Fred Gardner

California

Managing Editor, O’Shaughnessy’s and Writer at CounterPunch

managing editor of O'Shaughnessy's, a tabloid created by crossing a medical journal with a political leaflet. The focus is on cannabis.

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Articles

Hopeful Signs - Anderson Valley Advertiser

1 month ago | theava.com | Fred Gardner

Are you ready for some hopeful news?
Political Flashback

1 month ago | theava.com | Fred Gardner

The removal of 381 books from the US Naval Academy Nimitz library last week was flashback-inducing for your correspondent. When Sen. Joseph McCarthy was at the peak of his power in March, 1953, Dashiell Hammett was subpoenaed to appear before his Subcommittee. McCarthy's pretext for grilling Hammett and other writers alleged to have CP affiliations, was that libraries maintained overseas by the US State Department purchased their books. I was 11 years old and wide awake.
Robert Trippet - Anderson Valley Advertiser

1 month ago | theava.com | Fred Gardner

"Stealing From the Rich: The Home-Stake Oil Swindle" by David C. McClintick (Evans, 1977) recounts how a Tulsa, Oklahoma lawyer named Robert Trippet masterminded the most lucrative Ponzi scheme of the 20th century. (Bernie Madoff began conning investors in the 1960s, but wasn't exposed until 2008.)Trippet graduated from the University of Oklahoma law school in 1941. "While in law school," McClintick recounts, "he married Helen Grey Simpson, daughter of a wealthy Tulsa oilman.
‘Future Soldiers’

1 month ago | theava.com | Fred Gardner

Many US citizens who want to join the Armed Services are too overweight or too poorly educated to qualify. (Eighth-grade level math and reading skills are required.) To meet its recruiting goals, in 2022 the Army created the “Future Soldiers Preparatory Course” –90 days at a training base to get in shape and cram for the written test. The New Yorker’s war correspondent Dexter Filkins described the program at Fort Jackson in a 2/10 piece about our nation’s overall readiness.
Fascism Arrives - Anderson Valley Advertiser

2 months ago | theava.com | Fred Gardner

"This is Fascism" is the title of a Counterpunch Radio show featuring Ralph Nader that aired March 18. Those same words had crossed my mind two days before. The thought must be occurring to millions of US Americans these days. It's one thing to see fascism coming (this cartoon from a recent AVA says it all), and another thing to realize it has arrived. The F-word hit home when I decided not to post a very informative interview I'd just conducted with a federal employee.
Inventory Item - Anderson Valley Advertiser

2 months ago | theava.com | Fred Gardner

Steve Howe died way too young. He was 48 when his pick-up truck rolled over on a road in Coachella, California, around dawn on the morning of April 28 [2006]. Riverside County authorities said Howe was doing 70 mph. They even drug-tested him in death.
Raw Earth - Anderson Valley Advertiser

Mar 9, 2025 | theava.com | Fred Gardner

Reporting on the February 28th meeting at which Trump and Vance ambushed Zelensky, the media almost totally ignored the President's use of the term "raw earth" instead of "rare earth" in reference to minerals US companies intend to mine in Ukraine. Trump said "raw earth" four times. If Joe Biden had said "raw earth" instead of "rare earth" four times in a speech it would not have been downplayed. Trump is equally demented, it just manifests differently.
Dylanology - Anderson Valley Advertiser

Feb 19, 2025 | theava.com | Fred Gardner

I recently got an email from a man in Italy named Mauricio Acerbo. At first it puzzled me because my memory is now a colander. I thought I’d once written a review of Bob Dylan’s album “Rough & Rowdy Ways,” not the piece referred to in the email. Here's our exchange:MA: Dear Fred, I read your article of yours on Bob Dylan and Karl Marx in Counterpunch . I'm a communist and at the same time an admirer of Dylan. So I would like to understand better.
Martin Olive - Anderson Valley Advertiser

Feb 7, 2025 | theava.com | Fred Gardner

Martin Olive, 47, proprietor of a cannabis dispensary called the Vapor Room, is recovering at SF General Hospital, after being shot six times outside his shop at 4:55 PM on January 27. He has been moved from the ICU. A friend who visited him reports,"It appears that a couple of bullets grazed his face and left ear, one caused a minor puncture of a lung and others hit his shoulder. I don't have anything more specific.
Alzscammers - Anderson Valley Advertiser

Feb 4, 2025 | theava.com | Fred Gardner

Charles Piller, an Oakland-based investigative reporter for Science magazine, is soft-spoken in person and in print. In his new book, “Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s,” dynamite accusations are professionally gift-wrapped. ”In some cases, the data problems might have an innocent explanation,” Piller wrote in a NY Times essay previewing the book.