The Diamond of the Pop world will be come diamonds in the real world.

Diamond company, LifeGem says it will turn a lock of Michael Jackson's hair into 10 diamonds.

Company founder, Dean VandenBiesen, confirms that an article in today's Daily News is legitimate and that the company will use hair retrieved from Jackson's horrific Pepsi commercial fire tragedy in 1984.

Vandenbiesen said the video footage from the commercial clearly shows a man throwing an Armani suit jacket over Jackson's burning scalp.

Shortly after, the same man is seen retrieving a lock of hair from the floor. A photo on the LifeGem website seems to show the Jacket and a square of paper on which a lock of hair is placed.

LifeGem says it needs only a relatively small amount of biological material to create a gem. "We only need 200 miligrams to create a 1 carat diamond. In this case, we have enough to easily make 10," Vandenbiesen says.

As to whether the hair is actually Jackson's, Dean said that based on the footage and verification by someone he calls 'the most famous hair collector in the world,' they are confident what they have is the real thing. However, Dean says the hair has not been DNA tested. He did not comment on whether that testing was planned.

According to a report in the on-line publication Orato, that surfaced days after Jackson's death, Gunther Von Hagens, anatomist and inventor of the plastination process and originator of Bodyworlds claims he will plastinate Michael Jackson's body.

The report claimed that von Hagens had been in talks with the Jackson family in the months prior to Michael Jackson's death and that permission had been granted for Jackson's body to undergo the procees in the event of his death. However, scandal rag TMZ, which was first to report Michael Jackson's death, claims the Orato report is false.

According to TMZ.com, "The director of publicity for Dr. Gunther von Hagens tells TMZ someone claiming to be from Jackson's management team did contact BodyWorlds several months ago about Jackson's interest in being preserved in plastic.

Although she says, "We can further confirm that Mr. Jackson is not now a registered body donor in the Institute for Plastination's Body Donation Program," the director does not categorically deny contact, nor did she state the Jackson family has denied the possibility, leaving much open to question.

END PROHIBITION NOW

Welcome back... I've been away... Twitter...y'know.

So, I committed to writing an article about cannabis, Marc Emery and about the laws in Canada. I knew when I committed that it would be a huge endeavour to compile all of that into 1200 words. I didn't succeed by the way. I'm at 1500 and something and there's a book left to write.

If you've been reading me for a while you may have caught a shift in my thinking. It happened about 2.5 years ago when my friends son (My Son That I Stole) was living with me while he was at school in our city. He's a regular toker and I, not knowing my ass from a hole in the ground on the subject of pot, was on a mission to prove to him that he was killing his braincells and himself from smoking weed.

After five hours of research, I had to go to him and apologise because everything I thought I knew was utter, unmitigated garbage.

Since then, I've read and read and read and the more I read, the more angry I am at the 'establishment' and what they're doing to people in my country. It's worse in the US but at least Hilary Clinton has admitted - this week in fact - that the US war on drugs is a colossal failure. Good. She's dead right about that.

Today I spoke to Jodi Emery, Marc Emery's wife. Marc's being extradited to the US, not for selling pot and not for selling seeds but for conspiracy. The Canadian Government had the option of keeping this man, a Canadian citizen, in Canada post sentencing (which, by the way shouldn't be happening at all***). But they declined and now a Canadian is going to the US to be tried under US law. HOW does THAT happen???

After speaking to Jodi, I was not only pissed off - not at her: she's a fighter - but at what's happening in Canada now but what the Harper 'government' has planned. Mandatory minimums. If those are established, you, YES YOU, could be charge with trafficking pot for something as simple as passing a joint or a baggie to someone else. Yes, passing it. AND you would then be subject to a minimum sentence of ? 18 months?

AND, the government then has the right to take your stuff - your house, your assets and your kids. I know. Sounds impossible but it isn't.

Now, for all of you who are sitting there going "well, if you smoke pot, you deserve what you get," Stop.

Cannabis has been used for eons and centuries. Until the US and Canada wanted to get rid of certain immigrant populations, it was legal in both countries. It wasn't even on the radar until the Mexican itinerant workers in the US in the '30s and the Chinese, who came to build the Canadian trans continental railway, started to bug the politicians in the respective countries. Then? WHAM! Criminalise pot. Since then, the machine has done everything it can to demonise a plant.

Well, it's addictive you say? No, it isn't. It may be habit forming for some, but so is having a glass of wine a day or two beers a day. Oh, wait; that's not correct. Alcohol IS addictive. Pot is not. (www.drugwarfacts.org)

Well, it's a gateway drug you say? No, it is not. in a US study that is now four or five years old, over 147,000,000 (yes, that's million) people in the US admitted to having used pot and a large percentage of those were 'last month' users. If pot were a gateway, then one would assume an equally large percentage of people would be using heroin or coke but they aren't. A very small portion of the population uses those drugs. If there's a gateway, it is nicotine or alcohol, both of which have a median first use age of 16 years. Pot? 17.5 years. (www.drugwarfacts.org)

It's cancer causing you say? Nope. Wrong again. If it were, the cancer industry would be on it like a pack of hounds and police forces everywhere would be hauling out the corpses. There aren't any. None.

Well, people die from it you think. No, they don't. A study on www.drugwarfacts.org clearly shows a ZERO for deaths from pot.

There are 5 recorded deaths in the UK between 1998 and 2004 (I'm pulling dates from memory; stats on www.drugwarfacts.org). It is not clear at all, however, what part, if any, cannabis played in those deaths. It looks like none.

Well, pot's way more dangerous than alcohol, right? No. Stoned people don't drive, don't fight, don't beat their wives (OK or their husbands or partners), aren't aggressive, don't commit crimes. In fact, people who are drunk but think the can still drive won't drive if they consume some weed. For some reason, weed even gives drunks enough clarity to keep them out of a car. Other studies also say that stoned drivers are more cautious, have much greater following distances, drive more slowly and are, well, paranoid and less likely to get behind the wheel at all anyway.

Did you know that the chemical composition of Ritalin is very, very close to cocaine? Yeah, like a couple molecules different. We give Ritalin to kids!!! Children are consuming a cocaine-like drug to keep them calm? What the F?

Did you know that over 1000 people die in the US annually - from Tylenol?

Did you know that some 45,000 people are killed due to alcohol in the US annually and that 15,500 of those are killed by drunk drivers? Yes. Killed by a stoned driver? NONE.

Well, pot kills brain cells! Yes, perhaps, but so does sitting in traffic, breathing disgusting exhaust fumes; so does drinking a couple pints; so does falling on your head when you're skiing; so does lack of sleep; so does blowing your nose too hard. What's your point? The brain has an almost unlimited capacity to regenerate cells and dendrites and nodes. There are a bunch of documented cases of people losing half their brain tissue and still leading perfectly fine, functional, use-of-all-appendages lives.

Well, pot sucks up your motivation drive. No, whatever is that hellishly wrong in your life that you want to be stoned 24/7 sucks your motivation and drive. Pot dulls the pain but the problem isn't pot. It's not solving the problem that's the problem.

OK. I'm done. I'm tired and I'm angry and I'm disappointed that so many people default to what they think they know rather than finding out.

So. Read.

WWW.DRUGWARFACTS.ORG This is a searchable database of studies.
It's the oracle. Ask questions. Go search. Please educate yourself; so many in power won't
www.theunionmovie.com
Woody Harrelson's "Grass"

Who funds "Partnership for Drug free America?" - The tobacco and liquor industries.

Prohibition creates crimewaves.

Respect

I just had what ended as a very sad conversation with my daughter about respect.

I raised my kids to acknowledged people and to say thanks when someone does something kind to or for them. Apparently, I am out of line expecting adults to, at least, acknowledge when I do a kindness for them.

In the case of strangers or near strangers, I'm often baffled when they can't manage a "thanks," but in the case of my niece, I'm full on offended and saying so to my daughter, who is very, very close to my niece and always has been, caused my daughter to hang up on me.

I am amazed at - and happy about - the extent to which my daughter will go to to support and defend her cousin. It's confirmation that to a large extent, how I feel people should treat each other has sunk in with her.

What's sad, though, is that I'm not sure that same defence comes my way.

Earlier this year, my niece spent nearly 30 days essentially living in my house, eating my food, using our utilities. During that month, we travelled by car seven hours to visit my daughter. I asked for gas money and told my niece that food was her responsibility. She didn't ante up more than $25 for the entire week, gas, food lodgings.

Neither here nor there did she lift a finger. She didn't wash a dish; she didn't offer to buy food; she didn't - not once - say "Thanks Auntie, I know I've been here a lot."

I was annoyed to be sure but I let it go. I know this kid and I know she's not concious of how she's acting. Her parents have spoiled her bloody rotten - not her fault - so she's as close to incapable of realising that she's a sucker fish.

What sent me over was an incident about six weeks later, when we ran into her at the local grocery store. This kid has never ever suffered for money, thanks to parents are generous, very much to a fault and who've spoiled their kids. So when I discovered my neice going through my grocery cart, eating food that I needed at home and that I hadn't yet paid for, I was furious and insulted and disgusted. I wrote her an explained why I was so annoyed. She didn't bother to respond. I know she recieved that message - she discussed it with someone else - so I'm even more annoyed that she didn't acknowledge to me.

My daugther and I were talking about it this morning and she, rightfully so, suggested I let it go because, despite my being appaled at my neice's behaviour, there is nothing I can do to change it.

My question is at what point is someone old enough to acknowledge that despite their having a right to live their life as they wish, they will offend people and that they are, I think, responsble for at the very least acknowledging when they've pissed somone off. I also think adults don't take endlessly and that they don't take other people for granted.

That statement caused my daughter to hang up on me. I must say I'm angry and confused and I feel really, really trampled upon, not only by my neice, for whom I've utterly lost respect, but by my daughter who will so intensely defend her spoiled cousin but who would not rise to my defense.

Am I wrong to expect at the least an acknowledgement?

I think not.

FINALLY; The mainstream begins to question....

I just want to say how THRILLED I am that the mainstream is beginning to ask questions about 9/11.

Click to hear what an architect has to say:


I also want to say this:

There is NO way that three state-of-the art buildings - all constructed to withstand an endless raft of possible attacks, fires and other damage - all fall straight down into their own footprints on the same day due to a 'terrorist' attack. NO way.

There is no way that a man in a cave had access to Thermite of any kind.

Jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel.

A 757 CANNOT hit a building, leave only a 16 foot hole, utterly disintegrate but leave enough biological matter to identify passengers by their fingerprints. THAT could NOT have happened.

There was no plane and there were no bodies, seats, debris, suitcases or parts of any aircraft in the field at Shanksville. THAT event did NOT happen.

Many people have accused me of wearing a tinfoil hat (meaning I'm a weird conspiracist). Well, I'd rather wear tin foil than choose the blindness the US government has perpetrated on its people.

9/11 is the most significant false flag incident in the last 50 years. The other two were Tonkin and Pearl Harbour. Both of those incidents were designed to get the US voting public on board with wars - Vietnam and WWII. Both those false flag incidents were highly successful - assuming you're ok with killing millions of people for profit.

9/11 is no different.

BLINDERS OFF!

Why are Christians presumptive assholes?

I've been contributing to a great blog recently, How Good is That? via its comments section. It's in the archives, right there to your right... top item. The guy who writes the blog is brilliant and deliciously controversial.

Some of the commenters are also super fab to read, some because they've considered what they're saying and others because they're so out to friggin' lunch.

One guy's comments have me in a state. At first I thought it was funny that he was calling me a snake and assuming I am male, but then I thought about and realised that he's exactly the type of religious person that makes people like me go "Hell NO!"

So, for the record some details about me.

First, briefly, although most people - religious types particularly - call me an athiest, that is not the case. I don't use the term because in order to be an athiest, one has to allow for the existence of a floaty god thingie in order to then say "I don't believe in god."

For me, it isn't a question of not believeing in a floaty god thingie. THERE ISN'T a floaty god thingie. I don't know what the term for that is but, for me, it isn't 'atheist.'

Now, for the rest of it:

After I wrote a previous response to a commenter (after he called me a snake), I realised that this Todd feller represents exactly what I much dislike about religious types. Two characteristics in particular: assumption (yes, there’s an ‘ass’ in that) and arrogance.

So Todd – and everyone else who’s reading this one and Jim’s excellent blog (and my comments on it) here’s who I am.

Eldest daughter of a family comprising seven sisters, an adopted (Chinese) brother and a step brother (two blended families).

FIVE of my cousins – all first cousins – are currently active, working ministers. My grandfather, great-grandfather and great-uncle and the five greats behind him were all ministers – 8 generations and soon to be nine.

My mother, father and step dad were all sunday-school teachers and the men were deacons. My Uncle is the only seller of church hand bells IN MY COUNTRY.

One of my first cousins is the head of the largest church organization in my country (and no, I won’t say which to protect HIM). Two of my second cousins will be ministers shortly.

I grew up in a church – literally: my father turned the sod for the building and helped build it. I went to kindergarten there and my mother had a school in the building, which was directly across a little city street from my house. I sang in the adult choir from the time I was 13 and was baptised at that age.

The bible was the first book read to me and was a daily presence in our home. I can still read it, if I must, in English AND French.

So Tom, because you’ve presumed that I am an uneducated, uninformed neophyte, I just want you to know that your presumptive, assumptive, uninformed stripes are GLARING.

The main difference between the presumptive, assoholic religious type and me – and Jim – is that, despite what is utter hokum to us, we would defend the right of said people to believe what they will until such time as it infringes on us. I think it’s garbage but I appreciate the commitment people have to their faiths.

Now. Go read something other than your bloody bible. You MUST be able to defend all aspects of an argument in order to argue well. This Todd dude can’t. I can.

To quote my brilliant youngest child, “My mind is so blue right now, even I’m not allowed in.”

More on Swine Flu

The media has taken a highly alarmist approach to reporting of the swine flu issue. I personally know two people who've had swine flu. Both took a week off work, suffered through it - and no, it wasn't fun - and that was the end of it. And no, I am not ill.

Except in very few situations, washing one’s hands and keeping one’s hands out of one’s eyes, nose and mouth, is the best possible prevention for any communicable disease.

What the media is NOT reporting is the pre-existing conditions of those who've died. The adults who have died recently have NOT died from swine flu. They have died because they were previously compromised. It is only possible, not proven, that swine flu hastened their deaths or had anything at all to do with those deaths.

Newspapers and radio are also ignoring the fact that, where the story relates to babies and very young children, most parents take their children to hospital, often for very minor complaints, when those children are ill.

It should be no surprise to anyone that a parent would take a youngster to hospital when that child is quite ill nor that the hospital keep that babe. Such is prudence when it comes to youngsters. But that does not have any relation to swine flu.

The GLARING omission, one the media as utterly ignored, is Roche Laboratories, the company that produces Tamiflu, has a vested interest in swine flu. The media is not asking WHY there is a sudden occurrence of a "pandemic" following the company’s stockpiling of Tamiflu and their June 2008 press releases, available on the company website, of their planning for a possible pandemic. How would they know? Why would they plan?

Swine flu and the so-called pandemic are false-flag events designed by a large, predatory corporation to promote sales of a product, in this case Tamiflu, which stocks the company now wishes to dispose of. It bears noting too that these created pandemics provide a very wide scale public testing of this company’s product.

There is absolutely no reason - NONE - for panic or school closures or termination of herds of pigs. All that does is continue to incite false, media- and corporate-created panic over nothing that regular hand washing won’t prevent.

The truth is that more - many more - people will die from AIDS and starvation, many of them children, in the next HOUR than will die from this flu.

The other truth is that in far too many cases, the vaccine is far more dangerous than the illness. See this article from 1976: "

Swine Flu

In 1976, a national influenza campaign was designed to immunize nearly the entire United States population in fear of an influenza pandemic. However, the A/New Jersey/1976/H1N1 vaccine, also known as the "swine flu" vaccine, was found to be linked with the development of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) and the program ended.

People consuming what passes for news must ask themselves what is NOT being reported and, more importantly, WHY those details are not being reported. The media has willingly, it seems, become very little more than a promotional vehicle for corporations with products to flog.

See http://buytamiflunow.co.uk/treatment-for-swine-flu-tamiflu/ for more.

Roche Pharmesceuticals implicated in Panic over Swine Flu

If you've been reading me for a while, you'll know that I am highly sceptical about how and why the media reports what and how they do. You'll also know that I detest everything to do with Big Pharma. That industry is highly suspect, predatory and founded on unethical business practices.

So, you will not be surprised to know that I went digging a bit about this Swine Flu "pandemic" and how it might have got itself into the news....

Roche Laboratories Inc issued two press releases in 2008, both regarding Tamiflu, their 'cure.'

09-23-2008	ROCHE ANNOUNCES TAMIFLU® ANTIVIRAL FLU MEDICATION IN AMPLE SUPPLY FOR 2008-2009 FLU SEASON
06-26-2008	ROCHE INTRODUCES PROGRAM TO FACILITATE CORPORATE PANDEMIC STOCKPILING OF TAMIFLU®

I hope you noticed, and that your heart jumped into your throat just then, the release of June 26th 2008.... "Program to facilitate corporate PANDEMIC stockpiling of Tamiflu..."

If you are naive enough to believe that the swine flu is anything approaching a pandemic and that there is no corporate interest behind the panic, stop it. Just stop.

The current world-wide economic 'crisis' has affected all business sectors. Any good business finds a way to increase its sales. Roche simply took advantage of a failing, desperate media, fielded a 'story' that would have the calculated benefit of increasing sales of a product that the company had stockpiled.

In the next HOUR, thousands and thousands will die from AIDS and starvation. In the next hour, internationally, one or two people may succumb to pre-existing conditions that MAY have been agrivated by the flu.

This is NOT a pandemic. This is a sales tactic for Roche.

It simply makes me furious the way that 80% of the western world sticks its barely educated head into the sand, does no reasearch (which the internet is very good for) and believes anything the media serves up as news. What an absolute abdication.

Open Mindedness....

Sadly lacking in the religious quarters of my family... but then so is the logical mind required to comprehend this great little animated short.

Many thanks to James Gardiner, who's blog is listed on the right here (please go visit).

Open-mindedness
by totocacapouet

Thanks for watching.

Conservative Party of Canada; Self- Attack?

An open letter to a Leader who obviously worships the failed McCain campaign and its tactics.

Mr. Harper:

These recent attack ads, and those planned, are regressive and damaging - to the Conservative Party.

During the recent US election, the McCain team made extensive use of such ads, very much to their detriment.

The issues upon which the attack ads have been based are inconsequential, particularly the idea that one's accent in French has anything to do with their ability to communicate well.

And a note on that point: Mr. Harper, your accent is decidedly English. Decidedly. Further, your continued missteps related to Quebec, her people and culture mark you as uninformed. I cannot imagine why you would allow yourself to become such an easy target...

As it relates to Mr. Ignatieff being out of Canada for 30 years, I would suggest, sir, that he has never divested himself of his Canadian-ness, his citizenship or his love for his home country.

Further, he has never misrepresented himself - as you have done: your assertions, and those of your party, that you are 'from the west,' or 'the first western PM,' are frank misinterpretations: four years at university does NOT qualify you as having come from the west. You are a born and bread Ontarian. It is offencive for you to claim otherwise.

Again, to bring up Mr. Ignatieff's 'faults' does little to hurt him but causes YOU extensive damage.

Mr. Ignatieff is an educated, considered, worldly leader. Whatever one's politics may be, one cannot deny that he is a highly skilled speaker and has an excellent grasp of international politics. His commitment to this country cannot be underestimated, nor will it be damaged by childlike arm-flinging and foot-stomping of the attack ad type.

Mr. Harper, your repeated mistakes, dishonesty and now your party's ridiculous expenditures on misleading, libellous advertising is a slap in the face to Canadians.

Such tactics apply only to the politically naive: is that the constituency you wish to attract? Those who do not read? Those who are not issues-oriented? Armchair politicos?

I am a writer and political analyst - from the west - and I am representative of many voters here who are shocked that The Conservative Party of Canada would even consider resorting to McCain-esque tactics. You cannot have such a short memory....

I guarantee you, these tactics will fail and they will further damage your credibility as a leader and the credibility of your party's ability to lead this country.

Canadians have recently watched the events in the US, where an educated, charismatic, excellent leader warded off infantile, poorly considered political tactics through measured responses. We want an equally competent leader. The leader who LEADS, not a leader who acts like an ineffectual school-yard bully.

These ads remind Canadians too much of Senator McCain and cast you as absolutely NOT the leader Canadians want.

Terror Storm

I just want you all to watch this with an open mind.

Please.

Terror Storm. Yes, I know the guy has a rep. But does discrediting the person mean the message isn't true???

After you're done that, watch Zeitgeist. Please. C'mon. Open mind.

Thanks.

I'm sorry if you can't sleep after.

Anarchy might help.