Did Errol Flynn wear hemp? spies lies and nazis in letters from Rudolf Stoiber

The swashbuckling Tasmanian thespian Errol Flynn became a subject of intense study lately, through some very complex, let's way weird, circumstances. While dealing in collectibles in New York, I came across a trove of letters written to Steven Lovett Jones, a designer who lived with the Austrian author and TV correspondent Rudolf Stoiber. The letters included details of Stoiber's correspondence with Charles Higham, whose book "Trading with the Enemy" I quoted in Hemp for Victory.
Higham wrote that book after writing a book on Errol Flynn, in which he alleged that Flynn was a nazi or nazi sympathiser, much of his thesis based on the fact that Flynn spent much time with a Dr Hermann Erben, actually an Austiran Jew who was also a nazi party member..and alleged Abwehr spy.
While Higham is a highly respected researcher, his book on Flynn was debunked extensively, and it appears that not only was Flynn not any kind of nazi sympathiser, but that Erben was quite possibly a double agent infiltrating the Abwehr for the OSS, and that he later worked for the CIA and possibly Mossad; in Saudi Arabia he was denounced by a former nazi, against whom he had tesitfied in China, and arrested as a spy for Israel. Ironically, his wife did not know he was Jewish and told the interrogators she had no Jewish firiends or relatives!
The plot is thick and murky and I dare not even attempt to go further with all the details...maybe I will write about it later in an article or even a book...just one more juicy detail will I drop here, Erben was given a job by GOP heavy Sterling Cole in 1974, he went to work for Gerald Bull in Barbados, Bull was later supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein, and in 1990 someone put a bullet to his head in Brussels. Cole, BTW, is claimed in a note by Higham to have hired Ilse Bohrmann at US taxpayer expence - she is the daughter of Martin Bohrmann, killed at the expence of the Russian taxpayer when Russian tanks opened fire on him as he tried to escape Berlin in 1945.
So quite possibly I will be posting more here. An unpuslished manuscript by Erben's wife with notes in Higham's hand is most interesting and incriminates the CIA.
So I had cause to go back and look in my book what quotes from Higham were used. They all appear on p. 65, endnotes 43,44,45, and 46. Here is wrote that required his research:

"Du Pont, financed by the Mellon Bank, had acquired GM, which was then placed under Irenee du Pont. As chairman, he led GM to new strengths, not only in his charismatic speeches about a 'race of supermen', but in reaching new sales, many to the Nazi war machine.
The workers, however, were not included in many of Irenee's ideas. Rather, they came under atack, were spied upon, beaten, tortured, and killed. Obsessed by Hitler's principles, he turned them on Americans, and such organisations as the American Liberty League (ALL), the Black Legion (BL) and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) were to play a hand in suppressing labour; terrorist organisations sponsored by 'patriots'.
For ALL. veteran's bonuses were an extravagance, whilst taxes for pensions and the unemployed were attacked. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to clash with the du Ponts over this organisation, stating that it : "ganged up against people's liberties." Irenee had founded the league with Lammot and Pierre, and other anti-African-American and anti-Semitic organisations were to follow. Irenee also paid $1,000,000 for gas equipped storm troops to sweep through plants and beat up those who were not in line; moreover, the board kept personal links to Hitler, some signing an agreement of total commitment to the Nazi cause, vowing to stamp out Jewish influence in America. When the Nazis invaded France, James D. Mooney, GM's chief ofd European operations, went to New York to have champagne and celebrate, renting a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue specially for the occasion."

So there is good Higham and bad Higham. Stoiber in his letters at the time (ca. 1980) wrote that Higham had fabricated some of the accounts, and some suggest that Higham had been spurned in his sexual advances as a young man by Flynn so sought revenge in his book. Who knows.

I will also be posting some information on an Errol Flynn site run by David DeWitt who knows his family and friends, and hope to help set the records straight. There are over 100 letters in my possession plus other documents in this story, so stay tuned...

And for information on Errol Flynn, here is the URL for the #1 Flynn site in the world.

http://www.theerrolflynnblog.com/2016/04/05/cache-of-dr-herman-f-erben-material-found/

New York Times article on hemp

The New York Times yesterday (p. A16) published an article on hemp in Kentucky, after Senator Mitch McConnell joined Senator Rand Paul in his support of hemp, and after a meeting on 11 February in which the issue was debated. Kentuckians are most supportive of this, see the plethora of previous posts for the current and past history. Below, Trip Gabriel reports on the issue as follows:

Hemp Growing Finds Allies of a New Stripe in Kentucky

The Courier-Journal, via Associated Press

In the summer of 1952, hemp plants growing wild in a lot in downtown Louisville, Ky., were killed with chemical spray.

 

FRANKFORT, Ky. — In 1996 the actor Woody Harrelson, who has a sideline as an activist for legalizing marijuana, was arrested in Kentucky for planting four hemp seeds.       

 

 

James Crisp/Associated Press

Senator Rand Paul supports legalizing the growing of hemp in the United States.

 

John Sommers II/Reuters

Woody Harrelson in 1996.

Last month Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, announced his support for growing hemp in Kentucky, his home state.

Between those jarringly disparate events lies the evolution of hemp from a countercultural cause to an issue championed by farmers in the heartland and conservative lawmakers.

On Monday, a panel of the Republican-controlled Kentucky State Senate unanimously approved a bill to license hemp growers. It was promoted by the state agriculture commissioner and three members of the state’s Congressional delegation, including Senator Rand Paul, who removed his jacket to testify in a white shirt that he announced was made of hemp fibers.

If the bill is approved by the full Legislature, Kentucky will join eight other states that have adopted laws to allow commercial hemp growing, although the practice is effectively blocked by federal law that makes no distinction between hemp and marijuana.

Mr. Paul, a Republican, said he would seek a waiver from the Obama administration for Kentucky hemp growers, while pressing Congress to delist hemp as a controlled substance, which hemp supporters say is a legacy of antidrug hysteria.

Both plants are the same species, Cannabis sativa, but hemp has only a trace of the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Hemp’s champions see it as a source of agricultural jobs, an alternative for struggling tobacco farmers and a wonder plant with uses from bluejeans to building materials.

Attitudes are changing in surprising places. At a hearing on Monday in Frankfort, the Kentucky capital, the state police commissioner’s opposition to hemp growing was challenged by a former C.I.A. director, R. James Woolsey.

“The specter of people getting high on industrial hemp,” Mr. Woolsey said, “is pretty much exactly like saying you can get drunk on O’Doul’s.”

Hemp supporters say it is only a matter of time before legalization comes as people more fully understand the plant. They also point to states where voters legalized recreational marijuana in November — Colorado and Washington — as inevitably forcing a change in priorities in the Obama administration.

“The demonology of hemp is exposed as being not valid,” said Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky, a sponsor of a bill in the House to allow hemp cultivation. He said the movement to accept hemp has the same inevitability that he attributed to acceptance of same-sex marriage.

Still, the federal government has been unyielding. Farmers in states that allow hemp must seek a waiver from the Drug Enforcement Administration or risk being raided by federal agents and losing their farms.

Dave Monson, a North Dakota wheat farmer and Republican state representative, has held a state hemp license since 2007, when North Dakota legalized cultivation. But he has no plans to plant. “I applied for a D.E.A. license, never got one,” he said.

A spokesman for the drug agency said it did not keep statistics on permits to grow hemp, which it does not distinguish from marijuana under the Controlled Substance Act of 1970.

Mr. Monson knows farmers just north of the Canadian border who profitably grow hemp, and he argues that it can be an economic boon. “The more states that do what we have done in North Dakota, if we can keep the pressure on, I think we’re going to see some movement at the federal level,” he said.

Hemp supporters claim a total retail value of products containing hemp at more than $400 million in the United States. But a Congressional Research Service report last year found that imported hemp raw materials was small, only $11.5 million. All hemp used in United States today — such as in Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps sold at Whole Foods — is imported, mostly from China.

Rodney Brewer, the commissioner of the Kentucky State Police, said that if hemp farming were legal, marijuana growers would hide their plants in hemp fields and the police could not tell them apart.

“They are identical in appearance when it comes to the naked eye,” Mr. Brewer said, predicting that legalizing hemp would create a boom for pot growers.

But Mr. Woolsey, who said he favored hemp because of “my interest in prosperity for rural America,” argued that no pot farmer would hide plants in a hemp field for fear that low-potency hemp would cross-pollinate with marijuana and lower the concentration of THC, its psychoactive ingredient.

Marijuana growers “hate the idea of having industrial hemp anywhere near,” he said.

The Kentucky bill faces resistance from some lawmakers, including the speaker of the State House.

Mr. Paul, after calling attention to his hemp shirt at the hearing in Frankfort, seemed to roll his eyes when he said, “You’d think you’re at a D.E.A. hearing.”

“This is a hearing about a crop,” he said. “It’s a crop that’s legal everywhere else in the world except the United States.”

Mr. Paul, elected in 2010 with Tea Party support, promised to introduce a Senate bill as a companion to the pro-hemp bill in the House, which has 28 co-sponsors. He is following in the family footsteps, since the first House bill allowing hemp was introduced several years ago by his father, Ron Paul, a former Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate. Ron Paul’s embrace of the issue fit his deep libertarian streak, which also at times embraced legalizing marijuana and other drugs.

Those positions placed hemp far outside the mainstream in many lawmakers’ minds, just as the image of its products — soaps, sandals and natural foods sold at co-ops — placed it in a counterculture.

But no better sign exists that hemp’s image is changing than its embrace by Mr. McConnell, the minority leader, who said in a statement last month that his mind had been changed “after long discussions” with Rand Paul and the Kentucky agriculture commissioner, James Comer, a Republican.

“The utilization of hemp to produce everything from clothing to paper is real,” Mr. McConnell said.

Hemp debate: hope or dope? Former Kentucky governor admits mistake

Just in from Mina Hegaard, whose petition for making hemp legal is at www.minawear.com/about-us/ - she sent me a thread of the debate on whether hemp is dope and an admission from a former governor of Kentucky that is it not, with previous arguments and counter-arguments.

 

Hemp Debate in the Lexington Herald-Leader

 

Kentucky Voices: We Can Differentiate Between Hemp, Marijuana

By Louie B. Nunn, Former Governor of Kentucky

Lexington Herald-Leader, Feb. 19, 2001

It is time to separate reality from rhetoric. When I was governor, I listened to all sides of the issues, carefully considered all opinions before me and tried to be fair in my responses. Being actively involved in public service, Iam often asked for my opinion on various matters affecting our state.

 

One of the most recent, the industrial hemp issue, has also proven to be one of the most important.

 

Although Kentucky has long been known for its historical hemp industry, it wasn't until about a year ago that I became educated about industrial hemp. Frankly, I was opposed to the legalization of hemp for years because I had been of the opinion that hemp was marijuana. I was shortsighted in my thinking, and I was wrong.

Last year, as our farmers struggled with the loss of 65 percent of their tobacco income, I was asked to examine information on hemp. What I learned was that hemp is not a drug, and never was. After studying the facts, I believe hemp cultivation has the potential to make a positive impact on our faltering agricultural economy and to create economic opportunities for Kentucky farmers and local industries.

I am concerned with all the misleading and intimidating rhetoric being offered to politicians as facts. We Kentuckians have been so mired in misinformation about industrial hemp that it has become difficult to distinguish reality from rhetoric.

They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but none stranger than marijuana growers and law enforcement. Like preachers and bootleggers, they oppose legislation for different self-serving reasons.

Law enforcement opposes legalizing hemp production because officers get paid to destroy it, while marijuana growers oppose legalization because hemp cross-pollinates and destroys marijuana's potency. And neither side talks about Orincon, a company with the technology to differentiate marijuana and hemp from up to 5,000 feet in the air, and other simple

in-field tests that accomplish the same results.

But despite these diametrically opposing sides, there is a middle ground where common sense and rational people exist together.

For instance, the North American Industrial Hemp Council is so adamantly opposed to ``mixing the message,'' it will not accept pro-marijuana members. Its membership includes James Woolsey, former head of the CIA; Jeff Gain, former director of the National Corn Growers Association; Erwin Sholts, former head of the Wisconsin Department of Agricultural Diversification; Raymond Berard, vice president of Interface Carpets (a billion dollar industry); Curtis Koster, formerly of International Paper; and Shelby Thames, a distinguished professor of polymer science at University of Southern Mississippi.

The list goes on to include farmers, businessmen, legislators and 16 other states in the process of passing legislation encouraging the growth of industrial hemp. Is it rational to say all of these folks are involved with the effort to legalize marijuana?

Should we listen when Canada's Royal Mounted Police report no problems regulating hemp, or is that force also working to legalize marijuana?

I know Kentucky State Police are as well educated as their Canadian counterparts and could as easily understand and incorporate industrial hemp regulations.

As difficult issues are analyzed with just, unbiased and sensible minds, solutions reached are usually fair and beneficial to all. Why should the industrial hemp issue be treated any differently? We should be looking forward to the time when intelligence and truth overshadow rhetoric and lack of knowledge.

Remember, we can't distinguish between Kentucky white moonshine and spring water by looking, but we haven't seen fit to outlaw spring water.

 

�Hemp A Cover For Legalizing Pot�

By Jeanette McDougal, St. Paul, Minn., Chairwoman Of� Drug Watch International's Hemp Committee

Lexington Herald-Leader, March 19, 2001

Separating hemp reality from hemp rhetoric is like separating fleas from dogs: It's hard to do, and it's temporary. When one hemp fact is established, pro-hemp advocates rush in with another of their own facts. Should we really turn for facts to former CIA Director James Woolsey, who bragged about his client the North American Industrial Hemp Council, by saying there was not a tie-dyed shirt owner among the members? He neglected to check their boxers. Several of the board members were either vigorous pro-drug advocates or their close associates.

David Morris, former vice-president of the council, pushed legalization of marijuana, marijuana cigarettes for medicine and industrial cannabis hemp for years in his columns in the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press.

Andrew Graves, founding and former board member, was party to a lawsuit to permit the growing of industrial cannabis hemp. The two lead lawyers in that suit Michael Kennedy of New York and Burl McCoy of Kentucky are on the roster of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, an aggressive pro-marijuana legalization advocate.

Actor Woody Harrelson, an admitted pot smoker, marijuana and hemp advocate, hired Joe Hickey, executive director of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Association, as a consultant, allowing Hickey to leave his former job and devote all his time to hemp. Harrelson has sponsored many Kentucky hemp events, including a hemp essay contest for Kentucky schoolchildren, some of whom received a list of hemp facts intermingled with marijuana facts, such as, ``smoking marijuana can be beneficial for emphysema, and can be used as a handy way to induce dry mouth before dental operations.''

John Howell, former hemp editor of High Times magazine, was in Kentucky in 1998 to help Graves, Kennedy and McCoy publicize the message that there is a hemp market. Howell recently represented the cannabis hemp industry at the National Conference of State Legislatures, without disclosing his ties to High Times.

High Times, one of the oldest and most militant pro-drug/marijuana publications in the United States, announced in its March 1990 edition an ``extraordinary plan'' to legalize marijuana:

``The way to legalize marijuana is to sell marijuana legally. When you can buy marijuana in your neighborhood shopping mall, it's legal ... Anything and everything you can think of will be made from hemp ... Supporters of the hemp legalization movement will be able to buy shares in hemp manufacturing. ... Legal and financial recognition of hemp's industrial value will mean legal marijuana, whether our government likes it or not! Pot will be legal! ... So invest in our future. Buy some legal marijuana. Buy a hemp shirt and wear it proudly!''

As to the economics of cannabis hemp, in 1999 about 540 Canadian farmers planted 35,000 acres of hemp. About 18,700 of those acres were contracted to a company called Consolidated Growers, which went bankrupt (Chapter 7) in February 2000, leaving 232 Canadian farmers� (almost half of those who planted hemp that year) holding the hemp bag for $5 million to $6 million. Much of the 1999 crop is still being stored by Canadian farmers.

In 2000, in all of Canada, a mere 13,500 acres were planted, down from 35,000 the year before. Ontario, the only province to do a costs/return per acre analysis, discovered that for fiber only, there was a $107 loss; for grain only, a $24 loss; and for grain and fiber, a $48 profit. An agriculture ministry official also warned farmers to have a contract with a reputable company before planting hemp, or they could lose $600 an acre.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the market for hemp fibers ``will likely remain a small, thin market.'' The report calculates that U.S. imports of hemp fiber, yarn, fabric and seed in 1999 could have been produced on less than 5,000 acres.

The hemp liability list goes on and on and on.

 

Reactions: �Attack On Hemp Unfair,� Lexington Herald-Leader, March 22, 2001

 

� By Louie B. Nunn, Woodford County

It appears that Jeanette McDougal of Drug Watch International mixed a few facts with a lot of misinformation in the anti-hemp commentary that appeared in Monday's Herald-Leader. It's the old legal tactic: If you don't have the law or facts, attack the person.

I have known the Graves family for three generations. During World War II the federal government asked the Graves family, as well as many other Kentucky farmers, to grow hemp for the war effort. Everyone was thanking them in those days instead of attempting to malign them as McDougal did. I know of no member of Andy Graves' family, passed or present, who would approve of or promote the production or use of marijuana.

As for Woody Harrelson, I defended him without charge in the name of liberty and justice. I didn't know him before the trial. He came here to test a legal concept in the interest of Kentucky farmers. No one was harmed.

 

McDougal and I have talked by telephone. She faxed me much outdated and narrowly interpreted material.

Modern technology can immediately distinguish between the industrial hemp plants and the marijuana plants, as can the naked eye. We should destroy the marijuana plant, but make every possible use of the industrial hemp plant.

In an honest effort to do both, there is no need to try to destroy decent people by insinuation, slander, guilt by association or the use of outdated or misdirected information.

I admire and support McDougal's objective, but shame on the course she has taken.

 

        By Erik Rothenberg, Director, VoteHemp.Com, Los Angeles

Employing innuendo and specious logic, Jeanette McDougal put forth an all-out conspiracy theory of farmers, businessmen, politicians and others concealing secret identities as pot-smoking hippies engaged in the most seditious form of cultural treason: the legalization of marijuana through the re-commercialization of industrial hemp.

For those of us in the real world, hemp enjoys its current widespread bipartisan support because of its proven benefits in 31 other countries. In fact, the irony of McDougal's hysteria is that it is completely misplaced considering that more case law and legislation now exists to grow and use medical marijuana while low-THC hemp remains illegal.

But beware of confusing McDougal with the facts, as her focus is to establish guilt by association. The mere insinuation that an individual is even indirectly linked to what still passes for cultural taboo is offered as a poor excuse for a legitimate gripe. One should note that her complaints have yet to be reconciled with the increasingly long roster of conservative politicians and industrialists who support hemp.

Apparently the crown jewel of McDougal's conspiracy musings is a High Times article published more than 10 years ago, wishfully referring to hemp clothing as ``legal pot.'' Sorry, but inflating the implications of the unfortunate semantics of a biased journalist does not exactly a conspiracy make.

The informed citizen, armed with the hard facts about industrial hemp's well-established commercial potential and environmental benefits will eventually triumph over McDougal's pitiable campaign of misinformation, demagoguery and character smears.

Is MI6 reading this post?

I just saw an interview with the head of LEAP in the UK - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). This could cover cannabis for recreational use, which is not so much an industrial hemp issue. It struck a chord as I used to know Annie Machon, a former MI5 agent - and her partner David Shayler. They took to the hemp issue but David only seemed to understand the cannabis part, and used to pester Tony Taylor of Tony's Hemp Corner for cannabis tincture. Ultimately I fell out with both of them - somewhat before David said he was the Messiah and was here to save us from 2012 - and before I rather bluntly told Annie Machon to get a job. In the UK, she is looked to by the press for any opinion on intel related matters, though she no 007...however, this article does touch upon an issue that hits home - intel agencies looking at the internet - as recently, I have had a number of them do just that here. And ironically, I am a law abiding citizen! But some of the political issues drew Homeland Security here, in 2008, and also a company called Cyveillance, which Bush owns via Quinetec - a company he got through underhanded means - taking it out of the hands of the UK taxpayer - stripping it, firing 400 employees - and using it as a shield for Cyveillance (which is based in the Virginia/DC area where so many intel agencies are).

Other viewers have included Lockheed Martin. Cyveillance, by the way, was not interested in hemp, but rather in a possible third party candidate for New York's 12th Congressional District (the one of most interest to spooks - it has embassies, the UN, Missions, CFR, etc.) named Wade Emory Johnson. Third party candidates scare both parties here, when the elections came there were tricks played at the polls to keep people from voting third party. Hence that agency taking a look. On other occasions viewers have looked here and then at seemingly unrelated blogs where I do leak to the editors more info about intrigue, especially about GOP complicity in the Jacob Ostreicher case in Bolivia; which would really get a lot of people here arrested if the truth were outed, it already has occasioned mass arrests in Bolivia.

Anyway, this post is not about hemp, which is an issue that generates some snooping on the part of the powers that wanna-continue-to be, but it is an interesting post nonetheless. So enjoy and know Big Brother is watching!

MI5, The War on Drugs, and the Internet
By Bea Xu

Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for the MI5 who resigned in 1996 with then-partner David Shayler to whistle-blow on the crimes and incompetence of the UK Security Service. Now the director of LEAP Europe (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) and an avid political campaigner, Annie speaks to Beatrice Xu about her experiences, and how they provide an insider’s commentary on the ‘three wars’ that threaten our civil liberties today.
What was it like working for the MI5 and why did you finally decide to resign and blow the whistle?
The most incendiary [department of MI5] in literal terms was working for G branch: International Terrorism. Right from the start, it was a disappointment and a surprise, because during the recruitment process they said that they wanted a new generation of intelligence officers to work against counter-terrorism threats. They could see the writing was on the wall about their usual areas of work: subversion, the political stuff, and espionage, because the Cold War was ending. Shamefully, they knew they were going to get some new work coming in: the investigation of the IRA on the UK mainland had been announced in parliament but the implementation was delayed until October 1992. This meant that they had recruited all these new people but had no jobs to put them in. So we were farmed out to these old sects. That’s partly why the counter-subversion section was kept artificially going long after it was realised there was no threat there: to make sure there were jobs to put the officers in, in order to have the right number of officers when they took on this new stream of work. What we’re talking about here is illegal investigations into UK political activists, extended even when they were deemed not to be a threat to national security, purely to give jobs to the boys! So that was quite an early shock.
What was it like to be ‘on the run’ in Europe immediately after the whistle-blowing?
Intensely stressful. It was very frightening because we had no other options, as we saw it at the time. The only people we could legally take our evidence to about crimes are the heads of agencies we wanted to report for committing the crimes. You can’t go to your MP; you can’t even go to the police under the draconian terms of the Official Secrets Act 1989. David [Shayler] had some experience because he started working life as a journalist, so he had some notion of the concept of what it would mean to blow the whistle. He decided it would be better to go straight to the press and create a bit of a stink. Then, because of the pressure from the media, there would have to be an inquiry into the crimes he was reporting.
How did your MI5 work get you interested in the drug trade?
One of my jobs with MI5 was working in T-branch on the Irish issue, looking at terrorist logistics – which is the import and export, infiltration and exfiltration of weapons and personnel. I was working very closely with customs across the UK and hearing all sorts of horror stories from them. This was the Investigations division of customs, the hardcore undercover section, and they were saying: “Well we can stop one or two shipments [of narcotics], but actually it’s a drop in the ocean”. I was living and working in central London in my twenties in the 1990s; anyone could get whatever they wanted on the streets of London. Then of course, roll on a few years and Shayler gets convicted with the breach of Official Secrets Act and is sent to Belmarsh High Security Prison – even there the prisoners could get whatever drugs they wanted. He said on his first night he was sharing a cell with some man who was chasing the dragon. The whole idea of a drug-free world might be a nice utopia but realistically, it’s not happening. So really it’s a case of how to manage the issue.
You are very much against the “war on drugs”. As the director of LEAP (Europe), you are calling for a repeal of drug prohibition. What is the “tight system of legalised regulation” that you propose in its place?
We’re looking at a system where drug flow and drug consumption has drastically increased over the same time and the price of drugs has usually drastically decreased. The war on drugs is an abject failure. And it’s funding organised crime: Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UNODC at the time of the financial crisis in 2008, went on record and said that the only thing keeping the banks from liquidity was drug money – so that’s how big this trade is. It’s about $500bn a year- and it could be regulated by governments.
How we would go on to regulate it is the interesting question. There are various proposals: Uruguay is considering is legalising cannabis and making sure that the government has control over the growth, production and sale of it – that it is regulated in the same way as tobacco and alcohol, and taxing it as well. This financial argument is becoming stronger now as countries are becoming more broke. Then you have slightly wider models like Portugal or the Czech Republic, who have decriminalised all drugs. Decriminalisation is different from legalisation. Decriminalisation is where the users are not penalised for their use, but the drug trade is still illegal and the organised criminals still have control of the trade – a bit like with the Dutch coffee shop system.
Until we get proper, controlled legalised regulation we won’t know quite how effective the system could be. But prohibition has failed so publicly that any other policy would have been abolished years ago – yet everyone has an emotional investment in [the belief] that drugs are bad. [Drugs] are inanimate things.
But your work on drugs is merely one piece of a triptych: what you call the ‘three wars’ of drugs, terror and the internet. Could you explain where you see these three issues overlap?
It evolved from a belief in the original intentions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 – that has always informed my critique of how the intelligence industries work, how police forces within democracy should work. That took me into looking at digital civil liberties where you get the copyright lobby trying to stamp out what they call ‘piracy on the internet’, even though it’s legal in many European countries and beyond, to protect their profits. And they use the same arguments: “We’ve got to clamp down on the internet, we’ve got to data mine everybody and store every message and look at deep-packet stuff in order to protect against organised crime, terrorists and paedophiles”. They are trying to strip away hard-won basic rights of freedom of expression and privacy from the internet in order to protect us from these greater crimes. This very much overlaps with the war on drugs because in the last 40 years we’ve seen the pressure from the state to take away our basic freedoms in order to investigate organised crime in the drug trade and terrorism. It’s estimated by the Drug Enforcement Administration that at least half of the recognised terrorist groups are funded by the drug-trade, so the overlap between organised crime and terrorism is very strong. In Afghanistan, since our intervention, the west has blown about $6bn on that war. One of the things they said was to eradicate the poppy growth industry, and in fact the acreage has doubled in that time. I think it comes down to basic freedoms, basic human rights and basic dignity.
Since your days on the run, are you continuing to take online security measures?
I don’t think I’m of interest to [the MI5]; they have far more pressing things to investigate, but it’s not just about the state spies. I think any concerned citizen now needs to be aware of all the data-mining that’s done by the Americans (and reports of the Government Communications Headquarters about to start in the UK – if it hasn’t already) and where we don’t have any privacy on the internet. Things like the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) have been used and abused, not just by intelligence agencies but even local councils to snoop on citizens living in their boroughs. Just taking basic precautions on the internet like using PGP to encrypt your emails is a way of ensuring your privacy. You now can’t guarantee that you will have privacy in your communications from your government.
From your research on surveillance and the internet, is there anything you think avid users of social media should be aware of?
I would say that big companies like Facebook and Google are a spy’s wet dream. When I was in the intelligence agencies, if you had a target you thought was of interest or threat to national security, one of the jobs was to profile or investigate them. ‘Investigating’ meant bugging their phones, bugging their flats, following them around, perhaps even sending in an agent to report on them. And by that you found out who they were talking to, who their contacts were and potentially what they were trying to organise – be it political activism […], terrorism or radicalism. Now of course we all do it to ourselves by saying what we’re up to, who we’re talking to and who our friends are on Facebook.
There’s a wonderful talk I saw recently by a man called Professor Eben Moglen at an event called Re:publica (Berlin, 2012).By using all these cunning arguments about copyright, piracy, paedophilia, terrorism, organised crime … big companies and governments are trying to strip away those freedoms to put in place ways that everything can be monitored and information can be removed. So it could be our generation that gives away freedom of thought, because freedom of thought depends on free information and free media.
But the ethos of something like Wikileaks, for example, is that all information should be available and stored. It’s a sort of modern Alexandria library, through which people can realise the levers put on national governments by big corporations, so they can be informed citizens and make the right choice.

LEAP (http://www.leap.cc/) asks for support from students and is currently seeking a student platform from which to speak, represented by two former UK chief constables amongst other spokespersons.

THE HIPPY CIA

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

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!)