Robert Norse: City Council silencing dissenting voices

NOTE TO READER: Longtime homeless activist, Robert Norse, published the following Op-Ed in the Sunday edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Norse was responding to two recent defeats in court in which his appeal was turned down. In the first case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, turned down Norse's bid to sue the Mayor and City Council members in Federal court for violating his civil rights when they arrested him for a brief, silent hand gesture for "disrupting a public meeting." Norse was arrested but all charges were dropped. Norse has filed for a re-hearing or an en banc hearing of the 9th Circuit Court. City Attorney John Barisone has claimed that his office has already spent $114,000.00 in legal costs through legal maneuvers to prevent an actual trial being held on the facts. ---- Becky Johnson, editor





Robert Norse: City Council silencing dissenting voices

Posted: 11/22/2009 01:30:26 AM PST



When courts support police misconduct and government repression, what can the public do? Two recent court decisions have brought this issue home to me sharply and personally.

The Sentinel inaccurately covered both cases. In one, I challenged two false arrests by the Santa Cruz City Council, including a brief don't act like Nazis salute shown in detail here.

In the second, a Metro bus station security guard insisted I leave the property because I'd pulled out a tape recorder after he accosted me and refused to identify himself.

Photo: Robert Norse interviews Metro Security Guard, Dan Delgadillo for Free Radio Santa Cruz on Nov 26 2008. Photo by Becky Johnson.

In both cases, courts ruled against me audio here and here ; fast forward to the relevant sections; transcript found here .

I offended politicians and police in both cases, but broke no laws. The Metro case is still being appealed, but poor and homeless people there are still being harassed with no police accountability.


Photo: The same security guard who refused to identify himself the day he had Norse arrested for trespassing at the Metro Transit Center, provided his card and allowed it to be photographed. Photo by Becky Johnson



The City Council has gone so far as to prohibit audience booing but not cheering. How far can our City Council going threatening, expelling, even arresting members of the public when their criticism offends but doesn't actually disrupt? This was the issue in my court case which we are now appealing to a higher panel.


Only one council member even noticed my brief silent political gesture of condemnation. Is it then a real disruption? Or was the arrest an attempt to punish ? Wasn't Councilman Tim Fitzmaurice's insistence on stopping the meeting itself the actual disruption? If I'd held up a sign instead saying don't act like a Nazi, would the Council have been equally justified in throwing me out? This is the issue a jury would have decided. I am still fighting these cases.



PHOTO: Councilmember Tim Fitzmaurice July 26, 2005 Photo by Becky Johnson.

The District Attorney knew a bad case when he saw one. I was arrested, jailed, but never charged. I then sued for false arrest. Two weeks later I and others made the same Nazi salute again, explaining it was neither pro-Nazi nor disruptive but rather an expression of outrage at abusive City Council process. The Council made no arrests.


Nationally, Bush's unlawful enemy combatants are now Obama's underprivileged enemy belligerents They face the same kangaroo military commissions. They are held in the same secret camps after being kidnapped, held without charges, and tortured year after year.


PHOTO: The main sign in front of the Metro Center which Norse was cited for failing to move away from. Photo by Becky Johnson Nov 26 2008.

Locals driven into homelessness by the economy face new Council-concocted anti-homeless laws. Benches are disappearing from Pacific Avenue under pressure from NIMBY groups like the Santa Cruz Neighbors and the Downtown Association. Police ticket poor people for holding up a spare change sign after dark. The city fences off another 25 seating spaces in front of New Leaf Market at the cost of thousands of dollars to stop people from sitting on the edge of the planter. The city attorney justifies a citywide outdoor sleeping ban that makes homeless people criminals. L.A. and San Diego have suspended their sleeping bans.

PHOTO: Warning sign at the Metro Center which is not in front of the large sign in front where Norse was cited for failing to move away from. Photo by Becky Johnson Nov 26 2008

When we bring these matters to the City Council, they devise new ways of silencing the public. They move items six hours ahead to late at night, cram everything onto rushed afternoon sessions, end public comment on individual agenda items unless a council member agrees, circumvent public commissions, and malign members of the public without right of reply. Does this kind of expanded power help or hurt us?


/Robert Norse is a longtime opponent of the Santa Cruz city sleeping ban and an activist for homeless rights/

Robert Norse can be contacted at: Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom
309 Cedar St. PMB 14B --- Santa Cruz, Ca. 95060 Phone: (831) 423-HUFF
www.huffsantacruz.org

Breast Thermography: The sensible choice

Photo courtesy of buzzle.com


by Becky Johnson
November 21, 2009

Santa Cruz, Ca. -- Forget mammography! It's its own scam. And it CAUSES an estimated 2 cancers for every cancer it finds, which when removed "saves" a woman's life. There is a far better choice. It can be used annually on woman beginning at age 40 and has a very low rate of false positives. And it's cheaper.

I know the buzzwords heard in liberal circles these days include some kind of outcry against recent recommendations that seem to compromise womens health, i.e. no mammograms prior to age 50. Pap smears to start at 21 instead of 18 and then only every two years. And forget self-examinations. While I can't fathom why women should be told to stop self examinations, I agree with the federal task force findings on mammograms. If mammograms are to be used, age 50 for a first look makes sense.

Tissue in younger women (ages 40 - 50) tends to be too dense to see an active cancer tumor. 15% of deadly tumors are missed under the best of conditions. Furthermore, the radiation from the x-ray does cause damage, so should be used sparingly. Establishing a baseline is warranted, but a mammogram every year starting at age 40 is not!

Finally, when a woman finds a lump through a self-examination, or a mass is detected through a mammogram, sometimes a biopsy is ordered. Nine out of ten biopsies are negative, yet there can be complications from the incision, reactions to the anesthesia, anti-biotics and other medications, infections, and of course the whole process generates stress and worry .

Fortunately there is a better way. With breast thermography, the technology looks only for active tumors. 98% of tumors are inactive, and do not need to be removed. In fact, they are best left alone and dealt with through diet, exercise, sleep and judicial use of vitamins and herbs. Active tumors have a high level of blood flow and hence generate high heat. Thermography is the perfect technology to find exactly those cancers which threaten women's lives most, and works well with women with denser breast tissue, which mammography does not.

To perform an exam, a woman is placed in a 68 degree room with her breast exposed. Additional fans are turned on which cool the breast causing blood flow to diminish in healthy tissue. Cancer tissues don't have the same neural sensory response and will not contract. The blood flow will continue, unaffected by environmental heat or cold. A thermal scanner is passed over the breast which detects heat. There is a very low rate of false positives with this method. No radiation is needed and the breast need not be crushed, so it's truly safe, unlike mammography or other x-ray techniques. The FDA approved thermography as a diagnostic tool in 1982, however in the United States, it is only used as an adjunct to mammography. However, in Canada and France, thermography is the primary tool for detection of breast cancer.

In the United States, medical establishments are heavily invested in mammography and have rejected breast thermography as a primary diagnostic method. The reasons can only be political. Huge pharmaceutical companies stand to profit from overtreating patients. Health advocates need to pressure their legislators to demand that thermography be the primary method used to detect breast cancers. Chemotherapeutic drugs mean big profits for pharmaceutical companies where the cost of an 8-week treatment period, which once cost as little as $100, now costs up to $30,000 for treatment with the newer drugs.

The American Cancer Society, a very large and respected non-profit is heavily invested in funding mammography screening clinics with pharmaceutical drug companies donations. $150 million in tax-deductible donations have already been spent and are expected to generate $100 billion in sales of chemotherapeutic drugs over the next 30 years. Unfortunately much of this treatment will be for cancers that were better off left untreated.

Soon after the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a federal advisory board recommended mammograms to begin at age 50, the ACS issued a statement opposing the recommendation. Charges of "rationing" health care and of balancing costs on women's lives have been leveled. But what is the truth?

Breast cancer is expected to kill 40,000 women in the United States this year. But the Task Force's recommendations are hardly new. In 1977, after an official of the National Cancer Institute voiced concern that women in their 40s were getting too much radiation from unnecessary screening, the National Institutes of Health concluded that most women should wait until they’re 50 to have regular screenings.

Nor have we made much progress in treatment of women who do develop breast cancer. From 1950 to 1990, there were about 28 breast cancer deaths per 100,000 people. Today, in California, 23 women per 100,000 will die from breast cancer. The lower rate can be accounted for by a reduction in the use of post-menopausal hormone therapy, and because rates for smoking tobacco have dropped. Treatment itself seems to have made little difference. Mammography screening, introduced in the 1960s, actually increased the breast cancer rate by finding cancers that would not have been found with less aggressive screenings.

The task force estimated that we would need to screen 1,900 women in their 40s for 10 years in order to prevent one death from breast cancer, and in the process these tests will have generated more than 1,000 false-positive screens and with all the over treatment they entail.

Eighty percent of the million breast biopsies performed each year in the US, because of a suspicious mammogram, are negative. Compare these results to a study conducted using breast thermal imaging. Sixty of 94 biopsies were malignant and 34 were benign. Thermal imaging identified 58 of 60 malignancies without exposing a single breast to a radioactive material.

The problem with mammography is that in trying to differentiate different types of tissue visually and structurally, 15% are missed.

"We're spending $300,000 to diagnose one cancer, "said Dr. Len Saputo, MD "And you are probably causing two cancers for every life you save." Dr. Saputo recommends a different approach to prevention and treatment of breast cancer.

"Early detection is different from prevention. We'd save 75% of the cost of healthcare" if we implemented preventative medicine.

"You always do lifestyle changes first...eat right, sleep right, exercise, then Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine and homeopathy. Then vitamins and minerals. Your last choice is to go to your medical doctor for treatment."

"With 400, 000 dead per year from drugs alone and another 600,000 per year from errors and complications in medicine (iatrogenic disease), it shouldn't be your first choice," Saputo warned.

Thermography doesn't radiate the breast. It doesn't crush the breast down, which can actually spread cancers in women with active tumors. And it's been FDA approved for 27 years now.

"A company, Computerized Thermal Imaging, spent $90 million in development, and is now bankrupt," Dr. Saputo reported. He said that thermo-imaging should be used as a primary screening test, considering all the mistakes that can happen with mammograms.

As for the claim that self-exams don't work? Who knows your body better than you? Half of cancers are found by the woman.



Sources:

"The High Cost of Chemotherapy"Johns Hopkins Health Alert June 19, 2007
"Who decides about mammograms? Inside the task force" by Elizabeth Landau, CNN, November 19, 2009
"Addicted to Mammograms" By ROBERT ARONOWITZ The New York Times November 19, 2009"Breast Thermography – The Mammography Alternative?" by Moshe Dekel, MD
"Effectiveness of non-invasive digital infrared thermal imaging system in the detection of breast cancer" by Nimmi Arora, M.D., Diana Martins, B.S., Danielle Ruggerios, B.S., Eleni Tousimis, M.D., Alexander J. Swistel, M. D., Michael P. Osborne, M. D., Rache M. Simmons, M.D., Department of Surgery, New York Prespyterian Hospital--Cornell, New York, NY, USA 2008"In Reversal: Panel Urges Mammograms at 50, Not 40"by Gina Kolata New York Times Nov 16, 2009"Health and Fitness" with Joanie Greggains -- KGO radio, November 21, 2009 guest: Dr. Len Saputo, MD