TEXAS CHAINSTORE MASSACRES AND

OTHER NEWS FROM THE USA

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

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

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

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

MAY IN REVIEW

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

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

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

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

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

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