War Archives — Page 105 of 117 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (3/12/07)

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March 13, 2007

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

31 Iraqi civilians were killed yesterday as a part of the violence targeting Shiite religious pilgrims, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. This week’s toll for Shiite religious pilgrims is 220.

Source

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

58,598 – 64,405: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 11 March 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/35/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Antiestablishmentarianism attitudes among Iraqi religious groups is fueling intolerance and violence towards homosexuals in Iraq, according to the UN.

Source: http://www.gaypeopleschronicle.com/stories07/february/0202071.htm

U.S. military:

3,421: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.01.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

151: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2013034,00.html

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6293807.stm

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

47,657: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (3/12/07): Bush asks congress to approve $622 billion for 2008. So far, $407 billion for the U.S., $51 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.
Compiled by Paula Connelly

Bush asked congress to approve $622 billion for defense spending, most for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a $2.9 trillion budget request for 2008, according to Reuters.
Source: http://today.reuters.com/

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Why people get mad at the media (part l2) The New York Times answers questions about its slow coverage of the Walter Reed scandal but stonewalls on its censorship of Project Censored

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March 12, 2007

0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Byron Calame, the public editor of the New York Times, spent an entire column in the Sunday New York Times (March ll) answering an important question:

“Why,” Calame asked in his lead, “were readers of the New York Times left without a word of news coverage of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal for six days after it had been exposed by the Washington Post?
That was the question posed to me in the wake of the Post’s Feb. l8 scoop by readers thirsty for readers thirsty for news of the poor care given those wounded in Iraq.”

As attentive readers of the Bruce blog will recall, I raised an even more important question as to why the Times and its sister paper in Santa Rosa (the Press Democrat) have for 30 years refused to run the Project Censored story from the local Sonoma State University. I have also asked Calame, and Times and PD editors, why they won’t run the Project Censored story, even though its stories before and during the Iraq War laid out much of the key neocon policy behind the war and the anti-war strategies in opposing it. Neither Calame nor any Times nor editor would answer me nor provide an explanation to Carl Jensen, the project’s current founder, nor Peter Phillips, the current director, for their censorship of the Censored Project through the years.

This is highly significant in light of Calame’s Sunday column. “Readers have every right to be angry about the Times’s slowness in telling them about the compelling news in The Post’s two-part series,” he wrote.
((I won’t raise the question here as to why neither the Post nor the Times, nor any of the beltway journalists, didn’t get the stories months earlier at nearby Walter Reed and why they didn’t respond earlier to the accelerating drumbeat of criticism of lousy treatment of returning soldiers from veterans, their families, and veteran’s organizations.)

Calame did find the culprit: “Excessive pride, I believe, is the fundamental problem. The desire to be first with the news still permeates the newsroom at the Times and other newspapers in a way that makes editors and reporters feel defeated when they have to conclude that the information in another publication’s exclusive article is so newsworthy that it has to be pursued.” Good point: but what about newsworthy stories broken by other publications, picked up by Project Censored, stamped “Censored,” and put out as a major package that the Times and other mainstream media then refused to print? Was “excessive pride” at work here for 30 years? Is that much of an excuse on stories as big as Iraq and Bush?

I pointed out in my earlier blog that the Censored stories were particularly timely during the war years.
For example, on Sept. l0, 2003, while the Times and the PD and affiliated papers on its news service, were running the stories of the disgraced Judith Miller that helped Bush make the case for the Iraq War and then seeking to justify it, the Guardian ran the Censored package with a headline that read, “The neocon plan for global domination–and nine other big stories the mainstream press refused to cover in 2002.” I noted that our introduction to the timely censored package made the critical point: “If there’s one influence that has shaped world-wide politics over the past year, it’s the extent to which the Bush administration hs exploited the events of Sept. ll, 200l, too solidify its military and economic control of the world at the expense of democracy, true justice, and the environment. But President George Bush W. Bush hasn’t simply been responding to world events. The agenda the administration has followed fits perfectly with a clearly defined plan that’s been in place for a decade.”

I noted that the neocon story, and the many other such stories that Project Censored put out during the war years and again this year, laying out the drumbeat to war and the dark side of the Bush administration, got no play in the Times nor the PD and very little play in the rest of the mainstream press and its “embedded” and “mission accomplished” journalism that marched us into war and is now keeping us there. Who was right, the Guardian and Project Censored stories or Judith Miller and the Times?

Calame wrote that “readers would benefit if the
Times could swallow a bit of its pride and make use of two readily available approaches to dealing with important news in the scoops of competing competitors.” He said the Times could put the stories of competitors up on its web and they could be encouraged to use “solidly reported wire stories” of significant exclusives in other publications. What about the Censored stories?

Calame concluded, “The reality is that when significant news breaks–even in the form of an exclusive in a competing publication–the Times must be committed to getting on the story. Anything less seriously damages the paper’s value to the readers.”

Another good point: so repeating for emphasis: Why won’t the Times and the PD run the Project Censored stories
that were so often on target when the Times wasn’t? And why won’t the Times and its public editor answer or even acknowledge the question and underlying issues of biased reporting, flawed news judgment, and too much lapdog access to the Bush administration? I’m sending this blog to them and asking once again.

I am waiting for the public editor and Times/PD editors to reply. Is this like waiting for Godot? Stay tuned. B3

Project censored blog:

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/bruce/2007/02/new_blog_project_censored.html

Byron Calame’s The public editor:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/opinion/11pubed.html?ex=1331269200&en=7f7f89dff165cf09&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

End the war!

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March 8, 2007

0

By Steven T. Jones
Good for Nancy Pelosi! It’s great to see her finally get serious about ending this disastrous war and to start being a long overdue check on this out-of-control imperial presidency. Win or lose, it’s the right thing to do and a move that makes me proud to be from San Francisco. And if Bush indeeds vetoes this thing, maybe she’ll reconsider her opposition to impeachment. After all, the Constitution vests Congress with the power to start and end wars, not the president.

Josh Wolf vs. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post, and the inside-the-beltway gang

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March 8, 2007

2

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Marvelous. Simply marvelous. While ten of the l9 witnesses testifying in the Libby trial were singing journalists, and three of them were central to securing Libby’s conviction, Howard Kurtz, the media critic of the Washington Post and the voice of the inside-the-beltway media establishment, did not raise any of the obvious issues and questions in this unprecedented mass outing of sources by journalists in federal court in Washington, D.C. It was a “spectacle that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago,” as Adam Liptak put it rightly in the New York Times March 8.

Instead, one day after the Libby guilty verdict, Kurtz went after Josh Wolf, the longest jailed journalist in U.S. history for contempt of court, in his March 8 column headlined “Jailed Man Is A Videographer And a Blogger but Is He a Journalist?” Kurtz, who tosses softballs about every Sunday morning in his media show on CNN, hit Josh hard with a lead that said, “He is being cast by some journalists as a young champion of the First Amendment, jailed for taking a lonely stand heavy-handed federal prosecutors.”

Then: “But Wolf’s rationale for withholding the video, and refusing to testify, is less than crystal clear. There are no confidential sources involved in the case. He sold part of the tape to local television stations and posted another portion on his blog. Why, then, is he willing to give up his freedom over the remaining footage?”

And then he quoted, not a media lawyer nor a journalist with knowledge of
California law, but a professor who ought to be flunked out of law school (Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles). Kurtz quoted Volokh as saying without blushing, “It’s one thing to say journalists must respect promises of confidentiality they made to their sources. It would be quite another to say journalists have a right to refuse to testify even about non-confidential sources. When something is videotaped in a public place, it’s hard to see even an implied agreement of confidentiality.”

Tom Newton, general counsel of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, had the appropriate polite response in an email to Kurtz: “Huh?”

“That, as they say, would be a settled right in California. In California, the people have flatly rejected the idea that police and prosecutors ought to be able to deputize journalists whenever they can’t figure out how to do their job themselves.”

“Moreover,” Newton continued, “the test for whether Josh is a journalist or not should not be based on who the U.S. attorney says he is, (“simply a person with a video camera”), or even who Josh says he is (an “artist, an activist, an anarachist and an archivist”), but on what he does and what he was doing when gathering the information at issue (i.e., creating videotape of a public and newsworthy event and actually selling portions of it for a profit to a news organization which made it part of the local evening TV news).” Read Newton’s full comment below.

So, when the chips are down and the question is raised in time of war, who stood the test of being a real journalist? Josh Wolf, who went to jail on principle, and is still there, and may be there until a new federal jury is impaneled in July? Josh Wolf, who was put in jail in my view by the Bush administration to send a don’t-mess-with-us message to anti-war protestors inside and outside of San Francisco and to journalists at large. Or the l0 journalists warbling away in federal court and thereby avoiding jail (excepting Judith Miller from the New York Times, who did jail time but still ended up testifying)?

I stand with Josh Wolf. I think he is not only a real journalist in the best sense of the word, but a journalistic Hero and a First Amendment Hero who is paying his dues and more every day he serves in federal prison in Dublin, California. As for Howard Kurtz and the Washington Post and the inside-the-Beltway gang, well, they helped George Bush march us into Iraq, no real questions asked, and they are now helping keep us there with this kind of logic and reporting.

There are lots of real questions for Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post/inside the beltway gang who asked the is-Josh-a-journalist question the day after the verdict and to some extent for Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle who asked the same question a few days before the verdict. The questions do not involve whether whether Josh Wolf is a journalist or not. The questions are, how in the world did those hotshot inside-the-beltway journalists with access and those hotshot inside-the-beltway media organizations with access so screw up the story of the biggest foreign policy mistake in U.S. history? And how did they so screw it up when millions of us without access, in San Francisco and around the world, figured out the real story, knew it was a terrible mistake to go to war with Iraq, and went into the streets to protest the decision? And when will they start reporting the real story behind the Libby trial: that Bush and Cheney lied us into war, that Libby was key to the much larger story of the cover up of the campaign of lies, that the war is now lost but the lies go on, and that our only option left is to get out as quickly as possible? Kurtz and the inside-the-beltway gang are the journalists who have the explaining to do, not Josh Wolf.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/07/AR2007030702454.html>

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/washington/08fitzgerald.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fL%2fLiptak%2c%20Adam

Newton’s email to Kurtz:

“While the national attention on shield law issues has focused almost entirely on the protection of confidential sources, out here in California we have for many years granted journalists the ability to protect both their confidential sources and unpublished information associated with newsgathering. Had the San Francisco situation not rather bizarrely become a federal case (it was, after all, an incident involving a San Francisco crowd, a San Francisco peace officer and a San Francisco police car), there would be no question that Josh, assuming for a moment he is a journalist covered by California law, would be immune from a contempt order for his steadfast refusal to disclose his unpublished information to a state prosecutor. This immunity is squarely set by popular vote in the state’s constitution (Article I. Sec. 2).

“I am totally puzzled by this quote in your column from an esteemed constitutional scholar: “It’s one thing to say journalists must respect promises of confidentiality they made to their sources,” says Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “It would be quite another to say journalists have a right to refuse to testify even about non-confidential sources.” Huh? That, as they say, would be a settled right in California. In California, the people have flatly rejected the idea police and prosecutors ought to be able to deputize journalists whenever they can’t figure out how to do their job themselves.

“Moreover, the test for whether Josh is a journalist or not should not be based on who the U.S. Attorney says he is, (“simply a person with a video camera”), or even who Josh says he is (an “artist, an activist, an anarchist and an archivist”), but on what he does and what he was doing when gathering the information at issue (i.e., creating videotape of a public and newsworthy event and actually selling portions of it for a profit to a news organization which made it a part of the local evening TV news). Based on a recent California case involving a blogger’s attempt to quash a subpoena pursued by Apple in an attempt to identify an internal leak, it’s clear to me Josh would be found to be a journalist for purposes of California’s Shield Law and would be a free man right now, but for this becoming a federal case.”

Full disclosure: I asked CNPA, as a member publisher, to support Wolf, his cause, and a federal shield law. To its immense credit, the CNPA board and staff rose to the occasion and has supported Wolf, a member of no media organization, with skill and passion. From CNPA to the Society of Professional Journalists to the California First Amendment Coalition to the International Free Press Institute in Vienna to other international free press groups to labor unions to the grassroots movement of Andy Blue and Julian Davis in San Francisco and beyond, this is quite a massive and growing coalition of the willing for Josh Wolf. Keep it rolling till Josh is out of jail and the U.S. is out of Iraq. B3

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (3/7/07)

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March 8, 2007

0

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

70 Iraqi civilians were killed today in the second day of violence targeting Shiite religious pilgrims, according to the New York Times

Source

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

58,022 – 63,800: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 4 March 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/32/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Antiestablishmentarianism attitudes among Iraqi religious groups is fueling intolerance and violence towards homosexuals in Iraq, according to the UN.

Source: http://www.gaypeopleschronicle.com/stories07/february/0202071.htm

U.S. military:

3,414: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.01.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

151: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2013034,00.html

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6293807.stm

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

47,657: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (3/7/07): Bush asks congress to approve $622 billion for 2008. So far, $406 billion for the U.S., $51 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.
Compiled by Paula Connelly

Bush asked congress to approve $622 billion for defense spending, most for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a $2.9 trillion budget request for 2008, according to Reuters.
Source: http://today.reuters.com/

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

THURSDAY

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March 7, 2007

0

March 8

MUSIC

Hiss Golden Messenger

The most remarkable thing about Hiss Golden Messenger is not its personnel — members of the Court and Spark, Oranger, and the Mother Hips — but that the sum of its parts sounds much different than one might imagine given their respective histories, none of which hint at the reverbed, spliff-friendly jams born of this incarnation. While it’s true that, between them, these guys have played every gin joint from Willits to Escondido, this is just their second show together. (Nathan Baker)

With Citay
9 p.m., $7
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St., SF
(415) 647-2888
www.makeoutroom.com

FILM

Night of the Lepus

If the words “giant killer rabbits” aren’t enough to convince you to travel to the East Bay to see a movie, then you are truly beyond hope. Night of the Lepus, perhaps the glorious nadir of all monster movies, has bunnies in spades. An experiment in bunny population control in the Southwest goes horribly awry, resulting in a radiated breed of hopping Godzillas that terrorize model train sets and devour poorly blue-screened actors. (Matt Sussman)

9:15 p.m., $8
Parkway Speakeasy Theater
1834 Park, Oakl.
(510) 814-2400
www.parkway-speakeasy.com

MUSIC

Born/Dead

There is an old adage: if you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance. Add that if you have an ax to grind, you can wield a guitar. It’s a philosophy, and Oakland anarcho-punks Born/Dead are its champions. Don’t look to them for brainless entertainment. Born/Dead have a message to their madness: no one gets out alive. They’ll be challenging the status quo with Pittsburgh, Pa.’s Behind Enemy Lines, among others. (Nicole Gluckstern)

With Behind Enemy Lines, Peligro Social, Nightstick Justice, and War Trash
7 p.m., $6
Balazo18 Art Gallery
2183 Mission, SF
(415) 255-7227
www.balazogallery.com

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (3/6/07)

-

March 7, 2007

0

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

Over 100 Iraqi civilians were killed today in bombing attacks that targeted Shiite pilgrims heading to Karbala for a religious celebration, according to the New York Times.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

57,805 – 63,573: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 4 March 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/32/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Antiestablishmentarianism attitudes among Iraqi religious groups is fueling intolerance and violence towards homosexuals in Iraq, according to the UN.

Source: http://www.gaypeopleschronicle.com/stories07/february/0202071.htm

U.S. military:

3,411: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.01.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

151: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2013034,00.html

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6293807.stm

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

47,657: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (3/6/07): Bush asks congress to approve $622 billion for 2008. So far, $405 billion for the U.S., $51 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.
Compiled by Paula Connelly

Bush asked congress to approve $622 billion for defense spending, most for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a $2.9 trillion budget request for 2008, according to Reuters.
Source: http://today.reuters.com/

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

God chillin’

-

March 7, 2007

0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER O brother, where art thou, blog-worthy, buzz-besieged bands? Whither the classes of 2004 and ’05? As memory fades and fads pass, the Klaxons and Beirut had best look to the respective fates of Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, both of which have spawned second albums at a time when Britney Spears’s postpartum-postbreakup cue-ball cutes (uh, was she actually a musician, mommy?) score almost twice as many hits as Beyoncé or any ole artist who has actually issued fresh tracks in the last four years. How has blogosphere-borne hypey held up? Can the viral gospel survive, with or without fast-buck comps with the word "Hitz" in their titles? (Was I dozing through Now That’s What I Call Indie! Vol. 23?) Was there any substance to the sound of the mid-’00s when it comes to Arcade Fire and CYHSY — two indie taste sensations that musically mimed Talking Heads and, in their number, resembled villages more than singular villains? Can they bring sexy back sonically, even though they never bumped billiard balls with the naked-noggined queen of pop?

From the sound of the last CYHSY show I caught at the Warfield, the Philly–New York sprawl seemed well on its way to sell-out-by staleness. Out were the frothy, Afropop-derived David Byrne–ing campfire rhythms. Enter monotonous, monochromatic indie rock.

Yet although CYHSY’s new (and still bravely self-released) ‘un, Some Loud Thunder, peters to a dull roar by the time "Five Easy Pieces" rolls around, the full-length still impresses with its sense of aural experimentation. Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann throws fuzz, shmutz, and the noise equivalent of cat fur and tumbleweed over the proceedings, futzing the opening, title track into a cunning combo of foregrounded murk and tambourine-shimmy clarity. CYHSY cut through the fog of pop with the dissonance-laced sweetness of a cockeyed, choral "Emily Jean Stock" and the Dylanishly titilutf8g manifesto tease of "Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning?" Some Loud Thunder is a freakin’ busy record — with the emphasis happily on the freak — and it’s almost as if CYHSY were trying to reach beyond the easy, cumbersome cool of their name (always suspected to be a major part of their appeal) and toward, hoo-boy, depth. Too bad the lyrics aren’t often up to the musical intrigue on such songs as "Satan Said Dance" and "Goodbye to Mother and the Cove," making CYHSY sound like the E.E. Cummingses of indie, for whatever that’s worth. "Gravity’s one thing and / Gravity’s something but / How about coming down …," Alec Ounsworth whinnies. "Weird but you’re back talking." Wonderfully weird, yes, though is it unfair to ask if you have anything to say?

Back also, in priestly black, are Arcade Fire, who have plenty to tell in the three years since Funeral was unveiled. Amid the majestic choral sheen, synth pop flock, and Tijuana brass of their new album, Neon Bible (Merge), Win Butler and party have unearthed and dusted off the lost threads of connection between the teary tough-guy sentimentality of Gene Pitney and Roy Orbison, the jittery junked-up teardrops of "Little Johnny Jewel" and Suicide, and the quavering, coaguutf8g pop syrup of the Cure and OMD. Arcade Fire have crawled through a creaky, darkened looking glass and found a lost, perhaps losing world populated with forlorn soldiers, urban paranoiacs, rough water, guiding lights, lions and lambs, and idling vehicles.

Cloaked in increasingly trad folk and ’80s pop-song structures, engineering by Markus Dravs (Björk) and Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls), and contributions by members of Calexico, Wolf Parade, and Final Fantasy, Arcade Fire thankfully put lyrical clichés to work during Neon Bible‘s clamorous service, to the end of genuine storytelling. They’re preaching the gospel of transcendence through music and art — something that now seems unique to rock, in contrast to rap — questioning a holy war in "Intervention" ("Working for the church while my family died / Your little sister is going to lose her mind / Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home / Hear the soldier groan / He’ll go it alone") and the god-fearing hysteria of "(Antichrist Television Blues)" ("Don’t want to work in a building downtown / I don’t know what I’m going to do / Because the planes keep crashing, two by two"). Arcade Fire are far from the first to fire artful shots in response to wartime, but Neon Bible — as bold and beautiful, as hysterical and hopeful, as corny and acute as a rockin’ soap opera or Jesus Christ Superstar — feels like the best album of 2007 so far. *

ARCADE FIRE

June 1–2, 8 p.m., $31.50

Greek Theatre

UC Berkeley, Gayley Road, Berk.

www.ticketmaster.com

GET OUT

NICE BOYS

The Portland, Ore., upstarts with mighty fine shaggy rooster cuts step up with ’70s-style glitter pop. With Time Flys and Apache. Wed/7, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

OLD TIME RELIJUN

K Records’ wrecking crew just might find a deity at the bottom of a beer stein. With Tussle and the Weasel Walter Quartet. Wed/7, 10 p.m., $5. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6994

BUNNY RABBIT

CocoRosie’s girly rapper protégé freestyles with a thumb-sucking bounce. Is her Lovers and Crypts (Voodoo-Eros) for reals? With Tha Pumpsta and Bruno and the Dreamies. Thurs/8, 8 p.m., $6. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. (510) 444-7263. Tues/13, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

EMPTY ROOMS

A new self-titled EP finds the Bay Area moodniks waxing gothily. With Worship of Silence and This Isn’t It. Sun/11, 9 p.m., $6. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300

Blood money

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March 7, 2007

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Most Americans are fairly sure they are being screwed where it hurts most: in the wallet. But if they think they know why, it’s usually a red herring, while the actual primary causes of shrinking financial stability remain obscured by propaganda, media inattention, and institutional stonewalling. By timely coincidence, three worthwhile documentaries opening this week shine some light on the matter. One profiles a longtime champion of consumer protection, while the others examine two realms in which lack of regulation is letting our dollars dance off a cliff of corporate profiteering and dubious ethics.

An Unreasonable Man is Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skrovan’s admiring yet critical portrait of Ralph Nader. The previous century’s most famous consumer advocate racked up a roster of triumphs that protected citizens against corporations — that is, until Ronald Reagan commenced ongoing deregulation trends. Famously starting with auto design safety in the early ’60s, then encompassing pollution, food and drug guidelines, nuclear power, the insurance industry, and workplace risk-protection, Nader did enough public good during his career — with worldwide legislative ripple effects — to merit secular sainthood. Then he decided to run for president, in 2000, as a Green. He won just enough votes for many Democrats to blame him for the catastrophic ascent of George W. Bush. Needless to say, the latter is no friend of Nader’s consumerist lobbying, which suffered a defection of support from nearly all quarters.

Lengthy but engrossing, An Unreasonable Man wants to reclaim Nader’s legacy, even as it admits that his black-or-white morality can be both admirable and mulishly exasperating. After all, in the end he didn’t rob Al Gore of the Oval Office: with familial help from the Sunshine State, Bush stole it.

If the current climate had allowed Nader’s Raiders as much clout as they had under the Jimmy Carter administration, could Americans possibly have been led into the shithole examined by Maxed Out? James Scurlock’s survey of the out-of-control credit and debt industry begins by informing viewers that this year "more Americans will go bankrupt than will divorce, graduate college, or get cancer."

Of course, thanks to our current president, they won’t be able to declare bankruptcy anymore — the lazy sods! Instead they can enjoy a lifetime of astronomical interest rates, threats, and continued solicitations to sign up for yet more loans and plastic.

Maxed Out includes personal stories of housewives driven to suicide, longtime homeowners tricked into foreclosure, and even underpaid soldiers targeted for exploitation by creditors after Iraq tours. The movie’s institutional focus spotlights the deliberate holding of customer checks until late fees can be charged (an executive from one company guilty of such tactics was Bush’s pick for financial-industries czar), spinelessness on the part of government investigative committees, and flat-out collusion by many politicos. Meanwhile, the national debt goes up and up, in good part owing to Iraq, making it unlikely that Social Security or basic social services will be around in the future.

Speaking of Iraq and bottomless money pits, for the first time in any major conflict, a great share of US military expenditure now goes to private security contractors. In less linguistically evasive times we called them mercenaries, or soldiers of fortune. Who are these people, and who are they accountable to? Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque’s Shadow Company is a well-crafted grasp at answers, though that latter question is a hard one. Some of the people interviewed in the movie sound conscientious enough, and as some grisly footage attests, the risks they run are no joke. More private contractees have been killed in Iraq than all non-US military personnel put together. But the booming $1 billion-a-year industry of private military companies (PMCs) doesn’t operate under any strict guidelines.

We’ve already outsourced the running of many prisons and schools to private concerns. When war itself is a for-hire endeavor — and a hot job market, since PMC employees’ salaries dwarf those of actual soldiers — is there any doubt left that we’re fighting for venture capitalism, not democracy? *

AN UNREASONABLE MAN

www.anunreasonableman.com

MAXED OUT

www.maxedoutmovie.com

SHADOW COMPANY

www.shadowcompanythemovie.com

All three films open Fri/9 at Bay Area theaters

Data crash of 2027

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March 7, 2007

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION All your personal correspondence is on Yahoo! or Hotmail or Gmail. Links to important news and research data are stored in your Del.icio.us account. Your blog, which contains records of a personal and professional nature, is hosted with some company owned by another company called SixApart. Your business contacts are on LinkedIn. Your art portfolio is at Deviant Art. Your photographs are on Flickr. You keep track of where your boyfriends are with Twitter. Most of the time you don’t keep backups of any of this data on your laptop. It would take up too much space. It’s much easier just to store it on somebody else’s servers. Plus, you can access your stuff from the Web anytime you want!

And now, with the new Google Apps product, you can run an entire small business enterprise through Google’s servers. No need for sysadmins or even computers. Google Apps promises that for a monthly fee, they’ll use Google’s gigantic server cities to host your corporate mail, chat, calendars, Web site, spreadsheets, and even word processing. Every single thing you do at work can stored on Google servers. All your documents. All your company data.

Perhaps you have not yet gathered that this freaks me the hell out. I’ve gone beyond the Electronic Frontier Foundation party line about how this is bad for privacy because the government can gain access to your personal data online. I mean: yes, the loss of privacy is terrible and dangerous, but this situation is worse than potentially being data-raped by some feds trolling for terrorists. When we store all our personal, financial, and social information on other people’s computers, we risk losing everything for reasons even stupider than the war on terror.

You’ll lose all the documents related to a crucial meeting with a client because some sysadmin in Dublin was playing football next to the power switch. Or perhaps thousands of companies will lose their entire financial histories because a high school kid is trying to impress a boy in her class by releasing a virus that eats Google spreadsheets. What scares me here is randomness. Randomness without backups.

I was recently at a baby shower for some dear friends, one of whom works at Google. We began to talk about how companies that deal with sensitive security information would never be able to use Google Apps. It simply wouldn’t be safe. And I kept thinking: what company is there in existence that doesn’t have sensitive data? Employee records and salaries are sensitive. Calendars, which announce where everyone will be at what time, are extremely sensitive. And what about historical records?

Google won’t reveal where its servers are, nor how many it has. Do you want to trust some unknown server in an undisclosed location to store your company’s entire history, let alone your personal one? Given how many people answer yes to this question, I could easily imagine my Googler friend’s baby growing up in a world where people trusted all their data to mega–storage companies like Google, Yahoo!, and SixApart.

I imagined a future where some catastrophic event — EM blast, super El Niño, virulent worm, massive political insurrection, whatever — took out half the world’s data storage. It’s possible such an event could be as destructive as the 1929 stock market crash. Money would be lost, and whole careers based on creating and analyzing online data would be trashed in an instant. Famous bloggers would be left with nothing — their bodies of work, years worth of brilliant observations stored on anonymous corporate servers, would be obliterated. And their letters would be lost to future biographers. There would be no old trunk full of correspondence to sift through and discover new angles on great cultural commentators. That trunk would be a Gmail account; its contents would be zapped into nothing.

When you store all the ephemera and all the hard work you’ve done in your life in an electronic machine you’ve never seen, you don’t just risk exposing your whole life to prying eyes. You risk losing all those records, thoughts, and pictures that make up your whole life. You risk losing a legacy that will live beyond you into your children’s generation. And in some ways, that is a fate worse than death. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who would rather store her whole life on five-inch floppy disks.

100 years of secrets

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March 6, 2007

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

They’re back.

First Amendment foes are again attempting to criminalize news reporting that exposes questionable if not illegal conduct by the White House, Pentagon, and intelligence agencies, from dispatching terrorism suspects to secret torture chambers abroad to listening in on private phone conversations.

An attempt by Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) in 2005 to pass legislation similar to Britain’s Official Secrets Act failed, but Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) quietly tried to attach an amendment to an unrelated bill scheduled for committee review last month that would have expanded the Espionage Act of 1917.

The amendment’s broad scope was narrowed March 2 before being shifted to another Senate bill amid an outcry by First Amendment advocates. The proposal’s almost laughably vague original legislative language aimed to punish anyone who published or communicated classified information "concerning efforts by the United States to identify, investigate or prevent terrorist activity."

The amendment would have extended jail time for whistleblowers to 20 years. Senate Bill 2, where the amendment now rests, was originally intended to enact the remaining recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The new amendment would still punish employees working on Capitol Hill or other unauthorized personnel who knowingly disclose classified information contained in congressional reports.

Coalition of Journalists for Open Government coordinator Pete Weitzel told the Guardian that the earlier language seemed to include newspaper publishers as well as government employees in its scope.

Conservative members of Congress called for reporters to be punished under the Espionage Act after the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media reported details of the George W. Bush White House’s domestic wiretapping and extraordinary rendition programs. In particular, Post reporter Dana Priest and Times reporter James Risen were condemned and accused of treason by Fox News pundits and jingoistic bloggers for harming national security, today’s ever-present excuse for government secrecy.

"Current laws are sufficient to prosecute anyone who leaks classified information and has an intent to harm the United States," Weitzel told us from Washington. "There’s no impediment to going ahead and prosecuting under existing law. So I don’t see a need for this additional legislation."

Sunshine activists worried the original amendment could plausibly include journalists covering emergency response planning, security failures, public health threats, and federal homeland security spending. In addition, its broadness is simply unconstitutional, according to the Virginia-based Sunshine in Government Initiative.

"The amendment would work to constrain critical reporting on homeland security — even information as basic as homeland security grants — as well as national security and foreign policy matters," the group, which includes the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (of which the Guardian is a member), wrote in a public statement Feb. 27.

The Espionage Act was passed under President Woodrow Wilson and led to a 10-year prison term for one-time Socialist Party leader and presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who was eventually pardoned by President Warren G. Harding after serving three years. Debs had criticized World War I and conscription during a speech in Ohio.

"Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters," he said during the speech, "but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself, and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth." *

James Madison Freedom of Information Award Winners

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March 6, 2007

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The Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Chapter has been handing awards for 22 years to journalists, educators, public officials, and citizens who best exemplify the importance of open and accountable government and a free and diligent press. And every year the Guardian recognizes the winners and helps highlight the important issues that they raise for the Bay Area and beyond. Here are this year’s winners:

Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award

ROWLAND "REB" REBELE

Three few years ago the Oakland Unified School District announced that, due to budget constraints, it was shutting down all the student-run newspapers in the district. Rowland "Reb" Rebele lives in Aptos, but he read about the shutdown in a San Francisco Chronicle column.

He picked up the phone, made some calls, and found out the situation was desperate and how much money was needed. He then wrote a check sufficient to resurrect the student newspapers for a year. Then he kept on writing checks to keep the papers going last year and again this year. This was typical of Rebele. No one asked him for help. He received virtually no acknowledgment for his gift. But his timely action turned the lights back on for fledgling newspapers that were out of money and, it seemed, out of luck.

Rebele is a First Amendment mensch (a description that James Madison, had he any familiarity with Yiddish, would have approved of). In his half century of publishing community newspapers that he owned and operated in Coalinga, Chula Vista, and Paradise in California and across the country, he was energetic, inspiring, and devoted to his readers and his communities, and a demon in pushing for open government and accountability. He pursued the same policies as a stalwart for half a century in the California Newspaper Publishers Association and as an activist president who brought key reforms and exceptional leaders to the organization.

Rebele has been a director of the California First Amendment Coalition for a decade. He quickly became the one truly indispensable member of the organization, pushing it, pulling it, holding it together, and cajoling it to broaden its activities because he felt the organization and its mission were vital.

He has also launched an innovative internship program at Stanford University. Rather than just give money to the school, he and his wife, Pat, created a program that has enabled dozens of students to get hands-on experience writing for real newspapers in California. Quietly and selflessly, Rebele has spent his newspaper career fighting the good fight for First Amendment and public interest principles. (Bruce B. Brugmann)

Beverly Kees Educator Award

ROBERT OVETZ

Art Institute of San Francisco instructor Robert Ovetz was fired after he criticized the administration for confiscating a magazine his students produced for his class last December.

Ovetz, who had taught at the institute for three years, told his students to create a "culturally critical" magazine as their final project for a cultural studies class he taught last fall. They produced a 36-page zine called Mute/Off.

Less than 24 hours after he and students distributed 500 copies of the magazine, which Ovetz printed with the institute’s copy machine, most were gone. Ovetz initially attributed their disappearance to popularity, but he soon learned from students that the administration of the school, which was purchased by Goldman Sachs and General Electric last year, had removed them from its campuses and even literally pulled them out of students’ hands.

"This is an example of how a corporation is not held accountable for upholding basic constitutional rights [to] free speech. This is a private company that’s operating as an institution of higher learning," Ovetz told the Guardian. "Its only interest is its bottom line, and its bottom line is profit."

Ovetz complained to the administration about vioutf8g the students’ freedom of speech and received his pink slip Dec. 20, 2006. Dean of Academic Affairs Caren Meghreblian told Ovetz the magazine possibly violated copyright law by reproducing corporate logos without permission and had grammatical errors. She also said a story in the magazine called "Homicide," about three white kids playing a video game as black gangsters, might be racist.

After Ovetz and students complained and the media reported the story, the administration allowed students to redistribute the magazines, but it still refuses to give Ovetz his job back. (Chris Albon)

To size up the magazine yourself, visit www.brandedmonkey.com/muteOffLowRes.pdf.

Citizen

RYAN MCKEE

The object of the California Public Records Act is to ensure the people’s right to know how their state and local governments are functioning. Newspapers are often the entities that test the limits and loopholes of the law. But in January 2006 an 18-year-old college student, Ryan McKee, undertook an audit of each of the 31 California state agencies that was the first of its kind. McKee tested how these agencies, which he personally visited, responded to simple requests to view and get copies of readily available public documents. The results revealed a disturbing pattern. Several agencies performed miserably, including the Department of Justice, which counsels and represents many other state agencies on the Public Records Act, and all of the agencies violated at least one aspect of the law. Common problems included asking for identification, making illegal charges, and taking longer than allowed to release information. McKee undertook the audit while volunteering for Californians Aware, a nonprofit where his father, Richard McKee, is president. A copy of the audit, including its results and grades, was sent to each agency to help it better understand and adjust to its responsibilities. (Sarah Phelan)

Journalists

MICHELE MARCUCCI AND REBECCA VESELY, ANG NEWSPAPERS

ANG Newspapers regional reporters Rebecca Vesely and Michele Marcucci are being honored for the series "Broken Homes" and their unflinching pursuit of public records that exposed negligent care administered to people with autism and other forms developmental disabilities. The series highlighted problems ranging from a lack of proper supervision to unlicensed officials working at health care facilities. Some of these offenses were then linked to patient deaths.

The award recognizes the daunting and tedious task that befell the journalists: 15 months of scouring thousands of hard-copy papers from dozens of sources that included licensing agencies, multiple law enforcement bureaus, and coroner’s offices. The results were entered into a database and cross-checked against other sources of information.

"It’s not like we work at the New York Times, where you can lock yourself in a room for a year. This is one-stop shopping here," Marcucci told the Guardian, noting that both reporters continued their daily beats while working on the project. The series was well received and helped prompt state officials to reinstate inspections of licensed facilities that had been eliminated due to budget cuts. (Christopher Jasmin)

ANDREW MCINTOSH AND JOHN HILL, SACRAMENTO BEE

Two reporters from the Sacramento Bee, Andrew McIntosh and John Hill, get Freedom of Information props for exposing the cronyism and the corruption of the California Highway Patrol.

The two wrote a series of articles detailing how the CHP violated state and department regulations in awarding contracts for items ranging from pistols to helicopters.

"The CHP spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on equipment and goods," McIntosh told the Guardian. "That’s taxpayer money."

McIntosh said he and Hill took a systematic look at the department’s bidding process and found it was not competitive. The investigation led to the suspension of one officer, Gregory Williams, who the reporters found had awarded $600,000 worth of contracts to his daughter’s company for license plate scanning devices, $500,000 of which was canceled after the reporters exposed the scandal.

The reporters also found the CHP, which controls signature gathering at the Department of Motor Vehicles and other state buildings, denied more than 100 applications for permission to register voters or solicit signatures. Other stories pushed Senate majority leader Gloria Romero and Assemblymember Bonnie Garcia to call for a state audit of the CHP.

McIntosh told us the investigation showed "the CHP is not above public scrutiny or the law when it comes to business dealings." (Albon)

MEERA PAL, CONTRA COSTA TIMES

A good mayoral race isn’t really fun unless a bit of scandal emerges, like it did in Pleasanton two weeks before the November 2006 election.

Meera Pal decided to research the roots of a story that was handed to her by city council member Steve Brozosky, who was challenging incumbent mayor Jennifer Hosterman. Brozosky gave Pal e-mails his campaign treasurer obtained through open-records laws that showed Hosterman may have used her city e-mail account to solicit campaign donations and endorsements, a violation of state law.

But Pal went beyond Brozosky’s story and submitted her own public records requests for the city e-mail account of the mayor, as well as a year’s worth of e-mail from Brozosky and the three other council members.

Pal’s public records request revealed that Brozosky’s inbox was completely void of any e-mail, something neither he nor the city’s IT manager could explain. Brozosky is a computer expert who runs a company that vends city Web site software, so his technical expertise made the situation even more suspicious.

Investigations revealed it was just a setting on his computer that was inadvertently scrubbing the e-mail from the city’s server. Though both violations aren’t necessarily serious crimes, the race was close enough that dirt on either side could have had a profound impact on the outcome, and the results show 68,000 voters who were truly torn during the last two weeks before election day while Pal was reporting these stories. Hosterman eventually won by just 188 votes. (Amanda Witherell)

SUSAN SWARD, BILL WALLACE, ELIZABETH FERNANDEZ, AND SETH ROSENFELD, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

In the wake of 2003’s so-called Fajitagate police scandal — in which San Francisco officer Alex Fagan Jr. and others were accused of assaulting and then covering up their alleged vicious beating of innocent citizens — the San Francisco Chronicle uncovered records showing that Fagan’s short history on the force was marked by regular incidents of abusive behavior, the kind of records that should have served as a warning for the problems to come.

"We decided to take a look to see how common it was. And we spent a lot of time doing that," Steve Cook, the Chronicle editor of what became last year’s five-part "Use of Force" series, told the Guardian. The team used the Sunshine Ordinance to gather boxloads of records on use-of-force incidents, which it organized into a database that was then supplemented and cross-referenced with a wide variety of other public records, along with old-fashioned shoe leather reporting, all the while fighting through bureaucratic denials and delays.

Despite an embarrassing mislabeled photo on the first day of the series that served as fodder for attacks by the Police Department and Mayor’s Office, the series made clear that rogue cops were abusing their authority, totally unchecked by their supervisors. "We were proud of what we were able to show," Cook said. "We showed a department in need of some basic reforms."

The series helped spur the early intervention system that was recently approved by the Police Commission. It’s a good first step, but one criticized by the Chron and the Guardian for failing to include some key indicators used in other cities (see our editorial "Fix Early Warning for Cops," 2/28/07), something that Cook said requires ongoing vigilance by the press, to bring about needed reforms: "Only the news media is really going to accomplish this, if they stay with the story." (Steven T. Jones)

Legal counsel

DAVID GREENE

The First Amendment was never about money. Free speech is supposed to be free. But these days threats to the First Amendment are growing, more and more people who lack the resources of a major media outlet are in need of help — and there aren’t many places dedicated to offering that assistance, free.

That’s where David Greene and the First Amendment Project come in.

Since 1999, as a staff attorney and executive director, Greene has helped dozens of freelance journalists, students, nonprofit organizations, and independent media outlets protect and expand their free speech and open government rights.

The operation he runs is totally independent. That’s a key point in an era of massive media consolidation: when the Guardian sought earlier this year to find legal representation to force open the key records in a lawsuit over Dean Singleton’s local newspaper merger, we found that just about every local media law firm represented at least one of the parties to the case and thus was conflicted. The FAP was not.

Greene and the FAP have represented blogger Josh Wolf and freelancer Sarah Olson in landmark subpoena cases. Greene, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, wrote the amicus brief on behalf of noted literary artists in the California Supreme Court case In re George T., in which the court, relying heavily on the FAP brief, overturned the conviction of a juvenile who made threats to other students with a poem. And the struggle just goes on. The FAP is funded largely by private donations and always needs additional support.

"Unfortunately," Greene told us, "we have to turn away a lot more cases than we can take." (Tim Redmond)

News media

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

After years of last-minute backroom deals at San Jose’s City Hall, things came to a head when the City Council rubber-stamped proposals to give a $4 million subsidy to the San Jose Grand Prix, $80 million for a stadium to keep the Earthquake soccer team from leaving town, and $45 million for new City Hall furniture.

Clearly, something had to give. But it was left to San Jose Mercury News editorial writers to push for transparent and accessible government and better enforcement of the state’s open government laws.

First they shamed the city, pointing out that "San Francisco, Oakland, even Milpitas have better public-access laws." Next they hammered then-mayor Ron Gonzales for saying that calls for more open government were "a bunch of nonsense." Then they printed guiding principles for a proposed sunshine ordinance that they’d developed in conjunction with the League of Women Voters and Mercury News attorney James Chadwick.

When city council member Chuck Reed was elected mayor on a platform of open government reforms, the paper still didn’t give up. Instead, it’s continuing to champion the need to bring more sunshine to San Jose and working with a community task force on breaking new ground, such as taping closed sessions so they can one day be made available when there’s no further need for secrecy.

Somehow the Merc also managed to pull off another amazing feat: the paper built public understanding of and support for sunshine along the way. (Phelan)

SAN MATEO COUNTY TIMES

When outbreaks of the highly contagious norovirus sprang up in a number of California counties, San Mateo County was among those hit. Public health officials, however, would not release the names of the facilities where numerous individuals became infected, citing concerns about privacy and not wanting to discourage facility managers from contacting health officials.

Nonetheless, the San Mateo County Times ran a series of reports on the outbreaks in the named and unnamed facilities. After publishing reports on unnamed facilities, the news staff began to receive phone calls from residents who wanted to know the names of the facilities. Times reporter Rebekah Gordon told us it became clear that the public wanted to know this information, and the paper fought the county’s secrecy.

Gordon learned that facilities are required by law to report outbreaks, regardless of the potential for media exposure. Times attorney Duffy Carolan sought out and won the disclosure of the names of four facilities.

"The county’s initial nondisclosure decision evoked public policy and public safety concerns at a very broad level, and nondisclosure would have had a very profound effect on the public’s ability to obtain information that affects their own health and safety. By persisting in the face of secrecy, the Times was able to establish a precedent and practice that will well serve to inform their readers in the future," Carolan told us.

The paper learned the outbreak was far more widespread than the county had admitted, finding 146 cases in six facilities. Gordon said, "The numbers were so much higher than we were ever led to believe." (Julie Park)

Online free speech

JOSH WOLF

Even as he sits inside the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, where he’s been denied on-camera and in-person interviews, jailed freelance journalist Josh Wolf manages to get out the message. Last month Wolf, who is imprisoned for refusing to give up video outtakes of a July 2005 anarchist protest in the Mission that turned violent, earned a place in the Guinness World Records for being the journalist to have served the longest jail term in US history for resisting a subpoena.

His thoughts on the agenda behind his incarceration were read at press conferences that day, reminding everyone of the importance of a free press. Meanwhile, Wolf has managed to continue operating his blog, www.joshwolf.net, by sending letters to family, friends, and fellow journalists, including those at the Guardian.

Wolf has also managed to create two other Web sites: www.mediafreedoms.net, which supports journalists’ resistance to government pressure, and www.prisonblogs.net, which allows prisoners to air thoughts and grievances. If Wolf can do all this from behind bars, imagine what he’ll do when he finally gets out. As Wolf would say, if we could only speak to him without reserving a phone interview 48 hours in advance: "Free press? Then free Josh Wolf!" (Phelan)

Public official

JOHN SARSFIELD

As district attorney for San Benito County, John Sarsfield upset the political applecart when he tried to prosecute the County Board of Supervisors for ignoring the Brown Act’s prohibitions on private communication and consensus building among board members on matters that involved employment decisions, personnel appeals, contracting, and land use–growth control issues.

His decision didn’t sit well in a county where battles over the future of the land have spawned Los Valientes, a secret society that has targeted slow-growth advocates and anyone who gets in its way — including believers in open government. So the board retaliated by defunding Sarsfield’s office, forcing the DA to file for a temporary restraining order against the board, the county administrative officer, and the county auditor, a countermove that kept his office operating and the investigation alive — until he lost his reelection bid to the board’s chosen candidate in January 2006.

One of Los Valientes’s targets, Mandy Rose, a Sierra Club member and slow-growth advocate, recalled how people on the outside warned Sarsfield what he was up against, "but he insisted on working within the system. It was what he believed in. Someone even said he was a Boy Scout."

For his efforts, Sarsfield’s life was turned into a living hell that cost him his dogs, his marriage, and eventually his job. But now, with this award, he gets some small recognition for fighting the good fight. And he has also been appointed special assistant inspector general within the Office of the Inspector General by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Phelan)

Special citations

LANCE WILLIAMS AND MARK FAINARU-WADA, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Investigative reporter Lance Williams and sportswriter Mark Fainaru-Wada joined forces in 2003 to take on what became one of the biggest — and most controversial — local news stories of the past five years.

The investigation of the Burlingame-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, better known as BALCO, and the larger scandal of widespread steroid use among baseball players was, the San Francisco Chronicle editors decided, too big for one reporter.

In fact, it turned out to be big enough for a series of stories, a book, and a legal battle that almost sent the two writers to federal prison. The duo admits today it was mostly the fear of getting scooped that drove them through the story’s dramatic rise.

"I’m a baseball fan in recovery," Williams told the Guardian. "I used to think I knew the sport. I didn’t have a clue about this stuff. I’m not kidding you. I had no idea how much a part of baseball steroids had become … that whole sort of seamy underside of the drug culture and the game. I just didn’t know it was like that, and I think most fans don’t either."

Although prosecutors seemed to be focusing on BALCO executives, everyone following the story wanted to know what witnesses — in this case top sports stars — told a federal grand jury investigating the company. The outfit had allegedly distributed undetectable steroids and other designer drugs to some of the world’s greatest athletes, including Giants slugger Barry Bonds, who is on his way to making history with a new home run record.

In 2003 the Chronicle published lurid details of the grand jury’s investigation based on notes Williams and Fainaru-Wada had obtained from court transcripts leaked by an anonymous source. Bonds denied knowingly taking any steroids, but prosecutors waved in the air documents allegedly confirming his regular use of substances banned by Major League Baseball.

Furious prosecutors launched an investigation into the leak of secret grand jury transcripts. The reporters were called on to testify but refused — and so joined two other reporters last year threatened with jail time for resisting subpoenas. A lawyer stepped forward last month and admitted leaking the documents, but Williams and Fainaru-Wada came dangerously close to landing in the same East Bay lockup where blogger Josh Wolf is held for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury.

The rash of recent attacks on reporters by federal prosecutors has First Amendment advocates up in arms. After all, no one’s going to leak crucial information if the courts can simply bulldoze the anonymity that journalists grant whistleblowers. Fainaru-Wada and Williams have since inspired a bipartisan proposal in Congress to protect journalists at the federal level (dozens of states already have variations of a shield law in place).

"People roll their eyes when you start talking about the First Amendment," Fainaru-Wada said. "But the First Amendment is not about the press, it’s about the public."

In addition to the James Madison Freedom of Information Award, Williams and Fainaru-Wada’s coverage of the BALCO stories earned them the prestigious George Polk Award. But the story took a dark, unexpected turn last month.

Defense attorney Troy Hellerman, who represented one of the BALCO executives, pleaded guilty Feb. 15 to contempt of court and obstruction of justice charges and could serve up to two years in prison for admitting he twice allowed Fainaru-Wada to take notes from the grand jury’s sealed transcripts.

Just as he was spilling details in 2004, Hellerman demanded that a judge dismiss charges against his client, complaining that the leaks prevented a fair trial. He even blamed the leaks on prosecutors. A deputy attorney general called the moves "an especially cynical abuse of our system of justice."

Media critics lashed out at Williams and Fainaru-Wada for exploiting the leaks before and after Hellerman moved for a dismissal. Among those attacking the Chron reporters were Slate editor Jack Shafer and Tim Rutten at the LA Times, who described the conduct as "sleazy and contemptible."

Williams and Fainaru-Wada today still won’t discuss specifics about their sources, but Williams said without the leaks, names of the athletes involved would have otherwise been kept secret by the government even though the grand jury’s original BALCO investigation was complete.

"The witnesses didn’t have any expectation of privacy or secrecy of any kind," he said. "They were going to be trial witnesses. It was in that context that our reporting got under way. I am sensitive to the need of an investigative grand jury to remain secret. And I’m respectful in general of the government’s secrecy concerns. But it’s not the reporter’s job to enforce that stuff." (G.W. Schulz)

SARAH OLSON

When Oakland freelance writer and radio journalist Sarah Olson stood up to the Army by resisting a subpoena to testify in the case of Iraq war resister First Lt. Ehren Watada, she faced felony charges as well as jail time. But Olson understood that testifying against a source would turn her into an investigative tool of the federal government and chill dissent nationwide. "When the government uses a journalist as its eyes and ears, no one is going to talk to that journalist anymore," Olson told the Guardian.

She also objected to journalists being asked to participate in the prosecution of free speech. "The problem I have with verifying the accuracy of my reporting is that in this case the Army has made speech a crime," Olson said. Watada, whom Olson interviewed, has been charged with missing a troop movement and conduct unbecoming an officer, because he publicly criticized President George W. Bush and his illegal Iraq War.

In the end, Army prosecutors dropped the subpoena once Watada agreed to stipulate that Olson’s reporting was accurate. Olson, for her part, attributes the dropping of the subpoena to the support she received from media groups, including the Society for Professional Journalists. (Phelan)

Student journalist

STAFF OF THE LOWELL

The 2006 school year got off to a rough start for Lowell High School, one of the top-ranked public high schools in the country and certainly San Francisco’s finest. The school’s award-winning student newspaper the Lowell was covering it all.

After the October issue went to press, the school’s two journalism classes, which are solely responsible for writing and editing content for the monthly paper, received a visit from the school’s interim principal, Amy Hansen. Though Hansen says there was no attempt to censor the paper and the classes agree that no prior review was requested when it appeared that the students would be covering some controversial stories, the principal questioned their motivations as journalists and asked them to consider a number of complicated scenarios designed to make them second-guess their roles as reporters. The principal told the student journalists they had a moral responsibility, not to turn out the news, but to turn in their sources and information.

In separate meetings with each journalism class, Hansen questioned them about when it was appropriate to lay aside the pen and paper in the name of the law. The students maintained that as journalists they are in the position to report what happens and not pass moral judgment. Additionally, their privileged position as information gatherers would be compromised if they revealed their sources.

The lectures from Hansen did not deter the journalism classes from their basic mission to cover school news as objectively and thoroughly as possible. Even when police were called in to question Megan Dickey, who was withholding the name of a source she’d used in a story about a tire slashing, she still refused to say what she knew. (Witherell)

Whistleblower

MARK KLEIN

Mark Klein knew there was something fishy going on when his boss at AT&T told him that a representative of the National Security Agency would be coming by to talk to one of the senior technicians. Klein was a union communications tech, one of the people who keep the phone company’s vast network going every day. The NSA visitor stopped by, and before long Klein learned that AT&T’s building on Folsom Street would have a private room that none of the union techs would be allowed to enter.

Klein kept his eyes open and learned enough from company memos to conclude that the government was using AT&T’s equipment to monitor the private communications of unsuspecting and mostly undeserving citizens. When he retired in May 2004, he took a stack of material with him — and when he read in the New York Times a year and half later that the NSA had indeed been spying on people, he decided to go public.

The 62-year-old East Bay resident had never been a whistleblower. "I didn’t even know where to begin," he told us. So he surfed the Web looking for civil liberties groups and wound up contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

It was a perfect match: the EFF was about to file a landmark class-action lawsuit against AT&T charging the company with collaborating with the government to spy on ordinary citizens — and Klein’s evidence was a bombshell.

"Mark Klein is a true American hero," EFF lawyer Kurt Opsahl told us. "He has bravely come forward with information critical for proving AT&T’s involvement with the government’s invasive surveillance program."

Federal Judge Vaughn Walker has kept Klein’s written testimony under seal, but the EFF is trying to get it released to the public. The suit is moving forward. (Redmond)

SPJ-NorCal’s James Madison Awards dinner is March 13 at 5:30 p.m. at Biscuits and Blues, 401 Mason, SF. Tickets are $50 for members and $70 for the general public. For more information or to see if tickets are still available, contact Matthew Hirsch at (415) 749-5451 or mhirsch@alm.com.