Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
P.E.A.C.E. is an individual communication arts project, started in 1991 on Maui, Hawaii, by ecologist, biodynamic agriculturist and photojournalist, Paul J. von Hartmann. Paul has been in Europe since 1996, speaking truth to power internationally, on TV, radio, and in newspapers, networking with the global drug policy reform community to end Cannabis prohibition.
The primary objective of P.E.A.C.E. is to help heal fundamental imbalances being induced by prohibition of the world's most useful organic agricultural resource: Cannabis (a.k.a. hemp, 'marijuana'). Cannabis is the only common seed with three essential fatty acids (EFAs) in proper proportion for long-term consumption. Cannabis is also the best available source of organic vegetable protein on Earth.
In 1994 President Clinton issued Executive Order 12919, identifying Cannabis as a "strategic" food resource. Knowledge of the true value of Cannabis conveys "self-evident" Natural Rights to utilize this essential and unique plant, which extend far beyond the rightful jurisdiction of any court.
75% of the diseases which are likely to kill people in developed countries are the result of fat degeneration at the cellular level. Essential fatty acids are called "essential" because for optimum health, proper physical and mental development, eating EFAs is not optional. In addition, EFAs move cholesterol and toxins out of the bloodstream, bolster the immune system, strengthen cell walls, and benefit every system in our bodies.
The power to prohibit any unique and essential Natural resource could never be within the reasonable jurisdiction of any court. Moral accountability for inducing such a universal degree of harm does not exist in government. "Self-evident" human rights include the right to grow the world's best food. Cannabis seed is potentially the most abundant, and the most sustainable source of vegetable protein on Earth. Cannabis is also the best choice for clean, renewable energy, which is critical to sustainable regional economics.
Prohibition has obviated free-market economics, effectively delegating people's fundamental right to survive, to the control of discompassionate, dysfunctional, corrupt and unlawful corporate political entities. By inducing essential resource scarcity, "extinctionistic" imbalances have been imposed, over several generations. This has increasingly toxified the environment, skewed mankind's economics, perverted human values, and bankrupted our collective spirit.
The Water Planet becomes more toxic every day. In developed countries, one person in three dies of cancer. The balance of life in Earth's oceans, lakes and rivers is being quietly destroyed by chemical pollution. Radioactive contamination, soil erosion, species extinction, economic disparity, mass emigration, illness, hunger, crime, corruption, stress, increasing violence, loss of civil liberties, and global terrorism are obvious symptoms of imbalance whose root causes are so fundamental that they are beyond common perception.
The probability of mankind developing sustainable existence on this planet is slipping further away, faster than most people are willing to contemplate. Man's economic system has been based on toxic, unevenly distributed, finite resources for too long a time. Accounting of the real costs of toxic industrialism hasn't factored in the inconveniently unprofitable environmental "externalities" that would reveal morally unthinkable and unacceptable costs of petroleum and nuclear energies, when compared with non-polluting, Earth-conscious energy production processes.
Exercising the individual right of non-violent civil disobediance by publicly planting Cannabis in the U.S. twice, Paul was convicted in Federal Court as a "tax protester" for formally refusing to give money to a government that puts people in jail for growing the most useful plant on Earth. Project P.E.A.C.E. has actively attempted to transcend "extinctionistic" prohibition laws through a thirteen-year long, international campaign of individual responsibility for the truth about the ecological significance of the Cannabis plant. The spiritual dimensions of the extended effort that has become a life's work, have led to recognition of the truly sacramental nature of the Cannabis plant.
The colossal shift in human values that's necessary for achieving sustainability on Earth, can most efficiently be achieved through historical, scientific, realistic re-valuation of the Cannabis plant. Proportionate respect and an accurate assessment of this functionally determinate resource is urgently needed, to end the manipulative, economically-driven prohibition, causal to so many radical imbalances.
Particular urgency exists for release of non-violent "Green Prisoners." Free access to organic herbal therapeutics for people who find healing value in them is of immediate concern to the sick and dying. Because Cannabis is an herbal therapeutic, it is the safest and most readily available herbal remedy there is, for the greatest number of ailments. Hemp seeds are the world's most effective preventative nutritional resource.
Removal of Cannabis from the "black market" would allow the world's most useful agricultural resource to compete in a truly "free market". This shift is critical if mankind is to develop sustainable existence on Earth. Induced scarcity of an essential resource is leading to fundamental synergistic collapse of Natural systems. The growing incidence of cancer is one symptom of increasing, fundamental imbalances in our environment, but there are many more. Armed aggression and terrorism are also fundamentally related to essential resource disparity.
In India, Mahatma Gandhi established the right to harvest salt from the sea, based on the same principles of fundamental human rights that dictate our right to farm Cannabis. Prohibition of Cannabis violates people's most basic Natural right, the right to survive.
It is "self-evident" that no one needs permission from the government to survive. To concede this point violates Natural Laws that define morality. Any species that falls into disrespect for primarily significant Natural Laws will certainly devolve through spirtual fraud to eventual extinction.
Cannabis has never been truly illegal because it is part of a more significant, ancient order which has been evolving on this planet for millions of years. Ours is a chronologically young, arrogant, self-centered species. To continue prohibition of Cannabis, in the face of current knowledge and understanding, is self-defeating and reckless to the point of being sociopathic.
Mankind is a small part of a gigantic Natural Order, with a dangerously limited understanding of how the "Web of Life" works. The Cannabis plant's exceptional nutritional profile, remarkable agricultural characteristics, and extreme practical versatility, make Cannabis a critically determinate resource, which is essential for mankind to evolve sustainability within the primarily significant Natural Order.
Fuels, food, herbal therapeutics, building materials, paints, varnishes, cloth, paper, plastics, rope...the list of products that can be made from hemp has been estimated to be between 25,000 and 50,000. This cannot be said of any other species.
Because of it's unique nutritional, industrial, and agricultural properties, Cannabis is critical to organic, sustainable rotational agriculture. Instead of prohibiting Cannabis, it would be wiser to use the plant to discourage pest infestation, regenerate desertified lands, reduce soil erosion, provide food and cover for other species, remineralize the soil and de-toxify contaminated soil and air.
Cannabis-specific biological warfare agents being developed by dangerously sociopathic 'drugs & wars' governments, are the manifestation of a warped economic system, mutating to perpetuate anti-Natural laws. These "laws" have enabled dominant economic empires which have manipulated political policy for three generations. It is behaviorably predictable that such an economic system would develop, but it does not serve anyone to tolerate regressive cultural inertia to the point of extinction.
Cannabis has never been and can never be objectively judged as truly illegal. Natural Laws are critically determinate, practically significant, and interminably abiding. By comparison, man's self-inflated "laws" are meaningless. Consider that mankind could unanimously legislate any number of "zero-tolerance laws", prohibiting the sun from rising. Nature has one law that says it will rise. Such is the relative significance of man's laws in relation to Natural Law. Human society has evolved into acceptance of an anti-Natural economic system based on unsustainable activities, long enough to forget the practical importance of respect for Natural Law.
Cannabis prohibition statutes are as extinctionistic as any law can be. The predictable behavioral result of prohibition is that a lot of peaceful people who recognize the true value of the Cannabis plant are marginalized, fined, and emprisoned, providing human feedstock for the lucrative "economics of punishment".
U.S. "tax-payers", intimidated by threats of government audit, continue to support the multi-national military/industrial oligarchy with income taxes which are morally and Constitutionally degenerate. Vested in toxic inefficiency by default, cowed by pressures of survival in today's cut-throat economy of scarcity, such behavior has led to synergistic collapse of Natural systems and armed conflict.
Prohibition has enriched the black market, made thugs of police, shamelessly corrupted a blatantly unobjective judicial system, violently accellerated the economics of scarcity, increased pollution and franchised punishment. It is predictable that such a system would pervert social evolution to promote abuse of toxic, unevenly distributed and expensive chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol (Thornton, Gray).
Growing and injesting fresh, fertile, organic Cannabis seed, roots and leaves is a preventative nutritional approach to achieving optimal health. As an abundant, globally distributed source of vegetable proteins, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and EFAs, Cannabis seed is uniquely valuable.
After decades of grassroots activism and public education, Cannabis has finally been recognized as an herbal therapeutic which is uniquely effective for many ailments. Cancer, AIDS, arthritus, Multiple Sclerosis, asthma, muscle spasticity, neuralgia, osteporosis, epilepsy, Alzheimers disease, chronic pain, mental disorders, alcoholism, sexual dysfunction, bacterial infections and many other health problems can be successfully prevented, treated and sometimes cured through use of Cannabis.
As a raw material for Earth-compatible industries, Cannabis is functionally superior to and less expensive than what is currently in use for fuel, paper, cloth, construction materials, paints, lubricating oils and much more. Most importantly, Cannabis is a critically determinate resource in repairing damage done to the environment by chemically-intensive agricultural practices, over-grazing, de-forestation, and soil erosion.
With increasing global warming, seismic activity, more extreme weather, radioactive contamination, global terrorism, and over-population posing incalculable threats to the availability of essential resources, it is obvious that new thinking is needed. Considering the radical degree of environmental degradation occuring all over the planet, there is ample moral justifcation for growing Cannabis, out of prudent necessity.
Farming Cannabis as an energy feedstock may be the most peaceful, sustainable, global security there is. With the plant's exceptional adaptability to a broad range of soil and climate conditions, critical resource distribution would achieve it's greatest spread through cultivation of Cannabis. Cannabis is, potentially, the best available source of vegetable protein on the planet. Protein is the limiting factor in calculations of the food requirements for the world's population.
In the absence of moral accountability for the truth, there can be no legal obligation to obey extinctionistic "laws" prohibiting free cultivation, manufacture, and trade of the most valuable agricultural resource on the planet. If anyone can give one good reason that's true, not to grow Cannabis, then Project P.E.A.C.E. will stop advocating the cultivation of it.
An ongoing, international "Town Hall Meeting", to achieve broadbased public consensus, is the most efficient way to effect necessary changes in a timely way. Such a forum would blanket the planet with the truth about Cannabis, using all available electronic technology to peacfully transcend prohibition of this essential resource.
Time is the limiting factor in the equation of survival. By the time people realize it's too late to heal this planet, it will have been too late for some time. It is vital to realize that catastrophic, irreversable synergistic collapse of Natural systems could occur without commonly perceptable warning.
Send E-Mail to: projectpeace@yahoo.comCopyright © 2000 Paul J. von Hartmann. All Rights Reserved