RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

These last two days have been full of action, ever since I poured out my pitcher of water and went thirsty at the brewery to make the point that cotton cultivation is a danger to Homo sapiens.

I did get a call from a female of the species who was not happy with one of my statements, and after hearing her out, I decided she did have a fair point and ammended the previous post. Lucy Siegle of the Observer was the caller, and we ended up having quite an amicable conversation after she made her initial request. It turns out she is quite on board with a number of my points, and has herself taken Katherine Hamnett and the greenwash brigade to task. She wanted to make it clear that she was not some happy clappy hippy going along with all the eco fig leaves, and I was glad to hear that. I await the publication of her next book, and of course, I expect there will be lots about hemp in it - after all Siegle hangs out with natural born hempster Woody Harrelson.

There was an irony in my being willing to listen to anyone from the Observer, as this is the paper that printed allegations about a friend of mine, Dr. Nick Kollerstrom. Their very own Nick Cohen reported that Kollerstrom was preaching Nazi doctrine and harrassing people. Whilst some of Dr. Kollerstrom's views might not be welcome in Orthodox circles, he is no Nazi, in fact, he is the quintessential peacenik, eats Challah bread in his home, and has Jewish friends - one of whom started a blog (click here to see) to defend Kollerstrom, even if the author does not agree with all of his conclusions. Whilst the Jewish Chronicle did go to the trouble to call Kollerstrom and talk to him and find out that a lot of the noise on the net was false, the Observer made no such effort. Instead, it took the word of some bloggers who do not even use their real names! What a load of nonsense. Further, it refused him right of reply. One might think that the Observer has the budget to check their stories and make a local phone call once in a while.

They do when they feel themselves misrepresented, and fair enough if there is some question about any statements I make, I am not using an assumed name like the Rachel 'Norths' and Johnny 'Voids'. I am easy to contact, just ask MI5...for which I am not working, but would like to work if they pay lots of money and let me spend all my time with beautiful women sipping martinis and saving the world every episode from over the top nutters most of whom are trust fund babies on crack.

Speaking of beautiful women, which I am in very much in search of, one poster on Sunday took such issue with my speech at the Black Eagle that she insinuated I was a misogynist; big mistake, I like women! There is a certain crowd that will label you a Nazi, a misogynist, or anything else that comes to mind when they do not have a real argument against you, or need to submit some rubbish to an editor to make deadline...it's called 'churnalism', as Nick Davies points out in Flat Earth News.

The poster, Janet from another planet, decided to tell us she worked for a hemp company that got lots of good liberal press, but then left a link to a cotton company. She also did not give a surname and could not be contacted. Funny, I've never heard of a Janet in the hemp industry. I would like to know more about this person, but I doubt we end up saving the world together at the end of a two hour adventure in which I get to wear black tie even while jumping out of aeroplanes.

So I am off to do other things now, like writing to MI5 to suggest that Bond wear hemp, and tell them the bad guys this time are some eco warriors who are in reality trustiferians gone bad. Their plan is to destroy the world by growing palm oil, soya, jatropha and cotton because they are not getting enough attention from Mummy and Daddy who are telling them to take a bath and get a real job. Bond will get no quantum of solace from this lot I assure you.

THIRST AT THE BREWERY

Today the Hemp for Victory tour headed for Brick Lane in East London, where Fashion Made Fair was in its last day. The Black Eagle Brewery was the location, just a stone's throw, incidentally, from Fashion Street. New faces, familiar faces, overall it was a good networking day. Green Knickers was the first stop - like many hemp based manufacturers, it is based in London - St. Julians Farm Road in SE27. Next to their stand was Goodone which uses recycled clothing, including offcuts from The Hemp Trading Co., whose CEO Gav Lawson was on hand. Jenny Ambrose from Enamore was having another successful day, sharing a booth with Equa, which is a shop in London that sells hemp and other natural fibre clothing.

Katherine Hamnett came at noon, dressed in black, to sell her white T shirts which contain not a shred of hemp, made as they are of cotton. After the appearance of the dark clad one I went on stage with my hemp material and a pitcher of water, from which I poured a glass, and then emptied it onto the floor. This, I noted, is what happens when we buy cotton. Then, after some words on the cultivation of hemp, peeling fibres from the stalks I had in hand from the BioRegional Harvest in Essex, the talk went on, with the jar of water intermittently emptied, to illustrate what goes on when we buy cotton. We are destroying the world with frivolous do-gooder ideas, but it feels good, and it makes the journalists go wild. Oh how they love to promote our cotton loving charade - and how some go so far as to degrade hemp because they are stupid.

This is all rather blunt, whether written on a blog or spoken to an audience. It would be easily defused, however, if it were not correct. Not one person could rebut these facts then, not one person has posted a comment in rebuttal on this blog over the years, and not one journalist has penned a riposte. The hacks do mutter under a bit their breath, and one audience member told us stories of their own abuse at the hands of journalists who did not want to hear so far as to criticism. Louisa Pearson of the Scotland on Sunday earlier this year wrote that hemp was the fibre to use, not cotton, and this did not sit well with some of her colleagues, including those at the liberal press which sells out to cotton and SUVs.

By the end of my talk the jar was empty, and I was thirsty; but the water was gone. And this is what has happened in lands where cotton has been grown, but, let's face it, the press gang do not suffer as a result. They can promote the Katherine Hamnett cotton picking crew and make an easy pay cheque. But not for long, as the water is finite, and lack of it is leading to war. Already the Aral Sea is down to less than 50% of its capacity due to cotton cultivation, and other waterways are similarly under threat. But does this matter to Katherine Hamnett? She is cool in the eyes of many - but let them go and live in Central Asia and it won't be long before they are tired of T shirt signings and other stunts designed to promote this pest crop.

Another aspect of cotton cultivation is that textiles made from it wear out sooner than hemp - but this keeps the likes of Sir Phillip Green and Hamnett in business. It also keeps up pressure to use arable land, which comprises but 4-5% of the earth's surface, for threads - mostly consumed by Westerners who do not realise what a farce this is. They do not face the reality of food scarcity, they are not involved in food riots which have gripped other nations so badly these last few months. They do not think for a second about minimising the land used for textile production, as long as they can feel cool and look sexy they think everything is OK. And to add to the irony of this, we label cotton 'organic' and then charge more for what took more water from the farmers. What would Katherine Hamnett say to these facts? Maybe she can quote Marie Antoinette; "let them eat cake."

That is the attitude in the journalistic circles in the West. Food riots are not their problem, and as many journalists have told me, not without annoyance at my persistent warnings on these issues, their job is only to report the events. Like vultures, they profit at others' loss.

Much to the credit of my listeners, my points were heard, and I had a good talk with them afterwards. If there were any journalists in the crowd, maybe I will be pilloried in the press tomorrow - but who cares, I was stabbed by crack dealers and paedophiles in NY when I spoke up, and threatened by pickpockets when I stopped their work. They are no worse than the idiot churnalists who support the likes of Hamnett - in fact, they do more harm than crack dealers since crack does not deplete the water supplies, it does not take diminish our food supply. Not that I want them around either.

One interesting contact was Uscha Pohl, editor of VERY and very-eco.com. We have both lived in NYC, and she updated me on the latest in recycling in the Big Apple: there is no recycling, Mayor Bloomberg just decided to hell with that; as a major player in the press, he is also not in support of hemp. Not surprising that lots of cotton is worn in his city, and that people who have money fill entire apartments with clothes, thus putting a burden on the land, which means that some people will have to starve to death in order to make way for land apportioned to cotton production.

What does the future hold? Do the men take the lead and oust the pests so that we use our land intelligently to produce for our needs, or do idiots hacks and greedy clothing manufacturers gang up with the drug dealers, paedophiles and pickpockets whom I so despised? We cannot be silent and also be real men. The world is under threat from cotton - which is by far the world's most cultivated textile crop - 1m acres alone in California - and this threat needs be addressed. I will be calling on journalists to act - with a view to naming and shaming all those who do not - and this includes the do-gooder but know-nothing hacks who promote whatever has the most money for PR.

HOMER GETS A BAG OF HEMP

A recent Simpsons episode included a new character who gets burned at the end - a hemp bag inherited by Marge from her aunt. The bag meets its fiery end near a missile launching station, causing the guards to lose their alertness.
OK, whatever. I'm not going to burn my hemp bag, it won't get me high. It has lasted well over a year, saving the use of 400 plastic bags. Hemp bags are not just catching on with Homer and his brood, there are lots of companies now making hemp bags, including Bags of Change in Richmond. BoC come in different colours, including pink, which I am sure would please Marge immensely. She just has to keep Bart and Homer from playing with matches.

CAUGHT UNAWARE AT AWARE '08

This weekend I trugged over to the Barbican Centre in East London to help man the hemp booth as Aware, a new festival which managed to attract a few of the converted. Naked cyclists, hot women for climate change, and some even hotter women selling incognito mosquito repellant, which they claim makes you invisible. Can't wait to try it on Monday when I pull a heist at the local bank. I can dispense with any attire, since I'll be invisible...

Overall the event was a disappointment, though there were highlights, such as the panelist from Moixa. Sharing the panel with him was Matilda Lee of the Ecologist, and I did get to question her as to why she completely ignored hemp in her monologue on textiles. She replied that hemp was a great idea and we all ought to take a look at it. But when pointed to the hemp booth, she made tracks the other way, and we did not see her for the rest of the conference. Maybe she had on that mosquito repellant. Her comrades from the magazine were more visible, and I visited their stand several time, taking Helen James of Innocent Oils along, who presented them with her latest skin care samples.

Also quite visible was a booth displaying solar power steam turbines, these are heated by giant mirrors which focus the light on a tower where water is heated to steam. This can also serve as a desalination plant. The claim is that these towers can supply all the world's electricity needs, and I hope they are right. Presently there are few up and running, the oldest being the one in Nevada, operating for 15 years. The one in Seville has been noted on this blog before. We need to get these and other forms of energy going as the lack of alternative energy means that the oil companies keep raisnig the price of a barrel, even though it still only costs $5 to excavate that barrel. Eric Pollit of Global Hemp just emailed me to say that the tripling of the price of a barrel has caused people to be much more on edge in the US, but they do not focus their anger on the people behind the energy crisis, they turn on each other, or blame corn for the rise in food prices. Part of the rise in corn prices has to do with the weak dollar he points out, as that means more countries buy foodstuffs from the US. Corn based ethanol does not take the food part of the plant, as I have pointed out so many times to the zealots in the left who are not bashing any form of biofuels, much to the delight of the oil companies who want a divided left that will argue and accomplish nothing. 40 years of talk about wind farms, solar energy, tidal turbines, electric cars, ethanol, biodiesel, etc. - and what have we to show for it? The development is rather invisible, and not due to the use of insect repellant.

Also invisible at Aware was any mention of hemp in all the vegan cook books, the gurus of that industry continue to promote soy based foods, even though this helps destroy the Amazon, an inconvenient fact they do not like to be reminded of. Even Nigel Winter of the Vegan Society does not seem to be too aware of hemp, but hopefully he will and they just might publish some of the information in their magazine.

While hemp was hardly to be seen, cotton was ubiquitous, Lee and others are happy to promote it, but not so happy to hear that a cotton T shirt uses 2,800 litres more water than a 50% hemp T shirt. My source for that, incidentally, is Jeremy Smith of the Ecologist. Lee could not argue with that!

So this show, if it is to go on, will need real promotion next year, I feel sorry for those who rented booths and ended up talking mainly to other exhibitors. They will also need some keynote speakers, not just frivolous cotton wearing trendies. Next week I will be speaking at another East London event, I'll be on at 2pm at the Fashion Made Fair, where I will hold forth on the cultivation of hemp. I hope that I will see more people and that some of them will actually be wearing hemp!

PLANE STUPID TALK AT ST. MARY THE VIRGIN

Image left is Tobias Kendall of Oxford, aka Ken Tobias, who got kicked out of Plane Stupid last month when Tamsin Omond of Cambridge outed him dramatically. Allegedly, he was working for C2i, a spook firm that must have some pretty low recruiting standards. Are they the ones behind Rachel North and David Shayler, both of whom claim they are not working for MI5? Maybe a double bluff on their part, but as to Kendall, er, um Tobias, his bluff got called. What made Omond see through it so easily? Was it the Armani jeans, or was it the fact that Omond is from Trinity College, a known recruitment ground for spooks and would know one when she saw one? Many of the Trinity crowd were sex addicts who betrayed their country to the Russians in the '30, '40s, '50s, '60s and whenever else they could get away with it; much of which was noted in the famous and suppressed book, Spycatcher.
The present day Trinity College alumnus was on hand last night at an event at St. Mary the Virgin in Primrose Hill, where the merchants of soya were on hand to sell their product. Somehow the vicar there must have forgotten that 2,000 years ago someone drove the merchants out of the church, but then again, there are a lot of vicars who have forgotten that the same person also said: "better a millstone tied around the neck of a person than they should hurt the little ones". Maybe the vicar was off at a sex shop, where the Tamsin Omond crowd can be found when not preaching to us or getting into trouble with the police or hasssling members of the general public at the Natural History Museum.
So, with the vicar away, the mice could play with people's minds and promote soya, a plant which is now one of the biggest problems facing the world today. Try telling this to Nigel Winter of the Vegan Society or the folks at Slow Foods London, and you just get a cold stare. Tamsin Omond then comes over to show her ignorance, and there is little one informed person can do against them, even if in the House of God, which they seem to have taken over.
And with the power and money behind Tamsin, one is not surprised. Her grandfather is none other than Sir Thomas Lees, who owns a good deal of land in the proserous South England county of Dorest, once a hemp growing and processing capital of the realm. Her father is a rich banker. She herself hangs out with l'ecume de l'ecume, having matriculated at some very expensive spots for rich kids, the kind who have money for both sex shops and the church.
But apparently, not much brains, or they would have known about hemp, and not used the House of God for a promo on soya, adding to the misery of poor farmers in Brazil, who are seeing more and more land cleared for this monocrop.
The irony is that the very people behind this misery are acting like eco-warrriors, running around in trendy spots talking about saving the planet, along with the dodgy people who forced palm oil plantations on the Indonesians and jatropha on the Indians (see previous post on this).
They are now threatening to force us to use more oil, which is set to rise to $200 a barrel (not so long ago it was $30). What they do is bash all biofuels, either directly, or by getting into the game and giving biofuels a bad name with their stupid ideas. Without biofuels, we are dependent on one fuel, and guess what, the price of that one fuel goes up.
Thus it is intelligent analysis to suspect that the rich kid bondage toy church attending crowd from Trinity College may just be the progeny of the pampered traitors at MI5, and that the game is to infiltrate environmental groups and stifle debate about biofuels. One easy way to do this is to write about it, then dissuade the public from taking action. Perhaps an example of this can be found in yesterday's Guardian, where the double barrelled Duncan Graham-Rowe mentions Henry Ford and his production of ethanol, but then talks only about rapeseed and maize (corn). Further, he warns against using up agricultural land for biofuels, but not a word about waste cellulose, such as stems, unwanted bark and other parts of the plant not used for food or fibre. This is crucial to the debate, and what is devious on the part of so many of the glorified debaters given space in the church and the media, is that they leave out the CRUCIAL part of the debate, entering at large celverly on some PART of the debate so as to push their agenda, which, dangerously, leads us back to petrol dependency, cotton usage, and soya consumption. By keeping us on petrol, major players in the options market can make a killing - literally - and they can well afford to pay people like Tasmin Omond to carry out this subterfuge.
But then again, this analyis may be rebutted by those who think that Tamsin Omond and crew are just 'plane stupid'.
And maybe they are. Whichever the case, treachery or stupidity, we cannnot afford to let this self congratulatory and trendy crowd ruin our lives with their mistakes. They are very self-centred gatekeepers with huge influence in the press, it is like they have hijacked a plane and we need the rational to storm the cockpit and get it back on the correct course.
Let's roll.

REVIEW OF ECO-CHIC: THE FASHION PARADOX

This book, with almost the same name as a book published earlier this year by Matilda Lee of the Ecologist, finally gives a bit of space to hemp. Sandy Black is the author, and she appears to have done a good bit of research, albeit UK-centric, and one might note rather Brighton-centric at that. The bulk of the book is on cotton/organic cotton, and yes there is mention of the fact that cotton drinks up too much water, there is even an image of the Aral Sea, showing its depletion.

Chapters tend to feature specific designers, and as such tend to read as infomercials, complete with full colour pictures from their ads, with some emaciated looking models. This is a paperback coffee table book, but not just all images and breezy text, it serves as a history of the UK eco-fashion industry from the late '90s to the present. The very good resource guide and somewhat good bibliography (it does include Hemp for Victory, which was pointed out to her by Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop in Brighton). There is no index, sadly.

Hemp is mentioned on pp. 21, 42, 62, and 126-131. There was a fair amount of effort put into this, going so far as to feature THTC quote Mina Hegaard and Chris Conrad, but marred by the obvious inconsistency of stating on one page that hemp cultivation was illegal in the UK, then talking about hemp cultivation in the UK, along with a picture of such; which those in the know assert is from Bobby Pugh's hemp farm in the mid-'90s.

Sandy Black is well known in the UK for her work in fashion, and this book will be passed around and read by fashionistas from Brighton to Glasgow. What she has had to say about hemp has been basically positive and accurate, but one does wish she had said more, or used images of hemp clothing rather than images of buds, leaves and a farm.

Eco-Chic is published by Black Dog Press, London. 4to, pbck, pp. 256. ISBN- 978 1 906155 09 4

£24.95/$39.95

THE REAL THING HEMP

Image left is Helen James of Innocent Oils with her Real Eco Bag - it reads: "REAL ECO BAGS ARE MADE FROM HEMP". It was made from 100% organic Romanian hemp and produced in the UK by The Hemp Shop.