| =<>=+=+=<>= conclusion of an earthday89 talk by Daniel Quinn (ishmael.org): The arms race could only be ended in two ways. It could be ended by a catastrophe, a nuclear holocaust. Or the participants could walk away from it. Luckily, that's what happened: The Soviets called it quits—and there was no catastrophe. The race between food and population is the same. It can be ended by catastrophe, when simply too much of our planet's biomass is tied up in humans, and fundamental ecological systems collapse. And if we refuse to abandon the race, it will end that way—probably not in my lifetime, but very probably in the lifetime of many of you. But the race doesn't have to end that way. It can end the way the arms race ended, by people simply walking away from it. We can say, "We understand now that there can be no final triumph of food over population. This is because every single win made on the side of food is answered by a win on the side of population. It has to be that way, it always HAS been that way, and we can see that it's never going to STOP being that way." The strange thing is that many people HATE hearing all this—yet I'm clearly pointing out a path of possibility and hope. I'm not a doom merchant, my compass is set firmly on success. Our population explosion is a problem we CAN get a handle on, provided we all start reaching for it with that third hand. -------------------------- 151003 fasting cure in Taiwan account in the Guardian: hey, unusual item here but as it happens I just found sapoty brook's defunct website (still to be had with a google cache click and I shall rescue the material into a prfr soon ----- 'fruit poetpiet raw food' should turn up a few links as well. -- google cache (64K) of Sapoty Brook material extracted from his book Eco-Eating; a very original and most scientific look at food value (emphasizing and explaining why fruit is the most perfect food). ------ What is Eco Eating? My Background --- --- Mineral Balancing --- The CaPNaK Chart --- Food Groups Symptoms of Food Imbalancing --- Benefits of Intentional Imbalancing --- How to Eat a live or raw food diet in a healthy way --- Core Raw Diet --- The Five Basic Rules of Raw Eating Food Combining and other issues --- Food Chakras --- Raw Benefits --- Order the book Eco-Eating Order The CaPNaK Chart --- Order Chart and Cassette Package --- Email Me --- This page was constructed by Christopher Barnaby Last updated 01.11.1999 What is Eco Eating? ECO EATING is the know how to select foods to create the body and mind you want, and reach optimum health without cooking. My name is Sapoty Brook and I'm hoping that what I've to tell you now will transform your body and mind. It can help you heal yourself, and heal the planet. Sometimes I wonder what my profession is. For now I'm willing to call myself a Rejuvenation Consultant. I'm interested in rejuvenating you and, through rejuvenating you, helping the planet and the environment. ^ to top My Background My university degrees are in science and electrical engineering with a master of science degree in neural modeling . I've also worked and lived for 20 years with the live or raw food approach to eating and have written the book entitled "eco-eating". How do I go about applying the idea of Eco-eating in my life? We will get to that soon. First of all I must describe a little background detail to make sure that you understand the process behind the Eco-Eating way. This will be divided into two parts. The first part describes the methods and benefits of mineral balancing, and how to use it in your life to achieve optimum health and create the body and mind you want. The second part describes how to apply mineral balancing to a live or raw food diet and how to eat a raw food diet in a long term healthy way, easily without any problems or difficulties. However, let me say at the beginning that what I'm about to describe is a demanding and intensely transforming practice. You may find at first that you have difficulties in applying what I have to say, but as time goes on, its like driving a car, you'll find it easier and easier, and eventually you'll find it so easy that you'll wonder why everyone isn't doing it! Its of the utmost importance however that anyone with any doubts about their physical condition must follow these guidelines only under medical supervision - that especially includes pregnant and breast feeding women, small children or the sick or elderly. Its also important to maintain a good exercise program that keeps your blood flowing and the tissues oxygenated. From an emotional and spiritual point of view its very difficult to apply the information if there is a backlog of unprocessed emotions in your mind. So I would suggest that anybody who feels on the edge emotionally at all, should either find some counseling or do some breath work and meditate . I highly recommend that you practice meditation daily to provide a stable basis for the application of this system and method of eating. The information here is based on the book "Eco-Eating" ,which I wrote. "Eco" relates to ecological and its important to realize that the ecological benefits of this diet and approach are just as significant as the health benefits. Your garbage and energy used in the kitchen and in the production of your food will be reduced to an absolute minimum and this will have great benefits for the environment especially if its adopted by many many people. ^ to top Mineral Balancing Now, the first of the two main parts of this information page is on mineral balancing. I developed a 'CaPNaK' chart for the understanding of this. The name CaPNaK is a conglomeration of the abbreviated names of the minerals shown on the chart. You can see here below an illustration of the chart for a clearer understanding of what I am describing. The CaPNaK Chart I developed the CaPNaK Chart after several years of working with a raw food diet, experimenting and trying to optimize a raw food diet and finding difficulties in achieving balance. Then, when I eventually discovered how to achieve balance in the raw food diet, I found that I was confronted by a lot of people who really and truly believed that this was impossible. So the CaPNaK Chart came out of this confrontation. The basic idea is that in food there are four main minerals: sodium, potassium, calcium and phosphorus. These minerals occur in much larger quantities in food than the other minerals, and they have very very significant and ubiquitous effects on the body and mind. With these four minerals its well known that sodium and potassium can be seen as a balancing pair as they both play a very important role in the fluid balance in the body. There is more sodium outside the cells and more potassium inside the cells and so the amount of fluid distributed between the inside and outside of the cells is influenced by this sodium/potassium balance. Other factors influenced by the sodium/potassium balance are, for example, muscle contraction and nerve transmission, - so these two minerals are very fundamental to the body and mind. The other two minerals, calcium and phosphorus are also in balance. Phosphorus in the form of phosphates has a major acidic affect on the body, whereas calcium is the major alkaline mineral. Calcium stored in the bones is the alkaline buffer for the body. When the body is overloaded with acid foods some alkaline calcium is withdrawn from the bones to help re-balance the acidity of the phosphates and restore the body to acid/alkaline balance. Slight disturbances in the balances of both these pairs of minerals have big effects on the body and mind. I wanted to express these balances graphically so that it would be very accessible to you in terms of understanding and achieving rebalancing of the minerals in your body. Now, the problem I ran into, of course, was that there are four dimensions here - the four minerals require four dimensions - so graphically speaking its impossible to display these four dimensions. So the approach I took was to take into account the balanced ratio between the two pairs of minerals. This then enabled me to take each food and subtract out the balanced ratio for each pair of minerals. This left the remaining residual amount of mineral that created an imbalance. For example consider a banana - a banana is high in potassium and low in sodium. A certain balanced ratio between potassium and sodium is fairly ideal for the average body and if that's taken out of the banana then there is an excess of potassium left over. So if I then show on the Chart how much potassium is left over it gives a clear indication of the imbalancing effect of the banana. That excess potassium must be dealt with in some way otherwise it creates symptoms and effects in the body mind. This way I reduced the graph to two dimensions. I plotted the positions of the foods according to the residual amounts of minerals remaining after the balanced amounts of calcium-phosphorus and sodium-potassium were taken out. I was then able to plot two directions on the Chart and therefore show the unbalancing effect of each food by its position or distance and direction from the centre of the Chart. So once armed with this basic concept I went to the food composition tables provided by various governments and other scientific groups. I took the average mineral contents of each food and put the data through my computer and determined the position of each food on the chart. Hence I was able to construct the CaPNaK Chart. That was 10 years ago now, and since then I and many other people have been using the CaPNaK Chart and finding great benefits from understanding what effect particular foods are having on the body and mind. You will notice if you look at the CaPNaK chart that there are four colours. The colours indicate where each mineral predominates. For example, in the blue area the calcium dominates and therefore the foods are mainly alkaline, in the yellow area the sodium dominates and the foods are mainly Yang. In the area between the blue and the yellow you would call the foods Yang/Alkaline so neither is dominant. You will see a rectangular area of a different shade around the center. Any foods outside that area have been squashed in towards the center so that they fit on the chart. For those who understand, the scale is linear inside and logarithmic outside the rectangular area. I've taken the liberty of associating Yang with sodium and Yin with potassium as a means of bridging the gap between the scientific nutritional approach and the eastern style approach to nutrition, especially macrobiotics. However there are some foods which are not positioned according to how one would expect from a macrobiotic viewpoint. In this case I've leant towards the scientific approach because of its fundamental foundation in the atomic understanding of matter. Food Groups Now if you look carefully at the Chart, for example look in the bottom left hand region in the Yang/Acid area, many meats and fish are grouped together in that area. Different food groups tend to group in different areas in this chart. So by knowing where the different food groups are located you'll be able to start to understand the different effects of the food groups on the body and mind. For example nuts, grains and legumes are mainly located in the lower right hand region, in the Yin/Acid area. Fruit, you'll notice, is located just right of the center in the Yin or potassium direction, and dairy products are located in the upper left hand region, in the Yang/Alkaline direction. Seaweed and also some green vegetables are located in that area as well. There are also many green vegetables in the upper right hand area, in the Yin/Alkaline direction. Foods stay in approximately the same position whether or not they are organic. Foods are shifted around the chart by additives. For example whole meal bread is in the Yang/Acid region even though wheat is in the Yin/Acid region. Why? Because sodium salt is usually added to the dough. Similarly white bread is above whole meal bread on the chart because the milk solids add more calcium than phosphorus. You will also notice that tea, coffee, white sugar and oils are at the center of the chart. They provide no residual minerals because they contain almost no minerals. This does not mean they are healthy. They are unhealthy for other reasons than their mineral content. Symptoms of Food Imbalancing I supply along with the chart a Symptoms Diagram and a Benefits Diagram. You will notice at the centre of the Symptoms Diagram and Benefits Diagram the same four directions that are shown on the CaPNaK Chart, calcium, phosphorus, sodium and potassium and these are in the same directions as they are on the chart. See the example below for a clearer understanding of what I mean. On the Symptoms Diagram there are various symptoms listed for being imbalanced in each mineral direction. Taking the opposite pairs of symptoms for example the pair for calcium and phosphorus, you'll be able to see that there are some opposite or complementary effects. For example the calcium foods will having a calming affect on the body, in overdose, making you excessively calm, tranquil, lazy, or careless. Whereas the excessive phosphorus foods will have the effect of making you anxious, paranoid, restless, or worried. That can be good to a certain extent but when taken too far can have negative effects on your body and mind. Due to our conditioning and cravings, almost all of us are in some ways out of balance in regard to these four main minerals and therefore we all tend to have some symptoms. So we can all benefit by checking out the Symptoms Diagram and finding out where our symptoms tend to lie. Now some of our symptoms will be always present, and some will be sometimes present and sometimes not. So first of all, the idea is to find which symptoms are the most pervasive ones for you and which direction tends to be the most important for you to try to rebalance. Say for example you find that you often feel very cold and have bags under your eyes and maybe some swelling of the ankles. Then you could conclude that you have got symptoms reminiscent of an overdose of sodium or an under dose of potassium. So by eating more foods in the potassium direction you would rebalance that. For example, Referring to the food chart look at foods in the potassium direction. You could choose bananas for example as a good food to reduce those symptoms of sodium overdose and potassium under dose. The other way you can approach the problem is also to reduce the high sodium foods that you may be eating. For example you may be eating too much cheese or too much meat which you'll see on the Yang side of the CaPNaK Chart. Lets say tomorrow you eat too many bananas, say you eat four bananas in a row. You may get a bloated belly, indigestion, feel faint and dizzy. These are Yin overdose symptoms. What will you do? You'll need an antidote. So you run your finger across the chart from bananas through the center to the diametrically opposite side. Look for a healthy raw food in that region, for example celery is ideal. Three sticks of celery will balance up the bananas, and half an hour later your negative symptoms will be gone. When you get the Symptoms Diagram its worth taking some time out now now and to have a look at the negative symptoms and find out which direction you think you've gone too far in. You may find that there is one particular direction of the sodium/potassium balance and one direction of the calcium/phosphorus balance and you'll get the idea that you have eaten too far into one region of the chart. So have a look at the foods in that region and consider what times you might eat those sorts of foods and whether you tend to get more of those negative symptoms at those times or soon after those times. And look at the foods in the opposite region, diametrically opposite through the centre of the Symptoms Diagram, and you might find a lot of foods you don't have much affinity with - that you dont enjoy very much. So the idea here is that we have to use our intellect to overcome our conditioning and preferences which have been instilled in us since childhood from our parents and our culture. Benefits of Intentional Imbalancing That's a look at the negative effects of foods. Conversely, there are corresponding positive effects and they are shown on a corresponding Benefits Diagram I supply in my cassette package or with the chart itself. The Benefits Diagram has the same four directions from the centre corresponding to the four main minerals. On the Benefits Diagram you would see the positive effects listed around the outside. For example, if you wanted to do some sport, say yoga, then up in the alkaline direction towards the top you'll see the second line from the top says "helps you relax and become tranquil". Well, that would be good preparation for doing yoga wouldn't it? So you could eat foods in that direction a couple of hours before doing yoga. Also, eating over in the right hand side, the Yin or potassium side, you'll see about fourth point down "loosens up your body". So eating in the potassium or Yin direction would be a good idea to prepare for yoga as well: help you stretch into those assanas. So eating in the calcium/potassium direction or the Yin/Alkaline direction, in other words in the upper right area would be good preparation for yoga. Look at the Yin/Alkaline region of the CaPNaK Chart and see that you could, for example, have a salad with chives, okra and broccoli in it. Or a little bit closer to the centre you'll see oranges, so you could have a couple of oranges. The further the food is from the centre the faster it will take you into the particular mind body state associated with that direction from the centre. Each direction from the centre: up, down, left, right or the oblique directions, has a corresponding mind/body state. For example, foods down in the bottom right hand region will put you into a studious thinker type personality and even a thinker type body if you eat them long enough. Foods in the bottom left hand region will put you into a gung-ho workaholic state for getting things done. And foods in the top left hand region will put you into what I would call party-animal mode, where you can really have a good time at parties and be more social and outgoing. And foods at the top right hand region will put you into what I would call care-bear mode, where you would make a good listener or carer. So you can experience how foods can influence the mind state as well as the body state. And you can start to use the foods to put yourself in the right frame of mind for whatever activity you want to be engaged in. You can also use the chart to create warmth or coolness in your body. For example, if you have got to work hard on a hot day then on the positive effects list on the left hand side corresponding to sodium you'll see it says "cools you down". So if you look at the corresponding sodium direction on the CapNaK Chart , celery, for example, could be used to cool down on a hot day, and conversely bananas over on the right hand side, high in potassium, will warm you up. You can imagine that your current body-mind state is at a particular point on the chart. You might describe yourself as a bit Yin/Alkaline for example. The foods you eat move your body-mind state around the chart. You can choose which way to go. Another important point for our times, considering the runaway obesity of western society, is the fact that the foods in the calcium direction will help you gain wait and the foods in the phosphorus direction will help you lose weight. So by eating low calorie - low kilo joule - acidic foods you can help your body lose weight. For example, looking at the CaPNaK chart green peppers, cauliflower, mung sprouts, asparagus, brussels sprouts, peas and mushrooms are foods all reasonably low in calories and have an acid residue in the body. Therefore they reduce the ability of the body to absorb and hold fat. This is because calcium in the intestine and blood stream helps the body absorb fat from the intestines and deposit it into fatty tissue. So the slight absence of calcium makes it more difficult for the body to retain or gain weight. So here again it's worthwhile to sit down and study the positive effects that you can create in each direction. Take time to think about what you do in your life and how you can use your food to enhance your performance in whatever you do. That concludes the general discussion of the CaPNaK Chart. Now I want to proceed to how to eat a live or raw food diet in a long term healthy way. ^ to top How to eat a live or raw food diet in a long term healthy way. Why would one bother going against the mainstream attitudes and try to eat a predominantly live raw food diet? First of all, lets look at the problems of our society in terms of health. Billions of dollars are being spent on health every year. Many people are having enormous health problems and spending a large proportion of their income and tax on maintaining their health, whether it be through herbs, supplements, all the way through to drugs and eventually to surgery. Now, the US Surgeon General, who would be considered to be the No. 1 doctor in the world, has publicly stated that 70% of diseases are nutritionally related. These are the words of an incredibly conservative member of the establishment. Even he is saying that 70% of all diseases are nutritionally related. So, that gives us the option of reducing our disease rate enormously if we can improve our nutrition. You will probably be familiar with the fact that over the last couple of decades there has been a real drive to reduce the amount of fat that people eat in their diet. The "sad diet" or the standard Australian diet is essentially, about, 50% fat intake. The other extreme was created in the well known Pritikin diet which recommended only about a 10% FAT intake. Current government recommendations are to eat about a 30% fat intake and some heart and diabetes groups recommend about 20% fat intake. There is also the recent Zone diet which recommends a 30% fat intake. The basic approach to almost all these lower fat diets is to say that people should move onto more carbohydrate in their food rather than the protein foods which tend to carry the saturated fats and cholesterol along with them. Also, another reason for moving onto the carbohydrates is to provide a nice clean source of fuel for the body in the form of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates don't produce the same acidic effects which a high protein intake has on the body due to the nitrates and uric acid formed by protein metabolism. However when we look at the CaPNaK Chart we see that the high carbohydrate foods tend to be down in the lower portion of the chart in the acid area. This is very important because it's well known that acidity in the diet leaches calcium from the bones and will contribute to osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a growing plague in our society and should be taken seriously by everybody. People in high grain eating societies such as the Japanese have a long history of fear of osteoporosis in old age. A lot of Japanese men are very frightened that they will slip over during their walk home from the pub and break their pelvis and have real problems. The solution is not to go back to a high meat diet because meat is equally as acidic in terms of the calcium/phosphorus balance, but even more acidic in terms of the high protein content, creating extra acidity. So when we are faced with this question of osteoporosis we have to look outside the conventional meat-grain-beans type of approach to eating. So would we move to dairy products? Well, OK, everybody knows that dairy products are high in calcium but actually the high protein in dairy products has an acid effect and reduces the alkaline/calcium benefits of the dairy products. This applies particularly to adults who do not utilise much protein for growth. Also, dairy products tend to stimulate excretion of a lot of mucous in the digestive tract, especially the nose and throat, providing a breeding ground for various bacteria and viruses, and contributing to colds and infections. Dairy products also tend to create allergic reactions, and many people are lactose intolerant especially as they get older, as they move out of childhood. However, if you look at the CaPNaK Chart there are some green vegetables that are higher in the Alkaline direction than dairy products. For example, just above dairy products there are spinach, kale and silverbeet. So these green vegetables, when eaten in sufficient quantities, are an excellent replacement for dairy products in the diet as a source of calcium. There are also many other high calcium green vegetables you can use, which are not so Yang, such as broccoli and okra. See the Yin-Alkaline quadrant of the CaPNaK chart. After all that putting down of meat and grain, beans and dairy products, you might be wondering "well what can I eat to get some energy?". Obviously vegetables don't contain enough energy to enable you to thrive. So there is only one option left for getting the energy and that is fruit. Food Chakras Before we look more closely at fruit, I want to talk about the different levels of nutrition. It’s important to realise that different practitioners have different views depending on their basic approach to nutrition. To provide a map so you can understand where people are coming from, I've developed a set of seven levels which I call the food chakras. Starting with the lowest those levels are: Junkivore- in other words a junk food eater. Carnivore- avoiding junk food but eating a lot of meat. Piscavore- avoiding meat and eating a lot of fish or poultry. Vegetarian- avoiding flesh and tending to eat a lot of grain and dairy products. Macrobiotic- shying away from dairy products but still heavily into grain and beans. Vegan- renouncing animal products, eating more fruit and salads in the diet than the macrobiotic, but still eating cooked foods daily. Symbiotic - which is a raw food eater who eats mainly fruit as the major source of energy, and usually eats raw vegetables, nuts and seeds. Now, as we progress up these levels we actually do have to give up certain foods or reduce them down to a minimum in our diet. For example, someone who is a macrobiotic has stopped eating red meat. This process of moving up the food chakras is abhorrent to many people because it means giving up some foods that they currently enjoy and are used to eating. But the essential point is that, in this process of giving up something that we enjoy in the short term, we get enormous benefits in the long term. We experience greater health and longevity, and generally enjoy life more due to our state of health. Its a case of giving up a short term pleasure for a long term benefit. So if you are not willing to give up the short term pleasures for long term benefits then perhaps what I have to say is fairly irrelevant to you. However as people mature they tend to realise the importance of this approach. So they are the people that this information is directed to. Are you one of them? Raw Benefits Getting back to the raw food approach, the idea is that you get your major source of energy from fruit. I recommend that 70% of the diet, say 7 serves out of 10 would be fruit and 25% of serves would be greens, green leaf vegetables. The remaining 5% would be nuts, seeds and perhaps a very small quantity of animal products. The first thing that comes to peoples’ minds when they hear about this sort of approach is "there is too much sugar in all that fruit - it's terrible". You have got to remember that the sugar in fruit is not sucrose. It is fructose, which has a much more gentle effect on the body and bloodstream - it comes into the bloodstream much more slowly. Also the sugars in fruit are mainly bound into the cellular structure so, again, they are released slowly and gently into the blood stream. The beneficial cellular structure of raw food is destroyed by cooking. Slow release of sugars from raw food keeps your insulin level low. This is a major health benefit also aimed at by the popular, but higher protein, Zone diet. Another way to keep the blood sugar stable and insulin level low is to graze. Forget the 3 meals a day belief system. With the raw food approach 6 to 8 meals a day is much better. Eat a sweet or savory meal depending on your taste at the time. It's important to realise that one of the major reasons for moving into a raw food diet is because any cooking, any heating of any foods above 50 degrees centigrade or half way to boiling point destroys the enzymes in food. The enzymes in food are very important because they actually help you digest the food. Now if you destroy the enzymes in food then the body has to produce all the digestive enzymes and acids that are required to digest the food. This puts a big load on the pancreas and stomach. So when we take the load off the pancreas and stomach we are actually taking the biochemical load off the endocrine system. Since the endocrine system is also responsible for the immune system, for immunity, we actually allow some of that biochemical energy to be redirected from digestion over towards immunity. Hence our immunity escalates much higher on a raw food diet. This accounts for the fact that many people are reducing cancers and eliminating cancers from their body by using the raw food approach. Their immune systems become strong enough to destroy cancer. In addition to eliminating osteoporosis, resistance to infection and cancer are other key long-term health benefits of a raw food diet. Some people prefer to follow their instincts in choosing raw foods. This can be assisted by touching and smelling the available foods. However many people also need to have an intellectual methodology to help over-ride their negative conditioning. To enable people to move into a raw food diet without any worries about the danger of deficiencies and so on, I've developed a simple diet which I call the Core Raw Diet. ^ to top Core Raw Diet Now the core raw diet consists of 5 bananas, 6 large oranges, 4 sticks of celery, 1/2 kilo of broccoli or equivalent dark green leaf vegetables and 2 handfuls of nuts and seeds every day. This diet is just under 20% fat. Think of these foods as your staples, just like bread, meat and milk might once have been. Amazingly, according to food composition data, this diet will give full nutrition to a 70 kilogram person, with the exception of vitamin B12. Smaller people could get full nutrition on less food. However the Core Raw Diet is low in calories, low in kilo joules so in effect if an active 70 kilogram person ate those proportions of fruits, vegetables and nuts then they would tend to lose weight. So, on top of the Core Raw Diet, you should add whatever fruits and vegetables you wish to add, especially those that are fresh and in season. Now, in addition to these five food components there are five basic rules you must follow if you want to be successful in eating the raw food diet. ^ to top The Five Basic Rules of Raw Eating The first rule is to have enough fruit to eat - this is incredibly important! Most people who switch to a raw food diet find it very difficult to eat sufficient quantities initially. Now that's a great thing because we are all so used to restricting ourselves and not being able to eat this or that and trying to keep our weight down or whatever. Well, in this case, you can go for it - eat heaps of fruit especially, and its vitally important to eat 5 pieces of fruit before 10.00 a.m. - that will get you off to good start for the day, get your blood sugar level nice and smoothly high, and you'll be ready to zoom through the day. Morning grumpiness and cravings are often due to low blood sugar, so try to always get yourself off to a good start. A small person who doesn't want to lose weight must eat a minimum of 12 pieces of fruit a day. By "a piece of fruit" I mean fruit equivalent to a medium sized apple. A big person must eat a minimum of 15 pieces. More if you are active. The second rule is to eat 1/2 kilo or 500 grams of dark greens. Now thats really important to get your sufficient calcium intake and also iron and many other trace minerals. Considerable protein can also be obtained from dark green vegetables. The third rule is to eat at least 4 sticks of celery a day. Now this is also very important. 4 sticks of celery a day will give you your basic sodium requirements. Have more on hot days. If you don't get your basic sodium requirements you'll go Yin and you'll have some high potassium / low sodium symptoms such as weakness, dizziness, fainting, headache or feeling passive. During the transition to a raw food diet some people experience a cleansing crisis as stored toxins are released from their tissues. The negative symptoms can often be dramatically reduced by eating more salty vegetables such as celery. So its quite important to keep those 4 sticks of celery going in every day spread through the day, especially around noon, because they are an important cooling food. And the fourth rule is to have two handfuls of nuts and seeds a day. Now I would particularly recommend men to at least include one handful of green pumpkin seeds because of their high zinc content. When you are doing a high level of physical activity then you may need to eat 3 or 4 handfuls of nuts and seeds a day to provide a higher fat and protein intake. You must also increase your intake of other raw foods to provide sufficient energy and water etc. The fifth rule is to have a source of B12 in the diet. After about 5 to 10 years on a very low animal food diet you'll probably run low in your stores of B12. Few people produce enough B12 in their digestive tract to maintain their stores. So its important, I think, right from the word go, to pre-empt that, and introduce some food source of B12. You can get B12 from animal products such as fish. One or two hundred grams of fish each week is a good idea. If you don't want to eat animal foods then I would suggest that you try a teaspoon of spirulina every day and/or take a B12 supplement, because it's quite difficult or impossible to get B12 in sufficient quantities from ordinary vegetables. There are some fermented foods such as tempeh or kombucha that you may be able to get a decent amount of B12 from. It's important to realise that B12 comes in different forms and not all are readily utilised by humans so it's necessary to check your sources. Think carefully about the B12 issue early on because if you go deficient in B12 then you may suffer nerve damage, brain damage or become anemic. You should also get a B12 check with your doctor every couple of years and take immediate nutritional action if you drop below the medical minimum. Now returning to the chart with this idea in mind of the high fruit based diet, fruit is slightly Yin of the centre. Almost all fruit’s clumped very specifically in this area, slightly to the right of the centre. However rather than worrying about becoming too Yin on a fruit based diet it's possible to balance up a Yin based diet with some Yang raw foods. Celery, which is off to the left hand side in the sodium/Yang area, is ideal for this purpose. That’s why it's included in the Core Raw diet and also why I suggest that everybody on a raw food diet should eat 4 sticks of celery a day. Alternatively, any of the other Yang greens such as spinach for example are also very good especially considering that they contain a high calcium content as well. Now it's important to realize that some greens and fruit are Yin/Alkaline so these are important calcium sources as well. So for example Broccoli is a major Yin/Alkaline green vegetable and oranges are an important Yin/Alkaline fruit. People may be surprised to hear that oranges are alkaline because everyone knows that oranges are so acidic. But it's important to understand that the acidity is in the juice - that orange juice is the acidic component. So, if you have an orange, try to have the whole orange as there is a lot of alkaline/calcium in the pulp which balances out the acidity of the juice. However, I don't wish to imply that you should eat the peel. It may cause tooth problems. It's interesting that juice generally tends to be more acidic than the fruit or vegetable it's juiced from. For example you'll see on the chart that carrots are balanced between the acid and alkaline areas, just to the left of the centre in the yang direction. Carrot juice is immediately below the carrots, well into the acid area of the chart. So it turns out to be a fallacy that Carrot juice is alkaline. Its certainly more alkaline than many seeds and nuts, but it definitely does not have a nett alkaline effect on the body. Now I don't recommend eating large quantities of nuts and seeds in a raw food diet. Nuts and seeds are quite acidic - they are high in phosphates. Some people believe that almonds are a good source of calcium. However, the high phosphate content of the almonds means that more calcium is dragged out of the bones, by the phosphate, than is deposited. So if you want to have a source of fat that is alkaline rather than acidic then the only one that I know of which is viable is unhulled tahini. Now, unhulled tahini, which is made from unhulled sesame seeds, is above the centre of the CaPNaK Chart right up high in the alkaline area. And in the opposite direction, down in the acid area, you'll find hulled sesame seeds. So it's important to know that tahini made from hulled sesame seeds is actually a very acidic food, whereas unhulled tahini is a very alkaline food. So don't use hulled tahini as a way of avoiding osteoporosis, as it will actually contribute to osteoporosis. You will now understand that in the core raw diet I mentioned earlier, there is an acid-alkaline balance between oranges and bananas, and also between broccoli and nuts and seeds. All these foods are Yin and are balanced by the celery which is yang. So, long-term CaPNaK balance and control can be maintained by eating these foods. In guiding people on a raw food diet I encounter a few very common problems. I would like to briefly mention those so that as you try the raw food diet you'll bear them in mind and avoid the pitfalls. ^ to top Food Combining and other issues The first problem is bad food combining. If you eat a lot of vegetables and fruit together then you may start to suffer from gas build up in your intestines. Now this is very bad for digestion of food, and reduces nutrient absorption from the intestines. When a portion of the intestine is filled with gas it means that the intestine wall is not in full contact with the food. This reduces the absorption of nutrients. So it's very important to avoid creating gas from bad food combining. If you notice excessive gas forming in your intestines then experiment with your combinations of fruit with other foods to find the causes. Unripe fruit such as bananas can also create gas. Another factor in food combining is that you may eat cake or other grain based carbohydrates from time to time, just due to your conditioned cravings or at a social event. Then it's important to avoid eating any fruit for at least two hours after eating carbohydrate. Then you won't get the fruit mixing with the carbohydrate in the intestines and causing fermentation and gas. Another problem that people run into is that they go low in sodium. This happens with many healthy diets and not only a raw food diet. People who go off all sodium supplements such as soy sauce, miso, high sodium dairy products and meat, find they start to get the Yin symptoms. For example, indigestion often occurs when your body gets so low on sodium that the muscles in their intestines can't contract properly. Also water is not well absorbed and diahorrea can occur. It's quite important to avoid this low sodium problem by religiously eating at least 4 sticks of celery a day. Another problem is that people become low in blood sugar. This happens when they don't eat enough fruit. Often people find that they have difficulty in eating more than about 5 pieces of fruit a day just because of the volume. So one way you can increase your fruit intake is to decrease the amount of fluids you drink. You can provide all the fluids you need by eating fruit. Remember that the fruit's about 90% water, so if your eating 12 - 15 pieces fruit a day then your getting around 2 litres of water from the fruit! So it's not actually necessary to drink water at all unless you are in a physically demanding situation or perhaps in extremely hot weather. You can satisfy your body's needs for water by eating a lot of fruit. That will also reduce the possibility of becoming low in blood sugar. Because the bloodstream gets a constant supply of sugars as the fruit's digested. Now the indicators to watch for with low blood sugar are that you start to slur your speech, your hands start to shake, or you lose some coherence of thought. Conversely, a great benefit of a high fruit diet is that thinking can become very clear as a result of the supply of sugars to the brain. The brain is a major burner of sugar in the body. Another problem that often occurs on a raw food diet is that you start to go low in Vitamin B. This is because you have not eaten enough green vegetables. The broccoli and dark greens are an excellent source of Vitamin B. So if you start to develop cracked lips, or cracked corners of the mouth, or start to become low in energy, that may be a result of going low in Vitamin B due to not eating enough green vegetables. Finally a typical problem is getting dry skin. Often this is due to not eating enough nuts and seeds and therefore not getting enough fats in their food intake. So if you take into account all these problems and take appropriate action as soon as you begin to notice the symptoms then you'll find that you can move into a raw food diet very easily. You can then start to feel the benefits of raw food in your daily life. You can start to use foods, according to the CaPNaK balance and control principles, to influence your body and mind states to achieve optimum performance in whatever you do. I would like to conclude by saying that if you want to get more information on these approaches to nutrition, then I suggest you buy my book "Eco Eating - A Guide to Balanced Eating for Health and Vitality". See the illustration below: The Book - Eco-Eating The book has 50 small chapters all on eating for different aspects for every day life. For example there are chapters on eating for immunity, eating for digestion, energy, weight gain, weight loss, cooling, warming, eating for the seasons, eating for cravings, addictions, travel, sleep, work, sport, action, sex, eating for the environment, and eating for a new society. These are just a few of the chapters you can read and enjoy. You can get my book by direct mail order by sending a $25 Australian dollar bank draft and your return address to: Sapoty Brook (eco-eat) P.O. Box 8, Repton, NSW 2454, Australia. I’ll send you a copy of my book by return mail. For secure credit card payment in US$ click here. For internal Australian orders please send $20 only. The CaPNaK Chart The CaPNaK Chart The CaPNaK Chart is available. Send a $8.00 Australian dollars bank draft and your return address to: Sapoty Brook (eco-eat) P.O. Box 8, Repton, NSW 2454, Australia. For secure credit card payment in US$ click here. For internal Australian orders please send $6.00 only. The Chart and Cassette Package Also available is this information in the form of a cassette with CaPNaK chart and detailed Symptoms and Benefits Diagrams which illustrate a clearer understanding of the process of Eco-Eating. The CaPNaK chart is a large full colour wall poster. This package is available. Please send a $15.00 Australian dollars bank draft and your return address to: Sapoty Brook (eco-eat) P.O. Box 8, Repton, NSW 2454, Australia. For secure credit card payment in US$ click here. For internal Australian orders please send $12.00 only. Or alternately, you can email me to inquire of other methods of payment to obtain any of these items by clicking . There is quite a lot more information on how to use food for healing, health, and performance. So if you are interested in pursuing this further, I would be very happy to provide you with a copy of my book. Also, you can send me your address if you would like to hear about my seminars, retreats, lectures or video. Most people find it difficult initially settling into a raw food diet. I would like to help you do this, or at least try raw food. You can consult me by email, my minimum fee is $20 (by Australian dollars bank draft; or to pay by credit card in US$ click here). Please inquire . Thank you for reading. I wish you a fruit-full life. Sapoty Brook !attention! To see another amazing product by Sapoty Brook click here ^ to top © Sapoty Brook, 1999. May be downloaded from the web, but not copied in any other way without written permission from the author. ---------------------- Comments on the many Boycott post repeats. YES Let's act!!! All those brands are owned by Zionist companies contributing and supporting the criminal and racist state of israel. Boycotting those brands is our contribution in the fight against the criminal and racist state of Israel. Several and seriouse informations concerning those brands and the way they are contributing to the criminal israely economy are available on the internet link « inminds.com ». Please spread this message and image as large as you can, to your friends, family, etc... Thank you A.S -------------------- Evidence (english) by observer 11:14am Thu Mar 14 '02 One person keeps reposting this several times per day, and I notice the one thing he always lacks in any evidence tying these companies to Israel. I suspect there is none, and that this person is a fool. I suspect that this person is merely targeting Jews, and that these companies are simple big names with Jews in management positions (for instance, Michael Eisner runs Disney). This kind of pathetic race baiting does no good, but a great deal of harm. A boycott against Israeli businesses is a great idea, but do your homework and find out what companies are really supporting Israel and HOW they are supporting it. ------------------- .... (english) by Mahakaal 11:18am Thu Mar 14 '02 The boycott of certain brands that promote or have trade with Israel is all well and good, but posting the same thing about 4 times a day I think just manages to piss people off. Information is good.Though I recommend you do it post this less frequently. ------------------ just follow the link for the evidence (english) by qtaro 11:29am Thu Mar 14 '02 Apart from a few ZioNazi apologists, I think most people on indymedia are in favor of a boycott on Israel until it changes it's nazi-like behavior. It's no different that the boycott of South Africa that happened a decade ago. I welcome reminders every few hours for all the newcomers. Anyone demanding censorship of the BOYCOTT ISRAEL campaign is immediately suspect as a ZioNazi stooge. Oh, and http://www.israelshamir.net is a good site as is http://www.zmag.org and http://www.counterpuch.org . . . www.inminds.com/boycott-israel.html ------------------ Zionazi Stooge (english) by Beery 11:36am Thu Mar 14 '02 "Anyone demanding censorship of the BOYCOTT ISRAEL campaign is immediately suspect as a ZioNazi stooge" No one's asking for censorship. What we're asking for is a little respect for the people who have to wade through these pieces of non-news every few hours. ----------------- boycott israel (english) by qtaro 11:36am Thu Mar 14 '02 http://www.counterpunch.com not org :( www.counterpunch.com --------------------- Reply to Mr Observer (english) by A.S 11:46am Thu Mar 14 '02 Of course Mr Observer, those companies are effectively supporting Israel. A research has been made on those companies and their investements in the israeli criminal economy. You can find the informations concerning each company on the site inminds.com (by cliking on the name of the company to boycott, it will lead you to the file where you can find all the informations with the sources). But if you dont have the time, i can send you all the informations and sources i am talking about. (just give your Email adress). Now, on the fact that i already published this message several times, i really dont see what bothers you in that???!!! I only see one reason : you are a zionist supporter who can't stand boycotting the criminal state of Israel. But be sure : NOTHING will keep us from fighting against zionsts like you and against the criminal state of Israel and its Adolf Sharon. NO JUSTICE NO PEACE. KNOW JUSTICE KNOW PEACE. A.S ---------------- sdfgsdfg (english) by sdfg 11:56am Thu Mar 14 '02 We had the Boycott of jewish shops in Nazi-Germany. That now "anti-facists" are doing the same is making me very sad...there should be better ways to act... ------------------- A.S. (english) by Mahakaal 12:06pm Thu Mar 14 '02 Don't be an idiot and go around accusing people of being zionist apologists, or zionist whatever. You only discredit the Palestinian struggle by piling such accusations against those who might actually be trying to help. --------------- Bad analogy (english) by fd 12:33pm Thu Mar 14 '02 >sdfg The only problem with your analogy is that it is a false one. These are not Jewish shops, but multi-billion dollar companies who are directly supporting an oppresive government (right now there are 5 times as many troups in the West Bank then the US has in Afghanistan). ---------------- Replay to THIS boycott and to THIS web site (english) by Ignacio 2:11pm Thu Mar 14 '02 I agree with boycott against Israel State, the same as it was done against South-African Apartheid but, before trusting the web site of this campaign, please, have a look at the other parts of it. Have a look at the anti-feminist part of the web: http://www.inminds.com/feminism-muslim-response.html This web site is a fucking boldshit of religious fundamentalists!!!! This is not acceptable in Indymedia! THE ENEMIES OF EQUALITY BETWEN WOMEN AND MEN, ARE OUR ENEMIES. LET'S FIGHT AGAINST THEM THE SAME WE FIGHT AGAINST THE STATE OF ISRAEL!!! NO GOD, NO MASTER!!! Salud ------------------ Answer to Ignacio (english) by A.S 3:58pm Thu Mar 14 '02 Dear Ignacio.. Boycotting Israel does not mean supporting the site's ideas. But it happens that this site has made some serious research on the companies supporting Israel. Several informations and articles (with the sources) on those zionist companies are available on the site. Now, our fight is on this level purely economic and it is against the criminal and racist state of Israel. We do support women in their fight against sectarian ideologies (which are not always religious ideologies) as well as we support the palestinian women against the barabarian zionist soldiers and on all levels. And of course we are for equality between men and women on all levels, but we dont agree with you when you say "No God, No master" cause people are free to believe in whatever they want. and we can believe in God and be against racisme, against zionisme, against facisme and against all the ideologies that exclude people because of their color, race or religion!!! A.S ---------------- Fisk in the independent - When Bush starts squinting his vision narrows and people start dying 14 March 2002 Middle East crisis It is the "vision" thing again. When President George Bush wanted Arab support for the US bombing of Afghanistan in September, he suddenly announced he had a "vision" of a Palestinian state. Then it disappeared off his radar screen. Yet now it's back in a watered-down, US-framed UN resolution that affirms "a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side..." | Could it be that Mr Bush has another war in mind for the region, that perhaps Vice-President Dick Cheney, now touring the Arab world and Israel, wants Arab support for an attack on Iraq? UN resolutions don't disappear as fast as presidential "visions" and the world now has the idea – and it's only an idea – embedded in a serious UN document. Indeed, it's probably the first time the UN has had a "vision" about anything. But it fails to address the far more important point of UN Security Council resolution 242 of 1967, upon which the Oslo agreement was supposed to have been founded. It calls for Israeli withdrawal from territories it occupied in the Six Day War. Yesterday's UN resolution makes no reference to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (nor to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights) and thus presents the world with an image, or "vision", of two sides fighting on level ground. When it "demands immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction...", it is unclear whether the Security Council believes Israel is occupying Palestinian land or whether it thinks that the Palestinian Authority is occupying Israel. Which is why the original Syrian draft resolution, which specifically talked about Israel as the "occupying power", was withdrawn – along with its call to Israel to respect the Geneva Conventions protecting civilians under occupation. Syria abstained from the vote. Israel's UN ambassador called the latest resolution "balanced". The only verbal connection between the new resolution and the all-important 35-year-old 242, which specifically refers to occupation, is the vaguely worded call for the states to live "within secure and recognised borders". No mention of Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, no mention of east Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, or a right of return for any refugees. Like the Oslo agreement, this latest resolution leaves these critical issues out of the "vision", as presumably something to be resolved later. It was left to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to express his revulsion at the current level of violence, to refer specifically to Israel's "illegal occupation" and to "morally repugnant" Palestinian suicide bombings. This is better than nothing but Mr Annan's words are not written into any resolution. The Security Council, now that the US has weakened its new resolution, makes no moral judgements at all, even though the illegality of Israel's occupation partly hinges on the Council's own 242 resolution calling upon Israel to withdraw. As always, the Arabs – anxious not to alienate the Americans – had to clap their hands at the "vision" bit, as if it contained the seeds of Palestinian sovereignty. Yasser Abed Rabbo, the so-called Palestinian Information Minister, said it represented a "defeat" for the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon – which is nonsense because the US would not have proposed the text unless it met with Israel's approval – and called for "direct international intervention to implement this resolution through ending the Israeli occupation and evacuating all the Israeli settlements" from Palestinian land. But there's nothing about international intervention in the UN text, nor about settlements. All in all, then, a pretty vision, to run alongside Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's own watered-down version of resolution 242. Let's see how much it helps Mr Cheney as he seeks approval for yet another Middle East war. ------------- Systematically tearing nations apart... (english) by Greg Palast interviewed by Alex Jones 2:31pm Wed Mar 13 '02 (Modified on 6:53pm Wed Mar 13 '02) "We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out of places to bleed." AJ: This is earth shattering. Can you break it down for us and tell us what the economists have done? GP: Well, I'll tell you two things. One, I spoke to the former chief economist, Joe Stiglitz who was fired by the (World) Bank. So I, on BBC and with Guardian, basically spent some time debriefing him. It was like one of the scenes out of Mission Impossible, you know where the guy comes over from the other side and you spend hours debriefing him. So I got the insight of what was happening at the World Bank. In addition, he did not brief me but I got some other sources. He would not give me inside documents but other people handed me a giant stash of secret documents from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. AJ: So to insulate himself, somebody else did it. GP: No, I'm telling you. He wouldn't touch it but I really did get from completely independent sources a big stack of documents. AJ: Just like you got W199I, from the same folks we got it from. GP: And so one of the things that is happening is that, in fact, I was supposed to be on CNN with the head of the World Bank Jim Wolfensen and he said he would not appear on CNN ever if they put me on. And so CNN did the craziest thing and pulled me off. AJ: So now they are threatening total boycott. GP: Yea right. So what we found was this. We found inside these documents that basically they required nations to sign secret agreements, in which they agreed to sell off their key assets, in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved and if they didn't agree to these steps, there was an average for each nation that signed one-hundred and eleven items that they are required to sign on to. If they didn't follow those steps they would be cut-off from all international borrowing. You can't borrow any money in the international marketplace. No one can survive without borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries - without borrowing some money and having some credit and ... AJ: Because of the debt inflation pit they've created. GP: Yea, well, see one of the things that happened is that - we've got examples from, I've got inside documents recently from Argentina, the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know, they are really upset with me that I've got the documents, but they have not challenged the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them on television. And cite some on the web, I actually have copies of some... AJ: Greg Palast dot com? GP: Yea, gregpalast.com. So then they backed off and said yea those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed. AJ: Isn't it six now? GP: Yea, it's like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation together. And this happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets, public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think of doing in the US, like selling off their water system. AJ: So they tax the people. They create big government and big government hands it off to the private IMF/World Bank. And when we get back, I want to get to the four-parts that you elegantly lay out here where they actually pay off the politicians billions to their Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer. GP: That's right. AJ: This is like one of the biggest stories ever, Sir. I'm sorry, please continue. GP: So what's happening is - this is just one of them. And by the way, it's not just anyone who gets a piece of the action. The water system of Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron. A pipeline was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile, was sold off to a company called Enron. AJ: And then the globalists blow out the Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation and then they just roll the theft items off. GP: You've got it. And by the way, you know why they moved the pipeline to Enron is that they got a call from somebody named George W. Bush in 1988. AJ: Unbelievable, Sir. Stay right there. We are talking to Greg Palast. BREAK AJ: We are talking to Greg Palast. He is an award-winning journalist, an American who has worked for the BBC, London Guardian, you name it, who has dropped just a massive bomb-shell on the Globalists and their criminal activity. There is no other word for it. You link through at inforwars.com, you can link to his web site - gregpalast.com, or any of the other great reports he has been putting out. He now has the secret documents. We have seen the activity of the IMF/World Bank for years. They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations - they then hand it over to them for nothing. The Globalists pay them off individually, billions a piece in Swiss bank accounts. And the plan is total slavery for the entire population. Of course, Enron, as we told you was a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, you name it, from the other reporters we have had on. It's just incredibly massive and hard to believe. But it is actually happening. Greg Palast has now broken the story world-wide. He has actually interviewed the former top World Bank economist. Continuing Sir with all these points. I mean for the average person out there, in a nutshell, what is the system you are exposing? GP: We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out of places to bleed. And the problem is, this is the chief economist, this is not some minor guy. By the way, a couple of months ago, after he was fired, he was given the Nobel Prize in Economics. So he is no fool. He told me, he went into countries where they were talking about privatizing and selling off these assets. And basically, they knew, they literally knew and turned the other way when it was understood that leaders of these countries and the chief ministers would salt away hundreds of millions of dollars. AJ: But it's not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank. GP: They hand it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank was very big and grabbed half the Argentine banks. You've got British Petroleum grabbing pipelines in Ecuador. I mentioned Enron grabbing water systems all over the place. And the problem is that they are destroying these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water in Buenos Aires. I mean it is not just a question of the theft. You can't turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting rich at the public expense. AJ: And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control over the water supply now. That's been in the Chicago Tribune. GP: Well the problem that we have is - look, the IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned by the United States Treasury. So the question becomes, what are we getting for the money that we put into there? And it looks like we are getting mayhem in several nations. Indonesia is in flames. He was telling me, the Chief Economist, Stiglitz, was telling me that he started questioning what was happening. You know, everywhere we go, every country we end up meddling in, we destroy their economy and they end up in flames. And he was saying that he questioned this and he got fired for it. But he was saying that they even kind of plan in the riots. They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its economy, you are going to get riots in the streets. And they say, well that's the IMF riot. In other words, because you have riot, you lose. All the capital runs away from your country and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions. AJ: And that makes them even more desperate. So it is really an imperial economy war to implode countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. They are getting so greedy - they are preparing it for this country. GP: I've just been talking to, out in California just yesterday, from here in Paris, the chief investigators of Enron for the State of California. They are telling me some of the games these guys are playing. No one is watching that. It's not just the stockholders that got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars out of the public pocket in Texas and California in particular. AJ: Where are the assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a dummy corporation - from the experts I've had on and they transferred all those assets to other corporations and banks. GP: Well yea, this stuff has really gone just like a three-card Monty game. I mean remember that there is money at the bottom. You did pay California's electric bills according to the investigations, they are telling me that they were pumped up unnecessarily by 9 to 12-billion dollars. And I don't know who they are going to get it back from now. AJ: Well they actually caught the Governor buying it for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt and doing it over and over and over again. GP: Yea, the system has gotten completely out of control and these guys knew exactly what was happening. Well, you have to understand that some of the guys who designed the system in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after. In fact, here I'm in London right now and we have, the British has some responsibility here. The guy who was on the audit committee of Enron, Lord Wakeham. And this guy is a real piece of work, there isn't a conflict of interest that he hasn't been involved in. AJ: And he is the head of NM Rothschild. GP: There isn't anything that he doesn't have his fingers in. He's on something like fifty Boards. And one of the problems, he was supposed to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. And in fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret Thatcher's government and he's the one who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power plants here in Britain. And they owned a water system in the middle of England. This is what this guy approved and then they gave him a job on the board. And on top of being on the board, they gave him a huge consulting contract. So you know, this guy was supposed to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their accounts. AJ: Well, he is also the head of the board to regulate the media. GP: Yes, he is, because I have run into real problems, because he regulates me. AJ: They are also trying to pass laws in England where you've got an 800-year old well, or in some cases a 2000-year old well that the Romans built that's on your property and they say we are putting a meter on it. You can't have your own water. GP: Yea, and that's Lord Wakeham. I mean this is the guy from Enron. He is a real piece of work. He can't be touched here because like I say he actually regulates the media. So if you complain, he's got his hand on your pen. AJ: Burrow into NM Rothschild, you'll find it all there. Go through these four points. I mean you've got the documents. The IMF/World Bank implosion, four points, how they bring down a country and destroy the resources of the people. GP: Right. First you open up the capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks. Then you go to what's called market-based pricing. That's the stuff like in California where everything is free market and you end up with water bills - we can't even imagine selling off water companies in the United States of America. But imagine if a private company like Enron owned your water. So then the prices go through the roof. Then open up your borders to trade - complete free marketeering. And Stiglitz who was the chief economist, remember he was running this system, he was their numbers man and he was saying it was like the opium wars. He said this isn't free trade; this is coercion trade. This is war. They are taking apart economies through this. AJ: Well look, China has a 40% tariff on us, we have a 2% on them. That's not free and fair trade. It's to force all industry to a country that the globalists fully control. GP: Well, you know Walmart - I did a story, in fact, if you read my book. Let me just mention that I've got a book out, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" about how, unfortunately, America has been put up for sale. "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is coming out this week. But I have a story in there about how Walmart has 700 plants in China. There is almost nothing in a Walmart store that comes from the United States of America, despite all the eagles on the wall. AJ: Exactly, like 1984, then they have big flags saying "Buy American" and there's hardly anything --- it's Orwellian double-think. GP: What's even worst is they will hire a factory and right next to it will be the sister factory which is inside a prison. You can imagine the conditions of these workers producing this lovely stuff for Walmart. It's really.... AJ: And if an elitist needs a liver, they just call. GP: (Laughs) I know, it's grim. In fact, I talked to a guy, Harry Wu, is his name and, in fact, he broke into, he's been in Chinese prison for 19 years. No one believed his horrible stories. He actually broke back into prison, took a camera with him and took pictures of the conditions and said this is the conditions of factories where Walmart is getting its stuff made at, it's all.... AJ: I was threatened to be thrown off TV here in Austin when I aired video of little girls 4-years old chained down, skinnier than Jews in concentration camps, to die. And I was threatened, if you ever air that again, you will be arrested. GP: Well you know, it is horrifying stuff that, unfortunately, I have been handed and Stiglitz, was very courageous for him to come out and make these statements. Like I said, he didn't provide me the documents. The documents really sealed it because it said this is what really happened. They really do say sign on the dotted line agreeing to 111 conditions for each nation. And the public has no say; they don't know what the hell is happening to them. All they know.... AJ: Go back into privatization. Go through these four points. That's the key. It sends billions to politicians to hand everything over. GP: Yea, he called it briberization, which is you sell off the water company and that's worth, over ten years, let's say that that's worth about 5 billion bucks, ten percent of that is 500 million, you can figure out how it works. I actually spoke to a Senator from Argentina two weeks ago. I got him on camera. He said that after he got a call from George W. Bush in 1988 saying give the gas pipeline in Argentina to Enron, that's our current president. He said that what he found was really creepy was that Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the world's price for their gas and he said how can you make such an offer? And he was told, not by George W. but by a partner in the deal, well if we only pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little bit for you to go in your Swiss bank account. And that's how it's done. AJ: This is the .... GP: I've got the film. This guy is very conservative. He knows the Bush family very well. And he was public works administrator in Argentina and he said, yea, I got this call. I asked him, I said, from George W. Bush. He said, yea, November 1988, the guy called him up and said give a pipeline to Enron. Now this is the same George W. Bush who said he didn't get to know Ken Lay until 1994. So, you know..... AJ: So now they are having these white-wash hearings. You know I was at Enron yesterday in Houston because I'm now here in Austin. We were like 30-feet from the door, right on the sidewalk and I have it on video - goons came up and said you can't videotape. I said go ahead and have me arrested. I mean I'm talking on the sidewalk, Greg. GP: Well, you know, I was there in May, telling people in Britain you've never heard of Enron, but ... And these are the guys who have figured out how to (garbled) this government. In fact, we saw some interesting documents, a month before Bush took office, Bill Clinton, I think to get even with Bush's big donor, cut Enron out of the California power market. He put a cap on the prices they could charge. They couldn't charge more than one-hundred times the normal price for electricity. That upset Enron. So Ken Lay personally wrote a note to Dick Cheney saying get rid of Clinton's cap on prices. Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy department reversed the clamps on Enron. OK, how much is that worth for those guys. You know that has got to be worth, that paid off in a week all the donations. AJ: Listen at the bombs you are dropping. You are interviewing these ministers, former head of IMF/World Bank economist - all of this, you've got the documents, paying people's Swiss Bank accounts, all this happening. Then you've got Part 2, what do they do after they start imploding? GP: Well, then they tell you to start cutting your budgets. A fifth of the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education budgets, I mean horrible things. Now if you cut the economy in the middle of a recession that was created by these guys, you are really going to absolutely demolish this nation. After we were attacked on September 11, Bush ran out and said we got to spend $50 to $100 billion dollars to save our economy. We don't start cutting the budget, you start trying to save this economy. But they tell these countries you've got to cut, and cut, and cut. And why, according to the inside documents, it's so you can make payments to foreign banks - the foreign banks are collecting 21% to 70% interest. This is loan-sharking. If fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina to get rid of the laws against loan-sharking. because any bank would be a loan-shark under Argentine law. AJ: But Greg, you said it yourself and the documents show it. They first implode the economy to create that atmosphere. They institute the entire climate that does this. GP: Yea, and then they say, well gee, we can't lend you any money except at these loan-shark rates. We don't allow people to charge 75% interest in the United States. That's loan-sharking. AJ: Part 3 and Part 4. What do they do after they do that? GP: Like I said, you open up the borders for trade, that's the new opium wars. And once you have destroyed an economy that can't produce anything, one of the terrible things is that they are forcing nations to pay horrendous amounts for things like drugs - legal drugs. And by the way, that's how you end up with an illegal drug trade, what's there left to survive on except sell us smack and crack and that's how... AJ: And the same CIA national security dictatorship has been caught shipping that in. GP: You know, we are just helping our allies. AJ: This is just amazing. And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar. What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan? GP: Well, in Part 4, you end up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President of Venezuela. AJ: And they install their own corporate government. GP: What they said was here you've got an elected president of the government and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics - they would just support a transition government. What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup d'etat, if the military overthrows the current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what I'm going to do is, I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government - and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as they did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military and I'm telling you watch this space: the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil companies. AJ: Greg Palast, here is the problem. You said it when you first came out of the gates. They are getting hungry, they are doing it to the United States now. Enron, from all the evidence that I've seen was a front, another shill, they would steal assets and then transfer it to other older global companies, then they blew that out and stole the pension funds. Now they are telling us that terrorism is coming any day. It's going to happen if you don't give your rights up. Bush did not involve Congress and the others who are supposed to be in the accession if there is a nuclear attack in the secret government, Washington Post -"Congress Not Advised of Shadow Government." We have the Speaker of the House not being told. This looks like coup d'etat here. I'm going to come right out with it. We had better spread the word on this now or these greedy creatures are going to go all the way. GP: I'm very sad about one thing. I report this story in the main stream press of Britian. I'm on the BBC despite Lord Wakeham. I know he doesn't like me there. I'm in the BBC, I'm in the main daily paper, which is the equivalent of the New York Times or whatever, and we do get the information out. And I'm just very sorry that we have to have an alternative press, an alternative radio network and everything else to get out the information that makes any sense. I mean this information should be available to every American. I mean, after all, it's our government. ### At http://www.GregPalast.com you can read and subscribe to Greg Palast's London Observer columns and view his reports for BBC Television's Newsnight. ********** Primitive accumulation of capital in conteporary times. www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=125&... add your own comments Very frightening (english) by Dhunter 4:08pm Wed Mar 13 '02 When you look at the whole picture and not just at isolated incidents, it seems that the corporations are SPEEDING UP THEIR TIMETABLE for world domination. I myself had thought that their power-grab would accelerate after 2005, here in the Western Hemisphere anyway, when the FTAA kicks in. But this interview reminds of a quote from the Book of Revelations in the Bible: "The beast knows its time is short". It seems to me that we could be facing a process that is over in MONTHS rather than years. Primitive Accumulation (english) by wwicko 6:53pm Wed Mar 13 '02 In the age of discovery, populations in the new world were exterminated and their resources taken by European imperialist. This activity was the source of accumulated capital for the European empires. This activity, which might be called "plundering," was called by Karl Marx "primitive accumulation of capital." Primitive accumulation of capital is the only real source of capital, or material inputs, for the economic system we refer to as capitalism. Capitalism is premised on infinte exponential growth, or infinite exponential accumulation of material wealth. The problem is that there are real material limits to economic growth. As is argued at www.dieoff.com, the earth is a sphere, a sphere is finite, thus the resources contained therein are finite. A system, such as capitalism, premised on infinite growth in a finite environment will eventually begin to reach those limits, at which time the capitalists will likely begin to hoard the few remaining resources (i.e. Oil in the Caspian Region, and fresh water supplies). It is getting more difficult for capitalists to acquire inputs for their system because we are nearing the limits of our finite sphere and the easy pickings are already consumed. For efficiency in acquiring the remaining resources, the mechanism of primitive accumulation has been institutionalized in the form of the international banking system headed by the IMF and the World Bank. The dictates of this institution are enforced by the US military. Another factor in this historical process is that the human beings who weren't suffering antisocial personality disorder have resisted the ugly truth that is the heart of capitalism. It is an economic system that must kill and consume to survive. At the end of the age of discovery, those human beings with an intact social instinct resisted the destruction of cultures for the purpose having luxury foodstuffs and linens. These intact human beings also resisted slavery, which is an another form of primitive accumulation. Once they understood how perverse these activities were, intact human beings said, "No more." (When will we understand that wage-slavery is not freedom?) Back to my original line of thought. With all this resistance going on, the process of destruction that is necessary for the capitalism to continue has been, as George Orwell knew it would be, propagandized. The ugly truth is distorted, and the true motives for the ongoing destruction of what remains of the world are concelaed behind a number of meaningless rationales such as humanitarian missions, a war on drugs, and a war on terrorism. Soon there will be precious little left to possess that is not already possessed by capitalists. At this point the economic system of Capitalism will collapse because there will be no further opportunity for primitive accumulation, and this centuries long Ponzi scheme will be over. Unfortunately, for most of us, the process will be very messy and very lethal. I wonder if at that point the "material preconditions for the socialization of the means of production" (Marx) will be present and the proletariat will usher in some golden age? Its kinda like waiting for Christ to return. --------------- THE STATE OF MIND - December 18, 2001 By Israel Shamir The steep slopes of Wadi Keziv in Western Galilee are walled by squat local oaks and thorny bush. On the streambed, oleanders and cypresses look into shallow ponds formed by its springs. I like this secluded canyon. On hot summer days, one can hide in an intricate deep cave and laze in its cool clear waters, waiting for deer and hoping for a nymph. On cooler days, you can climb up a steep spur rising amidst the gorge. It is called qurain, the Horn, in Arabic, hence the Arab name of Wadi Keziv, Wadi Qurain. Astride the spur, the Crusader castle of Monfort raises its donjon high and gazes towards the distant Mediterranean Sea. This place holds many memories. The 12th century Zionists, Teutonic knights of St Mary fortified the castle on the spur, and called it Starkenberg, the Mount of Strength. The name and the remote location didn't help: they were defeated by Salah ad-Din, the Arab paragon of valour and compassion, who allowed them to depart with their weapons and honour for Eastern Europe. The stony path leading to the spring was the meeting ground of the enchanting characters of Arabesques, an exquisite novel by the Palestinian writer Anton Shammas. Shammas, a native of nearby Fassuta, is probably the only non-Jew in the world who writes his books and poems in Israeli Hebrew. Farther west, the brook of Keziv flows into the sea at the ruins of az-Ziv, the Christian village destroyed by Jews in 1948. In this village, in the long-gone 1920s, a local Palestinian girl was visited by another local Palestinian woman, the Virgin. In other words, it is a typical place in the unusual land of Palestine. These days, you can roam the canyon all by yourself. It is as empty of people as the rest of countryside. The land of Palestine is in trouble, the deepest trouble since the black nights of 1948. People do not venture down here anymore, leaving the canyon to its lean and wiry boar. Walking downstream, I spotted a few of these gracious animals, so different from their domesticated cousins. It was only outside the gorge, on the plain of Acre that I came across a human presence. There were a few Thai or Chinese peasants working the fields of a local kibbutz. A middle-aged kibbutznik sat in the shadow overseeing their work. I joined him for a smoke and a drink of cold water. He was the epitome of a good Israeli, large, sunburned, with a friendly smile, bushy mustachio and brisk talk. Fifty years ago, he or rather his predecessor, a fighter of the Jewish Storm Troopers, the Palmach, would seize the lands of az-Ziv and expel its peasants to Lebanon. Thirty years ago, he would work the stolen land with his own hands. Now, he oversees the Thais working this land. Very soon, he told me, he will go to New York, to visit his son, a web designer. While he is away, some Russians from Maalot town will be hired to oversee the Asian workers for the kibbutz. Not many Jews are interested in working the land, or even in overseeing Thais working it, he said. The kibbutz hopes to get a building permit, build housing and sell the real estate. It is a valuable site, near Naharia and Acre, and it will fetch a premium price, despite the crisis, he said. I shook hands and bid farewell to him, to the sweaty Thais, to the green fields, to the mountains of Lebanon to the north, concealing the refugee camps where dwell the original inhabitants of as-Ziv, to the Galilee mountains to the east, holding the Russian town of Maalot. I hitched a ride to Nahariya, and from there, I took a train homewards to Jaffa. The train carried a few Africans, probably illegal immigrants judging by their shy demeanour. A Romanian building team was gulping beer and burping loudly. They were imported from their impoverished East European land to build the houses for elderly Russian immigrants. Just like in California, the Israeli Jews do not want to be employed in construction. A Jewish Israeli lawyer in black yarmulke leafed through papers in his semi-opened briefcase. A blond and armed Israeli soldier talked Ukrainian with its fricative h's to his corpulent girlfriend. He extolled his own heroic fight against multitudes of Arab terrorists under her admiring eyes. A group of Moroccans discussed the closure of the Acre steel plant and their slim chances of finding other work. The crisis is deepening, one of them said. It is as bad as in 1966. The train rolled through Haifa, and I thought of the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Americans, Jews and Christian Zionists, who lobby, pray, support and pay - no, not for the Jewish state built on the ruins of Palestine, as they imagine. That would be bad enough. But the reality is worse. I thought of the millions of Palestinians, rotting in refugee camps and jails, dispossessed, expelled, - victims not of Jewish greed for land, as they imagine, but of something worse - of a ghost. The Jewish state is a virtual state that is quickly losing all remaining connection to reality. This ghost of a state kills people and collects money in America; it continues some nefarious existence, like the legal term, 'estate of the deceased'. Its fields are worked by imported guest workers, guarded by imported Russians and Ethiopians, explained by Israeli professors who are forever off lecturing in American universities and by brave generals on the lookout for a big kickback from American weapon-makers. Unemployment grows daily, vital services are on strike; the tourist industry has collapsed months ago. Hotels are boarded up and other branches of the national economy are close to collapse. Israelis buy flats in Florida and Prague, while houses in Israel go begging for buyers. Sharon's desire to punish the Palestinians has the sting of punishing one's own left hand. Palestinians and Israelis are intertwined and integrated, and this separation kills the economy of both. From far away America, Israel looks like a giant nuclear state, the great ally of the United States, a Jewish state that is a source of pride for American Jews. A visitor leaves our shores with a strong feeling of our identity and prosperity. Only we, permanent residents, know that it is a cardboard sham. Israel is collapsing, as its active citizens emigrate in despair, while generals complete the destruction of the country. A cruel fate befalls the native Palestinians: a ghost kills them, a spiritless body walking the corridors of the Congress and the deserts of the Middle East in Zombie-like trance. For the sake of this spectre, important American Jews squeeze every penny from their employees and countrymen, cut down on pensions to old and assistance for children, reduce the health and education budget, dry up help to Africa and Latin America, build improbable coalitions with notorious racists of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell's kind, demand destruction of Iraq, bless the bombing of Afghani refugees, keep Afro-Americans in their ghettos, undermine their host society, make enemies for themselves and for America. These deeds would be vile enough even if they would accomplish something of value to someone, but they are worse because they are useless. The Zionist experiment has practically collapsed. It can run for many yeas to come on life-support, as a brain-dead vegetable. It can kill people, maybe even start the next world war. But it cannot become alive. The Jewish state of Israel is a state of mind, a projection of the American Jewish mind. The worries and problems it articulates are American Jewish problems. For Israeli 'Jews', there is no need for segregation, war, or subjugation of natives. We eat no bagels with lox, speak no Yiddish, read no Saul Bellow or Sholom Aleichem, and avoid synagogues. We prefer Arab food and Greek music. My neighbourhood has seven pork butchers to a kosher one. Forty per cent of Tel Aviv weddings are done outside Jewish framework: young Israelis prefer to go to Cyprus to get married, just to avoid contact with Rabbis. Tel Aviv is the gay capital of the Middle East, though according to Jewish law, gays should be exterminated. If American Jews did not bribe Israelis on a large scale, we would just forget about the Diaspora and dissolve into the hospitable Middle East. If they continue to bankroll us, we shall oblige them with a small show of Jewishness. We are master-sellers of illusion, and as long as there are buyers, we shall provide the goods. In 1946, a group of dedicated men from all over the world came to Palestine under the aegis of the UN. They were sent to prepare the ground for partition of the land. Among other places, they visited the southernmost kibbutz, Revivim in the arid Negev. There, they came across a wonderful flowerbed with roses, anemones, and violets in front of the kibbutz office. In their report, the members of the delegation expressed their amazement and stated, 'Jews make the desert bloom, let them have the Negev'. As they left, the kibbutz youngsters went out and pulled the already dying flowers out of the sand. They had just bought the flowers same morning on the Jaffa market and had planted them as props for the duration of the visit. This small outlay of cash had transferred Negev with its two hundred thousand Palestinians to the Jewish state. Most of the natives were expelled across the newly drawn border, to the camps of Gaza or Jordan. It was cruel and useless: even now, fifty years later, the Negev south of Beersheba has a smaller population than in 1948. In order to populate depopulated lands, the Mossad broke and terrorised the Jewish communities of North Africa. The Jews were brought in, sprayed with DDT lice-killer and placed into refugee camps that soon became the towns of Netivot, Dimona, Yerucham. They are still there, in the stark desert outpost towns full of unemployment and misery, drawing social benefits and nursing a deep dislike for the Ashkenazi Jews who lounge in Tel Aviv's cafes. It is probably the only place on earth where you are liable to hear, 't'is pity you did not burn in Auschwitz'. Thus the conjuring tricks of Revivim, the conquest of Negev, the expulsion of Palestinians and the destruction of the Moroccan Jewish community succeeded separately, but ultimately failed altogether. It could be expected: evil and immoral deeds cannot bear good fruit. Zionist leaders dreamed of making Palestine as Jewish as England is English. They failed. Palestine is as Jewish as Jamaica is English. The land of Palestine is being ruined now, in front of our very eyes. Its beautiful old villages are bombed to oblivion; churches are emptied of their flocks; olive trees are uprooted. Such ruin has not befallen the land since the Assyrian invasion 2700 years ago. Nothing can comfort us in the face of this great destruction, and certainly the people responsible for it - whether Israeli killers or their American Jewish supporters - will be damned forever. Still, a wry irony of history will remain as a footnote in the books: the Jewish leadership committed these crimes in vain, and received no gain out of it. Even if the last Palestinian were to be crucified on the hill of Golgotha, even that would not breath life into the virtual Jewish state of Israel. -------------------- >Kelley merely despises democracy and therefore sneers at all the >methods by which democracy can be made an actuality rather >than of leaders swaying through advertising and *her* kind of >manipulative slogans rather than the leninist slogan which summarizes >and gives focus to the practice of the people themselves. Her >boorish sneering at slogans while utterly ignorant of the history of >their political use gives the lie to her claims of extensive political >practice. She has rather engaged in bureaucratic dominance based >on intellectual charisma. i did say a thing about slogans carrol. i didn't sneer one way or another except to laugh at people who i knew would reject slogans and yet engaged in their use in a game of oneupmanship. so, i conclude that the meds need to be adjusted coz you're hearing voices again. as for my take on democracy well here it is again from my post on working class civil society of which you've heard some about from patrick bond, except adapted for the US. if you think the below, which is about how to foster the building of demcratic practices and institutions is undemocratic, you've got some strange notions of democracy. somday, try looking into the solidarity movment because much of what we did in the community of which i speak was modeled on that experience. -----paste----- for one thing, ehrenreich is being pragmatic and she's asking people to engage in political practice. get involved and *do* something that will help people and in the process you might bridge the consumer divides, instead of investigating one's navel for lint and classifying it according to some ossified typification of real politics, to wit: > I know it sounds scary, but it will be a lot less so if we can make >sharing stylish again and excess consumption look as ugly as it actually >is. Better yet, give some of your time and your energy too. But if all you >can do is write a check, that's fine: Since Congress will never >redistribute the wealth (downward, anyway), we may just have to do it >ourselves. --------------- yoshie: >Ehrenreich is the Martha Stewart of progressive politics, for Ehrenreich >thinks that housework is a _moral_ issue _for women_, a spiritually >uplifting testimony to women's industriousness . actually, she's talking about how the *shared* experience of gendered labor in the form of housework--the social conditions of labor--gave us something in common. now, the division of labor and the commodification of what was once unpaid labor presents us as enemies, as she astutely notes. the answer, at least one, for her is to create alternative political practices, as i mentioned above. no, it's not radical or marxist as you would have it. but if we sit around waiting for the time to be right for radical, marxist change we'll be sitting around forever. marx surely didn't say that we could only pursue radical political practices, but must take a side in the struggles and wishes of the age and move them progressively forward. she's drawing on an approach that in sociology is evident in the lit on "civil society". it is in civil society--in the practices of commitment to something greater than one's self (in union struggles, in organizing, in volunteering, etc) that we create shared lifeworlds (habermas) with people we might not ever come in contact with otherwise. in the process we learn to see the world from the perspective of someone besides our selves and those in our "chosen" lifestyle enclaves. in the process, (and this is habermas's schtick) we learn to create alternative social institutions in which *we* negotiate the rules through which we decide to live together. these are social practices that might, just might, present real alternatives to the colonizing logics of the market and state. this involves morality. the market encourages a morality of self-interest maximization. "let me keep my own and i will become, without ever thinking about it, my brother's keeper". the state encourages a morality of obedience to rules said to be in the service of the greater good: people who one does not know, but nonetheless depends on through vast intricate divisions of labor. (when that division of labor breaks down through strikes or disasters we realize just how much we need people all over the globe in order to enjoy modern conveniences) civil society, on the other hand, creates and is sustained by practices of reciprocity and we learn how to create, for ourselves, the rules by which we are to live together. (and this, i think, is what sam, brett, eric, i [and maybe angela] often are on about: where do people fit in? where do we, in this coming utopia, become part of the process of deciding how it is that we ought to organize our lives. which is why i think brett's parecon model is interesting but also problematic ] we might get involved for all the wrong reasons, too. moralistic, selfish, whatever. my students, for ex, talk about working with the special olympics simply because they wanted to put that work on their applications to college. however, in the process, they learned about a world they never would have known existed and that turns them into people who are much more sympathetic to the daily lives of the disabled. to bore frances to tears, i'll mention, yet again, the anti nuke dump protests. while people started out protesting from a NIMBY position, their involvement in that struggle put them in contact with people engaged in similar struggles all over the world: latino communities in texas, ukrainian communities, etc. rural whites were in contact with those from worlds that, from a distance, they could easily ignore and belittle. but the shared experience of capital/state oppression made them realize connections they would never have realized had they not gotten involved with. they can no longer take the view of observer and ignore and belittle. "those" people are no longer "those" people. as demonstrated by numerous social movement studies done on that community and others, these people went on to get involved in other environmental issues. issues they might never have cared about before. also, their NIMBY critique turned into a larger critique of, at first, the state and then of capitalism -- a critique of the capitalist economy that produced nuclear waste in the first place. a critique that recognized that it was power companies who were trying to shuffle the cost of doing business off onto taxpayers, who were make us pay for the disposal of waste. people also got involved n issues they might not have cared about were it not from direct involvement--involvement that they took up themselves for selfish, moralistic, pious reasons to begin with. this had real consequences when plant closings hit the communities. 1. they were much more cognizant of the rippling effects of the economy and much more concerned about the people in mexico who were the would be beneficiaries of the relocation. this, i would contend, is very likely a direct result of their political engagement in the anti nuke dump protests. 2. their active engagement in struggle meant that they felt a sense of efficacy--that they could accomplish something, that it was do-able. a decade of such struggle and involvement, in turn, meant that the last time a plant announced that it would be closing up shop, the workers walked out on the spot. just up and left. and, unlike earlier plant closing announcements, many more people spoke out against the practice. and many more people were on the side of the workers who were working for minimum wage in a plant that had promised all kinds of things to that community in order to get tax abatements: we tore down houses, an entire street, at county expense for that plant and they paid not one red cent in taxes. five years later, they packed up and left. a normally very docile community was radicalized by their involvement in alternative institutions in civil society. twenty years before, a community sat idly by with a "fuck us over we like it attitude" toward corporations. twenty years before, the town fathers posted a billboard on the highway that pretty much announced to the world that we liked getting fucked over. no more. not after the nuke dump protests. no more, not after the engagement in protests against the last plant closing. and those engagements in protest were made possible by civil society *and* by the work of people thinking about ways to strengthen civil society and to create public spheres of active, practical engagements with the struggles and wishes of the age. yes, that would be lousy shit fer brains social scientists, often involved because they needed the r.a. monies or the research experience or the publications or because they wanted to piously demonstrate their moralizing concern for the down trodden. whatever. they couldn't have lasted long in that project without being affected by it and without learning to see what it's like in another world-- a world of the rural working poor that they often disparaged. it was civil society that provided the foundation for the community's engagement in political practices to begin with. what were they? voluntary organizations that people often joined out of a sense of pious moralism: churches, little leagues, the grange, the ywca, book reading groups, women's league of voters, quilting circles, etc etc etc. how were they the backbone of a (comparatively) insurrectionary struggle against the state? these organizations provided the resource and practical infrastructure that enabled that protest to get off the ground in the first place. they provided a group of people who were used to donating their time for this or that project. people who were willing to do the shit grunt work, like typing letters, licking envelopes, making phone calls, digging up info. people who knew how to interact with people they didn't always get along with. people who brought you donuts and hot coffee when you were standing outside the county office building freezing your tail off waiting from some government official. while enrenreich ought to go further in advocating such an approach, she at least did hint that it wasn't enough to write a check out to an organization. perhaps doug couuld press her on this. nonetheless, i suspect from reading ehrenreich carefully over the years, she is coming from the above analysis of what it takes to make social movements work and why it is necessary to engage in and strengthen alternative social institutions and practices rather than denouncing them as insignificant. that may well be true in the long run. i don't know. but my hopelessly optimistic side, one nurtured by witnessing the transformation i witnessed above, makes me suspect it's worth a shot. ----------------- |