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Today's Stories September 29 / 30, 2007 Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   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 29 / 30, 2007 The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad Bill Zimmerman or Bill-Did-Us-In? By FRED GARDNER The author of the lame "General Petraeus or 'General Betrayus?'" ad for MoveOn.org was none other than Bill Zimmerman, the Santa Monica p.r. man installed as Prop 215 campaign manager in the Spring of 1996. Zimmerman was assigned to replace Dennis Peron by Ethan Nadelmann (who was bankrolled by George Soros and several other billionaires, including a Rockefeller). Under Zimmerman's leadership Prop 215 started to lose its lead at the polls, but this reality went unpublicized and Zimmerman could and did claim credit for the monumental win in November. Zimmerman is passing off his "General Betrayus" ad as another triumph. According to Tina Daunt of the Los Angeles Times, "Bill Zimmerman, the veteran democratic campaign manager who produced the controversial ads, said the group is pleased with the outcome. "'The intent was to elevate these issues by drawing attention to the facts,' Zimmerman said. 'The idea was to jump start the debate. We succeeded in doing that.'" Elevate what issues? The juvenile mockery of Gen. Petraeus's name diverted attention from the war itself. It could not have come at a better time for the War Party -just as the murder of 11 Iraqi civilians by Blackhawk mercenaries and Maliki's futile expulsion order exposed the pretense of an independent Iraqi government. And it played right into the Administration's hands by elevating Petraeus's personal role (even if there had been no pun on his name). "With Zimmerman as the ad man, MoveOn has defiantly added more of an edge to its efforts," wrote Ms. Daunt. MoveOn reportedly got a big influx of contributions after Bush attacked the ad; so maybe it actually was a success in their terms. The Hijacking of Prop 215. By January, 1996, it was clear that Dennis Peron and his friends and allies were not going to come up with the signatures needed to get the medical marijuana initiative on the ballot. New York-based Ethan Nadelmann agreed to fund a professional signature drive in exchange for which he would run the campaign (via Zimmerman). Zimmerman then submitted ballot arguments emphasizing Prop 215 as an affirmative defense for those arrested (i.e., business as usual for law enforcement). Dennis and his lieutenant John Entwistle submitted alternative arguments emphasizing that the measure would be a bar to arrest and prosecution. Zimmerman's weaker version was approved and his status as campaign manager confirmed by Secretary of State Bill Jones, a Republican. Prop 215 was ahead in the polls by a 60-40 margin when Zimmerman took over the campaign. Prospective voters said they'd made up their minds based on their own or a family member's experience and/or media coverage of Dennis's San Francisco Buyer's Club. The No-on-215 campaign was led by an overconfident Attorney General Lungren and other politicians and law enforcement officials who assumed the populace would buy their war-on-drugs propaganda forever. Zimmerman ordered Peron not to talk to reporters and set about projecting a more respectable image -his own. "Every time I debate [Orange County Sheriff] Brad Gates," Zimmerman complained to an interviewer, "he always begins by saying, 'This bill was written by a dope dealer from San Francisco,' and emphasizes the looseness with which the Cannabis Buyers Club was run." Zimmerman said he would counter, "If Prop 215 were law, we wouldn't need such clubs." Zimmerman produced three TV ads that ran in Southern California depicting doctors and pharmacists in conventional settings, but his modest campaign was overwhelmed by news stories focused on Peron after an Aug. 4 raid by 100 black-clad state Bureau of Narcotics agents closed the SFCBC. When Dennis challenged the legality of the closure order, Zimmerman convinced the northern California ACLU chapter not to file an amicus brief on his behalf. The raid on Dennis's club came to the attention of Garry Trudeau (thanks to John Entwistle) and soon there appeared a Doonesbury strip in which Zonker's friend Cornell says, "I can't get hold of any pot for our AIDS patients. Our regular sources have been spooked ever since the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco got raided ... " Lungren urged California publishers to spike Doonesbury and held a press conference to reveal the evidence his investigators had assembled against Peron and the SFCBC. He lost his cool during the question-and-answer session. "Skin flushed and voice raised, Attorney General Dan Lungren went head-to-head with a comic strip Tuesday ... " is how Robert Salladay began his Oakland Tribune story. A gradual, month-long decline in support for Prop 215 ended Oct. 1, the day of Lungren's press conference. The AG had Peron arrested Oct. 5 on criminal charges that included conspiracy to distribute marijuana -one more effort to make the vote a referendum on him and his club. Strong opposition was voiced in the closing weeks by Drug Czar McCaffrey, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Gray Davis, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, C. Everett Koop, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, George HW Bush, and 57 of Calfornia's 58 district attorneys, but Prop 215 passed by a 56-44% margin, with more than 5 million people voting yes. The wall of Prohibition was cracking. Zimmerman's version of the campaign was relayed thus by Hannah Rosin of the New Republic in February '97: "The passage of Proposition 215 surprised even its most zealous supporters. In the months before the November election, they fought what they thought was an uphill battle against an enemy that tried to portray them as a front for the seedy drug dealers on Market Street... The pro-215 advocates stuck to their line: the referendum was simply about limited, medical use of the drug, and then only in extreme cases... The pro-215 activists tailored their image midstream; they hired a pinstriped professional, Bill Zimmerman, to run the campaign, and to run it at a conspicuous distance from people like Dennis Peron. 'He was pictured on election night smoking a joint and saying, "Let's all get stoned and watch election night returns," Zimmerman recalls. 'That kind of behavior supports the opponents' view that we are a stalking horse for legalization... He could ruin it for the truly sick.' Zimmerman's images stuck." As soon as Prop 215 passed, Zimmerman was hired by Nadelmann to arrange (progressively weaker) medical-marijuana ballot initiatives in other states. After voters in Oregon and Washington approved theirs in 1998, Rolling Stone published a piece on medical marijuana by William Greider that dubbed Zimmermanm, who happened to be his primary source, "the national head of the movement." Greider proclaimed, "If this year's outcome turns out to be an important turning point, one explanation may be that the 1998 referendum propositions were different [than Prop 215]. They were designed to be law-enforcement friendly, and they included new regulatory rules that avoid much of the legal ambiguity and conflict that followed California's decriminalization vote in 1996." But the '98 election did not turn out to be a turning point. It may have been hard to see, because a super-nova keeps expanding after it explodes, but the movement led by Dennis Peron had begun to cool and lose political momentum from the time he was pushed aside in April 1996. 60 Minutes Rewrites History The first segment on 60 Minutes Sept. 23 was just plain embarrassing -reporter Scott Pelley asking the President of Iran questions on the level of "When did you stop beating your wife?" Pelley asked, "What do you admire about President Bush?," which drew a look of bemused consternation."What trait ... " Pelley added helpfully. Ahmadinejad tossed it back: "As an American, tell me what trait do you admire?" There was a flicker of fear in the CBS man's eyes but he came up with, "Well Mr. Bush is without question a very religious man." Ahmadinejad still looked bemused as he replied, politely, "What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people, please tell me, does Christianity tell its followers to do that?" The second segment -"Pot Shops," produced by David Browning, narrated by Morley Safer, and featuring Scott Imler as a Methodist minister- was an outrageous revision of history. Did CBS lay off all its fact-checkers in an economy move? Roll the tape: Morley Safer: ... Even one of the key proponents of medical marijuana says things have gotten out of hand. Imler (a 50-something man in a white collar with a prissy voice and a mincing manner): It's just ridiculous the amount of money that's going through these cannabis clubs. It's absolutely ridiculous. Morley: Scott Imler, a minister in the United Methodist Church (shot of Imler in a white robe preaching to bored people in pews) who has long been active in promoting medical marijuana. Eleven years ago, he was working to pass Proposition 215, the ballot measure that legalized it. Today, Imler has second thoughts. Imler (smiling, to Morley): The purpose of proposition 215 was not to create a new industry. It was to protect legitimate patients from criminal prosecution. Morley (over clips of Zimmerman's Prop 215 ads): The aim back then, reflected in television spots, was for a highly regulated system in which licensed pharmacies would dispense medical marijuana to the seriously ill. Proposition 215's backers had people with AIDS, cancer, and glaucoma in mind. Imler (sounding beleagured as he recalls being under enormous pressure from imaginary lobbyists): What happened when we were writing it was, as you can imagine, every patient group in the state and they all have their lobbies -you know, the kidney patients and the heart patients. Every patient group wanted to be included in the list. And so we didn't want to get in the position of deciding what it could be used for and what it couldn't be used for. We weren't doctors. We weren't scientists. We weren't researchers. We were just patients with a problem." The drafting of Prop 215 was a collective process. The primary authors were Dennis Peron and John Entwistle; Dale Gieringer of California NORML; attorney Bill Panzer; Valerie Corral, a medical user, caregiver and gardener who insisted that cultivation be protected; and the late Tod Mikuriya, MD, who contributed the all-important opening line allowing doctors to approve use in treating "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." When Imler says, "We weren't doctors," he simultaneously claims authorship credit for himself and denies it to Mikuriya, who interviewed some 200 patients at the SFCBC in the early '90s and documented their ailments. Gieringer says that Imler attended planning sessions regularly and that his past experience working on an initiative opposing nuclear power proved useful; but Gieringer can't recall anything specific that Imler contributed to the final version of 215, and acknowledges that the image of patients' groups clamoring to be protected is absurd on its face. "He was confabulating," says Gieringer about Imler's claim on 60 Minutes. In an email to your correspondent dated 22 Aug 2005 Imler made no mention of any pressure from patients' groups seeking protection under Prop 215. He wrote, "Enjoyed your recent article about marijuana's continually emerging efficacy for the wide variety of ailments commonly treated with far more dangerous and expensive pharmaceuticals. You are certainly correct that the 'movement leaders' were aware of this reality in '95 & '96 during the preparation and campaigning for Proposition 215, which is why the 'any other condition' language was included" How and why did Imler came up with his 60 Minutes confabulation? It turned out to be the lynchpin for the whole segment, prefigured by Morley asking in his introduction, "How is the California state law working? The answer involves another statute: the law of unintended consequences." Click that play button again: Morley: What you're saying is you were forced to make the proposition vague. Imler: We were, yeah. Morley (over a long shot of the ballot measure's text): So the law voters passed mentioned not only cancer and AIDS but (suddenly, we see a blow-up of the following words, as if they had been buried in fine print) "...any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." A decade later, if you've got a note from a doctor, you can buy medical pot for just about any imaginable condition. (Cut to a young black woman at a dispensary.) Producer David Browning did not zoom in for a close shot of the words " any other illness for which marijuana provides relief" because if he had, the viewer would have realized it's not fine print, it's the first sentence of the initiative. This was a very subtle, very duplicitous maneuver. (You're doing a heckuva job, Browning.) The fact that Prop 215 covers people who use marijuana to treat a wide range of conditions is not an unintended consequence of vagueness forced on the authors by patients' groups. It reflects the understanding that Dennis Peron, Tod Mikuriya and the other authors had developed over years of listening to thousands of medical users. And it reflects the way the components of marijuana actually work, modulating the rate at which neurotransmitters are released in various systems of the body -cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, excretory, immune, nervous, musculo-skeletal, and reproductive. It often happens that an ardent disciple will wind up viewing the leader as a betrayer. The leader develops, changes his/her line, responds to changing conditions, etc., and wants the flexibility to do so at all times. The disciple has embraced the leader's program and/or philosophy at a fixed point in time, and remains committed to his/her understanding of the program while the leader advances. In the early '90s Dennis's constituents were mainly AIDS patients. He had lost his lover and all his best friends to the epidemic, and when he talked about "the sick and dying" he wasn't doing so for effect. By '96 he had 9,000 club members, many of whom were seemingly able-bodied young men, and he was saying "if they can prescribe Prozac to shy teenagers, all marijuana use is medical." Imler deplored this line. If he had been truly respectful, had related to Dennis as a leader whose vision was keener than his own, he would not have reacted with such fierce outrage. "He's just jealous of me," says Dennis, sadly. "So, so jealous." "A minister? How sinister -it finished her." -Pete Seeger 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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