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<$Project P.E.A.C.E. -- Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics$>
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I recently referred to the very real danger of someone distributing biological agents by contaminating drugs that are unregulated. If drugs were regulated rather than prohibited, this danger would not exist.
Deadly agents are easy to obtain. They can be cooked up on the stove (i.e. ricin, using castor beans). Ricin was in the news recently, when an Al-Q operative was busted in his basement lab in France. It stands to reason that it could be going on in the U.S. too. I believe that this is a valid area of exposure to terrorist attack, which would not otherwise exist in the absence of prohibition.
People are finally becoming more concerned with global warming, and chemical contamination of air, water and soil too. Illness being related to pollution is common knowledge now. Cancer kills one in three. Then comes heart disease, diabetes, MS, Alzheimers, FTT, malnutrition and lots of other illnesses attributable, in large part, to pollution, weakened immune systems and poor nutrition.
What people don't know is how bio-fuels, food, medicine, paper, cloth, building materials, plastics, etc. can be sustainably produced from one plant that's been all but forgotten because it's been prohibited for three generations. This plant is so useful and grows so well, that it sounds too good to be true.
Don't take my word for it, ask any nutritionist or farmer -- Cannabis is unique, an agricultural marvel. The only reason it has been possible to prohibit it is because it's been under-valued, as a "bad plant," rather than recognized for what it is - the world's most useful plant. The only reason prohibition has persisted in the face of all this science and information, is because the plant is still being under-valued by people who ought to know better. Very few people recognize Cannabis as the world's most useful plant, but the ones that do are well-respected scientists.
Logically, when you base an "endless-growth" economic system -- and your primary energy supply -- on unevenly distributed, finite, toxic, chemical pollutants, you WILL get wars-for-energy, and a chemically saturated environment, every time. You'll also get a corrupt political system that's been bought by the dominant industries, who maintain prohibition of the competition, regardless of any rationale or logic that doesn't serve their corporate bottom line.
Hemp isn't the poor step-child of prohibition -- it's the primary economic threat to the multinational, corporate chemical, military/prison industrial complex. Essential resource scarcity is the motivation underlying the relatively insignificant prohibition of marijuana. The forty billion a year that's blown on prohibition is no chump change, but compared with the rest of the industries thriving in the absence of Cannabis, it's really almost nothing.
Unfortunately, the plant makes a great party drug. Prejudice against, and disrespect of 'marijuana' have been impacted over the past sixty-seven years. It's shamefully easy for faux-spiritual chemical-industrial-politicians to spend hundreds-of-thousands of tax dollars every year to whip up the moralistic hypocrisy, while pushing Ritalin and Viagra, sucking down a six-pack-a-day and a carton of Camels per week, as they rant about abstinence, while stuck in "reefer madness."
The truth about the inconsequential and in some respects, beneficial physiological effects of smoking marijuana have been known for decades. Obviously, the real reason for prohibition is the economic competitveness of non-psychoactive Cannabis, which could be the organic, sustainable feedstock for industry. That niche has been filled by petroleum, timber, chemical pharmaceuticals, chemical agriculture, GM soy beans, and other crap that our society is paying billions for the privelege of being addicted to. Those industries couldn't otherwise compete in the absence of prohibition, especially if environmental and health costs are figured into the equation.
Now that the economics of punishment have made the prison industry so profitable, and legislation has been passed that favors the use of cheap prison labor, the economic inertia in that direction is just getting stronger. To miss the big picture is to weaken the overal effort to disengage from prohibition, and it amazes me that you don't see it.
Farmers in Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, China, and other parts of the world are growing hemp for industrial purposes right now. In the US, the hemp food industry just won a major victory in 9th Circuit Court against the DEA. Why do you think the DEA is trying to kill the hemp foods industry? It's not because they don't like the taste of it.
It's because you can make fuel out of the same plants you get the world's best available source of organic protein from; the only common seed with three essential fatty acids; the world's biggest producer of cellulose; "the safest, therapeutically active substance known to man" that's profitable on a small scale.
Prohibition of drugs will collapse when Cannabis is available, because people prefer Cannabis to other drugs, if they can get it. Green harvest is what caused the meth craze in Northern California and the 'ice' epidemic in Hawaii.
Prohibition creates a black market, "forbidden fruit", crime and corruption, sure. But mainly it gives value to things that should have no value, and ties our economics, and therefore our future on this planet, to a system of acellerating imbalance, diametrically opposed and antagonistic toward the primarily significant Natural Order.
for balance,
Paul
posted by projectpeace @
2:17 PM
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Thursday, May 13, 2004  |
Dear drug policy reform community, environmental activists and interested members of the global citizenry,
I am not patient about Cannabis prohibition. Nor am I oblivious to the impact of essential resource scarcity on our environment. It seems to me that alot of people who shouldn't be either, are both.
The correlation between imposed scarcity of the world's most useful organic agricultural resource, and proportionate respect of the Natural Order is beyond obvious. Yet discussions of ending Cannabis prohibition typically lack full awareness of the true value of hemp and participation by people and groups who ought to know better than to remain silent. That is why I am writing to you all today. What is needed is consensus, to overcome a condition of resource imbalance, absurdly impacted by fear of association with 'marijuana.'
In the environmental community it is sad that organizations such as the National Resources Defense Counsel and the Union of Concerned Scientists are lagging so far behind the drug policy reform community in recognizing the environmental significance of prolonged essential resource scarcity. The fundamental problems effecting all of us, need to be addressed by all of us if the inertial momentum of corruption and regressive economics are to be overcome.
It is not alright for the environmental community to remain silent on the issue of Cannabis prohibition, any more than it is logical for the drug policy reform community to distance itself form environmental concerns. Yet this is what has been happening. Divided, we are all conquered by the duolithic paradigm built around the toxic fuels industry and the economics of punishment which prolong un-sustainable, chemical economics.
It can't take a long time to end prohibition. If it does, then the chances for ours and future generations (assuming there are any) to achieve sustainable existence on this planet, will be even slimmer than they are now. Prohibition of the most useful plant on Earth has to end so that we can get on with what needs to begin. Nothing less than a fundamental shift of values is required to avoid extinction.
It is logically apparent that basing the global economic system on sustainable agriculture, rather than unevenly distributed, toxic finite chemically-based industries is the only way for mankind to evolve in cooperation with the primarily significant and abiding Natural Order. At this oint in the develoment of energy technology, no other equation balances economics and environmental integrity, over an extended period of time.
Also, it isn't hard to imagine that at some point in the degenerative slide through escalating violence, the unregulated distribution of prohibited drugs is going to be used as a means of spreading some very deadly stuff. Cheap, quick, efficient, untraceable, the black market in drugs is probably the most fluid vehicle for terrorist attack using biological agents. Ricin and anthrax are just two of the possible contaminants which could easily find their way into the next set of tragic headlines. To paraphrase one terrorism expert, it is incredible that it hasn't happened already.
It seems obvious that there is no credible defense for continued prohibition, considering what's been known for years about the counter-productive effects of it. Yet prohibition persists, largely because of the economic inertia behind the propaganda supporting it.
The image of a "tug-of-war" with a rope comes to mind. People's ability to communicate is the greatest, recent advantage we have for pulling together, all like-minded activists at the same time, to end prohibition and the consequent environmental degradation caused by it, once and for all. There is no guarantee that we will always have the communications capability we so quickly have learned to take for granted now, as the forces that maintain the "economics of punishment" are reacting to progress being made by attempting to constrict free communication.
I think it is vitally important to identify the common "pressure point" of environmental/drug reform discussion, and apply focused reason to making one thing universally understood: Cannabis is "unique and essential" -- the most sustainable, broadly available and potentially abundant source of fuel and protein on the planet. That fact is of greater relevance, for a larger number of people, than any single point in dicussions of either environment or drug policy reform.
What seems to get people's attention is the fact that one person in three dies of cancer; that heart disease and diabetes, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, and now, terrorism, are very proximate threats to everyone. It is this kind of immediacy that will motivate the greatest number of people across all disciplines and issues, which is what needs to happen to end prohibition in a timely way.
Here are additional resources that may help balance the discourse, adding weight to reason and breadth to science:
1. "Cannabis-Based Medicine Numbs Pain in Trials" Feb 2, 2003
Trials of three cannabis-based drugs have produced promising results. British drug company GW Pharmaceuticals tested its three new drugs on 34 people with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, or other conditions that caused severe pain, whom had not responded well to other medications. 82% of participants said that the drugs effectively relieved pain and helped them to sleep better."
Full abstract: http://www.worldhealth.net/index.php?p=147&x=44&y=19&search=Cannabis
2. Dr. Robert J. Melamede Ph.D. Chairman of the Biology Department of the University of Colorado:
Conducting Scientific research on Cannabinoids
Excerpts:
"Cannabinoids slow down the aging process. Mice that have had their brains respond to cannabinoids live longer and mice that have brains that block the CB1 receptors die younger."
"In the case of most autoimmune diseases, the bodies immune cells produces free radicals & is destroying it's own body as a foreign object. Cannabis pushes the immune system into anti inflammatory mode & helps slow the progression of that disease, thereby slowing down the aging process."
Full text http://www.thc-ministry.net/cannabisinfo.htm
3. "Under the Misuse of Drugs Act cannabis is classed as a substance with no medical value. However, incalculable amounts of anecdotal evidence and increasing amounts of modern research has found that it is useful for an incredibly large number of symptoms."
Abstarct: http://www.ukcia.org/medical/medicalusages.html
And finally this, having to do with the increasing awareness of plastics fouling the ocean. Since Cannabis-based plastic is bio-degradable, consideration of alternative materials for making plastic is taking on greater significance in this vast discussion.
4. "Plastic particles surf polluted waves"
The seas are awash with long-lived microscopic debris.
7 May 2004
by MICHAEL HOPKIN
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040503/040503-8.html
The "pressure point" in this is that the potential benefit of Cannabis to society, and the increasing urgency of functional respect for the Natural Order, are becoming increasingly important to everyone. The benefits of Cannabis far out-weigh any real or imagined health threats from smoking, being theorized.
As conditions worsen, people are actively appreciating that Cannabis is too useful and unique to casually dismiss. Eventually humankind will have to wake up to the fact that our species may not survive on this planet without employing the plant as a rotational, organic agricultural resource.
Literally billions of people are already malnourished, dying and disabled from the essential resource scarcity that has been induced for three generations. The economics of prohibition must begin to factor in the loss of benefits (true value) and the harm of the results (actual effect) of this loss, on top of the obvious expenses of counter-productive law enforcement, racial and civil rights erosion, environmental degradation, increasing illness, hunger, violence, etc.
Until revaluation of Cannabis, as the most valuable agricultural resource on Earth, is fully acknowledged by the drug policy reform community and the environmental community, without fear of association with prohibitionist themes that legitimize "reefer madness," it is predictable that well-funded, endless argument about insignificant details regarding personal use will continue without end, stuck in emotionalism, economics and political corruption.
Only by acknowledging the enormous value and significance of the plant, can the magnitude of the threat imposed by its scarcity be fully realized, and the recalcitrant inertia of an impacted prohibition be overcome. Unless the drug debate encompasses the concept and relevance of extinction as an ever more likely consequence, the discussion will lack its full impact for the majority of people, needed to change the status quo in the very limited time we have left. For billions of malnourished, sick and dead people it's already too late, which is the truest, greatest shame of prohibitionist thinking.
Ending Cannabis prohibition is key to destroying the credibility of all drug prohibitions. It isn't simply a matter of justice, it's a matter of survival.
I wish Joep and others of like mind in Dublin all the strength and conviction needed to put this argument to rest. Time is the limiting factor in the equation of survival, and the only thing we can't make more of.
for peace,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Adavncing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace
http://www.formalcomplaint.blogspot.com
posted by projectpeace @
11:48 PM
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Tuesday, May 11, 2004 |
Dear Dr. Weil Community Member,
You have subscribed to discussions which have had recent activity:
Daily Tip Discussions
Daily Tip: Seizing Soy (22 new)
http://forums.drweil.com/drwdailytip/messages?msg=37.10
37.10 in reply to 37.9
Thanks for your interest.
Project P.E.A.C.E. is not an organization in the traditional sense. It is an individual communication arts project that demonstrates individual responsibility, for what I recognize as fundamentally important truths.
To that extent, everyone is a "member" of their own Project P.E.A.C.E. as we have all been blessed with inalienable individual rights and Constitutionally protected freedom of choice. If people don't actively exercise their civil liberties the government will take them any way it can (as evidenced by the so-called "Patriot Act").
By contributing to the public record, through writing, speaking on radio, televison and in public -- as a private individual -- I am exercising my individual rights (and yours). I have attempted to revaluate the Cannabis plant for what it truly is: The most useful agricultural resource on Earth, which we all have a right to use in what ever way we choose, as long as we are responsible in our use.
I feel very strongly that people must have the "self-evident" right to take individual responsibility for their own lives, and that the government must be extricated from personal decisions of what herbs to use, and what foods we can grow in our gardens.
Right now, in the U.S. people don't have the right to fresh fertile Cannabis seed. This has profoundly disasterous effects on our health and the security of our nation. If you would like to know more, please see
http://formalcomplaint.blogspot.com/
As far as soy is concerned, I don't use it much, except in the form of low sodium tamari and miso soup.
Here's a great miso soup recipe I came up with one day when my friend was gravely ill, after an operation where she lost a lot of blood. She recovered:
Chop some beets, carrots, a purple onion, garlic, acorn squash and potatos. Cut up dried kombu into one inch squares using kitchen scissors. Fill a big cooking pot half-way with water, and add the veggies, starting with the kombu to let it cook a little ahead of the others as it takes longer.
Cover and simmer on low heat. After all veggies are almost cooked, add carrots last, throw in a handful of raisins and some hemp seeds, if you can get them unsterilized (in Europe and Canada).
Take a big dollop of red miso, dissolve it in a cup of the veggie broth, and then stir it into the main pot. Don't let the miso boil.
Just before serving, flavor to taste with hemp seed oil, olive oil and if you like, serve with a little scoop of sour cream. Make more than you think you'll need, because it is really tough to stop eating it, even after you're full!
Here are some other hemp seed recipes you can try:
http://www.manitobaharvest.com/recipes/
Bon appetit !
posted by projectpeace @
11:45 PM
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