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From the FDA's website:

On September 22, 2009 a ban on cigarettes containing certain characterizing flavors went into effect. The ban, authorized by the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, is part of a national effort by FDA to reduce smoking in America.

According to the act

…a cigarette or any of its component parts (including the tobacco, filter, or paper) shall not contain, as a constituent (including a smoke constituent) or additive, an artificial or natural flavor (other than tobacco or menthol) or an herb or spice, including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee, that is a characterizing flavor of the tobacco product or tobacco smoke

In short, it's not illegal to possess them, but it is illegal to sell them. However, you can't get them anymore because nobody's able to sell. It's supposedly to keep kids from starting smoking. That lie is so easy to see through, because this legislation was supported by Philip Morris, an American cigarette manufacturer.

• They're not banning menthol cigarettes, which are a major cash cow for American cigarette companies. Clove cigarettes are imported from Indonesia.
• Kids who smoke haven't heard of clove cigarettes, and typically smoke marlboros or camels. The big demographic to be affected by this: people who wear black and go to Cure concerts, NOT kids.
  
• They're not banning flavored alcohol (wine coolers, schnapps, the new Bacardi-Ice-type malt beverages, etc), which kids DO consume.
• If we're serious about stopping kids from smoking, why not ban cigarettes outright? Are the big US tobacco companies still pushing it to kids overseas?

This is about US tobacco companies getting a stronger hold on the US tobacco market, by literally making the competition illegal. In fact, if you look closely, you'll note that this legislation goes against legislation in the WTO agreement that the US signed onto.

This is remarkably similar to the conspiracy of the corporate power grab against industrial hemp, except this one is obvious and right in front of us. It's hard to say where the industrial hemp suppression originally came from, but at this stage, it's obvious that it should no longer be suppressed (for environmental and economic reasons). The main reasons now for not legalizing industrial hemp are:

• There actually now are competing industries (oil, ethanol, timber/paper, cotton) that don't want hemp back in the mix because it is a mighty useful plant.
• It is not easy to tell from a distance whether a plant is industrial hemp or actually contains cannibis flowers on it. My guess is that as long as the war on marijuana continues, there will be little headway made against laws pertaining to growing hemp.
  

Compare the complexities regarding the illegality of hemp and marijuana to the simple change of making clove cigarettes illegal. The former two remain illegal because of the ability to wield a continuance of economic and social power (including the drug war's value as a tool for perpetuating a powerful institutional form of racism), and the latter is simply a bald-faced power-grab by the corporations who have the most to gain, though considering how many menthol cigarette cartons I've seen in downtown Oakland, one could build an argument that race and class play a factor in the cigarette policies as well.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: drug war, economics, indifferent corporations, interconnected web, racism, renewable energy

Today's service at First UU San Francisco was dedicated to the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office. Here is a picture of the preamble to the UN Charter, drafted 60+ years ago,written as a response to the end of WWII, "the war to end all wars." This picture was taken down on UN Plaza, by where Hyde St. meets Market. St.



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chant/prayer/mantra: Put an end to the war machine, and devote all those lost resources to peacetime prosperity efforts.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: economics, equal rights, globalism, multiculturalism, paradigm shift, parousia, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, theological sources, universal health care

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THIS should be right up there with healthcare reform.

What the person at the link says is mostly about Biofuels, which I think are only a part of the equation, but there is a lot of good information about algae and industrial hemp there, so that's why I put up the link.

chant/prayer/mantra: free and natural. that's how i want to be


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: indifferent corporations, personal bookmarks, renewable energy, USA, yachts

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Check out this link, and you can see how much the US owes and has in assets, both in the government and held privately. There's a lot more I'd like to see this page become, as it doesn't tell the whole story yet. I'm going to also put a link to this on the column at the left.

There's a lot of interpretation that can be done just from this data, but I'm not going to do that right now. There are a few important numbers to look at however.

1. Note the Gross Domestic Product (upper right), and compare to the US Budget Deficit (YTD, upper-left) and the interest on Debt (upper left, a little lower). When the interest on debt grows too large, it is a drain on the economy, in that it cuts into the government's ability to pay for other programs. Who do we owe all that principal and interest to?
2. The largest (by a factor of 30!) number on the page is Currency and Credit Derivates ($589.232284 trillion at 1:30 on Oct 22). This is the fabricated money partially responsible for the big trouble we are in. I am surprised to see that it is going down, and wonder what that actually means. Is somebody actually trying to regulate this, or is this currency being pulled off the market.
3. In many of these numbers, it's not simply the numbers that are important to watch, but the rate of change of the numbers, and the rate of change of that change (the acceleration).


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Capitalism, classism, economics, globalism, indifferent corporations, oppression, personal bookmarks, politics, theological sources, USA

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This article seems to have something important to say.

I'm going to come back and check it out.

lyrics: Theme from Mario Brothers.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: personal bookmarks, theology

No loitering, for birds, or people.

If you click-thru and look closely, you can see the little sharp wiry things to keep the birds from perching on this ledge about ten feet up. On this side of the block in the Tenderloin, there is nothing except this building with its alternating grey and beige stone. No doors, no windows, and a barren sidewalk. And several of these "No loitering" signs.

Labels: homelessness, indifferent corporations, oppression

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I know I haven't said all that much on immigration reform, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking on it, and I just came across an article with a long list of principles that should be satisfied by meaningful immigration reform. I agree with these.

Three key points:
1. The US has created a system where undocumented immigrants have no legal recourse, and businesses that hire them can treat them very unfairly without fear of recrimination.
2. US policies of interference in other countries (Including the drug war in Mexico and Columbia, School of the Americas harming the countries of Central America, and a variety of unfair lending practices that leave developing nations in the lurch) leave those countries economically destitute, forcing their workforce to other countries (including the US) to find work. Those practices need to end, so that our country is not exploiting the labor of other countries. We need to explore ways of real cooperation.
3. Incarcerating undocumented immigrants and putting them to work in prison at sub-minimum wage? Highly unethical, yet this treatment seems par for the course for those incarcerated in US prisons.

chant/prayer/mantra: May we all recognize our common humanity, beyond any thoughts to human-created national boundaries.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Capitalism, changing the prison paradigm, classism, equal rights, globalism, immigration reform, racism, USA

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Poor Firefox. I'm giving it a bit of an ego problem.



















When I go to shut down my computer (which doesn't have hibernate for some reason), if I have open tabs in Firefox and want to save them, I just Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the task manager, and end the Firefox.exe process, then shut down. When I reboot and open Firefox the next day, the tabs are still there, but Firefox thinks it messed up. I like features like this. More applications should have fail-safes built into them where they remember exactly what they were doing.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: computers, theological sources

Ostrich eggs for 30 bucks at whole foods

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"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

This quote is often incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela. I suppose the most important thing is that the message gets out there, but correct attribution and dispelling misinformation is a good thing.

lyrics:
"Among the metal ones a messenger will soon arrive."
from 10001110101, by Clutch

And some extra awesomeness, this time from this year's convocation sermon by our revered school president, Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker(she also writes books):
"We can only bear with the tasks that are larger than ourselves if we are refreshed and sustained by sources larger than ourselves."

I needed that.

pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: our mission, personal bookmarks, theological sources