Today's Stories

December 5 / 7, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

Weekend Edition
December 5 / 7, 2008

Not Just a Comedian Anymore

Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

By NORM KENT

I double dare you to tell me that when you hear the names ‘Cheech and Chong’ you don’t smile, chuckle and recall a funny, hazy moment in your life.

Between 1972 and 1985, the comedy team released nine albums, starred in eight films, and won a Grammy award. They became the Dynamic Duo of Dope, and some of their films, like ‘Nice Dreams’ and ‘Up in Smoke’ became celebrated classics.

Tommy and Cheech would often be pressed to talk about their ‘message.’ They would reply simply: “All we can do is be funny and try to make people laugh.” In a lifetime far away, that was their modest and fulfilling goal. That, however, was before a fully armed Department of Justice swat team raided Tommy Chong’s comfortable suburban California home in February of 2003.

Armed with a search warrant, you would think these machine gun toting FBI agents were expecting to find 9-11 terrorists. You would think Tommy was holding hostages. Not close. The feds found Tommy, his wife, his elderly dog and some pot. They found a comedian whose entrepreneurial bent enabled him to become the CEO of business enterprise which sold beautiful and designer glass pipes over the Internet.

Unfortunately, ‘Nice Dreams Enterprises’ was about to become Tommy Chong’s nightmare.

In a different world, maybe Tommy would have been given an award for glass artistry. But in the mind of President George Bush, Tommy Chong was aiding and abetting a culture of ‘terrorists’ who glamorized pot. Said the Chief Assistant United States Attorney from the Western District of Pennsylvania, who would personally handle Tommy Chong’s prosecution, and see him to prison: “The people who sell the accessories are just as bad as those growing the plant.”

On that date, Tommy Chong went from telling jokes and producing glass pipes to starring in a real life documentary which exposes just how transcendentally meaningless the drug war against our citizens is. Like the young man who stood alone before a cannon twenty years ago in Tiananmen Square, Tommy Chong has become the unanticipated warrior whose life experience has exposed the abject foolishness of our government’s drug war.

Tommy Chong has gone from living off the culture of pot to going to prison because of it. He has become the person he joked about. But he never asked to be a hero. He just sought to be funny, to do for pot what Red Skelton used to do for booze. Somewhere along the way someone forgot to tell the feds that Marcus Welby was never really a doctor and Tommy Chong was never really a stoner. Well, maybe a little. But it was not his whole life.

Tommy Chong was a comedic writer, a guitarist, a filmmaker, a humorist, a businessman, and an entertainer. He trivialized law enforcement. He made stoners laughable and humorous. He mimicked those panicked moments when we would stash the stash, or swallow a roach. He made us laugh about being high even when we were not high. He made funny movies and comic albums. Along the way, he became a counter culture hero, and for everyone who ever bogarted a joint, there is a Cheech and Chong moment stored in your memory bank.

Says Tommy today: “I turn 70 this year. And I still smoke pot about as regular as I want to.”

One of Tom’s more unique honors was being given a “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the Cannabis Cup ceremonies in Amsterdam. His tour still involves comedy of course, but in his own words, Tommy gives talks “on how Pot can save the Planet. My life is full of love and adventure thanks to the magical herb.”

Following a path many of us tracked, Tommy grew up, has grown older, got married, got divorced, got married, raised a family, and started a successful business. ‘Nice Dream Enterprises’ sold bongs over the ‘Net. Today, any convenience stores on street corners from San Francisco in California to Saint Petersburg in Florida carry pipes and papers and smoking agents. They are not getting busted and they are not going to jail.

But in 2003, while our nation was still removing bodies from the World Trade Center, 55 defendants got popped for bong-selling on the ‘Net. It was a nationwide operation heralded in a press conference by the Attorney General of the United States.  Tommy Chong was the Potboy Centerfold, targeted as the number one offender, with a government hell-bent on sending a message which would make Tommy the example to be burnt at the stake.

After 9-11, selling glass pipes on the Internet became a low priority for the federal government. The law was pretty much ignored. Out of all those eventually charged and found guilty, one man of course, would have to wind up with a sentence longer than any other. That man would be a man in his sixties with no criminal record, a father, a parent, and entrepreneur. That man would be one Tommy Chong, who would go to Taft Prison in California for nine months between 2005 and 2006.  

“I tried to look at it as going on location for nine months,” Tommy says in a newly released documentary, A/K/A Tommy Chong. It’s playing now on Showtime, and it is a compelling, commanding feature, produced by Blue Chief Entertainment. Even the title has a double entendre: the federal indictment including the charges which would send Tommy to prison, reads United States of America vs. Thomas B. Kin Chong A/K/A Tommy Chong.

The Josh Gilbert film illustratively reveals the way the government improperly solicited and perhaps unlawfully entrapped ‘Nice Dream Enterprises.’ The revealing evidentiary tapes show that the company originally sought NOT to ship glass pipes into the Western Pennsylvania jurisdiction where a phony paraphernalia store run by feds was pleading for product. But the propositions from the undercovers kept on coming, and the corporation headed by Tommy Chong made a bad call. Then came the feds.

As the film shows, Tommy had little to do with the day to day operations of the company. He was, his son Paris says, too busy “dreaming about creating a million dollar bong with gold and diamonds.” But the indictment named Tommy, and in exchange for the government not adding as co-defendants his wife and son, who were instrumental in the operation of the company, Tommy bit the bullet and took the fall.

To secure a lenient plea deal and possible sentence reduction means your attorney has to plead you guilty swiftly. This sentencing guideline enables you to get credit for ‘early acceptance of responsibility.’ It means you have to waive your right to contest the indictment, file defensive motions, and allege such issues as unlawful entrapment. As his attorneys in the film point out, and as Tommy himself found out, your options are severely limited.

The Prince of Dope Films became the pot prisoner he used to joke about. In the film, drug reformers Ethan Nadelman and Eric Schlosser acknowledge as much: “He convinced the government he was the guy he played in the movies.” And Andy Griffith was really a Sheriff.

In 2008, as he tours North America with Cheech Marin for the first time in 25 years, Tommy recognizes of our government: “They made me a martyr.” How true. Within months of his release, Tommy was on the Tonite Show with Jay Leno. “Too bad he wasn’t a conservative radio talk show host,” Leno would remark in his monologue: “he would be in rehab instead of jail.”

On Bill Maher’s weekly television show, Maher noted with irony that Tommy’s federal sentencing date was on September 11: “Osama may still be running free in caves, but our country will be much safer with a 65 year old Tommy Chong in a prison.”

Now free of prison, but forever an adjudicated felon, Tommy says: “I made a living for thirty years talking about a culture. Today, I stand up for it.”  He is truly not just a comedian anymore.

Joshua Gilbert produced, wrote, and directed the film. He had the ingenuity and foresight to create a film which followed Tommy from his indictment to his release from prison. We see Tommy entertaining on stage before his incarceration, and then doing a sobering interview while doing his time. In a lighter moment, he jokes with his new found friends, all inmates at a federal prison. Few actors have better worked the ‘method’ system. Tommy’s was real.

In a later scene, we see Tommy leaving the gates of this deserted and lonely steel prison, walking out of the federal penitentiary on his release date, his wife waiting to meet him. Driving home along an isolated road, Tommy sees a goat entangled in a wire cage. He frees him. “It feels good to be free,” Tommy says. He then arrives home, bends down, and kisses the concrete steps leading up to his house.

The film’s insight reveals that the end of a sentence for a prisoner can also be the beginning of a new one. As a felon, you have to register and report to police stations, half way houses, and you can be subject to post-custodial supervision and random drug testing. The failure to meet these conditions can cause your return to prison. After spending nine months in jail, Tommy had to go to one of those half way houses and endure nine more months of probation. We forget what that can do to the human spirit.

“Once you have been jailed, you are never really free again,” Tommy says. “You no longer feel invincible. You have been humbled. You know what the meaning of ‘doing time’ means.”

In life, sometimes you are called upon to stand naked in front of the cannon, as that young man in Tiananmen Square did years ago. Sometimes, you are called upon to just be funny.

The new tour of Cheech and Chong is taking them to cities in America and Canada. As she has since 1996, Tommy’s wife Shelby opens the show. An entertainer in her own right, she is the prelude for the duo that has now been booked for over 50 dates in 50 cities between now and March of 2009.

One of those dates, on March 07, 2009, is not many miles from the very county in Pennsylvania where Tommy’s bongs arrived in a shipment, in 2002, which would lead to his arrest, prosecution, and incarceration. If he has not already, I suspect on that stage and in that forum, Tommy may find true vindication.

Tommy is not alone turning 70 this year. So are many members of his audience. But the crowds laugh and cry, stare and abide by the Dukes of Dope, now in the autumn of their lives. Maybe they go home to lattes instead of lines, grandkids instead of ganja, but Cheech and Chong are one with the crowd, no more so then the closing moments of the performance, when all join in a joyful, playful, sing-along rendition of  ‘Up in Smoke.’

“And we close our show,” says Cheech in a Rolling Stone interview, “with ‘Kumbaya.’ It’s for world peace. It’s for the kids. It’s for the future.”

“I am inspired,” Tommy says now, “not just to tell jokes, but to send a message. My arrest, my sentence is a badge of honor..”

Norm Kent is a Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorney who serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. His website can be accessed at www.normkent.co. He can be reached at: norm@normkent.com

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