Military

In the Loop

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REVIEW A typically fumbling remark by U.K. Minister of International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) ignites a media firestorm, since it seems to suggest war is imminent even though Brit and U.S. governments are downplaying the likelihood of the Iraq invasion they’re simultaneously preparing for. Suddenly cast as an important arbiter of global affairs — a role he’s perhaps less suited for than playing the Easter Bunny — Simon becomes one chess piece in a cutthroat game whose participants on both sides of the Atlantic include his own subordinates, the prime minister’s rageaholic communications chief, major Pentagon and State Department honchos, crazy constituents, and more. Writer-director Armando Iannucci’s frenetic comedy of behind-the-scenes backstabbing and its direct influence on the highest-level diplomatic and military policies is scabrously funny in the best tradition of English television, which is (naturally) just where its creators hail from.

IN THE LOOP opens Fri/24 in San Francisco.

How to help Iran without meddling

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OPINION Two of us, Penn and Erlich, traveled to Iran in 2005 and interviewed numerous ordinary Iranians. People were very friendly toward us as Americans but very hostile to U.S. policy against their country. We visited Friday prayers where 10,000 people chanted, "Death to America." Afterward those same people invited us home for lunch.

That contradiction continues today as Iran goes through its most significant upheaval since the 1979 revolution. Iranians are rising up against an authoritarian system, but they don’t want U.S. intervention.

Many Iranians believe that they have experienced a coup d’état, in which the military and intelligence services have hijacked the presidential election. Through vote-buying and manipulation of the count, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad guaranteed himself another four years in office.

In June more than a million Iranians marched in the streets of major cities across the country. The spontaneous demonstrations included well-to-do supporters of opposition candidates, but also large numbers of workers, farmers, small-business people, and the devoutly religious. They were fed up with 30 years of a system that used Islam as an excuse for breaking union labor strikes, stripping women of their rights, and repressing a nation.

The Iranian government responded to these peaceful protests with savagery, killing dozens of people. Some human rights groups put the number at more than 100. The government admits arresting 2,500 people nationwide and continues to hold at least 500. Most are being held without charges or have simply disappeared.

The repression hasn’t killed the movement. On July 17, more than 10,000 people came to Friday prayers in support of the opposition. Instead of chanting "Death to America," they chanted "Death to the Dictator," a reference to supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Police attacked them with clubs and tear gas.

Meanwhile in Washington, some politicians tried to use the crisis for their own ends. Sen. John McCain criticized President Obama for not taking a stronger position against the Iranian government. It’s ironic to hear McCain and other conservatives proclaim their support for the people of Iran when a few months ago they wanted to bomb them.

That doesn’t exactly build credibility among Iranians.

President Obama faces tough choices on Iran. If he speaks out loudly against Ahmadinejad, he is accused of meddling in Iran’s internal affairs. If he says too little, then right-wingers in the U.S. accuse him of being soft on Ahmadinejad.

In reality, the U.S. has very little ability to impact what has become a massive, spontaneous movement for change. And it shouldn’t. The CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, bringing the dictatorial shah back to power. George W. Bush’s administration attempted to overthrow the Iranian government by funding and arming ethnic minority groups opposed to Tehran.

The U.S. government has no moral or political authority to tell Iranians what they should do. Iranians are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves.

That’s why citizen diplomacy is so important. Iranian demonstrators welcome the support of ordinary Americans. Joan Baez recorded a Farsi-language version of "We Shall Overcome" that has shot around the world on YouTube. She sang it July 12 at San Francisco’s Stern Grove.

Iranian activists are holding a hunger strike in front of the United Nations in New York from July 22 to 24, demanding that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon send a special commission to Iran.

With hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Americans in California, it would be unconscionable to ignore the nonnegotiable right of peaceful dissent by millions of people in Iran. Join us in the San Francisco Civic Center plaza on July 25, from noon to 4 p.m. Stand in solidarity with Iranians and against U.S. intervention in Iran (www.norcal4iran.org). *

Sean Penn is an actor, director, and writer who visited Iran in 2005. Ross Mirkarimi is a San Francisco supervisor, the first elected Iranian-American to hold that office. Reese Erlich is a freelance journalist and author of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis.

In Mexico, the Dinosaurs return

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By John Ross

714dinos.jpg

MEXICO CITY (July 16th) — Nine years ago, on a sultry July morning, Mexicans woke up and discovered to their great amazement that the Dinosaur that had hunkered down at the foot of their beds for 71 years was gone. This July 6th, when Mexicans rose in the morning, the Dinosaur was back.

In the famous short poem by Augusto Monterroso, the Dinosaur is the PRI — the Institutional Revolutionary Party — once the longest-ruling political dynasty in the known universe that controlled the destiny of Mexicans from the cradle to the grave for seven interminable decades until it was dislodged from power by the right-wing PAN party in the July 2000 presidential elections. In its unslakable thirst for power, the PRI committed unspeakable crimes against the Mexican peoples, stealing elections from the most humble city hall to the presidential palace, jailing and torturing and executing those who stood in its way, and emptying out public treasuries in an unmatched kleptocracy that was a legend throughout Latin America, “the perfect dictatorship” Latin American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once dubbed it (for which the PRI had him tossed out of the country).

“Have we Mexicans lost our memories and our minds?” asks Sylvia Insulza from behind the counter of her newspaper dispensary in the old quarter of the capital. Tears of frustration crystallize in the corners of her eyes.

The depth and breadth of the PRI victory July 5th is nothing short of stunning. From a distant third-place finish in the 2006 presidential fiasco in which the rightist PAN stole the election from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and his left-wing PRD party by .57% of the popular vote, the PRI (“proven experience and a new attitude” is its current campaign slogan) took 37% of the total ballots cast, nearly doubling its votes three years back, and taking control of congress for the first time since 1997. The once-upon-a-time ruling party’s alliance with the so-called Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM – see sidebar below “The Green PRI”) will give it 259 seats out of 500 in the lower house, an absolute majority. In nine out of 31 states, the PRI won every office up for grabs — federal congressional representatives, local congresses, and municipal officials, a “carro completo” or “full car” in the Institutionals’ curious lexicon.

The Dinosaurs also proved triumphant in five out of six governors’ races, winning two statehouses in which the PAN had resided for 12 years. Only in the northern border state of Sonora, where the PRI governor was seen as complicit in the tragic incineration of 48 babies in a Hermosillo day care center a month before the election, was the PAN able to squeeze out a victory in an election in which the PAN and PRI candidates were cousins.

Moreover, the PRI won cities like Naucalpan, an upper middle class Mexico City suburb the right-wingers have controlled since the 1980s, and the nation’s second city, Guadalajara, which the PAN has owned since 1995. In alliance with the Mexican Green Environmental Party, the PRI won its first elected office in Mexico City since 1994. Although the left PRD maintains control of the nation’s capital, the Party of the Aztec Sun does so by a greatly reduced margin. Whereas the PRD registered 51% of the vote in Mexico City in 2006, three years later it weighs in with just 29%.

But Sylvia’s tears of frustration may soon dry. Whether the Dinosaurs are really back or just staying overnight (in Jurassic time) is not yet clear. Mid-term elections are referendums on the sitting president and his administration’s management of the country and July 5th represented a crushing vote of no confidence in Felipe Calderon on whose watch the economy has tumbled into freefall — “growth” in 2009 will measure a negative 8%, the worst slide since the Great Depression of 1929-32. Calderon, who campaigned as the “President of Employment,” has presided over the loss of 2,000,000 jobs. The president’s ill-advised war on the drug cartels has soaked the country in blood — more than 12,000 lives have been lost — and fueled corruption and human rights abuses on the part of the military and the police. Calderon’s panic-driven handling of this spring’s Swine Flu “PAN-demic” kicked the bricks out from under the tourist industry, the nation’s third-largest source of dollars, and his arrogant imposition of candidates in the July 5th vote-taking angered and turned many in his own party against him.

Prison report: Special edition

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His blogs typically appear Mondays and Thursdays. However, he sent over a special report today on a recent incident in Solano State Prison.

Let me tell you where your tax dollars are going — something the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation doesn’t tell you about, and its secretary, Matt Cate, and spokesperson Lance Corcoran neglect to tell you about in their disingenuous double-speak about inmates, prison, rehabilitation and spending.

Right now the California state prison in Solano is on modified program because on one of the four yards that prison, an anonymous note was found in the mail by a corrections officer. It said:

“The blacks have a zip gun and three shells.”

Because of this anonymous note, the normal program for the entire institution has been modified so that the inmates get no yard activities because the staff has been redirected to search the building in which this unsubstantiated note was discovered.

Now, in normal investigative law-enforcement practices, would it be standard operating procedure to redirect significant resources and funding based on unsubstantiated information? I highly doubt it.

Bear in mind that this is the third time since April, 2008 that an anonymous note has been discovered indicating that a zip gun was in the possession of an inmate. In April 2008, the entire institution was searched, resulting in lots of overtime for the guards, but a zip gun was never found. In the second instance, a similar note was discovered but no search was performed — but this was likely a function of senior administration in Sacramento not allowing the massive expenditure of resources and loss of revenue (from the Prison Industry Authority) that a search causes. In this most recent instance, CDCR administration is making sure that revenue-generating functions like PIA are still going strong, which is indicative of how seriously the note was taken by the administration.

Think about what the alleged anonymous note said:

“three shells.”

Now, I find it very unlikely than an inmate would us the word “shells.” We would much more likely say “bullets.” It seems to me that a person who would use that terminology has either law-enforcement or military experience, which supports the argument that it was a staff member who planted the anonymous note. I would be curious to know whether or not CDCR will try and lift fingerprints from the note to see whether or not an inmate actually touched the paper — or are they afraid of what the fingerprint results may turn up?

At the end of the day, the CDCR has a long-standing history of only instituting measures detrimental to the inmate population when unsubstantiated and unverified information crosses the staff’s desk. Such information serves their purpose, which is to redirect staff and implement overtime situations that are beneficial to CDCR employees. That information becomes gospel.

Remember the swine flu? CDCR discontinued visiting for fear of spreading the disease — yet continued transfers between institutions and had every other program running, specifically the PIA — which, of course, makes CDCR money.

I would really like to see Sen. Mark Leno or Assemblymember Tom Ammiano or some media outlet call CSP Solano and question their “modified” program. After all, it’s your money that’s being wasted.

Hmm … I wonder if they could have paid the salary of a grade-school teacher for a year with the money that was wasted on this one “modified” program?

Honduras: Nostalgia for the gorillas

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By John Ross

MEXICO CITY (July 9th) — The June 28th coup d’etat in Honduras that toppled leftist president Mel Zelaya invokes nostalgia for the bad old days of the “gorillas” — generals and strongmen who overthrew each other with reckless abandon and the tacit complicity of Washington during the last half of the past century.

Perched on a hillside in the Mexican outback, we would tune in to these “golpes de estado,” as they are termed in Latin America, on our Zenith Transoceanic short wave. First, a harried announcer would report rumors of troop movement and the imposition of a “toque de queda” (curfew.) Hours of dead air (and probably dead announcers) would follow and then the martial music would strike up, endless tape loops of military marches and national anthems. Within a few days, the stations would be back up as if nothing had happened. Only the names of the generals who ruled the roost had changed.

Guatemala was the Central American republic par excelencia for such “golpes.” Perhaps the most memorable was the overthrow of General Jacobo Arbenz by Alan Dulles’s CIA in 1954 after Arbenz sought to expropriate and distribute unused United Fruit land. Like Mel Zelaya, the general was shaken rudely awake by soldiers and booted out of the country in his underwear.

Coups in Guatemala continued unabated throughout the 1970s and ’80s. General Efrain Rios Montt, the first Evangelical dictator in Latin America, who had come to power in a coup himself, was overthrown in 1983 by the bloodthirsty Romeo Lucas, a much-decorated general. In 1993, the Guatemalan military brought down civilian president Jorge Elias Serrano, the last gasp of the Gorillas until Zelaya was deposed last week. It has been 15 years since the generals have risen in arms in Central America.

Zelaya’s overthrow has stimulated generalized repugnance throughout the world. The Organization of American States, the General Assembly of the United Nations, the European Union, virtually every regional organization in the Western Hemisphere, and the presidents of 33 Latin American republics have condemned the Honduran Gorillas — yet U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can’t quite get her plumped-up lips around the word “coup,” preferring to describe the low-jinx in Tegucigalpa as an “interruption of democracy” or some such euphemistic flapdoodle.

One wonders what descriptives Hillary would have deployed if she and Bill had been aroused from a deep snooze in the White House master bedroom on a Sunday morning by gun-toting troops and put on the first plane for Ottawa in their pajamas?

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

There was plenty in the long New York Times Magazine cover story profile of Gavin Newsom to induce the Technicolor yawn. But the sentence I found most offensive was buried after the jump, down at the bottom of a page of type: "While generally considered a liberal by people outside of San Francisco, Newsom has not shied from confronting the left with tough love."

Say, what?

Whenever you read something in the Almighty Times that uses terms like "generally considered," you need to stop and think. Considered by whom? And what the hell does the Times mean by "liberal?"

You can define that word any way you want — Wikipedia has a long history, and outlines the difference between the classical liberalism of John Locke, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo (much of which we would now call libertarianism) and the social liberalism of the postwar era. I think any honest definition, though, rests in significant part on the notion that unregulated free markets are not always the best way to allocate resources, that government has a role in helping the needy, and, perhaps most important, that one of the primary functions of government is to reallocate income and resources to increase equality — that is, to tax the rich to feed the poor.

Liberalism got a bad name in the 1960s, particularly when it was used to apply to politicians like Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, who had the right ideas about using exceptionally high taxes on the very rich (the marginal rate in that era was more than 70 percent) to fund programs like the Great Society, but were utterly wrong about the Vietnam War and the use of U.S. military force abroad. And in the 1970s and 1980s, liberal politicians like Phil and John Burton in San Francisco became way too close to the real estate developers.

But words have to mean something, or the whole gig is over. And, as far as I’m concerned, a mayor who refuses to raise taxes to cover a huge budget deficit, and instead cuts wholesale from programs that help the poor, is not by any definition a "liberal."

He’s not terribly good at "tough love," either.

The Times uses his implementation of Care Not Cash as an example — the program, the magazine says, "essentially ended direct payments to homeless people and put the money into service agencies instead." Not exactly true — Newsom ended direct payments to homeless people, but the "care" part of the package was never really there. And it’s all gone in this latest budget. That’s not tough love — it’s just tough.

The idea that Mayor Newsom of San Francisco is a good liberal who is still willing to challenge the left every now and then is just mythology. Newsom (generally, to use the Times’ favorite word here) has no relations whatsoever with the left. That fact might help him in the campaign — Californians as a whole are not as progressive as San Franciscans. But let’s at least be honest about it.

And of course, the lavish story is another sign that the Newsom campaign is rolling ahead very nicely. "The fact that a national newspaper of the stature of the Times decides that Gavin Newsom is the story in the governor’s race is certainly a plus," Eric Jaye, Newsom’s chief political advisor, told me. I’d say that’s a bit of an understatement. *

Capitalmania

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a&eletters@sfg.com

REVIEW UC Santa Barbara sociology professor William I. Robinson was recently in the news for having the temerity to criticize the Israeli military’s assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Right-wing groups including the ADL orchestrated a campaign attacking Robinson with the implication that any criticism of Israel’s military abuses in the occupied territories somehow equates to anti-Semitism.

It would be nice if Robinson also received some press for the incredibly rich body of work he has produced in his career. His current volume Latin America and Global Capitalism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 440 pages, $55) is an important book for anyone interested in where our imperiled planet is headed. Robinson, author of the brilliant 1996 study of U.S. foreign aid Promoting Polyarchy, is admirably thorough in his overview of the direction capitalism has taken in Latin America since the 1970s. Robinson uses research from years of on-the-ground work, and sifts through rafts of data to map out how neoliberal trade agreements and other mechanisms for greasing the machine of global commerce have increased profits for global elites while deeply disrupting traditional patterns of life and balance with the natural world.

One glaring example Robinson focuses on is the shift toward intensive farming of soy, which has massively displaced small farmers and production of dairy, fruit trees, horticulture, and other grains. Soy production is now much more profitable than food production for local consumption — hence malnutrition is on the rise in soy producing areas.

Plans for expansion of biofuel production, Robinson writes, "could well obliterate small and medium producers and consolidate a new empire of corporate agribusiness, biotechnology, chemical and pharmaceutical TNCs [transnational corporations] in South America. The ecological devastation would undermine any gains in terms of a reduction in carbon-based fuels, and we would face a situation — absolutely absurd from any social logic yet consistent with the logic of capital — in which cars would replace human beings as the main consumers of world cereal output."

In addition to these new agro-exports, Latin America and Global Capitalism analyzes the spread of maquiladoras, the transnational tourist industry, exported labor, and remittances from abroad sent home. Robinson makes no bones about being a politically engaged academic, or of shaping his thorough, rigorous work with the intent of it being useful for popular progressive struggles. His sentiments are clearly with the indigenous resistance movements he chronicles in Latin America, as well as the immigrants’ rights movement in the United States and the continuing Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. The ruling elites have their well-funded, right-marching think tanks churning out public intellectuals cultivated to defend the status quo. Grassroots radicals need more like William Robinson.

Bending toward oblivion

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culture@sfbg.com

Gay liberation changed Martin Duberman’s life. In the 1960s, Duberman taught history at Princeton, hardly a bastion of radical thought. Yet he found himself invigorated by nascent counterculture movements and became a champion of the left, penning essays in The New York Times and serving as faculty advisor to the Princeton chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. At the same time, Duberman spent years in intensive psychotherapy in desperate attempts to "cure" his homosexuality. Soon after the emergence of the gay liberation movement, however, he rejected this homophobic vision and embraced a gay identity. His work also became queerer.

Over the years, he has written more than 20 books — biographies, plays, memoirs, history texts, and a novel — on a wide range of topics ranging from antislavery activism to the civil rights movement and Stonewall. His new book, Waiting to Land: A (Mostly) Political Memoir, 1985-2008 (The New Press 352 pages, $26.95), is a combination of diary entries and recollections from the Reagan years to the present. This latest work serves as a window into Duberman’s activist and scholarly careers, as well as his critiques of the mainstreaming of the gay and lesbian movement.

SFBG We’re approaching the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the symbolic event of early gay liberation, and I’m wondering if you think there’s any of this liberationist spirit left in the gay movement.

Martin Duberman Well, I guess it depends on how you define liberationist. In the early days, gay liberationists were aware of a great many other ills in the society besides their own. Their own were real, and they were well aware of that. But there was a lot wrong, they felt, with the system, and their central goal was to challenge many of the established institutions and values. Today most LGBT people seem to think of themselves — certainly they tell the mainstream — as "just folks," except for this little matter of a separate sexual orientation. That they’re patriotic Americans and they want the same things that everybody else wants, etc.

SFBG In Waiting to Land, you cover this assimilationist turn in the gay movement. You talk about the March on Washington in 1993 where gays in the military became the dominant issue. You also talk about Stonewall 25, which happened one year later in New York City, where one of the biggest fundraising events was held onboard a U.S. aircraft carrier, and where corporate sponsorship arguably overwhelmed any celebration of resistance, history, or culture. Has anything changed in the last 15 years?

MD The early ’70s were still fueled by the countercultural movement of the ’60s, and the early gay movement built on the insights and the demands of, say, the feminist movement or the antiwar movement. I mean there was so much going on in the ’60s, and together it all amounted to a challenge to the so-called experts. There was an across-the-board challenging of many traditional views, so finally that began to seep down, or up — whatever it is — to us. That’s the whole trouble, I think, with the assimilationist turn. It denies our own gay past and our culture and our politics. I mean, they’re willing to throw all that away in order to make stronger the claim that we’re just folks.

SFBG And do you feel like mainstream gay people have become more heterosexualized? I mean in that particular way of embracing long-term committed partnership, monogamy, or now even marriage, as the only type of love or intimacy that’s valid?

MD Yeah. Once again, the banner of lifetime monogamous pair-bonding has been raised. Now some of that is the result of AIDS, in which people were scared to death, so they settled down into so-called permanent relationships. Not everybody. But many more than had done so in the ’70s.

SFBG When you talk about AIDS in Waiting to Land, it punctures the style of your writing. You’ll be writing something that’s more ruminative, and then you’ll have three or four sentences about a friend who died or a series of friends who died, and then you go back into your thoughts about something outside of that.

MD I think that’s right. It’s why I put that subtitle in. I say "mostly political," because when it came to the death of friends, I did talk about my personal feelings, and my sadness, whereas most of the time in Waiting to Land I’m talking about external events or public policies.

SFBG You yourself have played a role as both an insider and outsider in a variety of realms. In Waiting to Land, you deliver scathing critiques of the rigid hierarchies and competitive structures of academia. You talk about the homophobia of the straight left, and you talk about the limited agenda of the gay mainstream. You talk about the exclusiveness of establishment theatre and mainstream media. Yet you’ve also worked inside all these structures. So I’m wondering how these institutions have formed your politics and how you’ve helped to form or transform these institutions.

MD [W.E.B.] Du Bois, the great African American leader, once said something — I think he called it double vision. He said that although he had had a superb education and was accepted by mainstream whites, nonetheless he felt he was a spy in the culture, a spy who was bringing the news about the mainstream back to his own people. And on one level, I have had a very easy time passing — I went to very good schools, I was on the tennis team in high school, etc. Nobody, I think, or very few people, guessed that I was in fact homosexual, and I did my best to play along with that. I was very career-oriented, I was very competitive — I always wanted to be first in my class, win the best prize for an essay, and that’s where most of my energy went throughout my 20s. But then once the counterculture began, I sort of leapt on it. I was immediately sympathetic, and I wrote lots of essays during the ’60s in which I was very strongly on the side of the New Left. And then it took a while longer after that before I realized that of course the same applies to being gay.

SFBG In terms of your role as both insider and outsider, do you feel that that’s helped you to develop stronger critiques of all those institutions, whether on the straight left, in the gay mainstream, or in establishment theater and media?

MD I think so, because I knew the inner workings of many of these mainstream institutions, and so I was able to see the falsity of many of the attitudes, especially toward people who are not middle-class whites. White men, I should say.

SFBG I think one thing you’ve tried very deliberately throughout your career, whether as a writer, an academic, or an activist, is to build movement ties across lines of class, race, gender, and age. In the new book, you talk about trying to bring an awareness of queer and feminist issues into the straight left, and an awareness of race and class into the gay mainstream — and feeling mostly like you’ve failed.

MD I think it’s because the mainstream left is no more receptive — they all claim that, "well of course we believe you people should have your rights, and of course we’re tolerant of your lifestyle." But when it comes right down to it, you cannot get them to hang around long enough to listen to the ways in which queer values and perspectives might inform their own lives. They don’t believe that for a second. And that hasn’t changed at all. At least, if it has changed, I haven’t seen it.

SFBG And what about in terms of the other side of the equation? With the dominant agendas of the big gay institutions centering on marriage, military service, ordination into the priesthood, adoption, and unquestioning gentrification and consumerism, do you think that those particular emphases prevent a deeper analysis of structural issues of racism and classism?

MD Well, of course they do. Mainstream America is still further behind the gay movement in dealing with any of those issues. So when you’re bending your energy to turning into the mainstream, you’re simultaneously burying your awareness of the class and racial and economic divisions that continue to characterize our country.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) is the author, most recently, of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights) and the editor of an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull).

Mr. Prez — just don’t fuck things up worse

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By Tim Redmond

I heard a lot of discussion on KQED’s Forum this morning about President Obama and his affronts to the queer community, and several callers — all folks who claimed to be “supportive of the the LGBT community” — suggested that the president is doing the right thing by taking it slow. First, he has to fix the economic mess, restore the banking system, put about 10 million people back to work, close the Guantanamo Bay torture chamber and create a national health-care system. Then, after he takes a little nap and has a nice healthy snack, he can get to work on human rights and equality.

Bill Clinton, one caller said, screwed everything up by moving too fast; his health-insurance reform collapsed, Congress wouldn’t go along with allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, and before long, the Republicans were kicking his ass all over Washington.

I know the song: A president only has a certain amount of political capital, and he can’t just go flinging it all around at once. And he needs Congress for his health plan, and overturning the Defense of Marriage Act or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell could alienate those same moderates who might be the swing votes on health reform. He also has to deal with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district may include the single largest concentration of active queer people in the United States, but who long gave up representing San Francisco. She’s more worried about electing Democrats in conservative districts to keep her majority and her power — and if that means lesbian and gay people have to go the back of the bus for a while, oh well. That’s politics.

But there are so many things Obama could do, right now, without Congress (and without making a big fuss) that would make a huge difference to the queer community. He can’t get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — but as commander in chief, he can simply order the office of the Judge Advocate General of each of the services to suspend indefinately all prosecutions seeking to discharge service members for homosexuality. The military doesn’t do everything right, but the one thing the leaders of that august institution understand is taking orders. Just tell them to stop kicking gay people out — and not to make a big deal of it. Then the problem will at least be something we can ignore while Obama is taking his sweet time and collecting political chits to deal with it properly.

Same thing with DOMA. I don’t know who exactly approved the legal brief defending that law — and I suspect somehow that Obama himself never read it — but that shit has to go. Just withdraw that brief, submit another one that doesn’t compare homosexuality to incest (and that’s kind of badly written and not particularly persuasive), and hope to god the government loses.

Yeah, the president ought to stand up publicly for equality — and unlike Willie Brown, who thinks that’s never going to happen, I suspect it will. By the end of his first term, he’ll come around. But in the meantime, Mr. President, remember the Hippocratic Oath of politics: First, don’t fuck things up worse.

PE credit for JROTC up tonight

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Editors note: The San Francisco School Board will vote tonight on a convoluted plan to allow physical education credit for JROTC. Since the military-recruitment program doesn’t meet state standards for PE, the board is trying a runaround — students would get “independent study” gym credit if they sign up for JROTC.

Marc Norton, who has been in the forefront of the opposition to JROTC, sent us this commentary:

by Marc Norton

Right-wing Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders jumped into the JROTC end-game with an opinion piece on Sunday. In April, Saunders, who endorsed John McCain for President, opined that “In Obamaland… the left chants, ‘torture doesn’t work…’ But common sense tells you that techniques like sleep deprivation [and] waterboarding… work, at least some times.”

In her latest rant, Saunders recounts the pro-JROTC mythology at length, but her real play is to torture the truth with the claim that the California Board of Education has “said local school districts have the authority to offer PE [physical education] credits for JROTC.”

What the California Board of Education actually did was revise its Physical Education Framework to say that JROTC classes “may not” meet PE standards, instead of “do not” meet PE standards. But, “if a district desires to award physical education credit for courses such as JROTC, marching band, cheerleading, and drill, it is the responsibility of the district to determine how each particular course, as conducted in its district, supports a course of study for grades nine through twelve… and substantially meets the objectives and criteria” for state PE curriculum and credentialing requirements.

Those who have followed the JROTC story know that bipartisan efforts in the state Legislature have tightened up PE standards in recent years because of the crisis of physical fitness among our youth, particularly low-income youth and youth of color. That is why PE credit has been withdrawn from JROTC programs all over the state, including San Francisco.

In fact, a recent report from San Diego compared physical fitness records of students who took PE and those who did not. Fitnessgram results for JROTC students actually declined during the same period that results for students in PE increased. The Fitnessgram is the test students generally take in the 9th or 10th grade to show their progress in physical education.

Dystopian enterprise

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Best-selling author Richard North Patterson stays out of the local limelight, but he’s a San Francisco resident — and we caught up with him May 21st to talk about his new book, Eclipse, and the role that U.S. oil companies play in Nigeria.

Before Nigerian environmental activist (and Goldman Environmental Prize winner) Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged in 1995, PEN, the international writers’ group, wrote letters and organized protests against the execution. "I was very impressed by Saro-Wiwa," says Patterson, who was on the board of PEN at the time. He notes that Saro-Wiwa was a nonviolence advocate who succeeded in building a grassroots movement among the Ogoni in the Nigerian delta — all in the face of a ruthless dictator, and at great risk to his wife.

As Patterson recalls, despite the protests, several Western governments voicing their concerns, and then-President Bill Clinton’s hour-long conversation with Nigeria’s military dictator Gen. Sani Abacha, "They unceremoniously hung Saro-Wiwa. It was a lesson in a number of things, beginning with the degree to which oil makes autocrats feel impervious."

Post- 9/11, oil "security" became a bigger concern. Patterson began to realize that amid the U.S. failures in the Middle East, the disaster in Iraq, and the growing fear of al Qaeda, everyone was looking at Nigeria as an even more important source of oil.

"Meanwhile Nigeria’s environment was that much more ruined, its political leadership hopelessly corrupt, a semi-official militia that claimed to be acting in Saro-Wiwa’s name was killing each other and stealing oil, and everyone had a fee," says Patterson. "It was a classic example of how a natural resource makes its extractors and the rulers rich, but only serves as a source of misery for people standing on the ground. I already felt that Saro-Wiwa was a remarkable man who should be remembered. But now he was becoming even more relevant."

Patterson began researching Saro-Wiwa’s life, a quest that involved one trip to Nigeria and many conversations with lots of related experts. "Nigeria is not a place to go back and forth to — you’d think I was trying to break into Las Vegas," he says, noting that he hired security during his trip. "I’m not unknown, so there was a concern I’d be a high-value target. But I loved the Nigerians I met. They were a bright enterprising bunch in a dystopian setting, and to the extent I couldn’t go places, I did all I could by talking to people, reading articles, and watching films."

The name of Eclipse‘s protagonist is Bobby Okari. Was Patterson making reference to President Barack Obama? "If I was, it was subliminal," he says.

So what can Americans do to improve the plight of everyday Nigerians? "Increasing our independence from oil and increasing our foreign aid to Nigeria would be helpful," Patterson says. "The real problem is the extent to which human rights are trumped by self-interest. When we fill up our tanks, half of us don’t know that there’s oil in Nigeria. So first we need to become aware of the impact of the commodities we need. But I’m not sanguine about how easy this is. Saro-Wiwa was hung and 14 years later, where are we? The same place, and that’s a disgrace."

While Patterson does not excuse what he calls "the callousness of the U.S. oil companies," he believes that first we must address the Nigerian government.

"The history of the oil industry in Nigeria is pretty ignoble, but [without the industry] they can’t maintain the schools, roads, hospitals, and clinics," he says. "If the government doesn’t give a damn, it’s hard to make a quasi-government out of an oil company. When we get angry at the oil companies, it begs the question, What is the government doing? If it isn’t encouraging economic development and environmental protection, how can the oil companies? Shell and Chevron didn’t invent corruption. This is in no way to defend them. [But] there is a disconnect between Nigeria’s miserable government and its citizens. One of my central aspirations is to tell an entertaining story — and also to convey an awareness of a real problem."

Total ‘Eclipse’

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

REVIEW Mass market novels of the mystery and thriller kind are not known for their progressive politics. The most popular authors of the political adventure set are the likes of Tom Clancy, who thinks we’re still at war with Japan and ought to be at war with China. The detective novelists tend to glorify law enforcement and disparage those weak-willed sorts who would rein in the mighty and righteous gun-wielding police. My favorite new character, Jack Reacher, who has made Lee Child a massive international best-selling writer, is a former military cop with a taste for violent vengeance.

But of course I read this stuff. It’s my guilty pleasure, what I do to relax over with my whiskey before bed, while my beloved partner is watching Super Nanny. As Pete Townshend used to say, each to his own sewage.

I’ve read almost everything San Francisco resident Richard North Patterson has written, and he’s a rarity. His stuff tends to go in a more liberal direction. (It also tends to have a subplot involving teenage sex.) He’s written about the death penalty and the criminal justice system and American politics, and his characters have more depth than John Grisham’s. I like him, but I’ve never raved.

But I do want to recommend Patterson’s latest book, Eclipse (Henry Holt and Co., 384 pages, $26). Not because it’s the most brilliant writing he’s ever written, but because it’s a real-life political novel that reveals, in graphic detail, the impact oil companies like Chevron Corp. have on the Niger River delta. Eclipse is a fictionalized account of the life of Ken Saro-Wiwa, an eloquent and charismatic environmentalist who tried desperately to tell the world how oil money had corrupted Nigeria and how the Western oil companies were conspiring with the brutal dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha to stifle dissent. He was hanged 15 years ago by Abacha; his legacy drives the protest movement that is still trying to force the petrolords to take responsibility for what they have done to the delta environment, its tribal residents, and the Nigerian people. Eclipse didn’t put me to sleep — it made me mad. It reminded me of what American companies are allowed to do to the rest of the world, with impunity. It’s a story, with Patterson’s typical devices (for example, I don’t have any reason to believe Saro-Wiwa’s wife had an affair with his lawyer). But there’s enough truth in it to make you think. And that makes Patterson’s novel, in a unique and surprising way, an important political book.

ChevWrong

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news@sfbg.com

When Chevron Corp. holds its annual shareholders meeting at its San Ramon headquarters May 27, its top executives are expected to give investors a glowing report on how this global enterprise came to rake in a profit of $23.9 billion last year — a staggering 28.1 percent increase over the past year.

As Chevron CEO Dave O’Reilly put it in the company’s annual report, 2008 was "a momentous year." Apparently O’Reilly will also claim that his company’s activities are improving people’s lot worldwide. "Energy," he writes, "is not a luxury — it’s the foundation for economic growth. By investing in the future, we’re creating value not only for our stakeholders, but we’re also building economic prosperity around the globe."

But O’Reilly’s high opinion of his company is not shared by a growing coalition of groups who believe that Chevron’s fifth consecutive year of record profits was earned, once again, at the cost of degrading the environment and its poorest communities, both here in Richmond and further afield, from the Amazon and Nigeria to Iraq and Kazakhastan.

Critics, who include what they describe as "a coalition of those directly affected by Chevron’s operations, political control, consumer abuse, and false promises," planned to hold a May 26 press conference to release The True Cost of Chevron, an alternative annual report that seeks to provide Chevron shareholders "with the most comprehensive exposé of Chevron’s operations — and the communities in struggle against them — ever compiled," according to the report’s authors.

The study includes reports from Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, the Gulf Coast, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Utah, Washington, D.C, and Wyoming as well as Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, and the Philippines.

The next day, people carrying shareholder proxies intend to enter Chevron’s annual meeting to discuss the report with shareholders while a protest is held at Chevron’s front gates.

"Chevron’s 2008 annual report is a glossy celebration of the company’s most profitable year in its history, and one in which CEO David O’Reilly became the 15th highest paid U.S. chief executive, with nearly $50 million in total 2008 compensation," the authors state. "What Chevron’s annual report does not tell its shareholders is the true cost paid for those financial returns or the global movement gaining voice and strength against Chevron’s abuses."

The 44-page report details numerous lawsuits against the company, nationally and around the world — cases, the report’s authors claim, that have "potential liabilities in excess of Chevron’s total revenue from 2008, posing a material threat to shareholder value and the company’s bottom line."

As they wrote: "When a company operates in blatant disregard for the health, security, livelihood, safety, and environment of communities within which it operates, there can be real financial repercussions."

The report concludes with six specific obligations demanded of Chevron and leaves shareholders with the following message: "Chevron is right. The world will continue to use oil as it transitions to a sustainable green renewable energy economy. Whether Chevron will be in business as we make the transition depends upon what sort of company it chooses to be and whether the public is willing to support it."

The report also includes a series of large "ChevWrong Inhumane Energy ads" that spoof Chevron’s Human Energy ad campaign — images that popped up all across San Francisco last week after a group of renegade Chevron critics gathered at an secret location, mixed batches of wheat paste, and grabbed armfuls of the freely downloadable posters and set off into the night to bomb the city streets with the series of subvertisements.

Claiming that Chevron’s Human Energy campaign, which depicts smiling people alongside phrases like "I will try to leave the car at home more" is an attempt to greenwash the petro-giant’s activities, this group of mostly youthful critics pointed to the ongoing pollution, human rights abuses, and wars in regions where the oil company is stationed as they set off on bicycles, skateboards, and foot, armed with glue rollers and stacks of "ChevWrong" images. Some stashed their tools in Banana Republic shopping bags, which gave them an almost comical air of being disoriented tourists as they lurked and lingered on city street corners searching for suitable spots to paste their alternative ad campaign.

Soon newspaper racks on Market Street, pillars outside the Ferry Building, buildings in the Richmond District, and walls in North Beach bore the fruits of their work — along with the glass office door of public relations consultant Sam Singer, who represented Chevron in criticizing two renowned Ecuadorian environmental activists who were in town to receive the Goldman Prize.

"I will not complain about my asthma," states one such subversive ad, which depicts a beautiful but non-smiling young black man beside the claim that "Chevron’s refinery in Richmond, Calif. poisons the community." The ad is accompanied by a retooled logo that says "ChevWrong."

"I will try not to get cancer," states another that hot glue artists had affixed to Sandra Bullocks’ buttocks — or at least a life-sized depiction of the actress featured on a Market Street billboard promoting The Proposal.

"I will suffer in silence" states another, alongside the claim that Chevron props up Burma’s military dictatorship.

An ad reading "I will give my baby contaminated water" portrayed a smiling Nigerian woman alongside the claim that Chevron refuses to clean up its mess in Nigeria.

One activist told the Guardian she got involved "because Chevron is poisoning communities and cutting corners across the world, and is even shameless enough to do that here in Richmond."

Another said he was inspired to take this action because of a billion-dollar lawsuit Chevron is fighting in Ecuador, and because of its activities in Nigeria.

Others said they decided to drop the subvertisements all over the city after they heard that CBS Outdoor refused May 14 to sell the group space for the images on billboards citywide.

As they noted, the images are all freely downloadable from truecostofchevron.com, a site supported by Amazon Watch, Crude Accountability, Global Exchange, Justice in Nigeria Now, Rainforest Action Network, CorpWatch, Filipino-American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Trustees for Alaska, Communities for a Better Environment, Mpalabanda, Richmond Progressive Alliance, and EarthRights International.

Mitch Anderson, corporate accountability campaigner with Amazon Watch, confirmed that members of the truecostofchevron coalition approached CBS Outdoor but were told that CBS has a policy not to run negative or attack ads — a claim Anderson found laughable. "What about all the attack ads we see posted during election season?"

A CBS Outdoor spokesperson confirmed that CBS had refused to accept the proposed ad campaign, and that it is the company’s policy not to run negative or attack ads.

Calls to Rachel Sutton, Chevron PR person at its corporate headquarters in San Ramon, seeking comments about truecostofchevron’s charges remained unanswered as of press time.

But at Amazon Watch, Anderson said he thought it was "great that the Bay Area community took to the streets this week to tell Chevron that our hearts and minds are not for sale.

"Chevron is trying to paper-over its widespread human rights and environmental problems across the world by spending millions to propagate insulting lies," he continued. "From its disaster in Ecuador to its hiring of global warming deniers as lobbyists, this company has shown complete disregard for the environment, human rights, and yes, wisdom. Chevron is on the wrong side of history. Just as there can be no social justice on a dead planet, Chevron should know that you can’t profit off a dead planet either."

In a final swipe at Chevron’s Human Energy campaign, critics are distributing posters that ask "Will you join us?" and show a woman smiling alongside the promise "I will protest Chevron."

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

It was not what you’d call a banner day in the big leagues. On May 12, the progressives — who celebrated sweeping victories in last fall’s election — lost three significant battles, leaving me more than a little nervous about the upcoming epic fight over Mayor Newsom’s 2009-10 budget.

In separate votes, with different members going the wrong way each time, the Board of Supervisors sided with Newsom on a private deal to build a solar-power project in the Sunset District, then approved his Muni service cuts and fare hikes.

And while the final Muni vote was going on at City Hall, the School Board was meeting nearby and voting to restore a military recruiting program to the public high schools.

This is not what any of us had in mind during last fall’s campaigns.

The vote to approve the Recurrent Energy project came early in the day and left me shaking my head. The idea was fine — build solar panels on the Sunset Reservoir — but the contract the mayor’s Public Utilities Commission put forth was full of serious problems. For starters, nobody was ever able to explain why the city never looked seriously at a way to build the project itself instead of giving the land to a private, for-profit company that will charge very high rates for the power. It was the kind of deal you’d expect the fiscal conservatives to wince at, but no: Sean Elsbernd was all in favor.

That left Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos to raise the questions about this use of public resources and public money. The problems should have been hammered out in committee, and the deal amended before it ever came to the board. But to my surprise, John Avalos voted with Carmen Chu to pass it out of Budget and Finance.

Then, again to my surprise, Eric Mar broke with the progressive bloc and sided with the Newsom camp to approve the thing.

I wasn’t thrilled with the outcome, but you can’t win ’em all — and I figured that at least the Muni fare hikes were going down. After all, Board President David Chiu had done an outstanding job of challenging Muni on its assumptions and its spending on plans, and was leading the charge to reject the budget. Six other supervisors signed on to his move.

Then the backroom talks started — right in the middle of the board meeting. The Mayor’s Office offered a few tidbits, but insisted that the fare hikes and service cuts had to be passed or the entire city budget would be out of whack. And to my surprise, in the end, Chiu blinked. He voted to table his own resolution, effectively approving the Muni plan.

What was missing in all of this, I think, was visible progressive leadership. Chiu has done some good things, but he’s still very new — and in this case, he didn’t stand up to the mayor. I think that’s partially experience, learning how Newsom plays the game and realizing that you can’t let him threaten you or push you around, that compromise is fine and open communications are great, but that in the end, the supervisors have to call their own shots.

And there’s nobody else on this board stepping into that role right now.

The progressive majority on the board is fractious, but that’s always going to be the case. The reason there’s no left-wing "machine" in San Francisco, and never will be, is that people on the left are always too independent and too unwilling to be herded. There’s still room, though — and now, a desperate need — for leadership, for someone who can be the majority whip and make sure the six votes are there when we need them.

If the progressives can’t stick together on Newsom’s budget, it’s going to be a long, and painful, year.

I wish Mark Sanchez had decided to stay on the School Board instead of running for supervisor. He would have been re-elected, and either Jill Wynns or Rachel Norton would have lost, and this whole JROTC fiasco would never have happened.

There are plenty of problems in the schools, plenty of issues for the board to work on, and with the deep budget problems, it’s going to be important for the members to work together. The decision by Wynns and Norton to dredge up a done issue and drag it back before the board was needless and wrong.

I’m way against JROTC in the schools, but even some of the people who ended up supporting it — like board member Norman Yee — never wanted to see it back before the board again. Now we’re going to be fighting over this for months to come. There may be litigation, and it didn’t need to happen.

Now any hope of finding an alternative leadership program that doesn’t involve the military is gone for at least the next two years, and we’re stuck with the Army as part of our high school curriculum.

Not a banner day, folks. Not a banner day. *

Sachs: Peace Through Development

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Here is an installment from Jeffrey D. Sachs’ monthly commentary: Economics and Justice available exclusively on the Project Syndicate news series. Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also a Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.

Peace Through Development

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

New York – American foreign policy has failed in recent years mainly because the United States relied on military force to address problems that demand development assistance and diplomacy. Young men become fighters in places like Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan because they lack gainful employment. Extreme ideologies influence people when they can’t feed their families, and when lack of access to family planning leads to an unwanted population explosion. President Barack Obama has raised hopes for a new strategy, but so far the forces of continuity in US policy are dominating the forces of change.

Crash landings

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news@sfbg.com

As the U.S. military wrestles with President Barack Obama’s plan to expand the war in Afghanistan while reducing its presence in Iraq, there’s a mounting cost on the home front for the 1.9 million soldiers who have been deployed to those conflicts and are now beginning the often difficult transition back to civilian life.

Inadequate stateside mental health and other veterans’ services has been serious problem for years (see "Soldier’s heart, 12/22/04). A report in January 2008 by the RAND Corp. titled "Invisible Wounds of War" found that nearly 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, and that an additional 19 percent experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed. But only slightly more than half of these returning veterans seek treatment that RAND called "minimally adequate."

The report estimated that PTSD and depression will cost the nation $6.2 billion in the two years following deployment, but also estimated that investing in more high-quality treatment — and thus lowering the rates of suicide and lost productivity among veterans — could reduce those costs by $2 billion within two years. Modern life-saving and protective technologies and repeated deployments appear to be making the problem worse now than in previous wars.

"Early evidence suggests the psychological toll of the deployments may be disproportionately high compared with physical injuries," the report stated, concluding that a national effort is needed to expand and improve the capacity of the health care system and to encourage veterans to seek this care.

That national picture is reflected in San Francisco. Judi Cheary of San Francisco’s Department of Veteran Affairs medical clinic said that 25 percent of the service members they see returning from Afghanistan and Iraq receive a mental health diagnosis.

Keith Armstrong, the clinic’s PTSD counselor and a professor of psychiatry at University of California-San Francisco, noted that veterans often have a diagnosis that includes depression and PTSD, or substance abuse and PTSD. "So they may be struggling with many problems," said Armstrong, who wrote Courage After Fire: Coping Strategies for Troops Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and Their Families (Ulysses Press, 2005). "Others simply have adjustment challenges from being in combat."

For instance, traffic can be difficult for returning service members who drove in combat conditions, where explosives were a constant concern. "They are scanning the environment because that’s what kept them safe in combat, or pushing the steering wheel when a friend is driving, trying to move from one lane to another," he explained.

According to V.A. data, California has the third-highest number of veterans in the nation. In Northern California, most live in the Central Valley, leaving some San Francisco vets feeling isolated. "There’s a lot of talk about supporting the troops, which is nice, but it’s intellectual," Armstrong said. "Here people may not disclose that a family member is in war, not because they’re afraid people will spit on him, but because they are afraid that people will say dumb things."

His clinic has seen an increase in these veterans in the past year. Armstrong typically sees three clusters of PTSD symptoms: intrusive symptoms (vets can’t get particular images and experiences out of their head); avoidance symptoms (vets believe they don’t have a great future ahead; they feel numb, it’s hard to get close to them); and arousal symptoms (vets are often irritable and angry).

Anger often causes the most problems. "We see more self-destructive and reckless behavior in younger folks," he added. "They have anger, revenge-based fantasies. They know what it’s like to blow someone’s head off or to see it being blown off, so when they get angry, that crosses their mind." But he said that couples and families often talk more about "the numbing" and "the inability to connect."

Armstrong also pointed out that many vets worry about the effect on their career of getting help, and how it looks to others if they do. "That’s due to both their training and age group," he said, noting that 50 percent of soldiers are 17-to-24-year-olds, and 89 percent are male.

"So it’s not just about war, but about the developmental stage of the troops," he said. "It’s an appropriate age to be independent and not get any help. But that, combined with the stigma of asking for help — and if they have PTSD avoidance symptoms — can keep them from going in."

As a result of recent studies showing that PTSD can develop up to five years after discharge, the V.A. extended what was previously a two-year limit in which veterans could get help to a five-year window. They also now have a suicide prevention hotline number for vets: 1-800-273-8255.

"The V.A. overall has made some mistakes, but it has really taken suicide prevention seriously," Armstrong said.

There are nonprofit options as well. Founded in 1974, Swords to Plowshares provides counseling and case management, employment, training, housing, and legal assistance to homeless and low-income veterans.

Equally important, it’s staffed by veterans like Walter Williams, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and has combat-related PTSD, and Tia Christopher, a survivor of military sexual trauma. "The experience of being in a war zone as well, or being sexually assaulted by some one in your own unit, that’s profound," Armstrong said.

As Christopher explained, she and Williams have similar symptoms and attend weekly V.A. appointments to deal with their own mental health issues, between providing services to other veterans at the group’s Howard Street office.

"Pretty much everyone coming back has combat stress and everyone I know has been buying rifles," Christopher said, noting that cleaning guns can be a meditative therapeutic activity for veterans. "Combat stress becomes clinical PTSD when those symptoms don’t go away."

Christopher said women who were in combat and survived military sexual trauma face "a double whammy." Out of the military for more than seven years, Christopher observed that "things get better, but the memories don’t go away."

In 2007 there were more than 2,000 reported military sexual assaults, but only 181 were court-martialed, she said. "So basically survivors are dealing with injustice of nothing happening.

"I used to wish that PTSD gave you purple spots," she added. "That way people would know you had it. Instead, you are left dealing with getting panic attacks all of a sudden and being on edge."

"I call it a flare-up," Williams said. "It’s different each time. Sometimes, when I have to focus and get my mind around something, I’m blank. I feel like I want to cry, but I can’t."

Unlike past generations who openly identified as vets, "this new wave of vets is "more intent on blending in," Williams said. "They’re trying to suppress their symptoms. They don’t want to be seen as weirdos."

Deployed to Iraq and then Afghanistan as a communications specialist in 2004, Williams recalled having to give up his weapon twice and being put on suicide watch. "For a week, they watched me, then they gave me my weapon back."

He’s convinced that the best solutions to the challenges facing this latest wave of PTSD-afflicted vets lie in "listening to stories from the mouths of people with it," he said.

Bobbi Rosenthal, regional coordinator for V.A.’s homeless program, said that an estimated 20 percent of the 6,514 people recorded in San Francisco’s 2009 homeless count are veterans.

Anita Yoskowitz, administrative site manager for the V.A.’s homeless services center on Third Street, said 90 percent of the vets who use the clinic’ showers, laundry facilities, and computer lab have PTSD.

And while many of the center’s clients are still from the Vietnam and Desert Storm era, the average age is starting to come down, she said, as veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan begin to trickle in.

Veterans can come to the clinic every day, but those who are not clean and sober are limited to three times a week. When folks come for medical care, Yoskowitz said, "the clinic is on the look out for mental health problems."

Jacob Hoff, who volunteers at the center’s computer lab, said that from conversations he overhears, it’s clear that coming back is hard. "There’s a lot of survivor’s guilt. I can really tell the young kids who are coming in and learning how to be homeless. The older guys tell them where to go for food."

Donald Fontenot, who enlisted in 1980, was on the computer looking for housing when he shared his story. He enlisted when he was 18 and then messed up his knees jumping out of a C-141 jet, so he understands the stress of no longer being able to perform.

"You are young and strong and then all of a sudden, you can’t do these things," said Fontenot, who was living in his car behind the clinic until it got towed by the police. "So I wound up more homeless."

Currently staying with a friend, Fontenot recalled meeting a Vietnam vet who likes to walk around Golden Gate Park at night with a pistol. "It gives him the feeling of walking around in the jungle," said Fontenot, who is searching for suitable Section 8 housing — another unique challenge for PTSD-afflicted veterans in San Francisco.

For some, the road to recovery leads them from the streets of San Francisco back into the arms of their family. One such local family shared their story with the Guardian and we decided to shield their identities for privacy. Mike recalled the dramatic change he saw in his brother, Joe, who joined the Marines directly after 9/11, after he tore up his shoulder in Iraq.

"His whole mentality, even if he didn’t support the war in Iraq, was of a to-die-for-it Marine," said Mike, recalling the hurt and disappointment in Joe’s voice after he had two surgeries, and couldn’t return with his unit to combat.

Mike said his brother’s state of mind worsen after he had been out of active duty for three years, and that the first signs that his brother might have PTSD were night sweats and an inability to pay attention.

"But how can you expect soldiers to pay attention to isolated thoughts, words, and action, when they are or have been immersed in culture that teaches you to ‘walk, talk, shoot, shit’?" Mike asked.

Joe was homeless in San Francisco for stints in 2007, but never longer than a week. Mike recalled how things came to a head when the two brothers got into a fight one night after Mike closed the bar where he worked.

"Here we are, I’m 30 and he is 28, in a fist fight, and I told [Joe], ‘I think you’re losing your mind.’ And he said, ‘then save me,’ lying on my kitchen floor at four in the morning. But then that was it, no more conversation."

Joe soon checked himself into a couple of private facilities where he berated psychiatrists for not knowing about military combat zones and could always check himself out. "Then he went over to the East Bay, went into a 24-hour Fitness Center to use the shower, got into it with a security guard for trespassing and disorderly conduct, got arrested, and was brought to the V.A.’s PTSD center in Palo Alto," Mike said.

It was at this state-of-the art facility that Joe began to get help, and this year he returned to Chicago, where he is living with family until he returns to school to pursue his master’s degree. Joe’s mother, Betty, said dealing with all this has been minor compared to the prospect of losing her middle son permanently. But she resisted labeling behavior she believes was connected to his imploding marriage and financial problems when he moved to California, as well as to fallout from his injuries in Iraq.

She recalls getting an e-mail from their now former daughter-in law saying, "Joe has been living in the park, camping." Betty said the first year after Joe came back was pretty tough. "We knew the marriage was over. And a couple of times I called two of his real close friends who are Marines, to tough-talk to him. For a period of time, he was acting out, a different person. You could tell something wasn’t right, and yeah, some blamed it on the service."

Asked what she thought of giving vets with PTSD a Purple Heart, an idea the military floated earlier this year, Betty said, "I don’t know. They all have to go through it in some respects. My feelings about why he ended up totally collapsing is that he was trying to do too much on too little. They are over there, building cities and lives for people. Then they get back and find they can’t support their families or themselves. But at least it’s not like when folks came back from Vietnam and were labeled as bums."

Guardian staff writer Sarah Phelan’s son deployed to Iraq in 2007 and returned in April 2008.

State of the movement

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As local antiwar activists continue to oppose the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they are struggling to mobilize popular support under a presidential administration that is less overtly bellicose than the Bush regime.

Antonia Juhasz, author of The Bush Agenda (William Morrow, 2006) and last year’s The Tyranny of Oil (William Morrow), has worked with a number of Bay Area antiwar groups. Over coffee in the Mission District, she said much has changed since President Barack Obama took office.

"It’s an amazing victory for the antiwar movement that we pushed people to elect a president who pledged to end the Iraq war. Now our job is to make that pledge a reality," she said, visibly tired from long work on a report about Chevron Corp.’s profiteering in Iraq and even at home in Richmond, where it’s sued the city to block a voter-approved tax increase.

Juhasz argues that all U.S. troops and contractors should leave Iraq immediately and that all bases be closed. But Obama’s plan includes a slower withdrawal timeline and for some U.S. forces to be left there indefinitely.

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CodePink and Global Exchange, told the Guardian that Obama supporters need to realize that it’s fine to disagree with our first African American president on some policies. She described MoveOn.org, the prominent liberal organization that was a key player in Obama’s campaign, as "very top down," and focused on pro-Obama talking points. "It’s very hard because a lot of groups have become appendages to the administration."

Juhasz feels the antiwar movement needs to better communicate that "the organizing isn’t over when the campaign is over. Even if the leader agrees with you, they still need activists to push them."

But she acknowledges the difficulty of the task. "We want to keep from telling people they’re wrong. They won, which is great. But we need to say ‘You have the responsibility to keep organizing for the issues, not just the individual.’ It’s critically important to see beyond the leader, so it doesn’t become a cult of personality," she said, recalling that "under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, if there wasn’t a mass movement for revolutionary change, there wouldn’t have been a New Deal."

That kind of pressure is clearly not being exerted on Obama. Tom Gallagher, a San Francisco resident active with the Bernal Heights Democratic Club, told us during a March 21 San Francisco demonstration commemorating the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war, "If McCain had been elected there would be many more people here protesting. Obama is using the schedule Bush agreed to on pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq."

Gallagher grew more irked as he said, "Obama has sent 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He’s getting a pass on it, and McCain wouldn’t."

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has continued to agitate against war and for social justice. Richard Becker, ANSWER’s Western Regional Coordinator, told us the relatively low turnout on March 21 was not surprising.

Becker said he sees Obama’s popularity as "elation" over Bush’s exit. But no matter how bad the past or good the intentions of a candidate, once the candidate is elected U.S. president, he said, "the job description is CEO of the Empire." Becker cautioned that it will take time for postelection euphoria to wear off and for people to realize that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are dragging on under Obama.

Local activist David Solnit, a mainstay of Direct Action to Stop the War, works with Courage to Resist, which supports military war resisters. The group also helps recruits fight "stop-loss," which sends soldiers back to Iraq for additional tours of duty without their consent. "Obama said he’s going to change it eventually, but we’re worried about right now," he said.

Courage to Resist organizer Sarah Lazare agrees with Solnit that peace activists should oppose U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Lazare says it’s important to communicate that "Afghanistan is not a good war" and that "terrorism is a tactic" that cannot be destroyed militarily.

"Measuring the number of people at a demonstration is not the only way to measure what’s going on," she said. Among her examples of ongoing, dynamic organizing is the work of Courage to Resist and Iraq Vets Against the War.

IVAW is directly organizing active-duty members of the military to engage in dissent. SF Bay Area chapter member Peter Schlange told us that their ranks are growing as the Iraq war continues.

IVAW is also challenging the Afghanistan buildup. In a recently passed resolution, the antiwar veterans group "calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces in Afghanistan and reparations for the Afghan people, and supports all troops and veterans working towards those ends."

Paul Kawika Martin, organizing and policy director for Peace Action, says his group wants all troops out of Iraq by 2010, with no "residual forces" or contractors left behind. Martin also says it’s important for activists to march and to lobby Congress. He stressed that both Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi lobbied for reform, and U.S. peace activists also need to do so.

Martin feels the peace movement will have an important impact on the new administration. "I don’t think he fears being too liberal," Marin told me. "But he wants to get things done, and like any politician he will be more pragmatic than we want him to be."

Martin said the troop escalation in Afghanistan was a concern for Peace Action. Martin is working with a group of 70 activists, think tanks, and aid workers who make up the Afghanistan Policy Working Group. He points to Reps. Raul Grijalva (now the co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus), Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters as key allies of antiwar activists in Congress. "We need to support them," he told me.

The antiwar movement itself also needs support, given that many of its top activists have been arrested repeatedly in the last six years.

Organizer Stephanie Tang with the World Can’t Wait dismisses hope for Democrats as a trap. She pointed to Nancy Pelosi’s early knowledge of torture and Obama’s recent announcement that the administration would block release of torture photos in the courts. In March 2008, Tang was arrested for allegedly obstructing police at a Berkeley demonstration opposing a military recruiting center.

Walter Riley, Tang’s lawyer, told the Guardian: "It’s my contention they identified Stephanie as a leader and are vioutf8g her constitutional rights to protest an illegal war."

Berkeley police referred inquiries to the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, which had not returned our call at press time. Riley said a Berkeley policeman "blind-sided her," and, holding his club horizontally, slammed Tang off her feet.

Police later attempted to get a statement from Tang while she was receiving medical treatment for injuries sustained during the incident. Berkeley police only later charged her with obstructing police at the march. Tang faces one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

JROTC: Now, the lawyers

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By Tim Redmond

It’s no surprise, really, that the School Board voted to reinstate JROTC last night.. ONce Norman Yee announced he was going to support the program, the deal was done.

By the way: We endorsed Yee in part because he voted not to allow phys ed credit for JROTC, and without PE credit, the program’s going to die eventually anyway because not enough students will sign up. Now, since the state (sort of) claims that JROTC qualifies for credit, Yee says he’s willing to accept that and keep the miitary recruitment program going.

I’m not happy about that, and neither are a lot of other progressives who supported Yee. But for the record, I don’t think Yee would ever have brought this back on his own; it took Rachel Norton and Jill Wynns to do that. And love JROTC or hate it, credit (or blame) for this lies squarely with those two board members.

Not letting Yee off the hook, but facts is facts.

Now then: It’s still not as simple as it seems. Even if Norton is right, and the board’s resolution killing PE credit only covered last year, it’s still not clear that the San Francisco schools can legally award class credit for JROTC. IN most cases, only people who have a state teaching credential are allowed to teach classes for credit in California public schools. The California Department of Education says that JROTC instructors can teach PE wihtout that credential:

JROTC instructors, who have a state and federal credential to teach the military course, would not need a PE credential, said Phil Lafontaine, the department’s director of professional development and curriculum support.

“They’re appropriately credentialed,” he said, even if students are earning PE credit.

But John T. Affedlt, managing attorney for the San Francisco law firm Public Advocates, says that’s completely wrong. In a May 12, 2009 letter to the SFUSD (warning, PDF), he notes:

Mr. Lafontaine’s opinion is not only wrong, it is utterly of no consequence … in California, it is the Commission on Teacher Credntialing (CTC) — not the California Department of Education — which implements and interprets state law regarding what constitutes appropriate credentials.

He adds:

There is no statute authorizing individuals possessing only JROTC credentials to teach PE.

So the School Board and legal counsel have some figuring to do. I think the whole PE credit question ought to come back up before the board — and JROTC supporters should hold off on celebrating until that messy legal issue is settled.

How the JROTC vote could come down

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By Tim Redmond

Like so much in San Francisco politics, the vote tonight on restoring JROTC isn’t as simple as it might seem.

The resolution by Jill Wynns and Rachel Norton simply directs the superintendent to preserve JROTC at the seven high schools where the program currently exists. It doesn’t say a word about Physical Education credit.

That’s a central issue, because just about everyone agrees that if students don’t get PE credit for JROTC, so few will sign up that the program will die anyway. State law seems to say that anyone teaching PE classes has to have a teaching credential, and the JROTC instructors don’t qualify. The Chron reports that

Last week, the California Board of Education clarified the issue, saying local education officials have the authority to offer PE credits for JROTC. The state Department of Education reiterated that position in a letter to district and county education officials Monday.

JROTC instructors, who have a state and federal credential to teach the military course, would not need a PE credential, said Phil Lafontaine, the department’s director of professional development and curriculum support.

“They’re appropriately credentialed,” he said, even if students are earning PE credit.

But Gentle Blythe, the SFUSD spokesperson, told me that the district “has not seen that letter, so we haven’t been able to analyze it.”

In the meantime, the school board voted last June to end PE credit for this past year, which was supposed to be the final year of JROTC. According to Norton, that resolution doen’t apply going forward — so she’s convinced that if her resolution passes tonight, the PE issue will be moot. “The board policy enacted last year only end PE credit for the 2008-2009 year,” she told me.

Now it gets interesting. The intent of the board last year was almost certainly to end PE credit forever, since JROTC was supposed to be phased out after this year (why deny PE credit in 2009-2010 for a program that wasn’t supposed to exist?) But if the technical interpretation Norton is offering holds up, the board may face another vote –to withold PE credit for next year and into the future.

And since the swing vote on JROTC, Norman Yee, has made it clear ijn the past that he doesn’t support PE credit, he could wind up voting yes tonight to save the program — then no on a future resolution killing PE credit (which would effectively kill JROTC anyway).

“That’s possible,” Norton said. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

It might, though — I don’t see JROTC foes letting this go.

UPDATE: I just spoke with Norman Yee. He says he plans to support the Wynns-Norton resolution “with amendments” — including the right for some high schools to opt out. He says his previous refusal to support PE credit was based on the state’s position that only credentialed teachers could teach PE — but if the state is wiling to accept the SF program, so is he.

Ick, that means this comes down to the district’s legal interpretation of a letter from the state Board of Education. Stay tuned.

Key JROTC vote tomorrow

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By Tim Redmond

The future of military recruiting in public schools will come back before the San Francisco School Board tomorrow (Tuesday May 12) as the seven board members take up a resolution by Jill Wynns and Rachel Norton that would undo a previous board decision and bring back JROTC.

This is, of course, a terrible idea.
It’s also going to be a close vote — Wynns, Norton and Hydra Mendoza are expected to support the resolution. Jane Kim, Kim-Shree Maufas and Sandra Fewer are going to oppose it. The swing vote is Norman Yee — and nobody has any idea what he’s going to do.

If the Wynns resolution bringing back JROTC fails, then the program is dead. The board has already voted to phase the recruiting program out, as of next month.

Of course, JROTC will be in trouble anyway as long as the board doesn’t grant phys ed credit to students who take the elective activity. Right now, the JROTC instructors don’t qualify as state-certified phys ed teachers, and the program doesn’t meet state standards. Assembly member Fiona Ma is trying to change that, but here bill doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

It’s a heated and emotional topic that’s generated a lot of organizing and energy at the board — and as the final vote nears, Kim, Fewer and Mendoza have been meeting with JROTC instructors to see if there’s any ground for compromise.

“I told them I would consider approving it as an after-school program,” Kim told me. “If students really want it, then they can do it after school, with no credit.” The response from JROTC: No way, that would kill the program.

“If the program is so popular, I don’t get the issue,” Kim explained.

The other glitch: The JROTC instructors say the Department of Defense, which ultimately calls the shots here, wouldn’t accept an after-school program.

In other words, the military really IS using the hook of P.E. credit to snag potential military recruits in public high schools.

There’s another interesting element to all of this. The San Francisco public high schools are considering changing curriculum anyway to fit more closely to the UC/CSU admission requirements — and there’s no way JROTC would qualify for any course credit under those standards.

Yee has said in the past — and has told me personally — that he doesn’t want JROTC to come back and that he won’t vote for P.E. credit for the program. But the pressure on the board members will be intense. I hope he has the courage to do the right thing.

The military has every right to go after 18-year-olds, and is using every tool at its disposal to convince them to join up. Seducing minors into the war maching just isn’t acceptable in San Francisco.

What’s a label?

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Who needs record labels? Do you? Yes, the music industry is in turmoil — so what’s the point of branding anymore? The Guardian checks out anonymous underground classics, military-industrial backers, trickle-up breakthroughs, warped corps, reissue revivalism, and indie’s wild, wild ride.

>>The name game
What does a record label mean in 2009? Label owners sound off
By Johnny Ray Huston

>>Saved by zero
Dance music still shakes off labels and flirts with the void
By Marke B

>>Great expectations?
Indie labels ride the ups and downs of the blog buzz and bluster
By Kimberly Chun

Going nuclear

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news@sfbg.com

April Fool’s Day is known as a day for practical jokes designed to embarrass the gullible.

But Assembly Member Tom Ammiano’s legislative aide Quentin Mecke says the April 1 letter that Ammiano and fellow Assembly Members Fiona Ma and state Sen. Leland Yee sent Mayor Gavin Newsom urging him not to support a proposal to bury a radiologically-contaminated dump beneath a concrete cap on the Hunters Point Shipyard was dead serious.

In their letter, Ammiano, Ma, and Lee expressed concern over that fact that federal officials don’t want to pay to haul toxic and radioactive dirt off the site before it’s used for parkland. They noted that an "estimated 1.5 million tons of toxics and radioactive material still remain" on the site.

A 1999 ordinance passed by San Francisco voters as Proposition P "recognized that the U.S. Navy had for decades negligently polluted the seismically-active shipyard, and that the city should not accept early transfer of the shipyard to San Francisco’s jurisdiction, unless and until it is cleaned up to the highest standards," the legislators wrote. "Given the information we have, a full cleanup needs to happen," Mecke told us.

But Newsom’s response so far suggests he may be willing to accept the Navy’s proposal.

WAR WASTE


From the 1940s to 1974, according to the Navy’s 2004 historical radiological assessment, the Navy dumped industrial, domestic, and solid waste, including sandblast waste, on a portion of the site known as Parcel E. Among the materials that may be underground: decontamination waste from ships returning from Operation Crossroads — in which atomic tests in the South Pacific went awry, showering Navy vessels with a tidal wave of radioactive material.

"We have serious questions about the city accepting what is essentially a hazardous and radioactive waste landfill adjacent to a state park along the bay, in a high liquefaction zone with rising sea levels," the letter reads. "We understand that the Navy is pushing for a comparatively low-cost engineering solution which the Navy believes will contain toxins and radioactive waste in this very unstable geology. We hope that you and your staff aggressively oppose this option."

Keith Forman, the Navy’s base realignment and closure environmental coordinator for the shipyard, told the Guardian that the Navy produced a report that did a thorough analysis of the site.

The Pentagon estimates that excavating the dump would cost $332 million, last four years, and cause plenty of nasty smells. Simply leaving the toxic stew in place and putting a cap on it would cost $82 million.

Espanola Jackson, who has lived in Bayview Hunters Point for half a century, says the community has put up with bad smells for decades thanks to the nearby sewage treatment plant. "So what’s four more years?" Jackson told the Guardian.

Judging from his April 21 reply to the three legislators, who represent San Francisco in Sacramento, Newsom is committed only to a technically acceptable cleanup — which is not the same thing as pushing to completely dig up and haul away the foul material in the dump.

He noted that during his administration federal funding for shipyard clean-up "increased dramatically, with almost a half-billion dollars secured in the last six years." Newsom also told Ammiamo, Ma, and Yee that the city won’t accept the Parcel E landfill until both the state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the federal Environmental Protection Agency "agree that it will be safe for its intended use."

The intended use for Parcel E-2 is parks and open space, said Michael Cohen, Newsom’s right-hand man in the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. The Navy won’t issue its final recommendations until next summer. "That’s when regulatory agencies decide what the clean up should be, whether that’s a dig and haul, a cap, or a mix of the two, " Cohen explained.

TRUCKS OR TRAINS?


Part of the Navy’s concern is the expense of trucking the toxic waste from San Francisco to a secure landfill elsewhere — someplace designed to contain this sort of material (and someplace less likely to have earthquakes that could shatter a cap and let the nasty muck escape).

David Gavrich and Eric Smith say the Navy is looking at the wrong solution. Gavrich, founder of the shipyard-based Waste Solutions Group and the San Francisco Bay Railroad, which transports waste and recyclables, and Eric Smith, founder of the biodiesel-converting company Green Depot, who shares space with Gavrich and a herd of goats that help keep the railyard surrounding their Cargo Way office weed-free, say the military solution is long-haul diesel trucks. But, he observes, the waste could be moved at far less cost (and less environmental impact) if it went by train.

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a nonprofit that specializes in tracking military base reuse and cleanup operations, would also like to see the landfill removed, even though he’s not sure about the trucks vs. train options.

"We don’t have confidence about having a dump on San Francisco Bay," Bloom said. "I’m concerned about the relationship between budgetary dollars and remediation of the site. I’m concerned that the community’s voice, which is saying they’d like to see the landfill removed, is not being heard."

Mark Ripperda of EPA’s Region 9 told us that community acceptance is important, but a remedy must also be evaluated using nine specific criteria.

"A remedy must first meet the threshold criteria," Ripperda said. "If it passes the threshold test, then it is evaluated against the primary balancing criteria and finally the modifying criteria are applied."

Noting that he has not received any communication from either the Assembly Members or the Mayor’s Office concerning the Parcel E-2 cleanup, Ripperda said that "the evaluation of alternatives considered rail, barge, and truck transport, with rail being the most favorable transportation mode for the complete excavation alternative. However, the waste would still be transported and disposed into a landfill somewhere else and the alternatives must be evaluated under all nine criteria."

Ripperda said it’s feasible to remove the worst stuff — the "hot spots" — and cap the rest. "A cap will eliminate pathways for exposure and can be designed to withstand seismic events," he told us. "The landfill has been in place for decades and the groundwater data shows little leaching of contaminants."

Meanwhile Newsom has tried to redirect the problem to Ammiano, Ma, and Yee, saying he seeks their "active support in directing even more state and federal funds" toward cleaning up the shipyard. He made clear he wants to move the redevelopment project forward — now.

Sen. Mark Leno is carrying legislation that includes a state land swap vital to the city’s plans to allow Lennar Corp. to build housing and commercial space on the site.

But while Cohen claims the aim of the land trade is to "build another Crissy Field," some environmentalists worry it will bifurcate the southeast sector’s only major open space. They also suspect that was the reason Leno didn’t sign Ammiano’s April 1 letter.

Leno says that omission occurred because Sacramento-based lobbyist Bob Jiroux, who Leno claims drafted the letter, never asked Leno to sign. (Jiroux refused to comment.)

Claiming he would have signed Ammiano’s letter given the chance, Leno described Jiroux as a "good Democrat" who used to work for Sen. John Burton, but now works for Lang, Hansen, O’Malley, and Miller, a Republican-leaning lobbying firm in Sacramento whose clients include Energy Solutions, a Utah-based low-level nuclear waste disposal facility that stands to profit if San Francisco excavates Parcel E-2.

Ammiano dismisses the ensuing furor over Energy Solutions as a "tempest in a teapot.

"I signed that letter to Newsom because of the truth that it contains," Ammiano said. "Sure, there’s crazy stuff going on. But within the insanity, there’s a progressive message: the community wants radiological contaminants removed from the shipyard."

5 Great Sandwiches

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Tourists may flood into our city each year just to eat bread, but we locals know that bread tastes a whole lot better if you make it into a sandwich. A good sandwich can cure a hangover, elevate a bad mood, decrease boredom, increase likeability, boost physical performance, raise your appeal to the opposite sex, hone your intellect, enhance your memory, and improve your personality — really, it’s shocking how little a sandwich can’t do. I could wax poetic until 2012 about the merits of two pieces of bread separated by edible fillings, but I believe my stomach says it best when it, quite simply, growls.

ATOMIC SUB AT SUBMARINE CENTER


I don’t know what kind of sandwich voodoo they practice at Submarine Center in West Portal, but their subs are so yummy I’ve decided not to question it. For nearly 30 years, Submarine Center has made some of the best — and most enormous — hot subs in SF. Their gargantuan Atomic Sub is one of the few sandwiches in the world that could probably shoot down a military aircraft if blasted out of a bazooka. A beautiful symphony of ingredients, the Atomic Sub features toasted white French bread, hot pastrami, hot ham, hot roast beef, lettuce, tomato, fiery jalapeños, onions, mayo, and an unexpected grace note of piquant Italian dressing. The fact that they’ll put crushed rather than cubed ice in your Coke is just icing (ha ha) on the cake.

820 Ulloa, SF. (415) 564-1455, www.submarinecenter.com

GRILLED CHEESE AT BLUE BARN GOURMET


Why offer just one type of grilled cheese sandwich when you can offer six? Blue Barn Gourmet, a rustic café housed in a barn (you can’t miss it) in the Marina District, answers this important philosophical question by giving the venerable grilled cheese its own special menu. The apotheosis of the grilled cheese has never looked so heavenly. Brie d’affinois, provolone, white cheddar, manchego, Jarlsberg and Gruyère, or mozzarella burratta — whatever the craving, Blue Barn aims to nurse that grilled cheese fever. Our favorite is the simple and effective cheddar panini, a textbook on proper sandwich- making written on pages of black forest ham, white cheddar, and honey mustard and bound with two slices of freshly baked sourdough. This is Velveeta on Wonderbread all grown up.

2105 Chestnut, SF. (415) 441-3232, www.bluebarngourmet.com

SHRIMP PO’BOY AT YATS’ IN JACK’S CLUB


It’s comforting to know, before diving into the behemoth fried shrimp po’boy sandwich at Yats’, that San Francisco General Hospital is across the street. It’s still unclear why Jack’s, a humble Potrero District dive bar, made the decision to start serving authentic N’awlins style po’boys, but since that decision was made, we’ve all benefited. Featuring real Louisiana French bread shipped from the Leidenheimer Bakery in NoLA, this mountain of fried shrimp snow-capped with mayonnaise is so delicious it’s worth the risk to your heart. You won’t get your three-to-five daily servings of veggies, but if you feel guilty, they’ll readily give you extra lettuce and tomato. Finish your meal with a thick slab of cornbread and a beer or three. Your soul will thank you, even if your arteries don’t.

2545 24th St., SF. (415) 282-8906, www.whereyats.com

MEATLESS MIKE AT IKE’S PLACE


For the meatball fan who likes everything about meatballs except for the meat, the Meatless Mike sandwich at the popular sandwich shop Ike’s Place will happily satisfy that craven need for animal protein, sans animal. Tasty ground soy protein "meatballs" are thickly slathered in marinara and Ike’s own house-made garlic aioli ("dirty sauce") and topped generously with pepper Jack. Served on a toasty Dutch crunch roll, it’s so good that your next sandwich is on me if you aren’t convinced it tastes as good — if not better — than real meat. Instead of eating your sando on the sidewalk and using up a roll of napkins, eat in Dolores Park around the corner and wipe your hands on the grass. So gooey, messy, and delicious, you’ll proudly wear that dirty sauce stain running down the front of your shirt as if it were a gold medal.

3506 16th St., SF. (415) 553-6888, www.ilikeikesplace.com

FRESH, SMOKED SALMON SANDWICH AT THE SENTINEL


A sandwich so elegant, it’s like the Lawrence Olivier of sandwiches. Fresh baked wild salmon topped with a layer of smoked salmon, with fennel, dill, and a sheath of iceberg lettuce on a soft roll, this sandwich is thoughtful and deliberate in its approach to taste and texture. It might sound fancy, but don’t confuse this sandwich for a snob. At $8.50, you get a bang for your buck. "The Sentinel" is an imposing name for a SoMa sandwich stand that offers no seating, let alone a bathroom, but like Thomas the Tank Engine, this tiny place means serious business. Owned and operated by chef Dennis Leary of Canteen — who will personally wrap your sandwich for you — these sandwiches work so hard at being good it makes other sandwiches look like lazy bums in comparison.

37 New Montgomery, SF. (415) 284-9960, www.thesentinelsf.com

Labelmania

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0

Who needs record labels? Do you? Yes, the music industry is in turmoil — so what’s the point of branding anymore? The Guardian checks out anonymous underground classics, military-industrial backers, trickle-up breakthroughs, warped corps, reissue revivalism, and indie’s wild, wild ride.

>>The name game
What does a record label mean in 2009? Label owners sound off
By Johnny Ray Huston

>>Saved by zero
Dance music still shakes off labels and flirts with the void
By Marke B

>>Great expectations?
Indie labels ride the ups and downs of the blog buzz and bluster
By Kimberly Chun

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