Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
I turned 39 (2014)

Friday, November 28, 2008

Andrea Nuciforo "Luciforo!" - May one please imagine if I replaced "Luciforo" with "Rinaldo"?

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Pittsfield's political inbred, dark prince: Andrea F. Nuciforo, Jr.! -(below)-
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11/28/2008

Hi, Rinaldo!

I hope you win on your appeal. You were practicing or exercising your 1st Amendment Right to Freedom of Speech. You did not harm or diminish anybody's access to the Post Office.

It amazes me that "Luciforo" gets away with serving as a private banking & insurance company attorney and chairing legislative committees that regulate these financial industries, then "Luciforo" goes onto strong-arm two women candidates for Pittsfield Registrar of Deeds out of the 2006 Massachusetts State Government Election, and then weeks after taking the oath of his new sinecure office, he lobbied State House Insiders to have Governor Deval Patrick name him Commissioner of Insurance, which he was passed over for.

Can you imagine if I replaced "Luciforo" with "Rinaldo"? The State would have pulled your bar card, placed you before the "ethics" commission and fined you with civil penalties, and The Berkshire Eagle, Alan Chartock, et al, would have skewered you for being sexist and corrupt.

Instead, "Luciforo" continues to practice law both in Pittsfield and BOSTON, he has faced NO "ethics" commission hearings and fines, and The Berkshire Eagle, Alan Chartock, et al, never uttered a word about him being sexist and corrupt.

Obviously, there is something wrong with this situation, but after all, politics is power, and power is politics. You are not "Luciforo", but you are my friend instead of my enemy #1. I also believe that you are right, Rinaldo! I support you.

May the rule of law be upheld on Monday in Boston and Mary E Carey may write "RINALDO VINDICATED" like she wrote "MELLE VINDICATED" after the Boston Globe's 1/16/2007 news article exposing "Luciforo's" corrupt conflicts of interests and corruption! Of course, that did NOT phase Jimmy Ruberto, who had "Luciforo" swear him into his 3rd term as Pittsfield's deficient Mayor a year later.
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I collected campaign signatures at the Pittsfield (MA) Post Office in early-2004 and no one said a word to me about doing so. I believe The Berkshire Eagle, Alan Chartock, et al, PERSECUTED you over the past several years, but the irony is that your policy proposals and predictions about Pittsfield's now tanked local economy all proved to be accurate.

Best regards,
Jonathan Melle

--- On Fri, 11/28/08, RDelGalloIII@aol.com wrote:

From: RDelGalloIII@aol.com
Subject: Re: I hope to be a witness for Rinaldo's Post Office case!
To: jonathan_a_melle@yahoo.com
Date: Friday, November 28, 2008, 11:20 PM

Jonathan:

Appeals judges just hear errors of law--there is no fact finding. If the case is REMANDED, we will need you as a witness.

Happy Thanksgiving plus 1

Rinaldo

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Rinaldo Del Gallo III
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Saturday, November 22, 2008

Amy-Jill Levine on Jesus & Judaism; & related religious topics, too.

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Vanderbilt's Amy-Jill Levine spoke in Cambridge on Christian and Jewish misperceptions of Jesus and his Judaism. (Evan Richman/Globe Staff)
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SPIRITUAL LIFE
"Tackling myths about Jesus, Judaism"
By Rich Barlow, www.boston.com, November 22, 2008

Amy-Jill Levine is not given to cliches, but the one about the road to hell and good intentions cropped up in a talk she gave last week. Levine used the old saw to summarize her point: Liberal, tolerant Christians are defaming Jews and Judaism.

From the left-leaning World Council of Churches and liberation theologians to former President Jimmy Carter, Christians have spread myths about Judaism: that Jesus overthrew a wrathful Old Testament God in favor of a loving deity, that he preached compassion against an obsessive-compulsive Jewish adherence to legalistic rules and purity laws, and that he was a first-century feminist up against a misogynistic Jewish establishment, said Levine, a professor at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville.

All of which is wrong, and "it happens not by bigots, but by well-meaning ministers who are uninformed," she said to an audience last week at Cambridge's Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church. And Jews shouldn't feel too superior, she said, for they also need to bone up on their own history and appreciate, not reject, Jesus' role in it.

When it comes to religions, "I am an equal-opportunity kvetch," she said.

Two years ago, Levine published to laudatory reviews "The Misunderstood Jew," a book based on her research into Christian and Jewish misperceptions of Jesus and his Judaism. The message comes from a woman who revels in contradictions. Her website calls hers "a Yankee Jewish feminist . . . in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible belt." (She was raised outside New Bedford.) An Orthodox Jew, she teaches the New Testament, and her upbringing in a community of ethnic Massachusetts Roman Catholics left her with eclectic tastes: She finds "Silent Night" prettier than "I Had a Little Dreidel."

A respected academic, she showed her laid-back side when she doffed her black heels at the start of her talk. "I don't like to teach with my shoes on," she explained. "But these really are fabulous."

The informality prefaced a steely, passionate dismembering of what she called lingering misapprehensions of what first-century Judaism and Jesus were all about.

As for Jewish law imposing a burdensome array of nit-picking rules like kosher eating, Jews don't find them onerous, and didn't in Jesus' day. "It's not as if Jesus is going to be tempted to eat a ham sandwich," she said.

Far from dismissing the laws, Jesus embraced them, she recalled, in the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew's gospel: "Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law."

She disputed critics who say the Hebrew Bible depicts a harshly vengeful God, citing passages showing God's love. And the idea that "Jesus was Hillary Clinton," a feminist trailblazer, overlooks inconvenient facts - he didn't recruit women among his 12 apostles, for example - as well as Gospel attestations that Jewish women didn't have it as bad as critics allege. They're variously pictured as owning homes, having access to money (some subsidized Jesus' mission), and traveling independently.

Some scholars question whether Jesus was Jewish at all, she said, although she quickly stripped that idea of credibility by reminding her audience that it is a favorite neo-Nazi canard.

She finds practices such as Christian churches' sponsoring Passover seders, while more benign, still offensive, partly because some Gospels say the Last Supper was a seder.

John's Gospel, however, says it wasn't, and Levine believes him, on grounds that it would have been remarkable for Jewish authorities to arrange a hearing for Jesus during such a sacred time, analogous to the Supreme Court hearing a case on Christmas Eve.

Besides, she said, the seders of Jesus' day were governed by rules that no longer exist and so can't be replicated. She questioned the point of Christian seders, since Christian theology holds that Jesus is the new "Paschal Lamb" through his atoning death, replacing the lamb slain in the Jewish temple at Passover.

Her words apparently won one convert.

Following her talk, Harvard-Epworth pastor William (Scott) Campbell lightheartedly directed the audience to the place where refreshments would be served, describing it as "the room where we no longer practice the seder."
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Comments, questions, and story ideas may be sent to spiritual@globe.com.
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"Dark passages:Does the harsh language in the Koran explain Islamic violence? Don't answer till you've taken a look inside the Bible"
By Philip Jenkins, The Boston Globe, Ideas, March 8, 2009

WE HAVE A good idea what was passing through the minds of the Sept. 11 hijackers as they made their way to the airports.

Their Al Qaeda handlers had instructed them to meditate on al-Tawba and Anfal, two lengthy suras from the Koran, the holy scripture of Islam. The passages make for harrowing reading. God promises to "cast terror into the hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks!" (Koran 8.12). God instructs his Muslim followers to kill unbelievers, to capture them, to ambush them (Koran 9.5). Everything contributes to advancing the holy goal: "Strike terror into God's enemies, and your enemies" (Koran 8.60). Perhaps in their final moments, the hijackers took refuge in these words, in which God lauds acts of terror and massacre.

On a much lesser scale, others have used the words of the Koran to sanction violence. Even in cases of domestic violence and honor killing, perpetrators can find passages that seem to justify brutal acts (Koran 4.34).

Citing examples such as these, some Westerners argue that the Muslim scriptures themselves inspire terrorism, and drive violent jihad. Evangelist Franklin Graham has described his horror on finding so many Koranic passages that command the killing of infidels: the Koran, he thinks, "preaches violence." Prominent conservatives Paul Weyrich and William Lind argued that "Islam is, quite simply, a religion of war," and urged that Muslims be encouraged to leave US soil. Today, Dutch politician Geert Wilders faces trial for his film "Fitna," in which he demands that the Koran be suppressed as the modern-day equivalent to Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Even Westerners who have never opened the book - especially such people, perhaps - assume that the Koran is filled with calls for militarism and murder, and that those texts shape Islam.

Unconsciously, perhaps, many Christians consider Islam to be a kind of dark shadow of their own faith, with the ugly words of the Koran standing in absolute contrast to the scriptures they themselves cherish. In the minds of ordinary Christians - and Jews - the Koran teaches savagery and warfare, while the Bible offers a message of love, forgiveness, and charity. For the prophet Micah, God's commands to his people are summarized in the words "act justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). Christians recall the words of the dying Jesus: "Father, forgive them: they know not what they do."

But in terms of ordering violence and bloodshed, any simplistic claim about the superiority of the Bible to the Koran would be wildly wrong. In fact, the Bible overflows with "texts of terror," to borrow a phrase coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery. The Koran often urges believers to fight, yet it also commands that enemies be shown mercy when they surrender. Some frightful portions of the Bible, by contrast, go much further in ordering the total extermination of enemies, of whole families and races - of men, women, and children, and even their livestock, with no quarter granted. One cherished psalm (137) begins with the lovely line, "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept"; it ends by blessing anyone who would seize Babylon's infants and smash their skulls against the rocks.

To say that terrorists can find religious texts to justify their acts does not mean that their violence actually grows from those scriptural roots. Indeed, such an assumption itself is based on the crude fundamentalist formulation that everything in a given religion must somehow be authorized in scripture. The difference between the Bible and the Koran is not that one book teaches love while the other proclaims warfare and terrorism, rather it is a matter of how the works are read. Yes, the Koran has been ransacked to supply texts authorizing murder, but so has the Bible

If Christians or Jews want to point to violent parts of the Koran and suggest that those elements taint the whole religion, they open themselves to the obvious question: what about their own faiths? If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery. Of course, they are no such thing; nor is Islam.

But the implications run still deeper. All faiths contain within them some elements that are considered disturbing or unacceptable to modern eyes; all must confront the problem of absorbing and reconciling those troubling texts or doctrines. In some cases, religions evolve to the point where the ugly texts so fade into obscurity that ordinary believers scarcely acknowledge their existence, or at least deny them the slightest authority in the modern world. In other cases, the troubling words remain dormant, but can return to life in conditions of extreme stress and conflict. Texts, like people, can live or die. This whole process of forgetting and remembering, of growing beyond the harsh words found in a text, is one of the critical questions that all religions must learn to address.

Faithful Muslims believe that the Koran is the inspired word of God, delivered verbatim through the prophet Mohammed. Non-Muslims, of course, see the text as the work of human hands, whether of Mohammed himself or of schools of his early followers. But whichever view we take, the Koran as it stands claims to speak in God's voice. That is one of the great differences between the Bible and the Koran. Even for dedicated fundamentalists, inspired Bible passages come through the pen of a venerated historical individual, whether it's the Prophet Isaiah or the Apostle Paul, and that leaves open some chance of blaming embarrassing views on that person's own prejudices. The Koran gives no such option: For believers, every word in the text - however horrendous a passage may sound to modern ears - came directly from God.

We don't have to range too far to find passages that horrify. The Koran warns, "Those who make war against God and his apostle . . . shall be put to death or crucified" (Koran 5.33). Other passages are equally threatening, though they usually have to be wrenched out of context to achieve this effect. One text from Sura (Chapter) 47 begins "O true believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads."

But in such matters, the Bible too has plenty of passages that read painfully today. Tales of war and assassination pervade the four books of Samuel and Kings, where it is hard to avoid verses justifying the destruction of God's enemies. In a standard English translation of the Old Testament, the words "war" and "battle" each occur more than 300 times, not to mention all the bindings, beheadings, and rapes.

The richest harvest of gore comes from the books that tell the story of the Children of Israel after their escape from Egypt, as they take over their new land in Canaan. These events are foreshadowed in the book of Deuteronomy, in which God proclaims "I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh" (Deut. 32:42). We then turn to the full orgy of militarism, enslavement, and race war in the Books of Joshua and Judges. Moses himself reputedly authorized this campaign when he told his followers that, once they reached Canaan, they must annihilate all the peoples they find in the cities specially reserved for them (Deut. 20: 16-18).

Joshua, Moses's successor, proves an apt pupil. When he conquers the city of Ai, God commands that he take away the livestock and the loot, while altogether exterminating the inhabitants, and he duly does this (Joshua 8). When he defeats and captures five kings, he murders his prisoners of war, either by hanging or crucifixion. (Joshua 10). Nor is there any suggestion that the Canaanites and their kin were targeted for destruction because they were uniquely evil or treacherous: They happened to be on the wrong land at the wrong time. And Joshua himself was by no means alone. In Judges again, other stories tell of the complete extermination of tribes with the deliberate goal of ending their genetic lines.

In modern times, we would call this genocide. If the forces of Joshua and his successor judges committed their acts in the modern world, then observers would not hesitate to speak of war crimes. They would draw comparisons with the notorious guerrilla armies of Uganda and the Congo, groups like the appalling Lord's Resistance Army. By comparison, the Koranic rules of war were, by the standards of their time, quite civilized. Mohammed wanted to win over his enemies, not slaughter them.

Not only do the Israelites in the Bible commit repeated acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but they do so under direct divine command. According to the first book of Samuel, God orders King Saul to strike at the Amalekite people, killing every man, woman, and child, and even wiping out their livestock (1 Samuel 15:2-3). And it is this final detail that proves Saul's undoing, as he keeps some of the animals, and thereby earns a scolding from the prophet Samuel. Fortunately, Saul repents, and symbolizes his regrets by dismembering the captured enemy king. Morality triumphs.

The Bible also alleges divine approval of racism and segregation. If you had to choose the single biblical story that most conspicuously outrages modern sentiment, it might well be the tale of Phinehas, a story that remains unknown to most Christian readers today (Numbers 25: 1-15). The story begins when the children of Israel are threatened by a plague. Phinehas, however, shrewdly identifies the cause of God's anger: God is outraged at the fact that a Hebrew man has found a wife among the people of Midian, and through her has imported an alien religion. Phinehas slaughters the offending couple - and, mollified, God ends the plague and blesses Phinehas and his descendants. Modern American racists love this passage. In 1990, Richard Kelly Hoskins used the story as the basis for his manifesto "Vigilantes of Christendom." Hoskins advocated the creation of a new order of militant white supremacists, the Phineas Priesthood, and since then a number of groups have assumed this title, claiming Phinehas as the justification for terrorist attacks on mixed-race couples and abortion clinics.

Modern Christians who believe the Bible offers only a message of love and forgiveness are usually thinking only of the New Testament. Certainly, the New Testament contains far fewer injunctions to kill or segregate. Yet it has its own troublesome passages, especially when the Gospel of John expresses such hostility to the Ioudaioi, a Greek word that usually translates as "Jews." Ioudaioi plan to stone Jesus, they plot to kill him; in turn, Jesus calls them liars, children of the Devil.

Various authorities approach the word differently: I might prefer, for instance, to interpret it as "followers of the oppressive Judean religious elite," Or perhaps "Judeans." But in practice, any reputable translation has to use the simple and familiar word, "Jew," so that we read about the disciples hiding out after the Crucifixion, huddled in a room that is locked "for fear of the Jews." So harsh do these words sound to post-Holocaust ears that some churches exclude them from public reading.

Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions . . . all are in the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Koran. At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in the Muslim scripture.

Whether they are used or not depends on wider social attitudes. When America entered the First World War, for instance, firebrand preachers drew heavily on Jesus' warning that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. As it stands, that is not much of a text of terror, but if one is searching desperately for a weapon-related verse, it will serve to justify what people are going to do anyway

Interpretation is all, and that changes over time. Religions have their core values, their non-negotiable truths, but they also surround themselves with many stories not essential to the message. Any religion that exists over long eras absorbs many of the ideas and beliefs of the community in which it finds itself, and reflects those in its writings. Over time, thinkers and theologians reject or underplay those doctrines and texts that contradict the underlying principles of the faith as it develops. However strong the textual traditions justifying war and conflict, believers come instead to stress love and justice. Of course Muslim societies throughout history have engaged in jihad, in holy war, and have found textual warrant so to do. But over time, other potent strains in the religion moved away from literal warfare. However strong the calls to jihad, struggle, in Islamic thought, the hugely influential Sufi orders taught that the real struggle was the inner battle to control one's sinful human instincts, and this mattered vastly more than any pathetic clash of swords and spears. The Greater Jihad is one fought in the soul.

Often, such reforming thinkers are so successful that the troublesome words fade utterly from popular consciousness, even among believers who think of themselves as true fundamentalists. Most Christian and Jewish believers, even those who are moderately literate in scriptural terms, read their own texts extraordinarily selectively. How many Christian preachers would today find spiritual sustenance in Joshua's massacres? How many American Christians know that the New Testament demands that women cover their hair, at least in church settings, and that Paul's Epistles include more detailed rules on the subject than anything written in the Koran? This kind of holy amnesia is a basic component of religious development. It does not imply rejecting scriptures, but rather reading them in the total context of the religion as it progresses through history.

Alternatively, one can choose to deny that historical experience, and seize on any available word or verse that authorizes the violence that is already taking place - but once someone has decided to do that, it scarcely matters what the text actually says.
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Philip Jenkins teaches at Penn State University. He is the author of "The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -- and How It Died."
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"The other good book"
The Boston Globe, March 6, 2009

IF THE BIBLE mixes together passages teaching both warfare and mercy, so does the Koran. Pay back evil with good, says God, and your deadliest enemy will become your dearest friend (Koran 41.34-35).

In both scriptures, in fact, the angriest words are directed not against national enemies, but against those who skimp on charity. The Koran's God condemns those who show no kindness to the orphan, nor compete with each other in feeding the poor; those who love riches, and seize the inheritance of the weak. If anyone deserves hellfire, it's them (Koran 89). Meanwhile, do you want to reach the spiritual heights? Then free a slave from bondage, feed the poor in times of hunger: always have faith, be strong and merciful (Koran 90).

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THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE
LISTENOP - GEERT WILDERS
"Islam and freedom of speech"
By Geert Wilders, March 8, 2009

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and head of the Freedom Party. In 2008 he released "Fitna," a controversial film about the Koran and jihadist violence. Wilders was condemned as an anti-Muslim agitator but also hailed as a defender of Western values and free speech. In January, a Dutch court ordered Wilders prosecuted for allegedly inciting hatred against Islam. Last month he was invited to screen "Fitna" at Westminster, but the British government barred him from entering the country. He was recently interviewed by Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, who prepared the following edited excerpts:

Q: You've said that England today is more Chamberlain than Churchill. Explain what you mean.

A: Well, Chamberlain was the biggest appeaser to a totalitarian ideology called fascism. Now we face the threat of another totalitarian ideology called Islam, at least according to me. And instead of defending our freedom, defending our values, when I was invited a few weeks ago to show "Fitna" in the House of Lords, they denied me entry to the United Kingdom.

Q: The letter from the British home secretary said: "Your statements about Muslims and their beliefs . . . would threaten community harmony, and therefore public security, in the UK."

A: What really happened is that she was pressured. In the English press, there was a lot of news that Lord Ahmed [Nazir Ahmed, a British peer] threatened to have 10,000 Muslims demonstrating in front of Westminster.

Q: If you were allowed into the country.

A: Yes. And this is what I meant by Chamberlain. The UK government is giving in, appeasing the enemy. They should stand up and say: We might not like the political view of this guy, but he should be allowed to come here and say it.

Q: In the film, you show quotations from the Koran, together with video of statements and actions by Muslim extremists.

A: Exactly. I used reality. It was really made by radical Muslims themselves. I just combined the pictures with the source. If they don't like the movie, they don't like what they do themselves. At the end of "Fitna," it talks about Islamic ideology - that we should defeat the threat of Islamic ideology. For that to not be allowed in the United Kingdom, to be prosecuted in my own country, is an absolute outrage.

Q: A few weeks ago at a demonstration in Amsterdam, people were yelling, "Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas." Was there any prosecution of that type of speech?

A: This is the double standard: If you are a radical Muslim imam, and during your Friday prayer - this happened in the Netherlands - they said that Shariah should be installed, gays should be thrown from high buildings, women should be beaten up - terrible things. Sometimes the prosecutors brought them to trial, but they were always acquitted, because [of] freedom of religion. Now somebody like me stands up and says, "Hey, this is wrong," and I'm being brought to court.

Q: This month is the 20th anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Back then, the West pretty much defended Rushdie. Yet now, 20 years later, you're banned from Britain, prosecuted in your country. What accounts for such a different response?

A: What's happened is that the cultural relativists believe that all cultures are equal, that Islam is just another leaf on the tree - and that everybody who says different is a xenophobe or racist. Within Europe, Muslims today have enormous political force. They all vote, and they're represented by mostly leftist parties.

Q: You say: "I don't hate Muslims; I hate Islam." Is there really any difference?

A: I have nothing against the people. I don't hate Muslims. But Islam is a totalitarian ideology. It rules every aspect of life - economics, family law, whatever. It has religious symbols, it has a God, it has a book - but it's not a religion. It can be compared with totalitarian ideologies like Communism or fascism. There is no country where Islam is dominant where you have a real democracy, a real separation between church and state. Islam is totally contrary to our values.

Q: What do you say to scholars of Islam like Daniel Pipes, who argues that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution? Why should one accept what Geert Wilders says about Islam, rather than someone like Pipes?

A: I respect Daniel Pipes, but I fully disagree. There is no moderate Islam. It's like the [prime minister] of Turkey, Mr. Erdogan, said himself recently: There is only one taste of Islam, and that is the taste of the Koran.

Q: But he's an Islamist. You would expect him to say that. What about anti-Islamist Muslims, Muslims who reject the radicals?

A: Listen, the Koran is seen by Muslims, unlike all the other religions, as the word of God that can never be criticized. If you criticize the Koran, you are a renegade, an apostate. There are people who are moderate and call themselves Muslim. But moderate Islam is totally nonexistent. It will never have an Enlightenment as happened with Christianity.

Q: Why not?

A: Because unlike the interpretations of other holy books, Muslims believe that the Koran is the word of God and can never be changed.

Q: Hold on - the New Testament today is the same New Testament as a thousand years ago. What's different is the way that book is read and understood. A thousand years ago, one could have said Christianity was a violent, militant religion; today one wouldn't.

A: Yes, there was a change in Christianity. It was possible because Christians don't believe that the Bible is literally the word of God - not like the Koran. If you really believe [the Koran] is the word of God, it will never have room to change.

Q: But why couldn't there be a movement within Islam that would say, "Yes, the Koran says X, Y, and Z, and it has been interpreted violently by violent people, but we give it a different interpretation"?

A: Then they are not Muslims anymore.

Q: How do you decide whether they are Muslims anymore?

A: I am not deciding. It's the Koran that's saying it.

Q: What Christians did at the time of the Inquisition was what Christianity was then; Christianity today has become something different.

A: Your premises are totally wrong. Islam is not a religion. Islam is an ideology. You keep comparing it to Christianity, Judaism. It's not. It's an ideology that wants to dominate every aspect of society. I know billions of people believe it's a religion. I don't.

Q: Is there any difference in your view between Islam and Islamism?

A: Islam and Islamism, it's exactly the same.

Q: With an outlook like this, don't you effectively exclude any Muslim from being an ally?

A: I am not excluding anybody. I don't even want Muslims from the Netherlands to leave my country. I'm not a [Jean-Marie] Le Pen. I want to help people be educated, be part of our society, get a job, respect our values. But it can never be possible on the basis of their violent ideology called Islam.

Q: Doesn't that contradict your defense of free speech?

A: Holland is not an Islamic country. I wouldn't want to have a system like in Saudi Arabia or Iran. Their ideology [says] to beat women, to kill Jews, to kill homosexuals. You can say, "Well, isn't that freedom of speech?" I want us to have more freedom of speech. But there is one red line - incitement of violence.

Q: You've said that under Dutch law, the Koran should be banned. Were you being rhetorical, or did you mean it literally?

A: I meant it. But you have to know the Dutch context for that. In the '70s, "Mein Kampf" was banned, and the left was so pleased. I am now proposing a ban on a book that is even worse than "Mein Kampf." And I'm not the first one - Winston Churchill compared "Mein Kampf" to the Koran in the 1950s.

Q: An American defender of free speech would say "Mein Kampf" shouldn't be banned, the Koran shouldn't be banned; books shouldn't be banned. To publish ideas in a book, even if they're hateful ideas - the First Amendment says you have that freedom. Is that what you would like in Holland as well?

A: I would, with the exception of incitement of violence.

Q: Do you think that multiculturalism and freedom of speech are ultimately incompatible?

A: No, Islam and freedom of speech are incompatible. Cultural relativism makes it difficult to fight, because cultural relativism says that Islam is the same as Christianity. Europe is being Islamized very, very quickly. In our prisons, we have a mark in every cell indicating the direction of Mecca. In Holland! I can give you 500 examples. People are getting beaten up on the streets of Amsterdam and Brussels for drinking water during Ramadan. We should have a sense of urgency.

Q: What do you say to Muslims like Zuhdi Jasser? He is an American, a former Navy officer, a doctor. After 9/11, he was so horrified by what was done in the name of Islam that he founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy: pro-American, pro-democracy, anti-violence, anti-Islamist. How do you answer Muslims like him, who say: "I love my religion. I also love freedom, democracy, Western values. I believe in separation of mosque and state. But how can I be an ally with someone who says my religion itself is evil?"

A: Well, I would tell him I wish there were more people like you. It didn't happen. I would not agree with [Dr. Jasser] about Islam, but I wish there were more like him.

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"When Jesus met Buddha: Something remarkable happened when evangelists for two great religions crossed paths more than 1,000 years ago: they got along"
By Philip Jenkins, The Boston Globe, Ideas, December 14, 2008

WAS THE BUDDHA a demon?

While few mainline Christians would put the matter in such confrontational terms, any religion claiming exclusive access to truth has real difficulties reconciling other great faiths into its cosmic scheme. Most Christian churches hold that Jesus alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and many also feel an obligation to carry that message to the world's unbelievers. But this creates a fundamental conflict with the followers of famous spiritual figures like Mohammed or Buddha, who preached radically different messages. Drawing on a strict interpretation of the Bible, some Christians see these rival faiths as not merely false, but as deliberate traps set by the forces of evil.

Being intolerant of other religions - consigning them to hell, in fact - may be bad enough in its own right, but it increasingly has real-world consequences. As trade and technology shrink the globe, so different religions come into ever-closer contact with one another, and the results can be bloody: witness the apocalyptic assaults in Mumbai. In such a world, teaching different faiths to acknowledge one another's claims, to live peaceably together side by side, stops being a matter of good manners and becomes a prerequisite for human survival.

Over the past 30 years, the Roman Catholic Church has faced repeated battles over this question of Christ's uniqueness, and has cracked down on thinkers who have made daring efforts to accommodate other world religions. While the Christian dialogue with Islam has attracted

most of the headlines, it is the encounters with Hinduism and especially Buddhism that have stirred the most controversy within the church. Sri Lankan theologians Aloysius Pieris and Tissa Balasuriya have had many run-ins with Vatican critics, and, more recently, the battle has come to American shores. Last year, the Vatican ordered an investigation of Georgetown University's Peter Phan, a Jesuit theologian whose main sin, in official eyes, has been to treat the Buddhism of his Vietnamese homeland as a parallel path to salvation.

Following the ideas of Pope Benedict XVI, though, the church refuses to give up its fundamental belief in the unique role of Christ. In a widely publicized open letter to Italian politician Marcello Pera, Pope Benedict declared that "an inter-religious dialogue in the strict sense of the term is not possible." By all means, he said, we should hold conversations with other cultures, but not in a way that acknowledges other religions as equally valid. While the Vatican does not of course see the Buddha as a demon, it does fear the prospect of syncretism, the dilution of Christian truth in an unholy mixture with other faiths.

Beyond doubt, this view places Benedict in a strong tradition of Christianity as it has developed in Europe since Roman times. But there is another, ancient tradition, which suggests a very different course. Europe's is not the only version of the Christian faith, nor is it necessarily the oldest heir of the ancient church. For more than 1,000 years, other quite separate branches of the church established thriving communities across Asia, and in their sheer numbers, these churches were comparable to anything Europe could muster at the time. These Christian bodies traced their ancestry back not through Rome, but directly to the original Jesus movement of ancient Palestine. They moved across India, Central Asia, and China, showing no hesitation to share - and learn from - the other great religions of the East.

Just how far these Christians were prepared to go is suggested by a startling symbol that appeared on memorials and stone carvings in both southern India and coastal China during the early Middle Ages. We can easily see that the image depicts a cross, but it takes a moment to realize that the base of the picture - the root from which the cross is growing - is a lotus flower, the symbol of Buddhist enlightenment.

In modern times, most mainstream churches would condemn such an amalgam as a betrayal of the Christian faith, an example of multiculturalism run wild. Yet concerns about syncretism did not bother these early Asian Christians, who called themselves Nasraye, Nazarenes, like Jesus's earliest followers. They were comfortable associating themselves with the other great monastic and mystical religion of the time, and moreover, they believed that both lotus and cross carried similar messages about the quest for light and salvation. If these Nazarenes could find meaning in the lotus-cross, then why can't modern Catholics, or other inheritors of the faith Jesus inspired?

Many Christians are coming to terms with just how thoroughly so many of their fundamental assumptions will have to be rethought as their faith today becomes a global religion. Even modern church leaders who know how rapidly the church is expanding in the global South tend to see European values and traditions as the indispensable norm, in matters of liturgy and theology as much as music and architecture.

Yet the reality is that Christianity has from its earliest days been an intercontinental faith, as firmly established in Asia and Africa as in Europe itself. When we broaden our scope to look at the faith that by 800 or so stretched from Ireland to Korea, we see the many different ways in which Christians interacted with other believers, in encounters that reshaped both sides. At their best, these meetings allowed the traditions not just to exchange ideas but to intertwine in productive and enriching ways, in an awe-inspiring chapter of Christian history that the Western churches have all but forgotten.

To understand this story, we need to reconfigure our mental maps. When we think of the growth of Christianity, we think above all of Europe. We visualize a movement growing west from Palestine and Syria and spreading into Greece and Italy, and gradually into northern regions. Europe is still the center of the Catholic Church, of course, but it was also the birthplace of the Protestant denominations that split from it. For most of us, even speaking of the "Eastern Church" refers to another group of Europeans, namely to the Orthodox believers who stem from the eastern parts of the continent. English Catholic thinker Hilaire Belloc once proclaimed that "Europe is the Faith; and the Faith is Europe."

But in the early centuries other Christians expanded east into Asia and south into Africa, and those other churches survived for the first 1,200 years or so of Christian history. Far from being fringe sects, these forgotten churches were firmly rooted in the oldest traditions of the apostolic church. Throughout their history, these Nazarenes used Syriac, which is close to Jesus' own language of Aramaic, and they followed Yeshua, not Jesus. No other church - not Roman Catholics, not Eastern Orthodox - has a stronger claim to a direct inheritance from the earliest Jesus movement.

The most stunningly successful of these eastern Christian bodies was the Church of the East, often called the Nestorian church. While the Western churches were expanding their influence within the framework of the Roman Empire, the Syriac-speaking churches colonized the vast Persian kingdom that ruled from Syria to Pakistan and the borders of China. From their bases in Mesopotamia - modern Iraq - Nestorian Christians carried out their vast missionary efforts along the Silk Route that crossed Central Asia. By the eighth century, the Church of the East had an extensive structure across most of central Asia and China, and in southern India. The church had senior clergy - metropolitans - in Samarkand and Bokhara, in Herat in Afghanistan. A bishop had his seat in Chang'an, the imperial capital of China, which was then the world's greatest superpower.

When Nestorian Christians were pressing across Central Asia during the sixth and seventh centuries, they met the missionaries and saints of an equally confident and expansionist religion: Mahayana Buddhism. Buddhists too wanted to take their saving message to the world, and launched great missions from India's monasteries and temples. In this diverse world, Buddhist and Christian monasteries were likely to stand side by side, as neighbors and even, sometimes, as collaborators. Some historians believe that Nestorian missionaries influenced the religious practices of the Buddhist religion then developing in Tibet. Monks spoke to monks.

In presenting their faith, Christians naturally used the cultural forms that would be familiar to Asians. They told their stories in the forms of sutras, verse patterns already made famous by Buddhist missionaries and teachers. A stunning collection of Jesus Sutras was found in caves at Dunhuang, in northwest China. Some Nestorian writings draw heavily on Buddhist ideas, as they translate prayers and Christian services in ways that would make sense to Asian readers. In some texts, the Christian phrase "angels and archangels and hosts of heaven" is translated into the language of buddhas and devas.

One story in particular suggests an almost shocking degree of collaboration between the faiths. In 782, the Indian Buddhist missionary Prajna arrived in Chang'an, bearing rich treasures of sutras and other scriptures. Unfortunately, these were written in Indian languages. He consulted the local Nestorian bishop, Adam, who had already translated parts of the Bible into Chinese. Together, Buddhist and Christian scholars worked amiably together for some years to translate seven copious volumes of Buddhist wisdom. Probably, Adam did this as much from intellectual curiosity as from ecumenical good will, and we can only guess about the conversations that would have ensued: Do you really care more about relieving suffering than atoning for sin? And your monks meditate like ours do?

These efforts bore fruit far beyond China. Other residents of Chang'an at this very time included Japanese monks, who took these very translations back with them to their homeland. In Japan, these works became the founding texts of the great Buddhist schools of the Middle Ages. All the famous movements of later Japanese history, including Zen, can be traced to one of those ancient schools and, ultimately - incredibly - to the work of a Christian bishop.

By the 12th century, flourishing churches in China and southern India were using the lotus-cross. The lotus is a superbly beautiful flower that grows out of muck and slime. No symbol could better represent the rise of the soul from the material, the victory of enlightenment over ignorance, desire, and attachment. For 2,000 years, Buddhist artists have used the lotus to convey these messages in countless paintings and sculptures. The Christian cross, meanwhile, teaches a comparable lesson, of divine victory over sin and injustice, of the defeat of the world. Somewhere in Asia, Yeshua's forgotten followers made the daring decision to integrate the two emblems, which still today forces us to think about the parallels between the kinds of liberation and redemption offered by each faith.

Christianity, for much of its history, was just as much an Asian religion as Buddhism. Asia's Christian churches survived for more than a millennium, and not until the 10th century, halfway through Christian history, did the number of Christians in Europe exceed that in Asia.

What ultimately obliterated the Asian Christians were the Mongol invasions, which spread across Central Asia and the Middle East from the 1220s onward. From the late 13th century, too, the world entered a terrifying era of climate change, of global cooling, which severely cut food supplies and contributed to mass famine. The collapse of trade and commerce crippled cities, leaving the world much poorer and more vulnerable. Intolerant nationalism wiped out Christian communities in China, while a surging militant Islam destroyed the churches of Central Asia.

But awareness of this deep Christian history contributes powerfully to understanding the future of the religion, as much as its past. For long centuries, Asian Christians kept up neighborly relations with other faiths, which they saw not as deadly rivals but as fellow travelers on the road to enlightenment. Their worldview differed enormously from the norms that developed in Europe.

To take one example, we are used to the idea of Christianity operating as the official religion of powerful states, which were only too willing to impose a particular orthodoxy upon their subjects. Yet when we look at the African and Asian experience, we find millions of Christians whose normal experience was as minorities or even majorities within nations dominated by some other religion. Struggling to win hearts and minds, leading churches had no option but to frame the Christian message in the context of non-European intellectual traditions. Christian thinkers did present their message in the categories of Buddhism - and Taoism, and Confucianism - and there is no reason why they could not do so again. When modern scholars like Peter Phan try to place Christianity in an Asian and Buddhist context, they are resuming a task begun at least 1,500 years ago.

Perhaps, in fact, we are looking at our history upside down. Some day, future historians might look at the last few hundred years of Euro-American dominance within Christianity and regard it as an unnatural interlude in a much longer story of fruitful interchange between the great religions.

Consider the story told by Timothy, a patriarch of the Nestorian church. Around 800, he engaged in a famous debate with the Muslim caliph in Baghdad, a discussion marked by reason and civility on both sides. Imagine, Timothy said, that we are all in a dark house, and someone throws a precious pearl in the midst of a pile of ordinary stones. Everyone scrabbles for the pearl, and some think they've found it, but nobody can be sure until day breaks.

In the same way, he said, the pearl of true faith and wisdom had fallen into the darkness of this transitory world; each faith believed that it alone had found the pearl. Yet all he could claim - and all the caliph could say in response - was that some faiths thought they had enough evidence to prove that they were indeed holding the real pearl, but the final truth would not be known in this world.

Knowing other faiths firsthand grants believers an enviable sophistication, founded on humility. We could do a lot worse than to learn from what we sometimes call the Dark Ages.
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Philip Jenkins is Edwin Erle Sparks professor of the humanities at Penn State University. He is author of "The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -- and How It Died," published last month.
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High Schools and Colleges should have professional police departments that STOP harassment to STOP tragedies such as Virginia Tech and Columbine!

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Jeanne Obermayer
Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs/Dean of Students/ABUSIVE BUREAUCRAT BULLY!
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11/22/2008

When I was at Siena College near Albany, New York, I complained to administration members that a fellow student, who was a Resident Assistant, assaulted me. After speaking to college staff, I ended up at the Dean's Office in front of one Jeanne Obermeyer, who defended the bully and let me know that if I went to the police I would have to deal with her too. Jeanne Obermeyer falsely told me there is no such thing as "harassment" unless it is tied to the Civil Rights Act, such as race and gender. I told Jeanne Obermeyer she is ABUSIVE, and she made me apologize to her for my reply to our meetings. Jeanne Obermeyer then told me she had no further use with me and terminated my complaints. Jeanne Obermeyer then would stare at me, make faces, and otherwise mock me for my grievances against bullies at Siena College.

While that unfair incident took place at Siena College in the Fall Semester of 1995, I still remember how stressful college is because there are NOT professional law enforcement services to protect oneself from harassment or bullying. At least in High School, one lives at home and has some protections in the community. However, when one attends college, the Administration is so concerned with their own interests that they do NOT allow for professional police departments that STOP harassment to STOP tragedies such as Virginia Tech and Columbine.

Jeanne Obermeyer SHOULD be ashamed of herself for allowing me to be assaulted by a fellow classmate at Siena College, but that would only be "in a perfect world". In the real world of college life, Jeanne Obermeyer is probably very proud of her terrible actions towards me. After all, she epitomized the whitewashing of harassment and tragedies to push forward an artificial agenda where "rules" were only enforced by fear, thuggery, harassment and bullying!

The news article, below, shows how many families are unable to deal with the dark side of college life. Siena College's Jeanne Obermeyer represents the terrible realities of these tragic issues that would otherwise be prevented and STOPPED if high schools and colleges had professional police departments that properly dealt with harassment and bullying!

In closing and for the record, Siena College's Jeanne Obermeyer is ABUSIVE! I retract my apology to this college bureaucrat. I state this so that society will change and innocent people will be protected by law and future tragedies will be prevented and STOPPED!

In Truth!,
Jonathan Melle
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siena_College
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"Va. Tech Families Talking To Kaine: Advocates Pushing To Correct Report"
By Brigid Schulte, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, November 22, 2008; B1

The families of the students killed in the Virginia Tech massacre as well as those who were injured and their families are meeting today and tomorrow with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to share new information that they say raises serious questions about what actually happened that April 16 morning and calls into question the university administration's initial response.

The information, gleaned from separate meetings in recent weeks between the families and Virginia Tech officials and later with law enforcement officials, including Virginia Tech campus police and Virginia State Police, was given to Kaine this week. Families are pushing Kaine to reconvene the panel he appointed in April 2007 to investigate the massacre and correct the report they issued the next August.

"It's just been unbelievable. The revelations of all sorts of things that have been found out just have all of our heads spinning," said Mike Pohle, whose son died in the attacks. "And it doesn't seem as though anybody really wants to be forthright and upfront about it."

Kaine said he had been reading about some of the revelations in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which has been combing through thousands of pages of university records obtained through a Freedom of Information request. But it wasn't until last Tuesday that he heard from families. He said he might be open to updating the panel report.

"The panel was all volunteers. I don't know that I could make them come back together to convene," Kaine said. "But if the families want to raise issues about inaccuracies, there may be other ways to correct it without calling the whole panel back."

The meetings with the university, law enforcement officials and Kaine were agreed to as part of the $11 million settlement that many of the Virginia Tech families signed this year with the state. The families agreed not to sue the university or the state in exchange for the meetings, a full account of what happened, insurance to cover medical treatment for the injured students and a monetary settlement.

Families will be pushing Kaine to again support legislation requiring background checks for all gun purchases, including private sales at gun shows. They also want assurances that budget cuts will not hurt the progress that has been made in improving the state's mental health system. "We made a big step forward in mental health funding and policy last year, and I don't want to jeopardize that," Kaine said.

But the families' biggest concern is finding out what actually happened that day.

One of the biggest discrepancies families have discovered is in the official timeline of events, as published in the panel report. In the report, the panel said university administrators "erred" in waiting two hours before informing students that a shooting had occurred on campus. Seung-Hui Cho shot his first two victims at 7:15 a.m. in the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory. The university sent an e-mail at 9:26 warning students that a "shooting incident" had occurred. About 9:40, Cho began his rampage in the Norris Hall classrooms, which left 25 students and five teachers dead.

University officials in hearings before the panel maintained that they had waited so long before issuing the warning because campus police had told them they had identified a "person of interest" -- the boyfriend of the first girl shot -- and were pursuing him.

But in the recent meetings, law enforcement officials told families that they identified the boyfriend not at 7:30, as they originally reported, but about 45 minutes later. Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger, in an emotional eight-hour meeting with families, told them he found out about police pursuing the boyfriend at 8:40, a full half-hour later than the time noted in the panel report, and that he had been initially told that the shooting was a domestic dispute.

The families say these time discrepancies could have made the difference between life and death and call into question the university's initial explanation for failing to notify students earlier. "They were basically sitting there, doing very little, and all the while you have an active shooter situation," Pohle said.

University spokesperson Larry Hincker said yesterday that Steger was speaking at the meeting from his recollection and that Hincker had not personally double-checked the timeline. "Fundamentally, the governor's panel report was intended to try to describe what happened. But more importantly, to inform any changes in public policy or operating practices," Hincker said. "In that regard, I think it has done that."

Lily Habtu, 23, who was shot in the jaw, wrist and head and who has a bullet lodged a millimeter from her brainstem, said all she wants is for someone to "own up" and admit they made a mistake when they didn't warn students earlier. "I was checking my e-mail and the university Web site from 6 a.m. until 8:50 a.m. It was such a cold day, I wanted to see if classes were going to be canceled," said Habtu, whose jaw was wired shut for three months. "I told President Steger, 'Believe me, if I had gotten any e-mail, I would have stayed home and so would a lot of other people.' But all he did was nod."

Although many families believe Steger has not apologized for waiting so long to warn people, Hincker maintains he has.

"We were asked several times by family members if we would do anything differently today," Hincker said in an e-mail. "On Sunday President Steger said, 'Given what we knew at the time, I think we acted properly.' When asked again if he would send out a notice earlier, he said, 'You're right. I would have sent a notice [earlier] but still be concerned about the accuracy of information. There is a trade-off in sending information.'"
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Staff writer Anita Kumar contributed to this report.
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www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Cho+Seung-Hui?tid=informline
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"Teen with HIV was bullied, suit says"
The Boston Globe Online, November 22, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS - A school district in the state where HIV-positive Ryan White fought for the right to attend classes two decades ago is being sued by the family of a 14-year-old girl who says she was bullied so badly over her positive status that she left school.

The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against Washington Township Schools in Indianapolis said the girl was subjected to name-calling and harassment at Westlane Middle School and that school officials did little to stop it.

In one instance, the lawsuit said, the girl's soccer coach asked her whether she had AIDS, then told her the team could use her HIV status to its advantage because "the other team will be afraid."

The girl, "on an almost daily basis, endured continuing harassment, teasing, name calling, and bullying by her fellow students," according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages. An attorney for the family declined to elaborate on the case.

Superintendent James Mervilde said he couldn't comment on the lawsuit but said the district prohibits bullying and harassment and has policies with specific precautions for cleaning up and handling bodily fluids.

The suit said the girl was found in 2006 to have the virus that causes AIDS. It does not specify how she contracted the virus. She confided her condition to a friend in March 2007, and the bullying began shortly thereafter as word spread.

The girl's mother met with school counselors in April 2007 to complain about the harassment, but officials took no action other than warning the students involved, the lawsuit said.

The girl withdrew from the school in September and is being home-schooled.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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11/29/2008

I get picked on to this day about being bullied and assaulted many times over at Siena College as if I am too blame for other peoples' terrible behaviors.

The last semester of my senior year at Siena College, my roommates decided to beat me up. So for about 2.5-months, I commuted from my parent's home in Becket, Massachusetts, to my classes at Siena College until I graduated cum laude. I felt the bureaucracy would have persecuted and made a mockery of me if I complained again about being abused. One of my closest Siena College professors, who was a Catholic Communitarian Sociology Professer labelled me a "coward" after I raised concerns about the institution's bureaucrats. However, I saw through his desire to make a career out of Siena above and beyond all things reasonable.

Siena College is a place where you have to fight a conservative, almost reactionary, cultural war in support of Catholicism. I was, am not, nor will I ever be, a Catholic. I do NOT believe in what the Catholic Church teaches, and any and all cultural conflicts are very dangerous.

Rather, I believe in a woman's right to choose; Siena College did NOT. I believe in birth control as a human right; Siena College did NOT. Moreover, Siena College did not even allow condums to be sold at their one school store! I believe in the rights of homosexuals to live freely with equality under the law. I support same sex marriages, too. However, Siena College did NOT.

I do NOT like Siena College and what it stands for: CULTURAL WAR against all who do not fall into their bigotted religious and communitarian doctrines!

Sincerely,
Jonathan Melle

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12/2/2008

Yes, "Emeritus", the bullies of Siena College, including the chief Siena College bureaucrat-bully, Jeanne Obermayer, saw to it that I would be assaulted over and over again, including in the last semester of my senior year (Spring 1997) where I was assaulted so badly I had to commute from my parents' then home in Becket to just outside of Albany for about 2.5-months until my graduation. Of course, there were dysfunctional breakdowns in Becket, too! Including my bullying, mean-spirited maternal Aunt "K", who I have been estranged from for over a decade now! My life was very scary back in the mid-1990s, most especially at the corrupt hands of the reactionary Catholic fascism that ruled Siena College. To some, it may be funny, but to others, it may be helpful. I stay away from Siena College for my own safety!

- Jonathan Melle

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Sirdeaner Walker held a photo of her son, Carl, 11, who committed suicide April 6 after being bullied and harassed at school. (Stephen Rose for The Boston Globe)
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"Constantly bullied, he ends his life at age 11: Mother vows to expose dangers of harassment"
By Milton J. Valencia, Boston Globe Staff, April 20, 2009

SPRINGFIELD - He was just 11 years old, and they called him gay. They said he acted like a girl and bullied him. Girls, boys - anyone, it seemed - taunted Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover until he could take it no more.

Less than two weeks before his 12th birthday, the bright boy beloved for his wide smile came home and hanged himself.

He left a note, saying he loved his mother and his aunt. He also left his Pokemon games and cards to his 6-year-old brother. On a Monday evening, as his mother was preparing dinner, she found him hanging from the railing of the third-floor landing, by an electrical cord.

His note did not say why, only that he was sorry for what he had done. But in a way only a mother could, Sirdeaner Walker had to explain the pressures her son faced.

"I know he would not have done this," Walker said, "unless he felt he did not have any other choice."

An 11-year-old committing suicide is tough to explain, especially to a mother. But Walker's newfound campaign to address schoolyard harassment since the death of her son on April 6 has exposed realities that national experts and academics are still trying to comprehend: bullying, youth suicide, and a community's responsibility to respond.

"There's so much more to this story," Walker, the director of a homeless program at a local social-service agency, said only days after she found her son dead. "Carl was a wonderful young man, and he had so much potential, and his potential is now gone."

Officials at the New Leadership Charter School acknowledged that the boy was bullied, but said they had responded appropriately and that the death was a tragedy no one could have foreseen.

"When we would see this (bullying), we would sit them down and tell them this is not an appropriate way to act," said Peter Daboul, chairman of the board of trustees at the charter school.

Since 2002, at least 15 schoolchildren, ages 11 to 14, have committed suicide in Massachusetts. They include a 13-year-old last year at the Gilmore Academy, a school for gifted students in Brockton. Three of them were Carl's age. But Walker won't let her son become just another statistic.

By all accounts, he was a promising sixth-grader, some say a scholar in-the-making who mixed football and basketball practice with mentorship and leadership programs. All along, he was the charismatic one in the class who would sing to Rihanna's "Umbrella" with the radio during a bus trip, or pose for the camera on a roller-blading adventure with a summer youth program.

"You knew he wanted to be somebody," said Clifford Flint, of the Black Men of Greater Springfield group, at the boy's funeral. Flint knew Carl through a mentorship program.

For Carl, the darkness began in September when he entered a new school, a process that can leave even the most secure of children unnerved and uncertain.

All was well, his mother said, until he met his new classmates and tried to make friends at New Leadership, a diverse Grade 6-12 school with just under 500 students. Walker enrolled her son at the charter school as an alternative to the local public middle school, thinking he would have better opportunities.

There, the troubles began. Students would bully Carl, say he was gay, make fun of his clothes. He complained of gangs and had to eat lunch with a guidance counselor numerous times to evade the harassment that was tearing at his young soul.

Walker did everything she could. She complained to teachers and administrators. She sat in one of Carl's classes, to get acquainted with the school. She joined the Parent-Teacher Organization and became head of the Sixth Grade group. She asked for help, saying no student, let alone her son, should be subject to such abuse.

The school staff knew about the harassment. Daboul, chairman of the board of trustees, said Carl met regularly with a psychologist to discuss his relationship with classmates, and students involved in bullying were disciplined. He defended the school's response, saying its anti-harassment policies go beyond what is required in Springfield schools. Among other things, the school issues a policy handbook on bullying to all students and makes them sign an agreement to treat each other with respect.

Daboul said the board of trustees has formed a committee to investigate the way the school responded, how staff worked with Carl, how staff disciplined and advised other students, and how administrators reacted to Walker's complaints. The committee's findings could help determine what went right, what did not, and ways the school and others can respond to such incidents in the future, Daboul said.

But he also stressed that the death was a tragedy, and that the suicide, and bullying, are an indication of a more sweeping problem.

Nationwide, suicide rates among 10- to 14-year-olds have grown more than 50 percent over the last three decades, according to the American Association of Suicidology, or the AAS. In 2005, the last year nationwide statistics were available, 270 children in that age group killed themselves. Suicide remains among the leading causes of death of children under 14. And in most cases, the young people die from hanging.

"Suicides go back to the biblical days. It's not a new phenomenon, even among kids," said Dr. Lanny Berman, head of the AAS. "Young people can, and do, die by suicide."

The struggle, Berman said, is to find the underlying cause, and ways to learn from such tragedies. Decades ago, family strife may have driven a youngster to commit suicide. Today, a teenager under constant harassment can feel stressed and depressed and begin acting out until the bullying is overwhelming.

"This is not simply teasing behavior," Berman said. "This has serious consequences, one of which we now know much more about."

The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center estimates that close to 30 percent of today's schoolchildren are either bullies or have been harassed by them. Boys are often beat up. Girls are the subject of rumors. Either way, the targets can feel tense, anxious, and afraid. Over time, they lose their self-esteem and sense of self-worth. They become withdrawn, and depressed.

In Carl's case, in the classroom "there was no one he felt he could turn to who could help him," said Eli Newberger, a pediatrician and faculty member at Harvard Medical School who has written about bullying and child development.

He said schools need to look at ways to not only prevent bullying, but also teach youngsters how to cope with harassment and how to empathize with others students.

"How to discern other people's individual rights, and to appreciate and respect them," he said.

One bill introduced to the state Legislature before Carl's suicide would require the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to set up a model curriculum for schools to follow on addressing bullying and teasing, which includes harassment over the telephone, computer, or other electronic device. School employees would have to undergo yearly training in identifying and responding to bullying, students would have to participate in surveys each year, and school districts would be required to set up antibullying policies approved by the state. Currently, districts can decide on their own policies, and the state is only required to provide resources.

Walker said she will file a complaint with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education about how New Leadership handled the incident. She believes the school could have done more to help her son, and she urges schools to learn from this tragedy "because I don't want anyone to have to bury their child like this."

"No one should have to do that," she said.

She had noticed Carl acting out, seeming disruptive, and having troubles at school. He would tell her, "I hate this school." They already had plans for him to attend a private academy. But until then, his mother asked, try to make it work.

That Monday, he was in another fight. A girl had yelled at him and threatened him after he accidentally bumped a TV at the school with his backpack, and the TV bumped into the girl. School staff intervened. The psychologist who had been seeing Carl tried to mediate, and told him and the girl that the three of them would have to sit together during lunch for the week.

Carl called his mother after school and told her of the fight.

At 6:28 p.m., she found him hanged.
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Milton Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com.
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www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/04/20/constantly_bullied_he_ends_his_life_at_age_11/?comments=all
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A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL
"Bullied to death"
April 22, 2009

RELENTLESS BULLYING, including anti-gay slurs, by students at the New Leadership Charter School in Springfield pushed sixth-grader Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover to take his own life, according to his mother. The quality of interventions by school officials is unclear. But an act so desperate by one so young is a clear reminder of how schools can become torture chambers for students perceived as different.

Massachusetts led the nation in 1993 by crafting an anti-discrimination law for gay and lesbian students. But the law is only as effective as the educators who implement it. And the stakes can be higher in poor, urban districts like Springfield, where nonconformity too often draws aggressive attention. Teachers or administrators who ignore even a single degrading comment in that environment can open the door to a world of pain.

Any sentient school official knows that gay students, or those perceived to be gay, are teased and bullied disproportionately. One remedy is the use of student handbooks that outline the specific consequences of discriminating against gay students. At New Leadership, students in the middle and high school grades sign a Golden Rule contract pledging not to "laugh, tease or poke fun at others." But there is no specific mention in the student handbook of discrimination based on race, religion, or sexual orientation. The school's written anti-harassment policies need to reflect the reality that students who are different actually face.

Peter Daboul, chairman of the school's trustees, says being or appearing gay "is not a stigma at the school." And students in both the sixth and seventh grades, he says, were studying the effects of bullying this year as part of their class projects. A school task force, he says, will examine all incident reports involving Walker-Hoover. And an investigation by the state Department of Education is likely to follow.

There may be a role for independent investigators, as well. New Leadership, which operates in modular units, may be too large to ensure student safety. Enrollment at the decade-old charter school was originally capped at 375. But it was serving almost 500 students by last year, when it sought to renew its charter. Despite reservations about the school's fiscal and academic standing, the state overlooked the violation and approved raising the enrollment cap to 500.

A case such as this requires education officials to consider what policies and practices may have been overlooked. Focusing solely on bullies and victims is rarely enough. How can schools build a critical mass of students who are willing to come to the aid of a targeted student and stand against their peers? The family of a dead 11-year-old boy deserves to know.
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www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/04/22/bullied_to_death/?comments=all
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April 21, 2009

Re: Bullying by design

I was bullied by an bureaucrat named Jeanne Obermayer at Siena College during the mid-1990s. Sometimes bullying is done by the designs of the authority figures and the immature students are just following orders for their own success. There is a dark side to school and college.

I was also viciously bullied by a former Massachusetts State Senator by the name of Andrea F Nuciforo II (aka "Luciforo), who has layered his harassment of me for nearly 13 years now.

www.jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/05/andrea-nuciforo-jonathan-melle-month-of.html

I believe that bullying or harassment is done by the designs of "evil" people like Jeanne Obermayer and Andrea Nuciforo II who abuse their authoritative power for their own interests. The actors are on their stage. That is why I am happy that I may Blog so the real bullies can no longer hide behind their secrecy.

- Jonathan Melle

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POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE
Congress - "Springfield mom testifies on bullying"
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor, July 8, 2009
By Stephanie Vallejo, Boston Globe correspondent, 7/8/2009

WASHINGTON -- In the three months since Sirdeaner Walker’s 11-year-old son, Carl Walker-Hoover, committed suicide, the Springfield mother has channeled her grief into action. Walker appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to speak out on the dangers of bullying.

But that was just a warm-up.

Walker, once a self-described “ordinary working mom,” has become a persistent advocate for safer schools, and she’ll stop at nothing less than federal legislation. Appearing today before the House subcommittees on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education and Healthy Families and Communities, Walker related Carl’s story once again.

“What could make a child his age despair so much that he would take his own life?” Walker asked during a panel on “Strengthening School Safety Through Prevention of Bullying.” “I will probably never know the answer. What we do know is that Carl was being bullied relentlessly at school.”

Walker had known for months of her son’s situation, and, so did the staff at the New Leadership Charter School in Springfield.

She was unhappy with their course of action, and attributes it to a lack of training. The last week of Carl’s life, he had been assigned to sit with his tormentors at lunch as part of a mediation process. “Obviously there needs to be some professional development and instruction, because that’s not a solution,” she said.

While school officials acknowledge they knew of the bullying, they say they handled the situation appropriately.

Walker supports a bill that would require states that receive grants for safe and drug-free schools to invest in bullying prevention programs. She plans to speak with staff in the offices of Massachusetts Senators John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy while in Washington.

“Everyone at the hearing listened to Carl’s story,” Walker said afterwards. “I really feel like now is the time that we look to the federal government for guidelines and leadership. Our children are suffering every day, in school.”

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"Dozens 'lie down' at Capitol for Columbine event"
By CATHERINE TSAI, Associated Press Writer, April 20, 2009

DENVER (AP) -- Dozens of people participated in a "lie-down" at Colorado's state Capitol Monday to demand stricter gun control and mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings. A circle of 13 people representing those killed at Columbine reclined on their backs before the west steps of the Capitol. They had wrapped blue and white ribbons around their necks, the official colors of the suburban Denver school.

Others kneeled next to the circle as the names of the 23 injured in the April 20, 1999, attack also were read.

Among them was Mallory Sanders, granddaughter of slain teacher Dave Sanders, and Steve Wewer, godfather of slain student Daniel Mauser.

Daniel's father, Tom Mauser, wore the Vans shoes his son was wearing the day he was killed.

"They did not kill their spirits. They did not kill ours, either," he told the crowd.

Above them, the U.S. and Colorado state flags flew at half-staff at the Capitol, as ordered by Gov. Bill Ritter. A giant blue ribbon memorializing Columbine hung from the outside of the Capitol's gold dome.

Monday's event was sponsored by Colorado Ceasefire, a gun control group.

"I don't necessarily think we need to get rid of guns entirely," said Richard Castaldo, who was partially paralyzed at Columbine. But he insisted background checks are needed at gun shows. "We need to know who they are."

The crowd at the rally included families commemorating the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings.

Columbine students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed with guns and pipe bombs, killed 12 students and a teacher. Harris and Klebold later killed themselves.

Harris and Klebold obtained three of the four weapons they used in the massacre from an 18-year-old friend at a gun show, where she wasn't subjected to a background check. The friend later insisted she believed the guns would be used for hunting or collecting.

After Columbine, Colorado's Legislature failed to pass a measure that would have closed the so-called gun show loophole. Colorado voters then passed a ballot initiative to do so. People who buy guns at a gun show must now undergo criminal background checks by a licensed gun dealer, just as they would if they bought a gun from a federally licensed gun store.

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"Study paints picture of collegiate mental health"
By Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press Writer, 4/20/2009

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Ever since campus counseling centers were established in the 1940s, college officials have known that the prevalence and severity of students' mental health problems were rising. They just didn't know by how much.

A pilot study released Monday by the Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health, at Penn State University, hopes to fill that void. Organizers call it a first-of-its kind effort by college counseling centers designed to get an up-to-date picture of mental health trends affecting higher education.

Most schools collect data of counseling center clients on their own. Until now, though, there have been no national data to help study perceived trends, organizers said.

"Mental health affects every aspect of a college student's functioning," said Ben Locke, executive director of the center. "The earlier you intervene in mental health issues, the more likely you are to be successful in treating it."

The numbers will further help colleges and universities equip themselves to support students, Locke said.

The Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors does a separate annual survey of its members. That survey estimated that about 1 in 10 college students seek treatment from campus counseling centers.

But the Penn State study is the first to get data from the counseling center clients themselves, Locke said.

"This is actual data from the counseling centers: the clients who are coming in, what they're saying," said Robert Rando, the director of counseling and wellness services at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. "It's accurate in that way, and no one has done that."

There is concern about the increased severity of mental health problems counseling centers are seeing among student clients, in part because of the increased use of medications such as Prozac by high school students, Rando said.

The collaboration began four years ago, but data collection began only in fall 2008.

The effort had been in the works before the high-profile campus shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois University last year.

The killing of 33 people, including the gunman, at Virginia Tech and five people at Northern Illinois put a spotlight on campus counseling services and risk reduction, said Dennis Heitzmann, director of counseling and psychological services at Penn State.

"What this effort will do will keep our work in the forefront, identify the importance of our function before the administration, parents and students themselves," Heitzmann said.

More than 130 schools nationwide are registered with the center. Of them, 66 participated in the initial study, with responses from more than 28,000 students who received mental health services in fall 2008.

Each counseling center asked clients to answer standardized questions, with the data pooled nationally. All data were anonymous.

Among the study's findings:

• One percent of students who answered a question about binge drinking reported going on a binge 10 or more times in the previous two weeks. Nearly half of those respondents said they had seriously considered suicide in the past.

• The vast majority (93 percent) of students who responded to a question about campus violence had little to no fear of losing control and acting violently.

• The 7 percent considered to have strong fears were most likely to be male and said they had previously harmed another person. They also tended to have experienced a cluster of other symptoms, such as a fear of having a panic attack or suicidal thoughts.

The results "don't translate into a guaranteed assessment or reliable profile at any point, but they offer a starting point in assessing risk in counseling center clients," Locke said.

The center has received $45,000 in funding over the past five years, Locke said. The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit that describes itself as trying to reduce suicides and emotional distress among college students, is listed as a past contributor.

The center also requires members to pay a $150 annual fee. In addition, researchers have received about $100,000 in in-kind funding from Titanium Software.

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"Map on HIV says highest rates are in South"
By Associated Press, June 23, 2009

ATLANTA - A new Internet data map offers a first-of-its-kind, county-level look at HIV cases in the United States and finds the infection rates tend to be highest in the South.

The highest numbers of HIV cases are in such population centers as New York and California. However, many of the areas with the highest rates of HIV - that is, the highest proportion of people with the AIDS-causing virus - are in the South, according to the data map, which has information for more than 90 percent of the nation’s counties.

HIV infection rates are higher in African-American communities, and high minority populations in the South help explain the finding. Yet the high rates seen throughout such states as Georgia and South Carolina were surprising, said Gary Puckrein, president of the National Minority Quality Forum, the nonprofit research organization that developed the map.

Of 48 counties with the highest rates for HIV that had not yet progressed to AIDS, 25 were in Georgia, according to the map.

Puckrein said the 2006 data came from state health departments and was checked against information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC officials were cautious about the data map, saying they hadn’t seen all the organization’s information.

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(Fred Field for The Boston Globe)
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Brigitte Berman, 15, (foreground with her sister, Margot, 13, and mother, Jane at home in Dover) wrote a book about bullying. (Fred Field for The Boston Globe)
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"The silent majority: The anti-bullying forces tried to work with the bullies and the victims. Now they’re targeting the bystanders."
By Bella English, Boston Globe Staff, July 18, 2009

Brigitte Berman is 15 years old, nearly 5-feet-11, and a self-described science geek. “I’m in a robotics club, and I really like science, and I’m kind of tall,’’ she says. Because of all of that, she has occasionally been the victim of bullying. So she recently self-published a novel, “Dorie Witt’s Guide to Surviving Bullies.’’ Told in journal form, each chapter contains tips for victims.

But Brigitte - like every other kid - more often has been a witness to bullying than a victim. And she believes there’s no such thing as an innocent bystander: If you’re a spectator, you’re a participant. Still, she knows that helping out is easier said than done.

“I think it’s very hard to be a bystander, because when you’re watching a bully, you’re not sure how or when to intervene. I think people are scared to intervene,’’ says Brigitte, who lives in Dover. “All it takes is one voice and maybe someone else will join in to stop it. I think there’s power in numbers. Bullies don’t like to be put on the spot.’’

In the wake of the various school shootings of the past decade, the focus of curbing antisocial behavior has been on bullies and their victims. But a third group has emerged as even more critical: the bystanders. Now, schools, pediatricians, and others who deal with children are seeking to shift some of the responsibility for stopping an act of bullying to those who witness it.

“Bringing the bystander in was always the critical piece, and in America that response has been the most lacking,’’ says Nancy Mullin, executive director of Bullying Prevention Inc., a Natick consulting firm that helps schools combat the problem. “The stress has been on incorrectly pathologizing the bully: that they are social misfits and have low self-esteem, which we know is wrong.’’ Many bullies, she says, are the popular kids who have followers.

With the growing understanding that bystanders - both children and adults - are key, more schools are engaging in training programs that emphasize the role they play. Mullin is also a program director for the Olweus Intervention Model, which has been adopted by more than 3,000 American schools, including about 20 in Massachusetts. Under that model, created by Norwegian psychologist Dan Olweus, the entire school - teachers, students, secretaries, custodians, cafeteria and playground workers - is trained to recognize and curb bullying.

“All bystanders are not created equal,’’ Mullin says. “They run the gamut from a sidekick egging the bully on to a good Samaritan who steps in.’’ Most fall somewhere in the middle: They feel bad but don’t know what to do, she says. They need strategies as well as support from peers and adults.

Under the Olweus approach, adult witnesses also take more responsibility. “Bullying happens in front of or within earshot of adults most of the time, so they need to be the first responders and they need to be effective,’’ says Mullin. The sole responsibility, she says, shouldn’t be “dumped on kids.’’

National studies indicate that one-third of children have either been a bully or a victim, and nearly all have been bystanders. Marlene Snyder, director of development for the Olweus program in the United States, agrees that the majority can no longer remain silent, given the serious consequences.

“Bystanders are key. They need to know it is OK not to join in and that they can reach out to those kids who are being bullied,’’ Snyder says. “They can circle back and say, ‘Come sit with us. We’re sorry that happened. It isn’t right.’ It takes a lot of courage.’’

In a new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Boston pediatrician Robert Sege defines the role doctors should play in bullying prevention. It is the first time the academy has included a section on bullying, including a recommendation that schools adopt the Olweus prevention model. Protecting children from injury, including bullying, is a key task of pediatricians, says Sege, who is chief of ambulatory pediatrics at Boston Medical Center.

“The brilliance of it is that Olweus identified that the key to stopping bullying was activating the bystanders,’’ says Sege, who is also medical director of the hospital’s child protection team. “The kids make a social contract that they’re going to protect the more vulnerable ones against bullying.’’ By doing so, he notes, the bystanders’ view of the bully changes from “top of the heap to the bottom. They see that the bully has a problem managing his or her behavior. They have reinterpreted the bully’s behavior as weird.’’

Sege says pediatricians must be ready to ask key questions of patients at routine checkups, as he does: “What’s going on at school? Do you feel safe there? What happens on the playground? Do kids get picked on?’’ They should also counsel parents about bullying, and be ready to call the school principal on a patient’s behalf, he adds.

This month, a Springfield mother testified before a congressional subcommittee in the wake of her son’s suicide following relentless bullying at school. Sirdeaner Walker told the panel she supports a bill that would require states that receive grants for safe and drug-free schools to invest in bullying prevention programs.

Last year, Brigitte’s sister, Margot, was the victim of cyberbullying by girls at her school. “Gay’’ or “lesbian’’ is the slur du jour: Margot, 13, and her group of friends were targeted by those who posted on Facebook or AIM. “They said rude things and made lesbian comments,’’ says Margot.

Jane Berman, the girls’ mother, took action. She knew the offenders’ parents and felt comfortable talking to them about it. The girls apologized; one even sent a handwritten letter. Berman thinks talking to the parents or school officials is a good solution. “I was taught in my generation just to ignore it,’’ she says. “But that really never worked.’’

Margot, who will enter the eighth grade in the fall, sees lots of name-calling on the school bus. “If we see it going on, we always say, ‘Stop that. It’s not nice,’ or we say something to the person being bullied, like, ‘How was your day?’ ’’ Still, she says, most kids stand by and watch. “They’re afraid to speak up.’’

Hasan Jafri, 17, will soon enter his senior year at the Dexter School in Brookline. His school takes a zero-tolerance approach to hazing and sexual harassment, and he says there’s not much bullying. But when he was younger, he witnessed some taunting. “I think the bystanders are important, because in my opinion they really can stop it or they can contribute to it,’’ says Jafri.

As for Brigitte, she has witnessed the “mean girl’’ syndrome, where so-called friends turn on one another, excluding first one, then another girl, while spreading gossip. “I think it’s happened to almost every girl,’’ she says. “You don’t even know what brings it about.’’

She believes that out of the group of gossipers, one or two will be uncomfortable about it. And they’re obliged to do say something - either to the shunners or the shunned. “Just walk away and talk to that other girl,’’ she says. “It’s difficult because you don’t want to be shunned, either. But I feel you’re obligated. You can’t just watch as people just trash another person.’’

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"What to tell your child"
By Bella English, Boston Globe Staff, July 18, 2009

Here’s what parents can do to help “bystander’’ children stop bullying:

. Tell your child not to cheer on or even quietly watch bullying. This only encourages the bully who is trying to be the center of attention.

. Encourage your child to tell a trusted adult about the bullying. Talking to an adult is not being a tattle-tale. Standing up for another child by getting help is an act of courage and safety. To make it easier, suggest taking a friend.

. Help your child support other children who may be bullied. Encourage your child to include these children in activities.

. Encourage your child to join with others in telling bullies to stop. Knowing what to say is important. If your child feels safe, the following statement may help to stop the bully: “Cool it! This isn’t going to solve anything.’’

Source: American Academy of Pediatrics

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In this undated file photo released by the Virginia State Police, Seung-Hui Cho is shown. Photo by AP (file).
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"Va. Tech gunman’s mental health records found"
By Associated Press, Wednesday, July 22, 2009, www.bostonherald.com - South

RICHMOND, Va. — The Associated Press has learned that missing mental health records for the Virginia Tech gunman have been discovered in the home of the former director of the university’s counseling center.

Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people on April 16, 2007, then committed suicide as police closed in. His mental health treatment has been a major issue in the investigation of the shootings.

A memo from Gov. Tim Kaine’s chief legal counsel says Cho’s records and those of several other Virginia Tech students were found July 18 in the home of Dr. Robert H. Miller.

The memo to families of the massacre victims said the records were removed from the Cook Counseling Center on the Virginia Tech campus more than a year before the shootings.

The recovery of the records, which eluded a vast criminal investigation two years ago, was announced first on Wednesday by Gov. Tim Kaine.

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"New Questions on a Tragedy: Two years after the Virginia Tech massacre, discovery of the shooter's mental health records should spark fresh inquiries."
washingtonpost.com - Editorial - Sunday, August 2, 2009

TWO YEARS AFTER Seung Hui Cho's bloody killing spree on the campus of Virginia Tech, the news that his missing mental health records have suddenly turned up at the home of the university's counseling center's former director raises a raft of unsettling questions.

Of course, the obvious one is what the records reveal, if anything, about Mr. Cho's state of mind in December 2005 when, on a judge's order, he appeared for an appointment at the counseling center. Was he evaluated? What were the results? Did his visit ring any alarm bells, and if so, why was there no follow-up by the school's mental health professionals?

Equally if not more disturbing, however, are the questions surrounding the disappearance and discovery of the documents:

What was going through the mind of Robert Miller, the former counseling center director, when he removed Mr. Cho's records, and those of a few other patients, upon leaving his job there in 2006, a year before Mr. Cho's rampage? And why did it take him more than two years -- until, he says, a lawsuit prompted him to undertake a search at his home -- to recall that he had "inadvertently" (and possibly illegally) removed the documents?

As Suzanne Grimes, whose son was injured in the shootings, told The Post: "When you retire, you take the pictures off the wall. You don't take records."

The unfortunate but inevitable upshot of this episode is to undercut the confidence of the public, and of the victims' relatives, in the soundness of the report of a blue-ribbon state commission charged with investigating the shootings in 2007. Among other troubling recent revelations is that the state commission apparently did not question Mr. Miller about the whereabouts of the documents. That omission is particularly mystifying given that the commission was led by a former state police superintendent, W. Gerald Massengill, who should know something about conducting an investigation and unearthing documents.

So now some of the victims' families are pressing Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) to reconvene the commission to ensure that it got the facts right the first time around, and to determine whether a cover-up contributed to the disappearance of Mr. Cho's mental health records. Mr. Kaine would be well advised to do so. Allowing the new questions to fester would add a toxic aftertaste to an already bitter event.
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Related News Article:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/22/AR2009072201209.html
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"Seung Hui Cho -- The Struggle to Understand a Killer"
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2007/04/20/LI2007042001592.html
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This undated file photo shows Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho. Recently discovered health records for Cho have been released. (Virginia State Police/AP Photo)
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"Va. Tech Shooter Seung-Hui Cho's Mental Health Records Released: Cho Killed 32 Students Then Himself in April 2007"
By EMILY FRIEDMAN, ABC News Online, August 19, 2009

The missing pieces of the mental health records of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho were made public today by the university, offering the first glimpse at the medical evaluations Cho underwent prior to committing the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

The records chronicle two telephone conversations and one in-person visit between Cho and mental health professionals at the Cook Counseling Center, the university's student mental health services provider, in the winter of 2005, the only instances in which the student ever interacted with the center, according to authorities.

Throughout his visits with mental health professionals, Cho denied having any homicidal or suicidal thoughts, according to documents.

The in-person consultation at the center followed Cho's release from the psych ward at Carilion St. Albans hospital on Dec. 14, 2005. According to the documents, Cho had been admitted overnight to the hospital after his roommate became concerned when Cho threatened to take his own life.

"I met with student for about 30 minutes," wrote triage counselor Sherry Lynch Conrad on a Post-It note stuck to Cho's file dated Dec. 14, 2005, the day after his release. "He denied any suicidal or homicidal ideation. Said the comment he made was a joke. Says he has no reason to harm self and would never do it."

Even so, Conrad drew an "X" through the portion of the medical chart that assesses a patient's mental health, instead writing, "Did not assess -- student has had two previous triages in past two weeks -- last two days ago."

Conrad wrote that she provided Cho with emergency numbers should he begin to have "suicidal or homicidal thoughts" over winter break, but she did not schedule a follow-up appointment because Cho didn't "know his schedule."

Cho first made contact with the center on Nov. 30, 2005, when he was referred by a professor.

In the records from his initial telephone conversation, another triage counselor checked off "Troubled: Further contact within 2 weeks" under the portion of the form that rates the severity of the patient's disposition.

An in-person appointment was scheduled for Cho on Dec. 12, 2005, but when he failed to show up, another telephone consultation took place.

According to the documents, Cho indicated in the second phone conversation that his symptoms of depression and anxiety had persisted. He also said that he was having trouble concentrating.

That counselor's notes indicate that Cho said that "he did not want to come in at this time," despite his symptoms.

This is the first time the public has seen the notes of three separate therapists who counseled Cho.

On April 16, 2007, Cho killed 32 people and then himself on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., making the school the site of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history and the focal point for a renewed debate over gun control and mental health services.

In a written statement released in conjunction with the medical records, Virginia Tech released a statement saying the university believes the center's counselors acted "appropriately in their evaluation of Cho."

"The absence and belated discovery of these missing files have caused pain, further grief, and anxiety for families of the April 16 victims and survivors, as well as for the Cook Counseling Center professionals who interacted with Cho and created and maintained appropriate departmental records," reads the statement.

"With release of these records, Virginia Tech seeks to provide those deeply affected by the horrible events of April 2007 with as much information as is known about Cho's interactions with the mental health system 15-16 months prior to the tragedy."

Just two weeks after the shootings, Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine signed an executive order that required anyone court-ordered to receive mental health treatment be added to a state database of people prohibited from buying guns.

A year after the shooting, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., introduced legislation that would amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which determines how much of a student's mental health records can be disclosed by a university. Webb argued that the Virginia Tech massacre may have been prevented had the policy been more clear on when information about a mentally ill student can be shared by a university .

Cho Records Initially Found to Be Missing
The records released today were discovered to be missing during a Virginia panel's August 2007 investigation -- four-and-a-half months after the massacre.

The notes were recovered last month from the home of Dr. Robert Miller, the former director of the counseling center, who says he inadvertently packed Cho's file into boxes of personal belongings when he left the center in February 2006. Until the July 2009 discovery of the documents, Miller said he had no idea he had the records.

Miller has since been let go from the university.

Cho, born in 1984 in Seoul, South Korea, was a naturalized U.S. citizen and had lived in the Washington, D.C., area since age 8.

In the days and weeks following the massacre, it became clear that Cho had not been a happy child. Even his grandfather told ABCNews.com after the massacre that his grandson Cho had "never hugged."

The documents released today make no reference to any mental health diagnoses prior to Cho's time as a Virginia Tech student. After the shooting it was reported that Cho had been diagnosed and had received treatment as a young adult for an anxiety disorder.

Four months after the shootings, Gov. Kaine released a report that harshly criticized the university for its handling of the incident, primarily in the failure to notify students promptly about the shootings, as well as the failure to notice warning signs that he says may have prevented the incident altogether.

University officials have cited privacy laws as the reason they did not exchange information on Cho's mental health history or contact his parents about problems he was having on campus.

The Virginia Tech massacre occurred over a span of several hours, beginning in the early morning of April 16, when Cho claimed his first victims -- students Emily Hilscher, 19, and Ryan Clark, 22 -- as they sat in Hilscher's fourth-floor dorm room.

Cho is then believed to have returned to his own dorm room, where he collected more ammunition and firearms before preparing a lengthy note in which he wrote, "You caused me to do this."

Recounting the Virginia Tech Massacre
Meanwhile, campus police were just then receiving a call about an incident in the dorm room.

At approximately 9:01 a.m., Cho went to the Blacksburg Post Office where he mailed photos, a letter and video clips of himself reciting an angry rant to NBC. The multimedia manifesto included 27 video clips with 10 minutes worth of Cho's chilling, personal rantings.

"You had 100 billion chances and ways to avoid today. But you decided to spill my blood," Cho said on the video in the package. "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

Included with the video clips was a 1,800-word diatribe in which he professed admiration for Columbine killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris; Cho carried out his rampage on the same week as the Columbine murders were committed in 1999.

Forty-three still photos, 10 of which showed Cho holding handguns, were also included in the package sent to NBC.

Cho then headed to Virginia Tech's engineering building, Norris Hall, where he shot and killed 30 people before taking his own life. Cho fired more than 170 rounds, a shot every three seconds, inside the building where he had once attended class.

In all, Cho's shooting rampage inside the building lasted nine minutes. It took police three minutes to respond to the scene and another five minutes to break through chains that Cho had used to lock the building's three public entrances.

Police heard a final gunshot -- presumably Cho's suicide shot -- before entering one of the four classrooms he targeted and discovering his corpse among some of his 30 Norris Hall victims.

Two handguns were retrieved near Cho's body: a .22 caliber model that was purchased in February from a Wisconsin dealer, the same one that 48-year-old George Sodini got his guns from for use in the Aug. 4 fitness club killings near Pittsburgh. Cho also purchased a 9 mm model at a Roanoke gun shop.

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"AP Enterprise: Bullying laws give scant protection"
By Dionne Walker, Associated Press Writer, September 14, 2009

ATLANTA --Recent student suicides have parents and advocates complaining that anti-bullying laws enacted in nearly every state are not being enforced and do not go far enough to identify and rid schools of chronic tormentors.

Forty-four states expressly ban bullying, a legislative legacy of a rash of school shootings in the late '90s, yet few if any of those measures have identified children who excessively pick on their peers, an Associated Press review has found. And few offer any method for ensuring the policies are enforced, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The issue came to a head in April when 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera committed suicide at his Atlanta-area home after his parents say he was repeatedly tormented in school. District officials denied it, and an independent review found bullying wasn't a factor, a conclusion his family rejects.

Regardless, Georgia's law, among the toughest in the nation, still would not have applied: It only applies to students in grades six to 12. Herrera was a fifth-grader.

Georgia's law has one of the largest gaps between what it requires of districts and the tools it gives them for meeting those requirements. The state doesn't collect data specifically on bullying occurrences, despite legislation that promises to strip state funding from schools failing to take action after three instances involving a bully.

After Herrera's death, other parents came forward to say their children had been bullied and that school officials did nothing with the complaints, rendering the state's law useless.

"There is a systematic problem," said Mike Wilson, who said his 12-year-old daughter was bullied for two years in the same school district where Herrera died. "The lower level employees, the teachers, the principals, are trying to keep this information suppressed at the lowest possible level."

Only six states -- Montana, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, North Dakota and South Dakota -- and the District of Columbia lack specific laws targeting school bullying, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most states require school districts to adopt open-ended policies to prohibit bullying and harassment.

While some direct state education officials to form model policies that school districts should mimic, they offer little to assure the policies are enforced; only a handful of states require specific data gathering meant to assure bullying is being monitored, for instance.

"The states themselves can't micromanage a school district -- but they can say to a school district, 'Look, you have to have consequences,'" said Brenda High, whose Web site, Bully Police USA, tracks anti-bullying laws across the nation, and who advocates for strict repercussions for bullies. The Washington state-based advocate's son, Jared, was 13 when he committed suicide in 1998 after complaining of bullying.

"It needs to be written into the law that bullying has the same consequences as assault," she said. "The records and such need to be kept so that if the child is a chronic bully, they -- after so many instances -- will end up in an alternative school."

Alaska and Georgia have particularly specific statutes. Alaska's Department of Education and Early Development must compile annual data on bullying complaints and report it to the Legislature.

Georgia's 10-year-old law goes a step further. It specifies that three instances of bullying is grounds for transfer to an alternative school, away from the victim. School systems not in compliance forfeit state funding, according to the law.

Despite that record-keeping provision, the Georgia Department of Education cannot say whether any child has been transferred as a result of bullying because the department only tracks the number for broader offenses, including fighting and threats, spokesman Dana Tofig said.

"If the district is not enforcing its own bullying policy, and that's been happening repeatedly, the law says they can lose their state funding," Tofig said.

No school has lost funding under the law, according to the department.

Some school districts say they keep track of complaints, especially those involving a single child being bullied more than once, and that they address those cases. Without a legal obligation to report such data to state officials, however, it's unclear how any such statistics are used.

In 2007, nearly a third of students ages 12 to 18 reported having been bullied during the school year, according to data on more than 55 million students compiled annually by the National Center for Education Statistics. That's up from as few as 1 in 10 students in the '90s, though bullying experts point out the rising numbers may reflect more reports of bullying, not necessarily more incidents.

Many children reported teasing, spreading rumors and threats, all harder to spot and manage, school leaders say.

"One of the questions is how do you quantify bullying? It could even be as simple as a rolling of the eyes," said Dale Davis, a spokesman for schools in DeKalb County, Ga., where Herrera committed suicide.

District officials have said since soon after the boy's death that there was no evidence that Herrera was bullied, and that outside factors including the death of a close relative influenced him to take his life.

Herrera's death in mid-April came barely two weeks after Sirdeaner Walker found her son Carl hanged in her Springfield, Mass., home. The 11-year-old had complained of teasing almost immediately after arriving at his new charter school, she said.

Parents in Illinois likewise pointed to bullies after three suicides there in February: a 10-year-old boy hanged himself in a restroom stall in a suburban Chicago school, an 11-year-old boy was found dead in Chatham, south of Springfield, and a father found his 11-year-old daughter hanged in a closet of their Chicago home.

Dr. Diahann Meekins Moore, associate director for psychiatric services at the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services, cautioned that it's unclear whether bullying could be considered a primary cause in those deaths or in any suicide.

All the same, every suicide with a hint of bullying, every school rampage involving a shooter who claims to have been bullied renews the debate over whether anyone can curb what most consider a harsh and inevitable part of childhood, and if so, who bears that responsibility.

"A lot of this has to be handled in the home," said Peter Daboul, chair of the board of trustees at New Leadership, the Massachusetts school where her son was a 6th grader.

Teachers there will receive training on spotting childhood depression and bullying, he said, "but you also have the family unit where these kids are hopefully taught the difference between right and wrong."

Sirdeaner Walker said reminding a child that they're loved at home is less effective when they're being teased in the classroom.

"I can say that all the time," Walker said. "But again, I have to send my child back to the school."

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THE BOSTON GLOBE: CLAUDIA MEININGER GOLD
"How we can end the cycle of bullying"
By Claudia Meininger Gold, September 14, 2009

BACK TO SCHOOL, and in my pediatric practice worries about bullying reappear. Recently one 10-year-old told me of his fears. Last year, despite many discussions with school personnel, he had not felt protected from a boy who repeatedly tormented him. The bully is also my patient. He was physically abused through much of his early life. I knew that until this other boy could get meaningful help, there was little the school could do to stop his behavior.

While discussions of bullying usually focus on children, anyone who has worked in an organization knows that these behaviors, if not addressed, may continue into adulthood. At worst, bullying leads to violent, criminal behavior. A recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry of 5,000 children in Finland found that both bullies and their victims were at increased risk of needing psychiatric treatment in their teens or 20s. We need to think carefully about the origins of this problem, and to devote significant resources to prevention.

Bullying is a symptom. People have difficulty managing their aggression. This symptom can start very young. Toddlers who are just learning to control their healthy aggressive feelings may grow up in environments where the adults in their lives are not able to help them with this task.

Assertiveness, a quality generally considered to be a positive one, actually has a similar meaning, but looks different in a 2-year-old. Lacking the verbal skills to express intense emotion, Johnny, wanting the red truck another child grabbed out of his hands, may not have a calm discussion, but instead take the truck and whack the other child on the head. Parents clearly have the responsibility to teach a child that such behavior is unacceptable. But in order to learn to manage his aggression as he grows up, a child needs to know that his feelings are acceptable, just the behavior is not. He needs help learning how to understand and contain strong emotions.

If a parent has experienced violence in her past, she may misinterpret a child’s healthy aggression. When Johnny whacks another kid, or hits his mother, she may experience a surge of stress and even rage. These feelings have nothing to do with Johnny, but make it very difficult to think about Johnny’s experience from his 2-year-old perspective. Rather than help him control his aggression, she may convey a sense that the feelings are “bad.’’

If a child gets the idea that his feelings are wrong, these feelings don’t go away. They just become disconnected from the child’s sense of himself. Unable to think about his feelings, he may simply act them out.

Children who have been neglected have no help managing their normal aggression. Those in abusive homes have been hurt by the very person who was supposed to protect them. They may, as a means of coping with this paradoxical situation, identify with the abuser and imitate the behavior as a way of being close.

Given the complexity of the problem, “bully-free zones’’ are clearly an inadequate response. A recent American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on violence prevention advocates support of early parenting skills and appropriate referral for mental health services.

While the academy’s goals are laudable, from the perspective of my small-town practice, they are largely unattainable.

The primary-care setting is an ideal place to help a parent, particularly one who has herself been traumatized, understand how her own life experiences may be getting in the way of teaching a child to manage aggression. Nurturing parents of young children is our best hope for breaking a cycle of transmission of trauma from one generation to the next.

But pressure from the health insurance industry for primary-care providers to see more patients in less time ensures that a parent is unlikely to open up and receive such support. Getting help for children who have themselves been abused is a daunting task. Access to quality mental health services is severely restricted.

Without meaningful health care reform that places value on primary care and mental health, the bullies will prevail.
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Claudia Meininger Gold, a pediatrician, practices in Great Barrington.
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September 14, 2009
Bullying is really done by people behind the scenes. I have been bullied many times in my life, including as an adult, and when I looked back on the incidents, there was always someone in a position of power goading & rewarding the henchmen or henchwomen to harass me!
www.jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/05/andrea-nuciforo-jonathan-melle-month-of.html
www.jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/2007/11/us-army-to-va.html
www.jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/2009/02/brett-harpsterd.html
Now I am a mentally disabled adult. I will never go down to the levels of the bullies and those who goaded and rewarded them. I guess the moral of my story is for me NOT to trust many people and to watch my back!
- Jonathan Melle
www.luciforo.blogspot.com
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www.topix.net/forum/source/berkshire-eagle/TAD3G10C3LOUMMC6N
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www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/09/14/how_we_can_end_the_cycle_of_bullying/?comments=all&plckCurrentPage=0
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www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/09/14/how_we_can_end_the_cycle_of_bullying/?comments=all&plckCurrentPage=1
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"Bullying the disabled"
The Boston Globe, Letters, November 28, 2009

THE GLOBE is right to support Representative John Rogers’s anti-bullying legislation that is now before the Legislature. (“Bullying bill won’t solve all, but it’s a needed first step,’’ Nov. 23, editorial).

Instances of harassment, discrimination, and intimidation are not, as some would propose, “rites of passage’’ that school officials should simply dismiss by allowing kids to “work it out’’ on their own.

As an organization that represents 180,000 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Massachusetts, we feel obligated to note that people with disabilities are especially at risk of being victimized by bullies. According to a 2002 study, 94 percent of children with one particular disability, Asperger syndrome, faced torment from classmates. The proposed bill does not single out people with disabilities, and it shouldn’t have to.

In fact, that’s exactly the point; all children should have the right to attend school with the assurance that they are being kept safe.

JOSHUA KOMYEROV
Waltham, Massachusetts
The writer is director of government affairs for The Arc of Massachusetts.
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www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2009/11/28/bullying_the_disabled/?comments=all
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www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/11/23/bullying_bill_wont_solve_all_but_its_a_needed_first_step/
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"6 Ways Parents Can Help Kids Cope With Social Cruelty"
By Nancy Shute, U.S. News & World Report, February 5, 2010

Kids can be incredibly cruel to one another, but parents can help minimize the pain. That's the reassuring message from Carl Pickhardt, a clinical psychologist in Austin who recently wrote Why Good Kids Act Cruel: The Hidden Truth About the Pre-Teen Years (Sourcebooks, $14.99). Though Pickhardt's book is aimed at tweeners, I found his book helpful as the mom of a first grader already faced with "I'm not inviting you to my birthday party."

I called up Pickhardt for firsthand advice and to ask him why he focused on the middle-school years, when social cruelty knows no age restrictions. "It's not that you don't get it in childhood," Pickhardt says. "It's just that the most damaging point is in middle school. The kids are right in the midst of this developmental change from childhood to adolescence. Combine that with self-awareness and striving for social place. It can be really devastating." Kids who don't feel safe at school can't concentrate on academics, and nobody wants to see a child suffer.

That's why parents and teachers need to take the initiative, Pickhardt says. It's too easy for kids to think that school is just about grades and that parents and teachers don't care about social problems or can't do anything about it. "Parents should let kids know that at this age, what very frequently happens is that people are trying to get a secure social place. They will treat each other meanly in service of that. There will be teasing, and exclusion, and bullying, and ganging up.

"Parents should say, 'If any of this should ever come your way, please let me know. I can help you with that.' "

OK, sounds good, but what do I do? Pickhardt's advice: Ask your child to explain what's going on, listen sympathetically, and try these six things as a way to help him or her cope:

1. Confront. Ask the child: "Are you being treated meanly by other students at school?"

2. Support: Tell your child he won't feel so all alone if he lets you know what's happening. I particularly liked Pickhardt's suggestion about what parents should say when a child takes teasing personally: "You need to understand, when you are being teased in a mean way, that teasing says nothing about you. It says the person who is teasing wants to be mean. It's not about you. It's about them."

3. Get specifics: Find out exactly what's going on, when, and where, and how many students are involved.

4. Strategize options: Come up with different choices, so that if it happens again, your child will have a plan.

5. Motivate: Praise your child for hanging in there and having the courage to go to school despite the hard times.

6. Assess: "Do you think with our support and coaching you can see this through, or do you think we need to communicate directly with the school?" Intervening with the school may be essential if your child is in physical or psychological danger or frightened about being hurt. "We need safe schools," Pickhardt says. "We owe our children that."

Bullies and mean kids won't go away altogether, of course. But there's a world of difference between a kid being a target of social cruelty and a victim of social cruelty. Pickhardt says. "A target says, 'Hey, this is happening to me, and I don't like it, and I am trying to figure out what to do about it.' A victim says, 'This is happening to me, and I have no choice.' "

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(Globe Staff Photo Illustration)
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"Inside the bullied brain: The alarming neuroscience of taunting"
By Emily Anthes, Boston Globe, Ideas, November 28, 2010

In the wake of several tragedies that have made bullying a high-profile issue, it’s becoming clear that harassment by one’s peers is something more than just a rite of passage. Bullied kids are more likely to be depressed, anxious, and suicidal. They struggle in school — when they decide to show up at all. They are more likely to carry weapons, get in fights, and use drugs.

But when it comes to the actual harm bullying does, the picture grows murkier. The psychological torment that victims feel is real. But perhaps because many of us have experienced this sort of schoolyard cruelty and lived to tell the tale, peer harassment is still commonly written off as a “soft” form of abuse — one that leaves no obvious injuries and that most victims simply get over. It’s easy to imagine that, painful as bullying can be, all it hurts is our feelings.

A new wave of research into bullying’s effects, however, is now suggesting something more than that — that in fact, bullying can leave an indelible imprint on a teen’s brain at a time when it is still growing and developing. Being ostracized by one’s peers, it seems, can throw adolescent hormones even further out of whack, lead to reduced connectivity in the brain, and even sabotage the growth of new neurons.

These neurological scars, it turns out, closely resemble those borne by children who are physically and sexually abused in early childhood. Neuroscientists now know that the human brain continues to grow and change long after the first few years of life. By revealing the internal physiological damage that bullying can do, researchers are recasting it not as merely an unfortunate rite of passage but as a serious form of childhood trauma.

This change in perspective could have all sorts of ripple effects for parents, kids, and schools; it offers a new way to think about the pain suffered by ostracized kids, and could spur new antibullying policies. It offers the prospect that peer harassment, much like abuse and other traumatic experiences, may increasingly be seen as a medical problem — one that can be measured with brain scans, and which may yield to new kinds of clinical treatment.

During the first half of the 20th century, even severe child abuse was considered a largely psychological problem in its long-term effects, denting children emotionally in a way that made it hard for them to grow into happy adults.

Gradually, however, scientists began to look at the brains of adults who had been abused as children and realize that the damage wasn’t just emotional: Their brains had undergone telltale long-term changes. Over the past two decades, neuroscientists have marshaled plenty of evidence that serious physical and sexual abuse during early childhood can short-circuit normal brain development.

But what about cruelty that is emotional rather than physical? That that comes from peers instead of parents? And happens at school instead of at home, when children’s brains are no longer so young and malleable? In other words, what about bullying?

Martin Teicher, a neuroscientist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, has been examining just these kinds of scenarios. He began by studying the effects of being verbally abused by a parent. In his study of more than 1,000 young adults, Teicher found that verbal abuse could be as damaging to psychological functioning as the physical kind — that words were as hurtful as the famous sticks and stones. The finding sparked a new idea: “We decided to look at peer victimization,” he said.

So Teicher and his colleagues went back to their young adult subjects, focusing on those they had assumed were healthy in this respect — who’d had no history of abuse from their parents. The subjects, however, varied in how much verbal harassment — such as teasing, ridicule, criticism, screaming, and swearing — they had received from their peers.

What the scientists found was that kids who had been bullied reported more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders than the kids who hadn’t. In fact, emotional abuse from peers turned out to be as damaging to mental health as emotional abuse from parents. “It’s a substantial early stressor,” Teicher said. The data were published in July in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Things got even more interesting when Teicher decided to scan the brains of 63 of his young adult subjects. Those who reported having been mistreated by their peers had observable abnormalities in a part of the brain known as the corpus callosum — a thick bundle of fibers that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and which is vital in visual processing, memory, and more. The neurons in their corpus callosums had less myelin, a coating that speeds communication between the cells — vital in an organ like the brain where milliseconds matter.

It’s not yet entirely clear what these changes in the corpus callosum may lead to, or whether they’re connected to the higher rates of depression that Teicher found in bullied kids. “There may be some subtle neurocognitive difficulties,” he said. “We’re currently doing research that will allow us to answer this question better.”

Teicher’s study is just one of a number of recent studies that have been finding troubling physical effects of even verbal bullying. For the past several years, Tracy Vaillancourt, a psychologist at the University of Ottawa, has been following a group of 12-year-olds, including some who had a history of being victimized by their peers, and assessing their functioning every six months. Among other things, she has discovered that being tormented by other kids can recalibrate children’s levels of cortisol, a hormone pumped out by the body during times of stress.

In a 2008 paper published in the journal Aggressive Behavior, Vaillancourt demonstrated that boys who are occasionally bullied have higher levels of cortisol than their peers. Bullied girls, meanwhile, seem to have abnormally low levels of the hormone. (It’s not entirely clear why that’s the case, but low cortisol levels are sometimes a sign of a body that has been so chronically stressed that it has learned to make less of the hormone.)

Vaillancourt speculates that cortisol may, in fact, underlie many of the adverse effects of bullying: It can weaken the functioning of the immune system, and at high levels can damage and even kill neurons in the hippocampus, potentially leading to memory problems that could make academics more difficult. Indeed, Vaillancourt has already found that teens who are bullied perform worse on tests of verbal memory than their peers. One of her next studies involves trying to get at this question directly: She will be putting some of her subjects — now ages 16 and 17 — into an MRI machine to look for evidence of damage to the hippocampus.

Research on animals suggests that Vaillancourt might be onto something. To model the kind of psychosocial stress that accompanies bullying, Daniel A. Peterson, a neuroscientist at the Chicago Medical School, did a series of experiments in which he put a young, subordinate rat in a cage belonging to a much larger, older, more aggressive rat. The dominant rat — the king of this particular playground — promptly began to push the smaller one around. “We let it go to the point where there’s substantial physical contact, maybe a bite or two,” Peterson said. Then, the researchers would rescue the younger rat, removing him from the cage before he could be seriously injured.

As Peterson documented in a 2007 paper in the Journal of Neuroscience, just a single session of this kind of bullying was enough to leave a mark on the smaller rat’s brain. In particular, Peterson and his colleagues examined the rate of neurogenesis, or the birth of new brain cells, in that same all-important memory-maker: the hippocampus. The bullied rats still made new neurons at a normal rate, but there was a significant hiccup in the process — an unusually high percentage of the cells would die off before becoming fully mature.

It’s not yet clear how long these changes last. Peterson suspects that neuron survival returns to normal if the bullying is a single, isolated incident, as it was with his rats. But, he says, “I think if you had a more persistent stressor of this level, it could reset the thermostat so you’d have a lower level of neurogenesis going on.”

Research into the neurological effects of bullying is still preliminary, and animal models are not perfect replicas of human social behavior. But together, these early findings suggest that bullying, even the verbal kind, is more similar to physical and sexual abuse than we might like to admit. No longer can we draw a clear line between the two kinds of mistreatment — they can both produce the same kind of trauma.

There is still much that neuroscientists need to sort out, however. It remains difficult to thoroughly disentangle cause and effect: It’s possible, for instance, that kids with certain hormonal levels or brain characteristics are more likely, for whatever reason, to be bullied in the first place. And, encouragingly, changes in the brain don’t always translate into long-term damage: Indeed, some of the subjects who had what researchers suspect are bullying-related brain changes are now happy, healthy adults.

But the findings are certainly provocative, and they raise some serious questions about how we should think about bullying. Does being victimized have subtle effects on cognitive functioning that we haven’t even noticed yet? Might some kids be more likely to develop the neurological hallmarks of bullying? Now that we know that victims are undergoing profound physiological changes, are there medical interventions that would be as helpful, or more so, than counseling and therapy? Would demonstrating that bullying scars the brain make it easier to prosecute bullies in court?

Vaillancourt, for her part, sees another kind of value to the new neurobiological research: as a tool to change how bullying is seen by the public, as well as by educators who may be in a position to intervene. In the past, Vaillancourt has been frustrated that her studies on the emotional and psychological effects of bullying have not generated much attention. “When I show that something is biological, it makes headlines,” she said. “For some reason I think humans are more compelled to believe biological evidence than someone saying, ‘Oh I’m depressed. I don’t feel good about this.’ I’m hoping that that is a policy changer.”

Emily Anthes is a freelance science writer.

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"How Parents Can Help Children Who Are Bullied"
By Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben, Yahoo! News, May 30, 2011

We talk about bullying prevention in large terms. We tell children what to do about bullying in school. We fault schools for failing to prevent bullying. The only person who can prevent bullying is the bully. What parents can do is help children address bullying when it happens.

If your child is being bullied or feels bullied, the only way to know is to listen and watch for signs. If your child says someone is picking on him at school, listen to what he says. Don't blow it out of proportion, but don't blow it off. Stay calm. You'll be able to think more clearly and address the situation effectively.

* Make it about your child, not you. This is not the time for power games or theatrics. Take an assertive role, but don't turn it into a muscle flexing contest. Kids know when mom or dad really cares about them and when they're just in the mood for a fight. This is awkward for your child and will not encourage him to share other hurtful behavior.

* Respect your child's wishes as far as possible about how he wants to handle it. If the bullying happened just once, or if your child isn't convinced it was bullying, agree to take a wait-and-see attitude. Keep the lines of communication open and watch for behavior cues.

* Exceptions include: violent bullying, bullying done by an older child on a younger child or gang bullying. If your child experiences this kind of bullying, you may not be able to take a "wait and see approach."

* Don't leave your child to handle it alone. Never tell him to "ignore them and they'll go away." You may not have to act, but be prepared to do so if necessary.

* Enlist support. Tell the school or bus driver if it happened at school or en route. Don't be combative or blaming. School staff will then be aware that there is past history if it happens again. They will be watching.

* Don't make it an adult-child confrontation. Adults should not attempt to correct another person's child. If the bullying occurred away from home, you don't know what happened. Confronting the child will bring out parental defensiveness.

* Take it up with the parents. The school can't stop all bullying and shouldn't be expected to. The school may not be able to address the bullying if it happened before or after school.

* In a non-threatening way, explain what happened from your child's point of view. If they agree to deal with it, give them one chance (and one chance only). If they resist you or if it continues, don't hesitate to contact the authorities and press charges for harassment.

Our youngest daughter and several classmates were bullied (hitting, pushing) by a large boy at a charter school. The rules about behavior were very lax and the school had a permissive approach. Bullying behavior flourished. I worked as as a substitute teacher and saw the bullying myself first-hand.

The teacher wanted to handle it herself, but the bullying continued on the playground. The playground aides told the girls to "stay out of the bully's way." They also scolded the girls, whom the aides claimed were trying to get the boy in trouble. I warned the teacher that if it didn't stop, I would call the parents. It didn't stop and we finally had to move our daughter to a public school.

Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben writes from 22 years parenting four kids and 25 years teaching K-8, special needs, adult education and homeschool.

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Anne O'Brien, mother of Phoebe Prince

Anne O'Brien, mother of Phoebe Prince, center, delivers a victim impact statement at a hearing in Franklin - Hampshire Juvenile Court, in Northampton, Mass., Thursday, May 5, 2011. Elizabeth Dunphy Farris, former Northwest first assistant district attorney, left, and victim-witness advocate Jane Schevalier, right, look on. Six teens have been accused of bullying Prince so relentlessly that the 15-year-old hanged herself. (AP Photo/Michael S. Gordon, Pool)
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February 11, 2012

I believe college campuses can be violent places for young adults. I think that our nation has a poor mental health system to help young adults transition from their childhoods to adulthood. I would not want to be 20-years-old again. I read news articles that student loans have sky-rocketed by a factor of 10 over the last decade. Moreover, about 30% of young people are unemployed. It is like the Great Depression is real for people in their 20's. A young person has student loans, no job, and has to deal with violence among their peers. I think arming campus police is a way to stop violence, but I think that young adults need mental health-care, too. If it wasn't for my parents, I would have been homeless as a person in my 20's about over a decade ago (I am now 36). I dealt with violence, had student loans, and at times had no work, when I was in my 20's. I learned to seek mental health treatment to cope with it all. Now I am financially secure and look back with pity at those young adults who face such difficult realities. I believe they need mental health-care.

- Jonathan Melle

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About Me

My photo
Amherst, NH, United States
I am a citizen defending the people against corrupt Pols who only serve their Corporate Elite masters, not the people! / My 2 political enemies are Andrea F. Nuciforo, Jr., nicknamed "Luciforo" and former Berkshire County Sheriff Carmen C. Massimiano, Jr. / I have also pasted many of my political essays on "The Berkshire Blog": berkshireeagle.blogspot.com / I AM THE ANTI-FRANK GUINTA! / Please contact me at jonathan_a_melle@yahoo.com

50th Anniversary - 2009

50th Anniversary - 2009
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Columbus Avenue in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Pittsfield Politics: Capitanio, Mazzeo agree on budget cuts, public safety

Pittsfield Politics: Capitanio, Mazzeo agree on budget cuts, public safety
Paul Capitanio, left, speaks during Monday night's Ward 3 City Council debate with fellow candidate Melissa Mazzeo at Pittsfield Community Television's studio. The special election (3/31/2009) will be held a week from today (3/24/2009). The local issues ranged from economic development and cleaning up blighted areas in Ward 3 to public education and the continued remediation of PCB's.

Red Sox v Yankees

Red Sox v Yankees
Go Red Sox!

Outrage swells in Congress!

Outrage swells in Congress!
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., left, and the committee's ranking Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., listen during a hearing on modernizing insurance regulations, Tuesday, March 17, 2009, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh). - http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090318/pl_politico/30833

Beacon Hill's $pecial Interest Tax Raisers & $PENDERS!

Beacon Hill's $pecial Interest Tax Raisers & $PENDERS!
Photo Gallery: www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/15/St_Patricks_Day_Boston/

The path away from Wall Street ...

The path away from Wall Street ...
...Employers in the finance sector - traditionally a prime landing spot for college seniors, particularly in the Northeast - expect to have 71 percent fewer jobs to offer this year's (2009) graduates.

Economic collapse puts graduates on unforeseen paths: Enrollment in public service jobs rising...

Economic collapse puts graduates on unforeseen paths: Enrollment in public service jobs rising...
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/14/economic_collapse_puts_graduates_on_unforeseen_paths/

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis
Should he be fired? As Bank of America's Stock Plummets, CEO Resists Some Calls That He Step Down.

Hookers for Jesus

Hookers for Jesus
Annie Lobert is the founder of "Hookers for Jesus" - www.hookersforjesus.net/home.cfm - Saving Sin City: Las Vegas, Nevada?

Forever personalized stamped envelope

Forever personalized stamped envelope
The Forever stamp will continue to cover the price of a first-class letter. The USPS will also introduce Forever personalized, stamped envelopes. The envelopes will be preprinted with a Forever stamp, the sender's name and return address, and an optional personal message.

Purple Heart

Purple Heart
First issued in 2003, the Purple heart stamp will continue to honor the men and women wounded while serving in the US military. The Purple Heart stamp covers the cost of 44 cents for first-class, one-ounce mail.

Dolphin

Dolphin
The bottlenose is just one of the new animals set to appear on the price-change stamps. It will serve as a 64-cent stamp for odd shaped envelopes.

2009 price-change stamps

2009 price-change stamps
www.boston.com/business/gallery/2009pircechangestamps/ -&- www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/02/27/new_stamps_set_for_rate_increase_in_may/

Red Sox v Yankees

Red Sox v Yankees
Go Red Sox!

President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama
AP photo v Shepard Fairey

Rush Limbaugh lackeys

Rush Limbaugh lackeys
Posted by Dan Wasserman of the Boston Globe on March 3, 2009.

Honest Abe

Honest Abe
A 2007 US Penny

Dog race

Dog race
Sledding for dogs

The Capital of the Constitution State

The Capital of the Constitution State
Hartford, once the wealthiest city in the United States but now the poorest in Connecticut, is facing an uphill battle.

Brady, Bundchen married

Brady, Bundchen married
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and model Gisele Bundchen wed Feb. 26, 2009 in a Catholic ceremony in Los Angeles. www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/gallery/tom_gisele/

Mayor Jimmy Ruberto

Mayor Jimmy Ruberto
Tanked Pittsfield's local economy while helping his fellow insider political hacks and business campaign contributors!

Journalist Andrew Manuse

Journalist Andrew Manuse
www.manuse.com

New Hampshire Supreme Court Building

New Hampshire Supreme Court Building
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_Supreme_Court

Economic State of the Union

Economic State of the Union
A look at some of the economic conditions the Obama administration faces and what resources have already been pledged to help. 2/24/2009

President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama
The president addresses the nation's governors during a dinner in the State Dinning Room, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2009, at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari).

The Oscars - 2/22/2009.

The Oscars - 2/22/2009.
Hugh Jackman and Beyoncé Knowles teamed up for a musical medley during the show.

The 81st Academy Awards - Oscars - 2009

The 81st Academy Awards - Oscars - 2009
Hugh Jackman pulled actress Anne Hathaway on stage to accompany him during his opening musical number.

Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow
A Progressive News Commentator

$500,000 per year

$500,000 per year
That is chump change for the corporate elite!

THE CORPORATE ELITE...

THE CORPORATE ELITE...
Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and chief executive of General Electric

The Presidents' Club

The Presidents' Club
Bush, Obama, Bush Jr, Clinton & Carter.

5 Presidents: Bush, Obama, Bush Jr, Clinton, & Carter!

5 Presidents: Bush, Obama, Bush Jr, Clinton, & Carter!
White House Event: January 7, 2009.

Bank Bailout!

Bank Bailout!
v taxpayer

Actress Elizabeth Banks

Actress Elizabeth Banks
She will present an award to her hometown (Pittsfield) at the Massachusetts State House next month (1/2009). She recently starred in "W" and "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," and just signed a $1 million annual contract to be a spokesmodel for Paris.

Joanna Lipper

Joanna Lipper
Her award-winning 1999 documentary, "Growing Up Fast," about teenaged mothers in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Happy Holidays...

Happy Holidays...
...from "Star Wars"

Massachusetts "poor" economy

Massachusetts "poor" economy
Massachusetts is one of the wealthiest states, but it is also very inequitable. For example, it boasts the nation's most lucrative lottery, which is just a system of regressive taxation so that the corporate elite get to pay less in taxes!

Reese Witherspoon

Reese Witherspoon
Hollywood Actress

Peter G. Arlos.

Peter G. Arlos.
Arlos is shown in his Pittsfield office in early 2000.

Turnpike OK's hefty toll hikes

Turnpike OK's hefty toll hikes
Big Dig - East-west commuters take hit; Fees at tunnels would double. 11/15/2008.

The Pink Panther 2

The Pink Panther 2
Starring Steve Martin

Police ABUSE

Police ABUSE
I was a victim of Manchester Police Officer John Cunningham's ILLEGAL USES of FORCE! John Cunningham was reprimanded by the Chief of Police for disrespecting me. John Cunningham yelled at a witness: "I don't care if he (Jonathan Melle) is disabled!"

Barack Obama

Barack Obama
The 44th US President!

Vote

Vote
Elections

The Bailout & the economic stimulus check

The Bailout & the economic stimulus check
A political cartoon by Dan Wasserman

A rainbow over Boston

A rainbow over Boston
"Rainbows galore" 10/2/2008

Our nation's leaders!

Our nation's leaders!
President Bush with both John McCain & Barack Obama - 9/25/2008.

Massachusetts & Big Dig: Big hike in tolls for Pike looming (9/26/2008).

Massachusetts & Big Dig: Big hike in tolls for Pike looming (9/26/2008).
$5 rise at tunnels is one possibility $1 jump posed for elsewhere.

Mary E Carey

Mary E Carey
My FAVORITE Journalist EVER!

9/11/2008 - A Show of Unity!

9/11/2008 - A Show of Unity!
John McCain and Barack Obama appeared together at ground zero in New York City - September 11, 2008.

John McCain...

John McCain...
...has all but abandoned the positions on taxes, torture and immigration. (A cartoon by Dan Wasserman. September 2008).

Dan Wasserman

Dan Wasserman
The deregulated chickens come home to roost... in all our pocketbooks. September 2008.

Sarah Palin's phobia

Sarah Palin's phobia
A scripted candidate! (A cartoon by Dan Wasserman).

Dan Wasserman

Dan Wasserman
Family FInances - September, 2008.

Mark E. Roy

Mark E. Roy
Ward 1 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Theodore “Ted” L. Gatsas

Theodore “Ted” L. Gatsas
Ward 2 Alderman (& NH State Senator) for Manchester, NH (2008).

Peter M. Sullivan

Peter M. Sullivan
Ward 3 (downtown) Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Jim Roy

Jim Roy
Ward 4 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Ed Osborne

Ed Osborne
Ward 5 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Real R. Pinard

Real R. Pinard
Ward 6 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

William P. Shea

William P. Shea
Ward 7 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Betsi DeVries

Betsi DeVries
Ward 8 Alder-woman (& NH State Senator) for Manchester, NH (2008).

Michael Garrity

Michael Garrity
Ward 9 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

George Smith

George Smith
Ward 10 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Russ Ouellette

Russ Ouellette
Ward 11 Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Kelleigh (Domaingue) Murphy

Kelleigh (Domaingue) Murphy
Ward 12 Alder-woman for Manchester, NH (2008).

“Mike” Lopez

“Mike” Lopez
At-Large Alderman for Manchester, NH. (2008).

Daniel P. O’Neil

Daniel P. O’Neil
At-Large Alderman for Manchester, NH (2008).

Sarah Palin for Vice President.

Sarah Palin for Vice President.
Republican John McCain made the surprise pick of Alaska's governor Sarah Palin as his running mate today, August 29, 2008.

U.S. Representative John Olver, D-Amherst, Massachusetts.

U.S. Representative John Olver, D-Amherst, Massachusetts.
Congressman Olver said the country has spent well over a half-trillion dollars on the war in Iraq while the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. 8/25/08.

Ed O'Reilly for US Senate in Massachusetts!

Ed O'Reilly for US Senate in Massachusetts!
John Kerry's 9/2008 challenger in the Democratic Primary.

Shays' Rebellion

Shays' Rebellion
In a tax revolt, Massachusetts farmers fought back during Shays' Rebellion in the mid-1780s after The American Revolutionary War.

Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore
Actress. "The Big Lebowski" is one of my favorite movies. I also like "The Fugitive", too.

Rinaldo Del Gallo III & "Superman"

Rinaldo Del Gallo III & "Superman"
Go to: http://www.berkshirefatherhood.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=699&cntnt01returnid=69

"Income chasm widening in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts"

"Income chasm widening in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts"
The gap between rich and poor has widened substantially in Massachusetts over the past two decades. (8/15/2008).

Dan "Bureaucrat" Bosley

Dan "Bureaucrat" Bosley
"The Bosley Amendment": To create tax loopholes for the wealthiest corporate interests in Massachusetts!

John Edwards and...

John Edwards and...
...Rielle Hunter. WHO CARES?!

Rep. Edward J. Markey

Rep. Edward J. Markey
He wants online-privacy legislation. Some Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Explicit Consent.

Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan
She gained fame with her antiwar vigil outside the Bush ranch.

Olympics kick off in Beijing

Olympics kick off in Beijing
Go USA!

Exxon Mobil 2Q profit sets US record, shares fall

Exxon Mobil 2Q profit sets US record, shares fall
In this May 1, 2008, file photo, a customer pumps gas at an Exxon station in Middleton, Mass. Exxon Mobil Corp. reported second-quarter earnings of $11.68 billion Thursday, July 31, the biggest quarterly profit ever by any U.S. corporation, but the results were well short of Wall Street expectations and its shares fell as markets opened. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole, File) 7/31/2008.

Onota Lake 'Sea Serpent'

Onota Lake 'Sea Serpent'
Some kind of monster on Onota Lake. Five-year-old Tyler Smith rides a 'sea serpent' on Onota Lake in Pittsfield, Mass. The 'monster,' fashioned by Smith's grandfather, first appeared over July 4 weekend. (Photo courtesy of Ron Smith). 7/30/2008.

Al Gore, Jr.

Al Gore, Jr.
Al Gore issues challenge on energy

The Norman Rockwell Museum

The Norman Rockwell Museum
Stockbridge, Massachusetts

"Big Dig"

"Big Dig"
Boston's financially wasteful pork barrel project!

"Big Dig"

"Big Dig"
Boston's pork barrel public works project cost 50 times more than the original price!

Mary E Carey

Mary E Carey
My favorite journalist EVER!

U.S. Rep. John Olver, state Sen. Stan Rosenberg and Selectwomen Stephanie O'Keeffe and Alisa Brewer

U.S. Rep. John Olver, state Sen. Stan Rosenberg and Selectwomen Stephanie O'Keeffe and Alisa Brewer
Note: Photo from Mary E Carey's Blog.

Tanglewood

Tanglewood
Boston Symphony Orchestra music director James Levine.

Google

Google
Chagall

Jimmy Ruberto

Jimmy Ruberto
Faces multiple persecutions under the Massachusetts "Ethics" conflict of interest laws.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama
Obama vows $500m in faith-based aid.

John McCain

John McCain
He is with his wife, Cindy, who were both met by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe (right) upon arriving in Cartagena.

Daniel Duquette

Daniel Duquette
Sold Mayor James M. Ruberto of Pittsfield two tickets to the 2004 World Series at face value.

Hillary & Barack in Unity, NH - 6/27/2008

Hillary & Barack in Unity, NH - 6/27/2008
Clinton tells Obama, crowd in Unity, N.H.: 'We are one party'

John Forbes Kerry

John Forbes Kerry
Wanna-be Prez?

WALL-E

WALL-E
"out of this World"

Crisis in the Congo - Ben Affleck

Crisis in the Congo - Ben Affleck
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/popup?id=5057139&contentIndex=1&page=1&start=false - http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=5234555&page=1

Jeanne Shaheen

Jeanne Shaheen
NH's Democratic returning candidate for U.S. Senate

"Wall-E"

"Wall-E"
a cool robot

Ed O'Reilly

Ed O'Reilly
www.edoreilly.com

Go Celtics!

Go Celtics!
World Champions - 2008

Go Red Sox!

Go Red Sox!
J.D. Drew gets the same welcome whenever he visits the City of Brotherly Love: "Booooooo!"; Drew has been vilified in Philadelphia since refusing to sign with the Phillies after they drafted him in 1997...

Joe Kelly Levasseur & Joe Briggs

Joe Kelly Levasseur & Joe Briggs
www.2joes.org

NH Union Leader

NH Union Leader
Editorial Cartoon

Celtics - World Champions!

Celtics - World Champions!
www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/gallery/06_18_08_front_pages/ - www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/gallery/06_17_08_finals_game_6/ - www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/gallery/06_17_08_celebration/ - www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/gallery/06_15_08_celtics_championships/

"The Nation"

"The Nation"
A "Liberal" weekly political news magazine. Katrina vanden Heuvel.

TV - PBS: NOW

TV - PBS: NOW
http://www.pbs.org/now

The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone
List of Twilight Zone episodes - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Twilight_Zone_episodes

Equality for ALL Marriages

Equality for ALL Marriages
I, Jonathan Melle, am a supporter of same sex marriages.

Kobe Bryant leads his time to a Game 5 victory.

Kobe Bryant leads his time to a Game 5 victory.
L.A. Lakers holds on for the win to force Game 6 at Boston

Mohawk Trail

Mohawk Trail
The 'Hail to the Sunrise' statue in Charlemont is a well-known and easily recognized landmark on the Mohawk Trail. The trail once boasted several souvenir shops, some with motels and restaurants. Now only four remain. (Caroline Bonnivier / Berkshire Eagle Staff).

NASA - June 14, 2008

NASA - June 14, 2008
Space Shuttle Discovery returns to Earth.

Go Celtics! Game # 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals.

Go Celtics! Game # 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals.
Boston took a 20-second timeout, and the Celtics ran off four more points (including this incredible Erving-esque layup from Ray Allen) to build the lead to five points with just 2:10 remaining. Reeling, the Lakers took a full timeout to try to regain their momentum.

Sal DiMasi

Sal DiMasi
Speaker of the Massachusetts State House of Representatives

Kelly Ayotte - Attorney General of New Hampshire

Kelly Ayotte - Attorney General of New Hampshire
http://doj.nh.gov/

John Kerry

John Kerry
He does not like grassroots democracy & being challenged in the 2008 Massachusetts Democratic Party Primary for re-election.

Tim Murray

Tim Murray
Corrupt Lt. Gov. of Massachusetts, 2007 - 2013.

North Adams, Massachusetts

North Adams, Massachusetts
downtown

Howie Carr

Howie Carr
Political Satirist on Massachusetts Corruption/Politics

Polar Bear

Polar Bear
Global Warming

Elizabeth Warren - Web-Site Links

Elizabeth Warren - Web-Site Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren & http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/WarrenAuthor.html

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren
Consumer Crusader

Leon Powe

Leon Powe
Celtics forward Leon Powe finished a fast break with a dunk.

Kevin Garnett

Kevin Garnett
Kevin Garnett reacted during the game.

Rajon Rondo

Rajon Rondo
Rajon Rondo finished a first half fast break with a dunk.

Teamwork

Teamwork
Los Angeles Lakers teammates help Pau Gasol (16) from the floor in the second quarter.

Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bryant took a shot in the first half of Game 2.

Kendrick Perkins

Kendrick Perkins
Kendrick Perkins (right) backed down Lamar Odom (left) during first half action.

Go Celtics!

Go Celtics!
The Boston Symphony Orchestra performed the national anthem prior to Game 2.

K.G.!

K.G.!
Garnett reacted to a hard dunk in the first quarter.

Paul Pierce

Paul Pierce
Paul Pierce reacted after hitting a three upon his return to the game since leaving with an injury.

Go Celtics!

Go Celtics!
Kobe Bryant (left) and Paul Pierce (right) squared off in the second half of the game.

James Taylor

James Taylor
Sings National Anthem at Celtics Game.

John Forbes Kerry & Deval Patrick

John Forbes Kerry & Deval Patrick
Attended Celtics Game.

Greats of the NBA: Dr. J, Bill Russell, & Kareem!

Greats of the NBA: Dr. J, Bill Russell, & Kareem!
Attend Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals.

Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis
The actor (left) and his date were in the crowd before the Celtics game.

John Kerry

John Kerry
Golddigger attends Celtics game

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton
Ends her 2008 bid for Democratic Party nomination

Nonnie Burnes

Nonnie Burnes
Massachusetts Insurance Commish & former Judge

Jones Library

Jones Library
Amherst, Massachusetts

Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton

Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton
2008 Democratic Primary

"US vs Exxon and Halliburton"

"US vs Exxon and Halliburton"
U.S. Senator John Sununu took more than $220,000 from big oil.

Jeanne Shaheen

Jeanne Shaheen
4- U.S. Senate - 2008

William Pignatelli

William Pignatelli
Hack Rep. "Smitty" with Lynne Blake

Ben Bernanke

Ben Bernanke
Federal Reserve Chairman

Gazettenet.com

Gazettenet.com
www.gazettenet.com/beta/

Boys' & Girls' Club

Boys' & Girls' Club
Melville Street, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Denis Guyer

Denis Guyer
Dalton State Representative

The Berkshire Eagle

The Berkshire Eagle
Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Carmen Massimiano

Carmen Massimiano
Williams College - May 2008

Larry Bird & Magic Johnson

Larry Bird & Magic Johnson
www.boston.com/lifestyle/gallery/when_the_celtics_were_cool/

Regressive Taxation! via State Lotteries

Regressive Taxation! via State Lotteries
New Massachusetts state lottery game hits $600 million in sales!

Andrea Nuciforo

Andrea Nuciforo
"Luciforo"

John Barrett III

John Barrett III
Long-time Mayor of North Adams Massachusetts

Shine On

Shine On

Elmo

Elmo
cool!

Paul Pierce

Paul Pierce
Paul Pierce kissed the Eastern Conference trophy. 5/30/2008. AP Photo.

Kevin Garnett & Richard Hamilton

Kevin Garnett & Richard Hamilton
Kevin Garnett (left) talked to Pistons guard Richard Hamilton (right) after the Celtics' victory in Game 6. 5/30/2008. Reuters Photo.

Paul Pierce

Paul Pierce
Paul Pierce showed his team colors as the Celtics closed out the Pistons in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals. 5/30/2008. Globe Staff Photo / Jim Davis.

Joseph Kelly Levasseur

Joseph Kelly Levasseur
One of my favorite politicians!

Mary E Carey

Mary E Carey
In the Big Apple: NYC! She is the coolest!

Guyer & Kerry

Guyer & Kerry
My 2nd least favorite picture EVER!

Mary Carey

Mary Carey
My favorite journalist EVER!

Nuciforo & Ruberto

Nuciforo & Ruberto
My least favorite picture EVER!

Jeanne Shaheen

Jeanne Shaheen
U.S. Senate - 2008

NH Fisher Cats

NH Fisher Cats
AA Baseball - Toronto Blue Jays affiliate

Manchester, NH

Manchester, NH
Police Patch

Michael Briggs

Michael Briggs
#83 - We will never forget

Michael "Stix" Addison

Michael "Stix" Addison
http://unionleader.com/channel.aspx/News?channel=2af17ff4-f73b-4c44-9f51-092e828e1131

Charlie Gibson

Charlie Gibson
ABC News anchor

Scott McClellan

Scott McClellan
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/scott_mcclellan/index.html?inline=nyt-per

Boise, Idaho

Boise, Idaho
Downtown Boise Idaho

John Forbes Kerry

John Forbes Kerry
Legislative Hearing in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, BCC, on Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson
My favorite classical U.S. President!

NH Governor John Lynch

NH Governor John Lynch
Higher Taxes, Higher Tolls

Paul Hodes

Paul Hodes
My favorite Congressman!

Portland Sea Dogs

Portland Sea Dogs
AA Red Sox

New York

New York
Magnet

Massachusetts

Massachusetts
Magnet

New Hampshire

New Hampshire
Magnet

New Hampshire

New Hampshire
Button

Carmen Massimiano

Carmen Massimiano
"Luciforo" tried to send me to Carmen's Jail during the Spring & Summer of 1998.

Kay Khan - Massachusetts State Representative

Kay Khan - Massachusetts State Representative
www.openmass.org/members/show/174

Luciforo

Luciforo
Andrea F Nuciforo II

B-Eagle

B-Eagle
Pittsfield's monopoly/only daily newspaper

Jon Lester - Go Red Sox!

Jon Lester - Go Red Sox!
A Red Sox No Hitter on 5/19/2008!

Go Red Sox!

Go Red Sox!
Dustin Pedroia & Manny Ramirez

U.S. Flag

U.S. Flag
God Bless America!

Jonathan Melle's Blog

Jonathan Melle's Blog
Hello, Everyone!

Molly Bish

Molly Bish
We will never forget!

Go Celtics!

Go Celtics!
Celtics guard Rajon Rondo listens to some advice from Celtics head coach Doc Rivers in the first half.

Go Celtics!

Go Celtics!
Celtics forward Kevin Garnett and Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace embrace at the end of the game.

Go Red Sox!

Go Red Sox!
Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon calls for the ball as he charges toward first base. Papelbon made the out en route to picking up his 14th save of the season.

Go Red Sox!

Go Red Sox!
Red Sox starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka throws to Royals David DeJesus during the first inning.

Go Red Sox!

Go Red Sox!
Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka delivers a pitch to Royals second baseman Mark Grudzielanek during the second inning.

Go Red Sox!

Go Red Sox!
Red Sox right fielder J.D. Drew is welcomed to home plate by teammates Mike Lowell (left), Kevin Youkilis (2nd left) and Manny Ramirez after he hit a grand slam in the second inning.

Go Red Sox!

Go Red Sox!
Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell crosses the plate after hitting a grand slam during the sixth inning. Teammates Manny Ramirez and Jacoby Ellsbury scored on the play. The Red Sox went on to win 11-8 to complete a four-game sweep and perfect homestand.

JD Drew - Go Red Sox

JD Drew - Go Red Sox
www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/gallery/05_22_08_sox_royals/

Thank you for serving; God Bless America!

Thank you for serving; God Bless America!
Master Sgt. Kara B. Stackpole, of Westfield, holds her daughter, Samantha, upon her return today to Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee. She is one of the 38 members of the 439th Aeromedical Staging Squadron who returned after a 4-month deployment in Iraq. Photo by Dave Roback / The Republican.

Kathi-Anne Reinstein

Kathi-Anne Reinstein
www.openmass.org/members/show/175

Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy
Tragic diagnosis: Get well Senator!

Google doodle - Jonathan Melle Internet search

Google doodle - Jonathan Melle Internet search
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=jonathan+melle+blogurl:http://jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/&ie=UTF-8

John Forbes Kerry

John Forbes Kerry
Billionaire U.S. Senator gives address to MCLA graduates in North Adams, Massachusetts in mid-May 2008

Andrea Nuciforo

Andrea Nuciforo
"Luciforo"

A Red Sox Fan in Paris, France

A Red Sox Fan in Paris, France
Go Red Sox!

Rinaldo Del Gallo III

Rinaldo Del Gallo III
Interviewed on local TV

Andrea Nuciforo

Andrea Nuciforo
Luciforo!

John Adams

John Adams
#2 U.S. President

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
I stood under a tree on the afternoon of May 9, 2008, on the foregrounds of the NH State House - www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/nhinsider/vpost?id=2967773

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
Inside the front lobby of the NH State House

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
Bill Clinton campaign memorabilia

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
Liberty Bell & NH State House

Jon Keller

Jon Keller
Boston based political analyst

Jon Keller

Jon Keller
Boston based political analyst

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
Franklin Pierce Statue #14 U.S. President

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
NH State House

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
Stop the War NOW!

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
"Mr. Melle, tear down this Blog!"

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
I stood next to a JFK photo

Jonathan Levine, Publisher

Jonathan Levine, Publisher
The Pittsfield Gazette Online

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
I made rabbit ears with John & George

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
I made antenna ears with John & George

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
I impersonated Howard Dean

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
mock-voting

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
pretty ladies -/- Go to: http://www.wgir.com/cc-common/cc_photopop20.html?eventID=28541&pagecontent=&pagenum=4 - Go to: http://current.com/items/88807921_veterans_should_come_first_not_last# - http://www.mcam23.com/cgi-bin/cutter.cgi?c_function=STREAM?c_feature=EDIT?dir_catagory=10MorningRadio?dir_folder=2JoesClips?dir_file=JonathanMelle-090308? -

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
Go Red Sox! Me at Fenway Park

Mary E. Carey

Mary E. Carey
My favorite journalist! Her voice sings for the Voiceless. -/- Go to: http://aboutamherst.blogspot.com/search?q=melle -/- Go to: http://ongeicocaveman.blogspot.com/search?q=melle

Velvet Jesus

Velvet Jesus
Mary Carey blogs about my political writings. This is a picture of Jesus from her childhood home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. -//- "How Can I Keep From Singing" : My life goes on in endless song / Above Earth's lamentations, / I hear the real, though far-off hymn / That hails a new creation. / / Through all the tumult and the strife / I hear its music ringing, / It sounds an echo in my soul. / How can I keep from singing? / / Whey tyrants tremble in their fear / And hear their death knell ringing, / When friends rejoice both far and near / How can I keep from singing? / / In prison cell and dungeon vile / Our thoughts to them are winging / When friends by shame are undefiled / How can I keep from singing?

www.truthdig.com

www.truthdig.com
www.truthdig.com

Jonathan Melle

Jonathan Melle
Concord NH

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=loc&newest=1&addr=&zip=01201&search=Search

Barack Obama

Barack Obama
smiles & beer

Jonathan Lothrop

Jonathan Lothrop
A Pittsfield City Councilor

Michael L. Ward

Michael L. Ward
A Pittsfield City Councilor

Peter Marchetti - Pittsfield's City Councilor at Large

Peter Marchetti - Pittsfield's City Councilor at Large
Pete always sides with the wealthy's political interests.

Gerald Lee - Pittsfield's City Council Prez

Gerald Lee - Pittsfield's City Council Prez
Gerald Lee told me that I am a Social Problem; Lee executes a top-down system of governance. R.I.P. Gerry Lee.

Matt Kerwood - Pittsfield's Councilor at Large

Matt Kerwood - Pittsfield's Councilor at Large
Kerwood poured coffee drinks for Jane Swift

Louis Costi

Louis Costi
Pittsfield City Councilor

Lewis Markham

Lewis Markham
Pittsfield City Councilor

Kevin Sherman - Pittsfield City Councilor

Kevin Sherman - Pittsfield City Councilor
Sherman ran for Southern Berkshire State Rep against Smitty Pignatelli; Sherman is a good guy.

Anthony Maffuccio

Anthony Maffuccio
Pittsfield City Councilor

Linda Tyer

Linda Tyer
Pittsfield City Councilor

Daniel Bianchi

Daniel Bianchi
A Pittsfield City Councilor

The Democratic Donkey

The Democratic Donkey
Democratic Party Symbol

Paramount

Paramount
What is Paramount to you?

NH's Congresswoman

NH's Congresswoman
Carol Shea-Porter, Democrat

Sam Adams Beer

Sam Adams Beer
Boston Lager

Ratatouille

Ratatouille
Disney Animation

Ruberto Details Plans for Success - January 07, 2008

Ruberto Details Plans for Success - January 07, 2008
"Luciforo" swears in Mayor Ruberto. Pittsfield Politics at its very worst: 2 INSIDER POWERBROKERS! Where is Carmen Massimiano? He must be off to the side.

Abe

Abe
Lincoln

Optimus Prime

Optimus Prime
Leader of the Autobots

Optimus Prime

Optimus Prime
1984 Autobot Transformer Leader

Cleanup Agreements - GE & Pittsfield's PCBs toxic waste sites

Cleanup Agreements - GE & Pittsfield's PCBs toxic waste sites
www.epa.gov/region1/ge/cleanupagreement.html

GE/Housatonic River Site: Introduction

GE/Housatonic River Site: Introduction
www.epa.gov/region1/ge/

GE/Housatonic River Site - Reports

GE/Housatonic River Site - Reports
www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/opca-reports.html

US EPA - Contact - Pittsfield's PCBs toxic waste sites

US EPA - Contact -  Pittsfield's PCBs toxic waste sites
www.epa.gov/region1/ge/contactinfo.html

GE Corporate Logo - Pittsfield's PCBs toxic waste sites

GE Corporate Logo - Pittsfield's PCBs toxic waste sites
www.epa.gov/region1/ge/index.html

Commonwealth Connector

Commonwealth Connector
Commonwealth Care

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Healthcare Reform

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Healthcare Reform

Network Health Forward - A Commonwealth Care Plan

Network Health Forward - A Commonwealth Care Plan
Massachusetts Health Reform

Network Health Together: A MassHealth Plan - Commonwealth Care

Network Health Together: A MassHealth Plan - Commonwealth Care
Massachusetts Health Reform

www.network-health.org

www.network-health.org
Massachusetts Health Reform

Neighborhood Health Plan - Commonwealth Care

Neighborhood Health Plan - Commonwealth Care
Massachusetts Health Reform

Fallon Community Health Plan - Commonwealth Care

Fallon Community Health Plan - Commonwealth Care
Massachusetts Health Reform

BMC HealthNet Plan

BMC HealthNet Plan
Massachusetts Health Reform

Massachusetts Health Reform

Massachusetts Health Reform
Eligibility Chart: 2007

Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare

Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare
Massachusetts Health Reform

Business Peaks

Business Peaks
Voodoo Economics

Laffer Curve - Corporate Elite

Laffer Curve - Corporate Elite
Reagonomics: Supply Side

Corporate Elite Propaganda

Corporate Elite Propaganda
Mock Liberal Democratic Socialism Thinking

Real Estate Blues

Real Estate Blues
www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/2008/0316/

PEACE

PEACE
End ALL Wars!

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of Speech
Norman Rockwell's World War II artwork depicting America's values

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln
A young Abe Lincoln

RACHEL KAPRIELIAN

RACHEL KAPRIELIAN
www.openmass.org/members/show/218 - www.rachelkaprielian.com

Jennifer M. Callahan - Massachusetts State Representative

Jennifer M. Callahan - Massachusetts State Representative
www.openmass.org/members/show/164 - www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/04/legislator_describes_threat_as_unnerving/

Human Rights for ALL Peoples!

Human Rights for ALL Peoples!
My #1 Political Belief!

Anne Frank

Anne Frank
Amsterdam, Netherlands, Europe

A young woman Hillary supporter

A young woman Hillary supporter
This excellent picture captures a youth's excitement

Hillary Clinton with Natalie Portman

Hillary Clinton with Natalie Portman
My favorite Actress!

Alan Chartock

Alan Chartock
WAMC public radio in Albany, NY; Political columnist who writes about Berkshire County area politics; Strong supporter for Human Rights for ALL Peoples

OpenCongress.Org

OpenCongress.Org
This web-site uses some of my Blog postings

OpenMass.org

OpenMass.org
This web-site uses some of my blog postings!

Shannon O'Brien

Shannon O'Brien
One of my favorite politicians! She stands for the People first!

The Massachusetts State House

The Massachusetts State House
"The Almighty Golden Dome" - www.masslegislature.tv -

Sara Hathaway

Sara Hathaway
Former Mayor of Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Andrea F. Nuciforo, Jr.

Andrea F. Nuciforo, Jr.
A corrupt Pol who tried to put me in Jail

Andrea F. Nuciforo, Jr.

Andrea F. Nuciforo, Jr.
Another view of Pittsfield's inbred, multigenerational political prince. Luciforo!

Luciforo

Luciforo
Nuciforo's nickname

"Andy" Nuciforo

"Andy" Nuciforo
Luciforo!

Carmen C. Massimiano, Jr., Berkshire County Sheriff (Jailer)

Carmen C. Massimiano, Jr., Berkshire County Sheriff (Jailer)
Nuciforo's henchman! Nuciforo tried to send me to Carmen's Jail

Andrea Nuciforo Jr

Andrea Nuciforo Jr
Shhh! Luciforo's other job is working as a private attorney defending wealthy Boston-area corporate insurance companies

Berkshire County Sheriff (Jailer) Carmen C. Massimiano, Jr.

Berkshire County Sheriff (Jailer) Carmen C. Massimiano, Jr.
Nuciforo tried to send me to Carmen's Jail! Carmen sits with the Congressman, John Olver

Congressman John Olver

Congressman John Olver
Nuciforo's envy

The Dome of the U.S. Capitol

The Dome of the U.S. Capitol
Our Beacon of American Democracy

Nuciforo's architect

Nuciforo's architect
Mary O'Brien in red with scarf

Sara Hathaway (www.brynmawr.edu)

Sara Hathaway (www.brynmawr.edu)
Former-Mayor of Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Nuciforo intimidated her, along with another woman, from running in a democratic state election in the Spring of 2006!

Andrea F. Nuciforo II

Andrea F. Nuciforo II
Pittsfield Politics Pot $

Berkshire County Republican Association

Berkshire County Republican Association
Go to: www.fcgop.blogspot.com

Denis Guyer

Denis Guyer
Dalton State Representative

John Forbes Kerry & Denis Guyer

John Forbes Kerry & Denis Guyer
U.S. Senator & State Representative

John Kerry

John Kerry
Endorses Barack Obama for Prez then visits Berkshire County

Dan Bosley

Dan Bosley
A Bureaucrat impostoring as a Legislator!

Ben Downing

Ben Downing
Berkshire State Senator

Christopher N Speranzo

Christopher N Speranzo
Pittsfield's ANOINTED State Representative

Peter J. Larkin

Peter J. Larkin
Corrupt Lobbyist

GE - Peter Larkin's best friend!

GE - Peter Larkin's best friend!
GE's FRAUDULENT Consent Decree with Pittsfield, Massachusetts, will end up KILLING many innocent school children & other local residents!

GE's CEO Jack Welch

GE's CEO Jack Welch
The Corporate System's Corporate Elite's King

Economics: Where Supply meets Demand

Economics: Where Supply meets Demand
Equilibrium

GE & Pittsfield, Massachusetts

GE & Pittsfield, Massachusetts
In 2007, GE sold its Plastics Division to a Saudi company. Now all that is left over by GE are its toxic PCB pollutants that cause cancer in many Pittsfield residents.

Mayor James M Ruberto

Mayor James M Ruberto
A small-time pol chooses to serve the corporate elite & other elites over the people.

Governor Deval Patrick

Governor Deval Patrick
Deval shakes hands with Mayors in Berkshire County

Deval Patrick

Deval Patrick
Governor of Massachusetts

Pittsfield High School

Pittsfield High School
Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Sara Hathaway

Sara Hathaway
Pittsfield's former Mayor

Rinaldo Del Gallo III

Rinaldo Del Gallo III
Pittsfield Attorney focusing on Father's Rights Probate Court Legal Issues, & Local Politician and Political Observer

Rinaldo Del Gallo III

Rinaldo Del Gallo III
Very Intelligent Political Activists in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq. is the spokesperson of the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition. He has been practicing family law and has been a member of the Massachusetts bar since 1996.

Mayor Ed Reilly

Mayor Ed Reilly
He supports Mayor Ruberto & works as a municipal Attorney. As Mayor, he backed Bill Weld for Governor in 1994, despite being a Democrat. He was joined by Carmen Massimiano & John Barrett III, the long-standing Mayor of North Adams.

Manchester, NH Mayor Frank Guinta

Manchester, NH Mayor Frank Guinta
Cuts Dental Care for Public School Children-in-Need

Manchester, NH City Hall

Manchester, NH City Hall
My new hometown - view from Hanover St. intersection with Elm St.

Manchester NH City Democrats

Manchester NH City Democrats
Go Dems!

2008 Democratic Candidates for U.S. Prez

2008 Democratic Candidates for U.S. Prez
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards

NH State House Dome

NH State House Dome
Concord, NH

Donna Walto

Donna Walto
Pittsfield Politician -- She strongly opposes Mayor Jim Ruberto's elitist tenure.

Elmo

Elmo
Who doesn't LOVE Elmo?

Hillary Clinton for U.S. President!

Hillary Clinton for U.S. President!
Hillary is for Children. She is my choice in 2008.

The White House in 1800

The White House in 1800
Home of our Presidents of the United States

John Adams

John Adams
2nd President of the USA

Hillary Clinton stands with John Edwards and Joe Biden

Hillary Clinton stands with John Edwards and Joe Biden
Hillary is my choice for U.S. President!

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton
Former President Bill Clinton speaks at the Radisson in Manchester NH 11/16/2007

Barack Obama

Barack Obama
U.S. Senator & Candidate for President

Pittsfield's 3 Women City Councillors - 2004

Pittsfield's 3 Women City Councillors - 2004
Linda Tyer, Pam Malumphy, Tricia Farley-Bouvier

Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
My friend Brian Merzbach reviews baseball parks around the nation.

The Corporate Elite: Rational Incentives for only the wealthy

The Corporate Elite: Rational Incentives for only the wealthy
The Elites double their $ every 6 to 8 years, while the "have-nots" double their $ every generation (or 24 years). Good bye Middle Class!

George Will

George Will
The human satellite voice for the Corporate Elite

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren
The Anti-George Will; Harvard Law School Professor; The Corporate Elite's Worst Nightmare

The Flag of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

The Flag of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
I was born and raised in Pittsfield, Massachusetts

State Senator Stan Rosenberg

State Senator Stan Rosenberg
Democratic State Senator from Amherst, Massachusetts -/- Anti-Stan Rosenberg Blog: rosenbergwatch.blogspot.com

Ellen Story

Ellen Story
Amherst Massachusetts' State Representative

Teen Pregnancy in Pittsfield, Mass.

Teen Pregnancy in Pittsfield, Mass.
Books are being written on Pittsfield's high teen pregancy rates! What some intellectuals do NOT understand about the issue is that TEEN PREGNANCIES in Pittsfield double the statewide average by design - Perverse Incentives!

NH Governor John Lynch

NH Governor John Lynch
Supports $30 Scratch Tickets and other forms of regressive taxation. Another Pol that only serves his Corporate Elite Masters instead of the People!

U.S. Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter

U.S. Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter
The first woman whom the People of New Hampshire have voted in to serve in U.S. Congress

U.S. Congressman Paul Hodes

U.S. Congressman Paul Hodes
A good man who wants to bring progressive changes to Capitol Hill!

Paul Hodes for U.S. Congress

Paul Hodes for U.S. Congress
New Hampshire's finest!

Darth Vader

Darth Vader
Star Wars

Dick Cheney & George W. Bush

Dick Cheney & George W. Bush
The Gruesome Two-some! Stop the Neo-Cons' fascism! End the Iraq War NOW!

WAROPOLY

WAROPOLY
The Inequity of Globalism

Bushopoly!

Bushopoly!
The Corporate Elite have redesigned "The System" to enrich themselves at the expense of the people, masses, have-nots, poor & middle-class families

George W. Bush with Karl Rove

George W. Bush with Karl Rove
Rove was a political strategist with extraordinary influence within the Bush II White House

2008's Republican Prez-field

2008's Republican Prez-field
John McCain, Alan Keyes, Rudy Guiliani, Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, WILLARD Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul

Fall in New England

Fall in New England
Autumn is my favorite season

Picturing America

Picturing America
picturingamerica.neh.gov

Winter Weather Map

Winter Weather Map
3:45PM EST 3-Dec-07

Norman Rockwell Painting

Norman Rockwell Painting
Thanksgiving

Norman Rockwell Painting

Norman Rockwell Painting
Depiction of American Values in mid-20th Century America

Larry Bird #33

Larry Bird #33
My favorite basketball player of my childhood

Boston Celtics Basketball - 2007-2008

Boston Celtics Basketball - 2007-2008
Kevin Garnett hugs James Posey

Paul Pierce

Paul Pierce
All heart! Awesome basketball star for The Boston Celtics.

Tom Brady

Tom Brady
Go Patriots!

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch
Owner of Fox News - CORPORATE ELITE!

George Stephanopolous

George Stephanopolous
A Corporate Elite Political News Analyst

Robert Redford

Robert Redford
Starred in the movie "Lions for Lambs"

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep
Plays a jaded journalist with integrity in the movie "Lions for Lambs"

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise plays the Neo-Con D.C. Pol purely indoctrinated by the Corporate Elite's political agenda in the Middle East

CHARLIZE THERON

CHARLIZE THERON
"I want to say I've never been surrounded by so many fake breasts, but I went to the Academy Awards."

Amherst Town Library

Amherst Town Library
Amherst, NH - www.amherstlibrary.org

Manchester NH Library

Manchester NH Library
I use the library's automated timed 1-hour-per-day Internet computers to post on my Blog - www.manchester.lib.nh.us

Manchester NH's Palace Theater

Manchester NH's Palace Theater
Manchester NH decided to restore its Palace Theater

Pittsfield's Palace Theater

Pittsfield's Palace Theater
Pittsfield tore down this landmark on North Street in favor of a parking lot

Pleasant Street Theater

Pleasant Street Theater
Amherst, Massachusetts

William "Shitty" Pignatelli

William "Shitty" Pignatelli
A top down & banal State House Pol from Lenox Massachusetts -- A GOOD MAN!

The CIA & Mind Control

The CIA & Mind Control
Did the CIA murder people by proxy assassins?

Skull & Bones

Skull & Bones
Yale's Elite

ImpeachBush.org

ImpeachBush.org
I believe President Bush should be IMPEACHED because he is waging an illegal and immoral war against Iraq!

Bob Feuer drumming for U.S. Congress v John Olver in 2008

Bob Feuer drumming for U.S. Congress v John Olver in 2008
www.blog.bobfeuer.us

Abe Lincoln

Abe Lincoln
The 16th President of the USA

Power

Power
Peace

Global Warming Mock Giant Thermometer

Global Warming Mock Giant Thermometer
A member of Green Peace activist sets up a giant thermometer as a symbol of global warming during their campaign in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007. World leaders launch marathon negotiations Monday on how to fight global warming, which left unchecked could cause devastating sea level rises, send millions further into poverty and lead to the mass extinction of plants and animals.

combat global warming...

combat global warming...
...or risk economic and environmental disaster caused by rising temperatures

www.climatecrisiscoalition.org

www.climatecrisiscoalition.org
P.O. Box 125, South Lee, MA 01260, (413) 243-5665, tstokes@kyotoandbeyond.org, www.kyotoandbeyond.org

3 Democratic presidentional candidates

3 Democratic presidentional candidates
Democratic presidential candidates former senator John Edwards (from right) and Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd before the National Public Radio debate yesterday (12/4/2007).

The UN Seal

The UN Seal
An archaic & bureaucratic post WW2 top-down, non-democratic institution that also stands for some good governance values

Superman

Superman
One of my favorite childhood heroes and movies

Web-Site on toxic toys

Web-Site on toxic toys
www.healthytoys.org

Batman

Batman
One of my favorite super-heroes

Deval Patrick & Denis Guyer

Deval Patrick & Denis Guyer
Massachusetts' Governor stands with Dalton's State Rep. Denis E. Guyer.

Bill Cosby & Denis Guyer

Bill Cosby & Denis Guyer
TV Star Bill Cosby stands with Denis E. Guyer

Denis Guyer with his supporters

Denis Guyer with his supporters
Dalton State Representative

Denis Guyer goes to college

Denis Guyer goes to college
Dalton State Representative

Peter Marchetti

Peter Marchetti
He is my second cousin. Pete Marchetti favors MONEY, not fairness!

Matt Barron & Denis Guyer with couple

Matt Barron & Denis Guyer with couple
Matt Barron plays DIRTY politics against his opponents!

Nat Karns

Nat Karns
Top-Down Executive Director of the ELITIST Berkshire Regional Planning Commission

Human Rights for All Peoples & people

Human Rights for All Peoples & people
Stop Anti-Semitism

Massachusetts State Treasurer Tim Cahill

Massachusetts State Treasurer Tim Cahill
State House, Room 227, Boston, MA 02133, 617-367-6900, www.mass.gov/treasury/

Massachusetts State Attorney General Martha Coakley

Massachusetts State Attorney General Martha Coakley
1350 Main Street, Springfield, MA 01103, 413-784-1240 / McCormick Building, One Asburton Place, Boston, MA 02108, 617-727-4765 / marthacoakley.com / www.ago.state.ma.us

Bush v. Gore: December 12, 2007, was the seventh anniversary, the 5-4 Supreme Court decision...

Bush v. Gore: December 12, 2007, was the seventh anniversary, the 5-4 Supreme Court decision...
www.takebackthecourt.org - A political billboard near my downtown apartment in Manchester, NH

Marc Murgo

Marc Murgo
An old friend of mine from Pittsfield

Downtown Manchester, NH

Downtown Manchester, NH
www.newhampshire.com/nh-towns/manchester.aspx

Marisa Tomei

Marisa Tomei
Movie Actress

Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities (MCHC)

Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities (MCHC)
www.masschc.org/issue.php

Mike Firestone & Anna Weisfeiler

Mike Firestone & Anna Weisfeiler
Mike Firestone works in Manchester NH for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign

James Pindell

James Pindell
Covers NH Primary Politcs for The Boston Globe

U.S. History - Declaration

U.S. History - Declaration
A 19th century engraving shows Benjamin Franklin, left, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Philip Livingston and Roger Sherman at work on the Declaration of Independence.

Boston Globe Photos of the Week - www.boston.com/bostonglobe/gallery/

Boston Globe Photos of the Week - www.boston.com/bostonglobe/gallery/
Sybregje Palenstijn (left), who plays Sarah Godbertson at Plimouth Plantation, taught visitors how to roast a turkey on a spit. The plantation often sees a large influx of visitors during the holiday season.

Chris Hodgkins

Chris Hodgkins
Another special interest Berkshire Pol who could not hold his "WATER" on Beacon Hill's State House!

The Big Dig - 15 tons of concrete fell from a tunnel ceiling onto Milena Del Valle's car.

The Big Dig - 15 tons of concrete fell from a tunnel ceiling onto Milena Del Valle's car.
Most of Boston's Big Dig highway remains closed, after a woman was crushed when 15 tons of concrete fell from a tunnel ceiling onto her car. (ABC News)

Jane Swift

Jane Swift
Former Acting Governor of Massachusetts & Berkshire State Senator

Paul Cellucci

Paul Cellucci
Former Massachusetts Governor

William Floyd Weld

William Floyd Weld
$80 Million Trust Fund Former Governor of Massachusetts

Mike Dukakis

Mike Dukakis
Former Governor of Massachusetts

Mary E. Carey

Mary E. Carey
Amherst, Massachusetts, Journalist and Blogger

Caveman

Caveman
www.ongeicocaveman.blogspot.com

Peter G. Arlos

Peter G. Arlos
"The biggest challenge Pittsfield faces is putting its fiscal house in order. The problem is that doing so requires structural changes in local government, many of which I have advocated for years, but which officials do not have the will to implement. Fiscal responsibility requires more than shifting funds from one department to another. Raising taxes and fees and cutting services are not the answer. Structural changes in the way services are delivered and greater productivity are the answer, and without these changes the city's fiscal crisis will not be solved."

James M. Ruberto

James M. Ruberto
"Pittsfield's biggest challenge is to find common ground for a better future. The city is at a crossroads. On one hand, our quality of life is challenged. On the other hand, some important building blocks are in place that could be a strong foundation for our community. Pittsfield needs to unite for the good of its future. The city needs an experienced businessman and a consensus builder who will invite the people to hold him accountable."

Matt Kerwood

Matt Kerwood
Pittsfield's Councilor-At-Large. Go to: extras.berkshireeagle.com/NeBe/profiles/12.htm

Gerald M. Lee

Gerald M. Lee
Pittsfield's City Council Prez. Top-down governance of the first order!

Mary Carey

Mary Carey
Mary with student

Boston Red Sox

Boston Red Sox
Jonathan Papelbon celebrates with Jason Varitek

Free Bernard Baran!

Free Bernard Baran!
www.freebaran.org

Political Intelligence

Political Intelligence
Capitol Hill

Sherwood Guernsey II

Sherwood Guernsey II
Wealthy Williamstown Political Activist & Pittsfield Attorney

Mary Carey 2

Mary Carey 2
California Pol & porn star

Pittsfield's Good Old Boy Network - Political Machine!

Pittsfield's Good Old Boy Network - Political Machine!
Andy "Luciforo" swears in Jimmy Ruberto for the returning Mayor's 3rd term

Berkshire Grown

Berkshire Grown
www.berkshiregrown.org

Rambo

Rambo

The Mount was built in 1902 & was home to Edith Wharton (1862-1937) from 1903 to 1908.

The Mount was built in 1902 & was home to Edith Wharton (1862-1937) from 1903 to 1908.
The Mount, the historic home in Lenox of famed American novelist Edith Wharton, is facing foreclosure.

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