High Headliners!
No let up on the rain yet, every day this week and everywhere is mud, mud, glorious mud. The citrus are scattered under their trees and I can scarcely keep up with drying the bananas.
We’re still tidying up the last of the MardiGrass weekend but otherwise Nimbin has settled into winter, our quietest time of the year—much quieter now that Byron Bay has out priced most backpackers who used to do daily visits on the Happy Bus—no longer in operation.
A couple of historical stories caught my eye below. International researchers concluded a while back that the cannabis plant originated on the Tibetan Plateau about twenty million years ago. Now they think it might be twice as old but what is known is that it was one of the five main grains used by our ancestors, the others are rice, soy, barley and millet.
When you think about the plants high protein seed, super strong fibre and how it is so fast growing, no wonder it was called ‘God’s Gift’. Moreover, that’s without mentioning it being the safest and best medicine!
The other story I liked is about “The Prohibition Paycheck”, something the mainstream rarely discusses. I’m always going on about Big Pharma and the police and privatised prisons, the obvious losers if we can get weed legal. They all lobby hard to maintain its illegality. Then there’s the alcohol and tobacco industries, with the latter now investing in weed world.
Then the story, in cannabis.net, talking about plastics and fossil fuels, which is refreshing. Hemp was a direct threat in the 1930’s to the new petrochemical and synthetic fibre industries. Today, the plastic industry produces 400 million tons annually and we all know, as Henry Ford said, “Anything that can be made from hydrocarbons can be made from carbohydrates”.
Then there’s the booming industries of rehabilitation clinics and treatment, often court mandated. It’s all just business, capitalism at its worst. Politicians have used prohibition for decades to target minority groups. Nixon’s war on drugs rode in on associating hippies with ‘marijuana’ and the blacks with heroin, and we all know how they love the “tough on crime” talk at election time.
They seem to be as frightened of being seen as soft on ‘drugs’ as they are of the ‘drugs’ themselves.
Love to everyone.
Michael Balderstone
Nimbin HEMP Embassy Head
