Hemp For Victory

2009-12-16T11:08:00.000-08:00

HEMP IN KANSAS

The following is from Debby Moore of the Hemp Industries Association in Kansas to her local paper:

December 14, 2009 - 10:00pm
I enjoyed reading George Will's recent column on medical marijuana and have asked my local planning department where it would zone property for medical marijuana dispensaries.
Cannabis Sativa L. Hemp has been documented as medicine for more than 2,000 years. The slang name, marijuana, was introduced in the early 1930s.
I personally hope the state will stand up and change its laws regulating cannabis. Legalization of cannabis would provide enormous agri-business advantages for Kansas, one of the states chosen by the federal government to grow hemp for the World War II Hemp For Victory campaign.
Hemp once was so vital in the Kansas economy that when the Capitol was constructed in Topeka, hemp leaves were painted around the murals at the top of the rotunda.
Should Kansas engage in economic development of cannabis hemp, the profits of the labors produced from cultivating this plant would stay in the state. Kansas could grow its own protein, paper, fiber and fuel. The state would not need to import these raw fiber resources.
Other countries build shipping crates, fiber board for building supplies, solvents to restore centuries-old wood framing and plastics for the automobile industry from their hemp crops.
Why not Kansas?
DEBBY MOORE,
director of research,
Hemp Industries of Kansas,

Wichita

2009-12-03T09:50:00.001-08:00

CLIMATE CHANGE OUTED

On this blog I have questioned the climage change camp many times. From firsthand experience, it was easy to see that many in it were dishonest and had not clue about anything scientific. If I had any doubts, they were removed when the Green Party UK delegate told me I could not expect them to be scientists. No. He was right. Not sure if I can expect anything at all from them.

The latest revelation about them comes from emails proving that they were hiding relevant data. Tree rings, for instance, showing patterns of global cooling. Today' s piece by Kenneth Green in The Epoch Times (NY) lays it bare when he notes that the Climate Research Unit (UK) has not been able to deny its data manipulation as manifested by the hacked emails. They consistently denied Steve McIntyre's requests for information, acting like some dodgy government agency with something to hide. Like the facts. Phil Jones, former head of CRU's climate change group, said he'd rather destroy data rather than show it. Maybe his new job will be at the CIA, where they are in need of a paper shredder.

Green (ironic surname...) notes: "What the Climate Change documents reveal is that this small group of scientists, who often peer-review each others' work as well as skeptical articles, have discussed ways of keeping findings they don't like out of the peer-reviewed literature as well as the IPCC reports, even if it required trying to oust editors, boycotting certain journalists, or to reclassifying a prestigious journal that publishes skeptical articles aas a fringe journal unworthy of consideration."

In other words, a gang of green nazis. Stupid, arrogant people trying to make a buck off of others' misery. And none are keen to wear hemp or even hear the facts about hemp - which brings me to note another story in The Epoch Times, this one written by Barbro Plogander, in which it is pointed out that cotton is a "thirsty crop." Yes indeed, but go tell that to the green nazis. I tried and they turned on me like swine, before whom you cannot cast your pearls.

So I am glad to see some facts, inconvenient ones at that, get out, bravo to the folks at The Epoch Times here in New York. They are sort of a startup paper and it looks like they may bring some fresh reporting to the stage, so have a look at their site at www.theepochtimes.com

2009-09-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

OBITUARY NOTICE

I note with sadness the passing of a great agriculturalist, who was a great inspiration to me as he was also my grand uncle. Below is an article about him. May more people follow his example and improve our agriculture so we can feed everyone.

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Norman Borlaug, 1914-2009, the Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived

Lisa Spinelli in The Phoenix, 15 September, 2009

With all these recent celebrity deaths, it's pretty lame of us media types that we haven't given more press/public attention to a real hero that has passed away. While Patrick Swayze may have made a lot of great films and seemed like a nice guy, and Michael Jackson was the King of Pop and an amazing entertainer, Norman Borlaug was a true hero that saved hundreds of millions of people's lives. Borlaug, dubbed the "Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived" by Penn and Teller, died of lymphoma at the age of 95 in his Dallas home on Saturday, September 12.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner, Borlaug was also the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal and has been called the father of the Green Revolution. He has also been credited with saving more lives than ANYONE that has ever lived. Why? Because he helped to develop a high-yielding, short-straw wheat variety that was more resilient than any other wheat out there. This meant that millions of people in Mexico, India and Pakistan were saved from eminent starvation with the development of this new wheat. Crops were established and hundreds of millions of people projected to be starving to death by the 1980s were saved. Since its creation, the dwarf wheat he helped create has been planted in crops in six Latin American countries, six in the Near and Middle East, and several countries in Africa and helped save millions more from famine.
"There are 800 million hungry people on earth, as many as 400 million in Asia alone," Borlaug said at the IARI Auditorium at New Delhi on March 16 2005. He went on to say, "We will have to double the world food supply by 2050," a feat he saw as improbable with our current agricultural resources and means.
Still actively pursuing his dreams to end world hunger through biotechnology well into his 90s, this amazing man was still the president of the Sasakawa Africa Association, an sister organization of the Carter Center and whose goal is to test and promote higher-yielding technology for maize, wheat, rice, grain legumes, and roots and tubers to help feed African nations, up until this year. And he was also still teaching at Texas A&M with a center there named after him, the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Southern Crop Improvement.. He also has numerous other research centers across the world in Bolivia, the UK, and the US standing in his name. Borlaug is immortalized within a stained glass window called the "World Peace Window" at St. Mark's Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is survived by his two children, his grandkids and more than a pair of great grandkids.
It says something as a country and as a society when we give more press to someone who entertains than who helps actually save lives. I'm not saying we shouldn't mourn Swayze's or Jackson's deaths, far from it, I was totally struck when I heard about MJ dying and even a bit sad about Swayze. But to have SUCH little press out there about this true global hero's death is just down right despicable when every other image on TV, like CNN, is still about MJ and now Swayze (and yes Kennedy too but that's a whole other ball of wax) and there's a mere two-second blip about Borlaug. Sad. The man deserves a great tribute and he should be plastered all over the TV screens as well as all the dailies.
This man has done so much to help our world and the human race it's impossible for me to have time to relate it all right now. Here are some more credible places to read about this amazing individual: New York Times, and ForbesNorman Borlaug, 1914-2009, the Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived

2009-09-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

CANNABIS AND COMEDY

I have been spending time in New York, hanging out with Mike Stranger and his gang. They often pop into Galaxy Global Eatery, Denis Cicero's place at 15th and Irving, next to Irving Plaza. This weekend there will be hemp on the menu not only at Galaxy, but a few doors up at 117 E 15th Street, Belmont Lounge, when Mike and his gang put on a comedy night with Arielle Adamy on Saturday, 12 September. Be there or be square! 7-9pm, $10 cover, no drink minimum. For info contact Mike at 917 940 5507.

2009-09-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

TOO LOW FOR ZERO

An article from the AP. Keystone cops in the Flevoland province of Holland, east of Amsterdam, take the law into their own hands only to find they've destroyed a field of industrial hemp that belonged to Wagenigen University and Research Centre. They estimated the value of the 47,000 plants at US$ 6.45 million. Simon Vink, spokesperson for the university, said it was less than zero. Isnt't it about time they learned the difference? Just imagine what may happen in the US when hemp is made legal...

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2009-09-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

JAPANESE WEARING HEMP

Just in from the New York Times blogsite, below is an excerpt of an article about Japan's first lady and her use of hemp.

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Japan’s New First Lady Not From Venus, Was Only Visiting
By Robert Mackey
Itsuo Inouye/Associated Press Japan’s next first couple, Miyuki Hatoyama and her husband Yukio Hatoyama, last week in Tokyo.
Here’s something you need to know about Japan’s next first lady, Miyuki Hatoyama: she used to be an actress. That may help to explain why Japanese voters were apparently not worried about handing her husband, Yukio Hatoyama, a landslide victory and the keys to the prime minister’s office despite the fact that he is married to a woman who wrote last year that she traveled to Venus in a U.F.O. in the 1970s.
On Wednesday, The Times of London’s Richard Lloyd Parry reported from Tokyo that Ms. Hatoyama, “a musical actress, cookery writer, clothesmaker and television personality,” is given a sort of free pass by Japanese voters because she “falls into the category of public figure known as ‘tarento,’ or ‘talent,’” who are expected to be kooky.
She has apparently been making good use of that pass. As Mr. Parry reports, Ms. Hatoyama wrote in “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered,” a book published last year, that before she divorced her first husband and married Mr. Hatoyama, she may have visited our neighboring planet:
“While my body was sleeping, I think my spirit flew on a triangular-shaped U.F.O. to Venus,” she said. “It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green.” Her first husband suggested that it was probably just a dream — but Mr. Hatoyama, she insisted, would not be so dismissive. “My current husband has a different way of thinking,” she said. “He would surely say, ‘Oh, that’s great!’”
As Reuters reported, Ms. Hatoyama also amazed a daytime television audience this year with the information that she personally knew Tom Cruise during a past life, when he was Japanese, and still hopes to one day make a film with him. The film, she assured viewers, will win her an Academy Award “for sure,” and “will change your values.” Ms. Hatoyama added that, in his spare time, her husband is helping to make her vision a reality by “translating the script into English even though he is tired after work.”
Yukio Hatoyama/Associated Press An undated photo of Yukio and Miyuki Hatoyama in younger, more carefree days.
Apparently Mr. Hatoyama is paying his wife back for her help with crafting his image. The Telegraph’s Julian Ryall noted last month that Ms. Hatoyama, who is 66, now “describes herself as a ‘life composer’ who selects people’s clothes and food — including those of her husband — and designs home interiors.” Mr. Ryall also reported that in a more recent television interview, she “appeared wearing a skirt she had made from hemp coffee sacks purchased in Hawaii.”

2009-08-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

MARGARET ATWOOD WEARING HEMP

In today's Observer there is an article which mentions that Margaret Atwood is wearing some hemp. About time. Too many of these attention getting so-called environmentalists are wearing nothing but cotton, at times pesticide free cotton which uses up twice as much water.

If half these people practices what they preached we would be able to make a difference in our world by getting away from cotton, one of the biggest and dirtiest industries on the planet. It uses up so much water that we may soon have water wars. The press does not like to talk about this, as their advertisers would not appreciate it...and if you happen to buy the Observer today, not to be mean, but do note how many large car ads there are in it (as I have done so many times on this blog...nothing like outing the hypocrisy of the left).

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Margaret Atwood on a voyage to the world's end
In her latest novel, the Canadian writer describes an Earth ravaged by an ecological disaster. She's crossing the Atlantic now on the Queen Mary 2 for what's billed as the greenest book tour ever – with songs thrown in

Tim Adams
The Observer, Sunday 30 August 2009

Margaret Atwood is currently at sea. She has set sail for the first leg of a book tour to promote her novel The Year of the Flood, an everyday tale of pestilence and pandemic, set in the near future (and required campfire reading for the eco-warriors in south-east London).
Atwood's ark is Cunard's Queen Mary 2. You can track her progress across the Atlantic on a blog that charts the nautical adventure. The choice of transport is highly appropriate to her book, a dystopia which imagines a Darwinian cult surviving after an ecological disaster has destroyed nearly all humanity in a plague called the "Waterless Flood". It is not science fiction, she insists, but a realistic extrapolation of the present. She is giving nightly readings from it to the liner's passengers, sharing top billing with Dr Peter Dean, a forensic scientist and expert on the Jack the Ripper murders. You only hope the captive audience wasn't expecting Elaine Paige.
It will be, Atwood believes, the greenest world book tour ever – not an air mile in sight. She has taken her "veggie vows" for the voyage, and has stocked up on the fairest traded coffee; her wardrobe for the captain's table features a good deal of hemp. Her latest blog detailed with some dry excitement the particular constituents of the "eco-paper for the programmes at the tour events" which, of all the papers on the market, has the "lightest impact on biodiversity and our climate". "God's Gardeners" in her book – who are desperately trying to reinvigorate life by devotional composting on a Mad Max planet destroyed by venal drug companies and infernal burger franchises – would no doubt be proud.
When Atwood docks in England those programmed tour events will include a series of special stage adaptations of the book, starring Atwood alongside Diana Quick and Roger Lloyd Pack, an evening of light musical apocalypse that will feature some of the hymns from the book sung in praise to the Gardeners' patron saints: Jacques Cousteau, James Lovelock, and Stephen Jay Gould. (On the boat, so far, Atwood confesses, she has bottled out of breaking into song with: "We praise the tiny perfect Moles/That garden underground;/The Ant, the Worm, the Nematode,/Wherever they are found…"; or crooning soulfully her characters' tribute to an evolutionary Creator: "We cannot always trace your path/through Monkey and Gorilla/Yet all are sheltered underneath/Your heavenly umbrella" – but she insists that, come dry land, she will.) "The events will be in the image of the Gardeners," she says. "Keep it plain, keep it local, keep it cheap, keep it green – this was our motto." All proceeds will go to the RSPB.
Atwood, the sharp-eyed prophet of quirky doom, is 69 now, but she has never, it seems, forgotten the Eden into which she was born. All of her nightmarish visions – the vicious subjugations of The Handmaid's Tale (the Taliban's book at bedtime), the genetically engineered hell of Oryx and Crake (to which the current book forms a kind of sequel) – have been created, you guess, in pointed contrast to her formative years. Her father was an entomologist, a taxonomer of all Linnaeus's creatures (as such a kind of role model for Adam One, the Gardeners' leader in The Year of the Flood).
From when she was a baby he took Atwood with him, along with her elder brother and her mother, a dietician, on expeditions from their ostensible home in Ottawa migrating north when the ice melted, south when the snow came, the time between spent in a tent or "in a cabin built by my father on a granite point a mile by water from a Quebec village so remote that the road only arrived two years before I was born".
It was 1939 and the world was at war – Carl Atwood's contribution to the armed struggle was a study of the ecology of hardwood forests – but Atwood lived in a kind of magical natural paradise in places where humans had hardly set foot. "At the age of six months," Atwood has written, "I was carried into the woods in a packsack, and this landscape became my hometown."
She and her brother were schooled in the mornings by their mother, "the athlete of the family who was fond of horses and ice skating and any other form of rapid motion that offered escapes from domestic duties". Otherwise they played in the woods, or read compulsively.
Society, in the form of school, which Atwood attended full time in Toronto only from the age of 11, came as a dull shock. "I was now faced with real life," she has recalled, "in the form of other little girls – their prudery and snobbery, their Byzantine social life based on whispering and vicious gossip, and an inability to pick up earthworms without wriggling all over and making mewing noises like a kitten." Perhaps the most chilling of all her books is Cat's Eye, an account of the effects of bullying on a child. Atwood was so precocious in her learning that she was placed in a class four years her senior. It was at about this time that she started to read Orwell; she never looked back.
At university she was tutored by the renowned literary theorist Northrop Frye, famous for his resurrection of William Blake as a major poet, and for his work on the archetypes of literature. Frye gave Atwood, she has suggested, a framework for her unusual creative mind; she responded first with a critical book about Canadian literature, which she saw as being all about Survival (as opposed to American novels – "The Frontier" – and British ones – "The Island") and subsequently with a series of novels and volumes of poetry that have all been survival stories of one kind or another.
In the manner of her parents, who always considered themselves "exiles from Nova Scotia", she has lived an insistently nomadic life. Her most settled period, perhaps, came in the years after she divorced her first husband and married fellow novelist Graeme Gibson and they made a home in Alliston, Ontario, in 1973. They lived a Fearnley-Whittingstall existence without the hype. "We had cows, chickens, geese, sheep, ducks, horses, cats, dogs and peacocks, to name a few," she has remembered. "Many of these we ate in our jolly meals punctuated by the sound of our bottles of home-made beer exploding in the cellar and Graeme's children asking if this was Susan on the plate."
Subsequently they lived all over the place: in Toronto's Chinatown, in a Norfolk manse, said to be haunted by nuns in the parlour; in Australia. In the Eighties, when she was writing her breakthrough book, The Handmaid's Tale, she was in West Berlin; trips to Poland, East Germany and the former Czechoslovakia all contributed to the book's intense claustrophobia.
Her concerns have remained consistent from her childhood, though: the ways in which the individual, and particularly the individual woman, comes to be constrained and deluded by irrational convention or insidious coercion. She herself has fiercely and imaginatively resisted any such constrictions, though the dangers of pigeon-holing are ever present: "The kind of thing that may have got you called a mean dangerous radical red-toothed bitch when you were 30," she recently noted, "may now be treated as the scatterbrained utterance of a cute old biddy. I'm not quite there yet but I can see the turn-off."
Atwood is anything but scatterbrained. The current novel makes a companion volume to last year's book, based on a series of lectures, entitled Payback, which dwelt, brilliantly and presciently, on the idea of debt in the western imagination. The political philosopher John Gray called it "the most probing and thought-stirring commentary on the financial crisis to date".
Written before the financial catastrophe, and with an eye to the balance and frugality of her upbringing, Atwood noted that the obligation of debt was "the governing leitmotif of western fiction" from Faustus on, and that once debt becomes "harmless and fashionable", empires and societies tend to crumble.
In Payback she put forward a "limits to growth" argument that suggested the biggest debt mankind had incurred was to the planet. She imagined a fable in which "Scrooge Nouveau" was visited by "the Spirit of Earth Day Past": "The end result of a totally efficient exploitation of Nature would be a lifeless desert," the Spirit warns. "All natural capital would be exhausted, having been devoured by the mills of production, and the resulting debt to Nature would be infinite. But before then payback time will come for mankind…"
The Year of the Flood imagines that payback. Adam One and his Gardeners are hopelessly trying to undo the unnatural havoc of technology, digging for victory: "Some would term our efforts futile, but if all were to follow our example, what a change would be wrought for our beloved Planet!"
Their creator, scanning the horizon for disaster from her deckchair on the Queen Mary 2, munching on her Endangered Species chocolate bars, and dreaming of unpolluted promotional stunts beneath the brim on her hemp hat, would no doubt concur.
Born 18 November 1939, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her father was an entomologist. She was home-schooled till 11 by her dietician mother and later studied at Toronto university and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Best of times Both her poetry and novels have received critical acclaim with The Handmaid's Tale (1986), Cat's Eye (1989), and Alias Grace (1996) all nominated for the Booker prize, which she finally won for The Blind Assassin in 2000.
Worst of times Following an idyllic childhood Atwood's move to a school in Toronto at the age of 11 was a difficult one for her.
Her experiences informed Cat's Eye – a novel on the effects of bullying.
They say "She's an incredibly inspiring figure and she's one of the funniest, sharpest, truest people, and maybe that's why she's scary, because there aren't that many people who'll dare to be that."
Novelist Ali Smith
She says "A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together."
"I returned to this world because people kept asking me what happened two minutes after Oryx and Crake ended. I didn't know. So in order to find out what happened, then I had to go back and write another book.''

2009-08-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

NUTRITIONAL ANALYIS OF

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HEMP HEARTS

Roger Snow kindly sent to me another package of his hemp hearts and hemp chocolate bars. I have shared these with a friend of mine who is a body builder, the protein content of hemp is quite impressive and of use to such people.

A complete breakdown on what 100 gm of his hulled hemp seeds contain is as follows:

Calories 567

Protein 30.6g

Total fat 47.2g

saturated fat 5.2g

palmitic acid 3.44g

arachidic acid 0.2

linoleic acid (Omega - 6 EFA) 27.56g

linolenic acid (Omega - 3 EFA) 8.68g

stearic acid 1.46g

monounsaturated fat 5.8g

oleic acid 5.8g

polyunsaturated fat 36.2g

linoleic acid (Omega - 6 EFA) 27.56g
linolenic acid (Omega - 3 EFA) 8.68

total essential fatty acids 36.24g

carbohydrate 10.9g

cholesterol 0.0g

total dietary fibre 6.0g

sugars 1.99g

fructose 0.45g

glucose 0.30g

sucrose 1.24g

maltose 0.1g

lactose 0.1g

Vitamin A (B-carotene) 4 IU

Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) 1.38mg

Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) 0.33mg

Vitamin B6 0.12mg

Vitamin C 1.0mg

Vitamin D 2277.5 IU

Vitamin E (d) -A- Tocopherol 8.96 IU

Sodium 9.0mg

Calcium 74.0mg

Iron 4.7mg

Tetrahydrocannabinol None detectable

2009-08-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

2009-08-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

SPIES, LIES AND CANNABIS

Image left is of two who do not seem to know when to take an exit. They demand much more than their 15 minutes of fame; former MI5 desk clerks Annie Machon and David Shayler. These two came along to the 9/11 Truth Movement and, with the help of Belinda Mackenzie, pushed their way to the front. Many regretted their involvement, as they seemed to go out of their way to make it all look like a circus. At one point, Shayler even pushed an eyewitness aside and started to promote his own absurd views during a viewing of "9/11 Eyewitness" in East London.

The press loved it, they could use them to bash the 9/11 movement. There was nay a word about the real evidence or the likes of William Rodriguez, who spoke time and time again around the world, but was shunned by journalists as they spent their time feting Shayler and giving him abundant space.

Now much the same is happening with hemp. Shayler, sitting on a squat in a dress and calling himself both the Messiah and Dolores Kane, a transvestite persona he has taken on lately, had decided to mention hemp quite often. Much as we talked about hemp, he never took the trouble to wear it or even read much about it. His transvestite garb is most likely cotton. His whole act is a scam, and he is not only squatting houses, but squatting the hemp movement. If only we could get a court order to evict him, or he would just shut up...

But sadly the press, which cannot be bothered to get the story on hemp, will use him as a reference and cast discredit on a very real issue.

2009-07-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

NEW MACHINE MAKES WAVES

Mark Anslow has just written a very interesting article in the Ecologist (June, 2009, p. 12). It is about a device created by Alvin Smith which harnesses water motion. His creation consists of a ballast and floats connected by a piston. A wave passes it, the float is lifted, the piston is raised and water is compressed. The float then sinks back down on the tail of the wave on to a second float, compressing the water again on the downstroke. It needs no electricity to run, nor even lubrication.
The energy can be summoned at will. One machine can generate 1 megawatt, enough for 1,700 homes, at prices lower than market.
These can work even in reservoirs.
Imagine a future with these, and other non-petrol based devices, such as solar towers, giving us clean energy and reducing the price of oil. But, like industrial hemp, they may be in for some suppression from the powers that run the media and the global economy.
I encourage all to stay tuned to this idea and support it so it does not get thrown aside. Click here for the Searaser site and more info.

2009-05-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

This week I read David Aaronovitch's Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in shaping our modern world. The first question that comes to mind is why anyone would write such a book, as it does not, as the subtitle asserts, show how these theories have shaped the world; rather, it shows how the author does not like these theories. He points out in the very first pages that they offend his sense of plausibility, and then proceeds to offend all and sundry with his dismissive work.

However, there are large portions of it that are both well written and well researched. As many conspiracy theories are complete and utter rubbish, it does not take a genius to see through them. And even in genuine cases of an existing conspiracy, it is to be expected that investigators will make their share of mistakes. Aaronovitch points these out gleefully, but fails to point out many solid pieces of evidence that make up the corpus delecti. Indeed, he is shadowboxing with one hand and patting his own back with the other.

One trick he employs is to point out absurd theories put forward by the likes of former MI5 agent David Shayler, which he quickly demolishes, but completely ignores the likes of William Rodriguez when discussing 9/11.

And how can he make such an omission? Did he, like so many other journalists, boycott Rodriguez's dozen or more public appearances in England? Certainly not, as Aaronovich and I had a lengthy discussion about his presence at the first 9/11 panel discussion at Friends House, in which Rodriguez held forth. But in the book, there is no mention of this meeting, which took place in Spring of 2004, but rather lengthy mention of one that transpired in the summer of 2005, at which, at least according to Aaronovitch's book, Rodriguez did not take the stage.

To give some context, William Rodriguez was the last man out alive from the North Tower, after voluntarily spending the morning saving hundreds of lives by unlocking the stairwells with his master key. Rodriguez was able to reveal that there was an explosion before the first plane ever hit, that there was mysterious machinery being moved on the vacant 33rd floor, and many other anamolies. Given his 19-years' good service and overall credibility, why does Aaronovitch ignore him? Is it to tackle a fringe goup of former MI5 agents, Beano the Fruito Man, and the odd anti-Semite? The latter are not, and never were, of any real consequence to the movement, in fact, a well researched book on the subject would note that the first 9/11 sceptics were Jews; we hear no mention of Aaronowitz, Shamir, Chamish, Israel or Goldman in his book.

Aaronovitch goes so far in his polemic as to actually side with the Nazis, who, according to the Nuremberg trial transcripts and other evidence, were the ones who set the Reichstag Fire. I told him once to go do this research before he made a fool of himself, but he was only arrogant and would not take advice on this sensitive issue. One might find this ironic, given his Jewish name, but, as he once told me, he is not really Jewish. This revelation came about when I rebuked him for his attitude backstage at Press TV with Yvonne Ridley, and his excuse was his lack of real Hallachic credentials. Friends of mine, whose relatives suffered at the hands of the Third Reich, may find some consolation in the author's limited claim on their culture.

But what consolation exists to relatives of those killed in the 9/11 attacks, or the hordes of people maimed, burned, wounded or killed in Iraq and Afghsanistan? Relatives of the victims of the attacks have refused million dollar compensation awards as they press for the truth, but these may only be collateral damage to Aaronvitch, as he exonerates all governments from false flag terror attacks on their citizens. Oh how Hitler would have loved his work, but I do not, it is sloppy and crude. However, when asked if I think he is an agent of some shadowy cabal that perpetrated these attacks, I answer no. Sheer arrogance is enough to make people stupid and dangerous, but, sadly, there is a market for this sort of rubbish.

Voodoo Histories is published in London in the spring of 2009 by Jonathan Cape.

2009-05-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Independent today published my letter in response to a previous letter (which was in response to David Davis' 1May article) in which the author absurdly stated that no one had any better ideas for Afghan agriculture than the cultivation of opium, and that we ought to buy opium products to prop up the economy.
Sadly though, the Independent did not print my letter in its entirety, and omitted the crucial detail about the title of the report by myself and Bobby Pugh - it as Hemp as a Replacement Crop for Heroin in Afghanistan; the subject of which I will now invite them to enter at large upon in an article.

2009-05-03T07:09:00.000-07:00

With concerns exponentially growing over the safety of what is applied to the skin, more and more consumers are turning to natural sources of beauty. British-based Hemp Garden offers a divine-smelling range of bath and body care that uses only plant-based ingredients, including the oil of the hemp seed, which seems to have shaken off its hippy image and is well known for its intense skin nourishing properties. Add the bath oils to your next soak to ease stiff muscles, soften the skin and leave the mind clear. From £9.99, available from www.hempgarden.co.uk.

2009-03-22T05:03:00.000-07:00

GREEN RUNNING IN BELSIZE PARK

There is a by-election in Belsize Park on 2 April, and one of the candidates has impressed me with her activism. Naomi Aptowitzer, of the Green Party. She is chair of the local residents' association in Chalk Farm and has been active in combatting anti-social behaviour. For 18 years she has worked for the Borough, and is currently director of ZiPee Bikes Ltd. That is what impresses me the most. She campaigns for better bicycle infrastructure, and in 2007 began the 'Elect Electric' campaign to press coucils to install more on-street charge points for electric vehicles. This would be great, and if we could get more people to drive the G-Wiz, which is visible on most streets in the borough, strangely juxtaposed to the oversizw SUVs, we could all have a bit more tranquility. Bikes, by the way, are bucking the financial trend, bike shops were trading 86% higher in '08 than in '07, so she is on to the new growth industry. And speaking of bikes, my friend Chris Sanders is working on importing a fold up electric bike, which is just about the greenest thing around. It can get people to work for much less money and save on parking spaces all over London. So I hope to see Naomi get in on 2 April, in which case, expect to see her on Haverstock Hill riding the latest e-bike.

2009-03-20T03:38:00.000-07:00

THE FLYING COLOURS OF HEMP

Image above is painted with hemp oil, which, along with linseed and poppy oils, is one of the most useful painting oils known to man. It depicts a Laggar Falcon chasing sandgrouse, which are cousins to pigeons. The are swift fliers and usually evade the falcon's talons, but one caught unawares, usually at a wadi, or drinking spot, can find itself a meal to this predator. As they are cousins to pigeons, it may well be they are fond of hemp, as are most birds. This image, and other images painted in hemp, and mostly depicting falconry, can be found now at the new blogspot Lure of the Falcon. I have been drawing and painting these now for 20 years, so this is like a retrospective. Presenty I am working on a painting of a Saker hunting a Houbara in the desert. I don't know if houbara eat hemp, but they have been noted for eating poppy seeds as they migrate through Afghanistan. As there has been a sighting of hemp fields in Afghanistan, I am starting to work on a sketch of houbara in the hemp fields of Helmand.

2009-03-10T03:35:00.000-07:00

HEMP AS A FEEDSTOCK FOR
BIOMASS-TO-ENERGY CONVERSION

This article, by Bernard Rice, appears (pp. 145-156) in the Journal of Industrial Hemp Vol. 13 #2, 2009. An abstract is as follows:
An increase in the demand for biomass for conversion to heat by combustion is likely. The potential role for hemp in supplying this demand is discussed in this article. For hemp, key characteristics such as net calorific value, ash content, and melting behavior, and the risk of corrosion or polluting emissions, are all favorable. Low bulk density and size reduction difficulties might limit its use for pellet production and in small boilers; its use in electricity generating plants and medium-to-large boilers would have better prospects. To mazimize profitability, an agronomy program to achieve high yields at the lowest cost is required. In the Irish climate, this would entail early sowing (late March/early April), a low seed rate (~30kg/ha), and variety selection for maximum stem yields over 10t/ha is attainable. Cost analysis shows that an energy price of about Euros6/GJ is required to achieve a profit level similar to conventional food enterprises. Arable farmers would welcome a break crop in rotation with cereals. Processors needing a year-round fuel supply might be expected to welcome an autumn-harvested crop as part of a mix with spring-harvested crops such as miscanthus and willows. A mix of energy crop species would improve biodiversity and visual impact. Hemp should be a strong contender to be part of the energy crop mix.

The varieties studied were Kompolti, Ferimon, and Fedrina 74. They had stem yields of 12.6t/ha, 11.7 t/ha and 11.6 t/ha respectively. A comparison of the net calorific value of hemp to other cellolusic biomass showed each as follows:
Hemp 13.4
Wood residues 10.0
Straw 13.0
Peat 8.9

(the gross values, respectively, were: 18.5, 19.7, 18.0, 21.5).

Bernard Rice is Principal Research Officer, Teagasc, Crops Research Centre, Oak Park, Carlow, Ireland.

2009-03-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

SPIES LIES AND CANNABIS

Speaking of spies this month, after having been accused by a reader of being one, see posts below, my memory was jogged about a story in the hemp world. Image left is uber spy Jack Herer, who, working for the CMI, infiltrated Lyndon Larouche, that avid spy seeker who runs the Executive Intelligence Review. CMI went undercover as anti-pot activists, and discovered a bizzare world in which LaRouche was planning to have rock music outlawed and make a hero of Mark Chapman, the guy who shot John Lennon.
Of course, now that I've told that story, there will doubtless be rumours that Jack was really an undercover DIA informant! Maybe Annie Machon, David Shayler or Steven Collier can shed some light on it. Ah how the pot, I mean plot, thickens...

2009-03-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

THE HIPPY CIA

In a previous post, I knock Homeland Security for their perusal of my blog. They make Inspector Clouseau look smart. But now the hippy CIA, that is, the anarchic crew of conspirarcy theorists who see a Zionist under every bed, have played dumber to their dumb. After my post about Paul Vigay and his mysterious death in Southsea, I got a personal threatening email from one Steven Collier of Burton upon Trent, who posts on the 9/11 forums as Mason Free Party. I was told I had been sussed and I ought to go back to my Zionist hole. Checking the 9/11 forum, I found that I was accused of being Dr Hemp, a character I met once in Bristol. I am not Dr Hemp. I am a blogger, pure and simple. Just to set the record straight...I'd stay and blog more but I am off to get my cheque from Mossad and change my disguise. I thought I'd outwitted them all, but I guess David Shayler saw through it. Shucks...

2009-02-27T14:02:00.000-08:00

PRESS SUPPRESSION

In the '30s, the press went beserk and demonised hemp, led by the Hearst newspapers. Facts were ignored so that a few companies could increase their dominance, and we are paying for it today. But the beat goes on...if you try to get them onside about this issue now, you end up wasting your time, and this includes a number of 'lefty' papers...such as the Independent, which, as the Ecologist newspaper points out, ran a front page story about environmentalists supporting nuclear energy. Here on this site you can read more details of this, and how twisted debate on biofuels kept us from developing biofuels. Also on this site, there has been much mention of press dishonesty in regards to 9/11. Above is a photo of Beverly Eckert, a 9/11 widow, clutching a photo of her late husband. She refused money from the government as a payout; part of the deal was that she would have to forego a real investigation. She stood out, and got hammered down; earlier this month she perished in a routine flight in New York. Funny how so many opponents of the Bush administration perish on aeroplanes, and the dots somehow connnect to the fact that both Bushes were pilots. In fact, the first victims of the Bushes may have been the two US Marines who died on the plane that George Herbert Walker Bush allowed to crash over Iwo Jima, without allowing them to parachute out to safety. This cowardice was observed by Sgt Chester Merzejewski. It came out in an election, but the press elected not to go into too much detail here; and maybe wisely, as those who go into 'too much detail' can end up dead. We do not know for a fact whether Beverly Eckert was murdered, but we do know that another 9/11 sceptic was - Mike Zebuhr - he was gunned down after a robbery. The gunman, ironically named Walker, fled the scene of the crime, and was pursued by the police. But when aprehended, he was let go, scot free. What gives? Zebuhr was a well respected magna cum laude graduate student and campus leader at Clemson University, where he handed out copies of Loose Change.
This week, another mysterious death, this time, someone I met recently - Paul Vigay, an IT consultant who recently put up a 9/11 website (google his name and you will see what I mean). He went out for a walk and was found a day later, washed up in the sea. No suicide note, a happy home life with a long term partner, no financial worries. Did he really decide to go for a swim in the chilly February waters off the south coast of England? Or were the comments on his site, include a number about intel service torture of suspects (the latest is that these goons were behind pulling out finger nails) too much for the CIA, whose long arm has lawlessly extended itself into so many other countries?
In addition to the mysterious deaths, there are the incidents of harrassment, including William Rodriguez's delay by Homeland Security when he was en route to the UK to discuss all this. Why would Homeland Security not want to allow him to leave the country - the hero of 9/11? 9/11 heroes, 9/11 widows, 9/11 sceptics, these seem to be the target of our security forces - who are perhaps inspired by the words of the MSNBC anchormen who asked that 9/11 sceptics be tasered, arrested, and sent to secret camps in Eastern Europe; one of these was none other than former (as in, had to leave office when the dead body of a woman was discovered in his office) US Congressman Joe Scarborough. Tasered, arrested, and sent to secret camps; or maybe just killed. This is the reality that the coward press does not report. They would rather put nuclear power stations in your backyard, which, as one environmentalist noted, are accidents waiting to happen. And accidents do happen, in a rather disproportionate proportion to those who ask awkward questions.

2009-02-24T11:29:00.000-08:00

20 YEARS A' GROWING:
THE RETURN OF DR SHIVA

Last month Dr Vandana Shiva made another appearance in London, returning to Hampstead Town Hall to speak. Sagar Shah and I came along again, running into Carolyn Whittle of PositiveTV and environmental reporter Stanley Johnson, whose resemblance to his son Boris was hard to miss. A perhaps not irrelevant factoid in this is the fact that Boris is one quarter Indian, and so the family may have some interest in that part of the world. Boris, unlike some politicians, does not wear his own ethnic diversity on his sleeve.
The event was a celebration of Dr Shiva's 20 years with Zed Books, a left wing publishing house here in London. She was introduced by Patrick Holden of the Soil Association; this time we had a more amicable chat with him backstage, or rather, in front of the food table which is where most people gathered before the event; having a good caterer is always a plus, and the same people who were there with such an impressive array were on hand again. Speaking of food, Sagar and I gave a blueberry hempseed chocolate bar to Vandana, so she had some in hand to take back (if that is still permissible with our new aeroport security laws). It was one of the footlong monster bars that Roger Snow sent me from Rocky Mountain Grain Products in Canada, so it may well be touring the world; the hemp bar that went from Ontario to New York to London may well be on its way to New Delhi. Which could, of course, be seized upon by the airmiles pharisees who want to stop all airlifting of food - including some of the folks at the Soil Association. As this would only devastate the local economies of about 50 nations, eight charity groups banded together to tell the elitists that this just would not work; and good job they did. How many times in this world do overzealous do-gooders destroy things before we call an end to this? What would this do, for instance, to the mango/papaya/jute growers in India? Or are we supposed to grow these items somewhere in the UK? Even by the most outrageous global warming prediction we are simply not going to be able to do that, so we might as well not disrupt the livelihoods of millions of people for the likes of Tamsin Omond (whose antics at closing down aeroports might have kept Dr Shiva out of the country).
Conspicuously absent from the event were the biofuel opponents preaching global warming/cooling/climate change. As so many scientists are now eschewing this rubbish (see Marc Morano in the current issue of Nexus), they are no longer flavour of the month, and people are wondering why governments are giving away hard earned cash to idiots trading carbon credits as if it was a new dot.com stock. Dr Shiva touched on this in her speech, calling such trading tantamount to the indulgences the church was trading in the Middle Ages. She also touched on the options trading, which she called a "construct of a construct of a construct", and asserted really only came about in the '70s. It is now into the hundreds of billions of pounds she noted, and is part of the reason for the credit crunch. If there were any bankers at the meeting, this is when they slithered out the door. They may not have been feeling to comfortable, but a wider segment of the audience might also have felt slighted as she talked about cars; she herself does not own a car, and good on her! In India, she says, the percentage of car owners has not grown since the '50; cars are everywhere, due to both population increase and the fact that the same people who owned a car in the '50s now own five. One wonders if they are going to start using electric cars - ironically India is where the G Wiz, which is now so prominent in Hampstead and other parts of London, is produced.
In her time Dr Shiva has seen much change, but sadly, much of this is for the worse. We hope that she will be able to see some soon for the better, and with hemp in hand on her way back to India, this may well be the case. Thank you Dr. Shiva for your inspiration, we hope to see you again soon.

2009-02-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

WATCHING THE
WHEELS GO ROUND

Image left is the new electric moped that Oliver Lindon, one of my readers, just bought. Good to see my readership putting their money where their mouth is, and, by the way, putting money into their own future. By riding around on this vehicle he is keeping down expences and keeping the air cleaner. He will not have the parking and maintenance charges that cars have, and he will not spend hours on end looking for a parking space (which are all too often taken up by SUVs). His neighbours benefit from this move too, we all benefit. I have not asked yet, but I did wonder, having met him and his girlfriend, if two can share the ride? A long time ago I designed an ad for the bicycle industry for which the logo was: "Two can get closer on a bike."
Someone actually took that caption and used it with an image of two acrobats on a unicycle, but somehow, the unicycle industry has not yet taken off...It sometimes takes two to tango.

2009-02-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

GREENS PLAYING WITH FIRE

In Australia the Green Party is not popular; not after hundreds of people died in forest fires that could have been prevented if qualified fire prevention officials had been listened to, and forest areas had been thinned down to minimise the risk of fire in a country where that is the #1 threat. Their impassioned pleas to keep every last log in place for every last bug to have a snug home backfired, and now every last bug is dead, burned to a crisp thanks to these idiots, who may or may not care that hundreds of their fellow humans have also met such a fate. As usual, the idiot savants in the Green Party have little remorse. The only pain they feel is when someone like me reproaches them, and then they hang their heads in shame and cry that I ought not to expect them to be scientists. No, I do not. In fact I do not expect them to even be literate enough to read about hemp, though some have found their way on to this blog and complained vociferously. The best thing they ever did was to back Cynthia McKinney for President of the United States in '08, and even that they could not get very right, with a high profile candidate like her they ought to have gotten millions more votes, but their stupid stunts make them a pariah party.

Let's hope that we can allow our governments to implement public safety measure without interference from these know-it-all climate change fanatics. How much more money has to be spent on their pipe dreams, and how many more have to die before we see through their drug induced hysteria?

2009-02-09T12:27:00.000-08:00

OF HAWKS AND HEMP

The image above is the painting I am working on, its revelance to hemp is that I used hemp seed oil, along with linseed oil and poppy seed oil to paint it. Previous posts on this site will have more technical information on the drying of oils. The hawk is a Red-tailed Hawk, mature male, Buteo jamaicensis. They are often mobbed by crows, and they can well hold their own against a flock of these birds. In Central Park I once watched Pale Male, the famous resident Red-tailed Hawk, non-chalantly scatter a few of these pests. The next day, I found the carcass of the corvid rotting in the bushes.

I am nearly finished with this, and am offering the original for sale at £11,000, and giclee limited edition prints, each signed, numbered and hand finished, for £100. Size is roughly A2 on archival paper for the prints, same size as original, which is painted on Belgian fine portrait linen.

2009-02-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

FURTHER NOTES ON

E-MOTION

Just after the last post on electric vehicles, I came across a small article in the Guardian (they might not have wanted to do a large article, you know, with all those car ads in their paper) about the first e-motorbike to go 150mph. Mission One, a California company, has just been put on sale by Mission Motors, for delivery in 2010. Mission Motors' founder, Forrest North, is a former Tesla engineer. His bike is to take part in this summer's TTXGP, a motor race in the Isle of Man that bills itself as the world's first clean emissions grand prix. Story by Adam Vaughan.