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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL
LOBBY
Former top
CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers
the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful
it is. Read
how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated
by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton
to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing
of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send
full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security
Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a
true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier,
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Now!
"Marijuana Does Not Raise Lung Cancer
Risk," proclaimed the headlines on May 23, over stories
about Donald Tashkin's talk at the American Thoracic Society
conference in San Diego. Dr. Tashkin led a team of UCLA investigators
who conducted a large, population-based, case-controlled study
looking for links between marijuana use and the risk of lung
cancer in middle-aged adults living in Los Angeles County. They
concluded, "We did not observe a positive association of
marijuana use, even heavy long-term use, with lung cancer, controlling
for tobacco smoking and other potential confounders" (age,
sex, race, educational level).
Tashkin originally announced
his findings at last summer's meeting of the International Cannabinoid
Research Society, as reported in
this column and O'Shaughnessy's. Only now has the
story hit the mainstream media. It is being reported accurately
but with Tashkin's conservative spin (downplaying the apparent
protective effect exerted by THC and/or other components of the
cannabis plant). The following from WebMD typifies the tone of
the coverage:
"The findings surprised
the study's researchers, who expected to see an increase in cancer
among people who smoked marijuana regularly in their youth. 'We
know that there are as many or more carcinogens and co-carcinogens
in marijuana smoke as in cigarettes,' researcher Donald Tashkin,
MD, of UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine tells WebMD. 'But
we did not find any evidence for an increase in cancer risk for
even heavy marijuana smoking.' Cellular studies and even some
studies in animal models suggest that THC has anti-tumor properties,
either by encouraging the death of genetically damaged cells
that can become cancerous or by restricting the development of
the blood supply that feeds tumors, Tashkin tells WebMD...
"While there was a suggestion
in the newly reported study that smoking marijuana is weakly
protective against lung cancer, Tashkin says the very weak association
was probably due to chance. Cancer risk among cigarette smokers
was not influenced by whether or not they also smoked marijuana.
'We saw no interaction between marijuana and tobacco, and we
certainly would not recommend that people smoke marijuana to
protect themselves against cancer,' he says."
Generally omitted from the
coverage is the fact that Tashkin has devoted much of his career
to the search for cannabis-induced lung damage, and that his
findings have been the basis for all the Drug Czar's warnings
over the years about marijuana as a carcinogen. Although Tashkin
could isolate the cancer-causing components of cannabis smoke,
and made frightening photomicrographs of damaged bronchial tissue,
he never got the holy grail, the great white whale, a causal
link to the Big C.
Philip Denney, MD, read the
account of Tashkin's talk to the respiratory specialists in the
Orange County Register and called to ask: "How does it make
you feel when you broke the Tashkin story and the mainstream
media picks it up nine months later and nobody credits you with
the scoop?"
Well, not quite nobody -there's
you, dear friend. And scoops were never my goal, for some reason.
Of course a political journalist wants to reach the masses and
influence the elites; but on another level, you're only writing
for a few people whose opinions you care about. The medical marijuana
movement in all its varied aspects is a great story and I feel
lucky to be covering it, even if CounterPunch, the Anderson Valley
Advertiser, and O'Shaughnessy's are "below the radar."
The characters involved -the club owners, the doctors, the researchers,
the activists, the growers, the patients (a term used rightly
by the doctors and misused widely by people who really mean "customers")-
could be the basis for a comic novel if I was any kind of writer...
Chapter 37, in which a team of doctors and scientists from UCLA's
David Geffen School of Medicine determine that components of
cannabis exert a protective effect on the lungs and then characterize
their study as "a failure!"
Tylenol
Kills (Why Do They Hate You?)
"Once in Chicago while
performing with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West," wrote Roxane
Dunbar, "Sitting Bull spoke through his translator to the
huge crowd of ragged white men, women, and barefoot children:
'I know why your government hates me. I am their enemy. But why
do they hate you?'" Robert Altman's great movie "Buffalo
Bill and the Indians" doesn't quote the line but depicts
the context, the dawn of the age of corporate hucksterism. Paul
Newman plays Buffalo Bill, who runs and is the star attraction
of a traveling show. One of the "acts" on display is
laconic, brilliant Sitting Bull.
The Sioux leader's blunt question
comes to mind with each example of the U.S. government's willingness
to expose us, the people, to corporate products and practices
that are literally killing us. To protect the beef producers
the feds won't allow thorough testing for Mad Cow disease. To
protect the poultry producers they tolerate high levels of salmonella
in chicken, and even 500 ppb of arsenic! To protect the drug
companies they outlaw the safest and most versatile pharmacological
agent known to mankind and approve and even promote synthetic
compounds with harmful-unto-death side effects. Vioxx, Celebrex,
Rezulin, Fosamax, Seroquel, FenPhen, Prempro/Premarin
Get ready for a wave of stories
revealing that Tylenol causes severe liver damage. Years ago
the medical students at UC San Francisco called their Pathology
rotation at General Hospital "Toadstools and Tylenol,"
because the only cases of poisoning they ever had to deal with
involved mushrooms or acetaminophen, the active ingredient in
Johnson & Johnson's best-selling painkiller. (McNeil, the
company that markets Tylenol, is a branch of J&J.) Now the
danger is being exposed in lawsuits, and the company is putting
out a blame-the-victim line, i.e., it's your fault for not using
as directed, or drinking alcohol, or inadvertently taking in
combination with other drugs that contain acetaminophen. They
are also emphasizing how rare the cases of death by Tylenol are,
given how many millions of Americans are popping the pills daily.
"Rare cases" of a
drug taken by millions equate to thousands of individual catastrophes.
The pharmaceutical manufacturers claim that the benefits their
compounds confer on the many far outweigh the damage they cause
a few. The "sanctity of the individual" -which we used
to hear a lot about when the enemy was Communism- couldn't stand
up to cost-benefit analysis. The corporate decision-makers relate
to us as customers, not as people. Their ad campaigns are folksy
and friendly, as if they're "good neighbors" concerned
about our health -but they're really stock owners intent on maximizing
their profits. They're willing to endanger our health to sell
their products. That's not the way you treat people you respect
and love. It's more akin to contempt and hate. And therein may
lie the answer to Sitting Bull's question.
Fred Gardner is the editor of O'Shaughnessy's
Journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group. He
can be reached at: fred@plebesite.com
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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