home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

Inside the New Print Edition of CounterPunch: Labor at the Crossroads

First the Wedding; Now the Wake: Big Labor's New Unity Partnership by JoAnn Wypijewski; Report from Baghdad: How Did the Votes Add Up: by Patrick Cockburn. Tsunamis of Blood: Wolfowitz in Indonesia: by Joseph Nevins; ALSO Alexander Cockburn on Tsunami Aid: How the People Scored. Remember these stories are available exclusively in the print edition of CounterPunch. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Wars of the Laptop Bombers

 

Today's Stories

February 23, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo

February 22, 2005

Kirkpatrick Sale
Imperial Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire

February 21, 2005

Hunter S. Thompson
"He Was A Crook"

John Ross
Mexico: the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq

Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did I Say It?

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to You by the US Navy

David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State

Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake

Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST

Michael Neumann
Strategies in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky

 

February 19 / 20, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Back to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"

Kathleen Christison
Struggling for Justice in Palestine

Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata

Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to Commit Suicide

Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues

Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior

Scott Richard Lyons
Ward Churchill and the Identity Police

Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage

George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in Oregon

Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels

Manuel García, Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?

Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War

Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?

John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past

Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?

Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal

Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark

Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard

CounterPunch News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland

Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller

Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin

 

February 18, 2005

Ben Moxham
In East Timor, the Nightmare Continues

Dave Lindorff
The Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte

Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery

Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy

Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads

Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward Churchill

Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?

Mickey Z.
"One Man Has Stopped Killing"

 

February 17, 2005

Joshua Frank
Hogtying of the Deaniacs

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media

Robert Fisk
Under the Shadow of Death in Lebanon

Christopher Brauchli
Where Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Military Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be Cannon Fodder?

Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions

Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"

Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples the Laws It Wrote"

Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill

 

 

February 16, 2005

Robert Fisk
Lebanon: a Battlefield for the Wars of Others

Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect Retirement

Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...

Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration

Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff

Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities in Texas

Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre

Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel

Website of the Day
The World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch

 

 

February 15, 2005

CounterPunch News Service
Dean a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch

Robert Fisk
The Killing of Mr. Lebanon

Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh, We Have Come Back Again"

Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal

Mickey Z.
Radio Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook

Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean

Nadia Martinez
Ending World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now

Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of Magical Thinking in Politics

Paul Craig Roberts
The American Job Sell Out

 

 

February 14, 2005

Robert Jensen
Ward Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11

Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style

Patrick Cockburn
Outcome of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War

Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?

Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?

Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood

Elaine Cassel
The Lynne Stewart Verdict

 

February 12 / 13, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill's Genes

Saul Landau
Alarcon Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba

Paul Craig Roberts
Nothing to Fear But Bush Himself

Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All Major Roads into Baghdad

John Feffer
Bush v. N. Korea: Round Two

Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak

Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!

Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich

Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)

John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll

Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"

Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice

Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin

Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour

Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado

Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?

Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan

Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting

Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman

 

 

February 11, 20055

Manuel Garcia, Jr
The Eight Percent War

Kurt Nimmo
Ann Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need Him?

Dave Lindorff
Guckert or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In

Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott Abrams

Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz

Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion

Jennifer Van Bergen
Lynne Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All

 

 

February 10, 2005

Dave Lindorff
What Academic Freedom?

Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed

Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?

Suzan Mazur
More on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha

Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition

Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little Hope"

Greg Moses
Taking Jesus Back from the Hijackers

Website of the Day
The Missionary Positions

 

 

February 9, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Duck and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers

Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say

John Ross
Hecho en Mexico: the Iraqi Election

Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon

Conn Hallinan
The Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely Forbidden"

Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions

Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

 

 

February 8, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral Pact, Not a Party"

Brian Cloughley
Out of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"

Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"

Harry Browne
"Don't Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland

Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President and Ward Churchill

Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the Same Beast

Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper

David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq

 

 

February 7, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's War on Jobs

Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher Ed

Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill

Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill

Patrick Cockburn
The Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism

Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried

Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI

Tariq Ali
Imperial Delusions

 

 

 

February 5 / 6, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs

Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day

Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill

P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami

Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust

Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America

Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story

Pamela Olson
West Bank Story

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court

Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents

Robert Fisk
History by Laptop

David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome

Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada

Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love

Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life

Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside

Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy

Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the Game

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert

Website of the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File

 

February 4, 2005

Brian Cloughley
The Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"

Bill Christison
Election Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?

Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft

Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal

Ron Jacobs
The Downward Spiral in Iraq

 

 

February 3, 2005

Ward Churchill
On the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications and Gross Distortions

Sharon Smith
Resisting Soldiers Need Our Support

Mickey Z.
Leslie Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?

Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union

Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan

Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq

Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence

Dave Lindorff
The Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies

 

 

February 2, 2005

David Domke / Kevin Coe
Bush's Brand of Christianity

Noam Chomsky
Iraq After the Elections

M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me in Its Crosshairs

Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen

Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean

Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT

Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn

Website of the Day
War is a Racket

 

 

February 1, 2005

Joshua L. Dratel
The Torture Memos

Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi

Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"

Uri Avnery
The Stalemate

Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal

Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel

Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades

Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified Voters

Paul Craig Roberts
American Police State

Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 22, 2004

James Petras
An Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre Historical Amnesia

Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel

Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit

Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge

Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column

Kathleen Christison
Imagining Palestine

Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos

 

 

December 21, 2004

Greg Moses
The New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV

Dave Lindorff
Losing It in America: Bunker of the Skittish

Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk

Dragon Pierces Truth*
Concrete Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam

Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"

Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti

Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report

Paul Craig Roberts
America Locked Up: a System of Injustice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Subscribe Online

 

February 23, 2005

The Redistribution of Marijuana Wealth

Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs!

By JOE PIETRI

Today the USA is the largest producers of marijuana in the world and it's not enough.

Marijuana has been quasi legal in Mexico the past 50 years and is grown commercially and exported to the US. Canadians would love to make marijuana legal and for the US to keep the status quo that would continue to generate billions of dollars going North.

The Californians complain that BC Bud is being dumped on the market and that wholesale prices have gone down 25%, which is great for the consumer. The drug Czar warns of the danger of Canadian weed and the high 20% THC content. (I guess he hasn't smoked any because BC Bud generally pales when compared to most Californian varieties.)

The DEA chomps at the bit in anticipation of kicking every medical marijuana grow ups door down and seizing everything as well as their souls. They well remember the 1980s when Reagan for the first time let the police sell you loads of marijuana as a way to infiltrate marijuana syndicates. And the biggest mass redistribution of wealth in the history of the US occurred when they shut down the good old boy marijuana networks that operated in the 1960's thru the late 1980s. It was Vietnam style body count, the more people they arrested the more possessions they confiscated. The best properties, the best of all the spoils went to further power the police state that had all ready been created when they declared a Drug War. They only other country in the history of mankind to have such search and seizure and confiscation and forfeiture laws was Nazi Germany.

Is it strange that we are still haunted by Richard Nixon's drug war when his own Shaffer commission recommended legalizing under an ounce of Cannabis? This report infuriated Nixon who sent it back, and when it came back around the word legalize was changed to decriminalize and by 2005 millions of Americans have been sent to prison for marijuana possession some working at slave labor as we speak!

Stranger yet instead of attacking the Shaffer Commission NORML jumped on the decriminalization bandwagon, and in 1980 came out with their own report on the harmful affects of marijuana and I guess jumped on Nancy Reagan's Just say no bandwagon! Hey I thought they were for legalization?

The drug rehab racketeers and Judges that own the Halfway houses they sentence you to, then get money from you, the state and the government! The billions generated by one word illegal. Is it that so much money is being made because it's illegal that no one really wants it legal? Are they afraid to lose the Goose that lays golden eggs?

First thing I asked people is why is marijuana illegal? Marijuana is illegal because it promotes free thought and expression and the society we live in does not want us to think for ourselves. It's as simple as that!

The Patriot Act is an extension of the Drug War and really it's out to get you and I! The DEA is in a panic because California is wide open with some Cannabis shops in Oakland featuring 60 or more strains of marijuana as well as hashish and all you need is a doctor's note! Can you believe that some of those guys are pulling a hundred grand a month. The Government has infiltrated the Medical marijuana movement completely! As an example Eddy Lepp sold one pound of pot to a friend and an undercover DEA agent. Lepp famous for his Medicinal Marijuana Garden was raided and over 32,000 legal plants were confiscated. Clearly Lepp was out of his league!

Everyday more and more extol the virtues of marijuana use and how it improves their lives. One medical patient went from 600 milligrams of morphine a day to just pot! Most profits that are made illegally in the marijuana trade are funneled back into our economy, except for the small percentage that goes to Canada and Mexico.

The American marijuana trade does not fund terrorism but instead puts shoes on little Bobby or Suzie. The huge underground marijuana economy keeps many of us alive in these lean and mean times. The lies the government spreads about marijuana funding terrorism when the reality is that it helps keep the economy humming. The American marijuana industry is home grown.

Cannabis has become the Golden goose and neither side is letting go, too much money on the table.

Joe Pietri author The King of Nepal. He can be reached at: jpietri@msn.com


Google
WWW http://www.counterpunch.org