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May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
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of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
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Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
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Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
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Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
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Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
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The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
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Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
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Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
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Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
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Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
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Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
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Peter
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May Day at Kut and Kienthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
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Bush's War Web Log 5/01
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South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
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Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
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Steve
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Bush's War Web Log 4/30
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Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
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Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
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Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
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A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
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April
29, 2003
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Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
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Uri
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Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
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Brush with the Law
Mickey
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Robert
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Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
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Wayne Madsen
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Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
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May
10, 2003
CounterPunch Diary
Ed
Rosenthal Faces the Music in Key Med Marijuana Case; He Charges
Millions Stolen by High Times Trust "Could Have Changed
History"; Bush and Blair Named for Peace Prize; More on
Breasts and Martinis
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Come June 4 Ed Rosenthal will be back in US District
Court in San Francisco, to hear what sentence Judge Charles Breyer
has decided to impose. Earlier this year a California jury found
him guilty of cultivating marijuana, of maintaining a place to
cultivate marijuana and of conspiring with others to cultivate
marijuana. He's in his early 50s now and he's looking at the
possibility of hauled off to prison for the rest of his life.
Let's all hope that it won't come to
that, and that Breyer will stay his sentence, pending appeals
that may end up in the US Supreme Court.
The feds went after Rosenthal because
he's a high profile advocate of legalized marijuana, famous for
his books and articles, not least in High Times. The charges
seemed surreal. Under the terms of California's Compassionate
Use Act of 1996, okaying the cultivation and use of medical marijuana
the City of Oakland designated Rosenthal the legal supplier of
marijuana starts to those in chronic pain.
Back then, on the eve of the trial, Rosenthal
told me, "This is a tipping point case. If they put me behind
bars they are going to start closing these clubs. The clubs will
have no excuse. Everyone will have to plead out. It's really
important that I win this case."
He will win in the end, but Rosenthal
lost that round in US District court. His trial was a grim farce.
Breyer (brother of US Supreme court justice Steven) overruled
every effort of Rosenthal's lawyers to introduce the fact that
the man in the dock had been working under the aegis of the city
of Oakland, abiding by the provisions of a state law approved
by the voters of California.
Thus kept in the dark, and with the ground
cut from under Rosenthal's defense, the jury found him guilty.
Then the jury stepped out of the jury box and for the first time
learned the actual circumstances and background of the charges.
Within days six of them mustered in front of the US courthouse
to apologize publicly to Rosenthal, and to proclaim their shame
and indignation that they had been dragooned into this parody
of justice.
I was there and it was truly an amazing
occasion. Terence Hallinan, the District Attorney of San Francisco,
SF supervisors Tommy Ammiano and Matt Gonzalez, and the chairman
of the city's board of supervisors all stepped to the microphone
to applaud the penitent jurors for their stand, to denounce the
conviction. Board Gonzalez invoked the long tradition of jury
nullification which, had this jury known about it, would have
enabled them to set aside Breyer's instructions, consult their
consciences and found Rosenthal innocent.
The next round in the case concerned
precisely this issue of whether a juror can discount a judge's
instruction. In the wake of the verdict two jurors, Marney Craig
and Pamela Klarkowski, disclosed to Rosenthal's lawyers that
during the trial, outside the jury room, they had discussed,
at least twice, the issue of disobeying Breyer's instruction.
Craig said she had phoned an attorney friend who had told her
forcefully that she had to follow Breyer's instructions and would
be get into big trouble if she used her own judgement. Craig
had then discussed this call with Klarkowski.
Rosenthal's lawyers went before Breyer
again, arguing for a mistrial on the grounds of malfeasance by
the two jurors. Though Craig took the Fifth, the facts weren't
disputed. Breyer hasn't issued a ruling yet. On the face of it,
you'd think it's open and shut. Aside from Breyer's outrageous
restrictions, did Rosenthal get a fair trial if two jurors were
secretly sitting on a piece of bad legal advice, to the effect
that if they stepped outside the narrow lines drawn by Breyer
they'd face serious sanctions?
But Breyer doesn't want to order a new
trial, one in which the chances of a jury aware of the background
of the case and also of the possibility of nullification would
be far higher. If he rejects the defense's motion for retrial,
it will be one more grounds for appeal, along with the basic
issue of the contradiction between state and federal laws, already
being considered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Last September, the DEA raided a marijuana
club in Santa Cruz, arousing enormous rage, not least among Santa
Cruz's city council, which has now filed suit in federal court
demanding damages as well as an injunction to prevent the
DEA from infringing on state affairs again. In February, the
feds launched a hundred raids across the US, seizing glass bongs
and kindred materials. They made more than 50
arrests, even though they found no drugs, and even though, in
California and other states, possession of marijuana pipes has
been decriminalized.
So, just as Rosenthal predicted to me,
the feds took the guilty verdict as a green light. Across California
people acting within the terms of the 1996 California statute
have every reason to fear that DEA will come crashing through
the door and that federal judges like Breyer will back up their
right to do so. Down in Los Angeles people involved in medical
marijuana activities have plead guilty, not prepared to risk
the possible twenty year sentence that Rosenthal is staring at.
The only silver lining thus far, aside
from the edifying stance of principle taken by Ed Rosenthal is
that the issue of jury discretion, or jury nullification is on
the front burner again. In the days after Rosenthal's conviction
about half Rosenthal's jurors began to proclaim publicly their
disillusion with the justice system as disposed by Judge Breyer,
you could hear intense seminars on jury nullification on at least
one of San Francisco's biggest AM stations.
Hey, nullification worked for John Peter
Zenger and for those nineteenth century folk charged with sheltering
runaway slaves. As anti-slavery sentiment grew juries wouldn't
convict them. You've been called to serve on a jury? I strongly
recommend you take the time to study
a useful little guide drawn up by Clay Conrad, chairman of the
Fully Informed Jury Association. Money to help with Ed Rosenthal's
defense should go to Green-aid.com
And yes, this is a Republican administration
rhetorically committed to states rights. Bush himself made a
campaign issue of it, ladling out a plateful of pledges on states'
rights alongside equally vociferous promises that he wouldn't
be in the nation-building business. But don't conclude from this
that Clinton Time was better. So far as marijuana was concerned
it was awful.
Ed Rosenthal, incidentally, is a man
of tireless energy. Amid his tribulations he's found time to
sue the trust which controls the money from the very successful
High Times magazine, founded by Tom Forcade, who died, allegedly
a suicide, though under slightly odd circumstances back in the
70s. Rosenthal has now won standing in Maricopa County, Arizona,
as a plaintiff who can to get discovery to prove he has standing.
That went by you, didn't it. Rosenthal,
a 20-year outside staff contributor to High Times charges that
those controlling the trust set up by Forcade have abused the
trust's original mandate and filched millions.
"It's more than the case of a writer
being screwed," Rosenthal tells me. "If it was just
me, you could say, too bad that justice was not done', and leave
it at that. But these days could have given NORML and the Alternative
Press Syndicate between $20 and $40 million. Think of what difference
that would have made. When NORML had a budget of $100,000 to
$200,00 instead they could have had a million a year.
"Let's say someone stole money from
Enron, from Lay, who would care. This is different, removing
money from a political movement. Millions were affected. The
whole environment could have been changed."
Nobel Peace Prize?
You've Guessed It
It was bound to happen and it did. A
Norwegian parliamentarian has nominated Bush and Blair for the
Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, praising them for winning the
war in Iraq. Simonsen's proposal will have to wait for the 2004
award because the deadline for nominations for 2003 passed on
February 1. With nominees including the Pope and Bono. Better
the Pope than Bono, though in general the viler the candidate
the greater the disrepute into which the whole awful Nobel process
is plunged.
About Those Breasts
and Martinis
CounterPunchers take their cocktail lore
seriously. A few days ago I wrote a little item about a line
borrowed without any acknowledgement of same by Christopher Hitchens.
The line was about how many gin martinis one should have at a
single session, the comparison being with women's breasts. Reviewing
the source material turned up in a google search I said it seemed
likely that the line came from the great San Francisco columnist
Herb Caen, "Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough,
and three is too many".
In came a prompt endorsement from D.J.
Harris "RE: Hitchens, martinis, and breasts. Your intuition
that the quote is from Herb Caen is right on the mark. I am absolutely
certain it appeared in a Caen column in the Chronicle some time
in the mid 60s. I distinctly recall reading that line and commenting
about it with friends of mine. I was a graduate student at Berkeley
in those days and an avid reader of Caen because of the brilliant,
dry wit (not the juicy tidbits of gossip) that filled his column.
In my circle, Caen and another Chron columnist (anti-war, anti-establishment
Art Hoppe) were a regular treat." Not to forget Charlie
McCabe's Fearless Spectator column.
Thanks Mr Harris,
Though Don't Forget
Half a dozen readers promptly reminded
me that line appears in the 1974 film The Parallax View, directed
by the late Alan Pakula. Robert Atkinson provided the context.
"The scene: comely small-town bartender offers a clean-and-sober
Warren Beatty a martini, using the aforementioned line as an
enticement. He wisely orders a milk."
Thus far, the earliest point of excavation
is provided by Don Neighbors, of Orange Park, Florida, who writes
thus: "I first heard the expression in 1955, and it was
my impression, from all the eye-rolling, etc., that it had been
around for a long, long time then."
Frank Armstrong offered refinement: "The
version of that joke that I heard, well over ten years ago, did
not employ the breast analogy. It goes like this: 'As to martinis:
One is not enough, two is too many and three is not enough...'
It is a dry joke, made funnier if you hear it while on your fourth
martini."
A scholarly friend of CounterPunch suggested
that "to me, more than two also suggests mammalian animals,
though they have even numbers of teats (CH and bestiality?) also,
many humans are born with a third, displaced nipple on the chest
or on the side -- more of a prob if you are a girl -- genetic
glitch giving rise to phrase 'witch's tit'. Considered not a
good thing....(CH and old fashioned superstitions re minor deformations?)"
Which takes us to the reminder from another
reader that Homer Simpson boasted once of his third nipple. I'm
not steeped in Simpson lore, but I don't see Homer S as a martini
kind of guy.
So here we are, with the line active
back in '55. I emailed Mr Neighbors asking where he was when
he heard it and how old was he, but no answer as yet. Any further
sourcing will be welcomed.
I must also note a few tetchy emails
asking How come our site has time for this kind of lighthearted
stuff, when great issues of war and disaster crave our undivided
attention. Folks, we run about ten stories a day, seven days
a week, most of them addressing the gloomier side of the world
picture. But neither Jeffrey nor I are gloomy guys and we think
it behooves radicals to take the advice of that character at
the end of the world's greatest political movie, The Life of
Brian. Albeit crucified at the time he recommends that we look
at the sunny side of life, which of course included martinis.
Yesterday's
Features
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
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