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Life Arts    H4'ed 7/7/11

Democracy, Freedom, Peace and HEMP

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And to soften up the idea of war, to make "...all Hell" more publicly palatable, we declare war on all kinds of things...war on drugs; war on terror; war on poverty; war on....

Meanwhile, in the "land of the free and home of the brave", for 73 years and counting it has been a federal crime to farm the most useful crop in the history of the world.

Hemp

Oligarchy...follow the money, protection of power and profit explain how hemp was effectively banned in 1937, and why industrial hemp farming remains smothered today.

In 1992, George H.W. Bush characterized the fundamental ideology of America this way: "The continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter, and righter hands."

Perpetual war and globalization are main engines powering this ideology from hell. Hemp is the premiere antidote for globalization, the ideal means of spreading the wealth where it belongs by empowering self-sustaining regional economies. That is why hemp remains an illegal crop--hemp prohibition has never realistically had anything to do with "reefer madness".

Destroying the competition, that's what American hemp prohibition is all about; hemp is too great of a competitor, it's wondrous record spanning nearly 120 centuries.

Benefits of hemp farming are actually difficult to overstate. Food, fuel, fiber, paper, textiles, plastics...an estimated 50,000 superior products that, totally unlike entrenched petrochemical products (with gravy-train patents--that's huge), have a place in a living system. And as far as hemp reflecting exactly how and why America has gone so wrong...could there be a better reflector--or anything even close? Hemp could power a breakout, perhaps even an epidemic, of peace. Instead of pirating so many other nations' resources, America could grow her own! But....

Elite families in America's oligarchy have become obscenely wealthy and powerful via enforcement of a global fossil-energy economy, and myriad synthetic products of petrochemical alchemy. To say the world runs on oil is largely a rude truth--the human world anyway, civilization. It certainly does not have to be that way, should not be that way regarding a viable future of humanity and Earth's biosphere. The reason it is that way points to the very heart of...darkness.

Widespread belief that there is no alternative to our destructive, suicidal, biocidal status quo has long been cultivated by those our terminal status quo enriches most (Screw the Future could serve as their motto). The elite not only own the government, they own mainstream media, along with...frankly, it's getting difficult to point out what they don't own, ultimately. Such concentration of "...money and power into higher, tighter, and righter hands" is chiefly perpetuated via the elite destroying any and all competition beyond their control. With hemp they've come as close as they can by making it an illegal crop, then hammering into the American psyche that hemp, farmers--even educated people (as opposed to indoctrinated) might, somehow, be dangerous.

To go with the class war boiling in America, the elite have cooked up a crass war. Evidence of who is winning gets more frightening every day. Multi-billionaire Koch brothers and their "tea party", Michele Bachmann...our Founding Fathers wouldn't just squirm, they would be almost as mortified as if they knew that in America, hemp farming has been a federal crime for 73 years.

So what about "states' rights"? Twenty-eight states have introduced legislation, and sixteen of them now have pro-hemp laws on the books. North Dakota is suing the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for the RIGHT! to grow hemp--have even been selling state licenses to grow hemp since 2007. However, farmers in North Dakota know that if they plant hemp, feds will arrest them, fine them, seize their property and throw them in prison. If this sounds insane, that's because it is insane.

North Dakota is doing a number of things correctly...or, against the grain as it were. After nearly 100 years of public banking (Bank of North Dakota), the state has the nation's lowest unemployment (about 4%), and not only has no debt to service, but is the lone state to avoid a budget deficit over the last two years (they actually have a billion-dollar surplus).

Any talk of freedom, democracy, liberty and justice for all, government by the consent of the governed--generally, all the platitudes politicians and officials croon about being handed down to us by our Founding Fathers...it tends to ring rather hollow in a nation that for 73 years has criminalized the growing of the most valuable crop handed down to us by Mother Nature.

America, and Americans--we need jobs that can't be offshored, now.

We need Mother Nature on our side...need to work with, not against, her.

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Rand Clifford lives in Spokane, Washington. His novels and earlier essays can be found at http://www.starchiefpress.com/
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