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Recent
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July
3, 2003
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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July
4, 2003
Paranoia and The Man
Queer as Grass
By ADAM ENGEL
It just occurred to me, I mean really occurred
to me, that pot is illegal. For the first time since I was sixteen,
when EVERYTHING was illegal, I smoked two puffs ("hits,"
they called them in 1982, or "tokes," I think) and
it helped me get to sleep. This is a good thing. I stopped smoking
pot at sixteen because it made me paranoid. I'm still paranoid.
But at least now I can trace the source of my paranoia to THE
MAN and fight back. With THE MAN outta my head, the pot actually
mellows me out and helps me sleep.
I have a particular problem, though.
I was born with a rare blood disease called Diamond Blackfan
Anemia, of which there are about 500 known "cases"
in the world, most of whom die at around age thirty-one. So far,
I've been able to beat the curve with Prednisone, which destroys
your bones, gives you diabetes and other maladies, and makes
you crazier than a shit-house rat. Also, I've been tanking up
with about half a dozen transfusions a year. Thing is, the Prednisone
isn't working as well as it used to. After that's done--a year,
two years, maybe three--I have to do "transfusion therapy,"
which you can only do for a year or so because iron accumulates
and messes up your heart, and finally the end of the road: Bone
Marrow Transplant. Twenty-five-percent mortality rate. When I
had my hip replaced at age thirty-two because of complications
caused by Prednisone, the mortality rate for that was less than
one-percent. A failed Bone Marrow Transplant entails a rather
yucky, painful death. Murderous leukocytes run wild. Savage anti-bodies
loot lymph nodes, smash platelets and generally fight off the
bio-matter of your donor as if it were a virus. The operation
itself seems awfully unpleasant, complete with chemo-therapy
to kill what's inside of you. I have a friend who went through
chemo. They prescribed him narcotics, which really spaced him
out, but did nothing for the horrible nausea except make it worse.
So he had to go out and hustle pot so he wouldn't puke or get
so spaced out he couldn't work. Hmm.
This rediscovery of pot after twenty-two
years is a good thing because I'm on a very large dosage of Prednisone,
which makes you feel like you've just mixed bourbon and amphetamines,
mean and sleepless, and traditional valium-like sedatives don't
work for me. Tranquilizers mess me up bad all next day. So I've
been taking two or three shots of alcohol to help me sleep. This
is not a good thing. Alcohol is the worst drug possible for someone
suffering from any kind of anemia. Bad for the bone marrow, among
other things. We'll, thought I, I'll just do what some of my
doctors have been telling me to do and switch to pot. But wait
a minute, thought I again. This is illegal. I can't just go down
to the corner store and buy a joint, which is all I'd need for
the week. I have to find some kind of "connection."
Someone to set me up with a "supply."
This turned out to be easy enough--was
I the only person in America NOT smoking pot?--albeit costly
and inconvenient.
Now, in my twenty years of adult life
I've been prescribed tranquilizers, sedatives, amphetamines,
barbiturates, narcotics and of course steroids by honest, legitimate
doctors, the same doctors who encouraged me to smoke pot, but
could not prescribe it, because it's illegal. A plant. That grows
in the ground. Or in one of those incubator things people keep
in their closets or backyards. Sure, I can easily go out and
buy a bottle of bourbon which will damage me physically, and
combined with the steroids turn me into a truculent, possibly
dangerous person. But I can't take a hit of pot to help me sleep.
Look, Boobus Americanus (mind if I call
you Boob, for short? You seem overly enamored with those things
anyway, though any sex therapist, or woman, will tell you you'd
be more of a "man" with your woman if you paid more
attention to her clitoris), do you think I'm some kind of moron?
Do you think I'm gonna take addictive sedatives/tranquilizers
whatever, which happen to be expensive and artificially manufactured
by Big Pharma, or kill myself with alcohol, when all I have to
do is take a few hits off a more or less "unprocessed"
weed? C'mon, Boob. We've been mortal enemies for some time,
now. I thought you gave me more credit than that.
If your employer, THE MAN, thinks I'm
gonna risk a bone-marrow transplant before my time because of
his outrageous, irrational, useless--except for putting young
black men in prison--"law," he's as dumb as YOU are.
And surely HE'S not that dumb.
Something else occurred to me, after
talking to a friend from Canada, where pot and gay marriages
seem to on the way toward becoming legal.
In addition to participating in "proper"
sex (you know: genital intercourse which may result in the procreation
of life THE MAN can use as labor or cannon fodder), I've also
indulged in cunnilingus and fellatio with willing (often quite
willing) women over age eighteen, and occasionally even anal
sex with women (again, quite willing) over the age of eighteen.
Some of these practices are supposedly illegal in various parts
of YOUR America, but really, that was always just a joke to me.
But it's not a joke to my gay friends
and relatives. In fact, for doing with a member of their own
sex the same things I've done with members of the opposite sex,
they can find themselves in grave trouble indeed. I haven't really
been all that politically active on this issue. Maybe it was
a "well, I'm not gay (although one never knows, does one?),
why worry?" type thing. And anyway, if you don't want hassles,
just clam up and lock the bedroom door.
Well it goes somewhat beyond that. Besides
the fact that "free speech" (hah!) should entail being
able to demonstrate public affection for any person you feel
affection for, "privacy" (double-triple hah!) means
you don't have to lock the door if you don't want to (unless
there's kids or pets in the house) cause you're not afraid of
anyone barging in (figuratively or literally).
Anyway, suppose I fell in love with a
male over the age of 18 and allowed him to perform fellatio on
me and I performed anal sex on him. Maybe I wasn't "really"
in love. I was all "high" on pot, it was dark, he wore
a dress, I thought he was a woman etc. That kinda thing. It's
not my mind-set in the morning that counts, but that I used my
genitals against the will of THE MAN.
Now I'm open to all sorts of trouble:
job discrimination, gay-bashing, snide remarks in conversation
and on the airwaves courtesy imbecile talk-radio hosts.
And what if I did fall in love with this
member of my own sex? What if we moved in together and had a
long happy relationship? Can't share Family Plan health insurance.
Can't go out in public like a real couple unless we're in Greenwich
Village or San Francisco or similar environs. Can't do a lotta
stuff. Why? Because we used our own dicks as if they belonged
to us and not THE MAN.
Now everybody knows that alcohol makes
many people violent, crazy, and physically ill, and cigarettes,
sooner or later, make many people sick or dead. But I never heard
of anyone smoking a joint, then beating up or even killing a
friend or family member in a violent rage. Nor have I ever heard
of many people--except Nelson Rockefeller--being harmed by safe
sex among consenting adults. What not everybody knows--or what
many pretend not to know--is that, though it couldn't be more
obvious, THE MAN doesn't care if you develop cancer, or blow
out your liver, or get drunk and rob a convenience store--he's
got a whole prison industrial complex just waiting to serve you.
What really bothers THE MAN is that YOU--this goes for YOU as
well as me, Boob--might harbor illusions that you own your lungs,
brain, genitals or any other part of your soul or person, when
really it all belongs to HIM.
Well, forget about that. I reserve the
right, the "freedom," to smoke pot every night before
bed and to follow my Johnson wherever it's welcome. Well, maybe
not everywhere. Though HE came on to me awfully strong before
the "war" with Iraq, THE MAN stopped returning my calls
weeks ago. As I said, I'm for freedom among consenting adults.
I don't have time for that "playing hard to get" shit.
Though I will say one thing. Ossama Bin
Laden (whoever he really is and whatever he really did) and Saddam
Hussein (whoever he really was and whatever he really did) sent
chills down many an American spine, but they got theirs. They
sure won't be taking away our cherished freedoms now. THE MAN
did that for us years ago.
The movie's getting weirder. Jump-cut
from "The Graduate" to "American Beauty."
Nevertheless, Adam Engel remains in the theater, where he can
be reached at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net
Weekend Edition
Features
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
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