Prince Michael Angel

an original Poem by Clarlita Zarate

In Memory of Michael Jackson


In a kingdom of all colors
dwells our beloved brother.
He has made his home in heaven
above where moments are made of
dreams come true.

It is where the greatest power is love.
Michael is dancing with angels now.
They sing his songs
because, my lord,
it pleases you.

The virgin calls out to him,
"Young Michael."
Her eyes are soft and kind.
Then she asks him as she takes his hands,
"Are you lonely for something you left behind?"

Michael answers, "I miss my fans."

By Clarita Zarate
written for Michael Jackson, forever.

Los Angeles police under scrutiny in Jackson death
By LINDA DEUTSCH and THOMAS WATKINS, AP
L. Michael Jackson.Investigation

The rented home of Michael Jackson seen from the air, Monday, June 29, 2009,...


LOS ANGELES — The investigation of Michael Jackson's death is widening as questions intensify about the drugs he took, the doctors who provided them and the actions of police.

Why didn't police seal the mansion where he had been living? Why were moving vans seen at the home, and were any items removed before police wrapped up their search? Why didn't they get immediate search warrants? Why did they tow away a doctor's car right after the death but not declare the home a crime scene?

Los Angeles police say proper procedures were followed based on the circumstances officers encountered when they were called to the home at 12:21 p.m. on June 25. A doctor was attending to Jackson and stayed with him when he was placed in an ambulance at 1:07 p.m. There was no sign of foul play.

Others say police should have assumed it was possible a crime occurred and taken precautions to ensure the scene was not disrupted so evidence wasn't lost or tainted.

"If I was the chief detective on the case, I would have said, 'We don't know what's going on. We should seal the scene,'" said defense attorney Harland Braun, who has represented celebrities including Robert Blake, Roseanne and Gary Busey. "You always have to think of the worst-case scenario and you have to think fast. I would have sealed the scene just because it was Michael Jackson."

Whether the Jackson probe turns into a criminal investigation hinges on what evidence emerges involving the drugs. Charges could be brought if authorities determine Jackson had been overly prescribed medications, if he had been given drugs inappropriate for his medical needs, or if doctors knowingly prescribed Jackson medications under an assumed name.

It's still not known what caused Jackson's death at age 50. The pop star went into cardiac arrest in his bedroom and his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, performed CPR while an ambulance was called, according to Murray's lawyers. Murray has spoken to police and authorities say he is not a suspect, though his actions have come under scrutiny because his own lawyers acknowledge it may have taken up to a half-hour for an ambulance to be summoned.

An autopsy was conducted but results are not expected for several weeks. The Jackson family had a second autopsy performed and those results also are pending.

On Wednesday, The Associated Press learned Los Angeles police asked the Drug Enforcement Administration to assist in the investigation.

DEA agents participated in the investigation of the 2007 overdose death of Anna Nicole Smith at a Florida hotel. California Attorney General Jerry Brown investigated her former boyfriend and two of her doctors.

Brown handed the investigation over to the Los Angeles district attorney's office, which filed charges of conspiring to provide Smith with prescription drugs.

Brown said the suspects broke the law because Smith was a "known addict." The former boyfriend and doctors denied the charges.

The DEA also probed whether painkillers found in actor Heath Ledger's system after his death last year were obtained illegally. Federal prosecutors did not charge anyone.

Jean Rosenbluth, a University of Southern California law professor, said the agency's involvement in the Jackson case suggests authorities are looking into whether drugs came from out of state. Murray lives in Las Vegas and is licensed to practice in Texas, Nevada and California.

Federal drug regulations include controls over whether and how frequently a doctor can write prescriptions over the phone, and DEA agents could be looking to see if these rules were broken, Rosenbluth said.

"You can't just get on the phone and continue to prescribe something for someone without having seen them for a long period of time," she said.

Jackson had a well-known history of using prescription medications, especially painkillers. Following his death, Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse who had worked for Jackson, told the AP she repeatedly rejected his demands for the drug Diprivan, also known as Propofol. It's a potent anesthetic used in operating rooms and it would be highly unusual to have it in a private home.

Uri Geller, a former Jackson confidant, said he tried to keep Jackson from abusing painkillers and other prescription drugs, but others in the singer's circle kept him supplied.

"When Michael asked for something, he got it," Geller said in a telephone interview from his suburban London home.

Jackson had multiple doctors and many others like Geller who came in and out of his life. Which people are being interviewed by police is unclear because the LAPD has said virtually nothing about the probe.

"I am not going to make any comments on the investigation," Commander Patrick Gannon, the designated police spokesman on the Jackson case, said by e-mail Thursday.

Any evidence would be turned over to the district attorney's office, which has final say on criminal charges.

One of the key questions is why it took four days for police to issue a search warrant and remove medications from Jackson's home.

Although the home wasn't declared a crime scene, police did tow Murray's car the evening of the death to look for potential evidence.

Vernon J. Geberth, former commanding officer of the Bronx Homicide Task force in New York, said police should have known they were dealing with an extraordinary situation.

"If it's a high-profile person, you have to do more than you would do ordinarily," he said.

Still, Geberth, who now acts as a private forensic consultant, said he believes the LAPD acted appropriately.

"Having a doctor present altered the equation. It was not a homicide scene. It was an emergency medical scene," he said.

Police spokesman Lt. John Romero declined to comment when asked if the LAPD was reviewing its handling of the investigation.

Rosenbluth said if the case ends up as a criminal prosecution, any defense attorney would seize on the LAPD's failure to immediately seal Jackson's home.

"If you can get even one juror think, I don't know, maybe somebody fiddled with the medicine before the police came in and collected it, that's reasonable doubt," she said. "All that the defense attorney needs is one juror."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

It brings Joy to my heart to hear that Michael Jackson wills complete and sole custody of his children to his mother!!!.
I am grateful to him for the beautiful music and for leaving a third of his great fortune to charity. I pray that it goes straight to the needy children he wants it given to.
RIP dear Michael
I know you are with angels!
Clarita

Whatever My President decides is ok with me. It is the first time in my life I have ever trusted and felt affection for a president and his family!
May they always stay blessed!

The Scorpion and the Frog

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.

The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

"Hellooo Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"

"Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.

"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"

"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"

"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.

"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.

"I could not help myself. It is my nature."

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Self destruction - "Its my Nature", said the Scorpion...
An Interesting article regarding this fable

The frog is altruistic I read somewhere and that is you and I. But we also need to be pragmatic and realistic. It is the nature of people to act as who they are. People do not change their basic character and it is not always easy to identify the scorpions as they disguise themselves very well. So you do what President Reagan said about the Russians when they agreed to dismantle their nuclear arsenal. You trust but verify. You never give strangers access to money or decision making with out a long time of proving themselves, that you always have two signatures and you have a board of directors approve all decisions. That is how NGO’s and business operates. You can trust with small things. If someone does not justify, explain, show proof in details, or defers or deflects and does not answer, that is not ethical, professional, in any culture of the world. People have different customs, but if they are sincere they will prove it that is culturally appropriate but they will show they are friends and trustworthy. Trust your instincts. You have a rare ability to see where so many are blind. Trust the sight that comes from your heart and not your eyes alone.

The Calf-Path

by Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bellwether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bellwethers always do.

And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made,
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed — do not laugh —
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet.
The road became a village street,
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare,
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed that zigzag calf about,
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They follow still his crooked way,
And lose one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.

In a traditional café in old Amman we were a band of friends laughing around apple chicha and lemon mint juice. The conversation is about identity and local dialects and each one of the Moroccan, Lebanese, Egyptian, Turkish and Palestinian friends are making jokes about how classical Arabic is becoming sterile in expressing our emotions and our changing identities, until Karim, an Egyptian film maker, took out his green Egyptian passport and tears off a page and start writing on it all the funny jokes we were making. What Karim did was a symbolic action that made me think about my identity and question the notion of reducing all what I am in a miserable travel document.

I set on my bed yesterday gazing at my green passport, remembering what Karim did and searching in every single line and shape for my identity, but was unable to find it. How could my name, my place of birth and my age determine who I am. Am I just a number in the lists of the Moroccan ministry of interior and the Schengen database. Is it said anywhere in my passport that I am a big dreamer, that I spend my nights whispering to the polar star, that I love Sufi songs or that I hate onions? So how could my being be summed up in this miserable travel document, and why do I need all the visas and the stamps of the world to move into a Mediterranean apace to which I belong? For a Moroccan like me it’s even more problematic, since I don’t feel very Arab, very European, very Muslim, very Jewish, very Berber, very Andalouisian, very African, very Maghrebine, and at the same time I feel belonging to all of these groups. So the only Identity which unites all these pieces of me is to say that I feel Mediterranean.

I deal everyday with noble concepts like dialogue of cultures, mutual understanding, or restoring trust. Therefore, even if I am one of the deepest believers in a north-south dialogue, I feel that the Euromed partnership is a chained pigeon as it doesn’t guarantee the freedom of movement for the people from the South of the Mediterranean. The mental barriers can’t collapse as long as the geographical barriers are being enhanced with electrical wires, exaggerated visa procedures, and endless checkpoints. The concept of Union for the Mediterranean itself is very problematic. Let me start by asking the simplest question: Why they didn’t call it Union of the Mediterranean? The simplest answer would be because the Mediterranean is made up of different contradicted blocks: Europe, The Maghreb, The Mashrek, Turkey, and Israel. The word Union assumes egalitarian relationships for a common cause, hence, a perception of a Union based on dichotomies of North/South, developed/undeveloped, Christian/Muslim, or European/Arab is nothing but the continuation of Edward Said’s orientalism in a modern terminology.

The Euromed or the Union for the Mediterranean are geopolitically speaking a form of ‘’imagined geographies’’ to follow the new social and political shifts which acquired after World War II. This methageographical invention is a very positive one for the people of the Mediterranean sea, since it’s their common fate to live together as it was their common past to move once and forth in the Mare Nostrum within the same civilizations. The continual exchange in terms of culture, goods, human beings is a process which no political or ideological circumstances succeeded in stopping throughout the centuries, thus, it’s a clever move to institutionalize this exchange within a framework which could tolerate even the most controversial component of the region: Israel.

From a purely realistic point of view, it is true that the nation state has the right to protect its interests by closing its borders for security reasons. Nevertheless, a humanistic project like constructing a new common civilization based on the Mediterranean shared heritage requires reconsidering the notion of the nation state itself and trying to construct a community based on common values while favoring diversity within elastic political borders. The enterprise of constructing a Euromed identity should pass through the process of imagining the Euromed community. According to Benedict Anderson 1983 “a nation is a community socially constructed, which is to say imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group”, Anderson argues that states are created from different symbols that we attribute to it. Consequently, the members of a community construct a mental image of their affinity even if they are an heterogeneous group in reality. The “imagined community” is gradually constituted by inventing common symbols such as: the flag, the national dish, the national anthem, the official holydays, the national dressing codes… etc Applied to the Mediterranean Anderson’s theory can really be an efficient way to construct a common identity by working on the mental images and highlighting different common symbols that we will not even spend a long time to find since they already exist. For example we can invent a flag for the Mediterranean, declare olive oil and tomatoes as an official dish, and foster academic research on our common anthropological and historical heritage. Anderson’s theory explains how what he calls “print capitalism” helps in consolidate the common mental images, accordingly, focusing our efforts towards producing printed press and publications will support the quick construction of our Mediterranean identity.

After spending hours meditating about the essence of identity I realized that I feel proud of my Moroccan identity with all its diversity, but I decided to put a blue sticker on my passport which reminds of the color of the Mare Nostrum saying: Mediterranean Citizen, because that’s how I feel!

Creating a lot of sensationalism and news stories on so called epidemics
is a way of overthrowing a government. A couple of hundred deaths worldwide from this disease is hardly a reason for global panic. It is an old military tactic that puts fear in people and causes discrimination. Dividing them is a trick they use to put a corrupt government in power through the use of fear, control, isolation, intimidation of present leaders[ by making them look incapable of taking care of the people], and creating great financial difficulties that threaten their society. It has been going on for ages. If people buy into these dirty tricks they will be very sorry afterwards. What comes to them once the corrupt regime has established itself, by creating chaos, is far worse than anything they could ever have imagined.

He has no name, because people like him don’t want to have the same identity they were born with any more and decided to burn all their identity papers. He has no family, because he preferred to kill his heart and forget the voices and the faces who gave him birth. He has no fear, because he prefers throwing himself in the cold and pitiless Mediterranean Sea in a small wooden boat with other nameless shadows. Yet, he has a story which I will tell you in this post.

He studied philosophy and spent his college years between experiencing different kinds of love and defending his ideals as the head of the student union in his university. He never imagined that after his bachelor with honors and his orator talent to motivate the crowds he will end up jobless. He fought hard: went on strikes in front of the parliament to get a job, went to that IT classes he never understood, he even convinced his mother to sell her golden bracelets to open a phone shop. None of his efforts was enough to make things go better, even though he never asked for the impossible. All he was dreaming about was a job, a wife, and a small shelter to live happily. After two years of unsuccessful fighting against the harsh reality, the passionate and energetic young man he was became a motionless and depressive zombie who refuses to go out of bed.

On day, while he was busy dreaming after an overdose of weed, he heard noise in the neighborhood of a car and women laughing. He went down to see what’s happening, since he can never give up his Moroccan habit of being curious about neighbors’ lives. He saw Said the neighbors’ son who immigrated to Europe 2 years ago going out of a Mercedes accompanied by his blond European wife in the middle of his family’s yoyos and joy. Said saw him and came to say hi and told him: “if you want to get out from this situation and live like a king you must immigrate to Europe instead of losing your time here”. Then he wrote the name and the number of the person who helped him pass clandestinely to the Spanish shores. To Immigrate! Maybe that was the solution to all his pains, and if Said who has no degree or special skills can succeed why not him.

Here he is in the city of Tangier sitting on the sand and watching the lights of Europe glowing on the horizon. He started asking himself these kinds of philosophical questions he loves so much to escape from the reality. Why I was born on this shore of the Mediterranean and not in the other side? It’s only 18 Km away from here, so why they are developed and we are backsword? Why in the first place the Gods of Olympia asked Heracles to separate Africa from Europe, if Heracles didn’t separate us from this same spot called Tangier we would have been the same land? Off course his questions had no answer, so he just decided to smoke his last cigarette and burn all his identity papers to go meet the man who will pass him to Europe late during the same night.

In the small boat they were 30 pale faces, some Moroccans and many sub-saharian Africans, men, women and even a baby, all sitting tight and watching the passer maneuvering in the wild sea. He was heading towards the unknown, but still confident that if he cross that 18 Km he will find hope. He was imagining himself giving a speech in front of thousands of people staring at him and applauding each single word he says. He saw his marvelous blond wife coming at the end of the speech to congratulate him. At the moment when she was going to kiss him, suddenly, the weather changed. The strong wind slapped him and the first drops of rain swiped his illusion. The boat was becoming not stable, and the people started to panic. In few minutes he realized that they were sinking in the freezing water and that his dreams were sinking to sinking to.

After 45 minutes of fighting against the high waves, there were no crying sounds any more, he looked at Morocco from one side and Spain on the other side, they both looked grey and far with the fog, and he screamed: I don’t belong to none of these places; I prefer dying and immigrating to heaven.

At Cal, global poverty minor's hot, humane
Reyhan Harmanci, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, April 10, 2009

UC Berkeley senior Emma Shaw-Crane is graduating in May with a degree in interdisciplinary studies and a Fulbright scholarship that will take her to Bogotá, Colombia. But she says that if it weren't for the university's newly established global poverty and practice minor, she might not have made it through her four years of study.

"I came into Cal thinking I'd fail out. I was partly schooled in Mexico, and I didn't know how to read and write in English," says Shaw-Crane, 23. "The minor was really, hugely important. I don't think I would have cut it if I hadn't been able to take classes based on what I was interested in and absolutely love."

Led by city and regional planning Professor Ananya Roy, who is curriculum director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and bolstered by 21st century service ideals, the global poverty and practice minor has become the school's fastest-growing minor. Sixty students will graduate with the credential this spring, as opposed to seven in 2007-08, its inaugural school year. Roy says that the fall's enrollment is 210, which could make it the campus' most popular field of secondary specialization.

At the heart of the curriculum, which includes the mandatory class Global Poverty: Challenges & Hopes in the New Millennium, is "the practice" - an opportunity for students to take their learning into real-world situations. The practice has led students around the globe, from South America to Africa to the Caribbean to Oakland, where they work on a wide range of issues: housing, health care, urban planning, infrastructure and gender equity.

"The Blum Center had been in existence for a couple of years, and I was focused on poverty alleviation - there's a set of projects that I run - and there was a sense on campus that we should also involve our undergrads in greater numbers," Roy says of the birth of the minor. "Many people in this generation are already doing this kind of work. We wanted to support that work and possibly train them."

Don't think, though, that either the professors or the students have any illusions about ending or solving poverty. "We want our students to be useful, but this is so much about what they learn from the experience that they are transformed, particularly as young Americans," Roy says.

Developing organizations and projects that won't disappear when a practice ends is another goal of the minor. Jonathan Lee, 21, a graduating senior from Pleasanton, plans to continue work on his nonprofit. Tentatively called Community Health Development in Honduras, the nonprofit has garnered national attention and landed Lee a spot in this year's Clinton Global Initiative University program.

Lee first heard about the global poverty and practice minor from a professor in another department, who thought it would align well with his previous work as a volunteer for Global Medical Brigades in Honduras. "I did a service learning trip with a group that helped to provide health care (in 2007)," he says. "I came back from the trip very frustrated, angry and confused, but hopeful. I switched to a public health major. I was interested in medicine but felt like my major wasn't doing anything to address what I had seen in Honduras."

Lee went back to Honduras for his practice, working on a new model for providing health services to remote areas. With two other Berkeley grads, he helped train people in preventive health care methods and to use cell phone technology to form a community health network.

"The basic platform is to empower communities to improve their health care," Lee says, calling the lack of medical care a "pathology of poverty." "The probabilities of a child dying in a rural area is 1.5 times more than in urban areas."

The minor is, by design, heavily interdisciplinary. City and regional planning Professor Jason Corburn, for instance, will be taking 10 students to Nairobi this summer to work on a multifaceted project in Kenya's second-largest slum.

Because of a plan to clean up the Nairobi River, an estimated 120,000 people will be displaced and Berkeley will work with University of Nairobi students and local nonprofits to help alleviate the situation. After their trip, Corburn will lead a class on follow-up action, creating and submitting proposals to the local government and to the United Nations.

"We are in a position of privilege as UC Berkeley students and faculty coming from a rich country and we spent a year or more building trust with a local community-based organization, really listening to what their needs are," Corburn says. "What privileged people can best do is support their ongoing work - don't shape or dictate, but support."

E-mail Reyhan Harmanci at dateletters@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

MEKNES, Morocco - On paper, wine is 'haram,' or forbidden to Muslims, but Morocco has become one of the largest winemakers in the Muslim world, with the equivalent of 35 million bottles produced last year. Wine brings the state millions in sales tax, even though Islam appears to be on the rise politically

The gently rolling hills planted thick with vineyards are an unlikely sight for a Muslim country set partly in the deserts and palms of North Africa. Yet the grapes, and the wine they produce, are thriving in Morocco despite Islam's ban on alcohol consumption.

Morocco has become one of the largest winemakers in the Muslim world, with the equivalent of 35 million bottles produced last year. Wine brings the state millions in sales tax, even though Islam appears to be on the rise politically.

"Morocco is a country of tolerance," said Mehdi Bouchaara, the deputy general manager at the Celliers de Meknes, the country's largest winemaker, which bottles over 85 percent of the national output. "It's everybody's personal choice whether to drink or not."

The Celliers have flourished on this tolerance. The firm now cultivates 2,100 hectares of vineyards, bottling everything from entry-level table wine to homemade champagne and high-end claret; its Chateau Roslane claret is aged in a vaulted cellar packed with oak barrels imported from France. The winery now dwarfs virtually any other producer in Europe.

Wine is haram on paper

On paper, wine is "haram," or forbidden to Muslims. But Bouchaara said the firm's distribution is legal since it only sells to traders authorized by the state, who in turn officially sell exclusively to non-Muslim tourists.

Statistics, however, show that Moroccans consume on average 1 liter of wine per person each year, and the Moroccan state itself is the largest owner of the country's 12,000 hectares of vineyards.

The paradox illustrates Morocco's delicate balancing act. The rapidly modernizing country thrives on tourism and trade with Europe, but its people remain deeply conservative. Morocco's ruler, King Mohammed VI, is also "commander of the believers" and protector of the faith. Islamists authorized to take part in politics are the second-largest force in Parliament, while support for non-authorized groups is believed to be even larger.

Despite this uncertain setting for wine culture, the Celliers' owner, Brahim Zniber, is among the country's richest people. His group employs 6,500 people, nearly all of them Muslim, and revenues rose to 225 million euros last year. Its three biggest sources of income are wine production with the Celliers de Meknes, hard liquor imports and Coca-Cola bottling.

Zniber's latest ventures, in addition to a new Moroccan champagne, include plans to build a luxury hotel offering the country's first "vinotherapy" spa resort, with health-care creams and baths based on grape products.

But the group has also tested the limits of the gray zone it operates in. The wine festival it helped promote in 2007 caused protests in nearby Meknes, a deeply religious city of 500,000 run until recently by an Islamist mayor.

"The festival was an unnecessary provocation," said Aboubakr Belkora, the former mayor who was slammed by his own Islamist group, the Justice and Development Party, for halfheartedly authorizing the gathering in the center of town.

The ex-mayor said that "for religious reasons," he uprooted about 100 hectares of vineyards from his own fields but has no qualms with others making or drinking wine.

Others feel there is some hypocrisy to the practice.

Hassan, a restaurant manager, said he wasn't allowed a license to serve alcoholic drinks because he is Muslim. "But everyone knows we serve wine with our food," he said, pointing at the restaurant's patrons, both foreign and Moroccan, sipping their wine over dinner.

Another owner in Meknes, who also requested anonymity because of his practices, said he serves wine in tinted glasses, keeps bottles out of sight, and tells clients to say they were drinking soft drinks if questioned. "Police rarely come, and if they do they never look inside the glass," he said.

These practices reflect a much more lenient culture than in other Muslim countries.

27 million bottles per year

Within Morocco's more favorable context, the Celliers winery sells 27 million bottles per year, mostly inside the country. Two million bottles head to Europe or the United States and the firm is planting another 800 hectares of grapes to meet new demand from China, said Jean-Pierre Dehut, a former liquor-store owner in Belgium hired as the Celliers' export manager.

By the size of the huge new bottling plant it is building and the 450 people it employs, the Celliers is more on-par with the new, industrial-scaled wine businesses in Australia, Chile or California than with Europe's often family-owned domains. But Dehut stressed that Morocco has made wine for at least 2,500 years, since the Phoenicians colonized its coast. "This country exported wine to Rome during the Roman Empire," he said.

Winemaking soared during the French colonial era, which lasted more than 50 years until the country's independence in 1956.

By then, hundreds of vineyards planted with French vines Ğ mostly centered on the sunny plateau around Meknes in northern Morocco Ğ churned out some 300 million hectoliters each year.

Creative energy brings you
to it
and it will bring you
through it.
Clarita

Not to long after my step father passed on I joined tig. The years have passed rapidly. I feel like an old member now!
Everyone in my family loved Bob, my stepfather, because he was a kind and unique individual. When he left us we knew we would really miss him. He had muscular dystrophy and it finally got the best of him. I still remember the day before he died the news had announced that Sadam Husen been captured.
I was so impressed with the way my mother told her dream I was inspired to make a piece of art out of it.
In the dream my mother was standing in a new house that Bob was showing her. She said the house was very nice and she liked it a lot. Then he led her down some stairs and she found herself in a small glass room that had a small bed and a book to read. The walls were glass and you could see the ocean on all four sides. She felt frightened in the dream but Bob told her not to be. He looked young and healthy as he stood there in front of her. He told her it was a place to rest for a while, to be calm. and that it was good. This calmed her down and she woke up feeling happy about the visit because she loved him very much!
I had a lot of difficulty searching for an image of a glass room on the internet that I could use to inspire me with the picture I wanted to make. I had never joined any internet sites and didn't plan to but there I was all of a sudden on taking it global. I don't know how I got there and why I joined so quickly, it wasn't like me! When I went back to read the fine print, which I usually read, I realized the community of artist and global matters I had joined was for young people. That was what I thought at least after reading everything carefully. I was wondering how it was that I acted so quickly and got glass house out of "taking it global". Especially after searching for hours and only finding about three pictures. None of the images were what I had in mind to use for an idea. Well, I thought, tig accepted me so I must be within their requirements, I told the truth about my age! As I got to know the community I realized that there were other people my age and that youth was the main focus. I was very happy about this. I felt so welcome by everyone and have made the greatest friends I could ever make! I have a son from Ghana now because of this site. He is wonderful and brings much joy into my life. We communicate in English. He is teaching me Dagbani and I am teaching him Spanish. I have brothers and sisters on tig that I feel as if I had grown up with. I have shared tears and laughter with them. We have helped one another.
This is my favorite site and I can only hope to meet you if you are reading this because all people who come here are pulled here by a beautiful energy.
As far as the dream....the glass walls are the directions I travel when I see all my friends [my global family] and we share our dreams. The book ......that is the story of humanity and myself. Our loves, our tears, our success, our loss, our truth....
The resting for a while....a time to reflect....
the house upstairs....our chance to work together to realize harmony and unity together on one planet as one family.
My mother/parents.....An angel who gave me the opportunity to see my humanity....my family on earth
My stepfather....An angel who brought me a message. One that I followed and found to be the most important decision I have made in my life.
This is why I am here sharing my dream with you.
May peace be with you always!
Clarita

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/27/MNQO16O4VT.DTL


(03-27) 14:34 PDT OAKLAND --

In an emotional farewell, more than 20,000 grateful citizens and law-enforcement officials from across the country gathered Friday to honor the lives of four Oakland police officers who were shot and killed in the single deadliest day in department history.


Every kind of law enforcement officer from every corner of the nation was there, from San Francisco parking-control officers to state game wardens and sheriff's deputies in camouflage to officers with rescue dogs. There were officers from the U.S. Mint, UC Berkeley, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Austin, Texas, many of whom waited in lines snaking around Oracle Arena to remember their fallen colleagues who made the ultimate sacrifice.

They were joined by community members and a host of dignitaries during a three-hour service at the arena for what was by far the largest police funeral in recent memory.

Sgt. Mark Dunakin, or "Dunny," as everybody called him, was a big teddy bear and die-hard Ohio State Buckeyes and Pittsburgh Steelers fan who proudly patrolled the streets on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle after serving a stint as a homicide investigator.

Traffic Officer John Hege was a "beer and brownie man" who combined his love for the department and the Oakland Raiders by working overtime at the Coliseum during home games.

SWAT Sgt. Ervin Romans was a former Marine Corps drill instructor, a "tactical guru" and expert marksman who instilled the importance of safety in the hundreds of officers he trained.

Sgt. Daniel Sakai, a former K-9 officer known for his big smile - and big ears - juggled the duties of being a patrol sergeant and a SWAT entry team leader, yet still insisted on working out and running with officers preparing to take a grueling physical test.

Deadliest day

All four veteran officers died March 21 when a wanted parolee, 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon, opened fire in separate incidents just hours apart in East Oakland. Together, they had nearly 50 years of experience with the force. Their deaths left 10 children without fathers.

As officers from 15 agencies patrolled city streets, the entire 815-member Oakland Police Department came to celebrate the lives of the officers even as they struggled to come to terms with the deadliest day in its history. To lose four officers was almost too much to bear.

"I was hoping not to have to go to another one of these things. It's a tough job," said Oakland police Officer John Wilson, a 25-year veteran who hopes to retire this year. "But our job is to protect and serve, and sometimes we die for it."

Mixon opened fire with a handgun after Dunakin, 40, and Hege, 41, pulled him over during a traffic stop at 74th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard at about 1 p.m. Shortly after 3 p.m., Romans, 43, and Sakai, 35, died when their SWAT team stormed the apartment where Mixon was hiding. This time, Mixon fired with an assault rifle. He was shot to death by police.

Another SWAT officer, Sgt. Pat Gonzales, suffered a gunshot wound but is recovering. He was one of Sakai's pallbearers.

'Forever Heroes'

Rumbling corteges of motorcycle officers escorted each hearse in miles-long processions to the arena, causing traffic delays on most East Bay freeways in the morning and again in the afternoon. Along the way, police officers and firefighters stood in silent salute on highway overpasses.

At the arena, police vehicles passed underneath a giant American flag hanging between the extended ladders of two Oakland fire trucks, maintaining a tight and sharp formation, just as Dunakin would have liked it, his colleagues said.

Their badges wrapped with black bands of mourning, hundreds of officers in dress uniforms lined the steps outside the arena and saluted as one by one, honor guards escorted four flag-draped caskets inside, followed by the officers' families. A sign at the complex read, "Forever Heroes."

Hundreds of police vehicles - bomb-squad trucks, motorcycles, Ford Crown Victoria and Dodge Charger cruisers - filled the parking lot. There were police cars from Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and New York. A rainbow of uniforms filled the arena and the adjacent Oakland Coliseum, where an overflow crowd of several thousand watched the service on two big screens.

Many officers dabbed at their eyes with white gloves as the caskets were placed in front of a flower-adorned stage beside their pictures. The police motorcycles of Dunakin and Hege and two pairs of empty boots sat nearby.

The funeral was mixed with humor and sadness.

Chris Dunakin recalled playing cops and robbers with his goofball of an older brother who, naturally, was the cop. Mark Dunakin took great delight in the irony that his little brother became an attorney, because that meant "I am still a crook," Chris Dunakin said, drawing laughs.

Sgt. Rich Vierra said he tried to wow Romans with a story about being attacked by a baby seal while scuba diving. Romans countered with a story of how a bear stole a fish from him in Alaska - and he "took the fish back from the bear."

Along with remembrances by friends and family were reminders by public officials who told those in attendance to keep their heads high in honor of the fallen officers.

Public officials who spoke at Friday's event included Sens. Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, State Attorney General and former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums sat on the stage but did not speak after he was asked by at least one family not to, a city official said without elaborating.

Show of support

Members of the Oakland City Council, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa were among those in attendance.

"Yes, they were gunned down in hatred and in anger, but they stand very tall in our hearts, in our memory forever," Brown said.

"We must not let the pain drown out the joy and comfort that these men brought to so many lives," Feinstein said.

Schwarzenegger hailed the selfless actions of officers who "would give their lives for any one of us. It is an awful day when we lose one of them, and now we have the sorrow of saying farewell to four of them, all at once."

Oakland police Capt. Ed Tracey agreed, telling mourners that although the four officers he supervised died of an evil act, "We must not, however, allow the selfish and cowardly actions of a criminal to taint our wonderful memory of these officers' lives." Tracey also singled out Clarence Ellis, a 53-year-old retired AC Transit bus driver who ran over and performed CPR on Dunakin.

Acting Police Chief Howard Jordan, who assumed the post only three weeks before the tragedy, gave the families of each officer the flags that had covered their caskets. A bugler sounded taps, and police bagpipers played "Amazing Grace." Outside the arena, officers stood at attention as their slain colleagues received a 21-gun salute from military cannons.

Each officer was honored with a group of five law enforcement helicopters flown overhead, with one peeling off in a "missing man" formation.

E-mail the writers at hlee@sfchronicle.com, carolynjones@sfchronicle.com and srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

[I am very proud of Hillary for standing up and speaking the truth. it is the same story with the many of the other crisis in this world. Tere is always a finger being pointed and an unwillingness on the part of the side pointing the finger to look at their part]. - Clarita

Mexico traffickers are armed by US weapons to supply drugs across border, admits Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has admitted that the US demand for illegal drugs and its consequent supply of weapons is fuelling the wave of violent killings in Mexico's drug wars.

The US secretary of state yesterday distanced the new administration from those in Washington who have in the past suggested that the government of the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, had lost control of parts of its territory.

During a visit to Mexico, Clinton never wavered from a tone that repeatedly stressed the concept of "shared responsibility" that appeared designed to address historic Mexican sensibilities over heavy-handed treatment from its northern neighbour.

"We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States and that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States," Clinton said.

The acknowledgement comes amid growing international concern about drug-related violence in Mexico that killed about 6,000 people last year and well over 1,000 so far this year.

Most of the victims of the violence are associated with rival trafficking groups who are in the midst of a turf war that has intensified since Calderón launched a military-led crackdown on the cartels in December 2006. In recent months some in Washington have suggested the Mexican government has lost control of parts of its territory, or even that Mexico is on the verge of becoming a failed state.

There is particular concern about the situation in cities such as Tijuana, south of San Diego in California, and Ciudad Juárez, just over the border from El Paso in Texas. The violence in Juárez has subsided somewhat in the last few weeks, but only because 8,000 soldiers have taken over security in the city in what amounts to de facto martial law.

After meetings with Calderón and the Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, Clinton gave the country's government a ringing endorsement.

"President Calderón has demonstrated great courage and dedication," Clinton said. "The criminals and kingpins spreading violence are trying to corrode the foundations of law, order, friendship and trust between us. They will fail."

An estimated 90% of drugs used in the US come through Mexico. A similar proportion of the weapons used by the cartels in their war in Mexico come from the US.

Along with promising greater efforts to try to stop guns from getting to the cartels, Clinton announced the creation of a new Bilateral Implementation Office in Mexico where officials from both governments would work together against the cartels. She also promised extra money for more helicopters than already negotiated in a $700m (£479m) training and technology package under the Bush administration.

Clinton's visit was preceded by a week of successes for Mexican law enforcement. First, Vicente Zambada, the son and heir-apparent of one of the country's most important drug lords, El Mayo Zambada, was arrested in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods of Mexico City.

Then Sigifrido Najera, allegedly a top hitman of the Gulf cartel, was detained. Finally, on Tuesday, soldiers picked up Hector Huerta Rios in a suburb of Monterrey, the northern industrial city where he allegedly controlled operations for the Beltrán-Leyva cartel.

All three were on a list of the country's top 24 traffickers published on Monday along with rewards of up to $2m for information leading to their capture. Such key detentions looked to many in Mexico as if they were specially put on for Clinton.

The secretary of state will spend most of today in Monterrey. Her sojourn will be followed by a visit from the US homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, and then President Barack Obama in mid-April.