Evel Knievel

Evel Knievel (/ˈiːvəl kɨˈniːvəl/;^[1] October 17, 1938 – November 30, 2007)

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Sidecar + Space Cadet Helmet

Castellano Lunch

Mosley Tribes + Crooks & Castles

Hood Freestyle

Corpses From Hell

Paint job Honda CX 500

Corpses From Hell paint job CX 500 from Richard Baybutt on Vimeo.

Bitch-slapped by Batman

Heavy Bike Dirt Action

Fun time USA!

Express Yourself

Lane Splitting

Near Cardiff.



Source: Youtube

Hunter S. Thompson - The Edge

Happy Birthday ... & thank you!

A Very Interesting Story

How Marijuana Became Illegal

by Bud Fairy

Sula Io > Q: What is hemp? Just another word for marijuana?

Yeah, and that's one of the things that happened in 1937. Cannabis Hemp was one of history's most widely used plants. Tincture of Cannabis was the basis for almost every patent medicine prior to the discovery of aspirin. Hemp was used for rope, twine, and cloth. Sailing ships were loaded with hemp. The word "canvas" is derived from "cannabis", because that's what canvas was. Sails were made of hemp because salt water deteriorated cotton. Old sails were made into wagon covers and ultimately original Levi's Jeans. And the pressed oil from hemp seeds was used for paints and varnishes. Everyone knew what hemp was. But nobody knew what marijuana was.


Basically, it came down to this. America in the 1900's saw two powerful rivals, agriculture and industry, faced off over several multi-billion dollar markets. When Rudolph Diesel produced his engine in 1896, he'd assumed it would run off of vegetable and seed oils, especially hemp, which is superior to petroleum. Just think about that for a second. A fuel that can be grown by our farmers that is superior to foreign oil. What a lot of history would have been rewritten!

Ok. So we have an elite group of special interests dominated by Du Pont petrochemical company and it's major financial backer and key political ally, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Mellon was a banker who took over Gulf Oil Corporation. In 1913, Henry Ford opened his first auto assembly line, and Gulf Oil opened its first drive-in gas station. In 1919, with ethanol fuel poised to comptete with gasoline, Alchohol Prohibition descended on the nation. Lucky Mellon. When President Harding made him Secretary of the Treasury, he was considered the richest man in America. In the 1920's, Mellon arranged for his bank to loan his buddies as Du Pont money to take over General Motors. Du Pont had developed new gasoline additives and the sulfate and sulfite process that made trees into paper.

In the 1930's, Ford Motor Company operated a successful biomass fuel conversion plant using cellulose at Iron Mountain, Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch ethyl-acetate and creosote from hemp. The same fundamental ingredients for industry were also being made from fossil fuels.

During the same period, Du Pont was developing cellophane, nylon, and dacron from from fossil fuels. Du Pont held the patents on many synthetics and became a leader in the development of paint, rayon, synthetic rubber, plastics, chemicals, photographic film, insecticides and agricultural chemicals.

From the Du Pont 1937 Annual Report we find a clue to what started to happen next: "The revenue raising power of government may be converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reoganization".

Ok, enter William Randolph Hearst. Hearst's company was a major consumer of the cheap tree-pulp paper that had replaced hemp paper in the late 19th century. The Hearst Corporation was also a major logging company, and produced Du Pont's chemical-drenched tree pulp paper, which yellowed and fell apart after a short time. Fueled by the advertising sold to the petrochemical industries, Hearst Newspapers were also known for their sensationalist stories. Hearst despised poor people, black people, chinese, hindus, and all other minorities. Most of all he hated Mexicans. Pancho Villa's cannabis-smoking troops had reclaimed some 800,000 acres of prime timberland from Hearst in the name of the mexican peasants. And all of the low-quality paper the company planned to make by deforesting it's vast timber holdings were in danger of being replaced by low-cost, high quality paper made from hemp.

Hearst had always supported any kind of prohibition, and now he wanted cannabis included in every anti-narcotics bill. Never mind that cannabis wasn't a narcotic. Facts weren't important. The important thing was to have it completely removed from society, doctors, and industry.
Around 1920 or so, a new word arose - "Marihuana". Through screaming headlines and horror stories,"marihuana" was blamed for murderous rampages by blacks and mexicans. Hearst continued to use his power of the press to impress on his readers the dangers of the "marihuana" plant.

When the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was formed in 1932, Mellon's nephew Harry Anslinger was appointed its head, a job in Mellon's treasury department that was created just for him. Treasury agents were beginning to operate on their own agenda. Deep in the throes of the depression, congress began to reexamine all federal agencies. Anslinger began to fear that his department was in danger of emasculation. Although worldwide, hemp was still big business, in 1935 the Treasury Department began secretly drafting a bill called The Marihuana Tax Act. The Treasury Department's general counsul Herman Oliphant was put in charge of writing something that could get past both Congress and the Court disguised as a tax revenue bill. Congress wasn't all that interested in the matter, seeing as all the information they had to work with was what was provided to them by Anslinger. They deliberately collected horror stories on the evils of marihuana pulled primarily from the Hearst newspapers, called Anslinger's Gore Files. Crimes that had never happened at all were being attributed to marihuana.

So, in 1937, Anslinger went before a poorly attended committee hearing and called for a total ban on marihuana. He stated under oath "This drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effects of which cannot be measured". Bureaucrats planned the hearings to avoid the discussion of the full House and presented the measure in the guise of a tax revenue bill brought to the six member House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Du Pont ally Robert Doughton of North Carolina. This bypassed the House without further hearings and passed it over to the Senate Finance Committee, controlled by another ally, Prentiss Brown of Michigan, where it was rubber stamped into law. Once on the books, Anslinger would "administer" the licensing process to make sure that no more commercial hemp was ever grown in the United States. Clinton Hesterm assistant general counsel for the Department of the Treasury, explained to the House Committee " The leading newspapers of the United States have recognized the seriousness of this problem and have advocated federal legislation to control.. marihuana...The marijuana cigarette is one of the most insidious of all forms of dope, largely because of the failure of the public to understand its fatal qualities."

125-year old Fulla Nayak, a resident Orissa, India

At the last minute, a few pro-hemp witnesses showed up. Most of the confusion came from the using of the word "marihuana". Most people had no idea that "marihuana", merely a slang word taken from a drinking song celebrating Pancho Villa's victory, "La Cucaracha", was the same thing as cannabis hemp, a plant which had been an important crop since the founding of the country. Ralph Loziers of the National Oil Seed Institute showed up representing paint manufacturers and lubrication oil processors, and stated that hempseed was an essential commodity. Dr. William C. Woodward of the American Medical Association spoke in defense of cannabis medicines and in protest of the way the bill was handled. Woodward complained that there was no certain data that marihuana use had increased, and stated that if it had, the "newspaper exploitation of the habit had done more to increase it than anything else". Asked point blank if he thought federal legislation was necessary, he replied "I do not .. it is not a medical addiction that is involved." Woodward went on to criticize the way the word "marihuana" had been used to deliberately confuse the medical and industrial hemp communities. "In all you have heard here thus far, no mention has been made of any excessive use of the drug or its excessive distribution by any pharmacist. And yet the burden of this bill is placed heavily on the doctors and pharmacists of the country, and may I say very heavily - most heavily, possibly of all - on the farmers of this country... We can not understand yet ... why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any initiative, even to the profession, that it was being prepared ... no medical man would identify this bill with a medicine until he read it through, because marijuana is not a drug, ... simply a name given cannabis."

A few days later, Representative Fred Vinson of Kentucky was asked to summarize the AMA's position. He lied to the effect that the medical group's legislative counsul (Woodward) "Not only gave this measure full support, but also the approval from the AMA."

The act passed without a roll call vote. Now we can see why it was prepared in secret - passage of the Act put all hemp industries firmly under the control of the very special interests that most benefited from its repression over the years - prohibition police and bureaucrats working in collusion with the petrochemical companies, the timber companies, the alcohol and tobacco industries, the pharmaceutical drug companies, and today, the urine testing, property seizure, police and prison industries.

In that same year, 1937, Du Pont filed its patent on Nylon, a synthetic fiber that took over many of the textile and cordage markets that would have gone to hemp. More than half the American cars on the road were built by GM, which guaranteed Du Pont a captive market for paints, varnishes, plastics, and rubber, all which could have been made from hemp. Furthermore, all GM cars would subsequently be designed to use tetra-ethyl leaded fuel exclusively, which contained additives that Du Pont manufactured. All competition from hemp had been outlawed.

The historical essay above was written by Bud Fairy and originally published on SF Net, the coffee house network. The HTML version - with emphasis, pictures and minor editing - was done by Hogeye Bill.

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Keep Your Eyes On the Road

Biker slams into UPS trunk. Love the "the sun don't have no prisoners."

Karen Stintz - New LRT

TTC Chair Karen Stintz unveils new TTC LRT streetcar.

TGIF - Thank Guu it's Friday!

Friday the 13th.

Sportinguistas

É melhor ter cuidado com essas gente.

Advancements in Urinal Technology

Splashguards for pisser. All class.
Courtesy Stanley Ho & Casino Estoril

Late Night in Lisbon

Chapito for Vinho Verde, chorico, more vinho, calamari & vinho.

Kawasaki

Mertola - Portugal

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd (Full Album)

Lynyrd Skynyrd's debut album



Tracks

1. I Ain't The One
2. Tuesday's Gone
3. Gimme Three Steps
4. Simple Man
5. Things Goin' On
6. Mississippi Kid
7. Poison Whisky
8. Free Bird

Andy's Jazz - Chicago

Beastie Boys

Stacks of Cash

Johnny Cash Money

Mom + Red Wine = A+

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Formula Vee

Formula Vee (USA and New Zealand also run formula first class which is the same chassis with later model Beetle part ad the larger 1600 motor other upgrades are disc brakes rack and pinion steering) and Formula 1200 (Canada)) is a popular open wheel, single-seater junior motor racing formula, with relatively low costs in comparison to Formula Ford or Formula BMW.

Wiki ...

Toronto Murder Map 2006 - 2012

The National Post maps out a history of Toronto shootings from 2006 to 2012. So far this year, Toronto police have reported 14 fatal shootings.

Foghat - Fool For The City (1975)

Foghat's Fool for the City, in it's entirety.


Tracklist:

1. Fool for the City
2. My Babe
3. Slow Ride
4. Terraplane Blues
5. Save Your Loving (For Me)
6. Drive Me Home
7. Take it or Leave it

English Broads at Euro 2012

God I love them!

Anthony Davidson & F458 Italia driven by Perrazini, goes airborne and crashes hard into the wall. Both drivers got out of the car on their own, Davidson is in hospital

The Decline of Facebook

Classic Zuckerberg.

Woodward & Bernstein

40 years after Warergate and they're still at work.

Fish Tacos

The One That Got Away

Squirrels On Steroids

Luminato - Taste of Toronto

Historic Distillery District - Toronto
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Surfs Up!

The Great Alaskan Bush Co.

Class of 2012.

Brooklyn Invitational

"Wild Thing" Rick Vaughn Bobblehead

Saturday Morning at the Mechanics

Cycleworld Superstore - Scarborough

AC/DC Live 1977

AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Although the band are commonly classified as hard rock and are considered a pioneer of heavy metal, they have always classified their music as rock and roll.

To date they are one of the highest grossing bands of all time. AC/DC underwent several line-up changes before releasing their first album, High Voltage, in 1975. Membership remained stable until bassist Mark Evans was replaced by Cliff Williams in 1978 for the album Powerage. Within months of recording the album Highway to Hell, lead singer and co-songwriter Bon Scott died on 19 February 1980, after a night of heavy alcohol consumption. The group briefly considered disbanding, but Scott's parents urged them to continue and hire a new vocalist. Ex-Geordie singer Brian Johnson was auditioned and selected to replace Scott. Later that year, the band released their highest selling album, Back in Black.

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Suzuki 250

Good things come in small packages

Is A Phantom Lover Destorying Your Love Life?

Happy Mother's Day!

A small token of my appreciation.

Triumph

Sarkozy's Final Farewell

Ocean's 11 (1960)

"Why waste those cute little tricks that the Army taught us just because it's sort of peaceful now."  Danny Ocean

Say Your Prayers & Eat Your Vitamins

Happy Birthday Willie!

Shotgun Willie Nelson

Marques Pombal Square 1974