Neocon Panic Attacks: May 2007

Thursday, May 31, 2007

!!!!!DIALING 911 for DEMOCRACY !!!!!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Holt Bill Will Result In Vendor "Gains" Being "Locked In" Under The US Constitution

Go here to sign a petition to your National representatives to stop the secret election machinery (STOP Holt Bill HR811) and read reasoning behind it. Please forward, it is your democracy at stake.

http://www.usalone.com/cgi-bin/petition.cgi?pnum=638

Add to Mark Crispin Miller's comments below, and Nancy Tobi's opednews article referenced below and available at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_070528_hr_811__28the_holt_bil.htm this very important point showing that "incremental progress" is an illusion in many ways because the Holt bill will result in vendor "gains" being "locked in" under the US Constitution:

Under the Contracts Clause and the Takings Clause of the US Constitution, governments can not constitutionally impair the value of contracts in existence or "take" property for a public purpose. This means that there is no "incremental" progress available in the next Congress if the provisions of the Holt bill inspire more contracts for technology development -- those contracts are "locked in" under the US Constitution.

Moreover, "incremental progress" or "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" is a clever misnomer when it comes to RIGHTS. This is so because a compromise of a right is nothing less than the violation of the same right. Do you want "incremental" free speech? Incremental democracy? The fact that Holt proponents are not even MAKING DEMAND for democracy such as in the manner below, shows the lie or the defect in their approach: no wonder they are so frustrated they think that this is all that democracy can get with the present Congress. If so, our government servants are now indeed our Masters.

The central problem with the pro-Holt approach is that it constantly slips into a "balancing test" of comparing positives and negatives and says "something is better than nothing" but balancing tests are never appropriate in the area of rights: Rights Trump competing values, thus I can speak whatever content I wish no matter whether the government and 80% of the public disagree with me.

This "balancing test" approach of pro-HR 811 folks is not just wrong, it is not merely a problem, it ignores and completely fails to consider Democracy and its rights and values at all! Compare this reality with the quote from James Madison at the bottom of the Nancy Tobi opednews article below and see which side YOU come out on.

Freedom and Democracy are easily lost when they are not even allowed to be at the negotiation table, and when quoting our nation's most important principles, rights and Founders is considered "blowhard" "18th Century Statesmen" -- the very terms used to describe me and my quotation of Madison, Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence on this, our Memorial Day Weekend. No wonder our democracy is dying or dead when, in a manner of speaking, Thomas Jefferson is not allowed to be at the negotiation table, and our most inalienable rights are dismissed by Holt proponents as "philosophy" "encomium" or mere "inspiration."

Folks, make no mistake, since our Democracy depends on it. Quotes from "18th Century Statesmen" like these are the TOOLS OF DEMOCRACY. They are guide-stars for our direction and they are tests for whether a voting system complies with the needs of democracy. They worked for women's suffrage and for Martin Luther King in I HAVE A DREAM.

HCPB? I've no choice but to support it because in the democracy race for voting systems, it is Running UNOPPOSED. Only by arguing non-democratic values like efficiency can we get to any other voting system. But as Harry Truman said, if you want efficiency, you'll get a dictatorship.

Paul Lehto

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Date: May 28, 2007 7:47 AM
Subject: [MCM] Don't say we didn't warn you
To: BLOCKED

The Holt Bill's supporters won't debate about it publicly. Why not?
Because the bill is indefensible, as this important piece makes very clear.

Please read and circulate this sharp analysis--or, if you support the bill,
and find fault with the facts or logic here, please try to persuade someone
in your camp to stand up and make the pro-Holt case in public.

MCM

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_070528_hr_811__28the_holt_bil.htm

May 28, 2007

HR 811 (The Holt Bill): Let the debate begin

By Nancy Tobi

There is a raging and often destructive debate among voting activists. The source of the discord is "The Holt Bill", a piece of federal election reform legislation named for its primary author, Democratic Congressman Rush Holt from the great state of New Jersey. The destructive nature of the exchanges among activists has led some of us who oppose the bill to propose, in the best of our American democratic traditions, a public debate on the merits of the bill.

We who oppose believe anything that stands to so dramatically transform, and possibly violate, the nature of American democracy deserves robust public debate, based on facts and principle.

Congress has already held its so-called public hearings on the bill, but those hearings were stacked with many pro-811 witnesses, and the few opponents of the legislation were not debating what we oppositional citizens believe are the real issues that need a good, public airing:

•
 The bill violates state sovereignty and cements control over the nation's voting systems in the hands of four white house appointees.
 The bill codifies into federal law the use of secret vote counting technologies in the United States of America.
 The bill mandates impossible, ineffective and controversial audit and reporting requirements and timetables.
 The bill confuses technology with democracy , embracing the tenets of the one over the other.
 The bill furthers the misguided and undemocratic direction initiated with the Help America Vote Act that replaces observable voting with verifiable voting
Unfortunately, in what appears to be a desperate desire to keep the rhetoric flying and the facts suppressed from any public discourse, supporters of the bill have refused every offer for real public debate.

Some of the more vocal supporters of the bill state that if we opponents are questioning the confusing language of the bill, it must be that we are not as "intelligent" as they are. Sort of like the way a sales person for an exclusive item will look down his nose and tell you, "if you have to ask what it costs, you obviously can't afford it."

If we have to ask what this bill means to our democracy, we are obviously in the wrong shop.
I, for one, would like to see robust debate on the merits of this complex bill. For one thing, the principles of democracy are at stake.

The American people deserve to hear honest debate on if and how this proposed election reform supports the fundamental principles of American democracy without which our elections are nothing but a sham.

As well, the language of the 62 page bill is so dangerously ambiguous in so many critical areas, that we ought to expose the ambiguities to the light before HR811 becomes the law of the land and our elections are thrown to the courts to decide what means what.

And finally, public debate is called for because of the complex, often conflicting, and seemingly impossible and impractical requirements of the bill. These requirements are outrageously expensive, the costs of which will be borne in large part by American property taxpayers as the nation's towns, cities, and counties struggle to meet the bill's unfunded high tech mandates.

And a careful analysis of the bill's timelines, equations, and reporting requirements indicates they just don't seem to add up to anything that will actually work in the real world. This fundamental flaw in the bill puts every state in the nation at risk if it forces them to try to run legal elections when the law itself is unsupportable.

This is not the birthright of democracy the framers of the U.S. Constitution bequeathed us.

The Holt Bill, in its former incarnation as HR 550, languished in committee under the former Republican majority, and was never released to the full House for a vote. With the Democratic takeover, the bill resurfaced in its current incarnation, HR 811. Within days of the November 2006 victory, Dem leaders were predicting the swift passage of election reform. They were going to "own" the issue that had been stymied under the Republican rule.

Unfortunately, the new leadership was stuck holding the same moldy bag of election reform that had been decaying in the former Republican majority's pantry. And time was not kind to the Holt Bill. As it languished, its unpleasant odor wafted through the ranks of citizen activists, many of whom, one by one, began to experience an unmistakable squeamishness about the bill.

When HR 550 was whisked out of the pantry, washed down, spiced up, and placed on the table of the House Administration Committee in its new form as HR 811, many former supporters found they could no longer stomach the bill, even in its shiny new form. One might even say, especially in its shiny new form.

The ranks of ordinary citizens, who laboriously studied the bill and its implications, the nation's election officials, counties, legislators, and even the e-voting industry itself, uniformly rose in loud and raucous opposition to its passage.

HR 811 quickly became a disputed and controversial bill, left only with its primary supporters being well funded lobbying groups like Common Cause, MoveOn, TrueMajority, Verified Voting and VoteTrustUSA.

Nonetheless, rumors abounded that the bill was going to be "fast tracked" through the Committee, on to the House floor, where it would be swiftly passed by a leadership-sponsored "unity" Democratic vote and dropped into the laps of the American people.

But apparently the bill's controversial nature has slowed down the fast track. Now the bill sits on the table, waiting for someone to take a bite. But while it is tempting and delectable to some activists and their seemingly well funded lobbyists, others of us are as repelled by the odor emanating from the bill as ever before.

The arguments proposed by HR 811 proponents are as effective in addressing the problems of the bill as spitting on a house on fire:

• "This is the best bill we can get passed by Congress."
• "If we don't pass this bill now we won't have any election reform in place for 2008."
• "Even if the bill supports secret vote counting, at least we'll force the states to conduct election audits."
• "At least our elections will be, if not observable by the citizenry, verifiable by 'qualified' persons and 'experts'."
• If you oppose the bill you are not as intelligent as we are.
The problem is that the defects of the bill are not small and can not be dismissed , as has been attempted with each new version of the bill, through copyediting, wordsmithing, and vagaries of text. In fact, the bill's flaws touch at the deepest levels our very notions, ideals, traditions, and fundamental constitutional rights with respect to American democracy.

In a recent email exchange inviting Holt proponents to a public debate, activist and attorney Paul Lehto was accused by a central Holt Bill proponent of "blowing hot air and quoting 18th century statesmen." Does this mean that this particular HR 811 proponent, whose organization has recently hired a high powered lobbyist just to get the bill passed, agrees with what George W. Bush is rumored to have stated, that our Constitution is "just a piece of paper"?

God bless Paul Lehto for quoting "18th century statesmen." They are the revolutionary spirits and first American patriots, who rose in opposition to a centralized power that used its authority to make bad and dangerous decisions for the people of this country. It is to them that we owe our freedoms and our dignities.

It is not enough for us to breeze past their messages and to sit content in our air conditioned homes, driving our Mercedes, eating our abundance of food.

Our country, the United States of America, was founded on ideals and principles, the principles of freedom and democracy, bolstered by robust public dissent, dialog, and debate. It is the strength of these principles that have enabled us to become the greatest superpower on earth. It is the words of those "18th century statesmen" that we must shine like a beacon to light for us the way forward, to remind us that our country is a country of the rule of law, and the basis and foundation for that rule of law is the U.S. Constitution.

This revolutionary document and declaration of democratic principles, written in the midst of much public debate and honest dissent and discourse, has stood the test of time. Our Constitution must be in the forefront of everything we do when tinkering with anything as crucial as the foundation of our democracy: our elections.

Lehto provides this quote from 18th century statesmen, American patriot and founder James Madison:

. . . [T]he Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny. . . . The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost." --James Madison
Lehto also reminds us that the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence are clear: we the people are the masters, our elected officials are the servants. Our democracy guarantees us the right to "kick the bums out" when our servants are misbehaving. And this means that we can not allow our elected representatives to enact laws facilitating the rigging of our elections, debasing the tenets of our democracy, and enshrining secret vote counting, which is the foundation of fascism and not democracy.

Lehto, like Madison, reminds us that this right is worth defending, at whatever the cost.

We who oppose HR 811 believe that a public debate on the merits of this legislation is not too high a cost to pay in defense of our country.

Authors Website: www.democracyfornewhampshire.com

Authors Bio:

Nancy Tobi is the author of numerous articles on election integrity, including "The Gifts of HAVA: Time to Ask for a Refund," "What's Wrong with the Holt Bill,"and "We're Counting the Votes: An Election Preparedness Kit." She is Legislative Coordinator of Election Defense Alliance, co-founder of Democracy for New Hampshire and Chair of the New Hampshire Fair Elections Committee. Her writings may be found at www.electiondefensealliance.org and www.democracyfornewhampshire.com

--
Paul R Lehto, Juris Doctor
plehto@psephos-us.org
425-422-1387

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Wanted: Election Fraud Bounty Hunters (Where Is Karl R?)

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Watergate Without the Break-In

Very interesting article.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070516_watergate_without_the_break_in/

Watergate Without the Break-In
Posted on May 16, 2007
By Marie Cocco
WASHINGTON—It is time to stop referring to the “fired U.S attorneys scandal” by that misnomer, and call it what it is: a White House-coordinated effort to use the vast powers of the Justice Department to swing elections to Republicans.
This is no botched personnel switch. It is not even a political spat between the fired U.S. attorneys and Bush administration officials who deemed some of them insufficiently zealous in promoting the department’s law enforcement priorities. Connect the dots and you see an insidious effort to corrupt the American electoral system. It’s Watergate without the break-in or the bagmen.
The emerging picture is one in which widespread Republican claims of “voter fraud”—unsubstantiated in virtually every case examined closely by law enforcement officials, local journalists, state elections officials and academics—were used to stymie Democratic-leaning voter registration groups and create a taint around Democrats. The Justice Department’s own statistics show that only a handful of people were convicted of voting illegally since it began a “voter integrity” initiative in 2002. Its top election crimes official, a career prosecutor, has told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that the proportion of “legitimate to illegitimate claims of fraud” hasn’t changed.
The “voter fraud” claims that White House political adviser Karl Rove promoted before last year’s congressional elections were in battleground states such as New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with closely contested races. He also has complained about alleged fraud in hotly competitive states such as Washington, Florida and Missouri. Curiously, states where elections often are decided by wide margins—New York, for instance—don’t turn up on his lists.
According to McClatchy Newspapers, Rove pressed Justice officials about voter fraud probes in October. Complaints from Republican activists wound up in the hands of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a key figure in the imbroglio. Five of the 12 U.S. attorneys who were canned or targeted for removal were singled out for alleged laxity in pursuing voter-fraud prosecutions, The Washington Post has reported.
The Justice Department’s power to prosecute was expected to be put to use in carrying out a partisan witch hunt. Yet even this picture is incomplete.
The shenanigans involving U.S. attorneys must be seen alongside the parallel campaign to turn the department’s voting-rights section into a rubber stamp for Republican efforts to enhance the voting power of their loyalists while diminishing that of Democrats.
Toby Moore, a former redistricting expert in the voting rights section and now project manager for American University’s Commission on Federal Election Reform, says he believed that when the Bush administration began, ideological differences—a suspicion that liberals held too much sway—were at the root of chronic disagreements between political appointees and career lawyers. But he says he was wrong. “It now appears that what they were doing was not ideologically motivated but partisan motivated,” Moore says. “They came in 2001 with the idea of changing the rules of elections to benefit the Republican Party.”
The voting-rights section began producing rulings that would have the effect of crimping participation by Democratic-leaning voters. The department’s backing of state photo identification laws, notably in Georgia, was one such case. Moore notes that the Georgia law, which was struck down in court, did not only burden minorities, the elderly and the disabled. It loosened rules for early and absentee voting, ballots typically used more often by the educated and affluent—and more likely to be cast by Republicans. A new fervor for forcing states to purge registration rolls of invalid names, a process that often deletes names of eligible voters, also seized the voting-rights section.
The most vivid nexus between the “U.S. attorneys scandal” and the subjugation of the voting-rights section to partisan pursuits comes in Missouri, where the abrupt resignation of U.S. Attorney Todd Graves in March 2006 was followed quickly by the interim appointment of Bradley Schlozman, who’d helped to recast the voting rights section in the Bush administration’s image. Schlozman soon announced indictments of four workers for a liberal voter-registration group—the group itself had brought evidence of suspicious activity to the authorities. He did so just before November’s election.
No set of coincidences could possibly result in this pattern. It suggests a scheme to use the levers of government to shape the pool of voters in favor of the ruling party. In a fledgling democracy, we would consider this shocking corruption. The chilling truth is that it can happen here—and apparently it did.
Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco(at symbol)washpost.com.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group

Sunday, May 13, 2007

No Organic Bee Losses

I have read that planting some specific herbs near hive stops the Varroa mites (thyme, Rosemary?). This article below explains the possible relation of cell size to Varroa infection and and also hybridized bees being the ones involved in the collapse.

No Organic Bee Losses

"Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa's House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada's fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:

I'm on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.

Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:

Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells.

Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?

These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.

We've been pushing them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. And we're starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances. Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it's all of the above...

Article Received from Lancifer

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Planet Earth, How Little We Have Known Thee

First, a look at the state of the Planet

Welcome to EARTH: A Graphic Look at the State of the World.

Then read about a crop (people's fear of which is a popular delusion) that will help it/us enormously.

Then go to the bottom and see the PRESS RELEASE on what North Dakota is doing to get US back to nature.
And lastly check out Authorative and informative links there too.

From http://www.jackherer.com/

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was the NUMBER ONE annually renewable natural resource for 80% of all paper, fiber, textiles and fuel, from 6,000 years ago until about 125 years ago. Furthermore, it was used for 5 to 50% of the food, light, land and soil reclamation, and even 20% or more of all medicine. Everyone, from the educated to the uneducated, the farmer to the townsperson, the doctors and the scientists used

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA products and depended on them.75 to 90% of all paper used from at least 100 AD to 1883 was made of CANNABIS/HEMP. Books, (including Bibles), money and newspapers all over the world have been mainly printed on CANNABIS/HEMP for as long as these things have existed in human history.

One hundred and 25 years ago, 70 to 90% of all rope, twine, cordage, ship sails, canvas, fiber, cloth, etc., was made out of CANNABIS/HEMP fiber! It was replaced by DuPont's newly discovered petrochemical fiber (nylon) beginning in 1937. By comparison, CANNABIS/HEMP is 4 times softer than cotton, 4 times warmer, 4 times more water absorbent, has 3 times the strength of cotton, is many times more durable, is flame retardant, and doesn't use pesticides. Fifty percent of all pesticides are used on cotton, yet cotton uses only 1% of the farmland in the U.S! CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the most health giving plant on Earth and it doesn't require pesticides or herbicides! It is the healthiest plant for human consumption, and for the Earth itself.

Eighty percent of our economy depended on CANNABIS/HEMP for paper, fiber and fuel, 125 years ago. At that time, it took 300 man-hours to harvest an acre of CANNABIS/HEMP, but with the invention of the brand new HEMP decorticator in the 1930s, it only took 1-1/2 to 2 hours. This is equivalent to reducing the labor burden from $6,000 down to $40 per acre, in today's money. Keep in mind that the cotton gin, in 1793, reduced the man-hours from 300 hours down to 2 hours to harvest and clean an acre of cotton. CANNABIS/HEMP would have taken over the cotton market, as it is far superior to cotton, and pesticide free. The role of CANNABIS/HEMP should be determined by market supply and demand and not by undue influence of prohibition laws, federal subsidies and huge tariffs that keep the natural from replacing the synthetic. I repeat, CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the KING KONG of the King Kongs of all plants!

Of all the 300,000 species of plants on Earth, no other plant source can compare with the nutritional value of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA seeds. It is the only plant on Earth that provides us with the NUMBER ONE source, and the perfect balance of essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, globulin edestin protein, and essential oils all combined in one plant, and in a form which is most naturally digestible to our bodies.

Prior to the 1800s, CANNABIS/HEMPSEED oil was the NUMBER ONE source for lighting oil throughout the world. Until 1937-38, even paints and varnishes were 80% CANNABIS/HEMPSEED oil. CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is non-toxic and has been used to make high-grade diesel fuel, oil, aircraft and precision oil and even the NUMBER ONE vegetable oil. The U.S. Army/Navy standards purchasing specifications list HEMP OIL as the NUMBER ONE preferred lubricant for their machinery. CANNABIS/HEMP is the best sustainable source of plant pulp for biomass fuel to make charcoal, gas, methanol, gasoline and electricity in a natural way.

In 1850, 80% of all paper, fiber, fuel, and oil was made out of CANNABIS/HEMP in America and the rest of the world. This was before the discovery of coal and petroleum for energy in the late 1850s...before the start of the worst permanent pollution ever experienced on Earth... fossil fuel pollution (coal and petroleum)!!

As a medicine, the worldwide use of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA goes back at least 6,000 years. Remember, 10 to 20%t of our medicines used to be CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA based medicines. It has been found to be healthy and effective in the treatment of chronic pain, cancer, strokes, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, AIDS wasting and many other illnesses, including simple nausea, appetite stimulant, anxiety and muscle pains, etc.

On September 6, 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man," and asked the Drug Enforcement Administration to reschedule it. The DEA refused, keeping it as a Schedule I drug, which they say "has no known medical use"! Thousands of studies have been done all over the world, documenting the medical use of MARIJUANA (England, Spain, Hungary, Holland, and the U.S., just to name a few). No one has ever died from MARIJUANA in over 6,000 years of recorded history... unless they were shot by a COP!

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was also used for land reclamation until 1915. CANNABIS/HEMP was planted or left to grow feral as ground cover and on riverbanks, and not intended for harvest. It is the NUMBER ONE plant in history used to prevent mudslides and loss of watershed, and river and soil erosion on Earth. It has been illegal to grow this NUMBER ONE plant in the United States since 1937.What disgusts me the most is how the U.S. government, as well as the people, knew about

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA and praised its value and then look what happened! In literally 90 seconds, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 passed in Congress. By using the unknown name "MARIJUANA" instead of the familiar name "CANNABIS HEMP", Congress was able to accomplish this because no one knew what plant they were talking about. CANNABIS/HEMP became illegal and was replaced by petrochemical products, coal and natural gas. They made it such a banned and forbidden plant that the words "HEMP" and "CANNABIS/HEMP" were not even taught in schools from the 1940s, 50s and thereafter.

The role of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was erased from America's history (as well as most of the rest of the world's) after 1945. To prove it, think... what did you learn about CANNABIS/HEMP in grade school? High school? College? From your parents and grandparents? Nothing! (Unless it was from the underground press within the last 15 to 20 years.) The continuing suppression of this information by the U.S. government places us all in mortal jeopardy. I believe that, in order to save our planet, we must use non-fossil fuel energy.

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA, in conjunction with wind, solar, tidal and hydroelectric power, could save the planet by providing all of our energy, fuel, paper, fiber, and 10 to 20% of our medical needs, naturally. It would also reduce acid rain and chemical pollution, rebuild the soil, and reverse the greenhouse effect (no other plant can do this!).

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was used to make over 25,000 products before it was outlawed in 1937.

Why does the U.S. government want to eradicate this seed, out of all the seeds on Earth? They want to kill the most perfect plant on the planet. We must stop this insanity and demand that the laws against CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA be 100% repealed!!

Federal Attorney General John Ashcroft, Drug Enforcement Administration head, Asa Hutchison, and White House Drug Czar, John Walters, have been given all of these proven facts and yet are still set against the legalization of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA and recognition of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIUANA knowledge. For whatever personal reasons, they refuse to believe the facts and are willing to sacrifice the future of our planet and the health of our people by keeping it illegal.

The ban of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is so extreme and its intention is to hide the truth. The truth is that out of the 300,000 species, and the millions and millions of subspecies, of plants on Earth, CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the NUMBER ONE plant for our survival and quality of life here on Earth. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government and Attorney General John Ashcroft have been calling MARIJUANA users "terrorists" and yet the government of the United States has been "terrorizing" MARIJUANA users for the last 65 years! There have been over 14 million arrests for CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA in the last 65 years, in the U.S. alone! 13 million were within the last 30 years!

No one has taken the $100,000 challenge to prove me wrong. Why? Because I am right. The U.S. government has been lying to us since the early 1900s. Do economic interests and the police have more to say than the people about the future of our planet? How angry are you for being lied to by the U.S. government about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA? Are you willing to make a stand right now? No one can dispute this information and knowledge. YOU have to join me in this fight. Either you are on the U.S. government's side or you are on my side.

Please help me spread this everywhere. Thank you!

Jack Herer
www.jackherer.com
2/14/07

American Historical Notes

In 1619, America's first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia, "ordering" all farmers to "make tryal of" (grow) Indian hempseed. More mandatory (must-grow) hemp cultivation laws were enacted in Massachusetts in 1631, in Connecticut in 1632 and in the Chesapeake Colonies into the mid-1700s.

Even in England, the much-sought-after prize of full British citizenship was bestowed by a decree of the crown on foreigners who would grow cannabis, and fines were often levied against those who refused.

Cannabis hemp was legal tender (money) in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800s. Why? To encourage American farmers to grow more.1

You could pay your taxes with cannabis hemp throughout America for over 200 years.2

You could even be jailed in America for not growing cannabis during several periods of shortage, e.g., in Virginia between 1763 and 1767. (Herndon, G.M., Hemp in Colonial Virginia, 1963; The Chesapeake Colonies, 1954; L.A.Times, August 12, 1981; et al.)

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis on their plantations. Jefferson,3 while envoy to France, went to great expense - and even considerable risk to himself and his secret agents - to procure particularly good hempseeds smuggled illegally into Turkey from China. The Chinese Mandarins (political rulers) so valued their hempseed that they made its exportation a capital offense.

The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp "plantations"* (minimum 2,000-acre farm) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and even the cordage used for baling cotton. Most of these plantations were located in the South or in the border states, primarily because of the cheap slave labor available prior to 1865 for the labor-intensive hemp industry.

see

http://www.jackherer.com/chapters.html

http://www.votehemp.com/PR/04-30-07_north_dakota_to_dea.html

For Immediate Release
Monday, April 30, 2007

CONTACT: Adam Eidinger 202-744-2671
adam@votehemp.com
Tom Murphy 207-542-4998
tom@votehemp.com

North Dakota to DEA: Out of Our Hemp Fields
New Law Allows Hemp Farming Without DEA License, Farmers to Challenge DEA

BISMARCK, ND — North Dakota's legislature wrapped up last week by telling the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that it would no longer require state-licensed industrial hemp farmers to seek DEA licenses. The law change removes the DEA license as a requirement of state law, but it can't protect farmers from federal prosecution. Vote Hemp, the nation's leading industrial hemp advocacy group, will support a lawsuit brought by ND-licensed hemp farmers to prevent the DEA from enforcing federal marijuana laws against them. If the farmers' lawsuit, which will be filed in the coming weeks, is successful, states across the nation will be free to implement hemp farming laws without fear of federal interference.

"With the broad authority that has been granted to them by Congress, the DEA could have easily approved the applications of the farmers in North Dakota," says Tom Murphy, National Outreach Coordinator for Vote Hemp. "The DEA could have also easily negotiated industrial hemp farming rules with North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson who has been talking to them about this for a year. Instead, they kept stalling until the time to plant had passed," says Mr. Murphy. "North Dakota had nothing left to do but cut the DEA out of the picture."

"I applied for my ND license in January and was hopeful the DEA would act quickly and affirm my right to plant industrial hemp this year. Unfortunately, the DEA has not responded in any way other than to state that it would take them a lot more time than the window of time I have to import seed and plant the crop," said ND farmer, David Monson. "It appears that DEA really doesn't want to work with anyone to resolve the issue", Monson added.

The hemp language in HB 1020 was the result of several months of fruitless negotiations between the DEA and North Dakota officials, who hoped to gain federal recognition for the state-licensed hemp farmers. It amends the state hemp farming law to explicitly remove the Drug Enforcement Administration from the process.

"The legislative action is a direct response to the DEA's refusal to waive registration requirements, including $3,440 per farmer in non-refundable yearly application fees, and the agency's inability to respond to the farmers' federal applications in time for spring planting," says Alexis Baden-Mayer, Vote Hemp's Legislative Director. Please click here to read a PDF of the DEA letter that was ND's last straw.

"The North Dakota legislature's bold action gives Vote Hemp the opportunity we've been working towards for nearly a decade. Now that there is a state with comprehensive hemp farming regulations that has explicitly eschewed DEA involvement, we can finally make the case that states have the legal ability to regulate industrial hemp farming within their borders without federal interference," says Baden-Mayer. Adding, "And, because ND Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson actually did spend nearly a year trying to work out an agreement with the DEA, it's clear that DEA isn't going to act in a reasonable way and isn't ever to going to acknowledge the practical differences between industrial hemp and marijuana and accommodate ND's plan to commercialize hemp farming."

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Vote Hemp is a non-profit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and a free market for industrial hemp and to changes in current law to allow U.S. farmers to once again grow low-THC industrial hemp. More information about hemp legislation and the crop's many uses may be found at www.VoteHemp.com or www.HempIndustries.org. BETA SP or DVD Video News Releases featuring footage of hemp farming in other countries are available upon request by contacting Adam Eidinger at 202-744-2671.

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