GWU to shut down during IMF protests

GWU senior Tanya Margolin, pictured left, speaks out against the university’s decision.

By Amy Argetsinger

Washington, DC, Sept. 7— George Washington University (GWU) will force nearly 5,400 students to move out of its Foggy Bottom residence halls during a five-day period surrounding the anti-globalization protests that are expected to swamp the city’s downtown this month.

The decision, announced yesterday, is one of the more drastic measures taken so far in preparation for demonstrations on Sept. 29 and 30 that police predict could draw 100,000 protesters to the site of World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings just blocks from the GWU campus.

GWU President Stephen J. Trachtenberg said he reluctantly decided to close the university at the recommendation of city police. In addition to shutting residence halls, GWU will urge students living in private housing near campus to leave the neighborhood. All classes will be canceled and all university buildings will be closed from the evening of Sept. 27 to the afternoon of Oct. 2.

University officials said they are asking most students to go home to their families or stay with friends or relatives outside Foggy Bottom. They said they are making emergency travel loans and discount plane tickets available and will provide temporary housing or free round-trip bus transportation for some needy students.

“If the campus is functioning, we add a complication to anybody worrying about how to handle crowd control,” Trachtenberg said.

The announcement was criticized by many students — some who said they see it as a disruption to their studies and others who decried it as a roadblock to their involvement in the demonstrations.

“I think it’s completely the university overreacting,” said Tanya Margolin, a 21-year-old senior who lives off-campus and is active in the anti-IMF movement. “A lot of students who live on campus were planning to be active and participate in the protests.”

Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer denied that the move is designed to stifle students’ voices. “They continue to have a right to be involved in activities around the World Bank,” he said. “They just won’t be able to do it from the university.”

With thousands of people working or studying at GWU’s downtown campus, the university faced likely “traffic congestion as well as safety concerns” if it operated as usual during the protests, Gainer said.

Much of the GWU campus will be cordoned off behind a nine-foot-tall fence that city police are planning to erect around a swath of downtown as a security measure.

Just blocks from the White House, GWU has been caught up in many of the demonstrations to hit the nation’s capital. In the 1960s, students from far-flung colleges unrolled their sleeping bags in GWU’s student center when they visited Washington to protest the Vietnam War. In April 2000, during an earlier round of World Bank protests, the university canceled classes and barred overnight guests from residence halls.

Trachtenberg said last year’s demonstrations, which drew between 20,000 and 35,000 protesters, provided at most “an inconvenience” for the university — the campus suffered only minor damage, and no students were known to have been injured.

But with city officials saying that they expect perhaps three times as many protesters this time, police asked the university to “reduce the density of people in the area,” Trachtenberg said.

“One is tremendously reluctant to close a university, particularly since we are neutral in [the globalization] discussion,” he said. But “when you get a request as we have from the police to close, it’s really hard to say no.”

In a memo sent to GWU students and staff yesterday, Trachtenberg said that no classes on the Foggy Bottom campus will start after 4 pm Sept. 27 and that all buildings will be locked by 8pm. Residence halls will reopen at 11am Oct. 2, and classes will resume at 4pm that day. Makeup classes will be scheduled throughout the semester.

The university’s offers of transportation and housing help did little to appease many students.

Senior Billy Tagg, 21, of Great Neck, NY, said he was outraged that he would have to abandon his room during his last weekend to study for law-school entrance exams. “They should probably be paying for students to go home,” he said. “They should have gotten hotel rooms for everyone.”

Some demonstrators said GWU seemed to be sending a message to students interested in the anti-globalization movement that they should just go home and ignore it.

“The attitude of the administration reflects the attitude of the city itself, which is one of batten-down-the-hatches, fear and loathing, paranoia, instead of constructive engagement,” said Jay Marx, 31, a Washington organizer.

Source: Washington Post

Bush’s drugs boss unfit for office, say civil rights groups

By Duncan Campbell

Los Angeles, California, Sept. 8— The man President George Bush has nominated to lead the fight against drugs is unfit for office because of his views on race and crime, according to civil rights and drug reform groups. The claims are likely to lead to a clash next Tuesday when John Walters, Bush’s choice as “drug czar” has his Senate nomination hearing.

There is concern that Walters represents the reactionary wing of the drugs debate in that he favors more frequent use of jail for users, and increased military spending in Latin America. His nomination hearing in front of the Senate judiciary committee on September 11 represents the latest clash over the president’s attempts to appoint hardliners to key posts.

A coalition of civil rights and drug reform groups this week launched a critical analysis of Walters’ policies, saying that they represented a step backwards. The Coalition for Compassionate Leadership on Drug Policy expressed concern that he appeared ignorant of the realities of the drugs world.

“It’s truly disturbing to have our nation’s nominee for the top drug policy spot be a throwback to a more intolerant and reactionary way of thinking,” said Vincent Schiraldi of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, one of the groups in the coalition, which advocates a greater concentration of efforts on prevention and treatment.

At the heart of the concerns expressed about Walters are remarks he made in May when he told the Weekly Standard: “What really drives the battle against law enforcement and punishment is not a commitment to treatment, but the widely held view that, first, we are imprisoning too many people for merely possessing illegal drugs; second, drug and other criminal sentences are too long and harsh, and third, the criminal justice system is unjustly punishing young black men. These are among the great urban myths of our time.”

The coalition says these are far from being urban myths, and that the concern about prison numbers and race are backed up by official statistics.

Of the 1,559,100 arrests for drug law violations in 1998, 78.8% were for possession of drugs and more than 100,000 people were in state or federal prison solely because of this. The average federal sentence for a drug offense in 1997 was 78 months, more than twice the average sentence for manslaughter (30 months).

According to the coalition, black men are admitted to state prisons for drug offenses at a rate that is 13.4 times that of whites, despite the fact that seven times more whites than blacks use drugs.

A letter sent by a number of groups separate from the coalition, asking senators to vote against Walters’ nomination, states: “His views on race and crime make him unfit for a position that requires sensitivity to racial fairness.” Hilary Shelton, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that the concerns were being expressed to the Senate judiciary committee.

Walters has described the current step-up of US involvement in military operations in Colombia as “cheap and effective”, and has urged an intensification of the policy.

A White House spokeswoman described Walters as a “respected and experienced leader in drug policy.” She added: “The White House is committed to a balanced approach toward the problem of drug abuse in the United States, with emphasis both on demand reduction and prevention.”

Source: The Guardian (UK)

New Ritalin ad blitz makes parents jumpy
More families and legislators are revolting against the push to consume anti-hyperactivity medications

By Viveca Novak

Washington, DC, Sept. 10— In Sheila Matthews’ view, it was a heartening event for the back-to-school season: the signing of a law in Connecticut that she and others hope will relieve the growing pressure on parents to put their kids on drugs to control attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The New Canaan homemaker helped gather support for the bill and was understandably proud to be in the Governor’s office last week for the ceremony. But she and her fellow lobbyists for the legislation, most of them parents, also got a surprise kick in the teeth.

Picking up the September issues of a number of women’s and parenting magazines, they saw the very first ads promoting these same medications. Considered Schedule II controlled substances by the Drug Enforcement Administration, they are among the most addictive and abused drugs that are still legal. Says Patricia Weathers, a Millbrook, N.Y., mother pushing for a law like Connecticut’s: “It seems like every time we take a step forward, they come back and hit us harder.”

Connecticut’s law is the first to bar school officials from recommending psychotropic drugs for kids on the theory that such matters should be left to families and their doctors. The law comes on the heels of legislation enacted by Minnesota earlier this year preventing schools from forcing parents to medicate ADHD children. Utah and New Jersey have similar bills pending, and lawmakers in many other states have shown interest in such action.

But the legislative trend is at odds with a new—and unprecedented—marketing push by the makers of ADHD drugs. Until now, drugmakers have heeded a 30-year-old international treaty meant to discourage consumer advertising of psychotropic substances. No more. In one ad, drugmaker Celltech shows a smiling boy and his mom with the message: “One dose covers his ADHD for the whole school day,” plus the drug’s name, Metadate CD. The ad is running in a dozen magazines, including Ladies’ Home Journal, which has two more ADHD drug ads in the same issue—from Shire Pharmaceuticals (maker of Adderall) and McNeil Consumer HealthCare (Concerta). These ads don’t name any medications, but they do give toll-free numbers for more information. McNeil also has a similar ad on cable TV.

In light of what appears to be an epidemic of ADHD-some 3 million US youngsters are believed to be afflicted with it and related behavior problems—pharmaceutical companies are locked in a fierce battle for what will soon be a $1 billion-a-year market for drugs treating the problem. New prescriptions for ADHD treatments have gone up more than 38% over the past five years, with 20 million prescriptions written in the past year. No longer do Ritalin and its generic knockoffs rule. Now there are more than half a dozen treatments, some of which last a whole school day, sparing kids the stigma of lining up at the nurse’s office.

Last year pharmaceutical manufacturers spent $2.5 billion marketing drugs of all kinds to consumers. A spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association says such ads “empower” patients by informing them of treatment options. But, as doctors will tell you, they are a double-edged sword because they drive up demand for drugs. And that’s particularly dicey in the case of drugs like those used for ADHD, which the DEA puts in the same category with morphine, cocaine, Demerol and Oxycontin.

Alarmed as it is by the trend, the government’s hands may be tied. Under a 1971 United Nations convention, signatory nations agreed to prohibit the advertisement of psychotropic substances to the public. But the US never passed such a law. So when the DEA recently complained to Celltech about its ad, it could only express strong concern—not threaten legal action.

The Food and Drug Administration is also handcuffed. Most of the ADHD ads are not within its jurisdiction because they neither name the drug nor describe it. (Exception: Celltech’s ad for Metadate CD, which the FDA is reviewing.) And even if they were, says FDA official Nancy Ostrove, the agency doesn’t have the authority “to treat advertisements for controlled substances any differently” from those for other drugs. As for the drug companies, they insist their ads “are within the letter and spirit of all laws,” in the words of a spokesman for McNeil.

Clarke Ross, head of Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, funded in part by the drugmakers, agrees that the ads promote “public awareness of the existence of ADHD.” But he thinks many families would prefer advertisers simply to discuss the condition and suggest drugs as part of a multipronged approach.

Certainly Sheila Matthews (who uses her maiden name to protect her son’s privacy) does not believe medication is the answer—or even in ADHD’s validity. Two years ago, school officials said her son fit an ADHD profile and warned that “if I didn’t medicate him, he would self-medicate later”—meaning he would use drugs illegally. Instead, speech and language tutoring solved the problem.

That’s why she’s so pleased by the new law. But in case she had forgotten what she was up against, she was reminded at last Thursday’s signing. A researcher lobbying for funding to test his new ADHD treatment technique was also there—as well as a representative from Novartis, the maker of Ritalin.

Ritalin found to be more potent than cocaine

By Jean West

Sept. 9— The children’s drug Ritalin has a more potent effect on the brain than cocaine, a study has found.

Using brain imaging, scientists have found that, in pill form, Ritalin - taken by thousands of British children and four million in the United States - occupies more of the neural transporters responsible for the ‘high’ experienced by addicts than smoked or injected cocaine. The research may alarm parents whose children have been prescribed Ritalin as a solution to Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

The study was commissioned to understand more about why Ritalin - which has the same pharmacological profile as cocaine - is effective in calming children and helping them concentrate, while cocaine produces an intense ‘high’ and is powerfully addictive.

In oral form, Ritalin did not induce this intense psychological ‘hit’. But Dr. Nora Volkow, psychiatrist and imaging expert at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York, who led the study, said that injected into the veins as a liquid rather than taken as a pill, it produced a rush that ‘addicts like very much’. Interviewed in last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association newsletter, she said: ‘They say it’s like cocaine.’

Even in pill form, Ritalin blocked far more of the brain transporters that affect mood change and had a greater potency in the brain than cocaine. Researchers were shocked by this finding. A normal dose administered to children blocked 70 per cent of the dopamine transporters. ‘The data clearly show the notion that Ritalin is a weak stimulant is completely incorrect,’ said Volkow. Cocaine is known to block around 50 per cent of these transporters, leaving a surfeit of dopamine in the system, which is responsible for the hit addicts crave. But now it is known that Ritalin blocks 20 per cent more of these auto-receptors.

‘I’ve been almost obsessed about trying to understand [Ritalin] with imaging,’ said Volkow. ‘As a psychiatrist I sometimes feel embarrassed [about the lack of knowledge] because this is by far the drug we prescribe most frequently to children.’

However, it was still not clear why a drug that has been administered for more than 40 years was not producing an army of addicted schoolchildren. Volkow and her team concluded that this was due to the much slower process of oral ingestion. It takes around an hour for Ritalin in pill form to block dopamine transporters in the brain. Smoked or injected, cocaine does this in seconds.

Dr. Joanna Fowler, who worked with Volkow on the project, said: ‘All drugs that are abused by humans release large quantities of dopamine. But dopamine is also necessary for people to be able to pay attention and filter out other distractions.’

But opponents of Ritalin, labelled a ‘wonder drug’ and a ‘chemical cosh’, believe it may be addictive and has dangerous side-effects. Moreover, many believe ADHD is a fraudulent title for a non-existent condition once put down to the exuberance of youth. Professor Steve Baldwin, a child psychologist from Teesside University, who died this year in the Selby rail crash, campaigned against Ritalin. He pointed out similarities between the drug and amphetamines as well as cocaine.

Mandy Smith of Banff in Scotland has a son of eight who was prescribed Ritalin for nine months. ‘I am astonished the British Government have allowed this drug to be prescribed,’ she said. ‘It can destroy people’s lives. My son was a changed person when he took Ritalin. He was suicidal and depressed.’

Janice Hill, of the Overload Support Network, a charity for parents of children with behavioral problems, said: ‘Now we have thousands of children in Scotland taking a drug that is more potent than cocaine. What does it take before the situation is thoroughly investigated?’

A spokeswoman for Novartis, which makes Ritalin, said: ‘Ritalin is available as tablets only. It should only be initially prescribed by a doctor who is a specialist in child behavioral disorders and should always be used and monitored under strict medical supervision.’

Source: The Observer (UK)

FBI denies bias as raid shuts Arabic web sites

By Marcus Kabel

Dallas, Texas, Sept. 6— An 80-strong US terrorism task force raided the Texas-based host of Arabic Web sites, including that of the Arab world’s leading independent news channel, prompting charges on Thursday of an “anti-Muslim witchhunt.”

But the FBI, which took part in the raid on Wednesday at privately held InfoCom Corp., in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, denied any anti-Arab bias and said it was executing an unspecified federal search warrant.

The FBI declined to specify the target of the search warrant, which is under seal in a federal court, except to say in a statement that the search was “one aspect of a more than two-year investigation that is ongoing.”

InfoCom’s owners said the raid resulted in a temporary shut-down of websites it hosts for about 500 customers, including that run by Al-Jazeera television and the newspaper Al-Sharq, both based in the Gulf state of Qatar.

Al-Jazeera is a major regional news source for Arabic speakers. Often dubbed “the Arab CNN,” it has emerged as a major force in a region where most broadcasters operate under direct state control.

The websites were shut down while about 80 agents copied information from InfoCom’s Internet servers, said Ghassan Elashi, brother of owner Bayan Elashi.

He said many of the sites were able to start up again on other servers, while the task force continued to copy computerized information on Thursday. The office remained sealed off by FBI agents.

“We have nothing to hide. We are cooperating 110 percent with the FBI,” InfoCom’s lawyer Mark Enoch told reporters. Enoch said whatever tips had led to the search was “bad information.”

“If they think they’re going to find that InfoCom is associated with terrorism, they’re wrong. It’s not,” he said.

Elashi said InfoCom’s customers were not solely Arabic or Muslim. “They are across the board, from Dallas to California to other places around the world,” he said.

Several American Islamic groups condemned the search as “an anti-Muslim witchhunt promoted by the pro-Israel lobby in America,” according to a statement from 10 organizations, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

“We are deeply concerned that there is a pattern of stereotyping that permeates all these types of investigations. There is a marginalization of the American-Muslim population,” Mahdi Bray of the Los Angeles-based council said at a news conference outside the closed InfoCom office.

The FBI denied the raid was any kind of witchhunt.

“We were executing a search warrant as part of a criminal investigation. It had nothing to do with anti-Islamic or anti-Palestinian or anti-Middle East issues or anything like that,” said special agent Lori Bailey, spokeswoman for the Dallas FBI office.

The search was conducted by the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multi-agency federal and local grouping which includes the FBI, Secret Service and the US Customs Service.

It also includes the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, an arm of the Treasury Department empowered to freeze or seize the assets of individuals or organizations that have been designated by the government as terrorist.

Source: Reuters

Media companies challenge FCC ownership rules

By Christopher Stern

Washington, DC, Sept. 8— Long-standing government rules limiting the size and reach of the nation’s largest broadcasting, newspaper and cable companies are facing new challenges in the courts and federal regulatory agencies, increasing the likelihood they could be eliminated or relaxed in coming months.

Yesterday, a group of major media companies mounted the latest attack, going before a federal appeals court to argue that the rules violate their right to free speech and are no longer needed to ensure that consumers have access to competing sources of news and entertainment programming.

The group, which included Fox, NBC and CBS, said the advent of satellite, internet and cable television services offer consumers more choices than ever before. They urged the court to overturn Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules barring a company from owning stations that collectively reach more than 35 percent of viewing households.

As part of the proceeding, AOL Time Warner Inc. also asked the court to end a ban on one company owning television stations and cable systems in the same market.

The court challenges, if successful, would allow big media companies to become bigger through mergers and acquisitions. Yesterday’s hearing came less than one week before the FCC has scheduled its own look at other rules that limit the number of subscribers a single cable company may reach and a ban on ownership of a television station and newspaper in the same market.

The restrictions on media ownership began in the early days of radio when Congress became concerned about a small group of companies gaining control of a powerful medium for delivering information. Since then, restrictions have been placed on ownership of many media organizations, including television, satellite and cable systems. In more recent times, Congress revised the numerical thresholds as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, sparking a debate that many believe is coming to a head.

“These rules are at their greatest vulnerability since Congress established the new levels in 1996,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who played a key role in writing the legislation.

Like many large media companies, The Washington Post Co. is affected by the federal rules because it owns television stations, cable systems and newspapers. Its Post-Newsweek Stations Inc., a group of six TV stations, has actively lobbied to keep a cap in place that limits networks to owning stations that collectively reach no more than 35 percent of households nationwide.

The major television networks have been unhappy with that provision.

“Every day the rule is in affect, we are being deprived of our ability to speak to 65 percent of the nation’s households,” said Edward W. Warren, who argued the case for Fox, CBS and NBC.

In making their case, the networks believe they have found an ally in FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, a Republican promoted by President Bush to head the agency. Powell has said the rules seem overly restrictive to deal with the changes in the media landscape. Yesterday, FCC lawyers were put in the awkward position of defending rules Powell had criticized.

Last April, the same court that heard yesterday’s arguments on media ownership threw out an FCC rule that limited a cable company to reaching no more than 30 percent of all homes that subscribe to a pay television service. The court ruled that the FCC had failed to provide an underlying justification for the cap.

The media companies said the FCC had failed to justify other rules as well. At issue is a congressional requirement that the agency review and justify all of its regulations every two years.

Even the court acknowledged that it would be virtually impossible for the FCC to meet Congress’s rolling deadline. “It is a bizarre schedule, but that is what they said,” said US Appeals Court Judge Harry T. Edwards, who presided over the hearing along with US Appeals Court Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and US Appeals Court Judge David B. Sentelle.

Gene Kimmelman, co-director of the Washington office of Consumers Union, an advocacy group, said if the court requires the agency to provide a detailed justification every two years, it will likely result in the demise of the agency’s ability to regulate media.

“The logical result is that these rules get thrown out the window,” Kimmelman said.

Kimmelman and other consumer advocates say further consolidation would be harmful to consumers, not only because it gives a small group of companies greater control over news and entertainment, but also because companies would face less competitive pressure to hold down prices on services like subscription television and high-speed internet access.

Source: Washington Post