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<$Project P.E.A.C.E. -- Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics$>
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Dear Mr. Schmid, Président de la Confédération Helvétique,
I am writing to express incredulation and outrage over the conviction and sentencing of Mr. André Fürst, the visionary environmentally conscious entrepreneur of Chanvre-Info. Mr. Fürst's, agricultural demonstration project in Murten Morat is of critical importance to a world that is crumbling under the weight of essential resource scarcity.
Such irrational injustice comprimises the integrity of Swiss democracy to its foundations. Mr. Fürst ought to be celebrated as a global visionary and a Swiss national hero. Instead he is being punished by a traitorous reversal in Swiss Cannabis policy, under pressure from the counter-productive U.S. war against organic agriculture.
The so-called "War on Drugs" led by G.W.Bush, is being imposed on the world as a means of suppressing the truth about the true value of the Cannabis plant. This induced scarcity and disparity is directly related to conflicts and imbalances that include the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, global warming, and other criminal iniquities enriching the outlaw regime currently controlling the U.S. government.
Since September 11, 2001, the US administration supported by an international religious, neoconservative and sectarian lobby is executing strong pressures on governments, politicians and media of all countries favoring drug policy reform. President Bush’s intention is obviously to strengthen the prohibition and to decapitate the pro-Cannabis movement. Another recent example of these totalitarian-like methods is an attempt of extradition to the USA of the Canadian hempseed seller Marc Emery. Both Canada and Switzerland would be better off defending their own sovereign policies, instead of serving the agenda of this dangerous oilman.
The Swiss process for elaborating an efficient strategy ought to be considered as a model of expertise and reconciliation. The majority of cantons were applying a tolerant policy towards people, hemp shops and hemp farmers.
Switzerland should depenalize the consumption and allow the free market to operate, as with other agricultural resources. All scientific or politic commissions, Federal Councils and even the Parliament approved in the first lecture this new approach. Why are you now denying science-based evidence, common sense, traditional wisdom and regressing back to policies of counter-productive, brutal repression? The black market has won a major victory through this decision, which will effect the quality of life in Switzerland, and the rest of the world.
André Fürst respected the recommendations of your failed regulation. He invested in and demonstrated the economic viability of biologically grown hemp, manufacturing many products which are essential to helping agriculture free itself from government subsidies. More importantly, he showed that solutions to the great social problems of our generation are readily at hand.
His cause seemed to win until the reversal in the Parliament rendered its illogical and unacceptable judiciary consequences. André Fürst is "guilty" of having anticipated a progressive, consensual reform, which has been buried without reason.
In a free Switzerland of the 21st century, a productive citizen, and responsible father, should not be torn from his community and his family, to be wasting precious time in jail. In effect Mr. Fürst is being punished for having tried to improve conditions of society.
Such shameful proceedings resemble a Stalinist purge, wherein a reform movement was initiated in order to better hang its leaders. The same is being done in the U.S. as medical marijuana patients and doctors are being targeted, in spite of State laws passed by the majority voters, by a Federal government pushing chemical drugs.
You must intervene in Mr. Fürst's case, in order to re-establish justice and morality in Switzerland. Otherwise we will always be regarded as a co-conspirator of the military-industrial empire whose worst enemy is a free agricultural market. This is why André Fürst in Switzerland, and Marc Emery in Canada are being targeted for emprisonment. And the world is waking up to this very quickly.
In order to stop this tragedy before it claims more victims, you must use your influence to declare a moratorium, general amnesty and exceptional clemencies for the non-violent Cannabis cases of the period of 1996-2004. It is within the scope and responsibility of your position as Président de la Confédération Helvétique to stop these under-handed activities, until the vote of the popular initiative Pro-Chanvre.
Would it not serve moral ideals of justice, and the best interests of the people to do this, rather than sentencing well-meaning activists whom you have been leaving in peace for so many years? It is neither just nor moral to impose U.S. laws on Swiss citizens. Bush’s war against Nature, science, compassion, and reason only harm our government, our beautiful nation and this planet.
Please continue what you have started. Finish the pragmatic and efficient reform of failed drug policies. This must be done in Switzerland as well as in Canada and at the United Nations. Freedom to farm is essential to our survival. Please see the essay below for an ecologist's perspective of the role played by Cannabis within a properly functioning Natural Order.
Thank you sincerely for your consideration of this urgent matter.
for peace,
Paul J. von Hartmann
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Fuel For Hurricanes: Global Broiling & "The War On Herbs"
by Paul J. von Hartmann
"Although we cannot be certain global warming intensified [Hurricane] Katrina per se, it clearly has created circumstances under which powerful storms like Katrina are more likely to occur now and in the future." -- Pew Center on Global Climate Change
Forget "global warming." This comforting description of what's really happening is an insult to the avoidable pain and suffering of people who are still in the midst of sickness, death, mysery and chaos. Katrina is only the latest example of catastrophic events that are certainly exacerbated by the "global broiling" of our planet.(1)
"Recent research...shows the intensity of hurricanes -- the wind speeds and the duration -- seems to have risen by about 70 percent in the past 30 years."(2)
Under-reaction to on-going crises of this scale has several counter-productive effects. The worst of these is to limit the scope of pragmatic thinking, narrowing the broader vision that is essential to rational consideration of all possible solutions. Unless this changes, the horrors of Katrina, the Asian tsunami, and other incomprehensible disasters will continue to intensify.
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If you care to read the rest of this essay, it can be found at the P.E.A.C.E. blog
"Revaluating Cannabis"
http://projectpeace.blogspot.com/
for peace,
Paul J. von Hartmann
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace/
THC Ministry International
www.thc-ministry.org
ENCOD Member
www.encod.org
=======================
Please see
Chanvre Info
http://www.chanvre-info.ch
The Urban Ecology of Cannabis
Jamnes Danenberg B.A. (Hons)
http://www.hemp.on.net/final_folder/about_us/what_weve_done/campaigns/industrial_env/urbecocan.html
for details about the many uses of the Cannabis plant.
The following articles have been selected to substantiate the truth about the "war on herbs" and the efforts of the Bush regime to take control over world agriculture and other critical industries.
Published on Thursday, September 8, 2005 by the Tucson Weekly
Censored Stories:
Project Censored presents the 10 stories the mainstream media ignored over the past year
by Camille T. Taiara
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0908-05.htm
#8. Iraqi Farmers Threatened by Bremer's Mandates
Historians believe it was in the "fertile crescent" of Mesopotamia, where Iraq now lies, that humans first learned to farm. "It is here, in around 8500 or 8000 B.C., that mankind first domesticated wheat, here that agriculture was born," wrote Jeremy Smith in the Ecologist. This entire time, "Iraqi farmers have been naturally selecting wheat varieties that work best with their climate ... and cross-pollinated them with others with different strengths.
"The U.S., however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice, Iraqis don't know what wheat works best in their own conditions."
Hempseed as a nutritional resource: An overview
Callaway, JC & TT Laakkonen, 1996.
www.finola.com/HempseedNutrition.pdf -
posted by projectpeace @
6:33 AM
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Monday, September 12, 2005  |
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