WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ANTI-SEMITISM IS WHITEWASHED

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ANTI-SEMITISM IS WHITEWASHED”

          Less than two years ago, Palestinian students and sympathizers on the University of California’s flagship Berkeley campus dressed up in combat fatigues, “armed” themselves with genuine-looking mock firearms and set up “checkpoints” where they demanded that students attempting to pass tell them if they were Jewish.

    There was no immediate outcry on campus, nor any response from administrators or campus police, as there surely would have been if students set up similar “checkpoints” to determine whether students with tan complexions are really African-Americans or whether students conversing in Spanish are undocumented immigrants.

          When Jewish groups later sought a court order against similar demonstrations in the future, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of San Francisco said any attempt to ban them would “raise serious First Amendment issues.”

          So, he implied, campuses can ban “hate speech” like the N-word and anti-gay smears, but outright physical intimidation of Jewish students and impinging on their walking space are OK.

          In August of this year, both the U.S. Department of Education and the Berkeley administration exonerated the demonstrators of anti-Semitism charges, and found that two other incidents to which Jewish students objected on the UC campuses at Irvine and Santa Cruz also were just fine.

          At the time, the Amcha (Hebrew for “your people”) Initiative against campus anti-Semitism and other Jewish groups warned these decisions might lead to an escalation. The whitewashings may not have condoned campus anti-Semitism, but they certainly promised to enable it.

          This appeared to come true in November at San Francisco State University, where a student group called the General Union of Palestinian Students set up tables in Malcolm X Plaza featuring messages like this: “My heroes have always killed colonizers.”

          Later, Amcha uncovered a since-removed picture on the Tumblr website allegedly posted by the president of the Palestinian student group, showing him brandishing a knife, with the caption saying “I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…”

          Palestinian student groups say they differentiate between Israelis and Jews, but most Jews are skeptical of that claim. Key Palestinian groups like Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and won the last major Palestinian election, make no such distinction. Says that group’s covenant, “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” And the mufti of the Palestinian Authority has issued a fatwa forbidding sale of land to Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Palestinian_territories). So it's no wonder many Jewish students feel targeted when Palestinians refer to killing “colonizers” or knifing Israelis.

          University officials who may believe Jews have little reason to feel this way and that such references are constitutionally protected free speech might want to look at some once-popular Nazi German anthems that also referred to knifing Jews.

          “Sharpen the long knives on the pavement, let the knives slip into the Jew’s body,” goes the lead verse of “Blood Must Flow,” theme song of the S.A. (full name in German: Sturmabteilung, or Assault Division), Adolf Hitler’s notorious “Brownshirts.” “When Jewish blood spurts off the knife, things will be twice as good,” says the “Fighting Song of the S.A.,” another Brownshirt anthem.

          To his credit, when San Francisco State’s president, Les Wong, heard of the Palestinian group’s words, he issued a statement saying “The university is a place where dialogue, debate and the marketplace of ideas are cherished. We must also maintain a safe environment. Engaging in expressions that threaten and intimidate are counter to these goals…”

          If Berkeley officials had reacted similarly to the Palestinian mock checkpoints, the San Francisco State incidents might never have occurred. But unless Wong follows through, preventing a repeat, and officials of other campuses react as strongly, there will be more intimidating demonstrations and Web postings.

          And soon they may not merely target Jewish students. Example: An investigation is now underway of an alleged anti-black hate crime at San Jose State. For Jews have long been like a canary in a coal mine: They are often the first targets in waves of discrimination and hate, but those waves almost always wind up washing over plenty of others.

          -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

FRACKING RULES MUST HAVE MERIT; NO ONE COMPLETELY HAPPY

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2013 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “FRACKING RULES MUST HAVE MERIT; NO ONE COMPLETELY HAPPY”

          There is little doubt an economic bonanza awaits California beneath the surface of the Monterey Shale, a geologic formation stretching from San Benito County south along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley right into parts of Southern California.

          One study put the possible job-creating potential of this oil and gas trove at more than 20,000. For sure, it would spread oil industry jobs far beyond their current centers in Kern County and some coastal areas of the state. Oil reserves said to lurk within rock formations are said to amount to at least 15 billion barrels. Not to mention many millions of therms of natural gas.

          So far, not much has been done with this resource, and there’s plenty of dispute over whether anything should be. The potential is obvious: Hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, has brought enough oil and gas from similar but smaller formations in Wyoming, the Dakotas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to turn this country from a big oil importer to a net exporter of petroleum products.

          But environmentalists in California worry large-scale fracking of the Monterey Shale and other oilfields previously considered depleted will pollute ground water, foul the air and maybe even cause earthquakes.

          That’s why the state Department of Conservation issued a set of proposed new rules the other day aiming, it said, to protect those other resources at the same time it keeps California “productive and competitive.”

          The rules, mandated by a compromise law passed last summer, won’t take effect for months and are now open to public comment, with revisions possible.

          Once they are in force, two things will be true: California will have America’s toughest set of fracking rules, while both frackers and their opponents will be unhappy. In journalism, there’s an old principle: If folks on all sides of an issue are unhappy with a story, it was probably a pretty good job. That’s because most stories are complicated, filled with gray areas and not all black and white.

          That’s also true of fracking.

          The practice has made a boom state of North Dakota, once a depressed area. But there have been reports of water pollution from several places and a several earthquakes have occurred in far from usual quake country since the technique became common.

          Here are a few things California’s proposed new rules would do:

--  Force oil companies to apply for permits before fracking and disclose where it will occur, how much water it will use, what chemicals are involved and where waste will eventually be dumped.

--  Nearby property owners will be able to have their water wells tested before and after fracking.

--  An independent panel of scientists will study risks and make a public report by Jan. 1, 2015.

--   And state water officials will monitor all ground water basins to make sure drinking water is not harmed by fracking.

     The Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading fracking

critic, says it has mixed feelings about those rules. They’re not a complete 

moratorium, but they do assure the most thorough study of fracking ever, which 

ought to lead to sound permitting laws and regulations.

      The oil industry has known for at least a year regulations were coming, but didn’t want an outright moratorium. “We’ve been doing it (fracking to get extra oil from wells previously considered depleted) for 60 years and there hasn’t been an incident anywhere in the state,” a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn. said. “To have a moratorium would make it even more difficult for California to supply the crude oil it needs.

           

          “But we’ve known regulation was coming. We don’t like it, but we can live with this.”

          The bottom line is that neither of these principals is happy with the planned new rules, which aren’t permanent anyway. The real key to this dispute will be the findings of the scientific panel and how all sides interpret them. Until that report arrives about a year from now, everyone involved can only hang onto their positions and hope they are proven right.

          

          -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net.

NEW ERA LOOMS FOR CALIFORNIA MEDICINE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “NEW ERA LOOMS FOR CALIFORNIA MEDICINE”

          As the new year approaches, a new era also looms for California medicine, and the changes are not due only to the Affordable Health Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

          Other big changes will come as pharmacists expand their role in patient care and nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physican assistants begin performing first-trimester abortions – unless a current attempt to qualify a referendum to stop the abortion expansion qualifies for next November’s ballot and delays it by a year.

          Even larger changes may come in 2015, depending on how the newly expanded roles for non-physicians work out.

          Although he did not carry the abortion-related bill, the effort to bestow new privileges on non-doctors is spearheaded by Democratic state Sen. Ed Hernandez of West Covina, who achieved only part of his goals this year. Hernandez, an optometrist, also sought wider privileges for both nurse practitioners and his own profession.

          But most MDs opposed the changes, with the California Medical Association managing to stymie much of what Hernandez sought. He has said he’ll be back with similar measures next year.

          How well they do will likely be tied closely to whether problems crop up in the expanded pharmacist roles and the abortion changes.

          With the new law, pharmacists soon will be administering drugs and vaccinations directly to their customers (they already do some vaccinations), conducting patient assessments, ordering tests and overseeing drug regimens. The shift is meant partly to compensate for a shortage of primary care doctors to handle the increased patient load Obamacare will bring.

          It represents a sea change. Not many years ago, pharmacists couldn’t even give flu shots. Now thousands of pharmacies across California post prominent signs inside and outside their stores offering those vaccinations almost year-‘round.

          That’s worked out fine, relieving doctors of a routine chore, making vaccinations more convenient for patients and producing virtually no negative incidents. If pharmacists do as well with their new roles, it’s a virtual certainty optometrists and nurse practitioners will also see theirs expand.

          And the odds are things will work out fine, although the occasional malpractice claim is to be expected.

          Less certain is what might happen to women getting first-trimester vacuum aspiration abortions from non-physicians who have received special training.

          Some liberal groups were delighted with the change because it essentially treats abortions like many other medical procedures. “The fact that abortion is singled out for special consideration (in other states) is a relic of the days when it was a felony. It’s a reflection of where this country is politically,” ACLU spokeswoman Margaret Crosby told a reporter.

          Pro-life activists, however, see the change as a trivialization of pregnancy. From now on, California Pro-Life Council director Brian John complained, “animals will have more dignity under California law than human beings.”

          One thing for sure: If medical complications crop up in a significant number of cases, early abortions will go back to being doctors-only affairs.

          But that doesn’t seem likely, one reason this bill passed and won Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature. That guess is based on a UC San Francisco study of 11,000 procedures over the last five years, which found virtually no difference in the prevalence of complications between early abortions done by doctors and those carried out by skilled non-physicians.

          Researchers conducted the study, which involved more than 5,000 non-physician abortions, using a little-known provision of California law allowing health care professionals other than MDs to take part in some pilot projects.

          In a state where teenage pregnancies are rampant (even if reduced slightly from a decade ago), there is little doubt that, barring the possible referendum reversing it, the new law will make abortion more accessible.

          Even so, it’s highly unlikely this will lead to change in other states, as many previous California laws have done. This state is far to the left of many others.

          But the increased responsibility given pharmacists is something that could spread now that California has joined more than a dozen other states in granting it. More loosening up in health care will depend on how the druggists do next year.

         

     -30-       
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

COURT RULING A CHANCE TO MAKE BULLET TRAIN SENSIBLE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “COURT RULING A CHANCE TO MAKE BULLET TRAIN SENSIBLE”

          Whether it’s the possibility of a magnetic levitation train or the hyperloop idea proposed by Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, the route of potential alternative designs for California’s putative bullet train invariably follows Interstate 5 from just west of Bakersfield to the San Francisco Bay area.

          That’s why the Thanksgiving week ruling by a Sacramento Superior Court judge forbidding the state’s High Speed Rail Authority from tapping billions of dollars in voter-approved state bonds for the project represents an opportunity and not a setback.

          Yes, cries for a new popular vote on the bonds went up immediately after Judge Michael Kenny’s decision, but that’s unlikely anytime soon. So the best course now is to make this project sensible, and the way to do that is to look hard at its potential routes.

    From the start, the route chosen by bullet train officials has made little sense. Yes, steep gradients on the north side of the Tehachapi mountains probably mean that, whatever its technology, the path will swing through the Antelope Valley cities of Palmdale and Lancaster, roughly tracking Highways 14 and 58 between Los Angeles and Bakersfield.

          But from there north, it makes little geographic or economic sense for the train to traverse some of America’s most fertile farmland, with stops in Fresno and Merced, then head west along Highway 152 over the Pacheco Pass to San Jose, before swinging north again into San Francisco.

          The simplest alternative would be to follow the I-5 to its junction with Interstate 580, then go west to Livermore, where passengers could quickly transfer to waiting special BART trains for the final run to and under the San Francisco Bay.

          Anyone who’s driven the I-5 knows that’s a far more direct route. Plus, the freeway’s wide median for most of that distance affords the project plenty of space at minimal cost, saving taxpayers many billions of dollars in land-acquisition expenses. This would also spare the farmers who spurred the Kenny ruling new disruptions, while allowing trains to run their fastest for longer distances.

          But what about passengers who might want to get on or off the trains in San Joaquin Valley cities? What passengers? The experience of several European bullet trains is that most passengers stay on for the full run, not shorter increments.

          Until now, the High Speed Rail Authority has never seriously considered changing the route behind most of its current troubles. Even after Kenny rejected the authority’s bid to begin selling some of the $10 billion in bonds voters approved five years ago, the agency is not yet seriously contemplating a route change.

          But it just might if it looks in detail at what was behind that court ruling: the current funding plan for the entire project does not comply with the voter-approved proposition’s requirement that the rail authority line up funding for each segment and have all environmental approvals in place before using any bond money. Yet, the authority’s stunning first response was to note that nothing in the decision prohibits the sale of bonds, but only using the money raised.

          So far, the $10 billion in state bonds and another $3.3 billion or so in federal funds for the first leg are all the project can count on out of a project cost of $31 billion. The hope is that private investors will buy in once they see how well things are going. But private money is not exactly pouring in.

          So it behooves the authority to cut costs before breaking ground anywhere. The I-5 and I-580 route would do just that, possibly making the entire thing affordable and definitely making it less environmentally intrusive. If that brings a change in technology to either mag-lev (now operating in China and Japan and on short routes elsewhere) or the vacuum-based hyperloop concept, so much the better, since those systems would be faster than the high-speed trains now conceived.

          Which means the Kenny ruling, if followed up in a reasoned manner, could lead to better and more modern technology, shorter routes, faster speeds and less trouble both for agriculture and large urban and suburban populations.

          Which makes this as an opportunity, not a problem.

         

              -30-

        Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net