Matthew's News and Gossip

This year I'm late, late, late...I went out cross country skiing on New Years Eve and am getting to my end of year letter late. It's already 2009, so I hope you had a great New Year's celebration. But I still hope that you'll think about some of the charities and issues that I raise each year. Which is why I write this email/blog posting.
The big excitement on the personal front in 2008 was that somehow I remained married and in March & April Amanda and I had a fabulous honeymoon in Jordan, Egypt & East Africa.

As I write this Amanda is putting up a whole travelogue about the trip, and you'll soon get to see lots of pictures of baby cheetahs, lions, tigers, bears and dolphins (Ok, no tigers, bears or dolphins) at http://www.matthewholt.net/honeymoon/site/Welcome.html

We also had lots of other fun, but perhaps we were spending a little too much time working-something that will be balanced out in 2009 I hope.

Amanda still works at PRN and had a great year there where she's now the star in the HR department. I'm still running the Health 2.0 Conference with my partner Indu Subaiya. Over 1,000 people came to our conference this Fall and despite the likelihood of us all living in tent cities during the coming depression, we're going ahead with more conferences in 2009. We think we're doing something important in highlighting how the health care experience can be more approachable and useful for consumers. I'm also still working on The Health Care Blog, which has now become a group blog and has rather more readers than I could have believed possible when I started it in 2003. As 2009 will be an interesting year for health care in the US this will all probably keep me busy. If you want to keep up with my (and many other great writers') thinking about what will be happening in health care in the US, please subscribe to THCB's newsletter.

But my personal and business life is not the point of these emails, which are designed to tell you about my particular interests in charities, issues and causes. Please feel free to hit the delete key, and/or email me back with any comments (polite or not) while you read it. My hope is that a few of the people who read this will either decide to join with me, or perhaps decide to do something similar themselves.

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Much of what you're going to read is familiar stuff to those of you who've been receving these emails (or reading this post) for a while. But there is one major new issue this year which I've been involved in. And not only will I mention this first, but it won't even cost you any money!

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So for several years I've been giving to NetAid which merged in 2007 with Mercy Corps. Their idea is to use education, social services, and self-reliance to help the very poorest in the world. Mercy has lots of projects going on in the very poorest countries in the world, it's well ranked by Charity Navigator, and it's received awards for its contributions to social entrepreneurship. You can give to Mercy in many different ways by either making a general donation, or buying one of their Mercy kits.

This year I've been asking the multitude of people who ask for an hour of my professional time to buy a bike. The bikes are for poor kids in Vietnam who would otherwise have to walk two hours each way to school. The bikes are just one way you can give to one of my favorite causes, Saigon Children's Charity (although their current appeal for bikes seems to have been answered). Saigon Children's Charity provides rice to the families of school children, so that their families don't pull them out of school. It also manages a micro-finance program for women in poor families. They spend lots of attention on the families and children to make sure that the money is being targeted in the best possible way. Amanda and I sponsor several kids, and it costs less than the Champagne you just drank at New Years.

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The recession bit in 2008 and that means that in the US and the developed world there's more hunger. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. I made a donation to the San Francisco food bank, but of course you can easily find the equivalent organization where you live.

My friend Caterina Rindi is on the board of the Homeless Children's Network which provides social services for the welfare of homeless children. When you consider how important a stable background is for a kid's development, the work the organization does in counseling, therapy, and support for those kids who live in at the best a very unstable environment is very important. You can make a donation at the site.

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The next section is about world events and politics. Lots and lots of bad government this century (and a little in the last) in the US came home to roost this year. Personally I'm not sure that, despite Obama's election, too much is rescuable on the economic front given the huge damage that's been done, but hopefully some change can happen.

I feel very strongly about torture. My own grandfather was horribly mistreated as a prisoner of war. The one thing that is supposed to set American (and Western) ideals apart from other civilizations is that we don't use torture. Among the many things Cheney, Bush, Ashcroft et al have to be ashamed for, the renunciation of this ethos is perhaps the worst.

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Greenpeace has been back in the news particularly as the Japanese government has unbelievably been trying to overturn the ban on whaling. Protecting whales was one of the first protests I ever got involved in when I was a teenager, so while Greenpeace may put some people off, they're still the ones putting themselves in danger between the whalers and the whales.

I won't repeat my usual long rant about drug prohibition here, other than to point out that Mexico is now in a low grade civil war, not of its own making but caused by criminals fighting over the rewards from the demand for illegal drugs in the US. A system of taxed, and regulated drug distribution is the only solution to removing the criminality associated with drug taking, much of which is relatively harmless anyway, and for all of which the harms caused by prohibition always exceed the harms caused by drug taking.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is a group of (mostly ex-)cops who are trying to persuade their colleagues about the wrongs of prohibition.
The Marijuana Policy Project is the leading organization fighting for the rights of medical marijuana patients.
Hopefully we'll have a significant change in drug policy under Obama. But he's said virtually nothing about it so far, and given what else is on the new Administration's plate, a major change here is unlikely. It will be impossible without groups like the ones above getting their voice into the fray.

Finally, my real day job is being a dog walker. Charley and I are fixtures wondering around South Beach where Charley' girlfriends are loose with the bacon. Charley is one of many dogs having a happy life despite a very unhappy start to life. Amanda and I support Rocket Dog Rescue which helps dogs in pounds find new homes. $50 pays for an adoption, which usually means saving a dog from being destroyed.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for your comments. Have a great 2009.

matthew@matthewholt.net

Hi. The year is just about over, it's already New Year in Europe so it must be time for Matthew's annual end of year letter. As most of you getting this know, I started doing these letters a few years back when I was going lots of letters from people telling me how their families had been over the past year, and I noticed that I didn't have a family to tell them about. At least one part of that has changed. Amanda and I got married in front of a great collection of family and friends on the beach in the town of Stinson Beach on August 18. It was a magical day and followed a week of parties, meetings, nights out, fun and much frivolity and love. We were delighted to see so many people from all over the world, many of whom had the chance to not only come and see us get married but also to visit California. And thanks to the wise fiscal policies of the current Administration, it was particularly cheap for them to do so! We had a particularly wonderful time getting married, and we are looking forward to our extensive honeymoon this spring in Jordan, Egypt and East Africa. It was on a personal level a completely full year. I don't think I've ever been as busy as I was during the month of August, and to give you an idea Amanda and I wrote up what happened to us in that month. There are also several wedding photos up here, but we're still parsing through the 2 1/2 thousand that we have!

Both Amanda and I also had big professional changes in the last year. Amanda a new job with PRN, a company that puts TV advertising in retail stores-- just in case you thought you could get away from it by going shopping! She really likes her new job. With my new partner Indu Subaiya, I started a conference on the somewhat obscure topic of Health 2.0. It was much better attended than we had hoped, and out of nothing it appears that we are now running a small business! You can follow our exploits on the new Health 2.0 Blog, and of course I'm still writing The Health Care Blog.

But that's not the point of these letters, which are designed to tell you about my particular interests in charities, issues and causes. Please feel free to hit the delete key, email me back with any comments (polite or not) while you read. My hope is that a few of the people who read either decide to join with me, or perhaps decide to do something similar themselves.

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There's not too much new in my thinking, so those of you who have read these before can skim down! In general I regard the end of the year at a time to think about the poorest people in the world and in our own society, and to figure out some ways to push for fairness, human rights and common sense -- none of which unfortunately seem to be currently much of the concern of my adopted nation.

First, as always I start in the same place, which is to try to make a small difference in the lives of the poorest people in the world. I discovered some good news which is that the NetAid World Schoolhouse program which I and some of you have supported over the last several years has completed all of its projects, and NetAid itself has merged with Mercy Corps -- a much larger charity with a similar focus on using education and social services to promote the well-being of the poorest of the poor, the displaced, and those whose homes and countries have been torn apart by conflict. Mercy Corps has been well ranked by Charity Navigator which is a leading evaluator, and has received awards for its contributions to social entrepreneurship. You can give to Mercy in many different ways by either making a general donation, or buying one of their Mercy kits. I've followed the example of my friends John, Tracy, Ellen & Georgina Phillipson who've been buying bogs, chickens and goats in my name for some time. I bought a goat and some school supplies for about the cost of a good night out-- and hopefully they will be doing good long after my hangover is forgotten.

The other similar contribution I make is for one of my favorite causes, Saigon Children's Charity. As many of you know I had a great time in Vietnam in 2002, but despite the great changes and advances made in that country in the last 30 years, there are still many desperately poor people there who cannot afford to send their children to school because it would mean forgoing the meager income those kids would earn. Saigon Children's both provides rice and in some cases bicycles to school children, and manages a micro-finance program for women in poor families. It has also spent a great deal of attention on the families and children it works with to make sure that the money is being targeted in the best possible way. You can sponsor a child for less than the cost of the toy you bought this Christmas which your kid has already forgotten about!

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In the US and the developed world the ongoing problems of poverty are still real for many people. This year in San Francisco has been particularly tough because food and fuel prices have increased, and donations are down. I made a donation to the San Francisco food bank, and of course you are only a quick Google search away from finding your local food bank. Meanwhile the problem of homelessness continues. Given that I live in a city with some of the most expensive real estate prices in the world, I know what a struggle it is to find housing here. I support the Hamilton Family Center which is a small shelter offering emergency and transitional care for families and children who need help. A few dollars can be sent the way of those who do not have my (and probably your) advantages by clicking this link. Finally, I've just been introduced by my friend Katerina Rindi to a new organization, the Homeless Children's Network which provides social services for the welfare of homeless children. Hopefully I will tell you more about this organization next year, but for now you might consider making a donation at the site And of course if you don't live in San Francisco there's bound to be similar organizations in your neck of the woods.

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Now onto the world political scene. This was a disappointing year. Despite the Democrats winning the Congress with what looked a clear mandate to do something about the mess in Iraq and the terrible succession of missteps the Bush Administration has taken in so many ways, not much has happened to change anything. (Take a look at the NY Times Editorial today for the catalogue). The leading Democrats seem determined to take a cautious do-nothing stand on foreign policy, and the Republicans have (with the exception of John McCain) been disgusting in their zeal to claim to be tougher and more willing to torture than the next. And despite it all, including the willful destruction of evidence of torture approved by the White House, it appears that nothing will be done to stop it.

I feel very strongly about torture. My own grandfather was horribly mistreated as a prisoner of war. The one thing that is supposed to set American (and Western) ideals apart is our renunciation of these counter-productive and dehumanizing techniques. Our leaders have discarded those ideals, and one thing we can all do is in some small way try to reclaim them.

I support three organizations that are on the right side of this issue. Amnesty International continues to advocate for prisoners of conscience and oppose torture around the world. The ACLU maintains steadfast opposition to governments treating people without following the law, and has been the main opponent to the Bush Administration's illegal treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Finally one of my favorite charities is the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. It does exactly what its name suggests, helping those who’ve made it to the UK recover from their ordeals. And I mean ordeals. You can click on any of the names to find out more or donate.

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Drug prohibition is the most maddening of all issues for me. It’s clear to anyone who looks at the situation dispassionately and logically both that drug abuse itself is worsened by treating it as a crime, and that the effects of the criminalization of drug production and supply are responsible for so many bad effects all over the world. Yet not even the slightest step to change the status quo seems possible. Even with a Democratic majority, Congress did not vote to curtail funding of the DEA’s raids of medical marijuana dispensaries, even though those medical marijuana laws have been approved by the citizens of all states that have voted on it. Of course voters don’t get campaign contributions from the corporations and law enforcement unions who benefit from prohibition. So the raids continue and the support for prohibition remains a mile wide even though it's probably only an inch deep.

A few sites worth checking out in the cause. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is a group of (mostly ex-)cops who are trying to persuade their colleagues about the wrongs of prohibition. DRCNet is an information clearing house with the best free email newsletter, the Drug War Chronicle. The Marijuana Policy Project is the leading organization fighting for the rights of medical marijuana patients. The Drug Policy Alliance is the umbrella organization working to promote harm reduction. All of them are worth checking out, and perhaps donating a buck or two. After all we don’t have a choice about donating to fund the propaganda from the government’s drug czar.

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This year I’ve given again to the Government Accountability Project. It’s protecting people within government agencies and corporations who are exposing really bad things going on in those organizations. I'm hopeful that this type of support will not be needed quite so much in the near future. But in the areas that I know something about anybody who has stood in the way of naked grabs of power and money by the politically connected has suffered badly. Hopefully the Government Accountability Project can help. To find out more click here

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Finally I’ve never made much mention of my pro-environmental stance in this letter. But the concept that we may be taking a big step back there too is quite appalling. My first ever protest and donation was to a group called Save the Whales in the 1970s and with the abolition of commercial whaling it seemed to have done its job. But the Japanese government is trying hard by using naked bribery to overturn the international ban on whaling. But even while the ban is still in place, a Japanese whaling fleet is right now in the Antarctic planning to kill 1,000 whales. Greenpeace may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s the organization behind the people who put themselves in between the whalers and the whales, and so I’m happy to support them.

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That’s probably enough for another year. Thanks for reading this far and thanks for your comments and suggestions. And even if one or two of you looks at something in a new way or makes a donation, it’s been worth my time writing this. Hopefully at least some of these problems will get better in the next twelve months.

And either way I hope that you and yours have a great 2008!

This year I am rushing to get my 2006 year end letter out before my New Year. But I know that most of you in the rest of the world have already Seen midnight strike. So I hope you have had a great introduction to a Happy New Year!

Just to remind you I’ve been writing these little end of year summaries for a few years now. And at this point I almost always say the same thing--I started because I was getting lots of end of year letters from my friends telling me about their family story, and I didn’t have one — so my end of year summaries would have been pretty self-indulgent! I’d also got some good responses to some suggestions I made about charities and causes I support.

This coming year is a little bit different. As most of you know I got engaged in early 2006. For a lifelong bachelor, this came as quite a shock. And not just because I found out how much those South Africans charge for their shiny rocks! Amanda and I had a great time at my sister Dordy's wedding back in England. Gabrielle Howatson also hosted a fabulous engagement party for us in London-- my dad who was already facing some huge expenses that week very kindly chipped in with a case of wine. Back in the US we also did the very domestic thing of getting our kitchen fixed up and upgraded.

This coming year, though, will be the big deal for us, as we are getting married in August. Unless of course Amanda comes to her senses between now and then. So for I still think I'm very lucky and she's crazy.

But the main reason for writing this letter is for me to tell you a little about the issues and the charities that I follow and support. And of course if you have any comments, nice or nasty to make about my letter, please let me know (even if it’s that you don’t remember who I am and want to be taken off this email list!)

Cheers & Happy New Year

Matthew

PS The main part of this letter starts below the line

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If you've been reading this this letter for a few years, then there won't be too many surprises. You'll know that in general I'm in favor of education for the poorest people in the world (and it wouldn't be a bad idea for some of the richest too!), I'm opposed to intolerance especially in its most brutal form, which is physical torture, and I have a special concern with the nefarious impacts of drug prohibition around the world and especially in the US. The rest of this letter talks a little about these issues, and gives those of you who like me spend most time sitting on your rear end in front of a computer some easy ways to make a bit of a difference. I'm always keen to hear what people think, I always post a copy of this on one of my blogs (not usually on my main blog www.thehealthcareblog.com) so that people can add comments.

As ever the first thing I'd like you to think about is how to most effectively help the poorest people in the world get out of poverty.

Education and economic promotion, particularly for girls and women, is still what I believe to be the most effective way . I am still very happy to support Net Aid (www.netaid.org), which is a clearing house for all types of attempts to eradicate poverty, and has its administrative expenses paid for by Cisco -- a company which incidentally I've had a great professional relationship this year.

If you want to look at this link you will see there are quite a few projects that have helped educate predominantly girls and young women all over the world. This year the giving format has changed somewhat, and they are now using the World Schoolhouse project as a general fund rather than doling out contributions to individual projects. But there are projects in Zambia and El Salvador to which I've donated the equivalent of a decent meal out on the town to get a few of the neediest to school. But if you look around the rest of the Net Aid site I'm sure you'll find something else to inspire you. To give to the World Schoolhouse you can click on this link

Of course if that's not for you there are many other equally inspiring opportunities to make a difference out there too. Most just as far away as your mouse

Probably my favorite charity is the Saigon Children's Charity. I spent five great weeks in Vietnam in 2002 and hope to go back there in the next few years. It was only after I left that I found out about Saigon Children's Charity, but they do a remarkable job. In particular they not only support education but they also help with the economic situation of the families involved. The issue is of course that the children from those households need to work in order to earn the money to feed themselves. Sponsoring a child's education actually mostly means paying from their food for the year. The Charity also also runs a micro-lending organization for some of the same very poor families — a great way of promoting economic self-sufficiency. The amount required is fairly small, so your contribution really does make a difference that you can see. You can sponsor a child by clicking on this link for less than the cost of your monthly cable bill.

I'd also like to make a special mention of one of my best friends JB, who helped me out financially this year, and when I came to repay the money, had me make a substantial donation to Saigon Children's Charity instead. JB was also at a summer business course at Stanford University this year, and it was great to see him for much of the summer. But while he was there, he arranged for the business executives on the course to make some very substantial donations to an orphanage in Kenya, and he also had his head shaved as part of the process. And yes his skull is ugly but his heart is not.

Meanwhile in the US the ongoing problems of poverty are still real for many people. And that is true too of course for those of you in the UK and Europe. In my city of San Francisco, I like to support the Hamilton Family Centre . It's a small shelter offering emergency and transitional care for families and children who need help. Given that I live in a city with some of the most expensive real estate prices in the world, I know what a struggle it is to find housing here. A few dollars can be sent the way of those who do not have my (and probably your) advantages by this link

Of course I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities for you to give locally wherever you are.

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This year politically maybe the end of an era. Not that any of you will need to guess my opinions, but it does look like the American public at large seems to be realizing the damage done by some of the policies followed by the nation's government over the last five years. However, it is well worth noticing, that even with political pressure on the Bush administration from within its own party, the US Congress still passed legislation which essentially formalized America thumbing its nose at the Geneva conventions and advocated torture. Torture is not only morally wrong; it’s counter-productive in that it doesn't produce good information. And if there are criminals or terrorists, than they should be prosecuted not disappeared. That's the difference between civilized societies and the ones we claim to be superior to.

So I support two organizations. The first is The Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture. This is a London based organization which works with victims of torture, trying help them get back to normal. Last year nearly 3000 people were helped coming from a variety of countries across the map. To help you can donate on this link

And if you think that apart from the accident of birth, maybe it could be me or you. Then read a few of these stories

Politically the organization which is clearest in its opposition to the policies which promote illegal detention, torture, and the abandonment of due process under the law is the ACLU, which continues to hold us to higher ideals. You can find out more and join at this link

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I won't say much about the terrible impacts of drug prohibition this year. For several years now, the news has been very bad. Drug prohibition causes more addiction, more pain among drug users, and huge social problems that can all be easily eliminated by sensible system of medicalization and regulation. However the same people who banned alcohol and essentially created organized crime in the 1920s are the ones behind the current insidious system and are causing even more crime and pain on a global scale.

There was some good news. I've been following one story since my very first end of year letter. Renee Boje the hippy chick who was taking photos of the medical marijuana being grown legally according to California state law in the late 90s finally lost her fight against extradition from Canada. But she was not given jail time and was allowed to return to Canada to her family. The news was nowhere near so good for some 45 Indian quick stop store owners in rural Georgia who were selectively prosecuted for allegedly selling OTC cold medications that were to be used in methamphetamine manufacture. In one of the biggest abuses of justice seen in the last decade, most of them are now doing many years in jail, even though the vast majority couldn't even understand what was being said at their trials and yet were supposed to be understanding the slang used by the white southern informants sent into their stores by a malicious district attorney. The ACLU tried to get their convictions overturned, and even found that two of the informants use in the case were prepared to change their story-- that is until a new prosecutor was put on the case and threatened to take away those informants' current deals for favorable sentences if they told the truth.

There is some hope. After 80 years in which all politicians in the US mouthed platitudes about fighting drugs while creating policies that increased the harm resulting from them, in the last few years it has become apparent that the stronger supporters of drug prohibition are the same intolerant fundamentalists who finally lost the last election. This is only a small crack in the amour. It's still official policy of both parties to pursue drug prohibition, but at least within the Democratic party there are some beacons of sanity both in the Congress and in its fundraising organizations. We can but hope, as it appears that the support for prohibition remains a mile wide even though it's probably only an inch deep.

These are the three organizations that I support which are trying to educate and make a difference. Please take a look, and see if you can help.

DRCNet an information clearing house with the best free email newsletter, the Drug War Chronicle.

The Marijuana Policy Project is the leading organization fighting for the rights of medical marijuana patients.

The Drug Policy Alliance -- an umbrella organization working to promote harm reduction.

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The only new organization to make my list this year is one I have just found out about. It's called the Government Accountability Project and its job is to protect people within government agencies and corporations who are exposing really bad things going on in those organizations. I'm hopeful that this type of support will not be needed quite so much in the near future. But in the areas that I know something about such as the Food and Drug Administration, it's been clear that all types of activities have been dramatically politicized, and that anybody who has stood in the way of naked grabs of power and money by the politically connected has suffered badly. I've also been in touch with a couple of whistleblowers of various types this year, and I'm beginning to understand the risks of these people have to take. Hopefully the Government Accountability Project can help. To find out more click here

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Please keep in touch and my best to you for the new year. See you in 2007

Love

Matthew

Hi, it’s time for my end of year 2005 letter….even if it’s already 2006. Happy New Year!

So for a few years now I’ve been writing these little end of year summaries. I started because I was getting lots of end of year letters from my friends telling me about their family story, and I didn’t have one — my end of year sumaries would have been pretty self-indulgent! I’d also got some good responses to some suggestions I made about charities and causes I support. This year was a very exciting one for me personally as I got a teeny bit closer to being one of those people who writes those family letters. I met a new girlfriend (well re-met actually), had a great vacation in Europe with her and, well, eventually the lovely Amanda and her beautiful and sometimes well-behaved dog Charley moved in with me in October. So far we’ve been having a great time, and have been redecorating the loft (which I moved into in San Francisco in July 2004), putting new floors in and being generally very domestic. I get to take Charley for lots of walks, and Amanda watches lots of British soccer, and has a big crush on Chelsea’s England international Joe Cole. We’ll be in England in the early Summer for my sister Dordy’s wedding to Simon, and if we’re lucky in the ticket lottery may sneak into a World Cup game or two. Check in next year (or sooner) for more news!

And of course if you have any comments, nice or nasty to make about my letter, please let me know (even if it’s that you don’t remember who I am and want to be taken off this email list!)

Cheers & Happy New Year

Matthew

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But most of the reason for this note is to remind you about which charities I support. Nothing too new here. I’m still asking you to spend a minute thinking about the poorest people in the world, and the disadvantaged here at home. (And later there’ll be a little about political causes that upset me!)

Education and economic promotion, particularly of girls and women, is still what I believe to be the most effective way to help people out of poverty. Anyone concerned about this world must believe that better education for women is part of the answer.

My first favorite charity is World Schoolhouse, which is part of NetAid. NetAid is sponsored by Cisco which pays its administrative bills, so its donors don’t have to. I’ve donated to a project which educates girls in the far west of Pakistan where only 12% of women are literate. But there are lots of others that are equally great.

I also feel a special connection with Vietnam, where I spent several weeks in 2002. So for my second favorite, I sponsor three young children via the Saigon Children’s Charity. Saigon Children’s Charity not only allows you to sponsor kids in school remarkably cheaply (far less than I spent on my New Year’s Eve dinner), but also runs a micro-lending organization for very poor families — a great way of promoting economic self-sufficiency. For both of these appeals the amount required is fairly small, so your contribution really does make a difference that you can see.

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In the US we’ve just had a major disaster which showed up many of our governments and, for that matter, relief organizations. One of the best responses to the devastation of Katrina that I know came from a physician I know at Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Enoch Choi went to Louisiana to deliver direct medical care, and here’s his account (Start here and click thru the days at the top). Enoch’s trip was sponsored by his church in Menlo Park, with support from City Team Ministries. Those of you who know me may be surprised that I gave to openly evangelical religious organizations — but there’s no question that they are supporting much needed work directly and I know that Enoch and his colleagues did great necessary work. Here’s Enoch’s take on it in my blog. The Palo Alto/Menlo Park parents club also did great work getting supplies to the affected area, and Glennia Campbell (married to my Stanford friend Frank Schellenberg) has been a driving force behind that.

But everyday in every city in America and elsewhere there are homeless people and homeless families. There are wider causes of homelessness that need a political solution, but for now there are people who just need some help. In my city of San Francisco, I like to support Hamilton Family Center which is a relatively small shelter offering emergency and transitional care for families and children who need help. But Google will connect you with local charities if you live somewhere else.

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On the political front the news across the planet and in the US kept getting worse….

We end the year with the American President officially declaring that he is above the law; and need not follow even the excessive secret provisions of the PATRIOT act. I continue to believe that America is better than the mob of criminals running it, and that’s why I continue to be a member of the ACLU, which continues to hold us to higher ideals. You can join here

Torture is now official American policy, and we’re exporting it all over the world. Of course torture is not only wrong, it’s counter-productive in that it is not how to get the best information out of criminals or terrorists. But the worse thing about torture as an official policy, is that it puts us on the same moral level as many many awful regimes across the world. One organization I’ve supported for many years works to help victims of torture. It’s the Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture, based in London, and you can find out more and support it here. You might want to read about some of the stories of its clients. Horrific. And we should all think barring that accident of birth, it could be any of us.

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Meanwhile, I continue to be passionately opposed to drug prohibition. While you may or may not agree with me that there’s nothing intrinsically good or bad about drug use, it’s beyond dispute that there is something very, very harmful about prohibition. It enriches criminals, it increases addiction, it abandons neighborhoods and communities to criminals and violence, and it abandons drug users to the mercies of those same criminals — rather than offering them the help we give to other people with addictive illnesses. And of course the reason prohibition continues is because there’s a huge amount of money in it for the law enforcement & prison complex that profits from it — even though we all suffer from the policy AND have to pay the taxes to support it and the hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders in jail.

And the cruelest treatment is doled out to those connected with medical marijuana. So I concentrate on that in this letter.

Last year was predictably bad on the drug reform front. Some of the stories that I’ve been following over the years had nasty endings. The US Supreme Court in its continuing lack of wisdom ruled against Angel Raich, a medical marijuana patient in California, and in an amazing legal contortion declared that medical marijuana legally grown and consumed with no money changing hands in one state is somehow subject to the Interstate Commerce Act. So effectively it gave the DEA license to arrest any sick person using medical marijuana — something they’ve been doing more and more.

Up in Canada, after a several year struggle, the justice minister finally ruled against Renee Bojee. She was the hippy chick who was taking photos of the medical marijuana being grown by Peter McWilliams and Todd McCormick in Los Angeles. So far Peter is dead, effectively killed by the DEA and justice system who wouldn’t let him use marijuana to treat the nausea he got from his HIV medication, with the result that he drowned on his own vomit. Todd was railroaded into five years in prison. Renee faces ten years for doing effectively nothing. She’s trying to stay as a refugee in Canada. Her case is now in the Canadian courts and you can still donate to her legal fund here. The Canadians seem to be bending over backwards under American pressure to support prohibition. They’ve even help arrest Marc Emery, Canada’s leading pro-marijuana legalization activist, and if they succeed in extraditing him no one on the planet is safe form disagreeing with the DEA.

Some people are trying to change all this. Take a look and think of supporting them.

DRCNet produces the Drug War Chronicle, a weekly email newsletter. Subscribe (it’s free), learn, and if you like, donate (as I do).

Marijuana Policy Project is the leading organization fighting for the rights of medical marijuana patients.

Drug Policy Alliance is an umbrella organization working to promote harm reduction in drug policy.

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So that’s my word for the end of 2005. Please keep in touch and my best to you for the new year.

Jeez. So it’s january 2006 and I never finished 2005 really on the blog. Given that a few more people might show up here now that I’m announcing some bigger news, I thought that I’d get the end of last year’s photos up here.

So we left you in Paris at the end of May.

Next pics were from walking Charley on the beach at Fort Funston.

All Fort Funston Charley pictures

Then Amanda and I joined lots of friends at the Black and White ball. A mob scene and it ended too early, but lots of fun. More pics here

Next up was my birthday — a bar bash on the Saturday night and a smaller dinner party (not much smaller) on the day itself.

So now we’re in the heart of the summer in California.

We went to a party at Lyn and Kent’s place (Lyn is Amanda’s sister, but calls Amanda “Amy”), where we met these three “wise” monkeys.

And my college friend John came over with his wife Tracy and daughters Ellen and Georgina. A few photos of them playing tourist are here.

Finally what would summer in california be without some camping in the cold mist of Mendocino. Very odd, drunken camping at that! Complete with man with Racoon hat on, really!

OK. September coming up next