuels, Brazil has based its ethanol industry on sugarcane, and that, according to labor groups, has only perpetuated the exploitation that always attends the growing of that crop.

The country's Landless Workers' Movement has condemned a national policy of encouraging sugarcane production for ethanol on big estates and even on lands being resettled under agrarian reform. Cane cutters are paid not by the hour but by the quantity they cut, and, writes the Movement, "This situation has serious implications for the health of workers and has caused the death of workers through fatigue and the excessive labor that requires cutting up to 20 tons per day. The majority of contracts are through third-party intermediaries or 'gatos' [so] formal work contracts do not exist."

Another way in which biofuel production could make food more scarce in the near future is by driving up demand for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Lavish quantities are needed to achieve high Midwestern corn yields, but synthetic nitrogen is even more essential to the life of many poor nations. If farming depended solely on naturally occurring nitrogen fertility, the planet's cropped acreage could feed only about 50 percent of today's human population.

In corn fields and rice paddies across the global south, farmers pace back and forth with panfuls of commercial fertilizer, metering out the precious granules by the handful. Meanwhile in America's Corn Belt, big farm implements stuff more nitrogen into the soil than the soil can hold or crops can absorb. As natural gas (the chief input for making nitrogen fertilizer) becomes even more expensive and the world market decides who gets access to costly nitrogen, it will be ethanol cropping -- whether it's with corn, switchgrass or other nitrogen-hungry species -- that goes straight to the head of the line.

The Worldwatch Institute's Lester Brown has been talking for months now about "competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists and its 2 billion poorest people who are simply trying to survive." The competition for nitrogen is forecast to be just as sharp, with the wealthier motorists favored to win.

Undercutting future harvests?

More than a century of research, on top of millennia of experience, show that cropping of annual plants like wheat, rice, corn and soybeans inevitably degrades soil (see this review in Scientific American). It is estimated that almost 5 billion acres -- 15 percent of the planet's entire land surface -- is now subject to human-caused soil degradation, mostly from agriculture.

On this continent, two developments have helped reduce soil loss by one-third over the past two decades: adoption of so-called "no-till" methods for reducing soil erosion and congressional passage of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to take the most erodable land out of production altogether and sow it to mixtures of native grasses and other plants. The CRP accounts for a much bigger reduction in soil loss than does no-till, but both have helped.

Biofuels now threaten to undermine future food production by reversing hard-won progress against soil degradation. First, the high price of biofuel crops is leading farmers to withdraw millions of acres from the CRP and put them back into cultivation. That will reduce the useful lifetime of those soils, which need permanent perennial vegetation. Second, as soon as methods for producing ethanol from cellulose have been employed on a large scale, crop "residues" -- the dry stems and leaves left on the ground after harvest -- will be collected and hauled off to biofuel plants.

A U.S. Department of Energy/Department of Agriculture blueprint (pdf) for supplanting just 30 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption with biofuels would not only consume vast quantities of intensively cropped grain but would also strip 75 percent of crop residues from the soil after harvest. That will further deplete the organic-matter content of farm soils. Concern is also rising that stepped-up depletion and pollution of water resources by corn destined for ethanol plants will undercut America's capacity to produce food in the future.

Future food supplies elsewhere in the world also depend on intact, healthy ecosystems, and those appear to be under threat. In a recent Time cover story, Michael Grunwald described the "chain reaction" that has accelerated deforestation in the Amazon basin: "U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon. It's the remorseless economics of commodities markets." Indonesia and Malaysia face a similar crisis, with oil palm plantations displacing rainforests in order to supply biofuels for Europe.

The bottom line on the food crisis was summed up in a May 6 commentary by Barry Coates, executive director of Oxfam New Zealand, in which he reminded the world that "even without the current food crisis, over 850 million people do not have enough to eat. Now many more face a similar fate."

Meanwhile India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has articulated an ethical bottom line: "As citizens of the world, we ought to be concerned about growing food and converting it into fuel [to meet] lopsided priorities of certain countries. It is the most foolish thing that humanity can do."

The ethanol and biodiesel industries have struggled for decades to overcome technological, biological and political obstacles. Now, just as the biofuel express gathers some real momentum, the prospect of worldwide hunger could derail it for good.

Top Ten Signs We Finally Have an Anti-Torture President

10) The President goes waterskiing instead of waterboarding.

—Jill – Redding, Connecticut

9) Grand opening of the "Sandals Guantanamo Bay Beach Resort".

—James - South Orange, New Jersey

8) "Stress Positions" are only for Corporate CEOs, and the phrase "torture memo" refers only to long, painfully boring email sent by superiors.

—Janis - Sunland, California and Megan - Rohnert Park, California

7) "Enhanced interrogation techniques" now defined as ordinary techniques filmed in HD.

—Megan - Rohnert Park, California

6) The phrase "Extraordinary Rendition" now used to describe American Idol performances.

—Joseph - San Diego, California

5) Jack Bauer starts acting more like his brother, Eddie.

—Travis and Benjamin - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

4) "Secret detention" means not telling your parents you had detention.

—James - South Orange, New Jersey

3) Calling Geneva Conventions "quaint" now seen as quaint.

—Megan - Rohnert Park, California

2) "I can finally stop wearing my 'Who Would Jesus Torture?' bracelet."

—Sarah – New York, New York

1) Superman no longer having to fight for truth, justice and the Canadian way.

—Edward - Los Angeles, California

How Our Sexuality Is Being Restricted One Bad Law at a Time

By Dr. Marty Klein, AlterNet

With anxiety and anger about sexuality reaching a noisy crescendo, Congress members and state legislators are responding with laws that placate the mob du jour -- laws restricting sexual expression that have little chance of surviving even the lightest Constitutional scrutiny.

For example, Congress has passed law after law attempting to rid the Internet of pornography. Texas recently passed a law requiring strip clubs to pay a special tax of $5 per head (no jokes, please). This spring, Indiana passed a law requiring vendors of "sexually explicit" materials to register with the state and pay a $250 fee.

But every federal law censoring the Internet has been derailed by a court. The Texas law was overturned by their Supreme Court just two months ago. The Indiana law, you can be sure, will be overturned before Labor Day.

All because of "activist judges." You know what an "activist judge" is -- a judge who decides that a law you like happens to be illegal. And more often than not, that illegal law concerns sex.

Most people understand that Congress can't pass a law reinstituting slavery -- and that if it did, a court would overturn it. Similarly, most Americans understand that their state legislature can't authorize murder, or require all its residents to eat beef to qualify for a driver's license.

Unfortunately, most Americans can't actually explain why certain laws cannot be established, no matter how much the public supports those laws.

The explanation is that we live by a set of rules -- the Constitution and its Bill of Rights -- that elected officials simply cannot violate, even when implementing the people's will.

Unfortunately, many Americans think their representatives should be allowed to trample these Constitutional rules when they're upset about sex. Sexual danger. Sexual fear. Sex panics break out, the people moo loudly. The Republic's in danger: there's a nipple on TV. Teens are getting birth control. There are lesbians in the Army. Sexuality is considered a public health menace, and many people want tough (albeit illegal) laws to battle the epidemic.

Legislators acquiesce, passing laws in response that break the larger, Constitutional rules.

When these laws are successfully challenged, counties and states face huge legal bills (Florida's municipalities spent over $10,000,000 last year fighting for bans on strip clubs, thong bikinis, adult bookstores, and the like), and everyone's time is wasted. But legislators win big even when their laws are losers.

"Don't blame me," they tell the angry electorate, "I voted for a law you demanded that would protect our children, but those snooty judges decided you citizens couldn't have the laws you asked us to pass. You might as well live in Russia."

This is legislative cowardice. Most lawmakers are lawyers. They can generally guess which new laws won't stand up. They vote for the laws anyway, watch them (predictably) get overturned, then blame the courts, the ACLU, and "liberal" plaintiffs (bookstores, strip clubs, a student who simply wanted birth control). Doing this with "porn," for example, has been good for many legislators' careers; Kansas Senator Brownback and California state senator Calderon, for example, both made their political fortunes from violating their oath of office.

Passing popular but constitutionally suspect laws can also be part of a testing process. If a questionable law survives a state court challenge, allied sponsors try to get them passed elsewhere (a popular strategy with laws restricting abortion). If a law is overturned, sponsors attempt to learn from the experience, reshaping the law and trying it elsewhere. This has been popular with theo-conservative legal groups like the American Center for Law & Justice and the Community Defense Council, who promote model ordinances designed to eliminate adult entertainment and to diminish church-state separation.

Americans frightened about sex and angry about "activist courts" need a civics lesson: what exactly is the role of our courts, and why do they sometimes challenge or negate the obvious will of the majority?

The answer is a 2,000-year-old concept called the Separation of Powers. A centerpiece of American government, we didn't invent it -- the Romans had it in their constitution. This revolutionary idea gives an independent judiciary responsibility for reviewing laws made by an executive or legislative branch. Under this system, courts are mandated to judge whether individual laws break the ultimate law -- the Constitutional rules of the legal system itself.

Not everyone thinks this is a good idea. Some opponents reject the idea that the majority's will can be wrong. Other opponents dislike the idea that a minority (say, a religious or ethnic group) has institutionalized rights distinct from those granted it by the majority.

Proponents of the system believe that the Separation of Powers protects democracy and prevents tyranny.

So hey America, democracy does not mean the majority can create any laws they want. It means they can pass any laws they want within our Constitution's wonderful, far-sighted limits. Democracy is not three wolves and a lamb voting on who gets eaten for dinner.

Legal analyst Mark Kernes notes that our Constitution doesn't deal with morality -- it only deals with rights and privileges. "And morality often conflicts with rights and privileges," he notes. Morality says 'you may currently have the right to do X, but you shouldn't do X.' But in relying on morality for governance, however, some people then make the leap that if you shouldn't do X, you shouldn't have the right to do X. Contemporary examples include virtually anything relating to sexual expression: abortion, pornography, "sex words" on TV, swingers' clubs, productions of The Vagina Monologues.

That kind of thinking leads to exactly the kind of laws that will be overturned by a clear-thinking court.

Many Americans are too civically immature to understand that their alarm, anxiety, and anger about sex do not justify suspending the Constitution. Predictably, they also get the lawmakers they deserve. These elected charlatans pander to their constituents' fear, pretend to do something efficacious, and when it predictably fails Constitutional scrutiny, argue "hey, I tried to do what you wanted, but due to a flaw in the system, we both end up victims."

California Chief Justice George, of course, sees the opposite: "Basically, it comes down to the question of when is a judge shirking his or her responsibility by not acting," he said about his decision to overturn California's ban on same-gender marriage.

No, judges overturning bad laws isn't a flaw in the system; it's the success of the system.

The adult fruits of democracy require that people be able to comfort themselves when their emotions want something their political system can't -- and shouldn't -- provide. And with the continuing polarization of the country (many people no longer believe there's such a thing as objective news), Americans are finding it harder to imagine objective judges. This makes it especially good for the nation that so many recent decisions with progressive impacts (California's gay marriage ban, Lawrence v. Texas, Internet censorship) were issued by conservative Republican judges.

It's good for the nation because too many people now suspect ideological motives when judges overturn popular laws. James Dobson, Phil Burress, Robert Peters, and other conservative leaders consciously encourage this awful notion. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, for example, ludicrously says "The federal courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, have systematically attacked Christianity." By undermining faith in our judiciary, he is undermining democracy in America.

But because Perkins and other policy conservatives complain about sex-related issues, they get a free pass on their civic crime.

Too many decision-makers, and the mass media that support them, seem to feel that no law is too extreme if it addresses Americans' anxiety or anger about sexuality. As this anxiety and anger increase, so do the number and intensity of the laws passed in response: the punitive, fear-mongering Adam Walsh law; restrictions on fantasy online conversations; bribes to public libraries that would censor their computers; record-keeping laws for porn distributors that no hospital, car company, or nursery school would ever be expected to meet.

The courts have protected Americans from their own frightened, bloodthirsty demands by ruling against various state, federal, and local laws restricting sexual behavior, education, health, and speech.

But not nearly enough of these laws have been nullified as unconstitutional. Because America simply doesn't have enough "activist" judges to go around.

Military Doctors Withholding Treatment from Soldiers with Mental Health Problems

By Maggie Mahar, Health Beat

Since 9/11, one Army division has spent more time in Iraq than any other group of soldiers: the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, New York.

Over the past 6 years and and six months, their 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) has been the most deployed brigade in the army. As of this month, the brigade had completed its fourth tour of Iraq. All in all, the soldiers of BCT have spent 40 months in Iraq.

At what cost? According to a February 13 report issued by the Veterans for America's (VFA) Wounded Warrior Outreach Program, which is dedicated to strengthening the military mental health system, it is not just their bodies that have been maimed and, in some cases, destroyed. Many of these soldiers are suffering from severe mental health problems that have led to suicide attempts as well as spousal abuse and alcoholism.

Meanwhile, the soldiers of the 2nd BCT have been given too little time off in between deployments: In one case they had only six months to mentally "re-set"; following an eight-month tour in Afghanistan -- before beginning a 12-month tour in Iraq.

Then, in April 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decided to extend Army tours in Iraq from 12 to 15 months -- shortly after the BCT had passed what it assumed was its halfway mark in Iraq.

As the VFA report points out, "Mental health experts have explained that 'shifting the goalposts' on a soldier's deployment period greatly contributes to an increase in mental health problems."

Perhaps it should not come as a surprise that, during its most recent deployment, the 2nd BCT suffered heavy casualties. "Fifty-two members of the 2nd BCT were killed in action (KIA)," the VFA reports and "270 others were listed as non-fatality casualties, while two members of the unit remain missing in action (MIA)."

This level of losses is unusual. "On their most recent deployment," the VFA report notes, "members of the 2nd BCT were more than five times as likely to be killed as others who have been deployed to OEF and OIF and more than four times likely to be wounded." One can only wonder to what degree depression and other mental health problems made them more vulnerable to attack.

When they finally returned to Fort Drum, these soldiers faced winter conditions that the report describes as "dreary, with snow piled high and spring still months away. More than a dozen soldiers reported low morale, frequent DUI arrests, and rising AWOL, spousal abuse, and rates of attempted suicide. Soldiers also reported that given the financial realities of the Army, some of their fellow soldiers had to resort to taking second jobs such as delivering pizzas to supplement their family income."

What has the army done to help the soldiers at Fort Drum? Too little.

In recent months, VFA reports, it has been contacted by a number of soldiers based at Fort Drum who are concerned about their own mental health and the health of other members of their units. In response, VFA launched an investigation of conditions at Fort Drum, and what it found was shocking.

Soldiers told the VFA that "the leader of the mental health treatment clinic at Fort Drum asked soldiers not to discuss their mental health problems with people outside the base. Attempts to keep matters 'in house' foster an atmosphere of secrecy and shame," the report observed "that is not conducive to proper treatment for combat-related mental health injuries."

The investigators also discovered that "some military mental health providers have argued that a number of soldiers fake mental health injuries to increase the likelihood that they will be deemed unfit for combat and/or for further military service."

The report notes that a "conversation with a leading expert in treating combat psychological wounds" confirmed "that some military commanders at Fort Drum doubt the validity of mental health wounds in some soldiers, thereby undermining treatment prescribed by civilian psychiatrists" at the nearby Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, NY.

"In the estimation of this expert, military commanders have undue influence in the treatment of soldiers with psychological wounds," the report noted. "Another point of general concern for VFA is that Samaritan also has a strong financial incentive to maintain business ties with Fort Drum -- a dynamic [that] deserves greater scrutiny."

Because some soldiers do not trust Samaritan, the report reveals that a number of "soldiers have sought treatment after normal base business hours at a hospital in Syracuse, more than an hour's drive from Watertown ... because they feared that Samaritan would side with base leadership, which had, in some cases, cast doubt on the legitimacy of combat-related mental health wounds.

"In one case," the report continued, "after a suicidal soldier was taken to a Syracuse hospital, he was treated there for a week, indicating that his mental health concerns were legitimate. Unfortunately, mental health officials at Fort Drum had stated that they did not believe this soldier's problems were bona fide."

According to the VFA, the problem of military doctors refusing to back soldiers with mental health problems is widespread: "VFA's work across the country has confirmed that soldiers often need their doctors to be stronger advocates for improved treatment by their commanders and comrades. For instance, soldiers need doctors who are willing to push back against commanders who doubt the legitimacy of combat-related mental health injuries."

While talking to soldiers at Fort Drum, VFA also discovered "considerable stigma against mental health treatment within the military and pressure within some units to deny mental health problems as a result of combat.

Some soldiers who had been in the military for more than a decade stated that they lied on mental health questionnaires for fear that if they disclosed problems, it would reduce their likelihood of being promoted."

Soldiers at Fort Drum are not alone. In an earlier report titled "Trends in Treatment of America's Wounded Warriors" VFA disclosed that leaders of the military mental health treatment system have been warning Department of Defense leadership of the magnitude of the mental health crisis that is brewing.

A report by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team (MHAT) that was released last May found that the percentage of soldiers suffering "severe stress, emotional, alcohol or family problem[s]" had risen more than 85 percent since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. MHAT also found that 28 percent of soldiers who had experienced high-intensity combat were screening positive for acute stress (i.e., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD).

Finally, MHAT disclosed that soldiers who had been deployed more than once were 60 percent more likely to screen positive for acute stress (i.e., PTSD) when compared to soldiers on their first deployment.

VFA's most recent report notes points out that, despite these warnings, soldiers at Fort Drum do not have access to the care they need: "More than six years after large-scale military operations began in Afghanistan and, later, in Iraq, a casual observer might assume that programs would have been implemented to ensure access for Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division to mental health services on base. Unfortunately, an investigation by VFA has revealed that [soldiers] who recently returned from Iraq must wait for up to two months before a single appointment can be scheduled ...

"Given the great amount of public attention that has been focused on the psychological needs of returning service members, a casual observer might also assume that these needs would have been given a higher priority by Army leaders and the National Command Authority -- the two entities with the greatest responsibility for ensuring the strength of our Armed Forces. These needs have long been acknowledged but," the report concludes " there has been insufficient action."

Last month the army tried putting a band-aid on the problems at Fort Drum by sending three Army psychiatrists from Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) to the Fort D on a temporary basis to treat the large influx of returning soldiers requiring mental health care. But, as the VFA points out, "this is only a temporary fix", as the Walter Reed-based psychiatrists will likely return to Washington, DC, within a few weeks.

Fort Drum will again be left with the task of treating thousands of soldiers with far too few mental health specialists. In addition, for those service members who were initially treated by psychiatrists from Walter Reed, their care will suffer from discontinuity, as their cases will be assigned a new mental health professional on subsequent visits."

And the war drags on. Earlier this month, the UK Times reported that "the conservative Washington think tank that devised the "surge" of US forces in Iraq [the American Enterprise Institute] now has come up with a plan to send 12,000 more American troops into southern Afghanistan.

A panel of more than 20 experts convened by the (AEI) has also urged the administration to get tough with Pakistan. "The US should threaten to attack Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters in lawless areas on the border with Afghanistan if the Pakistan military did not deal with them itself, the panel concluded."

Where do conservatives expect to find those troops?

More soldiers are likely to suffer the fate of the soldiers at Fort Drum. They will be sent back to combat, again and again -- until finally, they break. Soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression or a host of other mental problems are not in a good position to protect themselves. Sending them back only guarantees that fatalities will rise.