Article on hemp biofuel by Giolio Sica in The Guardian

Years ago I did an article with The Guardian, but somehow I missed this very telling piece by Guilio Sica, which detailed how the UK government ignored hemp as a biofuel and even downplayed biofuels - which is ridiculous, as biofuels can be sourced from existing farm waste; wheat straw etc. can be turned into alcohol at very low cost and in the process generate local employment. Too many politicians are on the take and it can be said are committing treason by working against national interests.

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Guardian, 28 January 2008

The Royal Society, the European Commission and the UK government have all managed, in the last few days, to take the wind out of the sails of the biofuel industry, publishing reports that suggest biofuels could be causing more harm than good, the crops not being as environmentally friendly as first thought, with the Commons environmental audit committee calling for a moratorium on biofuel targets until more research can be done.
What struck me as astonishing about these reports is that they all managed to ignore the one crop which has been successfully used for many years to create bioethanol and biodiesel, is environmentally friendlier to produce than sugar beet, palm oil, corn or any of the crops mentioned in the report and can grow in practically any temperate to hot climate leaving the ground in better condition than when it was planted.
That plant is hemp.
Last year, the Conservative MP David Maclean tabled a question to the then environment secretary, Ian Pearson, asking what assessment had been made about the potential to grow hemp as a biofuel crop in England. Pearson responded:

Research into the potential of hemp as a biofuel crop suggests it is not currently competitive compared to other sources of biomass. However, hemp does have a number of high-value end uses. For example, as a fibre crop it is used in car panels, construction and as horse bedding. In addition, hempseed oil is used in food, cosmetics and various industrial applications. As a result, there is little interest in this country at present in growing it for biofuel production.

So the government cannot point to ignorance of hemp's uses, which makes hemp's omission from any of the recent reports even more perplexing.

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The fact that hemp does not need to have land cleared to grow it, grows faster than any of the crops currently used and leaves the ground in a better state when it is harvested should surely be enough for it to be considered a perfect crop to offset the carbon currently produced by fossil fuels and by the less efficient biofuels currently being so roundly criticised by the various official research bodies.
The influential Biodiesel magazine reported last year on the cultivation of hemp as a biofuel and it too could only point to its lack of economic competitiveness (due to its minimal production) as a reason for not seeing it as a viable biofuel. But surely if it was mass-produced, this one drawback could be overcome and its many benefits as an efficient biofuel could be harnessed.
As far as research and implementation of hemp for biofuel, the US is way ahead of Europe and there are a range of websites dedicated to the use of hemp as a fuel for cars.
In the UK, companies such as Hemp Global Solutions have been set up very much with climate change and the reduction of carbon emissions in mind, but there is little, if any, research in this country that has looked into the viability of the hemp plant as a fuel for cars.
So why was there not a single mention of this miracle crop, that, in addition to being able to be used as fuel, can also be used as paper, cloth, converted into plastic and is a rich food source containing high levels of protein?

YO BAMA

In 2008 a great hope was elected to the White House. Change was in the wind and the revolution was a'coming. Yeah right. I noted then that a man who had four times as much campaign money as George Bush smelled funny and so did his backers. His dough was not grassroots; it was from bankers, and bankers don't give you dough without expecting bread in return. So much for my clever cynicism. Below are some hard facts from a Guardian reporter. She is not the only one to notice that 44 is not supporting hemp or any other environmental initiatives. It's time for a change, and while it seems a long shot, I hope to see Ron Paul in the White House next time around, search this site and others to see his support of hemp. And read below to see Obama's lack thereof:

Report Details Obama's Broken Environmental Promises

By Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian UK

29 November 11

arack Obama has been just as zealous as George Bush in stripping away environmental, health and safety protection at the behest of industry, it turns out.

Some environmental organisations were beginning to suspect this, after Obama over-ruled his scientific advisors and blocked stronger ozone standards. Now, a new report [pdf] from the Centre for Progressive Reform has dug up some key data revealing that the White House in the age of Obama has been just as receptive to the pleadings of industry lobbyists as it was in the Bush era. And it goes far beyond ozone.

Under Obama, a little known corner of the White House - known as the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or Oira - has changed more than 80% of the rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

None of these were changes for the good, the report says.

"Every single study of its performance, including this one, shows that Oira serves as a one-way ratchet, eroding the protections that agency specialists have decided are necessary under detailed statutory mandates, following years — even decades — of work."

Oira was set up by Congress with the purpose of performing a last review of government regulations to see how they would work once they were put into effect. Its current chief is Cass Sunstein, a friend of Obama from his days teaching at Harvard Law School.

In practice, critics say the office operates as a one-stop wrecking machine undoing environmental, health, and worker safety protections that could cause political problems for the White House.

When lobbying Congress and the president fails to delay or weaken a regulation, industry has learned over the years that Oira can be their last best resort, the report says.

"A steady stream of industry lobbyists — appearing some 3,760 times over the ten-year period we studied — uses OIRA as a court of last resort when they fail to convince experts at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to weaken pending regulations."

The lobbyists were particularly obsessed with trying to undo environmental protections. Corporate executives and indusry lobbyists turned up at the White House about once a week over the last decade to try to delay or weaken EPA regulations, or more than 440 meetings.

The steady stream of oil and coal industry lobbyists to Oira did not end when Bush left office – arguably it turned into a flood. Environmental regulations made up only 10% of Oira business in Bush's time, but 36% of the office's business was meeting with outside lobbyists.

Under Obama, Oira has dedicated more than half of its meetings, 51%, to discussing pending environmental regulations with industry lobbyists, the report says.

And for industry the meetings paid off – about as much under Obama as under Bush. Following those meetings with outsiders, Oira changed 84% of EPA rules during the Bush era. Depending on how you calculate it, the change rate was even higher under Obama. Oira changed 81% of environmental rules after meetings with lobbyists. But the change rate rises to 85% once all Oira decisions on environmental regulations are factored in.

Oira does not make public records of those meetings.

Is there any chance that Obama is unaware of what Oira is up to? Rena Steinzor, the law professor at the University of Maryland who wrote the report, doesn't think so. She notes that Sunstein is a longtime friend of Obama, who has for years advocated against government regulations.

Obama will have to own those decisions – and the failure to live up to his election promises of 2008 to run a government that made decisions based on science and expertise, not political calculus.

"To us this is a sharp departure from what we were promised when this president was elected," Steinzor said. "From sound practice what we really want is for the experts to be making decisions at government agencies – the toxicologists, the pediatricians, the geologists. That's what modern government is supposed to be about, not having the decisions made by an office that is not accountable for what it does."

She went on: "What Obama meant to us, what a transformative presidency meant was that the lobbyists wouldn't control government any more. We would be transparent to a fault. We would run a transparency presidency and we would have very protective rules. We have arguably in this specific case not gotten any of this and it is disappointing."

FRESH REVELATIONS MAY FINISH MURDOCH

Yesterday it emerged that the Murdoch gang had given a cell phone to Sara Payne, whose daughter was killed by a paedophile in 2000...Mrs. Payne loved the Murdoch papers and supported them till the end...when she found out that the gift of the phone was a Trojan Horse, bugged so the paper could listen in. To what? Their grief? Or, since the Murdoch empire is now known to support paedophiles who are under investigation, were they trying to support the murderer of this child? They went so far once as to bug the phone of a detective on a murder case who was surveilling someone who worked for the Murdochs...and who is now in jail.

What the hell is going on?

The Post in New York is not selling; yesterday the deli on my block threw away almost all the copies they got. El Diario sold out, but the Post was left to remainder.

And no wonder. It carries little or no information on this. Instead, it had some stupid article about drug dealers busted in Harlem, with the caption HEMP SHIRT - no, the shirt was made of cotton, as all stupid drug dealers wear, but the editor saw fit to carry on the Hearst tradition and smear hemp along with marijuana in the paper (Laura Italiano, "Busted in High Fashion, NY Post, 29 July 2011).

Let us take a long look at this scenario, and reflect on what is going on. A billionaire gives the public smelly garbage as news and the public eats it up. Thus we have wars and pollution, some of the latter from the process of making newspaper pulp. Which, like drug dealers' shirts, is not made from hemp.

Some of the smelliest garbage the Muroch people foisted on us was the Rachel North attacks on those questioning 9/11 and 7/7. And it stunk. She made good money from it all, jetsetting off to expensive hotels in Spain from which she blogged about the wines she enjoyed...and it was clever, as she was a woman who was claiming to be a victim - St Rachel the Martyr, dare question her and she could use the force of Murdoch to bring you down...I more than questioned her, to her face, which she claimed was hit by up to 40 pieces of shrapnel in the attacks - but shows no scars. She did not like the scrutiny and made sure to avoid me.

Just like a number of Murdoch journalists over the years when I have confronted them. They stink. They are part of an empire that has committed the most vile of acts and needs to be questioned about their role in 9/11, 7/7, and 3/11...which, besides being 911 days after 9/11,. just happens to fall on the birthday of one Keith Rupert Murdoch...was he celebrating as the bombs went off? We would like to know.

And we would like to close his papers and stop felling trees to produce the smelly garbage he calles news. But he is not alone - even the Guardian, which is at the fore of the exposure of his sins, has its own: for instance, it spiked the stories by investigative journalists Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynne who were investigating Scotland Yard back in 1999 and 2000. They finally published their shocking book Untouchables, Dirty Cops, Bent Justice and Racism in Scotland Yard in 2004.

One might just ask, was the Guardian also in bed with the Yardies? And what role did the Yard have in covering up 7/7 - which they must have known was an inside job? Or the sale of Quinetic, a story that the Guardian did not want to take from me? Or the extradition of Ian Norris - which had disgusting ties to the Bush Empire (which has disgusting ties to the Murdoch Empire...) - the Guardian spiked that one big time...

We may one day have to arrest and question about 30% of all journalists in the UK because this just cannot go on anymore. And I say 'we' because it looks like the Yard is also not doing its job.

CITIZEN KANE

In the last two weeks, the world is realising what Murdoch really is. Sure, he denies knowing about hacking the Royal Family, hacking celebs, hacking into the phone of a missing-later-found-murdered 13-year-old, hacking the phones of 7/7 victims' families, hacking UK soldiers, trying to hack 9/11 victims' family members' phones, and lastly, following a detective around to help the two suspects in a murder case, one of whom is in jail for sexual crimes against a child - the list surely goes on - but do we believe him?

Do we believe he closed the News of the World for any other reason than to get his satellite deal through Parliament? Or that he did not just plan to open as the Sun on Sunday?

I have told people that he is a spy working for other intel agencies, that he got so big he is now basically working for himself, that he benefited from the strikes at the Times, which he bought cheap and cheapened - that he had a hand in the death of the Labour leader before Tony Blair, that he paid Tony Blair to sell Quinetic to Bush, that he ordered a stand-down on the publishing of any news about Ian Norris or US extradition, etc., etc., etc.

Now people are waking up. He was privy to deals at Downing Street and was not a UK citizen. He was a SPY and a THIEF, as I have called him on this site. Let him sue me. I have information on his org that I am not disclosing yet, and some I have but have been rudely sidelined.

So now I am seeing some vindication, but he is moving to control the damage, and there is hell of a lot going on that may occasion the deaths of some MPs etc. Remember who a pal of David Cameron mysteriously died just before this scandal broke? More to come...

And as to why he wanted 7/7 and 9/11 families' phones hacked, you have to realise those were inside jobs done in part by his allies. They wanted to see if anyone close to the attacks had any clues.

But the Murdoch press is not alone in that regard, let us not forget Jane Standley of the BBC who told us at 5pm EST that Building 7 had fallen...it had not. It fell 20 minutes later. The BBC girl was then whisked out of sight, I personally called them in London and was told they were not putting her forward...it was not wise they said. Not wise.

Then there is the Guardian. The what? The Guardian, which broke the story about Murdoch and his crew? Yes. Remember good old George Monbiot and his attacks on the 9/11 truthers? Well, he was almost one of us - he wondered out loud if the FBI did not do the anthrax attacks...too loud he was, and he suddenly reversed himself. Did he get close to the truth and get told to shut up, or did he use it as blackmail?

And when it came to the Ian Norris case, which is one of the most embarrassing cases in UK history - an innocent Brit sent to jail in the US for committing LEGAL acts - and the UK Parliament and police, their strings pulled by Murdoch, do nothing...

I will not shut up. These newspaper barons need to end their lives in jail. They are criminal jerks. They are the cause of many wars, and the reasons facts about things like hemp are suppressed.

Here in NY we have a Murdoch paper, the New York Post. I am going to call advertisers to tell them to withdraw advertising. Join me. It will put a dent in the Murdoch Beast. It will teach a lesson to journalists like Andrea Peyser who support DDT but do not tell you the truth about hemp, or much of anything for that matter. Just like Hearst. And Sun Myung Moon. And, yes, the Guardian and others nipping at Murdoch's heels for the wrong reasons - to get their own piece of the pie. I noted that Murdoch suppressed the story about Ian Norris being whisked away illegally to the US - but the Independent did the same, with the story taken out at the last minute after Genevieve Roberts had written it up. This is their shame too, lest they try to look good calling the kettle black at this time.

BNP IS GREENER THAN GREENS

Here in the UK there is always news on the British National Party. The biggest scoop was when they appointed a member to be their central London list keeper. It was actually an undercover Guardian journalist, Ian Cobain, who printed the secret passwords and outed Simone Clarke (pictured right) as a member.

The latest caper did not take an undercover journalist to pull off, a disgruntled employee put the entire nationwide list on the internet. Names like Rod Lucas, the radio presenter, then appeared, and it was supposed to be shocking that anyone in the BNP had a real job or, as one breathless journalists reported in a pseudo state of shock, could speak Italian. Lucas has since claimed he never was realy BNP, he was just joining it to research it - kind of like a former WHO member who claimed he was only looking at child porn on the internet to research it...and I was only wearing a silk stocking and waving a gun in the bank, your honour, to research crime...

The best gag out of all of it was the statement by the Green Party, who claimed that Chris Bessant, a former Green, who was on the BNP list, was not a racist, but left the Greesn because the BNP policies were greener. At least I agree. The Green Party was an utter waste of time in regards to hemp. But I think you can buy some good dope from them. Drug policy is their strong point.

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.

PARTIAL OBSERVER

Nick Davies of the Guardian wrote movingly of the sister paper in a chapter in his book Flat Earth News; he titled it "The Blinded Observer." It is a litany of sins of the worst kind, and one wonders how anyone can still go out and buy this paper, taking part in the destruction of millions of trees each year to produce this pulp of fiction and fantasy.
By chance, I came across a leftover copy of the Observer Magazine in the launderette. On the cover is the new trendy model who wants everyone to think she is green indeed, so her first name is Eco, just in case one does not get the message. Everything seems to be named green or eco these days, and Katherine "E" Hamnett seems to be leading this trend. She is of course featured in this, I will get to Hamnett in just a bit.
Going page by page one finds incredible irony, it makes one want to scream. After flipping over the cover, we see a picture of the rejected mayor Ken Livingstone with a bicycle held over his head. It is not green, but red, as in Red Ken. But we get the graphic, Ken is supposed to be an eco-warrior. One might just note there are reasons he lost the election, one of which may be that he never listened as the pigeons he starved got sick and became a threat to public health. Flipping overleaf, we then find a double spread for a large car, the kind that takes up precious parking space, the kind that Ken in one of his brighter moments wanted to tax to death. One wonders then if he notices the juxtaposition of him and his red bike with the sleek silver coloured monster he sought to restrict. Previously I noted on this very blog the hypocrisy of these 'lefty-greeny' papers printing so many of these ads, and briefly, Media Watch and George Monbiot made some noise; obviously, no one noticed.
One does not have to flip many pages before another double page spread for yet another leviathan comes to light, this time for a Hyundai 4x4. And it is justified by having some award, maybe for the least polluting 4x4. Who gives these awards?Maybe it is Lucy Siegle, who is giving them out on the next page. Yes, the same Lucy Siegle who called me one night after somebody gave out my number without permission. After protesting, too much methinks, that she really was not so much in support of cotton, and that she read my blog every day and was delighted with my book, I took off some comments made about her, even though my eyewitness stands by his tesimony and pointed me to others who were there and could back up his story. After asking Siegle to back herself up about her claim that she too takes some issue with cotton and Kathine "E" Hamnett, I got the feeling I had fallen for a high pitched con job. Soft hearted bloke I can be, but not a total fool, so the time has come to call her bluff. If she reads this every day, then let her respond - weeks have gone by and she has failed to susbstantiate her claims as I asked. She can post a comment here; but how many times have we written in to the Observer and been ignored when we presented evidence about hemp and Omega 3 oil, hemp and its value as biofuel, hemp and its place in fashion? Not once. So allowing an Observer reporter to reply on my furom is in effect turning the other cheek.
Back to turning pages, I find no evidence at all that Lucy Siegle was honest with me. The awards seem to feature more and more cotton. And the way they work is that companies with lots of money can advertise in such papers and get to the attention of the reader, who in turn votes - based thereby on the amount of money a firm has to attract attention. Observer readers vote for Observer advertisers, like, doh. Turning yet another page in this sham popularity contest for rich kids, we see another toy for them - a Mercedes Benz. So far not one ad for a G Wiz or even a red bike. Just lots of expensice gas guzzlers which use up our resources and drive up the price of a barrel, causing massive economic hardship. Thank you very much indeed Lucy Siegle and the Observer.
And who is Lucy Siegle's pick of eco-politician? Red Ken, pictured on p. 23 with a bottle of champagne. Some of the winners though totally deserve their prize, and I am glad to see common sense prevailed with Tanya Ewing and her wireless Ewgeco, an instrument that measures energy consumption. But where is The Hemp Shop - which Woody Harrelson praised as the best stocked hemp shop he had ever seen - has Lucy Siegle seen it once or even mentioned it? Or Pure Sativa, which manufactures really strong and well designed luggage here in London? Or the exquisite multi-coloured creations of House of Hemp? Most or all of the fashion and textile coverage is on cotton, but then we get to some really good reporting on this once we get past Lucy Siegle. Dan McDougall gives us a fact only article on this weed's growth in Egypt, where child labour is the norm. A large part of this labour involves picking bollworms, and this takes place in the heat of the day. These plants are often drenched in pesticides, and no surprise that "accurate health studies are thin on the ground here."
The children often get no school, only the lash on the back from a foreman. But for all the hard work, there is less and less money. Part of this is due to US subsidies to US cotton farmers, which has occasioned a sharp drop in prices causing Egyptian farmers to lose money in a season. There is also the problem of cotton being overcultivated so there is a glut at times on the market, and whilst I make many arguments against cotton farming, economic reasons alone ought to bring common sense to the equation. McDougall rightly informs us "cotton has a long and chequered history." This history is not getting any better - it went from one form of slavery to another. Now that we have GM crops, the farmers are at the mercy of the seed companies, and I will not enter at large upon so well known a subject here as my readers, Lucy Siegle and Katherine "E" Hamnett included, must already know well the horrors of this.
The article is excellent, but again the strange juxtaposition of a 4x4 add lends an eerie sense of hypocrisy to this. McDougall goes on to talk about food riots, such as the ones in Haiti, but then tells us that there were similar or worse such disturbances in Egypt - at least 60 dead. One source of friction is water use from the Nile, and cotton is thirsty. In a hot country it is a greedy plant like the monster plant in Little Shop of Horrors. This of course causes "economic hardship and growing resentment in the west." Quoting Hamdi Wabid, he writes: "It is becoming apparent that cotton is not an economical crop. Now it's just hurting people - and perhaps most tellingly the environment - badly, and many families are going under."
What the article does not tell us is what to do to change this. A crop that does not attract bollworms and many other pests that cotton does, one which uses less water and can be grown for many uses - that is a solution. I would like to present not only the dark clouds but also the bright sunshine, but it is going to take people like Siegle and Hamnett to take on board facts and not just go and support more cotton farming. OK, Hamnett claims hers is organic, but in reality this uses even more water, and how do we get the bollworms and other insects off ths organic plants? Do we whip these kids to work harder and explain that it is better because it is getting written up in the Observer with lots of trendy people?
Turning the page again, I am face to face with a Lexus, its sleek black body coming out of a background of grey clouds. This is what drives the Observer, and I am sure Lucy Siegle, and the board of directors, are not unaware. Overleaf is brighter, an image of the blonde haired blue eyed Eco Herzigova - whose name I did in green just in case anyone does not notice that she is ECO - which one might just dare to question as she is advertising lots of cotton dresses and has ties to Al Gore. Oh she is happy indeed, probably not thinking at all about how much the cotton attire is depleting the water. Just stick an organic label on it and it's kosher, kind of like a Michael Sophocles chicken. And they are not cheap, a white cotton shirt worn by Eco goes for £314 at Harvey Nichols. And the Stella McCartney floral dress (I can only imagine a whore who smokes organic crack wearing it) goes for £645 at Matches. Page after page of this woman with the happy clappy organic smile has made me indeed depressed. But a good story about a family that went off grid for a month does have substance, and I am glad to see their more sensible faces, not the silly grins from Eco. Then it gets better, Dan Pearson talks sensibly about gardening in London. Here is someone with more than just a smile to get by - he studied at Kew, spent a year at Jerusalem Botanic Garden, worked with Miriam Rothschild, and toiled away in NY on the Lower East Side, where, incidentally, I spent my years, correcting my teacher's spelling at PS 64. Old habits die hard.
Sadly, however, a flip of the page takes me away from such a good bit of botanical ruminations back to the world of Gossypium promotion. A spread with the "top 5 Ethical outfits" looks suspiciously like an infomercial for the top 5 spenders in "eco"-fashion advertising - and these top 5 ethical outfits are not cheap. A sleeveless dress by Peopletree goes for £165 - it is black, quite suitable or a funeral, though cut above the knees. And of course, there is a Katherine "E" Hamnett T shirt, grey with a large slogan in block letters - this goes for £40. Cotton, of course. There is no hemp on this page. In fact there is no hemp at all in this 'ethical' issue. American Apparel, another spender on the ad scene is here, and Stella McCartney is ubiquitous - three out of five of the shoes are her creations - no price given, dare we ask?
Next page spread features Jocelyn Whipple, who does not mention hemp - even though she worked at hemp company for years in LA and is betrothed to Dru Lawson of The Hemp Trading Co. Or was it edited out?
Then on to Katherine "E" Hamnett and her £40 T shirts. Am I being too cynical, or is she ripping us off? Either she is making a killing on profits or else organic cotton is just not feasible. By the way, she reminds me of that very authoritarian teacher at PS 64 whose spelling I used to correct. Few people like it when I do that, but if we are going to have food to eat and not just trends to enthuse over, we need such hardcore reality. Nice to make expensive organic cotton outfits and then give them lots of awards in these lefty papers, but we need water - we need food - we need facts. And there are not being heard when I am nice, so I have to shout and hope someone hears. Mr. Nice Guy gets taken advantage of by the likes of Lucy Siegle, so no more of this game. It has to be reality, and I am not hampered by 4x4 companies, American Apparel, happy clappy organic crack smokers or any other nonsense. This blog is for the fact, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts. If you do not like what I say, and you have facts, then by all means, speak up - comment is free, as the Guardian and Observer like to tell us.
At present the press is working hard to keep the likes of me out of discussion, they prefer the rich and famous who keep wearing cotton. There are those in the press who are on the ball - Andrew Gilligan, Genevieve Roberts, Nat Hentoff, plenty of people who have done a good job, but this pseudo eco brigade is not among them.

LET THEM EAT CAKE

Have you heard the latest in humanitarian news? The starving are to be fed the left over pressing from cotton seeds, known as seed cake. This way the cotton industry can keep right on rolling, the biofuel idiots who do not know what they are doing can use food crops for fuel, instead of using exisiting waste parts, and Robert Mugabe can get the Noble Peace Prize. We thought that he was 86'd from Europe, but no, they let the beast in to a hunger summit, maybe just to strike a note of irony. Not that much was needed to strike such a note, as the delegates were already gulping down veal and white wine, along with prawns served in vol-au-vents stuffed with pumpkin puree. Wonder where all the food came from and what the farmers who produced it made, but that may not have been an issue on the table.

The UN delegates who attended heard from Ban Ki-Moon that we were about to face food riots worldwide. Production, Ki-Moon warned, needed to increase 50% by 2030 in order to feed everyone. Not sure Mugabe was keen to hear any of this. When his highness did speak, at least one person had the guts to do the right thing and snub his talk - International Secretary Douglas Alexander. Well done mate.

UK MP Gordon Brown and Spanish MP Jose Zapatero weighed in with a remark about how the "world cannot afford to fail" on increasing food production, but neither of them really made any difference by outlining what exactly was to be done.

Since they left that to others to do, let me take up the slack here. We need to appropriate more land to food production. On a planet where only 4.5% of the land is arable, this needs real effort - and chopping down forests is not my recommendation. If we look at the way we are using land, we can make some intelligent changes, and this is a simple exercise. What do we grow lots of but do not use for food? Cotton. This is one of the world's most damaging crops, especially waterwise, and we need to change - but we are hampered both by large companies and petty do-gooders who have fallen in love with cotton. From Robert Mugabe to Katherine Hamnett you will find a common denominator - they are both wearing cotton. Everyone seems to love cotton - and why not, when both the right wing and the left wing press promote this thing to death? For instance, the latest issue of the Observer Magazine hands out all kinds of ethical awards to cotton companies - mostly owned the rich and famous (who can in turn afford to advertise in the Observer)! Money runs things just as much in the left as in the right, and previous posts on this blog have made much mentions of who is advertising in the Guardian, Observer, Independent, etc. OK, a little noise was made by Media Watch and George Monbiot echoed the noise, but the game went on.

So when we are in desperate need, do not expect these papers to give a damn except anything other than their hip and trendy image. They print on the trees grown in the Third World, and exhort us to use cotton and lots of it. Getting mention of a real solution is just not happening. In the meantime, people starve while reporters get paid for worthless stories.

But let me not just pick on cotton, when other crops are just as vile - I turn my guns next on tobacco, a plant that Thomas Jefferson warned against. Jefferson, a farmer himself, advised that we grow hemp. Tobacco might be grown in limited quantities for real quality cigars, but to just raise a crop to burn here there and everywhere is criminal. Lots of people think they are cool if they waste their money on this, but in reality they are causing land that could be used for food to be used for greedy tobacco companies. And while they burn up this weed, they are causing a rise in food prices. But tobacco is one of America's four largest industries, right up there with the arms industry. No one would need to suffer if tobacco were phased down to a minimum, as then Americans, many of them poor Kentuckians who are abused by the tobacco companies, would then grow food, which is becoming so much more of a luxury.

Growing hemp and other plants which produce food and biomass for ethanol is the sensible way to go. It does not take a genuis to figure this out. It takes lots of peopke to take action though, maybe there is some journalists out there who wants to take a look at this and do some reporting?

Many things that seem like they are complex are in fact simple, but the press gives out so much misinformation and prints excuses. For instance, recently there seemed to be a 'breakthrough' here when it was reported that there was the possibility of phasing out the ubiquitous plastics milk container used in the UK. People in North and South America are probably laughing! Of course there is, you use a waxed card square container which is easy to fold up and recycle. Doh. But the UK press acted as if some genius inventor was thinking of this and it would be a packaging miracle. Then nothing happened. Since then, about 6 billion of these plastic containers have been used. The truth is the press ignores people like me when we show them prima facie evidence.

And I suspect that they will give lots more space to Robert Mugabe, Kate Moss, Katherine Hamnett and others who support cotton. For those of use with not such short memories, the press did in fact support Robert Mugabe - especially the left wing press - they thought that Ian Smith was a terrible fascist. But there are starving masses in Zimbabwe who would love to have him back. Unfortunately, all they can look forward to is some more noise and no action, and of course, lots of cotton seed cake.

THE CHANGE IN CLIMATE CHANGE

Another good story in the Guardian is today's front page by John Vidal about the billions wasted on UN climate change programme. He reports on routine abuse and waste in this, which is now a$20bn a year industry, expected to grow to $100bn a year.

By the way, this month has been quite cool, and again the global warming hawkers will have to wear jackets and bring their brolleys if they want to venture outside. Of course, having been so wrong for so long, they might as well just stay in and avoid any public disussion.

If a fraction of that money had been wisely spent on developing hemp farms and more infrastructure for hemp textile production, we would not be in so much of a mess. The do-gooders waste time and money on hair-brained ideas, but there is always a bevy of stupid journalists to take on these ideas. A few in the press are however noticing that we need to pay more attention to facts, but the industries that have $20-100bn to spend can drown them out with a blitzkrieg of press releases.

HEMP OFF THE MENU

A really good article in the Guardian on hemp was just brought to my attention by Sagar Shah. How I missed this for 4 months I do not know, may have something to do with the fact I do not buy that paper every day, too many trees chopped down by the newspaper industry to support it all the time. This one however was worth a few trees, though of course, we hope that in the future they will print on hemp, but that's another story.

The piece is by Guilio Sica, and is titled "Why is Hemp off the biofuel menu?" He starts off by noting that a number of agencies have all attacked the biofuels agency, citing their opinion that biofuel crops would cause more harm than good. In some cases, this is true, especially when talking about the poisonous jatropha, which Bill Clinton and lots of leftie do-gooder know nothings backed to the hilt recently. Sica notes that the reports all manage to ignore the one crop which has been successfully used for many years to create bioethanol, in more environmentally friendly than sugar beet, palm oil, corn or any of the other crops mentioned by the agencies. Of course, he is talking about hemp.

Also talking about hemp was Tory MP David Maclean who tabled a question to the then environment secretary, Ian Pearson, asking what assessment had been madd about the potential to grow hemp as a biofuel crop in England, to which the secretary responded: "Research into the potential of hemp as a biofuel crop suggests it is not currently competitive compared to other sources of biomass. However, hemp does have a number of high-value end uses. For example, as a fibre crop it is used in car panels, construction and as horse bedding. In addition, hempseed oil is used in food, cosmetics and various industrial applications. As a result, there is little interest in this country at present in growing it for biofuel production."

Sica continues: "So the government cannot point to ignorance of hemp's uses, which makes hemp's omission from any of the recent reports even more perplexing. Click here to see the entire piece.

5 out of 5 comments were in support of hemp, but I doubt the honourable secretary took the time to read it. The way they shuffle the cabinet, he is probably long gone. This government has done little to produce alternatives to petrol, and as petrol has gone from $30 a barrel to $132, the people are going to suffer greatly. Any alternative, even a non-profit alternative, would help to keep the price of the barrel down, the less bidders, the less the hammer price.

And of course, as a recent Defra report noted, hemp is ideal for the UK, so it would provide jobs for people here. But that may not be their interest at all, after we have seen how richly foreign companies rewarded Blair & Co., we wonder who they are serving.

THIRST AT THE BREWERY

Today the Hemp for Victory tour headed for Brick Lane in East London, where Fashion Made Fair was in its last day. The Black Eagle Brewery was the location, just a stone's throw, incidentally, from Fashion Street. New faces, familiar faces, overall it was a good networking day. Green Knickers was the first stop - like many hemp based manufacturers, it is based in London - St. Julians Farm Road in SE27. Next to their stand was Goodone which uses recycled clothing, including offcuts from The Hemp Trading Co., whose CEO Gav Lawson was on hand. Jenny Ambrose from Enamore was having another successful day, sharing a booth with Equa, which is a shop in London that sells hemp and other natural fibre clothing.

Katherine Hamnett came at noon, dressed in black, to sell her white T shirts which contain not a shred of hemp, made as they are of cotton. After the appearance of the dark clad one I went on stage with my hemp material and a pitcher of water, from which I poured a glass, and then emptied it onto the floor. This, I noted, is what happens when we buy cotton. Then, after some words on the cultivation of hemp, peeling fibres from the stalks I had in hand from the BioRegional Harvest in Essex, the talk went on, with the jar of water intermittently emptied, to illustrate what goes on when we buy cotton. We are destroying the world with frivolous do-gooder ideas, but it feels good, and it makes the journalists go wild. Oh how they love to promote our cotton loving charade - and how some go so far as to degrade hemp because they are stupid.

This is all rather blunt, whether written on a blog or spoken to an audience. It would be easily defused, however, if it were not correct. Not one person could rebut these facts then, not one person has posted a comment in rebuttal on this blog over the years, and not one journalist has penned a riposte. The hacks do mutter under a bit their breath, and one audience member told us stories of their own abuse at the hands of journalists who did not want to hear so far as to criticism. Louisa Pearson of the Scotland on Sunday earlier this year wrote that hemp was the fibre to use, not cotton, and this did not sit well with some of her colleagues, including those at the liberal press which sells out to cotton and SUVs.

By the end of my talk the jar was empty, and I was thirsty; but the water was gone. And this is what has happened in lands where cotton has been grown, but, let's face it, the press gang do not suffer as a result. They can promote the Katherine Hamnett cotton picking crew and make an easy pay cheque. But not for long, as the water is finite, and lack of it is leading to war. Already the Aral Sea is down to less than 50% of its capacity due to cotton cultivation, and other waterways are similarly under threat. But does this matter to Katherine Hamnett? She is cool in the eyes of many - but let them go and live in Central Asia and it won't be long before they are tired of T shirt signings and other stunts designed to promote this pest crop.

Another aspect of cotton cultivation is that textiles made from it wear out sooner than hemp - but this keeps the likes of Sir Phillip Green and Hamnett in business. It also keeps up pressure to use arable land, which comprises but 4-5% of the earth's surface, for threads - mostly consumed by Westerners who do not realise what a farce this is. They do not face the reality of food scarcity, they are not involved in food riots which have gripped other nations so badly these last few months. They do not think for a second about minimising the land used for textile production, as long as they can feel cool and look sexy they think everything is OK. And to add to the irony of this, we label cotton 'organic' and then charge more for what took more water from the farmers. What would Katherine Hamnett say to these facts? Maybe she can quote Marie Antoinette; "let them eat cake."

That is the attitude in the journalistic circles in the West. Food riots are not their problem, and as many journalists have told me, not without annoyance at my persistent warnings on these issues, their job is only to report the events. Like vultures, they profit at others' loss.

Much to the credit of my listeners, my points were heard, and I had a good talk with them afterwards. If there were any journalists in the crowd, maybe I will be pilloried in the press tomorrow - but who cares, I was stabbed by crack dealers and paedophiles in NY when I spoke up, and threatened by pickpockets when I stopped their work. They are no worse than the idiot churnalists who support the likes of Hamnett - in fact, they do more harm than crack dealers since crack does not deplete the water supplies, it does not take diminish our food supply. Not that I want them around either.

One interesting contact was Uscha Pohl, editor of VERY and very-eco.com. We have both lived in NYC, and she updated me on the latest in recycling in the Big Apple: there is no recycling, Mayor Bloomberg just decided to hell with that; as a major player in the press, he is also not in support of hemp. Not surprising that lots of cotton is worn in his city, and that people who have money fill entire apartments with clothes, thus putting a burden on the land, which means that some people will have to starve to death in order to make way for land apportioned to cotton production.

What does the future hold? Do the men take the lead and oust the pests so that we use our land intelligently to produce for our needs, or do idiots hacks and greedy clothing manufacturers gang up with the drug dealers, paedophiles and pickpockets whom I so despised? We cannot be silent and also be real men. The world is under threat from cotton - which is by far the world's most cultivated textile crop - 1m acres alone in California - and this threat needs be addressed. I will be calling on journalists to act - with a view to naming and shaming all those who do not - and this includes the do-gooder but know-nothing hacks who promote whatever has the most money for PR.

PLANE STUPID TALK AT ST. MARY THE VIRGIN

Image left is Tobias Kendall of Oxford, aka Ken Tobias, who got kicked out of Plane Stupid last month when Tamsin Omond of Cambridge outed him dramatically. Allegedly, he was working for C2i, a spook firm that must have some pretty low recruiting standards. Are they the ones behind Rachel North and David Shayler, both of whom claim they are not working for MI5? Maybe a double bluff on their part, but as to Kendall, er, um Tobias, his bluff got called. What made Omond see through it so easily? Was it the Armani jeans, or was it the fact that Omond is from Trinity College, a known recruitment ground for spooks and would know one when she saw one? Many of the Trinity crowd were sex addicts who betrayed their country to the Russians in the '30, '40s, '50s, '60s and whenever else they could get away with it; much of which was noted in the famous and suppressed book, Spycatcher.
The present day Trinity College alumnus was on hand last night at an event at St. Mary the Virgin in Primrose Hill, where the merchants of soya were on hand to sell their product. Somehow the vicar there must have forgotten that 2,000 years ago someone drove the merchants out of the church, but then again, there are a lot of vicars who have forgotten that the same person also said: "better a millstone tied around the neck of a person than they should hurt the little ones". Maybe the vicar was off at a sex shop, where the Tamsin Omond crowd can be found when not preaching to us or getting into trouble with the police or hasssling members of the general public at the Natural History Museum.
So, with the vicar away, the mice could play with people's minds and promote soya, a plant which is now one of the biggest problems facing the world today. Try telling this to Nigel Winter of the Vegan Society or the folks at Slow Foods London, and you just get a cold stare. Tamsin Omond then comes over to show her ignorance, and there is little one informed person can do against them, even if in the House of God, which they seem to have taken over.
And with the power and money behind Tamsin, one is not surprised. Her grandfather is none other than Sir Thomas Lees, who owns a good deal of land in the proserous South England county of Dorest, once a hemp growing and processing capital of the realm. Her father is a rich banker. She herself hangs out with l'ecume de l'ecume, having matriculated at some very expensive spots for rich kids, the kind who have money for both sex shops and the church.
But apparently, not much brains, or they would have known about hemp, and not used the House of God for a promo on soya, adding to the misery of poor farmers in Brazil, who are seeing more and more land cleared for this monocrop.
The irony is that the very people behind this misery are acting like eco-warrriors, running around in trendy spots talking about saving the planet, along with the dodgy people who forced palm oil plantations on the Indonesians and jatropha on the Indians (see previous post on this).
They are now threatening to force us to use more oil, which is set to rise to $200 a barrel (not so long ago it was $30). What they do is bash all biofuels, either directly, or by getting into the game and giving biofuels a bad name with their stupid ideas. Without biofuels, we are dependent on one fuel, and guess what, the price of that one fuel goes up.
Thus it is intelligent analysis to suspect that the rich kid bondage toy church attending crowd from Trinity College may just be the progeny of the pampered traitors at MI5, and that the game is to infiltrate environmental groups and stifle debate about biofuels. One easy way to do this is to write about it, then dissuade the public from taking action. Perhaps an example of this can be found in yesterday's Guardian, where the double barrelled Duncan Graham-Rowe mentions Henry Ford and his production of ethanol, but then talks only about rapeseed and maize (corn). Further, he warns against using up agricultural land for biofuels, but not a word about waste cellulose, such as stems, unwanted bark and other parts of the plant not used for food or fibre. This is crucial to the debate, and what is devious on the part of so many of the glorified debaters given space in the church and the media, is that they leave out the CRUCIAL part of the debate, entering at large celverly on some PART of the debate so as to push their agenda, which, dangerously, leads us back to petrol dependency, cotton usage, and soya consumption. By keeping us on petrol, major players in the options market can make a killing - literally - and they can well afford to pay people like Tasmin Omond to carry out this subterfuge.
But then again, this analyis may be rebutted by those who think that Tamsin Omond and crew are just 'plane stupid'.
And maybe they are. Whichever the case, treachery or stupidity, we cannnot afford to let this self congratulatory and trendy crowd ruin our lives with their mistakes. They are very self-centred gatekeepers with huge influence in the press, it is like they have hijacked a plane and we need the rational to storm the cockpit and get it back on the correct course.
Let's roll.

COOL HEMP

Robbie Anderman (pictured right) of Cool Hemp in Canada just sent us a link to his You Tube video, click here to see it. He also has a song about hemp, archived earlier this year (17 Jan) on this site, use the keyword search for the site to bring it up or click on archives for January.

On a not so cool note, I just talked to James Randerson of the Guardian, he is their science correspondent, or 'churnalist', as fellow Guardian writer Nick Davies might call him. When asked if the paper was reviewing the hype surrounding climate change, as they at least partly did earlier this week in an article by Randerson (also discussed on this site, 12/March/08), he said that it was a definite conclusion. But when challenged with the evidenece from hundreds of scientists, including Piers Corbyn, he did not seem to know of a single one of them. He challenged Corbyn's accuracy not by rebutting data, but by asking if Corbyn was a billionaire; the answer to which is "I do not know." And if I did, what relevance does it have to the issue? Is that what the paper considers a mathematical equation? Formulate weather patterns based on someone's bank balance?

I had thought that Randerson was going to voice some needed dissent, but no, his piece only noted that certain data was not conclusive, but he asserts that is only that data and he does not notice that other legs of the table are falling off. And I bet that he is sitting there writing on tree pulp paper and wearing mainly cotton clothing. Not cool. If anyone wants to send him some informatoin on hemp, you can address it to: james.randerson@guardian.co.uk

GUARDIAN QUESTIONS THE

GLOBAL WARMING HOAX

It's refreshing to hear some sanity in the Guardian after all the Green Nazi brainwashing crusade to get us all to believe in Al Gore and George Monbiot's hot air news. James Randerson writes in yesterday (11 March, '28) paper: "Experts deny link between floods and gloabl warming." The scientific ananlysis of the severe floods here in the UK has shown that they cannot be linked to climate change. In fact, there has been less summer flooding in the last four decades. And some of the older folk remember some quite warm winters when they sat on the beach without any coats in the winter.

However, the Nazi youth party in the Greens does not want to remember all this. They want to herd us all into their protest march and take our money, but not once do they talk sense abou hemp. So will we be hearing more real science from the press? Hopefully yes, but that means they will have to do real work. So maybe that is too much to hope. I encourage everyone to keep on contacting their local journalists with information on hemp and any other real science so we can get heard over the roar of the Nazi Green PR machine.

SPIES, LIES & JOURNALISM

This weekend I got my copy of Flat Earth News. The publisher was either brave to send me one, or just did not know of my reputation as a scathing reviewer. Chatto & Windus need not be worried though, this is going to be one paen of praise to a very good writer. Nick Davies has ploughed his pen at the Guardian and other papers, so he is able to give us a glimpse into what happens in the newsroom. It's as if a reporter went undercover to cover reporters.
To those of you in the hemp movement, the story of Hearst and his dishonest methods will be no surprise, there is no need to enter at large upon that here. There is a need, however, to look at what is happening in the press today. Davies' book, published this month in London, is shaking up Fleet Street. It has already sold out twice, and there are a number of hacks already trying to downplay its significance. They like to out others, but boy oh boy do they whinge when the light is shone upon themselves! The Pharisees never cried so loud.
It starts off with a view of a non-event, the New Years Eve party in 1999, when so many journalists wasted their time waiting for the 2000 bug to wipe out civilisation. It never did. But for months, these guys had been scaring the public by reprinting PR releases from firms that were making a mint out of 2000 bug scare stories. It was an industry which used the press to its own advantage; not, however, a unique scenario, Davies points out that this is a ubiquitous practice.
In the 2nd chapter we get a look at the newsroom and the art of 'churnalism', which is a mix of robot-like plagiarism and failure to check facts. Reuters, Associated Press and the Press Association (in the UK) feed the local hacks a mix of news and propaganda, which is then fed to the massses to suck up. He quotes a character on the Simpsons: "Journalists used to question the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary treat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call the six 0'clock news."
There are less journalists in the local rags to cover more news these days, some writing, or plagiarising, 10 articles a day. In some cases, real stories get overlooked because they require too much work, or the victim is black, or the story is too controversial. This becomes more apparent in the 3rd chapter, which talks about the suppliers, or, as they are called, 'grocers'. He notes (p. 85) that there are signs of a surge in secretly organised propaganda which has occured since the terrorist attacks of 11 Sep 2001. "The common element is the ease with which clever outsiders can manipulate the now vulnerable media", he asserts, and how correct he is! This thought it well backed up, Davies quotes no less an authority than Edward Bernays, the founding father of PR: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who pull the wires which control the public mind."
Contrasting all this, Davies notes examples of journalists who tried to commit journalism. Some of them are now dead, e.g., Gary Webb and Anna Politkovskaya. One who tried to run a story about US troops murdering hundreds of civilians got pushed out of the ranks. Both Webb and Politkovskaya had written about their governments' complicity in crime. Little wonder, then, that I have had the phone go dead after calling the Independent and other papers with leads on such information. At that paper in particular, I have had strange experiences, especially in dealing with them on the US extradition story. At one point they insisted they 'guaranteed an interest' in an interview with Ian Norris, who committed no crimes in his tenure at Morgan Crucible, yet was under threat of extradition to the US for acts which were completely legal. Much as I felt that the paper was trying to get the story only to kill it at the behest of US intel agencies, I agreed to set up the interview. It ran rather well, and then, for no reason at all, it was killed. They have for two years now refused to run it, much to the sorrow of all parties involved, including their own reporter, Genevieve Roberts, who has since quit.
Roberts, like thousands of very qualified writers, has joined the ranks of ex-journalists. The situation looks bleak, and there are specific reasons which are well worth noting, not just for the body of reporters now out-of-work, but for the public in general. Not only are they getting important stories suppressed, and the US extradition issue is a top concern - certainly of greater interest than the Naomi Campbell story that the Independent gave space to the week of the Norris interview - they are getting lied to by conmen and intel agents. As a case in point of the former, Davies recounts how Rupert Murdoch was made to look the fool after a certain Mr Josephs bilked him out of his dosh with a fairy tale about who killed Jimmy Hoffa. Even when Murdoch was shown that it was a hoax, he published it, much to his damnation. Of the latter, there is copious evidence in the public domain, yet Davies manages to top it with his own story about the Sunday Times being pushed to suppress a story about Kim Philby and his real role in MI6. In another cloak-and-dagger tale we are given the inside scoop on Mordechai Vanunu, who was taken to London by the Sunday Times only to be kidnapped right out from under them by Mossad, which set the honey trap for him here in London whilst he was a guest of that paper's famous, but now defunct, Insight Team. Murdoch finally got rid of this crew, which was famous for taking months on a caper and diligently checking facts.
Due diligence is seldom to be found in today's press, but utter lies get in all the time. Not surprising then that we have such a barrage of misinformation, some of it complete garbage and plagiarism about global warming. The aforementioned Independent is a leader in this field, and little wonder as it has been so duped - Davies recounts that their Washington bureau had one simple rule: no phone calls! That means no checking, and PR firms can run rough shod over them and other papers who are not diligent. One of the leading voices in that paper for climate change is Johann Hari, whose bitchy rants at times make good reading, but are more to be respected as fiction. Not only do they not do phone calls, they do not do much spell checking, and one of Hari's recent diatribes was an embarrassment to journalism as he could not even spell the name of his subject correctly, when writing of Lady Michele Renouf.
Given the fact that Davies worked for the Guardian (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?), it is no surprising that there is little criticism of that paper; nor is one too surprised to read much of their sister paper, the Observer. Those of us in the UK might recall that recently Alan Rusbridger, editor at the former, was involved in helping his rival Roger Alton, editor at the latter, to pack his bags. However, Alton and crew were badly in need of a course titled journalism 101. It was this Observer editor who blindly put Kamal Ahmed in as political correspondent to Whitehall; Ahmed was like a babe among the wolves there, and they used him mercilessly to plant ridiculous stories. It was he who was so much a part of the suppression of the story that was secretly passed to Yvonne Ridley by an anonymous informant at GCHQ about the NSA bugging UN delegates before the vote on the occupation of Iraq.
Credit does go to the Guardian, however, in their having made some attempt to question the barrage of stories about al-Zarqawi, who the US was trying to make out to be the next bin Laden. The US efforts were ridiculous, and at this point the book becomes light-hearted comedy' except, of course, for the citizens of Iraq who are suffering as a consequence.
But do any in the Fourth Estate really worry about the victims of their lies and distortions? Not often, but at times they themselves are the victims, as when Times reporters tried to get to the truth about the SAS shootings of suspected IRA terrorists; MI6 would plant stories with the editors, and the reporters would have their stories changed so as to suit the MI6 version of events. The reporters complained and insisted on seeing copy before printing, but even this was denied them in a dishonest manner. Davies notes the fact that there was an overall demise at the Times after Murdoch acquired it in 1981, which he bought at a knock-down price after mysterious striked at the paper. The former owner, Lord Thomson, was a lion who stood up to the intel agencies and governemnt, especially in the Philby affair.
This is quite a tome; it could, I am sure, go on for hundreds more pages, and for those of us working in the hemp movement, we could add quite a few of our own chapters. One issue I might have with Davies is his omission of any mentions of William Rodriguez, the hero of 9/11; after all, we did invite the Guardian to come and hear him many times in London, but maybe ther never got to his desk. He may well also be honestly ignorant of the fact that the BBC ran a broadcast on 11 Sep. 2001 at 5pm EST about Building 7 having just fallen. It did indeed fall that day, but not until some 20 minutes later. The journalist, Jane Standley, did not so much as turn her head to see if the story was true, maybe she was trained at the Indepedent and remembered the 'no phone calls' rule; it is one of the weirdest broadcasts of all time. When I asked Richard Porter of the BBC here in London why it happened, and why the archival footage of it mysteriously disappeared, he had no answer, and said it would not be wire to put Standley forward to answer for any of it. When asked where he got such information in advance, and why the Standley report was full of deliberate misinformation about the building's fall and the structure of it, he was quick to beg off. Did the CIA supply this story? We may not have an answer to that one, but we do now have in hand a highly important book that points to other cases of CIA/MI6 involvement in the press.
Well done Davies, you are rocking the boat and making waves. I recommend to everyone that they buy this book, read it, and then put pressure on papers like the Independent to get their heads out of the sand.

Flat Earth News, London, Chatto & Windus, 2008. ISBN 978-0-701-18145-1. 408 pp., printed on Forest Stewardship Council approved paper (but still not hemp!)

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!

NOTES FROM THE GUARDIAN

This week I wasted money on the Guardian, but there were some articles well worth 70p. One by comedian Mark Thomas told the tale of the devil and his tricks infiltrating a peace group - paid for by BAE and run by a woman named Le Chene. The infiltrator was one of Thomas' favourite people, and it took him a long time to accept the facts. In reality, many of these left wing groups are run entirely as false fronts - hence the standdown on many issues in the press, including such papers, but let's not name names.

However, the Guardian is in many ways the best we have, and there is always a good amount of accurate reporting, along with the usual hot air from the likes of George Monbiot. This week he heated up the climate with more rubbish about global warming, conveniently avoiding the fact that the earth is moving closer to the sun or any mention of Piers Corbyn. Saturday I will ambush them again, look for me outside the US Embassy with a placard reading: "Real Environmentalists Wear Hemp". The cotton wearing 4x4 driving Guardianistas might just take note.

One sticking point in reporting from the truckers on Farringdon Road is biofuels, many there do not yet get the difference between bioethanol and biodiesel. Easier to just lump the two together, as Jonathan Watts has managed to do in his piece on Tuesday (4 Dec.) about food riots. He makes the same stupid mistake as so many other journalists in talking about biofuels as an enemy to food production - just because George Bush managed to mess up corn based ethanol production in the US; are there any journalists smarter than Bush out there? Can they not realise that farm wastes are perfect for fuel production, as Henry Ford told us? Once again, most of these wastes are cellulose, which humans do not digest, but which turns to ethanol quite quickly. The edible parts, of course, are sold for food. And the cellulose waste parts do not, as one Moonbat tried to tell me, make good fertiliser, as cellulose is only C,H & O, (as in carbohydrate) thus one does not appropriate P,K,Ca or N. (as in Phosphorous, Potassium, Calcium and Nitrogen).

Maybe some, however, are brighter than the Bushman, as John Vidal on Thursday wrote a very worthwhile article about the Tories working on getting 1 million households to create electricity, some of which they would sell back to the national grid - an idea George Monbiot has dismissed (in his speech last month at Friends House). The fact that this is used effectively in Europe ought to be enough to win an argument - for instance, 12% of Germany's electricity is supplied by this method, called 'micro-generation.' My own proposal is that gyms can offer exercise bikes to people and then harness the power to sell to the national grid, solving the problem of obesity as well.

More science reporting from the Farringdon Road crew included James Randerson's report on Sir David King's attack on the press for not supporting GM food; King also supports this climate change nonsense - and no wonder, as it in turn heats up the debate for nuclear power - leaked to me last month was a memo showing that King is about to go to work for Fluor. Can anyone trust him? Maybe the folks at the Guardian who do not already know this. Look for an announcement in the near future, but when it comes out, remember you read it here first.