Now buried in the tailings of the news cycle is the story of a US soldier named Manning who had conscience enough to expose the gruesome massacre of Iraqis—including a journalist—by a US Army helicopter crew in 2007. Manning’s fate was grim; he will remain in prison for telling a truth for years to come after being charged with leaking sensitive state secrets. That’s often a euphemism for telling the truth and the source that Manning leaked his tape to, the Australian sourced Wikileaks is a new form of media that seems to be dedicated to doing exactly that as a new exposé of more than 90,000 documents concerning US military operations in Afghanistan show.

So far, the unearthed documents have not shown anything that a dedicated, intelligent, investigative media couldn’t have found out and reported on. A litany of needless civilian deaths at the hands of US troops, the utter uselessness of Pakistan as an ally, dozens of intelligence failures, futile US efforts to win Afghan hearts and minds, and above all, the growing and flailing scale of the war itself seem to be coming out via this independent, non-standard media outlet that left the mainstream media in the dust.

Even though the White House was informed—and seemingly didn’t care if the data was aired—by the New York Times, which tattled off to the government as soon as the London Guardian ran with the data, the usual apologists for secrecy are raging that the leak endangers American lives in a war zone in war time. This remains to be seen. What it really does is show up the mainstream media that should have found this kind of stuff before, informs the American people of the extent to which the military is carrying out this war in their name to some unknown end, and most of all, exposes the age of the internet as the enemy of secrecy—at least for now.

But like what happened to Manning, the government will no doubt react with a heavy hand against Wikileaks and other whistleblowers who out the dirty laundry of realpolitik. It won’t be long before hawks in the spook business of national security call for limits on the net, citing safeguarding US lives in action as the excuse to impose Chinese-like preemptive censorship of information access, sharing and especially publication without prior approval.

When that dismal day comes, it will be imperative for every American to drop their party affiliation and say that enough is too much. For better and worse, the net’s open traffic gates have become the most important way of using and finding information on earth. Limiting it will cripple this country and people. Ultimately, the US is going to have to learn what the government learned during the Civil War—that fighting a war against the press and open flow of information is a waste of time and a drag on the nation. Maybe the US government should re-think its need to fight odd wars in the glare of scrutiny, instead.

Though the flow of oil into the Gulf from the ruptured British Petroleum well has stopped, endless questions remain regarding what the oil—and a dispersant known as Corexit 9500 and a variant known as 9527; made by Nalco—did to the sea life and waters in the region.
There are good reasons for these questions: the Obama administration has done nothing to impede BP’s privatization of law enforcement at every level in a successful bid to quash information gathering by the world’s media at the disaster zone. Taxpayer funds have been used to keep taxpayers in the dark and thwart meaningful consideration about our need and excessive use of oil. To a high degree, the government and BP have succeeded in their propaganda efforts.
As good as the news is to know that perhaps the gusher in the Gulf has finally been controlled, the oil will continue to poison all around it for an indefinite time to come and that far from being able to control events or the negligent agent who caused this disaster to happen, government acts as the willing bum boy to do the bidding of industry, especially when it comes to thwarting the press and other oversight of the containment effort. Below are some selected remarks from the EPA, congressional hearings and fishing industry spokesmen that may offer a “non-standard” view of what has happened to the region. Consider this data in the days and weeks ahead, when the news cycle reinforces the idea that the disaster is ended and that all will soon be “normal”.
Nearly a month of the oil disaster, the EPA admitted that the impact of oil dispersants are still unknown.
“We remain concerned about the volume of dispersants used to date,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said at a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing. This statement came at a time when “only” 1.8 million gallons of Corexit, a chemical dispersant that breaks down oil—and anything else it comes in contact with— had been dumped into the sea.
Some 700,000 gallons of Corexit was dispersed underwater in a single day in a unique attempt to slow the flow of oil. The dispersant was sprayed directly at the well head onto the uncontrolled gushing spume in an unprecedented—and completely unmonitored—effort. To the end of May, BP acknowledged it had used nearly 1.8 million gallons of Corexit at a rate of 35,000 to 65,000 barrels per day. The Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 used 250,000 barrels to combat a spill of 11 million gallons.
The EPA’s Jackson said she did not know of any research focused on the heavy use of chemical dispersants or underwater application of the chemicals.
“You’re suggesting to me that we haven’t done that research anywhere?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ala., asked, during hearings.
“That’s correct senator,” Jackson said. When asked about how much study had been done of chemical dispersants since the Exxon Valdez disaster, Jackson said, “There has been significant research, but let me say at the outset, I don’t think there has been enough.”
“Should we ban them?” subcommittee chair Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., asked. “I don’t want dispersants to be the Agent Orange of this oil spill.”
“Every single thing done at sea has some cost,” Jackson said. “There is good news. We have not seen signs of environmental impact from the use of dispersants so far,” she said, though she acknowledged that the long-term affects on aquatic life are “largely unknown.”
So far, EPA testing of water and sediment close to the shore has yielded no evidence of dispersants on or near the shoreline.
“So why did you tell them to limit it?” Mikulski asked Jackson, referring to a May 26 order issued by the EPA for BP to scale back the use of dispersants.
“Because there were scientific unknowns,” Jackson said. She said she had a choice between banning dispersants altogether or letting BP use them “in moderation”, and she let the company use them in moderation in hopes that the dispersants would help.
“[The dispersants] are much less toxic and the chemicals added to them are much less toxic than the oil itself,” Jackson said.
“U.K. has banned dispersants,” Mikulski said. “If the U.K. banned it, a nation surrounded by water, why weren’t we banning it?”
Jackson said the U.K. banned Corexit not due to its toxicity or lethality, but because it caused damage to rocky shores; degrading life among them and proving hard to eradicate. This was a problem the United States sought to avoid by allowing dispersants to be applied at least 30 miles offshore. How or why it was assumed that dispersants wouldn’t drift inshore was left unexplained.
Jackson, however, did explain that by the time the dispersants break down the oil, the only thing left are the oil byproducts.
“They don’t stick around,” Jackson said of chemicals in the dispersants.
“The thing that sticks around is the oil.”
The fishermen of the region are like canaries in a coal mine—early indicators of bad changes to their environment. They’ve had plenty to say about what has happened to the sea they made a living from. Those who fish at the bottom, for oysters, lobsters, crabs and clams discovered first how grave the Gulf has become; oystermen were the first to recognize that BP made poison “A permanent part of the seabed and food chain in the biostructure in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The oystermen realized that Corexit 9500 and 9527 was excellent—for sinking degraded oil to the bottom, out of sight of the planes and boats that foraged the surface to observe damage. The oil poisons the bottom feeders. Once they’re dead, the sea has no means of disposing of the carrion that occurs when other fish, plankton and myriad life forms die. Without this natural cleanup mechanism, less oxygen remains in the polluted water and vast regions of the sea will be unable to sustain sea life for an unknowable time in the future. It may be generations before the region’s water can support the life levels it had the day before the oil well exploded and sank. All the fishermen say that it would have less of a disaster if no Corexit had been used—at least if it hadn’t, the oil may have been attacked on the surface and a greater amount either reclaimed or burned, and the bottom of the sea would have been left intact and unharmed.
Left unsaid are concerns about the seafood coming out of the Gulf. The disaster has likely changed the game for every aspect of the fishing industry and no one knows how the oil—and the dispersant—may affect the fish stocks. Currently, federal agencies are not testing seafood coming out of the Gulf for traces of chemical dispersants, a fact that aroused concern in senators in the May 26 hearings.
Under the current seafood testing protocol for the Gulf, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tests seafood collected from the contaminated area more than 3 miles offshore, and states monitor seafood collected less than 3 miles offshore with the help of the Food and Drug Administration.
Murkowski complained that seafood sales in her state of Alaska have been affected by the Gulf spill because consumers, especially in the Midwest, may not know where their seafood is coming from, and out of fear that it is polluted, do not buy any.
“Those shrimp might be absolutely perfectly safe,” Murkowski said, “but as long as market perceives that they are not, then no one is going to buy them.
“NOAA and FDA need to come out and unequivocally state, ‘Things are safe,’” Murkowski said. “We need to get that word out.”
Murkowski’s sentiments will no doubt be mirrored by industry and government in the coming weeks to simulate a sense of normality and help the public forget there was a disaster. It’s unlikely that BP will ever have to pay for cancers or other diseases caused by contaminated fish caught in the Gulf, and if burying the known hazards of Corexit and oil will help get a market going again, then as Murkowski says, “we need to get that word out.”
Getting that word out will be a bit less easy with Richard Dennison around. Dennison, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund who wrote on the group’s website that Corexit 9527 and Corexit 9500, the two forms BP is using, are “among the least effective of the 18 dispersants that EPA has approved under the National Oil and Hazardous Pollution Contingency Plan.”
Dennison wrote that the dispersants “appear to be among the more toxic based on limited short-term toxicity tests conducted on fish and shrimp.”
BP has been using Corexit during the oil spill catastrophe in far greater quantities than ever before in US history.
Jackson said other chemicals the EPA wanted BP to consider appear to be less toxic and more effective than Corexit.
“My concern is they appear to be going out of their way to find problems with these other chemicals,” Jackson said.
Fishermen throughout the Gulf—as well as many others, including some state officials in Louisiana, believe that by ignoring the need to keep oil away from sensitive marshlands—prime breeding habitat for dozens or hundreds of species of wildlife, including fish, crustaceans and birds, pollution there will eventually open the way for BP or other industry to obtain mineral rights in those areas. Far below Louisiana’s fragile wetlands are reserves of crude oil and other valuable minerals. Some believe that BP is after the mineral rights, which it cannot touch while the wetlands are alive. If the marshlands are compromised, the logic goes, they are no longer worthy of protection so there is no reason not to drill for oil in them. If this happens, vast profits could accrue to BP or any oil company BP partners with to extract oil less expensively than for offshore efforts.
Almost 70 miles of Louisiana coast are soaked with oil. That’s more land than the seashores of Maryland and Delaware combined. As oil threatened to come ashore in the marshland coast and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal all but screamed for help from the feds for boats, booms and manpower, a curious—and perhaps criminal—event unfolded when BP and the Coast Guard abandoned 44 boats loaded with booms on Louisiana’s shores as thick black oil flooded into the marshlands.
BP was nowhere in sight as the oil inundated the fragile marshes, and the oil company has provided little explanation about what made it jump ship rather fight the incoming oil as it hit land.
The Army Corps of Engineers dragged its feet on whether to approve dredging plans to create a barrier around Louisiana’s wetlands. BP officials did not propose any plan to prevent the oil from moving away from the broken well and into Louisiana’s fragile marshes. This sudden failure to act and wilful disregard of the danger facing the Gulf Coast marshlands is impossible to understand unless one believes that incompetence is the standard operating procedure of the US government when faced with adversity, or that the suspicions of those who believe that changing the status of the marshlands from protected to available for commercial lease are correct.
St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro stated in Louisiana hearings, “I would be betting the plan is to let us die.” As Taffaro made his remarks, it was announced that BP had ignored a federal order to stop spraying Corexit; they had, in fact, brought in a new variant of the dispersant which is more toxic to marine life, and this is new variant was being used in waters in and near the marshlands.
Louisiana marshalled available resources in an effort to emplace booms and breakwaters to keep the oil away. Too little and too late, the effort failed and dispersant-contaminated oil came ashore. As this took place, BP spokesman Mark Salt told worried Louisianans “We’re heavily invested in doing the very best job that we can,” and assured everyone that BP would spend $500 million in the next decade to study the effects of the catastrophe, including the environmental effects of dispersant. Shortly thereafter, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson asked BP to limit its use of the dispersant and to find a less toxic replacement.
At all times since the disaster occurred, the government has bent backwards for BP and accommodated their every need. One enviromental group is taking the feds to task on that now, in Federal Court against what it says is a fast-paced, wholesale “exclusion” from environmental laws to several companies, including BP.
Specifically, the Defenders of Wildlife claim the (US) Minerals Management Service (MMS) violated federal laws by “arbitrarily and capriciously” granting the exclusions, and finding that deepwater offshore drilling, including the Deepwater Horizon’s, was “not likely to have a significant impact on the environment.”
The nonprofit environmental group also sued the Department of the Interior and its Secretary Ken Salazar.
“In violation of NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act] and its own regulations, MMS has authorized additional categorical exclusions for over twenty exploratory wells and drilling operations in the Gulf since the April 20, 2010 blowout, with over fifteen of these exploratory wells in waters classified as ‘deepwater’ pursuant to MMS regulations,” according to the complaint.
Before the MMS granted 11 oil and gas leases, including that for the Deepwater Horizon, it issued a final environmental impact statement that estimated that in the event of an oil spill, the maximum amount spilled would be slightly over 1 million gallons—an amount already dwarfed by the continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the complaint.
“MMS estimated that over the 40-year life span of the eleven proposed lease sales, the total amount of oil spilled in the offshore waters of the Central Planning area, which includes the Deepwater Horizon site, would be 5,500 to 26,500 barrels of oil. … The maximum amount estimated – 26,500 barrels – is slightly over 1 million gallons, one-fourth of the current estimate of oil spilled at the Deepwater Horizon site,” the complaint states.
In applying for the lease, BP wrote in its “Exploration Plan” that it had “blowout prevention equipment” and that the “likelihood of a blowout was so remote that this possibility could be discounted entirely,” the complaint states.
BP added that “in the event of an accidental release, the water quality would be temporarily affected by the dissolved components and small droplets” but that “(c)urrents and microbial degradation would remove the oil from the water column or dilute the constituents to background levels.” BP anticipated “no adverse impact” to marine life, birds or beaches.
Defenders says that MMS granted “categorical exclusion” to BP, which meant it did not have to file an environmental impact statement.
The MMS simply told BP to “(e)xercise caution when drilling.” It did not explain why BP was given the exclusion, according to the complaint.
In fact, the environmental group says, the disastrous oil spill will “drastically reduce oxygen levels in the Gulf, which will result in the loss of marine life at all trophic levels” and several hundred species are in danger, including endangered and threatened sea turtles, whales, seabirds and fish.
The Defenders of Wildlife wants the court to vacate all 27 “categorical exclusions” the MMS issued to several companies, including BP, since April 20 and to stop any more lease sales until a supplemental environmental impact statement has been prepared.

SIDEBAR: Corexit 9500 is a Dispersant, which is made with a petroleum base and chemical additives,. These work to degrade oil before it impacts wildlife on the ocean’s surface or before the oil hits the shore. The dispersants break up into small droplets, which sink in the water and are eaten by tiny microbes. Corexit 9500 has been illegal in the United Kingdom since 1998, when it was found to be harmful to the food chain.
The Gulf Coast oystermen claim Corexit 9500 is four times more toxic than oil and will cause the Gulf of Mexico “to be contaminated into future years far beyond that which would have been caused if the oil were allowed to gather on the shoreline.” And they say cleanup workers have and will continue to become sick from exposure to Corexit 9500.
Although the complaint does not cite it, Corexit 9500 was used in unprecedented quantities during the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska; it has been linked to central nervous system depression, nausea and unconsciousness. Valdez spill victims say the chemical can cause liver, kidney damage, and red blood cell hemolysis with repeated or prolonged exposure through inhalation or ingestion, and can cause reproduction problems in women. One of the two Corexit products that BP is suing in the Gulf also contains a compound that is associated with headaches and vomiting.
According to Nalco’s own documents Corexit 9500 is “hazardous.”
Though not cited in the complaint BP also is using Corexit 9527 in unprecedented quantities to disperse oil. Corexit 9527 is even more toxic than 9500. It contains 38 percent butoxyethanol, a known animal carcinogen.
Nalco’s own documents classify Corexit 9527 as “hazardous.” Its warning label calls it an eye and skin irritant that poses “acute” human hazard, and warns that repeated exposure may cause injury to red blood cells (hemolysis), kidneys or the liver, and excessive exposure “may cause central nervous system effects, nausea, vomiting, anesthetic or narcotic effects” and coma. The warning states: “Do not get in eyes, on skin, on clothing.”
Nalco’s documents also contain an “environmental precaution” that warns against getting Corexit 9527 on water: “Do not contaminate surface water.”
Critics of BP claim the company could, and should, have used more effective, less toxic dispersants and say that corporate ties with Nalco probably influenced BP’s decision to use the Corexit products.
Congressman Jerrold Nadley, D-N.Y., said a former BP executive is one of Nalco’s directors and a former ExxonMobil president is also on Nalco’s board of directors.
“Why would you use something that is much more toxic and much less effective, other than you have a corporate relationship with the manufacturer?” Nadler asked BP America Chairman Lamar McKay during a House committee hearing in May.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in May ordered BP to stop using Corexit 9500 and 9527 by May 23, but BP continued using the chemicals anyway
The oystermen claim the dispersant was used “in an attempt to lessen the financial burden of BP and to lessen the public reaction to the oil spill by forcing the oil to the bottom of the Gulf and thereby obviating the need for shoreline cleanup.”

That isn’t a bun made from bread. It’s two slabs of deep fried chicken breast that hold cheese, a mysterious orange sauce that comes from unlabelled bottles and fresh-nuked bacon. It’s called a Double Down and it’s the latest hideous manifestation of the particularly American addiction to fast food now offered by Kentucky Fried Chicken—Colonel Sanders’ KFC.
This obscenity will clog your arteries with 540 calories, 32 grams of fat and an astounding 1,380 grams of sodium—as in salt, as in the stuff you’re eating too much of already and enough in this sandwich to cover four days’ requirements for the human body’s sodium needs. The only thing that doesn’t come with the new Double Down filet o’ death sandwich is a defibrillator and kidney stone extractor.
One of ESPRESSO’s lesser intellects actually bought one of these and brought it to the office for an appraisal. By the time the sandwich came to the office from the nearby KFC outlet, the bag was wet with hot grease off the bird fragments and the mysterious orange sauce that reminded some of us of fire retardant had congealed at the bottom of the sandwich into a scary, semi-solid mass. Our staffer admitted that he’d seen the several strips of industrial strength bacon come out of the microwave all flabby, greasy and limp—but paid the five and a half bucks plus tax for the sandwich anyway and took it with him. We watched as he bit into it with trepidation; someone held a trash can ready for the fountain of barf he thought would surely follow.
“I like it,” the idiot said. There’s just no accounting for taste with some people. None.
The published numbers for the Double Down say that it has less fat than a Big Mac. This like saying that the Great Lakes have less water in them than the Pacific Ocean does. What is really a killer here is the salt—our taster said it was salty and four days worth of it is simply insane. KFC must have experimental tasters who were weaned on salt pork rinds for them to recommend this kind of thing.
As for the sauce, God knows what it is. Our staffer said it tasted a bit harsh, and hot, and he could feel it in his stomach later. Thinking of the natural outcome of such a disaster, we opened a couple of windows and started a fan—after twenty minutes, staffer was sent home early and told not to show up again until his Double Down was flushed down. We even gave him some alka seltzer. Maybe it helped.
This thing is merely the latest outcropping in the fast food nation of addicts to fat, salt and empty calories. Far be it from us to rage against some people’s tastes usually, but something this ridiculous calls for an intervention of some kind. At least the Eskimo, who eat a diet that largely consists of whale fat exercise a lot; the average American thinks exercise is something that happens in movies about satanism. The least someone can do who eats one of these things is run a marathon or two between meals.
Americans like to look down their noses at those who engage in dirty, disgusting, filthy habits like smoking, unsafe sex and drinking and we’re slowly bringing prohibition of tobacco and booze back without a Constitutional amendment. So why not the same with our fatal attraction to fat-filled fast food? Of course, Civil Libertarians will argue that no one ought to have the power to tell us what we can eat, but please, it’s not like we don’t have laws like these on the books already. You can’t buy dolphin meat, for example and in California, Paté de Foie Gras is banned because of animal cruelty to the geese it’s derived from. If we are going to legislate for the futures of geese, what’s to stop us from making the Double Down, the Big Mac, the Frappuccino and extra fries a felony?
Recently, researchers at Scripps figured out that fatty foods trigger the same parts of the brain that are affected by a hit of heroin or a jigger of scotch or a cigarette. The results are astounding; the more fatty food you eat, say the researchers, the more addicted to the stuff you become—right up to the day they drag your dead carcass to the morgue from a heart attack, aka final overdose. If this is true, then why don’t we do something to limit the damage? We had a war on drugs for seventy years, maybe we learned something from it.
Of course, the reality is that no government is ever going to limit access to this kind of fried garbage—agribusiness and the fast food industry are too rich and powerful for the mere government to successfully combat.  We’ll have to do it ourselves if we want to live out our normal threescore and ten. So before you pay five and a half bucks for two slabs of deep fried dead mystery bird, industrial strength pseudo-cheese, day-glo slick sauce and nuked fatty bacon strips with an oil slick on the side, ask yourself, “Is the joy I get from eating this sludge worth the health risk?” Grown ups might say no, and eat something else. Let’s hope they become a majority in the marketplace.

Of all the things swirling around the controversy about legalizing marijuana, one of the most consistent arguments against it is that legalization will kill the profits made by clandestine trade. That’s a lot of money, too: up to $3 billion in economic impact is admitted by the state, and no one knows how much higher the real figures may be. Legalization, it is said, may kill the goose that lays some very big golden eggs.
But that view is very shortsighted. The reason why is because legalization will bring new industry and jobs to California in an expanded cannabis trade that covers new products made from it. There are a lot of things that can be made from cannabis, and the industries that would make them would have an edge here that would allow them to dominate markets even if other states finally followed California’s lead and got pot back on the table.
One of the biggest industries that may come from legalization is paper. Hemp makes first class paper that doesn’t yellow, dry out or decay the way newsprint or low grade book stock does. It’s durable and can be used for every need that paper is used for. A well developed hemp paper industry wouldn’t just save trees, it would be easily renewable; ask any good pot farmer how fast the stuff can grow under optimal conditions and you can get an idea of the level of sustainability that hemp paper would offer to a resource-deficit world.
Textiles could be another cash cow for the Golden State. Hemp was once used to make everything from rope to tenting material, fine cloth and ticking for mattresses. These are made from cotton or  man-made fibers that depend on oil for their manufacture now. Besides fabric, hemp was once used for insulating material (goodbye, asbestos-contaminated insulation from China) fiberboard, cardboard and wallboard. The stuff is incredibly durable and easy to work with.
There’s even some food to be derived from cannabis, as well, including the oil, which is said to be higher in “good” fats than olive oil.
Some growers worry that legalization of pot will cut the prices for high grade toke; some of which is supposed to sell for around a thousand an ounce in some places. These concerns miss an important point; just like  Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee or Perique tobacco, the market is regulated in some sense by the limited growth of high-end crops; this keeps prices high. The profits from lower, industrial grades of marijuana sold in high volume to industry would be enormous.
It’s not enough to ask whether legalizing pot will affect the value of the product. Longer term views of what legal pot will do for the overall California economy are worth considering too. Among those are:
Land value. Even marginal farm land would be usable for the kind of cannabis that industry would want. This would sharply inflate the value of arable land here. Water costs would rise with it and perhaps bring enough tax revenue to finally repair the aging water infrastructure in California.
Taxes: Any new industry here will contribute sorely needed tax revenues. California could impose a severance tax on all hemp leaving the state and sales tax on the finished goods made here and these would ease the financial woes the state is now suffering.
Fuel: Imagine what sustainable cannabis could do for biofuels. The price impact this would have on California-grown auto, home and industrial power needs and the shift in prices would be enormous and echo throughout the state. Every other competing commodity would have to re-think its price point in the marketplace as a new, strong competitor entered the market and the downward pressure on the prices of building material, paper, textiles and other things would stimulate the economy by making competing products cheaper for the consumer in the long run.
Science and Industry: There would be a learning curve in the race to find new and better ways to use cannabis in a wider variety of applications. This would fuel R & D firms, universities and entrepreneurial efforts to squeeze more money out of that spleaf and would get more people back to work too.
All this would be a huge shot in the arm for California and eventually, the rest of the country and more than offset the worries of Humboldt County pot farmers who are concerned that their high priced gold will go down the drain. The reality is that high priced anything will always stay high and in the case of legal pot, the bottom of the market will grow as well. Legal pot will be an economic boon for us all.

Pity the pedicabs:  A few months ago, San Diego enacted laws that limit the use and range of the three-wheeled, pedal-powered tricycles that scuttle around downtown and other neighborhoods. The reason for this was said to derive from a fatal accident caused in part by an untrained driver whose drunken passenger missed a step, fell against the curb and died. Another reason was that the taxicab companies in San Diego hate them like the plague and used every bit of their leverage to blow the trikers into the weeds when the opportunity presented itself. True to their loyal calling, the city council piously curtailed the peds and congratulated themselves on a job well done.

The only ones who continue to suffer are of course the people who might benefit from another way to beat traffic in the congested core of the city. In case you didn’t know, driving in the downtown area is a waste of time since traffic, one way streets, blocked left turning lanes and lousy parking opportunities take all the advantages out of having a speedy set of wheels. Once in the maw of downtown, you’re lucky to find any parking anywhere, and then you get to walk where you need to go or perhaps take the trolley. Trolleys still leave a lot of room for walking once you get to any of the stops; a trip downtown soon becomes an exercise in exhaustion and patience.

It shouldn’t be this way. As one who lived and worked downtown for years, I can truthfully tell that a bike is by far the best way to navigate the mean streets from the waterfront to I-5 cut through East Village. Pedal power coupled with a trolley offers a lot of convenience; with pedicabs, it’s the way to go.
Imagine a squadron of the pedicabs near each stop on the trolley line, ready to carry passengers where they need to go. Short hauls wouldn’t take long and allow drivers to hurry back to catch other fares. The time it takes to get from A to B would often be less than with a car when the hell of parking is factored in and once people trusted the service and compared the cost in money and time, this could mean a lot of cars left off the roads, off the parking grid and more people able to breathe cleaner air with less congestion in the city core. It would make the trolley a more attractive form of transit for all classes of people, too.
Downtown businesses might gain more traffic from people who discover them while scouting from the sedate rumbleseats of the pedicab and the curbside service without the exhaust and noise would add much to the ambiance of the outdoor eateries. They would even be their own kind of tourist attraction—to the natives as well as the many who flock here.

The key to their success is regulation, just as it is for the taxicabs. Drivers would have to show some proficiency and know the rules of the road. They would post fixed fares so the passengers can’t be gouged, and they would have to be licensed, preferably by the county so they could operate everywhere the trolleys—and buses—run. That way, they can operate throughout all of San Diego County. Imagine the beach areas freed from the nightmares of parking; the fears of DUI’s; the accidents and costs that loose cannons behind the wheel commonly cause. Think of how much easier it would be to navigate through most of Mission Valley with fewer cars to clutter up the inadequate roads. People might even get to see the river when they go by…

Let’s get started on a kind note with regard to the recent anti-illegal immigrant law (SB1070) that Arizona passed recently: Their legislature and governor were unusually brave in passing the new law that effectively equates presumed ethnic or race characteristics with criminal activity. Arizona threw the gauntlet at the feds who have dithered for decades on illegal migrants, preferring to give agribusiness, manufacturing and construction industries the cheap, docile labor they need to stay solvent. The new law is, at best, a demand for new and improved federal action where Mexican migrant labor and border security is concerned. It’s likely that those in Washington aren’t going to be able to continue to ignore the issue, and this is a good thing. In this sense, Arizona did the other 49 states and Mexico a favor.
But with the blunt and shortsighted outlook typical of the state’s blunt and shortsighted political majority, Arizona has single-handedly excited the worst aspects of American racism and nativism since the same kinds of knuckleheads in California passed Prop. 187 a decade ago.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s facile comments notwithstanding, SB 1070 is an inherently racist law: It focuses law enforcement scrutiny on anyone with any presumed aspect of foreign nationality. It demands that law enforcement exert unusual scrutiny toward anyone who may be presumed to be foreign absent any other cause for suspicion.  And it especially targets Mexicans and those who appear to be of hispanic heritage.
What that means is that anyone who looks like a foreigner to an Arizona cop will have to prove—on demand—that he or she is in the country legally. A foreigner will have to show a visa, green card or other suitable ID to any cop, officer of a court or state, or city bureaucrat who demands their papers, please. Unfortunately, many of those who appear foreign aren’t. They’re Americans; some naturalized, some the sons of immigrant parents who speak with traces of accents learned from their immigrant parents. This class of people will now be treated as criminal suspects—as though they are illegal aliens—and will have to prove to any cop who questions them that they are as American as an Arizona cop is.
If your heritage is Mexican, or hispanic, or Italian, or Greek, or Jewish, or Arabic, or Asian, or African, you could find yourself suddenly having to prove the American end of your hyphen to any Uniform that wants to make you sweat. SB 1070 demands critical enforcement; it can’t be helped, and cops can be sued by Arizona residents if they don’t enforce the law. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t and millions of Americans will suddenly find that they’re damned in any case once they’re in Arizona.
This is reminiscent of South African apartheid, or of the racial laws of the old Confederacy, or of the United States before the Civil War when free blacks had to carry their manumission papers on them at all times to prove they weren’t someone’s stolen property. In Arizona, sixth-generation American citizens of Mexican heritage who have names like Young will be stopped on the streets and be forced to produce their ID to the curious cop on the beat. The “probable cause” that those curious cops will use to stop people can be anything; driving down a “known corridor of human trafficking” like a freeway, for example, or sitting in a car having a smoke while listening to norteño music—and having dark skin, eyes and hair while you do it, even if your name turns out to be Al Smith. It doesn’t take much to come under scrutiny legally, but that scrutiny is going to make Arizona law enforcement work double time to do half the job it’s doing now, since the wild goose-chases the law mandates will result in a lot of missed calls, bruised feelings, bad arrests and no end of lawsuits against the state.
The belligerent folk who harp on the “invasion” by illegals and who want to “take their country back” from the foreign-born hordes show little empathy for their fellow Americans who may be caught in this dragnet—their hysteria against Mexicans prevents them from understanding just how loathsome this law is to millions of their fellow citizens—let alone foreigners. Of late, reactionaries, skinheads, neo-nazis, minute men and others for whom the different have no rights worthy of respect have had a field day marshalling their forces, claiming they will once again be the master race in their own land. But they’re  wrong of course. Arizona has changed even as America has changed.
Like it or not, the US is a melting pot and cultural and ethnic divides aren’t as clear cut as they once were. People who think that white anglo-saxon protestants are a majority are mistaken. The last half of the 20th Century was a blending of race, culture, ethnicity and class that has expanded the base of our people’s human foundation. It is the vilest kind of wrong to attempt to inflict some sort of Hitlerian racial profile onto the people of any state and say that any who don’t follow it are suspect. Yet this is exactly what Arizona will now do.
The better people of this country should put Arizona in a long timeout through every kind of boycott possible until the residents of that state understand what their actions mean to millions of our own people. We’ve done it before; in 1972, Arizona prohibited farm workers from unionizing—and pressure from the feds and other states forced them to change their odious law. They also refused to honor Martin Luther King, an American hero, and only relented when the feds threatened to cut off their federal money across the board. Arizona may be a holdout of some old thinking in the American psyche, but it should learn from the rest of us that you can’t solve a human problem by making it worse for your fellow man.

One thing the anti-illegal immigrant crowd gets right is that those who are here in violation of the law are de facto criminals. This isn’t a good way to start off a relationship with what many of these people hope will become their new homeland. Much needs to change in US law with regard to immigration and this short essay is a small attempt to foster some discussion and other ideas toward a better solution to this problem. It seems the rest of the American people better get on the ball instead of those in Arizona or talk radio if we’re to get anywhere on the issue.
Between 1942 and 1964, the US and Mexico operated a Bracero Program that imported needed Mexican labor into the US, mainly to work in agriculture. It was a guest worker program that offered relatively high wages to Mexican campesinos who hoped to work in El Norte for awhile and go home with money in their pockets for a better life at home. While the program was a good idea, it was riddled with corruption that cheated Mexican laborers out of their pay. That notwithstanding, a revitalization of some kind of guest worker program is long overdue here. Agriculture jobs aren’t done by Americans and even in a depression, poor people aren’t going to move from cities to pick peaches for the pittances paid to farm workers.
Another element in need of re-thinking is status of illegal migrants already here. The extreme of amnesty and legalization is troubling since these folk have gotten off on a bad foot by violating our laws by showing up here, while the current non-documented status is a continuing disaster. A better approach would be to deport those who have committed any crime whatsoever. Those left could be given a new kind of status—a green card with probation  that allows them to live and work, with the caveat that if they violate a lifetime probation, they’re gone. They should also pay a fee which should be treated as a security to keep the peace. If convicted of a crime, the fee is forfeit. If they don’t, it’s to be paid back with interest to their heirs or designates here or abroad. This should be mandatory for all “long-term migrants” intending to marry in the US and every state marriage license should be granted only on payment of this fee. A fee could be made in installments but would have an iron-clad deadline.
Beyond that, immigrants who show that they are directly contributing to the economy of the US should get bumped up a notch in the citizenship line. If they start a business, teach a trade, earn letters of recommendation from employers grateful for their skill and attention, they should be rewarded. America is a nation that respects sweat equity and if these folks are willing to roll up their sleeves and go to work—especially in jobs that aren’t done by Yankees anymore, they—and especially their American-born children should benefit.
As for children, American born or not, their immigrant parent’s status could ride to some extent on how well the young-’uns do in school. Some families without a tradition of education in their crowd don’t value education enough and this needs to change for many people, including  immigrants and their kids. They need to be taught about the promise of America and reminded that to have a shot at achieving the American dream takes brains, not just muscles or a pretty face.
Beyond that, if we were smarter, we’d breathe life into American labor unions again and more Americans would belong to them. Membership in an American labor union should be limited to citizens or those with legal status intending to become American citizens. This would do much to screen out illegal workers from industry—without the intrusive hand of Uncle giving permission for a job as now occurs with E-verify. Unions might give American workers better bargaining rights and a greater say over their economic futures, too.
The feds must lean on Mexico’s government to limit migration from their side. This may take the form of an annual quota, or by levying fines against the families of those found to be in the US illegally, but since it’s obvious that we can’t solve the problem alone, it makes sense to ask the neighbors for help. The incentive for Mexico would be to save face—it does nothing for the Mexican government to have to swallow the insult Arizona recently threw at it and perhaps they would be willing to do something more progressive in the future. Ultimately, loosening the strictures against Americans’ living, working and owning property in Mexico need to be re-thought, too.
We could just lock the border, of course— put soldiers on the line with barbed wire and guns. This would make our hardcases happy. But fool moves like this would only make Mexico a pressure cooker of repression and poverty that would soon explode into some version of a Red revolution with Cuba, Venezuela and China lending support and munitions. That’s a scenario that no American wants to see, but it could become likely if the kind of imbecility we have in high places keeps on keeping on. In the end, our neighbor’s troubles are our own and solving them won’t be done by hate-filled hotheads or craven bureaucrats. Surely, we’re better than that.

by Simone Parker

Almost 10 years ago, my mother thoughtfully and forcibly, sent me to therapy, so that “we would end the cycle with me.”  Last week, barely capable of getting out of bed to get to my night job as a waitress, I confessed to the coworker whom I begged to cover for me I’d had a flash back of some “childhood sexual trauma.”  I wasn’t coming off a night of partying, I wasn’t lazy; I was physically sick, aching, wishing for death in a dark room, with the door shut and a dark sheet over the window.
She confessed to me later, “It happened to me too.”
I’ve decided I’m tired of my mother, after years of vague hints, alluding only what she could barely recollect about the first instance of sexual abuse by an adult; albeit the constant ensuing sexual conquests or “acts of sexual freedom” during her twenties, that some of those acts too were traumatizing sexually, and were more easily susceptible to because of the destruction of her childhood by an adult.  To a co-worker, with a  full time day job like myself, a world traveler, a bohemian, a mega stellar representation of American women; she reveals “Me too.”
It is time to end the silence.  It is absolutely time. We may all watch Law & Order SVU, where I’m sure you, like I, get some relief when the “bad guy” gets his due. Of the predator bearing the weight of some sort of unbearable punishment for his sexual crime against children or women or even men. We watch in neatly compact one hour episodes, the offender receiving, jail or death, games with attorneys and pleas, and in those show ending reflection dialogues sometimes the offender gets off, as I have experienced similiarity in one of my pasts, an attempted asylum request and my required testimony for the ex husband of mine who plead to felony stalking after being caught, in the act, of trying to rape and murder me.
I looked at my mother today.  Finally, out of my dark and quiet cave that during the weekend I hid myself in as I attempted to sleep off and silence a resurgent reaction that only indicated the severeness of sexual abuse I endured when I was a little girl.  Details fuzzy, fear more.  I looked at her, my mother, who sent me, literally held my hand when I revealed an event of sexual abuse by classmates that I had told no one about when I was twelve years old, and she carried me into the psychiatrist’s office.
“It ends with you,” my mother said again.
I pulled up in front of our family’s store today. I parked, walked in, pulled up a chair next to my mom’s desk and said,
“Mom, how completely fucked up is it that there are all these men out there, who stole little girl’s souls? Literally stole any chance they had at being “normal,” of understanding what true love is, what a healthy sexual relationship is; all of these things absolutely stolen from us?” She knew exactly what I was referring to. Both in herself and in me.
And I looked at her. My dad and our family dog were on an errand, and the bookstore was barren of customers.
Just her and I.
She looked back at me. Pause.
“I know,” she said.
Just like my co-worker. And how many else? How many? I promised my mother, in an act that turned out also to be an exercise in self-reassurance, that I had avoided talking to her for the last several days because I knew I was severely depressed. Because I knew I was irrational and out of my mind with anxiety and grief. I had already taken her on this roller coaster of emotions for the last twenty odd years.  I told her that I had needed to wait until I got through it, or had some understanding of my depression’s purpose, before sharing with her.
Her knees were bruised enough from all my crises, my wounds on top of her own self-lived scars.
It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have listened had I reached out. It was that weekly, I face myself and my actions are questioned critically (though lovingly) with my psychiatrist.  That I have a completely safe and neutral place, one that my mother brought me to, despite her own personal struggle with who she was, her past, her choices and the choices that were made for her; regardless of whatever moment of insecurity or doubt of my own parent’s affection for me, for all that they struggled with personally while I was growing up, they safely carried me to the answer, to a professional.
My parent’s encouraged, inquired, respected and believed in my psychiatrist and my work with her over the years. I have been with her since I was 19 years old. Almost 10 years. And they still respect my time with her.
My frequent weekly time with her is invaluable. I know, no matter what, there is one person, who for one whole hour, delicately, lovingly and healthily guides me through my decisions, what historical events and learned pathologies might have lead me to make or follow through with a (in my case) sexually dangerous or life-threatening encounter(s).
My parents weren’t perfect. But they admitted defeat to unachievable perfection by bringing me to a professional and supporting me all the way.
I’m lucky. I’ll repeat that. I am EXTREMELY lucky. Not only, through a variety of resources, have I been afforded the privilege of an extremely intelligent psychiatrist, with decades of experience, but that my family absolutely supports my frequent attendance and growth processes that stem from it.
So, though, I am blessed and get all this support, I still go into days-long depressions.  What about my sisters? The ones with no support who did it on their own? To my mother who only began to whisper the mere possibility of sexual inappropriateness decades after, already in her mid fifties. To women my age, in loving long term relationships or the opposite, desperately flinging themselves from one unknown sexual partner to another—what about them?
All I know is despite ten years of amazing support from my family. Those ten years into self-exploration, constant testing, cyclical success and predictable severe depressions, that the mere head nod and eyes of shared histories occurred in that of my coworker, and it made all the difference.
“It happened to me too.”
I slept for days. I cried for hours.
I feared and welcomed any sort of end to reliving the childhood learned ways of protecting my psyche by literally not recording them.
All I have is my reactions.
All I have is my mom pausing before I ranted on the “fucked up men” who stole little girl’s souls.
All I have is my coworker, with the guts to say, when I was scared and could barely stand,
“Me too.”
Start telling your story. You may save a life. You will save your own. You are not alone. You are not alone.
“It ends with you.”