Oct 01 2007
King Hemp IV: Rope and Dope
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By Rand Clifford
10/1/07
Imagine…YOU are the legend, William Randolph Hearst. You unleash an old Mexican slang term—an alien, scary and macabre-sounding word, then hype it relentlessly in your national chain of newspapers…creating a monster to threaten civilization with plagues of rape and murder, mass insanity and boundless violence! Domestic terrorism…you must kill competition, protect pretty profits standing in your vast acreage of Mexican timber, pulp the trees into paper with the new environmentally-obscene sulfuric acid process patented by DuPont. His tentacles diddle the very heart of American politics….
Your campaign of sensational disinformation—featuring hysteria spiced with racism—works so amazingly well that generations later, history’s King of crops remains exiled from the most influential nation on Earth. One might say you “ran the table” with your invasion of “marijuana” and “Reefer Madness”. You certainly made out like a bandit from the prohibition of cannabis hemp…wealthy industrialists still make out like bandits from the prohibition. You and DuPont blindsided The People, but did you ever really imagine the majority of Americans over seventy years later, when hearing the term “hemp”, thinking typically and simply of rope, and dope?
Let’s all sing…
La cucaracha, la cucaracha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marihuana que fumar.
(Translation)
The cockroach, the cockroach
Can’t walk anymore
Because it lacks, because it doesn’t have,
Marijuana to smoke.
Yes, The King, cannabis hemp, regal for many thousands of years and without peers, fell under siege just before the Roaring Twenties for threatening profits of rich and ravenous American industrialists with little in their hearts besides timber and petroleum profits. Exile came in 1937, when new machinery promised to free The King’s vast potential from the fetters of manual labor.
Fast-forward to the 1970’s, and what is known as “Reefer Madness II”. High school texts were universally cleansed of the word “hemp”. And at the Smithsonian Museum, Jack Herer, author of that touchstone of hemp truth The Emperor Wears No Clothes, asked a curator why “hemp” had been removed from all of the exhibits. The curator replied, “Children do not need to know about hemp anymore. It confuses them.”
SAY WHAT? One of the most important aspects of the history of civilization has been cleansed from the Smithsonian Museum so as not to confuse children? Someone decided simple omission was better than “embarrassing questions”? If the truth is embarrassing, doesn’t that imply profound systemic problems? Omission of important meaning is a cornerstone of our corporate-controlled media (CorpoMedia)…but the Smithsonian! Pulling hemp from history left a hole in the Smithsonian Museum big enough to drive cattle through. History is a tapestry of events, and if you pull a thread hooked to so many others it’s no longer a tapestry, but a bunch of threads dangling into a big hole. Omission for convenience changes history to propaganda. And the more we look at such a hole the bigger it gets….
Written language was developed 5,000 years ago by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, what is now Iraq. One of mankind’s oldest root words, K(a)N(a)B(a) is the Sumerian word for cannabis hemp. Writing made possible the intentional recording of history; by the time writing was invented, hemp husbandry had been around a very long time—the oldest relic of human industry is a scrap of hemp fabric 10,000 years old.
About 4,700 years ago, the first written record of cannabis use appeared in the pharmacopoeia of Shen Nung, a pioneer of Chinese medicine. 2,000 years later, the Persian prophet Zoroaster wrote the Avesta, a sacred text with cannabis hemp topping a list of more than 10,000 medicinal plants. Hemp was civilization’s largest agricultural crop from over 3,000 years ago until the late 1800s. The Chinese began making paper from hemp and mulberry about 2,000 years ago; their scholars gained a cheap means of preserving information, allowing Chinese knowledge and science to transcend that of the West for 1,400 years—partly because the Roman Catholic Church prohibited reading and writing for 1,200 years. Something to consider in terms of the Smithsonian Museum cleansing history to avoid “embarrassing questions”….
The oldest known doctor’s prescription is an Assyrian (also Mesopotamia) clay tablet dated around 2,700 years ago, a prescription for “medical marijuana”.
1,200 years ago, Mohammed permitted cannabis use among Moslems, but forbid alcohol. 950 years ago, Moslems started Europe’s first paper mill, using cannabis hemp. Of course hemp paper is what originally led to The King’s exile from America, in the decade following those Roaring Twenties—but still long before:
The world’s first mandatory hemp cultivation laws were enacted at Jamestown Colony in Virginia, 1619, ordering all farmers to grow hemp or face penalties. Massachusetts passed similar laws in 1631, followed by Connecticut a year later. In 1776, patriot wives and mothers organized spinning bees to clothe Washington’s troops, spinning hemp fiber to save the Continental Army from freezing to death at Valley Forge. That same year, Thomas Paine, in “Common Sense”, listed as America’s four essential natural resources: cordage, iron, timber and tar. “Hemp flourishes even to rankness,” Paine wrote, “we do not want for cordage.”
The first draft of the Declaration of Independence, June 28, 1776, was written on Dutch hemp paper; the version released on July 4 is also written on hemp paper. The War of 1812 was fought mainly because the United States had been cut off from most of its Russian hemp imports. In 1898, the Spanish American War got us to the threshold of American exile of The King when the “marijuana”-smoking army of Pancho Villa seized 800,000 acres of prime Mexican timberland from William Randolph Hearst. For The King, in America, it’s been a miasma of deceit ever since….
Today the themes are the same, but on a much grander scale. The King could be a fantastic boon for The People and the environment—similarly fantastic are his threats to status quo profits. The profit shift would typically be from elite corporations, to The People. Also, hemp being a natural plant rules out patents so coveted by the elite.
The conjuring of cannabis into marijuana made The King a magnet for mind-boggling hypocrisy. Perhaps there is no finer example of the hypocrisy than that of Dronabinol. Marketed under various names such as Marinol, Nabilone, Sativex…Dronabinol is a synthetic version of THC, the primary active ingredient of cannabis. The DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) lists cannabis as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. The three benchmarks for Schedule 1 listing:
[A] The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
[B] The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S.
[C] There is lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.
So, why would Big Pharma spend untold millions of dollars developing a synthetic version of a drug that the DEA insists HAS NO CURRENTLY ACCEPTABLE MEDICAL USE? Money. Patents. Control. Dronabinol was extremely expensive to develop, is very expensive to make, and is very expensive to buy. It works nowhere near as well as raw cannabis, which contains many cannabinoids in addition to THC which contribute in various ways to the excellent effectiveness of cannabis. So the bottom line with synthetic THC: It’s a poor substitute for the real thing (which patients can easily grow themselves), but Big Pharma makes a lot of money (at the expense of patients) peddling the patented synthetic of a drug the government classifies as having no currently accepted medical use. When it comes to virtually every aspect of The King, such hypocrisy rules. If a patient that needs cannabis were to simply grow their own, nobody would make any money (except the patient, by saving the astronomical cost of the synthetic), and the patient could not be controlled for profit—one of the modern essences of government under corporate control (CorpoGov).
Regarding LACK OF ACCEPTED SAFETY FOR USE OF THE DRUG UNDER MEDICAL SUPERVISION, cannabis has been for thousands of years one of the most common and effective of drugs, listed as a panacea (remedy for all ills or difficulties) more times, in more places, than anything else known to mankind.
A possible ray of hope for The King in America, and for Americans to make progress against CorpoGov tyranny such as displayed in the Dronabinol boondogle, is H.R. 1009, The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2007. This bill, introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, would amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of “marihuana”. The detailed summary reads:
“Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2007 - Amends the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of “marihuana.” Defines “industrial hemp” to mean the plant Cannabis sativa L. and any part of such plant with a delta-nine tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) concentration that does not exceed .3 percent on a dry weight basis. Grants a state regulating the growing and processing of industrial hemp exclusive authority, in any criminal or civil action or administrative proceeding, to determine whether any such plant meets that concentration limit.”
As with all things CorpoGov involving The King, hypocrisy has descended upon H.R. 1009: Since 4/20/2007 the bill has been languishing in the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
Hypocrisy rules.
*****
In King Hemp V, the lobby forces attacking H.R. 1009 as it mires in a committee that has nothing to do with industrial hemp farming present a crystalline portrait of hemp’s amazing usefulness to The People, and threat to status quo profits. Just how valuable is hemp? How might it mitigate our most serious problems? Modern forces arrayed against The King leave little to the imagination, and, they hope, even less to The People….
Rand Clifford is a novelist and essayist living in Spokane, Washington, with his wife Mary Ann, and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Mink. His novels CASTLING and TIMING are published by StarChief Press: http://www.starchiefpress.com
King Hemp Part I: From DEA Deadly Birdseed, Toward Power to the People
King Hemp: Part 2: Battle Lines: Natural, Or Synthetic…Life, Or Death?
King Hemp Part 3: We Got Mugged, So Let’s Get Hemp Back
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The author also rewrites history by telling us that writing started with Sumeria. That means he acknowlefges the myths that we descended from chimps, and later Lucy. How then is it possible that 120 geologists signed a statement to say that weathering on the surround of the Sphinx was more than 10,000 years old,. Why are the pyramids of Giza, Mexico and ruins in Cambodia aligned with star systems positions of 13,500 years ago. No previous civilizations with high tech. Sure of that?The author is playing into the hands of corpopress, which he attacks.
I think Thomas has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. The article is about the sacred herb. There are all manner of ideas out there that don’t NATURALLY conflict…except within our own pet theories.
EVERYTHING is just a story. You got your story, I got mine. A ‘myth’ is in the eye of the beholder.
The history of the mighty hemp plant is established. All the demonization is duly recorded. That is all this article is trying to say. Why muddle it with an argument as to whether we were genetically engineered by aliens, or created by some anthropomorphic god, or evolved by natural selection?
I see what you are saying Thomas. I just don’t see the relevance to this article. I think there is some merit to your assertions about ancient artifacts and such. It just that, What does that have to do with the price of microchips in China?
PWNED~!
Hey ThomasT:
I believe the author was referring to “history”, the written word as has been discovered thus far, when referring to Sumerian … so don’t be so hard on him. There are quiet a number of earlier inscriptions that have been found but not translatable to date. You are absolutely correct - as I believe the author would agree - that the evidence is overwhelming for pre-Sumerian, very advanced civilizations, something the Corpo~Religio masters, as represented by the Smithsonian, find inconvenient. And there is tons of evidence/proof that hemp/dope has been with us all along.
This was a good peice aside form the theory of when writing developed. It’s still out for debate. Irregardless the Company wants only to maximize profits through taxation in the form of usless consumables. Our gorvenmental expirament has clearly shown that represenative democracy can work only for a short while until those that benefitted fom this democracy have gained wealth and power to shape it to their desires.
Speaking of writing there’s no such word as “irregardless”. It’s just “regardless”.
Cannibis became illegal to protect hearst’s newspaper/timber industries, and to enable the state to arrest and imprison citizens randomly. It remains illegal because it supports $megabillions worth of businesses (enforcement and prisons). It- and other natural contraband substances- also provide an off-the-books currency for the black market. Notice that it isn’t really all that unavailable.
As to hemp- it threatens not just the timber and cellulose industry, but also the oil industry and the budding and perncious ethanol industry (food and water-guzzling horror!). It isn’t that the hemp industry wouldn’t stoke a $megabillion business of it’s own, it’s just that it wouldn’t be the same people making the money.
Most ominously, the criminilization of a desirable, useful, and readily available substance teaches the whole culture to accept hypocrisy, lying, and cover-up as a way of life.
BTW, it’s weird that Thomas ran off with the discussion in such an odd way.
Those elite rulers crushing American freedoms could never tolerate or control rich farmers, not to mention all other industrial positives created by HEMP, Imagine a debt free society and nation, who rules that??? why the people of course.
Hearst and Dupont were guided by some one that saw the future no doubt. could it have been those creators of the FIAT federal reserve privately owned bank, which now has a debt owed to it by the American slaves over 9 trillion dollars at around 27,000 bucks for each man woman and child, its obvious isnt it.
Since Democracy and paper money have a 100% historical failure rate thru time, why are we doing this again, Im thinking some body got Beguiled along the way.
The Constitution is written on hemp paper. Nuff said.
http://home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/celestial/forcesoflightmessages.htm
Hey Greg, your up on something there. Like Plato said, democracy always preceeds tyranny. The US was established as a REPUBLIC, not a democracy. It’s the mob rule thing verses the rule of law.
Both the fiat paper money thing and the democracy thing got the big push, propaganda wise, under Wilson in 1913…down hill here ever since.
A.Magnus, yes, but just the first drafts, wasn’t the final draft on leather?
This is an excellent article about hemp. The astonishing irrelevancies set in motion by ThomasT certainly reinforce the authors lament about lack of knowledge in America. “Writing” began, you might say?, when some sharp stick under control of a certain sentient being, scratched some marks in the dirt that involved a transfer of meaning from that sentience, to the dirt, where it stayed until the next big rain. WRITTEN LANGUAGE, however, is as far above such simple “writing” as homo sapiens sapiens are above that first writer. WRITTEN LANGUAGE, employing syntax, definitions and other paradigms that usher meaning through millenia, to us and beyond, obviously began in Sumer. Astonishing lack of knowledge blended with profound confusion regarding what is genuinely meaningful, that equals the modern American herd. Good luck.
And, ThomasT, don’t forget Joan of Arc…you know, Noah’s wife….
Notice the first word, or three letters of the Con-stitution, me thinks perhaps way back when the populace was thought to be better useful to the masters if the slaves believed they were free, and free we were for a time, until the demise of Lincoln came about and then the suffrage of that ever decieving fourteenth Amendment, Ahh lads we did not free the Negro, we joined him in those shackles. Research of the Virginia Company Charter is very chilling indeed, alas we find that the titles of owner ship of this great property go way farther back than maybe we were lead to believe. Since those farmers and Minute men were sharp as tacks, the masters laid a trick out, once those brave fellows went to their final naps, low and behold a silent populace in 1868, fell for the next chess move after a terrible conflict, which I might add was instigated from both sides in an attempt to further break that previous CON apart, when this failed due to a shrewed Abe, he go’s to sleep and plan two unfolds. that lousy Fourteenth. Adios Magna Charta, good by Common Law, see ya round Nation of even wealth, enjoy the Roman Civil tyrany, Admiralty Maritime, Oh yes Lads, we got the start of Modern ” Commercial Law” which of course is another ancient code, why its the Babylonian Codes of course, why fella’s didnt ya know, it’s from 1066, Ah Lads a very long time ago. President Monroe attempted to save us he did, Jefferson and Adams even helped, yet those sly devils hid that Monroe doctrine well, as they also stashed that original Thirteenth Amendment, why Lads you know the one, that Titles of Nobility and Honour Clause which went missing around 1812, slippery tyrant foxes they were. Some knave fool in 1913 thinks we need paper commerce, Ahh, Some body saw the future way back when, Im thinking he might have ARCON, get it, kinda like ARCO OIL, or would that be FALLEN ANGEL….Hmmm, I must go have me a bowl of Hemp now lads and suffer my chains for the day, but fear not I will return for some more fun, Good day.
If people got on the phone to their legislators and sent in letters, we could get hemp grown again in the US. There’s lots of people complaining and using rhetoric, but how many of them are doing something?
California Bill AB 684 got passed by the state senate, but now some idiot from Hollywood can veto it. Call the ‘governators’ office and stand up to him, don’t just write
stuff on the net.
Or support your local hemp businesses. Put your money where your mouth is.
Here are some hemp shops to go to online:
www.thehempshop.co.uk
www.minawear.com
www.thtc.co.uk
www.braintreehemp.com
www.geomio.com
www.nutiva.com
www.globalhemp.com
If hemp could be used as an ethanol type fuel, it would save our corn for people to eat. Would hemp fuel be as corrosive to pipelines as corn-based ethanol or corrosive to car engines?
The government, of course, would stop hemp-fueled cars at their totalitarian highway checkpoints and arrest the drivers on drug charges and impound the vehicles. They would say that hemp fuel fumes make us high and therefore, dangerous drivers!
Is there a Hempmobile in our future? Or will Reefer Madness prevail?
until 911, the biggest government sponsored rape of humanity yet…
Right On mike! What a rush, TRUTH!
The next time you come down with a bad flu, with all the fever, the stiffness and bodyaches, and the sinus problems that go along with it, if you have access to just a little cannabis - a few puffs will do just fine - within minutes you will have forgotten all about your illness (and no, not because you are enibriated - get a grip!). It removes all stiffness in the joints and relieves the sinuses. The bodyaches disappear and before long you will be up and around back to your normal self…. amazing stuff and all natural!