Traveling up to Kamloops this afternoon by Greyhound bus, for my niece’s 16th birthday, I got five hours of free reading time: yeah!—John Keay’s India: A History (okay four hours and a snooze).

Having got through about five thousand years worth of historical speculation beginning with the remarkable Harappan civilization findings—long term colonized countries always have countless stories—I reached partition.

This is the 30s to the late 40s, the time of Gandhi and Nehru, and other historical giants; World War II, the Great Depression, independence from colonialism; the beginning of the Cold War and the British Empire’s departure from India.

In India a man by the name of Mohammed Ali Jinnah was pushing for independence for Muslims from India (India, incidentally, is a term that was only ever used by Powers outside of the land mass).

According to Keay (pg 56):

“…in the whole colossus corpus of Sanskrit literature nowhere called ‘India’ is ever mentioned; nor does the term occur in Buddhist or Jain texts; nor was it current in any of South Asia’s numerous other languages.

Worse still, if etymologically ‘India’ belonged anywhere, it was not in the republic proclaimed in Delhi by Jawaharlal Nehru [the first Prime Minister of India] but to its rival headed by Mohammed Ali Jinnah in Pakistan.”

This is because the word, first mentioned way back in Persian texts, and likely comes from the Sanskrit word for river: sindhu.

But speaking of etymology and Pakistan, there was a meeting in Lahore in 1940 of the Muslim League, a political group seeking greater Muslim independence with the push towards British departure—the Raj—from India. This push would eventually lead to bloody partition—in my opinion a disaster—and the formation of West and East Pakistan.

But get this (pg 496):

Although known as the ‘Pakistan Resolution’, the Lahore text made no mention of ‘Pakistan’ as such. The term was still an academic fiction. It had first been adopted by a group of Muslims at Cambridge in the early 1930s as a wishful acronym for a greater Muslim homeland consisting of P(unjab), A(fghania), i.e the North-west Frontier, K(ashmir), I(ran), S(ind), T(urkharistan), A(fghanistan) and (Baluchista)N.

It also meant, according to its inventor, ‘the land of the paks—the spiritually pure and clean.’

That’s a big empire, and a lot of ego. And Cambridge again? Weren’t the five English spies for Russia, Kim Philby et al., from Cambridge? Anyway, you can’t tell me that bit of trivia on the word Pakistan wouldn’t spruce up a dull party. I had no idea.

Love ya,

Pete

From Quantum Enigma, pg 51-52:

Quantum theory has been subject too challenging tests for eight decades. No prediction by the theory has ever been shown wrong. It is the most battle-tested theory in all of science—it has no competitors. Nevertheless, if you take the implications of the theory seriously, you confront an enigma. The theory seems to tell us the reality of the physical world depends on our observation of it. This is surely almost impossible to believe.

Being hard to believe presents a problem: Told something hard to believe, a likely response is: “I don’t understand.” There is also a tendency to reinterpret what is said to make it seem reasonable.

Don’t use believability or reasonableness as a test of comprehension.

But here’s one test: [the great physicist] Niels Bohr, a founder of quantum theory, claimed that unless you are shocked by quantum mechanics, you have not understood it.

That sounds like a great way to take the world, too. Imagine waking up comfortably shocked every morning. Like, “Wow, we’re spinning through space, held up by I don’t know what, I can’t even feel it, I’m not falling off, and I have to stretch this somewhat self-contained body/thing around to make mobility along the ground a little more flowing. Wow. And who is the “I” making all these plans and assumptions, anyway?”

And if that isn’t absurd enough, get this (from pg 61):

In 1906, the year after Albert Einstein discovered the quantum nature of light, firmly established the atomic nature of matter, and formulated the theory of relativity, he was promoted by the Swiss patent office to Technical Expert, Second Class.

That’s like President Obama getting a job at McDonald’s. Okay, a managerial job at McDonald’s. But hang in there, and who knows what’ll happen. We sure as heck can’t predict it.

Lots of love to you—and I don’t believe you exist only by my observation.

Pete xox

“You have to believe in free will. You have no choice.”
—Isaac Bashevis Singer

I was thinking the other day that the essence of the universe has always been nuanced, expansive, infinite and endless communication, and all we humans have added to the conversation is words.

I’m reading the Quantum Enigma, and its opening paragraph of Chapter 3 is thought-provoking:

Today’s technology limits our displaying the quantum enigma to small objects only. But that is solely a technological limitation. Quantum mechanics applies to everything.

Just imagine what that might mean—and if we were more subtle…

That’s it for now.

Lots of love to you,

Pete xoxo

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…”
—George Orwell

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is heartbreaking, depressing, brutal, degrading and all-too-human in every way: physically, spiritually, and in a search for truth. Every time I try to understand it, my head spins and I feel quite depressed. Too many dates, borders, claims and lies. And polar opposite conclusions between highly intelligent people are distressing. We are trying to hear truth in a crowd of fanatics.

I would not be surprised if you feel the same way.

Either way, the massacre of children and citizens in the last round of attacks must surely be intolerable to most any human being who tries to put themselves in such unfortunate shoes, regardless of the side they defend.

And I say ’side they defend,’ because the more I try to understand this conflict, the more I realize the one mistake I am making, which is this: I keep thinking that everybody involved is actually seeking peace.

Even a cursory glance at statements reveals this to be absolutely untrue. I learned this idea—that some people actually want war—from the writings of Doris Lessing, in a book called Prisons We Choose To Live Inside.

Put another way, anybody can say they want peace. But peace on one’s own terms, only, is no peace at all (so it goes for free speech). But for some leaders involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—both yesterday and today—compromise with the enemy is largely or even completely unacceptable.

Even a few select quotes—I cannot be sure of their validity or the translations—show that any talk about a desire for real peace or co-existence with dignity is largely rhetoric.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to the US House of Representatives in 2006:

“I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people’s eternal and historic right to this entire land.”

From Khaled Mashal, Damascus-based Hamas leader, speaking in December of 2005:

“Hamas will continue to wield its weapons and to claim its right to resist. Resistance will continue to be a strategic option until the last piece of Palestinian land is liberated, until the last refugee returns….”

Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Force, Moshe Dayan, (sometime in the 1970s):

“We have no solution… You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.”

Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha on December 22, 2008:

“It is our right as an occupied people to defend ourselves from the occupation by all means possible including suicide attacks.”

Shmuel Katz, who cofounded the Herut Party in Israel (which became Likud) with Menachem Begin, writes on February 23, 2004 in the Jerusalem Post (to the International Court of Justice):

The “occupied Palestinian lands” is…the common language of Arab anti-Israel propaganda, a part of the Arabs’ fictional history, which it has succeeded in disseminating throughout the whole wide world…

Israel rejects absolutely the notion that it is illegally holding “Palestinian lands.” Israel has a very valid claim to these lands, and to its right to do what it is doing there. It is a claim backed not only by historical fact—which a modern judge may well ignore—but by substantial modern legal and historical testimony. Regrettably, the court has already shown a sign of bias, apart from echoing the UN’s “Palestinian lands.”

Mahmoud Al-Zahar, Hamas leader, quoted October 2006 in Al-Ayyam, Palestinian newspaper:

“Israel is a vile entity that has been planted on our soil, and has no historical, religious or cultural legitimacy….”

Dov Weissglas, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s senior adviser said in 2004 in an interview with Haaretz’s Ari Shavit:

“The significance of the ‘disengagement’ plan [from Gaza] is the freezing of the peace process [trying to be implemented by the Quartet of the United States, Russia, EU and UN]… when you freeze that [Peace] process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

Khaled Mashal, again, Hamas leader, said on February 3, 2006 in Al-Hayyat al-Jedida:

“[Hamas will] never recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist state that was founded on our land.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Prime Minister and current leader of the Likud Party, said on December 18, 2008:

“We want a united Jerusalem under Israel, with access to the religious sites, to all the three great faiths…Our position on refugees is also unchanged: We’ll seek a solution to the problem of refugees but not in Israel—we will not entertain refugees, Palestinian refugees, inside Israel.”

David Ben-Gurion, Israeli’s first Prime Minister, in 1956:

“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

From Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, January 18, 2006:

“Hamas is not hostile to Jews because they are Jews. We are hostile to them because they occupied our land and expelled our people….We did not say we want to throw the Jews in the sea or feed them to sharks. We just said that there is a land called occupied Palestine. It was burglarized and it needs to be returned to the Palestinian people.”

By the way, if I have understood the definition of the phrase, “Israel’s right to exist”, correctly, it means, among other things, to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, with the right to ensure a Jewish majority.

Without saying this should or should not be accepted, let’s just say, from what I understand, such terms are anathema to international law. Further, for me, an Islamic state with similar demands sounds like—and wherever it happens is—a disaster for non-Muslims, free-thinkers, freedom of speech and women forced to live there.

One could easily say that a Jewish State would be different—with greater democracy and free speech—but what has unfolded with the massacre of Palestinians does not bode well for the full implementation of such a rationale.

So to talk about peace, the wanting of peace, the striving for peace etc, is futile and heart-breaking—like trying to make a relationship work out when one of the parties only wants one thing: out.

This is all quite depressing, of course. But somehow remembering this fact is also freeing. Why? Because without keeping this thought nearby, trying to get a decent handle on the conflict, and an answer to why the conflict is so far from peace, is impossible.

This shouldn’t diminish one’s compassion for the innocent (and even the not-innocent) in this battle—sisters and brothers like you and I.

In the latest round of attacks in Gaza, thirteen Israelis were killed (3 civilians) and some 1,300 Palestinians were killed—and, in honesty, one can only assume that it was known with virtual certainty that a large number of those killed would be citizens.

According to the BBC, after the ceasefire, over 400,000 Gazans were without running water, 4,000 Gazan buildings had been bombed to the ground, another 20,000 “severely” damaged and over 50,000 Gazans were left homeless.

Deuteronomy 7:2:

“And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.”

Surah 9:27:

“Fight against such as those to whom the Scriptures were given…who do not embrace the true faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued.”

For better or worse, let me quote the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens from January 5, 2009:

Gaza…has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and made into a place of repression for its inhabitants and aggression for its neighbors…To read [in my opinion, the inconsistent historian] Benny Morris is to be quite able—and quite free—to doubt that there should ever have been an Israeli state to begin with. But to see Hamas at work is to resolve that whatever replaces or follows Zionism, it must not be the wasteland of Islamic theocracy.

Still, believe in love,

Pete xoxo

For those who didn’t see The Story of India (I haven’t yet seen it), PBS, as usual, has a fantastic and generous website that is wonderful to go through. The piece is beautifully shot, the score is elevated, and narrator Michael Woods’ affection for the country is palatable, and contagious. If you have any interest in the heart or history of India, the site is a great overview, with video clips, photographs and writing.

Humans ventured out of Africa, across the bottom of Saudi Arabia and into India around 70,000 years ago, venturing to the south of the country—which is today called Kerala. It’s beautiful, I was just there. But I didn’t realize this bit of genetics. Michael Woods says:

“And all non-Africans on the planet can trace their descent to those early migrations into India. The rest of the world was populated from there. Mother India indeed…”

What a thought. No wonder I love chai. Actually, tea came from the British. Wait, I was born in Britain. Ah, now it really makes sense. Karma. What comes around, goes around—preferably with a little cardamom sprinkled on it and, as Led Zeppelin once sang, “…a whole lotta love…”

Lots of love to you, sister and brother,

Pete

I once had the great pleasure of interviewing Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power (A Problem from Hell). She recently married legal superstar and prolific writer Cass Sunstein, whom I knew very little about. But feeling like a friend of Samantha’s—which I’m not, of course—I looked him up and found something he said, whether I agreed with him in general or not, wonderfully thought-provoking and useful.

As I’ve been less than thrilled by some of President Obama’s choices for certain key cabinet positions—while trying to remember that in the world of realpolitiks, pragmatism must play a massive, necessary role—I found this comment from Sunstein enlightening (both for myself and how I perceive Obama’s choices). Admittedly, who really gives a crap what I think of his choices (no one), but being human, I can’t help thinking—and I thought a few people who read this might find it useful.

Anyway, Sunstein writes about Obama—with whom he was a colleague at university:

I’ll tell you what I like about Obama, which is connected with the book. He really doesn’t like to surround himself only with like-minded others. He really is someone who has never lived and wouldn’t live in an echo chamber. His great skepticism about the red state, blue state divide is just the thought that no particular party has a monopoly on wisdom.

He has an amazing line in the “Audacity of Hope” where he says, roughly, there are feminists in the United States who mourn their own abortions, and there are conservative women who have paid for their friends’ daughters’ abortions. And the reason I think this is so great is that it breaks down a sense that Americans come in two types.

I think that’s true, important, and a good reality-check. From my point of view, I don’t even consider the terms liberal and conservative to have significant meaning anymore, and will gladly take degree-of-kindness as a much more revealing and important marker of one’s nature. I’m sure ol’ Sunstein could well tell me why that’s idiotic, but how could George Bush policy (massive spending, huge State, wars of aggression etc) ever, ever, ever be considered conservative? The full article is here.

I also heard that Obama had a pretty busy and effective first day, doing things to increase ethics and transparency.

During his first full day in office Obama also issued orders on government ethics and transparency, including curbs on lobbying, an ethics code for federal employees and a pay freeze for senior White House staff.

Good on him. He just outdid George Bush’s efforts over eight years in the same area. May it continue.

Love to you,

Pete

In a continuation of the King Corn theme, this is the most concise definition of our paradoxical food crisis—the over-production, the war against children getting good food, the sustained brutality of livestock, the unsustainable model—I have ever read. It made me laugh out loud, too. From James Hill, epidemiologist in the field of obesity:

“Becoming obese is a normal response to the American environment.”

The article, in the Sunday Mail (England) in 2003, with the succinct title How Americans Became The Fattest People In The World (and Canadians and Brits are right there with you) goes on to say—and tell me this isn’t fascinating:

So what is it about the American environment—and, increasingly, our own [English environment]—that is making our weight balloon?

We all know the short answer—too much fast food, too little exercise—but the detail is fascinating.

According to Greg Critser, the problems began with Earl [Let's Expand American] Butz, a former Secretary of Agriculture to Richard Nixon whose brief was to produce cheaper food.

Under Butz, corn crops multiplied, leading to the increased production of high-fructose corn syrup, a liquid sugar produced from corn starch that is six times sweeter than cane sugar, and which had new attributes that matched the needs of food manufacturers very well indeed.

Not only did high-fructose corn syrup mean that more sweet foodstuff could be produced much cheaper than before, it also protected frozen foods from freeze-burn, prolonged the shelf life of other foods and made baked goods look more appetizing.

Then, palm oil—a vegetable oil made from the pulp of the palm tree—entered the national diet. Palm oil may sound healthy, but its other name, tree lard, gives a hint of its highly saturated nature. It was loaded with calories and bad for arteries. But, in the jargon of the processed food industry, it gave “good mouthfeel”. And it was cheap.

Who can’t relate to the good mouthfeel? What is the eating of, say, a warm, chewy, moist…nutritionally hopeless chocolate-chip cookie, after all, other than good mouthfeel? Salty, oily chips? Mmm! Or perhaps worst of all, and one of which I am not guilty, addicting, sweet-ladened soda pop.

Says Critser [generalising, to be sure]:

“The legacy of Earl Butz was that Coca-Cola and Pepsi switched from a 50/50 mix of corn sugar and cane sugar to 100 per cent high-fructose corn syrup, enabling them to save 20 per cent costs, boost portion sizes and still make profits.”

At the supermarket, too, calorie-dense convenience foods became even more affordable.

“In short, Butz had delivered everything the modern American consumer had wanted. Cheap, abundant and tasty calories had arrived. It was time to eat.”

It’s true. We want our food available and cheap. It isn’t easy to spend more money on better food, even if it can be afforded. But it’s probably essential to do so for long-tern sustainability, both personal and environmental. Buy local (as an aside, Earl Butz lived to 98).

Here’s the push behind it all, where something can be called a ‘Happy Meal’ although, for so many, it is actually a ‘Horrible Meal’ that will eventually lead to, say, the amputation of a leg due to Type II Diabetes, or just a massive clogging of arteries and a heart attack at the top of the stairs, only to be found weeks later, at the bottom of the stairs, the remains of that once happy ‘Happy Meal’ splattered desperately across the wall.

The cheap, calorie-dense fillers were embraced by a new breed of fast-food marketing men—and sales went through the roof.

Who can say no to that?

What the American consumer wanted was quantity, not quality. They wanted more for less, and they got it in jumbo portions and combo deals (chicken, mash, gravy, peas and a cola, for example).

But enough is never enough. The more you give people, the more they eat, simple as that. There is a new science of understanding human satisfaction, or satiety, and the evidence seems to show that there is actually no such thing as satiety.

The yogis have said this forever. Literally, that the ten senses can not be fulfilled, and thus we must ask, “Are we these ten senses?” If not, “Who are we?”

Continuing:

A study by Penn State University in the US shows that as portions increase, people simply eat more. Human hunger is not something related to stomach size and caloric need. It is something that can be expanded by merely offering more and bigger portions.

A marketers dream! Monsanto can fill us with empty calories until, too fat to move let alone revolt, but revolting nonetheless, we’re on our big fat knees, with clogged arteries, immersed in our own delusions, begging for more, like a child who’s lost its mother.

Not pretty, but what a marketing strategy.

And I know the feeling. I love the feel of food, and constantly put too much in my belly. It’s hard to listen. May you stretch often, breathe deeply, eat well, and remember your deeper, truer nature. Or, may I!

Pete xox

In 1947, India was partitioned, resulting in war (Indo-Pakistan War) and misery that continues intermittently yet punishing to this day, with no obvious visible peace-to-come. The UN partition of the so-called British Mandate of Palestine in 1947 also erupted in war, and the miseries continue, unbearably, as we all see in the news these days.

Trying to take an intelligent, compassionate, expansive (let alone moral) stand with so much loss of civilian life, and a battle that is so archly divided by intelligent, and probably good, people, is virtually impossible for me. It’s like looking at a rotting corpse with a flashlight and believing in the least rotten spot. The magnitude and weight of the past and the present is overwhelming and obfuscated, in both India/Pakistan and the so-called Holy Land.

The news, so often, does not help at all—on the contrary, divides people, and gives unilateral arguments for those who seek them. Nonetheless, a little conversation in a little community paper in Charlotte, with a Palestinian merchant who lived in Gaza, reminded me of the details and the nuances that are left out of so much heavy-handed, headline news.

Either way, would it not be correct to say that, whatever one’s argument, the lives of the Palestinian citizen in Gaza and the West Bank (the Occupied Territories)—their quality of life markers, perhaps—must be at present, dismal, bordering on hopeless? And unlike Israeli citizens, Palestinian citizens, not backed by an sort of military defense force, have no real means whatsoever to protect themselves or their families from being bombed into oblivion by military power in the extreme. What else could be done but to throw one’s hands up to the heavens and weep? And what could be done differently?

Something needs to be done, for as Dante once wrote:

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”

TUNNEL VISION

I keep hearing about the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, built only by unstoppable terrorists for the transport of arms and to kill because, I keep hearing, that clearly all Palestinians must think: “We are going to win because they love life and we love death.”

Actually, according to former Punta Gorda (Gaza) resident Amer Shriteh, the tunnels are largely for the transport of goods, in the name of capitalism, for the actual survival of people in Gaza, embargoed from the world in so many ways, for so many years.

Anyway, the piece is not earth-shattering, but it is an interesting reminder of how, under such duress, one grand truth remains: most people, under siege, are just trying to desperately survive and feed their families, despite the depravities of Power.

This was also seen after the brutal attacks in Mumbai. The day after the massacre there, with a city in shock, the poor in the massive slums of Mumbai, were out in their usual force, like everyday, trying to get enough to eat.

White Tiger novelist Aravind Adiga, who lives in Mumbai, put it thus:

“It wasn’t just a bomb. This was an invasion. It felt more personal. So there is still anxiety and fear. No one trusts the police, or has any confidence that the government is in control. Business in restaurants is 25% down. Only the poor must continue as before because, of course, they have no choice. For them, it is as if nothing has happened. In this way, they are putting the middle classes to shame.“

Imagine living in Palestine—what could you have confidence in? From the article by Greg Martin in the Charlotte Sun community paper:

Unable to import merchandise since Israel blockaded the borders in 2006, Palestinian merchants in the Gaza Strip began digging tunnels—as many as a thousand—to smuggle in supplies, according to former Punta Gorda resident Amer Shriteh.

Shriteh knows firsthand.

Shriteh, 43, has long owned and operated an appliance store in Gaza City—and he began purchasing merchandise himself from tunnel traders as the territory’s residents grew desperate for supplies, he said.

“I got TV parts, radios, irons, telephones, washing machines and water heaters from the tunnels,” he said. “I am the first one that bought TVs through the tunnels, the fifth one to buy ceiling fans.”

Others shipped produce, canned goods and propane tanks through the tunnels, he said…

Amer Shriteh said there’s no doubt Hamas and other factions, including the Popular Front, Jihad and Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, have built their own tunnels to smuggle weapons.

Those tunnels are made of concrete and steel, he said.

“Every faction has its secure tunnel and nobody knows where it is,” Amer said.

But hundreds more tunnels were dug by hand by civilian entrepreneurs and laborers, he said. Those tunnels are typically no bigger than 3 square feet, he said.

So many tunnels have been dug along the 4.8-mile stretch of Egyptian border that there have been times when workers in one tunnel have accidentally dug through the wall of another tunnel, he said.

The merchandise is typically shipped in barrels that are cut in half. Communicating by intercom, workers “crawl like cats” to drag the cargo with ropes from the Egyptian side, he said.

“This is a business,” Amer Shriteh said. “It’s just a job.”

The rest of the article is here.

So many humans, heck, almost all humans—painted the color of terrorists or State Terrorists by political leaders and newspaper propaganda—are simply trying to feed a family, sleep at night, and get along with neighbours of whatever race and creed.

Like most of us, they could use a little love and remembering.

Lots of love to you,

Pete xox

I write this in a wide reference to genetic manipulation in food:

“There is no simple one-to-one mapping, then, between genes and bits of the body, any more than there is mapping between words of recipe and crumbs of cake….This makes nonsense of the idea that the genes are anything like a blueprint for a body.”
—Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (pg 296)

I know most consumers have the right to eat as they want, assuming they can afford whatever it is they want, but a couple of documentaries I saw recently were interesting and depressing enough to mention here. Of course they’re both biased etc etc, but for those who have a heart towards sustainable existence, both are eye-opening, and a call to even more vigilant, intelligent food purchasing and awareness. There is a revolution going on around us—while we write blogs or whatever—to own all the food and all the seeds, all over the world.

The first film was called King Corn, dedicated to Michael Pollan, writer of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Startling facts from two beef-loving city boys gone country—back to their roots—who find that corn, and corn with less and less nutritional value, has overtaken the American diet, with disastrous results. Those brutalized by the journey are the farmer’s integrity, the cows stomach, and the meat it provides, and the increasingly fat/Type II diabetic consumer.

To quote Michael Pollan:

“If you’re standing in a field in Iowa, there’s an immense amount of food being grown, none of it edible. The commodity corn, nobody can eat. It must be processed before we can eat it. It’s a raw material—it’s a feedstock for all these other processes. And the irony is that an Iowa farmer can no longer feed himself.”

In the film, the farmers, who seemed like salt of the earth people, were quite aware they were producing, I think one called it, something like the biggest load of crap in agricultural history. They know it’s totally dependent on government subsidies.

Interestingly, up until the mid 1970s, the farmer was subsidized to not produce too much. Now he/she is subsidized more for producing more, and the produced grain is starch in a much greater percentage, and inedible.

From the film, the new new farmers say:

“Three weeks from harvest time [after all our research] we could see the agriculture our great grandparents had helped build was now going for fast food.”

HOLY COW

Not.

Everyone who reads this knows I’m vegetarian. But for those who aren’t, man, the quality of your grain fed beef (corn) is way, way down, except in saturated fat, which is way, way up.

Said one cattle farmer in the film, paraphrasing: cows in feed lots can be okay on corn for 60 to 90 days, they’re being pushed at 120, and any more than that and the cows won’t survive. More acid in the belly is produced, ph drops, acidosis occurs, brutal stomach sores, dies if not treated, low doses of antibiotics are prescribed. According to the film, livestock now consume 70% of the antibiotics in the USA. Imagine the waiting lines in those emergency rooms. Fowl.

In the feedlot we produce, according to, I think, Loren Cordain from the University of Colorado:

“…a characteristically obese animal whose muscle tissue looks more like fat tissue more than it does like lean meat in wild animals. If you look at a T-bone steak from a grain [corn] fed cow, it may have as much as 9 grams of saturated fat, whereas a comparable steak from a grass fed animal would have 1.3 grams of saturated fat.”

STICKY BUSINESS

And the invasion of the absolutely pointless high-fructose corn syrup is out of control, and the effect of these totally empty calories are not pretty.

Walter Willet from Harvard said that to…

“…drink 1 soda a day on average almost doubles the risk of Type II diabetes compared to…” only occasionally or never having a soda beverage.

From the film:

“When you take that actual McDonald’s meal, you don’t realise it but you’re eating corn [this can be measured by taking hair samples]. The beef has been corn fed [for the last thirty years]. Soda is all corn—it all came from [high fructose] corn syrup. That’s the main ingredient. Even the french fries—half the calories come from the fat they’re fried in—and that fat is likely corn oil or soya oil [when GMO, as you'll see below, both are mostly produced with Monsanto products (and thus owned by Monsanto)]“.

Oh, and of course all these record amounts of corn crops in the US are heavily, profoundly subsidized because 1) the farmers lose money off of every acre and 2) because of our leaders undying belief in the free market—the second line was sarcasm.

The other film was called The World According to Monsanto (see the trailer here)—and you can watch the whole thing right here. This film, too, was disturbing for myriad reasons including a lying-as-a-principle corporate world, monopolies across the globe on all food crops, the genetic manipulation of food, and the literal crushing/enslavement of indigenous workers from India to Mexico, who are already up against the wall.

To quote Indian activist, Physicist and Ecologist Vandana Shiva in the film:

“There’s nothing [Monsanto] is leaving untouched. The mustard, the okra, the brinjal, the rice. Once they have established the norm, that seed can be owned as their property, royalties can be collected…we will depend on them for every seed we grow for every crop we grow. If they control seed they control food—they know it. It’s more powerful than bombs. It’s more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world.”

Just really disgusting. The amount of scientists who have said Monsanto outright lies—dangerously—and the scientists who have lost their jobs for saying so, and Monsanto’s connections to the revolving door between the FDA and the White House, and Downing Street, is staggering.

A few names to look up, if interested: Shiv Chopra, Dr Aprad Pusztai and Dr Stanley Ewen.

But hey, business is business, and this is a roundup.

And check out the effects of BT cotton for Indian farmers and their endless suicides due to, among other things of course under brutal conditions, their inability to pay off debts once being captured by this “miracle seed”—and make up your own mind.

And I know President Obama’s inauguration is today, and people think he’s totally different and wonderful—and maybe he is and I’m thrilled to tears over the historicity of it all—but the Organic Consumers Association (emails totaling more than 120,00) are not happy with his choice of Agriculture Secretary. Governor Tom Vilsack has been described as, among other things, “just another shill for Monsanto.”

More about this here.

But here’s to the audacity of hope. Seriously. Hope and work at it. What a miracle food is, this earth is, life is.

Lots of love and may you be fortunate enough to have beautiful, nutritional, cared-for food as a great part of your life,

Pete xoxo

With the talk of Hong Kong, I thought this was interesting. A quote from the beginning of W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello’s The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another:

Imagine this scenario: the Medellin cocaine cartel of Colombia mounts a successful military offensive against the United States, then forces the US to legalize cocaine and allow the cartel to import the drug into five major American cities, unsupervised and untaxed by the US. The American government also agrees to let the drug lords govern all Colombian citizens who operate in these cities, plus the US has to pay war reparations of $100 billion—the Colombians’ cost of waging the war to import cocaine into America.

That scenario is of course preposterous and beyond the feverish imagination of the most out-there writers of science fiction. However, a similar situation occurred not once, but twice in China during the nineteenth century.

In both cases, however, instead of thuggish Colombian drug dealers, it was the most technologically advanced nation on Earth, Great Britain, that forced similar conditions on China.

I wonder if England ever paid them back. Hmm. Funny world.

Speaking of freedom, it was heartening (freedom-wise) and disheartening (economics-wise) to see in a Hong Kong airport bookstore what seemed to be a serious mixture of pro and con opinions on China’s economic and stately status (from the Newsweek cover—Why China Works—cheering China’s economics) to The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage by former Financial Times reporter Alexandra Harvey.

I was going to buy the book but didn’t because I’m cheap and 160 Hong Kong dollars sounded like too much (about 27 bucks, I think).

I mention the book so as not to appear picking only on the former empire of Great Britain for amoral tendencies. It’s about how ruthless and disregarding the state of China is of those disposable things known as working people—in this case, their own (the moniker People’s Republic notwithstanding).

Of course, we’re all sisters and brothers when you get down to it, but how often do we? As a sustainable percentage, we humans just don’t seem to instinctively do what’s good for ourselves only to a point that is still good and kind for everybody else. So distant from the effects of so much that we do, it’s not even expected. Still, keep trying…

Pete xo