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Jonestown, 30 years Later: Inside People's Temple, the 1977 exposé.

In its special website section devoted to 30 years since Jonestown, the San Francisco Chronicle has republished a copy of a 1977 report on Jim Jones and People's Temple by Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy. The investigative report marked a turning point for People's Temple, an arc towards the catastrophic end that would come one year later. Before this exposé was published in New West magazine (because back then, the Chronicle's editor refused to run it), Jim Jones enjoyed what amounted to broad support and protection from news organizations, powerful social figures, and politicians who saw the influential preacher as a "deliverer of votes." Collectively, they turned a blind eye to mounting reports of coercion, corruption, and physical and sexual abuse within his church. And they bear some responsibility for the tragedy that followed. I agree with what one sfgate.com commenter wrote about the two tenacious reporters who fought to produce this piece: 30 years on, this is a piece that should be required reading by all journalism students at any level. To quote the 1998 article on why this was published in New West rather than the Chronicle, "Kilduff said that when he later proposed a story on Jim Jones, (San Francisco Chronicle city editor) Gavin said 'we had done a profile and that was sufficient.' I went at him several times, and said I thought we should do more. He didn't see it that way.'" Jones had co-opted the powers that were in the City, including the Chronicle, and only the persistence of Kilduff began to reveal the horrible truth. Three decades later, the whole article is a must-read. I'll paste the final two paragraphs here: [S]omething must be said about the numerous public officials and political figures who openly courted and befriended Jim Jones. While it appears that none of the public officials from [California] Governor [Jerry] Brown on down knew about the inner world of Peoples Temple, they have left the impression that they used Jones to deliver votes at election time and never asked any questions. They never asked about the bodyguards. Never asked about the church's locked doors. Never asked why Jones's followers were so obsessively protective of him. And apparently, some never asked because they didn't want to know. The story of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple is not over. In fact, it has only begun to be told. If there is any solace to be gained from the tale of exploitation and human foible told by the former temple members in these pages, it is that even such a power as Jim Jones cannot always contain his followers. Those who left had nowhere to go and every reason to fear pursuit. Yet they persevered. If Jones is ever to be stripped of his power, it will not be because of vendetta or persecution, but rather because of the courage of these people who stepped forward and spoke out. Inside Peoples Temple, Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, Monday, August 1, 1977. (SFGATE.com). Here is a PDF of the original 1977 article (via Jonestown Institute). The SFGate web feature on 30 years after Jonestown includes a number of related features, both archived and new, all well worth reading. What lesson should we learn from this today? Why does this matter now? Snip from an extensive piece in today's Washington Post by Charles A. Krause, one of the journalists who survived the November, 1978 trip to Jonestown with Congressman Ryan: Many Jonestown survivors and their families believe that the lessons of Jonestown are to remember and guard against demagogues who use religion as a cover for fraud, deception and imposing their own sometimes dangerous social and political beliefs on their naive and unsuspecting followers. (...) It was that theme that dominated Tuesday's memorial service at the mass grave in Oakland. In an emotional and highly charged address, the Rev. Amos Brown, bishop at San Francisco's Third Baptist Church and president of the San Francisco NAACP, warned the mourners to beware of religious leaders who claim to have all the answers and insinuate themselves into politics, as Jones did so effectively in San Francisco. "Good religion elevates folk, it teaches people to think for themselves. Good religion isn't authoritarian. Good religion isn't bigoted," he said. "Open up your eyes, America. America isn't a theocracy, it's a democracy. . . . And that is the lesson we must learn from Jonestown." Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple: - Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana. - Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video). - Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video) - Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide - Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981 - Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People - Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings...

Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana.

The single most comprehensive online public resource for original source material related to Jonestown is Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, a website sponsored by San Diego State University's Department of Religious Studies. The site includes scanned documents, photographs, first-person testimonies and reflections, and a periodic email newsletter with updates on research, and the whereabouts of those who survived. The section I've spent the most time in is the Audiotape Project Index, which includes copies of original recordings made by People's Temple members in California and Guyana. Some of the cassette recordings at the SDSU website were retrieved from Jonestown by the FBI; others are in the possession of the FCC, which monitored radio transmissions from the compound. I'm not clear on the specifics, but it seems many of the original recordings in government possession are lost, missing, or still classified and unavailable to the public. Some ham radio operators once maintained a website documenting their battle to get the FCC to release more shortwave radio recordings from Jonestown, but the website is now offline. Here is a list of recording transcripts and summaries at the SDSU Jonestown Project website. They include: * Peoples Temple audiotapes collected by FBI * Tapes of Peoples Temple radio conversations collected by FCC * The Miscellaneous Audiotapes link includes tapes donated from private individuals and collections. Three examples of the recordings in this collection: * FBI #Q 042, "The Death Tape", made in Jonestown on 18 November 1978, during the mass deaths. Warning: the audio is very disturbing. You can hear children dying. Here is the audio at archive.org. * FBI #Q594: In this tape recorded 5 days before the mass deaths, Jones and followers fantasize how they will torture and kill People's Temple defectors. * FBI #Q174: music and entertainment performed by Peoples Temple members in October, 1978. An announcer speaks: "And now, ladies and gentlemen. We?re glad to have you here in Jonestown, Guyana. Sit back and enjoy yourself. We have a brief program. Presenting to you, the Jonestown Express." The Jonestown Institute website is maintained by Elizabeth Parker, and archivist-historians Fielding McGehee III, and Dr. Rebecca Moore, an SDSU professor of religious studies. Together, they have played an instrumental role in preserving and digitally archiving many important historical documents related to People's Temple at SDSU, and with the California Historical Society. The SDSU site introduction expresses hope that visitors "will come away with an understanding that the story of Jonestown did not start or end on 18 November 1978. Dr. Moore has a personal connection to the tragedy: her two sisters died there. Annie Moore was Jim Jones' nurse, and Carolyn Moore Layton was his lover and lieutenant. RELATED: * The fact that so many Jonestown-related source materials went missing or remained classified for years has fed much speculation, and many conspiracy theories. This Feral House book includes an interesting essay by Jim Hougan which explores some of the wackier theories, and some of the possible links between Jonestown and various military/government activities involving the US or Guyana. * Snip from a 1998 CNN item about how the lack of access to documents and audio recordings has fueld rumors of CIA involvement: Some people believe CIA agents were posing as members of the Peoples Temple cult to gather information; others suggest the agency was conducting a mind-control experiment. In 1980, the House Select Committee on Intelligence determined that the CIA had no advance knowledge of the mass murder-suicide. The year before, the House Foreign Affairs Committee had concluded that cult leader Jim Jones "suffered extreme paranoia." The committee -- now known as international relations -- released a 782-page report, but kept more than 5,000 other pages secret. Without those documents, it's hard to confirm or refute the speculations that have sprung up around Jonestown, said Melton, who planned to be in Washington Wednesday to ask for the documents' release. George Berdes, chief consultant to the committee at the time of the investigation, told the San Francisco Chronicle the papers were classified to assure sources' confidentiality, but he thinks it is time to declassify them. * Loren Coleman has a post up on his Copycat Effect blog about connections between the Jonestown deaths and the murders of then San Francisco political figures Harvey Milk and George Moscone. For some time before the extent of his insanity and destructive activity were known, Jones and his church -- in which most members were black, while most leaders were white -- received expressions of support from left/liberal politicians including Milk and Moscone, and black power activists like Angela Davis and Huey Newton. Boing Boing posts on Jim Jones, Jonestown and People's Temple: - Jonestown, 30 years Later: Inside People's Temple, the 1977 exposé. - Jonestown, 30 years later: original audio recordings from People's Temple and Guyana. - Jonestown, 30 years later: Life and Death of People's Temple (PBS video). - Jonestown, 30 years later: interview with a survivor (video) - Jonestown, 30 years later: From Silver Lake To Suicide - Jonestown, 30 years later: "Father Cares," NPR documentary from 1981 - Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People - Andrew Brandou on his Jonestown paintings...

Interview with an Arc Flash Survivor

On August 16th, 2007 Bill Giffen was involved in an Arc Flash incident with a 13,800 Volt Switch. He received 3rd degree burns to his left leg and 2nd degree burns to his arm, back and groin area. Reliabilityweb.com publisher Terrence O?Hanlon caught up with Mr. Giffen 2 weeks before his scheduled visit to IMC-2008 the 23rd International Maintenance Conference to share his story with us. Listen to an Interview with an Arc Flash Survivor

4 Things to Keep in Mind While Killing Zombies in 'Left 4 Dead'

This isn't your typical survivor horror videogame. These tips will keep you the blood bath going just a little bit longer.

Reprisals fear as Bali bombers executed

Three Islamic terrorists convicted for their part in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that claimed the lives of 202 people - most of them foreign tourists - were shot dead last night by firing squad. The executions, which had been widely expected, came despite last-minute pleas to the Indonesian authorities from relatives of some of the British dead for the sentences to be stayed, warning that they would be used as a propaganda coup by the militants' supporters and families.Jasman Panjaitan, a spokesman for the Attorney General's office, told a news conference last night that Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron had been executed on the prison island of Nusakambangan off southern Java. The executions are understood to be have been carried out in a clearing in the heavily forested island by police who had been preparing for days.According to sources the men were taken from their cells to the site about 4 kilometres from the prison, where they were strapped to wooden poles, and shot through the heart. Following negotiations with the men's families, their bodies will be flown to their home villages for burial.Amrozi had become notorious as the 'smiling bomber' for his behaviour at his trial when he was convicted of providing the van and explosives for the attack on the Sari Club in the popular resort of Kuta.The carrying out of the death sentences, passed five years ago, brings an end to a protracted period of delays. The dead men said that they carried out the twin bombings in retaliation for US-led aggression in Afghanistan.As news of the killings spread around the globe, western countries renewed warnings to their citizens to be vigilant against reprisal attacks. Although the men had said repeatedly that they were happy to die as 'martyrs', their families and legal representatives had appealed against the death sentences right up to the country's constitutional court. Speculation that the executions were imminent had intensified when the younger brother of two of the militants on death row visited the island yesterday. Ali Fauzi, a brother of bombers Amrozi and Mukhlas, left their home village in East Java earlier in the day to see them.The three men were found guilty of planning and helping to carry out the attacks on 12 October 2002 that thrust Indonesia on to the front line in the war on terrorism. They never expressed any remorse, even taunting some of the relatives of their victims at their trials five years ago.In recent months, the men publicly expressed hope their executions would trigger revenge attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Police responded by stepping up security at foreign embassies, oil depots and at tourist resorts.The fate of the men has become a source of controversy, with some relatives of the victims insisting that the death penalty was 'anomalous' with what they believed. Last night relatives of the victims of the bombings said they did not believe justice had been achieved. Among them was Susanna Miller, of the Bali Bombing Victims Group, who on the eve of the reported executions told BBC Radio 4 that their deaths could provide a propaganda boost to jihadists in the south-east Asian state.Miller, whose brother Dan died in the atrocity, said: 'Capital punishment for jihadist terrorism seems particularly anomalous to me. It effectively provides a state-sponsored route to martyrdom. There are two strands to justice - one is to punish the deed and the other is to deter subsequent deeds.' Tobias Ellwood MP, who lost his brother Jonathan Ellwood, 37, in the attacks said he was unable to draw a line under the Bali bombings. He said: 'Firstly, the ringleader behind the Bali bombings, Hambali, dubbed by the CIA as the 'Osama Bin Laden' and the operations chief for the militant group Jemaah Islamiah, was arrested by Thai authorities in 2003 and handed over to the US. 'He has never been put on trial for masterminding the Bali bombings and no one will explain why.'In Australia, where 88 of the victims were from, there had been last-minute appeals for clemency from some families. Former Adelaide magistrate Brian Deegan, whose son Josh was a victim, told local media: 'I would sooner they repent for the rest of their natural lives rather than meet an unnatural death.'However, others had opposed the calls for clemency, including Australian survivor Peter Hughes, who attended the bombers' trial and has insisted that the three men's deaths would bring some sort of 'closure'.Fear that supporters of the group would use it to encourage further attacks had been prompted both by the arrival of Islamic extremists in Tenggulun, the home village of Amrozi and Mukhlas, and a statement issued by the head of Jemaah Islamiah group, Abu Bakar Bashir, who urged his followers to fight for Islam. Bashir praised the bombers as heroes adding: 'Their fighting spirit in defending Islam should be followed. We will win the fight in this world or die as martyrs. Even if they are murdered, they will die as Islamic martyrs.'Prosecutors in Indonesia had insisted that the bombers would be executed in 'early November', but had not given a date to prevent their supporters organising rallies to concide with the event.IndonesiaGlobal terrorismguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Kristallnacht anniversary: Violinist Daniel Hope comes to Berlin's Tempelhof

It is an enduring symbol of the Nazi regime and once Europe's largest airport ? so what do you do with the empty relic of Berlin's Tempelhof? British violinist Daniel Hope thinks he may have the answer.Tomorrow evening, Hope will fill the airport - which was closed just 10 days ago - with some of the world's world-renowned musicians and actors to mark the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, one of the most monumental acts of racism Europe has ever witnessed.Inspired by a book on the subject by British historian Martin Gilbert, Hope resolved to observe the occasion in the best way he knew: music. "It's a commemoration, not a party, which is not to say it won't be a fulfilling experience", he told guardian.co.uk.Tempelhof, he said, came to mind as being a highly appropriate location for his Tu Was! (Act) concert, given its controversial history. "It's a potent symbol, being both a Nazi-era building and, with its inextricable link to the legendary airlift after the war, a unique act of civil courage," said Hope, whose own family was forced to flee Nazi Berlin.The 35-year old, who is ranked one of the world's leading solo violinists, quickly gathered an impressive crowd. Among them will be German bass baritone Thomas Quasthoff, pianist Helene Grimaud, the actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, pop artists Patrice and Polarkreis 18; and - arguably the most impressive figure of all - pianist Menahem Pressler, 84, himself a Kristallnacht survivor. Foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier agreed to act as patron to the project, which helped Hope to persuade airport authorities to let him use the departures lounge and fill it with seating for a paying audience of 800. Profits will go to the Freya von Moltke Foundation, a centre for international understanding, in Poland. Menahem Pressler said he was delighted with the idea. "Daniel is sweet man and when he asked me if I'd take part, I reorganised my schedule to do so," he said to guardian.co.uk yesterday. Pressler, who founded the Beaux Arts Trio chamber ensemble before disbanding it earlier this year, Kristallnacht remains an integral part of his personal history.The state-sanctioned violence, which took place on the nights of November 8 and 9 1938, led to Pressler's family fleeing their home in Magdeburg. Four months later they arrived in Palestine, a day before war broke out. While the pianist's immediate family were saved from the Holocaust, his grandparents, numerous uncles, aunts and cousins perished in the concentration camps."That night is certainly something to remember," he said. "It obviously reminds me of the horrific persecution, but in a way, being able to take part in the concert makes me feel very, very fortunate. I had the luck to go to Israel, which saved my life, while many others didn't and still now, at the age of 84, I'm relishing music more than ever."It was, Pressler said, partially the suffering he experienced that made him the acclaimed musician he has become. "You get wrinkles not just on your face, but also in your heart ? they reflect your experience, your suffering and your pleasure. I learned the depths of my emotions through music and channelled them into music making. I doubt I'd have become the pianist I am if I'd stayed in Magdeburg."The evening's programme largely reflects the cultural riches of Germany, including music by the great composers who were banned or misused, artists whose works were considered degenerate or composers who were persecuted and murdered.Thomas Quasthoff will perform Four Serious Songs by Johannes Brahms, while Argentine-born cellist Sol Gabetta will play a work by Ernest Bloch, the Swiss composer who was inspired by Jewish liturgical and folk music. Hélène Grimaud, as famous for her love of wolves as her musical abilities, will play works by JS Bach, while Max Raabe, who has made a huge name for himself as a singer of songs from the 1920s and 30s, will revive some of the popular music from the Weimar Republic. Hope himself has opted for Lieder by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. A musician close to Hope's heart, Mendelssohn was banned by the Nazis, who ordered linen covers to be sewn over his scores and stamped them with a warning that they were not to be played.The highlight of the evening, however, is set to be Pressler's performance of Beethoven's penultimate Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110. He chose it, he said, because it was the piece of music which helped give expression to his experience. "It has everything," Pressler says. "It has idealism, it has hedonism, it has regret and it has something that builds like a fugue and at the very end - something very rare in Beethoven's last sonatas - it ends triumphantly."It says: 'yes - my life was worth living'. That's what I feel."Classical music and operaGermanyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Remembrance Day: Oldest WWI survivor Henry Allingham to lead commemorations

Europe's oldest man has spoken of his sense of duty as he prepares to mark the Great War's 90th anniversary.

Judith Mackrell talks to choreographer Richard Alston

This autumn Richard Alston celebrates both his 60th birthday and his 40th anniversary as a choreographer. Bespectacled, he radiates a vaguely professorial air; he appears serenely successful but says he takes nothing for granted. "I feel I've been amazingly lucky. There have been moments when I've been through great waves of insecurity - feeling that I'm a has-been, that I'm finished. But I'm still here, and I'm still making dance." It is hard to put Alston's work into a single stylistic camp. Much of it is abstract, in the sense that it is about the fundamental elements of dance as an art form: space, energy and line. But it is also profoundly emotional, with a lyricism and romanticism that come from his early love of ballet. He counts Merce Cunningham as his greatest mentor, but doesn't share his absolute belief in separating dance from music. Mozart, jazz, Peter Maxwell Davies, Britten - Alston's tastes are eclectic, and whether it's the laidback songs of Hoagy Carmichael accompanying Shuffle It Right, or the splintered darkness of Heiner Goebbels creating the landscape of Red Run, music is always his prime inspiration. If Alston now ranks as one of the great survivors in British modern dance, he was once one of its original rebels. He came to dance late: he was 17 before he saw his first ballet, and there was no dance in his background (he was a schoolboy at Eton, and his father worked with MI6). But his timing was good. As one of the first students at the London Contemporary Dance School in the late 1960s, and then one of the first members of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, he embarked on his career just as the modern dance scene was getting underway. He was asked to make his first work for LCDT aged just 21. It would have been easy for Alston to secure his future at the company, but at that age he was too restless. In 1972 he left to form the experimental collective Strider, and to "make lots of very rigorous work which we performed in garages and gyms and art galleries". After three years, however, Strider began to feel constrictive. "We were doing rather well," Alston recalls, "and the Arts Council invited us to become regular funded clients. I was fiercely independent and the idea was terrifying. I felt it was time to stop before I found myself in a situation that I couldn't get out of."He left London for New York. "It was one of the best times of my life," he says. "I lived in the Lower East Side, which was crowded with Chinese, Ukrainian and Jewish communities and Puerto Rican drag queens. I took class every day with Merce [Cunningham], who was the most brilliant teacher I'd ever studied with. And I went to as much dance as I could. I soaked it all up."Alston returned to London in 1977, and began to settle down. "I've never had a strategy," he says. Shortly after founding his own small troupe, he was invited to choreograph a work for Ballet Rambert. He became the company's resident choreographer, and then, in 1986, its artistic director. In 1994, he ended up back at the Place Theatre, the home of his original school and company, where he formed a replacement ensemble for the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, which he has been directing and choreographing ever since. "I never planned for any of this to happen," Alston says, with an expression of slightly bemused gratitude. "Maybe there is a larger pattern here."The pattern lies in Alston's enthusiasm for his art. He remembers being a teenager at village barn dances, "learning complicated reels very quickly and wanting to organise everybody". Seeing his first ballet was a revelation. "It was the Royal Ballet Touring Company and I queued up to see every performance. This was 1965 and Margot Fonteyn was dancing with Rudolf Nureyev. Margot especially knocked me for six. Then at the end of the week I saw Ashton's Fille Mal Gardée and I thought, 'This is wonderful. I would love to make something like this.' I took my parents on the last night and said to them, 'This is what I want to do.'"Alston was due to start at art college. His mother "went crazy", but he stood firm. He enrolled in ballet and modern dance classes, and went to see every company that came to London. Those years, in which he studied art, listened to music and learned about different kinds of dance, made Alston the choreographer he is today.What has marked Alston out from many of his peers is his indifference to changing fashions in dance. He has seen successive generations of choreographers pioneering different trends, from strident, issue-driven dance theatre to experiments with digital technology. At times Alston, the purist, admits he has felt "like a dinosaur" among them. But he also believes that it is his commitment to "digging deeper and deeper into the core of dance" that has made him a survivor. "I've never wanted to make loud statements," he says."What I believe in is the amazing power and complexity of the human body in steps, in rhythm and music. And that doesn't change." He doesn't fear the prospect of diminishing energy. "I've always loved the endgame scenario - the late quartets of Shostakovich, the late plays of Shakespeare and of course the work that Merce is still making at 89. If I thought I had made my best piece, I would stop. But I don't think I have." ? The Richard Alston Dance Company perform 40/60 at the Northcott theatre, Exeter, today and tomorrow, then touring. Details: theplace.org.ukRichard AlstonDanceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Specieswatch: Spined loach

Most people, including anglers, have never heard of the spined loach, Cobitis taenia, but the fish is a rare survivor of a time when the English Channel was a river.

Who wants to be a Carilionaire?

David Crimmins sits on a chair outside his house, holding his youngest son and smoking a cigarette. With no phone and no car, he would be the first to admit he doesn't own much. But what little he does have, he nearly lost earlier this year after he fell of a ladder while he was painting and went to the local hospital to get a herniated disc treated. Crimmins was left with a $5,000 bill; he earns $15,000. When he was taken to court for the money, he didn't bother showing up. "I didn't see the point," he says. "They're going to do whatever they want anyhow." So Carilion, a nonprofit private clinic that gets tax breaks in return for a commitment to provide healthcare to the poor, garnished his wages. They are also garnishing his sister's wages for money she owes them and extracting money from his mother's pay packet for care she received. "Carilion have been trying to take me to court since I was 18," says Crimmins. Indeed, since 2003 Carilion has accounted for 40% of all the judgments at Roanoke district court. Such is the volume of its collections that the courts set aside one day a week just to deal with healthcare. They call it Carilion day."While the numbers seem large, they represent a small fraction of the 2 million patient visits to Carilion facilities each year," says Eric Earnhart, a spokesman for Carilion.""But we are working hard to reduce the number of people who qualify for charity care but do not pursue it. Last year we provided approximately $43m in free care to patients who couldn't afford to pay."A local group, the Citizens Coalition for Responsible Healthcare, has been set up to challenge Carilion and raise the issue of affordable healthcare in the town.Ken King, the coalition president, says that if you cannot afford health insurance, "your doctor of choice becomes the emergency room". "At that point you are probably walking into a room that has the highest cost of operation of any medical facility, any kind of care available ... If you can't pay it, you get sued. Thirty-three thousand people in Roanoke general district court in the last five years have been sued for that bill."Once a railroad town, Roanoke is now dominated by Carilion, which merged with another local hospital in the late 1980s. At the time, the justice department tried and failed to prevent the merger, warning that it would create a monopoly. According to the Wall Street Journal, health insurance rates in the area have risen since then from the lowest to the highest in Virginia. Carilion disputes this: "A comparison of Carilion's prices with hospitals that have comparable volume, and with the state average, shows that in many if not most cases, our prices are lower," it says. Today, a colonoscopy at Carilion costs between four and 10 times what you would pay at a local endoscopy centre, while a neck CT scan is just under three times as much. Hospital care, Carilion says, is always more expensive than that provided at outpatient facilities.The hospital has a charity care programme through which anyone who earns twice the federal poverty level or less should pay less, or nothing. A single person earning less than $20,800 or a family of four with an income below $42,400 should qualify. Clearly, however, many fall between the cracks.So Crimmins, it turned out, was eligible for assistance, and Carilion has stopped pursuing him. Healthcare has emerged as a huge issue in this election. With the provision of care here often tied to jobs, the failing economy means anyone worried about their job security is, almost by definition, worried about their health. And this isn't just a concern for the very poor. One small business owner and cancer survivor I spoke to says she has not been for her check-ups for three years because she has no health insurance. She simply makes it a priority not to get sick. With 16% of the country uninsured, and 50% of bankruptcies linked to non-payment of medical bills, the issue is central to the economy.The numbers are staggering. "Forty-seven million [people] - which is 35% of the population - don't have healthcare insurance in the United States right now," says King. "$143bn is the administrative cost of the healthcare system, and that's simply the paperwork cost; $2tn is the annual healthcare cost in the United States ... and $7,000 per person is what it costs us. "One of the things that is really a problem is that employers are beginning to say: 'We can no longer do this. We can't provide healthcare for you as an employee.' And that number is going to go way up."For the most part, that is good news for the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, who is regarded as better on health than his Republican rival, John McCain. "Me, personally, I think I would put a poor man in, somebody who knows how to budget, knows how it feels to struggle," Crimmins says. "[I've worked] pretty much since I was 12 years old. My mom, she was raising nine of us by herself, so she didn't have the money to get what we wanted - or what we needed, most of the time. So I always had to pitch in and help out."He has never voted, and he is not registered. But he is rooting for McCain because, he says, the Republican is more experienced. If she were registered, his partner, Melissa Hicks, would vote the same way. "I don't know why I don't like Obama," she says. "But it's not because he's black."VirginiaUS elections 2008guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds