WITH THE HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATE IN THE WORLD, AMERICA HAS STILL MANAGED TO LOSE THE WAR ON DRUGS, DESTROY MILLIONS OF INNOCENT LIVES, RIP FAMILIES APART, WASTE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND BUILD A RACIST CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM SECOND TO NONE.

by Debbie Epstein
for HUSTLER Magazine – May 2010

In April 1993, 23-year-old Clinton Matthew was staying at a friend’s house in Norfolk, Virginia, with his girlfriend when the police burst in. A small amount of drugs, belonging to others, was discovered in the house, and Matthew ultimately received a sentence of life with no chance of parole even though he basically was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Under a federal law passed in the 1980s, dealers’ friends, lovers and family members who possessed little or no illegal substances could be charged with “conspiracy,” potentially a life sentence.

Clinton Matthew (right) at brother Ian’s college graduation in May 1992. One year later he would receive a life sentence with no chance of parole.

To establish conspiracy for Matthew, the police paid known criminals to testify against him, according to court records. For some reason (probably a previous bust that pissed off the police because he’d been found not guilty), police decided Matthew was the “kingpin” even though he couldn’t afford a lawyer. One paid snitch was allegedly Bernard Vick, a close relative of Michael Vick, the pro football player busted for running dog fights. Others got better deals if they named Matthew, although some refused and were deported. He will turn 40 in prison this year. Under his sentence, he’ll die behind bars.

“When I was young, I was an angry kid trying to find my way,” he says. “I got into some minor trouble before the bust. But I’ve grown out of my anger. Sitting in this place all these years has made me learn to value the small things. Still, it seems shameful that so many men are locked away like this.”

Matthew continues, “I’ve been sent to so many different penitentiaries, places where you walk a straight line and give people the highest respect because if you don’t, it may cost you your life. Predators prey on the weak. The strong survive, and the weak lay down and die. I’ve lost my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather and countless friends while I’ve been here. And every time, a part of me is ripped out.”

Matthew’s father, a veteran who lives in Florida, tries to stay positive. “I can’t believe my son is going to spend his entire life in jail,” he says. Every request for an appeal has been refused. Because “the kingpin” had to rely on a public defender, he’s had basically no hope from day one.

A GROWING INDUSTRY
Matthew is just one of a million or so Americans wasting away in jails for victimless, nonviolent drug violations. Since the 1970s the number of imprisoned drug offenders has increased 1,200%! America jails five times more people—most of them for drugs—than any other countryAnnually, about 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana crimes alone. Four out of five are for possession. There are 2 million drug busts in the U.S. each year.

What’s behind the madness? “In the ’80s, President Reagan and the Republican Congress were trying to prove who could be the toughest on drugs,” says Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. The result was more busts, longer sentences and mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws. Now about half a million men and women are wasting away in prisons for drugonly crimes. No guns, no violence or other crimes—just drugs. The number doubles when you include those in jail for violating parole by failing or refusing drug tests. In Alabama, for example, about half the prison population falls into this latter category.

The cost of arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating a million or so drug offenders each year is huge, with taxpayers footing the bill. California (a groundbreaking state in drugpolicy reform) saved more than $1.5 billion in a year by softening its drug policy.

“There’s a lot of money involved,” says Piper. “Grass is the bread and butter for lots of law officers and prison workers.” Some of the main supporters for mandatory minimum sentencing are the prison guard unions. They are also some of the largest donators to lawmakers who want to ensure that prisons stay filled to the bursting point.

RACISM AND REPUBLICANS
Every war has casualties, and this one hits the poor, the young, and blacks and Latinos the hardest. Although blacks, for example, make up only 12% of the population and use only slightly more drugs than whites, 75% of all drug sentences are handed out to minorities. “All the offenders busted in my case were black,” Matthew says, “and it was well known on the street that the town was trying to clear us out of that area of Norfolk.”

“It was the rise of crack and its racial undertones that bred mandatory minimum drug sentences,” says Monica Pratt Raffanel, communications director for Families Against Mandatory Minimums. (When you’re black, it’s crack; when you’re white, it’s coke. The difference can mean life in prison.)

These new sentencing laws took all discretion away from the courts. “The judges and parole officers often express their horror at the cruel sentences,” says Pratt Raffanel. One judge commented he wished the defendant standing before him had been a congressman; he was forced by law to sentence a 23-yearold man to 20 years for possessing cocaine and an unloaded rifle under his bed. Another judge said it was with a heavy heart that he sentenced a 22-year-old man to 20 years for coke possession. Neither defendant was white.

“There should be consequences for offenders, but the punishment should fit the crime,” says Pratt Raffanel. “Mandatory laws require a five-year sentence for 5 grams of coke. In Indiana one man with a minor prior record was sentenced to life in prison for marijuana possession,” she says. “The lower-level offenders get the highest sentences because they have no information to trade with the police.” Piper agrees: “The high-ups avoid possessing the drug by using low-level couriers.”

LEGALIZE IT!
Given the growing inequality that borders on ethnic cleansing and apartheid, the time has come to stop this national disgrace. Surveys show that 65% to 75% of Americans oppose jail time for pot. And President Obama almost immediately stopped the raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal, such as California. His predecessor, George W. Bush, aggressively busted legal medical marijuana stores.

Obama also called for a repeal of the federal syringe exchange ban to control AIDS and other diseases, and he has requested changes in the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. Additionally, the President named Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, a cop who has a fairly liberal record on drug policy, as the drug czar. Kerlikowske declared that the war on drugs is over.

Like California, Washington state has been at the cutting edge of drug policy reform, legalizing medical marijuana in 1998. (Today, 13 states have legalized marijuana or medical marijuana.)

Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia) has told the Senate that this country is locking up far too many people who do not belong in jail. “Drug offenders are swamping our prisons,” according to the senator, who introduced the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009. It calls for an 18-month commission to review the entire criminal justice system and offer real reform recommendations, not just a laundry list of wrongs. The act is supported by President Obama, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Attorney General Eric Holder and many lawmakers.

“The commission is a good idea, but it will take years to bring real change,” says Piper. “The federal government should be expending its resources on arresting violent gang members.”

In the meantime, those who would probably go free under Senator Webb’s legislation remain caged—missing their children and families—while costing millions when they could be contributing to society.

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Debbie Epstein is an award-winning healthcare and science author who lives in Ringwood, New Jersey, with husband David, Wilbur the cat and Joe the Yorkie.

MAY 2010 – HUSTLER Magazine


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Hustler Publisher requests Senator to donate “diapers and other personal items” to control costly effects of the disaster.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – July 1, 2010 – As rough seas from Hurricane Alex delay oil clean-up operations on the Gulf Coast, Hustler Magazine publisher, Larry Flynt, in a letter to Republican Senator David Vitter today, urged the Louisiana lawmaker to personally contribute “diapers and other personal items” in an effort to control the costly effects of the eleven week old British Petroleum oil disaster.

Three years ago, Flynt and his team of investigators assisted in exposing Senator Vitter’s extracurricular activities with female prostitutes. Others have reported on the Senator’s penchant for diapers during his transgressions. Vitter later apologized for his “very serious sin” after documents released by the D.C. Madam, Deborah Jane Palfrey, revealed that he had patronized her high-end, fantasy escort service.

In the letter to Vitter, Flynt acknowledges the Senator’s statement that everyone does their part to solve this catastrophe. Additionally, he suggests that, when it comes to blocking the oil that’s gushing into the Gulf, Vitter might consider donating his extensive collection of diapers, known for their super absorbency, to help stop the leak by creating a giant “plug.”

“Senator Vitter has gone on record claiming that the oil spill in the Gulf is ‘too big of an endeavor’ for one company,” said Flynt. “Accordingly, in an effort to protect the coastlines and marshes on the Gulf Coast, I am asking Senator Vitter to use the personal articles that he’s best known for to aid in the relief. His experience in the discipline of ‘spills’ is unprecedented.”

###

Senator David Vitter
516 Hart Senate Building
Washington DC, 20510

Dear Senator Vitter:

Forgive me for intruding on your valuable time. I know you are a very busy man, especially in regards to the current problems in the Gulf of Mexico. But that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. I concur that everybody must do their part to solve this serious catastrophe. And that’s where I think you, in particular, can be of so much help.

As I understand it, you have some expertise regarding diapers. I have no idea how many diapers you actually have on hand (quite a collection from what I hear) but as you know, diapers are quite absorbent. So, when it comes to blocking the oil that’s gushing into the Gulf, they might be a very effective way of solving that problem. With that in mind, I urge you to donate your extensive diaper collection to BP so they can use them to stop the leak by creating, for want of a better term, a giant “plug.”

It could be a historic moment: An ecological disaster thwarted. And you’ll get the credit for it. In fact, when people hear the word “diaper” they will automatically think of you. Hell, they already do.
Please don’t piss away this golden opportunity.

Sincerely,

Larry Flynt
Publisher
Hustler

HOW ISRAEL DICTATES U.S. POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

by Christopher Ketcham
for HUSTLER Magazine – April 2010

Israel’s military dominance in the Middle East depends heavily on U.S. aid, totaling more than $140 billion since the Jewish state’s inception in 1948. Any reduction in that generous support terrifies our ally because U.S. policy is considered absolutely crucial for Israel’s survival as the regional hegemon. This explains why its intelligence and political action network, unrivaled by that of any other foreign power, has penetrated deep within the U.S. government to ensure that American policy remains beneficial to Israel’s national interests even if detrimental to our own.

“It’s sickening how much reach the Israelis have here,” a veteran CIA officer tells HUSTLER. Another former CIA officer, author Michael Scheuer, puts it more bluntly: “The relationship is criminal, both literally and figuratively. There are a lot of people in the U.S. government in trusted positions who don’t see a difference between being a U.S. citizen and a friend of Israel.”

Examples of Israeli penetration abound. In 2005 the National Security Agency secretly wiretapped conversations between Representative Jane Harman (D-California) and an unnamed Israeli intelligence agent. He promised Harman the prized chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee if she intervened on behalf of two suspected Israeli spies facing jail time in a Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecution.

How does a foreign intelligence operative have the sway to fix such appointments? Look to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerhouse lobby that funnels millions of dollars into congressional elections to ensure that pro-Israel lawmakers get elected and stay in office. AIPAC, which ostensibly conducts its work as a legal lobby, has long been a suspected front for Israeli covert action—in other words, a group engaged in illegal intelligence activities against the U.S. government.

The Israeli agent’s 2005 conversation with Harman, first reported by Congressional Quarterly magazine in April 2009, was stunning. At the time, two veteran AIPAC policy players—Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman— were under indictment on charges of passing classified information to Israel. The secrets, gleaned from a mole in the Pentagon, specifically concerned U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran, with pro-Israel lobbyists pushing hard for a U.S. attack on the Iranian mullahs.

According to the DOJ indictment, Rosen was suspected of handing over classified information to the Israelis as early as 1999. For her part, Harman was asked to pressure the DOJ to reduce the charges against the two men. The congresswoman happily assented, saying she’d “waddle into” the case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to the NSA transcript.

In addition to handing Harman the committee chairmanship, the Israeli agent promised to funnel campaign contributions to Harman’s fellow California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, today the Speaker of the House. The source of the campaign cash? Media billionaire Haim Saban, the chief moneyman behind the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

It’s unknown whether Harman—who concluded her phone call with the Israeli agent by saying “This conversation doesn’t exist”—did in fact intervene in the case. But on May 3, 2009, the DOJ dropped the charges against the two AIPAC staffers, who went free, presumably to continue spying in the United States. Harman, who should have been investigated, remains an elected representative of the American people. It’s as if the incident never happened.

Big money infused into the political system, secrets stolen from the Pentagon, quasicriminal collusion with a congresswoman— all in a day’s work for the Israeli intelligenceand- influence machine.

How would the United States react if some other country’s intelligence apparatus behaved this way? Would there be total silence if England, France or Germany did this? Most likely our elected officials would be screaming, and journalists would spread it through every news source, just as they should.

COVERT OPERATIONS
In his explosive 1974 book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti—arguably one of the most authoritative whistleblowers in CIA history—details how a spy service works to pursue its “national interest” via covert action.

Marchetti writes that the efficient way to conduct covert action is not through violent intervention—mounting bloody coups or bankrolling insurgents—but through the soft touch of “penetrations.” This involves using sympathetic journalists to build propaganda outlets in the media, as well as financing political parties to make sure the “right” people get into office. It also requires placing “agents of influence” as intellectuals and scholars, often gathered in think tanks, and tapping into the telecommunications system to establish electronic surveillance.

Some CIA officers will admit a grudging respect for the success Israel has achieved. “They’re running a terrific campaign in the U.S., both covert and overt,” says ex-CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson. Let’s run through the checklist and see how Israel fares.

Finding Friends in the Media: Pro-Israel pundits are salted throughout the U.S. media. Just look at the kowtowing to right-wing Israeli interests on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Israel also seems to have a voice on “America’s most trusted source for news,” CNN.

Before rising as CNN’s star anchor, Wolf Blitzer worked for AIPAC and the Jerusalem Post. He wrote a book-length apologia about Jonathan Pollard, who in the 1980s compromised U.S. security more than perhaps any other spy in the past 30 years. Blitzer, who once traveled the American TV talk show circuit as the “voice of Israel,” has an American passport. From a covert-action standpoint, that makes him a more effective asset.

Pumping Cash Into Political Parties: During the 2008 election cycle, pro-Israel PACs (political action committees) contributed some $3.6 million to various Democratic and Republican congressional candidates. In fact, pro- Israel campaign contributions were eclipsed only by the $4 million in PAC money from the National Association of Realtors. Fortune magazine rates Israel as having the number one foreign-policy lobby, while the lobby’s chief arm of operations, AIPAC, regularly attracts as billed speakers the most powerful people in Washington. Just about every 2008 Presidential candidate addressed an AIPAC gathering.

Watchdog Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, suggests that AIPAC is no run-of-the-mill political action committee. “I am most troubled by AIPAC’s history of subverting the rule of law in America,” he tells HUSTLER. This goes back to the founding of AIPAC in 1951, when the Justice Department sought to register the group formally as a propagandist for a foreign power. But due mostly, some say, to the influence and money it pumps into the American political system, AIPAC was never forced to comply.

“In 1984 AIPAC obtained a classified government report it used to negotiate a highly damaging trade agreement with the U.S.,” Smith adds. “In the late 1980s, AIPAC was found to have ‘probably’ violated federal election laws in forming and directing PAC expenditures to favored candidates.” What’s more, according to Smith, AIPAC has helped Israeli arms manufacturers traffic stolen military systems intelligence to third countries. In his 2007 book Foreign Agents, Smith charges that AIPAC has effectively laundered money to disguise the financial support given by U.S. groups, both Jewish and Christian, to the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank. “AIPAC has corrupted U.S. governance to advance the interests of a foreign state,” Smith points out.

Getting the “Right” People Into Office: When, in the spring of 2009, the Obama Administration named veteran diplomat and Middle East expert Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council— a key position in formulating U.S. foreign policy—the Israeli lobby went on the attack. Freeman’s “crime” was offering a damning assessment of Israel’s controversial behavior in the Occupied Territories and its negative impact on U.S. standing in the Arab world. Steven Rosen, one of the accused spies employed by AIPAC, had the chutzpah to spearhead the attack on Freeman, who, in March 2009, resigned from the post, with Barack Obama saying nothing in his defense.

Freeman later issued a blistering public statement: “The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views.”

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration boasts an assortment of pro-Israel players. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was a staunch supporter of Israel during his stint in Congress, and when the first Gulf War broke out in 1991, he signed up with the Israeli Defense Forces. Meanwhile, Obama’s special envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross—whose consistent pro- Israel bias was evident during the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks—has sided with AIPAC in pushing for aggressive U.S. action against Iran.

Building Think Tanks: The American Enterprise Institute, the Project for a New American Century and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs seek to advance Israel’s interests by influencing Congress and the executive branch. Top players in these powerful think tanks have included Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who pushed the George W. Bush Administration to invade and occupy Iraq. This arguably benefited Israel’s hard-right Likudniks while ensnaring our nation in what one decorated Army general called “the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.”

It comes as no surprise that Feith,Wolfowitz and Perle were each at one time investigated for passing U.S. secrets to Israel. None were indicted. (See The Traitors Among Us, HUSTLER February ‘09.)

Tapping the Telecom Network: Israeli wiretapping companies with close connections to Israel’s intelligence services, particularly Mossad, provide their hardware and software to the U.S. National Security Agency for the electronic surveillance of American citizens. Journalist James Bamford reports that these firms can access all kinds of data gathered by the NSA. The upshot: If the U.S. government is vacuuming up your phone calls and e-mails in flagrant violation of Constitutional protections, so are the Israelis.

The implications are huge and troubling, says a onetime high-level Bush Administration counterintelligence official who spoke with HUSTLER on condition of anonymity. “American citizens,” he warns, “could be losing confidential business and proprietary information that could cause loss of jobs, patents, intellectual property and the disclosure of politically sensitive information.”

Why doesn’t the United States government take action to stamp out Israeli interference on American soil? The counterintelligence official suggests an answer: money. Congress has the oversight power to take on Israel’s covert and overt activities. But as Senator J. William Fulbright once famously said, Congress is “Israeli-occupied territory.” “They own it lock, stock and barrel,” says the former counterintelligence official. “You have all these people on Capitol Hill whose campaigns are funded by groups representing a foreign power.Well, the only purpose of AIPAC is to promote the welfare and the security of that foreign power.”

He continues, “It’s the money that’s so corrupting. Where the system is being abused—where it starts to break down and fail to work the way the Framers intended—is when the two or three percent of the country, the pro-Israel people, outspends by a thousand- to-one any other lobby. When AIPAC says we want something, Congress salutes and says, ‘How much and what color?’ The American people need to know the truth about this.”

The Bush Administration counterintelligence official even suggests, although the allegation has never been fully investigated, that Israel has illegally used U.S. foreign aid by laundering it back into this country as campaign contributions. If true, this would mean American interests are being subverted with its own money. As former CIA officer Michael Scheuer writes: “Bravo, Israel!”

Christopher Ketcham is a New York-based freelance reporter who is writing a book on Israeli intelligence operations targeting the United States. He can be reached at cketcham99@mindspring. com. More of his work can be found at ChristopherKetcham.com.

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APRIL 2010 – HUSTLER Magazine


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WORSHIP IN THE RIGHT CHURCH AND YOU CAN DO THIS PSYCHEDELIC DRUG LEGALLY. TOO BAD THEY PROBABLY WON’T LET YOU JOIN.

by Justin Hampton
for HUSTLER Magazine – April 2010

All those involved in the ceremony assemble in a circle. The aging hippie across the room may want to better understand death before he eventually faces it. The pale-skinned waitress states she’s looking for a release from anxiety and fear. And perhaps someone here wants to learn how to manipulate others. One by one, each person kneels in front of the shaman. He holds a small cup in his hand. Lighting up a mapacho cigarette, he blows smoke into the vessel, where it hovers like fog. Each one drinks, then returns to his place in the (ceremonial hut), waiting to be transformed.

The participants, like many others who travel to South America or pay upwards of $150 a pop for a domestic opportunity, are drinking ayahuasca (pronounced eye-ya-WAsa ), the legendary psychedelic brew venerated by indigenous Amazonian tribes for spiritual and medicinal purposes. Make no mistake: Partakers are in for a bumpy ride. Hallucinations unleashed by the drug’s main psychoactive agent, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), range from kaleidoscopic and sublime to horrifying and grotesque. Add this to an intense physical purging that often includes lots of shitting and puking. You can easily think you’ll die.

Those who do ayahuasca more than once, however, say these are necessary ordeals. Anything overcome in this state, they say—be it fear, addiction or disease—is also overcome in the real world. To users, ayahuasca is not a drug or even a medicine, but La Madre (The Mother), an entity unto herself that many report meeting and speaking to under its influence.

La Madre is worshiped by such South American churches as União do Vegetal and Santo Daime, both with branches in the United States. Israeli philosophy professor Benny Shanon caused an online stir in 2008 when he suggested that Moses may have received his divine visions after ingesting an ayahuasca-like substance.

A small-but-influential and well-heeled group of people in this country has begun to argue for its use in psychological and medical settings as well. Dr. Richard Grossman, a Los Angeles-based acupuncturist who has spent over two decades in the service of ayahuascerismo, says, “In the [Amazonian] jungle there’s hundreds if not thousands of tribes, each with their own tradition of using ayahuasca, each with their own songs and language and practices. … [Many] things are being incorporated in ceremonies now that are really for 21st-century human beings rather than for the people in the jungle.”

Ayahuasca, a word meaning “vine of the souls” in the indigenous Quechua language of the Andes, also goes by many other names throughout the Amazon, such as caapi, yage, hoasca, daime, mihi and dapa. It’s made by grinding up the vineBanisteriopsis caapi and combining it with DMT-saturated leaves from either the chacruna shrub or any number of similar plants. Since DMT is naturally occurring to human systems, it would normally be neutralized upon digestion. But an alkaloid within the vine acts as an MAO inhibitor—a class of chemical compounds most notably found in powerful antidepressant drugs—allowing the DMT to sneak past one’s metabolism filter to do its dirty work.

Thanks to the efforts of maverick ethnobotanists and their stoned-out disciples, ayahuasca gained a controversial cachet among New Agers worldwide as the 20th century rolled on. The pioneering fieldwork of Amazonian explorers Richard Spruce and Richard Evans Schultes, coupled with the writings of William Burroughs, Terence McKenna and other countercultural icons, brought ayahuasca to the public’s attention. In particular, McKenna would connect ayahuasca to UFOs, mysticism and the 2012 phenomenon.

This opened the floodgates for tourism enterprises throughout the Amazon, most notably in Peru, where ayahuasca is legal and locals are desperate for money. Dirt-poor practitioners could strike it rich almost overnight, which has led to many con men mixing in with genuine healers. Regardless, as South America’s younger generation shrugs off ayahuasca in favor of World of Warcraft, gringo tourists may be the medicine’s unlikely salvation.

Filmmaker Mitch Schultz, who captured Peruvian ayahuasca ceremonies for his upcoming documentary DMT: The Spirit Molecule, says: “These cultures have a great wealth of knowledge and not just the use of ayahuasca in that visionary state, [but also] the respect for the natural world and how to live within [it]. I do look at it as a positive thing because it’s good for us to be able to access that [knowledge] and hopefully heal ourselves [with it] in the Western world.”

However, one shouldn’t drink ayahuasca on a whim. Because it’s an MAO inhibitor, anything you can’t consume when taking an antidepressant—such as fermented beverages and cheese—applies to ayahuasca. Also, mixing it with SSRIs (another type of antidepressant) can have deadly consequences. People with histories of psychosis are better off leaving it be.

Author Matt Pallamary—who has participated in rigorous ayahuasca cleanses (dietas ) with Sting and former Alice Cooper guitarist Mick Mashbir—warns: “Ayahuasca definitely isn’t for everybody. I’ve seen a couple of people who weren’t right [for the hallucinogen] kind of lose it, and it was not pretty.”

Because of its overwhelming effects, two models for using and “integrating” the ayahuasca trip have developed. Western tourists usually experience the shamanic model, in which a healer (curandero ) conducts a nightlong ceremony. He tends to individuals when necessary, singing songs (icaros ), whisking away negative spirits with fans and blowing tobacco smoke onto his occasionally struggling clients. Relying heavily on intuition and belief in its effectiveness, this form of healing is more an art than a science.

Says Dr. Grossman of his experiences with officiating ceremonies, “It’s a real act of surrender to the medicine for me, because if I get an impulse to sing something that’s going to possibly bring up sadness for them, I’ll do that.”

The model assembled by União do Vegetal (which in Portuguese literally means “union of the plants”) and Santo Daime imposes a greater structure than the shamanic ritual. The proceedings include singing of hymns and a liturgy led by a maestre preaching a fusion of Christianity and animism.

Conflicts between the two syncretic churches and the U.S. government led to key court battles that eventually established legal use for União do Vegetal and Santo Daime sacraments. Thanks to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, União do Vegetal’s U.S. president, Jeffrey Bronfman (of the Seagram’s whiskey dynasty), was able to win an injunction for his New Mexico-based chapter to use ayahuasca. The Ashland, Oregon, Santo Daime offshoot, Church of the Holy Light of the Queen, recently earned a similar injunction.

Not so fast, though, if you think these injunctions have rendered ayahuasca legal in this country. The churches’ American branches have a strict vetting process to weed out those who simply want to drink the mindblowing tea. Moreover, DEA spokesman Rusty Payne asserts that ayahuasca remains a Schedule I substance, and trafficking penalties range from 20 to 30 years. So unless you’ve got the resolve and cash necessary to prove you are using ayahuasca for religious purposes, you are breaking the law. “We still have to enforce this, you know what I mean?” Payne cautions. “Not everybody can hide behind a church case, because only two churches have that exemption now.”

This hasn’t stopped scholars and medical researchers worldwide from attempting to study ayahuasca’s potential benefits for modern civilization. The most famous of these studies, The Hoasca Project, pitted 15 members of União do Vegetal against a control group in several personality tests. (Hoasca is the Portuguese transliteration of ayahuasca.)

Overall, the tests showed UDV members— several of whom possessed serious addictive and antisocial tendencies prior to joining— possessed on average greater confidence and reflectiveness than the control group. These UDV subjects credited ayahuasca’s sacramental role as essential in helping them beat their demons.

Pending further research, Dr. Charles S. Grob of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA—The Huasca Project’s principal investigator— foresees a host of possible applications for ayahuasca in addiction treatment and psychotherapy. But he also acknowledges the many societal prejudices and institutional roadblocks that are standing in the way.

“The drug companies make their enormous profits by developing and marketing drugs which are taken on a daily basis for weeks and sometimes for months or years,” Dr. Grob explains. “You don’t make much money if you’re developing a compound that might only need to be given on one or two occasions, along with a lot of psychotherapy.”

Nevertheless, ayahuasca continues to make its presence felt. If it isn’t making cameo appearances in television shows like Nip/Tuck and Weeds, then celebrities like Sting, Tori Amos and Paul Simon will namedrop it in interviews. In their wake, risk takers— both foolish and fearless—will discover ayahuasca’s applications for the 21st century the same way Amazonian tribes did—gradually, through trial and error and by listening to an inner voice.

Matt Pallamary believes, “If you really continue on this path, and it’s not an easy path, you’re really working toward being balanced [because] one of the things about ayahuasca is you need to learn to surrender. Not totally give up, but dance with it, to find control within acceptance. It really helps you to find that balance in between.”

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this article are strictly those of the author, are for information and entertainment purposes only, concern a powerful and potentially dangerous drug and do not constitute medical advice of any kind.

Los Angeles-based Justin Hampton is a veteran freelance writer who has covered sex, music and vice for High Times, Spin, Penthouse Forum and “other fine and not-sofine publications.”

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APRIL 2010 – HUSTLER Magazine


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Interview by Larry Flynt
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE – April 2010

Actor, conservationist and social activist Edward Norton portrayed the valiant lawyer defending HUSTLER’s mastermind in the 1996 biopic The People vs. Larry Flynt. Besides starring in a host of other hit films—Primal Fear, Rounders, American History X, Fight Club and The Incredible Hulk—Norton merits a forum as the producer of HBO’s heralded documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama.

LARRY FLYNT:

Your documentary was set up before anyone knew Obama was going to run for President. How did that come about?

EDWARD NORTON:

Edward Norton - HUSTLER Magazine April 2010

Everybody was struck by his speech during the 2004 [Democratic National] Convention. He was clearly a person of enormous potential. It seemed he was already carving a path toward this conciliatory middle. That speech didn’t launch him because it was a bold, new declaration of radical progressivism. That speech was notable because it denied the notion of trench warfare between blue and red. It sounded like a proto-Presidential speech. A lot of the credit for the documentary idea goes to one of our directors, Amy Rice.

FLYNT:

How did you convince Obama and his people to let you shoot your documentary?

NORTON:

I work on low-income housing issues. One of the organizations I work with is very effective at setting up meetings with new senators to help them set policy. So we went to D.C. to meet with Barack on housing issues in the winter of 2005/2006. I told Amy to come down with me in case we got some time to talk about this documentary idea, and that’s what happened. We wound up talking with Barack and Robert Gibbs, his communications director.

They were very open to the idea. Barack understood what we were saying. I think he has always been very self-aware, and he recognized that, yeah, he was going to be a touchstone for a lot of things. They said, “Well, how would this begin?” And we said, “Maybe we just start slow. We’ll propose a few places that we’d like to film or people we’d like to interview.” They said, “That would be fine. Let’s just do it case by case.”

FLYNT:

I was a little disappointed that more access wasn’t shown in the documentary. There weren’t a lot of conflict meetings with Obama and White House staffers like David Axelrod.

NORTON:

When we started out with them, they weren’t restricting us at all. But when it became clear Barack was going to make a run for the Presidency, we knew the campaign staff would tell us, “You’re done.” And sure enough, David Axelrod basically told Robert Gibbs we wouldn’t be filming anymore.

I called Axelrod to explain. I said, “We’re not the short-cycle news media.We’re not going to exploit this before the election.We’re archivists. We want this for the historical record. This will be an important piece of history.” After we talked, Axelrod was on the fence. Barack exhibited a certain amount of trust in us, and we slowly got back in the game.

We did get to do some things nobody’s ever gotten to do during a Presidential campaign: actually interviewing the candidate and his family, shooting debate prep, things like that. We were hoping we could be inside the room when key arguments came up or decisions were being made, but they were careful about exposing themselves even though I think they trusted our intent.

FLYNT:

When Obama learned he’d been elected President, there was no camera in his face. Nobody was there to catch his expression. I’m wondering how you guys missed it.

NORTON:

It was pretty amazing that Amy was able to follow Axelrod and [chief campaign manager David] Plouffe upstairs into the room moments after Obama won. She didn’t have clearance to go with them up to his floor. As she’s following them in the stairwell, you can hear the Secret Service guy say, “Where’s your pin?” And Amy says, “I’m with them.” Then she just pushed on through. She got into the room to get that bit of Michelle [Obama] saying to Axelrod, “Don’t cry. If you cry, I’m going to cry.” You can see Obama in the background.

You’ve seen The War Room, right? In that documentary it’s all about the strategists. We were able to get a little more of the candidate. We were also able to get the senior guys ruminating on what they were doing. But most of all, what the directors actually captured was a nice portrait of the rank and file. When people look back on this in 25 years, a big key to seeing how Obama built this movement will be the people who saw the candidate reflect their values and background. [Campaign staffer] Ronnie Cho is a perfect example. He said something like: “Here’s a guy—if he can be President, that means someone like me is included in this whole dynamic American experiment.”

Politics is always identity and identification. What you see in Ronnie Cho and others in the film are contemporary American young people who are biracial and who identify with Obama. Obama succeeded because he built this movement of people who saw themselves as included in his vision of America.

FLYNT:

Tell us your impression of Obama on the campaign trail.

NORTON:

I don’t think I have any insights that other people haven’t had. I’ve met a lot of candidates or politicians in the last ten years, and there’s always a certain shellac, as I call it, like they’re on the make. There’s a certain desire on their part to impress. I never felt that with Barack. From the first time I met him, he seemed like one of your smarter friends from college. He was extremely attentive. He’d ask questions, and he would listen. He seemed sincerely inquisitive. He seemed like a person aware of his own potential, but measured. That’s the best word I can come up with. I think you see that in the film.

Everybody would like to peek around the corner and see the melodramatics. But the reality of Obama’s team, for better or worse, was that when you got into the private spaces with them, they actually were very Zen. They weren’t very emotionally reactive people.

The morning the Jeremiah Wright scandal hit, the Hillary Clinton campaign jumped on it. If there was ever a day you’d catch someone on edge, that was it. Alicia [Sams, a By the People filmmaker] caught David Axelrod coming out of his house, and she said, “Does it make you angry when you see that kind of tactical negativity being thrown at you?” She’s almost leading him into venting, and he just says, “Well, I never thought she [Hillary] would wave the white flag. That’s just not her gestalt.” They just don’t bite.

I’m sure you felt the same way I did during the campaign. I was tearing my hair out. I was thinking, Punch back; be tougher.

FLYNT:

While having dinner with Jesse Jackson Jr., I said, “Jesse, Obama’s got to get angry.” He said, “No, Larry, you don’t understand. America has a vision of an angry black man. That isn’t what we need.”

NORTON:

I think Barack knows that, but I don’t even think it’s an image thing. It’s who he is. He and Axelrod, in particular, are extremely adept at playing the long game. I remember trying to text some of those campaign guys. I was trying to script responses like everybody else, but they proved over and over again that they had a better sense of the long game. They were looking further down the field.

When the Jeremiah Wright thing broke, Barack could have punched back at Hillary a lot harder. She said something like, “I can’t see how a person could maintain a relationship with someone who says things like that.” I’m thinking Barack should say, “Why do Catholics keep their faith in the Catholic Church despite rampant abuse of young people by the clergy? They do it because it’s more complex than that. They do it because they have a deep faith and relationship with something, despite its flaws.” Or he could have turned to her and said, “Why does a woman stay with a man who cheats on her and flushes the mandate of his entire political party when he has an affair in the Oval Office?” What would Hillary have said? She would have been flat on her heels. Obama has more sense than that.

FLYNT:

I talked to Dennis Kucinich when he was running for President during the Democratic primaries. I said, “Unless you do something, you’re going nowhere.” He said, “Can you suggest anything?” I said, “When you have an opportunity, say to Hillary that Carville and Begala controlled the bimbo eruption when your husband was President. Who’s going to control it when you’re President?” That would have been the most outrageous thing Kucinich could say. That would have been the news for the night.

NORTON:

There’s a reason, I think, Obama couldn’t go that route. Those guys knew they had the delegate math. They knew they were going to win the key primaries and that when they won, they needed to convert all of Hillary’s supporters to their side. If they indulged the emotional satisfaction of knifing her, they would just piss those people off.

FLYNT:

What do you think about what Obama is doing now?

NORTON:

In a way I find myself doing the same thing I did during the campaign. I have these reactions where I say, “Don’t do that or do this.” But if the campaign revealed anything, it’s that those guys have been smarter than the rest of us. Do I wish they had been tougher about TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program]? Yeah, I do. But I’ve actually heard them say that it’s healthcare first, climate second and then Wall Street regulation. Maybe they’re kicking bank regulation down the road and keeping goodwill with the bankers until we get through this healthcare thing.

FLYNT:

You’ve dated many beautiful girls in show business. My favorite of all is Salma Hayek. She is one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever met. Why would you ever let her get away?

NORTON:

Things like that are complicated. We didn’t even have ten minutes where we weren’t friends. Sometimes your lives are going in different directions or you want different things on a different schedule. Timing is a lot of it.

FLYNT:

Salma told me a story that revealed a lot about her as a person. A lot of people come to Hollywood and expect things to just happen, and it doesn’t just happen. Someone told Salma when she first came here, “You’ve got to have an agent.” So she called the William Morris Agency. She said, “I’d like to speak to William Morris.” The receptionist said, “He’s dead,” and hung up on her. So she called back ten minutes later and said, “Can I speak to his son?” I just thought that was really funny because it shows she’s full of determination. I imagine Salma puts that same determination into her acting and her relationships.

NORTON:

I like girls who are confident. I think that my girlfriend, Shauna Robertson, is the same way. She came here from Canada with nothing when she was 17 and lied about her age to get a job at Disney. By the time she was 33, she had produced $1 billion worth of comedies. She and Judd Apatow started Apatow Films. She produced Elf, Anchorman, The 40- Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.

FLYNT:

Someone told me your own body of work consists of over 25 movies. I didn’t know you’ve made that many.

NORTON:

I didn’t either. I think it’s more like low- 20-something unless you count the documentaries.

FLYNT:

I do count them. Which of your movies do you like the best?

NORTON:

I think The People vs. Larry Flynt really holds up.

FLYNT:

I still get royalty checks off of video sales.

NORTON:

Someone said they use that film in civics classes in Slovenia.

FLYNT:

All of the law students watch it in this country. Before they’d study New York Times v. Sullivan, a 1964 case. Now they use Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, and they always show the movie.

NORTON:

The film is a great portrait of the messiness of a true democratic society. My dad’s an attorney, and he said that one of the real truths of American law is that a principle never gets tested in the comfortable middle. It only gets tested at the extreme end of the spectrum, like when you wrote in HUSTLER about Falwell in that outhouse with his mother.

FLYNT:

With Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, I thought we were going to lose at the Supreme Court. I couldn’t believe it when we won by a unanimous decision. I also couldn’t believe that Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the decision himself. More or less, he said things are often done under the name of those men with less than admirable intentions, but that does not give the government the right to suppress free speech. Those kids in law school really get wrapped up in that. I speak at Robert Scheer’s class at USC every once in a while. His students are shown The People vs. Larry Flynt, then they ask me questions. Scheer told me the students voted me the best speaker by far. He’s had Oliver Stone there and Lawrence O’Donnell—

NORTON:

I’d vote for you over Oliver too.

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OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES ON CAPITOL HILL HAVE SCREWED US RIGHT AND LEFT. IT’S TIME TO SEND A POWERFUL MESSAGE.

by Alex Bennett
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010

The other day I saw an interview with that enemy of the people, Glenn Beck. I’ve always believed the adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Beck proved me right when he said, “Everybody is mad at Washington.”

The people who disgusted me at those televised town hall meetings and at the March on Washington—yelling and screaming their nonsense while clutching badly spelled signs— were angry at the body politic.Well, so am I.

Have I become one of them? My politics are different, but my ire is just as rich. I too share a hatred for that fools confederation in the legislative and administrative branches of government that makes our lives a living hell. I differ, however, in how I see the country moving forward.

Politicians! Day after day, week after week, year after year, they sit around playing a stupid little game using their dicks (and some vaginas) as swords to see who has the power. At the same time, We the People sit with our dicks in our hands doing nothing while getting screwed. The worst part is we put up with it thinking that eventually these jerks will fix the economy. In fact, they keep playing their games, and we keep suffering.

Once a U.S. senator gets elected, he stays in office for six years. When it’s time for reelection, he has accrued enough power (read: money from lobbyists) to retain his seat. This cycle repeats itself until one day the senator drops dead of old age—an age achieved due to a great healthcare plan paid for by us.

In the meantime lobbyists bought him lunches and dinners, paid for his trips to exotic lands and gave him who knows how many other perks that will allow his family to inherit millions. All that time he lived off the public dole while using his influence to wheel and deal. What do we get? An early grave and the debt we leave our loved ones.

These guys are a bunch of worthless fucks, and even the best of them doesn’t make up for the rest. It gets worse each year. The games get nastier, and less gets done. As of now this country is at a standstill, paralyzed by the greed and stupidity that is called Washington politics.

Are you getting the idea I’m pissed? Well, I’ll bet you are too—even if your politics are the polar opposite of mine. What we have in common is that we’re sick of the way business is being done in our name. Our politicians have ceased to care about us. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.

Happily, we’re still able to fight back. Forget those well-intentioned letters to your representatives, and enough already with demonstrations and those cute placards with catchy phrases—they’re a waste of time. The good ol’ boys don’t care what you think. They’re way past that. What we need to do is vote the bastards out!

Our supposed two-party system is an illusion. The Democratic and Republican parties have almost finished their merge into a single, pro-corporate entity. The fighting between them is a charade designed to keep us thinking there is a difference. It’s time for a third party that responds to the needs of 21st-century Americans.

I wish that some of the other political parties— for example, the Green Party, the Labor Party—were viable, but they just aren’t. Ross Perot managed to catch that lightning in a bottle until he went off the rails. People responded to Perot because he was articulating the public’s frustrations.

Creating a powerful third party, and even a fourth or fifth party, would be a daunting task that might take many years. So what can we do in the meantime? I say we scare the shit out of them!

Let’s send a message to every incumbent in Washington, even if they’re doing a good job, by not voting for him or her.Vote for a challenger no matter who it is. That doesn’t mean Democrats have to vote Republican or vice versa. There are always other candidates, some of whom might not be that bad once you listen to them.

The message has to be sent to our representatives. We’re their employer, and they’d better shape up. Otherwise they’ll wind up on the same unemployment line with everyone else—the unemployment line created by the politicians. If we kick the bastards out in large enough numbers, they just might pay attention.

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Alex Bennett is a longtime HUSTLER contributor. The two-time Emmy winner, who broke into broadcasting as a teenager, currently calls Sirius Left 146 his radio home.

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A LAWMAKER DEMANDS AN AUDIT OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK, BUT OBAMA AND HIS BRAIN TRUST REFUSE TO MAKE THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY “NERVOUS.”

by Robert Scheer
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE March 2010

You don’t have to salute every time Ron Paul raises the libertarian flag, and personally I don’t like leaving education, health and Social Security to the tender mercies of the inevitably rapacious capitalist markets. But the Republican congressman from Texas is on target with his bill demanding a full public audit of the Federal Reserve, the government monster that has a power over the economy that many dictators would envy and operates under a cloak of secrecy that even the CIA rarely attains.

It was the Federal Reserve, under the leadership of the once exuberantly honored but now disgraced Alan Greenspan, that got us into this banking mess. The Fed looked the other way while the finaglers of Wall Street packaged and sold those mysterious Collateralized Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps that brought the economy to near death when they exploded with a destructive force and then were covered by trillions of taxpayer dollars.

The Federal Reserve—more than any other institution, public or private— deserves blame for shoving the world economy into the huge financial hole it now inhabits. The Fed, most definitely including the New York Federal Reserve Bank—headed for the five years prior to the Wall Street meltdown by Timothy Geithner until Obama named him Treasury secretary—miserably failed in its regulatory obligations while the bankers looted the banks. But where the libertarians and Ron Paul are wrong is to resist any meaningful regulation, and where Obama is equally wrong is his belief that we can get it from the Fed.

Despite Obama’s sorry record of enabling Wall Street greed, choosing Geithner to run the Treasury Department may be his biggest mistake. And it is not only Geithner but also every other major appointment of those who formulate economic policy—notably deferring to the Fed—that demonstrates the President’s fawning response to the financial hustlers.

Take key White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, who during his tenure as Clinton’s Treasury secretary pushed through the deregulation of mortgages and other derivatives that made the housing collapse inevitable. After the collapse it was the Federal Reserve that orchestrated a bailout package under George W. Bush and continued under Obama to save—indeed reward— the “too big to fail bankers” whose destructive greed the Fed had promoted.

Paul is right with his legislation, which as of this writing had the support of hundreds of lawmakers but had already been gutted by Democrats on the key House Banking Committee in response to signals from the White House. Not only was the administration opposed to transparency for the Federal Reserve to check its unbridled power, but Obama also compounded the error by advocating an even larger role for the Fed in new legislation designed ostensibly to prevent another banking meltdown.

When Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, proposed to take major banking oversight power away from the Fed and put it in the hands of a new agency to regulate all federally chartered financial institutions, the Obama Administration treated it as a dangerously subversive proposal. In the words of White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, it would cause financial industry “nervousness.”

Isn’t that what we ordinary folk want? Shouldn’t the banking bandits with their proven record of chicanery be made just the least bit nervous when they cook up their next series of scams? Not so, in the view of Neal Wolin, Obama’s choice as deputy Treasury secretary. Despite massive evidence to the contrary,Wolin insisted that the Federal Reserve “is the agency best equipped for the task of supervising the largest, most complex firms.”

Consider the source: Wolin, as the Treasury’s top lawyer during the Clinton years, drafted the language of the infamous Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed the merger of investment and commercial banks with insurance companies to create the toolarge- to-fail monstrosities like Citigroup, with which the taxpayers are now saddled.

Between his government stints under Clinton and now Obama, Wolin benefited from those breakthrough mergers. He served as general counsel at The Hartford insurance company, which—thanks to the deregulatory legislation Wolin had helped draft—was allowed to buy up troubled banks and qualify for federal TARP funds.

Even the conservative Washington Times voiced skepticism in an editorial on Wolin: “Revolving doors between industry and the administration and fat-cat political contributors getting bailed out at taxpayer expense sound like business as usual. This certainly isn’t change we can believe in.” Painful as it is to admit, the Right got that right.

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Before serving 30 years as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hard-hitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.

You may purchase the hard copy of the March 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com. Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

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OBAMA PLEDGES THAT SUSPECTED TERRORISTS WILL BE TREATED IN ACCORDANCE WITH AMERICAN VALUES, BUT WE’VE HEARD THAT SONG BEFORE.

by Nat Hentoff
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE – February 2010

One of President Obama’s first executive orders closed the CIA’s secret prisons (“black sites”). But we still have no confirmed reports of deaths that took place there during interrogations—and where “missing” prisoners are. Their families would like to know.

Another move by Obama to show his desire to “reform” past Bush-Cheney violations of the U.S. Torture Law, the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant Against Torture was his appointment of a multi-agency High Value Interrogation Unit within the FBI (marginalizing CIA interrogators). This team must adhere to the Army Field Manual’s interrogation standards, which purportedly outlaw physical force.

What about Low Value suspects? What standards for them?

However, as George Hunsinger of Princeton Theological Seminary and founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture reminded the President, even the Army Field Manual “allows for certain abusive techniques that are tantamount to torture—sleep deprivation, partial sensory deprivations, stress positions” that sometimes can be used in combination to ensure the cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment that can qualify as war crimes.

What most startled me in this humane President’s new directions is the continuation of “renditions,” the abduction of terrorism suspects anywhere who are then sent to other countries to be interrogated. In the Bush Administration, to be thus rendered outside our laws was to be tortured, as hundreds most cruelly were.

While planning his candidacy for the Presidency to bring us “Change We Can Believe In!” then-Senator Obama wrote in the Summer 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs : “To build a better free world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries [and] of detaining thousands without charge or trial.” Whatever happened to that Obama?

But to be skeptically fair, Obama claims that his renditions of kidnapped suspects will only be to nations that pledge these suspects will not be tortured. In August 2009, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly announced that the Obama Administration would “establish a kind of monitoring mechanism that allows us to make sure…the prisoners…are not being abused. The details of this will have to be worked out.”

Maybe, the State Department flack added, officials from the American consulate or a private contractor will do the monitoring. (Some of the private contractors on assignment in Iraq and Afghanistan have become notorious for their own skills at cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of suspects.)

However, this pledge of “assurances” that our shackled, rendered prisoners will be treated in accordance with American values was intoned, ritualistically, for years by President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other caring officials of the Defense and Justice departments.

These raw official lies have been vividly skewered in the 2004 report by the CIA’s former Inspector General, John Helgerson; Dana Priest of the Washington Post and scores more U.S. and foreign reporters; Jane Mayer of The New Yorker ; and starkly documented books.

Aziz Huq, a lawyer who has represented terrorist detainees and currently is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, told the naked truth to the Washington Times (August 26, 2009): “These assurances, as a matter of law and fact, are worth slightly less than the paper they are written on.”

In this country the first news break of the actual treatment inflicted on rendered terrorism suspects was a front-page exposé by Dana Priest and Barton Gellman in the December 26, 2002, Washington Post. As I quoted from their report in my 2004 book, The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance (Seven Stories Press): “The alleged terrorists [at the U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan] are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions…after they have often been softened up by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in the tiny rooms…. Medication to alleviate pain is withheld.”

And dig this! In 2002, just as will happen during the Obama renditions, Priest and Gellman quoted an American official with knowledge of these exported CIA-style “enhanced interrogations”: “If we’re not there in the room,” said the informed official, “who is to say [what happened there]?”

But what if an Obama monitor actually got into a prison we rented overseas and asked a suspect if he had been tortured? One of Bush’s rendered prisoners, Maher Arar— whose case became known around the world—said that when he was finally released, he was too scared to tell the monitor, who would soon be gone.

And, in view of his far-from-transparent Presidency so far, do you believe that Barack Obama will even once seriously check to find out if a suspect he has rendered was tortured? And think about this: Why does the President continue to send suspects to be interrogated in other countries? For what other purpose than to have alleged information extracted by any means necessary. The Dick Cheney legacy continues.

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Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights ; and the forthcoming Is This America?

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THE NEW SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA BRAZENLY QUESTIONS THE GOVERNMENT’S SURVEILLANCE SUBTERFUGE BUT CAVES AT CRUNCH TIME.

by Nat Hentoff
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE March 2010

I was not a fan of Al Franken’s comic turns, much preferring those instigators who went deeper into our hypocrisies, namely Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor. But Franken has suddenly begun his career in the U.S. Senate as a mentor on the Constitution’s rule of law—a dim memory, if that, for many of his colleagues.

To his surprise, and mine, Franken won a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee even though he is not a lawyer. But unlike many lawyers in the Senate, Franken has deeply researched the largely un-American USA PATRIOT Act. Rushed into law soon after 9/11 before most members of Congress had a chance to even read it all, its draconian provisos remain almost entirely intact.

On September 29, 2009, David Kris—assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division—appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kris was pitching to renew a section of the PATRIOT Act that permits the FBI to obtain a warrant from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which does not allow appeals from us mere citizens, thus totally repealing the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

These are “John Doe” warrants that do not denote the suspect’s name, nor the specific location of the phone, e-mail or any other device the suspect may use. It could also be a pay phone in any neighborhood.

If this unnamed suspect uses a phone in your office, a bar you frequent or a social club or nearby pay phone, the FBI tap on those phones will pick up all conversations, including yours. And these are national wiretaps; the FBI doesn’t have to get a warrant from any city or state jurisdiction. We’re all immediately covered. Neither President Obama nor his attorney general, Eric Holder, has expressed any objection to this torpedoing of the Fourth Amendment.

When the Justice Department’s David Kris was telling the Senate Judiciary Committee how vital these roving tools against terrorism are, Franken startled him and, I expect, most of the rest of the committee. The freshman senator announced that after taking his seat, he was given a copy of the Constitution—and by gum he actually read it!

Franken then read aloud the actual Fourth Amendment to the Justice Department official who had been extolling roving wiretaps: “No warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Looking at this representative of our Justice Department, Franken said, “That’s pretty explicit language.” So how can roving wiretaps be within the rule of law if they don’t particularly name the targeted suspect or the particular place to be tapped?

Assistant Attorney General David Kris fumbled and sputtered, “This is surreal.”

It sure is! How many times since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 has a member of Congress, an attorney general or a President asked a law-enforcement agent or a prosecutor to define any part of the Bill of Rights and then justify a law that turns the Founders’ language upside down?

Senator Franken’s target, the man from the National Security Division, finally said that the courts had ruled that even if the FBI didn’t name the suspect or the particular place for the wiretap, a description of the target would satisfy the Constitution.

Think about that. Just a description? How many people resemble you in a general way? Height, hair color, posture, gait, skin color, age as far as can be guessed, attire, facial characteristics?

Franken’s question that seemed so “surreal” to government lawyer Kris has deep roots in our history as a precipitating cause of the American Revolution. The Founding Fathers gave us the Fourth Amendment because King George III’s officers in the American colonies used what they called “a general search warrant” to invade homes and offices without going to any court. The British king’s men wrote those warrants themselves.

When Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty sent details of the brutal abuses of these “general warrants” around the colonies through the Committees of Correspondence (the Internet of the time), the cumulative outrage was a significant factor in igniting the American Revolution.

But little American history is now being taught in our schools, and there have been no rallies or marches in the streets by outraged citizens protesting roving wiretaps. Congress may eventually tweak roving wiretaps a trifle if a patriotic senator has taught American values to enough of his or her colleagues. But anyway, watch what you say on the phone or on the Internet.

But why doesn’t Washington’s elite press corps ask President Obama, who purportedly once taught Constitutional law, about using wiretaps and to define the stark differences between his disregard for the separation of powers, due process, torture practices, etc., and the commands of the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution?

I’d suggest you write such questions directly to the President, but affixing your name to such critical messages comes with a caveat. You might well be put in a database the FBI employs to search for “patterns,” possibly making you a “person of interest” not only to the FBI but also to Homeland Security and state and local police. After all, we continue to live in an ever-expanding surveillance society.

But now, guess what? Al Franken finally voted to keep roving wiretaps unchanged in the PATRIOT Act bill that the Senate Judiciary Committee recently sent to the floor for further debate. So much for Franken’s Fourth Amendment principles! Whom can we believe these days?

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Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights ; and the forthcoming Is This America?

You may purchase the hard copy of the March 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) at HustlerMagazine.com. Comes with full length DVD and free shipping!

You may purchase a digital copy of the March 2010 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine at UnderCoverMags.com.

THE GAPING DIVIDE BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR CAN NO LONGER BE IGNORED; IT’S TIME TO IDENTIFY THE REAL ENEMY.

by Paul Craig Roberts
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE February 2010

Americans think that they have “freedom and democracy” and that politicians are held accountable by elections. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is ruled by powerful interest groups that control politicians with campaign contributions. Our real rulers are an oligarchy of financial and military/security interests and the lobbying group AIPAC, which influences U.S. foreign policy for the benefit of Israel.

Have a look at economic policy. It is being run for the benefit of large financial concerns such as Goldman Sachs.

It was the banks—not the millions of Americans who have lost homes, jobs, health insurance and pensions—that received $700 billion in TARP funds. The banks used this gift of capital to make more profits. In the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Goldman Sachs announced record second-quarter profits and large six-figure bonuses for its upper-echelon executives.

The Federal Reserve’s low-interest-rate policy is another gift to the banks. It lowers their cost of borrowing funds and thereby increases profits. With the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, banks became high-risk investment houses that trade financial instruments such as interest rate derivatives and mortgage-backed securities. With abundant funds supplied virtually free by the Federal Reserve [in the form of low-interest loans], banks are paying depositors virtually nothing on their savings.

Despite the Federal Reserve’s low-interest- rate policy, banks are raising the annual percentage rate (APR) on credit card purchases and cash advances and on balances that have a penalty rate because of late payment. Banks are also raising late fees. In the midst of the worst economy since the 1930s, heavily indebted Americans—who are losing their jobs and their homes—are to be bled into bankruptcy by the very banks that are being subsidized with TARP funds—our bailout tax dollars—and low interest rates.
What we are experiencing is a massive redistribution of income from the American public to the financial sector. And this is occurring during a Democratic administration headed by America’s first black President, with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. Is there a government anywhere that less represents its citizens than the U.S. government?

Consider America’s wars. As of this writing, the out-of-pocket cost of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is $900 billion. Then add in the already-incurred future costs of veterans benefits, interest on the debt, the failure to use resources for productive purposes and such other costs as computed by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes. In all, “our” government has wasted $3 trillion on two wars that have no benefit whatsoever for any American whose income does not derive from the military/industrial complex—about which five-star general President Eisenhower warned us.

No one else benefited. Iraq was a threat to no one, and finding Saddam Hussein and executing him after a kangaroo trial had no effect whatsoever on ending the war or preventing the start of others.

The cost of America’s wars is a huge burden on a bankrupt country, but the cost incurred by veterans might be even higher. Homelessness is a prevalent condition of veterans, as is post-traumatic stress disorder. American soldiers—who naively fought for the munitions industry’s wars, for high CEO compensation and for dividends and capital gains for shareholders—paid not only with lives and lost limbs, but also with broken marriages, ruined careers, psychiatric disorders and prison sentences for failing to make child support payments.

What did Americans gain from an unaffordable war in Iraq that lasted far longer than World War II and that put into power Shiites allied with Iran? The answer is obvious: nothing whatsoever.

What did the armaments industry gain? Billions of dollars in profits.

What about President Obama? “A corporate marketing creation,” sums up the distinguished British journalist John Pilger.

Obama is the Presidential candidate who promised to end the war in Iraq. He hasn’t. But he has escalated the war in Afghanistan, started a new war in Pakistan and appears determined to start a war in South America. Why does any American care who rules Afghanistan? The country has nothing to do with us.

Did the armed services committees of the House and Senate calculate the risk of destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan when they acquiesced to Obama’s new war there, a war that has already displaced two million Pakistanis? No, of course not. The whores took their orders from the same military/security oligarchy that instructed Obama.

The great American superpower and its 300 million people are being driven straight into the ground by the narrow interests of the big banks and the munitions industry. People, and not only Americans, are losing their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers for no other reason than the profits of U.S. armaments corporations, and the gullible American people seem proud of it. Those ribbon decals on their cars, SUVs and monster trucks proclaim their naive loyalty to the armaments industries and to the whores in Washington who promote wars.

Will Americans, smashed and destroyed by “their” government’s policies, which always put Americans last, ever understand who their real enemies are? Will Americans realize that they are not ruled by elected representatives but by an oligarchy that owns the Washington whorehouse? Will Americans ever understand that they are impotent serfs?

PRINTED BY PERMISSION OF PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS AND CREATORS SYNDICATE.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury and onetime associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. The syndicated columnist’s books include The War of the Worlds: How the Economy Was Lost and The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

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