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Today's
Stories
September 4-6,
2004
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who Are and What We Do
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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Labor Day Weekend Edition
September 4-6, 2004
Pot Shots
The
Hempstead T-Shirt
By
FRED GARDNER
Pseudo-sophisticates in the media have
commented snidely on the following Associated Press story, datelined
Atlanta, that ran in papers across the country in late August:
The town of Hempstead, N.Y.,
has a message for Gwinnett County school administrators: Before
you target a student wearing a Hempstead shirt, look at a map.
Terrell Jones, a student in Gwinnett County's Grayson High School,
was weeded out of a classroom by a school administrator because
he wore a shirt that read: 'Hempstead, NY 516,' a reference to
the Long Island town and its telephone area code. (The reporter
and editor(s) must have snickered over "weeded out."
Few seem able to resist making puns when talking or writing about
marijuana, as if the very subject produced a contact high.)
According to Jones' family,
which moved from Hempstead to the Atlanta suburb, the school
thought the shirt referred to marijuana. Jones wasn't allowed
to return to class until he persuaded school officials to search
the Internet for the town name.
The town's Web site says the area may have been named for Hemel-Hempstead,
England. Another theory cites the Dutch city of Heemstede, because
settlers had come years earlier from the Netherlands.
'Before they would jump to any conclusions, they should be sure
of what they're talking about,' town spokeswoman Susie Trenkle
said of the Georgia officials.
Hempstead is the nation's largest township, with 759,000 residents
spread across 22 villages and more than 142 square miles, she
said.
The student's father, James Jones, said he wants an apology for
Monday's incident. School district officials did not return a
call for comment.
Terrell Jones says he will keep wearing the shirt to school.
The implication of the AP story--and
the sarcastic commentaries that ensued--was that the Georgia
school officials are a bunch of slack-jawed yokels. Nobody got
it that Hempstead, L.I. spokesperson Susie Trenkle is either
ignorant or in deep denial about the derivation of the town's
name. The "Hemp-" in Hempstead, England most certainly
refers to the cannabis plant, grown for fiber and the oil from
its seeds. [Stede meant "place" in English 2.0. "Hempstead,"
according to cannabis historian Michael Aldrich, "probably
referred to a farm where hemp was grown, which then became the
name of the town that sprang up around it."] By naming
their town after the plant, the founders of Hempstead, England
were paying cannabis a great honor; and subsequently, the founders
of Hempstead, Long Island, were paying homage to their roots...
Since hemp and marijuana are both synonyms for cannabis (albeit
one is grown for fiber and one for resin), the school officials
in Georgia were right! Terrell Jones was indeed violating the
school's zero-tolerance-for-marijuana policy by wearing a Hempstead,
L.I. t-shirt.
Aldrich adds, "The reason
George Washington and Tom Jefferson and others grew hemp was
so that the US would not have to rely on England, Italy and Russia
for hemp (national security, can't have our Navy depending on
foreign hemp!). Despite the Washington note in the 1790s about
'separated male from female' hemp plants, they were not interested
in the resin, but in hempseeds so that local 'home' industries
could produce the hemp the Navy needed. The cultivation manuals
of the time (the famous one by Edmund Quincy, John Quincy Adams's
cousin) said specifically that to get the best yield of hempseeds,
one pulled out the taller male plants AFTER seeds were set in
the female, to give the female more space and light to produce
big bunches of seeds. This is the opposite of sinsemilla. (Incidentally,
my very first hemp research project was going through Washington's
multi-volume Writings in the Lockwood Library at Buffalo in
1966 to find out if he smoked pot, which he didn't. My cullings
and comments-- all of Washington's writings on hemp-- were published
in Robert Anton Wilson's first book, 'Sex and Drugs.') The African
slaves probably knew about the 'other' use of the hemp plant,
but didn't tell their masters."
2. Cannabis
and "Forgotten Memories"
In December, 1996, soon after
California voters legalized marijuana for medical use, the U.S.
government -personified by Attorney General Janet Reno, Drug
Czar Barry McCaffrey, Health & Human Services Secretary Donna
Shalala, and NIDA Director Alan Leshner- threatened to deprive
doctors of prescription-writing privileges if they approved marijuana
use by their patients. At a widely covered press conference,
McCaffrey called the notion of marijuana having medicinal use
"a hoax," and he pointed to a large chart on an easel,
as if introducing conclusive evidence. The chart was headed "Dr.
Tod Mikuriya's (215 Medical Advisor) Medical Uses of Marijuana."
Twenty-six conditions were listed in two columns (with "Migranes"
misspelled). The chart had been culled from a website on which
Mikuriya listed uses of cannabis cited in the pre-prohibition
medical literature. The Drug Czar thought it was patently ridiculous
that one treatment could affect
such a wide range of ailments.
One of the conditions on McCaffrey's
chart- "Recalling 'Forgotten Memories'"- had been included
by a zealous aide hoping to link Mikuriya to the whacko sex-abuse
accusations then sweeping several U.S. communities (as they have
ever since the Salem witch hunts). Mikuriya said at the time
that the reference to cannabis helping people cope with traumatic
memories came from John Stuart Mill (!) and had been cited by
William Woodward, MD, of the American Medical Association, when
he urged Congress in 1937 not to remove cannabis from the formulary.
Mikuriya himself has encountered
patients who use cannabis to this end. He has identified two
distinct mechanisms by which it exerts a helpful effect. "In
some patients, it appears that cannabis makes dissociation unnecessary
by permitting conscious processing of their horrific memories,"
he says. As an example he describes "a middle-aged female
patient who was enabled by cannabis to acknowledge and 'own'
the source of her emotional pain, after which she no longer felt
the need to be 'all clenched up,' and hyper-vigilant, so that
she could actually form relationships, which she'd been unable
to do before."
Other patients have been helped,
Mikuriya says, by cannabis easing or eliminating obsessive thought
patterns. He has treated "a male Vietnam-era vet who was
a communications person on an aircraft patrolling for submarines.
During a landing, one of the engines malfunctioned and a propeller
came off, piercing the fuselage and killing a crew member who
was sitting two feet from him. For the rest of his life he's
been replaying and
obsessively going through the sequence of events, a loop he couldn't
shut off. But cannabis helped him do so, and now he can sleep
without being awakened by nightmares."
At this year's meeting of the
International Cannabinoid Research Society, Giovanni Marsicano
and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in
Germany reported on how the body's own cannabinoids control "extinction
of fear behavior." They trained normal mice and mice lacking
cannabinoid receptors (CB1-knockout mice) to associate a 20-second
tone with a 2-second electric shock, resulting in the mice "freezing"
whenever they heard the tone. In the next phase the researchers
played the tone without
providing the shock. Normal mice, over time, stopped freezing
in response; but the CB1 knockout mice continued freezing, leading
to the conclusion that CB1 receptors are involved in extinguishing
fear. The experiment was repeated with mice receiving an antagonist
drug that blocks the CB1 receptors; they, too, continued exhibiting
the fear response. Marsicano et al have identified the amygdala,
the medial prefontal cortex and the hippocampus as areas of the
brain involved in the fear-extinction process.
Gen. Barry McCaffrey mistaking
Dr. Tod Mikuriya for a scammer is an example of what psychiatrists
call "projection" -assuming the other person thinks
like you. Mikuriya is civic-minded and straight. McCaffrey's
duplicity reached a murderous level in 1991 when he ordered retreating
Iraqi soldiers mowed down from behind. But I digress... The
irony of McCaffrey's attack on Mikuriya is that the very act
of documenting all the conditions for which cannabis provides
relief is a major contribution to medicine, and a prerequisite
to understanding how cannabis works within the body.
Mikuriya presented a poster
at the 2001 meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research
Society calling for the reclassification of cannabis, which is
listed as a "hypnotic" or "sedative" in various
formularies, and as a "hallucinogen" in the Federal
Controlled Substances Act. "The term 'easement' most aptly
characterizes the unique medicinal effects of cannabis,"
according to Mikuriya. "Its properties are unique and distinctly
different from other categories of drugs. Subjective descriptions
categorize cannabis' therapeutic actions as sedative, anxiolytic,
and analgesic; the power of the drug to alleviate depression
is, perhaps, as important... Cannabis calms agitation, anger,
and mania. Painful, disruptive, and frequently incapacitating
symptoms are brought under control with
minimal side effects."
Recent reports that cannabinoids
are "retrograde messengers," exerting their effects
by inhibiting nervous activity, makes the term "easement"
seem all the more apt. It makes sense that an observant clinician
could intuit a few things about mechanism of action. Too bad
our scientific establishment has dug a deep cultural moat between
the researchers in the lab and the hands-on MDs.
Potshots
On Aug. 25 U.S. District Judge
Charles Breyer put off sentencing Robert "Duke" Schmidt
of Petaluma, until the Raich and Blakeley cases have been decided
by the U.S. Supreme Court. (The Ninth District Court of Appeals
ruled in Raich v. Ashcroft that marijuana grown within the state
for consumption by a patient within the state doesn't affect
interstate commerce and therefore the federal government has
no jurisdictional basis for banning it. Blakeley concerns the
legality of mandatory minimums.) Schmidt had pled guilty to cultivation
and distribution. The US Attorney had been demanding that he
serve five years in prison followed by seven years' probation.
Schmidt went into court expecting to get, worst case, a year
in a federal prison camp, and best case, time served. He says
his jaw dropped, and so did his federal public defender's, when
Breyer put everything on hold... Angel Raich is flying to New
York Sept. 10 to tape a Montel Williams show. Also appearing
will be Irvin Rosenfeld, the broker from Boca, one of six surviving
patients who are provided with marijuana by the feds under the
federal Investigational New Drug program (cut off in the late
1980s by George Bush I when large numbers of AIDS patients started
applying)... A feature on medical marijuana will appear in a
future issue AARP Magazine, which is sent free to millions of
geezers and pre-geezers. Author Eric Bailey is an honest, thorough
reporter employed by the Los Angeles Times. There's no more appropriate
readership for a story on this subject than AARP's... The Oakland
ballot initiative to "tax and regulate" marijuana use
by adults has been designated Measure Z, and city officials are
characterizing it in the Voters Handbook as a bill to "legalize"
marijuana (symbolically, since state law still prohibits cultivation,
distribution and possession except for medical use). The initiative's
backers thought they were being slick not to use the L-word in
their signature drive and were upset, initially, to see it in
the Voters Handbook. So they commissioned a poll to see how much
damage had been done, and lo and behold, 70% of those sampled
said "legalization" was fine with them. (While that
awkward, misleading concept known as "decriminalization"
got thumbs up from only 64%!) Measure Z has received endorsements
from the California Nurses Association and the new leader of
the State Senate, Don Perata.
Fred Gardner can be reached at fred@plebesite.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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