This is a message that promotes the truth about pot. If this is something your mind can’t tolerate, go back to your beer and TV and listen to Fox News go on and on about the evils of hemp addiction...

If on the other hand, you have a brain and are looking for a way to promote the one natural substance that can improve almost every industrial sector it plays in, you and your friends will love wearing these incredibly groovy informative T-shirts to spread the word, a powerful tool in the war of information, which is the only way a final victory will ever be won in our battle to legalize hemp. The free speech issue and the artwork are why they continue to be the top selling T-shirt at the Hemp House in Paia, Maui, Hawaii. 

While special interest groups aligned against the industrial and personal use of hemp seem to control the media, they and the government they fund with lobbyist dollars have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo to ensure continued toxic petroleum-based industrial manufacture. I recently read that 73% of Americans now favor the complete legalization of marijuana. (Small wonder, when prescription drugs alone kill more than 1,600 people a week, worldwide.) In a free society, why should the government, favoring a monopoly, decide what medicines we take?

Especially when it's been proven in clinical studies that Tobacco is the real "gateway drug." It is more addicting than heroin and kills more than all illegal drugs, wars, disease, and traffic accidents combined. Although neither tobacco nor alcohols are called drugs by our leaders, both are dangerous drugs. Alcohol makes most people do stupid things. It is responsible for a large number of traffic accidents, most domestic violence and much violent behavior in general - a bad drug.

William is an artist interested in science and history who has created a classically beautiful and informative T-shirt that relays the historical, scientific and cultural reasons why we should not only legalize hemp, but switch to hemp for our growing fuel needs.

These informational T-shirts promote a historical precedence for the legalization of hemp: George Washington, the father of our country, grew and smoked it. Both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper, and it's time we honour the principles of freedom and self-determination that these documents represent by standing up for it.

Hemp is not just about getting high, which is just ONE of the THOUSANDS of uses of this ancient and versatile plant. We need to legalize hemp to correct our oxygen, global warming, and carbon problems.

The real fuel of internal combustion engines is oxygen. Most of the oxygen in our atmosphere was created between 35 and 115 million years ago during the Paleozoic and Cretaceous periods. At the end of the Cretaceous period, we had about 27% oxygen in the atmosphere. Now we now have only about 18% oxygen in our ecosphere. The five nucleotides that make up our brains and DNA need 16% oxygen to survive.

We are rapidly running out of the oxygen it takes to support human brains and our DNA. Plankton currently creates 60% of the oxygen we breathe. They live in the top 18 inches of our oceans. Plankton are being polluted out of existence by oil spills, continental fertilizer runoff, etc. 

We've cut down half of our planet's forests since 1960. As a result of these suicidal actions, the world's temperatures are rising, as are those of our oceans, further diminishing plankton growth. More people are driving cars than ever, producing more carbon and higher temperatures, using up the oxygen we need to breathe and sustain life.

What can we do about all this? Here are some facts and suggestions: 

1) Hemp, the fastest growing plant on the planet, produces more oxygen than any other plant that grows in any climate except Polar Regions.

2) Hemp absorbs more carbon per acre than any other plant with hardly any water and without pesticides. Its leaves can be baled like hay and transported to make alcohol to run car engines.

3) Hemp seed oil powers diesel engines without refinement or additives. The original fuel used by Mr. Diesel for his engines, hemp oil produces little carbon and no carbon monoxide, or the pinging of diesel fuels we now use, without the poisonous additives. 

4) Growing enough hemp to fuel our autos could rebuild the ozone layer in a few decades. 

5) Growing hemp cools the atmosphere, attracts rain, and could end the extreme weather patterns that now plague us. 

6) Industrial hemp grows well using sewage for fertilizer, reducing cost and pollution of our waters, eliminating the need for chlorine that destroys the ozone. 

7) Hemp is much cheaper than petroleum. Considering the cost of protecting our secret oil pipeline from the Caucasus Mountains through Afghanistan and Iraq to the Persian Gulf, not to mention the atrocities, human misery, and environmental and fiscal costs of war. 

8) Hemp byproducts range from ice cream and bread that are complete proteins, to much stronger plywood than that made from trees. There are hundreds of other uses for hemp pulp.

9) Hemp for fuel can help eliminate the need for toxic petroleum-based oil and keep our money at home. 

It's long been monitored that the world's once inexhaustible oceans are rapidly becoming depleted by humanity's endless hunger. Now experts from throughout the seafood supply chain will convene at SeaWeb's ninth International Seafood Summit from January 31 to February 2, 2011, at The Westin Bayshore Hotel to discuss global perspectives on the theme "Responsibility without Borders?"

World-renowned businessman Yvon Chouinard, co-founder of outdoor outfitter Patagonia and the philanthropic initiative 1% for the Planet, will provide keynote remarks. The Summit will be opened with a blessing from Squamish Nation Elder Audrey Rivers. Other highlights will include a message from His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales.

The Seafood Summit brings together global representatives from the seafood industry and conservation community for in-depth discussion with the goal of making the seafood marketplace environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. Important issues such as sustainability and food security, traceability of seafood sources, impacts of ocean acidification, aquaculture, fair trade and certification, sustainability in developing nations along with the role of suppliers, chefs and others in the seafood chain will be discussed.

"We are at an important crossroads for the growing seafood sustainability movement," said SeaWeb President Dawn M. Martin. "Seafood is a global commodity and part of our global commons. As such, it is our collective responsibility to thoughtfully and collaboratively manage this valuable resource. The scope of this responsibility is enormous, the politics daunting and the economics critical, and it is just these challenges that underlie the theme of this year's Summit."

The Seafood Summit is internationally recognized as a key forum that inspires productive dialogue toward helping today's global business leaders, policymakers, producers, scientists and partners in the environmental movement critically examine the factors influencing progress toward a sustainable seafood market. For more information on the agenda or to register, please visit www.seafoodsummit.org.

Seafood Choices is an international program that provides leadership and creates opportunities for change across the seafood industry and ocean conservation community. We seek to create synergies and help identify creative solutions to long-held challenges. By building relationships and stimulating dialogue, Seafood Choices is encouraging and challenging all sectors of the seafood industry along the road toward sustainability. www.seafoodchoices.org

In addition to the Summit, SeaWeb is offering three unique field experiences that will provide invaluable insights into the production of sustainable seafood. The first involves an overnight trip (January 29-30, 2011) to Vancouver Island to explore shellfish production methods and includes visits to an oyster farm, oyster beds, a scallop farm, a shellfish hatchery, a state-of-the-art floating upwelling system (FLUPSY) and the stunning new Deep Bay Marine Field Station, offering a comprehensive look at local shellfish aquaculture. Cost: $150 USD.

The second field experience (February 3, 2011) will take participants to the Seattle area port of Ballard. Participants will have the opportunity to explore the docks and speak with local fishermen. The culture of this community will be front and center as the history of the halibut fishery, dynamics of international management and socioeconomics are presented by local management officials. Following an excursion to Pike Place Market, the day will end with a delicious dinner of black cod and halibut prepared by Seattle's leading chefs. Cost: $85 USD.

The third field experience will take place along the Vancouver coastline and is a 90 minute boat trip to learn firsthand about the B.C. spot prawn fishery from local fisherman Steve Johansen of Organic Ocean. There are no costs associated with this trip. Specific dates and times depend on participant interest.

To start off the creative's challenge from our last post, here's the first awareness raising ad to get the ball rolling. Titled "BP's Gift to the World" it plays off the biblical beatitude about the meek inheriting the Earth... once it's no longer worth anything...

Here it is already heading into six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon disaster and they still have gotten no closer to ending this disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, with tens of million gallons of oil having gushed out in an underwater oil volcano. I say volcano, because I think the word "spill" is misleading as it connotes a finite amount, while the damage that is occurring now is something along the lines of Biblical Proportions (as in a disaster of)....

The "green" oil company BP has bungled every chance to correct this matter, and it's been obvious that they are winging it with solutions that are targeted more at recovering the well than on stopping the leak. But now, with evidence turning up that is is not just a well geysering anymore, but major cracks and canyons seeping black death up from deep beneath the earth, their image is as ruined as a brand as the Gulf is as a habitat for life. You must keep in mind that one drop of oil can kill a fish, and there are millions of barrels coming into the environment... this is apocalyptic BP.

Greenpeace in the UK has decided to help raise awareness with a contest encouraging people to express their outrage by rebranding the BP logo and show their true nature. Entries are pouring in, with over 300 to date and the contest runs until the end of June. I grabbed just a handful of the more interesting ones for your viewing, you can see the entire collection here. Grab a copy and try your hand at retooling their logo to show this reckless and careless industry's true nature.

ORIGINAL BP LOGO:

About the logo: Our visual identity reflects the revolutionary quality of our business.
Our logo was launched in 2000, and was designed as a dramatic break with tradition. It is unlike any other energy identity, and symbolises a number of things - from the living, organic form of a sunflower to the greatest source of energy... the sun itself.

The colours of the 'Helios' - named after the Greek god of the sun - suggest heat, light and nature. It is also a pattern of interlocking shapes: like BP, a single entity created by many different parts working as one. This was particularly relevant, as the new brand was launched after a series of mergers and acquisitions. It united all the heritage companies and employees that now make up BP and its global brand.


THE LOGO REBRANDED
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