US prohibition of hemp farming is a national catastrophe. Addiction to fossil energy is a global, ecological catastrophe.
Both are peoples’ catastrophes; right up there with the consequences of hemp prohibition, and suppression of Mother Energy access, is the demonstrated disregard of humanity.
Nature is infinitely subtle. We are part of nature. Working against nature is working against us.
The ultimate question for mankind seems to be: If you are clever enough to exploit Earth’s fossil energy, are you wise enough not to destroy yourselves with it?
Sheer cleverness is obviously not our problem. A collective, nurtured and even enforced wisdom deficit leading to corporate profit becoming God, that seems our problem. Runaway focus on profit is a dead end.
Nikola Tesla was a very human being. Awareness and wisdom shining from Tesla’s mind was so brilliant he could only be targeted in a world destined to run on oil. His statements about science being but a perversion of itself unless its goal is the betterment of humanity . . . that, along with other noble demonstrations of his humanity put a big bull’s-eye on his back.
As much as Tesla gave us, and as much praise as he has attracted, a proportional derision hounds even his memory. Powers of corporate profit have failed to excise the memory of Tesla from public consciousness, and so, have fallen back on the next best thing: relentless disinformation, misinformation, misdirection and distraction.
Has one man ever offered so much to humanity? Has any man ever been suppressed in so many ways both subtle and overt? A main idea being pushed lately is that an electric car is named after Tesla—as though that’s one of his greatest achievements. Reliable information regarding what matters most about Tesla is disappearing.
It is generally agreed that on January 7, 1943, Tesla had an appointment to discuss with FDR the possibility of tapping Mother Energy—of mankind hooking its machines up to “ . . . the very wheelworks of nature.” Limitless, clean and natural energy (Tesla used the term, “Free energy”).
He missed his appointment with FDR. Tesla was found dead of “natural causes.”
Evidence suggesting that Tesla was murdered includes the FBI being right on the scene to confiscate all of Tesla’s possessions. Papers, notebooks—everything involving his research remains locked down. And for reasons of “national security,” the coroner’s report is also ultra-classified because it reveals that Tesla did not die of natural causes.
Parallels between malign powers attacking Tesla, and those responsible for prohibition of hemp farming since 1937—the parallels are astonishing, yet predictable. Access to Mother Energy, the force that energizes the universe, and freedom regarding hemp in all its life-promoting glory . . . seems hard to imagine two things of greater public benefit, or two things more threatening to the profit status quo.
Today, hemp threatens entrenched profits of even more industries than in the summer of 1937, when congress was being asked to essentially outlaw a drug they knew nothing about.
That summer, Congressman Snell asked Congressman Rayburn, regarding the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act, “What is this bill about?”
“It has something to do with something called marijuana,” replied Congressman Rayburn. “I believe it is a narcotic of some kind.”
Of course, the real issue was non-drug industrial hemp. Marijuana and the whole “reefer madness” shame was a ruse to protect profits of industries such as timber, paper, petroleum, cotton . . . a fact substantiated by “medical marijuana” opening broader decriminalization of marijuana. Get ready for even greater shame when marijuana is legal, but hemp farming is not.
Biotech is a new industry threatened by hemp that is gaining immense and hazardous control over not just our food supply. Biotech’s ultimate thug is a beast that has grown to own the designation of “Most Evil Corporation in the World”: Monsanto.
Sheer political power of this beast recklessly splicing up “Frankenfoods” lurks in what many are calling the “Monsanto Protection Act.”
Monsanto has deployed its congressional gangsters to attach and defend “riders” to both the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, and the 2012 Farm Bill. Essentially, these riders represent a green light for Monsanto to do their worst—with no restrictions, and no responsibility for the consequences. If Monsanto prevails, as usual, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will be free from all meaningful safety reviews, and the government will be forced to approve new GMOs upon request. Danger of this cavalier profiteering with the code of life is unprecedented in both scope and malignancy.
Nature has woven over Earth a system of life perpetual, a tapestry of species filling myriad niches. Intricacy of the environment supporting life, and life supporting the environment—magnificence achieved over billions of years. Nature’s clock is geological.
Mankind’s clock seems stuck on me now. Call us Prometheans, getting most of our energy burning things; combustion, explosion, chemical reactions. We’ve learned to tear apart largest atoms for fission energy while piling up radioactive waste deadly for millennia. We’ve learned to fuse the smallest atoms, but fusion, nature’s way . . . we only use fusion in thermonuclear warheads triggered by fission. Our biggest bang so far.
And now we have the childhood of biotech. Compared to nature, biotech is something like a child with molecular trimmers and mucilage splicing genes into places they don’t belong and releasing unnatural mutants into nature. A playground for childishly snipping and splicing at life’s tapestry . . . a thread here, a thread there (in nature they are all connected). Monsanto is the unquestioned playground bully, a child obsessed with profit—to hell with consequences!
Monsanto’s character is starkly highlighted by its fight against GMO labeling. Almost 90% of the public wants to know if GMOs are in their food; over 50% say they would not buy GMOs. Monsanto will spend whatever it takes to make sure the public has no right to know if they are consuming GMOs.
An estimated 70–80% of processed foods in grocery stores now contain at least one GMO.
Freedom of speech depends entirely on who is speaking and what they say. Freedom of speech can be very expensive. Monsanto can afford freedom to speak or conceal; citizens are enormously restricted—the Occupy Movement is fine proof. Monsanto can release into the environment unknown hazards for profit, with little regard for public safety. It’s called freedom of money, freedom of power.
Private profit, public risk . . . a morbid refrain echoing wherever corporations go.
Monsanto is a perfect poster child for working against nature; hemp is a perfect example of the power of harmony with nature. Frankensteinian “improvements” churned out by Monsanto, and subsequent, potential mother lode patents and control of food supply are irrelevant when it comes to hemp. How can so-called improvements be spiced into what nature has already perfected?
Besides, 80% of Monsanto’s GMO patents are for “Roundup-ready” crops modified to withstand massive amounts of Monsanto’s herbicide, Roundup. Hemp needs no herbicides, pesticides, fungicides . . . needs no petrochemical inputs, which in itself is good for a slew of corporate enemies.
As a pinnacle of nature offering fantastic benefits across the biosphere and public, hemp is guaranteed Monsanto’s hatred. Is this a corporation that should be telling government what to do?
While hemp farming is legally shackled and chained, Monsanto paves with cash its road toward total legal immunity. Were hemp to win, everything that deserves a better future wins. When Monsanto wins, nature loses.
Entire regional economies could grow from a foundation of hemp farming; a natural antidote to the plague of globalization. Superior natural products flowing through jobs that cannot be offshored; wealth that cannot be skimmed and sucked away by casino financialization; local businesses strong enough not to be snuffed by Wal-Mart.
Hemp has the power to divert vast corporate profits directly to the people while benefitting life on Earth as only nature can. Any wonder why hemp farming remains banned, 75 years and counting?
Tesla tried to give humanity access to Mother Energy, humanitarian eminence that cost him everything. Today, offering Mother Energy access remains mortally dangerous. The corporate Empire is willing to extinguish life on Earth with fossil and fission energy, and genetic mutilation, if that’s what it takes to maximize profits; evidence compounds everywhere, damage perhaps already irreversible. And profits are soaring.
Corporations have become powerful enough to control civilization. Power never gives up anything without a fight. Whether or not the public has much fight in them . . . that could be the ultimate question for humanity. Extreme superiority in numbers is a power being slept away, despite blaring alarms.
If the public could somehow make Mother Energy research and application unrestricted, safe and sane . . . make it a most cherished endeavor instead of a most deadly, the benefits could be worth any costs of fighting—but it must be done before nothing is left to fight for. How much more corporate profit will the biosphere take and still function?
There might be no better first step in reversing global corporate creep than fighting to get back hemp farming. Globalization is as unnatural as Monsanto.
Could there be two things of greater potential benefit to life on Earth than Mother Energy, and hemp in all it’s glory? The fact that we must fight for the right to live naturally, empowered by two things of such benefit to the health and well-being of the public, the biosphere, the future of humanity—the fact hisses that we’ve let an evil system embed over us.
If there is no fight, there will eventually be no rights . . . at least not for the people.
Rand Clifford lives in Spokane, Washington. His novel, CASTLING, is “A Story of the Power of Hemp.” The sequel, TIMING, and Clifford’s new novel, Priest Lake Cathedral, are published by StarChief Press.
