The organizer of an annual South DeKalb neighborhood festival claims county police officials nixed his event -- scheduled for this Sunday -- because they were concerned it would attract an undesirable crowd of gangbangers and troublemakers.

“I was told, ‘You’re not welcome in DeKalb County,’” says Robb Anthowny, a local promoter who says he’s organized the Glenwood Day gathering the past four years at the former Snapfinger Woods Golf Course off I-20.

Anthowny says last year’s event drew a crowd of tens of thousands, including DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones. He says he’d already lined up sponsors, vendors and entertainment for this Sunday. He planned to charge $1 admission to offset expenses.

However, Anthowny says officials with the county’s Homeland Security unit told him that postings on several local MySpace pages had led them to believe Glenwood Day could be the scene for violence or other illegal activity.

“It would have controlled access,” he explains. “Anyone coming in would have been patted down and gone through a metal detector.”

Apparently, Glenwood Day is not exactly a church social. One MySpace page described the event as a “big-ass block party” where revelers were harassed by the cops. Another referenced the event as an opportunity for area “gangstas” to show off their rims.

But Anthowny says it’s the police department’s job to provide security at events like his. “I feel like we’ve been made the scapegoat because they don’t have enough officers,” he says.

DeKalb police spokesman Michael Paine, however, says Anthowny had not secured the proper permits for his event – including permits for outdoor alcohol sales and parking -- so police officials informed him it could not be held as scheduled.

“Also, the venue was not appropriate,” Paine says. “It was an abandoned golf course with boarded-up buildings.”

The promise of the Beltline, the proposed 22-mile loop of light rail and trails that would circle Atlanta, is that it will improve our quality of life. (And for $3.4 billion, nearly half of which will come from local taxpayers, it damned well better!)

If all goes according to plan, the Beltline would add thousands of acres of greenspace to our city. It would ease traffic by offering an attractive opportunity for people to ditch their cars. And it would bring more decently priced housing to the city through a rule that says 20 percent of new housing along the Beltline's path must be affordable.

At least it would seem as if the rule would bring more decently priced housing to the city.

Realistically speaking, though, there's a good chance the Beltline could slash Atlanta's number of affordable digs. That's because there's a growing demand to live along the Beltline (which, mind you, is a good 15 years from completion). Where there's a growing demand, there's increasing property values. And where there's increasing property values, there's often a push to demolish and rebuild -- not just along the Beltline, but in the neighborhoods beyond as well.

Atlanta's former planning chief, who now teaches at Georgia Tech, tells me the city needs to start "committing to keeping the affordable housing we already have along the Beltline, because we're losing it fast."

Otherwise, Mike Dobbins predicts the end-game could show "a significant net loss" in housing that's within the budgets of students, teachers, cops, firefighters and (shameless self-interest alert!) journalists.

Dobbins says the city now has the opportunity -- and, in fact, responsibility -- to determine just how much affordable housing is currently out there, as well as how significantly housing costs already have risen because of the Beltline. The city then should set a goal to maintain that amount of housing, and then to increase it.

I just attended a symposium at Georgia Tech on video games that play with reality. It was a fascinating conference filled with cutting-edge innovations that showed games not only entertain, but also educate.

One of the best panels was titled "Playing with Health" and featured a variety of speakers who've helped people understand and cope with their environments and health -- from autistic children to individuals who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Ken Graap, co-founder of Virtually Better (located in Atlanta), showed a great slideshow on how a virtual world could potentially help heavy marijuana users lower their cravings. The "game" works like this:

Virtually Better has created several virtual rooms -- the neutral room, the paraphernalia room (adorned with joints, cigarettes, black lights, Grateful Dead posters, etc.) and the party room (people smoking up, fresh pizza on tables). A person starts in the neutral room and then is taken to the other rooms. When he or she gets to the paraphernalia and party rooms, a USB port emits the smells of pot, pizza, cigarettes, etc. while music and conversations come through headphones. Throughout the game, a person's heart rate is measured to gauge the intensity of that person's craving.

The company has found that these virtual rooms, scents and sounds can "turn on" a person's craving in a matter of minutes.

So of course -- as Graap pointed out -- wouldn't this make the person want to go find a joint ASAP after leaving the lab?

The simulation brings the person back into the neutral world at the end, and cravings, data show, lower -- not back to the initial state, but significantly from the height of the game. And it seems legit: the National Institute for Drug Abuse funds the project. Virtually Better hopes to use the data from these virtual worlds to figure out new ways to treat people with substance-abuse problems -- from pot to cigarettes to crack and even possibly meth. And that could be really cool.

March 23, 2007

Dear Mr. Edelstein,

Please find enclosed an article I wrote a while back about Elie Wiesel, the public face of "the Holocaust," the multi-million dollar racket that provides an all purpose alibi for Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.

So begins a letter CL received from Georgia State University Professor of French David O'Connell.

Why the sarcastic quotation marks bracketing Holocaust?

O'Connell explains in the article he sent us:

I avoid using the word "Holocaust." Since that term is has become a media code word that is all too often used as a justification for the Jewish war crimes and crimes against humanity that are routinely committed in occupied Palestine, it is tainted. It is also associated with the scams and manipulations of various Jewish holocaust profiteers, of whom Wiesel himself is probably the most flagrant example. It also serves the purposes of the pro-Israel Judeo-corporate power structure, since it justifies foreign adventures to "prevent another Holocaust." I refer instead to the Jewish Ordeal of World War II (JOW) to describe the Nazi persecution of innocent Jews.

You see, it wasn't a "Holocaust." It was a "Jewish Ordeal." And apparently it wasn't a "genocide" either. It was a "persecution." After all, genocide is such a harsh word.

Thanks for clearing things up, Professor.

I mean, "Professor."