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<$Project P.E.A.C.E. -- Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics$>
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The Glaring Hypocrisy - A letter sent to Rep. Lynn Woolsey via the Drug Policy Alliance's Activist Action Page
The glaring hypocrisy, racism, and degenerative thinking that characterizes current U.S. drug policy is massively and predictably disabling to social evolution. Perversion of the HEA, resulting in the loss of student funding for drug convictions, is so obviously warped thinking that it is inconceiveable to imagine it was seriously considered in the first place.
Who is responsible for writing and passing this sociopathic legislation, and how can those persons be held liable for implementing such predictably destructive policy? Education is the obvious answer to many of the problems our elected officials are supposed to be solving. Though, to be sure, since the Economics of Punishment was privatized, prisons have become a more profitable short-term investment than universities.
I suggest that the personal investment portfolios of our elected officials be reviewed for conflict of interest, as a matter of procedure whenevr legislation is introduced. In that way the personal economic interests of our elected officials, that fuel this prohibition-drunk political bent, would cease to be a motivating force for laws that profit the industries which are competitve with individual choice and freedom.
If there is no accountability, then there is no law. The lack of accountability in our government allows this kind of legislative trash to be force-fed to the public, without consideration of the mathematically predictable consequences.
I am writing to urge you to strongly consider co-sponsoring Representative Barney Frank's legislation that aims to repeal the 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act (HEA). In 1998, HEA was revised to include a new provision that delays or denies federal assistance to any person convicted of any drug-related crime. This law is poorly conceived and does more predictable harm than can be justified for any reason, particularly among poor and minority students.
There are a variety of unintended long-term consequences associated with the 1998 amendments to HEA. Denying access to education for those who need or want it most retards economic growth, increases criminal activity, undermines our moral values, and destroys the credibility of American democracy. Also, because communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the drug war, the HEA restrictions functionally exaggerate racial imbalance on college campuses, and in the subsequent work-force, across the nation.
Denying or delaying the opportunity to receive an education only exaccerbates our nation's problems. Access to higher education provides young people with a variety of benefits including hope for the future, increased earning potential and the chance to find a decent place in the job market. Education provides drug- and alcohol-addicted students with realistic goals and incentive that people need to overcome addictions and lead healthy, productive lives.
Freedom of individual choice would make our world much safer. Consider that before it was prohibited, Cannabis (hemp, 'marijuana') was used successfully to cure alcohol and hard drug addiction (from a conversation with Dr. Willis Butler of Honolulu, whose father started Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii, and specialized in this area of medicine in the 1920s).
Consider the relative safety of Cannabis compared with alcohol in operation of automobiles. Consider that no one has ever smoked themselves to death with Cannabis. Consider the epidemic of pharmaceutical drugs circulating through our schools as the black market sale and abuse of Riddelin blossoms.
All of these are predictable effects of legislation that punishes naturally-curious and adventurous young people for experimenting with a relatively safe herb (that they can get no matter what is done to stop them anyway - Consider the lucrative drug trade in our prisons!) that would replace more dangerous substances. Consider the Dutch experience with specific reference to percapita chronic pot-smoking in Dutch teens and the median age of hard drug users in Holland.
The best opportunity to repeal the 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act is upon us. Rep. Frank's legislation is strongly supported by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, the NAACP, the United States Student Association and nearly 100 colleges and universities throughout the nation.
I urge you to support a repeal of the 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act. To become an original co-sponsor of this bill, please contact Joe Recalto at 5-3609 or by e-mail at joe.racalto@mail.house.gov.
PvH
posted by projectpeace @
9:59 PM
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Wednesday, March 19, 2003  |
The United Nations is preparing to re-inject an unwilling global society with another highly-addictive dose of prohibitionist drug policy. In April, the global community will again be conscripted into the UN's "War On Some Drugs and Plants", doomed to repeat costly failures and self-inflicted human rights atrocities, characteristic of the unacceptable conditions institutionalized by prohibition.
Failure to comprehend or the lack of will to overcome the dynamics of prohibition does not serve other than those power-driven entities at the end points of profit for the Economics of Punishment. Obviously, war and punishment have been elevated economically to positions of respectability, and impacted into the institutional procedures and structures which people pay taxes for their government to provide. In the United States, nowadays people are more likely working to send their children to war, prison or the hospital, than to college. One in three people living in developed countries dies of cancer. More than 700,000 people were arrested last year for "breaking a 'marijuana' law" in the United States. The U.S.A. now locks up more people for breaking drug laws than Western Europe emprisons for everything! The built-in inertia of the Economics of Punishment drive the momentum and profitability of prohibition.
The truth is, in the absence of accountabiility for the truth, there can be no reasonable obligation to obey "laws" leading to increased violence, enrichment of a perverse "black market" economy, erosion of human rights, and fundamental disrespect for Nature.
Ignorance of the truth is no excuse for the law.
PvH
posted by projectpeace @
12:15 AM
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This is just one recent example of a symptom pointing out the synergistic collapse we are inducing, through our poor choice of fuels and the prohibition of Cannabis.
PvH
From the World Wildlife Fund Newsletter
http://www.wwfus.org/news/headline.cfm?newsid=486
Contact: Kathleen Sullivan, kathleen.sullivan@wwfus.org, 202-778-9576
For Release: 02/25/03
Disappearance of North American Mammal Linked to Global Warming
Related Links:
Learn more about global warming WASHINGTON - New research published in the February 2003 issue of the Journal of Mammalogy indicates that American pikas may be one of the first mammals in North America known to fall victim to global warming. A smaller relative of rabbits and hares, American pikas (Ochotona princeps) have short, round ears and make their homes among the broken rocks or talus at high elevations in the mountains of the western United States and southwestern Canada.
Photo by J. MacKenzie - pikaworks.com
Previous research results suggested that American pikas are particularly vulnerable to global warming because they reside in areas with cool, relatively moist climates like those normally found in their mountaintop habitat. As temperatures rise due to increasing emissions of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases, many montane animals are expected to seek higher elevations or migrate northward in an attempt to find suitable habitat. Living essentially on high-elevation islands means that American pikas in these regions have little option for refuge from the pressures of climate change because migration across low-elevation valleys represents an incalculably high risk - and perhaps an impossibility under current climate regimes - for them. Results from the new study suggest that climate may be interacting with other factors such as proximity to roads and smaller habitat area to increase extinction risk for pikas, creating detrimental synergistic effects.
"American pikas may unfortunately be the 'canary in the coal mine' when it comes to the response of alpine and mountain systems to global warming," said Dr. Lara Hansen, senior scientist, World Wildlife Fund Climate Change Program. "Their disappearance is an indication that our heavy reliance on polluting fossil fuels is causing irreparable damage to our environment. We must make the switch to clean renewable energy resources like wind and solar now before it's too late."
American pikas may act as 'ecosystem engineers' at talus margins because of their extensive haying activities. Since food is difficult to obtain in winter in the alpine environment, pikas cut, sun-dry, and later store vegetation for winter use in characteristic 'haypiles' above a rock in talus areas.
Learn more about what you can do to help reduce global warming, and thereby protect pikas and their habitat.
posted by projectpeace @
12:12 AM
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Tuesday, March 18, 2003 |
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 23:23:58 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Response to: [eurodrug] Request on Vienna - Hard Facts From P.E.A.C.E.
From an e-mail written by Mssr. Guillaume FOURNIER of NEF:
> >As you know, the Vienna moment is getting closer:
> we need to bring our
> >arguments together. We are collecting "Hard Facts"
> among some members of
> >the Senlis Council / ENCOD. These "Hard Facts"
> consist of a series of
> >facts/data taken by you from official sources
> (UNODC and EMCDDA) and
> >independent researches, which outline in a clear
> and effective way the
> >failures of the current drug control system.
> >
> >
> >The objective is to give an evidence-based
> illustration (e.g.
> >cost/benefits) that the fundamental premise of the
> international drug
> >control system is flawed and that the UN drug
> treaties should be reformed.
> >
> >The Hard Facts are organised around eight themes:
(The following is the e-mail response of P.E.A.C.E. to Mssr. Fournier's inquiry)
***Salut! Mssr. Fournier,
I trust you will consider and appreciate the
compelling significance of the following synergistic
facts and relationships and with your permission, some
hard conclusions.
> >1. Environment
***Fact: Cannabis is the most unique, essential, and
useful agricultural resource on the planet (Erasmus,
Herer, Conrad...)
Ecological Perspective: Inducing scarcity of a
critically determinate resource, over time, has
created fundamental imbalances, thwarting the natural
process of man's socio-economic evolution. Farming
Cannabis is a determinate activity in mankind's
progress toward economic sustainability within the
primarily significant Laws of the Natural Order.
Consider that drilling for petroleum in the Alaska
National Wildlife Refuge would produce less oil than
could be grown biodynamically each and every year in
the United States (Herer, Conrad).
> >
> >2. Crime-Justice (terrorism)
Disrespect for Nature is a kind of invisible terrorism
we All participaste in to some degree, resulting in
unecessary death for people and other creatures. It
will continue to be so until our Natural choices and
freedoms are returned to us.
One person in three dies of cancer. Terrorism against
the Laws of the Natural Order by a chemically-based
soul-less economic system, have produced a world out
of balance in environment, economics and social
evolution.
The Economics of Punishment have grown out of
prohibition, by criminalizing enough of the population
to fill prisons, empower the black market and
profitize industries and bureaucracies that have
sprouted from the "War on Drugs". Punishment has
become an accepted, impacted and institutionalized
source of revenue because of increasingly acute
conditions of scarcity. Scarcity of the most valuable
plant on Earth has been induced, and the increasing,
accelerating imbalance is predictable.
The insidious self-inflicted terrorism of inducing
scarcity and promoting anti-Natural economics is so
fundamental as to be invisible to most people, until
it is pointed out. Then it becomes obvious. We are a
young, reckless, and currently, an extinctionistic
species.
***Where Cannabis use is tolerated, hard drug use and
drug related crime are reduced. I refer to the Dutch
experience of policies based on tolerance, considered
in relation to the median age of hard drug users in
Holland.
> >
> >3. Health-HIV
***Cannabis is an effective herbal therapeutic for
relieving many symptoms of many illnesses. As an
example, I refer to wasting syndrome in HIV/AIDS
patients, and nausea in cancer patients. Glaucoma,
arthritus, multiple sclerosis, muscle spasticity...The
research being done in this area is a fraction of what
it should be.
The nutritional value of cannabis seed makes it the
most healing food there is. Eating fresh organic
Cannabis seed can reduce the chances of contracting
75% of the diseases that are likely to kill people
living in developed countries (Erasmus). If people are
suffering from these diseases, a diet of fresh hemp
seed can effectively treat, and sometimes cure the
illness.
> >
> >4. UNGASS Targets (supply or demand)
***Demand: "Forbidden Fruit Is Always Sweeter." This
tenet of adolescence is demonstrated in the relatively
lower levels of drug consumption by Dutch teens.
> >
> >5. Corruption
***The United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) "Food For All" program has no
reference to Cannabis as a source of vegetable protein
and essential fatty acids. No where in the world is
there a U.N. sponsored investigation of the Cannabis
plant for food, fuel, fiber,or an of its other 25,000
uses.
Corruption of scientific inquiry for developing
regional seed strains of the highly adaptable Cannabis
plant is an unacceptable corallary result of
prohibitionism. It is beyond the moral accountability
of any governing body to induce scarcity and inhibit
scientific investigation at this magnitude of
significance.
Cannabis is the best avilable source of vegetable
protein, and EFAs; and it is potentially the most
abundant and widely distributed beneficial rotational
crop that there is. Corruption of objectivity in food
security and fuel production issues is potentially
extinctionistic.
> >
> >6. Human rights
***The right to free access to unique and essential
natural resources was established by Mr. Gandhi, with
specific reference to salt. Cannabis is the only
common seed with three essential fatty acids
(sometimes four!)in proper prortion for long-term
consumption (Erasmus). Essential and unique natural
resources cannot possibly be within the rightful
jurisdiction of the unobjective courts.
> >
> >7. Economics
***The true value of Cannabis is the opposite of what
we have been taught. Cannabis is the first plant that
was cultivated by man (Herer). It was a required crop
in the jamestown Settlement that became the United
States. Washington, Hamilton, Lincoln all farmed and
appreciated the many benefits of the Cannabis plant.
It is only for the past three generations that this
Natural resource has been grossly undervalued.
Our generation lives in an economic vacuum that is
drawing us toward extinction, because our economic
system is based on toxic, unevenly distributed, finite
substances.
If environmental "externalities" and moral
responsibility could be quantified, then the current
basis for our economic system would not be competitive
with an organic, Cannabis-based agricultural economy.
> >
> >8. Alternatives (positive
> initiatives/policies)
***"Return to Reason", the film I am making, provides
one hour of concentrated drug reform information and
perspective from around the world that could help you
to transmit a comprehensive rationale in a repetitive
and efficient way.
If you like I can send you a VHS or VCD to incorporate
into your effort. Any support you can provide in
helping to screen the production video of "Return to
Reason" in Vienna, would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> >References:
"Fats That Heal Fats That Kill" Udo Erasmus
"The Emperor Wears No Clothes" - Jack Herer
"Hemp - Lifeline to the Future" - Chris Conrad
"The Economics of Prohibition" - Mark Thornton
"The Fundamental Challenge of Our Time" - Paul von
Hartmann
and many more...
for peace,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace
with links to other sites of interest
posted by projectpeace @
11:56 PM
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Monday, March 17, 2003 |
From a speech by Foreign Minister George Papandreou at the High-Level Confrence on Drugs on the subject:
Towards an effective drug policy: "Scientific documentation, everyday action and political choices." 7 March 2003
"There are certain key issues which we would like to raise, as Mr. Apostolou said, at this conference.
First of all, how can we reduce demand, how can we limit the use of narcotic substances, particularly among youth."
The Project P.E.A.C.E. resonse to this for the past twelve years has been:
"Forbidden fruit is always sweeter." How many times do people have to learn this before prohibitionism
is commonly recognized as an advertisement for rebellious young people to use drugs? This fundamental truth is an axiom
because it is always true.
With all due respect, if Mr. Papandreou and Mr. Apostolou are serious about reducing drug consumption by youth,
then they had better reconsider the real and unchanging effect of "drug-pushing" policies they are promoting in their prohibitionism.
As the wiser kids sometimes remind us, "Keep it real." Making Cannabis a "forbidden fruit" does several very bad things, all at once.
First, prohibition disrespects Nature, the Natural Order, and Natural Law by making an "outlaw" of a plant. What kind of an example does that set for our children? We consume toxic chemicals, alcohol, and pharmaceutical drugs as though there were no tomorrow, no responsibility to future generations, or other creatures, then we insult the intelligence of children with "Just Say No" and D.A.R.E. and demonstrated disregard for science, history and common sense.
Second, it takes away the possibility of using Cannabis - the most ancient, useful and unique agricultural resource on the planet - as a means
of achieving sustainable economics. What kind of future is there in that for these children you say you are trying to protect?
Third, it makes being a teen-aged, middle-class outlaw cool and sexy, and relatively safe - until you run into some really bad, chemically-corrupted
black-market pot, or even worse, a really mean street punk who is angry about the way his world is being infused with violence and scarcity, who decides to take it out on you.
Fourth, "Forbidden fruit is always more expensive." has, predictably, resulted in the richest black market in history,
which further impoverishes the spiritual integrity of our society as morality and reason are sold to us as a hypocritical and impotent drug war;
abstinance is presented as normalcy; and prohibition is promoted as a somehow-acheiveable and realistic state of balance,
when every teen who lives in the real world can assure you that it is absolutely not.
The children are waiting for someone to be honest about it. Why not just admit that the economics of punishment are so profitable,
that to end the profitable war that is prohibition, is just too expensive an investment decision for the corporate military collective to approve.
Our corporate governments are not willing to let go of the income that incarceration and related buraucracies
afford. Institutionalized addiction to prohibitionist economics is infinitely more destructive to society than drugs will ever be.
Individual choice determines individual drug use. The systematic elimination of choices is the foundation of prohibition.
What makes anyone think that teens or anyone else will ever respect that?
Prohibition is extinctionistic. Do we have to wait until the imbalances we are creating are
so acute that there is no possibility of recovery, before we admit prohibition is killing us?
The primary significance of Natural Law over man's self-inflated proclamations insures that
prohibition will pass eventually, as it finally did with alcohol prohibition. The question is
how long will it take for people to return to reason? How many will die
for no purpose before we apply common sense to conscious evolution?
If you really want kids to stop using drugs, let them make their own choices. The best we can do is live as
good examples for them to follow, or not as is everyone's Natural choice.
If Cannabis is "legalized" it will grow in almost every garden, for some reason. Many people are sick now. One in three dies of cancer. Cannabis is a safe and effective herbal therapeutic, not a "drug".
Cannabis freedom is the answer to ending the "forbidden fruit" attraction, the "black market" violence, and the immoral torture that is the induced deprivation of 'marijuana' , taken from people who derive therapeutic benefit from it.
Cannabis freedom is also the solution for the hard-drug epidemic. The Dutch experience has proven this. When people have free access to clean Cannabis, the demand for hard drugs goes down. In the early part of last Century, Cannabis was used successfully in clinical treatment of alcoholism and hard drug addiction.
"Judge not lest ye be judged." is a relevant thought to keep in mind. Right now, the youth of the world
have every right to judge the war mongers and pollutionists who are destroying the viability of the planet.
What makes anyone think that young people would listen to "adults" who are so confused, so consumed in false-morality,
and so dogmatically out of touch with reality?
Keep it real.
posted by projectpeace @
12:31 AM
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