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.

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.

THE PLANT WHOSE STALK IS
NOT WORTH A BEAN

In this month's Ecologist, Pat Thomas dares to go where few journalists care to venture. She debunks the soya myth, which is like a central tenet in some kind of religion. Go to any vegan fair these days and you are being sold soya, soya and more soya. And where's the hemp at any of these? Hardly a single achene is to be found. Few seem to know or care about its Omega 3,6 and 9, or its high protein status, or its environmentally friendliness. The bottom line to these gurus is the dollar sign. Their greenness comes from the almighty greenback, the soya leaf their fig leaf; but their nakedness and ignorance cannot be hid from intelligent people.
Thomas is one who is not fooled by these do-gooders in cotton clothing. She points out fact after fact about this monocrop and leaves no doubt as to what is going on - even if the likes of Tamsin Osmond and her followers take over a church (St. Mary's in Primrose Hill) to preach the joy of soy. Like so many cults, it falls apart when facts are produced. Take, for instance, the claims about soya being healthy because people in the Orient eat it and are healthy. In some ways yes, but this is nothing but a generalisation. There are much higher rates of cancer, particularly cancer of the oeshophagus, stomach, liver and pancreas. And now, after decades of overkill, people in the West eat soya and are still unhealthy - even when we do not know it or want it. Soya has become ubiquitous, and iniquitous as well. For instance, it has found its way into infant formula milk, despite the reality that it contains isoflavenes, exposure to which may effect future fertility and reproductive development. A Harvard University study found that men who eat it have significantly lower sperm counts. Consumption of soya has led to more memory loss and cancer in our populations. And the production of soya is one of the major reasons for the loss of the rain forest. 90% of it is genetically modified.
So why are we eating it? Hype, and people want to follow hype, whether it is right wing warmongering or hippy trippy hype. Hype creates a movement, and subconsciously, people want to be part of a movement. Asking them to think makes them feel uncomfortable, and the leaders of the movement take advantage. Anyone with facts they try to exclude, as when Tamsin Omond's group Plane Stupid called the Ecologist to let them know they were not welcome to cover the campout at Heathrow last year. Little wonder that the Ecologist is becoming and entity non grata in some circles - perhaps a sign that they are doing something correct.
If you want a high protein, environmnetally friendly food that does not require processing at all and can be eaten raw, hemp is just the thing. And if you're in the UK, try some of the foods over at Yorkshire Hemp - www.yorkshire-hemp.com and see what your're missing.

BITS AND BOBS

'08 is winding down, and there is, or was, a wave of good feeling in the air (as I write we are reading about the massacre in Mumbai). The GOP is out, and many people think the Messiah is arriving on 20 January '09. Actually I think the US Secret Service arrives in full force that day with 4 years of overtime trying to protect Obama from the KKK and whoever else does not agree with having an Arab for a President. At least in my case, they don't have to worry too much, my attacks are only verbal. But then again, as Homeland Security was spending so much time on this site earlier this year, maybe there is some agency that protects US politicians from the likes of me. Not being able to find Osama bin Laden, they are taking up other duties in an effort to look busy and justify taking $50billion a year from the pockets of the taxpayers.
The big question is what will happen to hemp in the Obama years (or Biden years, if the KKK gets a lone gunman on a grassy knoll)? Will he legalise it? Or will he just grow his own under UV lights in the White House, which will come under DEA scrutiny for the large energy bill?
And talking of energy bills, I might note that people are talking about energy bills. Since the politicians dragged their feet on developing energy, we all had to pay up to $150 a barrel for oil. The price dropped, due in no small part to the fact that we did not have $150 to pay for crude anymore. And now there seems little money left to develop energy to get us out of this mess, even if energy sourcing is as simple as stepping on the floor. For those of us moving at more than a foot dragging pace, our feet generate electricity, as the Rotterdam dance space Club Watt has found out. So the beat of the music leads to the beat of the feet and the owners beat the high electric bills that come with high powered strobe lights. An article in the New York Times by Elisabeth Rosenthal this weekend points out that this is not just a one-off, but part of an enterprise called the Sustainable Dance Club. The energy produced by an average person dancing is about 20 watts. The Observer picked up on this article, which their science editor Robin McKie wrote about on Sunday. His notes go further, as he explores the possibilities of other forms of naturally existing or human induced motion being harvested to make power.
Getting back to the NYT, two other articles were of interest in regards to energy, one of hydrogen pumps on Santa Monica Boulevard (for girls who just wanna have fun...) which will be used to fuel hydrogen cars. Shell Oil is behind this, but other oil companies are behind the times and may not cooperate. The other article was a bit less high tech, it talked about rental bikes in European cities. I live in London - I want them here. That way I could combine mass transport for the long, or uphill treks, and bikes for short/downhill treks. If they were smart, they could even put on little energy devices on to catch the motion of the wheels and harvest that. A day's riding could bring in both a profit on the rentals and a device with stored energy.
Switching back to the Observer, I was stunned to find a lengthy article on bottled water by Martin Hickman. This had become a recent issue with me, as my fellow author on the Hemp for Victory book, Sam Heslop, had just sent around an e-mail warning about dioxin poisoning from plastic water bottles. Some of these are stored two years or more before they reach the shelves, and they can leak a lot, so much so that movie stars are claiming that they are getting cancer, especially breast cancer, from all the trendy bottled water they drank. Hickman knocks tap water as it contains chlorine, but with so many of these article in trendy lefty mags like the Observer, it does not do the full research. Fact is, a home water filter is not that expensive, and can filter these out. Hickman also fails to note that on occasion the bottled water is a scam, for instance, one enterprising New Yorker made millions out of filling trendy bottles full of tap water and selling it as a top brand before his scam got switched off. There is no word from this journalists as to what we are supposed to do with the millions of empty bottles, maybe we can just dump them in someone else's backyard, along with the millions of copies of the Observer that get used to sell us these ideas every weekend. Still waiting for them to use hemp paper...
Maybe, though, we well see the Independent using some - as they have been in talks with Zac Goldsmith, former publisher of the Ecologist, to be bought out. Goldsmith spoke last month at Friends House, and as usual, when hemp is brought up, there is a trendy crowd that tries to hide its ignorance by pouring scorn on the subject; he was not affected, and enthused about hemp to my friend Sagar Shah. It is good to see honest people like Goldsmith in the environmental movement, sadly, we are beset with trendy hippy trippy types who are either dopers or useful idiots for big business or both. David Shayler was the epitome of this, it was so bad that when he started talking about hemp I asked him to stop. Where is he now? In Amsterdam, where a few foolish people believe he is the Messiah. Some of them are apparently giving him money, and those journalists who have no for lengthy research, see him as a source of a quick article. I saw him once this year, at a 9/11 Truth Event, where he was so unwelcome that an organiser smashed a glass bottle at his bare feet to send him a message to stay away.
So here's to '09. '08 has been one bad year overall for many people. Out with the suicide terrorists and false Messiahs, and in with hemp, Zac Goldsmith, rental bikes and non-petrol based energy production.

ROYAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

HOSTS NONSENSE

Image left is Sir Gordon Conway, who compered and spoke at the RGS at Kensington Gore on Wednesday, 22 October. The subject of the evening was rainforest management, but what was needed was better conference management. For £15 we got lousy PA standards and a translator whose monotonouse Adams family voice was like nails being scratched on the blackboard.

But these were minor hitches compared to the real problem - the whole thing was an exercise in avoiding the elephant in the living room. When the audience was finally allowed to ask some questions, one man pointed to the issue of laying blame on the indigenous farmers who committed slash and burn, but did not mention once the plantation owners. The man who started to talk about this was abruptly asked to stop by Sir Gordon. Now, it might have ended right there, but a friend of mine, Sagar Shah, asked about hemp, and then I pulled the rug out further by pointing out that Sir Gordon was in bed with the Rockefellers, who made their fortune in a most evil way by running plantations in Brazil - Gerard Colby wrote a lengthy tome on this in the '90; the same author is famous for his 1974/1984 book on the Du Ponts, from which I quoted extensively in Hemp for Victory.

The audience was mostly a posh crowd, and no surprise to hear the usual idiots ramble on about how much they know hemp cannot be a solution but who know nothing about hemp. A bit of left wing feel good and do-nothing waste of time. Next month I am hoping to ambush the evasive George Monbiot, who will be speaking with Zac Goldsmith at Friends House. Yes, Monbiot who writes for the sandal wearing, 4x4 driving Guardian readers and wears environmentally destructive cotton. Goldsmith, hopefully, will see through him and cease to share a platform with him.

NOVEMBER SELECTION

As Americans mull over which chad to punch on that first Tuesday of November this leap year, a real candidate runs for office. Forget the GOP man and his sidekick, hockey mom, who has more experience blowing away polar bears than sitting in Congress (none of the latter to be precise); forget the Obama Hussein donkey candidate, who has at least some experience in DC, and forget the other candidates, especially Ralph. Go for the GREEN.
Cynthia McKinney, with whom I was privileged to spend a week with in London, is a matronly woman with a real sense of what is going on. It was she who asked Rumsfeld about the missing $2.3 trillion...and since that day, she has been made an enemy of, blacked out by the press whores who whitewash the theft that it so rife in Washington.
We can look forward to a US President who is not scamming money, who is not (like 40,41 & 43) the subject of paedophile investigations, who is not a Skull & Bones member, who is not into big business, but who is a real statesman, and has a real agenda.
Even if your vote does not get her in, it sends a message, and that needs to be heard. If the GREENS get 5% of the vote it will mean a serious victory for the party. The change from Nader, a man who never served in public office, to a person who has spent about 20 years in office, was a good move for the party and means that they can be taken a lot more seriously. McKinney's tour in London showed she has real diplomatic and speaking skills. She thrilled the audience at Friends House, the historic venue in North London, and held court well in enemy territory, such as the James Whale show (a particularly unpleasant UK shock jock who has recently had his radio licence revoked by the communications authorities). She also spoke at the Green Party UK festival in Brockwell Park and held a conference at the Friends of the Earth HQ. The people who met her, from Tony Juniper of FoE, to Mark Anslow of the Ecologist to Baroness Jenny Tonge were well impressed with her.
Her stance on the treatment of US soldiers is also a very strong point, she is the only candidate to take a stance on the DU issue. Presciently, she asserts that the people who got us into this mess, referring to Iraq, cannot be trusted to take us out. Or to take care of the soldier who they messed up with DU by giving lucrative contracts to companies that use this nuclear waste product. They make the money, our boys pay the price. That's how it works, but McKinney is vocal about changing this - and her record reflects this - look at this issue in the 109th Congress and see how she stood out from the crowd and stood up for those in uniform. The others betrayed the military on this - look at their voting records. So voting for those who vote against proper treatment of the soldiers is, it could be argued, a step away from treason. A strong military is essential, and we are currently looking at a decline in morale and enlistment. For those who care about this issue, McKinney is the candidate.
And of course, for those who want to see America growing hemp, McKinney is the candidate. She would help the likes of Dave Monson in North Dakota to get his legal rights, which his fellow GOP members have failed to do.
But, sadly, we may get Obama or McCain. I would vote for neither. I fear for America's future if they get in.
For more information on Cynthia, check out her site, www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com or click flags to see previous posts on this blog.

IMAGES OF A FEW OF THE PEOPLE WE EXPECT AT

THE VEGAN FEST AT KENSINGTON TOWN HALL ON

SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER,

WHERE KENYON GIBSON AND SAGAR SHAH

WILL BE TALKING ABOUT

HEMP, SOYA AND THE ENVIRONMENT.

BOTH ISSUES ARE COVERED IN THE

SEPTEMBER ISSUE OF THE ECOLOGIST.

DRESS CODE IS HEMP OR GO NAKED!

THERE WILL BE A PRIZE GIVEAWAY AS

THE TALK GETS UNDERWAY (1PM)

2003 HEMP ARTICLE IN

THE ECOLOGIST

While looking for forward to the upcoming article on hemp in the Ecologist, I remembered they had one not too long ago, "Seeds of Hope" by Jake Bowers, here it is for those who want to have a look.

Image left is of a UK crop grown under the auspices of Hemcore. Most grown here is for low grade fibre or seed oil. Recently the BBC wanted to take aerial photos of a hemp field in Devon, and they got sent to the Good Seed farm. BBC1 is producing a documentary new and unique crops, though hemp is one very old crop in the UK, with record going back to ca. 300 BC. We told the BBC but they are not too bothered with facts, their entire budget is going to pay Jonathan Ross, we're lucky they had a few pence left to do anything at all on hemp. For a satirical look at the Beeb and a call to raise more money for Ross (he only gets £6m a year), check out Mark Ski's Mark of the Mask site. He is urging us to protest outside the Beeb and get a large pay raise for Ross. This movement is known as the Ross Cause. Ski also asks us to drive 4x4s, support Homeland Security, put 9/11 sceptics in camps in Eastern Europe, and not use hemp. His latets rant exhorts we close the offices of the Ecologist. Ski is on a roll.

HEMP ARTICLE UNDER CULTIVATION

IN THE ECOLOGIST

The September 2008 issue will feature hemp and the book Hemp for Victory, so I am excited. It will be a good time time for hemp businesses to advertise their shop, here are their contact details:

Advertising@theecologist.org or call 020 7422 8100. Click here for site quoting ad rates.

It is of great advantage to have both a full scale article on hemp and some business contacts so as to engage the general public. Too often there is a curt and innacurate article with no contact details. The Ecologist has worked hard to help the hemp movement, last year they gave us free advertising for a hemp shopping bag made by the Hemp Shop in the UK. Their reporters have been quite keen to work with us, and go out of their way to keep their ear to the ground, as when Cynthia McKinney, potential US Green candidate for President, visited London last year (she was boycotted by many of the larger publications, including the Guardian). I still remember her cooking up porridge with hemp seeds whilst Mark Anslow and freelancer Elizabeth Mistry looked on.

Current circulation runs at 20,000 per issue, 10 issues a year. Readership is quoted at ten times that figure, understandably as many copies circulate in libraries and institutions. The magazine tends to have a longer 'life', as more readers tend to keep back issues, a fact reflected on my own shelves. It punches above its weight as far as publications go; writers such as Mark Anslow, Jeremy Smith, Pat Thomas and Zac Goldsmith, to name a few - influence opinion in environmental circles. It has an online presence, and an e-newsletter with 25,000 signed up.

So let's support them in their act of support for hemp. The more the general public sees of hemp products, the more we can advance this cause. For smaller companies, and perhaps those not so UK/EU centred, I might suggest some collective ads in the Green Pages section. We are hoping to have a hemp products show here in London, maybe early '09, so keep that in mind too.

And as always, I am happy to do a post about any hemp business here on the blog, it is free, but to be objective it does not reach 20,000 a month. Not yet, but we are working on it. Contact me at cotingas@hotmail.com if you have such information and/or low res images to post.

In the meantime, make sure you at least get a copy of the hemp article in this next issue of the Ecologist and send copies to environment editors so they follow suit. A good idea would be to copy their article and send along your own synopsis with details of your business so they contact you for an article. Look for an upcoming post here with a list of hemp articles in the press, there is always at least a small one appearing here and there on a weekly basis, and many of them are noted here with a link, as will be the upcoming piece in the Ecologist.

LOMPOC REPORT

Over the years I have gained the reputation of being a scourge on the Fourth Estate. Just ask Lucy Siegle of the Observer, I have indeed made a few enemies. Not that I mind. For many in that profession have betrayed it, and newspapers today are awash with government planted disinfo, out-and-out lies, page 3 girls with small brains but large mammaries, and other assorted clutter. Once in a while though someone comes to light who really shines, and today I pay respects to Joe White of the Lompoc Record. He wrote a story on hemp that I would have liked to have written. He addresses the issue of hemp and THC and basically calls for people to grow up. He uses grapes and wine as a metaphor, fitting for a US journalist as wine was once outlawed there, just before they outlawed hemp.

Lompoc is a little town off 101 near Santa Barbara. It is a farming community known to some extent for its viniculture, and White addresses his agrarian readers with facts about hemp - he does not waste time with stupid jokes about getting high and other nonsense. It is the federal government which is wasting time - and money - on such nonsense, and White takes them to task. $500 billion is the figure he gives as the sum spent on the 'War on Drugs'. He notes that 40,000 people are in jail presently for marijuana, which just happens to be the population of Lompoc.

White's state has twice passed pro-hemp laws, but the actor in the Governer's Mansion just vetoes them. Other states are in similar situations, he cites North Dakota, Kentucky, Vermont and Oregon. In North Carolina, both senators, one GOP the other Democrat, were in support of hemp. Any wonder that all these states have lots of farming? In fact Kentucky was the hemp basket of America in the 19th century. It is now the tobacco basket.

White cites the fact Europe and Canada allow hemp and hemp farmers in both are making money. He talks about the subject objectively, he does not at all come off as a hippy activist. He is talking more along the line of Adam Smith, the economist who asserted that the agriculture of a nation was its real wealth.

But what America is experiencing is real poverty, as White notes there is a recession in his town, and teachers are being laid off. If they are about to lose their livelihoods in part due Schwarzenegger at all, then maybe it is time to say hasta la vista and get an intelligent person in that and other offices.

Thanks to White and other responsible journalists, they may end up cultivating hemp, which was grown all over the US by the Founding Father no less. And talking about responsible journalists, the Ecologist has been in touch with me about an upcoming feature on hemp, later this summer or fall.

CAUGHT UNAWARE AT AWARE '08

This weekend I trugged over to the Barbican Centre in East London to help man the hemp booth as Aware, a new festival which managed to attract a few of the converted. Naked cyclists, hot women for climate change, and some even hotter women selling incognito mosquito repellant, which they claim makes you invisible. Can't wait to try it on Monday when I pull a heist at the local bank. I can dispense with any attire, since I'll be invisible...

Overall the event was a disappointment, though there were highlights, such as the panelist from Moixa. Sharing the panel with him was Matilda Lee of the Ecologist, and I did get to question her as to why she completely ignored hemp in her monologue on textiles. She replied that hemp was a great idea and we all ought to take a look at it. But when pointed to the hemp booth, she made tracks the other way, and we did not see her for the rest of the conference. Maybe she had on that mosquito repellant. Her comrades from the magazine were more visible, and I visited their stand several time, taking Helen James of Innocent Oils along, who presented them with her latest skin care samples.

Also quite visible was a booth displaying solar power steam turbines, these are heated by giant mirrors which focus the light on a tower where water is heated to steam. This can also serve as a desalination plant. The claim is that these towers can supply all the world's electricity needs, and I hope they are right. Presently there are few up and running, the oldest being the one in Nevada, operating for 15 years. The one in Seville has been noted on this blog before. We need to get these and other forms of energy going as the lack of alternative energy means that the oil companies keep raisnig the price of a barrel, even though it still only costs $5 to excavate that barrel. Eric Pollit of Global Hemp just emailed me to say that the tripling of the price of a barrel has caused people to be much more on edge in the US, but they do not focus their anger on the people behind the energy crisis, they turn on each other, or blame corn for the rise in food prices. Part of the rise in corn prices has to do with the weak dollar he points out, as that means more countries buy foodstuffs from the US. Corn based ethanol does not take the food part of the plant, as I have pointed out so many times to the zealots in the left who are not bashing any form of biofuels, much to the delight of the oil companies who want a divided left that will argue and accomplish nothing. 40 years of talk about wind farms, solar energy, tidal turbines, electric cars, ethanol, biodiesel, etc. - and what have we to show for it? The development is rather invisible, and not due to the use of insect repellant.

Also invisible at Aware was any mention of hemp in all the vegan cook books, the gurus of that industry continue to promote soy based foods, even though this helps destroy the Amazon, an inconvenient fact they do not like to be reminded of. Even Nigel Winter of the Vegan Society does not seem to be too aware of hemp, but hopefully he will and they just might publish some of the information in their magazine.

While hemp was hardly to be seen, cotton was ubiquitous, Lee and others are happy to promote it, but not so happy to hear that a cotton T shirt uses 2,800 litres more water than a 50% hemp T shirt. My source for that, incidentally, is Jeremy Smith of the Ecologist. Lee could not argue with that!

So this show, if it is to go on, will need real promotion next year, I feel sorry for those who rented booths and ended up talking mainly to other exhibitors. They will also need some keynote speakers, not just frivolous cotton wearing trendies. Next week I will be speaking at another East London event, I'll be on at 2pm at the Fashion Made Fair, where I will hold forth on the cultivation of hemp. I hope that I will see more people and that some of them will actually be wearing hemp!

REVIEW OF ECO CHIC

The last review was not that positive, scathing might have been the word, and I am afraid this one is not going to be laudatory. However, Matilda Lee does go a lot further than the hapless Tamsin Blanchard - she has an index and cites her sources, which gives this some credibility.

Ms. Lee works at the Ecologist, which is a much more serious publication than the Independent, where Blanchard toiled away watching catwalks and size zero models. The former publication is very well researched, and went to the trouble to seek me out last year to give me a half page colour advert for the hemp eco bag - free! They were not just a bunch of mercenaries, but genuinely committed eco-journalists. At one time, they even printed part of an issue on John Hanson's Treefree hemp paper.

Their ethos does not seem to have rubbed off on Ms. Lee however. Nor, I take it, has she taken on board any of what I had to say when I had a conversation with her about hemp - she basically snubbed her nose at it and seemed offended - many Americans working in the eco movement do not really want any competition for US based businesses, so they serve as gatekeepers; Lee is from the Homeland, which does not even allow its citizens to grow hemp at all.

Mention of hemp in her book is limited, not surprising when Katherine Hamnett writes the foreword. Hamnett was exposed to hemp but decided to promote environmentally destructive cotton instead, now raising organic cotton which depletes the water in third world countries, even more so than non-organic cotton. Discussion of hemp is limited to pp. 122, 125-7, 186 & 210. All of this does start with a positive note, as Lee states that a UK hemp industry would decrease the transport of fabric to the UK. This statement, however, demands more information supplied, as the move to initiate a UK hemp textile industry is not an easy one. Further discussion of the UK hemp industry on pp. 125-127 fails to mention the use of hemp seed in the statistics, and then we are led to believe that BioRegional is in a project with Hemcore to cultivate hemp for fabric on 1,214 hectares - which would be, by Lee's previous data, 60+% of the total UK harvest. There is also the statement that there is no mill in the UK with experience with spinning, knitting or weaving hemp - again - Lee needs to do more checking. Huddersfield is mentioned as a place for a future BioRegional project, but could well have been given space for the very beautiful hemp fabrics being created there by Katie Knill, who for some reason was not at all consulted in this book. Get your facts right! Going back to BioRegional, they did indeed run field trials, twice in the last 10 years, but each trial involved 10 acres or so, and neither has produced much fibre. Let me here shed some light on this - I came along to view the second field trial, and saw that they really were not getting this together - so I asked if they had read any books about retting and production of fibre. They then just shrugged their shoulders, and I suspect that the reading list I gave them has been thrown away. They are far from cultivating 1,214 acres of anything, and far from producing fibre, though their efforts did not go completely in vain, they produced research reports, one of which was written up in the Journal of Industrial Hemp. Lee does not appear to have read any of this. Sadly, what happens is that misinformation gets repeated and repeated, and I will no doubt be hearing more and more of this airy fairy tale, repeated with great authority as people take Lee and some clap happy fashion editors as gospel.

I do like Lee's choice of words on occasion, she does succeed in making me laugh, as when she asserts: "...there is an issue of contaminating the spinning mills with hemp fibres."

The last mention of hemp is on p. 210, where she starts off by mentioning the Anya Hindmarch bag, along with the Onya bag - which she perhaps fails to realise is plastic. No mention of the eco hemp bag that her magazine so graciously promoted for me - she did not have far to go to find out about this one!

Another aspect of her book that is poorly researched is the resouce guide, she omits such vendors as The Hemp Shop, Sativa, Minawear, GeoMio. Omission of The Hemp Shop in particular shows a callous lack of regard for the history of the eco movement - it has been around the longest of any existing hemp shops in the UK and the proprietor, Bobby Pugh, not only was a founder of the hemp movement here but was also a hemp farmer; it was he who manufactured the hemp eco bags that the Ecologist promoted gratis as a real gesture of their stance on the environment. But I guess Lee was out of the office that month.

On the way are two more books in this genre, including one with the same main title as Lee's, and the way things are going, I do not expect to be writing ecstatic praise. The trouble with the eco movement is that there is no end of celebrities and self promoting fools, but those who do the research are often ignored, and this may have something to do with the budget of the cotton industry. The eco movement is much like an army where none of the recruits want to do basic training, but are eager to shoot off weapons in all directions. I recommend that Lee go back to boot camp and take agriculture 101 and science 101 before she writes a book on textiles.

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.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY IN LONDON

This summer the US Green Party asked Cynthia McKinney to run for president. Hopefully she will, and many things that the Bush administration have damaged in the land of liberty will be repaired, such as the treatment of US veterans. I am lucky to have served before either Bush got in, many of those who did their time after me are now suffering the effects of depleted uranium. The Marines got a few good men, but Bush was not one of them. In fact it is pretty well understood that he went AWOL for 7 months, and his VP never even went in as he got 5 deferrments, is that a record or what? How did he get out of duty 5 times when hundreds of thousands of others got called up? Did he tap his feet?

McKinney is definitely not a foot-tapper. She has hers solidly on the ground, and this week they are on British ground. She arrived Monday around noon and has taken up residence in London where she has been holding court with writers and journalists. Mark Anslow of the Ecologist spent the afternoon in her presence, asking her about her stance on all things green, followed by Elizabeth Mistry. Nafeez Ahmed showed up later with his friends and a heavy discussion ensued. At one point Cynthia cooked up a meal of hulled hemp seeds and porridge, the former a gift of Roger Snow at Rocky Mountain Grain Products in Canada.

The next day London was set back by a tube strike, which may not have pleased a lot of people, but at least it got some of us more fit as we were forced to walk or ride bikes. Personally, though, I'd rather sit and get taken to my destination by wheels of steel. Let's hope they are rolling soon. While they idled, McKinney gathered steam, talking to the Big Issue and getting on Talk Sport just before midnight. Any American would be proud that she held her own against the talk show host John Nichol. She was asked if she was an American version of George Galloway, to which she wisely did not say yes or no. Truth is that both do stand against the establishment and oppose the mess in Iraq, but she does not go on Big Brother and do inane antics to get attention, she is able to make her points in more effective ways. She also has a very good voting record for her constituents, whilst Galloway has a very bad one, and in fact missed a crucial vote for Bethnal Green when he was a guest of Channel 4.

She will rock and roll in the UK some more, meeting Friends of the Earth tomorrow and protesting outside the US Embassy on Friday (7 September) at 6 pm with Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who got locked up for nothing. It sounds like Seinfeld, which was a show about nothing, but noone ever complained (except some viewers). There still are hundreds of people locked up for nothing, and they are not even allowed to watch old epidodes of Seinfeld. Instead they are being forced to hear loud music, as if that is going to help win hearts and minds. If Cynthia gets in they get out. And the millions, sorry, billions, sorry, trillions that the Bushistas are spending on Camp X Ray and other abominations will be spent in the Homeland with proper accounting to the taxpayer's whose money has gone astray these last few years. Some folks will not like that one bit, and I suspect that the princes of darkness who run Blackwater and other paramilitary outfits at great expense to the taxpayer will be getting caned.

On Sunday (9 September) she will be speaking at the Urban Green Fair in Brockwell Park, Brixton. After that she goes up to Leeds, then returns to the banks of the Thames on Monday, when she will speak at Friends House on Euston Road at 6:30 pm, admission £5, £3 with concessions. Her speech will be followed by a 45 minutes Q&A session. Tuesday (11 September) she is attending a rally in Parliament Square at noon, and then she heads off to Amsterdam.

For more information on Cynthia McKinney click here.

GOING GREEN

It seems everyone these days is going green, or am I just wearing my Oz glasses? Perhaps the wizard is about to pop out and make the world a better place, but even he will not remove my cynicism.

Some things however are hard to knock, and I have only good words for a new book out by Sheherazade Goldsmith, wife of Zac, who is known for his work at the Ecologist. The cover is featured right (so I could save time typing in the lenghty title). It is very spot on, though it seems to have greatly upset George Monbiot last week in his Guardian piece. Methinks he did protest too much, as there are 90 projects here and whether someone lives on a sheep farm or in a bedsit there is something for everyone in this tome. Maybe even he could roll up his sleeves and get to work instead of inundating us with innacuracies. He also tried to sneak out the back door on the global warming issue, rather than saying he was wrong, or listening to Piers Corbyn, whose letter appeared the next day in the same paper. Corbyn gave us his previous predictions, facts on which they were based, and future predictions. According to him, this year and next will get colder, and there will be more storms this summer. The Big Green Gathering will be mostly spared these storms, if he is correct, and I hope he is as sloshing around in the mud with the madding crowd in Somerset is not my idea of fun, or even how to save the planet. I am to hold forth on hemp on Friday, 8:30 pm in the Moon Marquee, so if Corbyn is spot on we will be high and dry.

When I called around to the environment editors in the UK to invite them, they all seemed to know nothing about the Big Green or Mr. Corbyn (except for John Vidal of the Guardian). So tens of thousands of people will be speaking in the woods, but there will quite likely be a mainstream press blackout, with the left trying desperately to ignore anyone who questions global warming, just as they did when they were all global cooling experts. From the right, expect lots of stories about drunk rich kids and journalists killing each other in helicopters as they try to follow drunk rich kids, and from the left, expect lots of know-it-alls claiming that we are freezing this summer due to global warming.

Somewhere in the middle there are a number of people who just want facts and are working on growing hemp and using electric cars. The next political movement may well be the Centrist Party, fed up with all the nonsense on the far left and far right. They will be carrying copies of genuine peer reviewed articles on hemp, climate change and sustainable living. The 'Green Party' ought to take note and expect a rebuke from me this Friday. Unless I get thrown out first for speaking the truth by the hard core global warming Nazis.

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.

WHERE'S THE HEMP?

On 7/7/7, a group of foul-mouthed millionaires assembled to get attention and burn up lots of petrol whilst telling us not to burn up lots of petrol. It was called "Live Earth", but run as it was by idiots, I thought the Gaia was gonna die right then and there, on the 2-year anniversary of the London bombings. Somehow we survived this made-for-TV hypocrisy. Those of us who did are now questioning why hemp was not once mentioned on this, in fact I just got a good essay from Doug Yurchey about this, it may or may not be up yet on his site, http://www.yurchey.com/

Above is the image of Ruth's hemp bar, I'm sure your Senators and Congressmen (and women) are gonna love it like apple pie, and so will their dear old mom, so why not send them a bar? Ruth was instrumental in getting hemp legalised in Canada in 1998, and her site is http://www.ruthshempfoods.com/

Americans are now fighting for hemp, led by David Monson, a lawmaker from North Dakota (who is probably eating a Ruth's bar as you read).

Lately I've been getting requests from Africa about hemp paper, one fast food company in South Africa wants to switch to hemp as wood is getting scarce, and a company in Eritrea also wants to start production. The scarcity of trees is affecting Ugandan papermakers so much that they now have to transport wood pulp 200 miles, and they too are thinking of getting some hemp in the ground. They also recently made plastic bags illegal in that country, but the sad thing is that idiots like Al the Bore are now just gonna go out and get more cotton cultivated so they can grow it for their cotton shopping bags, which may or may not be made by Anya Hindmarch and others impervious to the fact that cotton depletes the water where it is grown. And as this is in some poor part of the world where Al and Anya do not live (or Mad Onna), and they do not fly in to do Live Earth attention stunts, it does not matter.

But some good news is in order, hemp bags are catching on, The Ecologist has a reader offer on hemp bags made by The Hemp Shop and Minawear in California will have much the same bags on sale for Americans. They are large enough to hold a good bit of shopping including those Ruth's hemp bars with the red, white and blue wrappers.

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.

MONSANTO GETS A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS IN THE EA

Readers of this site have at times been offended by my statement that watching David Miliband run DEFRA is like wathcing a paedophile run a kindergarden. Other readers have just been offended at the fact that DEFRA is such a failure. The July 2007 issue of The Ecologist reveals some facts about the related EA (Environment Agency) which back up my not so pleasant assertions.

Jon Huges and Pat Thomas write:

"The EA is within weeks of letting Monsanto escape its liability for knowingly dumping thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals - including all the ingredients of the DDT defoliant Agent Orange - in two quarries in Wales. Unless a claim and 'adversary action' is lodged with the US bankruptcy courts within around four weeks, the UK taxpayer faces picking up a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds to safeguard teh environment and public health. Yet for the past few months the Agency has stonewalled teh one remaining eyewitness to events as they unfolded in 1967 onwards, and who is prepared to speak out. This man, who now carries a panic button at all times, also has a dedicated police protection officer supervising protective devices installed at his house because of the threats he has received".

A comment I posted on their site listed the Parliament number of David Miliband, which is: 020 7219 3000. The more you complaing, the better service you get. If you let them do what they want, you are going to lose.