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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! America's First Terror War From Pirates to Enemy Combatants: R.T. Naylor traces the birth of the American Military-Industrial Complex and illustrates the striking parallels between Thomas Jefferson's naval war on the Barbary Coast states and Bush's War on Terror. Oil Company U?: Ali Tonak takes apart the big merger between British Petroleum and Cal-Berkeley and reveals BP's plot to saturate the Third World with GM crops, all in the name of oil conservation. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Cool Clothes for a Hot Summer: Brand New CounterPunch T-Shirts!

Today's Stories May 24, 2007 Franklin Lamb Who's Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon May 23, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Opium: Iraq's Newest Export Rev. William Alberts Faith-Based Imperialism Joe DeRaymond Colombia's Civil War and the US Sudhanva Deshpande and Vijay Prashad The Political Economy of a Crisis Paul Craig Roberts Republicans in Self-Destruct Mode Glen Ford A Less "White" USA Rannie Amiri The Great Bank Heist of Tripoli China Hand China's Great Wall of Cash? Zoe Blunt Tales from the Tree Tops: Veteran Tree Sitter Tells All Nivien Saleh Who's to Blame for Iraq? Website of the Day Debating the Israel Lobby May 22, 2007 Robert Fisk A Front Row Seat for the Bloodbath in Lebanon Joshua Frank Hillary Clinton's Achilles Heel? Harvey Wasserman Drop Dead, New Yorkers: Giuliani and the Toxic Fallout from 9/11 David Mos Masumoto An Orchard Without Workers Sonja Karkar Israeli Forest Named After Australian Prime Minister Conn Hallinan The Afghan Quagmire Dave Lindorff A Widening Chasm on Impeachment Jeffrey Kolakowski Meet Us in Detroit: an Open Letter to John Konyers Evelyn Pringle A Misleading Suicide Warning Jim Baumer Politics Gary, Indiana-Style Website of the Day Should the Democrats Fear Mike Gravel? May 21, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Secret US Plot to Kill Sadr Nicole Colson Much Ado About the Fort Dix Pizza Plot John Ross Shooting for the Top: Mexico's Drug Gangs Take Aim at Calderon Stephen Fleischman Werewolf of Washington: Wolfowitz Comes Full Circle M. Shahid Alam Chosenness and Israeli Exceptionalism Ron Jacobs Green Mountain Days: Return to Vermont Peter Rost, MD Pfizer CFO Resigns Alan Farago Can the Everglades Save Florida? Paul Buchheit The Dark Side of Democracy Promotion Website of the Day Code Monkey: Live! May 19 / 20, 2007 Andrew Cockburn Why America Lost the War in Iraq Uri Avnery The Next War Peter Gelderloos My Arrest in Spain: The Easy Road from Tourism to Terrorism Saul Landau Bush's Accomplishments Robert Fantina Iraq's History: Lessons for the Present and the Future Fred Gardner Hemp vs. Pot, a False Dichotomy Ralph Nader Timid Democrats and the Antiwar Movement Jean Daniels Waiting for Obama Reza Fiyouzat Vietnam Syndrome: Dead or Alive? Missy Beattie Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani and Osama's Fatwah Robert Alvarez Magical Thinking About Nuclear Waste Sonja Karkar The Palestinians of Iraq Dave Lindorff Mumia Case on Hold Jeff Sher Keep Workers Healthy and Reduce Health Care Cost: Eliminate Co-Pays Julian C. Holmes Torture, Maine Style Clancy Sigal Red Mutiny: 11 Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin Prairie Miller The Murder of Fred Hampton James Murren The Dog Ate Karl Rove's Homework: When Turd Blossom Met the Teachers of the Year Poets' Basement Davies, Valentine and Engel Website of the Weekend Yellowstone's Shame: Harassing Newborn Bison   May 18, 2007 Adam Jones When Does Genocide Purify? Ask the Pope Sharon Smith The Death of Triangulation Politics? Christopher Brauchli Cheney's Middle East Adventure Peter Rost, MD Bribes and Spies in the Drug Industry Denise Maloney Pictou The Murder of Our Mother, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash: After 31 Years, It is Time for Justice David Swanson Of Snoops and Dupes Ali Khan The Lawyers' Mutiny in Pakistan Susan Rosenthal, M.D. Cho Seung-Hui Delivers His Message Samer Assad Israel and the Refugees: Fifty-Nine Years of Dispossession CP News Service Bidding for Extinction: Ivory Trade on eBay Threatens Survival of Elephants Website of the Day Another War Criminal Goes to Harvard   May 17, 2007 Tariq Ali The General vs. the Judge Yifat Susskind Honor Killings in the New Iraq: The Murder of Du'a Aswad Dave Zirin Being Ali or Being Owned: an Open Letter to LeBron James Brian J. Foley Hell, No, Harry Won't Go! W. John Green The Godfather of Colombia: Uribe and the Para Scandal Eric Johnson-DeBaufre Challenges for the New Sanctuary Movement Badruddin Khan Rebirthing the Neocons: Bernard Lewis' Latest Call to Arms Martha Rosenberg From Cockfighting to Foie Gras: On the Menu and on the Docket China Hand Pope Rat in Brazil: "The Amazon Tribes Longed for Christianity!" Dan Vojir Falwell's Tinky Winky Legacy: Who Will Battle the Telebubby Threat Now? Website of the Day Welcome to the Terrordome May 16, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Chalabi Speaks Ashley Dawson Who's Afraid of Wolfowitz? Joshua Frank Obama's Cash Flow: Maverick or Kidder? Corporate Crime Reporter Corporate Drug Pushers Ray McGovern A Four-Letter Word for Tenet Glen Ford Black Labor and the Big Mission Joe Bageant The Ghosts of Timothy Leary and Hunter S. Thompson Sonja Karkar The 59-Year Catastrophe Mickey S. Huff Preaching Hate: Farewell, Falwell John Chuckman Falwell's Lone Act of Kindness Kaz Dziamka What Ever Happened to Rogerian Argument? Website of the Day We're All Going to Hell   May 15, 2007 Michael Neumann Two States, One State and Snake Oil Patrick Cockburn An American Nightmare Ashley Smith How the US Set Iraq on Fire Marc Gardner Parole and the Long-Distance Trucker Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington, Jr Mumia Case Reaches Its Climax Ben Terrall Benchmark as Theft: Iraq Oil Workers Strike to Stop Privatization Ron Jacobs Cheney Threatens More War Harvey Wasserman The Legacy of Seabrook Marcus Mabry Shopping During Katrina Dr. Susan Block Cheney and the DC Madam's Cookie Jar Website of the Day Save Jean Klock Park from the Mega-Developers!   May 14, 2007 Jennifer Roesch Giuliani Time: the Mussolini of Manhattan Jeffrey St. Clair Humans, CO2 and Climate Change George Bisharat For Palestinians, Memory Matters Diane Wachtell The Real Imus Lesson Ramzy Baroud From Palestine to Rotterdam Rosemary and Walter Brasch When the National Guard Goes Missing: An Ill Wind and American Policy Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Blair's Exit Roberto Rodriguez The Elusive Bars of Justice Jonathan Culp Cutting Out Collage: Copyright and Art in Canada Website of the Day Uranium Rock May 12 / 13, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Who are the Merchants of Fear? Patrick Cockburn State of Surge Jeffrey St. Clair High Line Fever: a Trip Across the Dark Side of Montana Diane Farsetta Untold Stories from the Pat Tillman / Jessica Lynch Hearings Ralph Nader Strip Mining the Newsroom: Mr. Zell and the Tribune Company Jean Bricmont The Great Illusion: Sarkozy and the "Decline" of France Marcus Breen Cheering Sarkozy: the US Media and the Rightwing Takeover of France Joe Bageant Rising Above Politics Conn Hallinan European Missiles and the Camel's Nose Fred Gardner The Unreported I-880 Fire Juan Santos and Leslie Radford Public Terror: Escalating the War on Migrants Eve Bachrach Inside Colombia's Flower Industry Missy Comley Beattie Shame Ron Jacobs The Bitterness of Regis Debray Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Sepoy Mutiny After 150 Years Susie Day Jesus Christ Weds Pat Robertson Poets' Basement Newberry, Engel, Landau, Katz and Davies Website of the Weekend The Shipyard: Recycling as Art May 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Blair's Depature: the View from Baghdad Kathleen Christison Playing at Peace Mike Ferner Collateral Genocide John Holt Gating Montana: A Ghastly Disneyland with High Rise Outhouses Laurie Hasbrook This Minute and Then the Next: a Plea from an Antiwar Mother Christopher Brauchli The Children of Limbo: Will the Pope Finally Set Them Free? Margaret Kimberley GOP Openly Embraces Gipper Values: Racism, Violence and Control Dave Lindorff Use It or Lose It: The Democrats and the Impeachment Clause Nicole Colson Anger Erupts at Conditions in For-Profit Indiana Prison John V. Walsh Beware the Do-Gooders in Body Armor Website of the Day Take the Terrorist Quiz!   May 10, 2007 Tariq Ali Adieu, Blair, Adieu Patrick Cockburn Killing of Teachers Turns Iraqi Sunnis Against al--Qa'ida Neve Gordon and Yigal Bronner In Israel Not All Blood is the Same: The Death of Samir Dari Marjorie Cohn Fighting Terror Selectively: Washington and Posada Carriles David Rosen The New Disappeared: Sex Offenders, Civil Confinement and the Resurrection of "Evil" Alan Farago Why the Everglades Have Dried Up: Developers and the South Florida Drought John Hellman France: From Pétain to Sarkozy Kathy Rentenbach A 100 Days of Rafael Correa BANCO The Stage is Set for Sentencing Another Innocent Black Man Richard Rhames Is Paris Burning? Website of the Day Tame the Corporation May 9, 2007 Jeff Leys Iraq and Afghanistan Supplemental Spending, 2008 Patrick Cockburn An Interview with Iraq's Foreign Minister on Iran and Iraq Glen Ford No Black Plan for America's Cities Paula Rothenberg Feminism Then and Now Kathryn Weber A Conversation with Norman Finkelstein John Chuckman The Likely Historical Significance of the War in Iraq Jordan Flaherty Looking for Justice in Jena, Louisiana Dave Lindorff Pelosi's Toothless Threat to Sue Bush Stephen Lendman Criminalizing Speech: the War on Free Expression in a Post-9/11 World Website of the Day "Fifth and Market": a Short Film About the Iraq War     May 8, 2007 Dave Lindorff The Great Oil Robbery Patrick Cockburn The Horrific Stoning Death of a Yazidi Girl Sparks Waves of Revenge Killings Corporate Crime Reporter Snuff Politics: Democrats Escalate Attack on Single Payer Ralph Nader The People's Crusade of Mike Gravel Malini Johar Schueller Decoding Harlan Ullman: Shock and Awe as Sexual Fantasy Juan Santos The Hate Equation: Targeting Migrant Children in LA Dave Zirin Jason Whitlock, the Clarence Thomas of Sportswriters? Joshua Frank The Price of Fire in Latin America Evelyn Pringle Serotonin Syndrome Eamonn McCann Irish Peace Dividend for Discredited Premiers Website of the Day The Pagan Science Monitor     May 7, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Great Wall of Baghdad Rises Monica Benderman Land of Opportunity Greg Moses Hutto Prison Rebuffs UN Rapporteur Rannie Amiri The Sham at Sheikh: Iraq Regional Conference a Flop Fitrakis / Wasserman Media Silence on Kent State Revelations Fred Wilhelms Another Royalty Forfeiture From SoundExchange: And This Time It's Secret! Ramzy Baroud The Hourglass of Blood: Darfur Revisited Bruce K. Gagnon The Democrats Don't Own the Antiwar Movement T. W. Croft Home Movies from a Weekend in Paris--And Related Dreamscapes Sonja Karkar Prizes for Supporting Israel? Website of the Day Posada Carriles: the Declassified Record May 5 / 6, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Trying to Catch Up with the Voters William Blum How America Has Changed Iraq Uri Avnery Exercise in Escapism Franklin Lamb Harvard's Twisted Report on Israel's Invasion of Lebanon Fred Gardner Elective Surgeries Kill Lawrence R. Velvel The American Moral Meltdown Accelerates Missy Beattie Lying and Dying: The Moral Sensibility of Military Recruiters Robert Fantina Bush's Veto: Hypocritical Words and Actions Carla Blank American Massacres and the Media Linn Washington, Jr. The Long Ordeal of Harold Wilson Stephen F. Jackson Taking It to Drummond: Paramilitaries and Mining Companies in Colombia P. Sainath The Jailing of Indian Farmers Anthony Papa Time to End New York's War on Itself James T. Phillips Blather Cancer John Ross Last Days of the Willie Loman of the EZLN Stephen Lendman Chavez's Oil Policy Sparks Panic at Wall Street Journal Ben Terrall Iggy Pop at 60 CounterPunch Newswire Advice from a Geezer Assassin Poets' Basement Valentine, Engel and Davies Website of the Weekend Mountain Justice Summer   May 4, 2007 Patrick Cockburn How the Surge is Failing Col. Dan Smith From Watergate to Gonzogate Norman Solomon FOX on Wall Street Azmi Bishara Why is Israel After Me? Ron Jacobs Sitting in on Senator Kohl and the War Dave Lindorff Clinton and Byrd are Calling for Revocation of the Wrong AUMF Kevin Zeese The Democrats Cave to Bush Bob Fitrakis Why Four Died in Ohio: Kent State, Gov. Rhodes and the FBI Janet Kauffman "Stop the Mudness!" Bare Earth is Scorched Earth Website of the Day Let Us Gather in Missouri!   May 3, 2007 Jeff Halper The Livni-Rice Plan for the Middle East: a Just Peace or Apartheid? Christopher Brauchli Bush's Best and Brightest: From Dr. Keroack to Bernard Kerik Dave Zirin Talking Sports from Death Row: an Interview with Kevin Cooper Corporate Crime Reporter Big Pharma Gets Its Hooks into Seton Hall Law School Robert Fisk Olmert Comes Undone Mike Ferner Bush Veto, Right for the Wrong Reasons? Mike Whitney A Stock Market Post-Mortem Pham Binh The Democrats and War Funding Dave Lindorff Kucinich's Impeachment Train: Look Who Just Stepped Aboard Michael A. Johnson Tenet on 60 Minutes Website of the Day Olivia Wilde: the Interview   May 2, 2007 Saul Landau Would Jesus Wear a Rolex on His TV Show? Dr. Susan Block Hookergate II: Madame Julia's Big Black Book of Cheesy Republican Sex Acts Carla Blank Historical Amnesia: Worst U.S. Massacre? Margaret Kimberly The Candor of Mike Gravel: "These People Frighten Me" Kevin Zeese Durbin Gives Edwards More to Apologize For Carlos Villareal How "Law and Order" Covers for Bigotry in the Immigration Debate Michael Dickinson Trouble in Turkey: Criminalizing Political Art Tim Shorrock A Raw Deal Between Washington and Seoul: Corporate Interventionism as Trade Policy Alevtina Rea The Myth-Makers of Estonia William S. Lind General Incompetence: Col. Yingling and the Military Brass Website of the Day Good News: Rost's "ZubeGate Exposé Prompts Congressional Inquiry May 1, 2007 Andrew Cockburn How Rumsfeld Micromanaged Torture Fred Gardner Affirmative Abstinence: Adios, Randall Tobias, the Man Who Turned His Wife's Suicide into a Sales Pitch for Prozac Chase Madar Are Working Class Jobs Bad for Your Health? Ralph Nader Cheney and the BYU 25: Faith, Accountability and Protest in Utah John V. Walsh Edgy Dems Snarl at Their Antiwar Base Joshua Frank Obama, Incorporated Leslie Radford The Migrant Trap and the Migrant's Way Out Shaun Harkin An Interview with Nativo López on Immigration Bills and Protests Dave Lindorff Murtha Talks Impeachment Peter Rost, MD Inspector General Requests Meeting with Pfizer Whistleblower Peter Linebaugh May Day and Magna Carta Website of the Day Impeachment? Why Bother?   April 30, 2007 Frank Menetrez Dershowitz v. Finkelstein: Who's Right and Who's Wrong? Paul Craig Roberts Incompetence at the Top: Tenet and His Masters Ray McGovern Tenet's Self-Serving Apologia Manuel Garcia, Jr. Fire Collapses Oakland Freeway as Steel Supports Fail Diana Johnstone The Three Rs of "Sarko the American" Sherwood Ross A So-Called "Liberal" Answers His Death Threats Peter Rost, MD Did Pfizer Illegally Market Its New HIV/AIDS Drug? Robert Jensen Anti-Capitalism in Five Minutes Kevin Zeese While Congress Voted for War, the Peace Movement Protested Inside the Senate Jane Stillwater Dalai Lama and Costco Website of the Day Francis Boyle: Impeaching Bush   April 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Is Global Warming a Sin? Jeffrey St. Clair Versailles on the Potomac Fred Gardner Fuel for a Killer: What Drugs Had Cho Taken? David Orchard and Michael Mandel Afghanistan and Iraq are the Same War Alan Maass The War on Hip Hop: an Interview with Dave Marsh Joe Bageant Why Are Leftists So Damn Afraid of God? Robert Fantina The Rhetoric of Dick Cheney: Lying as Art Form Hanan Ashrawi Palestine and Peace: the Looming Challenges Ron Jacobs Return of the Guitar Army Nicole Colson The Surpeme Court Targets Abortion Rights Ben Terrall Tracking Torture Missy Beattie Quit Your Day Job, George Harvey Wasserman The Lesson of Chernobyl Cindy Beringer The Horrors of Hutto: Inside Texas' For-Profit Immigrant Prison Mike Roselle The Dog Philosophy: What Kant Can't Tell Us About Why We Love Wilderness RAWA Freeing Afghanistan James McEnteer Where the Movie Villains are American: Screening Films in Bolivia Poets' Basement For Stew Albert Website of the Weekend Rudy and Donald: the Drag Smooch April 27, 2007 Eva Liddell How Can Women Defend Themselves Against Stalkers? Phyllis Bennis and Robert Jensen Moving Beyond Anti-War Politics Mike Whitney Where's the Beef?: Padilla and the Zucchini Prosecution Michael F. Brown Biden and Pelosi: Failing to Hold Israel Accountable for War Crimes in Lebanon Jordan Flaherty Forgotten Mississippi Margaret Kimberly John McCain, Cold-Blooded Senator Christopher Brauchli The Dangers of Unstable People Jacob Mundy Stalemate in the Western Sahara? Website of the Day Yee Speaks April 26, 2007 Andrew Cockburn Wolfowitz's War Franklin Lamb Giuliani Plays the Islamic Terror Card Patrick Cockburn Al-Qa'ida Group Behind US Deaths in Iraq Roger Morris Dispatches From the Front Henry Siegman The Three Nos of Jerusalem Alevtina Rea A Sister City Debate in Rachel Corrie's Hometown Paris Are You a Hip Hop Apologist? Nikolas Kozloff White Racism and the Aymara in Bolivia Alan Farago Dow 13,000 Disconnect Matthew S. Miller The Limits to Lakoff Website of the Day PBS: Blaming Blacks Again April 25, 2007 Sharon Smith The Rights of Children in America David Price The Long Lost War Diana Johnstone Who Wants Sarko? New or Old France? Brendan Cooney Cho and Cheney: Killer Looks Sonja Karkar Israeli Democracy, For Jews Only? Brian Concannon Wolfowitz and Haiti Lee Gaillard Baptism Under Fire: Can the Osprey Fly? Leah Fishbein Women Under Siege Dave Lindorff The First Shoe Drops Neal Galloway US Agricultural Policy is Destructive at Home and Abroad Website of the Day Anti-War Student Movements: a Short History   April 24, 2007 Ishmael Reed How Imus' Media Collaborators Almost Rescued Their Chief Lila Rajiva Tragedy and Irony After Virginia Tech Paul Craig Roberts The War Goes Ever On Patrick Cockburn Sunnis Protest Baghdad's "Prison Wall" Ralph Nader The Corporate Debasement of Earth Day Mike Whitney Housing Bubble Boondoggle Website of the Day "Refugees"   April 23, 2007 Saul Landau The Courage to Withdraw Patrick Cockburn Time of the Death Squads: Iraq as Revenge Tragedy Robert Fantina Changing Sentiments Sam Husseini The Gonzales Distraction Corporate Crime Reporter Bought-and-Paid-For Journalism at the Philly Inquirer Elizabeth Lalasz Sick and Getting Sicker Harvey Wasserman Earth Day, Incorporated Dave Lindorff Huge Win for Impeachment in Vermont: Are You Listening Sen. Leahy? Gary Leupp Maoist Homophobia in Nepal? Stephen Lendman A Short History of the Christian Right Website of the Day No to OLF April 21 / 22, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Bring Back the Posse Fred Gardner Prozac Madness Kristoffer Larsson The Islamic Threat to Europe: By the Numbers Barbara Rose Johnston Nuclear War and Its Consequences Manuel Garcia, Jr. The Heart of Whiteness: Racism, Wealth and IQ John Scagliotti Unlocking Closets, Locking Free Speech Marjorie Cohn Gonzo Justice: Counting on Alberto Patrick Cockburn Sadr Raises the Stakes Diana Johnstone The Absent Middle East Ron Jacobs Explaining the Spectre Evelyn Pringle How Iraq Was Looted BANCO Travesties of Justice in a Black City in Michigan: the Persecution of Rev. Pinkney Paul Richards Thinking Big in the Northern Rockies Dan Bacher Zapatistas in the Colorado River Delta Ben Terrall Showdown at Chevron: SF Protest Against New Iraq Oil Law Sherwood Ross How the Taliban Defeated the Pakistani Army in Waziristan Remi Kanazi Bill Maher's "Towel-Headed Hos" Aseem Shrivastava Behind the Curtain of SEZs Poets' Basement Valentine, Reed, Harley and Engel Website of the Day Reading Sappho in New Orleans   April 20, 2007 Doug Peacock Beginning of the End for the Yellowstone Grizzly? Diane Farsetta Onward, Free Market Soldiers!: Privatizing Public Diplomacy Tom Clifford The Surge in Iraqi Civilian Deaths: the Bloodiest 12 Months of the War Amira Hass The Holocaust as Political Asset Nicole Colson Desperation in Gitmo's Camp 6 Sonja Karkar Double Jeopardy Entraps Palestinians Heather Gray The Supreme Court Looks a Lot Like the Taliban Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban Syrian Expeditions Agustin Velloso Spain and Iraq, Four Years On Matthew Koehler Distorting the News in a Timber Company Town Website of the Day Gonzo's Monica   April 19, 2007 Emad Mekay / Jim Lobe Scoring at the World Bank: Wolfowitz's Quid Pro Quo Patrick Cockburn A Day of Bombs and Blood in Baghdad Larry C. Johnson The Hobbesian Hell of Iraq: How Many Dead Equal a Failed Government? Norman Solomon Bowing Down to Our Own Violence Saul Williams Notes from a Hip Hop Head: an Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey Sunsara Taylor From Iraq to the Supreme Court: a New Dark Ages for Women Harvey Wasserman How Green is Tom Friedman? Christopher Brauchli Apologies, Incorporated Anthony Papa Nightmare Behind Bars: John Valverde's Fight for Freedom Dave Lindorff Betraying Thomas Jefferson Website of the Day The Best Antiwar Song of the Iraq War? April 18, 2007 Lila Rajiva More Gun Laws or Fewer Idiots? How the Va Tech Administration Failed Its Campus Landau / Hassen Tancredo as 17th Century Indian Chief? Charles Fisher / Randy Fisher Don Imus's Firing and the Hip-Hop Culture Diane Christian Facing Death Politically Kevin Prosen Meeting the Resistance in Iraq China Hand Gold Digging: The U.S. Treasury Department's Economic Campaign Against North Korea Peter Rost, MD The Strange Profits from a Re-Branded Cancer Drug Justin Akers Chacón What's Inside the STRIVE Bill Jerry Kroth Virginia Tech and Cho Seung Hui: Love and Unhappiness in an Alien Culture Sherwood Ross Massacre at Va Tech: a Brief Glimpse into Daily Life in Iraq Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Bonfire of the Hannities Alice Cherbonnier Why South Dakota's "Informed Consent" Law Doesn't Go Far Enough Website of the Year? "I Hope I Die Before I Get Old"   April 17, 2007 Jean Bricmont / Diana Johnstone The Elections in France: a Coming Political Tsunami Paul Craig Roberts Bloodbath in Blacksburg Frida Berrigan Militarizing the Border Alison Weir The Message of PBS's "Crossroads" Series: Some Muslims Aren't Bad John Walsh Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC? Jason Hribal Resistance is Futile: Emily the Cow and Tyke the Elephant Evelyn Pringle The Iraq Money Trail Ben Terrall Cuban Exiles Get Hero's Welcome; Haitian Refugees Get Shafted Stan Cox 1040s and Death Certificates Soren Ambrose Confidence Crisis at the IMF Website of the Day Go Ahead and Yell: "FIRE!"   April 16, 2007 John F. Sugg Hate and Hypocrisy in the Cox Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Escalating Military Spending: Income Redistribution in Disguise Carl G. Estabrook The Politics of the Useful Threat: It Didn't Start with the Neo-Cons Paul Craig Roberts The Party of Brownshirts Uri Avnery Blood on Our Hands Ralph Nader Where Are the Cries of Outrage Over Military Rapes? Eamon McCann Shame of the Empire: Simon, Sir Bono and Tinkerbelle Lee Sustar Decoding the Democrats Mike Whitney Trouble in Squanderville: Bubble People and the Faith-Based Market Don Fitz Solar Capitalism? Stephen Lendman Ecuador Votes for Revolutionary Change Website of the Day Black Mesa Water Coalition   April 14 / 15, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Ho Industry Whores Jorge Mariscal Gen. Petraeus's Field Manual: a Traveler's Guide to Big Muddy Jeffrey St. Clair The Beautiful and the Dammed: How the West Got Flooded Dave Marsh The Imus Affair, Hip Hop and Politics Dr. Trudy Bond Shrinks, Lies and Torture: How Psychologists Became the Pentagon's Bitches Joe Bageant A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard Fidel Castro The Terrorist Walks Alfredo Molano "More Than Complicated" Alan Farago When Miami Crashes Michael Neumann Anglophone Fantasies and French Realities Fred Gardner Barbara McNair's Unsung Heroism: Bringing Down the Owner of EST Ron Jacobs A Conversation with Three Iraq Veterans Against the War Gail Dines Racy Sex, Sexy Racism Linda Ford Imus and Lady Hoopsters: a Long History of Bias Against Women Athletes Missy Beattie What Would Imus Do?: Iraq, Ho, Ho, Ho Dan La Botz Farm Labor Organizer Murdered in Mexico Giuliana Sgrena The Lies of Mario Lozano Laura Carlsen A Moratorium on Free Trade Agreements Abu Spinoza Wolfowitz's Real Crimes Elizabeth Schulte Grinding It Out with Quentin Tarantino Poets' Basement Davies, Harley, Engel and Landau Website of the Weekend Vonnegut's Final Interview   April 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Shattering of Mosul Stephen Soldz Aid and Comfort for Torturers: Psychology and Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective George Ciccarriello-Maher The Failed Chávez Coup: Five Years On Laith al-Saud Kirkuk, Oil and the Kurds Dave Zirin Memo to Imus John Ross Drawing a Line in the Heartland Ramzy Baroud America as Proxy Harvey Wasserman The Novelist Who Hated War: Peace Be With You, Mr. Vonnegut Lopez, Olivo and Garcia Columbia University's Two-Tiered Punishments Dols, Fukumori, Judd and Tillett-Saks Columbia: On the Wrong Side of Justice Website of the Day Democrats: an Iraq Scorecard   April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski We May be Rid of Imus, But We're Still Stuck with the Culture Paul Craig Roberts Big Profits from Big Brother Marjorie Cohn U.S. Attorneys and Voting Rights Evelyn Pringle Bush Family War Profiteering: Will Congress Finally Cut Them Off? Ron Jacobs God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut Norman Solomon The Awful Truth About Hillary, Barack and John Joe DeRaymond The Release of Dennis Counterman: The Justice Game, the Alford Plea and Death Row Nicola Nasser Squeezing Palestinians into an Impossible Mission Nikolas Kozloff Chile, a Country Geographically Located in South America "By Accident" William S. Lind Horatio Hornblower's Worst Nightmare Siegfried L. Sassoon A Statement Against the Continuation of the War Website of the Day Where You Want This Killin' Done?   April 11, 2007 R. T. Naylor Quebec's Lessons for the US: How "Wars on Terror" Should be Fought Vijay Prashad The Generation of IEDs and iPods Patrick Cockburn The Myth of Tal Afar Winslow T. Wheeler When Will the War Money Really Run Out? Jack Balkwill Prison for a Peacemaker: A Vietnam Vet Interviews Kathy Kelly Alan Farago Florida's Fundamentally Weak Environmental Movement Russell D. Hoffman The Carbon Offset Tax is Just Another Nuke Bailout Peter Rost, MD The Fine Print on Drug Industry Kickbacks Mike Whitney Doomsday for the Greenback? Dave Lindorff Torture and Selective Outrage Susie Day Peter Pace Porks a Peck of Pinko Perverts Website of the Day Save the Internet!     Subscribe Online

May 24, 2007 The Life of Dr. Tod Mikuriya Doctor of Last Resort By FRED GARDNER When the Medical Marijuana Patients Union held a symposium in Fort Bragg in August, 2004, Sheriff Tony Craver asked an organizer to please introduce him to Dr. Tod Mikuriya. It turned out that Mikuriya had left after participating in a morning panel. "That's one man I've always wanted to meet," said Craver, looking down in disappointment. The sheriff knew there was something unique about Mikuriya, and so did half the cops and prosecutors in California, who, unlike Tony Craver, fiercely resented him for conferring legitimacy on people previously considered criminals. Mikuriya died Sunday at his home in the Berkeley Hills. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer. In the final days he'd been in the care of his sisters, Beverly, an MD from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Mary Jane of San Francisco, and his longtime assistant, John Trapp. Cancer had been diagnosed originally in his lungs, and as of last March it had been detected in his liver, too. Dennis Peron and Dale Gieringer threw farewell parties for him. He canceled a trip to Hungary where he was to present a paper at the International Cannabinoid Research Society meeting. His office began steering patients to other doctors. And then his condition improved. In late May 2006 Mikuriya attended his 50th reunion at Reed College and sang rounds with his old madrigal group. His office geared up again. He wrote the lead section of an article recounting what California doctors had learned in the 10 years since the passage of Prop 215 ("Medical Marijuana in California, 1996-2006," O'Shaughnessy's, Winter/Spring 2007). He met with a publisher about reissuing "Marijuana Medical Papers," his 1973 anthology of pre-prohibition medical literature -the new edition to include a CD containing eight more articles that had come to his attention over the years. He had many visits from his 12-year-old daughter, Hero, the apple of his eye; they even went cross-country skiing one weekend. As recently as this March Mikuriya played a key role organizing a symposium at which retired colonel James Ketchum, MD, discussed the Army's secret search for a cannabinoid-based incapacitating agent. Mikuriya had begun assembling the contents for a new anthology, "Cannabis Clinical Papers," that would include studies by colleagues and three major papers of his own: "Cannabis as a Substitute for Alcohol;" "Cannabis as a First-Line Treatment for Mental Disorders;" and "Cannabis Eases Post-Traumatic Stress." (The titles alone reflect the relevance of Mikuriya's concerns. Even his historical studies related to our present time and place. For example: "An 1873 survey by British tax officials in India elicited a range of views on cannabis that seems strikingly contemporary... 'the general opinion seems to be that the evil effects of ganja have been exaggerated.'") Mikuriya liked to use the slogans "Grandfather it in!" and "Back to the future!" in discussing the legalization of cannabis for medical use. The generations of Americans who discovered cannabis in social settings in the 1960s and the decades that followed had no idea that it had been widely used in this country between the Civil War and the Great Depression, with tinctures manufactured by Eli Lilly, Parke, Davis and other major pharmaceutical companies available by prescription. For decades Mikuriya was the only MD among the small group of activists and scholars who collected the bottles and labels and sought to unearth and publicize the history that our educational system had erased so systematically. Mikuriya was given to creating polysyllabic phrases that forced one to puzzle over their meaning. For example, America's cultural preference for the modern he called "temporal chauvinism." Cannabis clubs, he said, showed the efficacy of "proactive structuralism;" by which he meant, "People can create something and, by doing so, set a precedent." Tod Hiro Mikuriya was born in Eastern Pennsylvania in 1933 to Anna (Schwenk) and Tadafumi Mikuriya. His father was a Japanese Samurai who converted to Christianity, his mother a German immigrant and practicing Baha'i. Tod and his two younger sisters went to Quaker schools. "The Quakers were proprietors of the underground railway," Tod noted. "The cannabis prohibition has the same dynamics as the bigotry and racism my family and I experienced starting on December 7, 1941, when we were transformed from normal-but-different people into war-criminal surrogates." He graduated from Reed College in 1956, served as a medic in the U.S. Army, and then attended Temple University School of Medicine. It was at Temple that a reference in a pharmacology text to the medical utility of marijuana triggered the interest that would define Mikuriya's career. After getting his medical degree, Mikuriya served an internship at Southern Pacific General Hospital in San Francisco, specialized in psychiatry at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, and completed his training at Mendocino State Hospital. In 1967 he became director of non-classified marijuana research for the National Institute of Mental Health Center for Narcotics and Drug Abuse. He left the position after several months, he said, "When it became clear they only wanted research into damaging effects, not helpful ones." Mikuriya moved to Berkeley in 1970 and entered private practice. He was active in Amorphia, a West Coast reform group that eventually folded into NORML, and helped organize a 1972 marijuana legalization initiative, working alongside Michael and Michelle Aldrich, Pebbles Trippet, and others who stayed with the struggle through the ensuing decades of cultural and political rollback. "Western medicine has forgotten almost all it once knew about the therapeutic properties of marijuana," Mikuriya lamented to a UCSF medical student interviewing him in 1996. (I had the privilege of sitting in.) "Hemp-based tinctures and preparations were prescribed for myriad purposes-analgesic and hypnotic; appetite stimulant; anti-epileptic and antispasmodic; for the prevention and treatment of the neuralgias, including migraine and tic doloreux; antidepressant and tranquilizer; oxytocic (to induce uterine contractions); topical anesthetic; withdrawal agent for opiate, chloral and alcohol addiction; intraocular hypotensive; childbirth analgesic; hypothermogenic." Cannabis is also an anti-asthmatic and antitussive (cough suppressant), Mikuriya told the med student. It went out of favor with doctors in the early decades of the 20th century "not because it was deemed toxic or dangerous but because alternatives came on the market -injectable opiates and synthetics such as aspirin and barbiturates- that were quicker-acting and offered more consistency in dosage and patient response." When Dennis Peron launched the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club at the start of the '90s, Mikuriya saw "a unique research opportunity." He began interviewing club members in an attempt to confirm or add to descriptions in the pre-prohibition literature. When Prop 215 was being drafted, Mikuriya contributed the all-important phrase in the first sentence that allows doctors to approve marijuana use in treating "any...condition for which marijuana provides relief." (Eleven other states have since passed laws allowing marijuana use to treat specific conditions. Mikuriya considered them all intellectually dishonest compromises.) Mikuriya's contention that marijuana alleviates an extremely wide range of symptoms was ridiculed by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey and other federal officials at a press conference in December, 1996. Reform advocates promptly sued the drug czar's office and obtained a federal injunction confirming the Constitutional right of doctors and patients to discuss marijuana as a treatment option. Nevertheless, for several years following the passage of Prop 215, almost no California MDs were willing to risk the wrath of the government by putting in writing a recommendation for cannabis in the treatment of say, depression, or lower back pain. People all over the state were calling cannabis clubs to report that their doctors -many of whom had expressed their approval of marijuana previously- would not give them a written "letter of diagnosis" entitling them to join a club. These people would very often be given the name and phone number of Tod Mikuriya. Thus Mikuriya became the doctor of last resort for thousands of California patients. He flew or drove with John Trapp to cities and towns around the state to preside at ad hoc clinics. "It's one of the most satisfying experiences for me as a psychiatrist to be able to remove the stigma of criminality from an individual," he said after testifying for an alcoholic Vietnam vet in 1998. "Not just the self-perceived stigma, but removing the real danger of civil forfeiture and other kinds of state viciousness." Mikuriya was investigated by the California medical board on the basis of complaints from law enforcement officers (none from patients, and no allegations of harm to a patient). At a disciplinary hearing in 2003 all the patients named in the accusation praised and thanked Mikuriya. He was placed on probation by the board, but continued to practice until two weeks ago. Then his decline was rapid. He had issued some 9,000 approvals. Mikuriya was the founder of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, a specialty group whose members have issued more than 160,000 approvals. "Tod was the mentor of every doctor working in the field," says SCC president Philip A. Denney, MD. "His observation that cannabis alleviates so many seemingly disparate symptoms has been explained by recent research showing that its active ingredients modulate virtually every neurotransmission system in the body." In other words, the finding the drug czar mocked as "a fraud" turned out to be a most significant truth. A Quaker service honoring our mutual friend will be held at 4:30 p.m. Friday at the Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St., Berkeley. Fred Gardner edits O'Shaughnessy's, the Journal of Cannabis in Clinical Practice. He can be reached at fred@plebesite.com

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