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National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
natassembly.org

Dear Antiwar Activists,

You are invited to attend a special Bay Area meeting of antiwar activists who support or want to learn more about the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation. The meeting is set for:

Saturday, May 17, 2:00 P.M.
ILWU Local 6 Hall
255 Ninth Street, near Howard, San Francisco

The National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation (website: natassembly.org) is planning an open national antiwar conference in Cleveland, Ohio on June 28-29 at the Crown Plaza Hotel.

To date almost 450 local, state and national organizations and prominent individuals have endorsed this first open antiwar conference. The complete list is on the website as well as the conference statement of purpose, schedule, workshops and all the rest.

Conference endorsers include the Cleveland AFL-CIO, the San Francisco and Los Angeles teachers unions, the Progressive Democrats of America, Veterans for Peace, Cindy Sheehan, Howard Zinn, Jonathan Hutto, U.S. Labor Against the War, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles Country Federation of Labor/AFL-CIO, The Iraq Moratorium, Green Party of Ohio, Mumia Abu-Jamal, New England United Against the War, Peace and Freedom Party, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Greater Boston Stop the War Coalition, Ohio State Council/Here/Unite, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee, Thomas Merton Center/Pittsburgh, the ANSWER Coalition, Middle East Children's Alliance, San Jose Peace and Justice Center, National Education Peace and Justice Caucus, Connecticut United for Peace, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement/Sacramento and hundreds of others.

The purpose of the Bay Area meeting is to promote support for and attendance at the Cleveland conference, to update the progress toward a united antiwar movement, and to seek new endorsers for the conference.

The National Assembly was formed as a network aimed at fostering a united, mass action-oriented, independent and democratic antiwar movement to Bring the Troops Home Now.

Speakers at the Cleveland conference include national leaders of the major antiwar coalitions, UFPJ (Leslie Cagan), ANSWER (Brian Becker), Jeremy Scahill, Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, Donna DeWitt, Pres., South Carolina, AFO-CIO, Cindy Sheehan (via satellite hookup) as well as leaders of several of the nation's most prominent antiwar and social justice groups.

The National Assembly was formed as an effort to achieve unity in action among the broad forces in the antiwar movement in order to close the gap between the mass antiwar sentiment and the still modest numbers that actively participate in the movement's activities.

As the Statement of Purpose states:

"We therefore invite everyone, every organization, every coalition, everywhere in the U.S. - all who oppose the war and occupation - to attend an open democratic U.S. national antiwar conference and join with us in advancing and promoting the coming together of an antiwar movement in this country with the power to make a mighty contribution toward ending the war and occupation of Iraq now.

"Everyone is welcome. The objective is to place on the agenda of the entire U.S. antiwar movement a proposal for the largest possible united mass mobilization(s) in the future to stop the war and end the occupation."

The San Francisco meeting is initiated by representatives of the Bay Area groups that participate on the 40-person Coordinating Committee of the National Assembly.

These include:

Paul George, Director, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
Patty Mote, National Network on Cuba
Tom Lacey, Peace and Freedom Party
Alan Benjamin, Executive Board, San Francisco Labor Council
Jeff Mackler, founder, Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice
Todd Chretien, International Socialist Organization
Bill Leumer, Workers International League
Millie Phillips, Socialist Organizer

Join us in Cleveland on June 28-29 for the conference.
Crown Plaza Hotel
Sponsored by the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
P.O. Box 21008; Cleveland, OH 44121; Voice Mail: 216-736-4704; Email: NatAssembly@aol.com

The Call for National Assembly:
http://natassembly.org/thecall/

List of Endorsers:
http://natassembly.org/thecall/

Endorse the conference:
http://natassembly.org/endorse/

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JROTC MUST GO!
Check out the new website:
http://www.jrotcmustgo.blogspot.com/

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NO on state Prop. 98!

San Francisco Tenants Union (415) 282-5525 www.sftu.org

Wealthy landlords and other right-wing operatives placed Prop. 98 on the state ballot. This is a dangerous and deceptive measure. Disguised as an effort to reform eminent domain laws and protect homeowners, Prop. 98 would abolish tenant protections such as rent control and just-cause eviction laws, and would end a number of other environmental protection and land use laws. [The catch is, that while it's true that the landlord can increase rents to whatever he or she wants once a property becomes vacant, the current rent-control law now ensures that the new tenants are still under rent-control for their, albeit higher, rent. Under the new law, there simply will be no rent control when the new tenant moves in so their much higher rent-rate can increase as much as the landlord chooses each year from then on!!! So, no more rent-control at all!!! Tricky, huh?...BW]

SAVE RENT CONTROL! NO ON PROP. 98!
http://leftinsf.com/blog/index.php/archives/2492

We All Hate that 98!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Phrt5zVGn0

READ ALL OF PROP. 98 at: http://yesprop98.com/read/?_adctlid=v%7Cwynx8c5jjesxsb%7Cwziq39twoqov52

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Stop fumigation of citizens without their consent in California
Target: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Joe Simitian, Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Assemblymember John Laird, Senator Abel Maldonado
Sponsored by: John Russo
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-fumigation-of-citizens-without-their-consent-in-california

Additional information is available at http://www.stopthespray.org

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Mumia Abu-Jamal:
Innocent Man on Death Row!
We Accept Nothing Less Than His Freedom!
Sunday, May 18, 2008, 2:00 pm
ILWU Local 6, 255 Ninth Street, near Howard, San Francisco

Hear:

Cynthia McKinney, former Congresswoman from Georgia

Soffiyah Elijah, Deputy Director, Criminal Justice Institute, Harvard Law School. Legal counsel for Sundiata Acoli, Marilyn Buck, Kwame Ture', Nuh Washington and Jihad Abdul-Mumit

Cindy Sheehan, founding member, Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization founded in January 2005 by individuals who lost family members in the U.S. war on Iraq

Walter Turner, Host, Africa Today, Pacifica Radio/KPFA

Jeff Mackler, Director, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Alan Benjamin, Exec. Bd., San Francisco Labor Council

Kali Akuno, Director, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

devorah major & Jack Hirschman, Former Poets Laureate of San Francisco

Mesha Monge Irizarry, Founder, Idriss Stelley Foundation,

Admission $10 sliding scale
Apologies: Bathrooms not wheelchair accessible.

Sponsor: Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, jmackler@lmi.net 510-268-9429. Send contributions to: Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610 Freemumia.org, Tables: $25

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For Immediate Release
UPDATE: SIXTH AL-AWDA CONVENTION TO MARK 60 YEARS OF PALESTINIAN NAKBA
Embassy Suites Hotel Anaheim South, 11767 Harbor Boulevard,
Garden Grove, California, 92840
May 16-18, 2008

The 6th Annual International Al-Awda Convention will mark a devastating event in the long history of the Palestinian people. We call it our Nakba.

Confirmed speakers include Bishop Atallah Hanna, Supreme Justice Dr. Sheikh Taiseer Al Tamimi, Dr. Adel Samara, Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, Dr. Ghada Karmi, Dr. As'ad Abu Khalil, Dr. Saree Makdisi, and Ramzy Baroud. Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Salim El Hos and Palestinian Legislative Council member Khalida Jarrar have also been invited.

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda. org
WWW: http://al-awda. org

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is the largest network of grassroots activists and students dedicated to Palestinian human rights. We are a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible.

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Taking Aim schedule during the WBAI fund drive

Tuesday, May 20
11:00 am to noon and again from 5:00 to 6:00 pm - ET
8:00 to 9:00 am and again from 5:00 to 6:00 pm PT
Each show filled with new information, discussion and an excerpt from our
fund drive premium:
The Collapse of Bear Stearns and the Crisis of Fictive Capital
A riveting 4-part series, $100 donation to WBAI

Tuesday, May 27
5:00 to 6:00 pm Taking Aim contribution to the all-day Nakba special

Your contribution to WBAI supports the station that brings Taking Aim to
you.

Thanks,
Mya

Mya Shone/Ralph Schoenman
Taking Aim
http://www.takingaimradio.com

Contributions to Taking Aim enable us to continue our radio broadcasts,
expand our Internet sites, produce workbooks, pamphlets and books and
organize events. Make your checks payable to: Veritas Press
PO Box 6345, Vallejo, CA 94591

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ARTICLES IN FULL:

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1) 35 Years of Rockefeller Drug Laws, and Hope There Won’t Be 36
By CLYDE HABERMAN
NYC
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/nyregion/13nyc.html?ref=nyregion

2) Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency
By STEPHANIE SAUL
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/13menthol.html?ref=business

3) Many Hispanics Are Hit Hard by Economic Slump
By PETER S. GOODMAN
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/13hispanics.html?ref=business

4) Oil Refiners See Profits Sink as Consumption Falls
By JAD MOUAWAD
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/business/14refine.html?hp

5) Felled mangrove trees may have doomed the coast of Myanmar
Scientific American
May 9, 2008
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=news-bytes-of-the-week-could-coastal

6) Belief in God 'childish,' Jews not chosen people: Einstein letter
May 13, 2008, 08:24 AM US/Eastern
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080513122249.m3ds3b6j&show_article=1

7) Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Thugs
[col. writ. 5/8/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Prisonradio.org

8) Colombia Extradites 14 Paramilitary Leaders
By SIMON ROMERO
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/americas/14colombia.html?ref=world

9) Americans Taking Prescription Drugs in Greater Numbers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Medication-Nation.html?ref=health

10) JROTC must go now
By Riva Enteen and Tommi Avicolli Mecca
San Francisco Bay Guardian
May 14, 2008
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=6353

11) RIGHTS-US: School Recruiting Could Violate Int'l Protocol
By Jim Lobe
May 13, 2008
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42354

12) No Rebates for You
Editorial
May 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/opinion/15thu1.html?hp

13) Marine Given 4 Years in Sex Case
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
May 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world/asia/17japan.html?ref=world

14) Italy Arrests Hundreds of Immigrants
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/europe/16italy.html?ref=world

15) California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban
By ADAM LIPTAK
May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/16marriage.html?ref=us

16) Los Angeles Eyes Sewage as a Source of Water
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/16water.html?ref=us

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1) 35 Years of Rockefeller Drug Laws, and Hope There Won’t Be 36
By CLYDE HABERMAN
NYC
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/nyregion/13nyc.html?ref=nyregion

New York governors come and go (some more swiftly than others). State lawmakers tend to hang around longer, but most of them eventually move on as well. For true endurance, the statutes known as the Rockefeller-era drug laws are hard to beat. The same may be said about attempts to scrap those laws, which came into being in 1973, so long ago that disco was just beginning to be hot.

Nelson A. Rockefeller was governor then. Drug criminals had New York by the throat in one of the city’s periodic heart-of-darkness phases. Rockefeller wanted to show he could be tough as nails with dope dealers. The result was statutes that eternally bear his name in common idiom. Their essence was to send drug felons to prison for very long stretches, with sentences made mandatory and leniency rendered unacceptable even for first-time offenders.

The laws were amended in 2004 and 2005, to ease some of the most severe sentences. By then, they had been deemed overly harsh by most New Yorkers, save perhaps those with portraits of Torquemada on their walls. Occasional polls, like one for this newspaper in 2002, show that New Yorkers overwhelmingly would grant judges more of a free hand in sentencing. That includes a chance to send drug-addicted small fry into treatment rather than to prison.

We are now in a moment when the laws are being scrutinized again, in public hearings organized by a consortium of six New York State Assembly committees. A first round was held in Manhattan last Thursday, on the 35th anniversary of the laws’ signing by Rockefeller, and a second round is planned for Rochester on Thursday.

Judging from the remarks of Assembly members at last week’s session, they want major change, in particular to expand “judicial discretion” over the fate of convicted drug offenders. “We’re on the precipice of real Rockefeller law reform,” said Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat. Mr. Lentol is among half a dozen lawmakers who were in the Legislature back in 1973. He voted against the laws then, and doesn’t like them any better now.

But it is far from clear what, if anything, lies beneath that precipice. The State Senate, dominated by Republicans, albeit with a weakened grip, has not been eager to join the Democratic-led Assembly in tossing the Rockefeller laws over the edge.

Indeed, positions have shifted little over the years.

Those who raise cries of “drop the Rock” say that mandatory sentences are mindless and unfair to nonviolent offenders, that they give too much power to prosecutors and not enough to neutral judges, that they steer too many low-level schnooks away from relatively inexpensive rehab that would serve them (and the state treasury) well, and that they are directed disproportionately hard toward African-Americans and Latinos.

A leading critic of the laws, the Correctional Association of New York, says that their effect is to give elected officials from 35 years ago, many of them dead, more power over today’s narcotics cases “than the judges who currently sit on the bench and hear all the evidence presented.”

In the same camp, you would probably find the present governor, David A. Paterson. He has not spoken up on the subject of late, but he got himself arrested in an anti-Rock protest six years ago, when he was a state senator.

On the other side are those, including many of the state’s district attorneys, who say that the threat of tough sentences is enough to induce some addicted drug violators to seek treatment. And don’t kid yourself, prosecutors say; street-corner dealers, even if not necessarily “drug kingpins,” are violence-breeding menaces. Neighborhoods, they say, are well rid of these lowlifes.

On the laws’ 35th anniversary, each side went to the hearing armed with anecdotes and statistics. A figure that stood out, though, was one that went unmentioned.

Bridget G. Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City, noted that in 1970 there were 1,146 homicides in the city. (Police records put the number at 1,117, but that’s not the point.) In 2007, that figure had been sliced to 496. The implication was that we could thank the Rockefeller laws for this marvelous result.

Unmentioned was another number: 2,245. That’s how many homicides the city recorded in 1990, our most blood-soaked year.

So for 17 years, starting with 1973, the murder rate grew and stayed implacably high, even with the Rockefeller laws. Then, over the next 18 years, the rate dropped sharply. The roller-coaster statistical ride is enough to make one wonder, at least in regard to murder, if the Rock really had anything to do with the numbers going up or down.

E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com

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2) Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency
By STEPHANIE SAUL
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/13menthol.html?ref=business

Some public health experts are questioning why menthol, the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette choice of African-American smokers, is receiving special protection as Congress tries to regulate tobacco for the first time.

The legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products, would try to reduce smoking’s allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon.

But those new strictures would exempt menthol — even though menthol masks the harsh taste of cigarettes for beginners and may make it harder for the addicted to kick the smoking habit. For years, public health authorities have worried that menthol might be a factor in high cancer rates in African-Americans.

The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.

“I would have been in favor of banning menthol,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, who supports the bill. “But as a practical matter that simply wasn’t doable.”

Even the head of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, a nonprofit group that has been adamantly against menthol, acknowledges that the ingredient needed to be off the bargaining table — for now — because he does not want to imperil the bill’s chances.

“The bottom line is we want the legislation,” said William S. Robinson, the group’s executive director. “But we want to reserve the right to address this issue at some critical point because of the percentage of people of African descent who use mentholated products.”

Supporters of the tobacco legislation, including the Senate bill’s sponsor, Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, say the bill addresses the potential health risks of menthol by giving the F.D.A. the authority to remove cigarette additives, including menthol, if they are proved harmful.

Menthol is particularly controversial because public health authorities have worried about its health effects on African-Americans. Nearly 75 percent of black smokers use menthol brands, compared with only about one in four white smokers.

That is why one former public health official says the legislation’s menthol exemption is a “cave-in to the industry,” an opinion shared by some other public health advocates.

“I think we can say definitively that menthol induces smoking in the African-American community and subsequently serves as a direct link to African-American death and disease,” said the former official, Robert G. Robinson, who retired two years ago as an associate director in the office of smoking and health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The current lead scientist on tobacco related issues for the C.D.C, Terry F. Pechacek, said the legislation’s exemption for menthol was an issue being discussed in the scientific community. "I would just say this is an area of clear scientific interest and it merits very careful attention."

The legislation could soon be up for vote in both chambers of Congress, where it has broad support. It is by no means a sure bet — though not because of the menthol exemption.

Despite the support of Mr. Kennedy and 56 co-sponsors in the Senate, the legislation faces some determined opposition from tobacco-state lawmakers who resist industry regulation. And the White House has said it opposes the legislation, arguing that F.D.A. regulation could create the false impression that tobacco is safe.

The legislation is largely a result of negotiations during sessions in 2003 and 2004 between lawmakers, antismoking groups and Philip Morris — the only major American cigarette company that supports the effort to regulate the industry.

“My recollection is that we were able to eliminate the use of flavored cigarettes, strawberry, mocha, and all this stuff that is clearly targeted at young kids and to start them smoking tobacco,” Mike DeWine, the former Ohio senator who helped arrange a series of negotiations between Philip Morris and an influential antismoking group, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a recent telephone interview. “Where the compromise was made as I recall was on menthol,” Mr. DeWine said.

While Philip Morris and other tobacco companies acknowledge the health hazards of smoking, they contend that menthol does nothing to worsen those risks. One of the government’s current top public health scientists on tobacco, however, says there are few definitive answers about the health impact of menthol cigarettes. Still, he points to several studies that suggest menthol smokers may be exposed to higher levels of dangerous compounds than nonmenthol smokers.

“There are multiple lines of evidence, generally consistent, suggesting that there’s reason for concern,” said Dr. Pechacek, the associate science director of the office on smoking for the C.D.C.

Of 45 million smokers in this country, the American Lung Association identifies about 33 million as non-Hispanic whites and 5 million as African-American. Historically, statistics showed that a somewhat higher percentage of African-Americans smoked than whites. Recent figures, though, indicate about the same rate of smoking for both groups — in the 21 to 22 percent range.

But the use of menthol cigarettes is disproportionately an African-American phenomenon, which critics say has been reinforced by decades of advertising aimed at black consumers. Concerns about menthol have circulated since at least 1998, when the C.D.C. reported that menthol “may increase the absorption of harmful smoking constituents.”

Four years later the C.D.C., along with the National Cancer Institute, sponsored a meeting in Atlanta on menthol cigarettes and disease rates in African-Americans. The official report from that meeting said the research up to that point had been inconclusive, but it called for further studies.

In five large studies of menthol to date, only one has found higher rates of cancer among menthol smokers than nonmenthol smokers, and only in men. But a growing body of evidence suggests that menthol makes it harder to kick the smoking habit — a view shared even by many scientists who say that menthol in cigarettes is not itself dangerous.

A tobacco company spokesman, Brendan J. McCormick, said menthol was “an ingredient and a flavor preference that is widely preferred by more than a quarter of adult smokers out there, and it’s got a long history of use.”

Mr. McCormick works for the Altria Group, the parent company of Philip Morris USA, whose Marlboro Menthol is the second-largest menthol brand in this country and also the fastest growing.

Last year, to counter concerns about menthol, a mint extract that can also be made synthetically, Philip Morris scientists published a 26-page paper in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. After examining dozens of studies on menthol, the company’s scientists said they found little evidence that menthol cigarettes were any more harmful or addictive than other types or that they encouraged people to start smoking at younger ages.

Its support of the tobacco legislation has put Philip Morris at odds with other cigarette companies, which generally oppose regulation. As the American industry’s biggest player, Philip Morris says it is willing to let the F.D.A. oversee tobacco because as the company tries to develop products that are less harmful, it wants a regulatory agency to evaluate and approve those products. The company also says it would prefer national tobacco regulations rather than a hodgepodge of state and local rules. But the company’s rivals complain that the legislation could help Philip Morris, with its best-selling Marlboro franchise, further entrench itself as the industry’s dominant player by placing new restrictions on cigarette marketing, making it difficult for rivals to use advertising to catch up. Besides banning the marketing of cigarettes on the basis of most flavorings — other than menthol — the new rules would also place additional limits on the types and placement of signs and magazine advertising for tobacco products.

Even with the menthol exemption, the legislation is opposed by Reynolds American, whose R. J. Reynolds unit sells menthol brands that include Kool and Salem. Another opponent is Lorillard, which makes Newport, the best-selling brand among African-Americans and the menthol market leader over all.

“Bottom line, the scientific publications to date have not concluded that menthol cigarettes are more hazardous or addictive than nonmenthol cigarettes,” a Lorillard spokesman, Michael W. Robinson, said in a written response to questions. Lorillard is a subsidiary of the Loews Corporation.

Scientists who study smoking have identified various disparities in the health of black and white smokers. National Cancer Institute data shows that African-American men get lung cancer at a rate 50 percent higher than white men — a gap that most scientists say cannot be fully explained by historically higher rates of smoking by black men.

One theory suggests that menthol in cigarettes, by providing an additional pleasurable sensory cue to smokers, reinforces addiction.

“There is evidence from different studies that it’s harder to quit menthol cigarettes,” said Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, a pharmacologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco and one of the nation’s leading tobacco researchers. He calls menthol a “public health risk.”

In work published in 2006, Dr. Mark J. Pletcher and colleagues at that same university analyzed smoking behavior for 1,535 people over 15 years. Their findings suggested that menthol smokers were 30 percent less likely to quit smoking and 89 percent more likely to relapse than other smokers.

One African-American woman, Joya Robinson of North Brunswick, N.J., said she began smoking Newport in 1988 and developed a pack-a-day habit. After several unsuccessful attempts to quit, she is now enrolled in a tobacco dependence program. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Ms. Robinson, 46, said.

Dr. Pechacek, the C.D.C. official, said a combination of menthol and genetic factors that predispose African-Americans to certain cancers may be in play for black smokers.

“There is sufficient reason to maintain a strong public health interest in it,” he said.

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3) Many Hispanics Are Hit Hard by Economic Slump
By PETER S. GOODMAN
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/13hispanics.html?ref=business

DALTON, Ga. — In his first years in the United States, Carlos B. Jacinto endured the itinerant life of a Guatemalan migrant worker, from picking fruit in Florida to moving logs at a sawmill in Washington. Eventually, he settled here in northern Georgia and erected a middle-class American life.

The carpet factories that sustained this town were desperate for workers to supply a nationwide boom in home construction. The wages Mr. Jacinto earned over the last decade were enough to buy a minivan and a brick house with a yard and a swing set for his four young girls. It was a long way from his childhood home in Guatemala, a wooden shack without electricity or plumbing.

But last month, amid the shrinking fortunes of the American economy, Mr. Jacinto, 37, was laid off. Everything he has achieved is suddenly at risk.

“Am I going to be able to keep up the payments on my house?” he asked. “I never believed this could happen. Now, we don’t know the future.”

The economic downturn unfolding across the United States is imposing a particularly punishing toll on Hispanics, a group that was among the primary beneficiaries of the expansion in recent years. What had been a story of broad and steady advances has given way to growing joblessness, diminishing paychecks and lost homes.

The boom in American housing generated millions of new jobs for those willing to engage in physically demanding tasks, from factory work churning out floorboards, carpeting and upholstery, to landscaping, roofing and janitorial services. Latinos occupied widening swaths of these trades and filled large numbers of relatively high-paying construction jobs.

As a great influx of Latino immigrants spread beyond the initial entryways of the Southwest into smaller cities and towns across the South and the Midwest, many found employment doing much of the unpleasant work shunned by those with better prospects.

But now significant portions of this work are disappearing. What were once the fastest-growing areas of the nation, including states with expanding Hispanic populations like Florida, California, Georgia and Nevada, are often bearing the brunt of the pain.

From April of last year to April of this year, the Labor Department reported, the unemployment rate among Hispanics spiked 1.4 percentage points, to 6.9 percent. By comparison, the overall jobless rate rose half a percentage point, to 5 percent.

For the nearly 19 million Latino immigrants in the United States, the downturn in the job market has cut significantly into earnings, dropping the share of those sending money home to families in Latin America from nearly three-fourths two years ago to about half, according to a survey released last month by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Economic troubles now threaten to reverse a long period of gains in homeownership among Latinos as well. From 1994 to 2006, the rate of Hispanic homeownership climbed to 50 percent from 41 percent, according to census data, a pace more than double the increase among non-Hispanics.

Growth was fueled by heavy reliance on subprime mortgages — loans extended to people with troubled credit histories, which have since proved the most likely to go bad. By 2006, 47 percent of the loans issued for home purchases by Hispanics were subprime, nearly double the rate for non-Hispanic whites, according to a paper by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Only African-Americans leaned harder on subprime loans.

Last year, the homeownership rate among Latinos fell, a trend that is likely to continue: one in 12 of the mortgages made to Latino households in 2005 and 2006 is likely to fail, estimates Catherine Singley, a policy fellow at the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group in Washington.

Georgia is one of many states where Hispanics are now feeling strains. From 2000 to 2007, the state’s Hispanic population grew more than 70 percent, according to census data.

In the Atlanta area, construction exerted a strong pull, mirroring the national trend. Nationally, Latinos rose from one-fifth of the construction work force in 2000 to almost one-third by 2006, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute.

Among foreign-born Hispanics, construction was responsible for 46 percent of the growth in employment from 2004 to 2006, according to Rakesh Kochhar, an economist at the Pew Hispanic Center.

Now, that dynamic is working in reverse. “Hispanics are concentrated in an industry that is leading the downturn,” Mr. Kochhar said.

For the last eight years, Jose Serrano, an illegal immigrant, has crammed into rented houses in Atlanta with five and six other men while working construction jobs that paid about $10 an hour, sending most of his earnings home to Mexico City to support his wife and three children.

But since November, Mr. Serrano has failed to find steady work. Every morning, he joins dozens of others in a parking lot, where contractors hire for odd jobs. Most days, he waits in vain, he said.

Now, there is no money to send home. He has sold his car, navigating Atlanta’s freeway-laced sprawl by bicycle. He has been borrowing from friends to pay his rent of $150 a month.

Others in his situation have returned to Mexico, he said, discouraged by the deteriorating job market and a recent surge in crackdowns against illegal immigrants. If things do not improve soon, so will he, though he is pained by the thought of having to lean on the very family he is supposed to be supporting.

“Your dreams have disappeared,” Mr. Serrano said. “Your family is counting on you for basic necessities. You feel defeated.”

Dalton, a town of 35,000 people 90 miles northwest of Atlanta, is where three-fourths of the carpeting in the United States is produced. It benefited from the housing boom, serving as an archetype of Hispanic upward mobility.

Before the 1980s, the carpet industry attracted mostly white blue-collar workers from as far as Tennessee and Alabama, offering wages that paid enough to support families. But competition intensified and as similar jobs sprang up elsewhere, Dalton’s carpet mills struggled to find enough workers.

Among Latinos, word spread that a small town in Georgia, with fresh air and thick stands of trees, had abundant jobs at wages reaching $14 an hour. Houses were affordable.

“This was the dream they were seeing on television,” said America Gruner, founder of the Coalition of Latino Leaders, a local social service organization.

Today, Latinos make up about 40 percent of the city’s population, up from 10 percent a decade ago. Some 70 percent of the students in the city school system are Hispanic.

“They came in here and saved jobs,” said Dalton’s mayor, David E. Pennington. “This is a one-industry town. If they hadn’t come here, the carpet industry was going to leave.”

For several years, Rafael Ortiz picked strawberries in California for 12 and 14 hours a day, being paid about $250 a week. On a visit home to his village in the Mexican state of Guanajuato a decade ago, relatives told him he could make twice as much in northern Georgia, working indoors.

Mr. Ortiz and his wife boarded a Greyhound bus with their six children — the youngest then 8 years old. They arrived with no savings, staying with cousins.

Mr. Ortiz quickly found a job in a factory making bathroom mats and toilet seat covers. Nearly all of the workers were from Mexico or Guatemala, he said. He was paid $8.50 an hour, with as much overtime as he was willing to take. He brought home $450 to $500 a week.

Over subsequent years, Mr. Ortiz, 62, never lacked for work. In 2000, he paid $4,500 for a trailer, plunked it on a three-quarter-acre lot and called it home. He recently became an American citizen.

“I have 10 grandchildren, and there’s plenty of room there to run around,” Mr. Ortiz said. “That’s my satisfaction.”

But last fall, Mr. Ortiz’s father grew ill. He returned to Mexico to be with him before he died. Since coming back to Dalton in February, he has not found work. He no longer takes his grandchildren out to eat, he said. He relies on his grown children to pay the bills.

From the fall of 2005 to the end of 2007, carpet industry jobs in Whitfield County declined to 15,416 from 17,140, according to the Georgia Department of Labor.

At the Southern Janitorial Services Corporation, where 95 percent of the employees are Latino, working hours are being cut and paychecks are down from $450 a week to as little as $300 a week, according to Gabriela Gardea, the company’s receptionist.

The impact of smaller paychecks is now rippling out to businesses built to serve the Latino influx. At El Sombrero, a Mexican restaurant in an old brick storefront downtown, sales have dropped by half since the beginning of the year, said the owner, Adolfo Morones. He has been forced to lay off a waiter and two kitchen employees, he said.

At La Michoacana, a grocery store festooned with colorful piñatas, the owner, Efrain Espinoza, said he was losing money. “We don’t know how long we can continue like this,” he said.

A taxi service that ferries Latino workers from home to job has idled three of its six cars, Maria T. Perez, the owner, said.

Born in Mexico, Ms. Perez arrived here from Los Angeles a decade ago to put her five children — then mostly teenagers — beyond the reach of gangs, she said. She started the taxi service in 2001, making use of no-money-down financing to buy her first car, a used Buick Regal.

As Dalton filled with Latinos, her business expanded, earning her a $40,000 profit in 2004 and again the following year, she said.

She and her husband, Ricardo Torres, bought a four-bedroom house with a swimming pool, a huge living room, a washer-dryer and a kitchen with granite countertops. They paid $240,000, with no money down, she said.

The promotional mortgage payment of $1,700 a month was manageable, she said. But the taxi business dipped the following year. And by early 2007, their mortgage payment had jumped to $2,500, she said.

Last summer, with the taxi service losing money, Ms. Perez stopped making house payments. In January, she and her husband gave up their home to foreclosure, she said, joining a growing crowd. From January to March of this year, Dalton registered 111 foreclosure filings, nearly four times the number of the previous year, according to data from RealtyTrac.

Ms. Perez and her husband are now camping in the taxi company office. They do their laundry at a Laundromat, and cook with a hot plate, opening the door to release the smoke.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future,” she said. “The only thing that’s left is to wait and see.”

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4) Oil Refiners See Profits Sink as Consumption Falls
By JAD MOUAWAD
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/business/14refine.html?hp

While drivers are facing sticker shock at the pump these days, here is a bigger shock: high prices are putting a strain on oil refiners.

After last year’s stellar profits, American refiners are going through a traumatic period. In a time of record gasoline prices, some of them actually lost money in the first quarter, and for virtually all refiners, profits are down sharply.

Experts say the refiners are caught in a double bind. The price of their raw material, oil, is rising because of strong global demand. At the same time, consumption of gasoline in the United States is falling as a result of slower economic growth and consumer efforts to conserve.

However much the companies would like to raise gasoline prices enough to pass along the full increases in oil, analysts say they have been unable to do it. Oil prices doubled in the past year, while wholesale gasoline prices rose a mere 39 percent.

“Refiners are having a terrible time,” said Lawrence J. Goldstein, an economist at the Energy Policy Research Foundation.

For decades, global oil prices were tightly coupled to the ups and downs of the American economy. But in recent years, world oil prices have been pulled upward by heavy demand for diesel fuel from developing countries like China. American economic growth weakened in the last few months, but that has mattered little in the upward march of oil prices.

“What we see at the gasoline pump is increasingly driven by what is happening elsewhere in the global economy,” said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm.

Gasoline prices rose on Tuesday to a nationwide average of $3.73 a gallon, according to AAA, the automobile club. That is yet another record. Diesel prices also set a record, at $4.39 a gallon. Crude oil futures closed at $125.80 a barrel, up $1.57, or 1.3 percent, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In its latest monthly report, the International Energy Agency, an adviser to industrialized countries, reduced its forecast for global oil demand for this year, as consumption drops by a bigger-than-forecast 300,000 barrels a day in the developed world.

But that decline will be more than offset by growth from developing countries. Consequently, global consumption is expected to rise this year by 1 million barrels a day, to 86.8 million barrels a day. Nearly all that growth will come from China, the Middle East and Russia.

In the United States, there is no longer much doubt that consumers are responding to higher fuel costs by driving less. Oil consumption fell by 3.3 percent in March, compared with March of last year.

But even as gasoline demand softens, the price keeps rising, driven by higher oil prices. The cost of oil represents about 75 percent of the price of gasoline at the pump, according to the Energy Department; state and federal taxes account for 12 percent, and refining and distribution make up the rest.

The rising oil prices have led to a sharp drop in refining profit margins, or the difference between the cost of oil and the cost of gasoline. These margins, at $12.45 a barrel on average, are 60 percent below their year-ago level, and in the lower half of their five-year range, according to a report by UBS.

In response to falling gasoline demand and rising costs, refiners have cut their production rates. Refining utilization rates, for example, slumped to a low of 81.4 percent in the second week of April, compared with 90.4 percent at the same time last year. Earlier this month, refineries were running at 85 percent of their capacity.

All this has translated into a tough quarter for some refiners. While large integrated companies, like Exxon Mobil, reported big profits in the first quarter thanks to their oil sales, smaller independent refiners that buy their oil, instead of producing it themselves, have been losing money.

Tesoro, Sunoco, and United Refining all posted losses in the first quarter. The hardest hit have been small refineries that tend to process the most expensive types of crude oil into gasoline. Sunoco, for example, lost $123 million in the first quarter, while Tesoro posted a $82 million loss for that period, in contrast to a profit of $116 million last year.

“We’re just not able to pass along the increased cost of crude oil on the gasoline side,” said Lynn Westfall, the chief economist at Tesoro.

At Valero, the nation’s largest independent refiner, first-quarter profit melted by 76 percent. Its refining capacity allows it to process heavier grades of crude oil that typically trade at a discount. Still, its profit dropped to $261 million in the first quarter compared with $1.1 billion last year.

Some consumer advocates say they are deeply suspicious about the behavior of refiners who are sharply cutting production at a time of record gasoline prices.

“They are not sitting in a boardroom and colluding, but they can see easily enough where their benefit lies, and it doesn’t lie in a price war,” said Judy Dugan, the research director at Consumer Watch. “In a truly competitive market, you might see some of these providers try to improve their market share by reducing prices. But this is not happening. They are all better off by restricting production to keep prices up.”

Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, said mergers in the 1990s had cut the number of refiners in the country and contributed to reduced competition in the refining market.

“We let them accumulate market power through the wave of mergers, and we’ve been paying the price in the last five years,” he said. “If there is a small number of players in the market, they learn from each other’s behavior.”

The demand for diesel has been one of the main drivers of oil demand in recent years. Diesel and other so-called middle distillates are used as transportation, power generation and industrial fuels.

In China, for example, oil imports have surged in recent weeks, a signal that the government is stockpiling oil and diesel in anticipation of the Olympic Games. Beijing, the International Energy Agency report said, is seeking to avoid a repeat of the embarrassing fuel shortages and power disruptions that plagued the country last year.

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5) Felled mangrove trees may have doomed the coast of Myanmar
Scientific American
May 9, 2008
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=news-bytes-of-the-week-could-coastal

By cutting down 50,000 acres (20,235 hectares) of mangrove trees in the 1990s, and probably more since, Myanmar may have left itself much more vulnerable to last week's deadly Cyclone Nargis, according to Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. That shouldn't be surprising: A study appearing in Science in 2005 found that regions buffered by coastal vegetation sustain fewer deaths and less damage when they are swamped by inundations from strong storms or tsunamis, such as the one in December 2004. Roughly nine million acres (3.6 million hectares) of mangrove forests have been cleared worldwide since 1980, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). More than half of that loss took place in Asia, where trees are cleared to build fish and shrimp farms as well as resorts. According to Myanmar's minister for relief and resettlement, most of the deaths caused by Cyclone Nargis were due not to the 120 mile (190 kilometer) per hour winds, but to its storm surge—some of which the forests may have been able to absorb or at least moderate.

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6) Belief in God 'childish,' Jews not chosen people: Einstein letter
May 13, 2008, 08:24 AM US/Eastern
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080513122249.m3ds3b6j&show_article=1

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion
have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the
comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish
people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other
people".

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product
of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still
primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.

"No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he
wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher
Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.

The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury
Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than
50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell.

In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become
Israel's second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God's
chosen people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the
most childish superstitions," he said.

"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose
mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me
than all other people."

And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than
other human groups, although they are protected from the worst
cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen'
about them."

Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"
-- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up
arguments in favour of faith.

Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection
of Einstein's real thoughts on the subject. "He's fairly unequivocal
as to what he's saying. There's no beating about the bush," he told
AFP.

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7) Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Thugs
[col. writ. 5/8/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Prisonradio.org

The scene is as common as sunlight: cops beating Black men in the streets.

This time, captured on videotape from a hovering helicopter, a malevolent swarm of cops pull occupants from a car, and then proceed to beat the paste out of the men, kicking, punching, and slamming with a club. At least 15 cops are seen in the broadcast beatdown; an average of 5 to 1.

Within moments of its broadcast came the predictable defense: cops in Philly are "stressed."

One need not even await such defenses anymore: just put a tape on speed dial, and repeat.

If ever there was irony, the three car occupants were charged with aggravated assault, and criminal conspiracy.

How much do you wanna bet that the cops, who were caught on film in the midst of aggravated assault, and as they committed the crime in common, criminal conspiracy, are never charged with these crimes -- and probably will never be arrested?

How can I dare make such a claim?

Well, I have plenty of practice.

Most folks flash back to the infamous Rodney King case, where cops in L.A. went into a whipping fit, because King tried to outrun them.

Were they too, stressed?

It also reminded me of the taped beating of Delbert Africa, a MOVE member who was beaten during the August 8th, 1978 police raid on MOVE's home.

These cops, too, were easily acquitted by explicit judicial decree.

If tape doesn't matter, what does?

In the case against three cops who rifle-butted, punched and kicked Delbert, the judge ignored the video tapes, and cited both Delbert's muscularity, and the claim of a Black TV reporter, who claimed she saw him armed --this, despite the tape showing him shirtless, empty hands opened, and naked from the waist up!

Prepare for the all but inevitable whitewash.

Look at that tape again, and you will see something that you'll see if you looked at a gang attack, for these are gangsters, pure and simple.

Only it's the Blue gang.

Welcome to Philadelphia: the city of brotherly thugs.

--(c) '08 maj

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8) Colombia Extradites 14 Paramilitary Leaders
By SIMON ROMERO
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/americas/14colombia.html?ref=world

CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombia extradited 14 jailed paramilitary leaders to the United States on Tuesday, in an effort by President Álvaro Uribe to take a hard line against the warlords and defuse a scandal that has tied them to senior lawmakers in the Colombian Congress and members of his own family.

The extraditions of so many paramilitary leaders at once was unprecedented in Colombia’s long history of trying to dismantle the hydra-headed syndicates that export cocaine to the United States. They come at a delicate moment for Colombia’s government, which is trying to win approval of a trade agreement with the United States.

Senior Democrats in Congress have opposed the trade deal, saying that Mr. Uribe has not made enough progress in curbing human rights abuses and prosecuting those responsible.

The extraditions seemed to indicate a new push by Mr. Uribe’s government to prevent the rearming of the paramilitary armies after years in which violence in Colombia’s internal war has waned.

The extraditions were carried out by surprise in the early hours of Tuesday with dozens of elite police officers gathering the men from three high-security prisons in Colombia. Interior Minister Carlos Holguín said the men were put aboard a plane in Bogotá bound for the United States, where they will face drug-trafficking charges.

“Most of the top bosses are there,” Mr. Holguín said, speaking on Colombian radio. “In some cases they were still committing crimes and reorganizing criminal structures.”

The extraditions are likely to add fodder not only to the fierce debate around the trade agreement, but also to the debate in Colombia about the best way to prosecute those accused of committing some of the worst atrocities in Colombia’s long war.

Human rights groups say the extraditions will put the warlords outside the reach of Colombia’s judicial system. While the men may now face lengthy sentences in the United States for drug-trafficking offenses, their crimes related to the war in Colombia may go unpunished, they said.

“These men are not going to be held accountable for the human rights violations they committed,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch. “Victims in Colombia will not be able to confront their tormentors and receive the reparations they deserve.”

Still, some of the men extradited to the United States could spend more time in prison in the United States on drug trafficking charges than they would in Colombia for their actions during the war. It was also clear that some warlords had effectively controlled their armies from prison, thwarting efforts to prevent a paramilitary resurgence.

Reports of an increase in extrajudicial slayings this year, in particular a rise in killings of union members, have plagued Mr. Uribe’s attempts to win approval of the trade deal in the United States Congress. In the past, paramilitaries were responsible for many of those killings, though it was unclear whether any of the extradited leaders were directly linked to the recent crimes.

In any case, the move by Mr. Uribe demonstrates a resolve to confront the paramilitaries despite a slow-burning scandal of revelations of ties to the militias that had ensnared the president’s political supporters, including top lawmakers and Mr. Uribe’s former intelligence chief.

“This is an astonishing move for Uribe, who is trying to demonstrate to the U.S. Congress that rumors of his ties to the paramilitaries are false,” said Bruce Bagley, an expert on the Andean drug war at the University of Miami. “This should go over well with the Democratic Congress.”

Still, perceptions of justice will depend on the sentences meted out. Mr. Bagley said human right groups would closely follow the sentencing, especially after moves by the Bush administration to reduce prison terms for top drug traffickers in exchange for information about the functioning of their networks.

American officials were vague as to whether prison sentences would be lenient or long. The Justice Department in Washington said in a statement that it had assured Colombia’s government that it would not seek life sentences for any of the defendants.

The paramilitary leaders extradited to the United States included a top warlord, Salvatore Mancuso, who oversaw atrocities like the massacre of 15 civilians and displacement of more than 600 people in 1997 in the town of El Aro, which has come to symbolize the path undertaken by the militias throughout the 1990s.

Mr. Uribe’s government, the Bush administration’s top ally in Latin America, has already extradited more than 700 Colombians to the United States since 2002. Most of those extraditions were of low-level operators in Colombia’s resilient cocaine trade.

Despite the disbursement of more than $600 million a year in aid from the United States to fight drug trafficking and leftist guerrillas, Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer and the source of about 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States. Paramilitary leaders came to control many of the thriving drug syndicates.

Landowners established the private armies in the 1980s to combat the leftist insurgencies, but the paramilitaries eventually attained broad influence in Colombia’s economic and political structures. Disclosures of ties between the paramilitaries and prominent political supporters of Mr. Uribe have recently shaken the country.

For instance, Mr. Uribe’s cousin and close political collaborator, Mario Uribe, a former senator, was detained in April on charges of collaborating with the paramilitaries. And more than two dozen other members of the Colombian Congress have been arrested on claims of having similar ties.

Some of these revelations were obtained from the jailed warlords as part of a peace process that demobilized thousands of combatants in the private armies. That process is now thrown into doubt with these extraditions.

“The idea that the United States will require the paramilitaries to collaborate with the victims is a lie that is being sold to the country,” said Eduardo Bocanegra, the lawyer for Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, one of the extradited warlords.

“The reparations were not only monetary,” Mr. Bocanegra said. “They were also symbolic; the paramilitaries were providing information about the bodies found in mass graves.”

But Mr. Uribe said on Tuesday that an agreement had been reached for the proceeds obtained from fines and confiscations of property from the paramilitary leaders in the United States to go to Colombian victims or their families. “This is notice,” Mr. Uribe told reporters in Bogotá, “that the law must be respected.”

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas, and Jenny Carolina González from Bogotá, Colombia.

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9) Americans Taking Prescription Drugs in Greater Numbers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Medication-Nation.html?ref=health

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- For the first time, it appears that more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines regularly for chronic health problems, a study shows.

The most widely used drugs are those to lower high blood pressure and cholesterol -- problems often linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

The numbers were gathered last year by Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages prescription benefits for about one in five Americans.

Experts say the data reflect not just worsening public health but better medicines for chronic conditions and more aggressive treatment by doctors. For example, more people are now taking blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering medicines because they need them, said Dr. Daniel W. Jones, president of the American Heart Association.

In addition, there is the pharmaceutical industry's relentless advertising. With those factors unlikely to change, doctors say the proportion of Americans on chronic medications can only grow.

''Unless we do things to change the way we're managing health in this country ... things will get worse instead of getting better,'' predicted Jones, a heart specialist and dean of the University of Mississippi's medical school.

Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country. But it was unclear how their prescriptions compare to those of insured people elsewhere. Comparable data were not available for Europe, for instance.

Medco's data show that last year, 51 percent of American children and adults were taking one or more prescription drugs for a chronic condition, up from 50 percent the previous four years and 47 percent in 2001. Most of the drugs are taken daily, although some are needed less often.

The company examined prescription records from 2001 to 2007 of a representative sample of 2.5 million customers, from newborns to the elderly.

Medication use for chronic problems was seen in all demographic groups:

-- Almost two-thirds of women 20 and older.

-- One in four children and teenagers.

-- 52 percent of adult men.

-- Three out of four people 65 or older.

Among seniors, 28 percent of women and nearly 22 percent of men take five or more medicines regularly.

Karen Walker of Paterson, N.J., takes 18 prescription medicines daily for high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic back and shoulder pain, asthma and the painful muscle disorder fibromyalgia.

''The only way I can do it and keep my sanity ... is I use pill boxes'' to organize pills for each morning and night, said Walker, 57, a full-time nurse at an HIV clinic. Her 69-year-old husband, Charles, keeps his medicines lined up on his bureau: four pills for arthritis and heart disease, plus two inhalers for lung problems.

Dr. Robert Epstein, chief medical officer at Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based Medco, said he sees both bad news and good in the findings.

''Honestly, a lot of it is related to obesity,'' he said. ''We've become a couch potato culture (and) it's a lot easier to pop a pill'' than to exercise regularly or diet.

On the good side, he said, researchers have turned what used to be fatal diseases into chronic ones, including AIDS, some cancers, hemophilia and sickle-cell disease.

Yet Epstein noted the biggest jump in use of chronic medications was in the 20- to 44-year-old age group -- adults in the prime of life -- where it rose 20 percent over the six years. That was mainly due to more use of drugs for depression, diabetes, asthma, attention-deficit disorder and seizures.

Antidepressant use in particular jumped among teens and working-age women. Doctors attributed that to more stress in daily life and to family doctors, including pediatricians, being more comfortable prescribing newer antidepressants.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen's Health Research Group said the increased use of medications is partly because the most heavily advertised drugs are for chronic conditions, so most patients will take them for a long time. He also blames doctors for not spending the time to help patients lose weight and make other healthy changes before writing a prescription.

The study highlights a surge in children's use of medicines to treat weight-related problems and other illnesses previously considered adult problems. Medco estimates about 1.2 million American children now are taking pills for Type 2 diabetes, sleeping troubles and gastrointestinal problems such as heartburn.

''A scarier problem is that body weights are so much higher in children in general, and so we're going to have larger numbers of adults who develop high blood pressure or abnormal cholesterol or diabetes at an earlier age,'' said Jones, of the heart association.

Dr. Richard Gorman, an American Academy of Pediatrics expert on children's medicines, said more children are taking medicines for ''adult conditions'' partly because manufacturers now provide pediatric doses, liquid versions or at least information to determine the right amount for a child.

The Medco study found that among boys and girls under age 10, the most widely used medication switched from allergy drugs to asthma medicines between 2001 and 2007. Gorman said that's because over the last decade, asthma care has gone from treating flare-ups to using inhaled steroids regularly to prevent flare-ups and hospitalizations.

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10) JROTC must go now
By Riva Enteen and Tommi Avicolli Mecca
San Francisco Bay Guardian
May 14, 2008
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=6353

OPINION In November 2006, San Francisco made history when the school board made this the first big city in the nation to ban JROTC [Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps]. The board's resolution, which called for phasing out JROTC from high schools this June, stated that "JROTC is a program wholly created and administrated by the United States Department of Defense, whose documents and memoranda clearly identify JROTC as an important recruiting arm."

A poison pill was added to the resolution at the last minute: it called for a task force to be set up to find an "alternative" program to JROTC. The school district administration, in a particularly despicable move, set up the task force with more than 10 members supporting JROTC, and only one member opposed.

Surprise! After sitting for almost a year, the task force failed to come up with an alternative, so the school board rolled over and, except for two courageous members — Mark Sanchez and Eric Mar — voted last December to extend JROTC for another year.

In 2005, San Franciscans passed Proposition I by almost 60 percent, declaring it "city policy to oppose military recruiting in public schools." That same year, by the Army's own report, 42 percent of JROTC graduates across the nation signed up for the military. As this country enters its sixth year of the illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, it's time for the school board to go back to its original decision to kick the military out of our schools.

The school board must end JROTC — now. JROTC is currently scheduled to be "phased out," but not until June 2009. By then both Sanchez and Mar will be off the school board, and there will be little to prevent the military from orchestrating a vote to extend JROTC indefinitely. If, on the other hand, the school board votes to end JROTC this June as their original resolution required, JROTC would be gone.

Two progressives on the board must be convinced to send the military packing: Kim-Shree Maufas and Green Party member Jane Kim.

Both received endorsements from progressives. To convince them that they risk such endorsements in the future, the JROTC Must Go! Coalition is circulating the following statement: "We will look very closely at the next school board vote on JROTC and will consider the votes carefully when making any endorsements for future candidates."

Within a week, the Tenants Union, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, and the San Francisco Bay View newspaper signed the statement. If Maufas and Kim join Sanchez and Mar, we'll make history again.

Riva Enteen is the former program director for the National Lawyers Guild and the mother of two San Francisco school district graduates. Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a southern Italian queer atheist writer and activist. For more information contact the JROTC Must Go! Coalition: (415) 575-5543, jrotcmustgo.org, or write: JROTCmustgo@gmail.com.

—San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 14, 2008
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=6353

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11) RIGHTS-US: School Recruiting Could Violate Int'l Protocol
By Jim Lobe
May 13, 2008
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42354

WASHINGTON, May 13 (IPS) - Pressed by the demands of the "global war on terrorism", the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.

The 46-page report, "Soldiers of Misfortune", which was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, also found that the U.S. military disproportionately targets poor and minority public school students.

Military recruiters, according to the report, use "exaggerated promises of financial rewards for enlistment, [which] undermines the voluntariness of their enlistment." In some cases documented by the report, recruiters used coercion, deception, and even sexual abuse in order to gain recruits. Perpetrators of such practices are only very rarely punished, the report found.

"The United States military's procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics," said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project.

The increased aggressiveness of military recruiters is due in major part, according to the report, to the increased pressure to meet enlistment quotas caused by ongoing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to which nearly 200,000 soldiers and marines are currently deployed.

The pressure created by current military commitments has not only translated into enhanced recruitment efforts among children under 18. The armed forces have also lowered their standards for minimum-intelligence tests, made it easier to enlist individuals with criminal records, and increased re-enlistment bonuses for soldiers who might otherwise be tempted to leave the service.

The report, which also detailed Washington's failure to protect foreign child soldiers being held by U.S. forces at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and elsewhere around the world as part of its submission to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, assesses Washington's compliance with the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.

The Protocol, which is attached to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is designed to protect the rights of children under 18 who may be recruited by the military and deployed to war.

Among other provisions, the Protocol sets an absolute minimum age for recruitment of 16 and requires that all recruitment activities directed at children under 18 be carried out with the consent of the child's parents or guardian, that any such recruitment be genuinely volunteer, and the military fully inform the child of the duties involved in military service and require reliable proof of age before enlistment.

While the United States is one of only two countries -- the other being Somalia -- to have never ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the U.S. Senate ratified the Protocol in 2002, making it binding under U.S., as well as international, law. Unlike most other industrialised countries that set their minimum recruitment age at 18, the Senate decided on 17 as the absolute minimum for the United States.

According to the ACLU report, however, the U.S. armed services "regularly target children under 17 for military recruitment, heavily recruiting on high school campuses, in school lunchrooms, and in classes."

The army's own Recruiting Programme Handbook, for example, instructs its more than 10,600 recruiters to approach high school students as early as possible, and explicitly before their senior year, which, for most students, starts at age 17. "Remember, first to contact, first to contract...that doesn't just mean seniors or grads...," according to an excerpt quoted in the report. "If you wait until they're seniors, it's probably too late."

Once recruiters are inside their assigned high schools, the Army's Recruiting Command instructs them to "effectively penetrate the school market" and "(b)e so helpful and so much a part of the school scene that you are in constant demand", with the goal of "school ownership that can only lead to a greater number of Army enlistments." That includes volunteering to serve as coaches for high school sports teams, involvement with the local Boy Scouts, attending as many all school functions and assemblies, and even "eating lunch in the school cafeteria several times each month".

The report documents a number of specific cases, mostly in New York and California -- the two most populous states with the largest number of minority high school students -- in which recruiters clearly followed these instructions. In a survey of nearly 1,000 children, aged 14 to 17, enrolled in New York City high schools, the ACLU New York affiliate found that more than one five respondents -- equally distributed among the different grades -- reported the use of class time by military recruiters, and 35 percent said military recruiters had access to multiple locations in their schools where they could meet students.

The report also noted that the Pentagon's central recruitment database systematically collected information on 16-year-olds and, in some cases even 15-year-olds, including their name, home address and telephones, email addresses, grade point averages, height and weight information, and racial and ethnic data obtained from a variety of public and private sources. The explicit purpose of the database is to assist the military in its "direct marketing recruiting efforts". As the result of a 2006 ACLU lawsuit, the Pentagon agreed to stop collecting data about students younger than 16.

But recruitment efforts even dip below 15-year-olds, according to the report, which found that the Pentagon's Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), which operate at more than 3,000 junior high schools, middle schools, and high schools across the country, target children as young as 14 for recruitment. The report cited recent studies that found that enrollment in some JROTC programmes was involuntary.

JROTC "cadets", of whom there were nearly 300,000 in 2005, receive military uniforms and conduct military drills and marches, handle real and wooden rifles, and learn military history, according to the report, which noted that the programme is explicitly designed to "enhance recruiting efforts". African American and Latin students make up 54 percent of JROTC programmes.

JROTC also oversees the Middle School Cadet Corps (MSCC), in which children ages 11 to 14 can participate, according to the report. Florida, Texas, and Chicago schools offer military-run after-school MSCC programmes in which children take part in drills with wooden rifles and military chants, learn first-aid, civics, military history and, in some cases, wear uniforms to school for inspection once a week.

The Army also uses an online video game, called "America's Army", to attract potential recruits as young as 13, train them to use weapons, and engage in virtual combat and other military missions. Launched in 2002, the video game had attracted 7.5 million registered users by September 2006.

"Military recruitment tools aimed at youth under 18, including Pentagon-produced video games, military training, corps, and databases of students' personal information, have no place in America's schools," said Turner.

(END/2008)

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12) No Rebates for You
Editorial
May 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/opinion/15thu1.html?hp

Immigrant restrictionism is stiffing hundreds of thousands of American citizens and legal residents out of their tax-rebate checks.

Hard-liners were so intent on keeping the cash out of the hands of undocumented workers that they restricted the rebate to people with Social Security numbers. An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, issued by the Internal Revenue Service to people who pay taxes but do not qualify for Social Security numbers, will not do. If a married couple files jointly, and one spouse is not eligible for the rebate, neither gets the money.

This hurts all manner of people who are working and paying taxes: American soldiers stationed abroad who happen to have married foreigners; high-tech immigrants in Silicon Valley and other places whose spouses are not authorized to work or have not yet had their paperwork processed. These are people who are perfectly legal, economically vital and politically inconvenient.

The government should fix the law so spouses get their money. It is a technical repair that even this Congress should manage. But why shouldn’t undocumented immigrants with taxpayer numbers get the cash too? The checks are not rewards for good behavior; they are taxes returned as a means to an end. Illegal immigrants constitute about 5 percent of the work force and earn much less than the native-born. They are just the sort of group the stimulus should be aimed at, if the purpose is to get the most economic bang for every rebate dollar.

Arguments like that do not fly in the polluted atmosphere of immigration politics, which has produced toxic byproducts so extreme that they make the rebate glitch seem like a mere annoyance.

Industries across the country are suffering and crops are rotting for lack of workers. Congress is debating a national right-to-work system that could mistakenly ensnare countless Americans and seriously overburden the Social Security bureaucracy. Federal agents and local police officers around the nation are rounding up the usual immigrants.

Such crackdowns have forced thousands of harmless people into a fast-growing, secretive detention system that is shockingly deficient in basic rights and decent health care. In a disturbing article, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the United States government had injected hundreds of undocumented foreigners with mind-altering drugs to render them docile while they were being deported. This practice violates every imaginable standard of decency, not to mention a few international laws and treaties.

Smart efforts to minimize the ill effects of illegal immigration die political deaths, meanwhile, like putting the undocumented into New York State’s motor-vehicle database, registered and insured instead of anonymous and unaccounted for. That was also the fate of the Dream Act, a modest bill to ease the way to college for the guiltless children of illegal immigrants so they would not be condemned to dead-end jobs. A model identity-card program in New Haven, hailed for lowering crime, is under legal attack from nativist groups.

Efforts at deliberate, proportionate and responsible immigration reform provoke paralysis, but restrictionist tactics are greeted with exuberance. The itch to do something about illegal immigration is being scratched. Note to country: Scratching never cured anything.

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13) Marine Given 4 Years in Sex Case
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
May 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world/asia/17japan.html?ref=world

TOKYO — A United States court-martial sentenced a marine to four years in prison on Friday for sexually abusing a 14-year-old Japanese girl, ending a case that had deepened anger over the American military presence in Japan.

The marine, Staff. Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, pleaded guilty to “abusive sexual contact” at the court-martial at Camp Foster in Okinawa, but was cleared of rape, the United States military said. He was also given a dishonorable discharge.

In February, Mr. Hadnott, who was stationed at a base in Okinawa, was arrested after the girl accused him of raping her inside his car. The marine, who had given the girl a ride, denied the accusation but admitted pressing her down and trying to kiss her.

The incident caused widespread anger in Okinawa, home to most of the 40,000 members of the American military based in Japan, and led to protests by Japanese politicians, including Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

On a visit to Japan in February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed deep regret over the case.

Japanese anger subsided after the girl, who was criticized in the news media for getting into the car with the marine, withdrew her complaint and Japanese prosecutors dropped the charges against the serviceman.

“Even though he was not prosecuted under the Japanese judicial system, we found that there was enough evidence to prosecute him under the U.S. system,” Lt. Gen. Edward Rice, the commander of the United States forces in Japan, said at a news conference Friday.

The case was one of several involving American servicemen in Japan in recent months. Last month, Olatunbosun Ugbogu, 22, a Navy seaman who had been wanted for deserting his base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, was charged with killing a taxi driver over a dispute about a fare.

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14) Italy Arrests Hundreds of Immigrants
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/europe/16italy.html?ref=world

ROME — Underscoring the new Italian government’s determination to crack down on illegal immigration and what the government contends is associated crime, Italy’s police arrested hundreds of people this week in a sweep of migrant shantytowns in major urban areas across the country, the police announced Thursday.

Nearly 400 people were arrested, including more than 100 who were immediately expelled. The police said more than 100 of those arrested were suspected of violating immigration laws, 180 of theft or prostitution, and 92 of drug dealing. Those arrested included 50 Moroccans and 32 Romanians.

The widely publicized raids were a strong signal from Italy’s new right-wing government, which is led by Silvio Berlusconi and includes the anti-immigrant Northern League Party, that it will keep its promises to pursue tougher policies toward immigrants.

“The anti-immigrant sweep was a positive thing because that’s what people want,” said Umberto Bossi, the minister of institutional reforms and federalism. “People ask us for safety, and we must give it to them.”

Mr. Berlusconi’s coalition, the People of Freedom party, ran on a platform that declared that it would “empty illegal camps, and get rid of nomads who have no residence and no means of subsistence.”

On Saturday, several hundred Italians attacked a camp of Roma, or Gypsies, on the eastern outskirts of Naples brandishing sticks and throwing homemade incendiary devices, after a 16-year-old Roma girl was accused of trying to steal a baby. The police were called to restore order and no one was injured, but the episode led national news programs.

Anti-immigrant sentiments have become harder to square with the European Union’s open border policy, which allows union citizens to settle in any member state. In January, Bulgaria and Romania were admitted to the European Union and their citizens may now live legally in Italy without any special permit.

That includes the Roma ethnic minority, who tend to live separately and resist integration.

“The Roma as well are European citizens and as a consequence of that, their rights should be assured,” Cristian David, Romania’s interior minister, said Thursday at a conference in Rome, commenting on the sweep.

Immigrants are now an essential part of the labor force in Italy, as in many other Western European nations with aging populations and low birthrates.

“Industry would close without them, especially the Romanians, and especially small and medium firms,” said Antonio Ricci, an immigration specialist at the charity Caritas Migrantes in Rome. “Business owners are really worried about this campaign because they need this work force, they are good workers.

“It will be a big problem if Romanians start feeling unwelcome in Italy and go to the U.K. instead,” he said.

Maria Mocanu, president of the League of Romanians in Italy, said, “It is not acceptable that, because of a few hundred people, the image of a million Romanians who live in Italy, not to mention the image of an entire country — Romania — is receiving such damage.”

Many Western European countries are struggling to accommodate immigrants not only from member countries, but also from Africa and South America. Immigrants from outside the union must get visas, although many if not most arrive illegally. It is hard for many of those immigrants to get residency permits because Italy’s strict immigration laws require them to show that they have a job and a place to live.

An estimated 670,000 illegal immigrants are in Italy.

Daniele Pinto contributed reporting.

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15) California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban
By ADAM LIPTAK
May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/16marriage.html?ref=us

The California Supreme Court, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, ruled on Thursday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.

The 4-to-3 decision, drawing on a ruling 60 years ago that struck down a state ban on interracial marriage, would make California the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages.

The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days unless the court grants a stay, was greeted with celebrations at San Francisco City Hall, where thousands of same-sex marriages were thrown out by the courts four years ago.

It was denounced by religious and conservative groups that promised to support an initiative proposed for the November ballot that would amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriages and overturn the decision.

Same-sex marriage has been a highly contentious issue in presidential and Congressional elections, but it was not immediately clear what role the ruling would have this year. The Democratic and Republican candidates for president have all said they believe marriage should be between a man and a woman, but Republicans could use a surge in same-sex marriages in the most populous state to invigorate conservative voters.

Given the historic, cultural, symbolic and constitutional significance of marriage, Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote for the majority, the state cannot limit its availability to opposite-sex couples.

“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice George wrote, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

Supporters of same-sex marriage called the ruling a milestone.

“This decision will give Americans the lived experience that ending exclusion from marriage helps families and harms no one,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, who noted that same-sex marriages were legal in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa and Spain.

Opponents said they expected the proposed ballot initiative, which has been submitted to election officials with more than one million signatures, to pass in November.

“The court was wrong from top to bottom on this one,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage. “The court brushed aside the entire history and meaning of marriage in our tradition.”

About 110,000 same-sex couples live in California, according to census data. The state has a strong domestic partnership law that gives couples who register nearly all of the benefits and burdens of heterosexual marriage.

A majority of the justices said that was not enough.

The court left open the possibility that the Legislature could use a term other than “marriage” to denote state-sanctioned unions, so long as that term was used across the board for opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

The ban on same-sex marriage was based on a law enacted in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000, both defining marriage as limited to unions between a man and a woman. The question before the court was whether those laws violated provisions of the state’s Constitution protecting equality and fundamental rights.

Mathew D. Staver, a lawyer with Liberty Counsel, a public interest firm that defends traditional marriage, said it would ask the court to stay its decision until the November election, meaning that the decision could be overturned before becoming effective.

“It would only be logical” to grant a stay, Mr. Staver said, given the confusion that would arise if same-sex marriages were available for a few months.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said in a statement that he respected the ruling and did not support a constitutional amendment to overturn it.

In a dissent, Justice Marvin R. Baxter said the majority should have deferred to the Legislature on whether to allow same-sex marriage, particularly given the increased legal protections for same-sex couples enacted in recent years.

“But a bare majority of this court,” Justice Baxter wrote, “not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves.”

Also dissenting, Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote that her personal sympathies were with the plaintiffs challenging the bans on same-sex marriage. But Justice Corrigan said the courts should allow the political process to address the question.

“We should allow the significant achievements embodied in the domestic partnership statutes to continue to take root,” she wrote. “If there is to be a new understanding of the meaning of marriage in California, it should develop among the people of our state and find its expression at the ballot box.”

The Supreme Court was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage, in a 1948 decision called Perez v. Sharp. The vote in Perez, like the one in Thursday’s decision, was 4 to 3. The United States Supreme Court did not follow suit until 1967.

At present, six of the seven justices on the California court, including all the dissenters, were appointed by Republican governors.

The decision was rooted in two rationales, and both drew on the Perez case.

The first was that marriage is a fundamental constitutional right.

“The right to marry,” Chief Justice George wrote, “represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with a person of one’s choice and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual.”

Chief Justice George conceded that “as an historical matter in this state marriage has always been restricted to a union between a man and a woman.” But “tradition alone,” he continued, does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right. Bans on interracial marriage were, he wrote, sanctioned by the state for many years.

In a second rationale from the interracial case, the court struck down the laws banning same-sex marriage on equal protection grounds, also adopting a new standard of review in the process.

When courts weigh whether distinctions among people or groups violate the right to equal protection they generally require just a rational basis for the distinction, a relatively easy standard to meet. But when the discrimination is based on race, sex or religion, the courts generally require a more substantial justification.

Discrimination based on sexual orientation, the majority ruled on Thursday, also requires that sort of more rigorous justification. The court acknowledged that it was the first state high court to adopt the standard, strict scrutiny, in sexual orientation cases.

Lawyers for the state identified two interests to justify reserving the term marriage for heterosexual unions — tradition and the will of the majority. Chief Justice George said neither was sufficient.

Still, Chief Justice George took pains to emphasize the limits of the ruling. It does not require ministers, priests or rabbis to perform same-sex marriages, he said.

He added that the decision did “not affect the constitutional validity of the existing prohibitions against polygamy and the marriage of close relatives.”

Other state high courts to consider the question of same-sex marriage in recent years, including those in New York, New Jersey and Washington, have been closely divided but stopped short of striking down state laws forbidding it. A decision from the Connecticut Supreme Court is expected shortly.

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16) Los Angeles Eyes Sewage as a Source of Water
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/16water.html?ref=us

LOS ANGELES — Faced with a persistent drought and the threat of tighter water supplies, Los Angeles plans to begin using heavily cleansed sewage to increase drinking water supplies, joining a growing number of cities considering similar measures.

Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who opposed such a plan a decade ago over safety concerns, announced the proposal on Thursday as part of a package of initiatives to put the city, the nation’s second largest, on a stricter water budget. The other plans include increasing fines for watering lawns during restricted times, tapping into and cleaning more groundwater, and encouraging businesses and residents to use more efficient sprinklers and plumbing fixtures.

The move comes as California braces for the possibility of the most severe water shortages in decades.

Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, which supplies about a third of Los Angeles’s water, is short of expectations. At the same time, the Western drought has lowered supplies in reservoirs, while legal rulings to protect endangered species will curtail water deliveries from Northern California.

Worsening the problem, Los Angeles is expected to add 500,000 people by 2030, forcing the city to examine new ways to meet demand. One option off the table, Mr. Villaraigosa said, is a repeat of the city’s troubled history, fictionalized in the movie “Chinatown,” of diverting a distant river southward to slake the city’s thirst.

The city, pushed by legal claims, is already paying millions to restore dried-up portions of the river, the Owens.

“There simply are no more holes or straws to pitch,” Mr. Villaraigosa said at a news conference at a water plant.

Many cities and towns across the country, including Los Angeles, already recycle wastewater for industrial uses and landscaping.

But the idea of using recycled wastewater, after intense filtering and chemical treatment, to replenish aquifers and reservoirs has gotten more notice lately because of technological advances that, industry leaders say, can make the water purer than tap water. San Diego and South Florida are also considering or planning to test the idea, and Orange County, Calif., opened a $481 million plant in January, without much community resistance, that is believed to be the world’s largest such facility.

None of the proposals or recycling projects already under way send the treated water directly into taps; most often the water is injected into the ground and gradually filters down into aquifers.

That is what Los Angeles would do, too. But the city abandoned that idea seven years ago in the face of political opposition, and is likely to face some debate about it now.

Fran Reichenbach, a founder of the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association, one of the groups that opposed the plan, said she remained unconvinced the water would be safe.

“I appreciate them trying to save us in a time of water shortage, but the fact remains the kind of toxins and chemicals that are created on daily basis cannot be tested for,” Ms. Reichenbach said, disputing industry claims to the contrary. She said the group would push for independent testing and analysis of the treated water.

But Mr. Villaraigosa and H. David Nahai, the general manager of the Department of Water and Power, said they would push forward.

It will cost about $1 billion to retool the water works to treat the sewage, capture more rainfall and make other improvements. The money, city officials said, will come in part from state grants and fees on polluters, though they have not ruled out increases in water bills as well. The City Council must approve some of the changes.

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