text:
James had grown up in California's Central Valley as a farmer's son. In
those days, chemical farming was not questioned--it was just how things
were done. He recounted to me how he used to watch with great interest as
the bi-winged planes flew over the fields, trailing white clouds of pesticide
that filled the spaces between the rows of corn and engulfed the plants
in thick fog. The smell was strong, and times the wet spray would land on
his skin and hair. He always associated fond memories with that smell.
However after 25 years of chemical farming, James Ryan was not well. Over
a year before I met him, he began to have dizzy spells, nearly collapsing
on two occasions. That's when he began to wonder about that familiar smell
he had loved so much as a child. He began to wonder if the constant exposure
to many toxic chemicals, plus the stress of running a big commercial farm
for so many years, had devastated his immune system.
At the advice of a Chinese herbalist, James began to take a tea of seven
herbs, including eleuthero, astragalus and reishi. Now, as we stood talking,
he attributed a large measure of his current health to these herbs, which
are often called "adaptogens" by herbalists. These herbs and other
adaptogens have been proven in clinical and laboratory studies to help us
adapt to the rapidly changing conditions in our modern, often synthetic
The following story is the practical side of adaptogens--why they are needed
today, what they are and how to use them, based on 22 years of experience
as an herbalist, quotes from other practicing herbalists and summaries of
scientific research performed on adaptogenic herbs from around the world.
Adapting to our Own Devices
Today, thanks to modern technology, we can change the natural environment
virtually at will. Air-conditioning, indoor lighting, central heating, pesticides,
food preservatives, cars, airplanes, polyester, and plastics are just a
few of the countless amenities we use to adapt the environment to our needs.
Yet however convenient or life-supporting these things may seem in the short-term,
they are a two-edged sword, bringing undesirable side effects in the long-term.
Some of the most obvious of these are already quickly becoming apparent:
smog, the thinning ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, and the many heavy
metals, pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals that are finding their
way into our bloodstreams for the first time in the history of our bodies'
delicate biochemistry. These by-products of "the good life" are
now creating a major problem for the adaptation and survival of most species
and biosystems here on planet Earth.
And to compound the problem, at the very moment when we need more than ever
to adapt to a quickly changing environment, as a society we seem
set on debilitating our bodies' natural ability to adapt by constantly forcing
the environment to meet our needs (and whims) instead of vice versa. In
Darwinian terms, this does not bode well for our species.
It is ironic that the more we insulate ourselves from environmental change,
the more we isolate ourselve from that which gives us life.
Rene Dubos, the humanistic scientist and a special guiding light for me,
said: "This state of adaptedness gives a false sense of security
because it does not have a lasting value and does not prepare for the future."
Therefore, it seems that the best course for survival is to increase
our adaptability to our environment, not the other way around. In other
words, instead of leaning on air conditioning to adapt to hot weather, it
may be best to strengthen ourselves and cultivate flexibility--both of mind
and body, and this is where the adaptogens can be of great importance.
The Russian scientist, G.M. Barenboim said it well:
"For the first time in the history of human civilization the biological
potentialities of the human body have failed to meet the requirements imposed
on it by the epoch. One witnesses an unusual 'epidemic' of fatigue aggravated
by the powerful action of man-made, external chemical and physical environmental
factors. Like the drugs that saved the world from numerous bacterial and
viral epidemics that cost millions of lives in the past, the adaptogens
are needed to help man withstand the diverse stresses of today."
Herbal Adaptogens--Medicines of the Future
Fortunately for us, though, there is a class of herbs and other natural
remedies available that can help the body adapt better to its environment,
whether that environment be one of many harmful chemicals or simply one
of rapid change. These herbs are called adaptogens.
The word adaptogen was coined by the Russian scientist N.V. Lazarev,
in 1947. In Lazarev's view, a medicinal substance must fulfill three criteria
in order to be classed as an adaptogen:
1. It must cause only minimal disorders in the body's physiological functions;
2. It must increase the body's resistance to adverse influences not by
a specific action but by a wide range of physical, chemical, and biochemical
3. It must have an overall normalizing effect, improving all kinds of conditions
and aggravating none.
Lazarev conducted his original studies of adaptogens on a chemical substance,
dibazole. However, his now renowned student, I.I. Brekhman, changed the
focus of adaptogenic research from synthetic substances to natural substances.
Brekhman first studied Panax ginseng, the classic Chinese herb for
longevity. But in 1959 Brekhman discovered that Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus
senticosus), which is more common and less expensive than Chinese ginseng,
has even stronger adaptogenic qualities than Panax.
I came directly from the airport and found the meeting was being held in
a noisy, glittering casino. As I entered, rows of flashing and whirring
slot machines were being hopefully, and somewhat vacantly caressed. I was
directed to the conference rooms and walked down the hall, stopping for
a moment in a small variety shop along the way. The man in line ahead of
me was wearing a suit, and had a camera suspended casually around his neck--I
looked at him curiously, for although he said nothing, he seemed somehow
out of place and looked a bit bewildered. He also looked very kind and had
a presense about him that provoked the thought that perhaps he was the person
I was looking for. Ten minutes later, as I found my way to the room we were
to meet in, I learned that my suspicions were correct--the man at the shop
was indeed I.I. Brekhman. I knew him previously only by his international
reputation and his many articles on eleuthero and adaptogens. I had also
read his unusual and interesting work, "Man and Biologically Active
Substances," in which he details how pollution and modern stresses
can affect our immune system and general health, and how natural substances,
such as ginseng and eleuthero can help us survive and maintain health. The
work, published in 1980, was well ahead of its time. His emphasis in the
book is resoundingly, study the science and art of health, not disease!
Brekhman's work for the last 40 years has been to clearly show that because
most of us are in a state somewhere between health and disease, we need
a group of nature's gifts called adaptogens,which work by helping us to
move towards true health and to stay there.
Although his English was not very fleunt, I could not help but notice how
warm and open he was in the interview, and that he had a good sense of humor.
He also seemed very energetic and vigorous.
Brekhman talked about medicine and herbs in Russia, and about adaptogens.
He told me that many medicial doctors prescribe herbs in their practice--especially
in the outlying districts. He began to study eleuthero because the Russian
people have strongly accepted the concept that a natural remedy can help
bolster our innate resistance to disease and help prevent stress from taking
such a devestating toll on our nervous, hormonal and immune systems. Panax
ginseng is very popular, but is scarce and mostly too expensive for
people to take on a daily basis. So he began to test other members of the
ginseng family in his research center, The Far-East Scientific Center, soon
discovering that eleuthero had even stronger adaptogenic qualities than
did Panax.
Since then, Dr. Brekhman and many other researchers have conducted thousands
of scientific tests on eleuthero, as Siberian ginseng is called, as well
as on other herbal adaptogens. Literally hundreds of thousands of people
have taken these natural strengtheners, and the results have been resoundingly
positive: they have proven to be remarkably effective for preventing a variety
of ailments, increasing stamina and sports performance, and helping the
body to adapt to extreme or changing environmental conditions.
The research has shown that adaptogens act in a number of ways to strengthen
the body and protect it from the stress of a variety of life situations.
(Stress, as almost all types of doctors now warn, is a major factor in chronic
disease. It is no coincidence that three of the most-prescribed and best-selling
drugs in America are for stress-related ailments: Tagamet for ulcers, Inderal
for hypertension, and Xanex for anxiety.)
In general, adaptogens work by
1. Supporting the adrenal function, thus counteracting the adverse effects
of stress;
2. Enabling the body's cells to have access to more energy;
3. Helping cells to eliminate toxic byproducts of the metabolic process;
4. Providing an anabolic (building-up) effect, hence the use of adaptogens
by body-builders;
5. Helping the body to utilize oxygen more efficiently;
6. Enhancing and speeding the proper regulation of bio-rhythms.
Although medical practitioners who believe only in the mainstream, allopathic
model of medicine often doubt that a single remedy can exhibit all the different
benefits of an herbal adaptogen, the concept of adaptogens is not unknown
to Western medicine. Until about 50 years ago, doctors commonly prescribed
medicines known as roborants (strengthening substances), tonics
(which restore normal tone to tissue), and alteratives (which cause
favorable changes in the processes of nutrition and repair). For example,
bitters such as gentian and quassia were widely used to improve digestion,
and strengthening foods such as oatmeal and yams were prescribed for the
convalescent. What we now call adaptogens combine at least some of the major
functions of roborants, tonics, and alteratives, and they particularly resemble
Below I will discuss the most important herbal adaptogens, giving pertinent
information and recommendations for use with each. Some herbalists classify
many herbs as adaptogens, including well-known immune-tonics (such as echinacea)
and bitters (such as golden seal). However, Russian researchers--who have
conducted most of the studies on adaptogens--have identified several herbs
that I will call primary adaptogens. These herbs were the first to be studied
as adaptogens, and they include: eleuthero, schizandra (Schizandra chinensis),
and reishi (Ganoderma lucidum).
There are also what I will call secondary adaptogens. These have shown some
normalizing activity, especially on the immune, nervous, and hormonal systems,
but they may not have been studied extensively for their adaptogenic qualities
or may not support the adrenal system. Secondary adaptogens include: ashwaganda
(Withania somniferum), gotu kola (Centella asiatica), wild
oats (Avena sativa), astragalus or huang chi (Astragalus membranaceous),
fo-ti or ho shou wu (Polygonum multiflorum), burdock (arctium
lappa), and suma (Pfaffia paniculata). There are probably other
herbs that fall into this second category of adaptogens, but these are the
best-understood and most readily available ones in this country.
Primary Herbal Adaptogens
Eleuthero (Eleutherococcus senticosus)
There are three ways to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of an
herbal remedy: first, by its history of use, i.e., how it has been used
in the past and in other cultures, and with what results; second, by what
modern scientific research can show about an herb's effect on the body,
its active constituents, and whether or not it has any subtle toxicity;
and third, by the results of the herb's use in modern clinical practice.


text:
You can't stop tragedies, but you have to go on
I have lived in Newtown since 1968 and played music all over town. I grew up on Broadway and 88th Street in New York City and got interested in the folk music scene down in Washington Square in the late 1940s. I heard Pete Seeger play the banjo, and that was that. I gave up the guitar and grabbed a banjo from my uncle's pawnshop.
I don't know much about music as healer, but it's quite plain -- the banjo is a happy instrument. If you're happy playing the banjo, you make others happy. That, I assume, is a way of healing them. It's like giving a puppy to the elderly or sick; the music lightens people's troubles and heals. It's a distraction from negative thoughts that can keep you from healing yourself.
We started the Saturday night jam up in Southbury, then moved to the old Pizza Villa. For the past 12 years now, we play at the Newtown United Methodist Church in Sandy Hook.
It's $13 for the show and a big spaghetti dinner, plus 50 cents a meatball. I cut them up and put them in the sauce.
This year has been a challenge. With so much sorrow around, people really needed the music. Around January, I sang a new verse to "We Shall Overcome," which is a song where the lyrics are often changed to fit the situation. I thought about Sandy Hook that day and decided to tailor the verse.
More Information
Roger Sprung, an internationally known banjo player and teacher, leads a spaghetti and bluegrass jam session on the first Saturday of each month at the Newtown United Methodist Church, near Sandy Hook Elementary School. After the Sandy Hook shootings, Sprung, paid homage to the 20 murdered children by rewriting "We Shall Overcome." Sprung told his story to staff writer Ken Dixon.
An essay by a local writer is running every day this week.
"Twenty bright angels around us, 20 bright angels/ Around us. We shall overcome the harshness of it/ All and go on for a better life, a happier life."
I only sang it once or twice. There wasn't a dry eye in the place as far as I could see, including me, and I was the one singing it. That's it; I don't plan on playing it again. If I kept coming back to it, the song wouldn't help anyone improve their outlook.
It's important to remember tragedies, so they don't happen again. But if all you do is think about are negative things, then you won't live as happy a life.
That's why the town doesn't want a memorial. It's too much.
There's a lot to be depressed about, but how is it going to help to live in a whole world of sorry people?
Any troubles that you have, you've got to try to get your mind off. Time is what heals, usually. You can't stop something like Sandy Hook, but you have to go on.
A friend of mine juggles. He said it's the greatest healer in the world. Your mind is so focused on the juggling, you don't have time to think about anything else. It requires total concentration.
It's the same with the banjo, and just about anyone can play -- just about.
During the jam sessions, people want to participate. So if they have troubles or anything, they can just join in and either sit in the back and strum along or be featured on the microphone.
Part of the show is having people who can't play that well get on stage. You've got to start somewhere. Anybody who wants to try, it's fine with me. If you try and do fairly well, the music goes into your skin by osmosis and the next time you play you'll play better.
At the spaghetti dinners, which are always crowded with between 250 and 300 people, there's probably been some healing over the last year. But a year after Sandy Hook, it's rough. Everyone has their own way of finding a path back to normal life.
I try to help people out a little by performing. I love to tell jokes. I love to see people smile. It does my mind a lot of good. It's a lot of laughs. I'm a good critic, particularly of my voice. It's always lousy.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The future of the detention facility on the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, inspires an unusual degree of bipartisan consensus, at least in theory. All three remaining candidates for President, the Republican John McCain and the Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have called for Guantánamo to be closed. So have Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, and Robert M. Gates, the Secretary of Defense; after touring Guantánamo in January, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "I'd like to see it shut down." At a news conference in 2006, President Bush said, "I'd like to close Guantánamo."
Still, Guantánamo is bustling. Although the number of detainees has fallen from a high of around six hundred and eighty to around two hundred and seventy-five, the base is gearing up for what could become a series of military commissions—criminal trials of detainees. The first is scheduled to begin in May. On a dusty plaza surrounded by barbed wire on an abandoned airfield, contractors are finishing a metal warehouse-type building, which will house a new, highly secure courtroom. On the former runways, more than a hundred semi-permanent tents have been erected, in which lawyers, journalists, and support staffs will work and sleep (six to a tent) during the trials. The tent city has been named Camp Justice. The Bush Administration, instead of closing Guantánamo, is trying to rebrand it—as a successor to Nuremberg rather than as a twin of Abu Ghraib.
The commission trials will be the latest act in a complex legal drama that began shortly after September 11, 2001. A few weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States invaded Afghanistan, and on November 13, 2001, President Bush issued an order establishing military commissions to prosecute war crimes by members and affiliates of Al Qaeda. On January 11, 2002, the first prisoners from Afghanistan reached Guantánamo, which was at the time a sleepy Navy facility used for refuelling Coast Guard vessels. The Bush Administration made it clear that it did not believe that the detainees were entitled to any Geneva-convention protections. Then as now, the Bush Administration asserted that they could be held until the "cessation of hostilities," meaning not the war in Afghanistan but the "global war on terror"—that is, indefinitely.
From the moment Guantánamo opened, it has been a target of criticism around the world. In 2005, the Amnesty International secretary-general said that "Guantánamo has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law." There were allegations of excessively harsh interrogation practices at the detention center in its first years of operation, and the Army's own reporting has substantiated at least one case of abusive treatment. There have been four apparent suicides at the camp and many more attempts. Even staunch American allies, like Tony Blair, in Great Britain, and Angela Merkel, in Germany, have criticized the facility. As McCain said in 2007, "Guantánamo Bay has become an image throughout the world which has hurt our reputation." It is that sort of damage, as much as what has gone on at Guantánamo, that has prompted the calls for the closing of the facility.
Administration officials hope that the military commissions will change Guantánamo's reputation, but that seems unlikely. To date, the commissions have been an abject failure; in more than six years, they have adjudicated just one case—a plea bargain for David Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner from Australia. In March, 2007, after more than five years in custody, he pleaded guilty to "material support to terrorism," and was sentenced to nine months; he was returned to Australia, where he served out his sentence, and has now been released. Charges have been filed against fifteen detainees, but even if these cases come to trial—and considerable legal obstacles remain—many more prisoners will be left in limbo, without any charges pending against them or any foreseeable prospect of release. As the clatter of construction work shows, it is easier to talk about closing Guantánamo than to do it. Even shuttering it would not settle the most fundamental question raised by this notorious prison: what to do with its inmates. And attempts to resolve that dilemma are increasingly likely to play a role in the Presidential election.
Four times a week, a twelve-seat propeller plane belonging to Air Sunshine, a small airline based in Florida, lands at Guantánamo. The flight from Fort Lauderdale, just three hundred miles away, takes three hours, because the American airliner must avoid Cuban airspace. More than two thousand people work there; most are Navy and Army personnel, and about twelve per cent are civilian contractors. As in many military bases around the world, the local commanders compensate for Guantánamo's isolation with a kind of hyper-Americanism. There are half a dozen fast-food restaurants, two outdoor movie theatres, miniature golf, and a bedraggled, but playable, nine-hole course. The roads are full of "Gitmo specials"—broken-down heaps that are traded to newcomers by people at the end of their tours.
Heading west from the base's townlike center, you pass the first of its infamous landmarks—Camp X-Ray. A connected series of open-air cages surrounded by barbed wire, X-Ray was the destination for Guantánamo's first prisoners. Photographs of these orange-suited detainees, many hunched over in awkward positions, became emblems of the base. The number of prisoners quickly exceeded the capacity of Camp X-Ray, and it was closed in April, 2002. Base leaders have long wanted to tear down the camp, but a federal judge, who is presiding over one of the many pending cases regarding Guantánamo, ordered X-Ray preserved as possible evidence. So the camp remains, filled with trash and overgrown with weeds.
Fifteen minutes farther down the road, overlooking a particularly beautiful rocky beach, is Camp Delta, the prison complex for the remaining detainees. When I first visited Guantánamo, in late 2003, most of the detainees were held in three areas of Camp Delta, Camps 1, 2, and 3, which look like higher-tech versions of Camp X-Ray. The detainees spent their days and nights in open-air cells, which were topped by metal roofs and surrounded by layers of barbed wire. Now, with fewer prisoners, these camps appear almost empty. (The camp authorities will not specify how many people are in each camp.)
About two dozen "highly compliant" prisoners are being held in Camp 4, which features a dusty courtyard in which inmates can move freely during the day and dormitory-style sleeping arrangements. The prisoners in Camp 4 also have access to a small library for books and movies (a National Geographic film about Alaska is popular), and they can take classes to learn to read and write Pashto, Arabic, and English.
The biggest change to Guantánamo has been the completion of Camp 5, in 2005, and Camp 6, the following year. Most of the detainees now reside there. They are modern federal-prison structures, brick-for-brick copies of a pair of existing facilities, one in Terre Haute, Indiana, and the other in Lenawee, Michigan. The scenes inside, for better or worse, resemble those at most Supermax facilities. The prisoners spend about twenty-two hours a day inside climate-controlled, eight-foot-by-twelve-foot cells, with no televisions or radios, and generally leave only for showers or for recreation in small open-air cages.
Painted on the floor of all cells are arrows pointing toward Mecca, and through the cell doors the detainees can hear each other pray five times a day. Each tier of cells appoints a prayer leader who gets a sign—"Imam"—on his door. About two years ago, there were a hundred detainees on hunger strikes demanding an end to their terms, or at least a finite sentence; the number has declined to about ten, although one inmate has been refusing food for more than eight hundred days, and another for nine hundred days. (These prisoners are force-fed twice daily, via a tube through the nose.) Interview rooms for interrogations are outfitted with blue couches for the detainees. Camp 6 had been intended as a medium-security alternative to Camp 5, but after a series of near-riots by the detainees, in 2006, it, too, was converted to maximum-security status. The so-called "high value" defendants are held at Camp 7. This is a secret location at the base and is never shown to reporters.
In a trailer "inside the wire," adjacent to Camp 4, I spoke with Bruce Vargo, the Army colonel who runs the detention facility. "I think any facility matures over time, and I think that we've continued maturing and offering more programs to them, like the library," he told me. "But they are still very dangerous men, and they take every opportunity they can. There are still assaults that take place weekly on the guards. Every day we have 'splashings,' so I made sure the guards have face shields to protect themselves from feces and urine."
The catchphrase that Vargo and others at Guantánamo often used when describing their work was "safe and humane care and custody." It was clear, however, that winning hearts and minds is not part of the agenda. "They wouldn't be the type of people they are without being driven," Vargo said. "They obviously are very intent on pursuing their cause. They will let you know that this place is just an extension of the battlefield." He went on, "I would not say that we are building a fan base for the U.S. here. We are keeping bad guys off the battlefield."
Vargo's comments reflect the unchanging perspective of the Bush Administration, which holds that these detainees are, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "the worst of a very bad lot"—incorrigible soldiers in an unending war. But, in the absence of any meaningful due process, there is no proof that they are. Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, has made a comprehensive review of the prisoners for his forthcoming book, "Law and the Long War." For a period in 2006 when Camp Delta held about five hundred prisoners, Wittes examined all the available data—including the military's assertions about the prisoners and any statements that they themselves made—and estimated that about a third of the detainees could reasonably be said to be terrorists or enemy fighters.
The legal battle over Guantánamo has followed a trajectory similar to the political fortunes of the Bush Administration as a whole. The first court challenges by lawyers representing detainees were filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the left-leaning legal-advocacy group in New York, and Joseph Margulies, a civil-liberties attorney. Now, however, the anti-Guantánamo cause has gone mainstream, and Air Sunshine flights often ferry attorneys from white-shoe law firms to visit their detained clients. Almost all the remaining detainees who want attorneys are represented by American counsel.
Initially, government lawyers asserted that because the detainees were held outside the United States they had no right to challenge their status in American courtrooms, or even to file writs of habeas corpus. The Presidential order of November 13, 2001, said that the detainees "shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or indirectly . . . in any court of the United States." But, in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that, because the Guantánamo base was under the exclusive control of the U.S. military, the detainees were effectively on American soil and had the right to bring habeas-corpus petitions in federal court. As Justice John Paul Stevens said in his opinion, the federal courts "have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the Executive's potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing."
In response to Rasul, the Department of Defense created a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, an administrative proceeding to justify each detainee's "enemy combatant" status. According to the rules, however, the detainees are not entitled to counsel, are not allowed to see all the evidence against them, and receive only the opportunity to be present and, if they choose, to respond to unclassified charges against them.
These days, the review tribunals are conducted in a windowless double-wide trailer inside the wire, under the supervision of a Navy captain named Ken Garber. These are not trials but a rough cross between grand-jury and probable-cause hearings. Three officers preside over each tribunal, and they can recommend continued detention or transfer to another country. There is only a limited right to appeal, but each detainee receives an annual review of his status in another hearing. "We look at two questions," Garber told me above the hum of the air-conditioners. "Are they still a threat? Do they still have intelligence value? A yes to either one is enough to keep them." The tribunals have been widely criticized as one-sided—Eugene R. Fidell, a noted American expert on military law, has called them a "sham"—and, according to Garber, last year only thirteen per cent of the detainees agreed to participate in or attend their own annual review hearings.
The commissions, which were meant to serve as criminal trials for the detainees, have so far proved to be even more dubious. After the Rasul case, in 2004, the military began pretrial proceedings in the first of the military commissions. One defendant, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was alleged to be a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, challenged the procedures for the commissions, and in June, 2006, he won his case before the Supreme Court. In another opinion by Stevens, the Court held Bush's order of November 13, 2001, as it related to military commissions, to be invalid, because the President could not create the commissions without the explicit assent of Congress. Stevens also rejected Bush's long-standing contention that the Geneva conventions did not apply to the detainees.
Bush's response to the ruling was notable both for what it revealed about the Administration's stance on Guantánamo and for what it might mean for the politics of 2008. Far from being chastened by another rebuke from the Justices, Bush used the Hamdan case to return to the subject of the September 11th attacks and to challenge Congress to ratify his aggressive approach. In a carefully choreographed ceremony in the White House on September 6, 2006, Bush made a surprise statement. "We're now approaching the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks—and the families of those murdered that day have waited patiently for justice," he said. "So I'm announcing today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and eleven other terrorists in C.I.A. custody have been transferred to the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay." All had previously been held in secret C.I.A. prisons. Despite the skepticism that Bush and his team had expressed about Guantánamo, the President had, by placing the nation's most notorious terrorist suspects there, given the detention facility a new vote of confidence.
Bush also announced that he was sending a bill to Congress to re-create the military commissions that the Supreme Court had just struck down. "As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly three thousand Americans on September 11, 2001, can face justice," he said. In other words, at the height of the midterm campaign season, Bush forced Congress to weigh the legal legacy of 9/11, his favored political terrain, and turned the commissions from an abstract debate about constitutional rights into a matter of getting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial. It was a winning gambit, for a little more than a month later, on October 17, 2006, Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law.
The Military Commissions Act was promptly challenged, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case shortly. The act's most vulnerable point, from a constitutional perspective, is a provision barring the detainees from filing writs of habeas corpus. The Administration argues that, even if detainees have rights under the Constitution to habeas corpus, the procedures in place at Guantánamo are an adequate substitute; lawyers for the detainees argue that the Administration has fallen far short of justifying the extreme step of suspending habeas corpus. Last December, at the oral argument of the current Supreme Court case, which is known as Boumediene v. Bush, a majority of the Justices—among them Anthony Kennedy, the Court's swing vote—seemed skeptical of the Administration's position, and the Court will likely strike down at least part of the Commissions Act. Again, it appears, a rebuke from the Court will prompt not a retreat by the Bush Administration but another attempt to double-down on its aggressive approach to the detainees. The Court's ruling, in that sense, could be less a legal setback for the President than a political opportunity for his party.
Near Camp Justice, the authorities will use the "pink palace," an old air-traffic-control terminal, for the trials of detainees regarded as minor figures. But the big trials, like that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will take place in the new metal building, in what for the most part resembles a modern federal courtroom in the United States. The defendants will sit at the end of long defense-counsel tables, next to their interpreters, and all counsel will have computers where the evidence and legal filings in the case can be displayed. The jurors, who will all be military personnel, will also have their own terminals. The law requires at least twelve jurors in capital cases, and at least five in commissions where the penalty is less than death. (In February, the Administration announced that it would seek the death penalty on charges against Mohammed and five others; last week, it added a capital case against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani for his alleged role in the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy in Tanzania.)
In the new courtroom, I spoke to Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, in the Pentagon, and, as such, the chief Administration defender of the commission process. Hartmann, an Air Force Reservist, is in civilian life general counsel to a Connecticut-based energy company. "When this is over, I'd like people to say these trials were conducted as fairly and as consistently as possible, and we followed the rule of law," he told me, as we sat at one of the prosecution tables.
Hartmann said that the commission procedures mirrored those of courts-martial. "There will be no secret evidence—defendants will see all of the evidence presented to the jury against them," he said. "If the prosecution wants to use hearsay evidence, it has to give notice to the defense and a hearing has to be held to see if it's reliable." Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is required for conviction, and defendants are given a military counsel (and also may hire an attorney), and they do not have to testify, with no inference to be drawn against them if they do not. Death sentences must be unanimous; two-thirds or three-quarters may be sufficient for conviction of lesser offenses.
But there is a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose quality to the proceedings. If a defendant is acquitted, he need not be released; he can simply be returned to detainee status at Guantánamo, to remain in custody until the end of the war on terror—raising the question of what sort of recourse the proceedings really provide.
"What's unusual about what we're doing is that we're having the commissions before the end of the war," Hartmann told me. "The Nuremberg trials were after World War Two, so there was no possibility of the defendants going back to the battlefield. We still have that problem. We are trying these alleged war criminals during the war. So, in order to protect our troops in the field, in general we are not going to release anyone who poses a danger until the war is over." By this reasoning, even those Guantánamo detainees who are acquitted of the charges against them are analogous to Nazi war criminals.
The commissions are not, however, the only way for detainees to be released. In the past year or so, the U.S. government has engaged in extensive diplomatic efforts to find acceptable homes for detainees of lesser interest. Hundreds of prisoners have left this way; Saudi Arabia alone took about a hundred last year. In a rather forlorn attempt to control the detainees' future behavior, each of those released is asked to sign a form that promises, among other things, that he "will not affiliate himself with al Qaeda or its Taliban supporters" and he "will not engage in, assist, or conspire to commit any acts of terrorism." If detainees refuse to sign, they are released anyway. According to critics, the release of so many detainees in such a short period amounts to an admission by the Administration that the detainees were never as dangerous as had been claimed. "Now that it's clear that Guantánamo is such an embarrassment, they are just shipping as many of them out the door as they can, and just keeping enough of them to save face," Clive Stafford Smith, who has long represented detainees at Guantánamo, said. "It's a political process that has little to do with terrorism."
Of the two hundred and seventy-five or so detainees now in Guantánamo, about sixty have been approved for transfer, if countries can be found to take them. (This issue is complicated by the fact that the United States has not been able to negotiate handovers to some countries, notably Yemen. Other detainees say that they will be tortured in their home country; cases involving Algerian and Tunisian nationals making this claim are pending in federal court in Washington.) Of the remaining detainees, Hartmann anticipates that there is sufficient evidence to bring commissions against only between sixty and eighty. In sum, there are more than a hundred and thirty detainees for whom Administration officials acknowledge they have no plan, except indefinite detention without trial.
The design of the courtroom itself suggests another problem with the commissions. For trials in America, journalists and other members of the public sit inside the courtroom; in Guantánamo, they will watch from behind soundproof glass, which can be screened off, with the sound eliminated, at any time.
"You know why the courtroom has the sealed-off press section, don't you?" Stafford Smith said. "All they care about is the evidence of the accused being tortured. They keep saying that the accused will see all the evidence, but the accused already knows he's been tortured. The point is to make sure that the media and the public don't see the evidence of torture. The key thing that they say is classified is evidence of torture and abuse."
That is not how Hartmann sees it. "The window is there in case the prosecutors want to use classified information, and they have advised that there will be relatively little used," he said. Still, classified information often involves "sources and methods" of intelligence gathering, and details about the interrogations of the detainees are likely to be kept from the public. This, of course, comes in the context of admissions by the government that several of the leading defendants, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, were subjected to waterboarding—the use of near-drowning during questioning. "The statute says that torture is illegal, and statements derived from torture are inadmissible," Hartmann told me. But is waterboarding torture? "These are evidentiary matters to be decided in the courtroom," he said.
To try to forestall trials centered on the alleged torture of the defendants, the prosecutors have assembled "clean teams"—investigators who were not directly involved in the interrogation—to build cases against Mohammed and the others which exclude any evidence that might be tainted. "The clean teams are a joke," Stafford Smith said. "It's impossible to 'unhear' what they said when they were tortured." But it is true that prosecutors in American criminal trials, when confronted with potentially illegally obtained evidence, sometimes devise ways to present the same facts to the jury. Still, the mere possibility that evidence will be aired about the waterboarding of Mohammed and the others suggests the political, not just the legal, dimension of the commission cases.
"We will all deal with the legacy of Abu Ghraib, but that is not the commissions," Hartmann said. "The commissions are not the detention facilities, they are not the C.S.R.T.s"—the review tribunals. "They are not even Guantánamo Bay and Camp X-Ray. The commissions are the commissions, and people are going to see that they are fair."
That claim of fairness suffered a significant blow last fall, when Air Force Colonel Morris D. Davis, the chief prosecutor for the commissions, resigned his post in protest. Davis, who has served as a military lawyer for twenty-four years, took the job in September, 2005. He told me that he operated without interference for about a year. The situation changed when Susan Crawford, a protégée of Vice-President Dick Cheney who is close to his counsel and chief of staff, David Addington, was named the "convening authority" of the commissions and Hartmann took over as legal adviser. Crawford was a political appointee, and her position made her a kind of one-person grand jury. Davis came to believe that Hartmann and Crawford were more concerned with the Administration's interests than with the integrity of the process.
"The commissions had such a bad image that it was important from the start to do things as openly and transparently as possible, so I spent a long time trying to get evidence declassified," Davis told me. Crawford and Hartmann, he said, made it clear that they thought that declassifying the evidence was too much trouble and that "we've got to get this moving quickly, even if it means doing it behind closed doors."
Davis went on, "I knew that a few of our likely defendants had been waterboarded, and I just made a decision that we were not going to use any evidence from them that was coerced, and no one challenged that opinion." But Hartmann, Davis says, questioned whether Davis had the authority to judge the admissibility of evidence.
In the end, it was the structure of the commissions, rather than any single decision by his superiors, that prompted Davis to resign. "I thought the whole idea was for Hartmann and Crawford to be the referees, not beholden to the defense or the prosecution," he said. "But if Hartmann is in our office each day, assigning lawyers, deciding which cases to bring, what evidence to use, and then supervising the case—that wasn't right." (Hartmann denied virtually all of Davis's version of events; a Department of Defense investigation determined that there was no wrongdoing on his part. Crawford declined to comment on her role. Davis is retiring from the Air Force this summer.)
It remains to be seen if the first two trials, scheduled to open in May and June, will even begin. One is the Hamdan case; in the other, Omar Khadr, a Canadian national who was fifteen years old when he was captured, is accused of killing an American soldier with a hand grenade. Among the outstanding legal questions in these cases are whether conspiracy is a war crime, and whether the defendants, to prepare their own cases, can interview Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other high-value detainees. And there is the issue, also currently unresolved, of whether Khadr should be charged as an adult. Most of the death-penalty defendants, meanwhile, have not yet even been assigned defense attorneys, and their trials are likely months away, at best.
Even if the commissions can somehow begin, the larger question of what to do with the remaining detainees is, for now, unsettled. One response to that quandary is a controversial proposal, by the law professors Neal Katyal and Jack Goldsmith, that is attracting a great deal of attention in the small world of national-security law—and which may offer an electoral lifeline for the Republicans this fall.
Katyal and Goldsmith make unlikely allies. A law professor at Georgetown and former Clinton Administration official, Katyal won widespread renown when he argued and won Salim Hamdan's case before the Supreme Court in 2006. Goldsmith is a former Bush Administration official who, despite leaving the government in 2004, in part over concerns about civil liberties in the war on terror, remains a strong national-security conservative. (He is now a professor at Harvard Law School.) But the two men shared a conviction that both military commissions and ordinary criminal prosecutions would be impractical for a few of those captured on distant battlefields. Together, they came up with an alternative: a national-security court.
According to their proposal, which was recently the subject of a conference sponsored by American University's Washington College of Law and the Brookings Institution, sitting federal judges would preside over proceedings in which prosecutors would make the case that a person should be detained. There would be trials of sorts, and detainees would have lawyers, but they would have fewer rights than in a criminal case. Hearsay evidence may be admissible—so government agents could testify about what informants told them—and there would be no requirement for Miranda warnings before interrogations. Some proceedings would be closed to the public. "It's a new system that's needed only in extreme circumstances," Katyal said. "It's not a default option."
Civil libertarians are, for the most part, aghast. "It's the liberals who support this, the ones who should know better, that are dangerous," Ben Wizner, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, who has long dealt with detainee issues, said. "The real problem is that there is an emerging consensus that we need to have some legal authority to detain people without trial, and that's wrong. The government has proved it can criminally prosecute people in terrorism cases—in the African embassy-bombing cases, in the John Walker Lindh case, and others. That's what the government should do—prosecute them, or release them." Katyal says, "Would I love every case to be tried in criminal court? Of course. The reality is, when you're dealing with foreign investigations, particularly concerning events that occurred a long time ago, there are going to be a small handful of cases that you can't try in criminal court." Wizner and others assert that the jurisdiction of any new court would be sure to expand and swallow up more suspects for greater periods of time.
In any case, according to lawyers inside and outside government, the Bush Administration may launch a proposal for a national-security court this summer or fall, after what they presume will be its next loss in the Supreme Court. "It looks like when Boumediene comes down the Court may say to the President and Congress that they need more procedures for the detainees," Goldsmith said. "So, to correct the problem, the President might consider sending something up to Congress this summer or fall. It would help the Republicans in the fall election." The measure would force congressional Democrats to take a stand on the issue in the middle of the campaign—just as Bush did successfully with the Military Commissions Act after the Hamdan defeat. "It worked very well in 2006," Goldsmith said. "The only way the Democrats have to not make it an election issue is to give the President the powers he seeks."
As long as the detainees remain at Guantánamo, the military continues to interrogate them. In this sense, the rationale for the detention center has been unchanged since 2002. Of course, many of the detainees have been talking for five years or more, and it is reasonable to wonder if they have anything left to say.
The head of the Guantánamo Task Force is Admiral Mark Buzby. Moments before he entered a conference room for our interview, an aide brought in the Stars and Stripes and a one-star admiral's flag and set them behind his chair. Buzby is relentlessly on message about the continuing value of the interrogations. "We ask them, 'Tell us how you did that forgery stuff.' That's as timely now as it was back then," he told me. "We are filling in the mosaic." Buzby noted that the detainees' interrogation sessions were sometimes catered by the base's fast-food outlets. "They want those Subway sandwiches!" he said. "Sometimes they just want to talk. Meanwhile, he's chomping on his Subway B.M.T. It's all about that give-and-take and that rapport-building. We still get regular questions in for us to ask from the front in the field. We'll show him a map: 'Thanks a lot, have a Big Mac.' "
It is hard to verify such assertions, because the task force does not allow access to the detainees or to the information they provide. However, many detainees who have been released, and the lawyers for those who remain, contend that the continued interrogations amount to harassment of people who never knew anything of intelligence value in the first place.
Still, the question now, as Buzby acknowledges, is whether Guantánamo, as a symbol and recruiting device for terrorists, endangers more lives than it can possibly save. "It's really for others to weigh whether what we do here is of sufficient value to offset how this place is viewed internationally," Buzby said. For the man in charge on the ground at Guantánamo, the situation with the detainees has devolved into, at best, a lingering standoff. "I don't think any of us envision that they will be here in thirty years, but the question is what to do with them," he said. "The good news is, we got 'em. The bad news is, we got 'em." ♦


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text:
EP Manuscript "Highly Accessed"
The final PDF of our manuscript is now available on the Genome Biology website.
It's been tagged as "highly accessed" article! From the Genome Biology website:
The 'Highly accessed' graphic appears on journal table of contents and search results to identify those articles that have been especially highly accessed, relative to their age, and the journal in which they were published.


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November 16, 2011
Contact: Sammy Parks
Phone Number: (713) 693-3329
Multi-District OCDETF Investigation Linked To Zeta Organization Leads To Local Arrests
LAREDO, TX - Five men have been arrested following the return of a sealed indictment alleging ties to the Zeta drug cartel and charges of money laundering, Drug Enforcement (DEA) Acting Special Agent in Charge Thomas E. Hinojosa and United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced today. The indictment, returned Nov. 7, 2011, was partially unsealed today following the appearance this morning of Nelson Adrian Casarez, 35, and Josue Alejandro Salinas, 41, both of Laredo, Texas at which time they were ordered held without bond at the request of the United States pending further criminal proceedings.
Also charged in this indictment are Jose Vasquez aka Catracho, 33, of Chicago, Ill., Isidro Juarez, 49, of San Antonio, Texas, and Miguel Santos aka El Mike, 41, of Laredo. Juarez was a rrested in San Antonio on a related matter but is expected to be presented in Laredo court on these charges in the near future. Vasquez was arrested yesterday in Oklahoma and is expected to make an initial appearance there later today or tomorrow. Santos was arrested just this morning and will be presented for initial appearance in Laredo tomorrow morning. This indictment remains sealed as to those charged but not yet in custody.
Since October 2009, Drug Enforcement (DEA) agents in Texas and Illinois have been conducting an investigation into the large scale transportation of drug proceeds from the Chicago, Ill, area to border cities in Texas including Laredo and Eagle Pass. The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task (OCDETF) investigation dubbed Operation El Chacal in Laredo identified a high ranking member of the Zeta drug and money laundering organization who operated out of the Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico area responsible for coordinating the transportation and laundering of bulk U.S. currency from various locations throughout the United States.
According to the indictment, the Zetas are a Mexican cartel engaged in large scale drug trafficking and money laundering. The Zetas cartel allegedly imports and distributes controlled substances including marijuana and cocaine from Mexico into the United States to major distribution centers such as Chicago. The Zetas and their co-conspirators collected drug proceeds from distribution centers and arranged for its transportation from the United States to the Republic of Mexico, according to the indictment.
The investigation identified a Zeta member who was the head of a drug proceeds transportation network for the Zetas and operated out of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. As head of the network, this person directed and orchestrated, through other co-conspirators based in Laredo and Chicago, the collection, concealment, transportation and movement of drug proceeds from the Chicago area to the border cities in Texas. The indictment also alleges that the Zeta head, through other co-conspirators, also coordinated the transportation of the drug proceeds from Texas border cities to the Republic of Mexico. DEA agents were able to identify other co-conspirators who, at the direction of the Zeta head, secured and maintained stash homes in the Chicago area for the concealment, collection, counting and wrapping of drug proceeds in addition to those who worked as truck drivers and, at the direction of the Zeta head, were recruited to transport bulk cash drug proceeds from the Chicago area to South Texas border cities.
The investigation further revealed that at the direction of the Zeta head, co-conspirators received drug proceeds in the Laredo and Eagle Pass area and transferred those drug proceeds to other co-conspirators who then transported the drug proceeds to the Republic of Mexico.
The investigation which was initiated by the Laredo DEA, spun off to OCDETF investigations in Chicago, dubbed Operation Gas Leak, and San Antonio, dubbed Operation Mexican Express. Over the course of the multi-jurisdictional investigation, more than $20 million in drug proceeds were seized throughout the various cities as well as more than 200 kilos of cocaine and weapons.
Furthermore, the investigation resulted in the rescue of a kidnapping victim when federal agents alerted the Laredo Police Department of information obtained during the investigation. The investigation has resulted in indictments being returned in the various jurisdictions to include Laredo, Chicago and San Antonio and the execution of a multi-jurisdictional take down. The violations alleged in the various indictments include conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, conspiracy to launder drug proceeds, traveling in interstate and foreign commerce in aid of racketeering and use of a communication facility to commit a drug trafficking crime. The prosecutions were coordinated with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois with the assistance of federal prosecutors in the Western District of Texas. The Laredo Police Department conducted a separate but related investigation that resulted in the arrest of defendants on state charges last week.


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text:
Bringing Transparency Back To The Patent System With 'Innovation Cartography'
from the spreading-the-knowledge dept
As Techdirt has noted many times, the patent system is broken, and in various ways. One major problem is the way it inhibits innovation, rather than promoting it, as its supporters usually claim. Here's why:
The patent system was created to advance societal benefit by encouraging clearly defined public disclosure of inventions, in exchange for a strictly limited monopoly. The intent is that the invention may be used wherever and whenever the patent monopoly is not in force.
That's taken from a page on the site of a new tool called the "Lens". It's the brainchild of Richard Jefferson, probably best known for setting up Cambia, which describes itself as "an independent non-profit institute creating new technologies, tools and paradigms to promote change and enable innovation," and the open-source biology project BiOS. Here's what the Lens is for:
The trouble is that unless information is readily available about whose patents are in force over what technology where, the system doesn't work well. People may unwittingly infringe patents they don't know about, avoid areas of innovation in which they are entitled to be creative, or make poor investments based on incomplete information about which rights are granted and who holds these rights.
to create transparency in the patent system, and to serve the public worldwide as a platform to explore, understand and improve its impact on society. The Lens informatics tools can assist the user to determine the boundaries of intellectual property constraints on deliverable innovations, and usable building blocks for future innovations.
As pointed out to us by @gnat, there's an excellent profile of Jefferson in Grist, which explains the larger goal of his new project as follows:
he's trying to radically transform the entire system of innovation to make it more inclusive and local: He wants a system that empowers farmers in Africa to invent their own solutions, rather than looking to multinational corporations for fixes.
The problem is that patents do not promote innovation in those contexts:
the people who need new solutions most, like farmers in developing countries, are isolated in a system that discourages ground-level innovation. Instead, we have a small group of companies in rich countries, with a stranglehold on patents, designing all the solutions to fit their own business models. This system works primarily to bring in money for these companies, to maintain their privilege, and to exclude competition.
More specifically, the problem is that:
the patent system has grown so complex that only a few experts understand it. It's impossible for normal people to navigate the patent thickets to discover the treasures there, or see the dangers. And these days everything from a cellphone to a seed requires dozens of separate patents for the component parts. The solution, he said, is mapping it out: what he calls "innovation cartography."
The rest of the Grist article explores Jefferson's ideas further, and is well-worth reading. It includes a wonderful historical parallel from the 16th century -- involving a different kind of map:
the Iberian peninsula controlled all the information needed to send merchant ships to Asia (and, to a large extent, the New World as well). The Iberians had invested heavily in research and development, sending out De Gama, Magellan, Dias, Columbus, all those explorers to map the world. And because they were the only Europeans with reliable maps of the East Indies -- these maps were state secrets -- the Iberians had a monopoly.
The result was great wealth and power for those that controlled the maps, but also stagnation within their industries, because they had no need to innovate -- the money kept rolling in anyway. The parallels with the present state of the patent system, where large returns are possible without the need to innovate further, are clear.
But back in the 16th century, something happened:
Jan Huyghen van Linschoten was working as a secretary for the Portuguese archbishop in Goa, India. In that capacity, he traveled all over the world. Somewhere along the way, he got his hands on the Portuguese maps, and he copied them.
He not only copied them, he made them freely available, with dramatic effects on the entire world:
Linschoten published the maps in 1596. The British East India Company started in 1600; the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602. The Dutch East India Company also represented an innovation in financing: It was the first joint stock company, and its formation gave rise to trade in options and derivatives. Once the maps were available and the Iberian monopoly was broken, new ideas flowered, and new investment flowed.
This is how Jefferson thinks the Lens will be used to unleash a new wave of investment and innovation, just as Linschoten's maps did:
Now we have a similar situation, Jefferson said. There is a tremendous opportunity -- not in mapping Asia and the Americas, but in mapping the patent system and all of its related knowledge.
anyone can look up patents and grab recipes for creating technologies. This is especially true of the people who need innovation most, because patents don't apply in most developing countries. Patents can only stop use of an invention in the country in which they're granted. An enterprising Ugandan company could look up the instructions for Monsanto's seeds in the patent literature, and build them tomorrow, without breaking the law, Jefferson said. The innovators and entrepreneurs are out there, he said -- they just need the maps to show investors that the technology exists and their plans are legal and feasible.
It's a radical approach: using the patent system to provide both the raw ideas that might help developing countries, as well as key information about where that can be done without running into legal problems. In other words, it's all about putting the missing transparency back into patents.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Filed Under: innovation, patents, transparency


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Experience Rural New Zealand
At the Homestay "Under the Totara Trees", close to Wellington with a very friendly host (American accent), you will experience rural NZ at its best.
1 / 5
Experience Rural New Zealand
My place is rural New Zealand at its best. Peaceful, quiet and private, with a backdrop of stunning river and mountain views on three sides, this homestay is a very special place to relax-- sitting in the shade of the totara trees listening to birdsong and the distant sound of contented farm animals or, in the late evening, soaking in the roomy, outdoor bath under the brilliant star-studded Wairarapa night sky.
The homestay
I purchased the land, part of a former small dairy unit, in 1999 and have had great fun (and hard work) turning it into my dream of a unique place in a beautiful country setting. I am a friendly, sociable person and I love sharing my lovely place with visitors from all over the world, especially those interested in experiencing rural New Zealand.
The spacious home is nestled in a large olive grove in the heart of Wairarapa dairy country, only a little over an hour's drive from Wellington, the capital city. Although predominantly dairy country there are sheep, beef and deer farms (and seven hay sheds) within sight of the front gate and orchards just across the river. If you are interested in agriculture your host (me-Gail), originally from a dairy farm in Virginia USA and the wheat fields of Alberta, Canada will design a tour of rural Wairarapa to suit your interests. She can take you to visit a dairy farm, New Zealand's sheep and shearing museum, a vineyard or almost anything else you fancy.
Or if you want a touch of nostalgia, when life was much simpler, you can elect to stay in the rustic wooden cabin, hidden in the olive grove, with stunning views down the river. The cabin is furnished with simple family heirlooms and lit by a oil lantern.
Fun activities
Young children love the wide open (and safe) spaces for playing, including rolling down the roly-poly grassed hill and digging in the grandchildren's sandpit. Older children (and their parents) enjoy the outdoor draughts/chess and petanque. There is a short walk on the property through regenerating native bush under towering trees beside a small stream. Carry some tempting food and look carefully and you may see an eel or two in the early evening. A couple of minutes from the homestay by car there is a short dirt track leading to a quintessential New Zealand river for children to play on the rocks and in the water--a great place for a picnic lunch.
Guests are welcome to borrow two bicycles to explore the country roads which pass beside many different farm activities and farm animals, depending on the season and weather.
Delightful dining
Enjoy your breakfast al fresco in the morning sun on the northern patio-- when weather permits. If you arrange for your host to provide dinner you can dine in the evening al fresco on the southern patio watching the amazing sunsets behind the river and distant hills. When lunch is ordered, it is served on the lawn under the shade of the totara trees.
A special treat is to buy food for a pizza and stoke up the wood-fired oven for cooking your own pizza, while enjoying the brilliant sunsets. You are welcome to pick the herbs from the herb garden near the oven and your host will provide olive oil harvested from her grove and possibly some fresh, spray-free vegetables and fruit, depending on what she has ready for harvesting.
Further afield
Close by is a winding, gravel road which takes you up to the Waiohine Gorge with a long and high, but very secure, swing bridge leading into original native bush where you can walk for hours on well marked tracks. Or you can take a picnic lunch to enjoy beside the stony mountain river and, if you are brave, you can play in the cool, fast moving water. Horse trekking is also available off that road.
When tired of the rural retreat atmosphere a 10 minute drive south will take you to Greytown for upmarket restaurants, trendy boutiques and causal cafes.
About 10 minutes to the north is Carterton which has a lovely 18 hole golf course which is rarely crowded and welcomes visitors. If you are a keen golfer there are three other golf courses within about a 30 minutes drive in several directions.
Further afield
Slightly further afield in the Wairarapa valley there are a host of fun, mostly outdoor activities, all less than an hour's drive from the homestay. (There also are lots of art galleries, museums, including a vintage aircraft museum, and other "cultural" activities when you want a break from "country".)
For instance, to the east the town of Martinborough has vineyards, for wine tasting and exquisite cafes, as well as gourmet restaurants. Around the area there is fishing, canoeing, kayaking, jet boating, horse trekking, glow worm caves, 4 WD quad bikes, Lake Wairarapa wetlands, the Cape Palliser lighthouse and a fur seal colony.
Drive north to Masterton and east, through typical rural New Zealand hill country, to the coast to enjoy several beautiful beaches. Northwest of Masterton is Mt Bruce Pukaha National Wildlife Centre, an interesting place to study unique New Zealand birds. Sit on the cafe deck to see the brilliant blue takahe, one of the world's rarest flightless birds, wondering around just meters away.
Naturally in an area surrounded by mountains, there are a number of day tramps and trails with huts for overnight tramps, such as the Mount Holdsworth tramp, if you are a keen tramper.
Best of all, your host prides herself on old-fashion country hospitality. The homestay is small and can only accommodate two couples or families. If you stay with me you are my personal guest and I will try to cater for your particular interests and make you to feel right at home--but you aren't expected to do the dishes! Go to www.olivehomestay.co.nz for more information.


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Jordan Hoffart Pro Model Released With New VCJ Artwork
From the time he was 10, Jordan Hoffart knew skateboarding was his life. For years, he lived his life in Vancouver working construction and skating every spare moment he had. In 2009, Jordan moved to San Diego from his Canadian homeland to live the skateboarder's dream. Working his way up the ranks from shop sponsored skate rat to professional skateboarder, Jordan has paid his way with blood, sweat and sacrifice; the only true way to make it.
Today, Powell-Peralta is excited to announce Jordan Hoffart's much-deserved pro model, The Hoffart Pegasus, featuring one-of-a-kind graphics by the mystic, Vernon Courtlandt Johnson. This is VCJ's first commercial offering since his highly anticipated return to Powell-Peralta.
VCJ, known for some of the most iconic graphics in skateboarding history, has returned to Powell-Peralta with a vengeance. "I had been away from skate art for a long time in order to find some answers to personal questions. I am satisfied with what I have found. I am back in the game of skate art," said VCJ reflecting on his return to skateboarding. In his early career, VCJ was the man behind the Ripper, Caballero Dragon, the Tony Hawk Hawk Skull, the Ray "Bones" Rodriguez Skull & Sword and the Mike McGill Skull & Snake graphics.
After some tinkering to the initial design, VCJ has produced Jordan's pro model graphic with a Pegasus theme of a winged horse. VCJ shared his insight on the image, "I see the symbol as a representation of the eternal soul and physical body. I am the soul and my body is the the horse that carries me through life. The logo behind the image represents those who love and support Jordan in respects to his giftedness, devotion and time in this form as Jordan Hoffart."
"I'm stoked the way it panned out," said Jordan reflecting on the experience, "It's amazing. The whole process of sitting down and really getting to know VCJ was a blessing. The amount of energy, time and effort he put into making this graphic is unbelievable. I literally got a stack of 100+ sketches he did leading up to the finished drawing. I'm beyond stoked to have this opportunity given to me." The levity of the first VCJ graphic since his return to skateboarding is heavy to Hoffart. "I just got it tattooed on my arm, so I get the significance of it. It's a huge honor."
Powell-Peralta's commander in chief, George Powell, talked about the time and effort that went into the project. "Jordan's new graphic is a gift of love from Court. We spent the kind of time on it we used to in the early 80s, months, until it was as good as we could make it, so it will last forever." Powell hinted at the velocity of the creative hurricane stirred up at Powell-Peralta since VCJ's return. "Working with Court is very different than it was 30 years ago, what used to be difficult is now easy, and Court's depth of understanding of both the skater he is creating a graphic for, and the deep meaning of the graphic keep bubbling to the surface as the design evolves. We are having too much fun."
The Hoffart Pegasus comes in two dimensions and is available in royal purple and blood red. The Hoffart Pegasus 1 is 8″ X 32.125″ with LIGAMENT™ technology, and the Hoffart Pegasus 2 is 8.5″ X 33.5″ both featuring a VCJ masterpiece of ride-able art on the highest quality skateboard decks available.
The first five decks offered will be signed by VCJ and Jordan and available on the Skate One site Saturday. The net proceeds of the sales will be donated to the Grind For Life Organization.
About Jordan HoffartJordan Hoffart, born January 28, 1985 grew up in Maple Ridge British Columbia, Canada. In 2009, he made the move to California where he now resides as professional skateboarder. He rides for Powell-Peralta, BONES Wheels, Bones Swiss Bearings, Theeve Trucks, Quiksilver, Active Rideshop, Neff Headwear and 9Five Shades.


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San Antonio artist Elizabeth McGrath is a maker of small and domestic objects. She is also an observer of human gestures and how notions like comfort and discomfort, and the organization of organic forms tend to manifest themselves. These ideas seem to float through her unconscious as she works.
McGrath graduated from Austin College and received her MFA at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She was selected by a 1994 regional panel of arts professionals convened Artpace to participate in the Foundation's London Studio program in April 1995. She spent six weeks in England. "The trip broadened my perspective," she says.


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5 Places to Order Last-Minute Thanksgiving Pies in the Washington, D.C. Area
You've been invited for Thanksgiving and assigned what seems to be the easiest task of all: bringing dessert. While some people might see baking Thanksgiving pie as a welcome challenge, some of you might have to opt for the bakery route. And Thanksgiving is days away.
Rather than let you pick up a sub-par pie at the grocery store, we've put together a couple of D.C.-area bakeries that'll take your order for last-minute pies that you can be proud to deliver to your host on the biggest eating day of the year.
This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.


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Follow Highway 70 through central Kansas on a hot summer's day and you'll invariably see this: a flat sea of cornstalks, stretching from horizon to horizon as far as the eye can see.
It was not always so. The High Plains region of the United States -- a subregion of the Great Plains stretching from the Midwest to the Rockies -- encompasses some of the most productive agricultural land in the country, but 200 years ago it was arid grassland. Its transformation was accomplished through innovations in technology and relied on a finite resource -- water.
Farmers withstood the High Plains' frequent droughts and dry spells by pumping groundwater from the region's aquifers, a trend that accelerated sharply with the electrification of rural America in the early 20th century. Since then, the levels of those aquifers have been dropping at an accelerating pace.
The recent drought that has gripped much of the Southwest for almost three years has thrown the issue into stark relief. A number of states and the U.S. Geological Survey have issued reports in recent weeks highlighting sharp drops in regional water levels due to increased groundwater pumping.
"The past year, we've had just about the biggest drop in groundwater levels I can remember," said Janie Hopkins, manager of the groundwater division of the Texas Water Development Board.
A recent study by the board found that water levels declined a median total of 4.8 feet between 2010 and 2011, nearly three times higher than the median decline of 2009 to 2010. Considering that the drought is ongoing in many of the districts, water managers fear the findings for 2012 and perhaps even 2013 will be similarly severe.
An accelerating rate of decline
The nation's largest aquifer is the Ogallala, underlying more than 170,000 square miles of the High Plains region and stretching across eight states, from Nebraska to Texas. A major source of both irrigation and domestic consumption, it is also one of the fastest-declining groundwater reserves in the country.
A recent study by USGS found that its rate of depletion accelerated sharply over the past decade with declines from 2001 to 2008 accounting for 32 percent of the cumulative depletion over the course of the entire 20th century. In places, water table levels have fallen 160 feet since the mid-20th century.
"During the 1940s and 1950s, the growth of populations and the expansion of industry meant many more farmers were drilling wells, particularly in the High Plains," said Leonard Konikow, a research hydrologist with USGS. "This was land that had never been irrigated before -- land that ordinarily wouldn't have supported these kinds of crops."
While aquifers do recharge over time -- the nation's water tables kept to a relatively constant level during the historically wet, cool years of the 1960s and 1970s -- that rate of recharge can't make up for water use in the West.
The Ogallala aquifer is the nation's largest, underlying eight states and providing water to tens of millions of people.
Image: U.S. Geological Survey
"[The High Plains] used to be grasslands. The recharge to these systems is going to be minimal," said Virginia McGuire, another USGS research hydrologist. "You pump that water out, and with recharge at about an inch a year, it'd be a heck of a long time before you get it back."
Drought exacerbates the problem in a number of ways. First, the slight recharge that would occur in wetter years is all but absent during times of dryness. And then, of course, farmers have to lean more heavily on groundwater in the absence of precipitation.
"If there's a big reservoir of good quality water that's sitting hidden beneath our feet, people who rely on water are going to pump their wells as they need it," Konikow said.
Pumping without meters
Agriculture claims 96 percent of the water taken from the country's aquifers, but managing that use can be tricky, McGuire said.
Among the High Plains states, only Kansas mandates that its farmers meter their water use, she said. For the rest, water managers have to assemble a massive amount of indirect data -- from the power usage of water pumps to test wells to meteorological data -- to try to estimate how much water is being used in a given year.
"You see different approaches to monitoring and controlling water use as you look across the High Plains," she said. "In Kansas, you have water metering; in Oklahoma, it's referred to 'mining for water,' and the state has the ability to regulate the amount of water pumped."
Texas, however, stands out for its relative lack of regulation. "The rule of capture has existed here since the 1940s," said the Texas Water Development Board's Hopkins. "Essentially, the biggest straw wins."
The recent declines have shocked many districts to reconsider their options, she said. And as they do so, they're realizing that a managed decline might be their only feasible course forward.
"They've gone ahead with 'We're going to deplete our resource.' That's an assumption in the regional water plans," she said. "What they're trying to do now is manage that depletion in such a way that they can adapt to it."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500


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SOLDIERofficer81 wrote:I have to disagree.
People move on. They forget. They want to forget.
The Ancients become a people apart from the rest of Humanity. The Ancients are marginalized, discriminated against (look what's happening in France, where the government is forcing the Gypsies to leave the country). The Ancients die off/assimilate/whatever. The Ancients' history and lore dies with them.
Specimen wrote:Was anyone else bugged by this as well?
Dimma wrote:And also, less than 1000 years ago we had the vikings on earth, and do not even really know how they disappeared.Specimen wrote:Was anyone else bugged by this as well?
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Palace Revolution 2000
Sendittome, this is a really good thread idea. In itself, kind of gutsy.
I'd say the double shot of "Thief in the Night/How Can I Stop" to close out B2B was a great call.
Also "Stripped" was a good album and idea. It could have been even better.
Oh - "Plundered my Soul" - yes.
The whole 'Undercover' album has some challenging sounds.
The year of the trio "Wandering Spirit/Slide On This/Main Offender" was a glorious year for me.
Standing up for Justin Timberlake was cool.
Continental Drift on Steel Wheels springs to mind.
So too does How Can I Stop on B2B.


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Ditch Those Preconceived Notions!
-- Planning to visit New York City? In addition to the bright lights of the big city, you'll find big opportunities for learning at the college level. From urban colleges to sprawling campuses, NYC is not only a great place to visit, it's a great place to visit colleges!


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Adam Schaffner, MD, FACS performs plastic surgery on patients not only from around the New York City area, but from all over the United States and the world. We want the patient to concentrate only on the plastic surgery and recovery not to worry about the traveling. Whether you are travelling to us by train, subway, car or plane, we will happily assist you with directions and your travel accommodations.
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via The Skeptic's Dictionary – Skepdic.com
"If Uri Geller bends spoons with divine powers, then he's doing it the hard way." —James Randi
"Because a good magician can do something shouldn't make you right away jump to the conclusion that it's a real phenomenon." —Richard Feynman
"Geller is at his ingenious best in laboratories where he is being observed by scientists who believe he has extraordinary ESP ability and think—without justification—that they have ruled out every possibility of fraud." —Milbourne Christopher
Uri Geller is most famous for his claim to be able to bend spoons and keys with his mind. An international star in the psychic circuit, Geller is a Hungarian/Austrian who was born in Israel and lives in England. He claims he's had visions for many years and may get his powers from extraterrestrials. He calls himself a psychic and has sued several people for millions of dollars for saying otherwise. His psychic powers were not sufficient to reveal to him, however, that he would lose all the lawsuits against his critics. His arch critic has been James "The Amazing" Randi, who has written a book and numerous articles aimed at demonstrating that Geller is a fraud, that he has no psychic powers, and that what Geller does amounts to no more than the parlor tricks of a conjurer.
Geller has been performing for many years. The first time I saw him was in 1973 when he appeared on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show. He was supposed to demonstrate his ability to bend spoons with his thoughts and identify hidden objects, but he failed to even try. He squirmed around and said something about how his power can't be turned on and off, and that he didn't feel strong right then. Randi had worked with Carson's producer to change the spoons and metal items Geller planned to use, as there was a suspicion that Geller likes to work (i.e., soften) his metals before his demonstrations, as would any careful conjurer.
View Geller's Tonight Show lack of performance (courtesy of James Randi):
I have always been fascinated and puzzled by the attraction of Uri Geller. I suppose this is because nearly every one of our household spoons is bent and what I would like to see is someone who can straighten them, with his mind or with anything for that matter. Likewise with stopped watches. I have several of those and I would love for someone to use his powers, psychic or otherwise, to make them start running again. Of course, even I can get my stopped watches to run again for a short while by shaking or tapping them, but a permanent fix would be appreciated. There is something mysterious, however, about a person who has built a career out of breaking things.


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