5/21/02 - 11:17 AM
Re: War Is Peace. Etc.
From: Zed B. Starkovich

Hallelujah brother, I couldn't agree more with your last message.

Unfortunately, the federal government isn't just ignoring the issue of hemp, they are actively stopping the states from researching the facts for themselves. Even when the state farmers get together and convince the universities and local politicians to support a simple investigation of the food, fiber, and medicinal uses of hemp, they are met with a tidal wave of ignorant derision from people who think that things are just fine the way they are. Seven states have stood up with voter-led initiatives on the hemp and medical marijuana issue but they have all been blocked by the DEA or some other misguided federal agency.

From the beginning, the war on drugs has been motivated my racist businessmen who wanted to protect their profits by turning the public against the one natural resource that could replace their petrochemical products.

The examples are endless, but the best is William Randolph Hearst who owned millions of acres of timberland that was worth around a billion dollars, but ONLY if the public remained dependant on timber for paper. When the US Department of Agriculture released a report (Bulletin 404, in 1916) on the benefits of using hemp for paper, Hearst went on the offensive. He filled the country with newspaper stories that declared: "Marijuana is the most violence causing drug known to man" and that "It causes Mexicans and negroes to rape white women." The politicians soon followed this media onslaught by reading the headlines in congress and banning hemp as "the demon weed marijuana" in virtual secrecy, and against protests by the AMA and America's thriving hemp industry."

By the early 1970s when Nixon declared that marijuana was an evil plot by the Communists and Jewish Psychiatrists, things hadn't changed much. He proudly intensified America's Drug War by banning universities and independent laboratories from doing ANY research into cannabis AT ALL.

Since clamping down on the freedom to find the truth for ourselves, anybody who even mentions the word hemp is declared a crackpot and Communist by people like Pepper, who refuse to question what they have been told by their leaders.

Frankly, I don't give a damn what they think, I just wish that they'd leave the rest of us alone so we can live our lives in peace and quiet, safely away from their shrill screams.

As you've found, people interested in doing something about the truth are out there, but they're hard to find because they're not on TV. Spreading the truth takes a lot longer when all you can do is stand in the street and yell at traffic.

You should get the book: The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer. It is THE place to begin looking into the 12,000 year history of hemp as a medicine and natural resource. It's also on-line at: http://www.jackherer.com/

There are many people trying to fight for this issue, but the future is bleak. On the one hand, its inevitable that the future will eventually be powered by carbohydrates instead of hydrocarbons because there is no other way, I just don't know how many more people will die in the meantime. Frankly, I don't like the odds. "Liars do not fear the truth if there are enough liars."

The answer might just be to hunker down, and tell your kids campfire stories about the good old days as we wait for Armageddon on CNN. Maybe not. But things don't seem very likely to change anytime soon with oilmen like Bush and Cheney in control who like things just the way they are.

Good luck fighting the good fight,
Zed