home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
MY LAI VET SAYS: HERE IT COMES AGAIN IN IRAQ Tony Swindell recalls "Butcher's Brigade" in '69; says "gooks" have now become "ragheads", every adult male is an "insurgent" ... atrocities against Iraqi civilians are soon going to explode in America's face; US Government's courtroom jihads against terror stumble. Alexander Cockburn on Lodi case where Feds paid $250,000 to man who "saw" world's three top terrorists at mosque. As neocons and Israel lobby howl for US to bomb Teheran, an Iranian outlines simple path to peace. 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! |
Today's Stories April 29 / 30, 2006 Peter Linebaugh
April 28, 2006 James Ridgeway Ramzy Baroud Sarah Knopp William S. Lind Werther April 27, 2006 Winslow T. Wheeler Robert Fisk Juan Santos Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Jose Pertierra
April 26,2006 Robin Philpot Sherry Wolf Pratyush Chandra Joshua Frank Gary
Leupp Bill
Quigley
April 25, 2006 Gary
Leupp Paul
Craig Roberts Linda
S. Heard Ralph
Nader Mike
Whitney Michael
Donnelly Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
April 24, 2006 Tim
Wise John
Stanton Dave
Lindorff Steve
Shore Amadou
Deme Mickey
Z. Ralph Nader Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
April 22/23, 2006 Jeffrey
St. Clair Jeff
Halper Jeff
Klein Thomas
P. Healy David
Underhill Lee
Sustar Deb
Reich John
Chuckman Fred
Gardner Julian
Edney Seth
Sandronsky Brynne
Keith-Jennings Dave
Lindorff Catherine
Ann Cullen and Harry Browne Bill
Pahnelas Jim
French Ron
Jacobs David
Krieger Jeffrey
St. Clair Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
April 21, 2006 Jonathan
Cook Lawrence
R. Velvel Evelyn
Pringle Christopher
Brauchli Pratyush
Chandra Michael
George Smith Missy
Comley Beattie Sarah
Hines Website
of the Day
April 20, 2006 Chris
Kutalik Gary
Leupp Joshua
Frank Diane
Christian William
S. Lind Ramzy
Baroud Justin
E.H. Smith
April 19, 2006 P.
Sainath Norman
Solomon Anthony
Papa Mike
Ferner Stanley
Heller Rifundazione Christopher
Reed Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day April 18, 2006 Paul
Craig Roberts Eric
Wingerter Juan
Santos Greg
Weiher Sam
Bahour Behzad
Yaghmaian Website
of the Day
April 17, 2006 Kevin Zeese Uri Avnery Norman Solomon John Ross Laila al-Haddad Jeffrey Blankfort Website of the Day
April 15 / 16, 2006 Jeffrey
St. Clair Ralph
Nader Thaddeus
Hoffmeister Kevin
Prosen / Dave Zirin Thomas
P. Healy Kristoffer
Larsson Fred
Gardner Edwin
Krales Brian
Cloughley John
Holt Seth
Sandronsky Rafael
Renteria Michael
Ortiz Hill William
A. Cook Gideon
Levy Andrew
Wimmer Madis
Senner Michael
Kuehl Mark
Scaramella Nate
Mezmer Jesse
Walker Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
April 14, 2006 Col.
Dan Smith Saul
Landau Stan
Cox Kevin
Zeese Brian
McKinlay Howard
Meyers Ishmael
Reed Website
of the Day
April 13, 2006 CounterPunch
News Service Norman
Solomon Stanley
Heller Jeff
Birkenstein Evelyn
J. Pringle Michael
Donnelly Kamran
Matin Website
of the Day
April 12, 2006 Vijay
Prashad Alan
Maass Dave
Lindorff Ron
Jacobs Ramzy
Baroud Randall
Dodd Missy
Comley Beattie P. Sainath Website
of the Day
April 11, 2006 Al
Krebs Lawrence
R. Velvel Sonia
Nettinin Willliam
S. Lind Robert
Ovetz Pratyush
Chandra Grant
F. Smith Laray
Polk Francis
Boyle José
Pertierra Website
of the Day
April 10, 2006 Ralph
Nader Heather
Gray Uri
Avnery Joshua
Frank Seth
Sandronsky Michael
Leonardi Evelyn
Pringle Tom
Kerr Lucinda
Marshall Website
of the Day April 7 -9, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Jeffrey
St. Clair Patrick
Cockburn David
Vest Dave
Lindorff Gary
Leupp Elaine
Cassel Saul
Landau James
Ridgeway Ron
Jacobs John
Walsh Ramzy
Baroud Christopher
Brauchli Todd
Chretien Jonathan
Scott John
Bomar Michele
Brand Ronan
Sheehan Mickey
Z. Don
Monkerud Michael
Dickinson Website
of the Weekend
April 6, 2006 John
Ross Dave
Lindorff Don
Monkerud Robert
McDonald Boris
Kagarlitsky Remi
Kanazi Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Robert
Fisk
April 5, 2006 Dick
J. Reavis Mark
Brenner Brian
Cloughley Jozef
Hand-Boniakowski Matt
Vidal Juan
Santos Alan
Maass JoAnn
Wypijewski Website
of the Day
April 4, 2006 Jackson
Thoreau Gary
Corseri Dave
Lindorff Paul
Craig Roberts Norman
Solomon Michael
Carmichael Winslow
T. Wheeler Ingmar
Lee Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
April 3, 2006 Saul
Landau Richard
Thieme Timothy
B. Tyson Omar
Barghouti Iwasaki
Atsuko Julian
Edney Roger
Morris
April 1 / 2, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Dave
Zirin David
Underhill Earl
Ofari Hutchinson Dave
Lindorff P.
Sainath Fred
Gardner Clancy
Chassay Heather
Gray Greg
Moses John
Chuckman Ron
Jacobs Jeffrey
St. Clair Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
Subscribe Online
|
Weekend
Edition Pot ShotsForgotten Memories, Personal and Political By FRED GARDNER It's no coincidence that the new O'Shaughnessy's includes five articles on post traumatic stress disorder and three on forgotten aspects of the history of cannabis as medicine. When a medical student named Tod Mikuriya first became interested in cannabis in the early 1960s, he realized that understanding might be found in two directions: clinical experience (input from patients, then unavailable) and the pre-Prohibition medical literature. So it makes sense that some 40 years later the journal Mikuriya founded would focus on a psychiatric condition that cannabis is being used to treat, and would publish documents filling in the gaps in our historic miseducation. The PTSD pieces include three patients' stories and two articles by clinicians, including one by Mikuriya himself, rife with original observations: " Although it is now widely accepted that cannabinoids help extinguish painful memories, my clinical experience suggests that 'extinguish' is a misnomer. Cannabis modulates emotional reactivity, enabling people to integrate painful memories -to look at them and begin to deal with them, instead of suppressing them until a stimulus calls them forth with overwhelming force. "The modulation of emotional response relieves the flooding of negative affect. The skeletal and smooth muscle relaxation decreases the release of corticosteroids and escalating "fight-or-flight" agitation. The modulation of mood prevents or significantly decreases the symptoms of anxiety attacks, mood swings, and insomnia. While decreasing the intensity of affectual response, cannabis increases introspection as evidenced by the slowing of the EEG after initial stimulation. Unique anti-depressive effects are experienced immediately with an alteration in cognition. Obsessive and pressured thinking give way to introspective free associations (given relaxed circumstances). Emotional reactivity is calmed, worries become less pressing. Used on a continuing basis, cannabis can hold depressive symptoms at bay. Agitated depression appears to respond to the anxiolytic component of the drug. Social withdrawal and emotional shutting down are reversed. The short-term memory loss induced by cannabis that may be undesirable in other contexts is therapeutic in controlling obsessive ideation, amplified anxiety, and fear of loss of control ignited by the triggering stimuli." The patients' stories are from survivors of combat (Al Byrne) and sexual abuse (Erin Hlidebrandt, Christopher Largen), and all took courage to tell. Byrne said after talking at the recent Patients Out of Time conference in Santa Barbara that he'd left out some points he'd meant to make. (Don't we all, all the time?). Byrne calls the condition post-traumatic stresss - " not a disorder but a logical response to people trying to kill you." His afterthoughts: "PTS can be 'inflicted' in 3 ways. You are a victim, you are the cause of trauma, you are a witness. When I spoke to my early years experience in the Navy I meant to point out that these events caused no trauma. There was no negative consequence for me personally. However the Vietnam experience was different. The story I related was as a witness to a major bombing of jungle/people, that was a traumatic event "Hopefully, treatment quickly is the norm. For instance: I was still working at combat counseling when the first vet from the first gulf war came in. He was going nuts when his friends hit a pothole in the street or went over a bump. Why? Turned out he was with the first troops to drive, at speed, into Kuwait City. The drivers were ordered to stop for nothing, the bumps were bodies, alive and dead, that the trucks he was in had crushed. We hope we got him doing ok and his coming to us quickly was a big help. Please stress the importance of getting trauma folks help right away." In the star chamber night Forgotten are the scents of old Tonkin Four-hundred twenty to one For war what's another forty billion? They've got what's called a gang mentality 'Cept you, Barbara Lee, 'Cept you, Barbara Lee, 'Cept you. On the next-to-last day of 1996 Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey reiterated the Clinton Administration's opposition to the medical use of marijuana at a well-attended White House press conference. He was flanked by Attorney General Janet Reno, Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, and Alan Leshner, head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The key visual element was a large chart on an easel to which McCaffrey kept referring with scorn. The heading read "Dr. Tod Mikuriya's (215 Medical Advisor) Medical Uses of Marijuana." Twenty-six conditions were listed in two columns of 13. One of the conditions was misspelled as "Migranes." As Shalala gazed at the chart and nodded agreement, McCaffrey told the media, "This isn't medicine, this is a Cheech and Chong show." He warned that use of marijuana violated federal law and would lead to reprisals, including the loss of prescription-writing privileges for any doctor who recommended it to patients. Reno said that prosecutors would focus on doctors who were "egregious" in recommending marijuana. In a New Year's Day interview at his home in the Berkeley hills, Mikuriya analyzed the set-up for a UCSF med student: "As doctors become more fearful, I'll obviously get more and more patients who are using cannabis or are considering it. Will that make it seem that there's something 'egregious' about my practice?" Mikuriya called the chart "a crude dirty trick -the kind of disinformation the U.S. military put out during the Vietnam War. Only in this case the 'enemy' is the people of California." Your correspondent subsequently interviewed the McCaffrey aide who compiled the chart, Dave Des Roches, "special assistant for strategy planning," a West Pointer who had retired from the Army after nine years and moved over from the Pentagon to the Drug Czar's office. Des Roches said he'd based the chart on Mikuriya's "Medical Marijuana Handbook" as posted on the Internet. He explained: "What he does there is put in every use in recorded history of marijuana for medical purpose. I'm sure he'll say 'I'm not endorsing this,' but it's on the internet, it's published, his name is on the front of it." Des Roches thought that some of the conditions Mikuriya listed were especially ludicrous: "'Writer's cramp' -I had to show that one to General McCaffrey, he didn't believe it. 'Removal of corns' -because it was sold in patent medicines! And can you believe 'Recall of forgotten memories?' He bases that on something from John Stuart Mill!" (At the time there had been a spate of highly publicized cases involving false accusations based on "recovered memories" of abuse during childhood.) Des Roches was highly amused by Mikuriya's "whole laundry list" of conditions for which marijuana provides relief, and so was his boss, McCaffrey, in front of a worldwide TV audience on 12/30. It would turn out that the very thing the brass were ridiculing Mikuriya for -his documentation that cannabis can be used to treat an astonishingly wide range of conditions- is, arguably, his most significant accomplishment. The implications of cannabis's versatility have been developed by Mikuriya and other clinicians in the 10 years since Prop 215 passed, and by lab scientists, too. Cannabinoids are now known to affect the cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, excretory, immune, musculo-skeletal, nervous, reproductive, and respiratory systems! As a clinician observing the effects of cannabis on human beings who provide verbal feedback (unlike mice and dogs), Mikuriya inferred its mechanism of action and defined it as "an easement" (rather than a sedative, hypnotic, hallucinogen, etc.) because in both the physical and mental realms, cannabis has a relaxing effect. O'Shaughnessy's is the journal I produce for Dr. Mikuriya's Society of Cannabis Clinicians. To get the Spring '06 issue and future issues, send a contribution of any amount to CCRMG, p.o. Box 9143, Berkeley, CA 94709. It's a 501c3 organization, so your contribution is tax-deductible. (CCRMG stands for California Cannabis Research Medical Group, the original name of the SCC. They changed it because it sounded too Jewish. That's a joke.) This appeal won't be accompanied by a thermometer rising to $24,000, but keeping the good ship O'Shaughnessy's afloat is a most worthy cause. This whole medical marijuana movement rests on the courage of a small group of doctors, and it's important that they have an outlet in which to publish their findings and observations. 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
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |