[eggplant43]

A homeless guy finds a refuge on the Internet

By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY

He sits in a secluded corner at the Nashville Public Library, next to a window that overlooks glass-and-steel buildings and a small park. In front of him is a computer screen, which is a different kind of window — a window into the world where he sends his words, his thoughts, his ideas.

Kevin Barbieux is a homeless man who uses the Web to record his experiences.
Eric Parsons, The (Nashville) Tennessean

He writes about God, Jung and the symphony. But mostly he writes about what he knows best: life as a homeless man in urban America, a world so far beneath the social radar that many step right over it.

By day, Kevin Barbieux writes in the free-form diarist style of Web logs — known in Internet circles as "blogs" — as "The Homeless Guy." His Web site (www.thehomelessguy.blogspot.com) has developed a worldwide following.

By night, the balding, blue-eyed 41-year-old stays in a shelter, a car or sometimes a new spot that he has heard might be safe.

Writing about his life is not new to Barbieux, who has lived on and off the streets for 20 years. In 1997 he started a newspaper about the homeless, but it lasted only two issues. Over the ensuing five years, he spent much of his time on computers in cafes and at the public library. Then, on Aug. 20, he became a blogger, using free software offered through a Web service called Blog Spot.

Since then, more than 38,000 people have visited his site, and the number continues to grow. Barbieux's goal is to shed light on the plight of the homeless: "If more people knew what was really going on, what it was really like to be homeless, more people would get involved. There's so much I want to say."

Barbieux became homeless in 1982, when "for reasons I did not understand at the time, I had an irresistible urge to leave San Diego," he says in his blog. "After a particularly bad day, I loaded up my car with the few valuables I had and headed east."

He got as far as Nashville, where he ran out of money and began living in his car. One frigid February night, he ran out of gas while trying to stay warm. "It was then that I decided to seek out shelter at the rescue mission," he says. "I was 21 years old, yet I had no idea how to take care of myself in this world."

Since then, Barbieux says, he has tried to live a conventional life, but he has had limited success. He says he has severe social anxiety, and its physical and psychological symptoms have prevented him from keeping a job or attending school regularly.

He has held a few part-time jobs and has worked as a photographer. But Barbieux says he was booted from the Navy after a short stint. He briefly attended college, but his grades failed as he was overwhelmed by social life. He even was married for 6 1/2 years and has two children, ages 9 and 12. But he has become estranged from them because of his situation.

"I've never really had close friends," he says. "No one invites me over for dinner or to watch the game. Yes, I know a lot of people, but it's all rather superficial."

He has received hundreds of e-mail messages, positive and negative. Like many fans of Barbieux's blog, Jordon Cooper, a pastor from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, came across the site one day while surfing the Internet and was drawn in by the writing. He also was curious, he says, about "someone who could obviously write at a fairly competent level but (who) is homeless."

Some of the more charitable visitors drop money into an online "tip jar," a button on his site that allow viewers to make donations using electronic payments. But others, including Julie Lessard of St. Cloud, Minn., are critical of the feature. Lessard, who was homeless for a year, says Barbieux's tip jar is a form of begging. She calls his blog "dangerous" because she says it doesn't give people enough information about how he became homeless and thus does not tell people how to avoid a similar plight.

Barbieux concedes he has made some poor decisions, but he considers the tip jar a way to make a living, not begging. "(Tippers) are not paying me to be homeless; they are paying me for making this blog. If I could get paid to be homeless, I'd just go outside."

Many readers also question why a man who is able to put together a Web page and write so eloquently cannot apply those skills toward getting a job.

"He seems very learned," says Hanna Girgis, a business analyst from Houston and a frequent reader. "He seems to be able to apply himself and set up his blog. If all that were possible, it would be possible to not be homeless. I pass people who are curled up under newspapers. That is (my) vision of someone who is homeless. I don't envision someone who can sit in the library and do HTML coding and interact with people all over the world."

That's because people want to see homelessness as a black-and-white issue, says the Rev. Charles Strobel, executive director at the Campus for Human Development, which provides services for Nashville's homeless. "Everybody wants it to be simple, but is your life simple?"

Barbieux's situation shows that homeless people are as diverse as anyone, says Strobel, who has known him for several years. "There are some devastating things that happen that even our best resources sometimes can't overcome. If everyone could be exposed to various stories, people would be less inclined to stereotypically dismiss them."

When Barbieux started his blog, his aspirations were small; he simply hoped to communicate with a few people. But now that he has attracted the attention of thousands, he's hoping for something bigger — such as a way out of homelessness for himself and maybe for others as well. "I have heard some say that they choose to be homeless," he says, but "I have never seen a homeless person turn down a place to stay off the streets."

He dreams of writing a book. He also hopes to run his own shelter one day. "It is my goal to have a home, a respectable dwelling, a place with room for my kids," he says.

In the meantime, Barbieux continues to sit in the library and document his life. "Online, the only thing that can be judged by others is your communication, your voice, your opinion," he says. "Before anyone says a thing, all people on the Internet are considered equal. It's a level of equality so pure it creates a tension that's hard to deal with.

"Idiots are easily exposed as such, and those with something real to say can say it, uninterrupted."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[eggplant43]

Jerry Falwell considers Islam's founder a terrorist
Copyright © 2002 AP Online



By RICHARD N. OSTLING, AP Religion Writer

NEW YORK (October 3, 2002 4:31 p.m. EDT) - The Rev. Jerry Falwell says "I think Muhammad was a terrorist" in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes."
The conservative Baptist minister tells correspondent Bob Simon he has concluded from reading Muslim and non-Muslim writers that Islam's prophet "was a - a violent man, a man of war."

"Jesus set the example for love, as did Moses," Falwell says. "I think Muhammad set an opposite example."

CBS released a partial transcript of the interview Thursday. Falwell's comments occur in a segment about American conservative Christians' political support for Israel.

A Falwell spokesman did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

Other conservative Protestant clergy have made sharply critical remarks about Islam and Muhammad in the past year. They include Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son and successor, TV evangelist Pat Robertson and leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In response to Falwell's remarks, Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relation in Washington, said: "Anybody is free to be a bigot if they want to. What really concerns us is the lack of reaction by mainstream religious and political leaders, who say nothing when these bigots voice these attacks."

Hooper noted that Falwell and Robertson will speak at next week's Christian Coalition convention in Washington alongside House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and other politicians.

"How can these elected representatives legitimize this kind of hate speech by appearing on the same platform with Islamophobes and Muslim-bashers?" Hooper asked.

Falwell was widely criticized last year after he said on Robertson's TV show that pagans, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals and civil liberties groups had secularized the nation and helped the Sept. 11 attacks happen. Falwell later apologized.

[eggplant43]

For any of you with teenagers, I thought this might be useful.


Internet Abbreviations and Acronyms

Since we know you all love chatting, here's a list of commonly used abbreviations around the internet that you might want to use:



a/s/l age/sex/location
afaik as far as I know
afk away from the keyboard
asap as soon as possible
atb all the best
atm at the moment
b/c because
bbl be back later
bbs be back soon
bf boyfriend
bfn bye for now
bg big grin
biab back in a bit
brb be right back
btw by the way
cu see you
cya see ya
d/c disconnect
d/l download
f female
faq frequently asked questions
fyi for your information
<g> grin
gf girlfriend
gg good game
gj good job
gl good luck
gmta great minds think alike
gtg got to go
h&k hug and kiss
ilu i love you
imho in my humble opinion
iou i owe you
im instant messenger
lmao laughing my *** off
lmk let me know
m male
iow in other words
irl in real life
jk just kidding
k okay
kit keep in touch (or Admin_VipersKitty!)
lol laughing out loud
ltns long time no see
ltr later
msg message
myob mind your own business
n/m never mind
ne1 anyone
np no problem
oic oh I see
omg oh my god
ott over the top
pdq pretty damn quick
plz please
pov point of view
ppl people
qt cutie
r are
rofl rolling on the floor laughing
s/o sod off
sry sorry
swalk sealed with a loving kiss
tc take care
thx thanks
tlc tender loving care
tmi too much information
tq thank you
ttfn ta ta for now
ttyl talk to you later
ty thank you
u you
vip very important person (or Admin_Viper!!)
w/ with
w/o without
wb welcome back
wbs write back soon
yw you're welcome
Zzzz you're boring me

[eggplant43]

Why We Eat
A review of Ellen Ruppel Shell's The Hungry Gene.

By Stephanie Mencimer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Two years ago, a young organ transplant doctor told me a harrowing story. Recently he had stood by and watched helplessly as a 15-year-old African-American girl died from an enlarged heart. A transplant might have saved her, but high blood pressure, diabetes, and a body mass of more than 400 pounds made surgery impossible. The memory haunted him as he continued to treat more and more children experiencing the deadly effects of chronic obesity. Mostly poor black kids, they marched through his office suffering from high cholesterol, high blood pressure, enlarged hearts, and adult-onset diabetes that promised to fill their future with kidney failure, amputations, blindness, and early heart attacks and strokes.
Despite the staggering numbers of kids like this who were showing up in District doctors' offices, little was being done about it. The public schools had long since sacrificed physical education to budget cuts; understaffed cafeterias served students Domino's pizza to be washed down with 20-ounce bottles of Powerade from school vending machines. The American Diabetes Association, headquartered in nearby Alexandria, Va., did not have a single program in the District for adults, much less children. Even as the casualties mounted, no one was sounding the alarm about all these fat kids. Eventually, though, I discovered that one group of people had taken a keen interest in the local obesity epidemic: drug company researchers. D.C. had so many fat kids, most of whom also had fat parents, that it was a veritable gold mine for gene-hunters looking for new drugs to treat Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

I thought about these kids--and the scientists pursuing them--as I read Ellen Ruppel Shell's new book, The Hungry Gene. As the co-director of the science journalism program at Boston University, Shell's specialty is scientists, and her book is largely a story about them. Her characters run the gamut from geneticists to nutritionists studying indigenous people of Micronesia, where a traditional diet of fish and breadfruit has been replaced by, of all things, Spam. The sum of all their tales isn't particularly heartening for those who may be carrying around a few extra pounds.

As Shell explains, humans are hardwired to get fat. Put us within arm's reach of too much junk food, liberate us from manual labor, and very few will avoid gaining a spare tire. "Obesity represents a triumph of instinct over reason, and as such it embarrasses us," writes Shell. "We prefer to think of ourselves as rational beings, in firm control of our destinies or, at the very least, of our bodies. But the deciphering of the genetic underpinnings to weight regulation has ascertained that it is to some degree biological, and that our drive to eat can sometimes eclipse reason."

The difficulty of overcoming genetic imperatives, though, hasn't prevented the nation from devoting its tremendous scientific resources to finding a pharmaceutical cure for excess poundage. While Shell strives for balance, it's clear that she doesn't think too highly of some of the scientists leading the race to find an obesity drug. Some of those who specialize in the study of gluttony also seem to suffer from another deadly sin: greed. Foremost among them, according to Shell, is Jeffrey Friedman, the head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University, who eventually helped discover--and patent--the first obesity gene, ob, and the protein it expressed, called leptin. Researchers believe that leptin is the body's tool for regulating appetite, alerting the brain when enough food has been consumed, and have entertained high hopes that someday it could be used as an appetite suppressant in humans.

In getting the gene patent, according to Shell, Friedman screwed over the very people who had helped him make the discovery in the first place, including veterans in the field whose preeminence helped secure the funding for his experiments and lab assistants who had devoted their lives to the cause and labored in horrible conditions for years. Shell says Friedman conveniently took over one assistant's nearly finished experiments while she was out of town, just before the big discovery, thus ensuring that he would be the only one credited with finding the gene. Friedman had also ensconced himself on the scientific advisory board of a drug company, anticipating a windfall from any drugs produced as a result of the discovery of leptin.

Among the many people Friedman denied credit for the achievement was Doug Coleman, who had done the pioneering work on obesity in mice in the '70s, and who had advised Friedman on his work. "Science was once about the free exchange of ideas, about collaboration," Coleman told Shell bitterly. "But today it's about intellectual property and confidentiality. It's all about patents, about ownership."

Another of Shell's targets is George Bray, a professor of medicine at Louisiana State University Medical Center, an esteemed scientist, past president of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, and founding editor of both the International Journal of Obesity and Obesity Research. He's also a guy who thinks that obesity is so dangerous that half the country should be taking diet drugs. As a result, his services have been sought out by various drug companies seeking to promote, or to protect from regulation, highly dubious weight-loss products. According to Shell, Bray has pimped fen-phen, Merida, and Metabolife's dietary supplements containing ephedra, an herb that works much like amphetamine and has been linked to the deaths of more than 100 people.

Not all the scientists in the book are portrayed as scoundrels. Shell finds several who got into the obesity field because they were genuinely interested in helping overweight people. One of them is Stephen O'Rahilly, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Cambridge, a doctor who actually likes treating patients and specializes in hard cases. A few years back, he treated a pair of cousins from Pakistan who suffered from what could only be called a pathological case of gluttony. The eight-year-old girl weighed nearly 190 pounds, and, despite liposuction and surgery, could no longer walk. The two-year-old, who weighed 65 pounds, was heading down the same path. The children behaved like "starving explorers," reports Shell, devouring everything in sight. If their parents padlocked the pantry at night, the kids would scavenge "through the trash for soggy French fries and gnawed frozen fish sticks from the freezer. There was no stopping them."

Dozens of doctors had tried to help, but they could find no explanation for such behavior. So the kids went to see O'Rahilly. He was aware of Friedman's work on the effects of leptin deficiency in mice, but scientists had never been able to find a leptin deficiency in humans. (In fact, most fat people have an overabundance of the stuff.) But O'Rahilly located it in the cousins and eventually also found the obesity gene mutation--the first such discovery in humans--which was telling the cousins' brains that they were starving. In an unprecedented experiment, O'Rahilly injected the cousins with leptin, with almost instantaneous results. The cousins stopped their nightly foraging in the kitchen, pushed away from the table, and shed pound after pound. O'Rahilly's work proved conclusively that the drive to overeat had deep genetic roots.

While leptin may have cured the Punjabi cousins of their ruinous cravings, its usefulness in treating other overweight people has so far been limited only to those with the specific, and rare, genetic mutation. More recent studies have shown that leptin does not serve as the body's tool for maintaining slimness, but rather prevents the body from becoming too thin. It's protective--if you're a hunter-gatherer subject to great variations in the availability of food. That's why, as one researcher told Shell, "For one or two months people considered leptin the Great White Hope. But we now know that leptin is not very good at preventing people from eating too much."

Forever Fat

With more than 60 percent of Americans overweight, Shell says scientists and drug companies alike see obesity as the "trillion-dollar disease," which is why, even when their products have failed to deliver, they have resorted to devious and underhanded schemes to deceive people into taking them anyway. Diet drugs have proven notoriously ineffective at helping people lose weight, and also usually rather dangerous. Fen-phen, which caused hundreds of cases of deadly primary pulmonary hypertension and heart-valve damage, is but one example. Shell shows how drug companies manipulated the Food and Drug Administration to get approval for Meridia, a weight loss drug that raises the risk of high blood pressure and stroke--the very things that are supposed to be reduced by losing weight. Meridia now has been linked to at least 19 deaths. And she finds several examples of prominent doctors selling drug companies the use of their names in order to get misleading industry-written articles touting the benefits of drugs like fen-phen into peer-reviewed medical journals.

Not only does Shell hold out these stories as morality tales about the dangers of greed in science, but she also uses the diet drug failures to make a convincing case that the scientific intellect will probably never outsmart the hardwiring of the body to consume excessive calories. Treat one angle of the problem, and another will kick in to compensate for it. That's why something drastic such as gastric bypass surgery--stomach stapling--works, but only for a while. Eventually, people who've undergone the surgery regain their appetites, and find creative ways to circumvent the problem of the smaller stomach, such as drinking melted quarts of ice cream. "Mother Nature wants her children to eat. Knock out a satiety gene like ob and an animal will eat insatiably. But knock out an appetite gene, and animals continue to eat normally," Shell writes. "For this reason, appetite-controlling drugs like fen-phen and Meridia, while they may work for some for a year or two, are not likely to permanently alter the eating habits of millions."

While much of The Hungry Gene is about the science of fat, Shell doesn't overlook environment as a critical factor in the world's obesity epidemic. It's the interplay, she argues, between genetics and environment that has created the current crisis in human waistlines. Our hunter-gatherer genes, designed to conserve energy and food to prepare for times of famine, are clashing with a modern culture of ease and plenty. To that end, she takes on car culture and the fast-food industry, a subject that has been well covered by Eric Schlosser in his bestselling Fast Food Nation.

Like Schlosser, Shell ends with the now-familiar call for a ban on marketing junk food to children. It's absolutely the right prescription, but one that invokes a "Yeah, right" response. This country will never ban Happy Meal ads on TV. Shell might have done better to suggest fighting fire with fire. Let the fast-food industry continue to market to children, but require TV stations to donate air time for anti-junk-food messages, which might, say, show what really goes into those burgers and fries. Or they might offer testimonials on the value of exercise from young people with Type 2 diabetes whose feet have been amputated. A similar requirement in the late 1960s for tobacco ads was so effective that it prompted the industry to voluntarily remove cigarette ads from television all together.

Another possibility would simply be warning labels, stickers on the side of 7-11 Double Gulps that spell out the dangers of consuming a full 64 ounces of Coke. Warning labels may seem trite on cigarettes today, but how many people really could say for sure how many calories are in a Double Gulp? (Answer: 600, almost a quarter of the proper full day's energy budget for an average male.) The food industry lobby has ferociously fought such labeling in the supermarket, a sign that this might be effective, at least for a while.

But why wait for the government to get involved? Instead, the food police at the Center for Science in the Public Interest ought to station themselves outside a busy McDonald's wearing sandwich boards that list the calorie and fat content of a large Extra Value Meal containing a Quarter Pounder with cheese (1,380 calories and 56 grams of fat). With the public duly informed about the restaurant's products, sales might plummet as people would no longer be able to delude themselves that fast food isn't that bad. Again, it might be only a temporary interruption, but it would accomplish what consumer groups can't afford to do now: counteract the onslaught of junk-food marketing. The media would eat up a campaign like this, and give the issue lots of free airtime. No doubt McDonald's would also respond with some ham-fisted legal action that would all but guarantee years of free fast-food bashing to come.

Shell doesn't raise the possibility of such exercises, but I'm sure she would approve. After all, they are far safer than a dose of Xenical. And she concludes that because of our genetic predisposition to amass calories, it's imperative for the U.S. and other countries to create an environment that at least makes us work a little harder for our Krispy Kremes--or shames us into avoiding them all together.

[Shadow Bea]

15 Common Rights For Renters
Protect Yourself


In a perfect world, landlords and tenants would work together like a well-oiled machine, both generously doing their part to keep each other happy and not disturb their neighbors' "peaceful enjoyment of the premises," as phrased in Mississippi's landlord-tenant law.


In fact, lots of tenant-landlord relationships fit this description—but we've all heard horror stories about the exceptions. And laws that protect both parties have become so complex that understanding your rights can be like herding cats. Since landlord -tenant law varies by state, the key is knowing your rights—preferably before you even sign your rental agreement. Understanding your state law and the terms of your lease are your best guarantees against future problems.


15 common renters' rights
Although renters' rights vary by region, many are pretty predictable. Here's a sample of rights likely to be addressed in your state's landlord-tenant law:


1. The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to deny housing to a tenant on the grounds of race, color, sex, religion, disability, family status, or national origin.
2. Residential rental units should be habitable and in compliance with housing and health codes—meaning they should be structurally safe, sanitary, weatherproofed, and include adequate water, electricity, and heat.
3. Many states limit the amount landlords can charge for security deposits. (See http://www.nolo.com/encyclopedia/articles/lt/lt1.html to find out if yours is one of them.)
4. A landlord should make necessary repairs and perform maintenance tasks in a timely fashion, or include a provision in the lease stating that tenants can order repairs and deduct the cost from rent.
5. A landlord must give prior notice (typically 24 hours) before entering your premises and can normally only do so to make repairs or in case of an emergency.
6. Illegal provisions in a rental agreement (provisions counter to state law) are usually not enforceable in court.
7. If a landlord has violated important terms related to health, safety, or necessary repairs, you might have a legal right to break your lease.
8. If you have to break a long-term lease, in most states landlords are required to search for a new tenant as soon as possible rather than charging the tenant for the full duration of the lease.
9. Damage or security deposits are not deductible for "normal wear and tear." Some states require that a landlord give an itemized report of any deductions.
10. Most states require landlords to return refundable portions of a security deposit within 14 to 30 days after the tenant has vacated the premises, even in the case of eviction.
11. Landlords usually can't legally seize a tenant's property for nonpayment of rent or any other reason, except in the case of abandonment as defined by law.
12. Landlords are legally prohibited from evicting tenants as retaliation for action a tenant takes related to a perceived landlord violation.
13. A landlord cannot legally change the locks, shut off (or cause to have shut off) your utilities, or evict you without notice; eviction requires a court order.
14. If a landlord makes life so miserable for you that it forces you to move, it may be considered "constructive eviction," which is usually grounds for legal action.
15. In many states, it's illegal for a lease to stipulate that the tenant is responsible for the landlord's attorney fees in case of a court dispute.

[littlemar]

HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT
Report Indicates Gender-Related Violence Is Global

By Jordan Lite - WEnews correspondent

(WOMENSENEWS)--Up to 70 percent of female murder victims worldwide are killed by their male companions and as many as one-third of girls are forced into their first sexual experience, according to a World Health Organization report released Thursday. The report urged countries to no longer treat violence solely as a "law and order issue."

Violence must instead be addressed by preventive public health measures, the agency says. Violent acts are most often committed behind closed doors and go unreported, according to the document, making violence "one of the leading public health issues of our time."

While most of the data in the "World Report on Violence and Health" is not new, the report is significant because it is the first time a United Nations agency has produced a major document that acknowledges the public health implications of violence beyond those of injury and death--particularly domestic and sexual violence that occurs in private, said Etienne Krug, director of the department of injuries and violence prevention at the World Health Organization.

"Violence is often only addressed in the context of war or the context of crime," said Krug, who edited the report. "By doing so we miss some of the violence that is not necessarily crime: violence in the home, bullying, suicide."

The United Nations first declared violence a worldwide public health problem at the World Health Assembly in Geneva in 1996. Now, armed with data on the extent of the problem and nine recommendations to address it, the World Health Organization will conduct an 18-month violence-prevention campaign. Fifteen countries have already invited agency officials to present their findings and review how effectively those countries are implementing preventive measures, Krug said.

Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women, commended the agency for issuing the report, adding that attention to the problem of violence against women "is long overdue by a U.N. agency."

"I hope that this is a sign that WHO and other U.N. agencies will push national governments and the global community to think seriously about how violence against women can be prevented and the significant costs to women's rights and the economic costs to national economies," Gupta said.

Violence Accounts for 7 Percent of Deaths among Women and Girls

The report tallies the ripple effects of physical, sexual and psychological violence around the world, from the immediate deaths and injuries to long-lasting problems including permanent physical disabilities and a range of
mental, behavioral and reproductive health troubles.

More than 1.6 million people each year die from violence, which is among the leading causes of death for those ages 15 to 44. In that age group, violence accounts for 7 percent of deaths among women and girls and 14 percent among men and boys. But while males are more often both the victims and perpetrators of violence overall, the "overwhelming burden" of sexual violence and violence at the hand of an intimate partner is borne by women, the report says.

The patterns of abuse women experience are strikingly universal, Krug notes. Most victims of physical aggression experience multiple assaults over time and more than one type of abuse. The report states that in 48 surveys from around the world, between 10 percent and 69 percent of women report that they have been physically assaulted by a male partner; with 22 percent of U.S. women reporting they were assaulted by male partners. Nearly 25 percent of women may experience sexual violence by an intimate partner during their lives, according to the report.

And these women continue to feel the after-effects of violence long after it's over. Victims of sexual violence can experience unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other gynecological problems, as well as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts and behavior. Domestic violence victims experience some of these same effects, as well as gastrointestinal problems and chronic pain.

"These statistics are shocking and disturbing," Krug said.

The report also notes the growing recognition of elder abuse, which includes neglect, physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Between 4 percent and 6 percent of all elderly people are abused in the home, and violence that occurs in care facilities may be even more widespread, the report says. Elderly women are at increased risk of abuse in cultures where women have inferior social status, and the type of violence they experience is particular to their gender. In Tanzania, for example, 500 elderly women accused of witchcraft are killed annually, the report says. Older women also may be abandoned and have their property taken when a husband dies.

Women Will Benefit from View of Violence as Health, Not Rights Issue

But "violence is not an intractable social problem or an inevitable part of the human condition," the report says. It advocates that countries establish national violence-prevention plans that involve government as well as health, education and labor organizations. It also recommends steps including the promotion of primary prevention services, such as parenting training and improving firearm safety; strengthening responses to violence, such as improved emergency-response systems and integrating violence prevention into policies to promote gender and social equality.

Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor of nursing at Johns Hopkins University who has been studying domestic violence since 1980, said that women would benefit from the report, which treats domestic violence as a mainstream health issue for the medical profession, rather than a politically marginalized human rights issue.

"I think it will be an eye-opener for people," Campbell said. "When they see the extent of injury and mortality, policymakers are much more likely to address the issue legislatively and through health care. In emergency room departments, providers will perhaps start asking routinely about violence.

"What we've found in the past is that if you address this as a women's health issue, that gets them convinced that it's an important issue--sometimes more so than if you talk about it only as a human rights issue," she added. "Sometimes talking about it as a human rights or women's rights issue, that's where you get a backlash."

But Krug said that the report could strengthen the use of international human rights conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, known as CEDAW, which has been ratified by 170 countries. "We see the collaboration of human rights and public health as a very
important one," he said. "I think the report can contribute to the efforts around CEDAW."

[Rep]

The Dow Jones dropped an additional 215.20 on tuesday.

Market carnage hits $8.4 trillion

By Matt Krantz, USA TODAY

Investors continue to suffer as stocks hit a multiyear low that has cut the total value of the U.S. market to half its March 2000 peak.

The Dow Jones industrial average, Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq composite are now at their most depressed levels in half a decade. The slide has brought total bear market losses to $8.4 trillion, Wilshire Associates says.

As has become common recently, investors had no shortage of reasons to sell Monday: Sears issued a profit warning; the standstill continued at western U.S. ports; Cisco's CEO gave a gloomy assessment of business conditions; and President Bush prepared to give a speech on the potential for war with Iraq.

But just as harmful as the bad news barraging stocks is the market's inability to mount a lasting recovery, says Todd Leone, trader at SG Cowen. "Every time the market rallies, sellers come back in," he says.

Last week, investors could find some solace in the fact that the S&P, considered the broadest market gauge of the three indexes, had not set a bear market low. But Monday, the S&P hit a fresh low in unison with the Dow and Nasdaq, leaving it at a level not seen since April 1997. The bear market is now close to becoming the USA's worst ever. Behind the slide:

Non-stop destruction. Investors who thought the market would have to recover after $4.5 trillion in value disappeared through 2001 have had their confidence crushed as they watched an additional $3.9 trillion get wiped out so far this year.
Aggressive selling by large investors. Big mutual funds are selling into the rallies to make sure they have enough cash to handle redemptions, says Ed Wedbush, CEO of brokerage Wedbush Morgan. The swings are amplified by computerized trading — which triggers selling or buying when stocks hit preset levels, he says. Up to half of the New York Stock Exchange's trades are coming from automated programs vs. the typical 20%, he says.
Bad earnings news. There have been 30% more earnings warnings this quarter than last.
No panic. Investors are less fearful than they were when the market last bottomed, according to the Chicago Board Options Exchange volatility index. That's bad because rather than getting the slide over with a crash, the declines are gradual and constant, says Todd Salamone of Schaeffer's Investment Research. "There are still more bulls than bears," he says.
Contributing: Adam Shell

[eggplant43]

Recalculating Cancer Survival Rates
LONDON, Oct. 11, 2002


The chances of surviving many types of cancer are better than statisticians thought, according to a new way of calculating the odds that takes into account improvements in treatment.

The new technique, outlined this week in The Lancet medical journal, separates recent patients from those who received less advanced treatment in years past.

The method is increasingly being adopted in Europe, where it was first proposed. American experts are starting to evaluate its merits. The new approach, proposed by German epidemiologist Hermann Brenner, is commonly used in other areas of medicine, such as predicting life expectancy.

In the Lancet study, Brenner analyzed more than 1.7 million patients recorded in the U.S. National Cancer Institute database.

He found that the new method estimates American breast cancer patients had a 71 percent chance of surviving 15 years, while the conventional approach put the chance at 58 percent.

Similarly, the 15-year survival rate for American men with testicular cancer was 91 percent, compared to 86 percent with the old method.

The survival rate for ovarian cancer five years after diagnosis was 55 percent with the new method, compared with 49 percent previously.

The conventional method of estimating cancer-patient survival, called the cohort approach, estimates the chances of surviving a particular cancer for, say 10 years, by looking at what has happened to patients diagnosed between 1990 and 2000.

"Cohort estimates are generally not appropriate for predicting the survival of newly diagnosed patients since the estimates are heavily weighted toward the survival experience of patients diagnosed many years in the past," said Paul Dickman, a professor of biostatistics at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who is a proponent of the new method but was not connected with the latest study.

The new approach, called period analysis, is based only on recent years - for example, on patients who were alive and under follow-up during the year 2000.

Henrik Moller, a professor of cancer epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is a fan of Brenner's approach.

"Cancer survival tends to improve, very gradually, but very certainly," said Moller, who is also director of research at the Thames Cancer Registry in London. "This technique (picks up) improvements in survival better than the old one."

Timo Hakulinen, director of Finland's cancer registry, tested both methods. He thought the new method might overestimate survival, "but that turned out not to be the case. There was not a single (cancer) site where it was too optimistic," Hakulinen said. "It has proven to be surprisingly good."

Hakulinen cautioned the new method is more prone to give wrong results if the database is not of good quality.

Brenda Edwards, associate director of the surveillance research program at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, said her team needs more convincing.

"I have not had my first-rate methodologists go in and look at it to compare and contrast the attributes of this approach versus other approaches that we've taken here in the United States," Edwards said. "I view it as just another technique that we will have to look at more closely."



By Emma Ross

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October 12, 2002
It's the War, Stupid
By FRANK RICH


As soon as President Bush rolled out his new war on Iraq, the Democrats in Washington demanded a debate, and debates they got, all right. There was the debate between Matt Drudge and Barbra Streisand about the provenance of an antiwar quote she recited at a party fund-raiser. There was the debate about whether Jim McDermott, Democratic Congressman from Washington, should have come home from Baghdad before announcing on TV that we can take Saddam Hussein's promises at "face value." There were the debates about why Al Gore took off his wedding ring, why Robert Torricelli took a Rolex, and why Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson took noisy offense at so benign and popular a Hollywood comedy as "Barbershop."

But as for the promised debate about Iraq, it became heated only after Congressional approval of the president's mission was a foregone conclusion. Though the party's leaders finally stepped up, starting with Mr. Gore, most of them seemed less concerned with the direction of the nation in 2002 than with positioning themselves for the White House in 2004 (or '08). They challenged the administration's arrogant and factually disingenuous way of pursuing its goal, then beat a hasty retreat to sign on to whatever fig-leaf language they could get into the final resolution. (Mr. Gore, after his Sept. 23 Iraq speech, dropped the subject altogether.)

Even at their most forceful they failed to state their qualified, Bush-lite case for war with anything like the persistence, eloquence and authority of Chuck Hagel, the Republican Vietnam War hero. Speaking with almost mournful resignation from the floor on Wednesday, the senator was naked in his doubts about what lies ahead. "We should not be seduced by the expectations of `dancing in the streets' after Saddam's regime has fallen," he said.

That Democratic leaders added so little to the discussion is attributed to their intimidation by the president's poll numbers, their fear of being branded unpatriotic and their eagerness to clear the decks (whatever the price) to return to the economy, stupid, before Election Day. None of these motives constitute a profile in courage; no wonder George W. Bush was emboldened to present himself as the new John F. Kennedy in his Iraq speech on Monday night.

Agree with him or not, the president does stand for something. He led, and the Democrats followed. The polls, far from rationalizing the Democrats' timidity, suggest they might have won a real debate had they staged one. Support for an Iraq war is falling, with the dicey 51 percent in favor in the latest CNN/USA Today survey dropping to a Vietnam-like 33 percent support level if there are 5,000 casualties, as there could well be. But even so, the Democratic leaders never united around a substantive alternative vision to the administration's pre-emptive war against the thug of Baghdad. That isn't patriotism, it's abdication.

Perhaps more than he intended, Tom Daschle summed up the feeble thrust of his party's opposition on "Meet the Press" last weekend when he observed, "The bottom line is . . . we want to move on." Now his wish has come true — but move on to what? The dirty secret of the Democrats is that they have no more of an economic plan than they had an Iraq plan.

Nor do they want to dwell on Iraq and the economy in the same breath. No one really knows how many billions are needed to pay for both the war itself and the years to follow of shouldering what James Fallows in The Atlantic calls "The Fifty-first State," post-Saddam Iraq. The Democrats are in lockstep with the president in refusing to say that we will have to sacrifice anything to pay these bills, because that would mean 'fessing up to the unpleasant truth that either domestic spending will have to be cut or taxes will have to be raised.

The economic rant the Democrats offer instead is the safely generic one they've used in war and peace, regardless of the state of the economy, since the Reagan years. As befits a clownish approach, it is all too fittingly presented this election season in the form of a cartoon — a now notorious ad in which Mr. Bush is depicted pushing Social Security recipients in wheelchairs to their doom. It's a funny example of its "South Park" genre, and we do get the point: Privatized Social Security accounts could hurt Our Seniors. As indeed they could.

But such accounts are likely less imminent than a Saddam nuclear attack; even Republican ideologues are running away from them in this economic environment. The real wolves at the door today are rising unemployment and falling consumer confidence, a cratered stock market that may soon be mirrored in the real estate market and . . . well, every Democratic candidate (and most American voters) can recite the litany. But in the words of Fritz Hollings, a Democratic senator so old that, like Robert Byrd, he sometimes commits the political sin of speaking the truth: "Our problem is the Democrats whine and whine. Everybody knows what the trouble is. The question is, `What's the solution?' "


The solution seems to be the same as that for Iraq — call for a debate and pray. Here is what Richard Gephardt had to say last week: "I have asked the president for nine months to have a summit on the economy to try to figure out a new economic game plan for this country." On Thursday Mr. Daschle asked for Congress to extend unemployment compensation and help bail out teetering budgets in the states (without saying where the money would come from), floated the whimsy that Mr. Bush might replace all his economic advisers with Clinton administration alumni and, yes, again called for an "economic summit." This kind of visionary leadership and a tin cup will get an unemployed American another presidential economic conclave of fat cats in Waco.

You might think that Mr. Gore, who has much to gain by showing political spine, would seize the moment. But fresh from his Iraq oration, he trotted out an economic address that offered only the familiar recitation of woes, followed by a few boilerplate bullet points largely remaindered from the 2000 campaign (including, of all musty Gore golden oldies, a plea for maximizing Internet bandwidth).

Like his party's Congressional leaders, he conspicuously avoided suggesting any kind of rollback of the Bush tax cut that now looms over the nation's economic future like the sword of Damocles. Pressed in a subsequent Q/A to take a stand on this fiscal elephant in the room, Mr. Gore said: "This is the time when we ought to be making some tough choices and reassessing what parts of the plan work and don't work." Far be it from him to offer his own reassessment at a time of national crisis. With or without his wedding ring or beard, the current new Al Gore is the same old Al Gore who fudged tough choices on issues like gun control and the death penalty during the 2000 debates.

As if to complete the picture of Democratic bankruptcy on what is supposed to be its signature issue, the party's chairman, Terry McAuliffe, was sitting in the front row for Mr. Gore's talk. No one is a more brazen role model for pseudo-populist hypocrisy at a time when corporate corruption has undermined fundamental American faith in the integrity of capitalism. Forever decrying the crooks of the dot-com bubble, Mr. McAuliffe has made millions (all legally, of course) from his serial insider's status at two telecom companies, Global Crossing and Telergy (where he was a director). While both subsequently went belly up, costing many Americans their jobs, their retirements or both, he was long gone when those non-insiders took the hit, much as Mr. Bush was at Harken.

In Washington, the main question about such Democratic fecklessness is: How will it play on Nov. 5? Is the economy so bad that despite everything, the party might hold onto the Senate and retake the House? I have no idea, and, I suspect, neither does anyone else in a punditocracy that with near unanimity erroneously predicted a G.O.P. sweep during the impeachment midterms of '98. But we're not in the frivolous 90's any more, and as we hurtle into war a better question might be: Do the Democrats stand for anything other than the next election?

As Congress prepared to sign off on the war resolution Thursday, Mr. Daschle sounded relieved, predicting that Americans would start brooding over the economy "once we get this question of Iraq behind us." Behind us? Given that he just signed on to a policy that by the C.I.A.'s estimation may increase the likelihood that a ruthless foe will attack us with biological and chemical weapons, you have to wonder just what America he is living in.

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100 new frog species show up human ignorance

By Steve Connor

London - Scientists have identified more than 100 new species of frogs inhabiting a small and threatened patch of tropical rainforest in a discovery that underscores our ignorance of the natural world's immense diversity.

The new species are all tree frogs living in the rainforests of Sri Lanka and are the latest additions to the estimated 1,7 million species of animals and plants known to science. However, increasingly scientists believe that the actual number of species on Earth is many times this number - possibly 10 million or more.

An international team of biologists led by Christopher Schneider of Boston University describes up to 140 new frog species they found in a survey of Sri Lankan rainforests published this week in the journal Science. The researchers say that the island is an "amphibian hotspot of global importance" in terms of biodiversity.

'It's a surprise to find so many frogs'
"We have only just begun the process of describing them and giving them names. They range in size from about an inch to four inches and come in all colours," Dr Schneider said.

Over recent years, herpetologists have monitored a dramatic global decline in amphibians - frogs, toads, newts and salamanders - so it has come as a surprise to many of them to discover a place where so many tree frogs have survived unnoticed.

"Sri Lanka is well explored and has has been studied by many British naturalists so it has come as a surprise to find so many frogs," Dr Schneider said.

Some of the newly-found frogs lay their eggs in foam nests in trees and bushes overhanging streams. When the tadpoles reach a certain size they drop into the water where they continue their metamorphosis into frogs.

Other species, however, belong to the rhacophorine group of frogs which lay eggs in the forest leaf litter that develop directly into tiny froglets, bypassing the typical aquatic phase of the amphibian lifecycle.

'Documenting life on Earth should be a priority'
Dr Schneider said this adaptation may explain why these species have managed to survive in a rainforest that in recent decades had dwindled dramatically to just five percent of its original size. "By skipping the aquatic [stage], they may bypass a life stage when they are more vulnerable," he said.

The discovery of so many new species on Sri Lanka increases the number of frogs there by fivefold. The concentration of amphibian diversity on the relatively small island puts the country on a par with much bigger islands, such as Madagascar and Borneo, in terms of biodiversity, the scientists say.

Rohan Pethiyagoda, a researcher at the Wildlife Heritage Trust in the capital Colombo, began a census of Sri Lanka's disappearing species in 1993. To his surprise he kept finding frogs he could not identify during this treks through the 750 square kilometres of Sri Lankan forest - which once covered 15 000 square kilometres.

From studies of about 1 000 specimens the researchers narrowed down the number of possible species to about 200. Subsequent genetic studies and other forms of analysis confirmed that between 120 and 140 were new to science.

The scientists also compared their frogs with other specimens kept in museums and collected more than 100 years ago. They found that upto 100 species that had been collected in Sri Lanka more than 100 years ago were not among the current finds, suggesting they have since gone extinct.

Such research exemplifies the problems facing scientists trying to study and preserve global biodiversity. Animals and plants may be going extinct at a faster rate than they are being documented and classified.

Stephen Blackmore, the Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, says in a separate article in Science that documenting the world's animals and plants represents one of the most important goals following the World Conference on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg this summer.

"The documentation of life on Earth, on which our own well-being ultimately depends, surely deserves to be amongst our most urgent priorities for investment," Dr Blackmore says. - Independent Foreign Service

[Rep]

Ex-Mideast chief: Iraq not No. 1 priority

From News Services

Published Oct 11, 2002 IBOK11

The former U.S. military commander for the Middle East said Thursday that at this time he opposes a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, adding that he believes the policy of containing President Saddam Hussein has been working.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who preceded Army Gen. Tommy Franks as head of Central Command, told a meeting at a Washington think tank that the United States should have higher priorities in the Middle East.

In 1991, after the Gulf War, Zinni was chief of staff for the Kurdish relief operation.

For the past two years he has been an unpaid consultant to the State Department on Israeli-Palestinian issues.

Saudi warning

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud, said Thursday that an attack on Iraq by the United States would spawn more terrorism.

He pointed to the attack this week in Kuwait, in which two gunmen killed a U.S. Marine before they were killed by other Marines, and said more such incidents would follow if military action is launched against Iraq without destroying terrorist groups first.

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Texas on the Tigris
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON — This has always been a place where people say the opposite of what they mean. But last week, the capital soared to ominous new Orwellian heights.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted to let the president use force in Iraq because she didn't want the president to use force in Iraq.

Giving Mr. Bush bipartisan support, she said, would make his success at the U.N. "more likely, and, therefore, war less likely."

The White House feigned interest in negotiation while planning for annexation without representation.

The Democrats were desperate to put the war behind them, so they put the war in front of them.

They didn't want to seem weak, so they made the president stronger, which makes them weaker.

Mr. Bush said he needed Congressional support to win at the U.N., but he wants to fail at the U.N. so he can install his own MacArthur as viceroy of Iraq. (Poor Tommy Franks may finally have to leave Tampa.)

Mr. Bush says he's in a rush to go to war with Iraq because it's so strong, but he's in a rush to go to war with Iraq because it's so weak.

In his Cincinnati speech, he warned of a menacing Iraqi drone that could fly across the ocean and spray germs or chemicals on us. But Pentagon experts say the drone could not make the trip and would have to be disassembled, shipped over, sneaked in and reassembled.

Mr. Bush said he wanted an independent 9/11 commission to investigate more broadly what went wrong with the government before 9/11. But now he's trying to kill the panel because he already knows just about everything went wrong before 9/11. He doesn't want us to know. Doesn't he know that we already know?

The president's father lamented in his diary in 1991 that his Persian Gulf war didn't have a clean end because "there is no battleship Missouri surrender." Now the son wants to skip the surrender and turn Baghdad into Houston East, putting a branch of the Petroleum Club at the intersection of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Tom Daschle, Dianne Feinstein and other doubters came around on Thursday to the view that Iraq is an urgent threat after the C.I.A. director, George Tenet, sent Congress a memo on Monday stating that Iraq is not an urgent threat.

Mr. Tenet, a Clinton holdover, is desperate to please Mr. Bush. Senators joke that he gives the president intelligence briefings while polishing Mr. Bush's shoes. So the C.I.A. chief was embarrassed to find himself insinuating that W. is hyping his war.

After providing the smoking gun to show that Mr. Bush has no smoking gun, the usually silent top spook was frantically calling reporters on Tuesday night to insist that there's no daylight between him and the president on Iraq.

Let's see: Mr. Tenet says Saddam is unlikely to initiate a chemical or biological attack against us unless we attack him, and Mr. Bush says Saddam is likely to initiate a chemical or biological attack so we must attack him.

The C.I.A. says Saddam will use his nasty weapons against us only if he thinks he has nothing to lose. So the White House leaks its plans about the occupation of Iraq, leaving Saddam nothing to lose.

The president says Iraq is linked to Islamic terrorists so we must attack, while the C.I.A. says that Iraq will link up with Islamic terrorists only if we attack.

Mr. Bush says the war on Iraq will help us in the war on terrorism. But somebody forgot to tell the Osama lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, who says the war on Iraq justifies more terrorist attacks. Mr. Zawahiri's taped message has incited Al Qaeda warriors to new attacks while we're preoccupied with our post-occupation.

When asked if Iraq in 2003 would look like Japan in 1945, Ari Fleischer said no, it would look like Afghanistan in 2002. But Afghanistan is now even more dangerous than the suburbs of Washington. We have lost interest in Afghanistan because we are too busy trying to turn Iraq into Japan.

The Nobel committee gave Jimmy Carter the peace prize as a way of giving W. the war booby prize.

Still, George Bush, the failed Harken oil executive, and Dick Cheney, the inept Halliburton chairman, will finally get their gusher.

One day, the prez was shootin' at a dictator bein' rude, and up from the ground came a bubblin' crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Baghdad tea.

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Charleston Daily Mail

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White House
e-mail calls Byrd ‘senile'
Mistakenly sent message
also rips Hispanic leaders

Bill McAllister
Media News Washington Bureau



Saturday October 12, 2002; 10:07 AM
WASHINGTON -- A White House intern "mistakenly" forwarded to dozens of Hispanic leaders an e-mail that described the Senate's senior Democrat as "doddering old Bob Byrd, the senile senator from West Virginia," an administration spokeswoman has told The Denver Post.

White House spokeswoman, Jeanie Mamo, said the e-mail, which was also highly critical of the Hispanic members of Congress who voted against the Iraq war resolution, was written by "an activist."

It "does not represent" the views of the president, the spokeswoman said. Mamo did not name the activist or say whether the intern was being disciplined for her actions.

A spokesman from Byrd's office was unavailable for comment this morning.

The message not only criticized Byrd, who led opposition to the Iraq resolution in the Senate, it also took to task Democratic Hispanic members of the House who voted against the resolution giving the president the authority to use military force to topple Saddam Hussein.

"If they have a defense for their actions, they should deliver it to the kids in uniform that could one day have their --- shot off to protect these ninnies!" the e-mail said.

The reference to Byrd said "Even Tom Daschle, Senate leader, committed to President Bush today. . . he's just waiting for doddering old Bob Byrd, the senile senator from West Virginia to shut up and sit down so the Senate can vote!"

The e-mail was dated Thursday and titled "Can You Believe This?" It cited polls showing Bush is popular among Latino voters and asked if their votes don't "strongly suggest that these Democratic congressional representatives are out of with their constituency and out of touch with America?"

Mamo said the president, who has been making a pronounced effort to woo Hispanic voters, did not question the motives of the lawmakers. "The president respects the way Congress approached the Iraq issue," she said.

The e-mail was forwarded by Jennifer Hugo, an intern. Hugo did not respond to e- mail questions about the message and White House telephone operators said they could not locate Hugo.

The e-mail went to dozens of Hispanic leaders across the country, some of whom were stunned that a White House official would send such an critical message to a group that included many Democrats.

"I was shocked," said Rosemary Rodriguez, director of boards and commission for Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. "I guess when I read it I thought it was a little bit inappropriate because it was so mean spirited," she said.

Rodriguez said she was taken aback by the e-mail because she had just attended a national Hispanic gathering in Denver to which the Bush White House had sent representatives. "It was so conciliatory. . . so much bridge-building that I was shocked by the e-mail," she said.

Part of that was a result of the list of people received the e-mail, she said. "It was an amazing list. They were all so well-connected," she said.

Oscar Sanchez, executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, a Washington group that represents union members, fired back an angry response to Hugo. "Don't knock my congressional representatives for being courageous," he told her. "And remove me off your list, thank you very much."

"I thought it was inappropriate," said Sanchez.

The letter ended by listing 15 Democratic lawmakers who voted against the resolution and the three Republican Hispanics who voted for the resolution. "Que verguenza!" (How embarrassing), the letter ended.

Denver Post Staff Writer Louis Aguilar also contributed to this article.

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Falwell's comments seem un-Christian
By G. Jefferson Price III
Perspective Editor

October 13, 2002

IF the Rev. Jerry Falwell represents Christianity, then count me out.
The same goes for his partner in evangelical obsession, Pat Robertson.

Christianity, as I know it, represents peace, love, forgiveness, charity, inclusiveness, struggle for the good of mankind as a whole, and hope.

Falwell, a Baptist minister, does not seem to embody or espouse these objectives. He is narrow-minded, singularly directed in his own bizarre mission; he is mean and insulting.

In an age when most of the Christian church is working toward ecumenism and understanding among the three monotheisms - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - he is a force of rejection and disparagement, which seems neither Christian, nor, really, American.

Last Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes, Falwell told his interviewer that the Prophet Muhammad "was a terrorist ... a violent man, a man of war."

The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not support terrorism.

"As an American Muslim, I am working with my community to be part of our multi-ethnic, mosaic culture to ... coordinate with my countrymen and to project a united front against the terrorist threat that we face from overseas," writes Hassan Makhzoumi, a Maryland physician who is prominent in the Muslim community.

Because Muslims are committed to following the teachings of Muhammad, Makhzoumi protests, Falwell "characterized 8 million of his [American Muslim] countrymen as aspiring terrorists."

Falwell won't be too concerned about insulting Islam because he has no constituency to fear there. Why should he care that by using the opportunity he is given to speak as a prominent figure in the Christian right, he confirms a fundamental cause of the fear and loathing that outsiders feel toward Americans.

Falwell is indiscriminate in his insults. Immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center, he and his comrade, the Rev. Pat Robertson of the self-proclaimed Christian Coalition, and star of the Christian evangelical TV show The 700 Club, proclaimed the attacks were punishment in part for the influence of abortionists, gays, feminists and liberals and other perceived anti-Christs in America.

Later, they sort of apologized. But not really.

With respect to Islam in America, Roberston has implied it has been a great mistake to allow so many Muslims to live in this country. In comments last February on his TV show, reported by the Washington Post, Robertson suggested a purer ethnic immigration policy might spare America. "The fact is that our immigration policies are now so skewed to the Middle East and away from Europe that we have introduced these people into our midst and undoubtedly there are terrorist cells all over them." Muslimrein?

Robertson and Falwell and a lot of others in the Christian right in America have formed a fascinating relationship with the right wing in Israel, which they may think is enhanced by the hatred and venom they heap on Muslims. Most Israelis I have spoken with find Robertson & Co. to be pretty absurd. Some of these Israelis are right-wingers, and while they laugh behind the backs of the Christian right, they recognize the importance in American politics of the American Christian right's support for the State of Israel.

The synergy seems to work like this: Christian legitimacy derives from Jewish legitimacy and that a Kingdom of Israel must exist in order for Christian aspirations to be fulfilled, including the Second Coming. What happens when the Second Coming actually occurs gets a little confusing, especially as the Jews would view it as the First Coming, if they accepted it at all. But the contradictions don't interfere - probably because at least one side isn't taking the other seriously.

The relationship between the Christian right and the Israeli right blossomed after Menachem Begin was elected prime minister of Israel and Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States in 1980. Robertson was enthusiastic as Israel developed its relationship with Christian militias in south Lebanon, where he was supporting a Christian broadcasting station. Falwell's Moral Majority euphorically supported Begin and then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon as they developed their disastrous alliance with Christian militias in Beirut.

(Christian? Twenty years ago, while the Israeli army occupied Beirut, Israel's Christian militia allies went on a rampage in the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps, where they massacred more than 2,000 inhabitants - men, women, children - while the Israelis stood by outside. Alliances with Christian zealots can be harmful to your reputation, the Israelis learned.)

Last week I happened to see a broadcast by Pastor Jack Hayford, of The Church on the Way, The First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys, Calif., talking about why Christians should support the State of Israel. When it was over, I realized that although Pastor Hayford had thrown a scrap of sympathy to Palestinian Arabs, he did not mention that they include tens of thousands of Christians. Unmentioned, they seem not to fit into the ambitions of the American Christian right. Their numbers are dwindling, but the families of those who remain have been in place a lot longer than Robertson, Falwell, Hayford & Co.

So, I feel compelled to say this to my friend Hassan Makhzoumi: As an American and a Muslim, you passionately repudiate terrorism. As an American and a Christian, I repudiate Jerry Falwell and all his like-minded brethren.



Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

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"When is this going to end?"

With its own newspaper and hot line, a group run by Palestinian kids attempts to create hope from despair.

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By Jason George



Oct. 14, 2002 | AR-RAM, Israel -- Ahmed Ayysh points to the horizon and smiles broadly for the first time all day. "There's my home," says the 23-year-old Palestinian. "You see that mountain there? That's where I live."

We are standing in the town of Ar-Ram, part of Jerusalem's northern sprawl, a strip of crumbling buildings and dust between two checkpoints that divide Israel from the occupied West Bank. A trash fire next to the road has been burning for five days. From here, the road goes through at least one more checkpoint on the way to Ayysh's house in the West Bank town of Biedo.

With a well-paved road and no roadblocks it would be a 10-minute drive, but for Ayysh the journey has taken much longer. Biedo, like most of the West Bank, is under curfew and Ayysh's orange West Bank identity card prevents him from entering Israel. But Ayysh has taken four taxis through back roads and walked three miles -- and, he says, been shot at by Israeli soldiers -- just to attend a meeting.

The meeting that has drawn Ayysh and other young Palestinians to Ar-Ram is being held by a group called PYALARA, which stands for the rather cumbersome title "Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation." The group was founded three years ago to give Palestinian young people something in desperately short supply here: constructive work, a vision of the future, hope. With a budget of just $144,000, most of it from UNICEF, the International Red Cross and various European Union groups, its tools appear modest -- a youth newspaper with a circulation of 10,000, counseling for Palestinian youth by their peers, various seminars and training sessions. But judging by the young Palestinians who say the group has saved them from despair -- even from becoming suicide bombers -- and given them some purpose, they are effective.

The situation in the occupied territories has recently become catastrophic. Massive Israeli military incursions, curfews and economic closures following Palestinian suicide bombings have devastated the feeble Palestinian economy and brought normal life to a standstill. The U.N. estimates that about half the population is now living below the $2-a-day poverty line. There are fears of widespread malnutrition.

At least a third of all adults are jobless -- much higher by some estimates -- and those who have jobs are frequently unable to get to work. Schools are frequently closed, hospitals and medicines often unreachable. Hundreds of thousands of people are confined to their houses around the clock, except for a few hours when Israeli authorities let them out to go shopping, by the curfews which have now been in place for three months in most West Bank cities.

The situation has taken an especially severe toll on Palestinian young people, who make up half of the three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Part of that toll is literal: Of the 1,888 Palestinians who have been killed since the start of the Al-Aqsa intifada two years ago, 306 were under the age of 18.

But part is invisible.

In a recent piece in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the Palestinian writer Sam Bahour wrote, "If my youngest daughter exemplifies the effect of the curfews on Palestinian children, then her first set of words -- dabbabeh (tank), naqelet jonnood (armored personnel carrier) and tayyara (fighter airplane) -- depict the challenge of rehabilitating an entire generation that we now face. A ray of hope may be seen in the fact that she sometimes refers to the Israeli soldiers as ammou (uncle)."

The problem is not unique to Palestinian children: Israeli kids, too, have been scarred by the conflict, but they suffer from a different problem, according to Dr. Asher Ben-Arieh of the Israel National Council for the Child, one of the largest children's aid groups in Israel. "It's not a lack of hope here," says Ben-Arieh. "Here it is a development of hate."

Says Pierre Poupard, UNICEF special representative for Palestine, "Seventy-five percent of Palestinian children are facing psychological problems. We have growing frustration and no hope that is turning into despair." Poupard says UNICEF supports PYALARA because of the worsening crisis and because no other organization in the West Bank offers its programs.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"We are a lot of unique things," said Hania Bitar, founder and director general of PYALARA. One of the few adults working at the center, Bitar stressed that it is the 300 active members and countless other participants, not she, who make PYALARA what it is. "The organization is truly founded and run by the children," she said.

PYALARA participants range in age from toddlers at summer camps to young people in their mid-20s. The group maintains that it has no political agenda, and as a recipient of UNICEF aid it is forbidden to have one, but the idea that any group in the West Bank could be completely apolitical is nothing more than a fantasy. A picture of Bitar with Palestinian Authority head Yasser Arafat looms over her desk, and the PYALARA Web site is filled not with the innocuous tales of self-discovery or bland feature reporting one might expect to find in a publication by young journalists and writers. Instead there are anguished tales filled with fear, anger and sorrow. The viewpoints expressed are the stuff of bitter argument, but the passion, sincerity and urgency in the essays cannot be mistaken.

In a piece called "So Long Bethlehem ..." Elise Aghazarian of Jerusalem, a graduate of Bethlehem University, writes, "Do the Israelis not realize, I ask myself, that in every stone, plant, and human being, there exists a spirit and story and that were they to consider these stories before causing more pain and damage, then they might see their own role in a different light?

"How afraid I feel as the military horror creeps closer. How sad I feel as I see how indifference is growing amongst the Palestinians whose hearts have been broken especially as I know that indifference is more painful and dangerous than anger and is so much harder to heal."

In a piece called "a target="new" href= "http://www.pyalara.org/youthtimes/journal.html"> "A Sleepless Night," a student at Bir Zeit university named Saleem Habash writes, "A sleepless night. My mother and sister spent the whole night sitting with me in bed listening to the sound of tanks coming from the western side of Ramallah. The fear was so intense; we were almost afraid to breathe, and all I kept thinking was, 'When is this going to end?'

"I decided to start writing as soon as I woke up but it was three in the afternoon before my fingers actually touched the keyboard. We had been eating a nice lunch, trying, to the best of our ability, to escape the ever-worsening news for a few short moments, when all of a sudden my sister yelled that there were Israeli soldiers surrounding an unfinished building just opposite our kitchen and that some of them were aiming the gun of a tank in our direction while others were firing wildly in another direction, possibly at yet another suspected 'terrorist.' Boom ... Boom ... Boom ... We ran for what we considered the most secure room in the house, all of us completely terrified.

"I say to you, Mr. Spokesperson, the following: Israel talks about wanting to build bridges of trust and peace, yet its actions in Ramallah, your 'infrastructure of terrorism,' reek of hatred and resentment. I warn you, however, that try as you might, you will never succeed in breaking the spirit of Ramallah or that of its people; on the contrary, the streets will be repaired, homes will be rebuilt, and Ramallah will rise, majestically, from the ashes.

" As for its people, those same men, women and children now locked in their homes, deprived, in many cases, of their most basic needs, such as food and medicine, they will never forget what you did to them, and in all likelihood, they will never forgive you either."

In a piece called "A Scary Tomorrow," 17-year-old Dalia Nammari of Beit Hanina, Jerusalem, writes, "I was born in 1983, which means that when the Palestinian Intifada erupted in 1987, I was still too young to really understand what was going on. I do remember, however, finding a bullet in our garden and the fear that it instilled in me, especially when I was told that it was only one of the many bullets that were being fired at my people by the Israeli occupiers.

"Like many other young Palestinians trying to come to terms with what has happened to our people, I have spent many hours going through the family albums, looking not only at the faces there, but also at the buildings ... buildings that, in many cases, no longer exist and that were reduced to rubble by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. Today, in their place, there are ugly, characterless buildings, built to accommodate the settlers who came to take the place of my kinfolk. What or who gave them the right to deprive us of our land and disperse our families and friends, and what or who gave them the right to uproot the olive trees that our ancestors planted and tended to with such care?"

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In addition to publishing the work of young writers, PYALARA members started counseling other school children two years ago -- about the same time as the beginning of the current Al-Aqsa intifada, which began in September 2000. When a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem killed nine Israelis in March, prompting a massive military invasion of the West Bank by Israeli forces, the teenage members of PYALARA held an emergency meeting and decided the counseling was too sporadic to help children in the territories. "We knew we needed the hot line," Bitar says.

One of the first callers was Fatma Mirab of Har Gilo, in the West Bank. Interviewed at a relative's home in Ramallah, Mirab says that her husband had lost his job, forcing their family to survive on rice, sugar and olive oil provided by aid groups. After the Israeli military campaign in March and April, her son, Hassan, 10, began having nightmares. He spent his days lost in a daze and was failing in school, according to school officials. "I dreamt that I am alone," Hassan says. "I was upset because they are shooting and they killed children in Ramallah."

Mirab called the hot line after the principal told her about it. The PYALARA member who answered the call was Rasha Othman, 21, of Jerusalem. "I told her to let him draw pictures so they could discuss them, since he was having trouble talking," she says. "I also set up a meeting between the mother, the school counselor and Hassan."

Almost three months later, Hassan says he feels like a different person. "I feel relieved because I had someone to talk to me. When she told me how to do this I could only say 'Thank you.' I have the nightmares less now."

Several young PYALARA members actually say the group has helped stop them from becoming suicide bombers. "I want to tell you honestly that I thought about [becoming a suicide bomber]," says Lana Kamleh, 16, of Jerusalem, who has worked for the Youth Times, PYALARA's newspaper that is distributed throughout Gaza and the West Bank, and appeared on Palestine TV on PYALARA news programs.

Kamleh lives in the Arab Shofat neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, an enclave that is a far cry from the poverty and desperation that marks much of the West Bank and Gaza. Sitting on one of the family's couches, her father Mohammed shakes his head sadly at her comments. "I hate to hear what she says, but I know this is a difficult life," he says as he glides through prayer beads with one hand and runs his fingers through the hair of his 4-year-old son Khalid with the other. "I am a father with five children. I want a good life for Israelis and Palestinians. We need peace."

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The PYALARA office is abuzz today with several activities, as well as the distracting hum that comes from putting teenagers of both sexes together in a small space. A group of 12 kids is discussing calls to the hot line, while others are at a Red Cross training session for summer programs in refugee camps in the area. Some students are also cooking dinner in the kitchen.

Even though the members created the hot line to deal with problems children were having as a result of the current conflict, they say they get calls on a wide variety of topics, from Palestinians of all ages.

"I remember one girl calling who had fallen in love with her neighbor and said she was having problems knowing that she must marry another man," says Louris Mosell, 22.

"No matter what the problem, the best is when they call back and say 'thank you, thank you, thank you,'" says Hiba Soblabin, 21.

Another problem is more difficult for the group to discuss, and they let Bitar explain.

"Some people thought it was a sex hot line," she says as her eyes focused anywhere in the room but on me. "They apologized."

When his stint at PYALARA is over for the night, Ayysh heads over to a friend's apartment where he has been staying, since the journey home can take three hours if he makes it at all. "I need to wash my pants," he says. He owns only one pair besides the ones he is wearing, so he must wash them every other day because of the heat and dust.

The apartment is a dump -- empty refrigerator, four Che Guevara posters and various people slouching on chairs. It doesn't seem that different from the apartment of a typical American college student, except for the posters of Palestinian "martyrs."

Ayysh, a senior at Birzeit University near Ramallah, says he has found little besides PYALARA to be optimistic about. "We have no meaning to our lives," he says. "And before PYALARA I had trouble speaking about my feelings. Now I speak with thousands at (the university)."

After getting turned away at the checkpoint for three days, Ayysh decides to return home through the back roads. He needs to talk to his parents about money. He makes a little income working for PYALARA but he also works construction and plucks chickens for $1.25 an hour: He thinks his record is 250 in a day. Before the intifada and the rash of Palestinian suicide bomb attacks within Israel, he was a waiter at two hotels in Jerusalem.

There are other people on the path today, mostly old women carrying groceries and young men trying to get to Ramallah for work. The heat is intense and the only shade on the entire route is from a 20-foot wall around an Israeli settlement.

Ayysh said he does not hate the Israelis, only the soldiers, and desires peace for them too. But peace is hard to come by here.

We arrive at his home after two hours of walking and five rides in "Fords," packed minivans that seem to be held together only with chicken wire and determination. There are six people living in his family's one-bedroom house, and even more children from the area dart in and out of the family's olive trees.

Ayysh pulls out a document that he says is his most prized possession. It is a certificate of completion from PYALARA. As he stares at it the same pride that filled his face when he pointed out his village appears again. Here is something tangible that proves he has accomplished something -- fancy signatures, stamps and all.

He tucks the certificate back into its folder and we begin the walk back to Ar-Ram, where he has decided to stay with friends more permanently. As the oldest son living at home, it was a tough decision to leave his family, but the journey has become too much of a struggle for now, he says.

"When this is all over I will drive on this road," he says as we cross a road reserved for Israeli settlers. "I will no longer walk with these dirty shoes to my house."