PETALUMA, Calif. -- Just before dawn, shoveling cow manure in the milking barn, Ryan Medlin feels a world away from his wild life in San Francisco.
For the one-time homeless addict, that's a good thing.
Last fall, Medlin was living out of his car, blowing his six-figure salary as a software engineer on crack and bourbon. At 33, he was so gaunt he was nearly skeletal.
Nowadays at first light -- a time when he used to be out scoring drugs -- the Raleigh, N.C., native is on an isolated farm near Santa Rosa, helping to care for 260 lumbering dairy cows. After a few moments of meditation with co-workers, followed by a brisk round of calisthenics, he spends his days spreading hay, shoveling manure, hauling heavy buckets of fresh milk.
BODY AND SOUL
And getting well -- both physically and emotionally.
''This is what gets you in shape,'' he says, driving a pitchfork into a hay pile to feed a clutch of cows. ``Not too long ago, there's no way I could have ever imagined doing this.''
Medlin is one of 40 addicts spending six months in an unlikely free program for drug and alcohol rehabilitation, run for half a century by the St. Anthony Foundation, a privately funded social services charity based in San Francisco.
The program's regimen combines counseling and daily 12-step recovery classes with the demanding physical labor needed to run a thriving 315-acre organic dairy farm.
Residents are victims of every known addiction: alcohol, meth, crack, cocaine, heroin. Healing comes, residents say, from helping to birth calves, performing back-breaking chores, working so hard you drop into bed at night from exhaustion. It comes from being a part of something that's bigger than yourself, from putting the needs of others first.
''These people have burned through every dime, every family relationship,'' St. Anthony spokeswoman Francis Aviani said. ``Most are here because they have no place else to go.''
Jamey Howell's heroin habit cost him his home and custody of his daughter.
''His drug habit drained the family,'' his half-sister, Deborah Warfield said. ``It was killing me. It was killing him too.''
Today Howell, 41, is an on-staff maintenance supervisor at the farm. He has regained custody of his teenage daughter. ''I'd gone through 20 programs before I found this place,'' he said.
The farm opened in 1952 when the friars who ran a popular inner-city dining room decided they needed to supply the raw ingredients for the free meals they served, and continue to offer, daily. The farm's intake office is in St. Anthony's Tenderloin headquarters, home to the nonprofit's dozen housing, job and recovery programs for the homeless.
Once they are accepted and beds become available, the men board a van for the 90-mile drive into the country. T Then comes the shock.
Sitting on a hill off the road, the farm consists of several barns, a buttery and maintenance sheds, a bunkhouse, a kitchen and rooms for meetings and therapy. Waylon Jennings croons from a boombox. The smell of animal stalls hangs heavy.
Conor Burke, 21, recalls his first reaction to barn work.
'I said, `Hell, no' '' he said. ``I felt like I was above all that. But I learned.''
Not everyone does. Of the 100 residents Jamey Howell met during his stint, 30 graduated from the program. Some were asked to leave for infractions. For others, old urges were just too strong. ''You'd wake up in the morning and they'd be gone,'' he said.
Dairy supervisor Curtiss Fjelstul said the biggest adjustment new residents make is to the silence. ''They're away from the hustle and bustle on the streets,'' he said. ``It scares people at first.''
Then comes the farm work. In the round-the-clock operation, men bundle up against the early-morning chill and start with window washing and lawn mowing before moving into the barn.
''Some men have never worked a day in their life, other than selling drugs,'' Fjelstul said. ``They've never had to show up on time or just do what they're told.''
THE `REAL WORK'
Residents undergo long hours of counseling and self-examination. Some call that the ``real work.''
Many men develop compassion for the big animals and run to their aid when they slip and fall. Residents with anger issues soon find out that rage has little effect on the 1,500-pound creatures.
''You learn fast that you just can't scream and yell; you can't hit these animals,'' Howell said. ``Things don't happen on your time, but on their time. That's the first lesson.''
There's more, Fjelstul said.
''These cows are calm and giving,'' he said. ``At the end of their stay, I think many guys have a little better idea of how to give without asking for something in return.''
His six-month stint nearly through, Ryan Medlin soon will be ready to leave the farm. Darlene Medlin believes the program saved her son's life. ''Outpatient programs just didn't work,'' she said. ``It's good this place was such a long walk from San Francisco.''
In a country where almost everyone works for the communist state, dairy farmer Jesus Diaz is his own boss. He likes it that way - and so does the government.
Living on a plot of land just big enough to graze four dairy cows, Diaz produces enough milk to sell about four quarts a day to the state.
This is independent production on a tiny scale, but it has proved so efficient that Cuba has decided on a major expansion of its program to distribute underused and fallow farmland to private farmers and cooperatives.
"It's a way for the land to end up in the hands of those who want to produce. I see it as a very good thing," said Diaz, 45. He received his land and cows from the state in 1996, and now hopes to get access to more property.
The government is preparing for a "massive distribution of land," Orlando Lugo, president of Cuba's national farming association, said last week. Private farmers have begun receiving land for the cash crops of coffee and tobacco, and will soon be able to lease state land for other crops.
The idea is to revolutionize farming, one tiny plot at a time.
While attention has focused on President Raul Castro's crowd-pleasing moves to allow any Cuban who can afford it to buy a cell phone or stay in a luxury hotel, farmland distribution has been less noticed and is potentially much more important for easing chronic food shortages.
The bet is that independent farmers will do better on their own than toiling for state-run agricultural enterprises, which suffer from red tape, bad planning and lack of funding.
"The authorities, they leave you alone and let you produce," said Aristides Ramon de Machado, who got permission to plant bananas, papaya and guava in a lot by his home in Boca Ciega, east of Havana.
De Machado only grows enough for his family to eat and is prohibited from selling any surplus. But he said entrusting larger private farmers with more land will encourage them to increase production.
"Seeing the fruits of your own labor gives you pleasure in ways that working for someone else does not," he said.
Fidel Castro's revolutionaries seized all large farms for the state after toppling dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, and officials insist the new liberalization isn't a betrayal of revolutionary values.
Independent farmers still face rules about what and how much they can plant, and risk losing their land if they fail to meet government production quotas. They are also required by law to sell any surplus to farmers' markets.
Increasing food production has been a top priority for 76-year-old Raul Castro, who succeeded his brother as president in February.
While distributing farmland to individuals has been tried before in Cuba, this time the government seems willing to give up more control to get better results.
For example, it has authorized state stores to sell supplies directly to farmers - a key concession, since for decades, individuals had trouble legally obtaining so much as a shovel. The state also is providing free fertilizer and feed.
And this time, local farming associations are being empowered to oversee the land reallocation, a prerogative once reserved for the Agricultural Ministry in Havana, although Lugo added that the municipal delegations still must report to a new "central control center" lest land distribution "degenerate into chaos."
Cuba spends $1.6 billion annually on food imports, about a third of it from the United States, which exempts food and farm exports from its embargo of the island.
Cuba even imports 82 percent of the $1 billion in rice, powdered milk and other staples it then rations to the public at subsidized prices - an astoundingly high figure for such a fertile country.
At farmers' markets, basics like cabbage and oranges are almost always available, but tomatoes and lettuce disappear during the rainy summer, and imported apples are considered a rare delicacy.
State-controlled cooperatives operate like modern mega-farms on huge swaths of land, often using heavy equipment and sophisticated irrigation systems. The cooperatives control all kinds of crops, including signature products like sugar, though the high-quality tobacco that goes into Cuba's famous cigars is already mostly in private hands.
Many large cooperatives are losing money and failing to meet production quotas. Their workers have little incentive to improve things, since wages remain low no matter how well the farms do.
Meanwhile, many of the 250,000 private Cuban farmers must plant and pick their crops by hand, plowing with oxen and watering with buckets.
In Guira de Melena, 30 miles south of Havana, El Guateque is one of three supply stores islandwide that are now allowed to sell supplies directly to private farmers. It offers small items such as gloves, machetes, hoes and horse bridles.
Such tools may be humble and low-tech, but they help to produce 60 percent of Cuba's total food output on just a third of its arable land.
In other moves to invigorate the industry, Cuba has settled outstanding debts to farmers and more than doubled what it pays milk and meat producers. Farmers say the government also is paying more for potatoes, coconuts, coffee and other products.
But if a farmland revolution is coming, it hasn't brought big profits to farmers yet. Diaz gets 2.50 pesos per quart of milk, up from one peso. A peso is worth slightly less than a nickel.
In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King wrote that he had "almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the ... Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice ..."
Jeff Halper's new book is, in part, the story of the evolution of a "white moderate" peace campaigner from Hibbing, Minnesota, to a radical Israeli campaigner for justice for the Palestinians. En route, he maps his development from "ethnic Jew to Jewish national to Israeli," disregarding his grandmother's warning that "Israel is no place for a Jewish boy!"
If to an ingenuous Gentile this might seem like a meagre itinerary, a quick look at the Kahanists' indispensable "S.H.I.T. List" reveals, on the contrary, that Halper is seen by red-blooded ultra-Zionists as a "sick self-hating Kike" whose primary concern, and that of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) which he helped found, "is the demolition of Israel."
Halper also has his less vehement detractors within the disparate community of pro-Palestinian activists, some of whom deem him flawed by excessive ego. In truth I have yet to meet an efficient activist who didn't to some degree share this trait. Given the odds stacked against the defenders of Palestinian rights and the degree of defamation to which they are routinely exposed, a fragile ego would constitute a dangerous Achilles' heel.
Admittedly Halper, who defines himself alarmingly as "a full-time peace-maker," has an occasional weakness for near-rhodomontade such as "the task I have set before me is to hasten a just peace," or "Israel's aggressive marketing of military systems ... has forced me to join up with forces outside Israel in this decisive struggle." Indeed the subtitle of this book, with its reference to "Redeeming Israel," might seem to confirm the prejudices of those who believe that the majority of Israeli activists are more interested in their own beautiful souls than in the devastation wreaked by Zionism upon Palestinian society.
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Oscar for South African Produced Documentary
Biz-Community (Cape Town)
Taxi to the Dark Side, one of the films made for the South African co-ordinated, global documentary project Why Democracy?, won the Documentary Feature award at the 80th Annual Academy Awards held in Los Angeles.
South African producer and filmmaker, Don Edkins, was the executive producer of the film. Edkins also produced and coordinated the Why Democracy? project for Steps International from its Cape Town offices.
Commented Edkins, "This is a great honour for the film. I am very pleased that Taxi to the Dark Side won because it deals with a very tough political issue. By awarding the film an Oscar, the academy has showed it is not scared of films which expose the undemocratic practices of the American Government."
Director Alex Gibney's film tells the story of an Afghan taxi driver tortured to death by the American government as part of its "War on Terror" and was one of 10 films in the Why Democracy? documentary project.
This is the second Academy Award nomination for Alex Gibney. He was previously nominated in the Documentary Feature category for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
For many years, the members of the Saudi hip-hop group Dark2Men performed mostly in living rooms for their friends. They hid their pastime from relatives who view singing and dancing as shameful in this strict Muslim kingdom where concerts, theaters and movies are banned.
But that all changed last month after the group auditioned for a hip-hop competition on MTV Arabia -- launched in November as the latest addition to the MTV network -- and became one of eight finalists from the Middle East.
The channel produced a video clip of Dark2Men that aired in late January and flew the finalists to Dubai for the contest finale, which was taped Thursday and will be broadcast across the region next month.
"We used to sing about scratching our way to the surface," said lead rapper Hani Zain, 27, a gangly computer programmer at a bank. "We finally made it to the light."
In a kingdom where the Koran serves as the constitution, Dark2Men's rapid ascent from obscurity to the waiting room of pop fame has brought its three young members a mix of elation and misery.
Saudi Arabia is home to Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest places, and the group's tenuous leap into the realm of MTV is in many ways the story of the kingdom's own struggle with the effects of intrusive Western-style modernity.
There are no nightclubs or concerts in Saudi Arabia because of social and religious codes that also ban alcohol and the mixing of unrelated men and women. Local radio and television stations play mainly Arabic pop music. With those limitations, the group's biggest ambition had been to cut a CD.
What they got instead was a television appearance viewed by thousands in the Arab world.
Their fathers, who had never seen them perform, were ashamed and angry as they watched them rapping and dancing in the video on television.
Their fiancees, in a country where women are not allowed to drive and must cover their hair and wear a cloak in public, were unhappy about the trip to Dubai, where men and women mix freely and alcohol is readily available.
The time they needed to spend on practicing and attending the competition put them at risk of losing raises and promotions.
"This should be the happiest time of my life, but it's really the most difficult," said Tamer Farhan, 24, a human resources assistant at a hospital who taught himself English by watching American movies and television shows.
The video, for their song "The Journey," was filmed in the studio and around Jiddah's landmarks, and in it, they rap about the group's rise:
"Hard life but I'll be sticking to it. Bad times but I'll be going through it. All I know is that I know I can do it. Be strong and never lean down to it."
Farhan seemed shy in front of the camera. Zain, sporting sunglasses, moved like he had been performing for the cameras for years. Maan Mansour, 25, looked straight into the camera and made the effusive hand gestures of Western rap stars.
"There are a lot of Saudi rappers, but they're underground because of the wrong impression people have of them," Farhan told MTV's "Hip HopNa" co-host Qusai Khidr, a Saudi rapper who has lived in Florida. "We would like people to hear our words and listen to our message before they judge us."
After the video aired, the group members met at a pizza place, and their moods shifted between excitement and despondency.
Farhan said that when hip-hop was just a hobby, his father was tolerant and his fiancee was confident that her parents would not discover he was part of the group. But now that the group has been on television and could win a recording contract, his father fears that his son will leave a steady job to become an entertainer. His fiancee said it was only a matter of time before her parents found out and ended the engagement.
Farhan, the eldest of four siblings who has worked since he was 13 to supplement the family income, said his father's disapproval was especially hard. "All my life, I've tried to make him proud," he said.
Mansour, who raps in English and Arabic, recounted how his father, a retired school principal, threatened to disown him a day after the video clip aired. "He said the whole neighborhood was talking about his son prancing around and dancing and singing like a jester on television," said Mansour, an equipment sterilization technician at a hospital.
Zain said he had agreed with his fiancee that if his music career started to hurt their relationship, he would cut down on performing and concentrate on writing lyrics and composing music. "I love this girl more than I love singing," he said.
The group's biggest challenge, Zain said, was to prove to their friends, families and fiancees that they are as serious about their religion and their culture as they are about hip-hop.
"If you're a rapper, people immediately assume that you are into the things they see on television. We don't want to be them, we want to create our own style. We rap about problems faced by young Saudis and we promote Islamic values," Mansour said.
Zain said the name Dark2Men was about shedding light on the hidden difficulties Saudi youths face. The "2" stood for the number of members in the group when it was founded in 1999. But Zain said the other founding member, a friend of his, left the group because he did not want to hurt his reputation and anger his family.
Zain met Mansour at a mosque, and Farhan joined them later.
The feeling of being under siege and misunderstood by society has turned the group's members into close friends, they said.
"People don't understand us here. They think being part of a rap group means you're less Arab or less Muslim or you want to imitate the West," Zain said.
A song written after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which were carried out mainly by Saudis, focuses on how the group views faith:
"We're the ones who care about women and family, we're the ones who care about neighbors and community, and after all that how dare you people call us terrorist. I'm proud to be Muslim. Islam is the deepest peace. And no matter what they say or do, I am, I am, I'm Muslim."
At the airport in Jiddah before leaving for Dubai, Farhan said his father had given him a good-luck gift that morning. He stretched out his hand to show a watch with a black leather strap.
Zain, wearing his ubiquitous sunglasses and black hooded sweat shirt, said he had "never been so scared and so excited."
"All my dreams are now staring me in the face," he said before taking off. "Everything depends on what happens in Dubai."
The documentary project, "Democracy in Dakar" highlights the impact hip hop artists have had on the democratic process in Senegal, shedding light on the politics of one of francophone Africa's more stable democracies and showing the contradictions that lie just below the surface.
The project is an online multi-media documentary that consists of eight mini-documentary video shorts broadcast through the African Underground website.
In the series of shorts, the artists featured first reflect on the 2000 elections in Senegal in which Abdulaye Wade took power from then President Abdou Diouf. This was supposed to be the dawn of a new era in Senegal's history, and it was also a time in which many of Senegal's hip hop artists were coming into their own for the first time.
As in other parts of Africa, hip hop in Senegal emerged in the late 1980s and was immediately embraced by the country's youth. The scene in Senegal evolved into one of the largest and most well known in francophone Africa south of the Sahara. The artists often blend local sounds and rap either entirely in Wolof or a blend of French and Wolof.
The project's website suggests that Senegalese hip hop is divided into two categories: a hardcore, more underground rap and mainstream, mbalax rap, which mixes traditional mbalax music with rap. But according to the site, both types have always been very political in content and as rap artists matured many of them also became some of the most vocal commentators on politics in Senegal.
In 2000, many of the artists were supportive of Abdoulaye Wade's campaign, and in the films they express the hope many of them had for the new president. But after the elections, they were also critical of what they perceived to be promises broken by the Wade regime. The increase in poverty and unemployment, as well as the desperation of many Senegalese people trying to illegally immigrate to Europe and the Comoros, was seen by many to be related to his economic policies.
When the project moves its focus forward in time, it covers the lead-up to, and then the aftermath of this year's presidential elections, held on February 25. The days leading up the election are filled with calls for change as the documentary shows us the myriad of parties challenging Abdoulaye Wade. In total 15 candidates ran for office in the hotly-contested vote.
The certainty of change was felt strongly among the rap artists featured in the film. However, Wade captured 56 percent of the vote, the shock of which is vividly portrayed in the footage of the period immediately after the election results were announced.
While there were complaints of fraud, the results have been internationally accepted and the film reflects a conclusion that they were more a testament to the lack of desirable candidates than evidence of support for Wade's regime.
The documentary is the result of a collaboration between Ben Herson, founder and director of the Nomadic Wax record label, and Magee McIlvaine, co-founder and director of the film company Sol Productions.
South African photographer Eric Miller recently launched a thrilling exhibition of rare photographs of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The exhibition, held in Cape Town and entitled "Rebel Chic", comprises a fascinating series of pictures, accompanied by captions which contextualise the images, taken during the years when the LRA held civilians captive in Northern Uganda.
Each image takes us back to a time when the population of the region was being terrorised by the LRA. The rebels targeted children between the ages of 13 and 15 years, abducting 66, 000 youths during the course of hostilities. Captives were raped, tortured and forced to kill members of their families and community over a period of more than 20 years.
Among the images is one of Agnes Ocitti, who was abducted at age 13, but who did not allow her ordeal to stop her from reaching her destiny. Inspired by what she went through, Ocitti decided that she wanted to help others and eventually received a degree in law. She is now a human rights lawyer who looks forward to continuing her studies and aspires to become a judge.
Another photograph shows Mary, who was kidnapped at age 14. When she escaped two years later she was pregnant and filled with hate. Also potrayed is a nun, Sister Rachele, who traced a group of 139 children who were abducted from a school hostel and pleaded with LRA soldiers to release them. She succeeded in securing the release of 109.
Finally the exhibition features Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, who failed to win the support of the Acholi people and was forced to retreat into Sudanese territory. Kony now faces the possibility of being charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, sexual enslavement and conscripting child soldiers.
Iraq Documentary Offers Rare Glimpse of Detention and Life After
Electronic Iraq
It could have been a moment out of the reality show Cops. Men in uniform break through the door of a house and take "wrongdoers" into custody. All we viewers know is that there is "good intelligence" that some brothers live here, and they're involved in bomb-making for a terrorist cell. Menace hangs in the air. We see captured men on their knees in the yard. Are they terrorists? One man, his hands tied behind his back, loses patience. "I am journalist," he complains in broken but perfectly understandable English. "You mistake this." His captors tell him to shut up, and the tied-up man parrots back what he hears, anger seeping into his voice. "Shut up, shut up. I know 'shut up.' Always 'shut up' in Iraq." At which point he is taken out of his house, dumped in a truck, and whisked off to a detention facility with his brothers.
This haunting moment stuck with the man behind the camera, Michael Tucker. The year was 2003. Tucker was filming in Baghad during the early months of the US occupation for what would become the critically acclaimed documentary Gunner Palace. Tucker was embedded with the soldiers so when the journalist was turned over to military police, his story thread ended. But something about the man haunted Tucker, as it will anyone who sees Tucker's new film co-directed with his wife Petra Epperlein.
The Prisoner or: How I planned to Kill Tony Blair begins at the moment when Tucker first crossed paths with Yunis Khatayer Abbas, and then goes on to explore who this man was, why he was arrested, and what became of him in the months to follow.
It's a surprising turn of events for Americans used to seeing the credits roll when the authorities get their man in Cops. But Tucker and Epperlein leave the focus locked on Yunis, and as the dignity of this man emerges, a universal story about the terrible price of the Iraq War emerges as well.
We learn Yunis is indeed a journalist, and that years earlier had run afoul of Saddam Hussein. We learn that he was tortured by Uday Hussein's henchmen because he had dared to criticize the regime. We learn that he was skeptical about the American invasion but hopeful at the same time. Maybe, just maybe, Yunis thought, he will be free to write what he wants.
And then he runs afoul of the Americans. The filmmakers call his turn through the detention centers of the occupation forces "an absurd comedy of errors." It's a Kafkaesque nightmare. Under interrogation, Yunis is accused of planning to murder Tony Blair. He laughs when he hears this, and in the film, as he recounts the story, he is laughing again. But it's laughter without joy, because despite the absurdity of the charge and the absence of any evidence, Yunis and his brothers spent 8 months in detention at Abu Ghraib.
Book Review:
Medical Apartheid: History of Medical Experimentation
The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
“The experimental exploitation of African-Americans is not an issue of the last decade or even the past few decades. Dangerous, involuntary, and non-therapeutic experimentation of African-Americans has been practiced widely and documented extensively at least since the 18th Century... The problem is growing… No other group as deeply mistrusts the American medical system.
“These subjects were given experimental vaccines known to have unacceptably high lethality, were enrolled in experiments without their consent or knowledge, were subjected to surreptitious surgical and medical procedures while unconscious, injected with toxic substances, deliberately monitored rather than treated for deadly ailments, excluded from lifesaving treatments, or secretly farmed for sera or tissues that were used to perfect technologies such as infectious disease tests.” —excerpted from the Introduction
In taking the Hippocratic Oath, every new doctor pledges “Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else’s interest.” However, Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, must be spinning in his grave, given the rampant ethical violations of his sacred doctrine routinely being perpetrated by physicians in the United States.
Most people only think of the infamous Tuskegee study of subjects with untreated syphilis when it comes to the exploitation of Blacks as guinea pigs. But such experimentation by medical researchers neither began nor ended with that shocking case.
In recent years, on a couple of occasions, I have been skeptical about physicians I felt were doling out different brands of medicine based on their patients’ skin color. Frustrated because I had neither the time nor the wherewithal to pursue my hunches, I couldn’t confront anyone or go public based only on anecdotal evidence.
For this reason, I am so grateful that Harriet A. Washington has written “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,” for this groundbreaking book confirms my suspicions by addressing the disparate methodologies currently being employed with patients presenting the specific symptoms I had been concerned with.
Ms. Washington, a Harvard and Tuskegee-trained scholar in ethics and journalism, conducted exhaustive research in order to be able to shed light on the country’s racism in the name of scientific research. Among the brutalities uncovered here by the author is proof that, “Black women have been systematically sterilized without their consent,” and that, “the brains of African-American children as young as six” have secretly been “surgically excised.”
She illustrates how this disregard for the well-being of Blacks began during the days of slavery when Africans en route to the Americas were “thrown overboard if signs of disease were found” by the ship’s surgeon. By the conclusion of this compelling opus, she makes it abundantly clear that just as America has a two-tiered criminal justice system, it has totally different quality healthcare systems when it comes to Black and White citizens.
So, when you encounter a Black person who harbors a deep distrust of doctors, that might not be paranoia, but simply a sensible survival instinct still intact.
