Harm Reduction Project: News, Information, & Opinion - August 13, 2007

News & Opinion 1. What Really Happened To Diane Linkletter? 2. San Francisco Says Meth Use Is At 'High Plateau' (Despite Data Suggesting That Methamphetamine Use Is Falling) 3. Cologne And Antiseptic: Russia's Killer Drinks 4. Speeding HIV's Deadly Spread (Multiple, Concurrent Partners Drive Disease in Southern Africa) 5. [US] Air Force Charges Victim in Her Own Rape 6. The Political Junkets of Bush's Drug Czar A. To Our Contributors B. Upcoming Conferences C. Listings Of Blogs & Sites We've Been Visiting Lately D. Quotes E. Know Someone Who Might Enjoy Receiving This Newsletter? How To Help ~ About HRP ~Subscription Information -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. What Really Happened To Diane Linkletter? Written by Doug DeLong Published July 27, 2007 The beautiful young woman who jumped out of her sixth-floor apartment window at 9 am on October 4, 1969 had no way of knowing that her death was destined to become a focal point of the anti-drug movement in America. Diane Linkletter was the 20-year-old daughter of Art Linkletter, the prominent radio and TV personality. Before an autopsy had even been performed, her famous father claimed to the media that she had taken LSD the night before her death. (Linkletter had not talked to his daughter before her death, but maintains that she had told her brother Robert that she had taken the acid.) He was quoted as saying, "It isn't suicide because she wasn't herself. She was murdered. She was murdered by the people who manufacture and sell LSD." When the autopsy showed no signs of drugs in her system, he changed his story to claim that she was suffering an LSD flashback from months earlier and that had caused her to jump out the window. The media, of course, ran with the story, and used Art Linkletter's claims to create the narrative, without doing much investigating of their own. By the time the dust had settled, the story had been transformed in most people's minds to reflect an old urban legend about a girl, high on LSD, who jumped out her window because she thought she could fly. A much more accurate picture of what happened can be gleaned by examining the testimony of Diane's boyfriend, Edward Durston, who was present when she died. Diane had summoned him to her apartment at 3 am and had spent the final six hours of her life with him. He told investigators that she was a desperately unhappy and despondent young woman who was determined to end her life. He had no reason to believe, and she had not indicated, that drugs were a factor in her death. Art Linkletter, understandably devastated, became one of the most vocal critics of the counterculture, speaking out against drugs at every opportunity, while telling the tale of his daughter's LSD death. Dr. Timothy Leary, the LSD guru who had urged young people to "turn on, tune in, drop out," became his archenemy. In this fascinating video from 1980, Leary is surprised on an interview show with a call from Linkletter. Listening to him scream at Leary that he "wishes he had died, or been hung" was a little disconcerting coming from someone whose public persona was that of the kindly father. [Please click link the following link to view video] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT31oB2vspw Did Art Linkletter truly believe that his daughter's death was caused by LSD or was it easier for him to view it through that prism? Did it make his burden easier to bear, believing that an outside force of some kind was responsible, and not any negligence on his part? One thing is for certain. The story lodged itself in the public's consciousness and helped to fuel the anti-drug sentiments that led Richard Nixon to declare a War on Drugs in 1971, a seemingly unending battle that has strained our prison system and drained the nation of valuable resources. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. City Says Meth Use Is At 'High Plateau' by Matthew S. Bajko 08/09/2007 Bay Area Reporter Despite some data suggesting that methamphetamine use among gay men has declined in recent years, a city panel tasked with addressing what health officials consider "the other epidemic" after HIV maintains that usage remains at a "high plateau." The Mayor's Task Force on Crystal Methamphetamine came to the conclusion in an April consensus report. Little noticed at the time it was issued, the report concluded that 13 percent of the city's estimated 54,000 gay and bisexual male residents use meth. Out of 5,524 gay and bi men who inject drugs, the task force concluded that 54 percent are speed users. Taken together, the numbers suggest that 10,003 gay men in San Francisco are meth users. Overall, the task force estimated that 46,000 residents use meth. The task force came to its decision after reviewing data from a dozen studies, and usage could range anywhere from once a day to once in the past year. "With most drugs you are looking at single digit percentages, not 13 percent," said task force member Michael Siever, Ph.D., manager of the Stonewall Project, a meth-focused substance use program that recently merged with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. "Crystal has been and continues to be a major issue in San Francisco's gay community. It still remains high, no matter how you slice the numbers." The task force estimated that only 3 percent of gay meth users use the drug on a daily basis, while 73 percent use it once a month or less. Seventeen percent of gay and bi who inject meth do so at least once a day, while 21 percent inject meth once a month or less, concluded the task force. "The conclusion of the consensus meeting was that we are at a high plateau and have been for a while. There are some fluctuations but there is still a very high rate of use even with whatever recent dips there have been," said Siever. "A high plateau means to me meth use has been very significant among gay men and has been for some time." Siever noted though that even if roughly 20 percent of the city's men who have sex with men use meth, 80 percent do not. "The reality is the vast majority of folks don't do drugs, period," said Siever. The task force's conclusion is 3 percentage points higher than data collected by the Stop AIDS Project suggested two years ago. Only 10 percent of the 809 men the agency surveyed in 2005 reported using crystal in the last six months, down from 18 percent of the 1,305 men asked in 2003 as part of the agency's street surveys. A study using Stop AIDS Project data through June 2006, published last month in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence , reported that overall, the use of methamphetamine was lower in early 2006 compared to late 2003. Usage among HIV-negative MSM dropped from 14.7 to 9 percent, while usage among HIV positive men fell to 19.9 percent last year from 28 percent in late 2003. Even more encouraging is that usage of the drug during sex also declined, said the study. The study's authors, who included Stop AIDS education manager Jennifer Hecht and health department epidemiologists H. Fisher Raymond and Willi McFarland, noted that speed use has been found to be associated with HIV seroconversion and is thought to account for a "large proportion" of infections in San Francisco. The city estimates it will record 800 to 1,000 new HIV infections this year. The number of negative men using speed during sex fell from 11.8 percent in 2003 to 6.6 percent in early 2006. Among positive men, the number fell from 24.8 percent in 2003 to 17.4 percent in early 2006. The study authors also reviewed drug-related visits to San Francisco General Hospital's emergency room. While visits for marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, and ecstasy use all increased, meth-related visits showed a "slight decrease" from the first half of 2004 to early 2006. The numbers dropped from 371 to 299. "The downward trend of methamphetamine use among HIV-negative MSM is particularly noteworthy given the attention that has focused on this issue over the last few years," states the study. The Stonewall Project launched in 1998 and in 2002 its http://www.tweaker.org Web site debuted. In 2005 Stop AIDS launched its own "Crystal Clear" campaign, and in April that year Mayor Gavin Newsom formed his crystal task force at the urging of Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who held several hearings at City Hall on the drug's impact. "While our data do not prove that the intensified prevention efforts are causing a decrease in methamphetamine use, they are encouraging and merit confirmation in other data," conclude the study's authors. The authors are currently crunching data collected over the last 12 months to see if meth use has continued to decline. According to the health department's July monthly STD report, meth-related hospital visits for men through June of 2007 numbered 213, down from 245 during the same period last year. Steven Tierney, a co-chair of the task force and deputy director of programs at SFAF, said despite the consensus report's conclusions, he remains optimistic about the course of the city's meth epidemic. "The news is good. Meth use appears to be continuing to go down," said Tierney, who said more data is needed though to confirm the trend. "Before people get all excited about meth, we need to do a little more investigation of what we are discovering." Studies have found that cocaine use among gay men is on the rise in San Francisco, suggesting that meth has lost some of its cachet as a fun party drug. According to McFarland, cocaine was slightly up, but statistically level from the second half of 2003 through the first half of 2006. Usage went from 13.6 percent in 2003 to 14.5 percent last year. While cocaine use has not been tied to unsafe sex and HIV infections, as has speed, Tierney said he is still concerned that cocaine may impair people's judgment. "The impact of cocaine on sexual risk would be in the same school as alcohol. If a person has a safety plan for himself around sexual behavior, sometimes you are not in the same capacity to stick to your plan. So that is the situation," he said. City urges resistance to meth The city's latest effort to reduce crystal use is an ad campaign and Web site urging gay men to "Resist Meth." An outgrowth of the task force's recommendations, the campaign uses stark black, red and white imagery recalling Soviet-era poster realism. The message is intended to reach not only meth users struggling to quit the drug, but also those gay men who have never tried it but may find themselves in a situation where they are offered the drug. Since its unveiling in June, more than 5,355 people have visited http://www.resistmeth.org and 75 people have "joined the resistance" at the online site. The health department is spending $195,000 on the campaign, which also includes the translation of tweaker.org into Spanish. "Meth has actually created a little bit of a front for a lot of us to come together and join forces. It was saying going back to the concept of community. We the people come together and want you to join us to resist this thing," said Antonio Aquilar, a gay Latino man who was a member of the campaign's community advisory group. Aquilar, 40, has spent the last two years working with gay Latino meth users through a project sponsored by the Cesar Chavez Institute at San Francisco State University. He said the advisory group members all had various points of view on the need for another meth campaign. "My hope was just start the dialogue. With gay Latino men there is no language to talk about it. So much stigma, fear, and misinformation," said Aquilar. "The sign doesn't say anything stigmatizing about anyone or anything. It leaves it open so people can read into it whatever they want." In addition to the ads and posters, 40,000 pamphlets called a "methifesto" and duplicating the Web site's message have been distributed. Under the heading "Resistance is not futile," the campaign proclaims that "Meth doesn't have to be part of being gay. It doesn't have to be a rite of passage." At the same time the campaign acknowledges that some gay men "can use meth occasionally without it becoming a problem." It includes advice for meth users on how to protect themselves from STDs and HIV - one suggestion for men who bottom tells them to insert a female condom in their rectum prior to getting high on the drug. It also advises HIV-positive men to be honest about their meth use with their doctors because crystal can cause negative interactions with HIV medications. The site also debunks myths that meth increases T-cells or boosts users' immune systems. Tracey Packer, the city's interim HIV prevention director, said the campaign purposefully tries not to sound preachy so it will not be dismissed. "We need to be realistic about people's behaviors and give them the information they need to reduce their risk," she said. "If you don't speak to people within the reality they live in they won't listen." She also said the campaign is not meant to compete with other efforts already being undertaken in the city. "The most effective messages are delivered in lots of different ways," she said. "It is not meant to compete but to complement." Packer said the Resist Meth message seems to be resonating with people. "I think that meth in the community can be very stressful. Just the effect it can have on individuals in a community creates a level of tension," said Packer. "The responses are suggesting relief. People are saying let's take some power over a drug that could be harming us." Siever gave high marks to the campaign's design, but he questioned if it was producing any real dialogue on meth use among gay men. Most people he has spoken to about the campaign said by trying to reach various target audiences, the campaign's messaging is muddled. "By its very nature the slogan sounds a little like Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' with cooler graphics and coolers words, maybe," said Siever. "What I found most interesting is I don't get the sense from folks I talked to that it prompted much discussion. I don?t know if people are oversaturated with crystal meth messages or what." Others have said the campaign strikes a chord. One recovering meth addict wrote in an e-mail that the Web site gives him encouragement to stay clean. "Meth seduced me then left me all alone ill and broken, but somehow my will to live was stronger than meth. I promised myself first and foremost that I'd never touch it again. Somehow, I've kept that promise for 2 years now, but am always looking for reinforcement. Thank you for CARING enough to build this site," wrote the San Francisco resident. Another person wrote, "Other campaigns can seem patronizing and unrealistic. This campaign with its political art, sexy style, and strongly directed message, appeals to our humanity to resist something that we know is killing so many of us." Back in February the city paid $15,000 for a billboard in the Castro to gather input on what kind of meth campaign gay men wanted to see. According to John Leonard, senior vice president of Better World Advertising, which created the campaign, more than 110 people responded to the billboard. Replies included suggestions and ideas for the ads as well as personal stories, artwork, and songs. "We got a huge range of responses to the billboard from people who said you should lock up users and dealers and throw away the key to people who said legalize it and forget about it," he said. "By and large if there was any common theme it was that the community needs to come together to deal with this." Leonard said the ad shop's task was to create "something positive that could help mobilize the community and avoid stigmatizing users. That posed a real challenge, but I feel the campaign is succeeding in speaking to all these different audiences with a strong message and just the right tone." Better World drew on the revolutionary and wartime mobilization posters of the 20th century as inspiration for the campaign, said Leonard. "The image is meant to be sort of iconic and to evoke and appeal to a community ethic but people also look at this guy's face and see various things. Some think he is using meth and struggling with it; others see him as someone who is in recovery and moved past meth," said Leonard. "I think because the campaign is so stark and simple it allows for people to interpret in it a lot of different ways, which I think is a strength." Dufty, who had criticized the expenditure on the billboard, complimented the final outcome, though he did express discontent with the more guerilla-type aspects of the campaign, such as chalk drawings that appeared in the Castro. The sidewalk images will disappear over time if not washed away first. "I am a fan of the Resist Meth campaign. I have had a number of people who wrote to me saying how striking the graphic images are and the brochure is good," said Dufty. "I struggle with this sometimes. I understand an edgy marketing approach reaches a younger audience. Certainly, that is a group we want to engage with on meth use." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Cologne And antiseptic: Russia's Killer Drinks Sarah Boseley ~ Luke Harding in Moscow The Guardian ~ June 15, 2007 Almost half of working-age men in Russia who die are killed by alcohol abuse, according to a new medical study which says the country's males die in excessive numbers not just because they drink lots of vodka but because they also consume products containing alcohol, such as eau de cologne, antiseptics and medicinal tinctures. Some products contain 95% alcohol by volume, equating to 200 proof. An international group of scientists looked at a single city in the Urals to establish the effects of the drinking in Russia. Izhevsk was chosen for being a typical industrial city where life is much the same as elsewhere and where death rates match the Russian average. Underlying the work was the question of why life expectancy in Russia is so low: in 2004 it was 59 years for men and 72 for women. Due to the low life expectancy and birthrate, the population in Russia is falling by 700,000 a year. Alcohol has always been an important factor in death and disease in Russia, borne out by fluctuations in the death rates linked to changes in lifestyle and politics, says a report on the study, in the Lancet medical journal. "President Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign in the mid-1980s was associated with an immediate rise in life expectancy, whereas increased alcohol consumption has been linked to rising mortality in the early 1990s during the transition from communism. Deaths related to alcohol, such as acute alcohol poisoning and liver cirrhosis, showed the greatest fluctuations, with similar trends for other causes plausibly linked to alcohol consumption." A study published last year found that Russians, and inhabitants of other former parts of the Soviet Union, drank more than anybody else in the world - an estimated 15.2 litres of pure alcohol per capita each year for over-15s. They also drank more dangerously and were prone to binges, known as zapoi, meaning two or more days of continuous drunkenness. David Leon, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues examined records and interviewed the families of 1,750 men who had died in Izhevsk from 2003-05. The men were compared with 1,750 who were still alive. They found that problem drinkers and those who drank alcohol not intended for consumption were six times more likely to have died young than those who did not have a drinking problem. The chances of an early death were particularly high for those who got their alcohol from eau de cologne and other unorthodox sources - they were nine times more likely to die. The authors say that men impoverished after losing a job through drinking may be forced to resort to drinking household products containing pure alcohol. Among those who were still alive, 47% who drank such products were jobless compared with 13% who stuck to vodka and beer. Overall, 43% of deaths of men aged 25 to 54 were caused by alcohol, a figure that could be extrapolated to all of Russia because of the typical nature of Izhevsk. An estimate in 2002 put the death toll at 27%. The authors say their higher figures could be due to taking into account drinking of household products with very high levels of alcohol, as well as binges. "Almost half of all deaths in working-age men in a typical Russian city may be accounted for by hazardous drinking," they write. "Our analyses provide indirect support for the contention that the sharp fluctuations seen in Russian mortality in the early 1990s could be related to hazardous drinking as indicated by consumption of non-beverage alcohol." A separate commentary points out that people who get their alcohol from household products often live in poor housing and have bad diets, which could contribute to their chances of an early demise. It adds that illegally produced alcoholic beverages are also widely consumed. The Kremlin is acutely aware of the epic scale of alcoholism. Ministers call it a "national tragedy". Although President Vladimir Putin has presided over a period of spectacular economic growth since 2000, he has so far not persuaded Russians to drink less. The government has recently cracked down on rogue distillers. Yesterday the federal tax service suspended the licence of several factories producing "alcohol and ethyl alcohol products", saying they had not complied with a law requiring data on how much alcohol each bottle holds. Russian alcoholics - drinking perfume, aftershave and cheap local alcohol - face great dangers. In winter, newspapers are invariably full of stories of drunks who have died after falling through icy ponds or collapsing in the snow. According to 2005 figures, Russia has about 2,348,567 registered alcoholics, and alcohol is being linked to 72% of murders and 42% of suicides. The World Health Organisation rates the country as one of the most alcoholic in the world. 'Ultimately it's a disease of the soul' Case study: Saviley Vlasov, 35, was a heavy drinker after leaving the army in his mid-20s. Now recovering, he works as a courier in Moscow I started drinking when I was 14. I was a shy teenager, but after a night of drinking I became sociable. I got a new nickname, new friends and even a girlfriend. I started drinking heavily when I left the Russian army at the age of 25. It was 1992. Every time I touched a drop of alcohol I couldn't stop drinking. I was helpless. I had just one purpose: to find alcohol. It was my only goal. I would drink until I could no longer stand up. My relatives gave me money. I would normally drink for two or three days continuously. After that I'd collapse. Then I'd lie down for a week. Then I'd start drinking again. This went on for several years. I'd look for money, steal it, borrow it, or get it from other drinkers. I mostly drank very cheap vodka. It's easily available in Russia, it tastes like industrial spirit. On one occasion I set myself alight. I almost died. I woke up, and I didn't know where I was or how I got there. On another occasion I nearly fell out of the window of my Moscow flat. I didn't have a girlfriend. I just drank alone at home and watched TV. My relatives thought I was a madman. They were waiting for me to go mad and put me in a hospital. My entire universe became distorted. I started to measure someone only by alcohol - whether they were someone I could share 50g of vodka with. At my father's suggestion I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. But only once. Afterwards I carried on drinking, for two years. Eventually I ran out of drinking companions and stopped. I've now been dry for eight years. I'm not sure why alcoholism is such a big problem here in Russia. It happens elsewhere too. But ultimately it's a disease of the soul. Men and women drink in Russia because they don't have any spiritual goals. They have nothing to live for. During my darkest moments, the whole meaning of my existence was to get alcohol. That was it. It was an unending struggle. Those years are still a blur to me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Speeding HIV's Deadly Spread Multiple, Concurrent Partners Drive Disease in Southern Africa By Craig Timberg Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, March 2, 2007 FRANCISTOWN, Botswana -- The young and hip at ground zero of the AIDS epidemic meet, drink and pair off under the knowing gaze of bartender Brian Khumalo. Sometimes they first buy a three-pack of condoms from the box he keeps by the liquor, sometimes not. Night after night they return for the carefree, beery vibe, with the same partners or new ones, creating a web of sexual interaction. A growing number of studies single out such behavior -- in which men and women maintain two or more ongoing relationships -- as the most powerful force propelling a killer disease through a vulnerable continent. This new understanding of how the AIDS virus attacks individuals and their societies helps explain why the disease has devastated southern Africa while sparing other places. It also suggests how the region's AIDS programs, which have struggled to prevent new infections even as treatment for the disease has become more widely available, might save far more lives: by discouraging sexual networks. "The problem of multiple partners who do not practice safe sex is obviously the biggest driver of HIV in the world," said Ndwapi Ndwapi, a top government AIDS official in Botswana, speaking in Gaborone, the capital. "What I need to know from the scientific community is, what do you do? . . . How do you change that for a society that happens to have higher rates of multiple sexual partners?" Khumalo, 25, tall and lanky with a crooked-toothed smile, described the problem succinctly as he pointed to a spiky-haired woman in a corner booth of the bar. "She's new around here, so every guy is going to talk to her," he said. "She will be with me today. Tomorrow she will be with my best friend. And I will be with somebody else." Khumalo moved from Gaborone to Francistown last March, finding a city of 85,000 with a red-brick downtown, modest concrete homes and an accommodating sexual culture. The first night, he slept with a woman he had just met, he said. He did the same the second night, the third, the fourth. Though he used condoms each time, he said, an alarmed friend soon drove him to the white, low-slung buildings of Francistown's biggest AIDS clinic. "I saw thousands of beautiful women going to get pills," Khumalo recalled. It scared him, but not enough. By the end of the year, Khumalo had slept with more than 100 women, he said. But the number of sexual partners is not the only factor that increases the risk of AIDS. The most potentially dangerous relationships, researchers say, involve men and women who maintain more than one regular partner for months or years. In these relationships, more intimate, trusting and long-lasting than casual sex, most couples eventually stop using condoms, studies show, allowing easy infiltration by HIV. Researchers increasingly agree that curbing such behavior is key to slowing the spread of AIDS in Africa. In a July report, southern African AIDS experts and officials listed "reducing multiple and concurrent partnerships" as their first priority for preventing the spread of HIV in a region where nearly 15 million people are estimated to carry the virus -- 38 percent of the world's total. But for many Batswana, as citizens of this landlocked desert country of 1.6 million call themselves, it is a strategy that has rarely been taught. "There has never been equal emphasis on 'Don't have many partners,' " said Serara Selelo-Mogwe, a public health expert and retired nursing professor at the University of Botswana, who recalled stepping past broken bottles and used condoms as she arrived on campus each Monday morning. "If you just say, 'Use the condom' . . . we will never see the daylight of the virus leaving us." A Lethal Mix of Causes International experts long regarded Botswana as a case study in how to combat AIDS. It had few of the intractable social problems thought to predispose a country to the disease, such as conflict, abject poverty and poor medical care. And for the past decade, the country has rigorously followed strategies that Western experts said would slow AIDS. With its diamond wealth and the largess of international donors, Botswana aggressively promoted condom use while building Africa's best network of HIV testing centers and its most extensive system for distributing the antiretroviral drugs that dramatically prolong and improve the lives of those with AIDS. But even though the relentless pace of funerals began to ease in recent years, the disease was far from under control. The national death rate fell from the highest in the world, but only to second-highest, behind AIDS-ravaged Swaziland. Men and women in Botswana continued to contract HIV faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. Twenty-five percent of Batswana adults carry the virus, according to a 2004 national study, and among women in their early 30s living in Francistown, the rate is 69 percent. Researchers increasingly attribute the resilience of HIV in Botswana -- and in southern Africa generally -- to the high incidence of multiple sexual relationships. Europeans and Americans often have more partners over their lives, studies show, but sub-Saharan Africans average more at the same time. Nearly one in three sexually active men in Botswana reported having multiple, concurrent sex partners, as did 14 percent of women, in a 2003 survey paid for by the U.S. government. Among men younger than 25, the rate was 44 percent. The distinction between having several partners in a year and several in a month is crucial because those newly infected with HIV experience an initial surge in viral loads that makes them far more contagious than they will be for years. During the three-week spike -- which ends before standard tests can even detect HIV -- the virus explodes through networks of unprotected sex. This insight explained what studies were documenting: Africans with multiple, concurrent sex partners were more likely to contract HIV, and countries where such partnerships were common had wider and more lethal epidemics. A model of multiple sexual relationships presented at a Princeton University conference in May showed that a small increase in the average number of concurrent sexual partners -- from 1.68 to 1.86 -- had profound effects, connecting sexual networks into a single, massive tangle that, when plotted out, resembles the transportation system of a major city. A second key factor helping the virus spread through southern Africa is low rates of circumcision. Before European colonialists arrived, most tribes in the region removed the foreskins of teenage boys during manhood rituals. Those rites, which were discouraged by missionaries and other Westerners who regarded them as primitive, have gradually declined as the region rapidly modernized. Dozens of studies, including three experimental trials conducted in Africa in recent years, show that circumcised men are much less likely to contract HIV because the most easily infected cells have been removed. These factors, researchers say, explain how North Africa, where Muslim societies require circumcision and strongly discourage sex outside monogamous and polygamous marriages, has largely avoided AIDS. They also explain why the epidemic is far more severe south of the Sahara, where webs of multiple sex partners are more common, researchers say. West Africa has been partially protected by its high rates of circumcision, but in southern and eastern Africa -- which have both low rates of circumcision and high rates of multiple sex partners -- the AIDS epidemic became the most deadly in the world. "That's the lethal cocktail," said Harvard University epidemiologist Daniel Halperin, a former AIDS prevention adviser in Africa for the U.S. government, speaking from suburban Boston. "There's no place in the world where you have very high HIV and you don't have those two factors." No Word for 'Fidelity' From under the broad thatched roof of Francistown's Customary Court, which handles minor crimes and misconduct, Chief Judge Ludo Margaret Mosojane had long suspected that the city's torrent of AIDS deaths flowed from its sexual culture. Each year brought more cases resulting from elaborate, overlapping relationships, she said. "It explains why Africa is hardest hit" by AIDS, Mosojane said. "The way we contract for sex is different from how others do it." Polygamy once was common in the region, and in some parts still is; Swaziland's king has 13 wives. In generations past, even Batswana with just one spouse rarely expected monogamy. Husbands spent months herding cattle while their wives, staying elsewhere, tended crops, Mosojane said. On his return, a husband was not to be quizzed about his activities while he was away. He also was supposed to spend his first night back in an uncle's house, giving his wife time to send off boyfriends. In Setswana, the national language, "the word 'fidelity' does not even exist," Mosojane said. The few checks that traditional villages had on sexual behavior dwindled during the development frenzy after 1967, when diamonds were discovered. Batswana increasingly moved to cities for school or work. Plentiful television sets delivered a flood of Western images, including racy soap operas and music videos featuring lightly clad women vying for the attention of wealthy, bejeweled men. Francistown, with nearby mines, military camps and border posts overflowing with desperate refugees, changed faster than most cities. Amid the bustling malls, there was soon an unsettling concentration of young adults because so many people ages 35 to 50 had already died of AIDS complications, residents say. Faruk Maunge, 36, a high school counselor whose dreadlocks, goatee and rectangular glasses give him a cosmopolitan air, noticed the changes when he returned from stays abroad. "They are just a lost bunch," he said. "They are very, very reckless." Maunge said that rent, clothing, even cellphone airtime became part of implicit sexual exchanges. Men and women maintained two, three, even four regular partners. The toll was clear from the snapshots he kept in a green plastic first-aid box. "This one is gone," Maunge said, pointing to a faded picture of a woman in a red top who was nibbling her fingernails. Moving deeper into the pile, he continued: "This one is gone, Mooketsi. And this one is gone, Themba. This one is gone, too, this one on the far left. This one is positive." With a hint of frustration, Maunge said of one man, "He's sleeping around again." Maunge also grew irritated at a picture showing a friend with AIDS who seemed to father a child -- he was awaiting his fourth -- with every girlfriend. Maunge said he once was reckless, too, having sex with three women in a week, sometimes without condoms. But after watching the disease kill more than 20 of his friends, he settled down with a new girlfriend and stayed faithful, he said. "Praise God, I've been lucky," Maunge said. "It's like you have 10 bullets going through you and none hits you." The Missing Message On a hospital wall here, not far from the AIDS clinic that Khumalo visited with his friend, the painted image of a condom shimmers like a comic-book superhero. Giant, colorful block letters declare, "CONDOMISE AND STAY ALIVE!!" In cramped black script below, it adds, "Abstain first." Yet rarely seen among Botswana's AIDS prevention messages is one that has worked in other African countries: Multiple sex partners kill. Dubbed "Zero Grazing" by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, this approach dominated in East Africa, where several countries curbed HIV rates. Fidelity campaigns never caught on in Botswana. Instead, the country focused on remedies favored by Western AIDS experts schooled in the epidemics of America's gay community or Thailand's brothels, where condom use became so routine it slowed the spread of HIV. These experts brought not just ideas but money, and soon billboards in Botswana touted condoms. Schoolchildren sang about them. Cadres of young women demonstrated how to roll them on. The anti-AIDS partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and drugmaker Merck budgeted $13.5 million for condom promotion -- 25 times the amount dedicated to curbing dangerous sexual behavior. But soaring rates of condom use have not brought down high HIV rates. Instead, they rose together, until both were among the highest in Africa. The focus on condoms endured even after the arrival of internationally heralded "ABC" programs, named for their prescription of "Abstain, Be Faithful and Condomize." The middle concept -- fidelity -- often got lost. The few posters advocating it in Francistown are old and torn; ads for condoms and abstinence are far more prominent. A 2004 government study measured the result: Three-quarters of Batswana surveyed knew that condoms could stop the spread of HIV. Half knew that abstinence would. Yet only one in five knew that fidelity to a single, uninfected partner prevented spreading the disease. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Air Force Charges Victim in Her Own Rape This post, written by Cara, originally appeared on Feministing on August 8, 2007 This news item made my stomach turn: Cassandra Hernandez, a female Air Force airman was raped, reported her attack and then subsequently became a court-martial defendant, herself. The story goes down like this: Hernandez was at a party, where she was drinking. She says that three male airman raped her. She went to the hospital and filed a report accusing her attackers. Due to stress and harsh interrogation tactics by the Air Force, she eventually refused to testify against the airmen. The Air Force then charged her with underage drinking (of which she admits to being guilty, but that's hardly the point, now is it?) and, along with her three attackers, "indecent acts." I had a hell of a lot of trouble finding an official definition for "indecent acts," and the best one I came up with is a "form of immorality relating to sexual impurity which is not only grossly vulgar, obscene, and repugnant to common propriety, but tends to excite lust and deprave the morals with respect to sexual relations." Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the basic translation seems to be "a sexual act, particularly one that is not generally accepted in society, such as sex with multiple partners." So. The woman was raped. By three men. She reported her rape. She was harassed by her superiors, to the point where she became too afraid to testify. The Air Force took this as meaning that the sex was therefore consensual (which isn't what it means at all), and charged her in the case of her own rape. If she loses her case, she could be publicly registered as a sex offender. Sounds like it couldn't get any worse, right? But it does. How? The three alleged attackers were offered sexual assault immunity to testify against Hernandez on the indecent acts charge. Having at least half a brain cell among them, they accepted. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. The Political Junkets of Bush's Drug Czar Flying High? By Bill Piper and Anthony Papa ~ July 20, 2007 ~ CounterPunch In a startling discovery of what appears to reek of the stench of collusion, a Congressional committee has discovered evidence that the nation's drug czar and his deputies traveled to almost two dozen events with vulnerable Republican members of Congress in the months prior to the 2006 elections. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, Chair of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, alleged that the taxpayer-financed trips were orchestrated by President Bush's political advisors and often combined with the announcement of federal grants or actions that benefited the districts of the Republican members. A November 20, 2006 memo from Sara Taylor, the former White House director of political affairs, summarized the travel Drug Czar John Walters took at her request. Of the almost 20 events, all were with Republicans in close races. An agency e-mail sent the following day describes how Karl Rove commended his agency (and three cabinet departments--Commerce, Transportation, and Agriculture) for "going above and beyond the call of duty" in making "surrogate appearances" at locations the e-mail described as "the god-awful places we sent them." That e-mail, as well as e-mails that followed, show that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) officials were proud of the commendation they received from Rove and the political travel they took using taxpayer dollars. According to ONDCP's liaison to the White House, Douglas Simon, "our hard workin preparing the Director and Deputies for their trips and events" allowed them to travel "thousands of miles to attend numerous events all across the country." The ONDCP by law is obliged to be non-partisan and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is expected to have hearings on the matter later this month. The accusation that Drug Czar John Walters and President Bush were scratching each other's backs for financial and political gain was shocking, even in current cesspool of Washington, D.C. politics. Walters used taxpayer money to campaign for Republicans; while President Bush ignored the agency's failures and increased funding for programs his own analysts determined were ineffective. One hand washes the other. Numerous government-funded studies have found that the government's anti-marijuana ad campaign and student drug testing program are ineffective, yet the Bush Administration continues to request funding increases for those programs. The recently released memos and e-mails are only the latest evidence that ONDCP uses taxpayer money to influence voters. During 2000 federal lawsuit evidence surfaced showing that ONDCP's billion dollar anti-marijuana TV ad campaign was created to influence voters to reject state medical marijuana ballot measures. The Drug Czar and his staff are also routinely accused of using taxpayer money to travel to states in order to convince voters and legislators to reject drug policy reform. During the 2002 election, ONDCP's campaigning on a Nevada ballot initiative was so intense that the state's attorney general complained in a letter to the Nevada secretary of state that, "it is unfortunate that a representative of the federal government substantially intervened in a matter that was clearly a State of Nevada issue. The excessive federal intervention that was exhibited in this instance is particularly disturbing because it sought to influence the outcome of a Nevada election." More recently, ONDCP bureaucrats traveled to New Mexico at least four times in 12 months--at taxpayer expense--to lobby state legislators to oppose medical marijuana legislation. Fortunately, the legislators ignored them and seriously ill people in New Mexico finally have access to legal medical marijuana. The president continues to blatantly compromise the integrity of his administration for political gain, legality and ethics be damned. Two questions should be asked. How long will the drug czar and other public servants continue to use taxpayer money to influence voters on behalf of the Republican party before Congress takes action to stop this clearly unethical and illegal action? President Bush: how long will you fund costly, ineffective and harmful policies as a quid pro quo to secure a few votes? Bill Piper is National Director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Anthony Papa is the author of15 Years to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom and Communications Specialist forDrug Policy Alliance. He can be reached at:[email protected] Papa's artwork can be viewed at: www.15yearstolife.com/art1.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A. To Our Contributors Please submit articles, essays, reviews, research, etc., with good citations. We will include your name as the source of the piece only if requested. Due to space and editorial concerns not everything gets published. Send contributions to [email protected] Thanks so much for all the great submissions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B. Upcoming Conferences Second National Harm Reduction Therapy Conference Harm Reduction Therapy in the Real World November 2-4, 2007 Philadelphia Drug Policy Alliance's International Drug Policy Reform Conference is the world's principal gathering of people who believe the war on drugs is doing more harm than good. No better opportunity exists to learn about drug policy and to strategize and mobilize for reform. December 5-8, 2007 New Orleans -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C. A Listing Of The Blogs & Sites We've Been Visiting Lately (updated) Whiskey Bar The Center For Responsive Politics STATS Working Families Vote 2008 Falafel Sex, and Other Things Best Left Unsaid Elayne Riggs Eschaton Fact-esque Farai Chideya Feministe Feministing Frameshop Death Penalty Infomation Center Cocaine Importing Agency Calitics Common Dreams Cursor OpEd News Raw Story Smirking Chimp Truthdig TruthOut Working for Change Trish Wilson War and Piece Waveflux What She Said! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- D. Quotes There are lies, damned lies and statistics. -Mark Twain Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance. -Francis Bacon No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant. -Friedrich Nietzsche As far as I'm concerned, love means fighting, big fat lies, and a couple of slaps across the face. -Edith Piaf -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E. 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