http://www.msnbc.com/news/768925.asp

Malaria is spread to humans through the Anopheles mosquito. A new study in the journal Science expects global warming would extend the range of the mosquito and the disease.

From coral reefs to rainforests, diseases are spreading among marine and land animals ˜ including humans ˜ and global warming appears to be a major factor, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. The study, said to be the first to analyze disease epidemics across entire plant and animal
systems, bolsters climate models that have factored in the possibility of a
warmer Earth creating a sicker planet.

 „WHAT IS MOST surprising
is the fact

that climate sensitive outbreaks
are happening with so many different types of

pathogens ˜ viruses, bacteria,
fungi, and parasites ˜ as well as in such a wide

range of hosts including
corals, oysters, terrestrial plants, birds and humans,‰

lead author Drew Harvell,
a Cornell University biologist, said in a statement.

      
The researchers said they felt that common traits are likely linked to

global warming. „Climate
change is disrupting natural ecosystems in a way that

is making life better for
infectious diseases,‰ stated Andrew Dobson, a

Princeton University epidemiologist.
„The accumulation of evidence has us

extremely worried. We share
diseases with some of these species. The risk for

humans is going up.‰

Human influences

Humans might be magnifying
warming by adding to the greenhouse gases naturally

present in the atmosphere.
Fuel use is the chief cause of rising carbon dioxide

levels. On the other hand,
humans create temporary, localized cooling effects

through the use of aerosols,
such as smoke and sulfates from industry, which

reflect sunlight away from
Earth.

         

The study tracked both causes and carriers of diseases that develop

more rapidly with slight
rises in temperature. It found that as temperatures

increase, carriers are likely
to spread into new areas where they could

devastate species that have
not been previously exposed.

      
In the statement accompanying the study, the scientists cited these

examples of disease outbreaks
tied to climate change:

 Expanding range of
disease carriers due to temperature. Honeycreepers, forest

songbirds that evolved only
in Hawaii, are being decimated by malaria from

mosquitoes that have been
able to range higher in elevation due to warmer

temperatures. „Today there
are no native birds below 4,500 feet,‰ said Dobson.

 Expanding range of
carriers due to moisture. Rift Valley Fever, a deadly viral

illness spread by mosquitoes,
is strongly linked to heavy rains, which trigger

mosquito explosions. „There
is clear evidence that Rift Valley Fever outbreaks

are linked to El Niño
years and we expect an increase in the frequency of El

Niños with climate
change,‰ stated coauthor Richard Ostfeld, a researcher at the

Institute of Ecosystem Studies
in Millbrook, N.Y.

 Increased susceptibility
to disease. Coral reefs have become susceptible to

disease once they are stressed
by warmer sea temperatures. The researchers

isolated one fungus threatening
Caribbean sea fans and found that it grows

fastest at exactly the temperature
at which many of the corals in the Florida

Keys start to bleach, a
stress-created condition that turns coral white and can

eventually lead to die-offs.

 Expanding range of
carriers in winter. Warmer winter temperatures can also

affect ranges of diseases
and carriers. A winter warming trend in the mid-1990s

allowed a parasite to spread
north to Maine‚s oysters, the researchers noted.

MORE STUDIES URGED

      
The researchers urged other experts to consider that diseases in their

specialty might share a
common link in global warming.

      
„This isn‚t just a question of coral bleaching for a few marine

ecologists, nor just a question
of malaria for a few health officials ˜ the

number of similar increases
in disease incidence is astonishing,‰ said Ostfeld.

„We don‚t want to be alarmist,
but we are alarmed.‰

       

The authors said they expect others to question their findings, in part
because

the issue of climate change
and diseases has had very little monitoring and few

long-term studies.

      
An immediate critic was Sherwood Idso, head of the Center for the Study

of Carbon Dioxide and Global
Change. He said the Science paper was based largely

on speculation and presented
„no concrete examples that these things will happen

in the real world.‰

      
The authors urged the scientific community to tackle the issue head on

with more research and gathering
of statistics.

      
„We need to pay better attention to this issue in an increasingly

unnatural world,‰ stated
Dobson.

      
MSNBC.com‚s Miguel Llanos and The Associated Press contributed to this

report.

In the Killing Fields

Samantha Power documents a century of atrocities – and excoriates the policymakers who refuse to stop the mass murders

By John Leonard

John Leonard, a contributing editor to New York magazine and The Nation, is the
author of “Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures.”

July 7, 2002

A PROBLEM FROM HELL: America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha Power.

Basic,
610 pp., $30.

Alexander Herzen, the gentleman-anarchist, once cautioned his bloodthirsty buddy, Mikhail Bakunin:
“We want to open men’s eyes, not tear them out.”

Samantha Power goes both ways. In one of her aspects – the journalist with the law degree who reported on ethnic cleansing in the Balkans for The Washington Post and then became executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government – she insists on our seeing the mass murders of the 20th century through her own wounded eyes, as scholars,
jurists and diplomats try to keep up with killers by establishing courts and naming crimes. But in another
aspect – angel of wrath – she would invade Cambodia or Rwanda all by herself: “When innocent life is being taken on such a scale and the United States has the power to stop the killing at reasonable
risk, it has a duty to act.”

She is so furious at policymakers who turn their backs on that duty, who spin silky extenuations out of their bowels like managed-health-care spiders, that she would smoke or smite them where they
bystand.

Warren Christopher, for instance, the former secretary of state who gave Power the title for her book when he described Bosnia as “a problem from hell” – and thus beyond mere mortal agency. During Christopher’s twiddle, the heretofore unheard of happened: Junior officers actually resigned from the foreign service on principle. Nor was the president, at whose pleasure Christopher served, such
a bargain. Candidate Clinton may have rattled sabers on the 1992 campaign trail, but President Bill let Serbs behave like Hutus and Hutus behave like Serbs, until it cost him in the opinion polls.

If Clinton seems Power’s least favorite president, she is not much kinder to his predecessor, George H.W. Bush, on whose watch Yugoslavia disintegrated in the first place while his secretary of state, James Baker, so colorfully explained: “We don’t have a dog in that fight.” Or Ronald Reagan, who didn’t care if Saddam Hussein nerve-gassed Kurds in 1987 and 1988, so long as Iraq continued to buy a million tons of American wheat a year. Or Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were not about to go back to Southeast Asia no matter what Pol Pot got up to, from 1975 to 1979, outside Phnom Penh. As negligent as Franklin Roosevelt might have been about European Jewry during the Nazi Holocaust, he had before him Woodrow Wilson’s example of choosing to ignore the very prototype of genocides to come –
Turkey’s massacre of a million Armenians in 1915.

“It is the smell of oil and the color of money that corrodes our principles,” said the Republican senator
from Maine, William Cohen, about our coddling of Iraq in 1990. Cohen, along with William Proxmire, Bob Dole and Claiborne Pell, is one of the few members of Congress to end up on Power’s list of valiant diplomats and journalists, troublemakers and whistleblowers who tried to stop a slaughter. Besides reminding us in searing detail just how it happened that 100,000 Kurds, 200,000 Bosnians,
800,000 Rwandans, 1 million Armenians, 2 million Cambodians and 6 million Jews were exterminated while we slumbered, she also wants us to honor those who couldn’t sleep, as well as men like Raphael
Lemkin, the refugee linguist who coined the word “genocide” and devoted his entire adult life to helping
get a law against it into a treaty among nations.

Still, the behavior of presidents
is what most infuriates her. From Dwight

Eisenhower on, they refused
even to sign the 1948 treaty against genocide till

Reagan did so in 1988 to
escape criticism for his visit to the Nazi cemetery at

Bitburg, Germany. Power
is convinced, from hundreds of interviews and thousands

of pages, that each administration
knew the dreadful worst and didn’t want to

talk about it. That each,
when it had to say something in public, cited

“national sovereignty” before
blaming “both sides,” “civil war” and “ancient

history” for what it called
a “tragedy” instead of an atrocity, a crime against

humanity or, of course,
a genocide. That each, for domestic political reasons,

chose to do nothing while
claiming that anything it might do would be “futile”

or counterproductive. “No
U.S. president,” she tells us, “has ever made genocide

prevention a priority, and
no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for

his indifference to its
occurrence.”

And she quotes the writer
David Rieff’s redefinition of the meaning of “Never

again” after his experience
in Bosnia: “Never again would Germans kill Jews in

Europe in the 1940s.”

As an anthology of horrors
from the equal-opportunity 20th century – Christians,

Muslims, Buddhists and Jews,
in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East – “A

Problem From Hell” has so
much ground to cover that it only nods in passing at

Pakistan and Bangladesh,
at Nigeria and Biafra, at Indonesia and East Timor. As

a pocket history of what
might be called the jurisprudence of the unthinkable –

how to get to Nuremberg
or The Hague – it might have wondered why the United

States

is so adamantly opposed to
the very idea of an international criminal court. And

as a fiery brief for our
intervention wherever there are killing fields, it

ought at least to mention
American meddlings in Latin America and

Southeast Asia that actually
upped the bloody ante.

But as an anguished reminder
that state violence is still the leading cause of

sudden death all over the
world, it is a much-needed corrective to our

generalized panic about
terrorism. However confounded and twitchy we’ve become,

looking over our shoulders
in fear of ambush by the lunatics of one idea and the

kamikazes of Kingdom Come,
we should never forget the worst thing about the

century just passed: What
we knew of war in 1900 was that 85 percent of its

casualties would be warriors
themselves – and only 15 percent civilians. But

according to the latest

United Nations figures, by
the end of the 20th century, that ratio had pretty

much reversed itself. More
than 80 percent of the damage is collateral. Which,

of course, is insane.

from the New York Times:

Amazon Forest Still Burning
Despite the Good Intentions

By LARRY ROHTER

RAIRÃO, Brazil, Aug.
19 ˜ By decree, the official burning season here in the Amazon is supposed
to be severely limited in scope and not to start until Sept. 15. Yet the
skies south of here are already thick with smoke as big landowners set
the jungle ablaze to clear the way for cattle pasture and lucrative crops
like soybeans.

    The Amazon
basin, which is larger than all of Europe and extends over nine countries,
accounts for more than half of what remains of the world’s tropical forests.
But in spite of heightened efforts in recent years to limit deforestation
and encourage “sustainable development,” the assault on its resources continues,
with Brazil in the lead.

    On Monday,
the United Nations’ World Summit on Sustainable Development is to begin
in Johannesburg. That conference comes 10 years after an Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro was attended by more than 100 nations, who signed a series
of ambitious agreements aimed at protecting forests, oceans, the atmosphere
and wildlife.

    As the
host country, Brazil was one of the sponsors of those accords. Within three
years, however, the annual deforestation rate in the Amazon, which accounts
for nearly 60 percent of Brazil’s territory, had doubled, to nearly 12,000
square miles, an area the size of Maryland.

    Since
then, the rate of destruction has slowed and the government has begun numerous
initiatives aimed at further curbing the cutting and burning of the forest.
Just this week, the government announced the creation of the world’s largest
tropical national park, in the northern state of Amapá near the
border with French Guyana.

    But the
Brazilian jungle is still disappearing at a rate of more than 6,000 square
miles a year, an area the size of Connecticut. What is more, the deforestation
is likely to accelerate, environmentalists warn, as the government moves
ahead with an ambitious $43 billion eight-year infrastructure program known
as Brazil Advances, aimed at improving the livelihoods of the 17 million
people in the Amazon.

    Over
the last 30 years, most destruction in the Amazon has been in a 2,000-mile-long
“arc of deforestation” along the southern and eastern fringe of the jungle.
But now the government is moving to turn the Cuiabá-Santarém
road, which slices through the heart of the forest, into a paved, all-weather
highway so that farmers to the south can more easily transport soybeans
and other products to the Amazon River and then to Europe.

    Soybean
production has begun to play a big role in the destruction of the jungle.
Both the deforestation here and the growing pressure to finish paving the
highway are to a large extent driven by economic developments half a world
away, in China. Rising incomes there have created a huge and expanding
middle class whose appetite for soybeans is growing rapidly.

    As recently
as 1993, the year after the Rio conference, China was still a soybean exporter.
Now it is the world’s biggest importer of soy oil, meal and beans. Brazil,
the largest exporter of soy products after the United States, is rushing
to meet that demand.

    The potential
environmental impact of asphalting the 1,100-mile-long road is enormous.
About 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon occurs in a 31-mile corridor
on either side of highways and roads, and when these are paved “deforestation
goes up tremendously,” said Philip Fearnside, a researcher at the National
Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus, known as INPA.

    A paved
section of the highway ends barely 12 miles from here, putting this remote
and dusty town of 14,000 on the front line of the agricultural frontier.
Dozens of sawmills now operate along the road where just a handful existed
five years ago, and at night, after government inspectors have gone home,
trucks carrying illegal loads of valuable hardwoods rattle down side roads
that lead deep into the jungle.

    “The
sensation is that of being on a battlefield and not having the weapons
to defend ourselves,” said the Rev. Anselmo Ferreira Melo, the parish priest
here.

    Trairão,
founded in 1993, is named for a game fish that has traditionally been plentiful
throughout the Amazon. But the new lumber yards here are dumping so much
sawdust into local streams that the fish population has dropped sharply.

    No one
knows exactly the quantity of greenhouse gases Brazil is already pumping
into the atmosphere as a result of such efforts to tame its vast jungle.
Though a national inventory of carbon emissions was supposed to have been
announced three years ago, it still has not been made public.

    But scientists
at INPA estimate that Brazil’s carbon emissions may have risen as much
as 50 percent since 1990. They calculate that “land use changes,” most
of which occur in the Amazon, now pour about 400 million tons of greenhouse
gases into the air each year, dwarfing the 90 million tons annually from
fossil fuel use in Brazil and making it one of the 10 top polluters in
the world.

    Part
of the recent decline in deforestation rates is attributable to the Brazilian
economy, whose rapid growth was responsible for the spike of the mid-1990’s
but has since cooled, or simply to weather patterns. But scientists also
credit specific Brazilian government steps for the improved performance.

    One symbolically
important step with practical consequences has been the demarcation of
indigenous lands. According to government statistics, more than 385,000
square miles, or 12 percent of Brazil’s territory, an area larger than
England and France combined, has been formally transferred to Indian control.

    As a
result, tribes with a warrior tradition, like the Kayapó, Wamiri-Atroari
and Mundurucú, have rushed to defend the reserves set aside for
them and become aggressive defenders of the forest.

    “If you
put together satellite images of all the fires burning in the Amazon, you
can see the outline of the indigenous areas just from that,” said Stephan
Schwartzman, senior scientist at Environmental Defense in Washington. “Where
Indian land starts is where the fires stop.”

    In some
areas of the Amazon, the Brazilian government’s environmental protection
agency, known as Ibama, has also played a leading role in deterring deforestation.
An environmental crimes law passed in 1998 gave the agency, founded in
1989, new enforcement powers, which it has used, albeit selectively, in
raids aimed at arresting and fining the most blatant violators of the law.

    “Ibama
is full of problems and underfunded, but they are still making progress,
thanks especially to these blitzes,” said Daniel Nepstad of the Amazon
Environmental Research Institute in Belém. “The cost of doing business
as a logger has increased and the profit margins have gone down, and the
sense of impunity that existed just a few years ago has diminished.”

    But the
initiative that the Brazilian government sees as most promising is in the
southern Amazon state of Mato Grosso, where deforestation is licensed and
monitored by satellite. Though the state’s name means “thick jungle” in
Portuguese, huge deforestation began in the 1970’s and accelerated with
the soybean boom of the 1990’s.

    Since
the program went into effect late in 1999, deforestation in Mato Grosso,
which has had the fastest growing economy of any Brazilian state, has declined
by more than half, to about 4,600 square miles over the two-year period
that ended on Jan 1.

    Large
ranchers and farmers can clear no more than 20 percent of their land, and
those who exceed that limit are punished with fines and prison sentences.

    “The
truth is that nobody ever controlled this, and that you can’t control properties
one by one even if you have an entire army of men,” said Federico Muller,
director of the state’s environmental protection agency. “But now the satellite
does it for us. It’s like Big Brother, an all-seeing eye in the jungle.”

    But the
neighboring states of Pará and Rondônia, where deforestation
has been equally intense, have yet to adopt the initiative. As a result,
loggers, sawmill operators, cattle ranchers, land speculators and other
adventurers have simply moved northward up the Cuiabá-Santarém
highway, deeper into the heart of the jungle, to areas like this one.

    Armed
with guns and global positioning satellite locators, loggers are also pushing
into the Tapajós National Park west of Trairão and other
nature reserves. Peasant settlers here say that they have complaimed to
the police and to the environmental protection agency but that nothing
has been done.

    “Everything
functions on the basis of bribes or threats, and so Ibama does not act,”
said José Rodrigues do Nascimento, who farms 250 acres. “These
loggers tell us they have the authorization to go in there, but they never
show any papers, and because they have gunman, you don’t dare to contradict
them.”

    José
Carlos Carvalho, the environment minister, acknowledged problems but promised
improvements by next year’s dry season, saying that the states of Pará
and Rondônia were now installing the same monitoring system as Mato
Grosso. In addition, he said, the environmental protection agency is to
double the number of its agents, to 2,000.

    “We recognize
that the predatory occupation of the jungle doesn’t work and has to give
way to a system of sustainable development, and we are moving in that direction,”
he said.

From http://www.burningheart.com/turbonegro/

THE MOTHERFUCKER HAS LANDED.

PRESSRELEASE

ACHTUNG CITIZENS OF EARTH:

O.K., this story has been pirated more times than your asshole in the Hazard County lock up…. so
don’t be surprised if it leaves some funky boils on your genitals. But
yes my wigglies, it was way back in 1995 when I first found out about a
li’l treasure titled “Stinky Fingers”, plans went into effect immediately
to obtain what had to be a guaranteed hit? I mean with a song called “Midnight
NAMBLA” (in the days when over-zealous PC dogma patrollers ruled “the scene”)
you can’t go wrong. The completely in your face Hobbit-Motherfucker bustin’
attitude and loud-ass action riffage made this a refreshing treat from
the usual lame pseudo pussy ‘hardcore’ manure manifesting itself and passing
for punk in back those days. (things would only go downhill from there
but that’s another story). A whole band joined in enhanced aggression mode
attacking Dungeons and Dragons retards gets my thumbs up any day. (“Your
Cloak of Indifference will not protect you from the vicious attacks of
a psychotic Denim Demon shredding your face and taking a hot steaming shit
on your breastplate!!!”)

Although I WAS SOLD (5 years
ahead of my time, as always) the rest of us non-Norwegian Euro’s and later
the remaining parts of the world remained unaware of this fantastic band
for at least half a decade. Only when this thing called “The Scandinavian
Wave” was upon us, taking the world by storm, TURBONEGRO briefly took to
the slimelight, quickly moving on to create a different musical genre,
all in their own right (which would become known as DEATHPUNK). Soon after,
they exploded like a wet sock of spooge hitting a frathouse wall, long
before reaching their peek. No justice in Rock ‘n’ Roll?AGAIN.

The fateful year was 1998,
my friends?Buggers can’t be choosers, you say??

Well, now that you are properly
briefed, let it be known that NORWAY’S DEATHPUNK SUPERSTARS and masters
of dungaree TURBONEGRO are back!!

THAT’S RIGHT! The band has
just signed to Burning Heart/Epitaph.

If you pissed your pants
hearing “Ass Cobra”? If you creamed your BVD’s during “Apocalypse Dudes”…
Well, get ready to shit yourself senseless when you hear their upcoming
album!…because no bones about it: the Danger Dudes will continue to throw
out more and more hilarious shit as their (ahem) star glistens brighter
yet. In addition to the quality music, which borrows blatantly from 70’s
sources as well as old school 80’s hardcore roots (much like Kunta Kente),
the lyrics also offers one of the most perceptive and brilliantly inflated
renditions of some Euro-US trash culture hybrid that appears to have been
conceived in some twisted darkroom of sorts. With utter disregard for taste
or class, tongues are stuck up ALL KINDS OF cheeks ALL THE TIME. Gripping
drama it definitely AIN’T. And that’s why we love it so much! APOCALYPSE
DUDES is one fucked up amyl-nitrate induced trip through what seems to
be several genres, it will, no doubt stand the test of time royally as
a true MASTERPIECE in a class of it’s own. A true juggernaut of the genre.
And if something’s good enough for the most jaded of jaded, bet your bippy
it’ll be good enough for you. TURBONEGRO offer a nutritious and well-balanced
meal that includes all of the trimmings. They also got enough raw fibre
to clog the ass of a pregnant chinchilla.

But, the band is successful
at so many different levels for a number of other reasons as well! TURBONEGRO
don’t need to rely on hotrods, flames, devil chicks, or fuzzy dice imagery.
Besides, there’s too many mental and chemical demons involved for the band
to devote time to such superficial symbolics. The band broke up in the
emergency room of a mental hospital in Milan, ending their triumphant “Darkness
Forever!” 1998 tour in ruins, and have spent the last 4 years licking their
wounds, preparing for their triumphant comeback, which has included headlining
this summer’s Bizarre, Quart and Hultsfred Festivals, playing for a total
of at least 100.000 crazed pieces of Euro Trash.

(left to right) Pål
Pot Pamparius, Hank Von Helvete, Rune Rebellion, Euroboy, Happy Tom and
Chris Summers getting ready for some darkness.

Must-have classics to be
re-released by BHR:

Ass Cobra (1996)

 A Dazzling Display
Of Talent

 Midnight NAMBLA

 Deathtime

 Black Rabbit

 Denim Demon

 Bad Mongo

 Mobile Home

 I Got Erection

 Just Flesh

 Hobbit Motherfuckers

 Sailorman

 Turbonegro Hate The
Kids

 Imorgen Skal Eg Daue

 Raggare Is A Bunch
Of Motherfuckers

Apocalypse Dudes (1998)

 The Age Of Pamparius

 Selfdestructo Bust

 Get It On

 Rock Against Ass

 Don’t Say Motherfucker,
Motherfucker

 Rendezvous With Anus

 Zillion Dollar Sadist

 Prince Of The Rodeo

 Back To Dungaree High

 Are You Ready (For
Some Darkness)

 Monkey On Your Back

 Humiliation Street

 Good Head

– They got the songs. Ones
you can sing along to with your fist raised in the air. Songs that WILL
ROCK THE HAIR OFF YOUR ASS AND MAKE YOU CRY LIKE A MAN.

– They got the denim. (arguably
the most genius concept since the Ramones, in a day and age where we’re
“treated” to whining teens and goofy-toothed college dorks who look like
they stepped out of a Tommy Hilfiger ad).

– They got a shtick. A GOOD
one. The gay part is a bit of an enigma, don’t ask. Other characters evolve
around maritime themes, a most blatant Alice Cooper look-alike, and much
more.

– TURBONEGRO HAVE A DOCTRINE
that operates on many levels of consciousness, most of which are far too
elaborate for their critics’ intellectual capacities to grasp. They call
it “Darkness”. Once again, don’t ask.

– They have undying credibility
status with “the kids”. Lacking multi-million funded promotion campaigns
the band achieved WORLDWIDE success in spite of THE MOST ADVERSE CONDITIONS
doing it THE HARD WAY, out there on the road, like real rock’n’roll bands
should. This is not some fucking White Stripes “saviours Of Rock’n’Roll”
media hype bullshit! Nobody cares about Rock’n’roll, and nobody cares about
a European band. These guys are BOTH. Go figure. As it stands now, TURBONEGRO
are huge enough to turn down serious major record deals.

– None of the members of
TURBONEGRO skateboard.

– Friends in high places:
Suddenly EVERYONE wants to be chums with them. Currently, TURBONEGRO has
had rim-jobs from Metallica, the Norwegian Black Metal elite (Mayhem occasionally
play Turbo tunes live and claim that “Turbonegro is THEE most evil band
in the world”, Jello Biafra (who claimed that Apocalypse Dudes was “possibly
the best European record ever”, the Beastie Boys, Placebo, the Hives (who
stated in an recent interview that “something as great as Turbonegro happens
only once every century”, and many more, as heard on last years “Alpha
Motherfuckers: A Tribute to Turbonegro” (Bitzcore), which included tracks
from The Queens of the Stone Age, The Supersuckers, The Residents (!),
Satyricon and many more.

– Their legions: Yes, TURBONEGRO
can marshall up their own private 5th column army consisting of countless
loyal human slave volunteers (which are called “TURBOJUGEND”) to carry
out their grand schemes. As the band proceeds to seize control of rock-fodder
and society minds alike, they are expected to press forward with their
ultimate move for global domination. Currently, TURBOJUGEND chapters are
found everywhere on the planet. From Tromsø, Norway, to Santiago
de Chile via Cornwall, – on all continents (the USA alone accounts for
7 Turbo cover bands). This incredible global phenomenon slipped by the
defences of any and all established media on a worldwide scale on all continents.

So listen to Sluggy, folks.
I’ve been saying this all along: REAL ROCKNROLL IS CONFRONTATIONAL, AND
HITS YOU BELOW THE BELT. By now, maybe you can take a wild guess at who
fits that bill.

Look, I’ve seen ’em rock,
and I’ve seen ’em roll, so trust me, people. Hundreds did before you! I’ve
been playing this punk rock shit since 1978 and it’s not for nothing that
I’m recognized as one of the world authority on the subject. OK, so I don’t
have a record deal. And no, I never get a whammy. But when I solve the
puzzle it gets the ladies wet. My joker’s always wild, bitch. And if you
ever doubt my intellectual supremacy again, I’ll bust out some Jet Li moves
and kick your goofy ass to the curb. So what I’m saying is, get on board
of the Man-Train. The Man-Train that is Turbonegro.

Tony Slug, Amsterdam, August
19th, 2002

Residents of Daraganj look at 26-year-old Sunil Sahu’s wounded arm, allegedly caused by an unidentified flying object they call Moohnochwa, in Allahabad, India.

SHANWA, India (AP) — It comes in the night, a flying sphere emitting red and blue lights that attacks
villagers in this poor region, extensively burning those victims it does not kill.

At least that’s what panic-stricken villagers say. At least seven people have died of unexplained injuries
in the past week in Uttar Pradesh state.

“A mysterious flying object attacked him in the night,” Raghuraj Pal said of his neighbor, Ramji Pal,
who died recently in Shanwa. “His stomach was ripped open. He died two days later.”

Many others have suffered scratches and surface wounds, which they say were inflicted while they
slept. In the village of Darra, 53-year-old Kalawati said she was attacked last week and displayed blisters on her blackened forearms.

“It was like a big soccer ball with sparkling lights,” said Kalawati, who uses only one name. “It burned my skin. I can’t sleep because of pain.”

Doctors dismiss the stories as mass hysteria.

“More often than not the victims have unconsciously inflicted the symptoms themselves,” said Narrotam
Lal, a doctor at King George’s Medical College in Lucknow, the state capital.

The police have another explanation: bugs.

“It is a three-and-a-half-inch-long winged insect” that leaves rashes and superficial wounds, Kavindra P. Singh, a superintendent of police, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

Police drew this conclusion after residents of one village found insects they had never seen before.

Villagers are unconvinced.
In the most affected area, the Mirzapur district, 440 miles southeast of New Delhi, people have stopped sleeping outdoors despite the sweltering heat and frequent power outages.

Villagers also have formed protection squads that patrol Shanwa, beating drums and shouting slogans
such as, “Everyone alert. Attackers beware.”

Some accuse district officials of inaction and failing to capture the “aliens.” One person died Thursday
in nearby Sitapur when police fired shots to disperse a 10,000-strong crowd demanding that authorities capture the mysterious attackers.

“People just block the roads and attack the police for inaction each time there’s a death or injury,”
said Amrit Abhijat, Mirzapur’s district magistrate, who claims he has captured the UFO on film.

18 AUGUST 2002: THE LANGUAGE
GENE?

From the 15
August New York Times:

Language Gene Is Traced to
Emergence of Humans

By NICHOLAS WADE

A study of the genomes of
people and chimpanzees has yielded a deep insight into

the origin of language,
one of the most distinctive human attributes and a

critical step in human evolution.

The analysis indicates that
language, on the evolutionary time scale, is a very

recent development, having
evolved only in the last 100,000 years or so.

The finding supports a novel
theory advanced by Dr. Richard Klein, an

archaeologist at Stanford
University, who argues that the emergence of

behaviorally modern humans
about 50,000 years ago was set off by a major genetic

change, most probably the
acquisition of language.

The new study, by Dr. Svante
Paabo and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute

for Evolutionary Anthropology
in Leipzig, Germany, is based on last year’s

discovery of the first human
gene involved specifically in language.

The gene came to light through
studies of a large London family, well known to

linguists, 14 of whose 29
members are incapable of articulate speech but are

otherwise mostly normal.
A team of molecular biologists led by Dr. Anthony P.

Monaco of the University
of Oxford last year identified the gene that was

causing the family’s problems.
Known as FOXP2, the gene is known to switch on

other genes during the development
of the brain, but its presumed role in

setting up the neural circuitry
of language is not understood.

Dr. Paabo’s team has studied
the evolutionary history of the FOXP2 gene by

decoding the sequence of
DNA letters in the versions of the gene possessed by

mice, chimpanzees and other
primates, and people.

In a report being published
online today by the journal Nature, Dr. Paabo says

the FOXP2 gene has remained
largely unaltered during the evolution of mammals,

but suddenly changed in
humans after the hominid line had split off from the

chimpanzee line of descent.

The changes in the human
gene affect the structure of the protein it specifies

at two sites, Dr. Paabo’s
team reports. One of them slightly alters the

protein’s shape; the other
gives it a new role in the signaling circuitry of

human cells.

The changes indicate that
the gene has been under strong evolutionary pressure

in humans. Also, the human
form of the gene, with its two changes, seems to have

become universal in the
human population, suggesting that it conferred some

overwhelming benefit.

Dr. Paabo contends that humans
must already have possessed some rudimentary form

of language before the FOXP2
gene gained its two mutations. By conferring the

ability for rapid articulation,
the improved gene may have swept through the

population, providing the
finishing touch to the acquisition of language.

“Maybe this gene provided
the last perfection of language, making it totally

modern,” Dr. Paabo said.

The affected members of the
London family in which the defective version of

FOXP2 was discovered do
possess a form of language. Their principal defect seems

to lie in a lack of fine
control over the muscles of the throat and mouth,

needed for rapid speech.
But in tests they find written answers as hard as

verbal ones, suggesting
that the defective gene causes conceptual problems as

well as ones of muscular
control.

The human genome is constantly
accumulating DNA changes through random mutation,

though they seldom affect
the actual structure of genes. When a new gene sweeps

through the population,
the genome’s background diversity at that point is much

reduced for a time, since
everyone possesses the same stretch of DNA that came

with the new gene. By measuring
this reduced diversity and other features of a

must-have gene, Dr. Paabo
has estimated the age of the human version of FOXP2 as

being less than 120,000
years.

Dr. Paabo says this date
fits with the theory advanced by Dr. Klein to account

for the sudden appearance
of novel behaviors 50,000 years ago, including art,

ornamentation and long distance
trade. Human remains from this period are

physically indistinguishable
from those of 100,000 years ago, leading Dr. Klein

to propose that some genetically
based cognitive change must have prompted the

new behaviors. The only
change of sufficient magnitude, in his view, is

acquisition of language.

17 AUGUST 2002: THE KIDS
ARE NOT ALRIGHT.

Cover story for Time
Magazine this week:

 

Young and Bipolar

Once called manic depression,
the disorder afflicted adults. Now it’s striking

kids. Why?

BY JEFF KLUGER AND SORA
SONG

It wasn’t every day that
Patricia Torres raced down the streets of Miami at 70

m.p.h. But then it wasn’t
every day that her daughter Nicole Cabezas

hallucinated wildly, trying
to jump out of the car, pulling off her clothes and

ranting that people were
following her, so this seemed like a pretty good time

to hurry. Nicole, 16, had
been having problems for a while now˜ever since she

was 14 and began closeting
herself in her bedroom, incapable of socializing or

doing her schoolwork, and
contemplating suicide.

The past few months had been
different, though, with the depression lifting and

an odd state of high energy
taking its place. Nicole’s thoughts raced; her

speech was fragmented. She
went without sleep for days at a time and felt none

the worse for it. She began
to suspect that her friends were using her, but that

was understandable, she
guessed, since they no doubt envied her profound gifts.

“I was the center of the
universe,” she says quietly today. “I was the chosen

one.”

Finally, when the chosen
one was struck by violent delusions˜the belief that she

had telekinetic powers,
that she could change the colors of objects at

will˜Torres decided it was
time to take Nicole to the hospital. Emergency-room

doctors took one look at
the thrashing teenager, strapped her to a gurney and

began administering sedatives.
She spent two weeks in the hospital as the

doctors monitored her shifting
moods, adjusted her meds and talked to her and

her parents about her descent
into madness. Finally, she was released with a

therapy plan and a cocktail
of drugs. Six months later, doctors at last reached

a diagnosis: she was suffering
from bipolar disorder.

While emotional turmoil is
part of being a teenager, Nicole Cabezas is among a

growing cohort of kids whose
unsteady psyches do not simply rise and fall now

and then but whipsaw violently
from one extreme to another. Bipolar

disorder˜once known as manic
depression, always known as a ferocious mental

illness˜seems to be showing
up in children at an increasing rate, and that has

taken a lot of mental-health
professionals by surprise. The illness until

recently was thought of
as the rare province of luckless adults˜the

overachieving businessman
given to sullen lows and impulsive highs; the

underachieving uncle with
the mysterious moods and the drinking problem; the

tireless supermom who suddenly
takes to her room, pulls the shades and weeps in

shadows for months at a
time.

But bipolar disorder isn’t
nearly so selective. As doctors look deeper into the

condition and begin to understand
its underlying causes, they are coming to the

unsettling conclusion that
large numbers of teens and children are suffering

from it as well. The National
Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association

gathered in Orlando, Fla.,
last week for its annual meeting, as doctors and

therapists face a daunting
task. Although the official tally of Americans

suffering from bipolar disorder
seems to be holding steady˜at about 2.3 million,

striking men and women equally˜the
average age of onset has fallen in a single

generation from the early
30s to the late teens.

And that number doesn’t include
kids under 18. Diagnosing the condition at very

young ages is new and controversial,
but experts estimate that an additional 1

million preteens and children
in the U.S. may suffer from the early stages of

bipolar disorder. Moreover,
when adult bipolars are interviewed, nearly half

report that their first
manic episode occurred before age 21; 1 in 5 says it

occurred in childhood. “We
don’t have the exact numbers yet,” says Dr. Robert

Hirschfeld, head of the
psychiatry department at the University of Texas in

Galveston, “except we know
it’s there, and it’s underdiagnosed.”

If he’s right, it’s an important
warning sign for parents and doctors, since

bipolar disorder is not
an illness that can be allowed to go untreated. Victims

have an alcoholism and drug-abuse
rate triple that of the rest of the population

and a suicide rate that
may approach 20%. They often suffer for a decade before

their condition is diagnosed,
and for years more before it is properly treated.

“If you don’t catch it early
on,” says Dr. Demitri Papolos, research director of

the Juvenile Bipolar Research
Foundation and co-author of The Bipolar Child

(Broadway Books, 1999),
“it gets worse, like a tumor.” Heaping this torment on

an adult is bad enough;
loading it on a child is tragic.

Determining why the age-of-onset
figures are in free fall is attracting a lot of

research attention. Some
experts believe that kids are being tipped into bipolar

disorder by family and
school stress, recreational-drug use and perhaps
even a

collection
of genes that express themselves more aggressively in each

generation.
Others
argue that the actual number of sick kids hasn’t changed at

all; instead, we’ve just
got better at diagnosing the illness. If that’s the

case, it’s still significant,
because it means that those children have gone for

years without receiving
treatment for their illness, or worse, have been

medicated for the wrong
illness. Regardless of the cause, plenty of kids are

suffering needlessly. “At
least half the people who have this disorder don’t get

treated,” says Dr. Terrence
Ketter, director of the bipolar disorder clinic at

Stanford University.

Yet scientists are making
progress against the disease. Genetic researchers are

combing through gene after
gene on chromosomes that appear to be related to the

condition and may offer
targets for drug development. Pharmacologists are

perfecting combinations
of new drugs that are increasingly capable of leveling

the manic peaks and lifting
the disabling lows. Behavioral and cognitive

psychologists are developing
new therapies and family-based programs that get

the derailed brain back
on track and keep it there. “We did a good job for a

long time of putting a lid
on [the disorder],” says Dr. Paul Keck, vice chairman

of research at the University
of Cincinnati College of Medicine. “Now the goal

is to completely eradicate
the symptoms.”

For Lynne Broman, 37, of
Los Angeles, just taming the disorder would be more

than enough. A single mom,
she is raising three children, two of whom˜Kyle, 5,

and Mary Emily, 2˜are bipolar.
At the moment it’s Kyle who is causing the most

trouble. He has been expelled
from six preschools and two day-care centers in

his short academic career
and has made a shambles of their once tidy home. Kyle

was hospitalized for violent
outbursts at age 4 and still has periods when he

goes almost completely feral.
He once threw a butcher knife at his mother,

nearly striking her before
she ducked out of the way. “That day started out

fine,” Broman says, “but
he turned on me like a rabid dog.”

Until quite recently, a child
who behaved like this would have been presumed to

have either Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD) or oppositional

defiant disorder. Bipolar
would not even have been considered. And with good

reason: the classic bipolar
profile, at least as it appears in adults, is almost

never seen in kids.

Most bipolar adults move
back and forth between depressions and highs in cycles

that can stretch over months.
During the depressive phase, they experience

hopelessness, loss of interest
in work and family, and loss of libido˜the same

symptoms as in major (or
unipolar) depression, with which bipolar is often

confused. The depressive
curtain can descend with no apparent cause or can be

triggered by a traumatic
event such as an accident, illness or the loss of a

job.

But in bipolar disorder,
there is also a manic phase. It usually begins with a

sort of caffeinated, can-do
buzz. “Sometimes the patients find the highs

pleasant,” says Dr. Joseph
Calabrese, director of the mood-disorders program at

Case Western University
in Cleveland. As the emotional engine revs higher,

however, that energy can
become too much. Bipolars quickly grow aggressive and

impulsive. They become grandiose,
picking fights, driving too fast, engaging in

indiscriminate sex, spending
money wildly. They may ultimately become

delusionally mad.

With kids, things aren’t
nearly so clear. Most children with the condition are

ultra-rapid cyclers, flitting
back and forth among mood states several times a

day. Papolos, who co-wrote
The Bipolar Child, studied 300 bipolar kids ages 4

through 18, and he believes
he has spotted a characteristic pattern. In the

morning, bipolar children
are more difficult to rouse than the average child.

They resist getting up,
getting dressed, heading to school. They are either

irritable, with a tendency
to snap and gripe, or sullen and withdrawn.

By midday, the darkness lifts,
and bipolar children enjoy a few clear hours,

enabling them to focus and
take part in school. But by 3 or 4 p.m., Papolos

warns, “the rocket thrusters
go off,” and the kids become wild, wired, euphoric

in a giddy and strained
way. They laugh too loudly when they find something

funny and go on long after
the joke is over. Their play has a flailing,

aggressive quality to it.
They may make up stories or insist they have

superhuman abilities. They
resist all efforts to settle them and throw tantrums

if their needs are denied.
Such wildness often continues deep into the

night˜which accounts in
part for the difficulty they have waking up in the

morning. “They’re like Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” says Papolos, “which is how

their parents describe them.”

Preverbal toddlers and infants
cannot manifest the disorder so clearly, and

there is no agreement about
whether they exhibit any symptoms at all. However,

many parents of a bipolar
say they noticed something off about their baby almost

from birth, reporting that
he or she was unusually fidgety or difficult to

soothe. Broman insists she
knew her son Kyle was bipolar even when he was in the

womb. “This child never
slept inside,” she says. “He was active 24 hours a day.”

For Broman, making that diagnosis
may not have been hard since the condition, as

Ketter puts it, “is hugely
familial.” Broman herself is bipolar, though her

illness was not diagnosed
until adulthood. Children with one bipolar parent have

a 10% to 30% chance of developing
the condition; a bipolar sibling means a 20%

risk; if both parents are
bipolar, the danger rises as high as 75%. About 90% of

bipolars have at least one
close relative with a mood disorder.

For all that, when the disorder
does appear in a child, the diagnosis is often

wrong. ADHD is the likeliest
first call, if only because some of the manic

symptoms fit. The treatment
of choice for ADHD is Ritalin, a stimulant that has

the paradoxical ability
to calm overactive kids. But giving Ritalin to a bipolar

child can deepen an existing
cycle or trigger one anew. Brandon Kent, a

9-year-old from La Vernia,
Texas, in whom ADHD was diagnosed in kindergarten

(they did not yet know he
was bipolar), took Ritalin and paid the price. “It

sent him into depression,”
says his mother Debbie Kent. “Within a couple of

months, he was flat on the
couch and wouldn’t move.” By some estimates, up to

15% of children thought
to have ADHD may actually be bipolar.

Similar misdiagnoses are
made when parents and doctors observe symptoms of the

low phase of the bipolar
cycle and conclude that a kid is suffering from simple

depression. Treat such a
child with antidepressants like Prozac, however, and

the rejiggering of brain
chemistry may trigger mania. Some researchers believe

that nearly half of all
children thought to be depressed may really be bipolar.

For most kids, the consequences
of not identifying the illness can be severe,

since the bipolar steamroller
gets worse as children get older. Though they tend

to be verbally skilled and
are often creative, bipolars find school difficult

because the background noise
of the disorder makes it hard for them to master

such executive functions
as organizing, planning and thinking problems through.

The most serious symptoms
may appear when kids reach age 8, just when the

academic challenge of grade
school starts to be felt. “They’re being asked to do

things that they’re very
poor at,” Papolos says, “and it’s a blow to their

self-esteem.” If school
doesn’t kick the disorder into overdrive, puberty often

does, with its rush of hormones
that rattle even the steadiest preteen mind.

Still, all these natural
stressors and the new awareness of the disorder may not

be enough to account for
the explosion of juvenile bipolar cases. Some

scientists fear that there
may be something in the environment or in modern

lifestyles that is driving
into a bipolar state children and teens who might

otherwise escape the condition.

One of the biggest risk factors
is drugs. People with a genetic predisposition

to bipolar disorders live
on an unstable emotional fault line. Jar things too

much with a lot of recreational
chemistry, and the whole foundation can break

away, especially when the
drugs of choice are cocaine, amphetamines or other

stimulants. “We do think
that use of stimulating drugs is playing a part in

lowering the age of onset,”
says Hirschfeld.

Stress too can light the
bipolar fuse. Many latent emotional disorders, from

depression to alcoholism
to anxiety conditions, are precipitated by life events

such as divorce or death
or even a happy rite of passage like starting college.

And bipolar disorder can
also be set off this way. “Most of us do not think

environmental stress causes
the disorder,” says Dr. Michael Gitlin, head of the

mood-disorders clinic at
UCLA. “But it can trigger it in people who are already

vulnerable.”

A decidedly more complicated
explanation may be gene penetrance; not every

generation of a family susceptible
to an illness develops it in the same way.

Often, later generations
suffer worse than earlier ones because of a genetic

mechanism known as trinucleotide
repeat expansion. Defective sequences of genes

may grow longer each time
they are inherited, making it likelier that

descendants will come down
with the illness. This phenomenon plays a role in

Huntington’s disease and
could be involved in bipolar. “There’s a stepwise

genetic dose that can increase
the risk,” theorizes Ketter.

The first part of determining
how those genes work is figuring out where they

are hiding, and the National
Institute of Mental Health is looking hard.

Investigators at eight research
centers around the country, working under an

nimh grant, are studying
the genomes of 500 families with a bipolar history to

see what genetic quirks
they share. So far, at least 10 of the 46 human

chromosomes have shown irregularities
that may be linked with the condition. The

most interesting is chromosome
22, which has been implicated not only in bipolar

disorder but also in Schizophrenia
and a little-known condition called

Velo-Cardio-Facial syndrome,
which has Schizophrenia links as well. The seeming

relatedness of disorders
that so prominently feature delusions has not been lost

on researchers, though with
so much still unknown about chromosome 22˜to say

nothing of the other nine
tentatively linked with bipolar˜no one is ready to

draw any conclusions. “There
are probably genetic variants that cut across

multiple systems in the
brain,” says Dr. John Kelsoe, psychiatric geneticist at

the University of California,
San Diego.

While this wealth of chromosomal
clues makes fascinating work for geneticists,

it promises little for bipolar
sufferers, at least for the moment. What they

want is relief˜and fast.
Thanks to rapid advances in pharmacology, they are

finally getting it. In fact,
children on a properly balanced drug regimen

supplemented with the right
kind of therapy can probably go on to lead normal

lives.

For decades, the only drug
for bipolar patients˜and one that is still an

important part of the pharmacological
arsenal˜was lithium. It works by

regulating a number of neurotransmitters,
including dopamine and norepinephrine,

as well as protein kinase
C, a family of chemicals that help determine the

neurotransmitter amounts
that nerve cells release. With its hands on so many of

the brain’s chemical levers,
lithium can help bring bipolars back to

equilibrium. For 30% of
sufferers, however, it has no effect at all; for others,

the side effects are intolerable.
“It’s still a miraculous drug,” says Keck.

“But some people simply
don’t respond to it enough.”

New drugs are stepping into
the breach. Rather than rely on the imprecise relief

that a single drug like
lithium provides, contemporary chemists are

investigating a battery
of other medications. Depakote, an anticonvulsant

developed to calm the storms
of epilepsy, was found to have a similarly soothing

effect on bipolar cycling,
and it was approved in 1995 to treat that condition

too. The success of one
anticonvulsant prompted researchers to look at others,

and in the past five years,
several˜including Lamictal, Tegretol, Trileptal and

Topamax˜have been put to
use.

Anticonvulsants are not the
only drugs being reformulated. Also showing promise

are the atypical antipsychotics.
The best-known antipsychotic, Thorazine, is a

comparatively crude preparation
that controls delusions by blocking dopamine

receptors. In the process,
it also causes weight gain, mood flattening and other

side effects. Atypical antipsychotics
work more precisely, manipulating both

dopamine and serotonin and
suppressing symptoms without causing so many

associated problems. There
are numerous atypical antipsychotics out there,

including Zyprexa, Risperdal
and Haldol, and many are being used to good effect

on bipolar patients.

For any bipolar, the sheer
number of drug options is a real boon, as what works

for one patient will not
necessarily work for another. When Brandon Kent, the

9-year-old Texas boy, started
taking Depakote and Risperdal, his body began to

swell. Then he switched
to Topamax, which made him lethargic. Eventually he was

put on a mix of Tegretol
and Risperdal, which have stabilized him with few side

effects. Kyle Broman in
Los Angeles is having a harder time but has grown calmer

on a combination of Risperdal
and Celexa, an antidepressant that for now at

least does not appear to
be flipping him into mania.

But drugs go only so far.
Just as important is what comes after medication:

therapies and home regimens
designed to help patients and their families cope

with the disorder. Early
last year the National Institute of Mental Health

launched a five-year, $22
million study, the Systematic Treatment Enhancement

Program for Bipolar Disorder
(step-bd) to refine bipolar therapies. Some 2,300

volunteers are participating
in the program, and enrollment is expected to reach

5,000. Of all the treatments
the STEP-BDdoctors are studying, the most basic and

perhaps the most important
one for children and teens involves lifestyle

management.

>From infancy, kids can easily
be unsettled by disruptions in their circadian

cycles, as parents of newborns
and toddlers learn whenever they try to change

nap times. Bipolars, regardless
of age, are also reactive to fluctuating

schedules; many things can
destabilize patients, but Keck believes that sleep

deprivation and time-zone
changes are the most upsetting.

For this reason, parents
of bipolar kids are urged to enforce sleep schedules

firmly and consistently.
Bedtime must mean bedtime, and morning must mean

morning. While that can
be hard when an actively manic child is still throwing a

tantrum two hours after
lights-out, a combination of mood-stabilizing drugs and

an enforced routine may
even bring some of the most symptomatic kids into line.

Teens, who are expected
to do a lot more self-policing than younger children,

must take more of this responsibility
on themselves, even if that means a

no-excuses adherence to
a no-exceptions curfew.

Also important is diet. Caffeine
can be a mania trigger for bipolars, so teens

are advised to stay away
from coffee and tea. Bipolar kids of all ages must also

be careful with less conspicuously
caffeinated foods such as sodas and

chocolate. And for adolescents
and teens, staying free of alcohol and drugs is

critical. Not only is the
risk of addiction high, but treatment of the

underlying bipolar problem
is much more difficult if the patient’s mind is

clouded by recreational
chemicals.

For children old enough to
benefit, the second leg of treatment is individual

therapy, which includes
social-rhythms work˜learning to balance meals, sleep,

studies and recreation.
If a triggering incident such as a divorce or death

kicked the condition off,
the doctor can help the child process that too.

The last, perhaps hardest
element of treatment is family therapy. Bipolar

disorder, like Schizophrenia,
depression and certain anxiety conditions, is

powerfully influenced by
surroundings. When an identical twin suffers from

bipolar, the other twin
has only a 65% chance of developing it too. Conversely,

adopted children with no
genetic legacy for bipolar have a 2% chance of coming

down with the condition
if they are raised in a home with one nonbiological

bipolar parent. Clearly,
something is in play besides mere genes, and that

something is environment.
Raise a child in a steady and stable home, and you

reduce the odds that the
illness will gain a toehold, which is why counselors

work hard to teach parents
and kids how to minimize family discord.

One strategy is to avoid
too much negatively expressed emotion. Tough love, for

example, is a good idea
in principle, but in some situations it can do more harm

than good, especially if
it makes kids who can’t control their behavior feel

worse about themselves.
When family arguments do break out, they need to be

conducted in a controlled
way. Psychology professor David Miklowitz of the

University of Colorado encourages
families to avoid what he calls the “three

volley,” a provocation followed
by a rejoinder, then a rebuttal. Hold the

volleys to just one or two,
and you’ll avoid some domestic breakdowns.

The most important thing
parents and siblings can do is simply to serve as the

eyes and ears of the bipolar
child. A teen in a depression can’t see the hope

beyond the gloom. A child
in a manic cycle can’t see the quiet reality behind

the giddiness. It’s up to
people whose compasses are more reliably functioning

to step in and point the
way. Says Dr. Gary Sachs, director of the Bipolar

Treatment Center at Boston’s
Massachusetts General Hospital and principal

investigator for the STEP-BDproject:
“Treatment is modeled on Homer’s Odyssey.

When Odysseus gets blown
off course, he asks the help of his crew.”

In the future, kids should
be getting yet more assistance as they sail. At the

Stanley Research Center,
in Massachusetts General Hospital, investigators are

beginning a yearlong study
of at least 10 bipolar drugs, comparing the merits of

each and the ways they can
best be combined. Others are looking at such

unconventional treatments
as omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish oil, which may

inhibit the same brain receptors
that lithium affects. Elsewhere, researchers

are running brain scans
to determine which lobes and regions are involved in

bipolar disorder and how
to target them more accurately with drugs.

Investigators also hope
to develop a blood test that will allow bipolar disorder

to be spotted as simply
as, say, high cholesterol, eliminating years of

incorrect diagnoses and
misguided treatments.

Getting all this work done
right˜and getting the treatments to the kids who need

it˜is one of the newest
and most challenging goals of the mental-health

community. Doctors who recognize
bipolar disorder and know how to handle it are

in critically short supply.
Growing up is hard enough for children who are

bipolar. The last thing
they need is a misdiagnosis and treatment for something

they don’t have.

˜Reported by Dan Cray and
Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles, Jeanne DeQuine/Miami,

Melissa Sattley/Texas, Cristina
Scalet/New York and Maggie Sieger/Chicago

15 AUGUST 2002:
AT HOME WITH JOHN WATERS

From the New
York Times:

AT HOME WITH JOHN WATERS

Bad Taste Is Its Own Reward

By JOHN LELAND

 

IN his Greenwich Village
apartment last week, John Waters was wearing a loopy T-shirt ensemble by
Yohji Yamamoto and listening to Solomon Burke ˜ and if there is a more
inviting way to spend a hot afternoon in New York City, it would be hard
to imagine. He had a thin line of mustache, gum-ball-striped socks and
a suntan.

Next to Mr. Waters was a
small photograph of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek and a slightly larger one of Divine.
“I’m obsessed with her,” he said, referring to the former of the two divas.
“She lives in New York, so I try to spy on her. I ask her doorman, `Does
she get pu pu platters?’ And he of course refuses to answer.”

Mr. Waters is famously associated
with the city of Baltimore, where he has lived most of his 56 years, and
where he has set all of his movies, including “Hairspray,” which has now
morphed into a big, sherbety musical that opens tonight on Broadway. “Baltimore
to me is what I write about, what inspires me,” he said.

But for the last 11 years,
he has also kept a pied-à-terre in a neatly groomed prewar building
in the Village. He divides his year among a large Tudor-style house in
Baltimore, a summer apartment in Provincetown, Mass., and this very genteel
one-bedroom in New York.

The house in Baltimore has
an electric chair, Mr. Waters’s addition to a building that used to spook
him when he walked by as a child. The apartment in New York is filled with
modern art and has a pillow with a needlepoint picture of an electric chair.
His mother did the needlepoint.

“I have a whole life here,”
he said. “I have dinner parties, I go to a lot of galleries. I really keep
up on that. That’s the main thing I do here. And I go to movies I can’t
see everywhere else.” Mr. Waters offered a cup of coffee and finished his
menu of Gotham pastimes. “I take the subway everywhere,” he said. “I ride
in the first car, to look at the rats. You can see them jumping out of
the way on certain lines. The F line’s not bad for that.”

It stands to reason that
you cannot become John Waters, auteur of such Oscar-free classics as “Female
Trouble” and “Hag in a Black Leather Jacket,” without drinking long and
deep of the cultural gutters of downtown Manhattan. Baltimore may have
its gothic charms, but if the Dutch explorers had not settled this other
lustrous, grubby isle, the world might never know the cinematic sensation
of Odorama.

Mr. Waters offered a tour,
beginning in the living room with a witty sculpture by George Stoll. On
an ordinary toilet-paper holder, mounted in a wall, Mr. Stoll, who had
a small role in Mr. Waters’s 1972 movie “Pink Flamingos,” replaced the
tissue with a roll of chiffon. Mr. Waters needed approval from the condominium
to install it. He could only imagine what the super thought.

To facilitate his vision
of semi-patrician Manhattan, he hired a Baltimore decorator named Henry
Johnson, the first time he had ever used a professional. “I told him I
just wanted a symphony in puke green, and I got it,” Mr. Waters said. He
had always considered that his signature color. There’s a slightly different
shade in each room.

Mr. Waters explained: “When
I was a child I wanted my skin to be that color, like the Wicked Witch
of the West. Now, as I get older, it’s getting close. It’ll match the apartment.”

Mr. Waters has written and
directed 11 movies since 1969, including his most recent, “Cecil B. DeMented”
and “Pecker,” working on tight budgets and tighter shooting schedules.
He makes about 30 speaking appearances a year, mostly on college campuses,
and exhibits his photographs ˜ pictures taken from television, then recombined
to create storyboards for wholly different movies ˜ at the American Fine
Arts gallery in New York. The New Museum of Contemporary Art is planning
a retrospective of his photographs for 2003 or 2004. He is also helping
to write a book about sex in art and working on his next screenplay, “A
Dirty Shame,” about peculiar carnal appetites brought on by a head injury.

During downtime, he managed
to act as a pedophile priest in “Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat,” directed
by the splatter legend Herschell Gordon Lewis. He is in “deep development”
on an animated series about his life. And he has been consulting on “Hairspray.”

Accordingly, Mr. Waters has
marshaled his life into rigid routines, a kind of regimented weirdness.
He writes each day’s schedule on an index card and crosses off tasks as
he accomplishes them; at the start of each week he plans every meal before
preparing his shopping list, and he says he never has any groceries left
over. He makes it a point to drink every Friday night, “like a coal miner
with a paycheck in his pocket,” and arranges his home life to accommodate
his compulsiveness.

The apartment reflects Mr.
Waters’s work habits, which are both perverse and meticulously disciplined.
In a plastic case on his desk, he has Polaroid snapshots of everyone who
has ever visited the apartment, including the reporter and photographer
of this article.

“I separate things,” he said.
“I don’t ever think up my movies the same place I think up my artwork.
I write every morning from 8 to 11:30. I have to think up weird things.
That’s my job. And then the rest of the day I figure out how to make that
into money.”

Above his desk in Greenwich
Village is a drawing by Mike Kelley showing fumes rising out of a garbage
dump, which Mr. Waters considered an appropriate image for his work space.

“I’m really organized,” he
said. To write anything, he added, “I need Bic pens and Evidence legal
pads, the only ones I like.”

“I use Scotch tape and scissors,
and move it around like a computer,” he said. “Then, when my first draft
is done, my assistant types it and I start cutting it up. I’ve written
all my books and movies like that.

“Now you can’t take scissors
on airplanes, which makes it hard. I have to have scissors everywhere,
because I need them to write. Sometimes on lectures I make them give me
a pair of scissors. That’s my only star demand, that in my room I have
a pair of paper scissors. You can’t call me a difficult speaker because
of that.”

Mr. Waters began his affair
with New York when he was 17. He had a high school girlfriend at the time,
and the two would hitchhike up from Baltimore. “We used to walk around
this neighborhood and ask strangers, `Can we stay with you?’ And they’d
say yes. I hitchhiked in Manhattan, which I don’t even think people did
then. I think no one picked us up.”

The boundaries of his New
York extended to the exploitation theaters of Times Square, where he used
to take speed and consume four movies in a row, and to the dormitories
of New York University, which removed him for smoking marijuana. He progressed
from Max’s Kansas City to the Mudd Club to Squeezebox; from flophouses
on Eighth Street to the couches of friends like Cookie Mueller, who appeared
in many of his movies, and Dennis Dermody, a movie critic at Paper magazine.
“I always wanted to live in New York,” he said, “but I didn’t want to live
badly in New York. I wanted to wait until I could get a nice place.”

But now, he said, parts of
his city are disappearing or gone. He misses the lunch counter at Bigelow
drugstore, where the staff was rude to everyone but regulars, and the Women’s
House of Detention in the Village. Since the omnisexual club Squeezebox
closed last year, he hasn’t had a regular place to drink. “Greenwich Village
is no longer the hotbed of rebellion,” he said. “But still many writers
live here, many artists. It’s still the same kind of people.”

With the arrival of “Hairspray”
on Broadway, Mr. Waters threatens to become a New York institution himself.
He admitted that he was nervous about the opening, especially because the
show has had so much advance buildup. As a fan of delightfully bad movies,
he acknowledges that there is no such thing as a good bad play. “A bad
play is literally torture,” he said. “Even good bad movies as a breed are
almost gone. `Showgirls’ is the last good bad classic. That is the `Citizen
Kane’ of good bad movies of the last 20 years.”

Mr. Waters plans to attend
tonight’s opening with his parents and some members of the original film
crew. Though his parents lent him money to make his early movies, they
rarely attended them. “That would just be parent abuse,” Mr. Waters said.
“They were so relieved when I made `Hairspray.’ They want it to be made
into everything, so they don’t have to go to any more openings, just go
to openings of that all the time.”

Sometime soon after, he will
escape to Provincetown, where he has gone for 38 years, ever since someone
told him it was a weird place. “I have a different set of friends in each
place that I see in the same way,” he said. Among his paintings in New
York is a foggy seascape by his Provincetown landlady, the artist Pat de
Groot. He can still hitchhike when he is there, and his apartment is “small
enough so I can’t have guests, which is great.”

And tomorrow night, if you
raise a glass in the direction of Cape Cod, chances are he’ll be raising
one too.

14 AUGUST 2002: “OUTSIDE,
LOOKING OUT.”

From the current issue of
BOMB
magazine

JOHN ZORN: One of the reasons
I started Tzadik, which is my own label, is to

keep things in print. I
got tired of labels dropping things out of print when

they don’t sell. Tzadik
is driven by the need to keep important work in print

forever, as a catalogue.
You know, if we sell it, that’s great, but . . .

MICHAEL GOLDBERG(artist/interviewer):
How many titles has Tzadik put out?

JZ:   About 250
now.

MG:  Whoa! Are you doing
it pretty much yourself?

JZ:   I have about
two or three people, we don’t have an office, we don’t even

have a dedicated phone line.
We do it out of our own homes, and we make it work.

MG:  That’s extraordinary.
And does it make money to pay for itself?

JZ:   It breaks
even. We lose ten, twenty grand every year. But then the people

who are working say, Look,
I’ll kick this back in, I don’t need to take this

profit share. It’s very
cooperative.

MG:  That’s wonderful.
So they’re really believers.

JZ:   Yeah, these
are believersˆwhich is hard to findˆpeople who care. And I’ve

been lucky. So it survives
because of goodwill, and because there are still

idealistic people in the
world.

MG:   Not many.

JZ:   Well, you’re
one.

MG:  Yeah, but I figure
I’m a little crazy.

JZ:   You can’t
be idealistic in this world and not be crazy. Because they’ve

created such a deep structure
now, you can’t get in. And we don’t want to get

in, we’re on the outside.
But we’re not on the outside looking in, we’re on the

outside looking out. So
I feel we’re in a very healthy place. The idealists will

always be in society, and
we will survive.