Economic illiteracy

Reflections of Fidel on Economic illiteracy

IN Zulia, Chavez made reference to “comrade Sarkozy,” and did so with a certain irony but he meant no offense. On the contrary, he was rather recognizing the sincerity of the president when he spoke in Beijing in his capacity as chairman of the European Community.Nobody was saying what every European leader knows but is not confessing: that the current financial system is no good and must be changed. The Venezuelan president candidly proclaimed: “It is not possible to re-found the capitalist system; it would be like trying to re-float the Titanic when it’s lying on the ocean floor.”

According to press dispatches, at the meeting of the European and Asian Nations Association attended by 43 countries, Sarkozy made some remarkable confessions: “Things are going badly for the world, which is facing an unprecedented financial crisis marked by its magnitude, swiftness and violence, a crisis whose consequences on the environment call into question the survival of humankind, as 900 million people lack the means to feed themselves.”“The countries taking part in this meeting account for two thirds of the global population and half its wealth. The financial crisis started in the United States, but it is now a global crisis demanding a global response: “An 11-year-old child’s place is not in a factory but in school.” “No region in the world has any lesson to teach others.” This is a clear reference to the United States. Finally, he recalled before the Asian nations the colonizing past of Europe on that continent.

If Granma (Cuban newspaper) had written those words, they would have been considered a cliché of the official communist press. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Beijing that it was not possible “to foresee the magnitude and duration of the current international financial crisis. We are actually dealing with the creation of a new constituent Charter of finances.” That same day the news revealed the general uncertainty unleashed. In the Beijing meeting, the 43 countries from Europe and Asia agreed that the IMF should play a major role in assisting the countries most seriously affected by the crisis. They also supported an interregional summit to promote stability in the long term and the development of the world economy.

The President of the Spanish government, Rodriguez Zapatero, stated that “there is a crisis of responsibility in which a few have grown richer but the majority is growing poorer.” He also said that “the markets have lost confidence in the market,” and urged countries to flee protectionism, as he is convinced that competition will make the financial markets to play their role. He has not been officially invited to the Washington summit since Bush resents his withdrawing the Spanish troops from Iraq. The European Community president, José Manuel Durão Barroso, supported his warning on protectionism. For his part, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon met with eminent economists to try and avert the developing countries becoming the principal victims of the crisis.

Miguel D’Escoto, former foreign minister of the Sandinista Revolution and current president of the UN General Assembly, demanded that the issue of the financial crisis should be discussed in the United Nations, not by the wealthiest nations and the group of emerging countries that make up the G-20.There are disputes over the venue of the meeting at which a new financial system should be adopted on order to bring about an end to the chaos and the absolute lack of security for the peoples. There is a major fear that the wealthiest countries in the world, meeting with a small group of emerging nations hit by the financial crisis, might approve a new Bretton Woods, ignoring the rest of the world. President Bush said yesterday that the countries that will discuss the global crisis here next month should also renew their commitment to the basics of economic growth on a long-term basis: free markets, free enterprise and free trade.

The banks were lending tens of dollars for every dollar deposited by savers. They were multiplying money. They breathed and sweated through every pore… Any contraction would lead to ruin or to absorption by other banks. They had to be saved; always at the expense of the taxpayers. They were amassing great fortunes. Their privileged majority shareholders could afford to pay any money for anything.Shi Jianxun, a professor at the Tongui University in Shanghai, stated in an article published in the foreign edition of The People’s Daily that “the crude reality has made people realize, amidst the panic, that the United States has utilized the hegemony of the dollar to plunder the riches of the world. He confirms the pressing need to change the international monetary system based on the dominant position of the dollar.” With just a few words he explained the essential role of currencies in international economic relations.

This was happening for centuries between Asia and Europe: it should be recalled that opium was imposed on China as a currency. I talked about that when I wrote The Chinese Victory. The authorities of that country did not even wish to receive the metal silver initially paid by the Spaniards from their colony in the Filipinas for products acquired in China, because it was progressively devaluated due to its abundance in the so-called New World recently been conquered by Europe. Even today, European leaders feel ashamed at the things that they imposed on China for centuries. According to the Chinese economist, current difficulties in the terms of trade between those two continents should be solved with euros, GB sterling, yens and yuans. Undoubtedly, reasonable regulation between those four currencies would aid the development of relations of fair trade between Europe, Britain, Japan and China. Two countries that produce sophisticated equipment with state-of- the-art technology, both for production and services, such as Japan and Germany, would be included in that sphere, as well as China. Japan comes second with an almost identical total of hard currency reserves.

At the present juncture, as the Shanghai professor has rightly indicated and rejected, the value of the dollar is increasing due to this currency’s dominant position imposed on the world economy. A large number of Third World countries, exporters of goods and raw materials with little added value, are importers of Chinese consumer goods which generally have reasonable prices, and technical products from Japan and Germany, which are constantly increasing in price. Even though China has tried to halt the overvaluation of the yuan, as the Yankees are constantly demanding in order to protect their industries from Chinese competition, the value of the yuan is increasing and the purchasing power of our exports is decreasing. The price of nickel, our main export item, whose value recently reached $50,000-plus per ton, is currently barely fetching $8,500 per ton; that is, less than 20% of its maximum price attained. The price of copper has dropped at least 50%, and the same is happening with iron, aluminum, tin, zinc, and all the minerals indispensable for sustained development. And defying any rational or human sense, the price of consumer goods like coffee, cocoa, sugar and others have barely grown over more than 40 years. That is why, not long ago, I also warned that as a result of the impending crisis, markets would be lost and the purchasing power of our products would be considerably reduced. In that circumstance, the developed capitalist nations are well aware that their factories and services will be paralyzed, and only the consumption capacity of a large part of humankind already living on the poverty line or below it, will keep them operating.

That is the great dilemma posed by the financial crisis and the danger that social and national self-interest will prevail over and above the desire of many politicians and statespersons agonizing over the phenomenon. They do not have the least confidence in the very same system from which they emerged as public figures. When the peoples leave behind illiteracy, know how to read and write and possess the minimum knowledge indispensable for living and producing in an honorable way, they will still need to overcome the worst form of ignorance in our times: economic illiteracy. Only in that way can we understand what is occurring in the world.

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 26, 2008

Haiti: Whose Rights? What Sort of Democracy?

by Yves Engler
Global Research, October 24, 2008

Canada’s NED? Whose Rights? What Sort of Democracy?
These are the questions that must be asked of “Rights & Democracy,” a Montreal-based political group funded almost entirely by the Canadian government.

This week Rights and Democracy has taken part in a smear campaign against a study released in the Lancet medical journal detailing the terrible human rights situation in the 22 months after Haiti’s elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s ouster. E-mails have been sent to various journalists from Rights and Democracy, in which they claim a co-author of the Lancet report is biased. Additionally, Nicholas Galetti, in charge of the Rights and Democracy Haiti file, was quoted in the Globe and Mail claiming the peer-reviewed study’s methodology is flawed. Why are Rights and Democracy working strenuously to discredit a study estimating that 8000 were killed and 35,000 raped in Port au Prince?

A couple of days after René Préval’s victory in Haiti’s recent presidential elections, the group, which supposedly has a mandate to promote human rights and democracy around the world, issued a statement (re-posted on leftwing website rabble.ca) that said Préval “must… form a government of national reconciliation.”

Strange words for a group that made no similar demand of Steven Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister. Harper’s Conservative Party won a minority government with less than 40 %of the vote in Canada’s federal elections in January.In Haiti, Préval won more than four times the votes (51% vs. 12%) of his nearest rival… and that after a systematic campaign to disenfranchise the poor who are his strongest supporters.

What does it mean to call for a government of national reconciliation? From the point of view of Haiti’s poor majority, it effectively means abandoning democracy. It means maintaining the power of a tiny economic elite to block any reforms that weaken elite control over the hemisphere’s poorest country. It means supporting a process whereby Haiti’s poor majority is told to relinquish political power to an elite incapable of winning via the ballot box. It means never confronting the “real problem” of Haiti, which is precisely the power of its tiny elite. It is the political equivalent of flipping a coin and saying: “Heads I win, tails you lose.”

The ten years between Jean Bertrand Aristide’s return as president in 1994 to his second ouster in 2004 were marked by numerous attempts to block the poor majority’s political agenda by forcing their candidates into “power-sharing” agreements. For example, Aristide was forced to accept the U.S. choice for prime minister when he returned in 1994. Unfortunately Rights & Democracy’s call for “national reconciliation” isn’t the first time the group has sided with the Haitian elite.

In a January 27, 2006 letter to Allan Rock, Canada’s ambassador to the UN, the group echoed the extreme right’s demand for increased repression in the country’s largest poor neighborhood, Cité Soleil. A couple of weeks after a business-sector “strike” demanding that UN troops aggressively attack “gangsters” in Cité Soleil, Rights & Democracy questioned the “true motives of the UN mission.” The letter – also signed by a group of Canadian-government-funded Quebec NGOs known as the Concertation pour Haïti – questioned whether UN forces were “protecting armed bandits more than restoring order and ending violence.”

Criticizing the UN for softness in Cité Soleil flies in the face of evidence of its brutality there, including a murderous attack on a hospital documented by Canadian solidarity activists just prior to the Rights & Democracy letter. Of course, the most stark example of UN repression in Cite Soleil was a raid on July 6, 2005 to kill a “gang” leader. That operation left at least 23 civilians dead. (Kevin Pina’s film Haiti: The Untold Story documents the chilling brutality of UN forces.)

Statements by Rights & Democracy have followed a pattern that belies the organization’s professions of support for either human rights or democracy.

A couple of days before Aristide took office in 2001 after winning an election with over 90% of the vote (it was boycotted by parties of the elite, but a poll by the U.S. State Department confirmed Aristide’s overwhelming popularity), Rights & Democracy stated: “Mr. Aristide’s election came amidst widespread doubts about his own and the [first] Préval government’s commitment to democracy.”

Yet when the Canadian-backed, unelected, interim government of Gérard Latortue took power after a coup in March 2004, Rights & Democracy made no such statement. Nor has the group criticized the unconstitutional interim government’s terrible human rights record. Yet in an April 2002 press release, Rights & Democracy claimed: “the elected officials of the Lavalas Family [Aristide's party] and representatives of ‘popular organizations’ close to that party are often implicated in the most flagrant violation of Haitian laws.”

A few months prior to the February 29, 2004 coup that overthrew Aristide for the second time, in September 2003, Rights & Democracy released a report that described Haiti’s pro-coup Group of 184 as “grassroots” and a “promising civil society movement.” The truth is that the Group of 184 was spawned and funded by the International Republican Institute (funded by the U.S. Government) and headed by Haiti’s leading sweatshop owner, Andy Apaid. Apaid has been active in right-wing Haitian politics for many years and, like former Group of 184 spokesperson Charles Henry Baker, Apaid’s brother in law.

Concurrent with Rights & Democracy’s public campaign to undermine governments elected by Haiti’s poor majority is the group’s more low- key work to use “civil society” to undermine any real democracy. In October 2005, Rights & Democracy began a $415,000 project – largely funded by the Canadian government through the Canadian International Development Association (CIDA) – to “foster greater civil society participation in Haiti’s national political process.”

The Haitian coordinator of the project is Danielle Magloire, a member of the “Council of the Wise” that appointed Gérard Latortue as interim prime minister after the coup ousted the elected president. Magloire’s status as a “wise” person, moreover, arose largely out of her positions at EnfoFanm (Women’s info) and the National Coordination for Advocacy on Women’s Rights (CONAP). Both of these organizations are CIDA-funded feminist organizations that would not have grown to prominence without international funding. In particular, CONAP is a virulently anti-Lavalas feminist organization that has shunned the language of class struggle in a country where a tiny percentage of the population owns nearly everything. It is also an organization that has expressed little concern about the dramatic rise in rapes targeting Lavalas sympathizers since the coup. In mid-July 2005, Magloire issued a statement on behalf of the seven- member “Council of the Wise” saying that any media that gives voice to “bandits” (code for Lavalas supporters) should be shut down. She also asserted that the Lavalas Family should be banned from upcoming elections.

Again, one must ask whose rights and what sort of democracy does Rights & Democracy support, when it effectively aligns itself with fascistic elements in Haiti? But why should anyone care? While few people are aware of Rights & Democracy or its position on Haiti, it would be a mistake to dismiss the group as inconsequential. A few hundred thousand dollars has significant influence in a country as poor as Haiti.

In addition, Rights & Democracy was formerly headed by Ed Broadbent, a former leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP). Rights & Democracy has negatively influenced the position of the social democratic NDP regarding events in Haiti. Even more important, Rights & Democracy has worked with a group of CIDA-funded Quebec NGOs (notably Alternatives, Development and Peace, AQOCI and Entraide Missionaire) to confuse the Quebec left, which should have strongly allied itself with the anti-imperialist sector of Montreal’s large Haitian community, regarding Canada’s intervention in Haiti.

Whose rights? The rights of a wealthy minority to run the world.
What sort of democracy? A democracy that accepts modern imperialism, regardless of the consequences.

Rights & Democracy has revealed itself to be similar to the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and many more government-funded institutions around the world that work to undermine real democracy. These groups are used to do the work that the CIA or the British Foreign Service or agents of the French government once performed.

It is important to reveal this so that Canadians can learn what is being done around the world in their name.

Yves Engler is the author of two books: Canada in Haiti

EU - Caribbean Partnership Agreement is harmful

The European Union (EU) is negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with 76 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific (the ACP). Negotiations began in 2002 and are taking place between the EU and six regional groupings of ACP countries: four in Africa, one in the Caribbean and one in the Pacific.

EPAs are being negotiated within the framework of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (from now on referred to as the Cotonou Agreement) signed between the EU and ACP in 2000. The Cotonou Agreement has the principal objectives of reducing and eventually eradicating poverty, consistent with the objectives of sustainable development and the gradual integration of ACP countries into the world economy. It states that the aim of future trade cooperation between the EU and ACP is ‘fostering the smooth and gradual integration of the ACP States into the world economy, with due regard for their political choices and development priorities, thereby promoting their sustainable development and contributing to poverty eradication in the ACP countries’.

The donkey negotiates with the rider.....

Well-known Caribbean scholars like Havelock Brewster, Norman Girvan, Vaughan Lewis, and Alissa Trotz have contributed widely circulated pieces critical of the EPA. Norman Girvan a research fellow at the university of the West Indies says of the EPA "(it is) ..a treaty that is legally binding, of indefinite duration, will be very difficult to amend once it is in force, covers a wide range of subject areas that have hitherto been within the jurisdiction of domestic or regional policy, and which few people know about and even less understand."

Here is a related article in the Jamaica Gleaner;
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080305/business/business1.html

The academics essentially accused the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) of striking a deal with "eyes wide shut" that will, in the end, leave the region poorer. They forecast displacement of businesses and increased vulnerability of firms to takeover by big corporations, while criticising the development assistance component of €2.2 million per Cariforum country per year as inadequate. Two of the academics, Girvan and Brewster, are senior associates of the CRNM.

Professor Girvan goes on to say that "Caribbean countries will be for many years amending their laws, regulations, policies and practices and setting up new institutions to comply with the EPA. Can you imagine a situation where a new Constitution touching many aspects of the lives of citizens were to be adopted within two months from publication of the text to provisional application, without widespread public consultation, dissemination and opportunity for review? The EPA is like a new economic constitution regulating many aspects of our external and domestic policy."

read his full article at:
http://dr1.com/trade/articles/535/1/EPA-Madness-A-Call-for-Sanity/Page1.html

During Guyana´s National Consultation on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) held on September 5, the group whose absence during the formal part of the proceedings was most noticeable, was the Caricom Secretariat. Further, no contribution was made by participants from that body on the floor. As a result, the noise caused by their absence was deafening to perceptive participants. This was particularly unfortunate because the EPA was condemned by the vast majority of persons there, because it conflicted with the regional integration process, and in particular, the promotion of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).
Afterwards, the gathering blamed knowledgeable persons, in particular academics and the media, for not making the public more aware of the EPA and the considerable number of weaknesses in it, which emerged in the discussions that day.

Asia´s anlaysis
The EPA will have serious implications for financial fragility in developing countries at a time of financial crisis. After reviewing the EPAs requirements for free movement of capital and current payments, a paper by the Third World Network (a Malaysian-based NGO), concludes that "Given the present global financial crisis, and its lessons on the dangers of deregulation and liberalisation, the dangers of this obligation for extreme financial liberalisation cannot be overstated."

The new paper focuses on the development implications of the CARIFORUM- EU EPA because it is the broadest EPA to have been initialled.

The paper notes that there should not be a legally binding agreement for securing foreign investment and investors because this would be damaging to the development interests of developing countries. On trade in goods, the TWN paper also notes the controversy over the EPA's goods most-favoured-nation (MFN) provision at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Developing countries such as Brazil and India have criticized this MFN provision for undermining the ability to have South-South preferential trade agreements without having to extend them to the European Union. The MFN provision in the EPA requires CARIFORUM countries to extend to the EU any tariff preferences granted to other "major trading economies".

Caricom's chief negotiator Ambassador Richard Bernal, said again yesterday that the pact was the best deal the region could have negotiated within the time frame available.
Outside an agreement by December 31, 2007, the region would have faced open competition in its trade arrangements with the EU.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who is the chairman of Caricom's external affairs committee, has also dismissed these arguments, accusing those who have been denouncing the new trade pact as suffering from mendicancy - tied to the concessions and preferences that Europe has given countries like Jamaica.

I don’t buy the academic argument that Caribbean production and service levels will rise to align with the EU. Mu conclusion is based on simple commonsense.

More critisism from scholars (in .pdf format from the transnational intstitute)
http://www.tni.org/detail_pub.phtml?&know_id=176

Garbage Wars

We live in an era of waste imperialism.

Unwanted or hazardous waste is dumped on unwilling or unsuspecting communities. States aren't struggling to reduce waste, but rather are battling for the right to call their garbage "commerce" and ship it out of state. New York City dumps its unwanted waste in Virginia -- as much as 18,000 tons a week. Computers shipped to Asia for recycling wreak havoc to public health and the environment. Waste incinerator ash from Philadelphia -- originally dumped in 1986 on a Haitian beach -- floats on storage barges off the coast of Florida still awaiting a final resting spot.

The waste wars are not new. In the mid 1980s, San Francisco tried to toss its trash over the mountains in Yolo County. The county refused. During that same decade, Essex County, N.J., wanted to send 4,000 50-gallon drums of radium-contaminated soil to Nevada. Then Gov. Richard H. Bryan angrily declared that his state is "not going to be a nuclear dumping ground for the country." A federal judge in Boston held that city liable for polluting Boston Harbor with 70 tons of sludge a day. The Massachusetts Water Resource Authority applied for a permit to dispose of its highly toxic sludge off the coast of New Jersey. Rep. James J. Florio (D-N.J.) ironically echoed Gov. Bryan, arguing that his state's coastline should not become "the dumping ground for every state in the region."

In 1986, Philadelphia was dumping its waste incinerator ash in Ohio, but local opposition forced the city to terminate that arrangement. That year, the City of Brotherly Love dumped 4,000 tons of incinerator ash on a Haitian beach, where it sat for more than 10 years polluting the local environment and causing myriad public health problems. A year later, the infamous garbage barge from Islip, Long Island in New York, sailed down the east coast looking for a site to unload.

Our highways are becoming clogged with vehicles carrying increasingly deadly wastes. One study estimated that more than 1.5 billion tons of hazardous wastes are moved each year, more than half by truck.

The increasing monopolization and economic hegemony of the trash handling industry is another aspect of waste imperialism. During the last three decades, the waste hauling and disposal industry has undergone considerable consolidation. When competition disappears, the consolidators will raise prices, gouging local government agencies and businesses. In fact, just one year after merging with a competitor, Waste Management Inc., one of the country's two controlling waste industry interests, increased its landfill tip fees 40% to 138%.

No amount of subsidies, exemptions from hazardous waste regulations, mandatory purchase of electricity, put or pay contracts, tax credits or court rulings can sustain such financially and environmentally outlandish technology.

Waste imperialism diminishes democratic local ownership and control of valuable discarded materials. Unchecked waste exportation and corporate mergers are hampering recycling and waste reduction progress, promoting the interstate transportation of waste, tightening already slim municipal budgets, and sounding the death knell for recycling-based community development and localism in the solid waste sector. At the same time, judicial and regulatory decisions (e.g., application of the constitutional commerce clause in the Carbone case) are restricting local authority and eroding citizen participation in waste management decisions.

Communities that seek legal relief from waste imperialism meet with little success. The right of localities to protect their citizens, the courts have maintained, is outweighed by the constitutional right of commerce to move freely across state boundaries. West Virginia tried to charge higher fees for waste dumped from other states. Pennsylvania tried to require that no more than 30% of waste landfilled could be from another state. Wisconsin tried to have all waste flowing into the state meet its state recycling requirements. All these state laws have been struck down by higher courts. The U.S. Congress has the power to act. Federal judges have consistently ruled that based on the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, Congress has exclusive power over the interstate trash business.

Waste wars stem from our refusal to take responsibility for our own wastes. They will end when we force ourselves to take that responsibility. No longer would we spend considerable financial, political and scientific resources to discover safe ways to move our wastes far away. Instead, we would first look for ways to reduce waste and recycle the ones we must produce into useful products.But innovative solutions will never be implemented if we can pursue the easier path of shipping our problems to someone else's backyard.

Even the best landfills will eventually leak toxic waste, and eventually contaminate groundwater. Incinerators are potentially even more polluting. Thirty percent by weight of trash entering incinerators exits as ash, a waste product that may contain high levels of toxic residues. Moreover, incinerators emit organic compounds, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and other acid gases that landfills do not. - http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/wasteimperialism.html

Every single chemical can be converted into a whole class of similar or even remotely related molecules. A gas can be converted to a solid and vice versa. A colored compound into a colorless one. Toxicity is not a property that is necessarily preserved when chemicals react.

The economics of recycling must be manipulated to insure that recycling is profitable. The more valuable an item is, the more easily it is to recycle. Toxic materials and articles are prime candidates for easy and early recycling. - Paul Palmer, Ph.D

Not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot

We hope to make it to Africa one day. Soon hopefully.


I cant imagine a more profound way to find and reclaim my roots than to return to the place where my peoples still have their own traditions than to do it by boat. My repartriation.

We are currently on our way to Bahia, Brasil. The heart of Afrikan culture outside of Afrika.
Some might not realise it but the most slaves were sent to Brasil, while North America recieved about 10% of the slave population. So Bahia is fitting, I see it as the near end of a cultural bridge to Afrika.

I dream of going to Afrika, to fill in more of the lapses in my "memory". To swim in the culture and birthplace of my ancestors. To find a place that I can accept more, with a little more intuitive understanding, regardless of the inevitable problems. Im excited to go back for what I forgot.

The concept of Sankofa is derived from King Adinkera of the Akan people of West Afrika. Sankofa is expressed in the Akan language as "se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki." Literally translated it means "it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot". "Sankofa" teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward. That is, we should reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward. Whatever we have lost, forgotten, forgone or been stripped of, can be reclaimed, revived, preserved and perpetuated. Visually and symbolically "Sankofa" is expressed as a mythic bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg (symbolizing the future) in its mouth. -W.E.B. DuBois Learning Center


As the saying goes in the Akan language, "Nyansa bunu mu ne mate masie" or "In the depth of wisdom abounds knowledge and thoughtfulness. I consider and keep what I learn.", per the Akan Cultural Symbols Project. Although all cultures have their proverbs, fables, and stories, used both to entertain and to teach, none seems to have joined the word so closely with an image than the Akan peoples of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, in West Africa. Their symbolism not only plays an important role in their art but it also plays an essential role in day to day life.

Stamped Ghanian Adinkra Cloth Carved calabash (gourd) used as stamps.Adinkra known as "Gye Nyame" for "Except God" is short for "This great panorama of creation dates back to time immemorial; no one lives who saw its beginning and no one will live to see its end, except God."

Although people speak and write of "Akan symbolism", it is important to note that the Akan speaking peoples of West Africa are made up of several different groups, such as the Ashanti or the Fante, to name only two. Along with their shared language, there are also shared cultural values and symbols that seem to be widespread. Historically, as early as the 1400s, the Akan people were known for their metal arts, casting in gold, iron, and brass. It is no coincidence that Ghana was once known by its British colony name of Gold Coast (1821-1957). While their metal art (along with textiles, ceramics, and wood carving) is often displayed as though it were fine sculpture, and deservedly so, it was never art for arts sake.By joining symbolic images taken from stories and proverbs to particular functions for items of metal and other materials, specific messages were communicated in sophisticated and subtle ways. From brass weights used to measure gold to colorful stamped clothing, from the tops of umbrellas to stools used by chiefs, Akan symbols or adinkra seem to permeate life at nearly every turn and touch on all sorts of topics. Take, for example, the dress of a woman that is made of cloth called "kurufue ti ka nani bii" or "Co-wife rivalry is like cow dung" which is actually short for "Co-wife rivalry is like cow dung: the top is dry but the inside is sticky.

Here are some more Akan symbols described for you;
http://www.africawithin.com/tour/ghana/adinkra_symbols.htm

Our Exhausted Oceans

Heaps of abalone shells in Santa Barbara, Calif., from a 1920 postcard. (Census of Marine Life)

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
I’ve written off and on about research revealing that ocean resources today are a pale shadow of the extraordinary abundance of just a few generations ago, and I touch on this theme again in a Science Times feature this week on new maps of human impacts on the sea.
Societies tend to have “ocean amnesia,” in the words of some scientists and campaigners who’ve highlighted the recent, and largely unnoticed, vanishing of marine life. Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia coined the phrase “shifting baselines” to describe how our definition of “normal” changes over time.Several studies of the Gulf of California have vividly illustrated the phenomenon. A 2005 paper charted changing impressions of fish abundance through three generations of Mexican fishers, finding that “old fishers named five times as many species and four times as many fishing sites as once being abundant/productive.”For a 2006 paper in the journal Fish and Fisheries, the same team estimated marine abundance in the same region by combing diaries and other written records from the 16th to the 19th century.“The diaries written by conquerors, pirates, missionaries and naturalists described a place in which whales were ‘innumerable,’ turtles were ‘covering the sea’ and large fish were so abundant that they could be taken by hand,” the scientists said.When I went fishing off Long Island with the marine biologist and author Carl Safina in 2006 (video here, article here), we had no problem reeling in fluke and bluefish in the right spots. But a century earlier, the right spot could have been just about anywhere.The right spots for Pacific abalone along the West Coast are now few and far between. In 1920, as you can see on the postcard above (provided by scientists working on the Census of Marine Life), they were abundant.A growing body of research shows that significant increases in fish populations could come with the expansion of marine reserves, more careful oversight of shared ocean resources like bluefin tuna, and education of fishing communities around coral reefs.But the pressures on marine fisheries appear to be mounting faster than the push for new practices to shift to more sustainable harvests.As the human species heads toward 9 billion in the next few decades, with a tendency to eat up the food chain as prosperity rises, is there any prospect of sustaining yields of seafood, whether wild-caught or farmed?Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University told me he was worried, for example, about the “democratization of sushi” as a growing source of pressure on tuna and other coveted species.Views diverge sharply on how to keep oceans productive and at least somewhat wild.Many environmental groups strongly oppose expanded marine aquaculture and, at the same time, are pushing for a vast expansion of protected areas, both to shield ecosystems and to provide nurseries for commercial fish.Scientists seem divided, with some supporting the idea of concentrated husbandry of high-value species (tuna, salmon) and others warning of indirect harm from the equivalent of factory farming of the sea.Sylvia Earle, the oceanographer and explorer, sees no future for wild harvests, given rising human populations and their growing appetite for protein.“One way or another, commercial fishing as a way of life does not have a future, any more than market hunting of terrestrial birds and furry creatures,” she said in an e-mail message on Monday, just after returning from the Galápagos. “Our long-ago ancestors lived by hunting and gathering wild things, a recipe for success that worked when our numbers were small and the wild world was relatively intact. Six billion people cannot be sustained on bush meat from the land — or from the sea.” If you’re a seafood lover, where do you expect your yellowtail or fried clams will come from a couple of decades from now?

Canada´s shame

Genetically Modified Canola oil

Although Canadians may want better information about what they are putting in their mouths, there simply has not been the consumer-led revolts that have produced so many changes in Europe towards GM foods.
Canada is the third largest producer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the world. Canada, the largest producer of Canola oil in the world, grows genetically modified herbicide-tolerant rapeseed (Canola) varieties on a large scale. In 2005 GM rapeseed accounted for 75% of total rapeseed cultivation.

Canada is now the largest producer of GM canola oil.

Here are the details:

http://development.asia/issue01/feature-03.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3498524.stm
http://www.nwri.ca/research/genetics-e.html

Canola, originally a syncopated form of the abbreviation "Can.O., L-A." (Canadian Oilseed, Low-Acid) that was used by the Manitoba government to label the seed during its experimental stages, is now a tradename for 'double low' (low erucic acid and low glucosinolate rapeseed. Sometimes the "Canola-quality" sticky note is applied to other varieties as well

Alberta's tar sands project.
Hundreds of square kilometres of toxic waste ponds. The oil works in Alberta could extend to an area as large as England.
"This is the dirtiest source of oil anywhere in the world and there are barely any regulations,... the greater energy needed to produce a barrel of oil from the sands means three times more greenhouse gas emissions than producing a barrel of conventional oil. The greater energy is needed because the oil has to be dug out and then separated from the sand." says Simon Dyer, a researcher for the University of Alberta's Pembina Institute.

the dirty details:

http://www.tarsandswatch.org/oil-sands-canadas-dirty-secretoil-sands-canadas-dirty-secret
http://www.tarsandswatch.org/dirty-and-wasteful-last-drop-oil-sands-development-one-most-environmentally-wrong-headed-ideas-ever
Photos: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/tar-sands-most-destructive-project.php

Earth Forum Posts
Beetles turning Canadian carbon sink into emitterPosted on March 12th, 2009 Posted in Climate change, Featured News Stories, Greenhouse gases, International enviro issues, Forestry, Global Warming, Environmental health -->
ClimateWire: An infestation of pine beetles and an increase in wildfires are turning Canada’s boreal forest, which normally sucks up 55 million or more tons of carbon dioxide annually, into a giant tailpipe, according to the Canadian Forest Service.
Trees that once absorbed carbon are falling or burning, releasing up to 245 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, the service said.
The reverse is one of the reasons Canada didn’t count its forest as a carbon sink as part of the Kyoto climate treaty process and raises questions about the world’s forests’ ability to mitigate climate change.
Scientists fear a positive-feedback cycle in which global warming increases beetle populations and forest fires, diminishing trees’ ability to absorb carbon and increasing greenhouse gas concentrations that drive global warming. Similar concerns have been raised about peat bogs, which currently soak up carbon but if heated could release their massive stores.
How to manage forests for massive carbon capture is a matter of ongoing debate. Some groups contend that infected trees and those at risk of fire should be cleared before they can release carbon, while others say fewer trees will only exacerbate the problem (Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor, March 10). – PR

Hegemony

Hegemony: is a concept that has been used to describe and explain the dominance of one social group over another, such that the ruling group or hegemon acquires some degree of consent from the subordinate, as opposed to dominance purely by force.

Resistance to corporate harms which does not challenge the legitimacy of corporate rule -- valiant as such resistance may be -- does not appreciably change corporate laws or constitutional doctrines which bestow upon giant corporations our governments' support. It does not shift back to people, communities and nature the power and authority over decisions. The largest 300 corporations control about one-fourth of all the goods-producing assets in the world. The largest 100 have incomes greater than half the member countries of the United Nations. 70% of all international trade is directed by 500 corporations.

Today, giant, global corporations enter and leave communities at will, shaping the futures of people, ecosystems, and the Earth. Leaders of such corporations exercise sovereign control over vast lands (80% of all land used for export agriculture), species and minerals. Such concentrated corporate power that can manipulate our democratic processes is contrary to the theory of governance that is supposed to prevail in a republic (that must be constitutional -- that is, answerable to the people). But isn't it clear that we the people have little legal or moral authority over today's giant corporations? That many of us are not even conscious that people once exercised such authority with diligence? Hasn't it become difficult even to imagine what a free and democratic society (without such concentrations of corporate power) would look like (or how it would operate)?

Where does the buck stop?

• Studies find that 115 Million animals are used in tests worldwide.
• The safety of cloned animal products are definately still uncertain.
  
• Chemical cocktails are leaking into Montreal river system. Uranium from Iraq arrives in Canada.
  
• Toxins causing cancer, known as persistent organic pollutants -- resulting from corporate research and development -- are now found in the tissues of every living creature on this planet.
  
• Half of all plants in the world, and over 11,000 animal species, are now threatened with extinction as a result of habitat destruction and hunting.
  

Don´t we care enough? Even about ourselves?

U.S. sugar providers have announced they will be sourcing their sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets beginning this year and arriving in stores in 2008. Like GE corn and GE soy, products containing GE sugar will NOT be labeled as such. Since half of the granulated sugar in the U.S. comes from sugar beets, a move towards biotech beets marks a dramatic alteration of the U.S. food supply. These sugars, along with GE corn and soy, are found in many conventional food products, so consumers will be exposed to genetically engineered ingredients in just about every non-organic multiple-ingredient product they purchase. The GE sugar beet is designed to withstand strong doses of Monsanto's controversial broad spectrum Roundup herbicide.

What has become patently obvious to a growing number of folks is that the work of environmental activists and environmental groups has been largely unsuccessful for doing anything else other than raising public awareness. We are stuck in a feedback loop where our failures are interpreted as signs that we should repeat our failed tactics, but simply try harder.
With the understanding that true democracy was impossible in the face of concentrated power held by a few corporations, the early legislatures of the U.S. and Canada passed laws declaring that corporations held limited rights under their constitutions. Dismantling that system took a lot -- but corporations had a lot. At first corporations became persons. Now corporations wield more power than citizens (hegemony?).

Now, constitutional statutes are used by corporations to punish those democratically elected local governments -- our governments -- who dare to confront corporate rights. As 'persons', corporations have pioneered the concept of "regulatory takings" in which local and state governments can be sued for the value of property "taken" by the enforcement of an environmental regulation.
Well .....kings used to drum into their subjects that they were anointed by God.

Corporations have, and will continue to, attack us through those institutions that create, and are empowered by, the "rule of law" and corporate culture. Courts, federal agencies, the national media, corporate think-tanks, secret NAFTA and GATT tribunals, and yes -- even law professors --are all be enlisted to stop this awakening. Those corporate few are intent on turning soil into sand. Win at all costs. Reframing must reach beyond environmental issues. It's not about managed health care, its about the power of a few drug corporations to determine the system of health care that we all will have. It's not about air bags and highway projects, but about the power of car corporations to rip up trolley lines and unilaterally decree that mass transit will wither on the vine. It's not about campaign finance reform, but the power of corporations to make the rules for our elections, and to select the issues even before people announce their candidacies.

And in the end, it's not even about corporations. It's about us. It's about whether we take "we the people" and democracy seriously. I believe we can give up our futile efforts to preserve the illusion. We can rebel not as a last act of desperation but as a first act of creation.

Who owns what (companies):
for e.g.

Canadian media;

Bell Canada Enterprises:

Bell globemedia Inc. (21-station CTV television network, full or partial ownership of 40 specialty television stations) CTVglobemedia Inc. A-Channel ASN Atlantic Satellite Network CKX Television
Discovery Channel CTV News eTalk The Comedy Network TSN MTV
Chum - 33 radio stations, 12 local television stations and 21 specialty television channels

Quebecor Media:

Owns eight dailies and 200 other local and community newspapers. In 2000, Quebecor bought Quebec's largest cable company, Vidéotron, and its French-language TV network, TVA.

Osprey Media; 21 dailies in Ontario (including the National Post, the Kingston Whig-Standard and Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Sun and Citizen) and 36 other papers. In 2001, Osprey bought 16 dailies and 12 other papers from Hollinger International. In 2002, Osprey acquired 30 more newspapers (including four dailies) from CanWest Global.

CanWest Global owns the Global Television Network's 11 stations as well as the three TV stations in the CH-branded network. In January 2007, in partnership with a group from Goldman Sachs, CanWest bought Alliance Atlantis, which added 13 specialty channels including Showcase, HGTV Canada, Food Network Canada and History Television. CanWest owns 11 of Canada's biggest dailies (including the National Post, The Gazette in Montreal, the Ottawa Citizen and both of Vancouver's dailies, the Vancouver Sun and The Province). Hollinger (formerly of Conrad Black) sold its major Canadian newspaper groups to CanWest Global Communications Corp. for $3.5 billion Canadian.

Rogers Media owns several over-the-air and specialty TV channels (including OMNI, Rogers Sportsnet, the Shopping Channel and the Biography Channel), 44 radio stations in six provinces and magazines such as Maclean's, Chatelaine and Canadian Business. In June 2007, Rogers Media bought five Citytv stations, in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.

Astral Media owns 29 radio stations in Quebec and the Maritimes and 17 pay television stations (including The Movie Network, Mpix and Family Channel, and half of Teletoon). In April 2007, Astral Media announced it had struck a cash and stock deal to acquire 52 radio stations and two TV stations from Standard Broadcasting.

US / International media;

AOL - America Online:

Time Warner CNN HBO Cinemax TBS Superstation Turner Network Television
Turner Classic Movies Warner Brothers Television Cartoon Network Sega Channel
TNT Comedy Central E! Court Tv MAD Magazine


Disney:

ABC: 10 stations, 24% of U.S Households
ABC Network News ESPN Disney Channel Touchtone Television
Miramax, Touchtone 3 music labels 11 newspapers
News Corporation LTD / Fox Networks
Fox Television - 50% of American Households
Fox International Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Searchlight
132 newspapers 25 magazines

General Electric:

NBC including 13 stations in 28% of U.S households.
NBC network news CNBC business television (MSNBC - co-owned by NBC and Microsoft), Court-Tv (co-owned with Time Warner), Bravo (50%), A&E (25%), History Channel (25%).

Viacom International Inc:

Paramount Television, Spelling Television, MTV, VH-1, Showtime, The Movie Channel, UPN (joint owner), Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Sundance Channel, Flix
Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Video, Blockbuster Video, Famous Players Theatres, Paramount Parks.

Crisis of Capitalism

Demagoguery and Realism

Santiago Alba Rico - Rebelión

Translation: Machetera

The same day that the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that almost a billion human beings are affected by hunger and that the aid necessary to save their lives would cost $30 billion dollars, six central banks (United States, Japan, Canada, England and Switzerland) injected $180 billion dollars in the financial markets in a concerted action to save the private banks.

In the face of data such as this, there are only two possible alternatives: that we be demogogues or that we be realists.

Read the rest of this great article that speaks bluntly;

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/demagoguery-and-realism/

Hemp´s real story

V.S. Opium in 19th century England

Cannabis was virtually irrelevant to 19th century England. The drug of the century was opium, freely available to the British population and so popular that the government went to war to prevent the prohibitionist Chinese disrupting the trade. Thomas De Quincy, in his 'Confessions of and English Opium Eater' gave the first popular account of the '...marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or pain'. He may have been the first glamouriser of the psychotropic effects of the drug, but, for most people opium was a friend and medicine as indispensable as aspirin or Valium in the 20th century. Godfrey's cordial, or chemists' home-brewed versions of popular patent medicines, were used to quiet children, while no home would be without laudanum (alcoholic tincture of opium). Opium was first used in the treatment of cholera in the epidemics of the early 19th century, and continued to be used for the treatment of diarrhoea and sickness, common complaints in the less than hygienic environment of the day. It was during the Crimean war that the analgesic effects were fully exploited, and it is certain that the widespread use of laudanum, Collis Browne's mixture or other opium-based medicines, available to the poor for a penny a bottle, enabled ordinary people to cope with the harsh realities of life in Dickensian England. From the government's point of view, it was no doubt preferable to have the poor in a state of comfortable stupor than rioting on the streets.

Opium and tea were the mainstays of the British East India Company, who had a monopoly on the opium produced in Bengal. In 1772 Warren Hastings, then chief executive of the company, realised the potential for foreign revenue in exporting Indian opium to China. Opium had been known in China for centuries, but imports bad been banned in 1729 by decree of the Emperor. An foreign trade was funneled through Canton, opium being smuggled with legitimate consignments in British ships, and sold through corrupt officials to an eager market Other traders smuggled opium to China overland, and the consumption spread to all levels of society, even to the personal retinue of the Emperor. Exports to China rose from 10,000 chests ill 1820 to 40,000 chests in 1840. China was determined to wipe out the opium trade by threatening the British merchants with the loss of the tea trade, and in 1839 forced them to surrender 20,000 chests of the drug. Captain Charles Elliot the British Chief Superintended, retaliated by ordering all British ships out of the Canton estuary, transferring the tea trade to American ships who would transport their cargoes to Hong Kong, an inconvenience, but not an obstacle, to the trade. Instead of using Canton, smugglers would take opium consignments ashore up and down the coast in sin all boats, fast enough to evade the Customs craft. The trade continued uninterrupted following the Chinese capitulation and the end of the first opium war in 1842. To the domestic audience in the UK, Palmerston, the Prime Minister, had portrayed the war as an attempt to force the Chinese to accept free trade. In reality, the only commodity directly involved was opium, the tax revenue from which was becoming increasingly important to the Indian Government. China was powerless to stop the trade following the treaty of Nanking, which ceded Hong Kong to Britain, allowing a bridgehead for further opium supplies. Lord Elgin was dispatched with an expeditionary force which burned down the Summer Palace in Peking to impress upon the Emperor the need to keep agreements. The main consequence of the Second Opium War was that China was forced to legalise the trade in opium, and were only permitted to tax the product at a level acceptable to the British. Consumption increased from 60,000 chests in 1860 to 105,000 by 1880. The international drugs trade was quite a different thing from home consumption; for example although the British Empire produced a great deal of the worlds' opiates, over 80% of the opium used in the UK was from Turkey and Persia.

The trade generated taxes to the British Indian Government equivalent to over half their total revenue, enough to cover the entire civil service and armed forces budgets. In this climate, financial expediency, as so often is the case, took precedence over the growing moral arguments against the drug trade. Before the development of the hypodermic syringe by Alexander Wood, the main concern about opium was not the threat of addiction, but the danger of poisoning. Only after the 1860s did the risk of dependency start to cause concern among the medical profession. The question of cannabis occasionally cropped up as an incidental issue in skirmishes during the long legislative battle against the opium business. MPs of both parties were particularly concerned about "an exhalation of the Hemp plant, easily collected at certain seasons, which is in every way more injurious than the use of the poppy.". This was another justification for the lucrative opium trade which flourished in a climate of official and unofficial governmental encouragement. The state of Bengal had been making an average 1 million rupees per year through the 1860's in tax on ganja shops and duty at government auctions, about £100,000 - tens of millions in today's money. At the end of the century cannabis tincture became popular again in England as a cure for cramps, migraine, opium addiction, withdrawal and insomnia, but the fashion faded. In the early 1900's a British Medical Association campaign against 'Secret Remedies' got most of the opiates, cocaine and cannabis out of tonics and non-prescription medicines. Doctors became responsible for most drug distribution as the consumer beverage trade grew.

Hemp in the new World

Cannabis hemp is, overall, the strongest, most-durable, longest-lasting natural soft-fiber on the planet. Botanically, hemp is a member of the most advanced plant family on Earth. It is a dioecious (having male, female and sometimes hermaphroditic, male and female on same plant), woody, herbaceous annual that uses the sun more efficiently than virtually any other plant on our planet, reaching a robust 12 to 20 feet or more in one short growing season.

Ultimately when the colonies (of England) were to become independent, hemp production was not curtailed, in many areas production increased, particularly in the United States, where the founding fathers were passionate hemp advocates. Benjamin Franklin, as the leading paper manufacturer in the colonies, noted the raising of it in his state, of which he was in support. Thomas Paine noted hemp as a strength of the colonies, citing it as evidence of self-reliance that made the revolution plausible. George Washington grew it on his estates, and took an interest in its uses stopping on one occasion to visit a hemp paper factory in Hempstead, N.Y. Thomas Jefferson even took a stand in favour of hemp versus a native plant, tobacco. He voices his opinion in "The Farm Journal" of March 16, 1791, stating that tobacco required much more manure, employed less people, and did not contribute to the wealth or defence of the state. He also compared hemp favourably to flax, and invented a method for breaking, which involved a thrashing machine moved by a horse; this was to be the new nation,s first patent. John Quincy Adams wrote of Russian hemp cultivation which was printed into government records. Little did he imagine the future governments anti-hemp activists would view these activities as subversive and un-American, or that the very substance of the paper on which the constitutions were written would be a matter of controversy. The first two drafts of the U.S. Constitution we written on hemp paper. The final draft is on animal skin. Abraham Lincoln responded to this kind of repressive mentality in December, 1840, when he said “Prohibition/goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

After independence, there was new pressure on the young nation to produce hemp, as the need for defence and trade fell solely on their shoulders. Ironically, while great amounts of hemp were grown, they were not water retted(rotted), and thus the United States, like other nations, sent to Russia for its supplies. North Americans tried to raise the best crops they could, and this meant constant revision and a willingness to try new methods. However, Russian, Italian, and Dutch hemp continued to be the most desirable, largely due to the centuries of experience that these nations possessed. The primary reason for the War of 1812 (fought by America against Great Britain) was access to Russian cannabis hemp. Russian hemp was also the principal reason that Napoleon (our 1812 ally) and his “Continental Systems” allies invaded Russia in 1812.

The American civil war caused great disruption; hemp growing came to a standstill and did not ever recover to its previous levels. One interesting use of hemp that the war occasioned was that of movable defences-Secessionist soldiers rolled wetted bundles of hemp towards the Union Army, thus able to fire upon their enemy from behind movable cover. By such means was the battle of Lexington, Missouri, decided. In the future, hemp was to decline and be revived in the 1930s, when Henry Ford was set to use hemp as a fuel for cars. Ford operated a successful bio-mass conversion plant that included hemp at their Iron Mountain Facility in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl acetate and creosote...all fundamental ingredients for modern industry, and now supplied by oil related industries. When considered on a planet-wide, climate-wide, soil-wide basis, cannabis is at least four and possibly many more times richer in sustainable, renewable biomass/cellulose potential than its nearest rivals on the planet, cornstalks, sugarcane, etc. Other uses of hemp were discovered, and the American farmer was to find that he would be able to sell even the hemp wastes at a profit. However, special interest groups cut down this hope, and hemp was outlawed just as it was set to revive the US economy. Today many US businesses are selling hemp, although it can not be grown legally in the US; ironically, arrests are being made as farmers try to get their rights, and recently Woody Harrelson was arrested for sowing the seeds of hemp in his hope state, Kentucky.

Facts

This may be hard to believe in the middle of the war on drugs, but the first law concerning marijuana in the colonies at Jamestown in 1619 ordered farmers to grow indian hemp. Massachusetts passed a compulsory "grow law" in 1631. Connecticut followed in 1632. The Chesapeake Colonies ordered their farmers, by law, to grow marijuana in the mid-18th century. Names like "Hempstead", "Hemp Hill, North Carolina" or "Hempfield, Pennsylvania" dot the American landscape, and reflect areas of intense marijuana cultivation.

Hemp paper lasted 50 to 100 times longer than most preparations of papyrus, and was a hundred times easier and cheaper to make. What we and the rest of the world used to make all our paper from was the discarded sails and ropes sold by ship owners as scrap for recycling into paper. The rest of our paper came from our worn-out clothes, sheets, diapers, curtains and rags*, made primarily from hemp and sometimes flax, then sold to scrap dealers. Hence the term “rag paper.”

In the 19th century Australians survived two prolonged famines by using hemp seed for protein and leaves for roughage.

All oil lamps used to burn hemp seed oil until the whale oil edged it out of first place in the mid-nineteenth century. And then, when all the whales were dead, lamplights were fueled by petroleum/ kerosene.

Until the 1880s in America (and until the 20th century in most of the rest of the world), 80% of all textiles and fabrics used for clothing, tents, bed sheets and linens,* rugs, drapes, quilts, towels, diapers, etc., and even our flag, “Old Glory,” were principally made from fibers of cannabis.

It cost more for a ship’s hempen sails, ropes, etc. than it did to build the wooden parts.

From 1842 through the 1890's a powerful concentrated extract of marijuana was the second most prescribed drug in the United States. In all that time the medical literature didn't list any of the "ill effects" claimed by today's "anti-drug warriors".

In 1860 'Ganjah Wallah Hasheesh Candy Company' produces one of the most popular candies in the U.S. It is made from cannabis derivatives and maple sugar, sold over-the-counter, and in Sears-Roebuck catalogs. It retains its popularity as a totally harmless and fun candy for over forty years.

During the 1870's the popularity of smoking female cannabis tops, to ease the back-breaking labor of working sugar cane fields and tolerate the hot sun as well as to relax recreationally with no alcohol "hang-over", begins to spread in the West Indies with the immigration of Hindus who are imported to provide cheap labor. Gradually, this popularity makes its way into the United States through St. Louis.

By 1883 hashish smoking parlors have opened in every major American city, including an estimated 500 such establishments in New York City alone.

Hemp paper contains no dioxin, or other toxic residue...and a single acre of hemp can produce the same amount of paper as four acres of trees. The trees take 20 years to harvest, and hemp takes a single season. In warm climates hemp can be harvested two, even three times a year. It also grows in bad soil and restores the nutrients.

Back in 1935 more than 58,000 tons were used just to make paint and varnish...all non-toxic.

After the 1937 Marijuana Tax law, new DuPont “plastic fibers,” under license since 1936 from the German company I.G. Farben (patent surrenders were part of Germany’s World War I reparation payments to America), replaced natural hempen fibers. (Some 30% of I.G. Farben, under Hitler, was owned and financed by America’s DuPont.) DuPont also introduced Nylon (invented in 1935) to the market after they’d patented it in 1938.

Four million pounds of hempseed for songbirds were sold at retail in the U.S. in 1937. Birds will pick hempseeds out and eat them first from a pile of mixed seed.

As an idication of its importance to industry, during World War II domestic hemp production became crucial when the Japanese cut-off Asian supplies of hemp to the United States. The U.S. government overrided its own ban on hemp and distributed 400,000 pounds of hemp seed to U.S farmers. American farmers, and even their sons, who grew marijuana were exempt from military duty during World War II. In 1942 the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a film called "Hemp for Victory" extolling the agricultural might of marijuana, and called for 100's of thousands of acres to be planted. Despite a rather vigorous drug crack down, 4-H clubs were asked by the government to grow marijuana for seed supply.

In 1972 U.S.D.A. finds that hemp seed is lower in saturated fats than any other vegetable oil (including soybean and canola).

Ancient Timeline

2700: B.C. Cannabis, as hemp fabric and cordage, medicine, and food, has been incorporated into virtually all cultures of the Middle East, Asia Minor, India, China, Japan, and Africa.

2300: B.C. Nomadic tribes from the East migrate into the Mediterranean regions and eventually Europe, introducing hemp along the way.

2000: B.C. to 1883A.D. Hemp is the world's largest agricultural crop, providing materials to support civilization's most important industries, including fiber for fabric and rope, lamp oil for lighting, paper, medicine and food for both humans and domesticated animals.

Hemp Extracts are the #1, #2, and #3 most important and most frequently used medicine for two-thirds of the world's population.

1470's: Gutenberg Bible is printed on hemp paper.

1494: Hemp papermaking starts in England.

1535: Henry VIII passes an act stating that all landowners must sow 1/4 acre, or be fined.\

1537: Hemp receives the name Cannabis Sativa, the scientific name that stands today.

1563: Queen Elizabeth I decrees that land owners with 60 acres or more must grow hemp or else face a £5 fine.

1564: King Philip of Spain mandated the cultivation of hemp for food, fiber and medicine throughout the Spanish territory in Central and South America.

1600: Rembrandt paints on hemp canvas.

1611: King James Bible is printed on hemp paper.

1619: America's first hemp law is enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia, ordering all farmers to grow hemp.

1631: 'Must grow' hemp laws are enacted throughout Massachusetts.

1631: to early 1800's Hemp is 'legal tender' and taxes may be paid with hemp throughout most of the Americas.

1632 to mid `1700's: 'Must grow' hemp laws enacted in Connecticut and the Chesapeake Colonies.