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Today's
Stories
January 6, 2004
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Notes on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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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January
6, 2004
Hashish & the
War on Terror
Drugs
in Uniform
By RON JACOBS
In the late 1970s, I used to visit with a Lebanese
fellow who lived next door to my friends in Anaheim, California.
This man had been a member of the rightwing Phalangist militia
and had escaped the guns of other Lebanese militias with the
help of the Israelis.
Usually our conversations revolved around
safe topics like his children, his wife, and his growing interest
in baseball, but on those occasions when he joined my friends
and I in draining a fifth or two of bourbon, darker stories would
emerge from the recesses of his memory. I was always careful
to never let him know of my sympathies for the Palestinian cause,
given my understanding that the Phalangists were intimately involved
in Israel's campaign to wipe that phenomenon from the earth.
It became apparent over the course of
these conversations that my acquaintance was mostly involved
with the fundraising side of things in the Phalange movement.
His tales of bank robberies and other types of fund transfers
made for good adventure stories no matter what the politics behind
them were.
The last time I saw him was on Christmas
Eve of 1979. The rest of my friends were already asleep on the
couches and chairs that sat in their living room. The former
Phalangist and I were finishing the second fifth of bourbon and
waiting for Santa. I decided to dig into my backpack for a pipeful
of weed that I had brought along. I didn't know if my drinking
buddy smoked, but I was getting tired of the alcohol buzz and
needed something to lift its fog from my brain.
As I lit the pipe, he looked at me and
told me that I must put it out. I asked him why and he grabbed
the pipe from my hand, put out the ember with his thumb, went
to the window and threw the pipe into the street. I was a bit
startled by his actions and also unwilling to find out how pathological
he was about marijuana so I said nothing. He explained that
he was trying to become a citizen and did not want to do anything
illegal, so he took away my pipe. I nodded. He continued, telling
me that he smoked "many kilos" of hashish in Lebanon,
but had sworn it off when he moved to the US. In fact, he had
been a hashish smuggler during his last two years in the Middle
East. (As it turned out, the Israelis had also helped him escape
the clutches of Interpol and the US Drug Enforcement Agency after
he was busted in a smuggling operation).
I must have looked interested, because
he proceeded to tell me a story of how the Phalangist militia
had occupied a region of Lebanon where marijuana was grown and
turned into hashish. The region had been under the control of
another faction in the multi-sided war then going on in Lebanon,
but when the Phalange took it over, the hashish makers began
doing business with them-money was money to them. The profits
went to the movement and the movement bought guns with them.
In this part of the world, said my drinking buddy, everybody
made money from the drugs: Christian, Jew, Moslem, Lebanese,
Palestinian, Israeli, everyone.
In the past month there have been at least three publicized hashish
seizures in the various bodies of water that the US patrols in
the Middle East. According to the Pentagon and its shills, the
drugs in these seizures are being sold to make money for Al Queda
and other non-state terror organizations. Now, I don't know
about you, dear reader, but I find this just a little too convenient.
How the hell does the Pentagon know who is buying and selling
these drugs, unless it's a Pentagon/CIA operation? Never the
less, let's assume that the Pentagon is telling the truth. In
that case, one has to wonder who is making the money from the
increased opium production in liberated Afghanistan? Is the
situation like that in Latin America, where the armed peasant
organizations pay a reasonable price and take their cut from
coca growers in their zones while the government supported militias
see the drug from cultivation to production and rarely suffer
any consequence (while also turning a tidy profit)? Or, is it
like it was in Laos and other parts of Southeast Asia during
the war there, with the CIA providing deniable transport for
drug shipments to those warlords who do the US's dirty work?
If this is the case, then is the war in Afghanistan just another
drug dealing operation and are the captured shipments owned by
drug producers who won't work with the CIA for ideological or
other reasons?
If one recalls the various US wars on
Central American countries during the 1980s, s/he will certainly
remember the so-called Iran-Contra affair. In essence, this
was a US operation that was run out of the Vice President's office
(Pappy Bush) that traded guns for cocaine to the CIA proxy army
in Nicaragua (the Contras) and in turn traded weapons parts and
technology via Israel to the Khomeini government in Iran for
cash. This cash came from the sales of the contra cocaine to
various drug dealers in the United States-some of whom were enterprising
enough to turn the coca paste and powder into a substance that
would turn many of our country's inner cities into cocaine-fueled
war zones. The substance I am referring to became known as crack.
The tale related to me by my Lebanese
acquaintance and the endless reports of secret US involvement
in drug dealing prove only one thing. That is that there is
probably no armed organization, local or international, that
has not been involved in this business. It is a quick and sure
way to make money that cannot be traced and does not need to
be accounted for. When the US trumpets a drug seizure in the
Gulf or in the deserts of Texas, remember to ask yourself how
many others they let through, either because of individual corruption
or because of those shipments' role in funding their national
security.
Aha! Is this one more reason to keep
drugs illegal? If so then, not only does the "war on drugs"
provide an easy method to lock up unruly and potentially unruly
elements of society as a means of maintaining internal security
for the elites and their supporters, it also provides a rationale
that can be used to wrongfully board and seize ships suspected
of carrying illegal drugs in international waters. In a complementary
manner, the pretext of potential terrorism as a reason to violate
previously agreed to international laws and standards as to various
human and sovereignty issues, when combined with anti-drug with
anti-terror laws has created an authoritarian international military
and intelligence apparatus composed of government and private
military entities that is capable of investigating on and incarcerating
virtually any of the earth's citizens.
In an aside, one has to wonder how long
it will be before US troops begin to use some of the drugs they
are capturing. After all, in a war-torn land where they must
celebrate New Year's with non-alcoholic beer, the desire of some
soldiers for some kind of mood modification and stress release
will eventually override any fear they have of the military's
anti-drug regimen. Sure, it's not the 1960s or Vietnam, but
many human psyches can take only so much of a life without the
type of release afforded by alcohol and other mood altering substances.
During the Soviet war in Afghanistan their military also suffered
from a drug problem thanks to the easy availability of hashish
and opium combined with troop morale as low as that of the American
soldiers during the last few years of America's war in Vietnam.
Ron Jacobs
is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground,
which is being republished by Verso.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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