My parents have been taking their grandchildren to Europe for 2-4 weeks in the summers. They have eight grandchildren and my youngest son John was the last to go this year. However, my mother wasn't well, so my father asked me if I would come. So I unexpectedly went to France, Belgium and Luxembourg (the majority of which time was spent in France) this summer with my father and son. It was a good distraction for me though I was still somewhat depressed and it was very sad for me to see how much pain my father was in from his arthritis. He also managed to miss a step and slice his arm, which required 12 stitches and my father and I were also worried about my mother for at least the first week or so of the trip until we heard she was doing much better.

So "trip" number two. The week before last I was extremely depressed and thinking about suicide, even though I was at the cottage on a river. When we got back to the city on Monday and I saw my psychiatrist we both agreed that it was time for me to become an inpatient so I could be removed from the rest of the medications I was on which were not working and be put on something else.

I am bipolar (II) so the drug I've now started is lithium. I've already been experiencing some side effects so I hope they go away.

During the "vacation" time I've been here so far, I've been both up and down although the up is probably more like an absence of the lowest depression, not really being normal.

The inpatient psych ward is calm and quiet and very peaceful and the nurses and doctors are lovely. I have the greatest empathy with the patients who struggle to regain mental health. There is a patient lounge with fridge, TV, ice dispenser. There are rooms for group and individual therapy. I tried an art therapy and relaxation class last week which were good. There is a larger dining room/computer room/piano room, with pay phones that accept incoming calls.

Even with someone like me who has a mental illness (bipolar disorder), I've never knowingly met a schizophrenic before and now I've met two. There is some stigma that all schizophrenics are violent or scary in some fashion, and that is just a stereotype. There seem to be quite a number of patients with serious, serious depression, and four of them went for ECT (shock treatment) yesterday (were "zapped") as one of the residents said. I've even met the first other bipolar person here besides me I've ever met.

The most recent and dramatic alteration in my life (November 2007) was a diagnosis by a psychiatrist of having bipolar affective disorder, II, rapid cycling, at age 51.

It is a chronic disorder (used to be called manic depression) and I will probably be on pills for the rest of my life. I was suicidal before Christmas because my medications hadn't been sorted yet (still a work in progress).

One thing I know for certain from my short experience being bipolar is that some of the billions going to cancer research should be directed instead to mental health facilities and staffing and research. Cancer (particularly breast cancer) is a popular cause; mental health issues are not.

From the January 2008, Vol. 02, Issue 01, B: Beauty & Beyond magazine, pages 18-19, an article about S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder):

LET THERE BE LIGHT
Light/Colour Therapy Part I

THE S.A.D. TRUTH

By Olwen Hydross

Light is a source of Health & Beauty. A visible radiant energy that travels through space in the form of electromagnetic waves that varies in size, intensity and frequency. When light travels at a speed of 300,000 km per second it vibrates. When the different colours. Not visible to the naked eye, they exist anyway.

Science of Chromotherapy
Before the scientific age, colour was considered akin to "divinity". It was only discovered in the 17th century by Sir Isaac Newton's demonstration of passing lightrays through a glass prism that "white light" (sun light), was not just a single component but also a complete sum of all the colours of the spectrum. The light rays when passed through the prism become divided into a series of luminous zones, which reproduce all the colours of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. All have different wavelengths and vibrate at different frequencies.

Effect of Light on Organisms
Seasonal Affective Disorders (SAD)
Photobiology, the discipline that studies the effect of light on living organisms, has clearly demonstrated the beneficial effect of sunlight on all living things. We perceive light through the eyes and through the surface of the skin. Light is absorbed through specific biochemical receptors that are present in our organism,  and through biophysical and metabolic receptors it transmits energy to all our organisms. Regulating the production of Melatonin (sleep hormone) and Serotonin (awake hormone).

Just as animals rely on the signals from the sun to keep their body clocks exact to synchronize their activities, so do we humans need sufficient daylight to synchronize their activities, so do we humans need sufficient daylight to synchronize our circadian and circ-annual rhythms and body clock. The biological clock can keep the time, but in the absence of connection from the daylight cycle, the biological clock gets out of sync, and affects our physical and mental health. Seasonal Affective Disorders (SAD), is one effect of reduced exposure to sunlight.

A similar thing occurs when we travel across different time zones, we experience what we call "jet lag". This de-synchronization of the body's rhythms is suspect in triggering problems; i.e. hormonal imbalances, sleep disorders and mood swings.

Absorption Through Skin
Scientific studies have demonstrated that only certain parts of the body are able to absorb light. These "light sensitive areas" coincide with the Acupuncture Points, Qi channels, and "Meridians", Yin and Yang, on the body's surface.

When human living organism is exposed to visible light at these actual points the light can travel immense distances within the body. The "Meridians" can be thought of as a "light distribution system" similar to a fiber optic communication system.

The light penetration through the human tisssue depends upon the spectral range of light (Colour) used. White light (mixture of all colours) diffused the best, followed by Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Indigo and Magenta light, which is the weakest.

These studies observed that "light and colour" are natural sources of energy that can help the body to cure itself by non-artificial means and by re-establishing corporal balance.

Cellular Energy
If we think of the therapeutic capacity of "solar light" as a "multi-coloured" energy source, it is easy to understand why certain colours, when considered separately, can be so effective. Each colour has different properties and actions, with different effects, such as: calming, exciting, re-vitalizing, or normalizing.

When a cell is hit by a light wave that has a wavelength equal to its own, a resonance is created. This sort of  "agitation" provoked by the absorption of light energy causes chemical / physical changes to take place, is able to restore the molecular resonance and brings a normalizing effect of the cellular function.

Some photochemical phenomena happens everyday. For example, on a bright sunny day when skin is exposed to the sun it will turn brown. Light interacts with molecules, increasing their energy, thereby modifying, or separating them to create new ones. Light colour acts on our cells in various other ways and may be used for therapeutic purposes. Frequently newborn, premature babies, born with jaundice, are treated in hospital under blue light and recover very quickly.

Chromotherapy
Highly sophisticated apparatus, designed to select each colour and deliver the power of energy on the basis of its wavelength, intensity and range of action, is now available to help in the treatment of common beauty problems such as: Excess Fat, Water Retention, Cellulite, Stretch Marks, Solar Redness, Sun Rash, Pre-mature Skin Aging, Dry Skin, Wrinkles, Acne, Oily Skin Prevention of Free Radicals, Slack Skin, Atonic Skin, and Threat Veins.

Selection and duration of exposure to the colour/s used in the treatment is customized, depending on the condition to be treated.

Light Food for Thought
Considering that our physical and mental dispositions are effected by light & colour, it is wise to carefully consider our daily surroundings, i.e.; colour of clothing and paint on our home, or office walls.... Even lighting: Full Spectrum rather than Fluorescent. Many of us work in  artifically lit buildings that do not provide sufficient intensity of light to affect the suppression of the hormone "melatonin" and to connect our ciradian Rhythms. Light specialist believe that this mal-illumination may be the heart of many common disorders, including fatigue, depression, suppressed immune function, sleep disorders, skin damage.

After all, a world without light and colour can become a SAD place.

This seems like something arising from modern history's dark moments and irrational fears, particularly when the frightened, fear-mongerer is a judge. From the February 14, 2008, News & Views section of Xtra!, page 14, is the article about this judge and his comments and the lack of education in general of judges on HIV/AIDs related issues:

JUDGE'S HIV COMMENTS SPARK ANGER
Education badly needed, say critics

NATIONAL NEWS

Krishna Rau

A Barrie judge who refused to let an HIV-positive witness testify in his courtroom has led to a call for judicial education on AIDS and queer issues.

In November Ontario Court of Justice (OCJ)  judge Jon-Jo Douglas told a sexual assault trial that an HIV-positive witness with Hepatitis C was a danger to the court.

"The HIV virus will live in a dried state for year after year and only needs moisture to reactivate itself," Douglas told the crown attorney according to a trial transcript. "I mean, he speaks within two feet of me with two serious infectious diseases. Either you mask your witness and/or move us to another courtroom  or we do not proceed."

Court staff also wore rubber gloves to place documents touched by the witness in plastic bags.

The crown attorney asked the Ontario Superior Court to remove Douglas, but Justice Margaret Eberhard refused, saying Douglas has jurisdiction over courtroom safety.

The trial was adjourned over Douglas's concerns. It was scheduled to resume on Thu, Feb 14 with a new judge.

The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network (CHALN) and the HIV and AIDS Legal Clinic have filed complaints with the Ontario Judicial Council over both Douglas and Eberhard.

"We suggest that it would be appropriate to examine the extent to which judges receive information about HIV/AIDS and related legal and human rights questions, in the course of judicial education," states the complaint. "We would be happy to discuss further with you, or with the Education Secretariat of the Ontario Court of Justice and similar bodies such as the National Judicial Institute, how to overcome HIV-related prejudice in the courtrooms of Ontario and Canada."

Leon Mar, CHALN's director of communications, says the extent of the judge's ignorance is a shocker.

"This is a wakeup call," he says. "This is a clear signal that HIV prejudice still exists in the court system."

Canadian courts are responsible for establishing their own education programs, most of which are optional. The result, says critics, is that judges decide how much they need to learn.

"You might not have the training because you might not know enough to know you need the training," says Hilary Cook, the chair of the legal issues committee at queer lobby group Egale Canada.

Even when judges do attend sessions their willingness to learn might be questionable.

"I think it falls into the category of you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink," says University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin, who has conducted judicial training sessions on immigration and refugee issues. "They regard any attempt to teach them as an attempt to infringe on their independence."

A spokesperson for the OCJ referred questions about the Education Secretariat to the court's online annual report. That report claims the Secretariat will "support and encourage programs which maintain and enhance social, ethical and cultural sensitivity," but offers no specifics.

The National Judicial Institute (NJI) and the OCJ joingly fund a position of education director for the court, but the NJI would provide little information on programs around HIV or queer issues.

Linda Russell, a spokesperson for the NJI, says the organization offers education in "social context," but wouldn't specify whether that included people with HIV/AIDS or queers.

"I'm sure you can understand that social context involves a great many groups," she says. "It would involve my doing a great deal of research to find out."

From the Thursday, January 3, 2008, Ideas section of the Toronto Star, page AA6, an article about social policy from Linda McQuaig. She has also written various non-fiction books, including the one that I've read, called It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil, and the Right for the Planet.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF PROGRESS
Agenda 2008
Social Policy

The seventh in a series of essays about key issues in the year ahead

Taller Europeans have a message for small-minded North Americans

Linda McQuaig

Many adjectives come to mind when thinking of how to describe Americans. But "short" probably isn't one of them.

We're used to the notion of the United States as the world's dominant power - a land of untold resources, wealth and consumption. And one reflection of this abundance is the fact that for most of the past 2 1/2 centuries, Americans have been literally the tallest people on the planet. Feeding off the abundant wild game and rich agriculture of their vast new land, colonial Americans measured a full three inches taller than Europeans.

Not so any more. Compared to Europeans, Americans have effectively shrunk. Indeed, among all advanced industrial nations, Americans are now at the bottom end of the height scale.

And, no, it's not the influx of short Hispanics. The height pattern is the same for Americans even when the sample is limited to non-Hispanic, native-born Americans.

It seems to be a reflection of something more basic. According to an influential paper in Social Science Quarterly last June by economic historians John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale, "height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment."

The relative shrinking of Americans on the world scene is perhaps then an indicator of something Americans are doing badly - not in Iran, but right at home. And that something should be of more than passing interest to Canadians as we continue, consciously and unconsciously, to shape our economic and social systems with the U.S. in mind.

Actually, Canada has traditionally been a blend of the U.S. and European approaches. But in the last couple of decades, as we have focused increasingly on cutting taxes and have adopted the attitude that individuals must make it on their own in society, we've veered more closely to the U.S. model.

We tend to view the low-tax, low-spending U.S. model as simply the norm in the era of globalization. But in fact it is only the U.S. norm.

Europeans, particularly nothern Europeans, have traditionally done things differently - imposing much higher taxes and delivering much more generous social programs that provide a striking array of benefits to every member of society. Contrary  to our impressions here in the West that globalization has fundamentally redesigned the world, the Europeans have stuck with their high-tax, high-spending model in the globalized era.

Which is why the "shrinking" of Americans relative to Europeans is so intriguing.

Almost three inches taller than Americans, the Dutch are now the tallest people in the world. Dutch males average six foot one - seven inches taller on average than they were just over a century ago. Crowded around the towering Dutch at the top end of the height scale are other northern Eoropeans - Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Belgians and Germans.

Height is a rather potent symbol. But it also appears to be a useful measure of the well-being of a nation's citizen's, particularly its young people, since height is determined early in life. Komlos and Lauderdale note that a wide range of factors determine height: "(T)he political economy of the healthcare system, education transfers to the poor, and government policy toward equality (hence taxation policy) all matter."

They go on to suggest that  "perhaps the western and northern European welfare states, with their universial socioeconomic safety nets, are able to provide a higher biological standard of living to their children and youth than the more free-market-oriented U.S. economy."

Height is in fact one of many measures of well-being where the Americans increasingly find themselves of the bottom of the heap among industrial nations.

Equally telling is the Innocenti Report Card, a broad measure of physical and material child well-being in 21 OECD countries, prepared by a UN-affiliated Italian research institute. Once again, the Nederlands tops the list, in a cluster with Sweden, Denmark and Finland. One has to go all the way down to number 20 spot to find the United States. (It narrowly edged out last-place Britian, which with the Thatcher revolution in the 1980s joined the U.S. in adopting the low-tax model.) Canada, in keeping with its blended approach to the U.S. and European models, comes in at a middling Number 12.

The strikingly strong performance of the northern Europeans and the dismal performance of the U.S. (and Britain) when it comes to child well-being would presumably set off alarm bells in any nation with aspirations for its future.

Yet we remain strangly oblivious here in Canada, continuing our obsession with low taxes and our acceptance of minimal social programs, even as the Europeans show us what appears to be a far better way to equip our children for the future.

One of the key differences for European children - in addition to excellent public health care and even free public dental care in some Nordic countries - is universal access to amply-funded child-care programs, which are typically housed in attractive buildings and staffed with teachers trained to encourage creative thinking and interest in the arts.

By contrast, we are in North America have embraced an "individualistic" approach, leaving it up to individual families to take care of the needs of their own children. This has left millions of children in poorly funded private daycare facilities or fending for themselves after school.

After years of pressure by activists, Ottawa finally brought in a bare-bones national child-care program in 2005. Yet that minimal program was cancelled by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, which replaced it with an even more meager child allowance paid to individual families, with no guarantee the money even be spent on children.

And even as the federal budget surplus ballooned to $16 billion this year, the Harper government steadfastly avoided enriching social programs, directing the surplus instead to tax cuts and military spending increases.

Our tight-fisted approach to meeting social needs takes its heaviest toll on the poor, but it has a huge impact on the middle class as well. The extensive benefits inthe northern  European countries include many that would make dramatic differences in the lives of just about all Canadians, including free university tuition, extensive in-home care of the elderly and the disabled, generous pensions, maternity and paternity leaves, job retraining and mandatory paid vacations (for all workers) of four, five or even six weeks.

Many Canadians might be inclined to dismiss these sorts of benefits as unaffordable luxuries - luxuries that would risk dminishing our economic performance in the highly competitive global economy. After all, the U.S., with its low-tax, low-spending model, is the powerhouse of the global economy.

But just as Americans aren't actually as tall as we think, they're not so clearly the towering economic giants we've made them out to be.

To be sure, the U.S.is one of the most competitive countries in the global economy, but it shares that elevated status with the Nordic nations, which along with the U.S., consistently rank at the top end of the scale of competitive nations, as measured by the World Economic Forum in Geneva.

This suggests that both the U.S. and European models can work well economically, leaving it a matter of which model the electorate prefers.

But there are other important factors that may reduce the room for chioice. The real imperative in the future may not be the demands of "globalization," but rather the demands of global warming.

Overall, Americans live in bigger homes, drive bigger cars and consume more.

Not surprisingly, then, Americans produce much larger carbon emissions - roughly 20 tons on average per person, compared to only nine in the Netherlands or just under six in Sweden. (And in this area, Canadians are much closer to Americans, producing almost 18 tons per person.)

But oddly there's little attention paid in Canada to the striking differences between the U.S. and European models.

Indeed, as the northern Europeans grow ever taller, more attentive to the environment and better at preparing their children for the future, we in Canada seem blindly attached to doing things as they're done south of the border- where climate change hasn't sufficiently registered as an issue, where people are getting relatively shorter, and where it's pretty much every kid for himself.

Linda McQuaig is a journalist and author, most recently of Holding the Bully's Coat" Canada and the U.S. Empire.

From the January/February 2008 issue of Vegetarian Issues, pages 70-73, an article about eating more vegetables as a vegetarian:

PUT THE VEG BACK IN VEGETARIAN
The simplest way to lose weight and keep if off this year might also be the healhiest diet change you'll ever make: eat more veggies

By Hillari Dowdle

Like many American vegetarian home cooks, I cut my teeth (so to speak) on the Moosewood Cookboook. I learned everything I know about baking homemade bread from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I revere Still Live with Menu as a work of art as much as a bible of artful meatless cooking. And I think of Berkeley, Calif.-dwelling Mollie Katzen, creator of these three classics as well as a new one, The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without, as a poster girl for vegetarian living.

So I'm shocked to hear Katzen doesn't call herself a vegetarian. "Vegetarianism isn't even about vegetables - it's about meat, or the absence of meat," she says. "I want to make a more positive statement - a big embrace of garden, orchard, and eating low on statement - a big embrace of garden, orchard, and eating low on the food chain. I like to call this pro-vegetable-ism.

"People approach me all the time and tell me they haven't eaten meat for 18 years. But I'm not interested in what you aren't eating," Katzen says. "Tell me what you are eating. Tell me you're into cooking kale chips, and we have something to talk about."

She's got a point. Every vegetarian has his or her reasons for choosing a meatless path. But, decision made, it's easy to fall into a meat-bad, everything-else-good way of thinking - a mind-set that paves the way for white bread, potato chips, and Oreos to take over a diet that should be among the world's most healthful.

It makes me wonder, here at the dawning of a brand-new year, what would happen if we all flipped our inner switch from anti to pro and make a new commitment to those foods we know we should be eating to keep our health up and weight down, environmental impact low and energy levels high? What if we all took a page from the Katzen book and put the veg back in vegetarian?

Veg Out

It's no secret we're experiencing a health crisis here in our land of plenty. Rates of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity have reached epidemic proportions. Diabetes diagnoses among American adults climbed 61 percent from 1991 to 2001. And according to the American Heart Association, about 72 million Americans over age 20 have high blood pressure. What's even more troubling is that nearly 30 percent of them don't even know they have elevated blood pressure. What's even more troubling is that nearly 30 percent of them don't even know they have elevated blood pressure and 65 percent don't have it under control.

Meanwhile, we're getting fatter and fatter. The 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimates 66 percent of all U.S. adults are overweight. The World Health Organization's 2002 World Health Report stated that obesity kills about 220,000 people in the United States and Canada every year.

But there's a simple cure for what ails us, and it's right in line with a vegetarian lifestyle. In a report entitled "The High Cost of Not Consuming Fruits and Vegetables," The Journal of the American Dietetic Association noted, "There is substantial evidence showing that a single dietary change, increasing fruits and vegetables, can help to reverse some if not all of these trends."

Eat your veggies - this is not new advice. We've all heard it a thousand times - but do we listen? Statistically speaking, no. A full 60 percent of American shortchange themselves on the recommended daily five servings of fruits and vegetables.

Are vegarians exempt from these trends? There's no definite statistical evidence that vegetarians are faring any better (or worse) than anyone else. Saying no to meat doesn't necessarily mean fruits and vegebles are on the menu. Meat-less doesn't equte to health-full.

"It is somewhat ironic when people find out about factory farming, choose a meatless diet, and then become junk-food vegetarians, " says Dina Aronson, RD, a vegetarian nutrition consultant, writer, and dietitian for vegfamily.com.  "People have so much respect for animals, but then they don't take good care of his own bodies. If you're a new vegetarian and you don't make a conscious effort, you can easily gain a lot of weight."

Tara Gidus, RD, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, has been vegetarian for 15 years. More and more, she says, she sees "potato-chip vegetarians" who don't put veggies on the plate at all - they never learned to, don't think to, or simply don't want to. "I hear lots of vegetarians say, 'I'm vegetarian and I don't like vegetables ...' And then they just chuckle," she says. So what's for dinner instead? "People eat a lot of starches: pasta, rice, breads, and cereals. And I see a lot of vegetarians leaning on proteins from cheese, and vegans gobbling up prepared soy products."

That last one in particular - the soy products and the convenience-food meat analogues that have sprung up in the past few years to make our lives easier and better - is a trap that vegetarians can fall into, says Reed Mangels, PhD, RD, nutrition adviers to the nonprofit Vegetarian Resource Group. "It used to be, 20 years ago or so, you'd go on a vegan diet and you'd almost always lost weight," she says. "You used to have to focus on fruits and vegetables and beans and whole grains, especially if you were traveling. Now, it is easy to find vegan convenience foods and snack foods and portable foods that fit into your diet. In a way, it's a blessing because it makes life easier. But if you're trying to lose weight, it can also be a curse."

Turn Up the Volume

For anyone who's ever fallen in love with a meatless corn god, "curse" seems like a harsh judgment - and to some degree, it is. Meat analogues, even the junk food ones, can have a proper place in a vegetarian diet. It's just that they're not the free-for-all food many of us view them as. Mangels explains. They tend to be high in calories and low in fiber, which means they fatten you up without necessarily filling you up. And that's not good.

Fresh vegetables, on the other hand, offer just the opposite equation. "Vegetables offer a lot of volume for very few calories because they are so rich in fiber and water," explains Aronson. "Study after study shows that people who consume more fiber and water lose weight because they get full quicker."

Barbara Rolls, PhD, a professor nutrional sciences at Penn State University and author of The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan and The Volumetrics Eating Plan, authored many of those studies. Rolls's research has focused on the "energy density" of foods - the calories delivered per gram of weight. Since water and fiber are the two lowest-calorie dietary constituents, it's easy to see that a diet focused heavily on them would be slimming. Hence, the idea that you can fill up on salad and not necessarily need to compensate with cheesecake later in the day.

"Because people tend to eat a consistent weight of food each day, losing weight is about reducing calorie density and filling the plate with lower-calorie options," Rolls explains. "If you add fruits and vegetables that are high in water, you dilute calories and feel just as full."

Eileen Behan, RD, is a nutritionist on the seacoast of New Hampshire and the author of Eat Well, Lose Weight While Breastfeeding. She regularly beats the same drum in her practice for vegetarians and meat eaters alike: fresh vegetables and fruits. "People come in and tell me they feel terrible and they're gaining all this weight and they don't understand why," she says. "Then we'll sit down and review what they ate over the last four or five days, and there won't have been a single fresh vegetable on their plate! No wonder."

In her practice, Behan often recommends Volumetrics as a resource to show how veggies can tip the balance toward weight loss. She offers this case study. "People love pasta, so I always start there," she says. "Two cups of pasta are 420 calories. Now, if you do one cup of pasta at 210 calories and add one cup of zucchini at 40 calories, you still have two cups of food but now it's only going to cost you 250 calories."

From  the January 17, 2008, Issue #606, XTRA!, an article about the discriminatory ban on gay men donating organs:

GAY MEN BANNED FROM DONATING ORGANS
Doctors say new rules mean people will die

National News
Krishna Rau

Health Canada's recent decision to ban gay men from donating organs is homophobic and could lead to hundreds of deaths a year, say doctors and politicians.

In December, Health Canada quietly enacted rules that prevent any man who has had sex even once with another man in the past five years from donating organs. Health Canada already bans any man who has had sex with another man even once since 1977 from donating blood.

Gary Levy, the head of Canada's largest tranplant program at Toronto's University Health Network, says he refuses to discriminate on the basis of homosexuality and encourages gay men to continue to donate. Doctors will be able to use organs from gay men if they get the recipient's consent and the doctor signs an "exceptional release" form.

"We will not disquality anyone because of sexual orientation," he says."We could be angry at Health Canada but we shouldn't punish the innocent on either side, those who need organs or those who want to donate. All we'll have is some dead people who weren't able to get organs."

Levy estimates that gay men account for up to 15 percent of organ donations in Canada, both of live donations of kidneys and livers and of deceased donations. He says banning gay men from donating could mean up to 1,000 organs are no longer available year year.

"When you're talking about heart transplants, lung transplants, liver transplants, you're talking about a lot of deaths," says Levy. "The gay community seems to be more giving, much more on a proportional basis than other groups."

Levy says Health Canada should continue to follow the existing guidelines which evaluate organ donations based on risky behaviour. He says doctors currently test donors and talk to them or to their survivors to evalute the risk. Doctors will follow the same procedure under the new regulations to determine sexual orientation.

"Before this legislation came in we had rules that I thought worked very well," says Levy. "They didn't identify groups, they identified behaviour."

Levy says he was not consulted on the new rules and doesn't know any head of a transplant program who was.

Health Canada would not comment on the policy but an email from spokespereson Carole Saindon states, "These regulations are based on risk for safety purposes and not lifestyle choices ... A gay man who has practised abstinence for the five years prior would be acceptable. Likewise a heterosexual man who had had a single sexual encounter with a male within the last five years would not be considered acceptable even though he is he is not gay."

But Philip Berger, who has worked with AIDS patients for decades and is the head of family and community medicine at St Michael's Hospital in Toronto, says the new rules are clearly biased.

"It could easily be that any straight person who has unprotected sex is infected," he says. "Heterosexual women who can have hundreds of sexual partners are never asked. All this does is promote the idea that it's gay men's fault that people get infected. It's this sort of febrile obsession with gay men that's been there since the start of the epidemic."

Levy says he will be representing Ontario health minister George Smitherman in meetings with federal and provincial officials.

"Our plan is to convince the federal government to correct this," he says. "In an ideal world they'd issue an apology as well."

In a letter to EXTRA! Smitherman says he will continue to list himself as an organ donor.

"As a gay man who proudly carries every tissue and organ donation card I have ever received in my wallet, I was outraged by Health Canada's new organ donation regulation," he writes. "Quite simply targeting gay men is ludicrous and ridiculous. As Ontario's Minister of Health I find the new regulations that single out a particular group irrelevant, ignorant and impractical ... Let's be clear: Gay men can and should still continue to sign their organ donor cards and give the gift of life. I will continue to do so."

Joshua Ferguson, codirector of Standing Against Queer Discrimination, a group trying to ban blood donor clinics from the Univesity of Western Ontario campus, says the fact that the two bans operate on vastly differrent time periods is evidence of the lack of science behind them.

"It shows how arbitrary these bans are," says Ferguson.

With files from Marcus McCann

From the Living section of the Toronto Star, Thursday, January 3, 2008, page L5, an article about a different type of program to deal with troubled teenagers:

Troubled Teens
YOUNG OFFENDERS TURN AROUND WITH TLC

Instead of shipping teen lawbreakers off to jail, Missouri finds success in home-like centres

Todd Lewan
Associated Press

Montgomery City, Mo. - At age 9, Korey Davis came home from school with gang writing on his arm. At 10, he jacked his first car. At 13, he and some buddies got guns, used them to relieve a man of his Jeep, and later, while trying to outrun a police helicopter, smacked their hot wheels into a firehydrant.

David pulled not only a 15-year sentence but got "certified" as an adult offender and shipped off to the St. Louis City workhouse to inspire a change of heart.

It didn't have the desired effect.

"I wasn't wanting to listen to nobody," says Korey, now 19. "If you wasn't my momma, or anybody in my family, I wasn't gonna listen to you, period."

Most states would have written Korey off and begun shuttling him from one adult prison to the next, where he likely would have sat in sterile cells, joined a gang, and spent his days and nights plotting his next crime.

But this is Missouri, where teen offenders are viewed not just as inmates but as works in progress - where troubled kids are rehabilitated in small, homelike settings that stress group therapy and personal development over isolation and punishment.

With prisons around the United States filled to bursting and with states looking to bring down recidivism rates that rise to 70 and 80 per cent, some policy-makers are taking a fresh look at treatment-oriented approaches like Missouri's as a way out of the United States' juvenile justice crisis.

Here, prison-style "gladiator schools" have been replaced by 42 community-based centres spread around the state so that now, even parents of inner-city offenders can easily visit their children and participate in family therapy.

The ratio of staff to kids is low: one to five. Wards, referred to as "clients," are grouped in teams of 10, and rarely separated: They go to classes together, eat together, and bunk in communal "cottages." Evenings, they attend therapy and counselling sessions a group.

Missouri doesn't set timetables for release, a policy that detainees say gives kids an added incentive to take the program seriously.

College students or other volunteers who live in the released youths' community track these youths for three years, helping with job placement, therapy referrals, school issues and drug or alcohol treatment. The results include:

*  About 8.6 percent of teens who complete Missouri's program are incarcerated in adult prisons within three years of release, according to 2006 figures. (In New York, 75 per cent are re-arrested as adults, 42 per cent for a violent felony).

*  Last year, 7.3 per cent of teen offenders released from Missouri's youth facilities were recommited to juvenile centres for new offences. Texas, which spends about 20 percent more to keep a child in juvenile corrections, has a recidivism rate that tops 50 percent.

*  No Missouri teens have committed suicide while in custody since 1983, when the state began overhauling its system. From1995 to 1999 alone, at least 110 young people killed themselves in juvenile facilities nationwide, according to the National Center in Institutions and Alternatives.

Does this "law-and-order" state know something others don't?

Hardly, says Mark Steward, who as director of the state's Division of Youth Services from 1987 to 2005, oversaw the development of what many experts regard as the best juvenile rehabilitation system in America.

Says Steward: "It's about giving young people structure and love and attention, and not allowing them to hurt themselves or other people. Pretty basic stuff, really. It's just that a lot of these kids haven't gotten the basic stuff."

Take Korey Davis. He didn't meet his dad until he was 5. He and his siblings we raised largely by aunts and uncles.

If the judge handling his case had left him in county detention centres until he reached adult age - 17, in Missouri - then had him serve the rest of his sentence in prison, few eyebrows would have been raised.

But a change to save a life would have been missed. "In jail, I wouldn't never have changed what I always done," Davis says. "There was no treatment at all." He adds, "Right now, I'd probably be dead."

In Missouri, judges can keep serious felons in the juvenile system until they are 21. That's what happened with Davis. At 15, he was sent to the Montgomery City Project, where robbers, rapists and the like get one last shot.

At first, he didn't want it.

But a year into his stay, two things knocked him back on his heels: the news that his younger brother had been shot and wounded in a gang fight, and an invitation from a counsellor to sit down, after class, to read a book out loud with her.

To a boy accustomed to hiding his illiteracy, the offer felt awkward. But because this woman had given him a chance, he responded, and "when I actually learned how to read, it made everything in the world easier for me."

Three years later, Davis is a group leader. He reads voraciously. He's been accepted by a community technical college, plans to study carpentry. And, he's proud to say, his kid brother has taken to heart this advice:

"Put the guns down."

From the Ideas section of the Toronto Star, Saturday, November 17, 2007, page ID6, an article about bringing environmental concerns to religious groups:

ECO RELIGION
Greening sacred spaces

Stephen Scharper

Can religious groups decrease the ecological footprint of their worship spaces? And, perhaps more importantly, should they?

A recently established religious initiative, "Greening Sacred Spaces," is helping faith communities across Canada answer both questions affirmatively.

A scion of the Faith and Common Good project (www.faith-commongood), started by United Church ministers Ted Reeve and Bill Phipps, Greening Sacred Spaces views climate change as a deeply spiritual issue, and strives to assist faith groups to move toward eco-friendly places of worship.

According to the group's website, "Climate change is one of the greatest threats to the well-being of our planet today, and as such represents a challenge to all people of faith."

The Group cites predictions by the UN panel on climate change that by 2100, Earth's average temperature will have increased by 1.5 to 6 degrees Celsius, with the rate doubling in the Arctic.

It argues that "faith traditions are a key source of wisdom in the great spiritual quest of our time: Healing our beloved Earth. We believe that we are called to re-envision the way that we live."

With support from the Ontario Conservation Bureau and the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, as well as the "sweat equity" of volunteers within the faith communities themselves, the project has developed a how-to resource kit, complete with workshops, posters, and music to help faith groups engage in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing sustainable living.

According to greening spaces to coordinator Rory O'Brien, more than 100 faith groups, including Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Baha'i communities, have become involved in everything from retrofitting energy efficient light bulbs to entire environmental audits and eco-friendly architectural renovations, using the most advanced environmental technologies.

In addition to the actual greening of places of worship, the group hopes that faith communities will become leaders in advancing a more ecologically sensitive way of life, and will team up with activists to engage in local environmental initiatives.

O'Brien also notes that they hope to make the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System) standard a key component of any future design and architectural planning among faith groups in Canada. A showcase for this group is Toronto's St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, the first Gold certified LEED church in North America.

Included in St. Gabriel's state-of-the-art green design features are a solar glass wall on the south face utilizing the energy of the sun. This creates a visual bridge connecting worshippers inside with a naturalized garden outside.

The parking lot has been moved underground, with privileged spaces for hybrid and non-polluting vehicles, and a garden with a cosmological stations of the cross has been installed in front. There is also a "living wall" of foliage over which a thin layer of water constantly flows. The living wall is meant to purify the air of both the entryway gathering space and the main sanctuary.

The greening project is a natural evolution in North American faith groups' growing concern about the state of the Earth's ecology which is asking of all us if we "pray well with others," including the flora and fauna with whom we share our planetary home.

Stephen B. Scharper is an associate professor with the Centre for Environment, University of Toronto. stephen.scharper@utoronto.ca

I received an email from an organization called United for Peace and Justice about a January 11, 2008, day of action to close Guantanamo Prison. The main event is in Washington, D.C., but there is a link for what is going on elsewhere. If you aren't somewhere where you can get involved, you can wear orange as a sign of support.

Witness Against Torture, a member group of UFPJ, has been a leading force in the efforts to shut down the detention center at Guantánamo. Now they are organizing what promises to be an important day of protest on Friday, January 11, 2008. More information about the plans for activities in Washington, DC, that day -- as well as what you can do locally -- are included in the message below.

Peace,

Leslie Cagan
National Coordinator, UFPJ

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"Immediately close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,
and either release its inmates or bring them before an impartial tribunal."
â€" United Nations Human Rights Commission

CALL TO ACTION

We declare January 11, 2008, six years after the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, an International Day of Action to Shut Down Guantánamo. In Washington, DC, we will hold a permitted demonstration at the National Mall followed by an orange jumpsuit procession to the Supreme Court. There will also be solidarity demonstrations in Chicago, Miami, London and Paris, with more being added every day. We invite you to come to Washington and participate, or else join or plan an action in your own community. We also encourage people around the world to wear orange t-shirts, armbands or other orange clothing on January 11th to mark the date.

JOIN US IN WASHINGTON, DC

Friday, January 11, 11:00am. (National Mall).

The day involves several elements:

Demonstration at the National Mall. Witness Against Torture has teamed up with Amnesty International and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to hold a permitted demonstration on the National Mall at 11:00am. (Gather at 12th street NW between Madison Dr NW & Jefferson Drive SW - near the Smithsonian Metro Stop.)

"Prisoners of Guantánamo March." Hundreds marched in last year's procession
A provocative street theater performance involving people wearing orange jump suits and black hoods. We will march from the National Mall to the Supreme Court in an orderly silent procession hauntingly evoking the moral disgrace that is Guantánamo. With your help, we will form a prisoner contingent including as many protesters as there are prisoners.

Funeral Ceremony at the Supreme Court. Following the procession to the Supreme Court, we will hold a Funeral Ceremony to remember the four men who died in custody at Guantánamo and to mourn the death of Habeas Corpus. Like last year, some may choose to risk arrest. To participate, please consider attending an orientation meeting on Thursday, 4pm, at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church (1525 Newton Street, NW) or come early to the National Mall for an orientation and rehearsal at 10:00am. Please let us know in advance if you are willing to participate in either the Prisoners Contingent, Nonviolent Direct Action, or both. Email jan11@witnesstorture.org or call Matt Daloisio at 201-264-4424.

For up-to-date details as well as information about housing, food, rides and directions, legal support and much more, please visit our website at http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=KcnPe1lIjQXPcM%2Fta%2FWEhNcwg%2Bixqqk6.

WEAR ORANGE ON JANUARY 11TH!
Wherever you are on January 11th, we encourage you to wear orange to raise public awareness and strengthen the movement to demand an end to torture and indefinite detention. Consider wearing one of Witness Against Torture's Orange "Shut Down Guantánamo" T-shirts, an ACLU arm band, or even an orange jump suit.

JOIN THE GROWING NUMBER OF LOCAL VIGILS - ATTEND OR ORGANIZE AN ACTION IN YOUR COMMUNITY
If you can't join us in Washington D.C., please consider attending or organizing a vigil, march or a public forum in your community. Actions are currently planned in 30 cities, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, London, Paris and elsewhere.

Visit http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=jbIGLMk5uIb00rQWxbVsW5AAAAmDI8X6 for up-to-date details about solidarity events, as well as to find ideas for actions, to post to our calendar, or to download flyers and other resources.

WHO WE ARE
Two years ago Witness Against Torture drew international attention after it walked to Guantánamo to visit the prisoners. Upon its return, the group has organized vigils, marches, nonviolent direct actions and educational events to expose and decry the administration's lawlessness, build awareness about torture and indefinite detention, and forge human ties with the prisoners at Guantánamo and their families.

Some of the organizations endorsing the Jan 11 Day of Action include:

    Act Against Torture
    Bill of Rights Defense Committee
    The Catholic Worker
    Center for Constitutional Rights
    CodePink
    Declaration of Peace
    International Federation of Human Rights
    National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
    Network of Spiritual Progressives
    Pax Christi USA
    Peace Action
    School of the Americas Watch
    Torture Abolition and Survivors Coalition
    United for Peace and Justice
    US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
    Voices For Creative Nonviolence
    War Resisters League
    World Can't Wait
    ...and more. See a full list of endorsers.

DONATE
Please make a contribution to help cover the costs of the January 11th event. You can donate online or send a check made out to "Witness Against Torture" to Mary House Catholic Worker, 55 E. Third Street, New York, NY 10003.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Zk68A9FOKSO0ek%2FrkZZayJAAAAmDI8X6

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Help us continue to do this critical work: Make a donation to UFPJ today.

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=0bk2yhauBoiWV0J3KCc5sJAAAAmDI8X6 | 212-868-5545
To subscribe, visit http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=eT8k8zlqNpJyR%2FXsl70k2ZAAAAmDI8X6