A Zero-Emission Coal Technology has been jointly invented by Dr. Hans
Ziock of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Klaus Lackner of Columbia
University, and Dr. Douglas Harrison of Louisiana State University.
These talented Scientists have shown that coal does not need to be
burned. Energy from coal can be generated via a closed-system chemical
process that does not release waste gases into the atmosphere. The
process involves anaerobic gasification of coal to produce hydrogen
without release to the atmosphere. During the gasification process,
pulverized coal reacts with hydrogen and water vapor (hydrogasification)
leaving solid ash residue in the reactor vessel. Other contaminants
including mercury, nitrogen oxides and ammonia are removed as solids or
liquids in purge streams for appropriate treatment and disposal; without
direct exposure to the atmosphere. Methane from the gasification process
is then reformed to hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide
is fixed as calcium carbonate (limestone) by reaction with lime. The
heat of the carbonation reaction drives the reformation of methane to
hydrogen.

The hydrogen generated from the coal (or other carbon based fuels) can
be used to power hydrogen fuel cells to create electricity or used as
chemical feedstock to produce synthetic fuels. The process is
approximately 70% efficient, twice that of a conventional coal-fired
electrical generating station - and with no emissions – zero air
pollution.

The Zero Emission Coal Technology process begins with the simple fact
that carbon (coal or other carbon based fuels) and hydrogen react to
form methane or synthetic natural gas. This gas is then passed, with
steam, over a bed of hot lime or calcium oxide (CaO) in the reformer to
produce twice as much hydrogen as was present at the beginning (half of
the hydrogen comes from the water, half from the gas).

The lime absorbs the carbon from the gas and the oxygen in the water to
form calcium carbonate—limestone (CaCO3).

The calcium carbonate from the carbonation reaction is recycled in order
to regenerate the calcium oxide (lime) which is then used to produce
more hydrogen. The recycling process produces a pure CO2 stream ready
for disposal by mineral carbonation or use in enhanced oil recovery
(EOR) or other form of sequestration, or for reuse in limited amounts as
chemical feedstock.

The LTTE has led the way in "innovations for terrorism" in other
countries too, according to the annual assessment of terrorism worldwide
submitted to the U.S. Congress.

"Many LTTE innovations, such as explosive belts, vests, and bras, the
use of female suicide bombers, and waterborne suicide attacks against
ships, have been copied by other terrorist groups," U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice has said in the 2006-Country Reports of
Terrorism.

In its South and Central Asian section, the report said while the
Maoists in Nepal signed a peace agreement the LTTE continued with its
terrorist attacks.

"In Nepal and Sri Lanka, terrorism carried out by the Maoists and the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) posed a severe challenge to
those Governments."

The report said the LTTE raised money from the Tamil diaspora in North
America, Europe and Australia and by imposing "taxes" on businesses in
the areas under its control.

It used weapons either purchased with the money on the international
black market or captured from the army.

The report said the LTTE conducted a campaign of targeted assassinations
against political and military opponents.

"The Karuna faction, a dissident faction of the LTTE, conducted its own
assassination campaign against the LTTE and pro-LTTE civilians in the
east," the report noted.

It said the Sri Lankan cooperation with the FBI had resulted in the
arrests of persons charged with material support to terrorist groups.
Colombo cooperated with efforts to track terrorist financing, though no
assets were identified.

"The United States also provided training for relevant Sri Lankan
government agencies and the banking sector. The Government cooperated
with the United States to implement both the Container Security
Initiative and the Megaports program at the port of Colombo."

The Media Center for National Security (MCNS) reported that the police
had uncovered arms and ammunition in a temple at Velanithurai in the
Kaytes Island. It said the weapons were concealed above the statues of
gods by the LTTE. Two priests were arrested.

TamilNet claimed that the Tigers had repulsed an offensive by the army
on the Vavuniya-Mannar border.

LTTE's military spokesman Irasiah Ilanthirayan told TamilNet that two
bodies of soldiers were captured with arms and ammunition when the army
offensive involving 300 troopers towards Paalmpiddi was thwarted.

A Tiger cadre was killed in action.

we are bold enough to attack two of the three evil Axis what chance do
you think personally we would have against North Korea???


We might now take George Bush at his word: in the wake of the September
11 attacks, he named three nations as the “axis of evil”: North Korea,
Iran and Iraq. The statement had a solid tripartite ring to it,
conjuring images of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. The
implication was chilling: that Axis, we might remember, damn near
overran the world.

“North Korea,” Bush then said, “is a regime arming with missiles and
weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.” Iran, he
explained, “aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while
an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.” When it
came to Iraq, Bush was oddly careful, saying it “had plotted to develop
anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.” Had
plotted.

We are now, some five years later, left with the realization that
thinking about acquiring weapons of mass destruction will get you
attacked (if you’re Iraq), while actually having them will lead to
negotiations — as is the case with North Korea. In truth, this is not an
incoherent theory of deterrence: the Soviet Union had some 20,000
nuclear warheads aimed at us during the cold war and we spent our time
fighting them in Nicaragua, Chile, the Congo, Vietnam — in other words,
in places where our vital interests were not threatened in the
slightest. In fact, we fought them on every continent in the world,
except Europe, where our vital interests actually were threatened.

But we should not think Bush’s words are a kind of historical conceit;
we fought the Axis by first knocking off its lightweight contender,
Italy. So too, we thought, we would do with Iraq. It was the “axis of
evil’s” Italy. More simply, as one of my colleagues has described it,
the Bush administration went after Iraq because they thought it would be
a pushover, “a Grenada with goats”.

Such glibness is well-placed, for it shows that among the gibberish
being uttered by Bush’s most important policymakers, there is a sense
that perhaps America is not the all-powerful hegemon its class of
neo-conservatives would have us believe. At the beginning of the movie
“Patton” — a classic, played nearly every night on some television
somewhere in America — the great and strutting general faces his troops.

“Men,” he says, “this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of
the war — not wanting to fight — is a lot of bull****. Americans love to
fight — traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of
battle.”

No we don’t. At the height of World War II, when we and our allies were
bumping up against the German army, the American army had the highest
desertion rate of any fighting force in the European theater. Dwight
Eisenhower was enraged; there were tens of thousands of men wandering
around behind the lines, “separated from their units”. (British
commanders, by the way, often referred to the Americans as … “our
Italians”.)

That is to say: we didn’t invade Iraq because we thought they had
weapons of mass destruction. We invaded Iraq because we knew they
didn’t. By this through-the-looking-glass logic, the only nations and
movements worth attacking are those that are the least capable of
hitting back. That sounds glib, but it is supported by the facts. During
his recent address before the United Nations Security Council, Bush laid
out a new axis of evil — Hamas and Hezbollah (this is, it seems, the
“axis of not quite as evil, but still evil”). Hamas and Hezbollah were
each mentioned three times. Al-Qaeda, the movement that attacked the
World Trade Center and killed thousands of Americans was mentioned once.
Once. North Korea was never mentioned.

America has a great military man, but his name is not George Patton. His
name is Fox Conner. He was a brigadier general and war theorist earlier
in the last century, and was responsible for tutoring some of our
greatest military leaders — like George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower.
His view was that dictators would always fight better, because they
ruled by fear. Democracies do not have that, ah, luxury. So, he said,
democracies must follow three rules when it comes to fighting a war:
never fight unless attacked, never fight alone, and never fight for
long. The Bush administration has got it exactly backwards — we attacked
a country that didn’t attack us, we did it virtually by ourselves, and
we have now fought longer in Iraq than we did against Germany and Japan.

So too, we have abrogated the most fundamental principles of diplomacy.
We insist on negotiating with others (when both Iran and North Korea
want bilateral talks), we insist on making demands we cannot hope to
enforce, and we believe that the negotiations should be short, when
everyone knows that constant negotiations mean constant peace.

Don’t think that any of this has been lost on either the North Koreans
or Iran. The North Korean leadership knows we’re not going to hit them —
why, Americans might actually die by the tens of thousands. It’s much
easier for us to hit Hamas, to ship weapons into the West Bank and Gaza
in the hopes of fomenting a civil war. That suits us. So the North
Koreans are safe. And the Iranians are moving as fast as they can to
make sure they will be too.

Many observers have assumed that Saddam Hussein’s execution was yet
another Iraqi “milestone” timed to serve the needs of a struggling
American president. Milestone it was, but indications now suggest that
this was, on the contrary, a marker that Washington was desperate to
forestall. And for good reason: in pressing for Saddam’s execution, Iran
appears to have reached over America’s head and graphically demonstrated
that it is now the preeminent political force inside Iraq.

The Bush administration’s provocative posture towards Iran in recent
days could thus say more about what has already happened than about what
is yet to come. From the vantage point of the Oval Office, raising the
specter of a military confrontation with Iran may in fact seem
preferable to facing the greatest humiliation of all: the
acknowledgement of an Iranian victory in Iraq. Yet it now appears that
Saddam’s ignominious end was exactly that: victor’s justice — Iranian
victor’s justice. It is a message from Iran to Iraq’s Sunnis that it is
Iran, and not the U.S, that is now the dominant force in Iraq. Iran may
have been diplomatic enough to call Saddam’s execution a “victory for
the Iraqi people,” but the blunt message heard across the region is that
Iran will not relent in asserting its title as the region’s leading
power.

Soon after the hanging, fears from various elements in the region were
expressed by one Gulf commentator who wrote that “If Iranian hegemony is
really implanted [in Iraq] — and that phase has begun to be evident —
then it is incumbent on all the political activists in the country [to
realize] that we will be facing a ‘Sunni holocaust,’ and any whiff of
civil war will mean assured Sunni victims.” [Translation from [1]
Missing Links.] This commentator’s sentiment echoes another warning last
month made by Saudi cleric, Sheikh Musa bin Abdelaziz, who claimed that
“Iran has become more dangerous than Israel itself.”

One of Iraq’s Sunni political leaders, Salih Muahaed al-Mutleq,
unequivocally asserts that Iran had a decisive role in Saddam’s
execution. And while Sunni rumors about Iran’s role in the execution
circulate in Iraq and across the region, the circumstantial evidence
that Iran was behind Saddam’s end continues to mount. Furthermore, while
the execution caused a mini-firestorm in Washington and European
capitals, in Iraq the video of the hanging has widened the chasm between
Sunni and Shia. Saddam’s execution is now viewed much like Lenin’s
murder of the Romanov family, nearly one century ago — everyone now
knows there’s no going back.

In fact, as our correspondent in the city reports, Baghdad citizens
nearly universally agree, if there was any doubt about whether the
nation is in the middle of a bloody civil war, Saddam’s execution has
put those doubts to rest. Not only is the execution blamed by Sunnis and
moderate Shias alike on Nouri al-Maliki, the decision to execute the
former dictator on the Eid al-Adha is viewed as a direct insult to
Sunnis.

Salih Muahaed al-Mutleq, the leader of the Sunni-supported Iraqi
National Dialogue Front (the fifth largest political list in the Iraqi
National Assembly), said in a telephone interview that it was a mistake
to view Saddam’s execution “solely as an American decision.” This is, he
said, “a common mistake in Iraq and particularly among Sunnis. It is
also a mistake for the Americans to view the execution as somehow a
miscalculation. This was an Iranian decision and it was directed against
all Sunnis.”

Mutleq’s views might be dismissed as typically Sunni, but as one of the
chief negotiators for the Sunnis over the writing of the Constitution,
Mutleq is in a better position to understand Maliki, and the Dawa Party,
than (in his words) “the class of scholars in Washington who style
themselves Iraq experts.” Mutleq derives his credibility from his
history as an outspoken Saddam critic — albeit the leader of a community
in which Saddam might be expected to retain significant popularity. “I
am personally against Saddam and I wanted him to be tried and punished
for his crimes against the Iraqi people,” Mutleq said. “But the way that
Maliki behaved showed that the hanging was motivated by sectarian
hatreds. The significance of its impact on Iraqis and Sunnis cannot be
underestimated. It is now clear that it was implemented not by official
elements, in spite of Maliki’s approval, as much as it was by the
al-Mahdi criminal militias.”

Dr. Kheir al-Deen Haseeb, the Director General of the Center of Arab
Unity Studies in Baghdad — a man widely viewed, like Mutlek, as a
well-known Sunni anti-Saddam activist (he was imprisoned and tortured by
Saddam’s secret police before leaving his country) — also blames Maliki
for the way in which Saddam’s execution went forward. “Everyone focuses
on the cries of ‘Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada ,’” he says. “But the place
where Saddam was hanged was carefully chosen to show Sunnis that none of
them are safe. It was chosen because it is highly sectarian. The
Al-Kadimiyah area is fully Shia. Why would they take him there if this
was not a sectarian murder, but a legal execution? In normal cases all
executions take place in Baghdad Central Prison.” Haseeb is not only
outspoken in his condemnation of the execution, but enraged by those who
believe that the execution was “botched” — that it was a matter of
simply incompetence on the part of the Maliki government that
embarrassed them. “This was done quite purposely. There was no
embarrassment involved,” he says.

Haseeb also condemns the idea that the videotaping of the execution was
a matter of circumstance. “This was well-planned,” he says, “and was
carried out by a member of the Iraqi Parliament. The parliamentary
member who did this is Mariam al-Rayes.” (Repeated calls to Ms. Al-Rayes
for her response to this claim were not returned. We note that there is
some disagreement on this point, — it was earlier reported by [2]
Newsweek that the recording was made by Ali Al Massedy, Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s official videographer.) Haseeb is quietly
certain that it was Al-Rayes, a former member of the National Assembly
and Nouri al-Maliki’s foreign policy advisor, who did the taping.
Al-Rayes is emerging as one of Prime Minister Maliki’s most important
advisors, and was outspoken in criticizing Arab governments who did not
quash protests that erupted following the execution. There should be no
period of mourning for the dictator, Al-Rayes said in the wake of the
execution, and those Arab nations who called for mourning should be
viewed as enemies of the Iraqi people. “This is a confiscation of the
rights of thousands of Iraqis who died under the oppression of the
[Saddam] regime,” she said.

Another hint of Iran’s role in the execution comes from a recent [3] BBC
report, stating that the execution took place “at an especially
constructed gallows at a compound that once served as the military
intelligence headquarters of the former regime. This was the building
where those accused of aiding Iraq’s former foe, Iran, were brought
during the Sunni ascendancy.”

The message for the Bush Administration should be clear: shifts in
military strategy cannot undo the fact that the political struggle for
Iraq has already been lost.

Hey, Doc what would happen if a country that we helped out got pissed by
our government. Would it be like we were fighting ourselves.

Moving Beyond Anti-War Politics
by Phyllis Bennis and Robert Jensen / April 28th, 2007

As Congress sends its bill requiring partial troop withdrawals from Iraq
to the White House for a certain veto, it has never been clearer that
mobilizing against this war is necessary, but not enough.

Congressional Democrats may be willing to stop there, but demanding the
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is only the first of our obligations
to help create the conditions for real justice and peace in the Middle
East and around the world. It’s crucial that we also advocate for an
entirely new foreign policy based on opposition to the long U.S. drive
toward empire.

That first step is, of course, crucial. When 78 percent of the Iraqi
people oppose the presence of U.S. troops and 61 percent support attacks
on those troops, it’s clear that our presence in the country is causing
— not preventing — much of the violence. Pulling out U.S. troops
(including the 100,000-plus mercenaries who back the U.S. military)
won’t eliminate all Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, but it will remove the
reason many Iraqis are fighting. That would take away the protective
umbrella that the widely supported anti-occupation violence currently
gives the real terrorists — those engaged in killing civilians for
political or sectarian reasons. Once U.S. forces are gone and the reason
for the legitimate resistance to foreign occupation is eliminated, the
ugly terrorist violence will be exposed for what it is — and it will be
possible for Iraqis themselves to isolate the terrorists and eliminate
them as a fighting force.

But what comes after a U.S. withdrawal? We clearly owe the Iraqi people
massive reparations for the devastation our illegal invasion has
brought. Only in the United States is that illegality questioned; in the
rest of the world it’s understood. Equally obvious around the world is
that the decision to launch an aggressive war was rooted in the desire
to expand U.S. military power in the strategically crucial oil-rich
region, and that as a result the war fails every test of moral
legitimacy.

As we organize against the occupation, we also must work to end U.S.
support for Israeli occupation and try to prevent an aggressive war
against Iran. But all of this is part of a larger obligation of U.S.
citizens: We must challenge U.S. empire. The U.S. troop withdrawal and
reparations should be accompanied by a declaration of a major change of
course in U.S. foreign policy, especially in Iraq and the Middle East.
We need a new foreign policy based on justice, relying on international
law and the United Nations, rather than the assertion of
might-makes-right.

This takes us beyond a critique of the mendacity of the Bush
administration, to recognize that similar dreams of conquest and
domination have animated every administration, albeit in different
forms. From the darling of the anti-communist liberal elite (John F.
Kennedy) and the champion of so-called “assertive multilateralism” (Bill
Clinton), to the crude Republican realist
(Richard Nixon) and the patron saint of the conservative right (Ronald
Reagan), U.S. empire in the post-World War II era has been a distinctly
bipartisan effort.

In his 1980 State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter called
for domination of the Middle East: “An attempt by any outside force to
gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault
on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an
assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military
force.” In other words: We run the region and control the flow of its
oil.

George W. Bush took earlier administrations’ power plays to new heights
of reckless militarism and unilateralism, seizing the moment after 9/11
to declare to all nations: “Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor
or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile
regime.” In other words: We demand global capitulation.

The only way to transcend this ugly history is through an honest
national dialogue and a promise of a sea change in U.S. policy.

Look around the world at the results of U.S. strategies. Rhetoric about
democracy and free trade has masked the enforcement of political and
economic subordination to the United States and U.S.-based multinational
corporations. The people of Latin America, much of Africa and the Middle
East, and many parts of Asia can offer compelling testimony to the
impact of those policies, enforced now through more than 700 U.S.
military bases spread across the globe in over 130 countries.

Such empires are typically brought down from outside, with great
violence. But we have another option, as citizens of that empire who
understand how this pathology of power damages our country as well as
the world. Imagine what would be possible if we — ordinary citizens of
this latest empire — could build a movement that gave politicians no
choice but to do the right thing.

Imagine what would be possible in the world if an anti-empire movement
were strong enough to make it clear that ending military violence
requires a just distribution of the resources of this world.

Imagine what is possible if we work to make inevitable one day what
seems improbable today — the justice that makes possible real peace.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and
author of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy
U.S. Power. She can be reached at: pbennis@ips-dc.org. Robert Jensen is
a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and
author of Citizens of Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. He can
be reached at: rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Read other articles by Phyllis
Bennis and.

The latest report I saw is that at a minimum 3,065 members of US armed
forces have been murdered in Iraq by Bush, Cheney and the neocons. And I
use “murder” as a technical term – I was originally hired here to teach
criminal law; taught it for a number of years. And murder involves
voluntary killing with malice of forethought. It is very clear that
Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, all the neocons lied their way into this
war and murdered those troops. These troops are our mothers and our
fathers, our brothers and our sisters, and ours sons and our daughters,
and we are going to have to stop this war and save them from being
further murdered by Bush and these fanatical neocons.

We also saw just yesterday in the New York Times that the Pentagon had a
report on its website indicating that in fact 50,000 troops had been
injured in Iraq, and not the lower figure they had been using of 20,000.
They back tracked on this figure, all up and down. The Pentagon always
lies about US casualties in wartime. My guess is that the real figure
are a lot more than what that they are reporting.

And then of course the dead Iraqis… Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and
the rest of them have murdered a minimum of 650,000 Iraqis (according to
the Lancet report last Spring). And if you extrapolate from that we are
up to 700,000. And the longer this goes on those figures are going to
increase for both Americans and Iraqis. My guess is that given the surge
we are going to see a bloodbath in Baghdad, for both the civilian
population of Baghdad and US armed forces… We really have to stop this
bloodbath, we have to pull these troops out, and we have to get rid of
Bush and Cheney. At a minimum, we owe it to our armed forces that have
been put in harm’s way in our name to stop this war, and to stop,
certainly, further development of conflict and violence to Iran which
could set up a regional, if not, a global war.
— Francis A. Boyle, Stopping the Guns of War, A-Infos Radio Project, 31
Jan. 2007. Very important interview. The quoted segment starts at the
23:25 min mark.

Pentagon Undercounts Number of Troops Injured
… the Pentagon is being accused of undercounting the number of troops
injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you looked at the Pentagon’s website
last month, it would have appeared that about 47,000 soldiers had been
injured in the two wars. But now the figure on the website has dropped
to less than 32,000. The Pentagon is no longer including troops who
suffered what it considers minor injuries or mental illness.
— DemocracyNow, 5 Feb 2007.

So far, what exactly is surging in Iraq?
U.S. casualties, which are at a post-invasion high: According to an
Associated Press analysis, more American troops were “killed in combat
in Iraq over the past four months — at least 334 through Jan. 31 — than
in any comparable stretch since the war began”; and February, with 34
American deaths in its first nine days, is exceeding this pace. These
loses are largely due to roadside bombs (IEDs) and to the fact that U.S.
troops are now engaged in almost continuous urban warfare. Before the
invasion of Iraq, the possibility of fighting an urban war in the Iraqi
capital’s streets and alleys was the American high command’s personal
nightmare. Now, it’s their reality — and the President’s surge plan can
only make it more nightmarish.
—Tom Engelhardt, Surging into Catastrophe in Iraq, TomDispatch, 12 Feb.
2007. (Introduction to an article by Michael Schwartz.)

At least 800 civilians under contract to the Pentagon have been killed
and more than 3,300 hurt in Iraq doing jobs normally handled by the U.S.
military…
It is not clear how many of the employees are American but the casualty
figures make it clear that the Defense Department’s count of more than
3,100 U.S. military dead does not tell the whole story.
—Iraq war claims 800 Pentagon contractors’ lives, PressTV, 24 Feb. 2007.

Commentary on recent developments
The report on the urban-rural mix in the US forces is worth reading.

Remembrance down the Memory Hole…
Several of the “remembrance” websites are starting to neglect updating
their output. The Seattle Times website has not been updated since March
2004. The Baltimore Sun stopped reporting on February 11, 2005.

Why this data sheet?
The US military doesn’t allow the compilation and publication of Iraqi
casualties, and it is very difficult to know how bloody the occupation
of Iraq has resulted. The only indication of the intensity of the
conflict are the military fatalities. We can use this as a proxy measure
to determine if the occupation is a bloody quagmire or if the dust is
finally settling on the rubble.

Furthermore, as demonstrated elsewhere, the Pentagon and their media
surrogates are attempting to hide the true extent of the carnage among
its soldiers. It is very difficult to find accurate fatality figures,
the classification of fatalities leads to exclusion in the official
death tally (e.g., contractors are excluded), and the number of errors
creeping into the official fatality reports is increasing, e.g.,
fatalities originally reported, but then not confirmed; long delays in
reporting; excluding the subsequent deaths of wounded soldiers after
they were transferred out of Iraq. If it is only the American and
British fatalities that are going to stop this bloody occupation of Iraq
then it behooves us to amplify the information on these fatalities –
primarily to counteract the attempts by the Pentagon and its media
surrogates to cover this over.

Another means to determine the intensity of the resistance against the
US-uk troops is to analyze the average daily death toll for each month
(first column). The center column pertains to a linear trend of the
average fatality rate – enables one to obtain some (limited) perspective
of how this will continue. The last column is the percentage of
“hostile” fatalities out of the total for the month.

Year
or
Month Average US-uk fatalities per day
(inc. hostile and other; 1-May-03 thru 23-Feb-07) Linear trend of av.
fatalities p/day Pct of fatalities due to hostile action
2003† 1.5 1.8 63%
2004 2.4 2.1 85%
2005 2.4 2.3 81%
Jan 06 2.2 2.5 88%
Feb 06 2.1 2.5 83%
Mar 06 1.0 2.5 90%
Apr 06 2.6 2.5 87%
May 06 2.5 2.6 87%
Jun 06 2.0 2.6 93%
Jul 06 1.5 2.6 91%
Aug 06 2.1 2.6 89%
Sep 06 2.5 2.6 88%
Oct 06 3.5 2.7 94%
Nov 06 2.5 2.7 91%
Dec 06 3.6 2.7 88%
Jan 07 2.9 2.7 94%
Feb 07 3.1* 2.8 94%*
The trend was calculated using monthly data using a simple linear
regression (using only complete monthly data). The forecast and the
trends indicated in the graph were derived from daily data. There have
been some amendments to the early data because CentCom recently released
data pertaining to earlier fatalities.

(*) Asterisk indicates a statistic was computed on incomplete monthly
data.
(†) Indicates statistic computed from May until Dec. 2003.
(!!): simply not credible.
(d): long delays in reporting.


The US and British armies are professional. (NB: a propaganda-compliant
means of referring to them is: “volunteer army,” which they are not.) As
soon as an army hires soldiers then there is a concern that it will not
be representative of the population at large, and that it will hire
minorities or poor in disproportionate numbers. The table below provides
the race/ethnic composition of the US-uk fatalities, and the main
objective is to determine if some minority groups are over-represented.
The reader is responsible for the interpretation.

Race/ethnic group of US-uk soldiers
(1-May-03 – 23-Feb-07) US
number pct UK
number pct
White 2,308 75.5% 94 95.9%
Black / Afro-American 278 9.1% 1 1.0%
Hispanic 337 11.0% 0 0.0%
Other 89 2.9% 3 3.1%
NA 43 1.4% 0 0.0%
Total 3,055 98
Women 73 2.4% 2 2.0%

Classification done by author from photographs, last names, and
additional archival search. This is an imperfect means of
classification, but no other source is available.
This article deals specifically with the US Army composition and that of
the fatalities.
Alternative official source.

Age of US-uk military fatalities post 1-May-03 thru 23-Feb-07
Age interval Percentage

age <= 25 57.9%
25 < age <= 35 30.5%
35 < age <= 45 9.7%
45 < age <= 55 1.8%
55 < age <= 65 0.1%

Statistics about the overall cost of the war (blood and money)
The cost of the Occupation of Iraq:
US-uk Military Fatality Forecast (using data thru 23-Feb-07)
Period from 1-May-2003 until: Fatality forecast
1 May 2007 3,341
31 Dec. 2006 4,056
NB: this forecast DOES NOT include the fatalities which occurred during
the “hot” phase of the war, i.e., before 1 May 2003.

The forecast is based on a simple linear regression – it doesn’t attempt
to be fancy in forecasting the threat potential, etc. However, even such
a simple method yields good forecasts. The data used for the forecast is
»daily« data – performs better than monthly data.

NB: the point of this forecast is to give an indication of the terrible
toll this occupation will exact; it is by no means presented in a
callous fashion.

US military fatalities in Iraq as a percentage of the total number
killed during the Vietnam War
US fatalities in: Number/Pct
Iraq 3,195
Vietnam 58,178
Iraq/Vietnam 5.5 pct
Source: The number of US fatalities listed on the Vietnam War Memorial.
For the US fatalities in Iraq, the 140 US military killed during the
“hot phase of the war” was added to the total number of fatalities
tallied for the occupation period. NB: In both cases the number of
fatalities understates the actual number of US personnel killed. For
example, US State Dept. employees or other non-DOD government employees
are not counted in these tallies. In Iraq, several embassy employees
were killed, but not counted. Similarly, mercenaries or contractors
aren’t counted. In Vietnam, ditto.

Explanation: The number of fatalities in the database used for this
study includes: (1) fatalities in the US, but caused in Iraq (and not in
the official count); (2) State Department personnel. There are about 20
of these in total.

Main foreign military forces in Iraq (in theater only)
Provenance Estimated numbers Date/Source
United States 132,000 (at least) 20 Feb. 2007 [1]
“Contractors” & mercenaries 20,000 – 30,000 14 Oct 2004 [2]
UK 7,100 Feb 2007[3]
Source:
[1] BBC News, 20 Feb. 2007.
NB: The total number of US troops in Iraq in May 2003 was 148,000, and
this level has been surpassed on various occasions during the occupation
phase. 165,000 is the highest number to date – this was during the
occupation phase, and not the hot war phase. There have been recent
reports (Oct 2006) that there will recent be a 15,000 increase of US
troops in Iraq in the coming months – bringing the total to about
155,000.
[2] On 13 Oct. 2004, Phyllis Bennis stated that the second largest
contingent of soldiers were “contractors” – there are more of them than
UK soldiers. She quoted an estimate of 20,000; at present 17 contractors
are dying p/month. Ha’aretz quoted an estimate of 30,000 in July 2004.
On 25 May 2006, Andy Bearpark, the head of the British Association of
Security contractors stated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000
contractors in Iraq, and out of these 5,000 are British. NB: In November
2006, it was revealed that the number of contractors in Iraq had tripled
since 2005 – so the above number is likely an underestimate of the size
of this contingent.
[3] BBC, Blair announces Iraq troops cut, BBC Online, 21 Feb. 2007.

For an alternative source see GlobalSecurity estimates.

Cost of the US-Iraq war
Through June 2004 [1] US$151bn
Estimate through 23-Feb-07 [2] US$368bn
As a percentage of the Cost of the Vietnam War 62 pct
[1] Source: Phyllis Bennis
[2] Updating using the estimates from the “Times Square” cost meter
which is based on the following formula: “increases at a rate of $177
million per day, $7.4 million per hour and $122,820 per minute”. Please
note that Bennis’s estimate refers only to the US budget allocations,
and refer only to costs once the war started (Source: personal
communication). These figures exclude: lead-up to the war, increasing
“security” costs in the US, reduced trade with Arab countries, etc. The
true cost of this war, if it can be computed at all, is much higher.
NB: The Pentagon recently reported that the cost p/month of the war had
gone from US$4bn to US$5.8bn. Since these figures were reported by UPI,
they will not be used until better estimates are published elsewhere.
The current monthly cost estimate used to generate the current figure is
about US$5.3bn/month.
The cost of the Vietnam War in 2004 dollar terms was put at US$597bn by
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Alternative estimates can be found here.
Also see Phyllis Bennis article.
Joseph Stiglitz is deriving a figure in the trillions of dollars due to
the medical costs that will continue for decades, see here.
And finally: National Priorities estimate.


Is president Bush empathy-impaired or maybe callous? Judge for yourself.

Number of times president Bush has visited wounded soldiers or been
present at funerals since May 1st 2003.
Funerals 0
Hospital visits 5
Jog around the White House with veteran limb-amputee with leg prostheses
1
Related article
Source: White House list of events schedule is checked regularly.

Explanatory Notes:
The propaganda-compliant terminology for the post-May 1st period is
“after the end of major combat operations.” Of course, conceding that
the US is occupying Iraq would mean that another justification for this
war was a sham. This is the reason the common media terminology aims to
avoid the usage of the word “occupation”.

The military fatality statistics are collated for the post May-1st
period because this refers exclusively to the enforcement of the
occupation of Iraq. Including the earlier fatalities would be confusing
because it would include those incurred during the “hot war”. The nature
of these fatalities is different, and therefore they should be analyzed
separately. Furthermore, the concern now is to end the occupation of
Iraq, and therefore Americans should be aware of the cost of this
current policy
Honest accounting would dictate the inclusion of all the military
fatalities enforcing the occupation, and thus include British, Italians,
Spanish, etc. It would be ideal to be able to include mercenary
fatalities too — alas, no data is available. However, there is much work
involved in collating quality data, and hence the data was restricted to
the US and “uk” (yes, lowercase “uk” because they are less than 10% of
the “coalition” contingent.)

NB: Whereas in previous conflicts “casualties” referred to both
fatalities and wounded soldiers, in the current Pentagon arrogant and
grisly accounting the wounded soldiers have been ignored. The statistics
it makes available refer only to US military fatalities.

This analysis also aims to be as accurate as possible, and any
observation about its accuracy should sent to Amplifications &
Corrections.

On the data used. All entries are obtained from the US and UK military
websites in the list found below. All the soldiers killed in Iraq or who
were listed as “supporting the operations in Iraq” are included here —
that is, some soldiers killed in Kuwait or in the Persian Gulf were also
included here. Furthermore, if there is a good indication that a person
was directly employed by the US-uk armies, then their fatality was also
included. For example, in August a translator wearing a US army uniform
was killed — he was included in this tally. There are a few instances
where via Reuters or AP references can be found to fatalities, but
subsequently these are not found in the official military sites. The
unconfirmed fatalities are included if found in two or more reputable
sources, e.g., Reuters, AP, BBC. All entries have been cross-checked
with the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count database, and there is a less
than 1% discrepancy (14 in February 2005). NB: the figures tallied here
contain some suicides of soldiers that occurred outside the US – these
are never counted by the usual sources. There are also some fatalities
due to contagious diseases (e.g., encephalitis) contracted in Iraq.

While the world has been busy with the specter of a major war in the
Middle East, the American public has been getting very little news
coverage about the Palestinians and the continuation of the oppressive
Israeli measures. As the world comes closer to the war on Iraq which now
appears imminent, many of us are more concerned not only about the major
loss in civilian lives in Iraq but also about the potential tragedy that
is expected to unfold in the West Bank and Gaza.



Credible analysis about the true motives behind the war and the real
objectives of the Bush Administration has confirmed that Israel has a
vested interest in the looming war on Iraq and that Israel is expected
to reap major gains from the war. In his article "The US Gameplan for
Iraq" former CIA political analyst for 29 years, Bill Christison, gave a
complete analysis of the apparent and hidden objectives from the almost
certain war on Iraq. He classified and analyzed all the reasons being
discussed by the media and the public, and explained that the true
reasons were the oil and the present administration's desire for world
domination, including domination of the Middle East by Israel, the US
surrogate power.



One of the obvious reasons that has not been mentioned by most analysts,
however, is the diversion from (or cover up for) what Israel is doing in
the West Bank and Gaza, and from what it plans to do. In an article
titled "As the world focuses on Iraq, the bodies pile up in Gaza" (the
Independent, February 23, 2003) reporter Justin Huggler asks pointedly
from Gaza "Is the Israeli military taking advantage of a time when the
world is not paying attention to what is going on here, when media
coverage is focusing on Iraq, to step up its campaign in the occupied
territories?" The answer is obviously 'yes' and Huggler explains that
the restraints imposed on Israeli repression against the Palestinians
have in the past come from world public opinion only. That public
opinion is now busy elsewhere.



A more important reason for concern is what Israel might be planning for
the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Academic observers
and analysts of the question on Palestine, both in Israel and in the
United States, have warned about a potential major disaster if Israel
makes good on threats being vocalized by Israeli extremists regarding
further ethnic cleansing; many extremists in the government, and most
settlers, have threatened to expel Palestinians from population centers
in the West Bank and Gaza across international borders into Jordan and
Egypt. These academics and observers have warned that as the world gets
more pre-occupied with the war on Iraq, the Israeli military will
manufacture excuses to conduct another in a series of ethnic cleansing
steps which started in 1948. In her article titled "Threats of Forced
Mass Expulsion" (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 19, 2003), Amira Hass,
the only Israeli reporter who lives in a West Bank city (Ramallah),
confirms that the idea of "transfer" of Palestinians forcibly or through
enticement is gaining momentum across the political spectrum of Israeli
society. Amira Hass asserts "Some 73% of those who live in the Jewish
settlements, euphemistically known as development towns, believe that
Israel should encourage its Arab population to leave. This rises to 76%
among Jews from the former Soviet Union and to 87% among religious
Jews." In the same article, Amira Hass further confirms that mini
transfers have indeed already started:



The presence of military pacifists in the occupied territories has not
prevented "mini-transfers". Faced with non-stop harassment from their
500 Jewish neighbours and a round-the-clock military curfew designed to
protect settlers, many Palestinians have moved out of the ancient city
of Hebron. In the northern West Bank 180 Palestinian villagers in Yanun
were forced to abandon their homes and relocate after increased
harassment from the neighbouring Jewish settlement of Itamar. Other
expulsions have taken place because of the construction of Israel's
infamous wall. Though such "mini-transfers" have come to the attention
of the Israeli public and resulted in demonstrations, the loss of land
and homes over the past two years has left the Palestinians feeling
dispossessed.



Considering this growing acceptance of the "transfer" idea within
Israeli society, and the fact that the world will soon be even more
pre-occupied with the war on Iraq and the problems that the war will
create, Israel could be expected to uphold its reputation of committing
further atrocities and manufacturing excuses to justify them. It should
be expected that such atrocities will include the "transfer," at least
through increased harassment by the settlers and at most by the Israeli
authorities with the backing of the occupation forces.



President Bush continues with his efforts to try to appease the Arabs
and Moslems by promising democracy for the Iraqis when he "liberates"
Iraq and a state for the Palestinians where Israel must stop building
settlements. Apparently this is the best he can do, to stop Israel from
building settlements. It is unknown how he plans to do that or whether
he plans to ask, or beg, Sharon the "man of peace" to stop, just like he
asked him in April 2002 to withdraw the Israeli forces from the West
Bank "without delay." President Bush is making promises to people who do
not believe or trust him. If he wanted to build some trust with the
Arabs and Moslems, President Bush knows how to regain his credibility;
he would ask Sharon to pull his troops out from the West Bank
immediately and end the Israeli occupation regime.



As the world gets closer by the day to a devastating war on Iraq, the
world community, including President Bush, must be mindful of the
actions of the Israeli settlers and the Israeli military in the West
Bank and Gaza. The world, especially the Middle East, does not need and
can not withstand another human tragedy in the form of a few million
refugees. The Palestinians have been victimized through frequent
transfers and ethnic cleansing since 1948. The world has the
responsibility to insure that Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza
will not suffer the agony of yet another major transfer from their
ancestral homeland.



Michael S. Ladah is an Arab American who lived and worked in various
parts of the Middle East. He is the author of Quicksand, Oil and Dreams:
The Story of One of Five Million Dispossessed Palestinians. He may be
reached at: mikeladah@hotmail.com

New Hemp Farming Act Allows Only 0.3 percent THC

Why is THC so important to the hemp plant? And human race?

THC is like a prophylactic. The bud is the sex organ that produces seed.
THC coats it to protect it. The colder it is the more THC is produced.
Stress produces THC. If you have a plant that is producing less than 8
percent you have holes in your condom. If you have 8 percent or more it
will protect it.

Beginning at about 42 degrees it will start producing more THC. When
down to 32 or 34 degrees, there will be so much THC they will look
almost like they’re covered with ice. It just gets thicker and thicker.

How would an orange grow if you took off half its peel?

As a farmer, you want to make sure you give that plant every chance to
grow and be healthy.

If there is 8 percent or more THC, they can survive outside below
freezing with protection, like a plastic sheet over them.

Eddy Lepp - www.eddysmedicinalgardens.com
Jack Herer

P.S. We agree with the rest of the Bill, just not the THC percentage. We
are strongly against that part! The human race will not survive without
this plant.







How to Save the World with Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana!


This is my work in progress. I'm entering it into the Virgin Earth
Challenge to stop global warming.

Plant hemp on 600 million acres of secondary farm land in the United
States.

Plant hemp on 600 million to 1 billion acres of secondary farm land in
Canada.

Plant hemp on 1 to 2 billion acres of secondary farm land in Russia and
Siberia.

Plant hemp on 1 to 2 billion acres of secondary farm land in Africa.

Plant hemp on 500 million acres of secondary farm land in South America.

Plant hemp on ? acres in Australia.

Plant hemp on ? acres in Asia.

Plant hemp on ? acres in Europe.

All fuel will be made of methanol or a derivative of hemp.

All fossil fuel, oil, coal, and natural gas will no longer be used. It
will stay in the ground for emergency only. For example, when we had the
earthquake Krakatoa, there was about two years that the sun was blocked
in that area.

All paper will be made from hemp. No trees will be cut for paper. That's
the way it was 130 years ago. That will save half the trees on the
planet that would otherwise be cut down in the next 30 years. All the
trees will be healthier and bigger.

Most building material will be made from hemp composite.

20 to 50 percent of all proteins for food will be made from hemp seeds.
In China, from 5,000 years ago to about 150 years ago, approximately 50
percent of all food was made from hemp seeds. And 20 percent of all food
in Europe. On the Chinese border from Laos to Nepal to Tibet to
Afghanistan all the way up to the northern border of Upper Mongolia, 50
percent of all proteins for food is still made out of hemp, and 90
percent of all butter. This starts on either side of the border to about
100 miles away from the border.

No more cotton for clothing, unless it is raised organically. Clothing
will mostly be made from hemp, bamboo, soy and flax.

Dr. Raphael Mechoulam in Israel believes that 30 percent of all
medicines will be made out of cannabis or combinations of cannabis and
other drugs.

The arid land from the Sahara all the way across the world will be
planted with hemp.

People from 18 to 30 years of age, throughout the world, will join a
different kind of military, the Hemp Corps, for planting and harvesting
and packaging hemp. In return for four years of duty, they will receive
four years of college paid by the government.

People will live about two year's longer using cannabis.

Everything will be a lot more fun. There will be new jobs for everybody.
The auto industry will build cars mostly from hemp. Computer companies
will build computers of hemp. Furniture will be made of hemp cloth and
hemp composite wood.

Hemp grows everywhere, from the Equator to the Arctic Circle, from the
valleys to about 6,000 feet up in the mountains. It's the healthiest of
the 3 million plants that grow on Earth. It has the deepest roots. It's
the only plant you can grow over and over each year, and the soil will
only get better.

People will be able to pay their taxes with hemp.

I wrote my book, "The Emperor Wears No Clothes", 25 years ago. I have
been teaching people how to save the world with cannabis/hemp/marijuana
since 1979.

Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong!

We hereby extend our $100,000 challenge to prove us wrong!

If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper
and construction, were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the
greenhouse effect and stop deforestation; then there is only one known
annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the
overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meet all of the
world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while
simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil and cleaning the
atmosphere all at the same time... and that substance is the same one
that has done it before . . . CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA!

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the only known plant that can be grown from
the Equator to the Arctic Circle and to the Antarctic Circle; from the
mountains to the valleys, from the oceans to the plains, including arid
lands and everywhere in between. CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the
healthiest plant for the ground out of the 300,000 known species, and
the millions and millions of subspecies, of plants on Earth, because it
has a root system that grows 10 to 12 inches in 30 days compared to one
inch for rye, barley grass, etc. The roots penetrate up to 6 feet deep,
pulverizing the soil and making it arable. After harvest it leaves a
root system that is mulched into the ground, revitalizing the land and
making it live once again. It is the KING KONG of the King Kongs of all
plant life.

All of my information about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA has been taken from
Federal and State Department of Agriculture reports, articles from
Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Pulp & Paper Magazine, Scientific
American, entries from encyclopedias and pharmacopoeias, and studies
from all over the world during the last 200 years. This is all public
information. The United States government is hiding the fact that 125
years ago, and even as far back as 4000 BC, 80% of our economy was based
on the use of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA for paper, fiber and fuel. Ten to
20% of our drug economy was based on CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA medicines,
125 years ago.

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was part of our everyday life. Virtually every
farm and every plot of land in the cities and towns across the United
States and the world, from 100-125 years ago and before, had a
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA patch growing. The U.S. government's cover-up of
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA outrages me and it should outrage you, too. I
have been studying CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA for over 30 years, and I
can't believe how the U.S. government, in 90 seconds in Congress, could
outlaw "MARIJUANA" in 1937, without the people realizing they were
outlawing CANNABIS/HEMP, the most perfect plant for the planet! They
even got other countries to outlaw it, too, after the Second World War
and beyond. From 1740 to 1940, 80% of all the world's
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was grown (mostly by Cossacks, who were
indentured servants), and then imported from, Russia.

I will again reiterate a few of the facts about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA,
which you already know from reading my book, "The Emperor Wears No
Clothes."

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










The Emperor Wears No Clothes

by Jack Herer

The book that started the hemp movement!

Ordering Info






Big, Big Government

by John Stossel - co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20"
Jan 31, 2007

Two weeks ago, U.S. drug agents launched raids on 11 medical-marijuana
centers in Los Angeles County. The U.S. attorney's office says they
violated the laws against cultivation and distribution of marijuana.

Whatever happened to America's federal system, which recognized the
states as "laboratories of democracy"?

According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,
11 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada,
Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) have eliminated the
penalties for physician-approved possession of marijuana by seriously
ill patients. In those states people with AIDS and other catastrophic
diseases may either grow their own marijuana or get it from registered
dispensaries.

But the U.S. government says its drug laws trump the states' laws, and
in 2005, the Supreme Court agreed.

This is not the way it was supposed to work. The constitutional plan
presented in the Federalist Papers delegated only a few powers to the
federal government, with the rest reserved to the states. The system was
hailed for its genius. Instead of having decisions made in the center --
where errors would harm the entire country -- most policies would be
determined in a decentralized environment. A mistake in California would
affect only Californians. New Yorkers, Ohioans, and others could try
something else. Everyone would learn and benefit from the various
experiments.

It made a lot of sense. It still does. Too bad the idea is being tossed
on the trash heap by big-government Republicans and their DEA goons.

Drug prohibition -- like alcohol prohibition -- is a silly idea, as the
late free-market economist Milton Friedman often pointed out. Something
doesn't go away just because the government decrees it illegal. It
simply goes underground. Then a black market creates worse problems.
Since sellers cannot rely on police to protect their property, they arm
themselves, form gangs, charge monopoly prices, and kill their
competitors. Buyers steal to pay the high prices.

Alcohol prohibition in the 1920s gave America Al Capone and organized
crime. Drug prohibition has given us South American and Asian cartels
that finance terrorism. Even the government admits that the heroin trade
bankrolls terrorists. Prohibition's exorbitant black-market prices make
that possible. In the United States, drug prohibition spawns gangs that
are sometimes better armed than the police. Drug prohibition does more
harm than drugs.

The war on drugs hasn't even accomplished what it promised to do. Drugs
are abundant and cheaper than ever. "ABC News" reported last month,
"marijuana is the U.S.'s most valuable crop. The report, 'Marijuana
Production in the United States,' by marijuana policy researcher Jon
Gettman, concludes that despite massive eradication efforts at the hands
of the federal government, 'marijuana has become a pervasive and
ineradicable part of the national economy.'"

The destructive failure of the drug war is why it makes so much sense to
let states experiment, which 11 of them have done with medical
marijuana.

Legalizing only medical marijuana brings its own problems. For one
thing, it invites state authorities to monitor the practice of medicine
to make sure doctors don't prescribe pot promiscuously.

But government officials shouldn't be the judges of what is and isn't
medicine. That should be left to medical researchers, doctors, and
patients. The effectiveness of medicine is too dependent on individual
circumstances and biochemistry. One size does not fit all, so
politicians and bureaucrats should butt out.

More fundamentally, why should only people whom the state defines as
sick be able to use marijuana? This is supposed to be a free country,
and in a free country adults should have the right to ingest whatever
they want. A drug user who harms someone else should be punished, but a
peaceful user should be left alone.

Despite my reservations about medical marijuana, the states'
experimentation is still better than a brutal federal one-size-fits-all
crackdown. There is no role here for the federal government. If the
people of a state want to experiment by loosening drug prohibition, that
should be their right. Washington should mind its own business. The feds
and rest of us should watch. We might learn something.

Mr. Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20" and the author of "Myth,
Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel -- Why Everything You
Know is Wrong".








Here are a couple of really good teaching graphics you can put on your
website or MySpace or anywhere else you can think of! Thanks Chris Scala
for helping me with them!









Proposed Wording:

California Cannabis Hemp & Health Initiative 2008

AN ACT TO AMEND THE HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE OF CALIFORNIA:

I. Add Section 11357.5 to the Health and Safety Code of California, any
laws or policies
to the contrary notwithstanding:

1. No person, 21 years or older, shall be prosecuted, be denied any
right or privilege, nor be subject to any criminal or civil penalties
for the possession, cultivation, transportation, distribution, or
consumption of cannabis/hemp/marijuana, including:

(a) Cannabis hemp.

(b) Hemp industrial products.

(c) Hemp medicinal preparations.

(d) Hemp nutritional products.

(e) Hemp intoxicating products.

2. Definition of terms:

(a) The term "cannabis hemp" means the plant hemp, cannabis, marihuana,
marijuana, cannabis sativa L, cannabis americana, cannabis chinensis,
cannabis indica, cannabis ruderalis, cannabis sativa, or any variety of
cannabis, including any derivative, extract, flower, leaf, particle,
preparation, resin, root, salt, seed, stalk, stem, or any product
thereof.

(b) The term "hemp industrial products" means all products made from
cannabis hemp that are not designed or intended for human consumption,
including, but not limited to: clothing, housing, paper, fiber, fuel,
lubricants, plastics, paint, seed for cultivation, animal feed,
veterinary medicine, oil, or any other product that is not designed for
internal human consumption; as well as hemp plants used for crop
rotation, erosion control, pest control, weed control, or any other
horticultural or environmental purposes.

(c) The term "hemp medicinal preparations" means all products made from
cannabis hemp that are designed, intended, or used for human consumption
for the treatment of any human disease or condition, for pain relief, or
for any healing purpose, including but not limited to: the treatment or
relief of Alzheimer's and pre-Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, asthma,
cramps, epilepsy, glaucoma, immunodeficiencies, migraine, multiple
sclerosis, nausea, PMS, side effects of cancer chemotherapy,
fibromyalgia, sickle cell anemia, spasticity, spinal injury, stress,
Tourette's syndrome, wasting syndrome from AIDS or anorexia; use as an
antibiotic, antibacterial, anti-viral, or anti-emetic; as a healing
agent, or as an adjunct to any medical or herbal treatment.

(d) The term "hemp nutritional products" means cannabis hemp for human
consumption as food, including but not limited to: seed, seed protein,
seed oil, essential fatty acids, seed cake, dietary fiber, or any
preparation or extract thereof.

(e) The term "hemp intoxicating products" means cannabis hemp intended
for personal use, other than hemp industrial products, hemp medicinal
preparations, or hemp nutritional products.

(f) The term "personal use" means the internal consumption of cannabis
hemp by persons 21 years of age or older for any relaxational,
spiritual, religious, recreational, or other purposes other than sale,
that does not conflict with any statutory law not effected by this
initiative.

3. Industrial hemp farmers, manufacturers, and distributors shall not be
subject to any special zoning requirement, licensing fee, or tax that is
excessive, discriminatory, or prohibitive.

4. Hemp medicinal preparations are hereby restored to the list of
available medicines in California. Licensed physicians shall not be
penalized for, nor restricted from, prescribing or recommending cannabis
hemp for medical purposes to any patient, regardless of age. No tax
shall be applied to prescribed hemp medicinal preparations. Medical
research shall be encouraged.

5. Personal use of hemp intoxicating products.

(a) No permit, license, or tax shall be required for the non-commercial
cultivation, transportation, distribution, or consumption of cannabis
hemp.

(b) Testing for inactive and/or inert residual cannabis metabolites
shall not be required for employment or insurance, nor be considered in
determining employment.

6. Commerce in cannabis hemp intoxicating products shall be limited to
adults, 21 years and older, and shall be regulated in a manner analogous
to California's wine industry model. For the purpose of distinguishing
personal from commercial production, up to 12 pounds (192 ounces) of
dried, cured cannabis hemp flowers/bud (not leaf) produced per adult, 21
years or older, per year shall be considered as being for personal use.

7. The manufacture, marketing, distribution, or sales between adults of
equipment or accessories designed to assist in the planting,
cultivation, harvesting, curing, processing, packaging, storage,
analysis, consumption, or transportation of cannabis hemp plants,
industrial hemp products, hemp medicinal preparations, hemp nutritional
products, hemp intoxicating products, or any cannabis hemp product shall
not be prohibited.

8. No California law enforcement personnel or funds shall be used to
assist or aid and abet in the enforcement of Federal cannabis/hemp/
marijuana laws involving acts which are hereby no longer illegal in the
state of California.

II. Repeal, delete, and expunge any and all existing statutory laws that
conflict with the provisions of this initiative.

1. Enactment of this initiative shall include: immediate release from
prison, jail, parole, and probation, and clearing, expungement, and
deletion of all criminal records for all persons currently charged with,
or convicted of any cannabis hemp/marijuana offenses included in this
initiative which are hereby no longer illegal.

2. Within 60 days of the passage of this act, the Attorney General shall
develop and distribute a one-page application, providing for the
destruction of all cannabis/hemp/marijuana criminal records in
California for any such offense covered by this act. Such forms shall be
distributed to district and city attorneys and made available at all
police departments in the state to persons hereby affected. Upon filing
such form with the Attorney General and a payment of a fee of $10.00,
all pertinent records anywhere in the state of California fisted in the
form and covered by this act shall be destroyed. Such persons may
truthfully state that they have never been convicted of any
cannabis/hemp/marijuana related offense which is hereby no longer
illegal.

III. The legislature is authorized upon thorough investigation, to enact
legislation
using reasonable standards to:

1. License concessionary establishments to distribute hemp intoxicating
products in a manner analogous to California's wine industry model.
Sufficient community outlets shall be licensed to provide reasonable
commercial access to persons of legal age, so as to discourage and
prevent the misuse of and illicit traffic in such products. Any license
requirement or fee shall not be excessive, discriminatory, nor
prohibitive.

2. Place an excise tax on commercial production of hemp intoxicating
products, analogous to California's wine industry model, so long as no
excise tax or combination of excise taxes shall exceed $10.00 per ounce.

3. Determine an acceptable and uniform standard of impairment based on
performance testing, to restrict persons impaired by hemp intoxicating
products from operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery, or otherwise
engaging in conduct that may affect public safety.

4. Regulate the personal use of hemp intoxicating products in enclosed
and/or restricted public places.

IV. Pursuant to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution of
the United States, the people of California hereby repudiate and
challenge Federal cannabis/hemp/marijuana prohibitions that conflict
with this act.

V. Severability: If any provision of this act, or the application of any
such provision to any person or circumstance, shall be held invalid by
any court, the remainder of this act, to the extent it can be given
effect, or the application of such provisions to persons or
circumstances other than those as to which it is held invalid, shall not
be affected thereby, and to this end the provisions of this act are
severable.

VI. Construction: If any rival or conflicting initiative regulating any
matter addressed by this act receives the higher affirmative vote, then
all non-conflicting parts shall become operative.

VII. Purpose of Act: This act is an exercise of the police powers of the
state for the protection of the safety, welfare, health, and peace of
the people and the environment of the state, to protect the industrial
and medicinal uses of cannabis hemp, to eliminate the unlicensed and
unlawful cultivation, selling, and dispensing of cannabis hemp; and to
encourage temperance in the consumption of hemp intoxicating products.
It is hereby declared that the subject matter of this act involves, in
the highest degree, the ecological, economic, social, and moral
well-being and safety of the State and of all its people. All provisions
of this act shall be liberally construed for the accomplishment of these
purposes: to respect human rights, to promote tolerance, and to end
cannabis hemp prohibition.











Download this ebook for free!



"The Reign of Law; a Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields"

by James Lane Allen



This was a bestseller in 1900 and it's all about our favorite subject
cannabis/hemp/marijuana!



Here is the free download link







I'm 120 but my joints are OK

December 04, 2006


A GREAT-great granny reveals how she has lived to be 120 ... by smoking
CANNABIS every day.

Fulla Nayak – believed to be the world’s oldest woman – puffs “ganja”
cigars and drinks strong palm wine in her cow-dung hut in India.

She lives with her 92-year-old daughter and grandson, 72, by the Indian
Ocean.

Fulla said: “I don’t know how I’ve survived so long. Many relatives much
younger than me have died.”

click here for original article







My Mother and Alzheimer’s. And cancer.

Around 1983, when my mother was 75 years old, she was in the first
stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She came out to California from Miami
Beach for six weeks to visit my children and me. My son, Barry went into
the airport to get her, while I waited in the car. Although she had just
seen him the year before, she didn’t recognize him and thought he was
trying to pick her up. My older sister, Marlene, explained to me that
was a symptom of the disease.

At that time, I was just beginning to write a book called “The Emperor
Wears No Clothes” about the history of hemp, including the medical
history of cannabis. I had read many reports about diseases being
treated with cannabis, including the first reports on Alzheimer’s
disease and dementia. One report said that if you smoke marijuana
morning, noon and night you won’t have a problem with Alzheimer’s. It
won’t go away but it won’t progress and may even go backwards a little
bit.

My mother didn’t smoke except for maybe 10 tobacco cigarettes a year.
When she came to California I gave her marijuana morning, noon and
night. She smoked it and ate it. She had never tried it before.

Prior to this, I was never able to really talk to my mother. Our
conversations always consisted of her telling me to “don’t do this” or
“don’t do that.” Now, for the first time, I was able to talk to my
mother about everything including politics, family and about when she
first came to the U.S. from Poland 60 years before. It was the most
wonderful time in my whole life being able to talk with my mother like
that. My only regret was that I didn’t give it to her when she was 45 or
55.

After six weeks she had no symptoms of Alzheimer’s whatsoever. Then it
was time for her to go back to Miami Beach to my stepfather. I sent her
back with about 60 joints. I was planning on sending her 60 already
rolled joints a month.

When she got home she showed her husband what she was doing and he had a
fit about her smoking so she quit. He said “You can’t smoke marijuana. I
don’t care if you think it’s good for you or not. It’s against the law.”
They threw away the 60 joints.

Two years later my mother got so bad she was put into a hospital. One
year later she didn’t recognize me or my children at all. She died in
1990. The last 4 years she didn’t recognize me at all when I came to
visit.

When I wrote the first edition (106 pages) of my book, I wrote that
Alzheimer’s disease is best treated by using marijuana morning, noon,
and night (not once in a while). Everyone thought I was crazy, including
my brother and sister.

I have kept up on all the information about marijuana for the last 30
years. I’ve known about the preliminary studies for Alzheimer’s since
the early ‘80s.

Two weeks ago it was reported on CNN and newspapers throughout the world
that using marijuana is the best treatment for Alzheimer’s. If you use
marijuana morning, noon and night it won’t progress. You may even get
better. If you start using it when you’re 20 or 30 or 40, your chances
are high you will not get Alzheimer’s. Cannabis has been proven to be
many times more effective than the drugs currently being used to treat
it. But marijuana is illegal in most places.

Thirty percent of all medicines used 100 to 200 years ago were made out
of compounds of natural marijuana. In 1964, researchers discovered the
main ingredient is THC. No one has ever died from using marijuana.

In 1974, Virginia Medical College in Richmond, Virginia did research on
tumors of the lung, brain, liver and kidney using mice and rats.
Incredible things were done. The cancer stopped growing and in most
cases even reversed itself 100 percent. Some of the mice who were given
cancer and treated with cannabis actually lived longer than some of the
control mice who were not even given cancer! It was found that marijuana
is the best thing to treat cancer of the lungs, brain, etc. After that
they were stopped from doing anymore research at all by first Nixon and
then Ford. No research with positive results could be done, only
research with negative results. That’s the way it’s been since 1975
until now, even though a 1999 marijuana study turned out to be positive
also.

You live almost two years longer if you smoke marijuana morning, noon
and night. This was the result of the most extensive research ever done
(from 1968 to 1974). It was a $6,000,000 study done by Dr. Vera Ruben in
Jamaica and Costa Rica. Today that same research would cost
$150,000,000. If you smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, you will lose
approximately 8-24 years off your life. If you don’t smoke cigarettes or
drink alcohol you will live (in the U.S.) until about 76 for a man and
78 for a woman. But if you smoke marijuana and don’t smoke cigarettes or
drink alcohol, you live about two years longer than that.

When this study came out in 1974, Nixon and then Ford dropped the most
expensive research ever done on anything whatsoever. No more research of
any type could be done on marijuana to prove the positive effects, only
negative effects. From 1984 until now.

Read my book “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” and get mad. The chapters
are online free on this website.

The reason I am writing this is because my friend, Ed Rosenthal, is on
trial for marijuana. He was convicted in federal court two years ago and
was sentenced to one day in prison by a federal judge. Ed fought this
one day conviction and now the federal government is indicting him
again. Ed and others in the hemp movement are the real American heroes
and our government leaders are the real criminals.

Please get this information out to everyone you know.

Thank you.

Jack Herer





“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit
it.
Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can
exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their
revolutionary
right to dismember or overthrow it.”

Abraham Lincoln
First Inaugural Address






MySpace profile:

www.myspace.com/hempjack

Site Space profile:

www.sitespaces.net/profiles/jackherer

Be sure to add me as a friend!

















A simple man's fight for truth, justice...and a plant.









Why You Should Smoke More Pot

The average lifespan in the United States is 76 for a man and 78 for a
woman. But if you smoke pot morning, noon and night, you will live an
average of two years longer than if you don’t. People who smoke pot but
don’t smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol will live approximately 8 to 24
years longer than those who do smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. This
was proven in studies done by Dr. Vera Ruben on Rastafarians in Jamaica
from 1968 to 1974. The Rastafarians lived up in the hills and were the
poorest people in Jamaica. Everyone expected them to have the shortest
lives but instead they had the longest lives. They smoked pot morning,
noon and night. This study cost $6,000,000.00 and was an extremely
comprehensive study. If the same study was done today it would cost
approximately $125,000,000.00.

In 1979 and 1980, the National Institute of Science did studies on
Rastafarians in Costa Rica that proved the same results. There were only
100 copies of this study released to researchers who were working for
the government. The only reason we have the results of this study is
because someone managed to leak a copy to NORML in 1981.

Between 1968 and 1975, there were about 10,000 marijuana studies done
all over the world, but mostly in American universities and colleges.
Approximately 4,000 of the studies were universal health studies. Almost
all of them proved marijuana to be beneficial in every way. The few that
were unfavorable were never proven by a second study.

In 1974 and 1975, Dr. Donald Tashkin did research to prove marijuana was
harmful to the lungs. He was the head of pulmonary research on marijuana
at UCLA Hospital. He predicted that more people would develop lung
cancer from smoking marijuana than from smoking tobacco. Dr. Tashkin was
100 percent positive that all of the studies about marijuana would come
out negative in his lung research. He had the only study in the whole
country from 1975 to 1999. After 1975 there was no more funding for
positive marijuana studies of any type by the U.S. Government for any
reason whatsoever. Only a negative study could get funding from the U.S.
Government and Dr. Tashkin had almost all of it. I came out against Dr.
Tashkin in 1979.

In 1981, I was approached by Dr. Tashkin to take part in his study. I
was protesting the marijuana laws on the front lawn of the Federal
Building, 500 yards away from the UCLA Hospital and University on
Wilshire Boulevard. I signed up (along with about 50 other pot
protesters) for Dr. Tashkin’s study because all of the UCLA students
refused to participate in his study after Ronald Reagan took office in
January 1981. Dr. Tashkin saw us pot protesters every day at the Federal
Building for 102 days. We weren’t college students and we smoked pot
morning, noon and night.

Once or twice a year I would have interviews with Dr. Tashkin. I told
him about the positive effects of marijuana. We disagreed 100 percent
and he was sure I was wrong. This was a long term study. I was paid
$80.00 to $90.00 for each test from 1981 to the mid 1990s. Once or twice
a year I would go smoke marijuana to get the pulmonary lung studies done
and I would interview Dr. Tashkin as part of my research for my book,
“The Emperor Wears No Clothes". I told Dr. Tashkin from 1981 to 1997
that no one gets lung cancer or any other type of cancer from marijuana
because Dr. Vera Ruben and Dr. Todd Mikuriya had already each separately
proven it. I had been doing research for my book since the early 1970s.

Now Dr. Tashkin has come out and is saying the same things I said to him
25 years ago. There is no link between marijuana and lung cancer or any
other type of cancer. In fact, Dr. Tashkin has found that marijuana, by
killing off old cells that could become cancerous, can actually prevent
cancer.

If you want to live longer, smoke more pot.

Jack Herer
July 4, 2006






Stop Mudslides by Planting Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana

Until this last century, our pioneers and ordinary American farmers used
Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana to clear fields for planting, as a fallow year
crop, and after forest fires to prevent mud slides and loss of
watershed.

Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana seeds put down a 10 to 12-inch root in only 30
days, compared to the one-inch root put down by the rye or barley grass
presently used by the U.S. Government.

Southern California, Utah and other states used Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana
routinely in this manner until about 1915. It also breaks up compacted,
overworked soil.















Free the West Memphis Three







Strange but true...

Police summer hats are made of Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana!

See for yourself!

Hemp - Required Agency Specifications!

Louisiana State Police

Ohio Highway Patrol

Pennsylvania State Police








For info about hemp building materials contact Alex White Plume at
605-685-5606

The debate over the legalization of Cannabis Sativa, more commonly known
as marijuana, has been one of the most heated controversies ever to
occur in the Inited States. Its use as a medicine has existed for
thousands of years in many countries world wide and "can be documented
as far back as 2700 BC in ancient Chinese writings." When someone says
bhanga, ganja, kinnub, cannabis, bung, chu ts-ao, asa, dope, grass,
rasta, or weed, they are talking about the same subject: marijuana.
Marijuana should be legalized because the government could earn money
from taxes on its sale, its value to the medical world outweighs its
abuse potential, and because of its importance to the paper and clothing
industries. This action should be taken despite efforts made by groups
which say marijuana is a harmful drug which will increase crime rates
and lead users to other more dangerous substances.

The actual story behind the legislature passed against marijuana is
quite surprising. According to Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears
No Clothes and an expert on the "hemp conspiracy," the acts bringing
about the demise of hemp were part of a large conspiracy involving
DuPont, Harry J. Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics, and many other influential industrial leaders such as William
Randolph Hearst and Andrew Mellon. Herer notes that the Marijuana Tax
Act, which passed in 1937, coincidentally occurred just as the
decoricator machine was invented. With this invention, hemp would have
been able to take over competing industries almost instantaneously.
According to Popular Mechanics, "10,000 acres devoted to hemp will
produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average [forest] pulp land."
William Hearst owned enormous timber acreage, land best suited for
conventional pulp, so his interest in preventing the growth of hemp can
be easily explained. Competition from hemp would have easily driven the
Hearst paper-manufacturing company out of business and significantly
lowered the value of his land. Herer even suggests popularizing the term
"marijuana" was a strategy Hearst used in order to create fear in the
American public. "The first step in creating hysteria was to introduce
the element of fear of the unknown by using a word that no one had ever
heard of before... 'marijuana'" (ibid).

DuPont's involvment in the anti-hemp campaign can also be explained with
great ease. At this time, DuPont was patenting a new sulfuric acid
process for producing wood-pulp paper. "According to the company's own
records, wood-pulp products ultimately accounted for more than 80% of
all DuPont's railroad car loadings for the next 50 years" (ibid). Indeed
it should be noted that "two years before the prohibitive hemp tax in
1937, DuPont developed a new synthetic fiber, nylon, which was an ideal
substitute for hemp rope" (Hartsell). The year after the tax was passed
DuPont came out with rayon, which would have been unable to compete with
the strength of hemp fiber or its economical process of manufacturing.
"DuPont's point man was none other than Harry Anslinger...who was
appointed to the FBN by Treasury Secretary Andrew MEllon, who was also
chairman of the Mellon Bank, DuPont's chief financial backer.
Anslinger's relationship to Mellon wasn't just political, he was also
married to Mellon's niece" (Hartsell). It doesn't take much to draw a
connection between DuPont, Anslinger, and Mellon, and it's obvious that
all of these groups, including Hearst, had strong motivation to prevent
the growth of the hemp industry.

The reasoning behind DuPont, Anslinger, and Hearst was not for any moral
or health related issues. They fought to prevent the growth of this new
industry so they wouldn't go bankrupt. In fact, the American Medical
Association tried to argue for the medical benefits of hemp. Marijuana
is actually less dangerous than alcohol, cigarettes, and even most
over-the-counter medicines or prescriptions. According to Francis J.
Young, the DEA's administrative judge, "nearly all medicines have
toxicm, potentially letal affects, but marijuana is not such a
substance...Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest
therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of
rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised
routine of medical care" (DEA Docket No. 86-22, 57). It is illogical
then, for marijuana to be illegal in the United States when "alcohol
poisoning is a significant cause of death in this country" and
"approximately 400,000 premature deaths are attributed to cigarettes
annually." Dr. Roger Pertwee, SEcretary of the International Cannabis
Research Society states that as a recreational drug, "Marijuana compares
favourably to nicotine, alcohol, and even caffeine." Under extreme
amounts of alcohol a person will experience an "inability to stand or
walk without help, stupor and near unconsciousness, lack of
comprehension of what is seen or heard, shock, and breathing and
heartbeat may stop." Even though these effects occur only under insane
amounts of alcohol consumption, (.2-.5 BAL) the fact is smoking extreme
amounts of marijuana will do nothing more than put you to sleep, whereas
drinking excessive amounts of alcohol will kill you.

The most profound activist for marijuana's use as a medicine is Dr.
Lester Grinspoon, author of Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine. According
to Grinspoon, "The only well-confirmed negative effect of marijuana is
caused by the smoke, which contains three times more tars and five times
more carbon monoxide than tobacco. But even the heaviest marijuana
smokers rarely use as much as an average tobacco smoker. And, of course,
many prefer to eat it." His book includes personal accounts of how
prescribed marijuana alleviated epilepsy, weight loss of aids, nausea of
chemotherapy, menstrual pains, and the severe effects of multiple
sclerosis. The illness with the most documentation and harmony among
doctors which marijuana has successfully treated is MS. Grinspoon
believes for MS sufferers, "Cannabis is the drug of necessity." One
patient of his, 51 year old Elizabeth MacRory, says "It has completely
changed my life...It has helped with muscle spasms, allowed me to sleep
properly, and helped control my bladder." Marijuana also proved to be
effective in the treatment of glaucoma because its use lwoers pressure
on the eye.

"In a recent survey at a leading teaching hospital, 'over 60 per cent of
medical students were found to be marijuana users.' In the same survey,
only 30 per cent admitted to smoking cigarettes" (Guardian). Brian
Hilliard, editor of Police Review, says "Legalizing cannabis wouldn't do
any harm to anybody. We should be concentrating on the serious business
of heroin and amphetamines." "In the UK in 1991, 42,209 people were
convicted of marijuana charges, clogging courts and overcrowding
prisons...and almost 90 per cent of drug offences invlove cannabis...The
British government spends 500 million pounds a year on "overall
responses to drugs" but receives no tax revenue from the estimated 1.8
billion pound illicit drug market" (Guardian). Figures like this can be
seen in the United States as well. The U.S. spends billions of dollars
annually in its "war on drugs." If the government were to legalize
marijuana, it could reasonably place high taxes on it because people are
used to buying marijuana at inflated prices created by risks of selling
illegally. It could be sold at a convenient store just like a pack of
cigarettes for less than someone would pay now, but still yield a high
profit because of easy growing requirements.

An entire industry could be created out of hemp based products. The oils
extracted from seeds could be used for fuels and the hemp fiber, a fiber
so valued for its strength that it is used to judge the quality of other
fibers, could be manufactured into ropes, clothing, or paper. Most
importantly, the money the government would make from taxes and the
money which would be saved by not trying to prevent its use could be
used for more important things, such as serious drugs or the national
debt.

The recreational use of marijuana would not stimulate crime like some
would argue. The crime rate in Amsterdam is lower than many major U.S.
cities. Mario Lap, a key drug policy advisor in the Netherlands national
government says "We've had a realistic drug policy for 30 years in the
Netherlands, and we know what works. We distinguish between soft and
hard drugs, between traffickers and users. We try not to make people
into criminals" (Houston Chronicle). In 1989 the LAncet report states
"The Dutch have shown that there is nothing inevitable about the drugs
ladder in which soft drugs lead to heard drugs. The ladder does not
exist in Holland because the dealers have been separated."

We can expect strong opposition from companies like DuPont and paper
manufacturerss but the selfishness of these corporations should not
prevent its use in our society like it did in the 1930's. Regardless of
what these organizations will say about marijuana, the fact is it has
the potential to become one of the most useful substances in the entire
world. If we took action and our government legalized it today, we would
immediately see benefits from this decision. People suffering from
illnesses ranging from manic depression to multiple sclerosis would be
able to experience relief, the government could make a fortune off of
the taxes it could impose on its sale, and its implementation into the
industrial world would create thousands of new jobs for the economy.
Also, because of its role in paper making, the rain forests of South
America could be saved from their current fate. No recorded deaths have
ever occurred as a result of marijuana use, it is not physically
addictive like alcohol or tobacco, and most doctors will agree it is
safer to use.

Banana bender
Bitzer
Bourke Street, he doesn't know Christmas well
i might get canned if i call stevewm a Clacker

Kalimera stevevw

E=MC2 dE =Ac2dm

split the nucleus of an atom into two smaller fragments with a neutron.
This method usually involves isotopes of uranium (uranium-235,
uranium-233) or plutonium-239

hey Daniel what does this Equation equal (dE= Ac2dm) just a kid

UK royals remember 9/11 victims



Britain's Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, began an eight-day US
trip with a visit to Manhattan's Ground Zero and the dedication of the
British Memorial Garden to honour victims of the September 11, 2001
attacks.

After a private tour of the razed site of the World Trade Centre's twin
towers, the royals spent 10 minutes of reflection among mementos left to
honour those who died at the "family room," reserved for relations of
victims of the attacks.

Sixty-seven Britons were killed in the hijacked airplane attacks that
brought the twin towers down, killing 2,749 office workers, rescuers and
others.

Hundreds of lunch-hour onlookers applauded when a motorcade delivered
the royal couple and New York Governor George Pataki to Hanover Square,
a narrow triangular park nestled among high-rise office buildings in
downtown Manhattan.

"This is really exciting," said Deborah Leigh, a downtown office worker.
"I think it's great they were able to come here for the dedication. That
was awesome."

The prince was making his first official visit to the United States
since 1994, when he came with the late Princess Diana.

Charles and Camilla stepped out of a black limousine and greeted the
crowd before walking into the memorial garden.

After being presented with a bouquet of flowers by a little girl in a
tartan dress, they greeted dignitaries and then strolled around the
temporary plantings before tugging at either end of a dark green drape
to unveil the centre stone, embossed with the crest of the Prince of
Wales.


British garden

The garden is expected to cost about US$6.5 million to build with
British stone and ironworks.

After the unveiling, Charles and Camilla crossed the street into the
India House, a private club, to meet 150 guests and 30 family members of
British victims of September 11.

"Both my wife and I were profoundly moved by what we saw," the prince
said about their visit to Ground Zero. "Not just by the scale of the
outrage but the deeply distressing individual stories of heroism and of
loss.

"Our hearts go out to you today as they did on that dreadful day. Both
our nations have been united by grief and strengthened by the support we
have given one another."

Alexandra Clarke, chair of a September 11 families group in Britain,
whose daughter Suria, 30, was killed in the attacks, praised the prince
for his support.

"Prince Charles has been behind us and with us right from the
beginning," she said. "He has been quietly and personally very kind to
families of September 11 victims in the UK.

"They are both very relaxed people," she said of the royal couple. "They
were genuinely interested in hearing the stories people had to tell. We
were talking, they were listening."

Charles also visited the United Nations, where he met Secretary-General
Kofi Annan and participated in a discussion promoting jobs for young
people as a way to spur global development, an issue he said he had been
interested in for the past decade.

Later, the British royalty were to be honoured at a reception at the
Museum of Modern Art, where invited guests included Sir Elton John,
actors Robert De Niro, Catherine Zeta Jones, Matthew Broderick, Sarah
Jessica Parker and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

Charles and Camilla were to have lunch and dinner Wednesday at the White
House. On Friday, they plan to visit New Orleans, ravaged by Hurricane
Katrina, before continuing on to San Francisco.

Cost-cutters slashed the price of New York's September 11 memorial in
half to US$500 million while preserving crucial design elements like
waterfalls and reflecting pools where the Twin Towers once stood,
officials said on Tuesday.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation unveiled the redesign a
month after builder Frank Sciame was hired to bring costs down to US$500
million. The price tag had climbed to nearly US$1 billion, drawing howls
of protest from politicians.

Bickering over financing, security and design had already delayed the
rebuilding of the World Trade Centre site, including the 540-metre
Freedom Tower, which will replace the Twin Towers in the Manhattan
skyline.

The new projected memorial cost is US$510 million $10 million more than
Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted.

But the redesign allows builders to meet the construction deadline of
September 11, 2009, and preserves most of Michael Arad's original
design.

Arad envisioned twin pools marking the base of the Twin Towers with
waterfalls cascading around all four sides of each pool, feeding
underground pools with a continuous stream.

Visitors would descend below ground and look up at the waterfalls, with
the names of all 2,979 killed displayed around the pools.

The savings come from a combination of eliminating some design elements,
scaling back infrastructure, passing off costs to other government
agencies, and efficiencies like having the landowner the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey assume responsibility for construction.

Costs were further reduced by moving the names of the victims to ground
level. The redesign removes some underground galleries but preserves the
subterranean view of the waterfalls.

The public has a week to comment on the redesign, after which various
public agencies will consider it for adoption

Conservative author Ann Coulter sparked a storm on Wednesday after
describing a group of September 11 widows who backed the Democratic
Party as millionaire "witches" reveling in their status as celebrities.

"I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much,"
Coulter writes in her book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism,"
published on Tuesday, referring to four women who headed a campaign that
resulted in the creation of the September 11 Commission that
investigated the hijacked plane attacks.

Coulter wrote that the women were millionaires as a result of
compensation settlements and were "reveling in their status as
celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis."

A spokeswoman for publisher Crown Forum said it had set a first print
run of 1 million copies of "Godless" and there were 1.5 million copies
of Coulter's previous four books in print.

The four women, Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and
Lorie Van Auken, declined to discuss the book in detail but issued a
statement saying they had been slandered.

"There was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no
happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming
home again," said the statement signed by the four, along with a fifth
woman, Monica Gabrielle.

The four women, who live in or around East Brunswick, New Jersey, became
friends after September 11 and formed a group that agitated for the
investigation. "Our only motivation ever was to make our nation safer,"
they said.

Coulter, whose books include the bestseller "How to Talk to a Liberal
(If You Must)," argues in the new book the women she dubs "the Witches
of East Brunswick" wanted to blame US President George W. Bush for not
preventing the attacks.

She criticized them for making a campaign advertisement for Democratic
presidential candidate Senator John Kerry in 2004, and added: "By the
way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these
harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up
and appear in Playboy."

Asked why she made such personal comments, Coulter said, "I am tired of
victims being used as billboards for untenable liberal political
beliefs."

In the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the
United States began reviewing history. On August 28, US Vice President
**** Cheney spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention,
and gave one of the most important speeches delivered on this subject.

Cheney talked about terrorism in his speech. Cheney argued that
terrorists seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man,
woman, and child is totally obedient to a narrow and hateful ideology.
This ideology rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience, and
demands that women be pushed to the margins of society. He said
terrorists have made clear their ultimate ambitions: to arm themselves
with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, to destroy Israel,
to intimidate all western countries, and to cause the death of masses in
the United States. They want to end all American and Western influence
in the Middle East. They believe that by controlling one country, they
will be able to target and overthrow other governments in the region,
and ultimately establish a totalitarian empire that reaches across
Spain, across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, all the way
around to Indonesia.

America needed to come up with a new strategy, said Cheney, to combat
this kind of determined, organized, ruthless enemy. The new strategy has
four points. The United States is absolutely determined to prevent
attacks and so it must always be on the offensive against terrorists.
Cheney deliberately avoided using such controversial wording as "to
strike first" at this point.

Unsurprisingly, the United States is determined to deny terrorists a
safe haven. Cheney explains the Bush Doctrine dictates that "any person
or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is
complicit in the murder of the innocent, and will be held to account."

The United States is also working to halt the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction, and to keep those weapons out of the hands of
killers. It must prevent any dangers from fully materializing. Obviously
this refers to Iran and North Korea. The United States is determined to
deny the terrorists control of any nation, which they would likely use
as a base and staging ground for attacks on others. These are the
reasons the United States continues to fight what is left of the Taliban
and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

In fact, Cheney's is not proposing a new strategy. He is justifying the
Iraqi war, for which the US has been heavily criticized. Assessing US
anti-terrorism wars over the past five years, the majority of US voters
said that the war on terrorism was far from effective and that security
is no better. Many people believe that the war on terror has actually
helped create more terrorists. More and more people want the US to
withdraw from Iraq. In the past year, the anti-war voice has dominated
public opinion. Congress members who support the war on Iraq are facing
defeat in the election. In fact, Cheney rarely attends such public
activities. He went to defend the government's decision to launch the
Iraq war and help restore the position of the Republicans before the
mid-term elections.

Cheney's new anti-terrorism strategy seems justified; however, it is
somewhat biased. The United States tries to enlarge the war on terror,
even turning it into a crusade of sorts, a "confrontation between free
and democratic Western forces and anti-freedom-and-democracy forces in
the Middle East." The fundamental cause of opposition is the hegemony
and partial policies that the United States has been pursuing in the
region. If the United States cannot acknowledge this point, it would
have difficulty getting support in the Middle East, let alone winning
the war on terror.

The US Defence Department on Tuesday released the first video images of
American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the military headquarters
building and killing 189 people in the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks.

The images, recorded by Pentagon security cameras outside the building,
were made public in response to a December 2004 Freedom of Information
Act request by Judicial Watch, a public interest group. Some still
images from the video had previously been leaked and publicly
circulated, but this was the first official release.

The airplane is a thin white blur on the video as it slams into the
Pentagon at ground level. Almost instantly a white flash and a huge
orange fireball appear on the video, followed by a tower of grey-black
smoke. One of the videos shows a Pentagon police car driving in the
direction of the impact point shortly after the plane hit.

Travelling at an estimated speed of 848 kilometres per hour, the
hijacked plane rammed into the southwest side of the Pentagon at
midmorning, shortly after two other hijacked airlines were flown into
the twin towers at the World Trade Centre in New York. The attack set
off fires in a portion of the Pentagon and killed 125 people inside, in
addition to the 59 passengers and crew and the five men who hijacked the
plane at Dulles International Airport.

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of the American
Airlines plane, said in a telephone interview that she realized Pentagon
officials were compelled to release the videos under the Freedom of
Information Act. But she said the images provide no new information
about what happened that day.

Ms Burlingame said she doubted that release of the videos would do
anything to dispel the many conspiracy theories, including the claim by
some that the Pentagon was hit by a missile. The Pentagon videos provide
only the briefest glimpse of the plane as it hits the building; the
images were recorded on cameras designed to record license plates of
vehicles entering the Pentagon grounds and were too slow to capture the
airplane's approach.

The Pentagon had previously refused to release the videos, saying they
had been provided to the Justice Department as evidence in any criminal
proceedings.

Judicial Watch said the Pentagon told the group it would release the
images "now that the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui is over." Judicial
Watch said the government previously had refused to release the video
because it was "part of an ongoing investigation" involving Moussaoui,
sentenced this month to life in prison for conspiracy in the Sept. 11
attacks.

"We fought hard to obtain this video because we felt that it was very
important to complete the public record with respect to the terrorist
attacks of September 11," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a
statement. "Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the
conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77