BAN THE BAGS!

Earlier posts on this blog talked about the bag mania that came in around 2007 when the Anya Hindmarch bags, made of cotton, were outed as being made in Chinese sweatshops...we then made a plain grey hemp bag which was the real thing, and held them up in protest outside the Hindmarch shop in London. Cotton, being a worldwide destructive monocrop, was used in those and other ecologically deastructiv bags worldwide. Here in New York these trendy bags are being recalled, as such bags, usually made in China, have been found to contain lead. Michael M. Grynbaum writes in yesterday's New York Times that consumers, such as Jen Bluestein, are finding out that it is fraud. Bluestein notes: "Green is a trend and people go with trends...People get them as fashion statements and they have, like, 50 of them. I don't think people know the real facts."

Duh. People don't, and the cotton industry is not letting on. So we now have these dangerous and idiotic bags when we could have had the real thing: Hemp. Plain hemp bags. Grynbaum notes, ironically, that "climate-change-conscious shoppers at one of Manhattan's culinary meccas on Sunday said they were chagrined that yet another good intention had gone awry." Shelley Kempner says "Bummer! We're still not doing the right thing", and asks if we might have to start using string bags. Actually, this is a good idea, less is more; we used these in Istanbul in the 1960s, and they were great. They were also biodegradable. But the problem with them is that no trendy lefty idiot shops get to print their name on them, so they are overlooked. Wholier-than-thou-Foods for instance has a big bag of its own, with its logo on it. But it is not hemp. Oh no, it is ecologically destructive cotton. Bluestein and Kempner were right. So when are we going to get it right?

KILLER THREADS

Belsize Park now has a new piece of merchandise with which to identify. It is a Belsize Ban Bag shopping bag. Is it made of hemp? No. Jute, bamboo, or flax? No, no and no. It is not made of cotton, is it? Unfortunately, yes. The trendy and foolish went and got themselves a piece of the bag war action and now want to parade around in a cotton bag. Bear in mind that a good number of residents here drive 4x4s. This is not an environmentally friendly neighbourhood. It is a good place to buy drugs or run into George Michael, Kate Moss, Pete Doherty or other drug users, and lots of rich people trying to be very cool indeed. But not so affluent that they could afford a real hemp bag, which only cost £10 or less from The Hemp Shop. And for that you get a long-lasting 100% organic hemp bag, the one which the Ecologist picked up on last year and which I used for my protests againt the Anya Hindmarch bag and other cotton atrocities.

So I am not going to make many friends in trendy Belsize Park. Not that I was ever anxious to waste my time with the likes of Moss and Michaels. Better things to do, like draw attention to the coming water crisis. For more information on this and why cotton is a threat to humanity, see related posts on this blog by clicking on the tags below.

In the meantime take a tour of Belsize Park and look for the Real Eco Bags are Made of Hemp bag- if you correctly spot me with it, and email me at hemppaperproject@yahoo.com, I will send you a prize, something made of hemp, or maybe even a copy of Hemp for Victory. Hint: I am very untrendy. Very uncool. That is my image.

NOTES FROM THE

SEPTEMBER o8 ISSUE

OF THE ECOLOGIST

This month the Ecologist hails hemp, and much as I would like to start, and end with that, there are quite a number of other worthy articles that were more than just a good read. The first to catch my eye was a short piece on how the government has actively tried to play down the launch of ground-breaking legislation that could give local communities a direct say in how they are governed. The Sustainable Communities Act of 2007 was not even given a press release on the day it received royal assent. Sometimes the only way to get the government to work is to take it to court, and this is the subject of another short piece on Georgina Downs, who is doing just that. She is famous in the UK for acting against pesticide spraying. It seems that the French, however, are a bit ahead in terms of getting the government to act, as Sarkozy has launched the Mediterranean Solar Power Plan, which will set up mirrors to reflect sunlight into tanks that will heat water to drive turbines. This is a very efficient device, it loses only three percent of its energy in transport every 1,000 km. Even though this might not work for more northern nations, it would help these nations as the demand for other forms of energy would decrease, and we could have cheaper petrol.

Hardly any magazine is without some coverage of the US presidential race, the Ecologist's contribution to this is a piece by Joss Garman who debunks the green claims of McCain. Not that anyone thought he was that green to begin with. Last time this year Mark Anslow interviewed the US Green presidential candidate, Cynthia Mckinney, who needs no fig leaf to be green - she was in fact cooking up hemp porridge when he arrived. Obama seems to be Garman's choice, and I can only roll my eyes thinking about the damage this political neophyte would do in every way to the nation and the world. I do not look forward to an Obamanation or a McCainnation.

Another issue with US overtones is peak oil, which Richard Heinberg, author of Peak Everything, weighs in on. "Reducing oil dependency is seen as a matter of economic survival", he asserts. Tell that to the Obama and McCain.

Pat Thomas, the editor, spills the beans on soya. This plant is a monster, but like cotton, it has a devout following and criticising it is frowned upon. The people who promote it all wear green fig leaves and hang out at vegan fairs and left wing rallies, so they must be really good people, right? No way. They are exploiting a certain image and the good intentions of their fellow vegans to sell them a crop that is for the most part GM modified and full of phytates which block the uptake of essential minerals in the intestines. In addition, it inhibits enzymes, messes with our red blood cells, contains isoflavones which can disrupt homone function and often contains aluminium as the acid wash/alkaline wash processes used takes place in aluminium pots which leech this metal into the soya. Yummie! But try to tell that to the vegan high priests who are turning the temple into a market place. Oh, and one more thing, the soya cultivation is destroying the rain forest. But stopping zealots with facts is just about impossible. I will try on Sunday, 7 September when I talk at the Vegan Fest in Kensington, but I may just get thrown out. The money changers like to keep the show going and inconvenient fact finders are brushed aside.

A few pages down there is another article on the US, this one about the nation at war, with moths. It seems just like a deja vu; California is spraying tons of harmful pesticides made by a pesticide company that gave lots of money to the powers that be. Schwarzenegger and his team are making money this time. Where is his green fig leaf? Surely not to be found in a hemp field, as he vetoed the state hemp initiatives twice. Since hemp is a crop that does not use a lot of pesticides, maybe it was in the financial interests of these companies. This article, by Clare Robinson, is a must read for anyone in that state. It will go much further than any by the LA Times etc.

Bringing this back to the UK, an excellent piece on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) which are proving themselves to be cost efficient. Ed Hamer, the author, is himself a farmer in Devon. There is also mention of the certification process, which has been a somewhat of a hoax, or another way to raise money by self appointed green gurus who take lots of cash to fly around the world and stay in luxury hotels. In reality this excludes a lot of very deserving small businesses and favours those who pay thousands for their kosher certificate. Another UKcentric piece takes us to Sussex, where Louise Amos revives the art of 'close shepherding', which has the advantage of reviving eroded heathland.

And then on to hemp...with an essay by Laura Sevier. She begins by telling us how she has the "Real Eco Bags are Made from Hemp" 100% organic hemp bag with her everywhere she goes, so this woman is no mercenary freelancer just trying to fill up pages. She then goes on to give the basic information, on which there is no need to enter at large upon here, and then onto a number f UK based companies. Although the article tends to focus a bit too much on BioRegional, which is not in the hemp business and did not produce much, if at all, from their fields, much due to a lack of having researched the subject, it deserves much credit for having mention of a number of the more productive enterprises in the field of hemp, such as House of Hemp, which produces some really colourful and tactile womens apparel. Too many reporters go for the hemp as sackcloth story and get it all wrong. And another fault of reporters is to shy away from the 'activist' brigade in hemp. Were it not for the 'activists' hemp would not even be legal in the UK, and there would be no story. At present Henry Braham, a wealthy Londoner who drives a large 4x4, is trying to cash in on hemp and has made it known that he only wants a certain mainstream type of blogger and reporter - he has specifically discriminated against those who are 'too political'; or, perhaps, those who know a thing or two about hemp and would ask him inconvenient question like what kind of defoliant he uses on his plants and if the seeds are hot or cold pressed. He is NOT mentioned in the Ecologist article, despite his wealth, or the fact that he has his oil in Tesco (not a fact to be proud of). But one might argue he is green indeed; or at least his 4x4 is, a fact pointed out with comic effect in the 2004 Telegraph.

It's good to see a journalist avoid these flashy wide boys and give credit where credit is due. The people Sevier features have all made real contributions to the industry, including Bobby Pugh of the Hemp Shop, who designed the aforementioned hemp bag (see related posts on this site by clicking on tags for Anya Hindmarch, hemp bag). A number of hemp businesses are featured in a photo essay which includes: The Hemp Trading Co., Green Stationery, The Hemp Store, The Hemp Shop, Braintree, Sativa Bags, Pukka Herbs, Hemp Garden, Innocent Oils, The Natural Store, Howies, Enamore, Inbi-Hemp, Green Fibres, Whitaker Publising, and Green Kickers.

If I might make some small criticism of the article, it would be to note that the assertion "hemp...needs to be laid on the ground to allow the natural fungi and bacteria to loosen and separate the bast fibres from the woody core..." is misleading. Sevier is quoting BioRegional a few lines down, and I assume this comes from them? Hemp is much more suited to other forms of retting, and again, such discussion can be found on this blog. Nice people that they are, hemp is not their field, though they raised some fields of hemp once (which they have not done much with). It all seems to have gone to Katherine Hamnett who made a rather, may I say, uninspired jacket out of it all and has done nothing with it since. Flashy, but not what we need. I say the activists, anoraks and real scientists who spend their time perfecting the hemp movement are what we need, not 4x4 driving media types and cotton loving fashionistas.

We do need real media coverage, and may I say the Ecologist and Laura Sevier get my vote here. Not for nothing are they known as the leading environmental magazine. The Goldsmiths and their crew have worked hard over the years to bring us cutting edge and very accurate articles. They cover ground which others fear to tread. This is real journalism, and we'd all like to see more of it. Thank you Ecologist for all your support over the years, we hope to see more articles on hemp, many of us who have read this present one are hoping that the next one will be on hemp food.

REVIEW OF 2007

Lots happened this year, hemp was on the increase yet again worldwide. Dave Monson in North Dakota ended up suing the US Gov over his right to grow hemp, a fight which made the front page of the New York Times in July. In South Dakota, the Lakota Indians continued their fight to grow hemp and ended up seceeding from the US, a story the mainstream press does not know what to do with. Good luck to them! White man no damn good...except for me!

Talking of no damn good stupid white men, good old Boy George managed to get corn growers to use their crops for ethanol, the entire plants going to ethanol production, which made the press decide ethanol was no damn good. None of them picked up on the fact that you use the edible part of the plant first then use the waste parts for ethanol. Must have missed science in school.

Others who missed science in school flew around the world in jets telling us not to fly around the world in jets and sold us the global warming scare. Then it was found out that these scaremongers were raking in $50m and treating people like dirt. Those who paid attention in science class posed inconvenient facts, which were ignored by the likes of George Monbiot and the Guardian.

So much nonsense from that paper got some people irked, including a 9-year-old who started jessthekid.blogspot.com Like may people, she is tired of pseudo environmentalists, especially the kind who support cotton. Organic cotton is now turning into a disaster, as it takes up more space and more water then cotton grown with pesticides. Here in the West we take water for granted, and pay lots of money to transport bottled water. You can see them gulping it down at the Guardian offices, where they are helping to destroy the rain forests by refusing to switch to hemp based paper. So for 2008, we are on a mission to put the spotlight on all the newspapers we can - and this includes eco papers as well. Stop using wood paper!

And stop wearing cotton - the writing on the wall reads: "Real Environmentalists Wear Hemp!"

And real environmentalists use hemp bags - a point we made this year with the creation of the hemp bag in answer to all these cotton bags, including the Anya Hindmarch bag. The press was on her, with the Evening Standard taking her to task on the front page in April.

I am still eating the hemp hearts and hemp candy bars that Roger Snow so kindly sent me from Rocky Mountain Grain Products in Canada. I shared them with Cynthia Mckinney when she visited London in September. What a trip that was! There was a bunch of oddballs trying to host her, including the David (the Messianic) Shayler! I make no apology for jumping in and getting her a nice place to stay and some good press, including Big Issue. Its founder, John Bird, was someone who encouraged Mina Hegaard of Minawear when she was just starting that business. They loved McKinney, who wore an orange jump suit outside the US Embassy in protest at Guantanamo Bay, but I doubt she wore it on the plane back (or she would be herself in Guantanama Bay); instead, she had hemp - given to her by Gav Lawson of THTC. While she was here she met with Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth and also Baroness Jenny Tonge - her ladyship (who hates being addressed so formally - but I like to stand on ceremony) has been a great supporter of the hemp movement here in the UK and we gave her the 100% organic hemp bag mentioned above. The bag, by the way, is basic, I call it ugly, and I am proud of it as a mother owl her chicks. It takes the mick out of every single bag out there because it is hemp!

Later in the year I met a remarkable woman, Jane Pasquill of House of Hemp and saw some really great multi-colour apparel. She wants to harvest hemp next year in Cornwall, and may yet kickstart the UK hemp milling industry.

By email and phone I met also Remy Chevalier, who is Gurdjieff's grandson. His sister lives here in London, the renowned artist CM Chevalier, whom I have yet to meet. We may just do so at the opening to ECO in Chiswick, where hemp sheets by Jilly Cholmondeley will be on sale. Expect it to open in January.

But I am jumping ahead and there is so much more to tell about 2007...maybe just best to suggest you check it out here as I blogged constantly this year. A review of which would not be complete without mentioning Sagar Shah, who is just now in India. He went to visit the famous octogenarian falconer Sirdar Mohamed Osman in Dehra Doon, whose books we publish (on hemp paper) at the Eryr Press. Sagar started his own website for hemp - http://www.hempandnaturalfibres.ning.com/ and will be giving me a report back from India.

So now I can jump ahead again...with a wish to make 2008 the best year ever for hemp - let's kick the press into action and get everyone wearing hemp so we can keep our trees and not use up everyone's water!

HOW GREEN IS THE TIMES?

This Saturday an article in the Times by Anna Shepard starts off with a very good question - How Green is my bag? It then fails completely to give an answer. It talks about cottton bags made by rich people like a certain member of the Bush family, on sale for £35 at Harrods, and the Anya Hindmarch bag - which Anna might know, if she read her own paper, was a disaster made in Chinese sweatshops. Click here for a link.

If she read up on her subject she just might have mentioned hemp - or even jute and ramie, but the world is full of these journalists and only an idiot believes that they know about everything they sound off about in the papers. Especially if that paper is the Times, and happens to be printed on wood pulp paper. It is not that hard to produce hemp paper, individuals do it all the time and the Ecologist used such paper in one of their issues.

Slowly, people are waking up to the fact that cotton is an environmentally destructive plant and that the press, including some of the 'eco-mags' are not telling us the truth. Many in the 'green' circles are just not aware of this at all - including Al Gore and George Monbiot. The former made a fool of himself in London as he barged in and kicked invited guests off the guests list and barred the press from asking questions - especially inconvenient ones; he got paid $100,000 for this charade, and anyone stupid enough to hire him deserves to lose a little money. For one thing, the sight of another green hypocrite dressed up in cotton, after having flown thousands of miles to get his cheque, is enough to start a riot; which almost occured after Monbiot's speech at the US Embassy on 8 December, as a group called We Are Change tried to get him to talk facts about things. I left before they started on him, but not without waving a sign about hemp and showing my hemp bag, the one that says: "Real Eco Bags are made from Hemp". It got knowing looks from a lot of people. Much as I wanted to wear it to the Gore event, they were not letting many people in and probably would have had me tasered, just like the student in Florida who asked an inconvenient question of John Kerry. Brave New World indeed. More like 1984.

HEMP IN NEW YORK

This month hemp has been making news in New York City. After Anya Hindmarch sold her bags to lots of people lined up outside of Whole Foods, a hemp bag was seen on the shoulders of some women in New York, and it casually stated: "REAL ECO BAGS ARE MADE FROM HEMP". Having the real thing, none of these ladies wasted any time on the line for the Anya bag. Ironically, people buying the Anya bag, supposedly to to something green, were asking the shop for plastic bags to put them in. Then they went and sold them on Ebay. A limited edition of how many million? The REAL ECO BAG was made in an edition of less than 200, and sold exclusively to Ecologist and Positive News readers. John Vidal, environment editor of the Guardian, suggested (jokingly) we send one to Posh, but sorry ma'am, we ran out. Next time we do a run we'll keep you in mind...

On Saturday, 21 July, the New York Times put a story on the front page about the struggle for hemp in North Dakota. NORML posted it on their site in its entirety, save for the photo, click here to view. It is a well written piece, the author, Monica Davey, obviously took the time to get the facts. Technical details and irony give her piece the character of a good front page piece, and I would hope that more pieces like this appear in the press.

The bag on the shoulder of this young woman was made from Romanian hemp, 100% organic, and manufactured in the UK by Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop. It and similar bags will be carried by Minawear in the US. Hopefully, however, the hemp can be made in the USA and grown in the USA. American farmers are getting sick of the DEA and its red tape, and some of them, like Dave Monson, are taking the government to court.

Later next month, on 21-23 August, there will be a public event in support of hemp called Lakota Hemp Days, click here to be taken to site. While that event promises to much of a young, music driven, 'leftie' event, Dave Monson and other hemp activists are very much 'right-wingers'. What we are seeing is that hemp rises above politics, and has broad support. Americans really want a profitable crop that does not require pesticides, and as hemp can be used for food, paper, textiles, medicine and energy, there is great demand for it.

REAL ECO BAGS ARRIVE IN NEW YORK

Image left is one of the Whole Foods locations in New York, at which shoppers lined up to buy an environmentally destructive bag which was booed in the UK earlier this year. The designer then did what so many do when they get bad press, they go elsewhere and hope no one will know. It seems New Yorkers are not too keen on being swindled, a trawl on websites this morning turned up some rather anti-Anya comments, and NYers are not known for their shyness.

To add to it all, the cat was out of the bag when thousands noticed a real environmentalist, Cindy Mackintosh, one of the authors of Hemp for Victory, walking around with her hemp bag. It says boldly on the side: "REAL ECO BAGS ARE MADE FROM HEMP". She is like the queen with the real tiara at a ball next to a woman wearing a plastic one, and Anya is the woman in the plastic tiara. In addition, Cindy is from the area, and used to run the Rhinoceros restaurant in New York. Her husband, Londoner Nick Mackintosh, is also a contributor to Hemp for Victory. The bag she took with her is the very one featured in The Ecologist (p. 86 July/August issue) and also on this site previously. The Hemp Shop in the UK stocks it, but negotiations are in place for more stockists worldwide. Including one in the Big Apple.

Speaking of New York and all things hemp, it would be amiss not to mention Denis Cicero and his restaurant, Galaxy Global Eatery, located at 15th an Irving (212 777 3631). Last time Cindy was in the city he gave her an autographed copy of his book, The Galaxy Global Eatery Hemp Cookbook. The two restaurateurs will have a lot to talk about this year, and this time is it Cindy who is giving Denis a book. But the bag she will keep to herself. Even he will have to wait till more of them come off the line.

FIELDS OF GREEN

In 1900, James Lane Allen of Kentucky wrote about the hemp as "fields of living emerald". He might be seeing red today if he knew about the status of hemp under the law; his book was titled Reign of Law, but today he would not have hemp to write about; just lots of lawlessness as the politicians rip off the taxpayers. It's called 'organised crime'.

The hemp issue and other environmental issues are now hot topics, even hotter than the weather (which has been rather cool here in the UK and many other parts as well, with monsoon rains here and villages under 9 feet of water - water, water everywhere). So of course the Big Green Gathering will have someone there talking about hemp, namely me. I am already laying out my green clothes, from Braintree trousers to a Minawear limited edition tie-dye shirt to a pair of green sunglasses (for a trip to the Wizard).

So look for the jolly green hempster at the Moon Marquee on Friday, 3 August, at 8:30 pm. This year the event will be at Fernhill Farm above the Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. Last year there were 20,000 attendees, and it looks like we will have quite a crowd again. For info click here. Tickets can also be ordered over the phone at (44) 01458 830 281.

BTW, it may be a cool idea to have a hemp bag to carry around the farm, and this month The Ecologist has a reader offer on one that says: "REAL ECO BAGS ARE MADE OF HEMP". It is 100% organic hemp, made in the UK. It is the real thing, no cotton involved in it, unlike the Anya bags and other ersatz bags being foisted on us by the cotton lovers. (see related posts for full story on cotton and the bag wars). The bag can be ordered from The Hemp Shop while supplies last, click here for info.

I got this bag in the post last week, delayed a bit by the strike, but soon after I was using it I got mugged; just like when you wear an Rolex in a rough neighbourhood, my bag got taken off me. The perpetrator was one of my co-authors, as a matter of fact, who wanted it to walk around Manhattan with. So if you are in the Big Apple, an you see a woman with a burlappy grey bag sporting the above-mentioned logo, quite possible hanging out at the Galaxy Global Eatery on 15th & Irving, that is one of the hemp team from London (though she is actually from New Jersey, but likes lots of rain, so she moved to London, where she lives with her husband Nick).

NEWS AND VIEWS

A story by Janet Cromley of the LA Times caught my eye today, click here to read. For some reason it is listed as being in the Cincinnati Post, so maybe they ran it. Easier than doing your own article on the subject I guess. The piece talks about all the hemp foods, hemp sauce, hemp tortillas, etc, that are on sale at Whole Foods in California. It then goes on to describe the nutritional benefits, and Cromley evidently did spend time researching and getting it right. Well done.

Here in the UK the front page of the Evening Standard also caught my eye, and set me back one of those heptagonal pieces of change I'd rather give to other causes, but the story was about the bag wars, so I parted with 50p. The local councils, led by Merrick Cockell (Tory leader of the London Councils organisation) want to charge people 10p as a tax on plastic bags - and one wonders if the diplomats at the US Embassy who refuse to pay the London congestion charge can legally avoid this as it is, or would be, officially a tax; the congestion charge is a service charge, from which only lunatics (by some 12th century statute) are exempt. If enacted it would greatly reduce the use of plastic bags. It is set to go for debate before MPs in November, and I think it is a good idea. Such a tax has led to a 90% drop in plastic bag use in Ireland.

So there is a good idea, but an even better idea is to just get a long-lasting hemp bag and not pay this tax at all, let them try to collect it from lunatics and US diplomats arrogant enough to carry on using the plastic bag. Hopefully, though, all this will NOT lead to people using environmentally destructive cotton bags, as Anya Hindmarch tried to do earlier this year. She and other eco-wannabes need to be restrained, otherwise we might just end up destroying the world's waterways and arable land by more cotton cultivation. [see related posts for more details].

ANYA VS. ONYA

IN THE

GREAT

GAME OF ECO CON

First we had Anya Hindmarch and her uncool pesticide loving cotton bag slagged off in the press after we made some calls to the fourth estate, which resulted in getting lots of press outing the silly fashionistas. However, it seems after the Anya bag people, the Onya bag people have decided to make the press look like fools with a plastic bag. Note the sign in the picture, taken by the notorious Chris Sanders of London; it's made of, yep, you guessed it, plastic. So again the Guardian and The Independent are made to look like fools, as both are listed on the Onya website as papers that promoted their environmentally destructive bag, which they claim has been sold to 380,000. One born every minute, so I am sure they have sold a few more by now.

But just how can they get away with this? It seems as if the journalists involved are complete idiots. For instance, they claim it is made of 'parachute silk'. No one bothers to check what that is, so they go off like crazed George Monbiot fans on their eco crusade not even realising they are zealously promoting plastic. Or, maybe they just work for second rate publications and they do not care.

Sanders, meanwhile, is in hiding at his schmoo safe house, but you can see what he had to say at his secret schmoo site. It turns out that after taking millions of quid off of people in these kinds of scams, some of the perpetrators and the idiots in the press do not like either of us very much. Hemp is never on their agenda, in fact, they are following in the footsteps of the Hearst Media people who tried to vilify hemp to promote plastic.

That is, if they are not on a top level assignment outside the Twin Towers in pursuit of a very important scoop on Paris Hilton. If I disagree with the schmoomaster on anything, it's his posts on Ms. Hilton, who is a public menace. He seems to miss the fact that her family had given money to the stupid sheriff who let her out, overriding the judge's orders. What about all those guys in orange jump suits (made either of plastic or cotton) in Guantanamo Bay?

Hilton is lucky not to have been sentenced in Singapore, as she would not even be wearing an orange jump suit, but her birthday suit, and she would be caned. Now that's sounds like justice. Send her to Singapore, or Guantanamo Bay, where innocent people spend years without any charges. You don't see her crying for them, do you? For cellmates Paris could have Anya Hindmarch and the Onya bag people. Then again there's Abu Ghraib, where the Bushite Republican Guards have raped men, women and children, but where was her cry over that? Like most Americans, she was rather silent. But now she is making noise and having crying fits and her fans are contributing to global warming with an airplane pulling a banner.

A few years back I myself had a free stay in the Twin Towers, when the famous LAPD were terrorising a bunch of hip hop dancers on Venice Beach. Machine guns and helicopters over head, we thought it was al-Qaeda trying to run everyone off the beach. When I called 911 to make a report on police brutality, they came for me. Since I pleaded not guilty to the made up charge of failure to move (I couldn't move, there were cops and kids all over so I had to keep cool and stay put), they took me off to the Twin Towers, where everyone was asking me if I was the guy the cops jumped on the news in Venice...Yea, that was me. It's not a pleasant place, and the guards are a bit sick. Since I did not have Paris Hilton's money, I got shuffled around for a day, they do that, change your cell every hour just as you've gone to sleep, then if they don't like you, lose you in the system and don't allow you to post bail. And since I questioned why the cops did not let the kids do their dance, for which they had a proper permit, I was not as popular as Paris Hilton.

But with all these fans, where is anyone offering to serve out her sentence? Come on now, free room and board at the famous Twin Towers Hilton in beautiful downtown LA and an orange jump suit, which matches the Anya and Onya bags.

TEXAS CHAINSTORE MASSACRES AND

OTHER NEWS FROM THE USA

Image left is of Doug Yurchey, who has just written a sequel to his epic piece on the reasons behind the suppression of hemp and its cousin, marijuana. He got an avalanche of emails from people who use hemp, and medicinal hemp in particular, to attest to the reality that Cannabis sativa is a plant of great value. The FDA and the DEA have even greater access to this information, but guess what...

Much talk on hemp will be taking place this weekend in California, where two great weekend festivals are taking place. One is the Health and Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, 8/9/10th June. Music by Erykah Badu, Brain Wilson, Rickie Lee Jones et al. Lots of speakers, and vendors to include Minawear and GeoMio. Both companies will also be at the Fairfax Festival in Marin County, 94930. 20 bands will be playing in the redwoods.

Here in the UK the Texas based US giant Wholefoods, known to many as Wholepaycheque as some of their food is soooo expensive, has moved into a giant complex in oh soooo posh Kensington. The Guardian noted of yesterday's opening that the pesticide loving cotton Anya Hindmarch bag was ubiquitous at the event. Kind of like a swastika at a Bar Mitzvah, one wonders if the Guardian reporter can really have that short a memory stick in their brain...only last month the bag was ridiculed by all and sundry, with a front page bash in the Evening Standard. OK, so people with lots of money who went out and bought this on Ebay are now showing off their dosh in Kensington AND trying to be eco-cool. I will relish crashing this party with the hemp bag which says quite brazenly "Real Eco Bags are made of Hemp". Hemp, what's hemp? will probably be the words on many posh, eco-wannabe lips. I can be so uncool! Wait for images of me, Mr. Mean with the inconvenient facts, on this site. Or, if anyone out there wants to join me, give me a bell at cannabissatival@hotmail.com

News from the US would not be complete without at least some mention of that very, very, very, very important person, Paris Hilton. She has apparently checked into a hotel which does not live up to the standards of the Paris Hilton, or any other Hilton for that matter, and has done what any other rich kid would do; she checked out. Officials at the facility have stated that "she had an ache in the tummy and we sent her home to mummy". Or something like that, I did not quite catch the exact wording. However, I lost interest when I learnt that the substandard hotel she checked out of did not even have the class to give her a hemp wardrobe. Most likely they just threw her an orange jump suit made of pesticide loving cotton, probably made at the same sweatshop as the Anya Hindmarch bags. I would of course love to meet Paris Hilton, if only to juxtapose myself next to her with a real eco bag, made of hemp. Not to be mean, but it would be kind of nice if she went back to her hotel without incident and we did not hear another word about her for 23 days...or more.

MAY IN REVIEW

Hemp is in the air, and in the field, but flowers will have to wait a month or so. As the hemp grows in the field, each day a little bit, so does the movement. Lots of little things to do last month, such as finishing up Bulletin # 1 of the British Isles Hemp & Natural Fibres Industries Association: Hemp as a Replacement Crop for Heroin in Afghanistan. Copies of this 24 page report are available from The Hemp Shop in the UK.

Some dark forces in this world might not like this, as they have, after invading Afghanistan, made poppies to prosper. And guess what, in Iraq, the rice fields are being plowed up and replaced with poppy fields. Is this the progress Bush was talking about? No wonder he wants to stay there forever. US troops are free guards, courtesy of the US taxpayer. One such taxpayer lost her son in Iraq, and when Bush handed her the medal, he joked about it and told her not to sell it on Ebay. Where is the dignity?

And where is the hemp? He finally got talking about ethanol, and it seemed too good to be true. Turns out it was, the idiots used up corn and drove the corn prices sky high so the Mexicans were protesting at his visit. Henry Ford used hemp and farm wastes, but I guess the modern environmentalist does not take the time to read such details, they just jump out there with George Bush and George Monbiot, and when it all fails, they tell us biofuels don't work. Try doing what has been proven effective and you just might be surprised.

Another proven use of hemp to which it has not been put by the wanna-be environmentalists is in the production of shopping bags. Anya Hindmarch came out with her bags in April and was bagged by the national press, and in May we worked on the hemp bag which is featured on this site. Our protests were mentioned in the May issue of The Ecologist, which is doing a reader offer in the July/August issue. We plan some fun with this, as it would really take the mick to carry this bag around all the posh spots of London, and maybe a bit outside the US Embassy.

From the US Dave Olson called to say he was coming over, which means we will be able to give him a hemp bag to take back. Doug Yurchey wrote a sequel to his famous piece on the real reason hemp is illegal, taking a swipe at Judge Judy and the idiot brigade which is keeping hemp out of reach for Americans. So either you buy your petrol from the Middle East or you use up all your corn and the price of corn flakes goes up.

On a sad note, it does not look like Dave Monson of North Dakota got his permits in time to sow hemp, as George Washington commanded. The good ol' DEA dragged its feet and efforts on the part of the US taxpayer were wasted. Let's hope to reverse this sad state of affairs and have hemp in the ground in the US this time next year.

CONTRABAGGED

The CIA is offering a reward for the arrest and capture of the man in the photo, seen taking the mick out of celebs and fake environmentalists. Abandoning their search for Osama bin Laden, who they have forgotten, they have now issued a fatwa against this new enemy, believed to be in cahoots with The Hemp Shop, schmoo on the run and The Ecologist. Schmoo is a subversive blogger last seen in the vicinity of the MI5 HQ in London, and The Ecologist is believed to have moved their HQ from Chelsea to a secret location on Commercial Street in E1.

Other sightings include: the library at UCSB, Venice Beach, the British Library, the NYPL, assorted hemp fields in the EU, and lately at the Legal Cafe in North London, where he may be committing illegal subversion. The background in the photo is now known to CIA analysts to be the Anya Hindmarch shop on Pont Street in London, which was peddling the environmentally destructive bag seen in the window, made of cotton in a secret location in China where the workers don't make enough to buy the bag they are sweating to make. Subject has also been spotted on Bond Street, allegedly to take the mick out of posh shoppers who are also supporting the cotton and pesticide industries.

Reputable sources have recently handed in confidential reports of sightings at the Minawear and GeoMio offices, where he may be planning the dissemination of information regarding the petrol and pesticide industries.

WARNING: Heavily armed with facts and dangerous in a debate. Opinion mongers George Monbiot and Johann Hari are known to be victims of his attacks, both now in hiding from his invititations to open debate. If spotted, immediately call the CIA office nearest you, or any newspaper which they have infiltrated, and give a full description of his movements. Do the same if any other person is seen with this bag in hand, which is believed to be a weapon of mass information aimed at large petrochemical businesses and second rate journalists.

BAG BANNED IN THE GREEN ZONE

After last month's fiasco with the Anya Hindmarch cotton bags, major chains decided to get into the fray with their own 'eco-bag', which meant that Sainsburys gave out an orange plastic bag. Not very green, but this bag at least was reusable.

As the logo above states, real eco-bags are made from hemp. Jute, ramie or flax might also make good eco-bags, but using cotton, even if it claims it is organic, is like eating Kosher pork.

The Hemp Shop will be offering these bags, in a limited edition, made of 100% organic hemp and manufactured under ethical conditions in the UK. Look for them also in Positive News and The Ecologist. Expect to see them around Mayfair and other posh spots, taking the mick out of all the celebrities who are wearing environmentally destructive cotton. Or on the arms of real environmentalists anywhere. But if you go to Baghdad, don't expect to find it in the Green Zone.

ARPIL SHOWERS MAY BRING FLOWERS: THE MONTH IN REVIEW

This is traditionally a month for sowing hemp in northern countries. With quite a bit of that going on, and Hemcore gaining approval for its new facility in England, which the local council granted after they agreed to widen the road, we are looking forward to harvests later this year.

We can also look forward to more consumer awareness, as the bagwars, which took place in posh parts of London, have sparked major newspaper articles about the Anya Hindmarch cotton bags that people were buying for £5 to sell on E-bay for £100. On 25 April, thousands queued at Sainsburys all over the UK, but by Friday, two major publications had questions about that; the first was The Ecologist, whose May issue hit the stands that day with a mention of the protest outside the Camden Sainsburys (p.8). That same day the Evening Standard trashed the bag on their front page. Saturday somehow all the major papers had journalists who had sudden inspirations to also trash the bag, noting that it was made in China, not fairtrade, and made of cotton. They all seem to have received uniquely personal inspirations all at the same time, and so they wrote much the same thing. Poor Anya Hindmarch, whose side I was definitely not on to start with, was being blamed for it all, and Sainsburys was not happy to answer questions. It may be that she listens to some real environmentallists and pulls out of this OK, as after all, I have to say I think she was trying to do the right thing, but got bad advice from We Are What We Do, whose website I won't bother to link to.

But for all that press, it seemed at some point that the press gang were now a bunch of bullies; one paper even tried to sell its own cotton 'ecobag' after they gave her bad press. Neither side said anything about hemp, and this was after I had called the papers, especially the Independent and the Guardian to get them to cover our protest on 25 April. The former, ironically, covered the story not only without any mention of hemp, but without even bothering to spell 'Hindmarch' consistently. So much for lazy journalists.

Much more on the ball is Baroness Tonge, who sent to me an answer from Baroness Amos regarding her question about hemp as a replacement crop for heroin in Afghanistan (posed 29 Jan.). She lamented in her letter that they seemed to not know much about the subject, and ironically, I read this the same day (2 May) that Richard Bacon on BBC5 Live had a panel of 'eco-experts'. These worthies got one question about hemp from a call-in, and they could not answer it, so Bacon said that perhaps we ought to read up about hemp. I tried calling 5 Live but it was by then a dead issue with them, on to silly stuff, such as Question Time in the House of Commons, in which someone asked the Prime Minister if he grew his own.

Maybe the 'eco-experts' on 5 Live will know the answer. May may bring some enlightenment, if not from 5 Live and the other press gangs, at least from Positive News and The Ecologist, which are working with us to provide customers with 100%, made in the UK, organic hemp bags. Already I am carrying my own, courtesy of Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop, and people are noticing a bit self-consciously as they reach for their cotton bags) or, in Primrose Hill, simply use the plastic bags. PH is a 'hood where 4x4s are the norm, and dog owners foul the streets because they are too cool to care. Some of them get their kicks from cocaine (because they think that is very cool), but I get mine from cannabis, in the form of my bag. Look for me, and my bag, which I am proud to say is grey and of 'uncomplicated design' at posh places like Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Anya Hindmarch.

ROCKETS' RED GLARE

An article on schmoontherun may yet get its author in deep doo-doo with Mr. Bush. As he notes in his piece, the American people are getting poisoned, and Mr. Bush has put a gag order on the Environmental Protection Agency so that they cannot do their job. In the meantime, Bush's friends do their job and sell lots of rocket fuel to the US military, which is now spending more money then the mint can even print.

The fuel gets into the water supply, and it then keeps on going. A rocket stops at some point, but the fuel gets into the water, then into the crops, then into you. But not into me, because I escaped and got the hell out. So unless they drag me back in an orange jump suit for disseminating this kind of information, I am safe...unless, of course, they put US rockets where I live (which is a secret location) and then the water all gets full of this. In America, it is happening at 12,000 bases. Osama bin Laden heard about it and decided to retire early, he says Al Qaida does not really need him to mess up America, Bush and Cheney are doing a better job, and no one is allowed to ask questions.

So don't drink the water in Uncle Sam's land. Just shut up and do what you are told. The press is there setting an example, unless they are out at the party for the "Gods of War II" playstation party, where Sony had a live goat slaughtered as a sacrifice to these 'gods', and encouraged people to eat the entrails. In addition, journalists could have things put in their mouths by half-naked wait staff. I was wondering where they were all off to last week when I called the Independent and other papers here to get them to take picures of the Anya Hindmarch bag event, which, as I predicted, turned into a major story. Sony, which makes these violent video games, is itself a media giant. So no surprise that they are not covering the stories about eco bags or rocket fuel poisoning the water supply in America. I guess the Yanks will all have to drink imported French water. Yeah man, live free or die.

WEEDS AND DEEDS

The cotton industry may be forcing us all into oblivion. If not by using up all the water on the planet to feed this weed, or by spraying millions of tons of pesticides every year on them to kill the pesticides it attracts, then perhaps it will get to us by upsetting the balance of nature as GM cotton plants are cultivated. These are already suspect in cattle diseases, as lots of GM cotton seed has been fed to cattle which has become sick. Now it turns out the bees are sick, sick and tired of mankind trying to fool Mother Nature, and they may well buzz off. Could this be in part due to GM cotton flowers? Pesticides are a main suspect, and of course, when you turn lush farmland into desert, you're not helping the planet.

So where are the journalists in the midst of all this? They seem to have buzzed off faster than a fleeing queen from an infected hive. This week we protested the use of cotton in the Anya Hindmarch bag, and not a word of it got into the mainstream press. Then the Evening Standard carries the story about the AH bags being made in China in a sweatshop, and the next day every paper in the UK has a story about how terrible the Anya Hindmarch bag is. Some manage to mention the fact that it is made of cotton, and that this is bad for the environment. But none mention a solution, not a word about hemp, or jute, or even flax. Ah, but that would take work. Lots of queens in the press, but not a lot of workers, maybe they all quit the hive.

Those left behind are happy, however, to promote cotton, with the Independent featuring lots of pictures of white cotton shirts, cheap at £430, or the Times including a catalogue from a company called "Cotton Traders".

So, I urge all readers of this post to call these papers and put them to work on hemp.

The Independent: 020 7005 2000 (ask for Michael McCarthy/David Randall)

The Guardian: 020 7278 2332 (ask for John Vidal)

Daily Mirror: 020 7293 3000

The Sun: 020 7782 4000

Daily Express: 0871 434 1010

Daily Mail/Evening Standard: 020 7938 6000

Daily Telegraph: 020 7931 2000

COTTON GETS BAGGED

Image right is of Sagar Shah and Kenyon Gibson talking to reporters outside Sainsburys in Camden this morning. [courtesy of Chris Sanders at schmoontherun]

As thousands queued up all over the UK today to support the globalist pesticide companies by purchasing an Anya Hindmarch cotton bag, I stayed in bed soundly asleep...until my conscience woke me up and dragged me out of bed to go and speak up for those who are forced into lives of misery by the cotton industry. So I did not get there at 3 am to hang out with the real die-hards who wanted to bag a bag and go sell it on Ebay (they will soon find out that a limited edition of tens of thousands will not command a very high price...they may be working for less money than they pay the farm hands in Third World countries). But I did get there some time before the magic hour of 8am when the crowd was allowed in.

I met Sagar, who just started a hemp and natural fibres website, and we proceeded to hand out fliers, printed on hemp paper made in the UK.

We got a mixed reaction from the crowd; some wanted to listen, some wanted to go home and sleep (but their girlfriends, who wanted this bag, were not letting them back into bed without it) and others looked like they wanted us dead. Walking around with a bag that proudly proclaims it is made of the real thing, hemp, was not very flattering to all the eco-wannabes engaged in this trivial pursuit of the killer weed.

This last reaction is about what the cotton industry wants for us, and it reminds me of an episode in New York when two thieves took a woman's purse out of her bag. I took it back from them and started to get her attention when they both started to yell and threaten, acting very put out; how dare someone come by and intervene?

The cotton industry is making billions, if not trillions, and they like to keep their slaves working hard on the plantations. So hard in fact, that some 142, 000 a year fall sick or die in India each year alone. Another gang member who might like to threaten me is the pesticide industry, and a third is the press. As cotton uses 50% of all the world's pesticides, they stand to lose a lot of money if hemp, jute, ramie or other fibres are introduced. The press works quite often with whatever bully is in charge of the schoolyard, and right now the hemp industry does not have trillions of dollars, so the press ignores a lot of crucial information. Many journalists do not like to work too hard, they have never had to pick cotton for the fashionistas in the West to go around looking cool. They do not have to worry about the massive water shortages that cotton causes, leaving people to die in far away places.

So what happened to that pink change purse I was holding up in my hand whilst two thugs tried to get me to "mind my own business before I got hurt?" I finally got the woman's attention, yelling over the crowd as she was walking away unawares. Otherwise her keys, her money and her cards would have been gone.

Hopefully yelling over the crowd will work again, even if the thugs have trillions of dollars and lots of huffy journalists who would rather do an easy scoop on silly BS which sells so many papers.

HOT AIR AND GLOBAL WARMING

Yesterday's front page of the Independent (UK) featured an image of an island caused by global warming. P. 2 then devotes lots of space to Michael McCarthy's "Environment Alert". It seems that the easiest job in journalism today is that of environment editor, as there is always something happening which can be reported on from the comfort of an armchair in E14. They used to report from the comfort of an armchair in EC4, but rent was easier in E14...Fleet Street now has no newspapers, they've all moved out to some part of London you need a passport to get to.

The article by McCarthy is put to ridicule by the big ad for a big car on p. 3 of that august publication, a Renault Scenic to be exact. So between McCarthy's hot air, the exhaust fumes of this behemoth vehicle, and the energy used in cutting down trees to make the paper for this paper, we are helping the Earth to heat up.

Granted, the Independent has some great writers working for it, Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, Genevieve Roberts, but McCarthy does not hold a candle to any of them. They ought to get a proper environment editor who just might do some real research on hemp and natural fibres. BTW, if they want a story, they ought to have gotten out of bed this morning and taken notes outside Sainsburys in Camden, where real environmentalists protested the sale of the Anya Hindmarch cotton bags. Other journalists were there, and coverage will appear shortly on this site and schmoontherun.

DRESSED TO KILL

[Image right of author with Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop, hanging out at The Body Shop in Knightsbridge, just before picketing the Anya Hindmarch shop. Photo by Chris Sanders, whose posts on the subject can be found at www.schmoontherun.blogspot.com on March 23]

In Little Shop of Horrors, the main character is a plant who grows and grows and insists on being fed. "Feed me Seymour", it bleats to the young shop assistant. Nerdy young Seymour obeys.

Many in the world today are obeying the orders from an overgrown pest, the cotton industry. It uses 50% of the world's pesticides, and by growing Glossypium ubiquitously, creates a dangerous monocrop situation where pests thrive. But what may be worse, and what cannot be cured by ill-informed do-gooders trying to revamp cotton's image by offering us organic cotton (along with Kosher pork chops...), is the fact that cotton is thirsty and consumes vast amounts of water; the Aral Sea is now half the size it was in the 1960s, the Indus is in danger, and cotton crops in Australia simply fail, after selfishly using up all the water around.

On 25 April cotton bags, and not even organic cotton bags, will go on sale at Sainsburys all over the UK. The production of these bags has helped to kill many people, according to Katherine Hamnett, some 142,000 Indians die or fall prey to diseases brought on by cotton culture every year. But who cares when you have the press on your side? These people are as idealistic as the National Socialist Party, and they do not want facts. Make them look cool and they'll not care that they are fools, or that their cotton goods are brough in blood. At the Natural Products Show at London's Olympia this Monday, there were the preachers of cotton all over the place, all beaming with joy at the fact that they are feeding and watering this monster plant. They were as naked as the Emperor, and even the rather large cotton leaf could not hide their ignorance, or their greed.

Why are they not campaigning for hemp, jute, bamboo or ramie? Bags, for instance, do not need to be soft and tactile, they need to have the strong fibres of hemp or jute. But to answer the question, let's look at the money involved. The cotton industry can pump millions into the press whores who then go out and swoon for the crop that is turning the Aral Sea and the Indus into dry beds. They will write their articles about cotton and never go live anywhere near these waterways. High and dry they will be, but somewhere in New York or London.

Join us on April 25 at Camden Sainsburys to protest against the use of cotton for the Anya Hindmarch bags they are selling, for more info contact me at cotingas@hotmail.com