“Pursuing SYDA,” Bottom Feeder, 1/14
Time to move on
Lisa Abbot, manager of the Oakland ashram, might claim that SYDA has “confronted the issue of sexual abuse” by asking the “teacher” in question to leave SYDA. However, if you were to ask virtually any member of SYDA why the teacher in question left, they would repeat the party line: X left SYDA because it was “time for him to move on in his sadhana, guided by the shakti.” In SYDA there is no such thing as accountability or honest, open discussion of issues affecting the community. Information is withheld as a matter of policy. Living in a city where corruption and abuse within the Roman Catholic Church have become such a public issue, I often wonder how SYDA manages to keep sweeping its considerable dirty laundry under the carpet. Money talks, I guess.
Sadhvi Sokoloff, former SYDA member, Scituate, Mass.
I only did it for the shaktipat
Like Meg Ryan, and a lot of other people, I too carry a picture of my guru, Swami Muktananda, everywhere I go. Muktananda himself said you should test out any prospective guru thoroughly before you commit to him. Like most organizations, SYDA has its share of scandals, soap opera, and human drama, as well as legal entanglements. My only complaint with the article was that the graphics didn’t do justice to the beauty of Gurumayi, who is a very beautiful woman in my opinion. Plus I’m keenly interested in SYDA because they can indeed transmit “shaktipat.”
Ace Backwords, Berkeley
A slick, well-oiled scam
I too was involved with SYDA for 22 years and left last year.
In the past year I have been astounded and shocked over the blatant behavior of this organization. To think that sincere seekers’ money, resources, and sacrifice are wasted on untold amounts of lawyers and court cases: hush money, paying off the judges, and really playing God with whomever comes across their path is a most arrogant way of deceit, conceit, and betrayal not just to the injured but also to their loyal flock.
SYDA is a very sophisticated and very slick well-oiled scam.
Adriana Breidenstein, Houston, Tex.
“High Times for Drug Kingpins,” City of Warts, 1/21
Word from the chief
Mr. Thompson’s story is factually incorrect, misleading, and obviously expresses his bias against the mayor and the Oakland Police Department’s efforts to combat open-air drug dealing and violent crime.
Had Mr. Thompson taken the time to do some informed research, he would have learned that his drug-arrest numbers for 2003 (3,935) do not include the last two months of 2003, since this data has not yet been entered into our system.
Additionally, if he had listened to me, versus extracting only that information which supported his original premise, he would have learned that we had a total of eleven officers dedicated to major narcotics investigations in 1999. We currently have nine. Furthermore, we now have a Police and Corrections Team, which includes six officers from the Oakland Police Department, a deputy probation officer, and two state parole agents. This team meets with all newly released parolees each week, and they look for those who have absconded. Their work is based on solid research that shows that parolees and probationers are victims or perpetrators in nearly 50 percent of the city’s homicides.
Mr. Thompson also failed to mention that we doubled the size of our crime-reduction teams in 2002. In addition to making street-level drug arrests, these officers utilize informants and write search warrants for drugs and weapons.
Mr. Thompson might be interested in knowing that last year we reassigned two of our highest-performing officers to our homicide section. These two men are immediately available to homicide investigators and move quickly to pursue homicide suspects, witnesses, and other investigative leads.
Our number-one priority is to reduce violent crime in the city of Oakland. A sophisticated agency does not do this by narrowly focusing on major narcotics investigations. The wise approach has to be much broader, more comprehensive, and thoughtful. We are targeting repeat offenders. We are focusing our efforts in Oakland’s violent crime hot spots. We have stepped up our efforts to abate street-level drug activity, and we will continue to pursue major narcotics traffickers. We are not driven by a desire to boost asset forfeiture revenue.
Richard L. Word, chief of police, Oakland
Chris Thompson responds
I stand by my reporting. Contrary to Chief Word’s claim, the narcotics arrest figures that I cited do include the last two months of 2003 — at least if the data supplied by the chief’s department can be trusted. I used the 2003 crime statistics found on the police department’s own Web site, which include the date and a brief description of every arrest made during the year. According to these figures, Oakland police made 671 drug arrests in November and December. Nikki Kinghorn, the OPD’s director of research and planning, who is responsible for collating the department’s crime statistics, assured me during my reporting that the Web site’s arrest figures were up-to-date. This data shows that drug arrests dropped 17.7 percent the year after the chief disbanded the narcotics investigative unit. As for his assertion that the department currently has nine narcotics investigators, his own Lieutenant Rick Hart, who oversees narcotics investigations, claimed that the department currently has seven — a claim that I reported in the story. Finally, I did report that Word has substituted crime-reduction teams for the narcotics unit, a point that apparently escaped him.
“Flameout of the Armchair Radicals,” City of Warts, 1/14
Cut ’em some slack
I want to commend your recent article on the fragmentation and infighting at SF Indymedia. Given the tawdry rhetoric you culled from their respective Web sites, I expect that your inbox must be burned to a crisp by now.
You are correct in asserting that “anonymous online forums” are ripe for gossip and tend to favor the cult of personality over content. Indymedia adds an evasive political protocol that inexplicably conflates anarchy with democracy. Put ’em together, and you’ve got a recipe for “childish behavior.” Indeed, there is no excuse for personal threats, particularly when aimed at fellow journalists.
And yet your case study of the “catfight,” though a provocative microcosm of the potential pitfalls of independent media, hardly seems an appropriate forum to psychoanalyze the indie media movement as a whole. From the participatory function of citizens reporting news that mainstream media is either unable or unwilling to cover, to a nonviolent outlet for social protest in an age of truncated civil liberties and media consolidation, organizations like Indymedia are engaged in an important experiment. Of course, without corporate and academic infrastructure, their laboratory lacks the necessary experience and professionalism and is thus bound to produce some flawed formulas. But I find your casual dismissal of “armchair radicals” to be a tad naive and provincial. While the rest of the country concocts elaborate schemes to get young couch potatoes to the polls, we are host to a community of vibrant activists who take their politics to the streets and, through a flawed Web site, to the world.
Perhaps you, as I, feel disappointed that the “most promising media outgrowth of the international antiglobalization movement” has yet to reach its full potential. If so, I find it curious that you are so quick to debunk its nonhierarchical organizational structure, inspired by the mobilization strategy in Seattle. It certainly makes your job more difficult when there is no appointed spokesperson or PR rep poised to provide the official spin on the split. But perhaps that’s because the split, or even the integrity of the Indymedia brand for that matter, just isn’t all that important. Perhaps, as its members verbally joust and trade ad hominem attacks, Indymedia is struggling to create a new model: a volunteer organization with no god, guru, or great man in charge.
I, for one, long for a progressive alternative to Fox. A network that is consistently organized, articulate, and accurate. Indymedia ain’t it. That’s a job for Al Gore, Al Franken, and Norman Lear. In the end, I believe that Indymedia is best considered a portal, a witness, and a training ground for the maturation of a new generation of journalists. Come on … cut ’em some slack.
Chris Boulton, Oakland
If this is pro journalism, I’m fine with amateurs
It is true that San Francisco Indymedia split. It is true that the split has become a public faction-bashing exchange on the Web. It is true that the anonymity of that context assures the likelihood of paranoid, scurrilous, and gratuitous slander and insult.
It is also true that Chris Thompson received no responses to his pleas to get some actual firsthand information about it. For all the rancor and hostility being splashed back and forth in the fallout from the split, everyone involved has refrained from the temptation to trump the other side by getting their own version of events in print through the medium of Thompson and the Express. Kudos to them for their principled restraint. They all must know that Thompson, as befits his regular position at the decidedly mainstream weekly, has cultivated a dismissive and smugly cynical posture toward anything remotely radical.
But did the total absence of quotable/ attributable firsthand sources deter our intrepid, award-winning journalist? Of course not. Why should a stupid and unimportant thing like interviewing those directly involved stop Thompson from writing hundreds of words about a topic he knows as much about as anyone else who cares to read through either or both local Indymedia Web sites? What adherence to professional and ethical standards! Thompson deserves even more awards for his groundbreaking investigations! Please extend my preemptive congratulations to him for his next trophy. Revoltingly yours,
C. Boles, Berkeley
“A Death at Body Slam U,” Feature, 1/14
Pain goes away and chicks dig scars
When I saw the cover, I dreaded the level of sensationalism in your article, which turned out to be a lot more balanced than the cover indicated it would be. I was glad that you included the example of the young girl training as a competitive swimmer, which most people wouldn’t think of as a violent sport. Because I think that the injury rate for wrestlers, while distressingly too high, is not that out of bounds for athletes in general. I watched HBO’s series on football players trying for a spot on the Dallas Cowboys, and one after another they were being hauled off the field injured, at a rate much higher than wrestlers.
As Jim Ross, the main announcer for the WWE, is fond of saying, “There’s limits to the human anatomy.”
Wrestling is a crazy spectacle, one that I find incredibly compelling. Wrestlers and wrestling fans see a weird kind of glory in doing what few human beings would do. As the Web site of TWF, a local extreme indie federation, proudly says, “Remember: The future is unwritten, glory lives forever, pain goes away, chicks dig scars.”
I think this is very much in line with how people view sports in this culture in general and that we demand that athletes put their bodies on the line repeatedly. I find the remark that Brian Ong should have been sidelined indefinitely for his first concussion incredibly unrealistic when you think about how you can watch any high school, college, or professional football game and see quarterbacks being put back in within an hour, or the next week at the latest, after taking a concussion.
The standards of sports culture in this society are that, if you can’t do that you shouldn’t compete. In my view, that’s the big issue that needs to be addressed to prevent not only more Brian Ongs, but the hundreds of young people whose bodies get eaten up in other sports.
Hell, many big-name wrestlers, including Goldberg, one of the biggest names, only got into it after their bodies became too mashed up to continue to compete effectively in football or hockey.
Steve Adelson, Oakland
A dangerous dream
I’m a 42-year-old man who was a pro wrestler for almost four years from 1978 to 1982. It’s a lifestyle not for everyone. The constant travel, wear and tear on the body, and the temptation of booze, drugs, and sex are unreal, yet when one enters the profession, they know that the next match may be their last one. It is a dangerous profession, yet the wrestlers are trained to protect each other; accidents still happen, and injuries happen. I was the victim of a kick that dislocated my right knee and forced me out, but I do not blame anyone. I made my decision, and followed a dangerous dream.
Ralph Snart, Fort Collins, Colo.
It’s called evolution
And what’s your point? If these “rocket scientists,” i.e. Brian Ong, want to get their jollies by being stooopid … so what? And if in the process they get killed, well, the good news is that they won’t procreate.
Jan Naftulin, San Francisco
“How to Stop Obesity: Advertising,” City of Warts, 12/17
How else do we study which regimens work?
When interviewed for this article, I was impressed with Mr. Thompson’s intelligence and interest in constructively dealing with public-health issues. After reading his article, I must say that I was disappointed.
I became interested in obesity research twenty years ago because members of my family were dying from diabetes and heart disease directly related to their obesity. When I looked into the epidemiology of these conditions, I realized that simply losing weight would result in both immediate and long-term health benefits.
Over the past forty years, systematic research on behavioral obesity treatments has resulted in much improved short-term (six-month) results, but disappointing long-term results. Although some people (10-20 percent) are able to maintain enough weight loss to significantly improve their health over many years, most relapse to their starting weight three to four years after starting treatment. The weight-loss maintenance trial, which you poked fun at in your article, is one of the few serious research studies systematically addressing the problem.
Note that a large number of weight-loss treatments are being aggressively marketed in the United States. Although they all claim to be effective, most have not been systematically evaluated and their true effectiveness is unknown. Medical researchers suspect that many of them are not effective and that some may be dangerous to patients. Objective research on the outcomes of various weight-loss treatments may not be glamorous, but it is essential if we are to develop more effective, and safe, weight-loss and obesity-prevention treatments.
Our study will systematically evaluate the three-year effectiveness of two easily applied, long-term weight-loss maintenance strategies. These programs have been designed to be practical and easily implemented by health-care organizations. Unlike private, proprietary research, the results of our NIH-funded clinical trial will be published and all research findings will be in the public domain. We expect that many practical applications will come from this project.
I agree with a point buried toward the end of your article — we need to address the root causes of the obesity epidemic. No question about that. But while we are trying to build the political will to do that, what are we going to do with the tens of millions of Americans with health-threatening obesity? How do we laugh off the rapidly escalating medical care costs related to the obesity epidemic?
Victor J. Stevens, Ph.D, assistant director for science programs, Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Portland, Ore.
“The Boy Who Cried War,” Cityside, 4/16/03
A young war supporter rethinks his position
I never got the chance to thank you for giving light to my seemingly uncommon view. Even months after the war has “ended,” we are still in Iraq, occupying a country that “we” Americans conquered. It sickens me to see the way the Bush administration so violently hacked out “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” This was not the way I envisioned a war. There was no set entrance, action, and exit strategy.
I know the war was about oil. It was about other subjects, too. But wars are fought about God or money. I know this dispute wasn’t a “My God is better than your God” skirmish, so that leaves only a monetarily driven purpose. And I honestly wasn’t against that. When I saw people without jobs before the war, I really believed that by liberating the dying people of Iraq and temporarily “renting” their resources, we would help Americans find jobs. The unfortunate part is the primary beneficiaries are the close friends of Dick Cheney at a little billion-, maybe trillion-dollar company called Halliburton.
Even in the face of all the corruption involved, I still believe this project can be salvaged. Iraqi oil can pay for many things. I propose first and foremost helping the people of Iraq. We obliterated their country. If my house got swept away in a tornado, I would want help from those who were able. If that’s what President Bush really cares about — helping people — he’ll do it.
Secondly, we need to take care of the impoverished American people. I now make close to minimum wage at an outlet-style grocery store. I see a cross-section of humanity every day, and I see them in need. Even starting at things like supporting affordable health care for those in need would do a world of good. Because while Operation Iraqi Freedom has ended, our needs as a people have not.
I have realized that our dependence on oil is too great to let this opportunity to help ourselves and the Iraqi people slip away.
As a side note, you’re probably wondering why I wrote you. If you recall, I said when Saddam Hussein died, I’d throw a victory party. Upon his being named a prisoner of war, I realized this to be an impossibility until natural causes take their toll. So there will be no victory party. In fact, it would be inappropriate to do so. I think it would be more fitting to have a memorial erected. I haven’t given it much thought, but once the conflict is complete, I think it would be entirely commendable for the American people to show their respect for those who have died.
Shane T. Morris, Pleasant Hill
