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Today's Stories September 22 / 23, 2007 Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition September 22 / 23, 2007 Pot Shots Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) By FRED GARDNER "I am a 49-year-old mother of two teenage daughters," is how Claudia Jensen described herself to a Congressional subcommittee in April 2004, "and a physician educated at the University of Arkansas for both undergraduate and medical schools. I studied Pediatrics at the University of California at Irvine, completing my internship and residency training in 1981. I have a total of 23 years working as a pediatrician, first as an HMO physician with Cigna HealthPlans, then in private practice in Ventura, CA. "I currently work two days a week in a small community clinic serving a poor patient population, three days a week in my own private office, and I teach first-year medical students one day a week at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. I have always had a reputation for being a patient advocate since the very beginning of my training. Congressman Souder has asked me to discuss my practice of recommending marijuana for use by 'dozens of patients, including children with ADD '" Dr. Jensen died Sept. 15, of breast cancer. One of her former students, Rolando Tringale, MD, passed along the sad news. A wave of anger lapped at the shore as I remembered how I'd come to know her. One evening in March 2004 Dale Gieringer of California NORML called. He said he'd been asked by Steve Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project to convince Jensen that she shouldn't go to Washington to testify before Souder. The Los Angeles Times had run a story about Jensen approving cannabis use by a troubled high school student. Fox and Rob Kampia of MPP feared that Jensen defending her practice before Congress would discredit the movement and undermine the prospects for reform, Dale said. The MPPers had dissuaded Oregon osteopath Phil Leveque by telling him that Souder was planning an "ambush" and that he would be "personally embarrassed." But Jensen needed more urging. I applauded Dale for not calling her and did so immediately myself to warn of MPP's ongoing manipulation attempt. She said nobody could turn her around, she was looking forward to bringing her daughters to Washington, which they'd never seen, and to telling Congress about so-and-so- and so-and- so, out-of-control teenagers who could function normally thanks to cannabis. She discussed her patients' lives and their problems with the utmost empathy. A few weeks later I took the red-eye from Oakland to Dulles and an airport shuttle to the hotel where Claudia and her daughters, then 16 and 13, were in the all-important make-up phase of the morning. The girls were brilliant, self-confident, and very keen to see Freddy Adu, the young soccer star who had just been signed by a U.S. team. We took a cab to the NORML office where someone who knew the ropes (Allen St. Pierre, if memory serves) gave Claudia advice and reassurance. Then on to the hearing, which I wrote up for the paper of record (Anderson Valley Advertiser, 4/7/07): Ventura pediatrician Claudia Jensen testified April 1 before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, chaired by Indiana Republican Mark Souder. The Subcommittee had also invited Dr. Phillip Leveque, who has written about 1/3 of the approximately 12,000 approval letters submitted to Oregon's state-run Medical Marijuana Program. Agents of the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based reform group, had urged Leveque, 81, not to attend. MPP "Congressional Liaison" Steve Fox and others phoned repeatedly to warn him that the encounter would be humiliating. Leveque decided to heed their warnings and asked your correspondent to read aloud a statement he'd written. A Souder staffer nixed my offer, but said the statement would be entered into the record. It included the line "Cannabis is safer than Washington D.C. drinking water"- a topical sound bite, given that lead in the drinking water has been a major story of late. As the Great Playwright would have it, Dr. Jensen took a seat in the gallery next to Joan Jerzak, the Chief of the Medical Board of California's Enforcement Division, who was also there as a witness. They struck up a conversation, which soon became convivial. I thought about going over to advise Jensen that anything she said might be held against her. (The Board is investigating Jensen for approving cannabis use by three ADD patients.) When they were called to testify, Jensen and Jerzak again sat next to one another at the witness table. They looked like sisters -two big, sensuous strawberry blondes.] Souder grilled Jerzak about why the Board wasn't enforcing federal law and the chief staunchly explained the Board's obligation to follow California law! The chief is a lot more likeable when she's on our side ... Jensen's testimony was from the heart. She defended her recommendations of cannabis for several patients with attention deficit disorder. She could have avoided the subject until the Q&A session but she told it as a success story. Souder was not initially hostile and seemed sincere when he thanked her for coming. During the Q&A, however, he expressed shock and disapproval that she was relying strictly on feedback from patients rather than established medical authority. She countered that she, too, wished that she didn't have to conduct her own studies. Claudia won every exchange. Rob Kampia also testified that afternoon. Having successfully pressured Dr. Leveque not to come, the young bureaucrat took his place. And then he proceeded to badmouth Leveque! I could hardly believe my ears as Kampia chastised the Subcommittee for having "invited Dr. Leveque, who is literally the only physician in Oregon to have written an inordinate number of recommendations." Phil Leveque is a World War Two hero, a decorated infantryman. This scene was taking place at the height of Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation" blither. Leveque's testimony would have been compelling and the Congresspersons wouldn't have laid a glove on him. Certainly Claudia Jensen's account of how cannabis helped a failing student turn his life around caused no embarrassment to her or "the movement." MPP's effort to keep away the brave doctors on whose shoulders the movement actually rests was more than opportunism, it was blacklisting. To marginalize indigenous leaders like Claudia Jensen does not advance the movement, it undermines it. The moneymen in DC claim that the indigenous leaders (to whom they may pay lip service for past services rendered) have flaws that make them anathema and that more "professional" and respectable spokespersons (i.e., themselves) can carry the message more effectively to the American people. There's a doctor in Chicago named David Ostrow whom MPP sees fit to fund. In March I got an email from Ostrow in response to a Counterpunch piece about cannabis as a treatment for post-traumatic stress. He described himself as head of the "Medical Marijuana Policy Advocacy Project (MMPAP)" which was recruiting members for its "scientific advisory board (SAB)." He requested information about "a Dr. and a group called Cannabis Clinicians (sic)." Before I could reply there came a follow-up: Subject: Ooops! Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:47 AM From: David Ostrow <david@OstrowAssociates.com> To: <fred@plebesite.com> Cc: <jeremy@OstrowAssociates.com>, 'Joe Haptas' <joe@OstrowAssociates.com> Fred- I forgot to mention that the Dr. I am interested in contacting is Dr. Phillip Penny, not Todd M. The latter Dr. is well known to me and while he has been an important driving force in the legalization of medical marijuana in CA, he unfortunately tends to go off the deep end into recommending MMJ for just about any condition in the DSM IV, which doesn't help our cause when we are trying to get Drs. to consider MMJ for specific indications. David O Tod Mikuriya, my close friend had a few months to live as I read this and pondered whether to share it with him or spare him the gratuitous insult. You'd think the physician hired to advance the Marijuana Policy Project agenda would have some savvy, some political sophistication. Intrigued by Ostrow's insensitive email, I phoned him with the requested info ("It's Dr. Philip Denney... one 'l' in Philip..."). David O was very forthcoming about the work "Ostrow Associates" was doing for MPP, but wouldn't say how much he was getting paid. He had a shock of recognition as I described O'Shaughnessy's, the journal I edit. "Oh, you have a terrible reputation! Terrible," he blurted. "That's right," I said cheerfully. He kept on talking, uninhibited. Said MPP was sponsoring a panel at the upcoming American Medical Association meeting in Chicago. They'd be flying in doctors from California (Donald Abrams), Montreal (Mark Ware), and elsewhere. I suggested that a California doctor who had monitored cannabis use by thousands of patients might be a good addition and told him how to reach Frank Lucido, whose practice standards are unassailable. One of the participants reported subsequently that the panel was a disaster -sparsely attended, and only by doctors already conversant with the subject. "I don't think a single delegate came who wasn't known to the organizers," said my source, "Not one drawn by curiosity. It was a complete waste of my time." Goodnight, Dear Girl Dr. Jensen was convinced that Chief Jerzak's retirement from the medical board about a year after their Congressional appearance was a result of federal pressure. Jensen contacted Jerzak, who said that she'd quit because she wanted to spend more time with her husband and to travel. Jensen didn't quite believe her. "She wouldn't work her whole career to become chief and then just quit," was Claudia's theory. Our last correspondence was in early August. I'd asked about patients who use cannabis to deal with insomnia. Claudia answered, "Those who have anxiety tend to use an inhaled indica (preferably one dose) within half an hour of desired sleep onset. The patients who wake up in the night I have using indica edibles. Unfortunately (and fortunately), it is very strain dependent. Each patient has to search for his/her best mix. I have one patient who has to use a high-grade sativa to enhance sleep onset." She lived in Capitstrano Beach and we'd go months without being in touch, so I don't miss her acutely. In fact, I can't even believe she's gone. Fred Gardner edits O'Shaughnessy's, the Journal of Cannabis in Clinical Practice. He can be reached at fred@plebesite.com Your Ad Here

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