July 31, 2000
Subject: Miscellaneous Subjects # 17: Top Arafat Aide Upbeat With Future + Fury as Japan unleashes its harpoons + Superfish are no superfix for hunger + TUMOR MEAT: Meat from Diseased Animals approved for Consumers + How Much Caffeine? + Direct Action: Time to Move On + WELCOME TO THE CLUB
Hello everyone
This whole compilation could be called "The Final Wake-up Call"...
You will see why when you read it.
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
P.S. Yaron <Wisdom79@aol.com> recommended this site http://www.universalhappiness.com for anyone looking for inspirational poetry.
THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE SUMMIT MAY HAVE NOT ACHIEVED AN IMMEDIATE COMPREHENSIVE AGREEMENT BUT THIS EXTRAORDINARY EFFORT WILL CERTAINLY LEAD TO SUCH AN AGREEMENT IN A NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE...
ACCORDING TO SAEB EREKAT SEEN ON NIGHTLINE LAST WEEK, OVER 80% OF THE ISSUES UNDER NEGOTIATION WERE SUCCESSFULLY DEALT WITH AT CAMP DAVID AND THE CONCLUSION OF A FINAL ACCORD IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME. UNFORTUNATELY, ACCORDING TO THE LATEST NEWS, BARAK'S GOVERNMENT MAY FALL TODAY (MONDAY, JULY 31) IN A VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE AS A RESULT OF THE FACT, AS SOME CLAIM, THAT HE HAS MADE TOO MANY CONCESSIONS TO THE PALESTINIANS. THIS WOULD PRECIPITATE A NEW ELECTION IN ISRAEL AND AT BEST POSTPONE FOR A GOOD WHILE THE CHANCES OF CONCLUDING A COMPREHENSIVE PEACE AGREEMENT.
From: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000725/wl/palestinians_1.html
Tuesday July 25
Top Arafat Aide Upbeat With Future
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - A top aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, unfazed by the collapse of the Camp David peace talks, said Tuesday the prospects for an agreement with Israel are better than at any time in eight years.
Saeb Erekat, minister of local government for the Palestinian Authority, told a news conference there was progress on all issues during the two weeks of talks at the presidential retreat in Maryland.
''I can't say the negotiations failed; I can't say the negotiations succeeded,'' he said. He added that no one had expected a comprehensive settlement to be achieved during the 14 days.
Erekat's upbeat message seemed aimed at minimizing the possibility of widespread disturbances by Palestinians who had high hopes that the Camp David talks would yield a breakthrough.
He acknowledged the possibility of ``desperate acts'' by some but added that ``the prospects for a settlement are real.'' He repeatedly sidestepped the question of whether Arafat will declare an independent Palestinian state by the Sept. 13 deadline for a settlement if no agreement is reached by then. Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who blamed Arafat for the absence of an agreement, Erekat declined to hold Barak responsible.
``I will not try to assign blame,'' Erekat said.
He refused to enter into details about the negotiations, saying only that the complexities of the issues - Jerusalem, borders, refugees, settlements and security - ``are enormous.''Despite the obstacles, he said Arafat is ``more determined than ever to reach an agreement.'' He added that Arafat will visit a number of Arab and European countries next week to give them his assessment of the situation.
``We know more than ever what it takes to make a deal,'' he said.
Erekat even found room for optimism on Jerusalem, the most contentious issue of all at Camp David.
``Jerusalem will stand as the capital of the state of Palestine and the state of Israel,'' he said. ``Jerusalem will be the place of freedom for all.''
Read also at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000727/wl/mideast_summit_dc_88.html
Thursday July 27
Palestinians, Israel Due to Resume Talks Sunday
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli and Palestinian negotiators plan to meet on Sunday to resume efforts to secure a peace accord that eluded them at the Camp David summit, officials from both sides said on Thursday. ``I would say that definitely yes, it's possible to finish the conflict and reach a reasonable agreement in not too long a time so long as there is talk between the sides,'' Israeli negotiator Gilead Sher told Israel Radio.
CLIP
I also received this:
From: "Barbara Wolf" <bjwolf@rochester.infi.net>
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000
Subject: Middle East Press Report
I have just received a Middle East press release from Ami Isseroff, ami_iss@netvision.net.il, who says today, July 29, at the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem, a group of senior Israeli and Palestinian politicians will meet to call for the governments of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to renew peace negotiations immediately and to ask the Israeli and Palestinian public to continue supporting the peace process and refraining from all threats or acts of violence. Today's meeting is the first ray of hope since the collapse of the Camp David peace summit.
Let us step in and help with the peace effort. Let us send our positive energies, our positive thoughts, to the Middle East.
CLIP
I have put on the Global Meditations web site excerpts from an email received July 26 from the Middle East.
http://www.globalmeditations.com/mideast1.htm
THIS TERRIBLE NEWS BELOW SHOULD BE AT THE TOP OF EVERY NEWSCAST TODAY. HAVE YOU HEARD THIS ANYWHERE? I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO FINALLY GET THE JAPANESE OUT OF THE WHALE HUNTING BUSINESS BUT LET'S HOPE THEY WILL WAKE UP BEFORE DRIVING A WHALE SPECIES TO EXTINCTION.
From: "Judith Iam" <judeiam@cwnet.com>
Subject: FW: The Observer: Fury as Japan unleashes its harpoons
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000
From: crashlist-admin@lists.wwpublish.com
Officially it's called research - but in Tokyo a slice of sperm whale sells for £20
by Robin McKie, Science Editor
Sunday July 30, 2000 The four boats that slipped out of the Japanese ports of Shimonoseki, Inonshina and Shiyogawa yesterday provoked no interest, no crowds, and no announcement of their destination. They looked for all the world like boats heading for local fishing grounds. But these ships were on a mission that is very far from being innocent. Over the next 24 hours they will rendezvous at sea and proceed on a task that will engulf their country in criticism and bitter disapproval: the resumption of the hunting of some of the world's largest and most endangered whales.
Despite last-minute personal pleas from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to the Japanese Prime Minister, the vessels are scheduled to kill a total of 100 minke, 50 Brydes (pronounced brooder) and 10 sperm whales in the North Pacific in the next few days. It is the biggest catch attempted since a world ban on whaling was introduced two decades ago. According to Japan's Fisheries Agency, the aim is merely to study the eating and migratory behaviour of the animals. The fact that their meat will then be sold to local markets in Japan is merely a by-product, it claims.
Yesterday most world leaders and environmentalists lined up to denounce this claim. 'The bottom line is that there is no convincing scientific reason for the Japanese to kill any whales at all,' said Helen Clark, the New Zealand Prime Minister. 'It is well known that meat from the whales killed during these 'scientific' expeditions finishes up at Japanese dinner tables. That's what appals people.'
Sperm whales - the giant toothed whales immortalised by Herman Melville in Moby Dick - have the largest brains of any mammal, and also the most valuable flesh. The Japanese eat it raw - for £20 a slice in Tokyo restaurants. The fact that Japan has decided to kill Brydes and sperm - which are much larger than the minkes that they have already hunted 'scientifically' over the past few years - has provoked particular fury.
These animals require processing in large factory ships that are currently banned under International Whaling Commission rules. 'This raises the spectre of a return to the sort of big-time whaling that drove many species of whales to the brink of extinction over the past century,' said Richard Mott, vice-president of the World Wildlife Fund. Three high-powered catcher boats will form the first wave of attack against the whales. As they approach one of the giant animals, a harpoon with an explosive head will be fired at its head, shattering its cerebral cortex. The carcass will then be pulled back to the catcher boat, before being brought to the foruth boat, the factory ship. Then the whale will be dragged up its main ramp and butchered. By the time the fleet returns to Japan in a few weeks, all whale meat will have been boxed ready for selling.
The prospect of this butchery has enraged Western leaders and officials. Last week Tony Blair and President Clinton both spoke person ally to Japan's Prime Minister and pressed him to reconsider his country's decision - to no avail. 'This decision is a slap in the face of President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair and many others around the world who have been working to persuade Japan to cancel its plans,' said Fred O'Regan, president of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. This view was shared by Richard Page, whale campaigner for Greenpeace. 'Japan clearly has no interest in the future of whale populations or world opinion,' he said. Japan's proposal to increase the intensity of its whaling missions was opposed bitterly at the last meeting of the International Whaling Commision which passed a resolution condemning the plan. For its part, Japan has rejected the motion. 'This is really an aggressive move by Japan,' said Rolland Schmitten, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce. 'These whales do not have to be killed for science.' This view was backed by a UK Ministry of Agriculture official. 'We are completely opposed to this. It flies in the face of world opinion,' he said.
The widening rift between Western nations and Japan shows that the latter's small but powerful whaling lobby now threatens to isolate the nation utterly. Japanese politicians believe that their relatively small scientific whaling missions are actually helping to pave the way for a return to full commercial whaling in the near future. Japan even pressed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in April to remove many whales species from its 'Appendix One' category so that limited hunting of these animals, and trading in their products, could be resumed. However, the bid was squashed by a huge majority of countries, suggesting that, far from paving the way for the resumption of commercial whaling, Japan's antics are hardening the rest of the world to its stance.
At this month's whaling commission annual meeting in Adelaide, an attempt to create a whale sanctuary in the South Pacific was narrowly defeated - largely thanks to Japan's open offers of aid to countries in Africa and the Caribbean in return for their votes at the conference.
However, observers believe that at next year's meeting, in London, even this tactic will fail. The hunted Northern right whale: up to 59ft long and 80 tonnes in weight. Status: it is heavily hunted and numbers may be as low as 350. Minke whale: up to 33ft long and 10 tonnes in weight. Status: insufficient data, but it is the only whale which is hunted commercially. Sperm whale: up to 60ft long and 50 tonnes. Numbers have dropped to a sixth of the million which existed at the turn of the century. Status: vulnerable. Blue whale: up to 88ft long and 120 tonnes. Only 460 left from the turn of the century population of a quarter of a million. Status: endangered. Bryde's whale: up to 72ft long and 80 tonnes in weight. There used to be 78,000, but no one knows its status now.
Superfish are no superfix for hunger
By Jean-Michel Cousteau
Thursday, July 20, 2000
Environmental News Network
Behold the "superfish," a salmon that grows six times as fast and twice as
large as normal farmed Atlantic salmon but only consumes three-quarters as
much feed before it is brought to market.
Sound like science fiction? It's not. Some 100,000 of these fish already
exist, produced by a Canadian company, and are awaiting the official
sanction of federal food agencies in the United States, the world's main
market for farmed fish. They and others like them might be in stores as
early as 2002.
This creature is the latest in a series of inventions being offered as food
to a world many believe to be teetering on the brink of starvation. The
problem is that, like many genetically altered or engineered life forms,
this salmon may end up destroying more lives than it saves.
How do you build a better salmon? In this case, part of the DNA of a winter
flounder is matched to the salmon's growth hormone to produce a mixed or
transgenic species. Over the past decade, researchers have also found a way
to alter tilapia and other fish so that they will produce human growth
hormone, or hGH. The resulting "superfish" grows faster and larger on less
feed. It's an entrepreneur's dream come true.
Yet, despite the optimism of inventors and the governmental and private
investors that support them, there are enormous environmental risks involved
in developing transgenic species.
In a major study of the effects of releasing transgenic species into the
wild, William Muir and Richard Howard of Purdue University discovered that
more than 30 percent of Japanese medaka born with the hGH gene did not live
to sexual maturity. In the market, this is not important. Fish can be sold
and eaten before they are sexually mature. But in nature, surviving to
sexual maturity is everything. The superfish may dominate the mating game,
but if they are least likely to produce viable offspring, the population
will eventually decline.
How large will these declines be? Mathematically at least, there is no
limit.
By using computer models, the Purdue scientists calculated that if 60
transgenics were released into a population of 60,000 wild fish, it would
only take 40 generations for the species to become extinct. With fewer
modified fish, the result was the same; it just took longer to get there.
Advocates of genetic engineering maintain that these fish can be rendered
sterile and isolated from wild populations. Both contentions are dubious.
Complete sterilization of all fish is simply not a reality. Nor is it likely
to be. No company has stepped forward to guarantee 100 percent perfection in
sterility. And nothing short of perfection is acceptable, for it only takes
one well-endowed superfish in a population of wild salmon to start the
process of decline.
The same goes for total isolation, another pipe dream. The best containment
systems are expensive enough to discourage even the most enthusiastic
investor. That leaves open-water containment, in netted farms, as currently
practiced in countries such as Norway, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.
The biotechnology industry, across the board, has a notoriously poor record
when it comes to containing its little Frankensteins, be they pollens, seeds
or fish. So-called netcage aquaculture fits this pattern. In British
Columbia, Canada, environmental groups have filed lawsuits to stop the
practice. They charge that the cages spread disease to wild fish, dump
antibiotics and other drugs into wild habitats, and allow more aggressive
farmed fish to escape and outcompete wild species.
Despite the likely negative impact, the race is on to build bigger, better
fish. The same company is engineering char, flounder, tilapia and trout with
the same boosted characteristics. According to Greenpeace, similar research
efforts are under way in many countries, including China, Taiwan and New
Zealand. Commercial stocking has already begun in Canada, Chile, Cuba and
Scotland.
Supposedly, the rush to engineer new strains of foods - fish included - is a
response to world hunger. In this version of events, biotechnology is a
second green revolution. But what is the point of having more food if
poverty prevents vast segments of the human family from sharing in the
bounty? Some 786 million people are officially malnourished. But the Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has recently hinted that
there is in fact no shortage of food globally. Merely a shortage of equity,
accountability and ethics.
In wealthy countries, one can now purchase any food at any time of the year,
while rural villagers in developing nations starve. This is no coincidence.
According to the FAO, hunger in the developing world is caused in large part
by a massive shift from subsistence farming to production for export, a
shift encouraged by international lending institutions and governments.
Modern industrial agriculture, with its high costs for engineered seeds,
petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, accelerates the trend toward
exports. Small-scale subsistence farmers cannot afford to farm, and abandon
the fields to wealthy corporate agribusiness concerns. In India, the system
has reached its logical, if absurd, conclusion: rice and wheat rot in
bulging state storehouses while a third of the population is undernourished,
too poor to buy food staples.
In this market, when nearly a billion people can't afford the basics, why is
there such a rush to engineer new fish? Not to ease world hunger. No, simply
because there is money to be made by selling to wealthy consumers in
industrial nations.
And for this short-term gain, bioengineers the world over are willing to
risk damaging Earth's life system at the most fundamental genetic level.
If we were to apply our ingenuity to designing and nurturing a more
equitable social order, and stabilizing both our numbers and our material
appetites, I believe we would find that we still have enough to get by,
without tampering with the very codes of life.
NOTE FROM JEAN: If you are still eating meat, the following may disgust you forever from eating meat. After you've read this, figure out if the government officials in charge of ensuring the safety of what people eat in North America would ever bother alarming the public about the presence of the Mad Cow disease infectious agent in the supply of meat on the market with such low standards of inspection as described below. If they don't care that people eat every day food stuff laced with growth hormone, antibiotic, pesticide and herbicide residues, AND untested gene-spliced Frankenfood with potentially lethal allergenic effects, AND irradiated food, AND God knows what else, then they will never ever verify if the Mad Cow disease prion is present in the meat. For all we know, there is perhaps already an epidemic in progress in North America and no one is reporting it for fear of upsetting the powerful meat lobby. According to recent news report, the number of Mad Cow disease cases in the UK is on the increase. Why not here? Should we believe that no slaughterhouse residues have never been used in making animal feed here?...
TUMOR MEAT:
Meat from Diseased Animals approved for Consumers
By LANCE GAY
Scripps Howard News Service
July 14, 2000
WASHINGTON - The federal agency overseeing food inspection is
imposing new rules reclassifying as safe for human consumption
animal carcasses with cancers, tumors and open sores.
Federal meat inspectors and consumer groups are protesting the
move to classify tumors and open sores as aesthetic problems,
which permits the meat to get the government's purple seal of
approval as a wholesome food product.
"I don't want to eat pus from a chicken that has pneumonia. I
think it's gross," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public
Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project. "Most Americans don't
want to eat this sort of contamination in their meals."
Delmer Jones, a federal food inspector for 41 years who lives in
Renlap, Ala., said he's so revolted by the lowering of food
wholesomeness standards that he doesn't buy meat at the
supermarket anymore because he doesn't trust that it is safe to eat.
"I eat very little to no meat, but sardines and fish," said
Jones, president of the National Joint Council of Meat Inspection
Locals, a union of 7,000 meat inspectors nationwide affiliated
with the American Federation of Government Employees. He said
he's trying to get his wife to stop eating meat. "I've told her
what she's eating."
The union is battling related Agriculture Department plans to
rely on scientific testing of samples of butchered meats to
determine the wholesomeness of meat, rather than traditional
item-by-item scrutiny by federal inspectors. A 1959 federal law
requires inspectors from the Agriculture Department's Food
Inspection and Safety System to inspect all slaughtered animals
before they can be sold for human consumption.
The Agriculture Department began implementing the new policy as
part of a pilot project in 24 slaughter houses last October, and
plans to expand the system nationwide covering poultry, beef and
pork. The agency this month extended until Aug. 29 the time for
the public to comment on the regulations, and won't issue final
rules until after the comments are received.
In 1998, the inspections and safety system reclassified an array
of animal diseases as being "defects that rarely or never present
a direct public health risk" and said "unaffected carcass
portions" could be passed on to consumers by cutting out lesions.
Among animal diseases the agency said don't present a health danger are:
- Cancer;
- A pneumonia of poultry called airsacculitis;
- Glandular swellings or lymphomas;
- Sores;
- Infectious arthritis;
- Diseases caused by intestinal worms.
In the case of tumors, the guidelines state:
"remove localized lesion(s) and pass unaffected carcass portions."
"They just cut off the areas,'' said Carol Blake, spokeswoman for
the Agriculture Department's inspection and safety system.
But Jones and consumer groups say production lines are moving so
fast that they can't catch all the diseased carcasses, and some
are ending up on supermarket shelves.
"When I started inspecting, inspectors were looking at 13 birds a
minute, then 40, and now it's 91 birds a minute with three
inspectors. You cannot do your job with 91 birds a minute," Jones said.
The Agriculture Department is also experimenting with proposed
rules that would require federal food inspectors to monitor what
the plant employees are doing, rather than inspecting each
carcass individually. They are aimed at bringing a new scientific
approach to federal meat inspection to cut down on E. coli
bacteria and other contamination.
The inspection and safety agency says a survey of pilot plants
using the new system concluded that less than 1 percent of the
poultry examined at the end of the production line and released
for public consumption was unwholesome.
At a public hearing on the findings this year, Karen Henderson of
Agriculture's division of field operations admitted that defective carcasses
are being approved for human use under the pilot program.
"Absolutely. There's no system that we are aware of that is
capable of removing every defect from the process," she said.
Felicia Nestor, director of the Government Accountability
Project, a Washington watchdog group, said the pilot project
found chickens with higher levels of fecal and other
contamination than in traditional methods of inspecting.
"A lot of diseased animals are going out," she said.
A. Raymond Randolph, a federal appeals court judge, this month
said federal food safety laws require meat and poultry inspectors
to examine every carcass that moves through slaughterhouses and
processing plants.
"The laws clearly contemplate that when inspections are done, it
will be federal inspectors, rather than private employees, who
will make the critical determination whether a product is
adulterated or unadulterated," he said. "Under the proposed plan,
federal inspectors would be inspecting people, not carcasses."
On the Net: The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and
Inspection Service http://www.fsis.usda.gov. The federal
inspectors web site is http://www.the-inspector.com
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000
From: Chere Rae <heartvisions@earthlink.net>
Subject: How Much Caffeine?
The question people ask: How much Caffeine is there in ?
CLIP
CAFFEINE
In case you hadn't noticed: Caffeine is a drug and it is everywhere. Caffeine can cause insomnia, heart problems, and nausea. How much caffeine is there in [drink/food/pill]?
++++++++++
From: "Dr. Van Beveren"
Subject: Re: How much Caffeine
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000
Good review of caffeine statistics. As always, I have my 2 cents to add and if any of the people this goes to do not drink stimulants - just delete this but here it is if you do drink coffee, regular tea or chocolate.
Americans consume 160 billion cups of coffee per year and about 120 million pounds of tea - or approximately 36 million pounds of caffeine. 85% of persons 18 years or older are consuming caffeine with a mean intake of 186 mg. caffeine per day (2.2 cups of coffee).
Of the 120 brands of coffee, cocktails and cola beverages nearly every one of the 60 million sodas consumed has caffeine - but with children and youth being the greater consumers and so oblivious to the health hazards hidden within these innocent looking cans - they may as well be smoking. Caffeine, like chocolate, is a close cousin to nicotine. While trying to quit smoking one cup of caffeinated coffee or tea and even flesh foods - will trigger the demand for a cigarette. Detrimental effects? While books have been written about this, suffice to say that the throat, stomach, heart, brain and its nervous system suffer the most. The chief problems are the lack of quality sleep (though one may have the eyes closed!) and muscular tremors. Decaffeinated coffee is worse - like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. If methylene chloride is still used in the extracting process (which most extractors have given up - I think!) or even the more popular "water process", Caffeol (the oil which gives coffee its flavor and which is used in tanning leather!) is a concentrated astringent and irritates all the mucous membranes, the liver, kidneys and bladder. Often the result of heavy caffeol doses in the bladder urine gives rise to bladder cancer. I can always tell by the mucous irritation whether one is drinking caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. Weight for weight the kola nut contains more caffeine than the coffee bean and leaves the brain even more fatigued.
Caffeine is an alkaloid - a vegetable poison - and causes all the problems associated with alkalosis, including allergies, sensitivities and a predisposition to arteriosclerosis and gout. It causes a compensatory depression, increases pressure in glaucoma, destroys stomach pepsin, high blood pressure and increases the heart rate. Not containing one atom of nourishment, caffeine can only whip an already tired horse and forces the system to borrow from tomorrow's reserves - with interest. Caffeine interferes with the recharging process. Proof of this is the morning "hangover" headache - tell tale of the state of exhaustion in the nerve centers. In the old days - just before an auction - horses were frequently injected with a small amount of caffeine to stimulate them and to keep their heads high and their actions spry. When the next day the horse's head was down low again the owner realized he'd been duped. Both the theobromine of chocolate and the caffeine of coffee and tea stimulate, excite and quicken the living machinery and force one to feel strong, active and quick-witted. Unfortunately it also helps produce lumpy cysts and fibroids in the reproductive machinery. The responsible chemicals for this are purine, uric acid, xanthines, caffeine and theobromine. Purine is also found in all dead flesh and is chemically almost identical to that found coffee, tea, chocolate and cocoa. Uric acid is C3/H4/N4/O3, Caffeine is C8/H10/N4/O2 and Theobomine of cocoa is C7/H8/H4/Os. To reduce breast, uterine or ovarian lumps (solid nodules - like the pearl) complete abstinence from the xanthines, purines and uric acids is essential. And abstinence will also help people with hypoglycemia.
Time to clear the cupboards and make a mid-year resolution to eliminate one more bad habit.
Good luck!
Warmly, Dr. Van Beveren, Ph.D.CNS, CNC.
Health Integration Centers
From: http://www.worldhealing.co.uk/risingearth/articles.html
Direct Action: Time to Move On
by Diane Manning <yabyumpan@fdn.co.uk>
(Who has been on this ERN list for a good while and who has a most excellent point here. Bravo Diane! You got it!)
This is a personal perspective on Direct Action and the way forward. During the early 90s I was fairly heavily involved in the ‘No M11 Link Road’ campaign. I live in Hackney, at the mouth of the link, and helped to organise meetings, marches and events. In Wanstead we were given training in NVDA (Non-Violent Direct Action) which involved learning to allow your body to go limp when being manhandled, as well as smiling at security guards and police and generally not making it personal and keeping it ‘fluffy’. Around this time I was also becoming more aware and in tune with the interconnectedness of all things and I began to see things from a different angle. What I had once seen as positive protest against legitimate targets I now saw as conflict. In conflict both sides push harder and harder, nothing is resolved and the gulf widens. While I understand and support the reasons behind DA and can see that greater awareness and personal empowerment are positive things which have come from actions, I feel that the movement as a whole needs to look at moving away from conflict and the ‘we’re right you’re wrong’ mentality (even worse ‘we’re good you’re bad’), and work to bring about change in a different way.
In 1994 I moved away from the direct action scene and started working with meditation and Earth healing to bring about change. My feeling was/is that not only is conflict ultimately counter-productive but that to bring about real change, human consciousness itself has to change and evolve. I know that to many people involved in DA this is seen as a soft option at best and a cop-out at worse; I realise also that sitting meditating for change doesn’t seem as much fun as partying on the motorway or as empowering as going face-to-face with the riot police, and it’s true you don’t get the same adrenaline rush as being in a large, loud passionate crowd, but I do believe it’s the way forward.
There are other ways to work actively without being in conflict; as has been shown recently with GM crops, the power of us as consumers should not be underestimated, we can attempt to buy ethically as much as possible and to boycott where we feel it’s necessary. Letter writing, as Amnesty International has shown, is a very effective form of protest, not only to Dictatorships but to companies and our own Government; in business, every letter of complaint received is counted as if ten people had written, so it really can make a difference. Networking and talking to family, friends and colleagues about what’s happening in the world is also a very important way of raising awareness, being open about who we are and what we believe is a very strong and positive way of bringing about change.
Imagine the next G8 summit or WTO conference, tens of thousands of people surrounding the buildings and sending out Love and positive energy to all the participants and security staff…
The bottom line is that conflict only begets more conflict… Loving energy creates yet more Love. Which way do we want to go in the 21st century?
DAILY GRIST
July 24, 2000
http://www.gristmagazine.com
2.
WELCOME TO THE CLUB
The Sierra Club gave its formal endorsement to Al Gore today, with
the group's president, Robert Cox, saying that if Gore were elected,
he would be "the most pro-environment president in our history."
Gore accepted the endorsement by saying, "It is an honor that I will
seek to live up to every day." The Gore campaign is working hard to
draw attention to the announcement, which it hopes will help shore up
support among enviros considering a vote for Ralph Nader, the Green
Party candidate. Twelve of the Sierra Club's 15 board members voted
to endorse Gore on Saturday, with only one favoring Nader.
straight to the source: Fox News, Associated Press, Mike Glover, 07.24.00
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/wires/0724/p_ap_0724_12.sml
straight to the source: New York Times, James Dao, 07.24.00
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/072400wh-gore.html
read it only in Grist Magazine: Readers weigh in on Gore vs. Nader
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/letters/letters062900.stm
To subscribe to DAILY GRIST, send a blank email message to <daily-grist-subscribe@egroups.com>.
