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.

HOT OFF THE PRESS

As usual the papers were full of doom and gloom. However, one bright spot appeared in the Daily Mail where Liz Jones, pictured left, wrote about the cotton based fashion industry. She really hit hard, and took to task the likes of Fiona Lambert of Asda. This designer, like so many others, tried to assure us that she was very ethical indeed. Lambert went to lengths to point out that she had recently visited Asda factories in Bangladesh, and that they were indeed Kosher. Jones, however, asked some awkward questions. Lambert had no anwers, indeed had no idea what the minimum wage was in Bangladesh. So Ed Watson of Asda comes to the rescue of the Goliath corporation, telling the lovely damsel that he is there to clear up confusion. Jones is obviously no bimbo; she told him there was no confusion. Watson reiterated the assertion that the slaves, I mean workers, were paid mimimum wage, but on cross examination had no clue what that minimum wage was. The Jones vs. Watson case continued with further distress to the gentleman when our lady then pointed out that the Asda assertion about "negotiate with union representatives over terms" was so much hocus pocus as the union representatives are all in hiding from the government, which bends over backwards to please greedy businesses. Jones spent time walking through the Dhaka slums and seeing for herself what rubbish this is: slaves, I mean workers, live in huts with no running water, no electricity and no sanitation. It does not take Sherlock Holmes to see that Watson is full of BS. We will send Jones some information about hemp so she can add to the light some facts about this textile.

In other news, Sting got stung when he was found to have used an entire jet to take his highly paid butt to a gig in Germany. It ought to be a crime; of which there is plenty in Zimbabwe, where the hospitals are full of mutilated people who were cut to pieces by that darling of the left, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The left hated the former president, Ian Smith, who made the hospitals and farms run well. But where are any of these lefty idiots to take responsibility for their crimes? I'd live to send George Monbiot to Zimbabwe to work on a farm, where he can learn a few things. Not surprising Zimbabwe refused to plant hemp, even though years ago Paul Benhaim went there to consult to the government about it. Other African nations are starting, however slowly, to learn about hemp, but don't expect to see fields of emerald up in Zimbabwe. For that matter, don't expect to see anything sprouting up in Zimbabwe except images of the great dictator Mugabe.

More bad news on the horizon is the fact that the US and Israel are making more noise about a strike on Iran, and so Iran is simply pointing out that they may stem the flow of oil if they get picked on. In which case, we may have a very cold winter, and not due to climate change. The West is simply not developing its own energy, and we need to have regime change to get this done, as governments in the US and the UK are too tied in to the oil and arms industries. And I did say regime change - which one translation service tried to interpret as "wipe off the map" - the famous remark that Ahmadinejad did not actually make. A year later a UN translator misinterpreted a note about Syria having certain weapons which was clearly, both in the original Arabic and the second translation into French, a remark about NOT having certain weapons - methinks this was accidentally on purpose. The arms dealers would love to have eternal war and make eternal profits. I would love to have some accuracy and a regime change.

Lastly let me mention a note about the EU changing its laws to allow the US to spy on EU citizens. Great. Big Brother crosses the pond and gets a warm welcome from the people we pay to guard our liberties. It is called treason, but they do not like that word, and in fact a number of UK MPs are trying to decriminalise treason. Much the same bunch that voted in the one sided US extradition laws, written mysteriously in US English. So treason would be legal, but growing hemp could get you the death penalty in the US.

Brave New World.

WATKIN DEPARTURE FUELS DEBATE ON BIOFUELS

On Monday(10 March '08) Karl Watkin announced his resignation from D1 Oils, the UK company that was promoting jatropha (photo above) as a biofuel. Jatropha had been the hope of many, and world leaders, including Bill Clinton, had backed it. 250,000 jobs had been created as part of the emerging jatropha industry, and jatropha plantations had sprung up from India to Africa.

All this was not without controversy, as some claimed that this plant poisoned the environment. While I am not sure about this, it is certain that the debate poisoned the investment climate and jatropha has suffered a setback. Watkin pointed out a number of parties as guilty of suppressing this plant, including commentator George Monbiot of the Guardian. A statement put out last month by D1 included Lord Oxburgh's assessment that Monbiot's views were 'absurd'. His lordship is correct, and statements on this very sight reflect much the same. One thing noted here was the way Monbiot and others talked about biofuels in such a way as to lump all together, even biodiesels with bioethanol. "This lack of differentiation," asserts Watkin, "combined with the London Stock Exchange's failure to address both the liquidity problems of [its junior market] Aim and the impact of shorting of illiquid stocks, have conspired to erode the value of D1."

Friends of the Earth also weighed in against jatropha, but then again it is not impossible FoE just bashes anything they are not getting funding for. Here in London they run around wearing environmentally desrtuctive cotton and using tree pulp paper. Any efforts to interest them in hemp has been a waste of time.

So is jatropha the next wonder crop? My answer is I do not know. There may be some legitimate complaints about it, and it may take more time to evaluate the equation. But would I put hemp forward here are the crop for biodiesel? No. Hemp can produce a good oil, but the fact is that hemp oil sells for much more in health food markets (retailing for £20 a litre), so it would be hard to get it at a cost that would work to the public. Hemp bioethanol, however, made from the stem, is very cost effective and tons of it can be produced from an acre in one season.

Jatropha does deserve real evaluation, not just slagoffs from journalists with an agenda, or competing organisations given too much space in the press. Hemp has its purposes, and other plants have their uses too. We support the cultivation of the best possible crops, including hemp, black salve, bamboo, jute, nettles, jatropha, etc.

HOW GREEN IS THE TIMES?

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

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

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

BOUND AND BAGGED

Carrying around the hemp bag has proven to be an interesting habit. Today a woman at a shop in Camden was carrying her own cloth bag, made, as is usually the case, of environmentally destructive cotton. When she saw the logo - "Real Eco Bags are made from Hemp", she got moody.

I watched with a grin as she paid at the till - and then almost laughed as she had the groceries put in a plastic bag, which she then put into her 'eco' bag.

Lots of these green posers are the same. They all want money and attention but cannot grasp the facts.

8 December I will be at the climate change parade (pray for rain) outside the US Embassy (Grosvenor Square) with a poster pointing out that Monbiot and his crowd are wearing cotton and destroying the forests by using wood pulp paper to print their propaganda.

A LIGHTER SHADE OF GREEN

I live to fight another day, after having attended the Monbiot rally at Friends House. I did not get lynched, only ignored and collared by one angry member of the Green Party UK.

Was it something I said? Or the fact that I wrote on their solicitation forms: "PRINTED ON ENVIRONMENTALLY DESTRUCTIVE WOOD PULP PAPER. HELP DESTROY THE RAIN FORESTS AND SUPPORT US NOW"?

They were not pleased. One member then proceeded to discusss global warming with me and things got hot. I mentioned Cynthia McKinney and her visit to the UK Greens in September, and he suggested she was unable to answer questions. When I questioned the angry member as to which questions, he was then unable to answer, and it turned out he was not even at the event. He was not alone in that his inability to answer questions. The panelists were not only unable to do so, but also rather angry an my inconvenient truths. When asked about Piers Corbyn, Phil just asserted that Piers was a nutter. "Conspicuously absent from your speeches was any mention of him or others who have real science about climate change," I told them.

While facts were few and far between, emotions ran high. One teary-eyed blonde from down under went on about how terrible climate change was, and how great it was to break the law in London to get her point across. For all her emotional speeches and illegal actions, she did not want to know about hemp and gave me a cold look when I gave her some hemp paper; as did another speaker.

The main speaker was George Monbiot, the smartest of the lot - he sat nearest the exit and when anyone like myself approached after the talk he managed to get away faster than a snake in the grass. This left a volunteer to field my questions about why they only discussed biofuel as one product rather than intelligenlty talking about biodiesel and bioethanol as two very distinct items; which confused the mean green assistant further and I was sure they were just about to call security.

The overall impression of it was that it was a Holy Roller revival meeting. They talk up the emotions and then pass the plate. In this case the plate was in the form of direct debit forms printed on - environmentally destructive wood pulp paper. And were any of them wearing hemp? No way - they all had on environmentally destructive cotton. They want to preach, but they don't want to practice.

GORE GORED

No matter how hard they try, there will always be people who can see through lies. Tonight a naked emperor dances on the stage with his rubbish about climate change, and no doubt there will be lots of people admiring his clothes - which will be made of cotton.

George Monbiot goes on in a few hours and if I get to pose a few inconvenient questions I may get lynched. In case that happens, and this is my swansong, I leave to the reader some links to articles that debunk the climate change hot air.

Click here for a good article in the Telegraph by Christopher Boooker and Richard North, published 4 November 2007, titled "The Deceit behind Global Warming". Another is at educate-yourself.org and a third, from Hillsdale College, can be found here.

The trouble with all this is that it is fed by the companies that want us to use nuclear power. Further, it is a false platform, and when it falls, it brings the reputable researchers with it. Thus, it is harder to get action behind real issues. But since there is a $billion industry now involved, they will only beat the drum for more money, scaring us into coughing up just as they did in the '70s with the global cooling fiasco.

ENEMIES MEETING UP AT FRIENDS HOUSE

Thursday, 8 November, 7 pm, George Monbiot is contributing to global warming with more hot air about climate change and carbon credits. The game is that lots of people give money to their stupid programmes and get made fools of. Real scientists warn them, but, just like in the '70s, when the same kind of people made a cult of global cooling, the media takes a liking to the hysterical nonsense. This means that resources that could be spent to fight pollution get used by hotheads.

That may be part of the reason we are in the mess we are in today.

So, to raise awareness of real issues, I will picket the event with fellow activists. Participants are encouraged to wear hemp (which the moonbats almost assuredly will not be wearing, as they much prefer environmentally destructive cotton).

Friends House is a historic venue located just across from Euston Tube Station on Euston Road. Come and make history at this event! Bring your "Real Eco" hemp bags for a night of awakening and help pass out flyers (to be printed on hemp paper).

INCONVENIENT FACTS

It has been windy wet and cold here in London these last few days, but no surprise to those of you who took on board the predictions of Piers Corbyn (posted on this site earlier this summer).

The Global Warming people have had to change their tune and are now yelling climate change, much to the delight of anarchists and the nuclear power industry, which is selling itself through the likes of George Monbiot. Al Gore is also into the nuke thing, his mouth is where his money is, as his family has a stake in that business. The Sunday Telegraph published some very inconvenient facts (19/8/07, Christopher Booker) for Mr. Gore. One was about the false date published by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Booker writes: "The error was so glaring that, on August 7, GISS had to post revised figures which show, instead of temperatures reaching their highest level in the past decade, that the hottest year of the 20th century was not 1998 but 1934. Of the 10 warmest years since 1880, it turns out that four were in the 1930s and only three in the past decade."

Which means that James Hansen, head of GISS and Gore's closest scientific ally, has been promoting rubbish.

FLYING LOW

Just got back from the Vegan Fair, where I found some new hemp products. Hempower of Leicester was there, with a new label on their hemp bar, I am natural of Brighton displayed a handmade hemp cream, and Earth & Wear of Denbighshire was selling No Sweat hemp trainers (made in the US).

Sagar Shah and Chris Sanders showed up and took some pictures, will put up when ready. We walked around with the "Real Eco" hemp bags, and ran into someone from Chiswick who had just bought one of the limited edition bags, she in fact got 007.

Sadly, a number of vegans were wearing cotton, the cultivation of which kills people all over the world. Cotton is a thief, it takes all the water and leaves the land dry. Some promoters have the nerve to sell 'organic cotton' as if it were cool to steal people's water for this weed. It is an upstart at that, historical figures such as Christ did not wear it - since Europeans did not discover it until the 1500s. Now it is grown all over, the monocrop that destroys the environment. I left a few fliers about to draw attention to this.

But that is not picked up on in the press much, perhaps because they are adverising cotton on their environmentally destructive pages - made of wood pulp. Recently Medialens pointed out the hypocrisy of the journalists, especially those who work at the Guardian and The Independent, as they scream about climate change on one page whilst selling their readers trips all over the world. Sounds like Medialens was reading this blog, check out all the times I pointed this out, why did it take Medialens so long to pick up on this?I'll give them an email and see if they are as aware as they think they are. Good job though they made George Monbiot uncomfortable, and Johann Hari as well. The latter is out at Heathrow as the only invited journalist! A dubious honour indeed. The two of them and the hundreds of brat protesters, some of them calling themselves 'Plane Stupid' are a liability to an honest cause. I much support the right of the local people to limit Heathrow to its four terminals, but somehow this undignified mess that is calling itself democratic protest is an own goal. Public support is for the police, not loudmouth journalists and anarchists. These kinds have hijacked the issue, and we await their crash. More details will be found here from our undercover agents carrying Real Eco bags made of hemp and will be posted at this site and at schmoontherun.

GOING GREEN

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

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

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

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

KEY EVIDENCE

The face in the photo may be familiar to many, as it is that of William Rodriguez, the last man out of the WTC on 9/11. He was in the position to be the first, but ran back in to unlock crucial fire doors with his master key. The other 4 people with this key buggered off and no one knows their names to this day.

He was made a hero for saving hundreds of lives, but when the US government heard his eyewitness accounts of explosions in the buildings, they turned their back on him and be became homeless, after 19 years' work in the complex. Hundreds of others backed his story up however, including many NYC firefighters. Scientific analysis of the amazing way in which the towers fell, including Tower 7 which was not hit by a plane, shows that there was a weakening of the structres lower down and that it was not due to aviation fuel burning at the top. Seismograph records show this quite clearly, and the video footage taken by Rick Siegel from the New Jersey shore corraborate this as well.

Since 2004 he has done four speaking tours of the UK, and always elicits a reaction. Some in the press shun him because they cannot argue with him, so they sit back and take silly pot shots at him and other 9/11 survivors who can talk first hand about what really happened, not what the press thinks they ought to tell us. The BBC, for instance, told us about the collapse of Tower 7 20 MINUTES BEFORE IT HAPPENED! How did they just happen to know? They rambled on about it being a weak building when in fact it was doubly reinforced so as to facilitate joining floors for large commercial tenants. Much as one would like to see any of these silly reporters going face to face, man to man with Rodriguez, this isn't going to happen. Johann Hari, George Monbiot and their ilk are safely esconced behind a desk in Pressland.

Rodriguez, on the other hand, shows his face and stands by what he says. He will be saying it on Monday, 9 July, at the Indian YMCA in Fitzroy Square, London. Join us at 7pm in the Mahatma Ghandi Room for an exciting evening with Rodriguez, to whom I have chosen to dedicate Hemp for Victory. This event is free and open to the public, and to any journalists who dare stick their head above the parapet.

ANYA VS. ONYA

IN THE

GREAT

GAME OF ECO CON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

THE DEBATE HEATS UP

On a US Senate website there is a list of top scientists who are saying that global warming is not the product of our pollution (posted 15/5/07). The list includes Dr. Claude Allegre, Bruno Wiskel, Dr, Nir Shaviv, Dr. David Evans, Dr. Tad Murty, Dr. David Bellamy, Dr. Chris de Freitas, Dr. Reid Bryson, Hans H.J. Labohm and Tim Patterson, inter alia. Many of these started out as alarmists but have re-studied the data and feel that it is the sun, and not man-made pollutants, which have caused the warming. Only an idiot would deny that there is global warming.

Given the site, one tends to wonder if this is not propaganda, but on the other hand, much of the hysteria, which is promulgated by the likes of Johann Hari and George Monbiot, also looks dodgy. Then there is the fact that the global warming industry is out to make money just like Du Pont and GM. It's hard to take sides, and most honest people would agree that it is a complex argument, best not entrusted to Messrs. Hari and Monbiot. Neither is it to be entrusted to big business or their bestest friend in the whole world, the US government.

One point made by the scientists is that the debate takes energy away from other issues, including the production of ethanol and the curtailing of the cotton industry. I would like to see some real journalists take these on and not just the loud mouths at the Guardian and the Independent. Could it not be that both these papers are in the business of advertising big cars and expensive cotton threads?

The hot air that these papers exhude (and the trees they fell to print their opinions on) is a danger, but if we take a closer look at some of the global warming fanatics, we may want to put a stop to them as soon as we can. Some of them are ready to inject diatomaceous earth (used in kitty litter) into the stratosphere. James R. Fleming, writing in The Wilson Quarterly, notes that they talked about these kinds of big ideas "even as they joked about a NASA staffer's apology for her inability to control the temperature in the meeting room..."

So NASA cannot even keep themselves cool, yet it hosts idiot savants who want to churn ocean water and blast kitty litter into the air. All, of course, at great cost to the taxpayer, and who reaps the benefit? The bevy of savants, journalists, scaremongers and politicians who can divert tax monies to these sorts of schemes... the same people who were crying about global cooling a few years ago. Now they're back, and they are wasting our time as we research proven solutions such as hemp and locally produced ethanol.

REAPING WHAT WE SOW

Saint Paul believed that people reap what they sow; "be not deceived", he warned, "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap; he who sows to the spirit shall reap life, but he who sows to the flesh shall reap corruption."

A more recent warning about reaping corruption comes from a leading German zoologist, Hans-Heinrich Kaatz of the University of Jena. Kaatz talked to the Observer (UK) in May of 2000 and foretold the disaster that is now occuring with bees. He asserted: "I have found the herbicide-resistant genes in the rapeseed transferred across to the bacteria and yeast inside the intestines of young bees." [full report posted on rense.com]

At that time, the UK Agriculture Minister Nick Brown advised farmers to destroy all crops contaminated with GM. Two years later, the government was less active, as a report in the Sunday Times was to show. In that piece (15/9/02), it was revealed that GM crops tainted honey from 2 miles afield. UK government response then was to say they did not believe it was a source of concern. Five years on we have different faces in that office, and they are not much concerned either.

They might be, if they listened. A yet more recent report just might get their ear, that of organic beekeeper Sharon Labchuk, who states that among the 1,000 or so organic beekeepers who write in to her newsletter, none has had a case of CCD in their hives. Michael Bush, to whom she refers her readers, notes that the media does not tell us the real causes of this problem, and asks if media coverage will affect government response. Unfortunately, it may, the bullies in the media set the tone and the politicians dance to it.

At times, some do stand up to the bullies, and this month it was Senator Chuck Grassely, a Republican from Iowa who demanded that Big Oil explain why they are not producing ethanol. In his opinion, and in that of many others' as well, Big Oil is stalling on the issue to sell us more petrol. Ethanol could be produced from farm wastes, so obviously, Big Oil has little interest in it. However, the left is just as guilty here, as they went and supported the palm oil fraud that has destroyed so many habitats in poor countries the mainstream press can ignore. The likes of George Monbiot might want to take some responsibility for their nonsense along with Big Oil.

It is becoming more and more apparent that individuals have to act on issues rather than wait for governments, right, wrong or left, to do so. This week a farmer in California took on the pesticide companies by suing them for pesticide residues which blew on to his farm, destroying his dill to the tune of $500,000. Larry Jacobs of Jacobs Farms is suing Westerm Farm Services. While the whole case may take as long as the OJ case, there is at least an injunction issued by the Santa Cruz County Superior Court to stop spraying.

Some might call this litigation unusual, but there is precedent for it in that very state, where northern orchard growers sued to limit spraying and the state granted stricter ordinances against the use of herbicides. Indeed there is solid legal basis for both cases, as Jacobs' barrister, Austin Comstock, points out: "There's a traditional concept in Anglo-Saxon law that you use your property in a way not to damage mine...if you damage mine, there's some redress there."

Sounds almost Biblical there, Mr. Comstock.

ECO TERRORISTS

Image right is of an oil palm, of which Jonathan Green in the Daily Mail writes yesterday. It is being used to provide biodiesel, and is destroying the forests. But why did they do this when ethanol can be produced from farm waste? Further, this confuses the issue of biofuel, making people think it is all bad. Part of the reason is sloppy journalism; few journalists really want to take the time to develop their stories, so they get a few soundbites and off they are like mad rats to make deadline.

Had they spent half-an-hour or so looking at the details, we might not have whole populations in Sumatra slaughtered for the sake of biodiesel, which they were slap happy to promote a while back; a few years ago, there were many who were proclaiming that biodiesel was the Messiah, probably the same fools proclaiming that global cooling was coming and it was the end of the world.

So what are the important details that they overlooked? For one thing, biodiesel has a high viscosity, and is not so good in cold climates. For another, one must grow lots and lots of oil rich plants, which leads to monocrop culture and an increase in crop specific pests and diseases. Large swathes of forest land have been cleared, with the support of fools like Tony Blair, and now people in places we aren't aware of are dying of starvation.

Ethanol, on the other hand, comes from existing farm wastes. People like George Monbiot seem to be quite unaware of this as they dismiss biofuel, and sadly, while he gets paid well, people in Indonesia are suffering for his kind of journalism. If he and the press gang had listened a decade ago, they could have been heroes, turning unwanted farm waste into ethanol, as Henry Ford encouraged. Ah, but today's journalists can't be bovvered to listen to him or any serious environmentalists. Instead, they are out attending parties sponsored by the media giant Sony, who slaughtered a goat as a sacrifice to the 'gods' of war and had semi-naked wait staff put things in journalists mouths, unless they wanted to put things in their own mouths, like the goat's blood and organs.

These and other stupid diversions get the attention of the fourth estate, which is quite rude when one calls up and tries to get them to pay attention to the real issues. The water supply is now being contaminated in the US, but where was the press? It's up to reporters and bloggists like Schmoo to run these stories while Sony puts things in their mouths at parties promoting violent video games.

Which makes them complicit in the earth's demise, as some kind of laid back eco-terrorists, helping to cover up the facts in the tradition of William Randolph Hearst.

THE COTTON WEARING, 4X4 DRIVING GUARDIAN READERS

Alarms went off this weekend as I leafed through the Guardian on Saturday. As usual, I could find no mention of hemp (although they did a full page feature on hemp and Hemp for Victory in September, 2006). Neither was there much mention of Muesli or sandals. The new improved Guardian was, however, awash with ads for 4x4s and other gas guzzlers. With full page ads or spreads, serious money is passing hands here. No wonder that they are printing the rather flawed science of George Monbiot and ignoring sound work by others much more qualified to take on these important issues. It seems they hardly have time to do any fact checking whatsoever, as this month they published rubbish about plans to close down the Serious Fraud Office. "There is absolutely no truth in your story," replied the Attorney General, Peter Goldsmith.

Maybe no truth, but lots of car ads, and it seems that the paper is now driven by Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Suzuki, Saab, Kia Motors, Freelander and Toyota. The Porsche people not only have an ad but a breezy editorial praising the 911. Trees are chopped down daily to promote 4x4s in this paper, which goes out of its way to call anyone questioning the US government on 9/11 a "gibbering idiot." Which, of course, includes a lot of people who work for the US government, they might look into the facts and wonder why senators, congressmen and military officers question the official story. Or they might talk to William Rodriguez, the eyewitness and hero who saved hundreds of lives by going back into the building at great risk to himself. In fact, he was interviewed by someone with a view to printing his account, but then it never appeared in print. Maybe there just wasn't room with all the 4x4 ads, promoting the automotive and mining industries, both part of or related to the military industrial complex.

So thanks, Guardian, but no thanks; next weekend I will look for another paper to read, and in fact today I found much more objective reading (and less car ads) in the Daily Mail. Two of their reporters are now questioning the so-called suicide of Dr. David Kelly, and later this week, it is expected that an interview with William Rodriguez will appear.

ELDERLY AMERICANS CALL GOVERNMENT SILLY

This blog has been following the progress of the hemp movement around the world, and perhaps the most interesting one is about North Dakota. There the people involved are not the usual environmental activists; they have no interest in pot; none are hippies. One, David Monson, is the ND House Majority speaker - his party is none other than the GOP. Many others are mainstream farmers, and they are pushing for hemp bacause it makes a good crop, and brings in cash. Two of them, an elderly couple from Stark County, George and Earlene Frank, asserted that the fears on the part of law enforcement officials were "silly".

Right on. Listen to your elders! It's time we got over the Hearst induced hysteria of the '30s and put hemp back in the farm, like it always was in America. Young whippersnappers cooked up a bunch of lies about hemp and got it published in the Hearst press, and in so doing, they have ripped America off. Interestingly, I was just reading that in the Nuremberg trials, they not only hung soldiers and top Nazis, but a few journalists as well, as they realised the dishonest reporting was much a part of the war. Earlier this week I met an Italian journlist who told me there is a bar for the press in her country, so they eliminate some of the problem. That is a great idea! Too often I open the paper here and read utter nonsense, sometimes put out by icons like George Monbiot, and I wonder if they are descendants of the Hearst and his Nazi friends. Incidentally, hemp makes a good rope, the hangman's noose was called in former times the "hemp horse". It's time a few people took a ride and we got on with farming this crop.

TOO MUCH SALT IN THE SOUP

Ten years ago, global warming experts were considered a bit crazy, worth mention in a small byline on p. 197 of your local rag. Now, global warming is front page day after day. To counter this, the pundits are out there calling the scientists a bunch of conspiracy theorists. One of them, Melanie Phillips, was caught out on the BBC when asked if she realised that her sources were industry funded. No, she was rather clueless on that one, but it made her sound important to put people down and quote some 'experts'.
However, it is not just those taking dosh from big business who muddy the waters. It seems now every anarachist and journalist is out there claiming to be an expert as well, and when they do a halfway job, they end up discrediting the work of others who have spent far more time and effort than themselves. It seems that from the ranks of anarchists, we have George Monbiot raging against the day without all the facts, and he gets put in his place by those who do. Weighing in to the Guardian on 30 January, he bashes that other idiot George, aka W, and thus starts off on a roll. However, he would be wise to cut it short, as after taking aim at so ridiculous a figure, he then descends into folly. Whilst he questions W's motives in calling for biofuel production, telling us, as if we did not already know, that W just might be funneling public funds to his buddies who have farms, he calls these moves "quixotic solutions." He then, as is common practice in the Guardian, alludes to maize and rapeseed as the crops which will provide the material for this. (Which, BTW, is cellulose, the most common compound in the vegetable kingdom). Their rival paper, the Independent, is prone to the same error. Rape seems to be what they believe would be used, then they realise it cannot supply such great amounts of cellulose as the stems are flacid, then someone writes in that this just won't work. The Independent science editor Steve Connor ought to know better, but he goes on about maize, ignoring other, better crops for biofuel. For one thing Steve, maize, or corn as it is known in North America, does not grow in Canada or in parts of the UK.
But getting back to that other would-be science editor, George of the Guardian, it is interesting to note that he repeats a very serious bit of misinformation that has been put forth repeatedly (including by one letter writer to the Independent), which is to say that using plants for biofuel would raise world food prices.
Assuming, perhaps, that the farmers are going to sell the edible parts of their maize, if that is what they are going to use, or the seeds from their rape, to the fuel producers. Of course not. Henry Ford, when he produced ethanol from hemp and other common crops, did not use the edible parts; rather, he created a secondary market for the waste parts, which for hemp, was the hurd, the inner core. Maize stalks and cobs can go into the pot for fuel after the kernels have gone into the pot for food, and the same example is mirrored in so many hundreds of other crops. George Monbiot shows himself a cut below that other George whom we all so loathe. Ironically it is GW, not GM, who is doing something, however selfishly, about producing biofuel.
But GM is not alone in this practice. Examine for a moment the usual eruption of irony spewed forth by Johann Hari in the Independent, who writes on so many subjects he might pass for an all-knowing genius if he could just get them right. His diatribe on 25 January bashes global warming deniers. Again, if he knew when to stop he might be a genius. Like Monbiot, he goes on to display a certain ignorance and weakness in debating style. He picks on a number of obviously wrong counter arguments, but does not mention at all the fact that Greenland was arable in the Middle Ages or, of more recent application, the facts put forth by Piers Corbyn (brother to MP Jeremy Corbyn). Much as I support the argument for global warming, I do not do so by suppressing the counter arguments, which can quite often be of great value to the whole picture. Picking and choosing your facts is how so many journalists work, but to present a holistic picture we must listen to all sides and form our opinions after we have listened.
Again, I might emphasise that I am well into the global warming camp and work to reduce pollution. However, if that warming is partly caused by the sun and other forces other than man-made pollution, we need to know that as well and act accordingly.
Another aspect to all this is that a rush to judgment on this complicated issue seems to be the style of those who stand to profit from or tax the carbon credit schemes. Much of this is newly foisted on the public and just because someone like George M or George W comes out and shoots their mouth off on a subject, does not mean we all ought to take their word as final. That is insanity.
Instead, I stand for sanity, demanding to hear all sides of the arguments, even those sides I do not like. There may be points in their thesis that have been overlooked, and the opposition can add to the campaign.
But getting back to hemp, what bothers me enough to write this much is that all these 'experts' and pseudo-scientists writing in these supposedly progressive papers ignore the hemp issue; years of giving them the information on hemp have, I think, been wasted, as the advertisers of these papers include car manufacturers (yes, the Guardian is in the business of advertising 4x4s after Monbiot rants against their use) and cotton growers.
If they were more intelligent, they would look at the plethora of information about hemp, which is one of, if not the, fastest biomass producers on the planet. You may just want to bring this to their attention, and you can do by emailing them at: editor@guardian.co.uk or s.connor@independent.co.uk Don't bother with Mr. Hari, his phone does not take incoming calls and he does not respond to facts put to him by email.