by Obiora Embry

Created on: May 19, 2009   Last Updated: July 11, 2010

We the people, the inhabitants of the U.S. and the Earth have a responsibility to solve the problems that we helped to create...the problems that began when we let greed, fear, ignorance, arrogance, a lack of respect for the Earth (that we inherited from our ancestors and will leave for our children after we expire), and the visual and aural propaganda to influence our daily thoughts and decisions.

We owe it to the unborn and yet to be thought of, to rediscover what it means to be "human," responsible, to distinguish fact from fiction, to recognize that not everyone in our country has the same standard of living, and to work together to solve problems. We also have to recognize that all change must first begin with ourselves.

We must demand that the automakers quit playing "brand new" when it comes to non-gasoline and diesel vehicles. Henry Ford's first Model T ran on ethanol produced from hemp and was built using only plants—combination of flax, wheat, hemp, spruce pulp, and soy beans—except for steel, which was used for the frame. Rudolph Diesel, the "inventor" of the diesel engine worked on the idea of a solar engine between 1880 and 1890. In 1900, he unveiled a diesel engine that ran on peanut oil at the World's Fair Exposition in Paris, France. The research, automobiles, and ideas of Ford and Diesel should already be known to automobile manufacturers and now to us. However, for us to understand why this technology has been stifled for so long, we must understand the continuum that began once Sir Percy Cox and others at the end of World War I carved up the Ottoman Empire and created the "Middle East."

The new boundaries within the old Ottoman Empire were designed to guarantee conflict and keep the region divided so that the money derived from the petroleum would be easier to negotiate. The instability created within the "Middle East," a petroleum shortage fear in the 1920's, policies in Washington being defined by corporations, and the "Red Line Agreement" of 1928 helped to spiral a domino effect nationally and internationally that still exists today. The "Red Line Agreement" gave the Near East Development Corporation—consortium of 5 large U.S. petroleum companies—23.75% of the Turkish Petroleum Company's shares in the new British mandate, Iraq and joint development of other petroleum fields within the Red Line.

These actions have been a primary cause of the following:

- Marihuana Tax Act, which paved the way for hemp and marihuana

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