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The Nine Circles of Hell! – all the news that gives you fits in print – for Monday, November 1, 2010,  including two bonus stories on the destructiveness of alcohol, are:

Gay marriage debate collides with immigration controversy

New study predicts American ‘Dust Bowl’ in 2030s

US uncertain how billions were spent on Afghanistan before 2007

The troubling level of violent crime in Canada’s military

Haitian marchers blame Nepalese UN soldiers for cholera

Paramilitary cops stop sex abuse survivors’ protest at Vatican

New report lists abuses by foreign mining companies in Ghana

Saudi clerics issue fatwa against women supermarket cashiers

Overall, alcohol is the most destructive drug

Gay marriage debate collides with immigration controversy
abcNews
(11/1/10)

Gay Immigrants Deported, Even in Legal Marriages

Joshua Vandiver, a Colorado native who is earning his Ph.D. in politics at Princeton University, said he is the studious type who has rarely embraced activism. But now, just months into his legal marriage to Venezuelan Henry Velandia, he is fighting to save his husband from being deported.

Had the couple been straight and not gay, Vandiver would have been allowed to apply for permanent residence status for Velandia, who could then later apply for citizenship.

But their dream to build a life together is been derailed by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as between a man and a woman under all federal laws, including immigration …

On Nov. 17, the couple will go before a federal immigration judge to ask that deportation proceedings be halted until legal challenges or a Congressional repeal of DOMA have been resolved.

Vandiver has applied for a petition to allow Velandia to stay in this country, an application that will surely be denied. And with that rejection letter, the couple will consider a lawsuit. “I see that as discriminatory,” said Vandiver …

The United States is home to about 24,000 same-sex couples in which one partner is an American citizen and the other is not, according to an analysis of 2008 census survey data by the Williams Institute, University of California Los Angeles Law School. About 25 percent of those couples have children.

New study predicts American ‘Dust Bowl’ in 2030s
The New York Times
(10/27/10)

Ignoring the Planet Won’t Fix It

It’s hardly surprising that a study released the other day by a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research didn’t register on any political radar screens, amid Kentucky foot stomps, dead wrestlers, $2 billion in campaign spending and the pitched battles for control of Congress.

And, political year or not, there’s only so much news value in any projection of what might happen in climate science. Still, you don’t need a Ph.D. to ponder the potential ramifications of the study, by Aiguo Dai, who works with the center’s Climate and Global Dynamics Division.

It concluded that, over the next 30 years, warming temperatures associated with climate change were likely to create increasingly dry conditions in the United States and droughts around the globe on levels seldom seen before. Previous studies by Dr. Dai have indicated that climate change may already be producing drier conditions. A 2004 study found that the percentage of the world’s land area facing serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

The recent study concluded that most of the western two-thirds of the United States will be significantly drier by the 2030s, and that large parts of the nation may face an increasing risk of extreme drought. This is not about melting ice caps; it’s about Dust Bowl-style drought within two decades.

“If the projections in this study come even close to being realized, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous,” Dr. Dai said.

US uncertain how billions were spent on Afghanistan before 2007
McClatchy Newspapers
(10/27/10)

U.S. can’t untangle billions in Bush-era Afghan spending

he U.S. government knows it’s awarded nearly $18 billion in contracts for rebuilding Afghanistan over the last three years, but it can’t account for spending before 2007.

Thousands of firms received wartime contracts, but the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction found it too difficult to untangle how billions of additional dollars had been spent because of the U.S. agencies’ poor recordkeeping.

“Navigating the confusing labyrinth of government contracting is difficult, at best,” the inspector general says in a report that was released Wednesday.

The finding raises doubts about whether the U.S. government ever will determine whether taxpayers’ money was spent wisely in Afghanistan.

“Data got better from 2007 on,” said Susan Phalen, a spokeswoman with SIGAR, “but it remains to be seen whether we’ll ever know how much U.S. agencies spent overall.”

Overall, the U.S. has set aside about $55 billion for rebuilding Afghanistan, but that includes agencies’ budget for staff salaries, operations and security. SIGAR couldn’t parse how much was spent on contractors alone.

SIGAR recommended that the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development create one database to track wartime contracts. As it stands, the Pentagon has four contracting agencies that oversee contracts, but none of them is sharing information. SIGAR found a lack of coordination among all the U.S. agencies that oversee contracting in Afghanistan, not just the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, a handful of companies received a majority of the contracts, auditors found.

USAID, for example, awarded almost half of the $2 billion it set aside for Afghanistan projects to two companies, Louis Berger and Development Alternatives Inc. Overall, the agency doled out contracts to 214 companies.

Of 6,600 firms that have received contracts from the Pentagon for Afghanistan, 44 of them received more than half the military’s business there. One contractor, DynCorp International, accounted for about 75 percent of all the contracts for Afghanistan that two State Department bureaus awarded.

The troubling level of violent crime in Canada’s military
Postmedia News
(10/31/10)

Persistent rate of military sex assaults criticized as ‘the elephant in the room’

Canada’s military police received 163 reports of sexual assault and 505 reports of assault in 2009 — numbers one military expert says are unacceptable.

The figures, reported in the recently released Canadian Forces Provost Marshal 2009 report, show reports of sexual assaults have actually decreased slightly, from 166 in 2008, but the numbers are still very troubling, said Michel Drapeau, a retired colonel currently practising military law.

“It’s the elephant in the room,” he said. “When you look at what we know now . . . this is supposed to be a professional force. Men and women serve alongside each other. But you look at the context, and you look at those numbers, it’s telling us it’s not safe.”

Two examples — that of former air force officer Russell Williams, now convicted of not only assaults but murders, and that of Capt. Nichola Goddard, Canada’s first female soldier to die in combat, who had complained about harassment — illustrate the point, he said.

Williams was recently convicted of the sadistic murders of two women and the sexual assaults of two others. He also pleaded guilty to more than 80 counts of break and enter and theft of women’s lingerie.

Goddard, while serving in Afghanistan before her 2006 death, told her husband she was a victim of sexual harassment, and that she was not the only one. One of her letters home told of one week in which, she said, there were six rapes at her camp …

The Forces are reporting 15 instances of either first- or second-degree murder, manslaughter, or criminal negligence causing death in 2009; 160 drug offences; 3,663 security breaches or violations; and 1,401 incidents of theft under $5,000.

The data include all reported incidents, regardless of the outcome of the investigation.

Of the 15 reported incidents of murder, manslaughter or criminal negligence — nine more than in 2008 — three resulted in charges against Canadian Forces members, Maj. Paule Poulin said, declining to offer further details.

The remaining 12 incidents involved a mixture of civilians, former members of the Forces and Afghan nationals, Michel Drapeau, a retired colonel currently practising military law, said.

Regarding the reports of theft, she said the high number is a consequence of “the large volume of equipment” Canadian Forces members own or are issued.

Haitian marchers blame Nepalese UN soldiers for cholera
The Associated Press
(10/30/10)

Protesters blame UN base for cholera in Haiti

Hundreds of protesters who blame U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal for Haiti’s widening cholera epidemic marched on a rural military base Friday to demand the soldiers leave the country.

Demonstrators waving tree branches and carrying anti-U.N. banners walked from the central plateau city of Mirebalais several miles to the gates of the base perched above a tributary of the Artibonite River — a waterway identified by health officials as a conduit for the infection.

The protesters chanted “Like it or not, they must go” as the Nepalese soldiers and other U.N. peacekeepers remained inside.

Cholera has sparked widespread fear in Haiti, where it was unknown before the outbreak was first noticed by authorities Oct. 20. As of Friday morning, more than 4,700 people have been hospitalized and at least 330 have died, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

There has been no scientific conclusion on the origin of the epidemic, which became evident when dozens of patients began dying with high fevers and watery diarrhea at a hospital in the town of St. Marc a few miles from the last stretch of the river.

Experts say the disease was likely imported. Until this month there had not been a diagnosed case of cholera in Haiti as far back as records go in the mid-20th Century, said Claire-Lise Chaignat, head of the global task force on cholera control at the World Health Organization. The disease is pandemic in parts of Africa and Asia.

Speculation among Haitians is increasingly centered on the Nepalese peacekeeping base near Mirebalais, much of it being stoked by politicians including the town’s mayor — a Senate candidate — ahead of the Nov. 28 national elections.

Cholera is endemic in Nepal and the country suffered outbreaks this summer. The current troop contingent arrived in shifts starting Oct. 9, after the outbreak in their home country and shortly before the disease broke out in Haiti. Cases have been concentrated down river along the Artibonite.

Paramilitary cops stop sex abuse survivors’ protest at Vatican
The Associated Press
(10/31/10)

Police block sex abuse survivors near Vatican

Italian paramilitary police blocked a boulevard leading to the Vatican to prevent a march Sunday by some 100 survivors of clergy sex abuse from reaching St. Peter’s Square, but later allowed two protesters to leave letters from the abused at the Holy See’s doorstep.

The two also left a dozen stones near the obelisk in St. Peter’s square to mark a symbolic path so other survivors might know they have company in their suffering.

The candlelit protest was the first significant demonstration in the shadow of the Vatican by people who had been raped and molested by priests as children, and organizers said it would be repeated until the Holy See takes decisive action to ensure children are safe …

Organizers had tried to stage the march on Vatican soil but were forced to hold it nearby after the Holy See denied permission. It is standard Vatican practice to ban non-Vatican-sponsored events from St. Peter’s Square.

Sunday’s protest kicked off with the unexpected arrival of the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, who said he had wanted to greet the organizers and had prepared a statement he hoped to read. He beat a hasty retreat to his office after a protester shouted “Shame, shame” in Italian.

Lombardi said later he left when he saw “it wasn’t going to be easy” to meet with the organizers.

Bergeron met with Lombardi later inside his Vatican office and told him that abuse survivors had been “waiting a lifetime to be able to stand up and speak out.”

After the demonstration, Bergeron accompanied several other survivors to speak with Lombardi and tell them their stories. They said they asked Lombardi to pass along their request to speak with other Vatican officials; Lombardi said he listened to their concerns and reasons for gathering.

The event, which aimed to show survivors worldwide that they are not alone, was organized by Bergeron and Bernie McDaid, who were abused by the same Boston priest starting when they were in the sixth grade. The two became some of the most prominent victims to speak out in the United States after the clerical abuse scandal erupted in their native Boston in 2002.

McDaid was the first victim to meet with Pope Benedict XVI when the pontiff visited the United States in 2008.

Bergeron and McDaid organized the rally after the scandal erupted anew on a global scale earlier this year, with revelations of thousands of victims in Europe and beyond, of bishops who covered up for pedophile priests and of Vatican officials who turned a blind eye to the crimes. They are seeking to have the United Nations designate systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.

About 100 survivors from a dozen countries — Italy, Britain, the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia among others — took part in Sunday’s protest, although they seemed outnumbered by journalists and police.

New report lists abuses by foreign mining companies in Ghana
The Associated Press
(10/29/10)

Human rights legal group says gold mining in Ghana rife with abuse, land grabs, pollution

Foreign mining companies in gold-rich Ghana regularly seize people’s land, pollute the environment and violently suppress those who oppose them, according to a new report Thursday by a human rights team at the University of Texas School of Law.

Large mining companies in Ghana’s west often take land from farmers without fair compensation, the report says. Ghanaian law requires compensation for loss of land and loss of crops. Many community members have not been reimbursed for either, according to Thursday’s report from the law school’s Human Rights Clinic.

Thomas Akabzaa, a professor of earth science at the University of Ghana who has studied Ghana’s gold mining industry for the last 16 years, said the problem with land compensation often can be traced to local leaders.

“The land is traditionally held by the chiefs in trust for the people,” Akabzaa said. “When the mining company takes the land, the compensation is paid to the chiefs.”

This money, he said, often does not make its way to the landowners.

Akabzaa says problems also arise when the government undervalues a crop.

“Particularly if they’re cash crops like cocoa, which has a life span of 20 years,” Akabzaa said. “Landowners are given the value of one year’s crop only.”

The report also accuses gold-mining operations of polluting territory surrounding the mines. Ghana’s Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice produced a report in 2008 that confirmed mineral levels in local water sources were above World Health Organization limits. Community members reported incidents of contaminated drinking water and large-scale fish deaths.

Local landowners told investigators that attempts to protest the effects of gold mining have been met with violence by private and government security forces. Anthony Baidoo, a farmer in Teberebie, was shot after a confrontation at a roadblock with military and company officers working for AngloGold Ashanti, a South African mining firm.

A spokesman for AngloGold Ashanti said the gunshot was accidental and the company assumes no liability. Nevertheless, AngloGold Ashanti has paid Baidoo’s medical bills, financed his son’s high school education, and is working out a compensation package.

Saudi clerics issue fatwa against women supermarket cashiers
Telegraph
(11/1/10)

Saudi Arabian clerics issue fatwa ruling that women cannot work as supermarket cashiers

The Council of Senior Scholars, the official fatwa issuing body, said that “it is not permissible for a woman to work in a place where they mix with men,” the news website Sabq.org said.

“It is necessary to keep away from places where men congregate. Women should look for decent work that does not make it possible for them to attract men or be attracted by men,” it said.

The fatwa was in response to a question – published with the ruling – asking specifically if women should work as cashiers in supermarkets, Sabq reported.

The ruling was signed by Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, the head of the Senior Scholars Council, and six other members of the fatwa committee.

The fatwa came some four months after the labour ministry quietly authorised stores in the western city of Jeddah to employ women as cashiers, in an attempt to open up opportunities for women who are forcibly segregated from men under the strict Saudi version of Sunni Islam.

Overall, alcohol is the most destructive drug
The Associated Press
(11/1/10)

Study: Alcohol is the most lethal drug, outranking heroin, crack cocaine, marijuana

Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study.

British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.

Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.

Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.

The study was paid for by Britain’s Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online Monday in the medical journal, Lancet.

Experts said alcohol scored so high because it is so widely used and has devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them …

Leslie King, an adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and one of the study’s authors, said countries should target problem drinkers, not the vast majority of people who indulge in a drink or two. He said governments should consider more education programs and raising the price of alcohol so it isn’t as widely available.

Experts said the study should prompt countries to reconsider how they classify drugs. For example, last year in Britain, the government increased its penalties for the possession of marijuana. One of its senior advisers, David Nutt — the lead author on the Lancet study — was fired after he criticized the British decision.

• For more on David Nutt, check out the BBC coverage in, “Alcohol ‘more harmful than heroin’ says Prof David Nutt”:
  Prof Nutt refused to leave the drugs debate when he was sacked from his official post by the former Labour Home Secretary, Alan Johnson.
  He went on to form the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, a body which aims to investigate the drug issue without any political interference.
  One of its other members is Dr Les King, another former government adviser who quit over Prof Nutt’s treatment.

• There’s good news for alcohol lovers, however. If reports keep coming in like the CBS News story, “Liver Shortage Fix? New Artificial Liver Seems to Work Like Real Thing,” maybe alcohol’s score will be better when the study is updated:
  Frankenstein isn’t going to show up at your door anytime soon, but scientists are having success creating artificial body parts – including tiny “bioengineered” livers that work just like the real thing – at least in the lab.
  If the miniature livers can be shown to work inside the human body, experts say they could provide a solution to the shortage of human livers available for patients who need liver transplants.
  There are currently 16,000 Americans on the waiting list for a new liver, according to statistics reported by medpagetoday.
  “We are excited about the possibilities this research represents, but must stress that we’re at an early stage and many technical hurdles must be overcome before it could benefit patients,” one of the scientists involved in the research, Dr. Shay Soker, professor of regenerative medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said in a written statement. “Not only must we learn how to grow billions of liver cells at one time in order to engineer livers large enough for patients, but we must determine whether these organs are safe to use in patients.”
  To make the livers, the scientists treated animal livers with detergent to remove all the cells. Then they added human cells to the remaining liver “scaffold,” and put everything inside a “bioreactor,” a special container that provides a constant flow of nutrients and oxygen throughout the developing organ.
  After a week, the artificial liver seemed to be functioning like the real thing.