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To alleviate the problem of articles from other press sources being reposted on this IMC site, this section allows users to link to articles published elsewhere, and to contribute and read comments on those pieces. [Posting a new item has been removed in this static archive of the site.] |
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News: Human Rights |
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Leaked emails claim Guantanamo trials rigged |
Submitted by: Banned / 31 Jul 2005
Publisher: ABC
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Leaked emails from two former prosecutors claim the military commissions set up to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay are rigged, fraudulent, and thin on evidence against the accused.
Two emails, which have been obtained by the ABC, were sent to supervisors in the Office of Military Commissions in March of last year - three months before Australian detainee David Hicks was charged and five months before his trial began. |
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News: Human Rights |
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Private Prisons Experience Business Surge |
Submitted by: TimL / 30 Jul 2005
Publisher: By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer
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Though state governments are no longer fueling a private prison boom, the industry's major companies are upbeat — thanks in large measure to a surge of business from federal agencies seeking to house fast-rising numbers of criminals and detained aliens.
Since 2000, the number of federal inmates in private facilities — prisons and halfway houses — has increased by two-thirds to more than 24,000. Thousands more detainees not convicted of crimes are confined in for-profit facilities, which now hold roughly 14 percent of all federal prisoners, compared to less than 6 percent of state inmates.
Critics, including prisoners rights groups and unionized corrections officers, contend the policy amounts to a federal bailout of an industry that would otherwise be struggling with a checkered record. The companies and the government say they provide a flexible, economical alternative to building new federal prisons as get-tough policies boost demand for space in an overcrowded system.
"If the Bureau of Prisons is going to build capacity for themselves, they have to plan eight years in advance," said John Ferguson, chief executive of the Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest company in the field. "It takes a lot longer in the public sector than private sector to get things done."
The industry expanded rapidly in the 1990s on the assumption that business in a tough-on-crime era would grow indefinitely. But escapes and violence at a few private prisons, along with questions about cost savings, tempered enthusiasm.
Saddled with thousands of empty beds, CCA teetered near bankruptcy before new federal contracts helped it rebound. Since 2000, the Nashville, Tenn.-based company has doubled its number of federal prisoners to 18,200 — 29 percent of its overall inmate population.
"The federal government smiled on them just in time," said Judith Greene, a New York-based prison-policy analyst.
Business is certain to grow. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said the number of federal inmates is expected to rise from 185,000 to 226,000 by 2010, with private companies likely to be relied on for housing non-citizen immigrants convicted of federal crimes.
The number of people detained by U.S. immigration officials also is increasing rapidly — up three-fold in the past 10 years to more than 21,000 at a given time. In December, Congress passed a terrorism prevention bill calling for 40,000 additional beds by 2010 for aliens awaiting deportation.
Many of the detainees are housed at facilities run by CCA and its main rival, GEO Group — formerly Wackenhut. Both companies anticipate their detention business will grow.
"Those two are huge beneficiaries of overincarceration in the immigration system," said Lucas Guttentag of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants Rights Project.
The private facilities are required to meet "rigorous federal standards," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback. Yet critics insist privatization will lead to cost-cutting and accountability problems affecting detainees' welfare.
"They're putting in a system where it's easier to pass the buck," said lawyer Dan Kesselbrenner of the Boston-based National Immigration Project.
Rep. Ted Strickland (news, bio, voting record), D-Ohio, a former prison psychologist, tried unsuccessfully to block privatization approval in Congress. "When the primary goal is profit, that can and probably does lead to a variety of abuse," Strickland said. "I don't see any end in sight."
On the state level, there is no comparable boom for private prisons, but neither is there the bust some industry critics anticipated. As of mid-2004, private prisons housed 74,285 state inmates, compared to 76,763 in mid-2001.
About 30 states use private prisons, notably in the South and West. Texas has the most inmates in private facilities — more than 16,000; New Mexico has the highest portion of inmates in them — 43 percent.
Most states' policies remain unchanged since the 1990s and the bottom line is that overcrowding remains a stubborn problem.
Still, arguments persist over the pros and cons of private prisons, which pay lower average wages than government agencies. Whether this undermines performance is hotly debated, although federal researchers concluded in 2001 that high staff turnover did aggravate security problems at many private facilities.
Industry officials insist they have addressed such concerns.
"For those who think the public employee monopoly should be maintained, and sentencing advocates who believe we send too many people to prison, we're an easy target," said CCA's Ferguson. "But if I'm chief executive of a state, I'd see a value to having competition in my prison system."
The industry's future is bright enough that GEO Group is buying rival Correctional Services Corp., but prospects hinge largely on incarceration trends. Many states have balked at funding new prisons, and now face crowding problems they could ease by using private prisons or diverting some offenders to alternatives like drug-treatment programs.
"The drug war has been the main cause of profits for private prisons," said University of North Florida criminologist Michael Hallett. "We've gotten so extreme in overusing incarceration that we have for-profit industries with an interest in high crime rates."
Geoff Segal of the pro-privatization Reason Foundation predicted private companies will diversify their state business — offering more health and rehabilitation programs, for example.
"States with private prisons aren't going to get rid of them," Segal said. "It's a tough sell for a state to say it's going to spend more money on corrections rather than on Medicaid."
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On the Net:
Prison statistics: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pjim04.htm |
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News: Politics |
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Selling Out Our Country |
Submitted by: anonymous / 29 Jul 2005
Publisher: Doug Thompson
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My, my, the rabid right got their anal sphincters twisted up in all kinds of knots when I suggested they were traitors to their country for supporting the treasonous acts of George W. Bush.
Didn't see them getting so damned self-righteous when they called liberals, Democrats and anti-war protestors unpatriotic for suggesting Bush's decision to invade Iraq was, at the very least, a serious mistake in judgment.
That's the problem with these conservative blowhards. They can dish it out but they sure as hell can't take it.
Guess that's what happens when you soak up the drug-induced rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh or the vitriol-filled hyperbole of Bill O'Reilly (when he's not busy talking dirty on the phone to one of his female producers).
The vapid right wingers are bald-faced hypocrites. They're all bluster when it comes to calling the other side names but then they get pissy when somebody gives it back to them.
Sorry boys but I don't play by your one-sided rules. Throw your garbage out there and I'll send it back to you with some extra shit piled on top. You've been wallowing in the bullshit that spills out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for so long that you already stink to high heaven. What's a little more?
Others can be polite if they want. It's a waste of time. You don't fight demagoguery with civility. You get down and dirty because these maniacal conservatives are doing everything in their power to destroy America. They have shredded the Constitution, created a police state bureaucracy called Homeland Security and sold out this country to their fat cat special interests and Middle Eastern oil interests.
Yes, I consider them traitors to their country. They don't care one goddamned bit about this nation but want, instead, to mold it into a extremist, fascist state where the government is free to spy on Americans, where courts decide what couples can do in their bedrooms and where laws regulate women's bodies and stifle personal choice.
They laughingly claim to stand for family and moral values yet their party is riddled with drunks, tail chasers and crooks. The House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, never met a bribe he couldn't take or a dollar bill he couldn't launder. The leader of their so-called Republican Revolution, the loudmouthed Newt Gingrich, resigned as Speaker of the House just as he about to be exposed as an adulterer boning an Agriculture Committee staffer. His successor quit before serving even one day on the job because he, too, got caught screwing around on his wife.
Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, another darling of conservatives, is currently under investigation for taking a bribe and trying to intervene in a federal investigation of a New York developer who later bought Cunningham's boat and financed the Congressman's house and condo.
Rep. Dan Burton, considered one of the "most conservative members" of the House, put his mistress on his Congressional office payroll, fathered a child out of wedlock and came under investigation by the Justice Department for threatening a Washington lobbyist.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott stepped down after his racist Mississippi "good old boy" views came to light.
The list goes on and on. To be fair, the Democrats have their share of bad applies but they aren't standing up and claiming to be the party of morality or the poster children for "family values."
After his disputed election to office in 2000, George W. Bush promised America the "most ethical administration in history." What he delivered was business as usual - a government based on lies, scandal and doublespeak.
Traitors to their country? Damn right. When you sell your vote to the highest bidder, disregard the Constitution because it gets in the way of your political agenda and send men and women to die in a war based on false information you have given up your right to be called an American.
Like so many corrupted by power, the rabid right-wing sold out this country a long time ago and I, and a growing number of other Americans, see them for what they are - the true enemies of the United States of America. |
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News: Race |
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Inside Incarnation |
Submitted by: liam scheff / 29 Jul 2005
Publisher: liam scheff
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NYC orphans and their role in NIH drug trials
LIAM SCHEFF
NEWS & COLUMNS
Mimi Pascual gave the children drugs every day and every night, on schedule, as the doctors ordered. She shook the children awake and popped the pills into their mouths, or squirted a syringe full of ground pill and water to the back of their throats.
She and the other child-care workers made the rounds: midnight, 3 a.m., 5 a.m. Some kids took the pills by mouth, some through nasal tubes, and some through tubes jutting out of their stomachs. The children didn't like the drugs. They'd wake up vomiting or with bad diarrhea. But Mimi and the workers at Incarnation Children's Center had to follow the regimen, or they'd be fired."The drugs had side effects, everybody knew that," said Mimi. But the workers were told the drugs were saving the children's lives. After a young girl who had just gone on the drugs had a stroke and then quickly died, and another young boy who was put on thalidomide wasted away on a respirator, Mimi stopped believing that the drugs were just saving lives. She believed they were killing the children too.
Minerva Pascual, called Mimi for short, worked at Incarnation Children's Center for eight years over a nearly 10-year period, taking care of the abandoned HIV-positive children of drug-addicted mothers in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood. She started at ICC in 1995, when she was just 17. Mimi was one of two dozen neighborhood women from Washington Heights, Harlem and Inwood Heights who were hired by the Catholic nuns who ran the orphanage for abandoned babies.
Like Mimi, the vast majority were originally from the Dominican Republic, and had no medical background. Some spoke only negligible English. But they were all mothers, aunts, big sisters and grandmothers themselves, used to taking care of large families on a shoestring, to keeping life together under great stress, and, as Mimi tells me, used to "cleaning ass," a skill that was useful at ICC.
Hired as a child-care worker, she soon found herself a surrogate mother to the children, changing them, feeding them, holding and hugging them—and drugging them.
"At first they were little babies," Mimi told me. "We changed their diapers and cleaned them up, and played with them. We were told they were 'special'—because of the HIV. There was a lot of shit and a lot of throwing up."
"They needed a lot of love," said Mimi, "and that's what we gave them."
Mimi can describe dozens of children in loving detail—the criers, the sweet ones, the hyperactive kids, the clowns and the quiet ones. "We were like their mothers. Some of the child-care workers even adopted children from ICC," she said. "I wanted to, but I was living at home, and my mother and father didn't want to take care of another little baby at the time."
Besides feeding, changing and bathing duties, the child-care workers were also responsible for administering drugs to the infants.
"The nurses would lay out the drugs on the counter. Lots of pills, powders and oral syringes, all labeled for each particular child. We'd pick up the syringe and put it right into the mouth or into the tube if they had one.
"We didn't like it, but that was our job," said Mimi. "We were told that they would die without the drugs—and since we were with the kids the most, it was up to us."
"But over time," Mimi said, "we began to feel betrayed."
"In the beginning we were taking care of little abandoned crack babies who had no one, but then it changed. More and more of the kids were there for compliance. They didn't want to take drugs, or their parents didn't want to give them, so they got put in ICC.
"None of us ever blamed the kids for refusing. We all saw them throw up like clockwork after taking the pills, and then the diarrhea that followed.
When the kids were all younger—babies—they couldn't tell us the drugs made them sick. But when they got older they started to tell us, 'I don't want to take this 'cause I can't go to school, I feel worse when I take it.'"
"We all had doubts about what we were doing," Mimi said. "But honestly, we did what we were told."
One of the things Mimi and the other childcare workers noticed was the constantly shifting medicine regime. "Some children got AZT, some didn't. Then it would switch. Then it was a new drug, then it was a drug that we never heard of.
We figured it out," she said. "These were experimental treatments." Marta, another child-care worker, put it more bluntly, "This is the guinea-pig business," she said.
ICC is administered by Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and the Catholic Home Bureau. It was under ICC's first medical director, Dr. Stephen Nicholas, that the orphanage began to receive funds from the National Institutes of Health to use its wards in pharmaceutical clinical trials.
ICC claims to have stopped the trials in 2002, but children from ICC are still seen at major New York hospitals, including Columbia Presbyterian, which all continue to do trials with HIV-positive children.
In 2005, following a year of media coverage on ICC, the New York City Council held a City Hall meeting to determine what exactly had happened there. Mimi attended.
"What a joke," she said. "They were trying to find out if ICC was doing trials… We were giving kids experimental drugs since the beginning. It was no secret. If you asked the nurses about it, you were told it was normal, and not to ask questions. If you asked the doctors why some kids got AZT and some didn't, you didn't get an answer."
"But we knew drug trials were going on," said Mimi. "The child-care workers, the nurses, the doctors, administration—everybody knew."
I asked how the children handled the complex regimen.
"The nurses said these children were lucky because they were getting the new drugs, but at the same time, when the kids vomited, or had diarrhea, or a bad rash," Mimi said, "we knew it was the meds. Even the nurses told us it was the meds. You couldn't hide it. It happened too regularly, it was predictable.
"Give the drugs, get ready for the vomiting and the shit."
"But we had to give them. We were always told that without the meds they would die," said Mimi.
"Is that what happened?" I asked.
"No," said Mimi. "It wasn't that predictable. Some kids lived and some kids died. But the ones who were drugged the most did worse." She added, "The ones with the tubes always did worse."
When Mimi started at ICC, the tubes were used infrequently. "But when the kids got older, a lot of them started to refuse the medication," she recalled. "Then they started coming in with the tubes more and more."
"Kids who refused too much, or threw up too much, they'd get a tube. First it was through the nose.
"But then it was more and more through the stomach. You'd see a certain child refusing over and over, and one day they'd come back from the hospital from surgery, and they had a tube coming right out of their stomach.
"If you asked why, the doctors said it was for 'compliance'—the regimen. Got to keep up the regimen," said Mimi. "Those were the rules."
"We weren't happy about it, because it wasn't just the drugs—it was everything that was getting pumped through the tube. Children would be pumped all night long with the milk—the PediaSure. It would pump so hard that the milk would leak out around the hole.
"Sometimes we'd turn off the pump for the kids, because it hurt their stomachs, but then the nurses would turn it back on. Some of the kids would do it themselves—they'd get out of bed in the middle of the night and turn off the machine. But in 20 minutes, it would start beeping, and the nurse would go back and turn it on."
"The children who were pumped all the time wouldn't have any appetite left, so they wouldn't eat. And then with the drugs on top of that, with the diarrhea, they wouldn't do well."
"But that was the rule," said Mimi. "Keeping to the regimen. Adherence. Give the drugs on time, on schedule, no matter what," Mimi repeated. "Or you're fired."
"Adherence" was the word of the day in late 2003, when I interviewed Dr. Catherine Painter, ICC's current medical director, about the relentless drug schedule. Painter explained, "What we're asking of our families and patients in terms of adherence is something beyond 100 percent—all of their medicines all the time, whether they have them on-hand or not, whether the medication makes them sick or not, or whether they're sick with a concurrent illness."
Michelle, a 17-year-old former resident at ICC, was there for just this reason. "I've expressed that I don't want to take the drugs, but they don't listen."
Michelle said that the drugs are given continuously throughout the day and night.
"I don't have to be up until 8:30, but they'd wake me up at 6 a.m. and give me meds. So I'd take the meds and go back to sleep. Then I'd wake up—and throw up. Because it was sitting in my chest and not in my stomach—and either way it doesn't feel good."
I asked Mimi why the children were drugged at night.
"The doctors and nurses gave us the drug schedule, and we had to follow it. Nine p.m., 12 a.m., 3 a.m., 5 a.m.—it didn't matter. We had cups full of pills and powders and oral syringes. It was up to us to figure out how to do it."
"So we learned to wake the children up, halfway, and pop it or squirt in their mouths and get them to swallow with a glass of water, and they'd fall back to sleep."
"How did the children react?" I asked.
"About half the time or more they'd wake up puking. We felt bad for them," said Mimi.
"At the time I thought it was better to get them to take the medication when they were half asleep and couldn't refuse, than to see them get a tube put in because they were refusing."
"But we all had our doubts," she added.
"One girl, a six-year-old, Cheyenne—she came in for adherence. She was the most delicate little flower—beautiful, polite, full of life. Her family never gave her meds. So Administration for Children's Services brought her into ICC."
"So, she came in, and started the meds. And it was three months, maybe three months. And she had a stroke. She couldn't see. She was this normal girl, singing, jumping, playing. Then, poof, stroked out. Blind. We were freaked out. Then, in a few months, she was gone—dead."
Michelle, the 17-year-old, knew Cheyenne. So did Deanna, a 16-year-old who was Cheyenne's roommate.
"That poor girl is traumatized," said Mimi. "Can you imagine, you go to sleep and you wake up and they're taking away your roommate?"
The drug Mimi remembers giving most often at ICC is the nucleoside analog AZT. In addition to the drug's long list of severe and even life-threatening toxicities, AZT also been linked to lymphoma and other cancers.
Andre, a 19-year-old who spent years at ICC as a child and adolescent, told me that he never wanted to take the pills because he didn't like them. So he'd hold them in his mouth and spit them out later.
"What about when they'd drug you at night," I asked.
"Oh yeah," he said, remembering—his eyes widening slightly. "I remember that. I guess I did take them."
Last year, Andre was treated for lymphoma. He wonders if it was related to the AZT he was regularly fed as a young boy.
Mimi has encouraged him to get his complete medical records from the state, but he is having little luck getting through the system.
Andre's memories of ICC are mixed. He tells me that he loved the child-care workers, like Mimi, who looked after him. He just didn't like the drugs, so he didn't take them, when he had a choice.
Shawn, a 14-year-old boy who is still in state custody, has practically grown up at ICC. When I asked him what he thinks about ICC, he said, "I like ICC because my friends are there." He paused then added in a quiet voice, "But I don't like when people run away from shots or vaccinations, or have to get held down so they can give you a shot."
Shawn is also in ICC because he doesn't like to take the drugs, and Mona, his aunt and legal guardian, doesn't like to give him drugs that she claims make him weak and sick.
Shawn acts out—he runs away whenever he can to get away from the constant, monitored drugging. When he is returned to ICC, Shawn tells me, it's "needle time"—time for Thorazine shots, then off to a local psych ward.
"They're destroying him," his aunt Mona tells me. "He just wants to come home, it's so obvious. That's why he runs away."
"The regime has changed," said Mimi, "and so has the place. It's AIDS drugs plus—plus psych meds, anti-psychotics, antidepressants. We came to work here with kids we were told were dying—crack babies—to try to care for them. Today it's a psych ward."
In 1999, Mimi left ICC for nearly two years to have a baby. When she came back, ICC was under new management. The nuns who used to administer ICC had been replaced by a nursing-home bureaucracy, headed by Executive Director Carolyn Castro.
ICC's founding physician, Dr. Steven Nicholas, moved on to head Harlem Hospital's Pediatric division in 2001. Nicholas is also project leader and principal investigator for two ongoing HIV/AIDS projects in La Romana, Dominican Republic. Like ICC, these projects are funded and overseen by Columbia University in conjunction with the local church and state authorities.
Another important change at ICC was that the child-care workers now belonged to a union, and were no longer responsible for administering drugs.
"That was a relief," Mimi said. "After I became a mother, I didn't think the same way about things, about the drugs."
Rhonda, a former nurse from ICC, relates the story of how Marylin Santiago, one of ICC's supervising nurses, suffered a needle-prick injury, and went on AZT, according to the current recommendation for healthcare workers.
"She was not well at all," said Rhonda, "Malaise, diarrhea, she was tired out, like she was going to die."
Mimi added, "She had it bad. She got a dose of her own medicine."
Rhonda pointed out that when Santiago got off the AZT, her system returned to normal.
AZT, the drug that is used in case of needle-stick injuries, is the same drug given to pregnant women and young children who test HIV positive worldwide. It was also used the ICC trials. AZT is often referred to in the mainstream press as a "life-saving" drug, despite the fact that it warns of the possibility of fatal anemia and organ failure on its label. A 1999 study in the journal AIDS reported that children born to mothers who are given AZT are sicker and die faster than those not given the drug. It is one of several recent studies reporting that AZT increases the rate of illness, major malformation and death in children whose mothers are fed the drug.
Mimi left ICC in December 2004. "I was fired," she said. "I let it happen. I couldn't stand it anymore—I watched them drugging this little boy to death—there's no way it was anything but the drugs."
Mimi described a boy named Seon, who died in spring of 2004.
"He had all these soft, fatty lumps. We even called him "lumpy." She said. They sent him to get the lumps on his neck removed in surgery, and they would just grow back. They told us it was cancer, but he was on all those drugs. He had a tube, and they were always pumping him. When we changed his diapers, it would come out like the drug mixture—rough and sandy like the ground-up pills."
Mimi said that after he died, she read about the phenomenon of "buffalo humps," large fatty lumps on the back and neck that result from the newer AIDS drugs called protease inhibitors.
Rhonda, the former ICC nurse, and Mimi both remember another boy at ICC who developed a breast while on the drugs. "He had a mastectomy, and then the other one started to grow. They couldn't hide that it was because of the drugs, but with Seon, they told us it was cancer," said Mimi.
Mimi has a paper from ICC, that she saved from Seon's treatment. "One day I got a sheet from the nurses about a drug they were going to give Seon—it said any woman who was pregnant or who was of child-bearing age should not touch the drug, even with gloves on."
"I couldn't pronounce the name, so I kept the sheet. Thalidomide. That's what they gave him."
Thalidomide was originally marketed as a safe, over-the-counter sedative and analgesic in the 1950s and 1960s throughout Europe. It caused a wave of severe deformities in children of pregnant women who took the drug and was taken off the market. In 1998, the drug company Celgene resurrected Thalidomide, with FDA approval, officially as a leprosy drug, but with intended off-label use for AIDS and cancer patients.
"They pumped Seon with it; he deteriorated fast," Mimi said. "Once day we came in and he was bleeding from every hole in his body—his rectum, his nose, his mouth. He was in such pain. He would scream when he had to go to the bathroom. They put him on a respirator. They induced a coma with drugs so they could put him on a respirator. They told us they did it so he could breathe better." Mimi said, her voice getting a little rough. "I sat with him; he couldn't talk, but he was crying-tearing from his eyes. "He got all dry and scaly; he shriveled up like a snail-and he died."
"After he died, I just didn't care anymore. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to quit, because I'm close with the kids—it was confusing," Said Mimi. "I'd been there for almost 10 years. But I couldn't stand it after that. So I stopped listening, and argued, and was insubordinate. They said I fell asleep in one of the rocking chairs for five minutes during an overnight shift. I said I didn't. They asked me to come in and talk about it, but I said fuck it. It didn't even matter. So they fired me. It was a relief."
After Mimi left, she was contacted by a half-dozen former ICC residents—children she'd helped to raise and take care of.
"We talk," said Mimi. "We talk about what's happened, and how they can live their lives now."
Michelle, the 17-year-old, is one of Mimi's post-ICC kids, who spent six months at ICC in 2004. She is now out of ICC and back in high school. Michelle admits that whenever she can, she weans herself off the drugs.
"When I was on the medication, it was hard. It doesn't make me feel good, and I have to deal with feeling sick and then trying to make it through my eight-hour day."
What happens when you quit?
"The withdrawl period is hard," she said. "I'm tired and I want to sleep all the time."
Michelle has been off the drugs for a few months, and says she feels better and stronger. "It's easier, I don't feel like I used to—12 o'clock comes and I feel hungry, but I don't get sick if I don't eat right away."
Michelle is out of ICC, but she's not free of New York's Drug Adherence program. She is required to attend weekly doctor appointments where her blood is drawn and tested for med levels.
What happens if the doctors decide you're not taking the drugs?
"They put you back in the hospital or in ICC—like that," she said, snapping her fingers. "They always say it's just going to be a short period of time, but it's always a few months—and that's out of my school time."
Michelle explained, "School is everything to me—I just want it out of my way so I can keep moving through life. I want to go to college—and high school is standing in my way"
"So it's comply versus school. Don't comply, and miss out on school. Then it's an extra year you have to do. So, smile and nod and take the pills, and slowly stop, or it's back to square one.
"I'm 17, not 18, and until I'm 18—I can say the sky is blue—and they'll say it's not—and I say 'Yes it is'—but it doesn't make a difference. "Three more months," she said, her throat tightening.
"I'm telling you, I can't wait…I can't wait." |
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News: Environment : Human Rights : Organizing : Politics : Social Welfare : Technology |
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Rail Trail Land Refused by Hardwick |
Submitted by: zeta / 28 Jul 2005
Publisher: Wocester Telegram & Gazette
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Rail trail land refused;
Private buyers can get block in Hardwick
by: James F. Russell; CORRESPONDENT
Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Route 9 West Edition
July 27, 2005
The state does not want it and the town does not want it, so surplus railroad land will be purchased by private citizens to the consternation of bike trail advocates.
Hardwick voters rejected a proposal at town meeting last night
that would have authorized the community to purchase about a mile of an unused railroad right-of-way in the town's Gilbertville section that measures 33,000 square feet.
Bike trail advocates had sought to use the land to continue building the under-construction 120-mile Boston to Northampton trail, referred to as the "Massachusetts Central Rail Trail."
Last month the town asked the state if it could purchase the land, which the town said would be used to build the Hardwick section of the trail. Selectmen changed their minds after finding out several parcels were being sought by private parties whose land abuts the defunct rail corridor.
A spokesman for the state Executive Office of Transportation and Construction said yesterday that the state has no interest in purchasing the land. If Hardwick declines to buy the land, then they said the rail company can sell to private parties.
According to state law, all railroad land offered for sale cannot be sold to a private party unless the state - which has the right of first refusal - says it is not interested. The state can designate a municipality to purchase the land if a city or town shows interest.
The state and town have now waived their rights to purchase the property, so the land along the one-mile stretch, which is owned by Massachusetts Central Railroad Corporation headquartered in Palmer, can be sold to six private parties, according to MassCentral Railroad Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Gary A. Hoeppner.
Bernard Audette, Joseph Boissy, Stephen Nelson, Edward Vinsky, Joanne Wypych and the Catholic Diocese of Worcester are the six parties, Town Clerk Paula L. Roberts confirmed following last night's meeting.
Each has tendered a deposit with the rail company to purchase the land, Mr. Hoeppner said.
Craig Dellan Penna, executive director of Northeast Greenway Solution, a group that advocates converting abandoned railroad beds to recreational and bicycle trails, said the state is failing to use the land for a public purpose.
Meanwhile the pastor of St. Aloysisus Church in Gilbertville, the Rev. Paul M. LaPalme, said after the vote, "We are not unsupportive of the bike path. I hope the bike path can go forward in a way beneficial to the entire community." |
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News: Environment : Human Rights : Organizing : Politics : Social Welfare : Technology |
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Cyclist Hit by Car |
Submitted by: zeta / 27 Jul 2005
Publisher: WCVB-TV
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Cyclist hit by car in Duxbury; found unconscious on road |
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News: Globalization : International : Organizing |
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Opponents Still See Chance to Block Bush on CAFTA |
Submitted by: sofiushka / 26 Jul 2005
Publisher: Reuters via CommonDreams.org
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by Doug Palmer
Opponents of a controversial free trade agreement with Central America said on Monday they still see a chance of defeating the pact, despite Bush administration claims it is nearing final victory with a vote this week in the House of Representatives.
"We have as good a shot of stopping this as we did for fast track (trade negotiating) authority for President (Bill) Clinton back in 1997," Scott Paul, a trade lobbyist for the AFL-CIO labor federation, said referring to the union group's last major success in blocking trade legislation.
The White House has found it harder to win approval of the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, than any other trade agreement it has negotiated.
Most Democrats oppose CAFTA for reasons ranging from concern about possible job losses to a contention that the pact's labor and environmental provision are too weak for a region with a poor record on workers rights.
Many Republicans from sugar and textile producing states also oppose the pact because of job loss concerns.
In the final days before the House votes -- most likely on Wednesday or Thursday -- both sides are scrambling to win over undecided lawmakers who now control the fate of the pact.
"There are probably about a dozen Democrats who are truly undecided on this and there are probably upward of 20 Republicans who are very torn," Paul said... |
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Afghan Protesters Try to Break Into U.S. Base |
Submitted by: sofiushka / 26 Jul 2005
Publisher: AP via CommonDreams.org
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by Amir Shah
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - More than 1,000 stone-throwing protesters tried to break into the main U.S. base in Afghanistan to free eight detained villagers Tuesday, and Afghan troops fired warning shots and used clubs to beat the mob back. U.S. troops also fired into the air.
It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in the melee outside the base's main gate as protesters chanted "Die America!" Black smoke billowed from burning tires. An Associated Press reporter was hit by a stone and an AP photographer was punched by a protester.
In southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, a provincial governor said about 50 suspected insurgents and two Afghan soldiers died during an overnight battle. It was one of the deadliest clashes in recent fighting between the government and militants heading into parliamentary elections.
The violence in Bagram erupted when six U.S. military vehicles tried to enter the base. Demonstrators massed outside to protest the arrests threw stones at the convoy and soldiers in the vehicles fired into the air with handguns.
The convoy sped into the base and the mob chased after them, trying to push down a metal gate guarded by Afghan troops. Some soldiers beat the protesters with clubs and several fired assault rifles into the air as they shouted for the protesters to go home. Most dispersed.
The eight men arrested late Monday "had materials used to make improvised explosive devices in their possession and are thought to be planning future attacks against coalition forces," the U.S. military said in a statement.
Demonstrators said they were angry that American soldiers arrested the men without consulting local authorities. .. |
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