Today's Stories

May 25, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Shock Doctrine

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu Goes to Washington

May 22-24, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
How Long Does It Take?

Michael Teitelman
Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh

Mike Whitney
Credit Default Swaps: the Poison in the System

Ray McGovern
Cheney Breaks the Taboo: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

Sonia Cardenas /
Andrew Flibbert
Why We Love to Hate Pirates

Clive Hamilton
Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

Fred Gardner
Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming

Carlo Cristofori
The Latest AfPak War

Dean Baker
A Friendly Financial Intervention

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah's 57-State Solution

Andy Worthington
A Message to Obama: No Military Commissions; No Preventive Detentions

David Macaray
Democrats Betray Labor: Card Check is Pronouced Dead

Nadia Hijab
What Kind of State?

Franklin Lamb
How Not to Win Votes for Team USA

Ted Newcomen
The Forgotten Casualties

David Ker Thomson
Joy (Or How Hope, the Thing With Feathers, Gets Plucked)

David Rosen
Porn Wars

Mark Weisbrot
Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights?

Robert Fantina
Gitmo, Democrats and Business as Usual

Heather Gray
Some Positive Directions in Public Health?

Farzana Versey
The Myth of Manmohan Singh

Chris Genovali
A Paler Shade of Green

Ron Jacobs
His Terrible Swift Sword: the Legacy of John Brown

Jay Diamond
Why the Left Should Cheer Hannity and Limbaugh

Dr. Susan Block
The Binds That Bond

Ben Sonnenberg
"Ballast": An Endlessness of Almost Ending

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost ... Again

Lorenzo Wolff
My Problem with Led Zeppelin

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Bohm

Website of the Weekend
Bob Graham's CIA Notebooks

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

May 25, 2009

Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming, Part Two

"War on Pot" Overrides "Support Our Troops"

By FRED GARDNER

In transcribing Phil Northcutt's recollections of combat, I misspelled the name of his commanding officer, killed by a suicide bomber in Ramadi.  Northcutt emailed: "Captain Patrick Rapicault, 34, was killed when a VBIED –vehicle-borne improvised explosive device– rammed vehicle 'Whiskey Six.'  Marc Ryan, 25, and Lance Thompson, 21, were also killed. Ben Nelson was seriously wounded but survived."

Every day is Memorial Day for Northcutt. He came back to Camp Pendleton April 1, 2005. He was promoted to sergeant and put on “medical hold” while the Marine Corps evaluated whether his back injury qualified him for medical retirement.

Northcutt:  The MRI showed that my L-4 and L-5 disks were bulging. They were pinching my sciatic nerve and causing me severe pain down to the back of my knees. The Marine Corps showed no interest in my PTSD, and there was never a word about TBI [traumatic brain injury].

How long were you on medical hold?

For a year. This is when they super-medicate me. I would be given a grocery bag full of really heavy shit. Hydrocodones and anti-depressants, Neurontin, Seroquel, anti-nightmare pills, half of it you get really fucking high on. I’m not much of a pillbilly but I’ve taken them all. And that is true of just about anyone I know who went to Iraq and has come back. They’re all pill experts. How the fuck does that happen? You get back and they just like push 10 pills on you right away.

Were you dealing with Marine Corps doctors or the VA?

The Marine Corps –DOD doctors. But I was also trying to deal with the VA because they sent me home awaiting orders. I go to live at my grandma’s in Long Beach and I’m chilling in the guest house while I’m waiting to get out of the Marine Corps. The VA Hospital is like a mile from my house and Camp Pendleton is two hours away in traffic. I’m drugged out all day long and they’re like, “You’ve got appointments on this day at Camp Pendleton.” I would just lie in bed all day, loaded. Totally fucked up. But it was cool because a doctor prescribed it.

The VA tells me, “you’re active duty, we can’t treat you.” So I’d go to the appointments at Camp Pendleton –sometimes– and I’m telling these people, “you don’t understand. I have waking nightmares. I sleep with a gun under my pillow.”

When I first got home I’d sleep for one or two hours a night. I’d be like I’m here with you and we’d be talking and (as if dozing off). And an hour later (as if startled awake) “Where am I?  Where are my Marines? Where is my weapon?” First thing that comes to my head. And then it would be like: “This is not a dream. This is not Iraq.” It’s weird because your brain goes (sound of a car accelerating) and then it comes back. A lot of people haven’t been exposed to severe stress and don’t understand that severe stress makes your brain do weird shit. I knew something was wrong with my head but I couldn’t get help.

Did you ask to be tested for brain injury?

Northcutt: No. I was not even thinking about it. And nobody asked me how many times I’d been near things blowing up, or how close, or anything like that.  The help I needed was not pills but fucking counseling. I needed people who knew what the fuck PTSD was and could tell me: “You’re life’s going to change in this way.” Nobody there knew. We were like the first bunch of guys to really come back from heavy combat in Iraq. They may have known about Gulf War Syndrome and another set of deal-ios...

Northcutt punctuated his knocked-out-loaded days with adrenaline-junkie jags,  racking up speeding tickets. He relied on high-doses of Hydrocodone to suppress his back pain. 

Northcutt: They just left me to my own devices with PTSD and a steady paycheck. So I bought a fast motorcycle and went to Utah. Went to Vegas. My back was so fucked up I could hardly walk, but I could drive real fast. I liked staying in hotels because I was drinking heavily and in a hotel I could go first thing in the morning to the hotel bar and start drinking.

I kind of avoided everybody I knew. I didn’t want anybody to ask me “How are you?”  Because what do you tell them? “I’m all fucked up?”  You don’t even know how to answer. And every time you start telling them it takes you back. And you’re trying to escape in your mind from Iraq.

What about your grandma?

I would be there like two days a week. I would barely talk to her. I would give her a hug and go out to the guest house and by that night I was gone. Or I would stop in to do laundry and visit with her for a minute.

What did you drink?

Tequila, Newcastle, Guinness. I like really good tequila.

Do you still drink?

No. Almost never.

Did you quit through a program?

No. I don’t need alcohol. As I’m getting older I really do feel it the next day. And my days are hard enough. And that’s one of the reasons I love medical marijuana.

How did you find medical marijuana?

I knew about marijuana because I was a recreational smoker. And I started medicating with marijuana before I became a patient. 

I started realizing, “Of all the crap they’re giving me, I feel the best when I’m smoking herb. Hmmm... That’s weird. When I just smoke herb I feel kind of relaxed, I don’t feel so stressed out, I don’t feel the depression, I don’t feel the guilt...” Eventually I realized: “this is real medicine.”

Did it help you sleep?

For sure. It helped me relax so I could sleep. That’s a big difference. The pills just knock you the fuck out. You’re just gone. Even if you don’t want to go to sleep you’re still sleeping. Which can be pretty dangerous. Once I decided to become a medical marijuana patient, that’s when everything changed.

When was that?

I want to say October 2005. When I went to see Dr. [William] Eidelman.

How did you decide on Dr. Eidelman?

I Googled “medical marijuana” and started reading different websites. I read stuff on his website about healing and medicine and I thought he had a legitimate angle.  People should take him more seriously. A lot of what he says is just common sense, like giving healing a chance to happen.

So I went to him and said I was interested in medical marijuana and he said, “I’m going to give you a recommendation, but I want you to quit smoking cigarettes and I want you to quit drinking.” He also warned about the side effects of all the prescription pills I was on.

At the time he got his letter of approval, Northcutt was becoming enraptured with marijuana –its beauty, its fragrance, its usefulness.  “I became a connoisseur,” he says.  His transition from consumer to provider came in response to requests from friends –a very common pattern.

Northcutt:  I discovered that organic herb made me feel the best. So next thing you know, I’m on this mission to get the best organic herb. I started going up to Mendo and Humboldt and meeting with farmers. (As if smelling a bag full of cannabis flowers) “Ah this is good.” And it would be that kushy wet hay... There’s no smell like it. But I would have to pay up the yin-yang.

Other patients knew that I was getting good organic herb and they were like, “Can you get me some?” So I started coming back with a couple of pounds. That’s how I could afford to have good herb for myself. 

So the next logical step is, “Why am I traveling all the time and spending all this money when I can just be growing it myself and all these people can learn to grow it, too?” So we got together and decided to grow for ourselves.

How many people were involved?

Four or five of us did the growing. There were more than a dozen patients, including my girl friend. We called ourselves a co-op.  I had the space. I had a warehouse from when I was in the screenprinting business. I had one screen-printing machine there, a gift from my dad, who was moving to Tennessee. He’d gotten into the screen-printing business after I did. He said, “If you can make money at it, I can for sure.” When he gave me the machine –which is really like giving somebody millions of dollars, because you can make a living with it, he said, “Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”

O’S: Were you planning to go back into screenprinting?

I was. But as I became more health-conscious, I realized the health hazards involved. The chemicals are terrible for the environment...  I’d been using the warehouse for storage and to park my vehicles. For growing cannabis I turned it  into like an operating room. I made special doors so that no dust or dirt could get in under the cracks. Air coming into the entire building was hepa-filtered. The air going out was charcoal filtered. Every room was plastic-wrapped and could be individually sterilized. I had four  10-by-10 tables, a separate nursery for my clones, a separate mama room, a drying room,  a sleeping area because I’m there all the time. I slept under the lights. When the lights came on, I would get up.

One of the really wild things that happened was: I became a gardener for the first time in my life. I was developing a love of plants and an appreciation of nature. And I was developing a relationship with God. Instead of killing and maiming I was making things grow.

"He's military and he's got a gun!"

Northcutt was busted by Long Beach police on the evening of March 28, 2006, while driving away from his warehouse. He had two mason jars, each with about 1/2 ounce of marijuana (New York City Diesel and Skunk Numer 1). He tried to smoothtalk his way out of trouble, mentioning that he had a doctor’s approval to use marijuana and was an active duty sergeant in the marine corps. He suspected a set-up when the officers said his less-than-an-ounce seemed like “a lot of marijuana" and that it was “packaged for sale.” When Northcutt informed them that he had a weapon, the officers vanished before he could hand it over.

In the rearview mirror Northcutt could see them crouched behind their vehicle, calling for back-up. “He’s military and he’s got a gun!” one yelled into her radio. She would repeat the urgent warning as re-enforcements arrived.

Sgt. Northcutt was taken to L.A. County Jail for booking. A warrant was issued to search his grandma’s house. The search yielded 20 grams of marijuana, a scale, five tablets of MDMA (ecstasy), and an unloaded shotgun.

Northcutt: My neighbors came to me later and said, “The way they cordoned off the whole fucking neighborhood, we thought you shot a cop. Of course there was nothing to find. My cousin hears one of the cops say, “Hey, look for some warehouse keys.”

Next thing you know, they’re issuing a warrant for my business, based on my electric bill of $600. Which is not high in an industrial zone. The diesel shop next door uses three times as much. It was unreal on a professional level. It blew me away. But it didn’t really surprise me. I’ve seen that happen to other people. Now it was happening to me.

The media had been notified in advance of the raid on Northcutt’s warehouse, and it made the news that night. Long Beach police seized 339 plants that he and his friends were growing by the “sea-of-green” method (densely packed small plants). They also found 18 mason jars containing 1.2 pounds of dried flowers, bags full of leaf and stalk, and a loaded shotgun.

Northcutt:  They took me downtown to LA County Jail for booking –suspicion of selling marijuana because I had a cell phone and two jars of marijuana. And the whole time they’re talking shit to me: “Who do you think you are? You think you’re bad. You think you’re Rambo.” 

Tim King says that law enforcement in Orange County has always had it in for the enlisted man.

Northcutt: I have some buddies who are good cops because they’re good human beings. But these cops who are badge-heavy, who think they’re bad-ass, they’re the ones who fuck things up. They told the judge that I had an unregistered weapon, but one of them ran it and saw that it was registered to me.  They wouldn’t call Dr. Eidelman.

Did you ask them to?

Northcutt: Of course. And when they didn’t, I asked them to call someone from Narcotics who might know the proper procedure.

Northcutt was charged on four counts: marijuana cultivation, marijuana possession for sale, MDMA possession, and possession of MDMA and a firearm. He spent 18 days in jail before getting bailed out. by an uncle, Bob Northcutt, who loyally showed up in court throughout Phil's ordeal.

How did the Marine Corps respond to your getting busted?

Northcutt: They came to me in LA County because on TV they’d said I was a reservist. They wanted to get me out before it became known that I was on active duty medical hold and had PTSD.  A staff sergeant came in and said, “Sgt. Northcutt, if you sign right here we won’t prosecute you, you’ll be out of the Marine Corps in 20 days.”

With what kind of discharge?

Northcutt: General under other than honorable conditions. 

Northcutt’s discharge cost him all his military benefits. He had enough money to pay defense attorney Bruce Margolin $20,000.  Unfortunately, the Margolin associate handling his case failed to appear at a hearing and Northcutt was sent directly into custody by Judge James Pierce. Northcutt heard that his lawyer eventually showed up and got scolded by the judge. He  figured he would be released –but he was still in jail six months later when his trial finally got underway.

Northcutt describes LA County jail as “a gulag that should be investigated by the United Nations,” He was  represented by a veteran public defender Ken MacDonald, whom he describes as competent in court but not knowledgable regarding medical marijuana law, and reluctant to do research because he didn't think Northcutt had a chance.

The trial was held June 12-18 –just when Northcutt’s girlfriend, Jen, a key defense witness, was due to give birth. Northcutt wondered if the date had been chosen to guarantee her absence. (Jen delivered a healthy baby boy, Kai, June 16.)

Northcutt says he was sleep-deprived during the trial, transported by bus to different facilities, stashed for a few hours in overcrowded cells, then driven back to LA County to hit the rack for a few hours.

 It was stipulated at trial that the amount of plant matter taken from the warehouse was just under 17 pounds. A Long Beach detective testified that each of the 339 plants at the warhouse would yield three to five ounces. Cultivation expert Chris Conrad testified for the defense that the “sea of green” plus the immature plants in Northcutt’s warehouse would yield about 4.25 pounds total.

Northcutt and Jennifer had letters of approval from Dr. Eidelman. Four other participants were willing to produce doctors' letters and testify about their involvement in the grow, but Northcutt’s lawyer advised that only two were needed. The others wanted to have their names kept out of the proceedings, and Northcutt says, “I understood and protected them.”

The jury was not instructed by Judge James Pierce that cooperative cultivation is legal in California. They were instructed that California's medical marijuana laws include limits on allowable quantity (as per SB-420, a bill enacted by the legislature ostensibly to help implement Prop 215).

 Northcutt was found guilty of cultivation but acquitted on possession for sale. Apparently the jurors thought the marijuana being grown fat Northcutt's warehouse was for medical use, but the paperwork was insufficient to justify the amount on hand. The MDMA charges had been dropped because there was no evidence that the five pills belonged to Northcutt. (They'd been found in an area of his grandma's house to which many people had access.)

After his trial Northcutt was transferred to state prison in Chino for 90 days. He was sentenced on Nov. 8 to three years’ felony probation with one year in jail (time served), and $470 in fines. He requested a court-appointed lawyer to appeal his conviction. At the time of his release, Phil Northcutt had lost his Marine Corps benefits, his chosen livelihood, and almost a year of his life.

NORTHCUTT: I lost my business, I lost my car, I lost my respect in the community, I lost all my money trying to defend myself. I literally had nothing to my name. Jennifer had moved back to Oklahoma to stay with her mom while I was in jail. When I got out, she came back, but we didn’t have a place to live. Not the best strategic decision but we’d been apart so long, we just wanted our family to be together.  So there we were together but homeless.

Luckily, friends came to my rescue. A buddy whose girlfriend owned a hotel let us stay there sometimes. Other people let us stay on their couch. It wasn’t till I got to the Pathway Home in Yountville that I started connecting with resources.  That was really critical, that turned my life around.

The Pathway Home is run by a man named Fred Gusman. It was there  I saw other people going through what I was going through.  I realized I wasn’t the only one with legal issues. There are other people who are going through this and it’s really having an effect on their lives.

I spent a lot of time on the internet figuring out who’s available to help veterans. I feel for guys who don’t even know these organizations exist. It’s ironic –you’ve got organizations with outreach programs that don’t know where to find the guys who need help. And you’ve got guys who need help who don’t know how to reach the organizations.

How is your PTSD? Is it under control? Do you have nightmares?

Without cannabis, I have trouble sleeping. It’s not just remembering the things you’ve seen. There’s survivor's guilt, there’s guilt from hurting other people, there’s anger from having been lied to. And I blame myself for having put myself into that position. I was not drafted. Granted some of the information was faulty, but I trusted the people in charge. 

When I took down his story on May 14, Northcutt was heading from Calistoga, where he lives, to L.A. to deal with $2, 700 worth of traffic tickets through "Veterans Homeless Court.." He was also planning to attend the hearing of People v. Northcutt by a three-judge panel from the Second Division Appellate Court on May 19. Northcutt said hopefully that his state-provided appeals lawyer, Benjamin Owens of El Cerrito, had spent more time discussing his case with him than any of the lawyers who had worked on the defense.

We felt bad for Northcutt driving off into the night.. Rosie told him she'd heard on TV that the hills above Santa Barbara were burning out of control. He said something about going through danger and finding success on the other side. I worried that he would not be able to get out of paying for the tickets, they'd take his driver's license, then he’d really be up the creek without a paddle.

A few days later he called to say that his conviction had been overturned.

NORTHCUTT; My attorney had spent a lot of time preparing what he was going to say. I was looking forward to hearing him argue and the judges asking questions. I was in the back. I heard a judge say, “You’re not going to speak.”  My lawyer sat down and I’m like, “What’s going on?”

Then the judge said, “The attorney general can say something if he’d like...”  And the attorney general talked about cooperatives’ membership requirements, and limits, and gray areas of the law.  Then my attorney said, “I’m available if you have any questions.” But the judges said, “You’re probably better off if we don’t ask any questions.”

I’m sitting there going, “What is that supposed to mean?”  Then my lawyer comes back and says, “Okay, let’s go.” And I’m like, “What just happened?”  He said, “The judges had already decided the case. I didn’t have to say anything because we’d already won before we got there. They said you’re getting a full reversal.”

In CounterPunch tomorrow:  the possible significance of the appellate court ruling in People v. Northcutt.  

Fred Gardner edits O'Shaughnessy's, the journal of cannabis in clinical practice. Email fred@plebesite.com

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